Orwellian Moral Universe On Shabbat Hazon

"The Prophet Isaiah" by Raphael 1511-12, Sant'Agostino, Rome

 

My thoughts today are with hundreds of thousands of Jews who have been forced to honor Shabbat Hazon in their cellars and bunkers, having left their homes behind, in the knowledge that on Shabbat Hazon the prophet Isaiah envisages the awful suffering that God will inflict upon the Jewish people for their transgressions against God, each other, and the Temple. What are these people meant to think is next in store for them? Did we so quickly forget the 'never again'? Shame on us...

Double Standard is a rule or principle that is unfairly applied in different ways to different people or groups.

There, right there is the problem. It sounds too dry, too civilized, too abstract. It's doesn't reflect the outrage and emotional charge inherent in the rabid anti-Semitism of 'one standard for everyone else, and then an impossible one for the Jews', displayed these past weeks.

However, this dry term describes the dilemma perfectly. Hezbollah, or rather Iranian rockets are maiming and killing ONLY innocent Israeli civilians, indiscriminately. Their rockets are ONLY fired to cause maximum terror amongst Israel's civilian population; that's their ONLY military and ideological goal. Whenever talk is of any of these murdering thugs, their goal to utterly destroy Israel must be repeated, over and over again. Yet, one is hard pressed to come across a report in the MSM or UN commentary which states these facts outright and without equivocation.

On the other hand, Israel warns the civilian population to evacuate the areas known to be Hezbollah strongholds before commencing surgical attacks. If it hadn't done so, the death toll would be hundred fold. Despite international consensus on Hezbollah's tactics to launch its murderous attacks from within densely populated civilian areas; despite international awareness, that Hezbollah terrorists don't wear uniforms, but instead do everything in their power to disguise themselves as aide workers, innocent civilians, medical personnel, you name it, even fake UNIFIL uniforms and vehicles; despite all of these and many more terrorist tactics, all of which do in fact constitute war crimes, a vast majority of the international community still insists on condemning Israel's only option to stop Hezbollah's terror as disproportionate and as 'war crimes'.

Charles Krauthammer sums it up in an article that is nothing short of brilliant:

What other country, when attacked in an unprovoked aggression across a recognized international frontier, is then put on a countdown clock by the world, given a limited time window in which to fight back, regardless of whether it has restored its own security?

What other country sustains 1,500 indiscriminate rocket attacks into its cities -- every one designed to kill, maim and terrorize civilians -- and is then vilified by the world when it tries to destroy the enemy's infrastructure and strongholds with precision-guided munitions that sometimes have the unintended but unavoidable consequence of collateral civilian death and suffering?

To hear the world pass judgment on the Israel-Hezbollah war as it unfolds is to live in an Orwellian moral universe. With a few significant exceptions (the leadership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and a very few others), the world -- governments, the media, U.N. bureaucrats -- has completely lost its moral bearings.

The word that obviates all thinking and magically inverts victim into aggressor is "disproportionate," as in the universally decried "disproportionate Israeli response." [...]

The perversity of today's international outcry lies in the fact that there is indeed a disproportion in this war, a radical moral asymmetry between Hezbollah and Israel: Hezbollah is deliberately trying to create civilian casualties on both sides while Israel is deliberately trying to minimize civilian casualties, also on both sides.

In perhaps the most blatant terror campaign from the air since the London Blitz, Hezbollah is raining rockets on Israeli cities and villages. These rockets are packed with ball bearings that can penetrate automobiles and shred human flesh. They are meant to kill and maim. And they do.

But it is a dual campaign. Israeli innocents must die in order for Israel to be terrorized. But Lebanese innocents must also die in order for Israel to be demonized, which is why Hezbollah hides its fighters, its rockets, its launchers, its entire infrastructure among civilians. Creating human shields is a war crime. It is also a Hezbollah specialty.

On Wednesday CNN cameras showed destruction in Tyre. What does Israel have against Tyre and its inhabitants? Nothing. But the long-range Hezbollah rockets that have been raining terror on Haifa are based in Tyre. What is Israel to do? Leave untouched the launch sites that are deliberately placed in built-up areas?

Had Israel wanted to destroy Lebanese civilian infrastructure, it would have turned out the lights in Beirut in the first hour of the war, destroying the billion-dollar power grid and setting back Lebanon 20 years. It did not do that. Instead it attacked dual-use infrastructure -- bridges, roads, airport runways -- and blockaded Lebanon's ports to prevent the reinforcement and resupply of Hezbollah. Ten thousand Katyusha rockets are enough. Israel was not going to allow Hezbollah 10,000 more.

Israel's response to Hezbollah has been to use the most precise weaponry and targeting it can. It has no interest, no desire to kill Lebanese civilians. Does anyone imagine that it could not have leveled south Lebanon, to say nothing of Beirut? Instead, in the bitter fight against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, it has repeatedly dropped leaflets, issued warnings, sent messages by radio and even phone text to Lebanese villagers to evacuate so that they would not be harmed.

Israel knows that these leaflets and warnings give the Hezbollah fighters time to escape and regroup. The advance notification as to where the next attack is coming has allowed Hezbollah to set up elaborate ambushes. The result? Unexpectedly high Israeli infantry casualties. Moral scrupulousness paid in blood. Israeli soldiers die so that Lebanese civilians will not, and who does the international community condemn for disregarding civilian life?

This is the Truth.

The version put forward by the Islamofascists, together with their sympathizers and apologists is simply to turn every bit of that truth around 180 degrees. Just listen to their statements and you quickly catch on. It never ceases to amaze me how successful that strategy, invented by none other than Liar-In-Chief Yasser Arafat, keeps proving to be. A good example of this inversion of truth strategy is dissected over at 'The Free West', German newspaper DIE WELT's English blog.

'What is clear is that Israel, realizing it is incapable of destroying Hizbullah, has decided to destroy Lebanon,' Khoury proceeds, as if Israel were responding in a fit of pique, rather than with precision and caution against specific military targets. [...]

'Lebanon has to join the battle against Israel not because it wants to, not because there are still Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails, but because the only options Israel offers the Arab Middle East are to submit or to collaborate in the crushing of the Palestinians.' Well no. Israel is not intent on crushing the Palestinians, merely in preventing them from crushing Israel. The bottom-line, the refusal of the Islamic world to accept the existence of Israel, is always neatly avoided in this sort of discussion.

If Hezbollah are indeed concerned about the human suffering, and wish to truly turn the tables, why not simply give the two soldiers back? Why? Because terrorist organizations live and breathe for moments such as these. So do the anti-Semites, who not so secretly agree with the Islamofascist notion that Israel should be exterminated.

The President understands this only too well.

A few recent related posts on ATB:

'Can We Get Over It Already' We Are All Jews Now
'Hezbollah Runs Lebanon' And 'Hamas Ready To Cut A Deal'
"One Foot In Terror One Foot In Politics"
Commander-In-Chief From Hell
Just Cause
UN's Global Mission: Reviving, Fueling And Spreading Rabid Anti-Semitism
The Devil's Arithmetic Part II
The Devil's Arithmetic Part I
The Muslim Brotherhood And Hezbollah Detonate The Political Bomb
The Washington Post Inaugurates The New Moderate
Unmasking The Hamas Code Of Honor
'Israel Cannot Succeed By Empowering Terrorists'
'Pallywood Does Not Recognize Israel
'The Palestinian-Spin-Of-The-Century' The World's Most Audacious Marketing Coup'
Total War

Comments

[Aidan]

CRITICS OF ISRAEL ARE NOT IMMEDIATELY ANTI-SEMITES, YOU IDIOT.
there are jews amongst them, and most just want to see an end to the turmoil of the middle east, a turmoil which is being escalated by disproportionate israeli attacks on mostly civilians. just check the death toll from any reliable source.

[gabrielpicasso]

It should be apparent to anyone looking honestly at the situation, that when the world said "Never Again" they meant they would never again come to the aid or defense of Isreal, or Jewish people anywhere.

[Kenny Pierce]

Can't believe I left Gringoman off my list up there...just goes to show you. I'm not sure what it goes to show you, but no doubt sumpin'.

[Kenny Pierce]

Michael, Mac,

Hey, come on, guys, stop pulling your punches. Tell us how you really feel.

[Kenny Pierce]

Alexandra,

Have you gone over and read the comments on that Cooper blog post I mentioned the other day? (You will be shocked -- shocked! -- to hear that my own comment explaining precisely why Hezbollah are terrorists and Israel is not, was not posted.) The level of moral obtuseness on display is even more frightening in the comments than in the original post.

Will send you something else by private e-mail in a moment in case you'd like to take some of it for a NewsBusters post...the media handling of this case is going to cry out for a NewsBusting, I think, and I have a suspicion you're already at work on something appropriate. Might I suggest to the regulars in general, and to Patrick and Michael and Crusader and Jess in particular, that if you guys see any outrageous examples of media mishandling of this case, you forward them on to Alexandra? Her NewsBusters platform is a fairly powerful thing, and the constant attempt by the media to spin the truth away from an awareness of the fact that the faultlines of the Muslim Civil War run throughout America, and that Americans can at any moment become casualties of that war, is something that desperately needs to be fought, as I think many of us here passionately agree. Alexandra has earned a place in the front lines and I think passing her the ammo would be an eminently useful thing to do.

(Should mention that I chose those names not on the basis of who are my favorite commentors, but because of their apparent interest in the Muslim question. Michael, I'd be especially interested in the reaction of the European media, which I -- based purely on snarky prejudice and with no real evidence to work on -- predict will pretty much entirely ignore this tragedy unless it can find a way to spin it as showing that America is a big fat failure plus we all have pimples and talk too loudly and wear those tasteless cowboy hats. ;-) )

[Michael van der Galien]

Ha, Mac, good aggressive rant. I'm afraid that I'm beginning to feel like that more and more these days. The fake victim mentality of those countries is a pain in the butt. The fact that they teach their children to hate 'infidels' is so obvious that I have enough of everyone who tries to ignore it.
I'm also pissed off by anyone who even tries to put this famous moral equivalence stuff on me. It's a fake reasoning as Alexandra explained so wonderfully: one of the main differences is that its not Israel's goal to kill civilians, in fact she does everything in her power to prevent it while dedicated to destroy Hizbullah. Those muderers thugs from Hizbullah, however, give a rat's ass about civilian lives: they purposely target civilians.
Moral equivalence my booty.

Also, something to say to the anti-Israel crowd, as I wrote at The Moderate Voice in response to what a commenter said:

A couple of the differences are: A- Israel is not the aggressor B- Those people attack a sovereign state (that's not attacking them first, see #1) while not being a state themselves, but merely a terrorist organization C- The goal of Hamas et al is illegal, namely to destroy a sovereign nation, whose right of existence is recognized by the international community. While Israel's goal, destroying terrorist organzations that threaten her safety is not illegal at all. D- The difference is that Israel warns those civilians because she doesn't want to kill civilians. Then when she attacks she again tries to limit civilian casualties. In short, Israel warns them for their own sake - removing them is not a goal an sich. After the fighting they're most welcome to come back. Whereas Hamas and Hizbullah simply want to destroy Israel. They give the civilians a choise: leave: dead or alive. If those civilians don't listen to their demands (again difference), these terrorist organizations deliberately target and kill civilians.

Or as I like to say, they're comparing rotten apples to oranges.

Man, I could go on and on, I'm pissed off by this ridiculous attitude by so many people who have the freaking guts to call themselves 'liberals'. They should call themselves what they are: socialist scum. Anti-semite idiots.

[mac Brachman]

Dear Alexandra:

I'd post at greater length but I'm having trouble containing my rage this a.m. (Sat.); before I went to your blog I caught the headline about a Muslim attack on a Jewish center in Seattle. I would like the Muslims to tell me that they are not all murderous sociopaths. I would like them to tell me that they, like the Hitlerian Germans and the Poles before them, don't feed Jew-hatred to their young from birth or earlier, in utero. One is dead and five injured in the Seattle attack. We are told that the parents of Haq, the scumbag who carried out this unprovoked outrage, are "grief-stricken." I assume it is only because of the shame in the public eye, not because they have remorse for what their evil son has committed. Here is my take: Islam and its adherents from all available evidence worship power, fetishize land and objects, and believe in no God beyond the one of power and dominance. Their cult of violence, hate, and murder is a template for all who follow, like Charlie Manson, may he rot in hell. They do not believe in guilt, in the idea that you should feel bad when you do bad things. they believe only in their infantile narcissism: if I don't get what I want when I want it, I kill. If I've screwed up my part of the world, it is somebody else's (Western "imperialists," Jews, always the Jews) fault. If I agree to a compromise (like the 1947 U.N. partition plan dividing the British Palestine mandate into Jewish and Arab nations) it is only to bide my time until I have the strength to destroy my enemy and have my way. Are these people ever capable of the still small voice (that was the name of a book I read in religious school in my reform Jewish education) that says doing these things is just plain wrong? Or has it been this way since Muhammad, a self-aggrandizing paranoid of the first degree, first had his differences with the Meccan community 14 centuries ago. Tell me Islam and Muslims are different than this. Go on, tell me. Just try.