A major calamity is certain to embolden screaming idealists to springboard off whatever unlikely explanation provides the opportunity to vent their horror at images of dead and mutilated children in the latest Middle Eastern conflict.
“I cannot endorse this cruel war.” they piously warble, flapping around bleeding heart disinformation. In a Facebook discussion this week the latest lefty distortion of colonialism appeared: an opinion piece stating that Israel has no right to self defence.
“It ignores that the Palestinians are engaged in a struggle for national liberation against a decades-long illegal and immoral occupation…”
Aljazeera
Apparently Palestinian children are dying in the latest Middle East conflict because of Jewish colonialist oppression! I wonder how Jews can be considered colonialists after inhabiting the area for thousands of years prior to the Muslim invasion 1,400 years ago and living under a British protectorate in the 28 years prior to 1948?
The hook in the article capturing sympathy is images and dialogue about maimed and broken bodies that didn’t mention that many of the thousands of rockets launched by Hamas into Israel fall short. Estimates range from 14% to 20% falling short and exploding inside Gaza, killing and wounding their own people.
Civilian deaths don’t unduly bother the terrorist group Hamas who appreciate that the images are essential for the media beat-up on Israel. If Hamas cared about Palestinians they would stop using them as human shields and refrain from attacking Israel where 20% of the population there are someone’s Arab relatives.
Civilian deaths are considered a positive byproduct in gaining Western support for Hamas’s single-minded goal to annihilate Israel.
Several friends of the original poster joined the Facebook discussion to support their friend, so I enlightened them with a shorter history on the origins of the Palestinian refugees than is laid out below.
Arabs living in the British protectorate of Palestine in 1948 are the original Palestinians. When Israel was established, Israeli military forces drove out Arabs living in strategic military zones, some Arabs left after warnings from surrounding Arab countries to leave or be annihilated when they poured in to destroy the Jews, and some Arabs stayed in Israel to ride out the inevitable war.
Arabs from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, and a unit from Saudi Arabia that fought under the Egyptian command, duly attacked the tiny new nation of Israel.
Amazingly, Israel won, but the Arabs who departed, either because they were driven out, were fearful of dying in the conflict or wanted no part of a Jewish nation, were not welcome to return and became refugees whose numbers increased exponentially over the years into the Palestinian refugees of today.
“Estimates of the number of Arabs displaced from their original homes, villages, and neighbourhoods during the period from December 1947 to January 1949 range from about 520,000 to about 1,000,000; there is general consensus, however, that the actual number was more than 600,000 and likely exceeded 700,000.
Some 276,000 moved to the West Bank; by 1949 more than half the prewar Arab population of Palestine lived in the West Bank (from 400,000 in 1947 to more than 700,000). Between 160,000 and 190,000 fled to the Gaza Strip.
More than one-fifth of Palestinian Arabs left Palestine altogether. About 100,000 of these went to Lebanon, 100,000 to Jordan, between 75,000 and 90,000 to Syria, 7,000 to 10,000 to Egypt, and 4,000 to Iraq.”
Britannica
It is indisputable that the Arabs who fled Palestine in 1948 as victims of the first Arab war on Israel remain landless and loveless today. In 1948 only one-fifth of Palestinian Arabs were welcomed into surrounding Arab countries, the rest are as homeless and friendless now as they were in 1948.
In Israel today, Arabs constitute 20% of the population. In Gaza, Palestinian numbers have swelled more than tenfold from less than 200,000 in 1948 to over two million. The link to this short video on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict was intended to promote discussion on the Palestinian plight.
One participant in the discussion said the sites I provided are one-sided, recommending instead a Reuters report that is “more balanced”. The report claimed Hamas did not operate out of the AP building that Israel destroyed this week. Another participant asking for credible websites bragged that her children edit Wikipedia for LOLS!
Naturally, The BFD provides excellent topical commentary. Writer Lushington D Brady’s criticism of our unscrupulous Greens’ seeking political momentum from the bleeding heart brigade while supporting the Hamas goal of Jewish genocide was not well received. In fact, it was claimed by some taking part in the Facebook discussion that The BFD is “full of racism”!
Despite several requests to produce a BFD article demonstrating racism, none was produced. To let loose brain farts, then run away and hide, is much more fun than to produce facts to debate.
The Facebook conversation ended with a stern request that I stop baiting the friends because it is embarrassing and childish on an issue that requires “empathy and a forward solution instead of justifying the continued hatred towards a displaced population”: a narrative that must have been pre-programmed into that mind because it didn’t get there from any dialogue I put forward.
The solution, I was chided, is what “we need to turn our collective mindset to”. Well, you know, I would, but most of the collective mindset had already left the room!
Happily, I agreed to end a discussion that barely scratched the surface and quickly became pointless when fragile participants ran for cover.
How spoilt are we for robust discussion at The BFD? We can enjoy it because we enjoy free speech now, but when the “collective mindset” kicks in, and hate speech is defined as whatever someone else disagrees with or finds offensive, our open discussions will end.
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