Update: Another Paliwood production opens to tough reviews from Israel National News:
Barely one day into the fighting in Hamas-run Gaza, the locals are hard at work playing the victim for the world's press.
Footage from the BBC captured by watchdog group Honest Reporting shows a heavy man lying on the ground and being carried away by residents, apparently after being injured by an Israeli attack.
Moments later, that same man again fills the frame, except he is walking about and obviously unhurt.
Update: The people begging for a terror attack on Tel Aviv got their wish, as air-raid sirens heralded the impact of a rocket from Islamic Jihad, shortly after 6:30 PM local time. No injuries have been reported as of yet. This marks the first rocket attack on Tel Aviv since the Gulf War in 1991.
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We've been here before. We all know how this works. It's still faintly shocking to watch the moral equivalency game play out.
This morning, the Israeli Defense Force said via Twitter, "Good morning to our friends in America. While you were sleeping, 3 Israelis were killed when a rocket hit their house." They died when Hamas terrorists targeted their apartment building with a rocket barrage. A toddler and two babies were also wounded in the attack. Here's a picture of one of the young victims:
Pictures are important, for the world's news consumers have a bottomless visual appetite. That's how Hamas and its apologists manipulate them. Blogger Bob Owens has a couple of choice examples, including a caption that reads "Israeli airstrike kills Hamas commander" over a photo that actually shows Hamas rockets being fired at Israeli civilians.
Hamas showers Israel with rockets and bombs for months; Israel finally can stand no more, and launches a decisive response; Israel is held responsible for everything that happens, because they "escalated" the situation. Apparently they're just supposed to shrug off 800 or so rocket strikes per year as a minor annoyance.
"No government would tolerate a situation where nearly a fifth of its people would live under a constant barrage of rockets and missile fire," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau.
He accused Hamas of committing a "double war crime" because "they fire at Israeli civilians, and they hide behind Palestinian civilians." By contrast, "Israel takes every measure to avoid civilian casualties." He mentioned having seen the picture above, and cited it as evidence of Hamas' cruel abuse of both Israeli and Palestinian children.
But there have inevitably been Palestinian civilian casualties. "Since the Israeli operation started, a total of 13 Palestinians, including four civilians, have been killed and more than 100 people wounded, according to Palestinian medical officials. Among the dead were two children," Fox News reports.
Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for the unwavering support of the Obama Administration, but that might be seen as a dose of pre-emptive thanks, because the State Department's official statement said "We support Israel's right to defend itself, and we encourage Israel to take every effort to avoid civilian casualties."
That's nice. How about encouraging Hamas to take every effort to avoid civilian casualties? They could start by refraining from deliberately targeting civilians. Then maybe they could think about discontinuing the practice of using civilians as human shields to protect their murder weapons.
Or maybe instead of enduring random attacks for months and then using its professional, humanitarian uniformed military to conduct large-scale, highly effective responses under internationally recognized laws of war, the Israelis should just randomly drop bombs on the Gaza Strip every day. How about that? Fair enough, right? Hamas shoots six rockets at Israeli civilians; Israeli soldiers close their eyes and shoot six right back. Why should Israel be the only party that has to live under the constant threat of random attacks?
The wonderful new post-Mubarak Egyptian government that Obama loves to take credit for midwifing weighed in by asking Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for "immediate U.S. intervention to stop the Israeli aggression." The United Nations began playing its usual moral equivalence game by entertaining similar Egyptian pleas for intervention against Israel, and "urging both sides to respect international humanitarian law," per the Fox report.
It sounds like a lot of those Palestinian civilians have forgotten all about the miserable misrule of their terrorist government, and they're eager to get into the bloody game:
Few in the Palestinian territory's largest urban area, Gaza City, came out following the call for dawn prayers on Thursday, and the only vehicles plying the streets were ambulances and media cars.
About 400 angry mourners braved the streets, however, to bury Hamas mastermind Ahmed Jabari, whose body was draped in the green flag of the Islamic militant Hamas movement. Some fired guns in the air and chanted, "God is Great, the revenge is coming."
[...] Outside the hospital where Jabari's body was taken, Hamas official Khalil al-Haya eulogized the commander and threatened Israel.
"The battle between us and the occupation is open and it will end only with the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem," he said.
Thousands of angry Gazans chanted "Retaliation" and "We want you to hit Tel Aviv tonight."
Has the U.S. State Department got anything to say to those people?
This is a very simple test of civilizational integrity. Israel withdrew completely from the Gaza Strip; Palestinian terrorists immediately began launching random attacks from the area, and never really stopped. The best they could manage was a temporary "informal truce." The Israelis were apparently expected to keep a quarter of their population in mortal jeopardy forever, with the only "acceptable" alternative being capitulation to terrorist demands. To hold Israel equally responsible, or even more responsible, for the ensuing collateral damage is the language of barbarism.
