Inverted Cowardice

Update: Glenn Reynolds just linked to an article that captures the ersatz "courage" of Hamas, with a perfect quote from a captured terrorist:

“Hamas took a gamble. We thought, at worst Israel will come and do something from the air - something superficial. They’ll come in and go out. We never thought that we would reach the point where fear will swallow the heart and the feet will want to flee. You [Israel] are fighting like you fought in ‘48. What got into you all of a sudden?”

Cowards tend to loathe themselves for their cowardice.  It is a natural reaction.  When the cowardice is shared by a large group, it becomes easier to deny one's cravenness and externalize the self loathing onto a designated and shared scapegoat.  The group leverages the individual defensive maneuver to increase group cohesion and support the individual members defenses.  This construct can be discernible as an aspect of several different conflicts in the world.

In most of the world, people who target women and children to attack and then hide behind women and children when the predictable response is provoked, are considered cowards.  Soldiers meet other soldiers on the filed of battle.  The Geneva Conventions codified a minimal set of rules for civilized warfare.  Soldiers were expected to wear uniforms and specifically were not expected or allowed to target non-combatants nor were they allowed to hide among non-combatants.  In the current perverse environment of a morally bankrupt international order, these rules have been inverted.  Nonetheless, hidingbehind a woman's skirts has traditionally defined cowardice.  Yet, the Palestinians, and Islamists everywhere, have convinced themselves that killing unarmed and undefended women and children is somehow heroic; they have convinced themselves that hiding behind their women and children is heroic.  I suspect there are a fair number of Muslims who are ashamed of the cowardice of their so-called heroes; sadly there is a much greater number who take pride in the murder of hated Jews,Christians, Hindus, et al.  Of course, it is hard to tell where their real sentiments lie, since to question the heroism of their shaheeds is to risk re-education by the bullet.  Such is the way of the Arabworld.  Note, however, that the leaders of the Hamas resistance remain hidden in he basement of a Gaza hospital rather than racing out to embrace the death they claim to crave.  I suppose a charitable view would be that heroic martyrdom is a prize for their followers and the leaders bravely avoid it in order to facilitate the heroics of their followers and those who are inadvertently caught in the crossfire.

In a particularly delicious turnof events, the Hamas leadership ensconced safely in their lairs in Damascus are now refusing the cease fire that is likely to be the only way their brethren in the Gaza Strip will survive the current fighting:

'We reject Israel's truce conditions'

Hamas leaderKhaled Mashaal rejected Israel's conditions for a Gaza cease-fire and demanded an immediate opening of the territory's borders, taking a tough line Friday as he asked Arab countries to back him by cutting off any ties with Israel.

What courage!  Khaled Mashall is willing to fight to Ismail Haniyeh's death!  Thus far, of course, Ismail Haniyeh has been in no rush to embrace his heroic martyrdom; why am I not surprised?

A different, and perhaps even less defensible form of cowardice is on display by the BBC, courtesy of Richard Landes:

BBC Silent about being Terrorized in Gaza: Discretion or Cowardice?

Israeli media reports that Hamas took over the first floor of the building that the BBC offices in Gaza last night and fired rockets from there, trapping the journalists above. Despite the fact that their reporters have now escaped the building, the BBC has so far not said anything about this.

When I was interviewed on the BBC last week, I commented on the pervasive intimidation of the MSM in Gaza, which is one of the reasons that there were none there when the hostilities broke out. I pointed out that the last journalist resident in Gaza, Alan Johnston, now the editor in chief, only survived because he was so openly pro-Palestinian, and even he got kidnapped and brutalized.

“I’ll cut that out to spare you a law suit, my interviewer said. You’re impugning the integrity of a journalist, and without his credibility he can’t practice his profession.” I was at once struck by the combination of concern for reputation and shamelessness involved in such a “favor” to me.

But here’s the BBC, used as human shields by Hamas, and they won’t let the public know

The story gets much worse and Richard's post should be read in its entirety.  The abject cowardice of the BBC and the media is on proud display in their reporting from the Middle East.  They have no problem speaking "truth to power" when they know full well there will be minimal if any consequences.  That is bad enough; however, the BBC and much of its allies in the MSM, like the Palestinians, attempt to brazenly make a virtue out of their cowardice.  Not only are they not craven, they are bravely standing up to the Israeli war machine and for the rights of the Palestinians (who have endangered their lives and leveraged the BBC's cowardice for propaganda purposes.)

In our new inverted world we treat our enemy's cowards as heroes and ignore our own heroes.  It is a tragic commentary that American and allied heroes of the war on Islamist terror are unknown (to the MSM) while the monsters they protect us from are lionized by our media.