It was just after seven in the morning in Israel and most of the country was quiet, closed down for a religious holiday. News was coming through of rockets from Gaza so I checked in with my family on Whatsapp to see if everyone was okay. The sirens in Tel Aviv were lasting a lot longer than usual, but everyone in the family was safe: my father and sister in the North, my other siblings in Tel Aviv and cousins in the South.
At that moment a terrible dark nightmare of utter depravity was unfolding. Several thousand monsters were slaughtering unarmed men, women, children and babies. We have now all seen the young people at a music festival being gunned down, and heard eyewitness accounts of rapes, of beheadings, of a baby ripped from its mother’s belly and people burned alive. We now know over 150 people were dragged into Gaza by the frenzied beasts. They took babies among their hostages. It is hard to think straight to write about what unfolded.
As the news spread there was another ugly scene. It was the cheering and celebration of some sections of the left. One well known unionist in New Zealand excitedly declared Palestinians were now in control in Israeli occupied Palestine. Another whooped with excitement, willing only to concede that rape and murder were “unpleasant stuff”, but he went on “it seems a supremely tall task to expect compassionate acceptance of the status quo after decades of structural and actual violence …”
John Minto of The Palestine Solidarity Network managed a short clinical statement that “the killing of civilians and taking hostages is a war crime and should be condemned” before going on to blame Israel and New Zealand rather than Hamas which he calls a resistance movement. The Socialist Worker in Britain ran a headline: “Rejoice as Palestinian resistance humiliates racist Israel”. The Electronic Intifada wondered if it was “Just another battle or the war of liberation”. The BLM movement which so many Jews had supported printed posters for rallies for Palestine with a silhouette of a terrorist on a hang glider. Jews in Sydney were told to stay away from the Opera House which was being lit up in blue and white, to mourn the dead. A Palestine demonstration was there instead and had ugly chants of kill the Jews, burning the Israeli flag and spitting on it. They were a minority and were denounced by the demonstration’s organisers, but it was a grim dark moment.
How did the left become so deranged? Why is it necessary to have to say that rape is not resistance. Or to have to say that blaming Israel for the vile blood lust is not resistance. Why are these leftists not demanding the hostages be released?
Having spent many years supporting Palestinian self determination I’ve seen up close so many leftist arguments against Israel that are wildly one-sided and sometimes complete lies.
“End the occupation of Gaza” they shout, ignoring that Israel completely pulled out in 2005 as Hamas took over. With Hamas repeatedly promising to annihilate all the Jews and sending rockets to show they were serious, Israel put up a fence. When the terrorists broke through the fence the leftists cried “what do you expect when you fence people in?” They never mention that tens of thousands of Gazans do travel across Israel’s border to work or that Gaza has a border with Egypt.
“What do you expect when you have apartheid” they say ignoring that Arabs in Israel have had the vote since the earliest days of the state and are represented in all spheres of life. For instance, in Israel Arabs, who are 20 percent of the population, make up nearly 50 percent of the doctors. Can the Israelophobes please explain how that happened? In New Zealand Maori are 17 percent of the population and less than 5 percent of the doctors. We would do well to focus on our own shortcomings.
Now they say Israel must supply Gaza with water, never mind that Gaza has an aquifer but Hamas dug up all the pipes to make rockets with. Hamas was so proud of this they even made a propaganda video.
The Palestinian national movement has been engulfed by Islamism. Hamas and the other Jihadists are opposed to a nation state. The old PLO which became the Palestinian Authority is almost a spent force. If elections were held in the West Bank it is likely Hamas would win, which is a risk the PA are not going to take.
That leftists in the West are supporting a movement that is now overwhelmingly Islamic Jihadist is a symptom of its infirmity. By embracing the suicide bombers the left is on its own suicide mission. The left need only look at the Iranian revolution which completely wiped out the leftists after they had supported the Ayatollah in 1979.
This weekend there will be “Palestine” demonstrations in New Zealand. They will be shouting “From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free”. They now know that means literally free of Jews, slaughtered by hand if necessary.
