A
few weeks ago, I turned on my computer, and saw the most outrageous
video of the year. The ‘brave’ teenage and twenty-something
Palestinian ‘revolutionaries’ in Gaza, ‘resisting the
occupation’ by the border fence, throwing rocks at the IDF, then
retreating behind what looks to be a boy of 4-5 years old.
Brave
Palestinian revolutionaries, using little children as Human Shields.
In
another scene, a small boy is seen kicking and flailing his arms
trying to escape someone wearing a Red Crescent vest, who seems to be
trying to put him in the line of fire. Then there’s the photo of
the baby in a diaper, holding a rock. Or, the video of four guys
carrying someone off in a stretcher, and after they think they’re
out of camera range, stop, and the ‘wounded one’ gets off, and
picks up a rock to throw.
Hamas’s
latest Theater of the Absurd production: “Cannibals in Gaza,” was
in full swing.
Sure,
the loony Left will say, “they are training them to participate in
the Palestinian Revolution.” But by what standards of humanity are
they behaving? Certainly not what we thought we had evolved to by the
21st Century.
But
Hamas continued this production for weeks, using the Arabs in Gaza as
cannon fodder. Since then, there has been the spurious Palestinian
claim, that an eight month old baby named Lila Randur, who was
brought to the scene of the riots, died from inhaling tear gas. Also,
Hamas refused to allow into Gaza, Israeli trucks with medical
supplies. For what purpose? To boost the body count?
About the baby, IDF Spokesperson Major-General Avihai Adre’i responded that, “testimonies collected by the IDF, undermine the credibility of the Gazan Ministry of Health’s announcement regarding the death of the baby.”
A Gazan doctor told
the Associated Press, that the baby, was known to have had a
preexisting medical condition, and that he did not believe her death
was caused by tear gas.
But think about this. Even if it’s true that the baby died from tear gas, what kind of parents would bring an eight month old baby, deliberately to the front lines of a war zone? And, using a dead baby as a prop, or, is that propaganda weapon against Israel?
Where
are all the child’s rights activists of the world? Why aren’t
they crying out at the abusive behavior of the Palestinians toward
their children?
Soon after the bloodiest clashes, which saw 62 Palestinians killed, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, announced that after a joint investigation conducted by the IDF and the General Security Service, at least 24 of those killed, in the Gaza border riots, were terrorists affiliated mostly with Hamas, and a few from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Proving the Israeli claim true, later, Hamas Politburo member Salah Bardaweil boasted, in an interview with the Palestinian Baladna news outlet, “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of them were Hamas.”
IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said in response, “This proves what so many have tried to ignore, Hamas is behind these riots, and the branding of the riots as ‘peaceful protests’ couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Then, Iranian backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed, that three members of its Saraya al-Quds military wing, were killed by Israeli forces in Khan Younis. So 53 of the 62 killed by IDF sharpshooters and others, were in fact ‘fighters’ intending violence, not peaceful protesters. The production must go on, it doesn’t matter that over 2,500 ‘actors’ were injured.
One rioter, who was captured by IDF
soldiers after breaching the border fence and infiltrating into
Israel, told the IDF that Hamas stage-managed the border riots to
stay in power.
“Hamas organized the demonstrations
so that people would not ‘turn’ on them,” he claimed,
explaining that the humanitarian situation in Gaza has gotten so bad
that Hamas planned out the ‘March of Return’ protests to let
people blow off steam, and did it in a way that would get them
publicity. A few dead Palestinians, who cares.
“Hamas controls everything in the
strip. Hamas sends us messages to our Facebook accounts and to our
cellphones. They come to mosques handing leaflet saying to go to the
fence. When there's electricity, and televisions can be turned on,
all you can see is the march. People got worn down and bored, and I'm
one of those people,” he said.
The detainee backed Israel's claim,
that Hamas uses women and children as human shields in the riots.
“They tell women to go forward. They say to the woman: Go ahead,
you are a woman, and the Israeli army does not shoot at women. They
tell small children: Go ahead, the army does not shoot at small
children. They tell a child to go ahead and he goes, it’s a little
boy. They deceive him,” he complained.
While the IDF has
indeed explicitly instructed not to fire at women or children, it has
dropped leaflets and in other ways, urged Palestinians to refrain
from coming near the fence, saying they are putting themselves in
danger by doing so.
PM Benjamin Netanyahu stressed that sometimes harming civilians is
inevitable. “They’re
[Hamas]
pushing civilians,
women, children into the line of fire with the hope of creating
casualties,” Netanyahu
explained. “We try to minimize casualties. They’re trying to
incur casualties in order to put pressure on Israel, which is
horrible.”
DM Avigdor Liberman taking part in a
Gaza Division situation briefing – together with Chief of Staff Lt.
Gen. Gadi Eizenkot and Southern Command Chief Eyal Zamir – said
that, “The Hamas leadership are a bunch of cannibals, who treat
their children as weapons. They have rockets, personal weapons, and
another type of weapon, children and [other] people.”
“Their
goal is to lift Gaza’s blockade, not to build an economy or hold
talks about coexistence, but rather to smuggle weapons [into Gaza]
and create a Hezbollah-type model,” he stressed.
Yet,
international media coverage has overwhelmingly portrayed the
Palestinian ‘narrative,’ blaming Israel, instead of reporting the
truth, that Hamas produced this horror show, “Cannibals in Gaza.”
The
usual obligatory responses followed this Theater of the Absurd,
politicians condemning Israel for ‘overreacting,’ summoning the
Israeli Ambassador, urging restraint, and then Turkey and South
Africa withdrawing their ambassadors in protest. Turkey and South
Africa, such bastions of peace and moderation.
One
exception has been the American administration, Nikki Haley has been
wonderfully truthful in the UN, pointing out that no other country in
the Security Council, would have acted as restrained as Israel.
But
unfortunately, people like US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Bernie
Sanders, have run to
accuse Israel of using
excessive force. Sanders has
also accused the IDF of
killing innocent people. He
should check his facts before he runs to condemn Israel.
Bye-the-way,
unless you’re an
animal rights activist, vegetarian, or PETA supporter, someone
who cries out for the
suffering of every little one of G-d’s creatures, don’t be a
hypocrite, don't cry for them when we have
to kill them, they’re
terrorists, and not
quite human, they’re
cannibals!
Ariel
Natan Pasko, an independent analyst and consultant, has a Master's
Degree specializing in International Relations, Political Economy &
Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous
news/views and think-tank websites and in newspapers. His
latest articles can also be read on his archive: The
Think Tank by Ariel Natan Pasko. (c) 2018/5778 Pasko
