One might find accidental, momentary convergence, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on his observation that there weren’t sufficient objections and demonstrations to what the West did during multiple wars, to Iraq, Syria and Yemen. However, Netanyahu was only interested in pointing that out in order to prove that “Israel is being singled out, not for what we are doing, but for who we are,” thus proving that his critics are anti-Semitic.
First, Netanyahu’s math, or infernal calculus: According to him, 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, of whom 14,000 were “terrorists” and 16,000 were civilians. The count by the Health Ministry in Gaza shows more than 35,000 killed, of whom 24,500 are women, children and elderly men—a figure much in line with the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which counts 24,000 women and children killed (14,500 children and 9,500 women). That means that if every male between 18 and 60 who was killed is declared a terrorist, there would still be 3,500 women and children in Netanyahu’s “terrorist” category. Put another way, Netanyahu concedes having killed 16,000 of the 24,000 dead women and children.
Even worse is the rest of his May 10 posting, done by Israel government spokesman Avi Hyman. There, Netanyahu explains the proof that his critics are anti-Semitic: “The whole attitude to Israel here is absurd because, yes, we’ve killed about 14,000 terrorists, unfortunately, because of the fact that they use the human shield, they’re slightly bigger number about 16,000 civilians that were killed in places where the terrorists won’t let them leave—Hamas stops them at gunpoint, because for us, every civilian is a tragedy.” And the clincher: “When you look at the numbers. Around us in Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq, millions of people were killed. Muslims. Millions were uprooted from their homes. Where were the protests? Where were the demonstrations on U.S. campuses? Where is it? And the answer is, it’s nowhere because it’s not directed at what we do. It’s directed at who we are. It’s an anti-Semitic explosion that threatens all of civilization.”
