Defining the Difference

 

The difference between the Arabs and Israel is stark and completely accepted as defined by both sides. The Arabs, in the form of the Palestinian Arabs, admire and celebrate death. The Israelis take their love of life from Torah and their basically libertarian views. As a matter of fact, the Arabs have proclaimed this difference when they proclaim, as did Osama bin Laden, “We love death as you love life.” The terrorists have proven the validity of this time and again. Often when there is a terrorist attack, they refuse to stop after murdering one or two people, they often continue to attempt to murder more people until they are stopped, almost as if their main aim was their own death as being more important than the deaths of others. We have witnessed this on far too many occasions here in Israel. This was proven with the Gaza rioting, which has continued despite the agreement to a ceasefire, when they continue to charge the border fence and fly incendiary kites and balloons into Israel knowing that they may be shot. There is proof of the extent to which Israelis love life, which is that even the terrorists who are murdering others, or destroying large regions of fields and other lands, the IDF follow their instructions to aim to maim and not to kill. Israel prefers to take terrorists into custody rather than simply eliminating these criminal threats to our society. To put this into reference, the police in almost every jurisdiction in the United States, particularly in the major cities, are instructed that if they are required to use their weapons, they are to fire for center of body mass with the full intent of neutralizing, read kill, their target. There is no aim for their feet or maim the criminal when you must shoot, you are to kill them preferably with a minimum number of bullets, though often the officers neglect the directive to use a minimum number of bullets. Even in many European nations, you know, the enlightened people, also instruct their armed and Special Operations officers to shoot to kill and to do so as efficiently as possible. These districts almost appear to be more concerned with saving bullets than lives. In Israel, our forces are trained to shoot to end an attack but not to kill the terrorist.

 

Probably one of the most striking trials proving how seriously the IDF takes what they define as an improper shooting, especially when resulting in the death, even of a terrorist, was the fairly recent trial of Sergeant Elor Azaria who was convicted in the death of a terrorist he shot while he was in custody. The terrorist was not restrained and Sergeant Elor Azaria claimed that he suspected the terrorist was reaching to explode a bomb belt. His claims ran contrary to some comments he had made in the barracks after the shooting which placed that excuse in sufficient suspicion that he was convicted. The conviction was also political as there was the intent to impress upon IDF soldiers that they would not receive any leeway should their actions result in a death, be it a terrorist, criminal or even combatant. From things we heard, many soldiers were spooked by the result of the episode concerning Sergeant Elor Azaria’s shooting case and some even had confided that they were now apprehensive towards the use of potentially deadly force even when lives might be under threat. They were worried that should they shoot a terrorist who was stabbing people that they might be tried for using unnecessary force as it might be believed that the use of their firearm would be considered improper and that they might be expected to instead use their hand-to-hand training to disarm and subdue the terrorist. This was not a solitary case as Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner lost his command for striking a European activist with his rifle butt. Lieutenant Colonel Eisner was reacting to a series of provocations including one during this engagement where his finger was broken which we believe was caused by the person he eventually struck. He was taken from command and thus ending any chance for advancement largely due to the videos provided by the European activists who initiated this engagement with the IDF with the intention of provoking any violent result. Lieutenant Colonel Eisner had attempted to calm his men and took a position between them and the activists which resulted in his injury and this eventually lead to his striking the activist in order to back him out of his face where the activist had been shoving him and shouting and spitting in his face. There may have been more to the actions taken against Lieutenant Colonel Eisner for reasons not related to the incident, but that is for another time and the fact remains that he was punished for basically defending himself from further injury.

 

The Israeli political and military elite will use soldiers to actually perform search and destroy missions into areas of concern where rocket launchers and arms storage are located or region which are know as terrorist strongholds. On the surface, this appears to be an obvious means of performing such necessary maneuvers. The reality is that most western powers when similar operations are required only send their soldiers into such areas after reducing much of the area to rubble with air power. The most often implemented tactic is to use high explosive bombings followed by incendiary, read napalm, bombing making the area fairly cleared of any threats to their soldiers who are performing what are referred to as mopping-up sweeps. The IDF does use air power before sending in their soldiers but they do not drop bombs or incendiaries, they drop leaflets informing the civilians that there is about to be military operations in the area and that they should depart the area for their safety. The usual question which follows is asking does that not warn the terrorists that the IDF is coming with their soldiers. The answer is, of course it does but that is a risk the IDF takes, or at least the command takes with the lives and safety of the soldiers far down under their command. Colonel Richard Kemp is an observer who has given testimonies to the Human Rights Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the European Union and anywhere else which would provide him with a forum where he has testified to the threats faced by Israel and the IDF and the extraordinary restraint and limited use of force with the full intent to minimize civilian casualties even at the cost of IDF soldiers’ lives. We have included some of his commentary below starting with his commentary of the recent Gaza demonstrations. Richard Kemp has been a commander in the British military as an Infantry soldier and officer as well as a commando commander. He has been a dependable human rights and observer of the conducting of war within the international rules of warfare. The last video is a speech given in Norway under invitation to clear the invectives which have been leveled against the IDF. He refers to studies done and other expert commentaries which have been conducted. All of his speeches below are worth hearing.

 

 

 

 

Israel and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PLO and other Palestinian Arab efforts cannot be any more different in every way and means. When it comes to the lives of Israelis, the difference is to be expected. Of course, the IDF is formed to protect the lives of the Israeli civilians while the terrorists desire dead Israelis and go to great extents to kill Israelis, especially Israeli civilians as that increases the terror and fear factor. What becomes more difficult to grasp is that the IDF and the government behind them are more concerned with the lives of Palestinian Arabs than are the terrorists. The terrorists very often place their rockets and arms stores inside schools, including United Nations run schools, they place launchers and weapons stores within and near hospitals, while the Hamas main command bunker sits under Shifa Hospital. These are simply a few choice examples and there are many more including the fact that Hamas uses human shields including children as the United Nations concluded in their own research. Of course, this discovery does not lead to any condemnations from the Human Rights Council as there was no feasible way to blame Israel. The UN’s Human Rights Council has issued more condemnations of Israel than of all other countries combined. You cannot make these things up, it is not necessary when you have the United Nations General Assembly during their 2015 session adopting twenty resolutions singling out Israel for criticism with only three resolutions on the rest of the world combined. We could list a similar proclivity for the European Union adopting condemnations of Israel but we will simply limit it to a picture of the result of their adopting the BDS demands to label certain goods made within Israel. This is being done despite the fact that the Oslo Accords left Area C as completely under Israeli legal and security control and was expected to become part of Israel and is where all the so-called “settlements” are located, many are actual cities with all the requirements to make them legal, but why allow reality get in the way of condemnation and economic sabotage against Israel. The amusing result was people were found seeking these labels on wines, cheeses and produce as well as other products in order to purchase them.

 

European Union Labels for Products from Judea and Samaria

 

The difference is also in the expectations of the world as shown above. What it comes down to is very simple and can be expressed in the simplest of terms. The world expects the Arab groups dealing with Israel to act as barbarians while they expect that Israel fight them as the perfect example of human restraint. Where Hamas is expected to break every rule of law, Israel is expected to never cause any collateral damage. Part of that expectation was brought on ourselves when we used smallest possible charges when targeting Hamas and Islamic Jihad commanders and leadership such that in a number of cases we struck their vehicle and succeeded in killing the Hamas officer in the rear seat, injuring the person sitting next to him in the back seat and left the driver barely injured. Hamas officers took precautions since this was operational by surrounding their vehicles with children which ended the targeting Hamas officers when in their vehicles. The world has simply set a diametrically opposite set of demands upon Israel and the Arabs set on the destruction of Israel. This allows for anything to be done if it will destroy Israel and almost no effort which has even the slightest violence which might even cause a boo-boo to be used in defending Israel. We have a name for such a double-standard; we call it anti-Semitism. When you have a separate set of standards which are applied only to the one Jewish State in the world and an unbelievable lenient set of rules only applied to the enemies of Israel and only when they are fighting or murdering Israelis, that is anti-Semitism. What is the difference when defined, anti-Semitism, nothing less.

 

Beyond the Cusp