Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Ilhan Omar's Ignorance and Bigotry on Gaza Rockets

by Alan M. Dershowitz • May 8, 2019 at 5:00 am

Does Ilhan Omar not realize that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, when Israel removed every soldier and settler from that area?
The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee issued a statement condemning Israel for "targeting and killing Palestinian civilians, including children and infants." Irresponsibly, it never once mentioned the firing of 698 rockets by the rules of Gaza that target Israeli civilians, and it never mentioned the sad reality that Hamas and Islamic Jihad deliberately use "Palestinian civilians, including children and infants" as human shields in order to increase the number of Palestinian civilians who are inadvertently killed or injured by Israel's legitimate efforts to protect its civilians from unlawful rocket attacks.
Israel is also celebrating its 71^st year of independence. No nation has contributed so much to humankind in so short a period of time. No nation faced with threats compared to those faced by Israel has ever had a better record of human rights, compliance with the rule of law or concern with avoiding civilian casualties. The world should join Israel in celebrating its 71 years of statehood. The world should also recognize that if Israel's enemies stopped attacking its citizens, there would be peace. But if Israel stopped defending its citizens, there would be genocide.

All decent people should be outraged at the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip that fired 698 rockets at Israeli civilians, killing four, injuring 234 and traumatizing thousands of innocent children. Pictured: A house in the city of Ashkelon, Israel that was damaged by a rocket strike from the Gaza Strip on May 6, 2019. (Photo by Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)

All decent people should be outraged at the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip that fired 698 rockets at Israeli civilians, killing four, injuring 234 and traumatizing thousands of innocent children. Imagine what other countries, including the United States, would do if lethal rockets targeted their civilians. Yet, Israel has responded with restraint. To be sure, 30 Palestinians were killed and 154 injured by Israeli efforts to stop the rocket rampage. Many of these were terrorists, but some were civilians who were put in harm's way by the terrorists.