Keeping the record about Gaza straight

[note - Christians for Fair Witness Web site has been hacked as of this writing - christianfairwitness.com]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 5, 2009
Contact: Christians For Fair Witness on the Middle East
(212) 870-2320

Christians for Fair Witness  Strongly Condemns America Magazine  Article on Israeli Action in Gaza

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East strongly condemns Donald Moore, S.J.'s article in  America Magazine ("When Silence is Betrayed" October 12, 2009) in which he repeatedly invokes Jewish voices to unjustly accuse Israel of the worst sort of war crimes. 

"If Fr. Moore had a legitimate argument, he could have made it himself," notes Rev. Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis, pastor of San Rafael Parish and Vicar for Ecumenical & Interreligious Affairs in the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego, California.  "But by repeatedly underscoring the point  that all the critics of Israel he cites are Jewish, he betrays the manipulative stance from which his entire article is written.  Is he trying to insulate himself from charges of bias, or worse, is he trying to hide behind Jewish voices and pretend  that if  any Jew criticizes Israel,  the criticism must be valid? Either way I find it intellectually insulting and morally offensive."

"The entire premise of the article is false," says  Fr. James Loughran, S.A., Director of the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute.    "Fr. Moore describes in some detail the suffering in Gaza and the destruction that was wrought by the last war, but he is dishonest about how it came about.  First Fr. Moore tries to confuse history with the argument that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 war was about 'territorial expansion.'  Fr. Moore needs to be reminded that Israel fought that war in self-defense and tried to negotiate land for peace almost immediately afterwards. It was the Arab nations that solidly rejected that offer."

"Fr. Moore compounds this dishonesty by pretending that in recent years Hamas resorted to terror against Israeli civilians only because it had no alternative and that it is merely the 'spin of [Israeli] public relations' that Israel's goal in the war was to stop the rockets," adds Fr. Loughran.  "But Fr. Moore either does not have his facts straight or he intentionally distorts the truth.  Had the rockets which started in 2001 stopped or even decreased when Israel ended the occupation of Gaza in 2005, he would have a point.  But after Israel disengaged from Gaza the response was to immediately start digging infiltration tunnels, increase the number of rockets that were being dropped on civilian targets in Israel and then elect Hamas, an organization openly dedicated not to a peaceful two-state solution, but to  the violent destruction of Israel.  What was Israel supposed to do?  Open its borders and simply allow terrorists free access or generally allow Hamas to strengthen itself while brazenly threatening Israel's very existence"?

There was a six month  truce,  but anyone who takes the time to check the newspapers from that period can confirm that it was indeed Hamas that announced the end of the truce in December, 2008.  And it was only after strong warnings from the Israeli government to stop the rockets, which had escalated  up to 100 per day, that the Israelis began a devastating military incursion in what was clearly a last-ditch attempt to protect their own population.

"The publication of an article like this one is a serious moral failure on the part of America magazine,"  adds Rev. Dr. Bruce Chilton, the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in Annandale, New York.  "America has, over the years, distorted the record to cast Israel in as damning a light as possible. There have been inexcusable accusations of ethnic cleansing,  racism -- the list goes on and on.  The moral failure, however, lies not only  in  the dishonesty employed in its persistent prejudice against the Jewish state, but  in the tragic missed opportunity America is helping to create.  No reasonable person can argue that Hamas is anything but a terrorist organization bent on the destruction of Israel and no reasonable person can argue that Israel did not go into Gaza to protect its citizens after eight years of indiscriminate rocket fire.  What can and must be debated  in this era of terrorist militias deploying from civilian populations, however, is how the armies of civilized countries are  to contend with asymmetric warfare. But here we have a Jesuit magazine, which just like the fatally flawed Goldstone report itself,  forecloses any honest debate on this critical issue, seeking instead to isolate and demonize  Israel.  This is a moral failure that should not be tolerated from any Christian publication."