Imperfect, tiny Israel is truly a “light unto the nations.” If only “the nations” would see it this way!
Israel is attacked by Turkey — and Israel, not Turkey, launches an investigation into the role its military played in defending their country. Yesterday, Prime Minister Netanyahu took “overall responsibility” for what happened. He said that although professional mistakes were made at intelligence and operational levels, the killings were justified.
Turkey has yet to admit its genocidal massacre of the Armenians; we are still waiting for Turkey to launch its own internal investigation—and for the United Nations to demand that they do.
The Taliban slay ten altruists, saints: two Afghans and eight western medical human rights workers, all of whom gave up lucrative careers and safe lives in order to minister to the same Afghan people whom the Taliban neglects and torments. I am waiting for President Karzai to take “full responsibility” and to disband, not negotiate with, the Taliban.
And, by the way, the Taliban also just publicly executed Bibi Sanubar, a pregnant widow whom they first kept in captivity for three days and then publicly flogged 200 times. Her crime? Alleged adultery.
Where is the United Nations condemnation of this and other crimes against women being carried out in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, not to mention all over the Islamic world?
We, who for now safely occupy front-row seats on the sidelines of war which we may view on television or in the theater, would do well to see the following films. There are certain films which capture what war is like for soldiers, such as The Hurt Locker (2008), which won Kathryn Bigelow an Oscar for Best Director. The film is not “political” but is, rather, about the “high” or addictive nature of war. Really, it is about the kind of warrior who is not fit for domestic life or even for civilization but who comes alive, shines, is at his best when he faces death like a gladiator to defuse a bomb. Jeremy Renner plays Staff Sgt. William James brilliantly. I want him just where he is—but I would not like to meet him in a locker room or in a bar, not to mention in a marriage.
Israeli filmmakers keep going back to the first war in Lebanon, at least for film material. Joseph Cedar revisited 1982 in his film Beaufort, as did Ari Folman in Waltz with Bashir. This latest and new Israeli film, Lebanon, shows us a very different kind of warrior. Like Cedar and Folman, Lebanon’s director, Samuel Maoz, is still haunted by Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon.
Folman focused on the “bystander” phenomenon; he morally wrestled with Israel’s having stepped aside and done nothing to stop the Christian Phalangists from pursuing the Palestinian terrorists who were terrorizing and attempting to take over their country. The Christian Phalangist massacre at refugee camps Sabra and Shatila is rarely remembered as an act of Christian revenge; the Phalangists are rarely blamed for the massacre that they themselves committed. The world still blames Israel for having allowed it, for having refused to risk its own soldiers in order to stop it. Israelis (at least leftists and filmmakers) can’t let it go either.
Much of the Leftist Israeli media and a large portion of the Leftist Israeli Jewish elite is complicit in fomenting the irrational, feverish hatred of Israel in the International community. Israeli leaders and Arab apologists like Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, and their supporters in the Israeli media are notorious for their knee jerk support of the anti Israeli Arab narrative. This is partly because they truly believe that Israel’s founding was a Naqba, the Arabic word for catastrophe, and partly because it benefits them socially, financially, and politically, especially among the European Left, to do so.
Not that this in any way justifies or excuses the bloodthirsty and malicious lies which are published throughout the world about Israel, but it does go some way towards explaining why Israel routinely fails to defend itself against these anti Semitic and anti Israel propaganda assaults.
What does 586 B.C.E. in the title, presumably a reference to the destruction of the 1st temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians, got to do with the article?
Chesler rambles all over history, films psychology, whatever. Her description of 1982 “Iran’s Hezbollah moved in, Syria assassinated the Christian Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel, and the PLO shelled Israeli communities along the border”, gets the events backwords. First the shelling, then the war (oops), then the murder of Gemayel and only then factions that will eventually become Hizballah begin to appear
At present it seems that Saad Harari who blamed the Syrians for murdering his father might be forced to live in a coalition with Hezbollah which is being implicated for the murder.
Life is more complicated than war movies
agreed-accepted…
but please go see A Film Unfinished
quite engaging-mesmerizing-absolutely
devastating
Anti-Zionism is the most powerful political force on earth. Why are North Korea and Venezuela the most passionate allies of Ahmadinejad? Because of anti-Zionism. Of course, it makes no sense for these three countries to be so committed to fighting Israel. They do not share a border with Israel. They have no quarrel with Israel. They don’t even care about the Palestinians. Iran, in particular, is an anti-Arab country. Its religious leaders has Sunnis. But hatred for Israel is powerful enough to overcome these factors.
This is tendentious stuff. Lump together a lot of unrelated examples culled from the brutalities all too common in backward Islamic countries (of which Turkey is not one) and use them as a smoke screen.
1. The condition of the people of Gaza is unacceptable. Yes Hamas should not have been elected but Israel does not have the right to treat them like prisoners. And it is not at war with Gaza.
2. Israel’s defiance of international legality is blatant and should be obvious to any neutral observer. Its blockade is of questionable legality, the method of its enforcement was totally illegal, and the murders of nine people by the IDF were completely unjustifiable.
3. Turkey has changed direction but Israel through its actions has accelerated the rift and is turning its most powerful neighbour and former close ally into an enemy–and an enemy which for once has a lot of Western and European opinion behind it. Destroying the evidence and issuing blanket denials will get Israe nowhere.
4. Barak should resign and take responsibility and possibly face prosecution. Israel should apologise for its grotesque and unlawful action and the loss of life and pay compensation to the families of the peace activists it shot.
5. That would be the sensible way to limit damage from this, but of course Netanyu and Burak will not go down that path. So Israel is going to look dishonest and brutal in the eyes of the world, its friends will shrink still further, while the sense that it has to be restrained will become more prevalent among the world public. And the US will find the price of protecting its delinquent client state escalating.
“And Israel is not at war with Gaza.”
Maybe it’s news for you – but it is. It is in officially declared state of belligerent confrontation with Hamas-controlled territorial entity of Gaza.
Dear Mr. Button,
I am glad you wrote your comments on this article by Ms.Chesler. This is not because I agree with any of them or because any of the points you raised are even slightly accurate, but rather because you may have taken the time to read Ms. Chesler’s informed, timely, and cogent commentary.
Obviously the plain facts about Israel vis a vis the almost entirely hostile Arab world and the trends of Israel bashing in the international community made little or no impression on you. Indeed, judging from your talking points you are either simply misinformed about Israel, the Arab World, and the Turkish nation, or you have consciously and deliberately decided to parrot an often anti Semitic and routinely biased anti Israeli line.
For example, the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip has as the first point of it’s charter a call for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jews living here. As if to back this up, Hamas both permits and encourages the unprovoked firing of rockets and missiles into Israel from Gaza to kill and injure innocent Israeli civilians. These attacks are in fact acts of war. Thus Israel has every legal right to both prevent these attacks, respond to them militarily, and to prevent the entry into the Gaza Strip these missiles or the material used to manufacture these rockets, by military land and sea embargo.
The Turkish government was directly involved in setting up the flotilla provocation, even after both Israel and Egypt offered to provide a land crossing for the hunanitarian goods the flotilla allegedly carried.
Indeed, for a fellow who apparently prides himself on his own personal morality, and a holier than thou attitude towards Israel, you seem strangely uninformed that the Gaza Strip shares a border, with crossing point, with the Arab Islamic State of Egypt. Any humanitarian, medical, economic, food, or education problems in Gaza could be effectively dealt with by Egypt. And yet Egypt, a brother Arab state to Gaza is even more strict and difficult regarding the transfer of goods and people in and out of Gaza than Israel is.
Mr. Button, why don’t you demand that Egypt provide the aid to Gaza that Israel won’t? Indeed, Mr. Button, you don’t even mention the harsh Egypt relationship to the Gaza Strip at all in your diatribe against Israel.
I would like to believe that your blindness towards Egypt’s role towards Gaza is entirely innocent and naive, that you simply do not know what you are talking about. But since you are able to give chapter and verse regarding what you think are the sins of commission and omission of the Jewish State of Israel, I am forced to believe that you are simply another despicable and loathsome anti Semite abusing your favorite scapegoats, the Jewish People and Israel.
Bill @ #5
I cannot allow your outrageous comments to go unchallenged!
1 – The situation in Gaza is the fault of the Gazans! Gaza was flourishing when the Israelis withdrew and the Muslims destroyed everything. Also, Israel damned-well IS at war with Gaza! Otherwise, how do you explain the constant shelling of Israel by Gaza???
2 – “International legality”, as you put it is blatantly anti-semitic. Of course, Israel ignores it, as well they should! If Israel’s blockade of Gaza is illegal, is Egypt’s blockade illegal as well, in your vaunted opinion? I suspect you, like so many hold Israel to a different standard than you do other Muslims! Also, murder of civilians by any military is always despicable. Where is your outrage against the terrorists murders of THOUSANDS of Israelis??!!
3 – Turkey’s deliberate provocation of a confrontation with Israel by running a blockade is not Israel’s fault! Just because you say it with conviction, don’t make it so!
4 – See above… Your biases are showing!!!
5 – Israel looks dishonest and brutal only to those who get all their information from carefully selected sources that support their own biases. Israel is in a justified fight for theri national, ethnic, racial and cultural survival. YOU would fight as hard and even more ruthlessly if you were in their shoes! You, who sympathize with the evil muslims and blame the noble Israelis are a hypocrite! To be clear, I do not say Israel has never done anything worthy of blame; I simply say their cause is just and that of the muslams is evil. All your stentorian protestations cannot change that truth!
Look around, there’s a nice rock somewhere nearby for you to crawl under. Go home!
Mr button, your ignorance of the entire array of issues here is outweighed only by your ill-merited pomposity.
i just love your use of the word ‘defiance” in relation to israel.
israel is defiant only in that it refuses to let a bunch of disaffected Arab Islamic supremacists erase it.
I understand their desire for Israel’s eradication perfectly .
Exactly what is yours?
I refuse to watch any film made by a lefty. I am sick of the “Israel is to blame” mentality of these mental midgets. They are playing into the hands of the Islamofascist enemy. I admire Phyllis but I wonder if she voted for B. Hussein Obama. I am presently reading Andy McCarthy’s book on the union between the Far Left and the Islamofascists and at some points I have to put the book down because I feel myself growing ill. Michael Goodwin is another one who voted for Hussein Obama and now regrets having voted for the community organizer and anti-Semite. Oh, gee, Michael – what did you really expect?
I write a weekly blog on Israeli/Jewish concerns which closely echo Ms. Chesler’s point of view. There is no doubt that after a brief several decades respite, anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism is once again chique throughout the world. In an essay written several weeks ago entitled, “The Age of Absurdity,” I posed the following questions to my readers: Has anyone heard of Darfur? Do you know where it is? Most importantly, has anyone ever heard of Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir? Unsurprisingly most respondents failed answering two out of the three questions. Needless to say, everyone had strong opinions about the flotilla nonsense and the death of the 9 thugs which set upon the Israeli soldiers but with the exception of two people, no one had a clue about a man the United Nations suspects of massacring a minimum of 300,000 civilians while displacing 2,500,000 others.
Indian troops fire randomly into crowds of protesters killing scores of people; barely a whimper. Lashes, stoning, amputations, misogyny, honor killings, and forced marriages occur on a daily basis throughout the Islamic world but Israel, as Ms. Chesler aptly points out is scrutinized in minute detail. What’s most frightening, a segment within Judaism itself either turns a blind eye to this invective, or out of political correctness actually joins in with it….Jerrold L. Sobel
“There is no doubt that after a brief several decades respite, anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism is once again chique throughout the world.”
Absolutely correct!! Read Robert Wistrich’s book “A Lethal Obsession, Anti-semitism from Antiguity to the Global Jihad”. Read it all, especially the last couple of chapters. It’s the 1930′s all over again, this time with nuclear weapons. And nobody wants to say it out loud.
‘I am waiting for President Karzai to take “full responsibility” and to disband, not negotiate with, the Taliban.’
Karzai “disband” the Taliban? Sure! Why didn’t you say so earlier?
“For not only one has risen against us to annihilate us, but in every generation they rise against us to annihilate us. But the Holy One, Blessed is He, rescues us from their hand” – Passover Haggadah (Ve’hi She’amda)
Interesting how Gaza has become the rallying cry of the jew haters on the political left. They are immune to the facts.
Many journalists, including some not well-disposed towards Israel, have reported that Gazans are not doing badly at all – in terms of standard of living. A luxury mall just opened in Gaza last month.
Politically, it is a different story, I read a report yesterday of continuing political assassinations by Hamas of its Fatah opponents. Sadly, Israelis themselves seem deluded as well, still believing the mythology that poverty is the source of terrorism, even though as far back as the 1950s, academic studies had already revealed that terrorists tend to be drawn from better educated and from more affluent families in their society.
Phylis: prior to the flottila incident, can you show me an article you wrote asking the Turkish government to condemn the genocide of the Armenien? I highly doubt it
Now I don’t know if by saying Israelis it’s meant Jews.
Anything, I have Something to note about Judaism (?).
*
Right Today I was talking to a Non-jewish Girl, lived in the USA for a while, and …
deeply in Love with a Jew.
Well: they love one another, ’till his Mother started putting Pressures on him and her for her to convert to Judaism.
They lived on the Western Coast, (and Everything was just beautiful), then they moved to the Eastern, (where Everything turned to be a Hell for them).
Eventually she refused to convert (despite she got adapted to all his Habits) and … she got secluded and excluded by the (Jewish) Friends she had since before her Decision.
He (her Jewish Love) eventually married a “suitable (Jewish) Girl”.
*
Who is Anti-what, here? I dare to ask.
For Judaism to continue to exist there must be Jews. Anyone who sincerely wishes to become a Jew can do so.
Any conversion that is forced, against the will of the convert, is not legitimate and is invalid.
The mistake the young man and woman made was to follow their hearts and leave their heads on vacation.
I wish them both well.
Yes, Islamic/-ist people state the same.
Head, Head and Head, and Hearth ist worthless.
Good on you, but then – please – why do you expect People to be kindhearted to you?
Thank you for seriously taking my Question.
Hm. Interesting.
I myself married a non-jew and she converted to judaism. However, i did in no way pressure her nor did any other member of my family. Her family was not disturbed at all.
Can we be fair to note that, while converting to judaism is very much encouraged in a marriage, it is 100% required for both Islam and Roman Catholocism.
We should also note that families and family dynamics are often complicated. Often a family will agree that one thing is important but everyone understands that it is not important, rather it stands in or represenst something else.
Finally, judging a whole group or people by one experience is called ‘stereotyping’ and is an indicia of racism.
I must correct you.
Conversion is NOT the Case with Catholicism,
and in Case of Islam an Islamic man may marry a “Woman FROM THE BOOK (Bible/Torah)”,
while an Islamic woman can JUST marry an Islamic man (this means mandatory Conversion for a Non-islamic man willing to marry an Islamic woman – or that an Islamic woman must force her future Husband to convert).
*
By the Way, I always knew that converting to Judaism was a “Mission impossible”,
therefore most of the People (99,9%) never took into Consideration to convert.
People get culturally interested in Judaism, but they have been told (…) that more is a Taboo.
*
Lovliest Regards.
It’s late. I’ve been out to dinner. I can’t reply at length. Yes, I don’t know much about the Egyptian angle but I assume they are worried by Hamas and its activities. I am too. We stand shoulder to shoulder on that one. But perhaps not as regards tactics.
I was a bit saddened by the outspoken attacks on me as Antisemitic. I am not. I admire and indeed love the Jewish people and their culture. But I think Israel has embarked on a self-destructive course and would do well to draw back and find a new way. That should include respect for and a determination to live with their neighbours. My interpretation of the last quarter of a century or so is of ever deepening errors and a disastrous reliance on the US. This only produced an ever worsening situation. I agree, it’s pretty hopeless at least in the short term. But the flotilla blunder is oe which can and should be corrected. And Israel would be a little bit (not much I admit) safer if it was.
“That should include respect for and a determination to live with their neighbours.” Despite your claimed love and admiration for the Jewish people, you’ve somehow convinced yourself that it is the Jews of Israel who don’t show respect for their neighbors and are unwilling to live with them as neighbors. The reality is quite the opposite.
It was the Jews of then Palestine and the Jews of today’s Israel that have been the only ones promoting coexistence. Go back to the decades before the country’s founding, when Jewish immigration by the British was restricted, but Arab immigration was unrestricted. Those Arabs came because of the economic opportunity provided by the Jews, and the Jews actively employed and traded with those Arabs. No problem until Arab *leaders* decided this was unacceptable, and promoted boycotts of Jews, attacks on Jews, restrictions on land sales to Jews. (cf. Karsh, “Palestine Betrayed”)
Look back to the post-1967 war, when Israel offered to return most of the captured lands for peace. Arab states refused. Look at the numbers of pro-peace, pro-coexistence groups initiated in Israel. Where are the comparable groups on the other side? The PA- and Hamas-sponsored media actively incite against Israel and the Jews. Syria, Iran and their proxies do likewise. There’s nothing comparable from the Israeli side.
And let’s not forget that it was ISRAEL that built up the infrastructure, the education and medical facilities that Egypt and Jordan had neglected while they held Gaza and the West Bank. And it’s Israeli communities – from the secular Kibbutz Metzer to the religious community of Efrat – that have actively promoted coexistence with their Arab neighbors, even raising funds for those neighbors.
That’s great Bill. When you live next to a stalker who’s trying to kill you, do let us know of your efforts to be a good neighhbour.
Don’t worry about whether he’s armed, crazy or thinks you’re trying to steal his girl – because though HE’S trying to kill you, it’s all about YOU!
I agree the flotilla incident was a blunder – the army should have known there were Turkish terrorists on the boat and acted accordingly.
Many commenters on a bunch of blogs recommend blowing up these ships – I’m verging on aggreeing with them.
As for your comment about not being antiSemitic, that’s your opinion. if you truly love Israel, Jews etc, then it’s a basic courtesy to undertsand basic facts abotu what is going on, and understanding that Israel’s actions in various contexts have been legal according to international law.
Not because I “like” Israel, but because those are the facts! Read camera.org to start with, it’ll give you a good overview.
Don’t be surprised if Jews react negatively to your comments. Every comment finds fault with us. The fact that Hamas, the democratically elected governing party in Gaza is honest about its desire to destroy Israel apparently isn’t relevant for you. The Turks are chosing to become more and more traditional as Muslims,which apparently includes hostility toward Israel, doesn’t seem to be relevant either. You don’t live within firing range of Hamas or Hizbullah. Do you actually know how Muslims live in Gaza? What responsibility does Israel have for people who are trying so hard to kill Israelis using every method their imaginations can invent?
In my own personal opinion the Jewish people owe very little to the world in general, or to the people who have been trying to destroy us at any time in history. For many of us all this hatred and its implementation don’t exist as descrete incidents. They are just the current incarnation on a long continuum. Even the International Red Cross, that great humanitarian organization who acted so stupidly during WW 2, is as impotent when dealing with current Jewish issues. What has Hamas done for their “prisoner” that is decent or responsible? What has the IRC done?
I have recently been reading Volume Two of William Manchester’s “The Last Lion,” his massive biography of Winston Churchill, titled “Alone: 1932-1940.” It deals with the years in which the great man (flawed though he was: a racist and imperialist, though an ardent Zionist going back as far as 1910), while still in office, was out of power, mostly due to his stand against appeasement of the Germans during the rising tide of Nazism. Manchester tells, in edge-of-the-seat prose, how Churchill stood almost alone throughout these years, the sole voice of sanity in a government determined to avoid war at any cost while never realizing that the cost of appeasing Hitler – allowing him to take Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, etc. without so much as a feeble protest — would eventually be their very lives. With first Stanley Baldwin, then Neville Chamberlin in the Prime Minister’s slot, Britan’s government believed – or desperately wanted to believe – everything Hitler told them. Never in history has the strategy of “The Big Lie” worked so well for so long.
Until now. For, in reading this biography, I could not help but think of how a similar scenario continues to be played out upon the world – wide stage, with Islamic nations in the chair previously held by Hitler, propagating the Big Lie, and nearly the entire non-Muslim world in the role of appeasers. As Stanley Baldwin dismissed out-of-hand the Reich Chancellor’s tirades with a bemused “Oh, I’m sure he didn’t mean it THAT way,” as Neville Chamberlin warned that “trade will suffer” if German cries of lebensarum were met with united resistance, as mounting atrocities were either ignored by the press or buried on the back pages, and as hard evidence of Hitler’s plans and Germany’s growing strength was buried by two succeeding Prime Ministers and dismissed as exaggeration by their newspaper of record, so the same events are unfolding right now, at this very moment, in the same way. Only the dates, the locations and the methods of slaughter differ.
I have stated in this space before that the lessons – nay, the LAWS – of the Nuremburg trials were that there are laws higher than those which any form of government on earth can declare; that NO form of government can impose a reign of terror – call it war; call it genocide; call it shi’ra law, call it what you will — upon its own or other peoples, then declare their atrocities exempt because they were legal in the place and time they were committed. Yet, these higher laws are being disregarded, at this very moment, by both the Islamic governments and those governments who are in a position to stop them once and for all, if they would only agree to unite against the common enemy.
In a time and place not too long past, it was a crime to shelter Jews, and those who were caught doing do were hanged from their own doorposts, the children first, in front of their parents. They were reviled as human garbage and race-traitors. Today, they are celebrated as righteous among the nations. These heroes knew what their neighbors refused to see: today the Jews, tomorrow the world. At this very moment, righteous people are sounding the alarm about a tide of Islam that is not merely rising, but overflowing its banks and threatening to drown the entire planet. Incredibly, these latter-day Churchills are reviled as alarmists by the very leaders who should, themselves, be alarmed; accused of “opposing diversity” by those who practice diversity by beating their breasts in eternal atonement for the real-but-past sins of colonialism, while ignoring the very real and present danger of the here and now; condemned as threats to
the public good by the very corporations who profit from our continued reliance on Muslim-controlled oil. Those who condemn our modern Churchills – from world mis-leaders to deluded (or anti-Semitic) movie stars – seem to believe that, by showing tolerance of – and even agreement with – Islamic “culture,” they will be able to achieve an understanding with a people whose aspirations to world domination and the extermination of anyone who is not exactly like them exceed even Hitler’s. Today’s appeasers meet with Islamic mullahs to talk peace with a people who have refused to live in peace with anyone for nearly 1500 years. They face the press for photo opportunities, the Islamic leaders grinning in a manner eerily reminiscent of Hitler’s, following his meeting with Neville Chamberlin nearly 70 years ago and return, like Chamberlin, to their native lands waving a worthless piece of paper, proclaiming “Peace In Our Time,” while the man with whom they have just finished making “peace” moves his armies into attack formation. By the time Chamberlin realized that Hitler was not such a “reasonable chap” after all, the Reich Chancellor had overrun half of Europe, slaughtered nearly 3,000,000 Jews and 2,000,000 others — out of the 6,000,000 and 4,000,000, respectively, that he would eventually kill – and built a fighting force so fierce that only a man of Churchill’s stature and determination was able to rally the people and save the continent.
We are fortunate in having a number of modern-day Churchills warning us of the dark days in store if we heed their warnings too late, and I probably do not need to remind readers of this little rant that I am writing it for a blog written by one of them. Others can be found on line, on television networks like FOX (would that they, however, would cease following the Limbaugh party line in other matters), as well as a small number of newspapers and radio networks. The Churchill we seem to be lacking – and the lack of whom may result in us being brought to our knees in the very near future – is that of the strident voice upon the West Wing or the Senate floor, the person with the courage to warn all Islam of the consequences they will face if they continue to move against the non-Muslim world, and the authority – moral and political – to force a reckoning with the powers of evil should that warning be ignored.
About Israel and Palestine, and “Freedomfighters” and their Sympatizers,
here about the wished Constitution for so called future State of Palestine:
well People, it is based on … Shari’a Law!
Criticism against it comes from … an Arab Christian, now I ignore if this makes his Criticism worthless or what.
I think so called Liberals should have a Look to it, and think twice before supporting – not Hamas but – Fatah, and/or “the Palestinan Cause”
[which should grant "Freedom" to Palestinans ... but which will actually let them drown in an Islamic/-ist State, and under Shari'a Law/Rule.]
http://www.sami-aldeeb.com/files/fetch.php?id=31&action=english-comments-on-palestinian-constitution-2003.doc
Lovliest Regards.
“And, by the way, the Taliban also just publicly executed Bibi Sanubar, a pregnant widow”
How queer that we Americans might entertain the thought of a 9/11 mosque as fruitful while women such as these are treated as insensitively as the victims, indeed all Americans, as this.
Muslims are always and everywhere the enemies of Israel, just as Muslims are always and everywhere the enemies of everything outside of Islam. Considering the character of Muslim doctrine, I deny that there is, or ever can be, any such thing as a Muslim civilian in any real sense of the word. Furthermore, Muslims make no distinctions protecting civilians when they make war on others.
No non-Muslim nation or military force should ever consider itself obligated to risk itself to save or rescue foreign Muslims under any circumstances whatsoever. They are the enemy!