The "March of Return" Protests

The world's attention and news media have been trained recently on the Gaza border over the past few weeks, where thousands of people have gathered and tyres were burnt emitting poisonous smoke and fumes.  We are told that this is a peaceful demonstration against Israel to protest the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and land in Israel.  The protest has been named the "March of Return" protest.

A closer inspection of the situation reveals that the truth does not resemble anything like what Hamas and the Palestinian side choose to present to viewers and listeners.  It reveals that the Palestinian rhetoric continues to mislead in order to give the Palestinian side public justification to pursue its sinister objective of destroying Israel, and killing of Jews in full sight of the international community.

In the period prior to 2005 when Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza, the accusation against Israel fueled by the Palestinians was that Israel was an "illegal occupier" of Gaza.  To an innocent bystander in the international community, it seemed as though all conflicts surrounding Gaza could be healed by a simple act on Israel's part to withdraw from Gaza and hand it over to Palestinian control.  That actually happened in 2005 when the Israeli government decided to unilaterally withdraw civilians and military forces from Gaza, and hand the strip over to the control of the Palestinian Authority.  Not long after that, control of Gaza was snatched by Hamas in a coup d'état.  Instead of using the opportunity and the huge sums of money given to them to build a nation state in Gaza for the benefit of their people, Hamas has used the land and the resources made available to them for the purpose of creating further conflict.  It has invested in weapons, arms, missiles, tunnel construction and terror training, all with the intention of destroying Israel.  If it was not apparent to all at the time of the Gaza withdrawal, it should be apparent now that Hamas's objective has nothing to do with building a state for its people.  Instead, it has everything to do with destroying Israel and the Jews.  Gaza was a step in this direction, but this was merely a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

The Palestinians have been extremely successful in duping the world to believe two key lies in the story that they tell to the international community.  The first is that Israel is the main transgressor in the conflict.  According to their accusations, Israel is the occupier, Israel violates human rights and Israel does all that it can to discriminate against the Arabs who have the just right to any land that is currently part of the Jewish state.  To focus the attention on Israel as the transgressor, they have succeeded in playing on the world's sensitivity to the preservation of human rights, and to the plight of the underdog.  The Palestinians have been careful to ensure that their militia are dressed as civilians to present the highly misleading picture of the might of Israel's army confronting innocent and unarmed civilians.  The second lie is that all they want is to live in peace in their own homeland, and this is being denied them by Israel.  The international community infers from this that peace would suddenly break out in the Middle East (and maybe even the wider world) if Israel simply allowed the Palestinians the freedom to live peacefully in their own homeland.  These lies afford them the opportunity to take little steps towards their ultimate objective of destroying Israel and the Jews.

In the same way as the statement that all that they want is a land of their own to live in peace is simply a ploy to weaken Israel, so too is the demand of the right of return of the refugees a ploy to try to weaken Israel.  The so-called refugee argument has been constantly raised over the past 70 years as an attempt to displace and weaken the Jewish hold on Israel.  Those Arabs who left Israel as refugees in 1948 were ordered to do so by their own leadership.  In fact, those who did not heed the calls of their leaders and chose to stay, still have their land and properties and are citizens of the State of Israel.  They came under no direct threat and were allowed to remain where they were without any reprisals.  It almost appears as though the status of refugee cannot be applied to those who ran of their own volition, or under orders from their leaders.  And yet, these people and their descendants have been held in inhumane conditions without any nationality for generations in the hope that they can be used as a tool against Israel.  It has drawn the attention of the international community, and played very successfully on their sensitivity to protect the weakest members of our society.  These members of society have, however, been weakened by their own leaders.  And nothing has been done over more than four generations to help them.  Let us compare this to the Jewish refugees who ran from Europe or Middle Eastern countries for fear of being persecuted and murdered.  They have been absorbed into Israel.  There is no United Nations agency devoted to taking care of their daily needs.  There are no demands for them to return to their homes, or to have their land returned.  Once again, the world has been successfully duped by a ploy that is designed to assist the Palestinians in their desire to destroy Israel.

The current events on Gaza's border are just another chapter in this saga.  Thousands of civilians have gathered on the border to threaten Israel, and to provide cover for armed operatives trying to break through the border fence, and trying to harm Israeli soldiers and collect intelligence for future operations.  Of course, their cause is substantially assisted if they can show the world that innocent civilians undertaking legitimate protest were killed by the might of the Israeli military machine.  To this end, Hamas has no qualms in cynically using children by sending them into the war zone in the hope that Israeli soldiers may fire upon them to help their claims against Israel even further.  The act of burning tyres to create a smokescreen that prevents IDF soldiers from having a clear vision of the actions of these militia is surely an obvious ploy?

If this was about a homeland for the Palestinians, the matter would have been amicably resolved many years ago.  What it is really about is a homeland for the Palestinians wherever the Jews happen to have theirs.  This will never be resolved.  Irrespective of the threats, and the lies and the unnecessary murder of people, theirs and ours, Israel will not be frightened into submission.  On the contrary, these threats simply strengthen the resolve of Israelis who are determined to protect and fight for each inch of their homeland.