On 15 May the U.N. Security Council held a minute of silence for the 62 Gazans who were killed by Israeli forces to prevent them from—in Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s own words—“taking down the border with Israel” and “tearing out the [Israelis’] hearts from their bodies.”
The next day, Hamas told an Arab news outlet that, “In the last rounds of confrontations, if 62 people were martyred, 50 of the martyrs were Hamas and 12 from the people.”
Repeatedly, Israel has informed a world with selective hearing that it aims to take out terrorist operatives, not civilians, whom it always warns to evacuate ahead of operations.
However, Israel’s message is hard to take in for those who prefer to believe in blood libels against the Jewish state, even if those blood libels can only be “proved” by terrorists pushing women and small children ahead of themselves, using them to incur civilian losses and the moral outrage that inevitably ensues from international bodies, such as the United Nations.
Unfortunately, the entire international community has contracted amnesia when it comes to the fact that using civilians as human shields is a war crime according to international humanitarian law, not to mention a morally despicable practice that shows the utter contempt for all human life that the Hamas regime displays at every opportunity.
None of that matters, however, to the U.N. Security Council, which appears to have launched a trend with its moment of silence. As is often the case, unfortunately, it was primarily leftist Jews—always first in line to prove that they are more adept at hating Israel than even the most prolific Jew-haters—who picked up that trend. Their Judaism typically springs into action whenever an opportunity arises to smear Israel.
In the United Kingdom, a group of far-left Jews affiliated with the British Jewish organizations Yachad and Jewdas, held a public Kaddish(mourning ceremony) in Parliament Square in central London, during which they read out the names of each and every Hamas terrorist. “I am here because Israel is a part of my identity, and I have an obligation to speak out when Israel oppresses Palestinians,” said one participant.
In New York City, the Beacon School—a public high school—also held a moment of silence for the dead jihadists. As New York City author Karen Lehrman Bloch pointed out, “The Beacon School never had a moment of silence for the dozens of Syrian children gassed to death by President Bashar al-Assad. … Though the school bills itself as progressive, it has never mourned the gay men that the Iranian theocracy has executed by hanging, nor Pakistan’s enforced honor killings or its stoning of women.”
The Anti-Defamation League also lamented the deaths of jihadists as a “horrific tragedy” and did not make any correcting statement after it had become widely known that at least 50 of those killed had been Hamas operatives.
One inevitably wonders whether the U.N. Security Council and the array of leftist Jewish groups will hold moments of silence the next time that ISIS, Hezbollah or al-Shabab terrorists are killed? Will they also lament their deaths as “horrific tragedies” and read out their names in the squares of Western capitals? After all, a jihadist is a jihadist.
In the midst of all this outpouring of grief for dead jihadists, the same Hamas leader who had told the world that his people would “tear out the hearts” of Israelis and “erase” the border, Yahya Sinwar, revealed that Iran is an influencing factor in Gaza and in Hamas’s border conflict with Israel.
Indeed, Iran has every reason to stir up trouble on Israel’s border with Gaza, but as with everything else that is factual and does not smear Israel, this kind of news does not make it to the mainstream press.
According to a report by the Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI), Sinwar admitted in an interview on Monday with Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen TV channel that Iran funnels “a lot of money, equipment and expertise” to Hamas’s military wing and other Gaza-based terrorist organizations. “We have excellent relations with our brothers in Hezbollah. Our relations with them are extremely developed. We work together and coordinate and are in touch on an almost daily basis. The relations are at the best stage ever. Similarly, our ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran, with brother Qasem Soleimani and the other brothers in the IRGC leadership are very strong, powerful and warm. Our relations with the Islamic Republic are excellent.”
On May 10, the Iranian Quds Force launched 32 rockets at Israel from Syria. The attack was ordered and commanded by Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who is in charge of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ external operations branch. Israel responded by taking out Iranian military infrastructure in Syria.
It is evident that the border conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel is part of Iran’s attempt at encircling Israel from all sides, whether from Syria in the north or Gaza in the south. The Iranian vassal state Lebanon, under control by the Iranian proxy Hezbollah is a possible third front.
Meanwhile, Iran’s enablers—at the United Nations and in the European Union, in the mainstream media and the useful idiots of various Jewish communities—all help Iran’s P.R. efforts by bowing their heads in deference to the dead terrorist proxies of the Iranian regime.
Judith Bergman is a columnist and political analyst.
You can find more in depth articles on Israel and the Middle East @en.mida.org.il.