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Does the World Hate Gaza and the Gazans?

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Lt.-Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch - Over the last 500 years, at least, the Gaza Strip has been a backwater. For the last 100 years, Gazans have increasingly been used as pawns, by both the Arabs and the international community, in their efforts to vilify Israel and the Jews. Paradoxically, Israel did more for the Gazans than any other of its changing rulers. For 400 years (1517-1917), when the area was part of the Ottoman Empire, it was never recognized as linked to Judea and Samaria. From 1948 to 1967, Gaza remained under Egyptian control. Yet Egypt merely administered the Strip under perpetual military law, never granting its residents Egyptian citizenship. At the same time, no UN resolution ever called on Egypt to end its illegal occupation of the Strip and withdraw or to recognize the new Arab state envisaged by the UN Partition Plan. The areas that are now so often referred to as the "Occupied Palestinian Territories" do not appear to have been "Palestinian territories" until they were liberated by Israel in 1967. Despite Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005 and its redeployment to the Armistice Line of 1949, the international community invented the claim that Israel remained an "occupier" of Gaza. In no other situation in the world is a country considered an "occupier" of another region without "boots on the ground" and without exercising effective control. On October 7, 2023, over 3,000 terrorists led by Hamas infiltrated Israel from Gaza and murdered more than 1,200 Israelis. Israel responded by declaring all-out war on the Gazan terrorists. In normal circumstances, a war situation almost always results in the creation of refugees forced to flee the fighting. But the war in Gaza created no new refugees. Instead of welcoming their Arab brothers, Egypt refused to allow Gazans to cross into the Sinai Peninsula, lining up tanks and armored vehicles along the border to prevent the Gazans from fleeing. The international community may not actually hate the Gazans. Rather, the international community hates Israel and is willing to do its utmost to vilify and condemn the Jewish state. To serve this goal, the international community uses the Gazans as pawns and cannon fodder. Gazans' lives don't matter to the international community unless they can be weaponized against the Jews and the Jewish state. The writer served for 19 years in the IDF Military Advocate General Corps and was director of the Military Prosecution in Judea and Samaria.
2024-01-03 00:00:00
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