I suppose it’s pointless to describe The Guardian‘s coverage of Israel as “unbelievable”. Okay, the so-called ‘facts’ certainly are very frequently unbelievable, but the tenor of these stories and mendacity comes so thick and fast that you’d have to have recently awoken from a long coma not to still be surprised by it.
Take this latest piece of distorted, dissembling rubbish:
The savage attack Israel unleashed against Gaza on 27 December 2008 was both immoral and unjustified. Immoral in the use of force against civilians for political purposes. Unjustified because Israel had a political alternative to the use of force. The home-made Qassam rockets fired by Hamas militants from Gaza on Israeli towns were only the excuse, not the reason for Operation Cast Lead. In June 2008, Egypt had brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement. Contrary to Israeli propaganda, this was a success: the average number of rockets fired monthly from Gaza dropped from 179 to three. Yet on 4 November Israel violated the ceasefire by launching a raid into Gaza, killing six Hamas fighters. When Hamas retaliated, Israel seized the renewed rocket attacks as the excuse for launching its insane offensive. If all Israel wanted was to protect its citizens from Qassam rockets, it only needed to observe the ceasefire.
Does the writer not understand the meaning of “ceasefire”?
A ceasefire does not mean “a significant reduction in attacks”, it means that attacks, well, “cease”. Notice how the author describes none of the “average of three” rockets launched at Israel by Hamas following the June agreement as violating the ceasefire. Nor are the next three or four rockets fired in July, or a few more in August, and still more in September, and two or three more in October, and then November, six moths after the “ceasefire”, Hamas are still launching missiles towards Israeli towns.
No, not one of these 20 or so attacks is considered a violation of the ceasefire by Hamas. Then Israel fires on a group of Hamas rocketeers setting up a launching site… Oh NOW there is a ceasefire violation! By Israel!! And then the further rocket attacks are described as “retaliation” by Hamas, having been cruelly interrupted in their intrinsic right to fire a rocket or two every fortnight at an Israeli town, while still being regarded by The Guardian and fellow travellers as having “ceased firing”.
And of course, the desire to stop an ongoing barrage of rockets fired at one’s towns and citizens is just an “excuse” for a military reply.
How many rockets a month – some possibly landing on 90 York Way – does The Guardian think London should tolerate before our government does anything? One? Two? Three? Three a month (“on average”)? Should we employ the military? I would hope that the reason we have the military is to intervene in the eventuality that some group decides it’s a good idea to fire rockets over the border at our cities.
But perhaps that would be an aggressive response.
As to the original question posed in the title of this post, by The Guardian‘s correspondent’s estimation, terrorist groups should be allowed to make about three (on average) attempts to blow us up every month before we consider the situation significant enough to respond.
