fredag 25 juli 2014

Västvärldens hyckleri

Britain's hypocrisy over Israel is shameful (Gabriel Sassoon The Telegraph)

"British liberals accusing Israel of a "war crime" are missing the point: Hamas is the aggressor, and Israel has a right - and a duty - to defend its citizens 
 According to the members of your legislature, and across the press for that matter, what is happening in Gaza right now is “disproportionate,” “indiscriminate killing,” and, of course, a “war crime.”
...This from the nation which sent its troops thousands of miles away to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which were firing even a single rocket at Britain. Your nation helped kill over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, while no civilians in Britain were killed in the fighting, and “only” 179 British soldiers were, tragically, killed. Your nation also ensured the killing of over 20,000 Afghan civilians, while no British civilians were killed, and “only” 453 British soldiers were killed. (Again, tragically.)
What does the “low” British casualty rate tell us? Nothing at all. “Proportionality” does not mean that a “proportionate” number from each side has to die for a war to be fought morally and legally. Whatever your views on these wars (far less justifiable in both cases than Israel’s defensive war against Hamas terrorism), does anybody believe that, because of the low British body count, you indiscriminately murdered civilians? Does anybody believe that you invaded these countries to commit war crimes? 

...But make no mistake: Hamas is the aggressor in Gaza, firing rockets indiscriminately at Israeli cities, an intolerable war crime. Hamas has an open policy of encouraging its civilians to be human shields to protect its rocket-launching infrastructure.
The Arab world is “sick and tired” of Hamas. Even the Palestinian representative to the UN Human Rights Council has called every Hamas missile launched at Israel a “crime against humanity".
Israel has every right – and a sovereign responsibility – to take out Hamas’s terror infrastructure. In war, as Britons are well aware, civilians will, tragically, die – even without Hamas’s “civilian casualty maximisation strategy.” That is why there are rules of war, international humanitarian law, which govern hostilities.
Israel abides by these laws meticulously, and its soldiers and civilians are frequently sacrificed to minimise opposition civilian casualties. How does this compare with your levelling of Dresden, by the way?

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