Israel at War—Humanitarian Disaster

Gosh, you'd think that with emotions and virtue signalling running so high, the usual pro-palestinian/Hamas crew—Muslim activists, the vast propaganda media, leftist crybullies, politicians like congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Gaza/Hamas], leftist intellectuals (and professors), and others who think moral preening is a substitute for honesty and clear thinking—would be OUTRAGED by the "humanitarian disaster" that is occurring in the Middle East. 

But, but, but ... they are, you say.

No, I'm not writing about the fully justified and wholly appropriate Israeli attack on Hamas in Gaza. There are many, many other actual, not manufactured, humanitarian disasters going on in the M.E. right now. But if there are no Jews involved, I guess there's no news.

Here are a few examples curated by Steven Green (heh, gotta wonder why the NYT or WaPo or CNN or MSNBC or PBS or the UN aren't expressing their "concern" on a daily basis):

Green comments:

... I clicked on "No Jews" [a link he discovered on X] ... because it goes with the job, and what I found was not at all what I was expecting.

While the Israeli-Hamas war garners all the attention — and I'll get back to the reason for that momentarily — "No Jews" shows that, even with a brutal war raging, Gaza doesn't even top the list of how bad Arabs have it...

...at the hands of their fellow Arabs. For much of the Islamic world, Israel serves as both a convenient distraction and a convenient excuse from just how badly most of the so-called "house of peace" (Dar al-Islam) runs its affairs.

For every leftie complaining about Israeli's treatment of Gaza Palestinians, there is exactly zero taking public notice of how they're being treated in [Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen and other places in the Arab Crescent.]

As Green notes: "Muslim-on-Muslim violence is a terrible thing already — and no Jews are required."

In fact, if no Jews are involved, and the 5 million square miles of the Arab Crescent is essentially Judenrein, violence against Arabs and humanitarian disasters just aren't a big story. 

But the virtue signaling "activists" on the Left have a unique ability to jettison facts, redefine the meaning of words, and selectively target their outrage at just one people and one country to the exclusion of others. They claim that they oppose Israel, not Jews. But that disingenuous claim is nonsense. J. Peder Zane comments:

It would be unfair to blame all opponents of Israel for this hatred – but the double standard at work here is instructive. Since Oct. 7, Israel’s critics have insisted that the people of Gaza should not be blamed for the actions of their government, that Israel’s military response is a vicious form of “collective punishment” against innocents. On a human level, the deaths of German civilians during World War II were tragic. But who would argue they were innocents whose lives had to be spared, if that made defeating Hitler impossible? If every civilian death is a crime, then there can be no war – which would be a fine ideal if the world were free of evildoers such as Hamas.

In the current conflict, the concern for civilians only goes one way. Hamas apologists quickly moved past the unprovoked slaughter of at least 1,400 innocents on Oct. 7, if they paused to note it at all. They ignore the fact that Israel, by contrast, has given advance warning to those in harm’s way – many of whom have been placed in danger by their own government’s decision to use them as human shields. As they cynically invoke the concepts of war crimes and human rights, they stay mum about the rockets aimed at Israeli neighborhoods, rededicating themselves to an armed struggle that has always made civilians the primary target.

Imagine our response, if after 9/11 the U.N. or other Muslim activists demanded that we provide humanitarian assistance to every citizen of Afghanistan, that we cease fire or reduce fire so as not to inflame the Arab street and go after al Qaida in a "measured and proportional manner," that we avoid bombing villages or cities in which the Taliban and later ISIS were hiding among civilian populations. 

Come to think of it, we did some of those things and failed to remove al Qaida. The Taliban currently control Afghanistan and only after a hard-nosed President decided that ISIS would no longer exist, did we defeat those barbarians (BTW: Even ISIS never kidnapped infants or raped women).

War is a bitch—innocent people die, the devastation is ugly, and human resolve is tested. If Hamas actually cared about the people who currently live in Gaza (they do NOT), they would have let them heed Israel's warning and leave or even better, they would have thought long and hard before committing atrocities that brought this war on. 

EVERY death that has occurred and will occur in on Hamas. That simple reality negates all the claims, all the demands, and all the whining coming out of the Left.

UPDATE:

It isn't surprising that Joe Biden and his foreign policy Team of 1s have acceded to the left wing of the Democratic party and tried to pressure Bibi Netanyahu to implement a "humanitarian pause. Note that Biden, Blinken and Co. made no demands of Hamas.

Ed Morrissey describes the result:

In a brief televised statement before the start of Shabbat, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told visiting US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he rejects any temporary halt to the fight against Hamas that does not include “the release of our hostages. He also says Israel “will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza.”

Netanyahu begins by promising that victory will be “sharp and clear” and will “resonate for generations.”

He says Israel’s enemies aim to destroy the country and will fail. “We won’t stop until victory,” he says, specifying that this means “to destroy Hamas, [and attain the] return of the hostages and the restoration of security for our citizens and children.”

Bibi makes Democrat presidents look foolish—particularly when those presidents propose dumb stuff. 

Israel should reject the perpetual and cynical whining of the Left, recognizing that leftists couldn't care less if Israel ceases to exist—"oppression" and all of that garbage. 

Israel should continue its work to grind Hamas into the ground and then ... dismantle Gaza, resettle all 2.1 million of its residents into the Arab crescent, and turn Gaza into the garden spot that the poor, oppressed palestinians had every opportunity to achieve over the past 2 decades—except that they are ruled by hatred, corruption and a 17th century view of the world.