Gaza - The Land Of Tears

The Israeli response to the rocket attacks that Hamas has carried out, on a more or less daily basis since Israel withdrew from Gaza, has provoked much world reaction.

As you might expect the Arabs have been out on the streets, "Death to Israel" is no doubt the chant from Damascus to Cairo ... not a word condemning Hamas's part in all of this, but then there never is, is there?

It's odd how the rockets being fired into Israel provoked almost no reaction until they responded. The difference, Israel aims at specific targets and largely hits them, whereas Hamas just aim at Israel, and largely miss it. So how many times do you have to tell the Arab world, and the terrorists of Hamas in particular "No More!"?

They seem to believe that they can perform any act with impunity from the consequences, either for themselves, or the people they claim to represent. All those apologists for Hamas in the UN and the West should ask themselves two questions, if Gaza was on their borders and rocketing them, how long would it be before they fought back, and how long before any PC politicians saying that "Arabs have the right, they are victims", would be ex-politicians? Not very long is the answer to both.

The map above shows the current range of the rockets being fired at what after all is a small country ..... A school in Beersheeba has been hit during the current wave of rocket attacks. To give perspective its the equivalent of 43 kilometers between Cardiff and Bristol in the UK map 

The usual double standards apply when dealing with the Arab world. 

The head of the Shia movement in Lebanon, Hassan Nasrallah, said "We are ready to face any aggression on our land, our country or our dignity" without any apparent irony. Obviously Israeli's responding to attacks by Hamas is not "facing any aggression on their land, their country or their dignity".

Why Arabs should think that they have the right to attack anyone, but no one has the right to retaliate, is beyond me, unless its their 'fellow travellers' in the West, who tell them that they are victims of a Western conspiracy against the Muslims, and therefore have special rights.

Well they are wrong, and the Arabs would do well to learn some lessons.

Human Cost 

Of course when talking about armed violence, collateral damage, military responses etc, we are talking about innocents being hurt or killed and there is no doubt that Israel's latest military reaction has killed 'civilians' as well as militants. This is partly because Hamas use civilians as 'human shields', to try and lessen the likelihood of Israel's attacks.

So they fire rockets from populated areas and near buildings such as schools and hospitals. However this doesn't lessen the fear and shock that the civilians experience, and its as well that we don't forget this fact. 

The BBC reported on Iman, a 14-year-old-girl. She was so scared she apparently could barely speak. "I don't know where to go. I don't know where is a safe place to stay. We don't know when they will strike again," she said. 

But for balances sake, lets see a couple of Jewish views on this taken from the BBC Have Your Say page. "I want to see you live in that kind of reality for seven years, in fear to send your children to kindergarten or to school. Do you know how many kids in Israel, particularly in Sdrot, can't sleep at night like every normal kid in the world can? Do you know that every little sound those little kids hear, make them cry hysterically?" Atar, Yavneh aged 16 (Israel).

"Enough is enough!!! eight years, that is 400 weeks, that is 2,800 days of being constantly bombed!!! kids who were born 8 years ago are still wetting their beds, the most common disorder in our the region is post traumatic stress disorder (probably more than the common flu). I am sorry to say, but talking somehow doesn't seem to do the trick. We are tax-payers, civilians, our country needs to protect us, protect our children. if it takes using A LOT of force, than so be it!" Oded, in the rocket range, Israel.

History 

Lets just take a brief look at the ethnic history of "Arab Palestine" ..... it was not "Arab" until comparatively recently. The first inhabitants were the Canaanites, who were not Semites or Arabs. Somewhere between 1813 BC and 1638 BC, the Jews arrived and set up their first Kingdoms of Judah and Israel .... the area now called Gaza was part of the non Jewish Philistine state. Most of the area fell under the Assyrians control between 722 BC to 586 BC, when the Babylonians conquered all of the area. It remained under the Persians, who succeeded the Babylonians (still with me?), and conquered the last separate Jewish state of Judah. 

The Jews finally got complete control during the Maccabean - Hasmonean Period (between 165–63 BC) before the area was conquered again, this time by the Romans (later Byzantines) until 634 AD. By this time the area was largely Christian, with a large number of Nabateans in the area. The Jews after a series of revolts were finally allowed back in 430 AD. Some areas, like Gaza, were well-known as pagan holdouts, and remained attached to the worship of Dagon and other deities as their ancestors had been for thousands of years ..... may explain a lot! 

When the Arabs arrived in 634 AD, they conquered a much weakened region, after a series of wars and revolts involving Jews, who assisted the Persian invasion, and the Byzantines, had largely depopulated the region of both Christians, and Jews, and the Arabs settled in large numbers. This was when the area started to take on an Arab population and feel, but it wasn't until the late 1200's (after another few centuries of wars, crusades, massacres, and the Plague), that the population became an Arab/Muslim majority. 

That's about how it remained until 1945. The Jewish population was only 11% of the total in 1920, and the Arabs opposed the rise in Jewish numbers during the 1920's in a series of uprisings against the British, who were the latest imperial conquerors. The Jews organized militia groups like the Irgun and Lehi to fight the British, and the Haganah and Palmach to fight the Arabs. 

By the time order was restored in March 1939, more than 5,000 Arabs, 400 Jews, and 200 Britons had been killed ..... sounds much like today doesn't it? After the Second World War the British had lost the imperial urge, and were leaving the area .... Jordan was established as an Arab state (explicitly without Jews) and the Jewish State of Israel was born as part of a two state solution in Palestine. 

Oddly the Palestinian part was almost immediately annexed in 1950 by both Egypt (Gaza) and the New State of Jordan (the West Bank), after the Arab armies got whupped by the Jewish settlers in the 1948 war. The 1967 six day war saw the Arab armies beaten again and the area was then controlled by Israel. The Palestinians then had a split in 2007, with Hamas seizing Gaza, and the Arab West Bank remaining under the control of PLO/Fatah ..... so effectively the Arab areas are now separate states.

Now there are more Jews than Arabs in the wider area (although demographics are working in the Arabs favour, which is another reason for the tension), and that dear readers, is the potted history of why the Israeli's are retaliating against the Arabs of Gaza, and why there will probably never be peace in that area.