By Dr Sheree Trotter on the Israel Institute of NZ…
Professor Richard Jackson and his student John Hobbs again beat an anti-Israel drum in their Newsroom article, ‘NZ lacking principles on Israel-Palestine conflict’.
Their simplistic analysis ignores the essential history and context of an intensely complex situation, reducing it to a body count in order to craft a particular narrative – that Israel is an all powerful aggressor and the Palestinians hapless victims without agency.
Their skewed narrative ultimately fails the Palestinian people. Implicit and explicit in Jackson’s body of work is the assumption that Israel, and Israel alone, is to blame for the plight of Palestinians.
This ignores at least seven decades of the conflict.
The writers fail to mention that a number of those who died in the recent conflict were killed by Palestinian rockets that fell short of their target. Palestinian terror groups target innocent civilians from within civilian locations, thus committing a double war crime.
The only reason the Israeli body count is not higher is that Israel values life and has invested heavily in a defensive iron dome system that intercepts the majority of rockets. Also, the Israeli government requires every home to set aside a room as a bomb shelter.
While these factors help to save Israeli lives, they do not mitigate the stress and trauma of hundreds of rockets raining down on Israeli communities, with as little as 15 seconds for mothers with babies, the elderly and young to get to a shelter.
Israel goes to great lengths to protect, not only its own citizens, but also Palestinian civilians, by warning ahead of time of an attack, dropping thousands of leaflets, making cell phone calls and aborting missions if necessary to minimize civilian casualties.
Sadly, when terrorist organisations fire from within civilian areas, civilian casualties are sometimes a tragic consequence.
Read the full story on the Israel Institute of NZ’s website here.
