Even though Israel’s concession to allow aid trucks safe passage to deliver aid was extracted under severe pressure, they had a chance to moderate their tone and begin to clean up their image. That didn’t happen.
IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, at today’s press conference, began rather high-handedly: “We are continuing to lead a process of bringing humanitarian aid, while continuing the fighting.” Then it was unrestrained chutzpah: Israel cares for the Gazans, not Hamas. “Israel is the one that initiated the aid distribution sites.… This is to prevent famine in Gaza.”
As everyone knows, the IDF blockaded the UN and associated aid operation, creating the famine in Gaza, and then spent three months designing the so-called “aid distribution sites”—all four of them—that by design has been a spectacular failure. A reminder: The classic definition of chutzpah is that of the kid who murders both his parents and then claims before the court for a pardon because he’s an orphan.
