Apologist for Terror: Hamas Suicide Bombings Were ‘Unwise Strategy’

It’s widely accepted that Israeli society has drifted to the political right since the breakdown of the Oslo process. Palestinian terrorism played a significant role in destroying faith in the peace process and the political left, and enabled the more risk-averse and security-minded Benjamin Netanyahu to become the dominant political figure of the age.

Outrageously however, for Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, an Israeli “peace activist” writing in The Independent, it’s not Palestinians who are responsible for terrorism but Israelis:

Although easier to paint “the other” as the guilty party, it’s more painfully honest, especially for promoting healing of that trauma, to acknowledge at least partial Israeli responsibility for those suicide bombings.

Yes, you read that correctly – Israel is partially responsible for the indiscriminate murder of hundreds of its own people in Palestinian suicide bombings.

This, Godfrey-Goldstein attributes to an environment of right-wing incitement, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir, the election of Benjamin Netanyahu and the appalling massacre of Palestinians at Hebron’s Cave of the Machpela by Baruch Goldstein in February 1994.

In Godfrey-Goldstein’s alternative reality, the absence of peace is not due to Palestinian violence but primarily the figures of Yigal Amir, Baruch Goldstein and Benjamin Netanyahu.

While it is legitimate to argue the impact these people and their actions have had on the peace process, treating Palestinians as incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions and blaming Israeli victims for terrorism is not.

According to Godfrey-Goldstein:

if over the years the Israeli public had been more fully exposed to their subversion of peace, we might have learned what Dr Abdel Aziz Al-Rantisi, then Hamas’ deputy to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, told Chris Hedges, heading the New York Times Middle East bureau: Hamas was so outraged by the 1994 Hebron massacre that it changed its strategy. It started targeting Israeli civilians.

Did Hamas really only start targeting civilians following Baruch Goldstein’s massacre?

The following fatal terrorist attacks targeting civilians before February 25, 1994 were all publicly claimed by Hamas:

• Sep 24, 1993: Yigal Vaknin was stabbed to death in an orchard near the trailer home where he lived near the village of Basra.
• Nov 7, 1993: Efraim Ayubi of Kfar Darom, Rabbi Chaim Druckman’s personal driver, was shot to death by terrorists near Hebron. 
• Dec 1, 1993: Shalva Ozana, age 23, and Yitzhak Weinstock, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists from a moving vehicle, while parked on the side of the road to Ramallah because of engine trouble. Weinstock died of his wounds the following morning.
• Dec 6, 1993: Mordechai Lapid and his son Shalom Lapid, age 19, were shot to death by terrorists near Hebron.
• Dec 22, 1993: Eliahu Levin and Meir Mendelovitch were killed by shots fired at their car from a passing vehicle in the Ramallah area. 
• Jan 14, 1994: Grigory Ivanov was stabbed to death by a terrorist in the industrial zone at the Erez junction, near the Gaza Strip.
• Feb 19, 1994: Zipora Sasson, resident of Ariel and five months pregnant, was killed on the trans-Samaria highway in an ambush by shots fired at her car.

In addition, the first Hamas suicide bombing actually occurred on April 16, 1993 at Mehola Junction in the West Bank where the terrorist killed himself and a Palestinian bystander. The suicide car bomber was parked between two buses, one military, one civilian. Clearly this Hamas terrorist cared little for civilian casualties.

Despite Godfrey-Goldstein’s attempt to excuse Hamas terrorism, the organization was clearly targeting Israeli civilians before the events at the Cave of the Machpela.

Godfrey-Goldstein writes:

So in April 1994, Hamas started targeting civilians, just as Goldstein had. Was it a wise strategy? No. It espoused war crimes, which caused a traumatised deadening of Israeli empathy, making mainstream Israel even less willing to consider peace, co-existence or strategic sacrifice.

Tellingly, there is only one mention in her piece that refers to terrorism and it isn’t in relation to Palestinian actions:

That trio of Goldstein, Amir and Bibi succeeded, using extremist, terrorist means, to prevent peace to this day.

So while Goldstein and Amir are legitimately accused of using “terrorist means,” Israel’s prime minister is also described as such. But when it comes to Hamas, all Godfrey-Goldstein can manage is to say that Hamas targeting of civilians “espoused war crimes.” By using this terminology, it would seem that Godfrey-Goldstein subscribes to the mantra that Palestinians are entitled to resist Israel by all means necessary, including what she cannot bring herself to call terrorism. Instead, Hamas targeting civilians is simply an unwise strategy rather than a morally bankrupt and inexcusable policy of murder.

Is Godfrey-Goldstein incapable of calling out the targeting of civilians as an unacceptable and immoral act? Is indiscriminate murder of innocents merely a ‘strategy?’

Note that while Hamas is treated as a legitimate actor carrying out unwise strategies, with no reference to morality, it is the Israelis who are “demonic” and evil:

That demonic trio – Goldstein, Amir and Netanyahu, not the Palestinians – deliberately derailed peace, while Bibi continues to deny Israel and Palestine a viable, democratic future.

While nothing can excuse the appalling crimes of Goldstein and Amir, it is truly incredible that Godfrey-Goldstein places responsibility for derailing peace on them and not on Palestinians. As for blaming Netanyahu, it is also worth noting that Palestinians also rejected peace proposals under a different Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who served from 2006-2009.

Ultimately, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein is disconnected from reality and, despite personally witnessing Palestinian suicide bombings, is nothing more than an apologist for terror.

Just the sort of commentator who finds a comfortable home in The Independent.

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