https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/israels-lost-cause-joseph-puder/
Anti-Semitism, the undying virus that still infects millions in the Muslim world and beyond, found a pretext to once again show its poisonous venom. The anti-Semitic protests, in many European cities as well as Latin and North American communities, used the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, (the Islamist terrorist group controlling Gaza), to malign the Jewish state with ugly obscenities such as an “apartheid state,” and characterizing Zionism (the Jewish national liberation movement) as Nazi-like. The slogans voiced in these protests didn’t match the facts that led to the conflict. Israel was seeking a long-term peace accommodation with Hamas, and instead got a barrage of rockets from Gaza aiming to kill Israeli civilians in its capital – Jerusalem, central Israel, including Tel Aviv, and particularly, in the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Israel, charged with the sacred duty to protect its civilian population, retaliated by destroying the sources of the rockets, cannons, and mortar fire. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) avoided many terrorist targets when innocent civilian bystanders were in the vicinity. Moreover, the IDF warned Gazan civilians to evacuate prior to bombing a Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) specific target. Hamas did the exact opposite, seeking to maximize Israeli civilian casualties. Yet, in world capitals, be it in Europe, America, or the Middle East, the truth and the facts are irrelevant. Anti-Semitism is irrational, as are these ugly protests.
Jews, having served as scapegoats in Christian Europe for almost 2,000 years, and a somewhat shorter period in the Muslim Middle East, became a convenient target for regimes to let their majority population vent their political, economic or social frustrations on the minority of Jews in their communities. Today however, the Jewish state – the collective Jewish body, has become a more convenient target, not that individual Jews in Europe or the Americas are immune as we have clearly seen in recent years. Some of the European governments, in seeking to appease their violent Muslim immigrants (Germany alone invited more than a million Muslim migrants into their country, who were brainwashed with pathological hatred for Jews and Israel) often criticize Israel, creating fertile ground of increased anti-Semitism. In the US, the Biden administration is being pressured by an anti-Semitic group of radical Democratic Party members in the US Congress, to disassociate the US from Israel. What we see in large portions of the West is moral equivalency, where actual right and wrong has become irrelevant.
Demographics alone point to an unfair fight between Israel and the Palestinians. 1.6 billion Muslims, most of whom automatically support their fellow Muslim Palestinians, are arrayed against less than 16 million Jews worldwide, with a sizeable percentage being anti-Zionist. It means that Muslim voices on behalf of Palestinians will always be louder than Jewish voices, as well as violent and intimidating, whether it takes place in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Montreal, or Santiago de Chile. This is true for the social media as well.
Demographic disadvantage notwithstanding, Israel it seems rarely mounts on effective worldwide informational (hasbara in Hebrew) campaign to go along simultaneously with its far more effective military campaign. This anomaly is unfortunate since Israel has justice on its side. Hamas clearly and deliberately initiated this war, and its declared agenda is to destroy the Jewish state. One often hears those voices in the West who bemoan the fact that Gaza Palestinians have far more casualties than Israel does. Consider therefore these simple facts. While Israel built shelters to shield its people from bombs, Hamas built attack tunnels to penetrate into Israel in order to murder and kidnap civilians in particular. They do not, though, build shelters for their people. Moreover, Israel cares enough for the Palestinian civilians to warn them of an impending attack, and canceling certain operations that might hurt innocent bystanders. Of course, there will always be unintended consequences, and civilians will get hurt. This however, has to do with the simple fact that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, and places their firepower in residential areas such as schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings. Hamas then uses children who died because of its own negligence, for its propaganda, to generate international sympathy.
