Certain pictures stand out, even in a world in which everyone is an amateur photographer and can easily share their photos using the phones in their hands. The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan was accompanied by striking, enduring images. The people falling to their deaths unable to hang on to the planes taking off from Kabul’s international airport have become a symbol of the troubling times, reminiscent of the pictures 20 years ago of desperate victims leaping from the World Trade Center as it burned and crashed on 9/11.
Other heartbreaking images from Kabul this month showed parents struggling to pass babies and young children through the barbed wire on top of the wall at the airport, so frightened for the future that they were willing to be separated from their offspring in the hope that the children at least would be able to get to live in another country; would be able to live, period.
Then there were the photos coming from Gaza’s border with Israel. Spot the difference. Here, too, masses of people were filmed rushing to a wall topped by barbed wire. But they didn’t come to escape hell but to export it. Their goal is to bring Israel down, not rebuild their lives. These weren’t asylum seekers. They were terrorists. Refugees don’t shoot to kill. They don’t carry weapons.
The Hamas member who shot Border Police officer Barel Shmueli at point-blank range on Saturday, August 21 – firing through the gap in the wall – was not shooting in self-defense. Shmueli, a 21-year-old sniper, continues to fight for his life as I write these lines.
The incident demonstrates the dilemmas facing Israeli forces and their commanders. Restraint is a double-edged sword. The soldiers and border police did not open fire on the crowds of rioters, which would have kept them away from the fence but likely would have resulted in mass casualties on the Palestinian side.
A few years ago after a similar riot along the border ended with many wounded Gazans, a British radio interviewer asked me sharply how I could explain that so many Palestinians suffered injuries to their legs and lower parts of their bodies. I took a deep breath before I replied, knowing whatever I said, however I phrased it, would be perceived as insensitive. The interviewer’s tone carried its own castigation.
IDF soldiers are well-trained and have clear open-fire regulations. If the Palestinians were being shot in their legs it was proof that the soldiers were not aiming to kill, but firing initial warning shots trying to keep them at bay.
The Hamas terrorists have nothing to lose. Raised on a diet of murderous incitement to martyrdom, they can either kill or be killed – and go straight to jihadi heaven, replete with celestial virgins to serve them.
It’s hard to fight that kind of fanaticism. The willingness to use your own people as human shields in terrorism and as props in a PR war is a win-win situation for Hamas. Note the number of children among the rioters. If Israel shoots, the terrorists become the victims; if the Israeli side shows restraint it is seen as weakness, encouraging more attacks.
It doesn’t take much to encourage Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad and their fellow terrorists. The Days of Rage on the Palestinian calendar are endless, running from week to week, month to month, year after year.
Israel is damned if it responds and damned if it doesn’t.
The Israeli South has long been held hostage by Hamas (and its Iranian supplier of funds and arms): There should not be a situation in which “a few” rockets now and again and ongoing ecoterrorism through incendiary balloons are considered acceptable.
This demands a mindset switch not only in the government in Jerusalem and the IDF chief of staff’s office at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv. It requires a change in world opinion. To go beyond the initial image in which Israel is automatically the bad guy and the Palestinian “refugees” are the victims. With some five generations living in Arabic-speaking, Muslim Gaza, the UN’s insistence on labeling the Palestinians “perpetual refugees” is itself part of the problem.
The Hamas and PIJ members seen trying to broach the fence on the border with Israel are not the local equivalent of refugees trying to escape the Taliban. On the contrary: they have much in common with the Taliban trying to spread their caliphate across the region.
Before condemning Israel for building walls and protecting them, consider what would happen if those walls did not exist and were not defended. European countries are not jumping at the chance of hosting genuine refugees escaping a strict Sharia-based regime. What would happen if thousands of people were to try cross those borders in a mass rally? And what if some were armed and open about their intent to carry out terrorist attacks?
Every country and every military tries to avoid mass civilian casualties, but none takes the measures that Israel does – often putting its own soldiers at risk. Yet no other country comes under the pressure that Israel does to halt defensive measures. What is a proportional response when rockets are being indiscriminately launched on your citizens? What type of restraint reins in terrorism instead of encouraging it?
The absurdity of the latest events can be seen in the way they followed agreements about another cash infusion from Qatar to the Gaza Strip and during Egyptian mediation efforts. It wasn’t enough or fast enough for Hamas.
After every round of Palestinian violence – like the 11-day mini-war that took place in May – there is much discussion about how to rehabilitate the Gaza Strip. But Hamas isn’t seeking rehabilitation; it’s seeking confrontation. The recent violent rallies, like the rocket onslaught in May, are being carried out under the slogan of defending al-Aqsa and Jerusalem. Jerusalem is always a good rallying cry. A battle cry. And it gains more regional and international attention than pleas to “lift the blockade” (which is in any case a very partial effort to prevent more war materiel from reaching the terrorists who rule the Gaza Strip.)
The threat to carry out more rallies on the border this week was not an attempt to lower the flames but to ignite the area and divert attention, split-screen style, as Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with US President Joe Biden in Washington.
There is no doubt that the fact that there has been a change in the government in Israel and the administration in the US is also having an effect on the region. The chaotic scenes of the withdrawal of US and other forces from Afghanistan encourages the radical Islamists everywhere.
Israel is in a difficult situation. For several years it has maintained a policy nicknamed “mowing the grass” – superficially cutting the surface growth and pushing Hamas back when the terrorists launch a round of violence, without tackling the grassroots of the problem.
Now is the time to chew the cud and come up with a different strategy – one that includes public diplomacy no less than the military campaign. Much of the Arab world already understands that the radical Islamists are the real threat, not the Jewish state. The Abraham Accords last year were partly based on that.
The Western world needs to understand what Israel is facing – and that Israel is on the frontlines fighting global jihad for the benefit of all democratic, free countries. It doesn’t matter which government is in power here, or on which side of the political map stand the leaders of the other countries.
Rioters on the border are armed with photogenic slingshots that help promote the perverse image of a Palestinian David fighting a Jewish Goliath. But Hamas is not the Boy Scouts movement. These aren’t peaceful demonstrators but terrorists. The dots connecting Hamas and the PIJ to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS come in the form of drops of blood.
Scenes of Palestinians rushing at the border fence offer photographers a chance of the perfect shot, an award-winning image. We must insist on asking what’s wrong with this picture.
liat@jpost.com