To fathom Gaza, look to the facts, not the spin

This is what Jack Dresser supports 

When talking about Israel, those that hate Jews always seem to have a problem with the truth.  Not that they have none, although in most cases there is little in their fact bag worth considering, but that what little legitimate truths they do have gets lost in the diatribe spewed each time they open their mouths.  Jack Dresser, long-time fan of jihad and clueless anti-semite begins his vitriol with the claim that what we need is immediate context, and then proceeds to give absolutely none worth contemplating.  Published in today’s Register-Guard (November 26) as a “guest viewpoint” it is the usual Dresser hate screed, with a bit of slander thrown in for good measure.  I have tried to talk to him, and each time he merely dismisses me as so much noise.  I have offered to debate him, and to have him on a panel to talk about Israel and Islam, and he refuses.  Those that cannot or will not defend their position when challenged have no legitimate position to stand on.  Jack Dresser is such a man.  People like Dresser assume that when they speak, people take it as it is and no questions are to be asked.  Sad really, that your position cannot be defended so you must resort to ignorance and silence.

Here is his opinion, for what it’s worth.

Link to R-G article here.    

To fathom Gaza, look to the facts, not the spin

Craig Weinerman (Guest Viewpoint, Nov. 21) calls for context on Gaza, then instead provides a distorted narrative of Israeli victimization. Facts matter. Invented narratives do not. Let’s get to some facts, starting with the immediate context.

There is no context except to present Israel as the aggressor and the deaths directly resulting from the evil Jews deliberately attacking innocent children.

First, who started it? Before November, 18 Palestinian children had already been killed this year by Israel. On Nov. 5 Israeli soldiers shot and killed an unarmed Palestinian man in Gaza. On Nov. 8, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli gunfire while playing soccer in front of his house, after which Palestinians retaliated with rocket fire.

Two days later, two Palestinian boys were killed by an Israeli shell fired at children playing soccer on a playground. On Nov. 14, an 11-month-old baby was killed by an airstrike on her family home and a 7-year-old was killed in the targeted assassination of Palestinian leader Ahmed al-Jabari.

He demonizes Israel by implying, with no proof that Israel, with malice targeted children on a playground.  Disgusting moral reversal, as it is Hamas that uses its children as human shields, and have admitted as much.

The next day, a baby, two toddlers and three other children were killed by airstrikes on their homes. During the next four days 19 Palestinian children were killed by airstrikes on their homes, including five babies and six preschoolers.

Israel targets only weapons? Really? Fifty percent of Gazans beneath Israeli bombs and missiles were children.

It is a crime for children to be massacred within the context of wartime, but lets remember that it is Hamas who put their people at risk, firing rockets from civilian neighborhoods, hospitals and mosques, as well as stockpiling weapons and ammo in mosques, homes and schools.  Any civilians killed are on the hands of Hamas, not Israel.

Altogether, 37 Palestinian children have been killed by Israel this year. No Israeli children have died. Who has the more urgent right to self-defense?

Not that Hamas hasn’t ardently tried to kill Israeli children.

Let’s extend our context further. Hamas won 76 of 132 parliamentary seats in internationally validated elections in January 2006, gaining leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Israel, the United States and Fatah collaborated to undermine this outcome, resulting in confinement of Hamas’ authority to Gaza by mid-2007.

With its settlers gone, Israel has had a free hand to attack and punish Gaza through incursions, assassinations, naval bombardment, attacks on fishermen, a suffocating blockade, confiscation of 35 percent of Palestinian farmland for a “buffer zone” and continuous intimidation by military overflights causing deafening sonic booms. In 2008-09 came the Operation Cast Lead assault, including use of white phosphorous and depleted uranium munitions, that killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and crippled the economy by destroying schools, hospitals, police stations, infrastructure and factories.

If Hamas had not been launching rockets from these locations, there would have been no need for Israel to destroy them.

All these actions are flagrant violations of international law. Their victims have the obvious right to resist, not only under international law but under the elemental rules of human conduct we all learned in kindergarten.

Let’s go back further. Since the second intifada began in September 2000, 1,509 Palestinian children have been killed. How many Israeli children? One hundred twenty-nine. During this intifada, 93 Palestinian children were killed before the first Israeli child died, and 105 Palestinian children were killed before the first suicide bombing (see www.​remember​thesechildren.org ). Studies have found that suicide bombers were retaliating for the murder of their loved ones in their own homes and communities invaded by Israel.

Let’s ignore the deaths of Israeli children, they don’t matter.  If there are studies, cite them, not just mention them.  Virtually all the homicide bombers let behind recorded statements of jihad and martyrdom, citing Qur’anic passages reflecting their love of Allah and their passion to die for Islam.  Whether Israel existed or not, the bombings will continue, as it is ordained within the teachings of islam.    

Nearly all Israeli deaths occurred before Hamas discontinued suicide bombings in April 2006. But Israel continued unabated. From 2006 through 2010, eight Israeli and 671 Palestinian children were killed.

So who is killing whom? Who is invading and occupying whom? Who is bulldozing whose homes and orchards? Who is stealing whose land? Who is violating whose human rights?

Who, through their charter wants all Jews dead and Israel wiped from the face of the earth?  Who believes death a higher goal than life?  Who hides behind their women and children while firing rockets at Israeli civilians?  We can play this game all day, the fact is, Islamic doctrine guides Hamas, and with that there will be no peace.

Do Palestinians have the right of self-defense? Nobody else is defending them — including the United States, which instead arms their oppressor and protects it from international justice through vetoes of sanctions proposed in the U.N. Security Council (43 to date).

Let’s extend our historical context even further. About 80 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees and their descendants, driven from their lands and homes during the 1948 “Nakba” (catastrophe) by Israel and its predecessor terror groups, and in 1967 when Israel seized the rest of historic Palestine in a war falsely justified as defensive. The rockets that frighten but rarely injure the residents of Sderot are fired by a people among whom are dispossessed former citizens of the same community, then the Arab Palestinian town of Najd.

The Arab League told the Arabs living in Palestine at the time to leave for a few days, just until the Jews were driven into the sea.  Then they could return and live a life free from Jews.  That didn’t happen, and now, 64 years later the refugees still suffer at the hands of their ;leaders.  The mention that the rockets merely frighten, not kill is just another tactic to dehumanize Jews and raise the refugees higher in victimization than the innocents in Israel.  After 1967 Israel gave back 97% of the land taken up to that point, unheard of in modern warfare. 

Many Palestinian refugees still retain their deeds, titles and door keys that symbolize their rights to return and to restoration of their stolen properties, protected by Articles 13 and 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Israel can have the peace and security it claims to want at any time, nonviolently, by simply allowing Palestinians their human rights under international law.

The right of return will destroy Israel and Dresser knows this.  It is just what he wants, and hopes for. 

Our project of course decries all violence, which is why we — along with Holocaust survivor Stephane Hessel, co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — encourage support of the international movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions to nonviolently support the Palestinian people (www.bdsmovement.net , www.pacbi.org , www.whoprofits.org ).

And Weinerman is right about one thing. There is certainly no moral equivalence.

That is true, there is no moral equivalence between the free and equal society that is Israel and the brutal, genocidal and jihadist regime of Hamas.  Unfortunately, Dresser cannot, or will not see the commonalities between Islam and Hamas, and that is most disturbing of all.  Anti-Israeli hatred is rampant in Eugene, led most often by our own little anti-semite.  Hats off to you, Jack.  There is no mistaking which way your hatred points.