Inversions of Reality

The newspapers mostly call them 'Gaza militants'.  They are mostly, however, terrorists, whether militants belonging to Hamas or to Islamic Jihad or any of the other jihadist-devoted Islamists eager to take on Israel and become blessed martyrs for their cause.  The Middle East is the inheritance of Islam, and Judaism has no place within the geography.  Egypt, with its new post-revolutionary Islamist parliament and Muslim Brotherhood president, bemoans the "Judaization" of Jerusalem.

To strenuously counter the possibility that Israel will strive to manipulate events to secure Jerusalem in its entirety for its world-recognized capital - as difficult a feat as that may be to achieve, given the world community's continual censuring of Israel - the Arab plan is to have the city re-named to Al-Quds, this unequivocally placing it in the heritage camp of Islam.  An undivided Jerusalem to be recognized as the divine right of Islam.

This is another wrinkle, and an important one to the surrounding Arab states, that aligns itself with the martyrdom complex of devoted jihadists.  Who have latterly stepped up their threat quotient from the Gaza Strip.  That very same territory that Israel unilaterally withdrew all its nationals from in a bid to see what would transpire.  And what transpired was that instead of Palestinian Gazans schooling and disciplining themselves in making an independent, self-responsible civil society, they clasped violence.

That violence which manifested itself in numerous deadly suicide attacks against Israel and Israeli citizens led to the gradual imposition of a restraining wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories and that wall, decried as a human rights affront by an observing, unsympathetic-to-Israel world, has long since seen a cessation of those horrifyingly successful suicide attacks.

In their place have come rockets, hundreds and thousands of Kassam and now more advanced rockets being lobbed across the border from Gaza into Israel.  And their launch sites are placed wherever it is most convenient for the Palestinian 'activists' whom President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority encourages in their 'resistance', and for whom millions in charitable funds courtesy of the EU are spent in support of their honoured families after martyrdom.

Public squares and streets are named in celebration of the Palestinians' blessed martyrs.  And each time that the IDF responds with an answering barrage of artillery to knock out the rocket launch sites they run the risk of inadvertently hitting civilians, including children.  For the launch sites really are placed wherever most convenient, and that occasionally is beside mosques or schools or crowded housing enclaves.

In the last several days alone, the sporadic silence and peace in an Israeli border town like Sderot has been shattered by incessant rocket attacks; over 100 rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel in that brief period.  The IDF has attacked the launch sites by air strikes, and the rockets keep coming.  And Israel finally decided, despite the protests and condemnation from rights groups and Western nations that it would re-commence its highly successful targeted killings.

Which had always proved to be hugely successful as deterrents.  Those same types of drone-controlled targeted killings that the United States continues to use in Pakistan and Afghanistan against an determined Islamist Taliban leaders.  A strategy learned by observing Israeli successes.  There was ample warning: "Whoever believes they can harm the daily lives of the residents of the south and not pay a heavy price is mistaken", cautioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And when he spoke with foreign ambassadors while visiting Ashkelon, a southern city battered by rockets from Gaza, he made it quite clear Israel would defend itself.  "I don't know of any of your governments who could accept such a thing.  I don't know of any of the citizens of your cities, who could find that acceptable and something that could proceed on a normal basis", he said.

The new Egyptian government has its own statements to make, referring to the "Zionist occupier" as a "racist state", calling on Arab and Muslim governments "to stop the Zionist war that is operating under electoral calculations", in preparation for a parliamentary election in the new year.  "The killing of tens of our innocent Palestinian brothers is part of a link in a chain of oppression and Judaization", fulminated the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot has its defender in its progenitor.

Now the most powerful political entity in the most populous of the Middle East countries, the Muslim Brotherhood, having won both the parliament and the presidency has the influence it has long awaited.  The group's supreme leader, Mohammed Badie, accused Jews of spreading corruption, slaughtering Muslims and desecrating holy sites.

In reality, of course, Muslims are slaughtering Muslims in a bloody carnage that rivals the hell of a world war, and it is the Muslim regimes of the Middle East that are corrupt.  And it is Islamists who take great delight in defiling the sites sacred to other religions, before converting them and claiming them to represent their own sacred heritage.