#WTH The World Central Kitchen & Israel

PS. shut up, Jill Biden

The deaths of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza was a dreadful tragedy. They were acting selflessly to provide assistance to people in need, were coordinating responsibly with the Israel Defense Forces, took all the right precautions, and yet they were killed.

War is hell. It’s as simple as that. Someone screwed up and seven people are dead. This is what happens in conflict; it happens all the time, more often than it should, and there is no magic that can fix it. The best troops in the world, with the best technology — America’s — have repeatedly killed civilians. For heaven’s sakes, we took down an entire Iranian passenger jet in 1988, 290 innocents died. We took out a wedding in Afghanistan in 2008, 47 deaths We’ve killed our own soldiers, we’ve killed allied soldiers, we’ve made more mistakes than ever should have been made. Because war is confusing, the men and women holding life and death in their hands are young, they’re afraid to miss, they make mistakes. Every such mistake is a tragedy, and not a deeper sign of moral degradation. Except when it’s Israel.

When it’s Israel, certain American political leaders feel that support for a war not begun by Israel, against a shared terrorist enemy, should be stymied with an arms embargo or conditional arms sales.

When it’s Israel, certain columnists feel it’s right to call time on U.S. support for its most stalwart ally in the Middle East, tossing in spurious claims that Israel is “starving” Gazans.

When it’s Israel, Joe Biden is “outraged,” and his unelected teacher wife feels she can demand that he “stop, stop it now.”

When it’s Israel, America’s newspapers feel license to use false data provided by the United Nations and Hamas — two organizations becoming ever more united in their antisemitic bias.

When it’s Israel, the U.S. taxpayer-funded U.N. Secretary General feels comfortable claiming hundreds of Hamas terrorists cum U.N. employees were engaged in development.

When it’s Israel, Jose Andres feels impunity in suggesting that the killings were targeted.

The list could go on endlessly, a non-stop stream of double standards that hold Jews accountable where so many are not. And don’t get me wrong: Accountability is required. There has been an official apology. There will be an official investigation. Justice will be served. And this war will continue until Hamas is destroyed and the hostages are home. Because those are the just aims of a war Israel did not seek.

But when I compare the justifiable outpouring of anguish over these aid workers to the muted outrage over similar such incidents; to the lack of outrage over appalling abuses like the Uyghurs concentration camps in China, the half a million Syrians murdered by Iran, Russia, and Assad; the execution of innumerable Iranian prisoners of conscience; the systematic targeting of Christians in Nigeria, and so much more, my heart breaks for Israel.

Should we hold an ally to a higher standard? You bet. Should it be higher than the standard we hold for any other country? Of for ourselves? No. And when it is, there’s a word for that: antisemitism. Jew hatred, plain and simple.

Some polls show a tide turning against Israel in American public opinion. Others show consistent support. You will have to make up your own mind. But make it up with facts, not bias. Among the facts, consider this, part of a piece I wrote on Hamas’s spurious death toll figures:

Ironically, Hamas’s questionable numbers underscore a narrative that Israel has been slow to emphasize: If Hamas is correct that the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza have killed 30,000 or so people, and if Israel is correct that, as of late February, the number of Hamas terrorists killed is around 12,000, the civilian-to-combatant ratio (an important measure of collateral damage in war) is in the range of 1.5:1 — in other words, 1.5 civilian deaths for every combatant death. And while there is some disagreement within the scholarly community over the question of what is a “normal” ratio — with some suspect research (echoed by the United Nations) suggesting it can be as high as 9:1 — there are few recent conflicts where the ratio has been so low as it is in Gaza.

There are facts to be had almost everywhere — barring the main newspapers of record, now pure editorial machines. But look at the work coming from JINSA, COGAT, AEI’s Critical Threats Project, and the Institute for the Study of War. Follow people on X (twitter) like Khaled Hassan, or Haviv Rettig Gur.

No matter what, remember, on October 6, there was no war. And if the United States abandons Israel, there will still be a war. For the moment, the Biden administration is continuing to transfer lethal arms to support Israel. In a just world, uninfluenced by enemies of the Jewish people, that would continue.