Facebook unfriended by war

When Israel quit Gaza in 2005 and left it in Palestinian hands, Hamas abducted Palestinian Authority leaders, dragged them to the rooftops and threw them off.

By ALAN KAUFMAN
A NAZI image from the Fatah Facebook included in the report by Palestinian Media Watch. (photo credit: FACEBOOK)
A NAZI image from the Fatah Facebook included in the report by Palestinian Media Watch.
(photo credit: FACEBOOK)
This morning, I went to a friend’s Facebook page, hit the word “friend” (marked with a check), scrolled down the options list to “Unfriend” and did the dirty.
For weeks she’s been posting Israel- shaming pics and articles, but the one that broke the camel’s back so to speak was the big flattering portrait shot of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal over an article claiming that four years ago Mashaal promised to honor any agreement with Israel that was ratified by Palestinian vote. My friend’s posting suggested that really, Mashaal and Hamas want peace, but are misunderstood.
When Israel quit Gaza in 2005 and left it in Palestinian hands, Hamas abducted Palestinian Authority leaders, dragged them to the rooftops and threw them off – Khaled Mashaal’s idea of a “Palestinian referendum.”
This same Mashaal oversaw the recent kidnapping-murder of three absolutely terrified Israeli kids whose execution in back of the kidnap car was recorded on one of the children’s cell phones, including their death moans, followed by the voices of the Hamas killers singing in celebration.
This is the same Mashaal who unleashed thousands of rockets aimed at Israel’s population centers and who, from his hide-out in Qatar – a US ally and the single largest financial backer of Hamas today – had in the years following Israel’s delivery of Gaza to Palestinian control approved the construction of murder tunnels leading from Gaza into Israel.
One of these tunnels, the largest, was to be used to stage a single attack involving hundreds of armed and trained terrorists who were to rush into Israel en masse and commit a Mumbai-like massacre of hundreds or even thousands of Jewish men, women and children.
Worst of all, this Mashaal is the homicidal overseer of the Hamas strategy to embed rocket launchers and crews among Gaza’s civilian population – using schools, relief organizations, mosques and homes as launch sites – and to warehouse weapons, though knowing full well that once Hamas rockets fell like some terrifying rain Israel would have no choice but to destroy the missile sites, causing possible injury and even death to Gaza’s population.
Which is precisely what happened, and the flood of gruesome images pouring out of Gaza sparked a global backlash of virulent anti-Semitic hatred, from Europe to Australia, just as Hamas knew it would.
What sort of leadership plans for its own population’s death as a public relations ploy? Hamas and its leader, Khaled Mashaal.
My former Facebook friend knows full well that I am the son of a Holocaust survivor, an Israeli-American dual national and proud IDF veteran with an Israeli daughter who lives in Tel Aviv under Mashaal’s rocket fire.
Despite this she has posted articles and images accusing Israel of genocide.
When I protested, she privately Facebook messaged me saying: “Lets not quarrel over this war. I don’t want to lose our friendship.”
But what sort of friend supports the destruction of the only nation on earth that, I, a Jew, can feel safe in? What sort of friend stares hard facts in the face but to my face calls them lies? Such a fact is that in 29 days Hamas launched 3,356 rockets at Israel, each fired to kill men, women and children.
Such a fact is that 70 percent of Israel’s population now live under the threat of Hamas rockets, and that prior to the current cease-fire Hamas violated every cease-fire and humanitarian lull (and had even violated a lull that they themselves had demanded).
Such a fact is that the Hamas charter is committed irrevocably to the destruction of Israel and the death of every living Jewish man, woman and child.
What sort of friend condemns whatever Israel does to defend itself yet always seems to support those who work night and day for Israel’s annihilation? To such friends I say: no thank you.
To such friends I say: goodbye! For “this war” as my “friend” disdainfully put it, is not just any war but is no less than genocidal aggression waged against the State of Israel; a murder campaign against every single living Jew on this earth, from Tel Aviv to Berlin to Sydney. It is an attempt to eradicate the hard-won lessons of the Jewish past and the golden possibility of the Jewish future. It is a war to eliminate my Jewish people and all that I love from the face of the earth.
And anyone who supports such monstrousness cannot, and will not, while yet there is life in me, call me friend.
The author is an American-Israeli novelist and memoirist. His most recent book is Drunken Angel, a memoir.