Israel Shows A Tremendous Amount Of Restraint

InsightSpencerFernando

Imagine if the power-balance was reversed…

Let’s play a little thought experiment.

Imagine if Hamas possessed a highly-advanced military and held the balance of power over Israel.

Imagine if Israel repeatedly shot rockets into Hamas-controlled territory (deliberately targeting civilians for death).

How do you think Hamas would respond?

Do you think Israel would still exist right now?

Seriously, ask yourself that question.

Given the rampant anti-Semitism in many parts of the world, and the repeated calls for the total destruction of Israel by Hamas leaders and Hamas enablers, do you think that Israel would continue to exist if Hamas had the most powerful military in the region?

I think you know the answer.

Israel would have been carpet-bombed out of existence, with the population either killed outright or forcibly evicted from the entire region.

In a short period of time, Israel would be completely overrun and overtaken by Hamas, with Hamas becoming another Arab state in the region with no place for Israeli’s.

There would be brutal ethnic-cleansing and mass death.

Why this matters

This thought experiment is important, because it tells you about the motives and the ethics of various participants in a fight.

Often, people have some sort of strange desire to support the ‘underdog,’ no matter what the underdog actually stands for or seeks to achieve.

But applying this thought experiment to other conflicts gives us a good sense of the ‘morality’ of participants in war and conflict.

Consider what would have happened if Germany had won WW2.

The number of deaths would have far surpassed the Holocaust, with genocide taking place on multiple continents, likely leaving hundreds of millions of people dead.

What if the Soviet Union had occupied all of Europe?

At minimum, hundreds of thousands would have been killed, and those deaths would likely have run into the millions, with a vast refugee crisis as people fled Communist States en masse.

In Communist China, we don’t have to imagine, as tens of millions perished under Mao, and even today we see China operating concentrating camps and committing genocidal acts.

By contrast, the United States enjoyed a level of power after WW2 that had not been seen before in history.

When the war ended, the US accounted for roughly 50% of all global GDP, had an immense military advantage over other participants (the Soviet’s had a large but far less advanced military). Further, the United States was the only nation on Earth with nuclear weapons for a period of time.

Did they exploit that advantage to butcher their enemies and subjugate the entire planet?

No.

Instead, they helped rebuild and reform the nations they defeated, and build a strong alliance network.

What would Germany or the Soviet Union have done with the level of power America had at that time?

Certainly, something far worse.

This tells us that – for all their flaws – America’s motives have (at least relative to most other dominant nations – been relatively benign as history goes.

And that brings us back to Israel.

Claims against Israel are divorced from reality

As Andrew Lawton recently reported, a group of media reporters are calling for Israel’s actions to be covered as “ethnic-cleansing.”

“Dozens of mainstream media reporters, including from CBC, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, have signed this open letter calling for, among other things, the Israel-Gaza conflict to be covered as “ethnic cleansing.””

“One simply can’t trust coverage to be neutral if it comes from a reporter who signs a letter with this paragraph in it.”

Lawton is correct, any reporter who signs a document like that clearly is not objective.

And that’s because the facts so clearly go the opposite way.

Israel possesses massive military power advantage relative to Hamas.

Israel could easily demolish Gaza if they chose – and it must be noted that Israel in fact once controlled Gaza directly, and moved their own citizens out of the area and gave up control voluntarily.

Israel could keep up indefinite air strikes, launch a huge ground invasion, and forcibly relocate the entire population.

They chose not to.

In fact, they even give warnings before launching air strikes in many cases, giving people the chance to evacuate and bringing down buildings once they are empty, as they did with a building housing some media outlets.

Indeed, in the video below you can see that Israel repeatedly checks to confirm whether there are people in the building, and bombs it only once it is clear it is empty:

“What a video. Watch the owner of al-Jalaa tower in Gaza pleading with an Israeli officer on live TV to let journalists collect their gear before Israel bombs the media tower, which houses @AP & Aljazeera.”

Furthermore, the population of Gaza has been increasing steadily every year, quite the opposite of ‘genocide’ or ‘ethnic cleansing.’

By contrast, in a place like China, we see forced-sterilizations and a decline in population in growth among Uyghurs, a clear sign the CCP is trying to reduce the population of a targeted group.

Immense restraint

Given their military power, and given what they could do, Israel shows tremendous restraint.

Israel is not committing ethnic cleansing, and they are using only a fraction of the military strength they could if they wanted to completely bring down Hamas.

Would Canada or any other nation simply sit by and let an adversary fire rockets at civilian areas?

I think not. The response would be swift, decisive, and brutal, as it should be.

Further, we know that Hamas doesn’t give warnings before they launch rocket attacks.

And Hamas doesn’t usually go after military targets either, they simply fire rockets into civilian areas indiscriminately, trying to do as much damage as possible.

Also, if Gaza is so poor, why does Hamas seemingly have so much money for tons of missiles?

Terror and death is their goal, rather than strategic objectives.

Why would Israel be held to a higher standard?

And yet, Israel choses to hold itself to a higher standard anyway.

Their Iron Dome system is a demonstration of Israel using their military and technological advantage in a defensive manner.

This is the context and reality of the situation that must be included in coverage of what is taking place, otherwise people will be getting a skewed and manipulated version of events, and that doesn’t serve anyone well.

Spencer Fernando

Photo – YouTube

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