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Hamas Defenders Wield Words as Weapons

(Wall Street Journal) Gerard Baker - From the streets of American and European cities, television studios, newspaper columns and legislatures, we are being bombarded with rhetoric that seeks to persuade us not to believe what we see, to convince us that right is wrong, justice is tyranny, terrorism is heroism. All kinds of cunning efforts have been used to get us to see that the country whose citizens were wantonly slaughtered on Oct. 7 by an enemy that has sworn to wipe it from the planet is in fact the wicked oppressor. "Cease-fire" sounds straightforwardly decent. But we know it would mean victory for Hamas. It would mean that the terrorist group should be allowed to continue to run a statelet only a few weeks after it has made good on its commitment to attack its neighbor and done so with complete disregard for international law or common decency. There is something especially malignant about the term "genocide" to describe Israel's operation in Gaza - and those propagating it know that full well. They use it deliberately to equate what happened to the Jews at the hands of the Nazis with a military action today that is justified in self-defense. If you can suggest that what Israel is doing in Gaza is equivalent to what happened in the gas chambers, then you are explicitly reducing the Holocaust to the level of a regrettable byproduct of a legitimate military campaign. "Decolonization." The idea that Israel is a colonist settlement on Arab soil is such ahistorical nonsense that we can understand why it could be tolerated only on the campuses of our most prestigious universities.
2023-11-08 00:00:00
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