SUNDAY EXPRESS
by Leo McKinstry
August 4, 2014

Across the western world the Jewish state has been increasingly portrayed as brutal aggressor bent on the wholesale slaughter of innocent ­Palestinian civilians.The soaring death toll from the recent conflict, which at the weekend stood at more than 1,700 since the start of July, is widely seen as the responsibility of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ­government. Even mainstream British politicians have joined in this condemnation. Always keen to jump on any passing bandwagon, Labour leader Ed Miliband called Israel’s incursion into Gaza “wrong and unjustifiable”. Just as forthright was the former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown. Calling for peace talks, he described Israel’s approach as “very foolish” and “disproportionate”.

But all this populist anti-Israeli posturing is dangerous. It shows not the slightest grasp of the reality of Islamist aggression in the Middle East and the depth of the challenge that Israel faces. In practice denouncing the Jewish state means siding with the malevolent, murderous forces of jihadism, a stance that not only represents a complete inversion of morality but a ­suicidal disdain for the interests of western civilisation. With their habitual self- righteousness Miliband and Ashdown claim that Israel is losing the propaganda war. “Israel has lost the support and sympathy of the world,” said Ashdown yesterday, speaking in his self-appointed role as spokesman for the planet’s citizenry. However, Israel is fighting a real war, not a propaganda war.

It is up against a fanatical enemy – the Hamas ­terror network, dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state. The idea, sedulously cultivated by western appeasers of radical Islam, that the Palestinian movement is innocent is absurd. The present conflict was started by Hamas firing rockets at Israeli civilians and since the beginning of July more than 2,800 of these ­missiles have been launched. Britain would not tolerate an ­aerial assault without striking back so why should Israel? The fact that Hamas’s rockets have inflicted only a few casualties is a reflection of their poor technology, not of their users’ lethal intent.