{"id":263027,"date":"2024-05-27T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=263027"},"modified":"2024-05-25T08:55:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-25T07:55:30","slug":"indeed-there-is-no-comparison-israels-crimes-are-far-worse-than-hamas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/05\/indeed-there-is-no-comparison-israels-crimes-are-far-worse-than-hamas\/","title":{"rendered":"Indeed, There Is No Comparison: Israel\u2019s Crimes Are Far Worse Than Hamas\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>Benjamin Netanyahu is right to dismiss as \u201cabsurd and false\u201d the suggestion that there is any equivalence in the atrocities committed by the two sides. Here\u2019s why.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>21 May 2024 <\/em>&#8211; There is one thing we should all be able to agree with Benjamin Netanyahu on: Any comparison between Israel\u2019s war crimes and those of Hamas is, as the Israeli prime minister put it, \u201cabsurd and false\u201d and a \u201cdistortion of reality\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Israeli war crimes have been ongoing for more than seven decades, long predating Hamas\u2019 creation.<\/li>\n<li>Israel has kept the Palestinians of Gaza caged into a concentration camp for the past 17 years, denying them connection to the outside world and the essentials of life. Hamas managed to besiege a small part of Israel for one day, on October 7.<\/li>\n<li>For every Israeli killed by Hamas on October 7, Israel has slaughtered at least 35 times that number of Palestinians. Similar kill-ratios grossly skewed in Israel\u2019s favour have been true for decades.<\/li>\n<li>Israel has killed more than 15,000 Palestinian children since October \u2013 and many tens of thousands more Palestinian children are missing under rubble, maimed or orphaned. By early April, Israel had killed a further 114 children in the West Bank and injured 725 more. Hamas killed a total of 33 Israeli children on October 7.<\/li>\n<li>Israel has laid waste to Gaza\u2019s entire health sector. It has bombed its hospitals, and killed, beaten and kidnapped many hundreds of medical personnel. Hamas has not attacked one Israeli hospital.<\/li>\n<li>Israel has killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza and more than 250 aid workers. It has also kidnapped a further 40 journalists. Most are presumed to have been taken to a secret detention facility where torture is rife. Hamas is reported to have killed one Israeli journalist on October 7, and no known aid workers.<\/li>\n<li>Israel is actively starving Gaza\u2019s population by denying it food, water and aid. That is a power \u2013 a genocidal one \u2013 Hamas could only ever dream of.<\/li>\n<li>Israel has been forcibly removing Palestinians from their lands for more than 76 years to build illegal Jewish settlements in their place. Hamas has not been able to ethnically cleanse a single Israeli, nor build a single Palestinian settlement on Israeli land.<\/li>\n<li>Some 750,000 Palestinians are reported to have been taken hostage and jailed by Israel since 1967 \u2013 an unwelcome rite of passage for Palestinian men and boys and one in which torture is routine and military trials ensure a near-100% conviction rate. Until October 7, Hamas had only ever managed to take hostage a handful of the Israeli soldiers whose job is to oppress Palestinians.<\/li>\n<li>And, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by western states, those same western states laud Israel, fund and arm it, and provide it with diplomatic cover, even as the World Court rules that a plausible case has been made it is committing a genocide in Gaza.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yes, Netanyahu is right. There is no comparison at all.<\/p>\n<p><em>___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/jonathan_cook-e1599121013830.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-168014\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/jonathan_cook-e1599121013830.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"145\" \/><\/a><em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State<em> (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East<em> (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair<em> (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/martha-gellhorn-award\/\" ><em>Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/em><\/a><em> for Journalism. The same year, <\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.projectcensored.org\/top-stories\/articles\/9-human-rights-abuses-continue-in-palestine\/\" ><em>Project Censored<\/em><\/a><em> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2024-05-21\/comparison-israel-crimes-hamas\/\" >Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Benjamin Netanyahu is right to dismiss as \u201cabsurd and false\u201d the suggestion that there is any equivalence in the atrocities committed by the two sides. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":168014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1854,1199,87,865,1029,88,965,886],"class_list":["post-263027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-crimes-against-humanity","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-war-crimes","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263027"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263030,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263027\/revisions\/263030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}