Israel,  Israel/Palestine

Protests after Israel responds to terror attack

It’s becoming too exhausting, to be honest, to add rhetorical flourishes to posts about Palestinian terrorists, their Islamist supporters and those on the Left who cheer them on, so forgive me if I keep it dry when I make these observations.

A huge protest is being organised for 5PM outside the Israeli Embassy this evening in London and another in New York. Do not imagine this is being organised by human rights activists and people of goodwill to offer solidarity with the Israeli people after a series of deadly terrorist attacks yesterday. Of course not.

The protest is being organised by, among other MPACUK, and is being billed as: “EMERGENCY DEMO AGAINST ISRAELI ASSAULT ON GAZA!”. Commenting on the issue on Twitter, Raza Nadim of MPACUK described “zionists” as “the most vile animals to walk the earth.”

Earlier this week, Turkish warplanes and artillery shelled 168 locations withing Northern Iraq after suspected PKK terrorist ambushed a Turkish military convoy killing eight soldiers and a guard and wounding fifteen. They did this fairly quietly, and not bothered by international calls for “restraint” and “proportionality” and were met with no global protests, and certainly none in London, or New York.

Yesterday, more than 20 Palestinian terrorists targeted civilian vehicles travelling near the Egyptian border. Launching five simultaneous attacks, in one instance, they targeted a family car with an anti-tank rocket killing the whole family including two small children.

In another attack on a civilian bus several off-duty soldiers where killed prompting Ali Abunimah of ‘Electronic Intefida’ to quip (fatuously, one hopes, but it may simply have been insanely) via Twitter that “Reports say ‘civilian’ bus had many soldiers aboard. Does this mean Israel uses its own civilians as human shields as well as Palestinians?” (As an aside, the demented Ali also noted on Twitter “Egypt regime still killing Africans for Israel” commenting on a news story that “Egyptian forces killed two Sudanese refugees trying to cross into Israel. Of course, he does not ask himself why African refugees don’t stop in Egypt or head for Gaza. Sane people know the answer.

But let’s not digress.

The attack yesterday was an escalation of the pilot scheme the terrorists ran in April where they fired an anti-tank missile at a yellow school bus killing its only passenger, 16 year old Daniel Viflic. Mercifully the school bus had emptied out at the previous stop.

There have been conflicting reports that some of the fire from yesterday’s attack came from the Egyptian side of the border. Some witnesses said that Egyptian soldiers joined in and took pot shots at civillian cars.

If this is true, it is a troubling development. There is of course a danger that Islamist groups friendly with Hamas are making a bid to take over Egypt and that the attack yesterday and the Israeli response is part of their plan of agitation. They too are holding a ‘protest’. Their statement reads:

The Egyptian Coalition of Revolutionary forces has called for an emergency rally at the Israeli embasssy (sic) in Cairo today at 1:00pm.

The Coalition, which is made up of more than 40 revolutionary youth groups and political organizations, has called the emergency action tto (sic) protest both Israel’s ongoing military attacks on Gaza and the killing of an Egyptian army officer and 2 soldiers yesterday in the Sinai peninsula during cross border raids against Palestinian activists.

The Coalition is calling on the Egyptian government to expel the Israeli ambassador in Cairo as a strong message to the Israelis. It has also called on the ruling military council to hand power to a civilian administration and return to its barracks in order to focus on Egypt’s border security.

So there we have it. It seems we have started on a trajectory where, if unchecked, a war between Israel and Egypt is inevitable. An Egyptian journalist tweeted earlier that “A group of Egyptian hackers just hacked one of the Israeli army’s websites and left them a message ‘This is not Mubarak’s Egypt, anymore'”. The message is clear: they expect that Egypt will now enter the assault on Israel on the side of Gaza – a reunification of sorts.

Once again, Israel is the only country in the world where Left/Liberal opinion is that it is not entitled to defend itself or respond to aggression – why would it, since that same opinion holds that it is an illegitimate state. Whatever Israel does in response to this attack, brace yourself for the usual barrage of cliches: “restraint” “disproportional” “collective punishment” “war crimes”, etc.

Ali Abunimah