+972 goes whole-hog in defending Amira Hass

Noam Sheizaf in +972 does everything he can to justify Amira Hass' disgusting piece in Haaretz that said that throwing stones is a fundamental right, at least when the target is Jews in Israel.

First, he tries to say that her words might have been misinterpreted. he claims that her article (which starts off with the words "Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule") "can be read as a description of the reality in the occupied territories – or even the situation under any occupation – but it could also be seen as a call for action. Many on the Right chose the latter interpretation."

I think I understand English pretty well, and I have no clue how anyone can interpret that sentence as anything other than a call to action - how else can one define "duty?". But when you are an extreme leftist and an Israel hater, anything goes.

Then he states, as fact, that "In the Israeli political conversation, all forms of Palestinian resistance are forbidden," trying to deflect from Hass' justification for stoning civilians, ambulances and the like. (Which is, incidentally, a war crime.)

Yet Hass' article mentioned many other kinds of "resistance," with this loaded quote:

...how to build multiple “tower and stockade” villages in Area C; how to behave when army troops enter your homes; comparing different struggles against colonialism in different countries; how to use a video camera to document the violence of the regime’s representatives; methods to exhaust the military system and its representatives; a weekly day of work in the lands beyond the separation barrier; how to remember identifying details of soldiers who flung you handcuffed to the floor of the jeep, in order to submit a complaint; the rights of detainees and how to insist on them in real time; how to overcome fear of interrogators; and mass efforts to realize the right of movement.

The entire furor was only over her justification of throwing potentially deadly stones. Sheizaf is simply trying to distract from the issue because, frankly, it embarrasses him that Hass said something so stupid - and he likes Hass.

Finally, Shezaf - desperately trying to find some justification in international law for Hass' preferred method of "resistance" - links to Richard Falk, whose lies and incredible hate for Israel hardly need to be listed again here. Sheizaf says that Falk "tried to make a legal case for the legitimacy of the first Intifada as a rare exception" - but he fails to note that Falk says rocket fire from Hamas is justified as well, if not quite "legal" yet.

But the most ridiculous defense that Sheizaf offers came a few days later:

As some readers noted in the comments to my previous posts, there were several UN resolutions (not all of them having to do with Israel/Palestine) that affirmed this right, but there wasn’t much legal writing on the issue. However, John Locke, an English philosopher and one of the fathers of Liberal thinking, had very clear words to say (Second Treatise of Civil Government, Locke 1690, emphasis mine):

Over those then that joined with him in the war, and over those of the subdued country that opposed him not, and the posterity even of those that did, the conqueror, even in a just war, hath, by his conquest, no right of dominion: they are free from any subjection to him, and if their former government be dissolved, they are at liberty to begin and erect another to themselves.

First of all, Locke - for all his importance - is not a source for international law by any stretch of the imagination.

Secondly, Locke says nothing here about the right to target civilians as resistance; only the right to reject the rule of the conqueror. Surprise - the PA and Hamas both have governments, and some 98% of Palestinian Arabs live under their rule!

Thirdly, and most importantly, if one is going to use John Locke as a source to justify "resistance," turnabout is fair play. Locke also writes:

I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.

If Locke is accepted as a source for international law today, then Sheizaf should have no problem with Israel utterly destroying Hamas and Fatah - whose charter, today, calls to "liquidate the Zionist entity".

After all, Locke said so! Fire up the tanks!

It just goes to show - when you hate Israel, there is no limit to how much you will twist facts to justify the unjustifiable.