OF COURSE NOT. BUT — WHILE THE WORLD FOCUSES ON QUANTITATIVE NUMBERS, THERE ARE QUALITATIVE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DEAD PALESTINIANS AND DEAD ISRAELIS. (PREPARE TO CLUTCH YOUR PEARLS.)
Accurate and necessary analysis, Pat. Thank you! You are correctly characterizing something that is so important to understand: "It is a core characteristic of both anti-Zionism and antisemitism to find the thing that Israelis or Jews most cherish and then accuse them of defiling it." The idea that Jews care only about their own is truly one of the ugliest antisemitic accusations because it takes something that is universal (every human being cares first and foremost about the people who are actually in their lives) and turns it into uniquely Jewish demonic vice while ignoring the value of caring for others that is often actively cultivated within Jewish culture. This libel is sadistic because it tells Jewish people that it is wrong to love themselves. Antisemites are throwing smoke in people's eyes to make them forget that what Israel does is in response to and in the context of a sadistic war that was cruelly started against it while cultivating the ongoing fantasy to destroy it. One question that antisemites do not seem to be asking themselves is the following: if the Hamas is justified in their eyes in murdering, raping, torturing and kidnapping to restore land that was lost in 1948 in the context of a war that Arab leaders started, how come that the IDF (which they depict as an evil and blood thirsty monster) has absolutely no interest in taking revenge on Germany? The very question sounds absurd, and this is because we intuitively recognize that the very same culture that the world likes to demonize, Israel, is actually a reasonable, life-loving, constructive culture. This is why "from gas to gaslighting" has been pointed out as one of the key techniques of antisemitism today: to profoundly lie about who Jewish people are. I grew up in the Israeli progressive left, but my understanding of reality has been modified in response to experience. In the Israeli left, it is common to hear people blame the situation on "the fanatics on both sides." This is, among other things, an instrument of snobbism against non-progressive Israelis--and it is ultimately not a correct description of reality. It is true that there are right-wing Israelis who feel more comfortable with military responses that the progressive left would not feel as comfortable with. However, the operative way is **responses**. Israel as a whole is generally a society that seeks peace, stability and normalcy. But it is forced to respond to the passionate and sadistic attempt to destroy it. Without that sadistic attempt, children would not be dying in Gaza today. The Palestinians must find ways to give rise to leaderships that do not seek the destruction of Israel, so that even the most right-wing politician in Israel does not have a reason to respond.
Very well said. And more kindly and generously than I would have said it. And to add my own opinion…any living individual, that hates or wants to harm Jews, is worth less. Any culture that indoctrinates its children to hate and harm Jews, is worth less. You could change the name of the target of the hatred, and I would still say the same.
The assumption on the part of the rest of the world is that Jewish lives don't matter at all, they have no worth at all; in fact, the fewer Jews alive the better so Jewish dead are a good thing, certainly nothing to mourn about. We don't value Jewish lives more than non-Jewish lives but since no one values Jewish lives, we have to. Our enemies have long taken advantage of that, which is why we have a history of making wildly lopsided deals to try to get Jewish hostages back.
As to your thesis, that innocent Palestinian deaths are the consequence of war and innocent Israeli deaths are the consequence of murder. Innocent Palestinian deaths are the consequence of Hamas's strategy to maximize their population's deaths. The jihadists have learned that they can't beat Israel militarily, but they are betting that they can get all the colonialist powers to destroy Israel for them if they just generate enough outrage. So they do everything they can to create suffering among their people, like stealing aid to make their people starve, and then they film the misery and push it out there so it will go viral. Misery is their coinage, and they create it every chance they get.
My recollection is that the ratio for hostages taken from Israel to Gaza on October 7/23 was 1 child, woman, sick or elderly for 30 detainees, many of whom had been convicted for serious violent crimes and for those Hamas deemed "military" 1 Israeli for 50 detainees. The most recent release, Edan Alexander, a dual US - Israeli citizen, was presented by Hamas as a "good will gesture" and eagerly repeated by CBC journalists, with no exchange, but in all likelihood because a dire warning was conveyed to Hamas if Alexander was not returned alive immediately.
As regards the deaths of non-combatants in Gaza, Ghazi Hamad and the late Abu Musa Marzook were quite shameless in telling Arab media that the massive tunnel system built out of stolen humanitarian aid was exclusively for military purposes and the safety of the general population was UNRWA's responsibility because "75% are refugees". The late Yahya Sinwar was even blunter in electronic communications that the Wall Street Journal obtained. "Necessary sacrifice". Nobody puts a lower value on Palestinian lives than Hamas and its patrons, whose project is to destroy Israel, and to fight on to the last Palestinian standing.
Then there' the whole issue of the "at face value" reporting of Hamas's claims. The data is released in an extremely opaque manner and has repeatedly been cross-checked and shown to grossly underrepresent the ratio of males between 15 and 55 among the dead and overrepresent females and actual children.
If only those who profess to care about Palestinian lives demanded on Oct 8 - before any Israeli response - that Hamas completely disarm, unconditionally surrender and return all hostages. No war, no bombing, not one civilian death. Different areas with Gaza could have been temporarily evacuated in an orderly and sequential fashion to allow for destruction of the tunnels and other terror infrastructure at leisure. Shame on "pro-Palestinian" supporters who are truly pro Hamas terror. They obviously care less about Palestinian lives than they despise Jewish ones.
I've been struggling as a Zionist to process the disproportionate death count, especially now that the war is entering a phase that seems to border on a war crime (I'm talking about this new "chariots" mission, nothing before that). I've heard everything on our side from "there are no innocent civilians in Gaza" to "the innocent civilians should have been able to leave" to "every innocent civilian death is Hamas's fault." There may be grains of truth in all of it, but the fundamental truth is that this is a war that Hamas started--and despite their elimination being Israel's main goal, that clearly hasn't happened (and doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon). It's a mess, made worse by the merry band of useful idiots of the West who have made lucrative careers and entire personalities over demonizing Israel. And the longer the war goes on, the bigger their platforms become.
Humanism vs pure evil - that's all it is. In the finer points in your article - just for the sake of argument, because I don't diagree with anything you are saying - even in a pure numbers game, the large number of Arab casualties in Gaza are a direct consequence of Hamas deliberately putting local people in front of bombs and bullets. So I would argue, they are killed by Hamas. Put another way, if A pushed B in front of an oncoming train, is B killed by a train or A? Criminal code will likely say A.
This is an excellent piece, Pat, and one that I sadly believe that the federal hgoverment under PM Carney will move to make sure you’re not allowed to publish from Canada within the next couple of years
Accurate and necessary analysis, Pat. Thank you! You are correctly characterizing something that is so important to understand: "It is a core characteristic of both anti-Zionism and antisemitism to find the thing that Israelis or Jews most cherish and then accuse them of defiling it." The idea that Jews care only about their own is truly one of the ugliest antisemitic accusations because it takes something that is universal (every human being cares first and foremost about the people who are actually in their lives) and turns it into uniquely Jewish demonic vice while ignoring the value of caring for others that is often actively cultivated within Jewish culture. This libel is sadistic because it tells Jewish people that it is wrong to love themselves. Antisemites are throwing smoke in people's eyes to make them forget that what Israel does is in response to and in the context of a sadistic war that was cruelly started against it while cultivating the ongoing fantasy to destroy it. One question that antisemites do not seem to be asking themselves is the following: if the Hamas is justified in their eyes in murdering, raping, torturing and kidnapping to restore land that was lost in 1948 in the context of a war that Arab leaders started, how come that the IDF (which they depict as an evil and blood thirsty monster) has absolutely no interest in taking revenge on Germany? The very question sounds absurd, and this is because we intuitively recognize that the very same culture that the world likes to demonize, Israel, is actually a reasonable, life-loving, constructive culture. This is why "from gas to gaslighting" has been pointed out as one of the key techniques of antisemitism today: to profoundly lie about who Jewish people are. I grew up in the Israeli progressive left, but my understanding of reality has been modified in response to experience. In the Israeli left, it is common to hear people blame the situation on "the fanatics on both sides." This is, among other things, an instrument of snobbism against non-progressive Israelis--and it is ultimately not a correct description of reality. It is true that there are right-wing Israelis who feel more comfortable with military responses that the progressive left would not feel as comfortable with. However, the operative way is **responses**. Israel as a whole is generally a society that seeks peace, stability and normalcy. But it is forced to respond to the passionate and sadistic attempt to destroy it. Without that sadistic attempt, children would not be dying in Gaza today. The Palestinians must find ways to give rise to leaderships that do not seek the destruction of Israel, so that even the most right-wing politician in Israel does not have a reason to respond.
All I hear from pro-hamas supporters is that Israelis are killing babies, when it is actually Hamas that is killing babies.
Very well said. And more kindly and generously than I would have said it. And to add my own opinion…any living individual, that hates or wants to harm Jews, is worth less. Any culture that indoctrinates its children to hate and harm Jews, is worth less. You could change the name of the target of the hatred, and I would still say the same.
The assumption on the part of the rest of the world is that Jewish lives don't matter at all, they have no worth at all; in fact, the fewer Jews alive the better so Jewish dead are a good thing, certainly nothing to mourn about. We don't value Jewish lives more than non-Jewish lives but since no one values Jewish lives, we have to. Our enemies have long taken advantage of that, which is why we have a history of making wildly lopsided deals to try to get Jewish hostages back.
As to your thesis, that innocent Palestinian deaths are the consequence of war and innocent Israeli deaths are the consequence of murder. Innocent Palestinian deaths are the consequence of Hamas's strategy to maximize their population's deaths. The jihadists have learned that they can't beat Israel militarily, but they are betting that they can get all the colonialist powers to destroy Israel for them if they just generate enough outrage. So they do everything they can to create suffering among their people, like stealing aid to make their people starve, and then they film the misery and push it out there so it will go viral. Misery is their coinage, and they create it every chance they get.
My recollection is that the ratio for hostages taken from Israel to Gaza on October 7/23 was 1 child, woman, sick or elderly for 30 detainees, many of whom had been convicted for serious violent crimes and for those Hamas deemed "military" 1 Israeli for 50 detainees. The most recent release, Edan Alexander, a dual US - Israeli citizen, was presented by Hamas as a "good will gesture" and eagerly repeated by CBC journalists, with no exchange, but in all likelihood because a dire warning was conveyed to Hamas if Alexander was not returned alive immediately.
As regards the deaths of non-combatants in Gaza, Ghazi Hamad and the late Abu Musa Marzook were quite shameless in telling Arab media that the massive tunnel system built out of stolen humanitarian aid was exclusively for military purposes and the safety of the general population was UNRWA's responsibility because "75% are refugees". The late Yahya Sinwar was even blunter in electronic communications that the Wall Street Journal obtained. "Necessary sacrifice". Nobody puts a lower value on Palestinian lives than Hamas and its patrons, whose project is to destroy Israel, and to fight on to the last Palestinian standing.
Then there' the whole issue of the "at face value" reporting of Hamas's claims. The data is released in an extremely opaque manner and has repeatedly been cross-checked and shown to grossly underrepresent the ratio of males between 15 and 55 among the dead and overrepresent females and actual children.
https://www.thejc.com/opinion/hamas-disinformation-war-manipulation-gaza-casualty-data-opjpliyb
And those bombing ops held in the vicinity of hospitals, well, again, because Hamas keeps on reestablishing itself in and around them.
https://x.com/Aizenberg55/status/1923421990347579419
Israel is forced to defend himself against numerous enemies. Israel is not attacking, it is defending itself. That’s the most important fact.
If only those who profess to care about Palestinian lives demanded on Oct 8 - before any Israeli response - that Hamas completely disarm, unconditionally surrender and return all hostages. No war, no bombing, not one civilian death. Different areas with Gaza could have been temporarily evacuated in an orderly and sequential fashion to allow for destruction of the tunnels and other terror infrastructure at leisure. Shame on "pro-Palestinian" supporters who are truly pro Hamas terror. They obviously care less about Palestinian lives than they despise Jewish ones.
So well said and laid out.
I've been struggling as a Zionist to process the disproportionate death count, especially now that the war is entering a phase that seems to border on a war crime (I'm talking about this new "chariots" mission, nothing before that). I've heard everything on our side from "there are no innocent civilians in Gaza" to "the innocent civilians should have been able to leave" to "every innocent civilian death is Hamas's fault." There may be grains of truth in all of it, but the fundamental truth is that this is a war that Hamas started--and despite their elimination being Israel's main goal, that clearly hasn't happened (and doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon). It's a mess, made worse by the merry band of useful idiots of the West who have made lucrative careers and entire personalities over demonizing Israel. And the longer the war goes on, the bigger their platforms become.
Humanism vs pure evil - that's all it is. In the finer points in your article - just for the sake of argument, because I don't diagree with anything you are saying - even in a pure numbers game, the large number of Arab casualties in Gaza are a direct consequence of Hamas deliberately putting local people in front of bombs and bullets. So I would argue, they are killed by Hamas. Put another way, if A pushed B in front of an oncoming train, is B killed by a train or A? Criminal code will likely say A.
Well said, and agreed.
This is an excellent piece, Pat, and one that I sadly believe that the federal hgoverment under PM Carney will move to make sure you’re not allowed to publish from Canada within the next couple of years
Thanks for your words. Pretty sure I'll be able to publish from Canada. Not to worry.
An excellent piece. Clear, concise, thought provoking. Everything your subscribers have come to expect. Thank you 🙏.