Morals and Massacres

Israel claims to be the most moral nation on the globe with the most moral army.  I would settle for an “almost” moral nation but Israel is not even close.

I looked up “moral” in my dictionary:

Distinction between right and wrong, and the rule of right conduct.

I also looked up “massacre.”

The killing of a number of usually helpless or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty.

The history of Israel is much more identified with massacre than moral.:[i]

            1946. Zionists blew up the King David Hotel, killing 91 people.

1948. Zionists kill over 100 civilians in the village of Deir Yassin which frightened thousands of Palestinians to flee their own villages. The officer responsible for this massacre was Manachem Begin who was later rewarded by becoming Israel’s prime minister.

1948. More than 100 Palestinian men are rounded up in the City of Lydda and massacred.

1948. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians in the village of Al Dawayima, west of Hebron, killed in a barbarous manner.

1953. Israeli troops led by Ariel Sharon raided the village of Qibya in the West Bank killing 69  Palestinians, most of them women and children, in retaliation for a cross border raid that killed three Israelis. Sharon is called a hero.

1956. Israeli forces gun down farmers in Kfar Qasim returning from the fields who were unaware that Israel had ordered a curfew earlier that day. Forty-eight Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed including women and children.

1956. Israeli forces killed 275 Palestinians in Gaza..

1970. Israel killed 46 Egyptian children during a raid on a primary school in the village of Bahr el-Baqar, Egypt.

1982. The Sabra and Shatilla massacre of Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps while Israel Defense Forces controlled the area. Somewhere between several hundred to 3000 Palestinians are murdered under the control of Ariel Sharon, who was also rewarded by becoming Israel’s prime minister.

1996. The first Qana massacre too place when Israeli missiles struck a UN compound in Southern Lebanon in  a clash with Hezbollah killing over 100 civilians. Ten years later, in 

2006, another Qana massacre by Israeli missiles killed 36 civilians including 16 children.

2008-09. Israeli assault on Gaza killed 1400 Palestinians.

2012. Israel killed 160 Palestinians in Gaza. 2014. Israeli onslaught on Gaza killed upwards of 2200 Palestinians. This massacre is remembered for its “sniper killings” of unarmed people.

If you are like me and if you have read this far, you are sick of reading about the facts on the ground by the “most moral army on the globe.” That’s why it is hard, when reading today’s newspapers that Israel is simply defending itself when firing into unarmed Palestinians demonstrating at the border.

How much damage has been done to Israeli property? Zero. How many Israeli civilians threatened? Zero.  How many breaches in that precious security fence”? Zero.[ii] 

Don’t be fooled. Israeli violence has nothing to do with security. It is a basic lack of values that chooses massacre over morals and given Israel’s Zionist record, when forced to choose between morals and massacres, massacre will come out ahead every time.

Thomas Are

April 14, 2018

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[i] This listing is gleaned from Mondoweiss, A Brief, Unhappy History of Israeli Massacres, April 1, 2018

[ii] Seven Things you need to Know about Israel’s latest Attack on Gaza.,  Mondoweiss, April 5, 2018.