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By Charles
Krauthammer
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Who is to blame for grief on
a beach?
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It was another one of those pictures that goes
instantly around the world. A young Palestinian, wailing in wretched
sorrow, grieving over her dead father, stepmother and five siblings who
had been killed by an explosion on a Gaza beach. Then came
the blame. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas (he's the moderate) immediately called
the killings an act of Israeli "genocide" and, to dramatize the
crime, legally adopted the bereaved girl.
The sensational coverage and sensational charges
raise the obvious question: Why would Israel deliberately shell a
peaceful family on a beach?
The Israeli government, clumsy as ever, seemed
to semi-apologize by expressing regret about the deaths, implying that
perhaps they had been caused by an errant Israeli shell targeting a
Palestinian rocket base. But then, a few days later, an army
investigation concluded that it was not Israel's doing at all.
First, because the shrapnel taken from the
victims (treated at Israeli hospitals -- some
"genocide") were not the ordnance used in Israeli artillery.
Second, because aerial photography revealed no crater that could have
been caused by Israeli artillery. And, third, because Israel
could account for five of the six shells it launched at the rocket base
nearby, and the missing one had been launched at least five minutes before
the one that killed the family.
An expert at a local chapter of a human rights
group disputes the Israeli claims. Okay. Let's concede for the sake of
argument that the question of whether it was an errant Israeli shell
remains unresolved. But the obvious question not being asked is this: Who
is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel --
and placing them 400
yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian
families on the Muslim Sabbath?
Answer: This is another example of the
Palestinians' classic and cowardly human-shield tactic -- attacking
innocent Israeli civilians while hiding behind innocent Palestinian
civilians. For Palestinian terrorists -- and the Palestinian governments
(both Fatah and Hamas)
that allow them to operate unmolested -- it's a win-win: If their rockets
aimed into Israeli towns kill innocent Jews, no one abroad notices and
it's another success in the terrorist war against Israel.
And if Israel's
preventive and deterrent attacks on those rocket bases inadvertently kill
Palestinian civilians, the iconic "Israeli massacre" picture
makes the front page of the New York Times, and the Palestinians win the
propaganda war.
But there is an even larger question not asked.
Whether the rocket bases are near civilian beaches or in remote areas,
why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in
the first place -- about 1,000
in the past year?
To get Israel to remove its
settlers, end the occupation and let the Palestinians achieve dignity and
independence? But Israel
did exactly that in Gaza
last year. It completely evacuated Gaza,
dismantled all its military installations, removed its soldiers,
destroyed all Israeli settlements and expelled all 7,000 Israeli
settlers. Israel then
declared the line that separates Israel
from Gaza
to be an international frontier. Gaza
became the first independent Palestinian territory ever.
And what have the Palestinians done with this
independence, this judenrein territory
under the Palestinians' control? They have used their freedom to launch
rockets at civilians in nearby Israeli towns.
Why? Because the Palestinians prefer victimhood to statehood. They have demonstrated that
for 60 years, beginning with their rejection of the United Nations
decision to establish a Palestinian state in 1947 because it would have
also created a small Jewish state next door. They declared war instead.
Half a century later, at the Camp David summit
with President Bill Clinton, Israel renewed the offer of a Palestinian
state -- with its capital in Jerusalem, with not a single Jewish settler
remaining in Palestine, and on a contiguous territory encompassing 95
percent of the West Bank (Israel making up the other 5 percent with
pieces of Israel proper).
The Palestinian answer? War again -- Yasser Arafat's terror war, aka
the second intifada, which killed a thousand
Jews.
This embrace of victimhood,
of martyrdom, of blood and suffering, is the Palestinian disease. They
are offered an independent state. They are given all of Gaza. And they respond with rocket attacks
into peaceful Israeli towns -- in pre-1967 Israel proper, mind you.
What can Israel do but try to take out
those rocket bases and their crews? What would the United States do if rockets were raining
into San Diego from across the border with
Mexico?
Now look again at that terrible photograph and
ask yourself: Who is responsible for the heart-rending grief of that poor
Palestinian girl?
This article originally appeared in the Washington Post.
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Death_in_Gaza.asp
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