Supporters of the right to exist in peace for the world's only small homeland for the long persecuted Jewish people - surrounded by enemies who blatantly call for genocide of the Jews - are feeling quite nervous about all the antisemitism around the world, centred in universities, "progressive" politicians, Islamist Muslim organizations, and both regular and social media. As someone who has written four books on the leftist-Islamist ideologies, I am sensitive to the vocabularies used by the media to further the goals of radical Islamism. There are numerous examples, of words that have been weaponized against Israel, such as: - calling land "occupied" even though Israel has withdrawn, leaving valuable greenhouses and infrastructure - calling Israeli society "apartheid" even though that term from South Africa is not applicable. - "cycle of violence" which is meant to create moral equivalency when there is none. - "hard-line" versus "moderate" when discussing liberal democracies versus totalitarian dictatorships - "peace process" - "freedom fighters" and "resistance fighters\’ - "refugees" describing only Muslims as such and not Jews, and using the term after 4 generations - United Nations " Human Rights Council " being chaired by Iran The mis-use of language in highly charged disputes has become so common that one wonders if anyone really studies history any more, because proper historical analysis is impossible if words are weaponized. And so, I notice that the Associated Press has taken to calling Israel's military response to decades of attacks by the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza an "offensive operation". In fact, given the historical facts, Israel's actions are an attempt to stop rockets fired at Israeli civilians. Protecting one's civilians from murders that are becoming increasingly barbaric seems to be a matter of defense not "offense", especially when the murderers are proud of their Charter that explicitly calls for the murder of the Jews in Israel and then the rest of the world's Jews. GlobalSecurity.org states that an offensive operation is aimed at destroying or defeating the enemy and imposing our will on him for a decisive victory. It says that defensive operations defeat an enemy attack, buy time, economize forces, or develop conditions favorable for a counteroffensive that regains the initiative and defeats the enemy. But Black’s Law Dictionary modifies this to say that a defensive war is “A war in defense of, or for the protection of, national rights. It may be defensive in its principles, though offensive in its operations. And so I suggest that the principles of Israel as seen from its withdrawal of 2005 are not to permanently rule Gaza, but rather to eliminate the rocket and other attacks. What country would allow its citizens to be subject to such attacks without military action, which really can’t be termed offensive or defensive. We cannot allow, unchallenged, Israel haters to use words like “offensive” to infer that Israel is an oppressor who uses brute force, in an offensive way. And international media must be held to account when it hardly covers the decades of rockets launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Does Associated Press care about the legal definitions in international law of offensive versus defensive? I suggest that the use of the term “offensive” is not reflective of international law criteria but rather is an attempt to portray Israel as the aggressor. This accords with so much of western opinion that seeks a quick determination of who is the oppressor and who is the victim and western media using pro-Hamas journalists and news photographers. Does western media cover that Israel is the only party in the Middle East that adheres to the laws of warfare, dresses its soldiers in uniforms, and seeks to warn civilians to vacate residential areas that are infused with military weapons? Since Hamas is guilty of the worst atrocities, then the offensive war label aids in moral equivalency by portraying Israel in a negative light. I suggest that we do everything we can to change the use of "offensive operations" in the context of describing the war against Hamas to "war response operation" since Hamas so clearly started this war both on October 7th and for many years before that. Let's examine the facts. From 2002 to mid-2014, more than 20,000 rockets were launched by the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza against southern Israel, all but a few coming after Israel pulled out of Gaza, trying to please the elites in the West who were telling Israel that creating a two-state solution would bring peace. In fact, any concession by Israel is seen as weakness encouraging the Palestinian Arabs to ramp up their terrorism against civilian Jews. We in the west obviously do not understand the culture existing in Gaza and elsewhere where Islamists dream of Jihad, Sharia Law and a world-wide Caliphate, and support a culture of hate and genocide. Where is Associated Press ' coverage of that culture? Culture and ideologies drive politics. Where is the investigative reporting that would show the extent of Palestinian lying ? For example, recall how often Palestinian Arabs have claimed Gaza is an open air prison due to Israeli attempts to minimize the import of materials which can be used for military purposes. And yet, the New York Times featured on December 24th a guest op-ed by Gaza City’s Hamas-appointed mayor, Yahya R. Sarraj, decrying damage to buildings, but also how the Israeli response to the hostage taking and the murders and the rockets somehow destroyed a beautiful culturally rich community. Here is the propaganda printed by the Times: “The Israeli invasion has caused the deaths of more than 20,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry (my emphasis) and destroyed or damaged about half the buildings in the territory. The Israelis have also pulverized something else: Gaza City’s cultural riches and municipal institutions. “The unrelenting destruction of Gaza — its iconic symbols, its beautiful seafront, its libraries and archives and whatever economic prosperity it had — has broken my heart.” Gaza could not have been prior to October 7th one big prison and at the same time also one great culturally rich, beautiful ocean front territory with iconic symbols. Why can I see the constant lies but neither Associated Press nor New York Times see them? The answer, obviously, is bias, based on antisemitism. Here are some facts: A poll was conducted of Palestinian Arabs by the Arab World for Research and Development, a research organization based in the so-called 'West Bank', carried out after the Oct. 7 attacks and following Israel’s military invasion of Gaza. To the question, “How much do you support the military operation carried out by the Palestinian resistance led by Hamas on October 7th?” 59.3 percent supported it strongly, with another 15.7 percent of people supporting it somewhat — a combined total of 75 per cent backing the slaughter of men, women and children . Now, here are the facts for the last 21 years of Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli civilians near Gaza that explain Israel's actions and why it is always playing defense. These numbers are the best available from research that I have done outside of sources from the Israeli government and the IDF. - 2002 to mid 2014 – 20,000 rockets (Israel withdrew from Gaza in August 2005) - 2014 - 4000 rockets and 31 mortars - 2015 - 49 rockets and 8 mortars - 2016 - 4600 rockets and mortars - 2017 - 35 rockets and mortars - 2018 - 395 rockets and 5 mortars - 2019 - 796 rockets - 2020 - no statistics available - 2021 - 4388 rockets - 2022 - 1179 rockets - 2023 - 8500 rockets It is irrelevant how many rockets fell short or otherwise missed their targets or were shot down by sophisticated Israeli anti-missile technology. As we unfortunately saw on October 7th, Israeli technology is only partly successful against the Gazans desire to rape, behead, burn and force parents to watch their children murdered, while Gazans cheer in delight. Israel tried to militarily slow down Hamas's militarization and rocket attacks by launching military operations which were hampered by the world's insistence that it not kill any Gazans in the process. There were attempts in 2012, 2014, 2021, and 2022. Israel understood that limited operations could not be successful against obsessed murderers. But the world uses a double standard when it comes to judging Israel compared to other countries, and Israel always has to account for that in its actions: Efraim Inbar and Eitan Shamir wrote in a 2014 article for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies : "Against an implacable, well-entrenched, nonstate enemy like the Hamas, Israel simply needs to ‘mow the grass’ once in a while to degrade enemy capabilities. A war of attrition against Hamas is probably Israel’s fate for the long term,” This analogy was wrong - dead wrong. By destroying Hamas completely Israel seeks to defend its men, women and children and anyone who knows the facts, even though Associated Press so selectively reports them, understands what Israel has to do. As former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” The Leftists and Muslims who began calling for the genocide of Israeli Jews even before Israel started its military operation after the massacre, show us what hate is. My father was a survivor of Auschwitz and he lost his parents and his then eight year old sister to the Nazi gas chambers. My family understands hate and that is why I am spending my retirement years writing books and essays to educate about hate in ideologies and values. I am joining in a defense of my people against the war over words in our media and universities. Howard Rotberg, a retired lawyer and businessman, founded Mantua Books www.mantuabooks.com and is the author of four books including The Second Catastrophe: A Novel About a Book and its Author, Tolerism: The Ideology Revealed, and The Ideological Path to Submission ... and what we can do about it. . His fifth book - Second Generation Radical: The World Through One Man's Second Generation Lens - is being released at the end of January.
