Imagine that in 2017, toward the end of the nine-month war to topple ISIS in Mosul as the terrorist group was on the ropes, someone called on the United States and its allies to stop their offensive and not enter Bab at Tawb, one of the Iraqi city’s main neighborhoods.
Does anyone really think the US would have listened?
Now, imagine that in 2014 America had the possibility of launching a commando mission to save journalist James Foley before ISIS killed him. Does anyone really think that the US media would have focused more on the clashes that erupted around the building where Foley was being held, than on the rescue of a US citizen from the clutches of death?
Here is another question: Imagine that a week after 9/11, as America was bombing the Tora Bora cave complex on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, “al-Qaeda Health Ministry” would have put out a statement claiming that the US military had bombed a hospital killing hundreds of innocent civilians.
Does anyone really think that Western politicians and media would have accepted, as truth, whatever claims were made by the “Al Qaida Health Ministry” and would have published it at the top of websites and TV news networks?
While for the US these questions are imaginary, when it comes to Israel they have all happened.
The example of Rafah
The first instance is an example of what is happening right now as Israel prepares for a possible operation in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, along the Egyptian border. From the US to the UK and Europe, all are warning Israel not to go in to Rafah due to the heavy presence of over one million Palestinians, many of whom were displaced from other parts of the Gaza Strip at the beginning of the ground offensive.
They are telling Israel not to go into Rafah even though Israeli hostages were rescued there earlier this week – and despite knowing that destroying the Hamas infrastructure there is key to ensuring that the terror organization will not be able to rebuild, once the high-intensity stage of the war is over.
Rafah is home to dozens of tunnels from Egypt into Gaza that serve as Hamas’s weapons pipeline.
The James Foley story is an example for the reporting that came out this week after Israel saved Fernando Marman and Louis Har, two hostages who had been held in Gaza for the 130 days. But instead of asking why two Israelis were being held in a second-floor apartment in Rafah, the media was more focused on claims by a terrorist organization that people had been killed during the rescue operation. The West was more obsessed with the people who might or might not have been killed in Gaza – depends if you want to believe Hamas – as opposed to the question of why two Israelis were being held there in the first place.
The imaginary “Al Qaida Hospital” is the example of the Ahli Baptist Hospital, which Hamas claimed was struck by Israeli fighter jets in the second week of the war. Even though it turned out that the explosion was, in fact, a Palestinian rocket that had misfired, and that it had landed in the parking lot and not on the hospital, The New York Times, BBC, Reuters, and others who initially accepted the Hamas lie, continue to lap up the falsehoods and fabrications this violent barbaric terrorist group regularly spins.
This is a moral bankruptcy of the Western media in particular, as well as large swaths of Western society in general. There is something seriously wrong when people are willing to accept lies by a murderous terrorist group over claims made by a democratic, liberal, progressive country.
How does it make sense that people in the world think that Israel should not enter Rafah and should essentially save Hamas by not degrading it to the greatest extent possible?
How does it make sense that people become so confused that they think it’s normal for hostages to be held against their will in private homes and that a country shouldn’t do what is necessary to get its people back?
How does it make sense that there are people willing to accept the lies of a terrorist group over the reports of a country that has rule of law, transparency, accountability, and an open and free press?
What does this say about the moral bankruptcy of parts of the West? It is worth thinking about this and then trying to find condemnations from Arab nations of Israel’s continued offensive in Gaza.
Most of the condemnations today come from the US, the UK and Europe. They don’t come from Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi Arabia. Why do you think that is? What do these Arab countries know that politicians don’t know in Washington DC, London, or Paris?
The answer is that these Arab countries want Israel to succeed in removing Hamas while other countries around the world sometimes appear to want Israel to fail.
These Arab countries know the truth.
They know that Israel is fighting an enemy the likes of which no military has ever waged war. While we have seen urban warfare before, it has never been at this level, embedded to this extent in civilian infrastructure and, of course, with hundreds and hundreds of miles of tunnels.
And with this challenge, Israel is achieving humanity in a way not seen before. The combatant-civilian death ratio is unprecedented in warfare.
As I’ve written here before, even if we accept the Hamas numbers – which we shouldn’t – the ratio is something like 1 to 1.8, meaning that for every combatant killed, there are less than two civilians. And while every loss of civilian life is a tragedy (Hamas is to blame in most cases), war is ugly, horrific, and terrible – and still Israel is achieving unprecedented humanity.
And while I don’t expect the world to stand on the sidelines and applaud the IDF, we should be able to expect some semblance of integrity. Sadly, there isn’t, and Western media, thinkers, and politicians continue to accept Hamas propaganda as the truth. It’s an incredible double standard soaked in a deep undercurrent of antisemitism.
While not easy and an uphill battle with real consequences, of which being dragged to The Hague is just one example – Israel should not give up.
Israel should continue to hold its head high, knowing that it fights for the values of freedom and truth.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.