Lately, the mass-media insists on the huge wealth accumulated by top Hamas leaders living outside Gaza: Ismail Haniyeh $4 billion, Khaled Mashal $4 billion, Abu Marzuk $3 billion, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel. The Israeli press gives different figures:

For some reason, this picture only credits Khaled Mashal with BILLIONS, all the others supposedly own MILLIONS!

I suppose this justifies any and all of the actions taken by the IDF (Tsahal) against people in Gaza, right?

Because this is what happens now. Why don’t we say:

  • Putin and his clique are evil, so it’s morally justified to kill all Russians!
  • Iran’s leadership is evil, so let’s kill all Iranians, including those girls and women that the “morality police” did not manage yet to beat to death!

When even Biden, which represents the United States and, as it happens, is also of Jewish extraction, asks for a humanitarian ceasefire, yet Netanyahu refuses, how can one still support Israel?

I’m not counting each side’s deaths. This is not the point.

The other day, I was reading that a former Belgian minister was asked to resign after having posted on Twitter a drawing that is now circulating in the pro-Palestinian circles, but which was created in 2021 by the Spanish artist Luiso García: Death Trap.

This particular artwork is not exhibited on Luiso García’s website, which however includes, among other pictures, this one:

Examine it for what it says. While Israel is killing Palestinian civilians, we only see the Russians killing Ukrainians. There are two wars, but few people consider Israel to be the aggressor. Typically, the narrative is: “Oh, you’re pro-Palestinian, therefore you’re pro-Hamas, and you must be pro-Russia!”

Beyond the stupid pro-Palestinian open letters signed by some student organizations or by some professors from Columbia and Harvard, which I deem stupid because they were too generic and, coming shortly after the October 7 massacre, they should have at least en passant condemned Hamas, there are many other voices in the United States that are silenced, and people are fired, for having called “for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians.” The First Amendment only protects the freedom of speech against persecution from the Government, but private entities and individuals can do whatever they feel like: fire you, cancel you, persecute you.

The disputed illustration that is considered anti-Semitic by some reminded me of an episode in the long series of clashes between Israel and Palestinians, an episode invoked by someone on the site Orient XXI, and mentioned in my previous post in French, where I added that I don’t agree with the entirety of the article, as the author supports the Palestinian struggle by all means, and puts the word “terrorist” in quotation marks when referring to Hamas.

Ces âmes sensibles ont-elles oublié les manifestations pacifiques de la «Marche du retour» organisées à la frontière entre Gaza et Israël en 2018 et 2019, lors desquelles plus de 230 Gazaouis ont été abattus par des snipers israéliens comme des animaux?

She was referring to the 2018–2019 Gaza border protests. As per Wikipedia,

The 2018–2019 Gaza border protests, also known as the Great March of Return, were a series of demonstrations held each Friday in the Gaza Strip near the Gaza-Israel border from 30 March 2018 until 27 December 2019, during which a total of 223 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.

As per a testimonial in the Haaretz, ’42 Knees in One Day’: Israeli Snipers Open Up About Shooting Gaza Protesters:

I know exactly how many knees I’ve hit, says Eden, who completed his service in the Israel Defense Forces as a sniper in its Golani infantry brigade six months ago. For much of the time, he was stationed along the border with the Gaza Strip. His assignment: to repel Palestinian demonstrators who approached the fence.
“I kept the casing of every round I fired,” he says. “I have them in my room. So I don’t have to make an estimate – I know: 52 definite hits.”

But there are also “non-definite” hits, right?
“There were incidents when the bullet didn’t stop and also hit the knee of someone behind [the one I aimed at]. Those are mistakes that happen.”

Is 52 a lot?
“I haven’t really thought about it. It’s not hundreds of liquidations like in the movie ‘American Sniper’: We’re talking about knees. I’m not making light of it, I shot a human being, but still …”

Where do you stand in comparison to others who served in your battalion?
“From the point of view of hits, I have the most. In my battalion they would say: ‘Look, here comes the killer.’ When I came back from the field, they would ask, ‘Well, how many today?’ You have to understand that before we showed up, knees were the hardest thing to rack up. There was a story about one sniper who had 11 knees all told, and people thought no one could outdo him. And then I brought in seven-eight knees in one day. Within a few hours, I almost broke his record.”

Snipers. Like in Sarajevo. Only “more humane” (?!), as not everyone was killed. Most of the victims were crippled, as they had an amputated leg. Destroying a knee is an easy job, while saving a shot knee requires top-notch hospitals and surgeons. I’m sure Gaza has the best hospitals in the world, right?

Also from 2018-2019, another quick selection. The Telegraph, Israeli snipers targeted children, health workers and journalists in Gaza protests, UN says:

A UN probe on Thursday said there is evidence Israel committed crimes against humanity in responding to last year’s protests in Gaza, as snipers targeted people clearly identifiable as children, health workers and journalists.

Israel immediately rejected the findings as “hostile, deceitful and biased.”

The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory investigated violations committed during demonstrations in the Gaza strip between March 30 and December 31 of 2018.

“Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” committee chair Santiago Canton said in a statement.

“Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity,” he added.

The commission, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in May, said that “more than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers” during weeks of protest.

“The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognisable as such,” it said.

That was from 2019. Back in 2018, in the Guardian, We were Israeli snipers and are filled with sorrow at Gaza shootings:

We, a group of former combatants who were members of sniper teams, seek to express our feelings of distress regarding the recent incidents in the Gaza Strip. As we hear about military orders permitting snipers to fire live ammunition at unarmed demonstrators, we are filled with shame and sorrow: shame at the orders devoid of moral and ethical judgment, and sorrow for the young soldiers, whom, as we know very well from our own experience, will always carry with them the scenes that they witnessed through the sights of their rifles.

Instructing snipers to shoot to kill unarmed demonstrators who pose no danger to human life is another product of the occupation and military rule over millions of Palestinian people, as well as of our country’s callous leadership, and derailed moral path.

Harming innocent people in Gaza is part of what is needed to maintain the regime of occupation, and we must not allow it to continue. Only ceasing to militarily control the Palestinian people will bring this to an end.
Gil Fermon Nahal 50th Battalion, Amit Goldberg, Nadav Weiman Nahal reconnaissance unit, Avner Gvaryahu Paratroops anti-tank unit, Ron Zaidel Nahal 931st Battalion

What else could be added?

This is how “the one and great democracy in the Middle-East” is behaving. Since forever.

LATE EDIT: You should definitely watch the two conversations between Piers Morgan and Bassem Youssef, the first of which became viral, but the second one, much longer, has a lot of insights too. Links in two comments to a previous post, starting here.