So this is Europe's contribution to our stability and welfare?

Terrorists, and Hamas
are the leading example, neither
respect nor protect civilians;
not their own, not the enemy's

Arnold/Frimet Roth
This Ongoing War
10 April '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/04/10-apr-11-so-this-is-europes.html

In a public statement today, Europe's foreign minister Baroness Catherine Ashton (the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the Commission, to give her the fullness of her weighty title) condemns "yesterday's mortar and rocket attacks out of the Gaza strip, which once again hit the innocent civilian population and which must stop immediately."

No one, and there are no exceptions to this statement, sees anything but hot air in a condemnation of the jihadist Hamas regime. Hamas, like other terrorists, has never concealed its intentions to use terrorism and every other tactic in pursuit of the messianic goals defined in its blood-curdling Hamas Charter. They are not misfiring or miscalculating. The innocent victims are the target and always were.

What does bother us, a lot, is the attention she and it (the statement) pay to Israel's defensive measures.

"I also deplore the loss of civilian life in Gaza and call on Israel to show restraint. The lives of civilians must be spared everywhere and in all circumstances. Only an immediate cessation of all violence can bring back the calm necessary to allow for a lasting truce in the Gaza strip."

Restraint.

Nauseatingly, she and her Brussels comrades place Israel and the terrorists on an equal footing. The effect is they negate the essence of the terrorist playbook that characterizes everything the Hamas regime does to Israel and its inhabitants. And so on that basis, the carefully calibrated and executed steps Israel takes in pinpointing Hamas terrorists on the ground, and eliminating them and their tunnels and weapons caches as surgically as warfare ever allows, are not enough to meet the 'restraint' test. Otherwise why call for more of it?

Her British compatriot, Col. Richard Kemp, previously commander of Her Majesty's forces in Afghanistan, knows infinitely more than Ms Ashton about how war is done. Regarding Israel's much-condemned military measures during the 2009 Operation Cast Lead, he said to the UN Human Rights Council (video here) that the Israeli Defence Forces "did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare". Does that count as restraint? Or as anything at all?

Wouldn't it be refreshing to hear Baroness Ashton, or indeed any political leader, acknowledge publicly that the fight against terrorists - dressed in civilian clothing, embedded within civilian settlements, using sophisticated explosive weapons against unprotected school buses and restaurants and other deliberately chosen civilian targets - needs to be fought to win?

And if she has a view on this, we would be interested to know the Baroness' assessment of the appropriate degree of restraint when it's your family that is under attack by the highly-equipped, religiously-inspired thugs?

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