A disproportionate response at NPR

Emmett Tyrrell:

Does anyone know the name of the National Public Radio interviewer who was so disdainful of Israel's ambassador to the United States on the morning of Dec. 31? I missed his name. I would like to give him an award for sarcasm, rudeness and, well, controlled rage. Maybe he would accept my shoes.

The interviewer is perhaps a graduate of one of our country's esteemed anger management centers. Very theatrically, he cut the Israeli ambassador off in the midst of the ambassador's variations on the theme of peace and goodwill and that sort of thing.

I wonder what made the NPR catastrophist so angry. I can understand the professional journalist suffering some mild pique. The ambassador obviously was not giving him the answers he sought. Yet this fellow was downright contemptuous. To employ a word currently in fashion, I would say his response to the Israeli ambassador was disproportional.

It is dreadful that Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on earth, is under heavy aerial bombardment from Israel. Yet Hamas, the governing entity in Gaza, has been lobbing shrapnel-filled missiles into Israel on a regular basis for months. Two weeks ago, Hamas arbitrarily broke its six-month ceasefire with Israel, and the danger to Israeli life and property has gotten worse. How many missiles is Israel to suffer before it is warranted to defend its territory and its people?

Now that word "disproportional" is being raised among foreign policy elites. Israeli air strikes since Saturday have killed several hundred Palestinians and injured several thousand. So we are hearing that the Israeli actions are "disproportional."

I can almost imagine a learned seminar being convened here in Washington wherein the assembled gogues excogitate precisely how many incoming Hamas missiles will warrant one air strike or more. And how will these advocates of proportionality factor in the targets of the Israeli air strikes?

It is tragic that Palestinian civilians are dying, but Hamas locates its military installations and administrative facilities in civilian areas precisely to dissuade Israel from attacking Hamas as it insouciantly bombards Israel, its soldiers and, more frequently, its civilians.

A couple of decades back, I wrote that the Palestinian terrorists -- and Hamas is a fully accredited terrorist group -- were the only fighters I knew of that target civilians rather than soldiers. That was pretty much true back then. Yet as terrorist organizations have proliferated, the targeting solely of civilians has become widespread throughout the world. Now apparently the civilized world has become accustomed to this outrage. Yet it is to Israel's credit that it remains outraged by a terrorist group that would target noncombatants for strategic purposes.

...

The indifference of the NPR reporter to the war crimes of Hamas tells you much about current liberalism. Before Israel attacks in Gaza, Hamas has already committed two war crimes which the NPR guy ignores. Its first is to attack noncombatant Israelis however inept its means. The second is to put its forces in civilian areas making them vulnerable. The The NPR guy position seems to be that Hamas should get away with its war crimes or that Israel should give into the demands of the war criminals.

Meanwhile Israel has massed its ground forces including tanks outside Gaza for a potential strike, and in all the rockets fired by Hamas not one has hit in the vicinity of these troops. Even inaccurate rockets should be able to land in a force this size, but instead they are all being fired at civilian noncombatants elsewhere in Israel. That this force has not even come under fire tells you all you need to know about the Hamas war criminals.

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