Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israeli Restraint & Palestinian Responsibility in the Gaza War

Israeli Restraint & Palestinian Responsibility in the Gaza War
Mitchell Bard - March 5th, 2009
I visited the World War II museum in New Orleans the other day and was
struck by the following description of the U.S. bombing of Japan:
    On March 9-10, 1945, bombs incinerated 16 square miles and killed
100,000 civilians. In April, bombs destroyed 180 square miles, killed
300,000 people, and left 8.5 million people homeless. Throughout the
war, the United States resisted bombing civilian areas. But with time,
attitudes hardened. What once became unthinkable became a deliberate
policy.
American history should be kept in mind when reports are issued about
the behavior of Israeli forces during the war in Gaza with Hamas.
Given this context, ask yourself what America would do if its cities
were bombarded by 10,000 rockets and mortars over the course of three
years. Do you think the response would be proportional?
The amount of destruction and the number of casualties was tragic in
Gaza. It pales in comparison, of course, to what America and its
allies did during World War II. In fact, never in history has an army
gone to such great lengths to avoid the loss of innocent life as
Israeli forces did during the recent Operation Cast Lead.
Palestinians were warned to evacuate buildings where weapons were
stored or where tunnels were dug and to avoid interaction with
terrorists. Roughly 1 million leaflets were dropped during the
operation throughout the entire Gaza Strip. Thousands of phone calls
were placed to Palestinians advising them to leave areas that were to
be attacked. Radio announcements were made as well. Minutes before the
targeted killing of a Hamas terrorist in his apartment or home, all
the neighbors get a phone call warning them to get out of the area.
Some of the defiant ones go to the roof hoping to dissuade the IDF
from firing at which point a small, harmless missile is fired to a
corner of the roof. This convinces the defiant to get away. Then and
only then is the hit performed.
Imagine another army giving up the element of surprise, effectively
telling the bad guys, “Hide, we’re about to attack you,” in the
interest of ensuring that innocent people around them were not harmed.
Predictably, Hamas used the media to convey their message, that they
were fighting heroically and that Israel was indiscriminately killing
innocent women and children. Too often the media cooperated and failed
to verify what they were being told by Palestinian health officials
whose jobs depended on the goodwill of Hamas, and UN representatives
with little or no firsthand knowledge and histories of anti-Israel
animus. Thus, for example, in one of the most notorious cases the UN
accused Israel of attacking a UN school full of innocent people who
sought shelter in the building. Later, we learned that Israel’s
denials were correct and that forces did not attack the school and
that they had returned fire after being shot at by terrorists in the
area of the school.
Inflated casualty figures were sent to the press along with claims
that nearly all of the dead were noncombatants. As in the case of the
war with Hezbollah, however, when that terrorist group did not
acknowledge that any of its fighters were killed, Hamas sought to hide
its losses. While still gathering information, Israeli investigators
have now identified most of the dead and concluded that the majority
were associated with Hamas or one of the other terror groups. Of
course, not a single Palestinian would have been hurt if Hamas had not
attacked Israel.
Listening to the reaction of critics to Israel’s actions in Gaza, I’m
reminded of a letter to “My dear Israel,” written by Michael Frayne
after the 1967 War:
    “I have felt obliged to condemn your unseemly haste in opening
hostilities [and] our insistence on winning the war – particularly in
such a brash and violent fashion….To insist upon defeating your
opponents is a discourtesy which they may find very hard to
forgive….What makes your behavior all the more perplexing is that when
the war commenced you enjoyed the approval and sympathy of polite
society as a whole. There you stood, surrounded on all sides by
greatly superior hostile forces, whose proclaimed intention was to
destroy you utterly. Everybody was deeply touched. We shouldn’t have
let you down. If things had gone badly, we had ships standing by which
could have evacuated several thousand Israeli survivors – who would
have had the unreserved sympathy of the entire world ”
More than 40 years later, Israel still has the audacity to care more
about the safety of its citizens, for whom the world showed no
interest during the three years of Hamas rocket bombardment, than
world opinion. It is the price Israelis have learned to pay for their
survival in a bad neighborhood.
http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/03/gaza-in-perspective/

 the behavior of Israeli forces during the war in Gaza with Hamas.
Siccome gli americani hanno compiuti crimini contro l'umanità allora
chiunque ha il diritto di farlo? CHe puttanata atomica!