{"id":12529,"date":"2023-12-06T14:18:56","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T12:18:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12529"},"modified":"2024-02-27T13:59:48","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T11:59:48","slug":"where-are-the-righteous-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/where-are-the-righteous-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"Where are the righteous Palestinians?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Palestinians worldwide cheer Hamas, Israelis \u2013 and Jews \u2013 feel pain and denial of humanity while daring to defend themselves<\/span><\/h3>\n

Speaking at\u00a0Dubai\u2019s COP28 Summit<\/a>, US Vice President Kamala Harris said \u201cwe cannot conflate Hamas with the Palestinian people.\u201d \u201cWe\u201d Israelis, Americans, Westerners, don\u2019t have to \u2013 the Palestinians and their thuggish enablers keep doing it by deifying Hamas.<\/p>\n

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Harris\u2019s comments sounded foolish to most Arabs\u2019 ears \u2013 they know the truth. For decades, the world has absolved Palestinians of responsibility for\u00a0the violence they keep encouraging.<\/a><\/p>\n

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This morally idiotic free pass continues, even as Palestinians worldwide cheer Hamas, even as we hear reports of doctors and UNWRA teachers holding innocent Israelis hostage, even as polls show that 75% of Palestinians support Hamas \u2013 especially the October 7 massacre, which Gazans facilitated. Just last week, Gazans threatened to lynch the hostages being freed \u2013 bizarrely, the Hamas war criminals protected the Israeli women and children from the mob.<\/p>\n

Absolving responsibility for violence<\/strong><\/h3>\n

That three-quarters of Palestinians champion the savagery reflects a broad Palestinian consensus. Only 36% of Americans approve of Harris, yet she represents them. Westerners proclaiming Palestinian \u201cinnocence\u201d or warning that, by defending itself, Israel might alienate Palestinians ignore how Jew-killing thrills the Palestinian street. Note the absence of Palestinian resistance to Hamas, even in free countries.<\/p>\n

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Harris and her fellow Western dupes should learn Roni Krivoi\u2019s story \u2013 Israelis know it well.<\/p>\n

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The first male Israeli adult hostage freed, Krivoi is a 25-year-old Russian-Israeli soundman who staffed the Supernova music festival. That desecration of the love celebration is now Israel\u2019s worst single terrorist attack, murdering 364 civilians, wounding hundreds more, kidnapping 40. The terrorists\u2019 own Go-Pro cameras broadcast searing images of Palestinians raping, kidnapping, and killing.<\/p>\n

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Dragged to Gaza, Krivoi eventually escaped his captors amid the chaos following a bombing. But unlike in World War II movies, there were no \u201cgood Germans\u201d to save him from these modern Nazis \u2013 a serious Palestinian resistance exists only in Western hallucinations. After four days, his aunt reported, \u201cthe Gazans captured him and returned him to the terrorists\u2019 hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krivoi\u2019s recapture explains why, to many Israelis, it\u2019s not just about Hamas. Even before the polls proved it, Gazans shared videos of themselves celebrating the violence and following the terrorists into Israel to rape, pillage, and murder.<\/p>\n

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Raided kibbutznikim recognized workers whom they had befriended participating enthusiastically, sometimes directing the evil. That\u2019s why Western leaders who pretend that only Hamas committed these war crimes sound naive to their Arab interlocutors in Dubai, let alone to Israelis.<\/p>\n

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THE BLIZZARD of lies denying Israeli suffering while forgiving Palestinians reflects an age-old phenomenon \u2013 the dehumanization of the Jews.<\/p>\n

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In the 1590s, William Shakespeare recognized that bigots first degrade individuals. \u201cIf you prick us, do we not bleed?\u201d Shylock the Jew in The Merchant of Venice famously asked. \u201cIf you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Today, Israelis \u2013 and Jews \u2013 feel that same erasure of pain, that denial of humanity, and that self-righteous fury against us for daring to defend ourselves. Today, many Jewish women wonder: \u201cIf you deny you raped us, do we not suffer?\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s dehumanizing when academics blame Israelis for being slaughtered; when Palestinians call for genocide, yet Israelis get called \u201cgenocidal\u201d; when #MeToo feminists suddenly turn silent about modern history\u2019s greatest act of self-promoted gendered violence; when \u201cQueers for Palestine\u201d overlook Hamas homophobia; when liberals support dictatorial, homicidal terrorists and their cheerleaders.It\u2019s dehumanizing when reporters equate stolen Israeli civilians with convicted Palestinian terrorists as \u201ccaptives\u201d; when reporters describe the next \u201ctranche\u201d of hostages, treating bound humans like financial bonds; when Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar describes Hamas\u2019s cynical release of a nine-year-old Irish-Israeli girl, Emily Hand, as \u201cAn innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned.\u201dObfuscating evil and the evildoers intensifies the offense \u2013 and Israel\u2019s outrage.<\/p>\n
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Similarly, it\u2019s dehumanizing to deny the widespread Palestinian Jew-hatred, or to restrain Israel\u2019s army in ways American generals wouldn\u2019t tolerate. The campuses were calm in 2017 when America helped liberate Mosul from ISIS, despite killing 10,000-plus innocent, nonhostile civilians as \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d And the firepower America and the Allies unleashed against civilians to defeat Nazi Germany and fascist Japan in World War II shows how surgical Israel\u2019s assault is.<\/p>\n

Calls for an Israeli \u201cceasefire\u201d lack credibility, after international pressure imposed \u201cceasefires\u201d in 2009, 2012, 2014, 2019, and 2021 \u2013 whenever Israel defended itself before.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember, there was a ceasefire on October 6, that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians,\u201d former secretary of state Hillary Clinton explained on The View. Clinton added: \u201cHamas have consistently broken ceasefires…,\u201d while affirming: \u201cIsrael has a right to defend itself, as does Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such moral clarity doesn\u2019t prevent Israelis from mourning the deaths of Palestinian children and any innocents caught in the crossfire. It just emphasizes that Hamas started the war and must reap the consequences, while the Palestinians\u2019 failure to pressure Hamas to free the hostages and leave Gaza only extends their own suffering.<\/p>\n

Israel tries minimizing civilian deaths, but its primary responsibility is to protect its citizens, then Western civilization.<\/p>\n

US President Joe Biden spoke authoritatively in October \u2013 and should say it again. Hamas must be removed. Most Palestinians, in Gaza and abroad, support Hamas\u2019s evil. Biden\u2019s moral cry reflects just war theory.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the only realistic way of ending today\u2019s humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while allowing Roni Krivoi and thousands of other Israeli survivors a shot at sleeping soundly at night, as they did before October 7.<\/p>\n

The writer is an American presidential historian and, most recently, the editor of a three-volume set, Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Published on Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n<\/section>\n

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