Londonrake wrote:On Monday the Iran-backed terrorist organisation Hamas achieved its baleful objective when more than 50 people were killed. This is what it had hoped for when it dispatched thousands of Gazans, including women and children, to the border with Israel under orders to break through the fence. This carefully planned operation – which continued on Tuesday – had nothing to do with protest or the so-called right of return of Palestinians to Israel. It was only about grabbing headlines and creating a situation that the Israel Defense Force had to deal with by lethal force.
Knowing they cannot defeat the IDF by military means, this has been Hamas’s long-term strategy: to cause international outrage aimed at isolating Israel. Previously it has fired rockets and dug attack tunnels, both intended to murder Israeli civilians, leaving the IDF with no option other than to defend its people with force. Hamas’s use of human shields in each of these situations guaranteed civilian deaths.
Hamas has brought these tactics to a new and sickening low in recent weeks, making its human shields the actual weapons of war, with inevitably bloody consequences. This is the first government in history that has deliberately sought to compel its enemy to kill its own people.
You have only to look at yesterday’s world headlines to see that these tactics are more effective than before. While Western commentators, human rights groups and politicians can recognise rockets and attack tunnels as aggressive military actions, it is harder to understand the same thing of apparent demonstrations such as are frequently seen in most capital cities of Europe.
How has the IDF responded to this aggression, which in reality is very far removed from anything seen so far in Europe? Over recent days, I have visited IDF commanders and snipers at the border and observed their actions for myself. They have employed graduated measures, starting with warning Gaza civilians against approaching the border, by leaflet drops, phone calls, SMS and radio broadcasts. They even directly appealed to bus company owners not to bring people to the border.
When crowds still assembled and threatened the fence, non-lethal weapons including tear-gas and evil-smelling “Skunk” liquid to were used. Despite the IDF’s deployment of drones to disperse these weapons more precisely, they are relatively ineffective in this situation.
Next the IDF fired over-head warning shots and then disabling shots aimed at ankles and legs. Only as a last resort, in the face of immediate threat by terrorists with weapons and explosives, have soldiers shot to kill.
As a British soldier with 30 years’ experience, including commanding troops facing violent rioters with terrorists among them, I know of no other effective means of handling this situation. Although human rights groups, media analysts and political leaders, including Jeremy Corbyn, have said the IDF should have acted differently, not one has suggested how.
Many have condemned Israel for using excessive and disproportionate force. I cannot assess every incident, but I can say for sure that this is not the case. The IDF has strict rules of engagement, similar to our own, which conform to the laws of war and, when appropriate, to human rights law. IDF commanders exercise tight control over use of force, and I stood beside a battalion commander on the border as he directed operations in
his sector.
Those who say it would be no big deal if the crowds reached the border fail to understand the potentially catastrophic implications. If they succeeded in breaking down the fence, thousands would pour through, intent on violence against Israeli civilians. Among them would be armed terrorists with orders to reach border communities and carry out mass murder. Some villages are just a few minutes’ dash from the border. Hamas social media provided Google maps marked with routes from the border to the communities they intended to attack. Had that horrendous scenario occurred, the IDF would have defended these communities with lethal force and many more people would have died.
All of this is no doubt hard to fully understand, especially if you are conditioned to see Israel in a bad light. But those who wrongly accuse Israel of using too much force play into the hands of Hamas.
I am in no doubt that the international reaction to conflict in Gaza has validated Hamas’s human shield tactics and encouraged them to step up their violence. This has contributed to the death toll. Anyone who is genuinely interested in human rights and concerned to improve the wretched lives of the people of Gaza should support Israel’s lawful efforts to defend its sovereign territory and condemn Hamas, which so malevolently oppresses its people and throws away the lives of innocent men, women and children.
Hamas has done this many times before. Even going so far as to arrange the bodies of dead Palestinian children, killed by IDF fire directed at Hamas rocket launching sites within civilian areas, (like Hezbollah, they have deliberately built their military infrastructure within civilian areas) so that they appear, lying dead alongside teddy bears, etc. Barbarians.
They come out of the woodwork every so often and do this sort of thing, a lot of people get killed then they declare it a victory.
I initially thought this was some copy paste from a fanatic Zionist blog and was about to ask you to provide the link.
Much to my surprise I eventually realized it was all yours!!
For a start would you be kind enough to provide us the evidence of your esteemed secret services concerning Hamas’ "orders to break through the fence" to "achieve its baleful objective of having 58 people killed + 1400 wounded"?
I guess your highly professional intelligence must also have the answer as to how Hamas has
"carefully planned this operation – that had nothing to do with protest or the so-called right of return of Palestinians to Israel."
Do you have any doubt that this protest would occur anyway and if it wasn’t guided maybe the protesters would do something stupid like attempting to cross the borders? We are talking for people who are starving to death in Gaza, what would you do if you were in their shoes at such a significant day? Stay home crying? The protest was as natural as it could get. The guidance and control they possibly got from Hamas proved to be reasonable. It’s true they wanted the world to hear them, considering all the media were there to cover the inauguration of the US embassy. What’s wrong with that? Go live there and suffer as they do, before inventing imaginary intrigues.
So you also dream on daylight, don’t you? YOU "over recent days " have visited IDF commanders !!?? Are you trying to convince us you are a person of high importance not just a consumable that retired from the British army? Keep visiting your local pub man, keep punching your keyboard in CF "over recent days ", and give up your ex-militant fantasies.
Regardless I am nor buying arguments based on carefully planned military demonstrations to journalists.
You keep talking about "borders" . Do you have any idea of what the borders of Israel were when it was accepted at the UN? Do you know how an 8% of the Jewish Palestinian population with just 12% land ownership managed to be accepted at the then infant UN with borders extending to more than 60%? Hell Britain itself who proposed those borders for reasons of spreading the seeds of eternal conflict abstained from the voting.
Do you have any doubts that the whole of ex-Palestine is now de facto controlled by Israel extending it’s borders to nearly 100% of the area?
For a start the borders of Gaza were unilaterally shrinked by Israel over the years by about 80%. What’s left is an area under a suffocating siege that brought the Palestinians of Gaza to the extremes of desperation. Did you really expect those people to demonstrate no resistance to what can only lead to mass starvation and despair, with the whole infrastructure in collapse, and no relief or hope?
Secondly you should ask yourself why those demonstrations only occurred in Gaza and not anywhere else in the occupied lands? Isn’t it because that’s the only place it could be done without the risk of getting massacred by the Israelis?
Who gave Israel the right to "warn Gaza civilians against approaching the border, by leaflet drops, phone calls, SMS and radio broadcasts or directly appeal to bus company owners not to bring people to the border."
A "border" is always a border, everyone can go as near as 1 cm away from it. Not even one of the Palestinian protesters crossed it simply because they assumed they at least had that right to go near it. Obviously they guessed wrong. The criminal State of Israel makes it’s own rules - a border according to them means you cannot approach more than 500m, while on their side they could build outposts as far as 1m from the fence and fire directly on human flesh! How many Israeli soldiers were fired at or got injured during those protests? How many of those got even hit by the stones the Palestinians were throwing? None?
The excuse that those protests were risking Israel’s security is nothing but a joke. It was just one more opportunity for the Jewish army to get one more dose of sadism by firing at human flesh, without punishment and without any serious consequences whatsoever.
Everything will be forgotten in a few days. Until next time…
Enjoy the massacre of 60 dead and 1400 wounded all you like. Just don’t try to invent excuses.
