Comment after comment on social media from progressive voices express support for the Palestinians during this current and terrible conflict. Rightly so. Some progressive voices support Israel too
But where are the progressive voices extending support for the Israelis being injured and killed, caught as they are under a bombardment of over 1500 rockets indiscriminately fired by Hamas?
Voices like MP Maria Vamvakinou, are calling for the upholding of “International Law in Palestine”. Rightly so. Yet it is a war-crime to send rockets into civilian areas whose express purpose is not to target military positions but civilians, as Hamas is doing. So why hasn’t Maria expressed the upholding of International Law by Hamas?
That can only be because Hamas, in Maria and some other progressive eyes, is exempt from International Law. How so? Because Israel is ‘laying siege to Gaza’, and therefore International Law must not apply.
But it does. Indiscriminate use of force is a war crime without condition.
Now I know this will raise hackles about Israel’s military operations. The screams about any and every Israeli use of force will shout down any discussion of how the Israeli Army actually operates. Like the famous “knock-knock” warnings before they bomb a building so people can evacuate (which the ABC did not describe when it showed footage of a tower block housing part of the Hamas ‘General Staff’ being demolished).
Israel, it is suggested, is wrong to use any force. Labor Front Bencher, Tony Burke MP said this week it was up to Israel to stop attacking Palestinians in Jerusalem and Gaza. He did not say Hamas sending rockets into Israel was something which gave Israel even a tiny right to defend itself. No. It is all Israel’s fault. ALP NSW Leader Jodi McKay twitted much the same thing this week, “Thinking of the Palestinian community”. Rightly so. But what of the Israeli community? Are they not worthy of thoughts, especially the Israeli Arabs killed by a Hamas rocket? Are Israelis alone not worthy of support?
The only options progressives give Israel in using any force is therefore:
- Defensive measures like using the Iron Dome system to shoot down incoming rockets so Israel can defend its civilian population, or
- Israel should do nothing, because no matter what it does it is an aggressor (Sorry about Israeli civilians dying under the 1500 rocket barrage. You know how it is though).
This is a ridiculous position for any State. It is asking Israelis why they wont let themselves be killed.
But NSW MP Dr Mehreen Faruqi has asked this question just this week when she declared in Parliament that “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. This means the State of Israel should cease to exist.
To hope for the death of Israel is to wish the death of Jewish self-determination. And that’s OK, she will argue, Jews can be citizens of the new bi-national State of Palestine. So the burning of Synagogues by rioters this week is a good indicator of how that will go for the Jews.
This ‘river to the sea’ Israel self-suicide is nothing short of anti-semitism and Dr Mehreen and her ilk deserve condemnation and a quick passage to obscurity.
What is even more irrational is that what is essentially a very challenging, unfair, political and emotional housing dispute in East Jerusalem that is proceeding slowly through the Israeli Court system (and to date no one has been actually evicted), is sufficient cause celebre for some progressives to accept Hamas raining rockets down on Israeli civilians as somehow a morally equivalent response to the housing dispute itself.
Given Hamas, a radical Islamist organisation, whose values include subjugating women, killing gays, using humans as shields, and calling Jews “apes” to be slaughtered, it is mind boggling to understand why some in the progressive left support this racist, homophobic, misogynist bunch.
But then Camus might have been right after all; “Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble”.