Do We Owe Gaza Our Pity?Jack Engelhard
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15374#.U9DOdmOCUtW John Kerry and Barack Obama appear focused on the suffering of “civilians” in Gaza as the IDF continues to find more killer tunnels that were built by those Hamas busy beavers…and I put quotes around “civilians” because if the information comes from Hamas or the UN they’re about as reputable as your long lost uncle in Zimbabwe. Remember, the UN was shocked, shocked to find Hamas rockets stashed in Gaza’s UN schools. Shocked, I tell you. For pity’s sake Kerry deplores Israel’s “disproportionate” response. Israel can’t seem to make him happy. Obama quickly took action to console himself and his secretary of state. He shipped $47 million over to Gaza. Half of that automatically goes straight into the pockets of the Hamas leadership so that those thugs can spend more time in their villas on the Riviera. (You expect them to actually live among their own people?) The other half goes to buying materials for more tunnels in time for the next war. Meanwhile there is this war, and this war is being waged to cry pity for the Palestinian Arab cause. This war is less about gaining territory and more about gaining sympathy. This is a war made for television. Watch the theatrics on CNN and the BBC and see how your emotions are being played. The images of Arab sorrow (seldom Jewish grief) are orchestrated to light the fuse of anti-Semitism throughout the world. It’s working. It is working among the usual suspects. But how do we, as Jews, react when asked to share the humanitarian concerns afflicting the other side? I was asked this question point blank: You are Jewish, after all, part of a nation famed for its compassion. So do you pity the poor Arabs in Gaza? Yes I do…but at number 613. Let me be clear. Before I pity them, I have 612 other assemblies, civilians, individuals and entire nations to pity first. So they will have to wait their turn. My first pity goes to the IDF soldiers fighting and in too many cases dying against the barbaric plague that has infested Gaza and mankind. From there on the list is too long before I reach Palestinian Arab suffering. At this rate I may never get there at all. The Holocaust itself has filled my cup of heartbreak to overflowing. But we don’t have to go there at this time. Arab atrocities have left scant room for empathy. Aside from actual wars, Palestinian Arabs throughout the decades have slaughtered thousands of Israelis in random acts of terror. Their intifadas and their nakbas are endless so please understand that my sympathies for them are remarkably limited…pretty much zero. But let me cite just one incident that makes it entirely too difficult for me to weep for the Palestinian Arab cause in Gaza or elsewhere: At the height of the Second Intifada an Israeli wife, mother and social worker Tali Hatuel left her neighborhood in the Gush Katif section of Gaza (when it was still Jewish) to transport her four daughters to join their father David, an educator, in Ashkelon. This was at a time when there were protests against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement plan, a plan that eventually awarded all of Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs. This was done to assure peace and tranquility as this time there could be no complaints about an occupation. Gunmen appeared and opened fire on the Hatuel vehicle, driving it into a ditch. Two Arab terrorists shouldering automatic weapons approached the family. All were murdered at close range, one at a time, with repeated blasts; Tali, 34, Hila, aged 11, Hadar, aged 9, Roni, aged 7 – and two-year-old Merav. Tali was eight months pregnant with a son. Imagine the cries for pity all the way from the mother to the uncomprehending two-year-old – brutally unheeded by the killers. At that moment the angels up in heaven turned their faces from such an unbearable sight. But there was dancing in the streets of Ramallah. So if you want pity for people like this and compassion for the people who breed them, please find someone else. I still have nightmares. Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, the anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Website: www.jackengelhard.comComments are closed.
