Double standards

(Originally published in The Times of Israel)

To all the folks who near-constantly ask me what I think of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, or constantly post about how Israel is unnecessarily killing “innocent civilians” in Gaza, or constantly ask why is Israel “punishing Gazans” for what “Hamas is doing:”

Now that Jews have again been targeted in Washington, D.C., with two beautiful young people murdered, I ask where are you?  I have not heard or seen you. Not one word. Not one post. Not one question.  Silence.

Three times in the last 10 days I was asked how do I feel about, or how can I approve, or why don’t I and my fellow Israeli citizens do something about the alleged “starvation” of Gazans.

None of the people asking the question mentioned the hostages or Hamas, who started the war, who explicitly adopted a strategy of embedding within and below civilians to produce as many Palestinian deaths as possible, and who continue the war by refusing to release the hostages and disarm.  The only issue apparently on the mind of these folks is why Israel was intentionally starving “innocent” Gazans.

My response:  Of course, I hate to see people, particularly children, suffering, but I think the question, along with much of the thinking of much of the Western World, betrays a moral system that is upside down at best.

When the Allies bombed the hell out of Dresden and much of the rest of Germany, did the world ask Americans how they felt about burning much of Germany to the ground, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and blowing innocent kids to smithereens?

When the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, did anyone ask Americans how they felt about incinerating hundreds of thousands of innocent kids, women, and men, young and old, and causing generations of deformed babies?

When the Allies fought the Axis powers, did the Allies supply food and other materials to the Germans and Italians during the middle of the war?  Did the Americans allow food and supplies to reach Japan during the war?  Did anyone expect them to or ask why they did not do so?

One could ask the same questions about any number of wars:  Iran-Iraq; Pakistan-India; the French and all their dirty little wars in Africa; and on and on.

It seems, however, that only when Israel—the only Jewish-majority country in the world—is attacked, civilians deliberately killed, raped, tortured, babies burned and kidnapped, thousands of missiles fired at civilians (not to mention the tens of thousands fired at Israeli civilians before October 7^th, about which the world did not give an iota of attention), innocent civilians kidnapped and held in horrendous conditions for months and now years, and then are expected to fight a war against the military without doing any harm to the people whose military conducted the attacks.

There is no other conflict where a participant, the victim of the attack no less, is expected to somehow separate the terrorist arm/military of the perpetrator from the rest of the population.

There is plenty of room for debate about whether Israel should cut a deal, leaving Hamas in power or with substantial influence at a minimum, or whether Israel should keep fighting.  Israelis are fiercely debating the subject.

But pinning the suffering of the Gazans on Israel rather than on Hamas and the Gazans who elected them and have largely supported them for years demonstrates a morally confused if not corrupt world.

The fact is that the West—hypocrites like England, France, and the European Union who are now threatening Israel with changes in trade and other relations for pursuing the war—could have stopped the war by October 10.

Had the Europeans, along with the Americans, Canadians, Australians, and Japanese, said to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain that there will be no food, no banking, no insurance, no shipping , nothing until the hostages are released and Hamas is disarmed, and if they had started to follow through with the promise on October 8, those countries would have put a stop to the war and would have had the hostages released within days if not hours.

Hamas could not survive without the support or complicity of those countries, and those countries could not survive with the Western world taking the actions I identified.

But, of course, the Western world would never threaten or take those actions.  Politicians cannot have the price of gas skyrocket, or the price of goods substantially increase, or their citizens burdened and inconvenienced for a few days or weeks.

The easier and more convenient path is to tell Israel, yes, you can pursue war against Hamas, but don’t harm any “innocent civilians,” and make a deal that will leave Hamas capable of surviving and re-arming and starting to fire missiles at Israeli civilians again.

It is easier to impose standards on Jews imposed on no other nation that has been attacked than it is to suffer the political consequences from doing what could have stopped this war on day one or two or three.

Just about seven weeks after the horrible events of October 7^th, 2023, I questioned how the world, including Israel, was responding to the attack and how the world would react to Israel’s response.  Many of my fears have come true.

I revisited the issue in February of this year as Hamas displayed subhuman behavior.

The Wall Street Journal reports how Gazans are now, finally, protesting against Hamas rule, not because they have suddenly become Zionists or developed a love for Jews, but because they now are living with the consequences of supporting or at a minimum acquiescing in Hamas’ war to slaughter Jews and annihilate Israel.

Meanwhile, while Israelis and Jews mourn for the loss of two beautiful young people, and while American Jews and Jews around the world live in fear of even gathering together in a public space, I will wait for a word from those so intensely concerned for the suffering of “innocent” Gazans and who are so quick to apply impossible double standards on the Jewish nation.

I will wait.  But I won’t hold my breath.