Israel captured Gaza from the Egyptians during the 1967 Six-Day War. For decades, there were no border fences. Many Israelis shopped in Gaza and many Arabs worked in Israel proper. Then in 2005, Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, searching for an end to the conflict, unilaterally removed all Israelis from the territory and gave the Palestinians full control.

In 2006, Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, a terrorist organisation whose Charter calls for the total destruction of the Jewish State. Soon, suicide bombers and thousands of missiles targeted Israel leading to military confrontations.

To prevent incursions and attacks on its citizens Israel established a fence along its border with Gaza. Hamas diverted building materials and other aid intended for civilians by building massive underground tunnels to circumvent the fence and launch attacks against Israel. Israel, like any other nation in the world, resisted an attempted invasion of its land.

Rather than turning Gaza into an international tourist destination on the Mediterranean and dramatically improving the economy and the life of the people, Hamas’ only interest is its radical terrorist ideology.

The international community continues to cynically blame Israel. But the simple fact is that no members of the United Nations, faced with a similar crisis would act any differently than the Israel.

Hamas has a long history of terrorists blowing up restaurants, buses, and schools. Our local media continues to sanitise what they so shamefully call “peaceful demonstrations” by the Arabs of Gaza at the border with Israel. In fact, these are attempted mass invasions of Israel using violent means including bombs, grenades and flaming kites to set fire to Israeli farmland. If these mobs were to break through en masse as intended, no-one can be in the slightest doubt about the slaughter of Jews that would then follow.

The scale of what Hamas has been planning has caused Israel to put itself onto a war footing in the south and call up Israeli reserves for duty. Hamas hopes to bring hundreds of thousands of Arabs to the border to bring about “mass penetration into Israel” accompanied by “acts of violence and… terrorist attacks exceeding what has been seen so far”.

The toll in the latest Gaza riots (according to Hamas) currently stands at around 55 Arabs. Hamas Politburo member, Salah Bardaweil, admits that 50 out of the 60 deaths widely condemned by leaders and the media as an Israeli “massacre” or “slaughter”, were in fact, members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the Israeli government continues to send leaflets warning Palestinian protesters to stay a safe distance from the border.

The people who caused these deaths are Hamas themselves. But the people at whose door these dead Arabs should also be laid are the Western media who have played their part in the script Hamas has written: to cause as many Gazans to lose their lives as possible, the younger the better, so that the media will portray Israel as wanton and disproportionate killers.

The media has duly obliged by calling what’s been happening at Gaza’s border with Israel, “unarmed demonstrations.” It was nothing of the kind. This is an attempt by tens of thousands of Arabs to storm the border in order to invade and destroy Israel.

If they do break through, no-one can be in the slightest doubt that they will massacre Israelis. In the words of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar,“Tear their hearts out”. This is not empty rhetoric; this is planned design.

Maps and aerial photographs show the proximity of the riots to Israeli communities. There’s no other way to understand these pictures than as a threat against these communities. That is why Israel has built extraordinary defences to protect its most vulnerable citizens who live close to the border. And it is a lie to say, as the media continue falsely to report, that this mob is unarmed.

Captured Gazans have revealed that Hamas has warned its members to stay away from the security fence during the riots lest they get shot, while actively coercing Palestinian civilians — particularly children and teens — to approach the border. “There is a prohibition for Hamas operatives to approach the border” the captives reveal, “for fear that they will be killed or captured by IDF troops, unless the security fence falls; and then they must enter, armed, into Israel under the cover of the masses and carry out terror attacks”.

Hamas, funded by Iran, is encouraging and sending rioters to the border fence in order to carry out violent acts and damage security infrastructure. For the media to portray this as a protest – moreover an unarmed protest – is to perpetrate a lie that is beyond wicked. On the basis that the western media
will report this as “unarmed protest”, those 55 dead Arabs, and however many more will be sacrificed in the days to come as cannon fodder, are therefore being killed for the media who have been dutifully playing their role in this infernal propaganda charade.

When did the media voice its concern at the threatened invasion of Israel and slaughter of its citizens? All governments have a moral duty not only to support Israel against this invasion but also to tell us the truth about what is happening and why Israel is being forced to take such action. They have not done so. Quite the reverse.

What the international media is calling for is that Israel’s self-defence must end immediately. We must therefore conclude that these commentators would be unmoved by the inevitable consequence: the invasion of Israel and slaughter of Israelis.

And that goes for everyone else demanding that Israel, defending itself as best it can, now desists from doing what every other country on earth would do if facing a potential mob of 250,000 invaders bent on conquest and mass murder. Not a word of condemnation of Hamas for attempting a violent invasion. Instead, our media scream that Israel is breaking international law. Israel is breaking no law by defending itself. It is Hamas which is guilty of multiple war crimes in using Arab civilians as cannon fodder behind whom it hides its weapons.

It is being claimed that Israel killed a disproportionate number. All deaths are to be regretted, especially of the young who are being so cynically used; but 55 dead out of an attack force of 40,000 and against the backdrop of 500,000 truly unarmed civilians killed in Syria? That’s a disproportionate number, all right: disproportionately low, and disproportionate reporting.

But here’s the really revolting thing about the West’s Israel bashers. They think it’s outrageous that 55 Arabs were killed and not one Israeli. So just how many Jews need to be killed in order to even up this corrupt notion of equivalent worth?

Jews have died in their millions over the centuries at the hands of those who simply hate Jews. Hamas is the latest manifestation of this evil. But Israel now has the means to defend itself, and it goes to enormous lengths to guard every life because so many Jews have over the past one hundred years been lost.

Yet these Israel bashers complain that this is somehow not cricket, that the Jews need to die – because it’s not fair that they are killing their would-be killers instead. So they portray the Jews as the killers and their genocidal Arab attackers as their victims.

Colonel Richard Kemp in London puts the whole issue of Hamas’ attack on Israel in perspective: “The demonstrations are far from peaceful. They are carefully planned and orchestrated military operations intended to break through the border of a sovereign state and commit mass murder in the communities beyond. Imagine the consequences if the IDF failed to stop these crowds breaking through the fence. The nearest Israeli communities are just a few minutes’ dash from the border by armed terrorists intent on mass murder. So the true and malevolent purpose of Hamas’ plan is to incite violence in such a way that the IDF has no choice but to respond with lethal force, (using live ammunition). This makes Hamas the first government in history to deliberately lure its enemies to kill its own civilian population.” DM

Rodney Mazinter is Vice-Chair, SA Zionist Federation – Cape Council

References for this article include: Col Richard Kemp CBE, The Times of London – Melanie Phillips, IDF official reports, Christian Embassy of Jerusalem