This is not good news:
Israeli commandos killed eight Palestinian policemen in “eye for an eye” shootings three years ago that were ordered to avenge comrades slain in an ambush on an army checkpoint in the West Bank, a newspaper said on Friday.
[ . . . ]
After gunmen from the Palestinian faction Fatah killed six soldiers at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Feb. 19, 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved stepping up the scale and variety of retaliations.
“The feeling was that this would be ‘an eye for an eye’,” an ex-soldier who took part in the shooting spree three years ago told Maariv.
Eighteen Palestinians were killed in various retaliatory attacks, including eight policemen shot while manning their checkpoints near Ramallah and Nablus, another West Bank city.
Whether this is true, sensationalized by the media, or even completely out of context, you can be sure we’re looking at a disaster. Palestinian terrorists will create a story of mythic proportions out of this, and nobody in the world will be surprised when they take to murdering innocent Israeli children in “revenge”. And the worst part is that, despite the pejorative spin that Reuters has inevitably tacked on, it seems to be based on fact this time.
As I said when details of the Abu Gharib prison scandal emerged in the media, if we condemn our enemies for wrongs, we must condemn our friends even louder. Not that the two episodes are on the same plane, but the point is that there can be no excusing wrongs or trying to explain them away. The Israeli army gets falsely accused of wrongdoing on a daily basis, but that’s no excuse.
Maybe it’s not “fair” that the world excuses terrorism while holding Israel to a higher moral standard. But the problem there is the excusing of terrorism, not the higher moral standard.
I’m already dreading the fallout of this.
Yeh, this could get ugly really quickly.
The thing about it that strikes me as downright stupid is that there were no lack of REAL targets. I don’t have any problem with the 2 for 1 eye-for-an-eye tactic but geez, you’ve gotta use a little strategic forethought. Shooting cops is a no brainer.
No one cares about this.
The ‘Oslo war’ is not about suicide bombings and Israeli atrocities anymore. The Palestinians wasted their card in Jenin, so anything less than a couple dozen Arabs massacred by Jews will not get too much media. 8 ‘innocent’ Arab militants are not going to get any attention. The Palestinians took advantage of the virgin ignorant foreign media. After almost five years of this war, many people know a bit more about the ‘conflict’, so playing dumb is not too much of an option.
The current excitement is building up to the expected expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif, northern Gaza and northern Samaria. No one (supporting the plan) wants to let anything get in the way that might put that plan in jeopardy, especially like putting Israel in bad light right now. Making Israel look bad right now, might marginalize Israel into backing out of the expulsion plan (after other developments of course).
Nonetheless, I don’t think the insane plan will happen.
I like that we are held to a higher standard. Dont we hold ourselves to a higher standard than our enemies hold themselves too? That is precisely why we truly are better than they are.
Holding ourselves to a higher standard for what purpose, to sacrifice more Jews in the name of ‘peace’?