Who Killed
The Baby - Hamas or Israel?
Hamas
murders its own children for good PR.
By
Alan M. Dershowitz
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem,
Israel --- March 15, 2013
The recent disclosure that Omar
Misharawi, the baby son of BBC photographer Jihad Misharawi, was
actually killed by an errant Hamas rocket rather than by an Israel
missile, should have absolutely no moral implications.
Of course the baby was killed by Hamas.
He
would have been killed by Hamas even if the missile that ended
his life had been fired by Israel. Hamas is totally and wholly
responsible for this death, as it is responsible for every civilian
death in Gaza and in Israel. It is Hamas that always begins the
battle by firing rockets at Israeli civilians.
Generally
Israel does not respond. When it does, its rockets occasionally
kill Palestinian civilians. Thats because Hamas wants Palestinians
civilians, especially babies, to be killed by Israelis rockets.
They want Palestinian babies to be killed precisely so that they
can display the kind of photographs that were shown around the
world: a grieving father holding his dead baby, presumably killed
by an Israeli rocket.
For
years, I have called this Hamas dead baby strategy.
The recent United Nations finding simply confirms the reality
of this cynical strategy.
The errant
rocket that killed Omar Misharawi was fired by Hamas terrorists
from a densely populated civilian area adjacent to the home of
the BBC photographer Jihad Misharawi. Hamas selects such locations
for firing its rockets precisely so that Israel will respond by
firing into civilian areas and killing Palestinian civilians.
They regard such dead civilians as shahids, or martyrs
for the cause. It is better for Hamas publicity campaign
if the rocket that kills the Palestinian baby was fired by the
Israeli Defense Forces, but even if the rocket was fired by Hamas
terrorists, Hamas will claim that the lethal rocket was fired
by Israel. Often the evidence is inconclusive, though the forensic
evidence in this case points clearly to a Hamas rocket.
The important
point is that it doesnt really matter who actually fired
the rocket that killed the baby. The baby was killed by Hamas
as part of a calculated strategy designed to point the emotional
finger of moral blame at the IDF for doing what every democracy
would do: namely, defend its civilians from rocket attacks by
targeting those who are firing the rockets, even if they are firing
them from civilian areas. As US President Barack Obama said when
he visited Sderot shortly before going into office:
The
first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens. And
so I can assure you that if
somebody was sending rockets
into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going
to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect
Israelis to do the same thing.
Babies like
Omar Misharawi will continue to die in Gaza and in Israel so long
as the world media continues to serve as facilitators of Hamas
dead baby strategy. Every time a picture of a dead Palestinian
baby being held by his grieving parents appears on television
or on the front pages of newspapers around the world, Hamas wins.
And when Hamas wins, they continue with their deadly strategy.
The media, therefore, is complicit in the death of Omar Misharawi
as it is in the deaths of other civilians who are victims of Hamas
dead baby strategy.
Pictures of
dead babies in the arms of their grieving fathers are irresistible
to the media. That wont change. What should change is the
caption. Every time a dead Palestinian baby is shown, the caption
should explain the strategy that led to his or her death: namely
that Hamas deliberately fires its rockets from areas in which
babies live and into which Israel must fire if it is to stop its
own babies from being killed.
It may sound
heartless to claim that Hamas wants its own babies to be killed
as part of its strategy of demonizing Israel. But there is no
escaping the reality and truth of this phenomenon. Indeed it has
been admitted by Hamas leaders such as Fathi Hammad:
For
the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which
women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The
elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children.
This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children,
the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist
bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy:
We desire death like you desire life.
Of course
these Hamas leaders dont desire their own death. They build
shelters for themselves and for the terrorists who fire the rockets
at Israeli civilians. As soon as these rockets are fired from
crowded civilian areas, the terrorist scurry into below-ground
shelters, leaving babies, women and other civilians in the path
of Israeli rockets that target the rocket launchers. This isnt
martyrdom by the leaders and terrorists. It is cowardice. That
too is part of the dead baby strategy: make martyrs of babies,
while the leaders and terrorists hide in shelters. In Israel,
it is precisely the opposite; shelters are for civilians; soldiers
put themselves in harms way.
Thats
why illustration above so aptly sums it all up.
Alan M.
Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard
Law School. He is a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale Law
School. He is the author of several books including "The
Case For Israel" and "Why Terrorism Works".
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