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Israel Derangement Syndrome
(Wall Street Journal) Kyle Smith - When the subject turns to the Jewish state, formerly robust minds are turning to mayonnaise. Frontal autolobotomies are eagerly being carried out on every campus. Israel Derangement Syndrome (IDS) is a drug that gets you high on self-righteousness while disabling your cognitive faculties. In reviewing for Variety a movie called "NAZA," about the alleged depravities of the IDF, Jay Weissberg presented with an advanced case IDS, claiming: "The Israeli government has stocked its jails and morgues with Arab men in order to use them as bargaining chips in prisoner exchanges." Israel doesn't "stock its jails with Arab men" so it can "use them as bargaining chips." Israel is a liberal democracy with written law, due process, proper judicial procedure and carefully vetted judges - all the stuff that Hamas rather famously overlooks. Israel arrests terrorists and other criminals. If they're convicted, they go to prison. Israeli police don't cruise down the streets with tuna nets picking up random Arabs while exclaiming, "Caught another bargaining chip!" Call Israel a genocidaire, and you're violating what John Erskine called "the moral obligation to be intelligent." Israel's prosecution of the war Hamas started has resulted in around 24,000 combatant deaths among 73,000 war dead in Gaza. That's a civilian-to-warrior kill ratio of about 2 to 1. Women and children are among the innocents killed due to Hamas policy. No matter how many heart-rending pictures of war carnage appear, genocide means taking major steps toward wiping out a people. A 2 to 1 ratio ain't close to genocide. It isn't even genocide lite. It's tragic that Hamas operations guarantee the deaths of lots of civilians. But that's their way. They embed themselves among innocents, use hospitals as weapons depots, and skulk in a 400-mile network of tunnels. When you're pro-death, all of this comes naturally. An entity that launches a war has no moral right to complain when it faces a justified counterattack. Japan's response to losing a war it started wasn't to beg for sympathy, but to drop its death cult, join the ranks of liberal democracies, and cease attacking its neighbors. Gaza could move on from Hamas and do the same.