In his May 16 column, Terry Glavin takes Israel to task for the deaths and injuries of Gazan Palestinians sustained in the border clashes he concedes that Hamas orchestrated.

Yes, Glavin understands that “Hamas exists for the sole purpose of doing violence to Israel and to Israelis.” Yes, clearly “what (Hamas) failed to accomplish with its rockets and tunnels, it is now prepared to attempt with the corpses of young, desperate and deluded young Gazans.” And yet, he concludes, “If Hamas persists in luring Palestinians to martyrdom at the Gaza fence, the IDF’s rules of engagement — first shoot to warn, then shoot to wound, then shoot to kill — become morally untenable. An abomination.”

Well, that’s quite a strong word, abomination. A very damning word. Myself, I save it for truly depraved actions like the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons on whole villages of innocent people — man, woman and child — by a monstrous tyrant who will stop at nothing to retain power, and who has proved many times that he’s devoid of any respect for the lives of those who aren’t kin or politically useful. I’m referring to Syria’s Assad, of course — and having read Glavin’s columns over the years, I know he shares my horror.

And this explains some of my surprise. “Abomination” is not a word I would ever use for any engagement with enemy forces undertaken in a democratic nation whose military, made up of ordinary citizens, comes out of a culture in which respect for human life is legendary. As Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who has made a close study of IDF policies and techniques of asymmetric warfare, has said: “I have fought in combat zones around the world including Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Macedonia and Iraq. I was also present throughout the conflict in Gaza in 2014. Based on my experience and on my observations: the Israel Defense Force, the IDF, does more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

Illuminating the validity of Col. Kemp’s statement, the Monday edition of the Wall Street Journal published an op ed by Israeli Brig. Ronen Manelis, spokesman for the IDF, titled “The Truth about Hamas and Israel.” In it Manelis reveals the depths of Hamas cynicism. Hamas provided free transportation to the security fence for all Gazans, including women and children. They were paid $14 a head or $100 per family to attend. The injured received $500. That’s pretty abominable. So’s this: Hamas gave everyone with a video camera VIP access to “the show,” and free wifi too to make sure no injury went unrecorded (both real and fake: one video shows an “injured” victim borne away on a stretcher hopping off completely unscathed when presumably out of camera range.)

According to Manelis, the “protest” theme was a complete fabrication: “The IDF had precise intelligence that the violent riots were masking a plan of mass infiltration into Israel in order to carry out a massacre against Israeli civilians.” Hamas operatives were dressed as civilians. On Facebook Hamas had posted maps for operatives indicating the fastest route from the border to nearby Israeli homes, schools and daycare centres. That’s abominable.

Manelis states that IDF soldiers “acted with courage and restraint, following strict rules of engagement to ensure minimum civilian injury and loss of life while still protecting the border.” The optics did not favour Israel, naturally, because the truth can’t make much headway when an enemy is prepared to put its own women and children in harm’s way, calculatedly using their bodies for propaganda purposes.

The IDF policy was indeed to warn first and shoot as a defensive action. Their first priority was, quite rightly, self-defence and defence of Israeli civilians. And as Manelis writes, “The soldiers of the IDF won this week by keeping Israeli families safe and by stopping Hamas from accomplishing its stated goals.”

But yeah, Hamas is winning the propaganda war, and the proof is that even a seasoned and objective journalist like Terry Glavin is so frustrated with the human cost of this reckless, feckless and essentially futile act of jihad, that he’s essentially asking Israel to find a way to stop it, as if there were some magical, casualty-free solution the IDF could employ, if only it chose to, in defending a border against a rabid mass of suicide-prone enemies.

Israel is constantly subjected to double standards — by the UN, by biased journalists, by anti-Semites on social media. In choosing to use this morally charged locution, “abomination,” with regard to the IDF, even the brilliant and knowledgeable and honourable Terry Glavin, whose writing on foreign affairs I greatly admire, has not only succumbed to uncharacteristic rhetorical carelessness, but in doing so, has given comfort and ammunition to polemical jackals for whom he normally and justifiably feels the greatest contempt.

National Post
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