The flawed comparison between Hamas and the IRA.
One of the arguments advanced by those who challenge the legitimacy of Israel's "Operation Protective Edge" against Hamas in Gaza involves a comparison between the bombing of highly-populated areas in Gaza in order to kill Hamas militants and destroy Hamas ordnance, and the approach the British Government took towards defeating the terrorist Irish Republican Army.
The point is correctly made that, if the British Government had tried to neutralise the IRA by bombing highly-populated areas where IRA terrorists and ordnance were located, resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths, there would have been a public outcry.
Yet this comparison between how the IRA was defeated and how Hamas must be defeated does not stand up to examination.
The IRA was at no time committed to the unconditional global genocide of British people and to the unconditional annihilation of Britain. It was also not a foreign government that had been elected by the people of a foreign enemy administration. The IRA was not firing thousands of missiles onto British cities, hiding their missiles under houses, churches and schools, and encouraging civilians to remain in these locations to act as human shields. Bombing civilian areas where IRA militants lived and where their arms were stored would have meant bombing our own country in the case of Northern Ireland, and bombing a close ally in the case of Eire. Furthermore, once it was established where the IRA militants and ordnance were, our police force and army, or those of the Irish Republic in the case of Eire, were perfectly capable of turning up on doorsteps and dealing with them.
Comparing Hamas to the IRA in an attempt to undermine the justification for Israel's military action in Gaza does not stand up to scrutiny. It is yet another attempt to undermine Israel's right to defend its citizens against rocket and mortar attacks from a genocidal fascist power that has no regard for human life, whether that human life be Israeli or Palestinian.
© Gary Powell, 2014
