oints of view
>> Send letters to: letters@thejewishnews.com
Essay
Editorials
unfortunate
'ivilian Virthrris
The Population Falloff
Df European Jewry
Dissecting AP's probe into Israeli
airstrikes triggered by Hamas.
s the International Criminal Court
(ICC) at The Hague considers pos-
sible war crimes during Israel's
summer war with the terrorist
organization Hamas in the Gaza
Strip, the Associated Press (AP)
has released findings of its exami-
nation of 247 Israeli airstrikes on
homes there.
The airstrike findings are
eyepopping. Of 844 Palestinians
killed, the youngest to die was a
4-day-old girl and the oldest was
a 92-year-old man. Kids younger
than 16 comprised a third of the
dead; 19 babies and 108 pre-
schoolers were among the 280
youngest victims.
Those numbers are heart-
rending. AP affirmed Israel's
position toward the 50-day
war: That the Jewish state
tried to avoid Palestinian
civilians, but couldn't
because Hamas hid weap-
ons, fighters and command
centers in neighborhoods.
Hamas' intent clearly was to
bump up the civilian death
toll, which has proven the
dominant postwar issue, to
drive the international com-
munity against Israel. The
2014 tunnel-spurred war was
the third and most perni-
cious between Hamas and Israel since 2008.
Under international rules of war, according
to AP, homes are off limits unless used for
military purposes. Israel maintains it attacked
only verified war targets. Palestinians allege
Israel struck without regard for civilians.
Israel further maintains it aborted strikes
when civilians appeared and delivered warn-
ings so civilians could evacuate.
A
j
Gaza Strip. The onslaught has killed dozens
of Israelis of all ages and has put ordinary
Palestinians in harm's way as a propaganda
tool.
Ultimately, Hamas must be
held accountable for the deaths of
the very people it is supposed to
protect — and for the deaths of
Israelis in southern towns caught
in the line of Hamas rockets.
Israeli army spokesman Lt.
Peter Lerner put it candidly to
AP: "While loss of civilian life is
regrettable, combating a terrorist
organization with semi-state capa-
bilities that conceals those capa-
bilities within and beneath homes,
schools, hospitals and mosques is
the reality of urban warfare."
AP described its review,
published in early February, as
"the most painstaking attempt
to date to try to determine
who was killed in strikes on
homes in the Gaza war even
as Israel's army and Gaza mil-
itants have refused to release
information about targets
and casualties." The inves-
tigation included witness
interviews, attack-site visits
and a casualty compilation.
Of course, statistics gathered
through Palestinian sources
are suspect for manipulation
geared toward downplaying the role of terrorist
combatants and raising the civilian casualty
count.
Hamas
provoked Israel
into war via
relentless rocket
fire since taking
power in Gaza
in 2007.
Beyond The Numbers
It's tragic that 508 of the dead in the air-
strikes, just over 60 percent, were children,
women and older men, all presumed to be
civilians. Also slain were 96 confirmed or
suspected terrorists, just over 11 percent of
the total, though AP acknowledged the actual
number could be higher.
Despite the unnerving high body count
among Palestinian civilians, the fact is
Hamas provoked Israel into war via relentless
rocket fire since taking power in 2007 in the
42
February 26 • 2015
JN
ews have left Europe in alarming numbers since 1960, according to
the latest Pew Research Center survey. Washington-based Pew sug-
gests various reasons for the postwar population tumbling: inter-
marriage, acculturation, aliyah.
Due to the Holocaust in the 1930s and '40s, two-thirds of Europe's Jewish
population were slain — leaving the continent a shell of the bastion of
Jewish life and protector of Jewish heritage it once was. Worldwide, the
Holocaust stole the lives of 6 million of the 16 million Jews then alive.
Most of the world's Jews today live in Israel and America, where the num-
ber of Jews is up.
But the trend since 1960 in Europe is daunting.
Europe — fighting economic, political and religious turmoil — has seen
its Jewish population plummet from 2 million in 1991 to 1.4 million now.
In contrast, 3.2 million Jews lived on the continent in 1960, 15 years after
World War II and 12 years after the rise of the modern State of Israel.
It wasn't so many generations ago that a majority of Jews called Europe
their home. In 1939, 9.5 million Jews lived in Europe — 57 percent of the
world total. European Jews now represent about 10 percent of our global
head count of 14 million.
Not surprisingly, much of the decrease is in Eastern Europe and areas of
the former Soviet Union — unstable regions for a long time, especially amid
the repressive will of Putin-led Russia.
And don't discount the flood of immigrant Muslims into Western Europe
in recent years; it also may have hastened Jewish flight. Law-respecting
Muslims have assimilated into the European way of life. But those radical-
ized by political Islam — often young, impressionable, poor and rebellious
— arrived indoctrinated to disrupt, deceive, incite and terrorize. ❑
What Lies Ahead
Israel might be prosecuted before the
unpredictable Netherlands-based ICC, but
Hamas certainly should be if the preliminary
look into alleged atrocities triggers a full
investigation with charges. Also at risk of
prosecution is President Mahmoud Abbas'
Palestinian Authority, which initiated the
ICC review; Abbas signed a treaty seeking
ICC membership despite the P.A. not being
an internationally recognized sovereign state.
Abbas' Fatah party feigns political modera-
tion toward Israel, citing security coopera-
tion. Yet Fatah not only entered into a unity
pact with llamas, but also promotes incite-
ment and violence against Israel and glorifies
the murder of innocent Israelis by branding
dead terrorists as "martyrs" serving Allah.
❑
We're A Global People
I
sraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caused a European
uproar with his blunt, overreaching pronouncement from Jerusalem
that embattled European Jews — reeling from terrorist attacks in
France and Denmark that left five Jews, among others, dead — should
move en masse to Israel.
Former Israeli President Shimon Peres, long a
respected Israeli statesman, served up a wiser, less-
contentious view when he said last week in New York:
"Come because you want to live in Israel. Jews can live
all over the world. Just keep your children Jewish."
He said make aliyah because you want to, not out of
fear.
His remarks in a discussion with Times of Israel edi-
tor David Horovitz were in sharp contrast with those
Shimon Peres
of Netanyahu. After the Denmark attack, which killed
a Jewish volunteer security guard at a Copenhagen
synagogue, Netanyahu, seeking re-election on March 17, declared: "We
are preparing and calling for the absorption of mass immigration from
Europe. I would like to tell all European Jews and all Jews wherever they
are: Israel is the home of every Jew."
It would have been more statesman-like for Netanyahu to invite immi-
gration among diaspora Jews seeking it because of ancestral ties (a noble
reason), while also saying Israel would support and assist European
nations ravaged by anti-West and anti-Jewish terror so Jews there who
sought to stay could do so amid less angst and danger (a noble gesture).
Yes, Israel is the Jewish ancestral homeland. But Jews as a people
count as theirs not just Israel, but also the Jewish diaspora. ❑