Africa By Saul

Africa By Saul Breves recuentos de mis viajes a África..África para inexpertos!

02/07/2024
22/06/2024
22/11/2023

The ‘Cease-Fire Now’ Imposture

Bret Stephens
Opinion Columnist
• Nov. 21, 2023

Of all that’s been said and written about the war between Israel and Hamas, nothing has cut through the mental fog quite so brightly as a remark this month from Hillary Clinton on “The View.”
“Remember,” the former secretary of state said, “there was a cease-fire on Oct. 6 that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians and their kidnapping, their killing, their beheading, their terrible, inhumane savagery.”
Those three words — “that Hamas broke” — aren’t trivial. They give the lie to the “Cease-Fire Now” mirage, or imposture, that has become a rallying cry at pro-Palestinian demonstrations. They are at the heart of what the war is about, and the key to how it can end. And they are the bright dividing line between those who would allow Hamas to get away with murder, and those who would refuse.
Why should it matter that it was Hamas that broke the cease-fire when Palestinian civilians are being killed in large numbers by Israeli bombs and bullets? Those saying that it shouldn’t matter argue that questions of culpability become secondary, if not irrelevant, when kids’ lives are at stake. If Israel has the power to save those kids by halting its campaign, goes the argument, then it has a moral obligation to do so.

But wait: Doesn’t Hamas also have the power? Hamas has a long record of firing those rockets from the vicinity of schools. It has sought to prevent ordinary Gazans from obeying evacuation orders, deliberately putting them at increased risk. It hides in a vast network of tunnels while civilians must fend for themselves above ground.

The Israeli government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday morning to a four-day cease-fire in which Hamas would free 50 of the hostages. But Hamas did that only because it’s under intense military pressure. It could get a real and lasting cease-fire for the people of Gaza — and probably safe passage out of the territory for many of its members — in exchange for releasing all the hostages, surrendering its arms and renouncing its rule in favor of some other Arab power.

That Hamas has done none of these things isn’t shocking: It’s a terrorist death cult. What’s shocking is that people in the Cease-Fire Now crowd don’t appear to have much interest in making any demands of Hamas equivalent to those they make of Israel.

They want Israel to stop firing. But do you often hear them insisting that Hamas return the favor?

They want Israel to provide Gaza with humanitarian relief in the form of electricity, fuel and other goods. But I haven’t seen those protesters in the street demanding that Hamas provide Israel with humanitarian relief in the form of immediately freeing all hostages. They claim to want a “free Palestine” for all its people. But I never hear them criticize Hamas’s dictatorship, or its contempt for the civil and human rights of its own people, or its members’ avowedly antisemitic boasts of slaughtering Jews.

There is a buried, unwitting compliment to Israel in this asymmetry — an assumption that, as a Western democracy, the Jewish state is susceptible to moral suasion, public shaming, or at least diplomatic pressure in a way Hamas and its patrons in Iran aren’t.

Yet that compliment is rarely accompanied with even a gesture of respect for Israel’s grief, or the legitimacy of its grievance with Hamas, or its need to keep its citizens safe, or even its right to exist as a sovereign state. Even when Israel’s notional right to self-defense is briefly acknowledged, every exercise of it is immediately deemed a war crime, whatever the evidence.
For Israelis, what “Cease-Fire Now” means is “Surrender Now.” No wonder they decline to heed the call.
What about for Palestinians — women, children and noncombatant men for whom the calls for a cease-fire are supposedly intended? Would they benefit? In the short term, of course: Palestinian lives would be saved if Israel held its fire.

But a cease-fire wouldn’t spare just civilians. It would spare, and embolden, the main fighting force of Hamas. It would also embolden terrorist allies like Hezbollah. That’s a virtual guarantee for future mass-casualty attacks against Israel, for ever-larger Israeli retaliation, and for deeper misery for the people of Gaza. No Israeli government of any political stripe is going to allow the territory to rebuild so long as Hamas remains in charge.

That gives a second meaning to “Cease-Fire Now”: Either a demand for Israel’s total capitulation, or a recipe for a perpetual cycle of violence between a terrorist group sworn to Israel’s destruction and a Jewish state that refuses to be destroyed. Whatever else one thinks of Israel, no country can be expected to sign its own death warrant by indulging those who, if given the chance, would annihilate it.

There are good intentions, if also ignorance and shortsightedness, among many of those demanding a cease-fire. But there is also the bottomless cynicism of others who accept, and even celebrate, Hamas as it uses living Gazans as human shields and dead Gazans as propaganda victories. The tragedy of these protests, like so many “antiwar” movements in the past, is that the naïve and earnest are again being manipulated as tools of the cunning and cruel.

Instead of Cease-Fire Now, we need Hamas’s Defeat Now. Only on that basis does a lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike have any chance to follow.

07/11/2023

Zambia 2023

South lwanga (Safari explorer)Oct. 2023
16/10/2023

South lwanga (Safari explorer)Oct. 2023

29/05/2023

Getting home from golf like…😬😭

Ryokan
21/04/2023

Ryokan

Mi campo de práctica !!🦁
05/02/2023

Mi campo de práctica !!🦁

Don Martin
13/01/2023

Don Martin

14/11/2022

AVIANCA la peor aereolinea del mundo!!!
Cambiaron las sillas : por más incómodas .
Quitaron las pantallas: solo se puede ver en el teléfono.. mas incomodo.
Quitaron la comida caliente: ahora solo un sándwich, agua o café,.
No tienen comida vegetariana si el vuelo dura menos de 6 horas (caso Bgt/Sao Pablo Que dura 5.20 horas!).
Increíblemente presentan los tres primeras sillas como preferenciales !! Que estafa!! Es que no hay protección al consumidor?.

08/11/2022
09/03/2022

Continuo mis
Paseos matutinos!!

28/11/2021

Dirección

Carrera 49a #93/29
Bogotá
000010

Página web

Notificaciones

Sé el primero en enterarse y déjanos enviarle un correo electrónico cuando Africa By Saul publique noticias y promociones. Su dirección de correo electrónico no se utilizará para ningún otro fin, y puede darse de baja en cualquier momento.

Videos

Compartir

Categoría