In Which Trudy Rubin Tells Us That She Doesn’t Understand War In calling for a ceasefire, the left are telling us that they want Hamas to win

by

We have previously mentioned Trudy Rubin, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s columnist who, according to her bio, “tries to make sense of the world’s chaos and conflicts as they affect Americans at home.” Alas! If she is trying to “make sense” of chaos and conflicts, perhaps it would help if she actually understood what war really means.

Miss Rubin is the newspaper’s resident neoconservative, at least when it comes to the Russo-Ukrainian War. Right up until Hamas attack on Israel, her author page is filled with Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, including such wonderful pieces as:

That’s just a small, small sample. Miss Rubin wants Ukraine to fight, fight, fight, against the invading Russians, and for the United States to continue, and increase, military aid to that country, even though that war appears to have ground to a stalemate.

But in the Middle East?

Palestinian civilians are suffering at the hands of Israel and Hamas

Biden should press for a “humanitarian pause” in bombing to get more aid into Gaza, along with safe passage to genuine “no bomb zones” so civilians can find safety.

by Trudy Rubin | Friday, November 3, 2023 | 2:52 PM EDT

As TV screens are flooded with images of dead children being pulled out of the rubble after Israeli bomb strikes in Gaza, the question of how to protect Palestinian civilians is stoking passions in Israel, the entire Middle East, and the United States.

Humanitarian aid organizations are demanding an unconditional cease-fire in the Hamas-Israel war to stop the bloodshed and ramp up the still limited aid that Israel is permitting to enter Gaza. President Joe Biden has vaguely called for a “pause” in the conflict to get more hostages out and more aid in, and sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the region to try and make it happen.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected any permanent cease-fire, has told Blinken that Israel “refuses a temporary cease-fire that doesn’t include a return of our hostages,” those seized by Hamas during its Oct. 7 rampage. That demand is understandable, but the dire humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza requires action right now.

Clearly, Netanyahu is in no hurry. Israelis are still reeling from the brutal murder of more than 1,000 civilians and the kidnapping of more than 220 others. They rightly blame Hamas for causing Palestinian deaths. The terrorist group has built a huge military tunnel network underneath hospitals, schools, mosques, and apartment buildings in Gaza which puts all those buildings at risk. And Hamas appears in no hurry to release hostages quickly.

If Miss Rubin truly understood “the world’s chaos and conflicts,” as she “tries to make sense” of them to her readers, she ought to understand that Israel’s relentless advance — and it has been reported that the Israel Defense Force have separated the northern areas from the south of Gaza — is a military advantage that Prime Minister Netanyahu does not want to give up, and the hostages that Hamas have seized are an advantage that the terrorists, who are getting their candy asses kicked, do not want to lose. However, Miss Rubin is so appalled by the “dire humanitarian catastrophe” that she wants Israel to surrender its military advantage while Hamas do not give up theirs.

But as the blame game goes on, and the diplomatic dance continues, two million Gazans are running out of food, water, fuel for hospitals, and any hope of safety — while Israeli planes drop bunker buster bombs that not only strike the tunnels but destroy entire neighborhoods above.

The columnist recognizes that Hamas have built their military infrastructure right underneath the civilian neighborhoods. Someone who actually understood “chaos and conflicts” would know that that is what guerrilla fighters do: they hide among the larger civilian population, making themselves mostly indistinguishable from them.

This isn’t something new! The United States learned that the hard way, to our regret, as the Viet Cong were able to hide among the Vietnamese civilians, and we lost that war.

So, yes, Israel has a legitimate right to self-defense, but its indifference to civilian suffering is morally unacceptable and strategically foolish. It risks not only the deaths of thousands of Palestinian civilians, but the widening of the war to Israel’s north, the destruction of the Abraham Accords, and prospects for peace with Saudi Arabia.

If a full cease-fire is not yet plausible, there needs to be a temporary humanitarian halt in Israel’s aerial bombing and ground offensive until there are measures in place to enable Palestinian civilians to find food, water, and safety. That is what Biden and Blinken should be insisting on now.

Doesn’t Miss Rubin understand? If “there are measures (put) in place to enable Palestinian civilians to find food, water, and safety” then those measures also enable the Hamas fighters to find food, water, and safety!

Much further down:

The Jewish group Americans for Peace Now has written to Blinken asking him to press for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor to enable safe passage for Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza and the establishment of “no bomb zones” within the strip that would serve as havens for civilians. I would add that, to guarantee those zones remained safe, Biden would need to pledge that if they were violated, the United States would no longer veto U.N. resolutions calling for an Israeli cease-fire.

If there were “no bomb zones” set up in Gaza, isn’t that exactly where the Hamas fighters would go?

This is a war, a war Hamas, with the encouragement of the mad mullahs in Iran, deliberately started. Yet Miss Rubin, who wants Ukraine to be able to fight on until the Russians, the ones who started that war with their invasion of Ukraine, are defeated, apparently heedless of whatever civilian casualties that causes. Why wouldn’t she also want Israel to be able to completely defeat Hamas, who deliberately started this war?

The columnist concludes by telling us that the civilians in Gaza are afraid to leave, fearing that if they left, Israel would never allow them back in, and they would lose their homes and land forever.

That is why it is important for Biden and Blinken to continue pressing Netanyahu to think seriously about what happens the day after this war ends and make clear that the U.S. opposes ethnic cleansing in Gaza in the future.

Can we tell the truth here? As long as the Palestinian Arabs are allowed to remain in Gaza, Gaza — and Judea and Samaria — will remain as tremendous security risks for Israel. Allowing the Arabs to retain that land means allowing them to continue doing what they have been doing all along: building bombs and rockets and attacking Israel.

Ethnic cleansing? That is just what Hamas and most of the other Arab organizations have said that they want to do with the Jews, that’s what “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free” means! Israel should have expelled every last Arab from the lands they conquered in 1967. It would have been a horrible humanitarian catastrophe, but it would have been over two generations ago.
________________________________
Related Articles:

Spread the love

One thought on “In Which Trudy Rubin Tells Us That She Doesn’t Understand War In calling for a ceasefire, the left are telling us that they want Hamas to win”

  1. Pingback: DAILY TOP 5 - The DaleyGator

Comments are closed.