Andrew L. Urban
The second worst atrocity after the barbaric October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israeli citizens is being perpetrated by those who, like Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, express “grave concerns” about Israel’s pending offensive against Hamas in Rafah.
We are witnessing public displays of psychological cruelty by western leaders, notably US President Joe Biden, as well as antisemites in and around the media as they lecture Israel on what Israel should/should not do.
The families and friends of those slaughtered and taken hostage are suffering the intense psychological torture of seeing the perpetrators of the horror, a terrorist group, left out of the lecture. Let off. Hamas is not being urged on a daily basis to surrender and to release all the hostages, which is of course exactly what the world should urgently demand, pressuring not only Hamas but their backers..
Calling for the release of hostages has become a second order of importance in these lectures. Surrendering their weapons doesn’t even arise as an issue.
Hamas is a terrorist organisation, not the army of a sovereign state fighting a legal war with Israel. There has been slippage in morality, accentuated by the wild eyed anti Israel (aka antisemitic) protests around the West, skewing the public debate into a false conceptualising of the conflict. As if it was a war between a powerful western nation and a weak, poor opponent nation. That is not what this conflict is.
This conflict is the consequence of a home invasion by a large, brutal gang in which men, women and children were butchered and raped. The survivors and families of the victims – and all their neighbours – are now seeking to eradicate that gang, which has sworn to repeat that home invasion whenever possible.
Wagging warning fingers at the victims of the criminal home invaders is entirely wrong. It is another atrocity.