Where Was The Outrage?

I hear words like "collective punishment" and "massacre" and other highly emotive forms of rhetoric emanating from Palestinian spokemen and their counterparts in the Western Left enclaves.

No one should have to bury their children.

To the extent that children and other noncombatants die in wars, it is tragic.

But the utter hypocrisy of this week's utterances boggles the mind.

"Collective punishment?" Let's talk about years of rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli civilian villages and cities.

"Innocent civilians." Yes, a redundancy, but where was the outrage when Israel's civilian met bloody death literally on their doorsteps? I'm not talking about Israelis who lived in harm's way in Gush Katif. I'm talking about women and children who lived quietly in their homes in Israel proper.



What about Faina Slutzker, a Jewish woman married to her Moslem husband -- certainly a person who embodied peaceful coexistence?






And Dana Galkowitz, a communications student enrolled in nearby Sapir College, whose campus has borne the brunt of numerous rocket attacks. She had returned to her boyfriend's home in Netiv Ha'asara, north of the Gaza Strip, early one evening because she was tired. She was sitting the porch when the rocket, launched from Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, exploded next to her. She was killed instantly. She was 22 years old.


What about Afik Zahavi, killed by a Hamas rocket attack while being taken to nursery school by his mother? He was four years old, his mother's only child.







Dorit Benisian was even younger. She was outside, playing with her cousin, when the rocket attack killed them both. Her family described her as a child who was always happy, who shared what little she owned with her brothers and sisters. She was playing right in front of her grandmother's home, where she and her cousin had come to visit, when she was killed.



Dorit's cousin, Yuval, was only four when he was slaughtered by Palestinian rockets. They didn't die a quick and painless death. Both children suffered massive injuries and both died shortly afterwards in the hospital. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, which also wounded thirty other people.





Ayala Abukasis died protecting her younger brother, Tamir, during a rocket barrage on Sderot. She was 17 years old. She and her brother had gone to pay a condolence call to another family. Ayala had acted as the guardian of her younger brother from the outset of the Palestinian rocket attacks. She accompanied him everywhere, slept alongside him, waited outside the bathroom for him and went with him to the computer on the second floor of the family's home. Ayalah and Tamir were with friends when the siren sounded, giving them 20 seconds warning of an incoming missile from Gaza. They did not have time to take cover, so Ayala shielded Tamir, who escaped with relatively minor wounds when the rocket fell and exploded alongside them, and she was fatally wounded. She died from massive injuries at the hospital, three days after the attack.

These are not the only victims. There are more dead and wounded. The man in the parking lot at Sapir College, who was going to school at night, while working in the day time, so that he could earn more to support his family. The grandfather killed while sitting on the bench next to his grandchildren's nursery school where Afik Zahavi was slaughtered by an incoming rocket. A nursery school child and a grandfather, both killed in the same attack. The delivery driver who decided it was important to make sure supplies reached Sderot, who was killed when a missile slammed into the ground beside his truck. His wife had begged him not to drive to Sderot. A grandmother visiting her family; a woman from Thailand employed at a kibbutz; a factory worker massacred when rockets crashed into his factory.

These are the ordinary people of Israel who have lived in terror for years. Where was the outrage then? Where were the indignant calls for "an immediate cease-fire" directed against the Palestinians? Where were the orchestrated "spontaneous" demonstrations (complete with expensive, identical, mass-printed, colorful placards demonizing Israel)calling for an end to these "massacres?" Where were the heads of state rushing to condemn the incessant rocket and mortar attacks deliberately aimed at civilian townships?

These attacks have gone on for years, and have only one purpose: "Our resistance to occupation in Palestine continues, and will not cease under any circumstances….the al-Qassem Brigades will continue the march for the total liberation of the soil of their beloved homeland of Palestine, from the sea to the river." This is not some old sixties rant by Arafat. This is Hamas policy, enunciated by Ahmad al-Jaabari in 2006 on Hamas's own website.

Got that? No Israel. No Jewish state. No self-determination for Jews. No adherence to the League of Nations mandate or the U.N. resolutions creating two states for two peoples.

Hamas and the people they represent want genocide. It is their political platform. The fact that Hamas is the "duly elected" representative of the people in Gaza does not make them sacrosanct--it only shows, as other obscenely racist dictatorships have shown, that elections cannot make an illegimate political platform legitimate.

Where is the outrage over that?