Why I am not moved emotionally by Gazan deaths
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Dresden after the bombing
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Dresden Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders. Gaza civilians are no more innocent than Germans who elected Hitler. Opinion.
The New York Times is anti-Semitic and has been for a century. They buried Jews by burying the Holocaust. They also collaborated in the murder of millions of Ukrainians, as their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Walter Duranty, filed glowing reports from the Soviet Union about Stalin while that butcher was starving millions to death during the Holodomor.
Not only could I go on-and-on about New York Times anti-Semitism, but I actually have done so here and elsewhere. You are welcome to read it.
So I now get the Washington Post. They are pretty-much just as bad. Before the 1,200 Israelis who were slaughtered on October 7 even had all their bodies identified, WaPo had moved from mourning the unsuspecting Jewish dead and turned its focus instead to the “poor innocent dead of Gaza.” And that has been its focus these past six weeks. By contrast, as leftist as Maariv and Yediot are, they do stand for self-preservation. (Haaretz, though, does not even go that far. They are fine with national suicide.) For sanity, I read my favorite Arutz Sheva columnists and Kalman Liebskind in Maariv.
I have not been moved by the headlines about Gazans being killed amid Israel’s attacks on Hamas terrorists and their weapons and tunnels. I don’t care. Although I read WaPo to avoid the echo chamber, I nevertheless now skip the crying, sobbing, weeping articles about the crying, sobbing, weeping Gazan dead. I just don’t read them. I just don’t care. For my two grush (remember agorot?), Israel can Dresden Gaza into rubble until:
(i) Hamas releases the remaining 150+ Jews and non-Jews it kidnaped,
(ii) Hamas unconditionally surrenders to Israel, and
(iii) All remaining Hamas leaders whom Israel has not yet killed submit themselves to a Nuremberg-type War Crimes Trial.
No Hostage release? Then Dresden Gaza.
No unconditional surrender? Then Dresden Gaza.
No submission by Hamas leaders for a War Crimes trial? Then Dresden Gaza
As you may have noticed, I use “Dresden” as a verb. It was good enough for America during World War II. It was good enough for Britain. It works for me. Dresden Gaza.
I know. I know: “But what about the poor innocent people of Gaza? What did they do to deserve this?”
Here’s what they did:
“Palestinians” elected Hamas in 2006 to be their government. Ismail Haniyeh, their leader, became prime minister. “Palestinians” had a free election in 2006. Hamas won. Was the election a legitimate reflection of Arab sentiment among “Palestinians”? A former president of the United States of America, doubling as a Jew hater, went there to observe the election and declared it a legitimate, proper election.
Thank you, Jimmy Carter. We know that your intention in legitimizing the Hamas election was to hurt Israel and Jews by legitimizing the rise of Hamas. But G-d is so good, Mr. President. In His mercy, He has kept you alive just barely long enough to watch your “legitimate” Hamas crushed and destroyed — and so much of Gaza turned to rubble — because you legitimized their election.
So that’s what the civilians of Gaza did in 2006. They elected Hamas. Hamas defeated Fatah, another terror organization, the one that runs the “Palestine Authority” in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”), by winning 74 seats to Fatah’s 45. Abu Mazen (known in the West as “Mahmoud Abbas”) heads Fatah. Another terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, came in a distant third. A parliamentary majority required either 67 seats or an armory of bombs, rifles, grenades, bullets, and such. Hamas had more of both.
In Germany, the civilians freely elected Hitler. They knew what he would do because he wrote it in Mein Kampf he would do it, told voters he would do it, and in time he did it. Moreover, they knew what he was doing when he did it, and they said nothing. They were, to use the German (and Yiddish) term, shtum. They allowed Dachau to happen, and Sobibor and Treblinka and Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt and, yes, Auschwitz. So, in due measure, those “poor innocent German civilians” got Dresdened.
Good. I hope they lived just long enough to know they had been bombed to death.
And now the time has come for Gaza to be Dresdened. They are lucky. Dresden happened during February 13-15, 1945. Close to 4,000 tons — that is 8 million pounds — of bombs were dropped on them in those three days. Some 25,000 Germans were killed. Much of the city burned down. All in three days. Got a problem with that? Talk to the hand: Hitler was elected March 5, 1933. The people of Dresden enjoyed 12 years’ respite before the Allies Dresdened them. By contrast, Hamas was elected in 2006, and that population got 17 years until their time to be Dresdened. Five extra years to murder Jews.
Was it Obama who told John McCain that “elections have consequences”? At first, the German public did not align with Adolf. In both 1924 and 1928, he got fewer than a million votes. And then his rise began. In 1930 he got 6,409,000. In July 1932 he got 13,745,000. In November 1932 it dropped a bit to 11,737,000. But then he got 17,277,000 in March 1933, enough to form a Nazi-driven coalition.
Dresden them.
And so it has gone for Hamas.
Let us be clear: If the Government of Israel were trying to murder innocent civilians wantonly, just to inflict terror and to horrify them into submission, I would condemn that. No Jew can accept or refrain from criticizing organized institutional efforts to harm civilians wantonly. There has to be a reason, a justification. If Israel were deliberately bombing residential structures just to kill people randomly in their homes and bombing hospitals just to inflict suffering on the ill in the abstract, there might be room for criticism. But that is not Israel nor the Jewish people. We have our ethic, and the Arab Muslims have theirs. We have our religious guidelines and theological authorities, and they have theirs.
Israel will not target innocent civilians knowingly. If they do kill people who should not be killed, it will be by accident.
But, otherwise, Israel in Gaza specifically destroys known military targets: rocket launchers, land mines, IEDs (improvised explosive devices), military drones, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and their launchers, anti-tank missiles, and other military battlefield materiel — and the people storing and launching them. If such terrorists are operating from specific residential buildings — say, running a rocket factory or storing attack drones in an 8th-floor apartment — then Israel may well bomb the entire building. But they won’t bomb the building next door. They attack with whatever precision is humanly possible. And if the day comes that they make a mistake, they will apologize. That is what America does.
By now, we all know that Hamas men and their weapons hide in and behind women, children, residential apartment buildings, hospitals, mosques, schools, and ambulances. When any or all of these are identified positively for their military threat, Israel will destroy them. And if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) cannot avoid killing civilians alongside, then Dresden entails collateral casualties, and Israel now must Dresden Gaza. Northern Gaza, southern Gaza. Beit Hanoun, Jabaliyah, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, Abasan al-Kabera. Dresden one and all until (i) all hostages are freed; (ii) Hamas surrenders; (iii) their remaining leaders submit to War Crimes Trials. Turn them into Bedrock with Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty, Pebbles and Bam-Bam.
Importantly, Israel has had to fight five previous Gaza wars started by Hamas these past 16 years. Each time, Israel stopped its winning responses, forced by international pressure to cease fire and by a convoluted “Conceptzia” that they could be bought off. Each time, Hamas used the ceasefire to re-arm, build more tunnels, and militarize more of the population. They now have 40,000 terrorists in 300 miles of those 500-800 tunnels. This time, upon having experienced the terror attacks of Shabbat Shmini Atzeret on October 7, Israel has learned the price of stopping halfway through a war. That “Concept” simply left behind the weeds to grow back and fight an even more destructive next war. This time Israel must uproot even the weeds.
When the Washington Post and others present their empathy for the “poor innocent Gaza civilians,” I don’t care. They are poor only because Hamas has used the billions of dollars they have received from Qatar and European — and American — taxpayers to build an underground tunnel system as expansive as the New York City subway system instead of allocating the money to the public by building a beautiful country. Believe it or not, with all that money that has poured in — more than $8 billion — they have not even built a water or electricity infrastructure in their 16 years.
“Humanitarian” nothing. They crossed the border by the hundreds with Hamas fighters to pillage and murder. They spat upon, beat and cursed the hostages. An UNRWA teacher starved a hostage in his home. So did a doctor.
They should get no food, no water, no meds, no fuel. Let them drink and eat their tunnels. That would set that murderous civilian population against their Hamas masters, just as ravenously starving attack dogs will consume their owners if desperately hungry enough. General Ulysses S. Grant was the King of Sieges. He laid siege to Vicksburg, Mississippi and presented it as an Independence Day gift to President Lincoln on July 4, 1863, the same day Gen. Meade partially won Gettysburg. But Meade “mowed the lawn” and allowed Robert E. Lee to escape back south to Virginia with his Confederate army. So Lincoln fired Meade despite his winning at Gettysburg. Lincoln had no patience for generals “mowing the lawn.” He finally selected Grant and, in time, Grant laid siege to Richmond. It is said that the initials in “U.S. Grant” stood for “Unconditional Surrender.”
The Gaza civilians are no more “innocent” than were the Germans who elected Hitler. Perhaps Israel needs a Chief of Staff with the initials K.L.T. — K’ni’ah L’lo T’nai.
So I am not moved emotionally — at all – by the news or sight of Gazans trekking now from north to south Gaza, or from one part of the south to the next where Israel is not presently attacking. They brought this on themselves. They celebrated too many mowings. If a country did this to America, the United States would Dresden them, or we would Hiroshima/Nagasaki them. So let Israel Dresden Gaza. No need to Hiroshima them. The breeze sometimes blows north. Dresden will do.
Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.
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