In the summer of 2006, during the appalling coverage of the IDF’s first post-Jenin military campaign, in Lebanon, Hizbullah scored a major cognitive war victory over Israel as a result of the Kafr Qana airstrike, which blunted whatever military offensive Israel could mount. With the help of an Israeli errant Israeli missile and a grotesquely cooperative media, the Shiite Jihadis were able to stage a massive humanitarian disaster for the cameras, while Israeli spokespeople tripped over themselves to apologize. Nidra wrote a fierce response which she published at Atlas Shrugged but which I cannot find there. She has given me permission to post it here for readers.
DON’T APOLOGIZE
Nidra Poller
Paris 8 August 2006
Don’t apologize.
Don’t express sincere regrets.
Don’t promise to investigate.
Don’t fall into that trap.
Apologize in private, in the privacy of the heart, apologize in prayer,
ask for divine forgiveness, but don’t apologize to public opinion. Don’t fall into the traps set by vicious
jihadis and relayed by unscrupulous media.
Investigate, hold to the highest standards, but don’t promise to
investigate. Don’t make promises to the
cynical birds of ill augur perched on the fringes of the battle, squawking
accusations against your brave hearts.
Don’t say “we will investigate” because they translate it to “guilty as
charged.” Did they ever ask a jihadi to
investigate? Did they ever scrutinize a
jihadi investigation with their steely eyes?
Do they investigate their own misfiring, misjudgments, misleading
misinformation?
Don’t apologize to a world that does not share our
values. Don’t play into the perverse
blood libel game. Your noble words fall
into their meat grinder and it’s our own blood and macerated flesh that comes
out the other end. Don’t apologize for
misdemeanors, for slips of the gun in the heat of battle, because the ears that
slurp up those innocent explanations are on fire with lust for our original
sin. They are not accusing you of
collateral damage, they are accusing us of killing the divinity we brought to
the world, accusing us of existing, accusing us of existence itself. The jihad gods belch it out through their
beards: you love life, we love death. They want death to win. And their misguided handmaidens pounce on
every apology and throw it into the maw of the death worshippers.
Don’t apologize for killing civilians.
The hand trembles to write these words. How not to apologize, how not to suffer their
pain in one’s own flesh, how not to have nightmares?
Don’t apologize to public opinion for killing
civilians. Because dead civilians are
the WMDs of this war. Israel is
bombarded with rockets and with alleged civilian casualties. Either Lebanese sources are lying, or
Hizbullah fighters are invincible, because every Israeli operation yields a new
crop of civilian deaths. And the media
take notes, like dutiful stenographers, and the statistics are racked up and
turn into more weapons aimed at the total destruction of Israel and the Jews.
These jihad battles don’t begin with military action, they
begin with civilian deaths in the jihad camp.
Mohamed al-Dura for the jihad-intifada, the Gaza Beach episode for the
current Hamas-Hizbullah offensive. They
begin with blood libel–Israel is massacring our children–and everything that
follows is justified by that initial crime.
After the opening act, the jihad campaign segues into a small foray,
just one more incident among dozens or hundreds in the never-ending war of
attrition. If Israel counterattacks, the
jihadis throw up their arms in horror and scream “what’s all this fuss about a
few captured [sic] soldiers?” At the
same time, their bearded chieftains, who have run for cover, send out credible
threats of annihilation of Israel and all the Jews on the face of the
earth. The rhythm of attacks accelerates–shahid
martyrdom operations after September 2000, rocket attacks now—into a raging
wave of atrocities aimed at Jewish civilians, accompanied by uninhibited
expressions of genocidal intent. The
jihadis are quick to declare victory.
And redefine triumph. They begin
with the stated goal of destroying the “Zionist enemy,” but as soon as they see
that they are losing, they start attacking with dead civilians. The Jenin massacre, the Qana massacre, and
countless mini-massacres, an endless series of macabre crime scenes, bloodied
bodies, Israeli guilt, and it is all relayed without verification by the very
media that pick up Israeli regrets and slather them over the “massacre” to make
it look even worse.
Subsequently, when a bit of the truth comes out, Israeli
apologies are used to contradict it.
“What do you mean Mohamed al-Dura is not dead? The IDF apologized!” And Qana?
A rare opportunity to dig under the rubble of lies and extract living
truths: it was certainly not a heartless intentional massacre, and probably not
an unfortunate side effect of war in tightly crowded villages but, most likely,
a self-inflicted wound enhanced by gory fabrications.
Yes, rockets are launched from homes in Lebanon,
deliberately attracting counterattacks that will kill civilians and Hizbullah
fighters dressed as civilians, but it is worse than human shields and more
macabre. And this time the evidence is
leaking quickly. Lebanon is not Gaza,
local stringers are not alone, the international press is in the field, the
bloggers are on the job 24/24. The
disturbing facts about the Qana bombing were rapidly uncovered and broadcast in
reliable media. Will they be dismissed,
as France 2 correspondent Charles Enderlin continues to this day to dismiss the
al-Dura manipulation, by claiming that Palestinians (or Hizbullis) are not
clever enough for such complicated staging?
What is the role of French diplomacy in the Lebanese
conflict? President Chirac packaged it as
a “humanitarian crisis”…only two days after the outbreak of hostilities. MFA Douste-Blazy inadvertently admitted that
France has been calling for a cease fire…since the very beginning. Is France a secret ally of Hizbullah? Or simply a well-behaved dhimmi state? A dhimmi does not need to be told how to
react to this or that incident, he just has to grasp the underlying concept of
jihad conquest: jihadis can attack infidels, infidels do not have the right to
strike back. If the conquering jihadis
are in a position of supreme power, they decimate the conquered population and
erect their version of the monument to the war dead– a mountain of severed
heads. But when the jihadis are fighting
an uphill battle, as is the case in Lebanon today, their main line of defense
is civilian suffering. The plight of the
refugees, the dead and the injured, widows and orphans, the destruction of
Lebanon–a coherent strategy designed to engage the international community in
a concerted effort to force Israel to stop fighting and submit to Hizbullah’s
demands.
Don’t apologize.
Don’t apologize to European countries all dolled up with plaques and
memorials to the Shoah and now mobilized to facilitate another extermination project.
Don’t fall into European traps. Here in
Europe local jihadis attack, then fall back and complain that Muslims are being
persecuted. Don’t bow your head when
Europeans shake their fingers. At the
height of the conflict, and smack between two Ahmadinejad Jew-killing
declarations, the French foreign minister shamelessly caressed Iran’s rump with
one hand and fondled domestic Jew-hating immigrants with the other. Don’t
apologize because there is no one on earth to apologize to. You can’t apologize to people who are sitting
on the sidelines enjoying life while Israeli civilians suffocate in bunkers and
Israeli soldiers courageously face death, fighting Hizbullah that is fighting
for Iran that is fighting to destroy us all, Israelis, Americans, Europeans,
Japanese, Indians…
Don’t apologize.
Stand up to them the way you stand up to katyushas, and fight back against
this lethal narrative jihad with equal valor and intelligence. No ordinary PR
efforts can counter it. New methods are necessary, far more severe, far less defensive. Your critics do not care what you are
fighting for or how nobly you are fighting; they run for cover, side with the
villains, hide behind the killers. They
have to declare Israel guilty because they are terrified at confronting the
real force that is bearing down on them.
You can’t reassure them by saying how good you are, how careful not to
make tragic mistakes. Apologies feed their anguish, and their anguish is turned
against us, against Jews. How dare we be so humane when subject to such vile
aggression?
The injustice is beyond belief: the small nation of Israel
has to fight against Iran, and as if that’s not enough, gets stabbed in the
back while engaged in fierce battle. Don’t explain this, they don’t want to
know. Use it to our advantage, use it to
transform our place in the world. You are fighting to defend Israel’s existence,
to establish authentic sovereignty for Israel and, beyond that, to bring an end
for Jews everywhere to vicious cycles of persecution, extermination, and restoration. We are not victims, we are not mercenaries,
we are no one’s protectorate. The cost
of this war is too high today but the benefits can be multiplied if we rise to the
full dignity that goes with such momentous responsibility.
What is Israel doing in Lebanon today? Israel is doing to Lebanon what we would have
done to Germany when Hitler came to power…if we had a state then…but we
didn’t…and we do now.
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