The Telegraph recently published an op-ed titled ‘Youngest casualties of war’ in the context of the casualties of children in Israel-Hamas war. In the following article, we will debunk the myths about this war.
Are these figures reliable?
According to the Gaza’s Ministry of Health at least 50,021 Palestinians have been killed and 115,688 wounded. This includes 22,265 men; 8,304 women; 3,839 elderly; and 15,613 children. That is, according to them, the children comprise 31.2% of the total casualties. It is their version and there is no independent confirmation.
Have you ever wondered how is it that they claim so many children having been killed? I will expose the bullshit right now. Israeli attack takes place in basically two ways: from the air, and the ground. Aerial attacks include bombs dropped by aircrafts; drones; air-to-surface missiles fired by aircraft; surface-to-surface missiles including MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System). Attack from the ground includes small arms fire of the infantry, direct fire by tanks and indirect fire by artillery.
Now the question is how are the kids killed? Do they mean to say that their kids are always playing in the open—even when the bombs are falling? Or, that they keep on roaming the streets when house-to-house battles are going on. Despite some 85,000 tons of bombs having been dropped in just over a year there, only about 50,000 people have been killed. This means that they too have some sort air defence shelter system, whatever it be; and that they do hide there. So, why don’t they take their kids also with them? For the edification of the ignoramuses, from the very first day of the attack on Gaza, the IDF mandatorily issue ‘evacuation warnings’ in advance and there is never any slip up. If these Palestinians refuse to evacuate, that is their problem.
This can mean only two things. First, the figures supplied by the Ministry of Health, Gaza are cooked up and fictitious. Second, if the allegation of 31.2% casualties being children is, by any chance, true, it must actually be their clever design. There is reason to suspect that they deliberately leave them out in the open to get killed. They want civilian casualties and that of the kids in particular, so that, through the worldwide left-liberal or pseudo-liberal ecosystem, it may embarrass or ‘shame’ Israel at international forums. The hypocrisy is that they continue, rampantly and relentlessly with their terrorism, but want Israel to be ‘restrained’ in its existential war against terrorism. Clever strategy but, unfortunately for them, Israel is not deterred by the phony noises made by the liberals.
Selective outrage is mala fide
Platform X (formerly Twitter) has been, since October 7, 2023, full of photos and videos of Palestinian elderly men and women beating their hearts out in mourning the deaths of their young men and children. On April 14, a X handle with over a lakh followers, posted two photos—one showing a father with his six grown up sons, and the other showing the father offering the namaz-e-janaza for them.
Should we not ask why they have not ever posted a single photo or video of grief in the families of the nearly 1,200 ‘equally innocent’ Israelis who were killed on October 7? This included 764 ‘pure’ civilians, if we exclude off-duty policemen and other security officers. The dead included two infants, 12 other children under the age of 10, 36 kids aged 10-19, and 25 elderly people over the age of 80. After all, what was their crime? Their only crime was that they were born Jews, that’s all! Do their deaths not invoke any sympathy?
Then, more torturous than these cold-blooded murders and rapes was the kidnapping of 251 Israelis. Out of these, 147 have been returned alive in the now-scrapped prisoner-exchanged deal; 44 have been returned in the form of dead bodies; and 58 still remain with their Hamas captors. Amongst the hostages, there were 30 children. Imagine the plight of their families and the enormous stress under which they must be living. But our bleeding-heart liberals or co-religionists of the Palestinians did not show a modicum of sympathy for them, not to speak of shedding a proverbial tear.
Since discriminating between the deaths of two groups of humans is obviously absurd, it means that their outrage over the deaths of the Palestinians is ‘manufactured’ and ‘motivated’.
Tell me, how is Israel supposed to fight anyway?
Now, given the fact that it is surrounded by hostile Muslim nations, Israel faces an existential crisis. Their publicly stated objective is to obliterate Israel from the face of the earth. If Israel is even mistakenly perceived as weak-willed, it would embolden the terrorists and hostile powers into deadlier attacks. Thus, Israel cannot afford to even think of ‘forgive and forget’ under any circumstance. It would lose not only self-respect but also its very raison d’etre as a nation.
Thus, the only logical option open for Israel is to avenge the atrocity. How does a nation avenge? Historically, since times immemorial, the only way has been through a war. What else? That is precisely what they are doing. How it can be criticized then? Can anybody in his right mind argue that Israel should have rather taken pity on the Palestinians as poor, stateless people and pardoned their terrorist act as an act of misdemeanour of a nasty kid!
Singling out terrorists in a mixed-up crowd is technically impossible
Realizing that it would be an insult to human intellect to say that Israel did not have the right to launch retaliatory war, liberal gangs of the world are criticising Israel for collateral damage, that is, the deaths of non-combatants in Gaza in general and children in particular.
Can anyone of these bleeding hearts explain the technology by which Israel could find out either from air or on ground as to who is a Hamas terrorist and who is not, or which building has only peace-loving people in it and which has terrorists mixed with them in it? Where does such a mythical technology exist? Stop watching too many mythological TV serials. There are no weapons that would spare everybody else, ‘chase’ a designated target wherever it went and kill him without even scratching anybody else. Sorry, liberals, we have yet to develop such a weapon.
In modern warfare, there is no way, in which a weapon system could distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. The so called smart weapons are a very crude beginning. Given ‘N’ kg of RDX in the warhead, it is N kg of RDX, and it will do the same damage, whether it is mounted on a smart weapon or a dumb weapon. Poor explosive knows only to explode; it is not designed to ‘reduce’ its explosive effect automatically when it ‘sees’ Palestinian kids! Physics dictates that collateral damage is therefore unavoidable.
In any case, the smart or precision-guided bombs can be used profitably only if you have pin-pointed intelligence. Such intelligence, particularly when the Hamas terrorists are inextricably mixed with the civilian population, exists only in films. There was this creep called Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, responsible for the murder and rape of some 1200 Israelis besides kidnapping of 251 of them. He had gone to Tehran to attend the inauguration functions of the newly elected Iranian president as a state guest. He was staying in a heavily guarded guesthouse of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps only a little distance away from the presidential palace. The Israelis killed him there most probably by a small missile launched by some drone (like the Hellfire missile that had killed Al Qaida chief Zawahiri in Kabul) or the Firefly loitering munition drone launched from inside the Iranian territory, which rendered their air defence systems useless.
Suppose it was learnt that Haniyeh was present in the room with his family. Could they have spared such a notorious terrorist just because there were kids or women in the room? Further, no such explosive warhead has been designed that would have killed Haniyeh but spared his family in the same room. By God, this is not the War of Mahabharat and Israel is not Bheeshma. Ancient warfare was essentially a duel between two warriors multiplied by the number of such warriors. Bheeshma could afford to flaunt his high ideals that he would not shoot his arrows at Shikhandi who, in his previous life was a woman. Israel does not have that luxury. Israel is fighting an existential war; they cannot write their warrant of death in their own hand. If they ever had such a stupid idea, Hamas would instantly convert every single kid and woman into Shikhandis and use them to destroy Israel. Ignoramuses do not understand the complexities and limitations of modern warfare.
The world has no right to prescribe the course of war for Israel
Israel has to get justice for the outrage perpetrated upon it, isn’t it? There is no ‘World Police Station’ where they could lodge a FIR and get Hamas prosecuted. Complaining to the UN is pointless because Hamas is not a nation on which the UN could impose sanctions. The world has neither any historical, moral or legal precedent nor any authority to decide for Israel that such-and-such quantum of punishment (in terms of Palestinian casualties or tonnage of bombs dropped, etc.) would be adequate. Who decides and on what basis that adequate punishment has been meted out? Who worked it out and who accepted it? Why such arguments were not advanced in other wars of the 20th and 21st centuries?
Sob stories cannot cover the guilt of the Palestinians
Palestinian civilians have never made any attempt to distance themselves from Hamas terrorists, not to speak of condemning them. Liberals are wailing because they sympathize with terrorists and particularly so if they happen to be Muslim terrorists.
A bloodless or humanitarian war is an oxymoron
In more than 5,000 years of human history, mankind has fought more than 14,500 wars in which nearly 1 billion people have been killed. No one can argue that they were fought when mankind was not ‘evolved’ enough. For their information, more than 108 million people have been killed in the wars of the 20th century alone. By its very nature, war is violent. There has never been any bloodless or humanitarian war ever nor there can be.
Then why single out Israel’s war for castigation? What is so special about it except the fact that in this war, only Muslims are getting killed? It is the misplaced sympathy that has led to the outcry. How can the world be swept by a wave of humanitarianism only for the Palestinians? Did the 1,200 brutally slain Israelis not deserve any humanitarian consideration? Do such considerations arise only for Muslims?
Kids cannot be an excuse for murdering justice
The aforesaid op-ed describes this and other wars as violence against children. This is outrageous bullshit. This is just another war, as other thousands of wars have been in history, and collateral damage in wars is both unavoidable and inevitable. There is no mal-intent in it. Every single country of the world has been basking in the glory of their wars. Would this paper dare to renounce India’s own war heroes? Destruction may be unfortunate but that’s how life is.
The op-ed desires diverting a mere fraction of military budget to education. How puerile; how utterly childish! They don’t talk of diverting budget from other things like entertainment, extravaganzas, luxurious lifestyles, and so on. Why only wars? This is old anti-war rhetoric covered in the new salad dressing of concern for education and environmental sustainability. Omigosh! Education of kids is necessary but war is a question of survival, an existential struggle against savages out on raping and murdering you. Get your priorities right, dears!
