Tom over at Redhunter has an excellent post up today about the venom spewed at Isreal by the left:
The best example of moral confusion is in regard to Israeli military actions versus terrorist actions by Palestinian and other Muslim extremists.
Israel directs it’s attacks at military targets, by which we mean people who are either armed themselves or directly part of a military-type structure aimed at doing harm. Sometimes civilians are killed during the fighting. However, they civilians are not only the ones not targeted, but the evidence is overwhelming that Israel, like the United States, goes out of its way to avoid civilian casualties.
Palestinian and other Muslim extemists, however, directly target Israeli civilians.
Why this difference is hard for some people to understand is utterly beyond me. My only conclusion is that they are so enraptured by leftist ideologies that they are beyond reason.
The Settlements
We’re forever hearing that the settlements are standing in the way of peace.
To which I ask; if the settlements are the problem today, what was the problem before 1967?
The usual response; silence. Of course. They have no answer.
I wrote about this at some length in a previous post. My conclusion:
The main issues preventing peace are the following
- Lack of Moral Clarity. I’ve written on this before here. Here are two of the essential elements of moral clarity lacking in some people:
- Israel is an imperfect democracy, but it is a democracy. No Arab state is a democracy. This does not mean that Israel may do anything it wishes, but it does mean that we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
- Israeli forces practice discrimination in warfare. That is, they only attack military targets. Civilians are sometimes killed as a byproduct, but the civilians are not the target themselves. Arab/Muslim terrorists deliberately target civilians. Why this is hard for some people to understand is beyond me.
- Lack of Democracy among the Arab States. Natan Scharansky wrote about this in his excellent book “The Case for Democracy”. Simply put, democracies do not fight each other. We in the west are partly responsible for the current state of affairs, since in the past we did not pressure Arab governments to reform.
- Palestinian terrorism – until the Arab states and/or the PA put and end to terrorism by organizations such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the others there will be no peace.
- The expansion of the settlements should stop. Ok, I know I said earlier that “the settlements per se” are not the problem. And that is true. But it is also true that in my opinion Israel does not need new settlements, and by expanding them they give Palestinian extremists a propaganda message that is useful in recruiting terrorists.
There is much more at his blog, I recommend checking it out regularly, it’s always on my must read list.
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