When Neutrality is Immoral: Israel, Hamas, and the Problem of Moral Equivalence

by André Villeneuve • November 19, 2023 at 5:00 am

While many the world over had the integrity to condemn "the hideous crime, naming its perpetrators and acknowledging Israel's basic right to defend itself against the atrocity," the Patriarchs and Heads of Churches were unable to muster up such moral clarity.
While the IDF goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups do their utmost to maximize them — not only by indiscriminately murdering Israelis, but also by hiding among their own civilian population and using them as human shields, resulting in disproportionately high numbers of Palestinian casualties, caused -- deliberately -- by Hamas.
If there is an "occupation" problem in Gaza, the occupier is Hamas, not Israel.
In this war, Christians — and all of us — have a moral responsibility to support a civilized nation's fight against barbarism. Israel must eradicate a terrorist group, Hamas, just as we confronted ISIS. Then all of us need to contain the real mastermind behind such groups, the genocidal regime of Iran. Unfortunately, there is no other viable solution if we wish to preserve the West.

It is well known that the IDF warns Palestinian civilians by means of leaflets, text messages and even phone calls to evacuate areas close to military targets before they are attacked. While the IDF goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties, Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups do their utmost to maximize them — not only by indiscriminately murdering Israelis, but also by hiding among their own civilian population and using them as human shields. Pictured: A Palestinian man shows a leaflet dropped by the Israeli military over Gaza City on November 5, 2023. (Photo by Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)

October 7, 2023: Another day that will live in infamy: Israel's Pearl Harbor. Israel's 9/11. The quiet Shabbat morning of Simchat Torah, concluding the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, suddenly turned into a bloodbath. Under the cover of heavy rocket fire, thousands of Hamas terrorists attacked Israel's southern communities and left behind them a path of carnage and devastation, ambushing army bases and motorists, murdering some 364 people at a music festival, slaughtering families in their beds, raping women, executing children and Holocaust survivors, burning civilians alive, and kidnapping 244 people in Israel to Gaza. With at least 1,200 people murdered, it was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The barbarity of the Hamas attack was so unprecedented that even the world was brutally — if briefly — jolted out of its usual apathy and left reeling in horror.

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France: A Tale of Two Demos

by Amir Taheri • November 19, 2023 at 4:00 am

Sunday's march... attracted over 100,000 people, five times larger than the pro-Palestine demo.
There were also many Muslim figures [Sunday] including imams of mosques who ignored the "advice" of the Grand Mosque of Paris not to attend.
Anti-Semitism isn't a byproduct of the Israel-Palestine conflict; it is an evil in its own right and a threat to what even the politically correct Macron says he upholds as "values of our civilization."
Anti-Semitism challenges the fundamentals of what one may call modern civilization. It denies the existence of human beings as individuals with inalienable rights beyond religious, ethnic, racial and other backgrounds. It dissolves the concept of citizenship as the basis of the relationship between the individual and the state.
Anti-Semitism also violates the principle under which guilt by association and collective punishment could not be accepted. Worse still, it rejects the principle of innocence until proven guilty by a court of one's peers, thus sapping the roots of civilized legal systems.

A week after Paris witnessed a march in support of the "Palestinian cause" it hosted another march, this time against anti-Semitism. It attracted over 100,000 people, five times larger than the pro-Palestine demo. Pictured: The demonstration against anti-Semitism in Paris, on November 12, 2023. (Photo by Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP via Getty Images)

A week after Paris witnessed a march in support of the "Palestinian cause" it hosted another march on November 12, this time against anti-Semitism.

Ostensibly provoked by the ongoing war in Gaza the two marches may persuade the French to take a closer look at the messages they convey and their impact on French politics.

Despite denials by its organizers, the leftist and extreme left parties, the first march, which took part on the right bank of the River Seine, was clearly anti-Israel, at times with anti-Semitic undertones.

The second march, last Sunday, was organized by Senate President Gérard Larcher and National Assembly Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, both on the right, who insisted that it was not meant as a show of support for Israel's war in Gaza but as a defense of the Republic.

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