Free speech should be protected
and I applaud the Irish newspaper, Southern Star, for having the commitment to allow all views to
be expressed in its columns, including its Readers Letters.
But one thing should be required
of its readers. That is to think and question dubious allegations that are
frequently expressed in it columns, particularly those attacking Israel and
dressed up with emotional imagery.
In the complex world of Middle East violence, it
is all too easy to accept, at face value, the stories of oppression especially
when women and children are victims. But is there a deeper motive behind false
blanket allegations. What is the full picture? What is being hidden from the
reader? And why?
A typical example was a letter
posted under the heading “No Peace for Palestinians.” The writer was clearly
trying to exploit the Christmas season to gain sympathy for Palestinians “deprived
of peace this Christmas through no fault of their own.”
Putting aside the fact that over 90% of
Palestinian Arabs are Muslim, do not celebrate Christmas, and are not imbued
with the Christmas spirit, the heart of the writer’s slander is that
Palestinian families are disturbed “every night” apparently “without
reason” by the “brutal violent invasion” of the Israel Defense
Forces who causing a “nightmare” for the women and children scared by
their “alien presence.”
A letter, dripping with such emotional
imagery, can fool the generally uninformed but sympathetic reader. That’s how
opinions are formed. In our case, by painting Israel in the darkest colours and
the Palestinians in the hews of innocence and victimhood. The truth is somewhat
different.
When Israeli security forces come
knocking on doors, often in the middle of the night to avoid the involvement of
innocent neighbours, it is because counter-terror intelligence have informed them that terrorists are hiding there.
Recently, Israeli forces raided
houses in which Palestinian killers were hiding. Fire fights erupted and, in
all cases, the terrorists were either apprehended or killed. Those killed include the Barghouti cousins who had shot at civilians waiting at a bus stop. They
seriously injured several including a heavily pregnant young mother who remains
in hospital more than two weeks after the attack. Her unborn baby died. This is a first in the gruesome Palestinian terror archives, the death of an unborn child. How’s
that for a poignant Christmas story?
Another terrorist who was
disturbed from sleep by the “brutal violent invasion” of Israeli
security personnel was Ashraf Ma’alwa, a Hamas terrorist who had been working
in a mixed Israeli-Palestinian workplace in Barkan before tying up two of his
co-workers, including a beautiful young woman, and shooting them in the head
before making his escape. Israeli intelligence had searched for his whereabouts
for over a month before tracking him down to a house outside Ramallah. Ma’alwa
was killed in a firefight with the arresting officers.
Readers, when reading such details, will
appreciate that the occasional night visits to arrest or neutralize known terrorists who
have committed such acts of violence and murder can, in no way, be called “without
reason.”
People who write such things have
an agenda, and that agenda is actively supporting the terrorists cause. And it
is known that this cause has nothing to do with searching for a peaceful
solution to the Palestinian problem. It has everything to do with maintaining the
political and religious violent rejection of the Jewish State of Israel
anywhere in the Middle East.
Peace can never come out of the
barrel of a terrorist gun. Ireland, of all places, knows this to be true. And, to
the writer of “No Peace for Palestinians,” until they are ready to lay
down their rifles and bombs, Israeli security forces will be justified to go in
search of the killers.
Wishing all the readers of Southern Star, and other Irish papers that print the false allegations of Israeli haters, a very
Happy and Peaceful Christmas.
Barry Shaw, Senior Associate
for Public Diplomacy at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. Author of ‘Fighting
Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.’
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