Keeping Civilians Out of Harm's Way

Bipartisan candlelight vigil with members of Congress to commemorate one month since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel  (Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

"The human tragedy that is unfolding in Gaza is heart-wrenching, especially the suffering we see in and around the Al Shifa Hospital."

"I have been clear that the price of justice cannot be the continued suffering of all Palestinian civilians. Even wars have rules."

"[Hamas needs to stop using Palestinians as human shields and release all hostages] immediately and unconditionally."

"[The violence urgently needs to stop] so that Palestinians can get access to life-saving medical services, food, fuel and water, so that all hostages can be released, so that all Canadians and other nationals can leave Gaza."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

 

"@Justin Trudeau...It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust."

"While Israel ls doing everything to keep civilians out of harm's way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm's way. Israel provides civilians in Gaza humanitarian corridors and safe zones, Hamas prevents them from leaving at gunpoint."

"It is Hamas not Israel that should be held accountable for committing a double war crime -- targeting civilians while hiding behind civilians."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attend a ceremony in Paris on November 11, 2018 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the First World War. Photo by Francois Mori/AFP/Getty Images/File

The problem here is that it is the Israeli prime minister who is facing a dilemma; wholly invested in ensuring that Hamas will never again be capable of slaughtering Israelis because they are Jews, while at the same time Israeli forces are responding to the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas in southern Israel, aggressively searching out the terrorist Hamas operatives in their densest most civilian-occupied areas, primarily Gaza City, while care is observed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

Even while the Israel Defense Forces have been dispatched to Gaza to rout out the terrorists, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have never stopped bombarding Israel with rockets, aimed at Israel's civilian population. When Israel warned Gazans to move south in the event of the IDF entering the northern regions of the Strip, Hamas ordered its civilians to remain where they were -- to be defiant -- but the agenda really was to continue their role as sacrificial martyrs to the Hamas death-cult imposed on Israel.

Netanyahu's rebuke of a democratic colleague who has never faced such a dilemma offering suggestions that appear to equate the legitimacy of a military fully involved in securing the safety of civilians while engaged in an existential battle for security for its population -- with the actions of a terrorist group that precipitated the war. Trudeau has shown himself time and again prepared to assume the worst of Israel, taking the word of Hamas, an organization listed on Canada's own terrorist list, over that of the Israeli authorities.

In repeating the Hamas mantra of Israel committing genocide by killing women, children and babies, Trudeau has selected terrorist propaganda over the concerns of a Western liberal democracy doing all it can under the circumstances to ensure that women, children and babies are as safe from harm as can be possible in a war situation where they are abused as human shields. Israel has carefully and selectively entered parts of Gaza's hospitals in its search for Hamas operatives in the knowledge that the terrorists use hospitals as covers.

Hamas command centres are set up in and under hospitals, a reality that both Hamas and the medical staff at Shifa Hospital deny. Urging "maximum restraint" upon Israel expresses a total lack of understanding of the situation and the care taken to exercise just that. War was mounted in the wake of a vicious surprise attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli communities bordering on Gaza, where an estimated 1,200 mostly civilians were subjected to mutilation and murder; women raped, children killed in their homes alongside their parents.

Trudeau's foreign affairs minister, Melanie Joly, terming the situation unacceptable, mimicked the concerns of her political governing leader: "Civilians must be protected and enough food, fuel and water must get into Gaza so that [the UN's] life-saving work can continue"; an obvious concern to Israel, grappling with the humanitarian crisis that it did not create of its singular volition. And while Trudeau stopped short of calling for a 'ceasefire', his foreign deputy went considerably further.

It was her considered recommendation that Israel sit down with Hamas and Qatar to discuss a cessation of 'hostilities', a return of the hostages and everyone will be reconciled. In the face of the atrocities committed by Hamas, in the reality of Qatar harbouring Hamas leaders, and funding its operations, precisely who is it that this woman is recommending that Israel trust and bargain with?

Hamas terrorists move Israeli hostages down a street in Be’eri, a kibbutz in southern Israel, video posted to X shows

(Photo: Screenshot)