Nicholas Kristof has words of advice for the Jewish state, but he knows less than he thinks he knows. “‘New York Times’ writer Nicholas Kristoff [sic] lost sight of facts, nuance – opinion,” by Barbara Sofer, Jerusalem Post, November
Kristof quotes a Palestinian nurse whose teenage brother “was shot dead by Israeli forces on the street in front of his school” as if the IDF and police have regular drive-by joyride shooting sprees.
Does the IDF shoot people dead who are just standing around, threatening no one? Of course not. There is more to this story of the innocent “teenage brother” who “was shot dead by Israeli forces.” But apparently Kristof is content to accept this Palestinian woman’s account without the least hint of skepticism. I am certain that the boy had a weapon. He may have been waiting to settle scores with a classmate who would soon be coming out of the school. Perhaps he hoped to kill some “hated Jews” and to become a martyr, thereby fixing his family up for life. He may have fired at the IDF soldiers before being “neutralized.” Something critical has been left out of this story, because the IDF does not kill people for no reason, but Kristof is content to naively believe the version the boy’s sister has been telling.
A repeated theme in many of his recent columns is that because of “big bad” Israel, Palestinian children need to undergo operations without anesthesia. He refers us to a video he has watched about “a nine-year-old boy having his foot amputated on a Gaza hospital floor, without adequate anesthesia as his sister looks on and waits for her own surgery.”
If there is an inadequate supply of anesthesia in Gazan hospitals, that reflects the spending priorities of the Hamas rulers of Gaza. It is they who for nearly twenty years have decided how much to spend on anesthesia, MRI machines, incubators, X-ray machines, medical supplies of all kinds. It is Hamas that year after year, instead of spending the sums required by the hospitals in Gaza, have chosen to spend billions of dollars on their vast underground network of terror tunnels. And it is the leaders of Hamas who, instead of building up a healthcare infrastructure for the people of Gaza, have instead stolen for themselves vast sums from donated funds Just three of those leaders — Khaled Meshaal, Mousa Abu Marzouk, and Ismail Haniyeh — have squirreled away between themselves a total of eleven billion dollars.
A key question he asks, after watching the film [of the nine-year-old Gazan having his foot amputated without “adequate” anesthesia], is “How can we not feel the same revulsion we felt watching Hamas videos of attacks on Israelis?”…
Really? Is the amputation of someone’s foot under “inadequate” — but apparently some — anesthesia, in any way comparable to what Hamas did when it beheaded babies, burned children alive, tortured and raped young girls, gouged out the eyes, sliced off the breasts, cut off the genitalia of Israelis both living and dead, murdered children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children? Of course not.
Kristof urges Israel to use only “surgical attacks” to get rid of the tunnels. At the same time, The New York Times has published sketches of the Hamas metro, a booby-trapped, reinforced world below the ground with train tracks, supply depots, prisons for captives, and nearly impenetrable bunkers for high command. Endoscopic surgery is impossible….
Kristof has no idea what the tunnels are like, how big they are and how sturdy, and what kinds of attacks will be necessary to destroy them. The phrase “surgical attacks” simply sounds good to him; it must mean “the kind of attacks that are precise enough to keep civilian damage to a minimum.” But that is what the IDF always does; it does not need lecturing by Nicholas Kristof to keep to that policy.
Nicholas Kristof wants us to believe that Israel is mainly responsible, with its “bombing” of Gaza, for the Hamas attacks — he never describes them as atrocities — on October 7. But Israel didn’t start its massive bombing campaign in Gaza until after the Hamas attack, and in fact, had done very little bombing in the Strip in recent months. Israel is no more responsible for those attacks by Hamas on its civilians than the United States was responsible for the 9/11 attacks planned by Osama bin Laden because its foreign policy displeased him.
Kristof would do well to spend less time gallivanting about the globe, and more time burning the midnight oil, reading the Qur’an and the most important hadith in the most “authentic” collections by Bukhari and Muslim. He might even read — would he dare swallow his distaste? — Robert Spencer’s The Critical Qur’an. That could help him to understand the depth of the inculcated hatred that Israel faces, a hatred that will not dissipate or disappear. Israel has only one choice: to keep up the campaign to deprive those in Gaza, and those elsewhere in the Midddle East, of the ability to destroy the Jewish state. They may hate Israel all they want — that can’t be helped — but won’t be able to act on that hate, for fear of overwhelming retribution of the kind now being visited on Hamas in Gaza. That is the only “solution” that has a chance of succeeding in keeping the peace between Arab and Jew.
Egor says
He could also read the Reliance of the Traveller. The fact is he does not care as he is as shallow as my Aunties’s bird bath
Huapakechi says
This kristof is another example of willing dupes and useful idiots.
Martha Rosenberg says
I have lost respect for Kristof who I used to support
Sindhi says
Getting sick of educated self-righteous ignorant morons like Nicholas Kristoff.