Opinion: The Absurdity of Equating Israel with Hamas
JERUSALEM, Israel -- Some people understand what's going on in the IDF's ground incursion in the Gaza Strip, and some don't.
The Israeli government and its defense forces are doing everything they can to document the operation against Hamas and other Islamist terror groups operating in Gaza.
Every afternoon, the IDF Spokesman's Office publishes a detailed summary of the day's events, often accompanied by images and video footage.
The facts certainly speak for themselves. The images speak for themselves. Both testify to the facts on the ground, namely that there is no moral equivalency between Hamas, the Palestinian faction controlling Gaza, and Israel.
Yet people with a predisposed prejudice against Israel don't seem interested in the facts. They fault Israel no matter what.
That's standard practice at the United Nations, for example, which often ignores the horrific killing and human rights abuses taking place every day in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, while producing endless resolutions against Israel.
In a stunningly perceptive analysis entitled "Moral clarity in Gaza," published last week by the Washington Post, Fox News analyst Charles Krauthammer calls it "absurd" to equate Israel with Hamas.
"Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent 'cycle of violence.' This is absurd," Krauthammer writes.
Even the Obama administration's attempts to broker a ceasefire to end the "cycle of violence" puts Hamas on equal footing with the country and people they're attacking.
Krauthammer believes the international community's double standard undermines Israel's right to exist.
"Given the Orwellian state of the world's treatment of Israel (see the United Nation's grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance, and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel's legitimacy and right to self-defense," he wrote.
There's no doubt Israelis are tired of war. Tens of thousands have died defending the country since its rebirth as a modern nation-state in 1948.
Israel will do what it must in an increasingly hostile world. It has no choice. But despite all the challenges, Israelis will continue to develop the beautiful land deeded to their fathers thousands of years ago by God Himself.
"For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are full, then you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you." ( )
