From First Blood:

Colonel Trautman: “Look John, we can’t have you running around out there killing friendly civilians.”
John Rambo : “There are no friendly civilians!”

It was inevitable, of course, that our nation’s major newspapers would allow opinions on the Israeli-Hamas War from ‘both’ sides, but I have to ask: is there really more than one ‘side’ in response to a deliberate terrorist attack which has killed more than a thousand Israeli civilians, including children and infants? Apparently Karen Attiah of The Washington Post believes that there is!

We cannot stand by and watch Israel commit atrocities

by Karen Attiah | Friday the Thirteenth, October 2023 | 3:28 PM EDT

“We are witnessing the worst of humanity, in all ways,” a friend of mine texted me this week.

Last Saturday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, killing more than 1,300 people, including 247 soldiers. Israel vowed to retaliate, cut off water and electricity to Gaza and began bombardment of the strip. The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that the death toll in Gaza from Israel’s military actions stood at roughly 1,800 people, including more than 580 children and more than 350 women.

As Israelis and Jewish people express their terror, shock and grief, Palestinians are (rightfully) pointing out that their own pain and deaths under the actions of the Israeli state have been ignored for years. Outside the battle arena, in the public and private spheres and especially on social media, there has been appalling commentary by people openly endorsing violence and genocide. People who support safety for Israel’s citizens are accused of being Zionist colonizers, while those who support safety and human rights for Palestinians are accused of being Hamas sympathizers and cool with the slaughter of innocents.

As you can see from her bio on the Post’s website, she is basically a grievance writer.

When she wrote, “People who support safety for Israel’s citizens are accused of being Zionist colonizers,” she was echoing the words of a lot of the far left, using the word “colonizers,” as though it’s a bad thing. And she certainly knew what the word means, as she retweeted some bovine feces from the fringe activist and notably anti-Semitic Najma Sharif in which he said, “what did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.” With a guesstimated net worth of $945,650, has she ‘decolonized,’ and turned over her home and property to the Indians?

Language is being hijacked. People using the terms “decolonization” and “liberation” in describing Palestinians’ struggle for human rights have had their remarks taken out of context and have been accused of championing Hamas’s brand of terrorism. This not only silences debate on the illegal, morally unjust occupation of Palestinian territory, but also implies a subconscious, irrational fear of oppressed minorities anywhere rising up and exacting violent revenge.

And there she tells us: she believes that Israel’s “occupation” of Gaza is “illegal (and) morally unjust.” The problem is that Israel doesn’t occupy Gaza.

It was 2005, and under then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel not only evacuated its people and soldiers from Gaza, but did so forcibly, because not all of the Israeli settlers agreed to leave peaceably.

The settlers who refused to accept government compensation packages and voluntarily vacate their homes prior to the 15 August 2005 deadline were evicted by Israeli security forces over a period of several days. The eviction of all residents, demolition of the residential buildings and evacuation of associated security personnel from the Gaza Strip was completed by 12 September 2005. The eviction and dismantlement of the four settlements in the northern West Bank was completed ten days later. Eight thousand Jewish settlers from the 21 settlements in the Gaza Strip were relocated. The settlers received an average of more than US$200,000 in compensation per family.

Israel basically gave to the ‘Palestinian’ Arabs the Gaza Strip, and told them to make what they would of it. Gaza is resource poor, but it has, potentially, some of the greatest beachfront property on the Mediterranean Sea, and could have been made into a tremendous seaside resort that would attract wealthy Europeans, with a slightly longer ‘beach season’ than most other resorts on the Med. Gaza could have provided some much-needed capital for all of the ‘Palestinian’ areas . . . if the Arabs there had opted for peace.

They didn’t. Instead of taking advantage of what they had been freely given, the Arabs chose to turn Gaza into another terrorist base.

There were actual elections in all of the ‘Palestinian’ areas in 2006, elections in which Hamas won a plurality of the vote, 44.45%, while Fatah, the successor name of Yassir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, came in second, with 41.43%. The results would have given Hamas 74 seats, more than the 67 needed for a majority. Much of Hamas strength came from Gaza. While there were later restrictions on the so-called Palestinian Legislative Council, there was no doubt that Hamas won. Naturally, Hamas and Fatah fought, and Hamas took over complete control of Gaza following a pitched battle.

Hamas were not particularly interested in building a seaside resort!

Had the Arabs actually been interested in a peaceful, independent state beside Israel — the solution proposed by then Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000, which President Bill Clinton has said was the best negotiated settlement the Arabs could ever hope to get, but which Yassir Arafat angrily rejected — they had Gaza under their complete control, and could have created a demonstration state, one which the Israelis would have welcomed, and which would have given impetus both internationally and domestically within Israel to expand to Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank region.

But Hamas, which has never disavowed its mission of creating an Arab state “from the River to the Sea,” wasn’t interested in peace, or a peaceful demonstration state, but in launching terrorist attacks against Israel.

Our institutions are meeting this moment not with clarity, but with double standards. Palestinians who have lost family members, invited to appear on TV, are asked amid their grief whether they support Hamas. (Do we ask Israelis whether they support Palestinian civilians and children being killed by their country’s state agents?) Journalists who cast themselves as arbiters of truth have amplified unverified claims, including one that 40 babies had been decapitated by Hamas militants. (As of Friday morning, there was no photographic evidence nor government confirmation to support the claim.)

Idiocy! Even President Biden stated it was true, and he did so Friday. Miss Attiah’s article is time stamped at 3:28 PM EDT on Friday.

The left have been (mostly) unable to deny the ferocity and utter terror of Hamas’ attack of last Saturday, but they are pleading that the lives of “innocent Palestinians” should not be taken over the actions of a few. But Hamas do not operate in a vacuum: like guerrilla fighters throughout history, they rely on the larger, surrounding population for food, shelter, concealment, water, clothing, supplies, transportation, and weapons. The ‘Palestinians’ among whom Hamas live are just as much a part of Hamas’ war machine as the civilian German and Japanese industrial and agricultural workers who kept their soldiers on the front lines supplied and fed. The Allies knew that, and we bombed German and Japanese civilians mercilessly, whether they were Nazis or not, Bushido or otherwise, male or female, young or old, because destroying a factory with 1,000 civilians working in it, which supplied ammunition to 100,000 soldiers on the front lines effectively disarmed those 100,000 soldiers. Blowing up railway stations and bridges, regardless of the civilians working there, reduced the ability of the Nazis to get food and fuel and supplies to the Heer on the eastern front.

It’s simple: in modern warfare, the civilian infrastructure are legitimate targets, and that is certainly true of the so-called “innocent Palestinians.”

The left do not want to understand that. Somehow, some way, they want to believe that war can be waged without ‘civilian’ casualties, and that Hamas are somehow separate from the ‘civilians’ among whom they live . . . and rule.

In the end, even the most brutal of dictators depends upon the support of the people. Adolf Hitler could not have started the invasion of Poland without not just the support of the Wehrmacht, but of the civilians who worked in the shipyards building ships and submarines, the factories building fighter and bomber aircraft, making soldiers’ boots and sewing uniforms. The fanatical Nazis were the ones most responsible for the concentration camps, but they, too, depended on the civilian railroad workers to haul prisoners to the camps, and the civilians who ratted out the Jews and other ‘undesirables’ among the larger populations. And after sixteen years under Hamas rule, under Hamas propaganda and control of education, the Arabs in Gaza have been pushed to support not just the idea of independence, but Hamas’ way of getting it: through war.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

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• The other Dana: Why Is Anyone Surprised At The Vicious Brutality Of Hamas? (Update Added)