Palestinian children in Gaza are killed by Israeli\nbombs, so Jews are to blame. Palestinian children are used by Hamas as human\nprotective shields, where they expect death, which will cause outrage in the\nworld public. And that’s exactly what happens. Despite calls to evacuation by\nthe Israeli army and warnings before the attacks, civilians are still near\nHamas military facilities because Hamas does not allow people to leave these\nplaces. That is why Palestinian children are also killed by Palestinians. From\nHamas. Who is more to blame – I don’t know. Nobody knows. There is no „fault\nmeter”. We have a general compass that enables us to distinguish between\nthose who have started the war and those who have had to accept it, and between\nthose who strive for maximum destruction and kill as many representatives of an\nenemy nation or society as possible, and those who only destroy those who are\nextremely hostile to them. And their aggressive regime. The ideology and\nlong-term practice of Hamas is clear: to murder as many Jews as possible. Not\nnecessarily soldiers – only Jews. The German Nazis did the same. Israel, on the\nother hand, had a strategy and now it has a new one. The first option, which\nhas existed since more than a dozen years, was to isolate itself from murderers\nand to carry out targeted retaliation after a terrorist attacks. This new\nstrategy is now about taking actions to destroy the terrorist regime that\nprevails in Gaza and spread blood there, which both the Palestinians and Jews\nfall victim to. The world public felt neither special sympathy nor anger for\nthe terrible massacre of Israeli civilians by the murderous Hamas command on\nOctober 7th. The world public expects the massacre of 1,400 innocent people to be\nanswered with a targeted retaliation, just like hundreds of earlier, much more\nlimited attacks by Hamas. In other words, the world public accept Hamas and\neven refuses to recognize it as a terrorist organization, although Hamas also\nterrorizes the Palestinians themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In fact, the global public believes that Hamas\u2019 rule\nin Gaza has something to do with the freedom of the Palestinian people – and\nsuccumbs to an unspoken claim that the Palestinians where Hamas rules are a\nfreer nation than where the Palestinians are under Jordanian or Lebanese,\nSyrian or Jewish rule, and even living in the Palestinian Authority, which is\npartly controlled by Israel. The reason for this situation is probably that\nGaza is the only place in the world where power is held exclusively by Palestinians.\nBut it is a totalitarian power. However, in a world dominated by nationalism,\nthis seems to be for most people secondary to \u201cnational freedom\u201d in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
World opinion fundamentally does not give the Israelis\nthe right to go to war in which they could potentially kill innocent civilians.\nSuch a war could threaten security in the region and around the world.\nConsequently, world public opinion expects Israel to endure the killings\ncommitted by Hamas terrorists indefinitely and to expose itself to even more\nsuch killings by opening up the Gaza region, which has been isolated for years\nby Israel and Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public opinion in Muslim and Western countries usually\nsees only a tiny part of the situation in the Middle East and therefore easily\nand indiscriminately points to the fact that the Palestinians are weaker and\nthe Jews are stronger. And isn’t it the moral instinct of a sensible person to\nbe on the side of the weaker? In this case, however, the weaker one has\npowerful supporters and sponsors who, fortunately, are at odds with each other,\nbecause if they joined forces, Israel would probably not be able to survive\neven a week. World public opinion is also supported by holy ignorance. Knowing\nalmost nothing about Israel and Palestine, millions of Hamas supporters imagine\nthe organization operating in an \u201coccupied territory\u201d that they are\n\u201cliberating.\u201d However, the majority, however knowing that Israel has long ago\nwithdrawn from Gaza, considers the slogan of Palestinian national liberation of\na \u201efree Palestine from the river (Jordan) to the sea\u201c, and therefore a slogan\ncalling for the liquidation of the State of Israel, to be of ethical\nsignificance. There is probably no other country in the world that hundreds of\nmillions of people around the world would like to see completely liquidated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Jews everywhere, this is the sad state of mind and\nconscience of most people in the West and the Muslim world. One sees how strong\nand massive prejudices against Jews are and how weak the human ability is to\novercome these prejudices through rational ethical reflection. There is no\nother state or nation that has had to contend with mass hostility around the\nworld, at the moment it was militarily attacked and is waging a defensive war.\nEven if the widespread hostility towards Israel on several continents, which\noften hides an anti-Semitism that is shameful for modern man, is well known,\nthe events of the last few weeks have surprised and shocked the Jewish world\nand its friends. No one expected that a terrible pogrom could trigger an\nexplosion of hatred instead of silencing the haters even for a moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today we know that this hatred does not even seek\nappearances and that the slogan \u201cNever again!\u201d has not taken place in the\nhearts of humanity. The Holocaust is still possible, and there are incomparably\nmore people who wish it to the Jews than all the Jews on earth together. One of\nthe paradoxes of the situation of the Jews is that they are not a very numerous\nnation. There are 16, or 18 million of them. In any case, significantly less\nnumber than half of Poles or Ukrainians, for example. The world hates a small\nnation. If there were a quarter of a billion Jews, there would be probably more\nrespect for them. Yet respect and hate are mutually exclusive. It’s easiest to\nhate something that is small but still seems disproportionately powerful and\nuniversally enviable. And Israel is a successful country and there is a lot to\nenvy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ethics of war represents a very serious challenge\nto public opinion. It is a field of reflection that operates in conditions of\ncognitive dissonance and relies on a language that is completely inappropriate\nfor the issues with which it deals. The most important dissonance is related to\nthe radical evil of war and the guilt of killing, which always burdens all\nparties to the conflict, including those who have been attacked and are\ndefending themselves. One of the horrors of war is that, in addition to killing\nand destruction, it also turns people into murderers and burdens them with\nterrible guilt. That’s just how it is. So, when we are forced to formulate\nmoral assessments of actions committed in war, we must remember the shocking,\nextremely difficult to accept truth on which all ethical reflection on war must\nbe based: crimes are committed by all parties to the conflict. When morally\nevaluating each of them, it must be assumed that the side that commits more\ncrimes, strives to commit them, is not ashamed of them and is even proud of\nthem, will be evaluated worse .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One must know a bit about the history of the\nArab-Jewish and Palestinian-Jewish conflicts in order to apply these difficult\nmeasures to them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And finding it out is not easy, because almost everything we find in the media is not even biased, but simply copied from propaganda materials. However, \u201cnot easy\u201d does not mean \u201cdifficult\u201d. A minimum of independent thinking, intellectual experience and criticism allows you to select reliable sources of information quite quickly. Unfortunately, those who shout, \u201cFrom the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,\u201d are not the same people who would be willing to learn a little more or familiarize themselves with the special nature of the ethics of war. When dealing with these types of people, we can only resort to simple analogies. Let them at least bother to imagine that their country was invaded by a group of several thousand \u201cmilitants\u201d who murdered 1,400 of their countrymen. And what would the state of which they are citizens do then? Would it open the borders? would it ask for a ceasefire? Would they wait for the borders to be opened? Would it have to apologize for still being alive?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many thanks to Andreas Szpilman for this translation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Palestinian children in Gaza are killed by Israeli bombs, so Jews are to blame. Palestinian children are used by Hamas as human protective shields, where they expect death, which will cause outrage in the world public. And that’s exactly what happens. Despite calls to evacuation by the Israeli army and warnings before the attacks, civilians […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1079,932,1380],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6714,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6712\/revisions\/6714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.polityka.pl\/hartman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}