It is unfortunate that some Cal State Long Beach student senators proposed boycotting companies that do business with Israel. Their resolution intentionally distorts facts and context about the Gaza-Israel war to demonize Israel, much like the Hamas propaganda it echoes. It doesn’t help Palestinians, peace, or human rights, but rather encourages support for their enemies — extremists like Hamas and Iran.
The resolution omits Israel’s predicament. To promote peace, Israel totally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, evacuating all Israelis. The response was escalating terrorism; forcing Israel to periodically restrict border movement. By December 2008, terrorists had fired more than 8,000 rockets and mortars — sometimes one every three hours — at civilians, schools, hospitals and homes in southern Israel.
Life turned into a lethal game of Russian Roulette, a race to find bomb shelters in the 15 seconds between the warning siren’s blare and the rockets landing. Israel responded with restraint for more than two years until it finally was compelled to defend its besieged citizens in the three-week Gaza war.
The resolution misrepresents Israel’s enemy. It was Gaza’s Iranian-supported rulers, Hamas, not Gaza’s civilians. A designated terrorist organization, Hamas calls for the murder of Jews, the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a Taliban-like theocracy.
“The annihilation of the Jews here is one of the most splendid blessings,” preached a Hamas cleric in July 2008. Terrorists claimed rockets on Sept. 3, 2007 were a “gift” for Israeli children on their first day of school.
Israel’s military conduct surpassed human rights standards. While Hamas targeted Israeli civilians, Israel targeted only Hamas’s 15,000 fighters, fellow terrorists and their infrastructure. Israel scrupulously tried to protect Gaza’s civilians through precision strikes; warning them by phone or leaflets before an attack to move to safety and aborting operations to avoid harming civilians.
More than 75 percent of casualties were combatants, a ratio unequalled in democratic nations’ wars. “I don’t think there’s ever been a time in the history of warfare when any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of innocent people than the IDF is doing today in Gaza,” reported retired British Col. Richard Kemp on January 18.
Hamas violated all human rights standards. It systematically used human shields, dressed terrorists as civilians and stored weapons in schools, mosques, hospitals and densely populated neighborhoods, while its leaders hid under Shifra Hospital.
While Israel strove to prevent a humanitarian crisis by ensuring delivery of 59,280 tons of supplies, declaring a daily three-hour ceasefire for their delivery and evacuating 68 wounded Gazans to Israeli hospitals, Hamas snipers killed workers transporting the goods and stole medical and humanitarian aid either for Hamas operatives or to sell at inflated prices. Hamas forced the U.N. to cease supplying aid temporarily.
The world is full of brutal regimes, including Hamas, but this resolution denounces a besieged democracy that set a model for humanitarian conduct in defensive urban wars, and defends violent, anti-modern groups that violate all humanitarian standards.
The only explanation for this inversion of values is that Arab countries that have imposed anti-Israel boycotts since 1948 — long before the Gaza war — exported their propaganda and found gullible followers at CSULB.
This resolution will spread misinformation and foment intolerance on campus, and strengthen the forces that undermine the peace and well being of Palestinians, Israelis and others in the region.
– Sharon Aboud, Beach Hillel
– Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, University Interfaith Center
– Roberta P. Seid, PhD., Education/Research Director, StandWithUs
Israel is a terrorist state built on lies and propaganda. Rabbi read the dead sea scrolls tell me how
Palestine is mentioned and not the “state ” of Israel” but the God of the Prophet Israel ” is mentioned pre-dating the Bible by 1,000 years.
What is taken by force must be held by force.
When the Indigenous people of Palestine are given the right to return maybe peace will happen. As long as the human rights of the Palestinian people are continued to be taken and their land stolen by the Zionist regime the people will continue to resist. There are now 100,000 people with out homes due to the killing of women and children by Israel and USA bombs.
Americans do not buy your lies anymore
Israel will be prosecuted for the war in Gaza and the lies exposed. God willing
Remember the Prophet Jesus taught us to “Love our neighbor” and the Zionists forget
“thou shalt not kill,”
thou shalt not covert your neighbors goods”
“thou shalt not steal”