Who Are The Innocent?

By: Bill Schoettler

October 19, 2023

Today things seem to be significantly different. The emotional sensibilities of each individual are parsed and magnified out of proportion to their real significance. What happens when a child gets hurt and the teacher or parent makes a big fuss over it? The child quickly realizes how to milk the experience and comes to expect the same attention, even to seek similar attention again and again. When nobody is around to see the fall, the boo-boo, and nobody comes running over to ask about the injury the “hurt” oftentimes disappears shortly thereafter and is forgotten. The difference…how attention plays out on the personal scale of the individual. Certainly, a variable subject dependent on personality and experience. 

Similarly, adults and even political parties and nations react the same way. A classic example can be drawn from the current hotspot in the Middle East. An explosion occurred in a Hamas hospital in Gaza. The Hamas contingent was quick to blame Israel for “targeting” a hospital filled with children and injured persons, condemning any who would aim explosives at such a target. 

Stop here, don’t even go to the issue of whether it was an errant Hamas rocket that caused the explosion, or an Israeli rocket deliberately aimed.

It was less than a week before, Hamas without any justification whatsoever entered Israel by storming the border, and began a campaign of shooting, killing, raping, looting, and kidnapping Israeli citizens and other legitimate occupants of Israel. All this was not only easily verified by news outlets but even used as boasting propaganda by Hamas videos widely distributed over the internet. 

Now ask yourself what kind of mindset would it take to conduct such operations on a wide scale and to brag about it?

Now back to the hospital bombing. Hamas quickly jumped in with virtuous proclamations that Israel deliberately targeted a hospital. And much of the world immediately accepted this interpretation and joined in vociferous condemnation of Israel. Where is there a difference between Hamas trespassing on any vestige of humanly acceptable conduct when it wantonly attacked Israel and the apparent Israel attack on the Palestinian hospital? At best, even assuming that Israel had deliberately targeted the hospital, the carnage toll was measurably less, and on any scale of legitimate outrage for unacceptable human conduct, was Hamas’ attack of lesser, similar, or greater outrage than Israel’s rocket attack?

Now if Israel were to regularly target hospitals, schools, or any other “unacceptable-in-wartime-targets” in Gaza, a worldwide public outcry might be justified. I say “might” because of the unquestionable history of Palestinian attacks against Israel. But that is not the case, nor has it ever been the case. Furthermore, Hamas has notoriously placed artillery, rockets, and military equipment storage facilities next to or within those “unacceptable-in-wartime-targets” and then screamed bloody murder when Israel would retaliate against legitimate military targets from which rockets were fired. 

Add to the above are the well-publicized efforts of Hamas to prevent Palestinian citizens from leaving Gaza after Israel warned of impending strikes and suggested those non-military citizens might wish to leave the targeted areas. Hamas is not just barricading those seeking to flee, it is actually killing those who try to leave. Such is the mindset of the people who now scream “atrocity” against Israel.

The question should be, who is guilty?

Who Are The Innocent?

By: Bill Schoettler

October 19, 2023

Today things seem to be significantly different. The emotional sensibilities of each individual are parsed and magnified out of proportion to their real significance. What happens when a child gets hurt and the teacher or parent makes a big fuss over it? The child quickly realizes how to milk the experience and comes to expect the same attention, even to seek similar attention again and again. When nobody is around to see the fall, the boo-boo, and nobody comes running over to ask about the injury the “hurt” oftentimes disappears shortly thereafter and is forgotten. The difference…how attention plays out on the personal scale of the individual. Certainly, a variable subject dependent on personality and experience. 

Similarly, adults and even political parties and nations react the same way. A classic example can be drawn from the current hotspot in the Middle East. An explosion occurred in a Hamas hospital in Gaza. The Hamas contingent was quick to blame Israel for “targeting” a hospital filled with children and injured persons, condemning any who would aim explosives at such a target. 

Stop here, don’t even go to the issue of whether it was an errant Hamas rocket that caused the explosion, or an Israeli rocket deliberately aimed.

It was less than a week before, Hamas without any justification whatsoever entered Israel by storming the border, and began a campaign of shooting, killing, raping, looting, and kidnapping Israeli citizens and other legitimate occupants of Israel. All this was not only easily verified by news outlets but even used as boasting propaganda by Hamas videos widely distributed over the internet. 

Now ask yourself what kind of mindset would it take to conduct such operations on a wide scale and to brag about it?

Now back to the hospital bombing. Hamas quickly jumped in with virtuous proclamations that Israel deliberately targeted a hospital. And much of the world immediately accepted this interpretation and joined in vociferous condemnation of Israel. Where is there a difference between Hamas trespassing on any vestige of humanly acceptable conduct when it wantonly attacked Israel and the apparent Israel attack on the Palestinian hospital? At best, even assuming that Israel had deliberately targeted the hospital, the carnage toll was measurably less, and on any scale of legitimate outrage for unacceptable human conduct, was Hamas’ attack of lesser, similar, or greater outrage than Israel’s rocket attack?

Now if Israel were to regularly target hospitals, schools, or any other “unacceptable-in-wartime-targets” in Gaza, a worldwide public outcry might be justified. I say “might” because of the unquestionable history of Palestinian attacks against Israel. But that is not the case, nor has it ever been the case. Furthermore, Hamas has notoriously placed artillery, rockets, and military equipment storage facilities next to or within those “unacceptable-in-wartime-targets” and then screamed bloody murder when Israel would retaliate against legitimate military targets from which rockets were fired. 

Add to the above are the well-publicized efforts of Hamas to prevent Palestinian citizens from leaving Gaza after Israel warned of impending strikes and suggested those non-military citizens might wish to leave the targeted areas. Hamas is not just barricading those seeking to flee, it is actually killing those who try to leave. Such is the mindset of the people who now scream “atrocity” against Israel.

The question should be, who is guilty?