From Norway to Greece to Ireland and places in-between, the protests against Israel’s right to defend its citizens are ubiquitous and quite ugly.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across Europe and the Middle East on Saturday to protest against Israel’s offensive in Gaza, clashing with police when some rallies turned violent.
Police in riot gear confronted around 20,000 protesters brandishing banners and Palestinian flags outside the Israeli embassy in central London, while Oslo police used tear gas against rock-throwing activists in the Norwegian capital.
About 30,000 took to the streets of Paris, many demonstrators wearing Palestinian keffiyah headscarves and chanting “we are all Palestinians”, “Israel murderer” and “peace”. Some threw stones at police and burnt Israeli flags.
[…]More than 40,000 people protested against the Gaza assault in towns across Germany, while demonstrators at the Israeli embassy in Dublin threw shoes and carried a mock coffin, covered with pictures of wounded or dead Palestinian children.
“The haunting images of homes wrecked, of terrified families existing among rubble in shock and despair, and of endless funerals, has rightly outraged people across the world,” said Gerry Adams, president of nationalist party Sinn Fein.
In Rome, Italy, a trade union has promoted the idea of boycotting Jewish owned shops.
The all too obvious Bob Dylan lyric applies all too well.
Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace,
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease.
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.
To hurt one they would weep.
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep.
He’s the neighborhood bully
…
Addendum: For a strikingly hard-eyed and incisive look at the war that Hamas has demanded Israel wage against it, read Spengler’s latest: Suicide by Israel. Excerpt:
To insist that Israel desist entirely from military activities that have a high probability of causing civilian casualties is doubly hypocritical. That would demand, in effect, that Israel value the lives of Palestinian civilians more than those of its own civilians, who are subject to rocket bombardment. That is something no state in the world can do, and it is silly to ask it. Israel has less reason than any other on Earth to heed such a demand. Never has the state of Israel been offered mercy by its enemies, nor has it any reason to expect it. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain by following the almost-golden rule: “Do unto others before they do unto you.”
Israel is in the unenviable position of mopping up a problem created by the inertia of the international community. Fourth-generation “refugees” living in towns officially designated as “camps” never have existed under international law until the world community found it expedient to defer the “Palestinian problem” into the indefinite future. The Gazans cannot be economically viable on their 139 square miles of sand, and the humiliation of perpetual dependency and poverty makes a political solution unattainable.
