The civilized world contracts

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
"A Violent Forcing of the Frog" by Hieronymus Bosch

“A Violent Forcing of the Frog” by Hieronymus Bosch

Is evil something concrete, or is it just the absence of good? Does it make sense in any way to say that the devil exists?

It seems to me that the answers to these questions are not reassuring. The actions of the “Islamic State,” or whatever name the Islamic horde that is murdering and raping its way through Iraq as you read this calls itself, make me think that (to use an expression favored by the similar savages of Hamas) the gates of Hell have opened.

I think of the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch when I see the unspeakably horrible photographs and videos from Iraq and Syria. I won’t reprint them in my blog, but you can find them easily.

It’s simple: Christians can convert, leave or die. The Yazidi sect, who are considered “devil worshipers” by the IS, seem to have fewer choices. Shiites do poorly as well.

As has ever been the case with messy third-world genocides, the West wrings its hands to some extent, but does nothing. There are huge “anti-genocide” demonstrations in Europe and many cities in North America, but they are all about Gaza, in support of Hamas, which would emulate the IS if only it had the ability to do so.

By the way, there are three times as many Palestinian Arabs today than in 1970. Some genocide.

Who can deny that so many humans, especially young males, have a compulsion to destroy, to wreck, to kill? Civilization tries to sublimate this desire into productive activity, or at least use it for defensive military purposes. Failing that, violent individuals are incarcerated or otherwise prevented from living out their desire. The uncivilized leaders of the Islamic State use this violence as a weapon to sow fear and prepare the way for their advance. Maybe they also enjoy the international ‘respect’ that their brutality gets them.

Much of the Middle East will soon be homogeneously Muslim. Countries that haven’t had any Jews since 1950 soon won’t have any Christians either. Israel is one of the few places in the region where Christians can live safely today.

Extreme violence is not the only ugly human proclivity that we could do without. Another is the stupidity that it seems to engender in its intended victims, especially those from more developed cultures which are physically capable of fighting back. So the Europeans busy themselves excoriating Israel for killing a few hundred Gazan Arabs while trying to defend itself against the IS-type massacre that Hamas would perpetrate with its rockets and tunnels, while the armies of the Prophet (metaphorically and actually) advance inexorably toward their own heartlands.

Nothing would make them happier than seeing the Jews suffer. Who do they think they are, to enjoy a good economy and a high birthrate, indeed to be among the happiest people on earth? Don’t they understand that they are Jews, who deserve to be expelled from the countries where they live by sufferance, have their property stolen, and perhaps be exterminated? No, they don’t — except for the Israeli Left, which agrees with the Europeans.

It could be too late for Europe now, which may not be able to overcome the demographic pressure from its rapidly growing Muslim population. Its embrace of Jew-hatred is the last twitch of a mortally wounded beast. The US is withdrawing from the struggle, at least unless a major terror attack brings it back (although the response could be the opposite, given the leadership vacuum there), so there will be little or no help from across the Atlantic.

Israel is holding its own, despite the pressure on its borders and the lack of support from abroad. It’s possible that it will end up the last outpost of civilization in Europe and the Mideast. Wouldn’t that be ironic?

Posted in Islam | 1 Comment

The moral imperative is to survive

Posted on August 8, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

I have been a ‘real’ Israeli again (one who lives here) for three days, so here are a few impressions of some things that have changed in 26 years and one which hasn’t.

One thing striking me over and over is the way things like government and private services have become so much more efficient. A visit to the Interior Ministry used to be an all-day affair, and sometimes they would give you a number and tell you to come back the next day. The other day, we walked in, waited a few minutes, and came out with the appropriate documents in a few more minutes. The clerk was helpful and friendly. Bezeq (the former telephone monopoly, world-famous then for wait times measured in months) agreed to come this Sunday to hook up our phone and Internet service. We already have working cellphones with new numbers and decent 3G service, for way less than we were paying in the US. Of course, this stands out even more compared with the precipitous decline in every kind of service in the US in the past few years.

But one thing is as bad or worse than ever: what Israelis call hamatzav — the (security) situation.

It is true that we haven’t come under rocket fire yet. Yesterday the most recent ceasefire was broken by a barrage of about 60 rockets, but they didn’t come as far north as Rehovot. For people in the towns and kibbutzim near Gaza, as well as the cities of Ashkelon and Beersheva, it was back to the shelters. In fact, the army told residents that had left some of the locations closer to Gaza who had temporarily left their homes that it was safe to return; but when what should have been predictable happened, they found themselves spending the day (and night) in shelters.

Some of them were interviewed on the TV news last night. One expressed what most of them were feeling: it is impossible to live like this. It has been going on for almost fourteen years! They understand that we can’t allow the fanatics of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to succeed in depopulating the area around Gaza, but come on — how can this be allowed to continue? How long do Jews in the Jewish state have to let racist Islamic fanatics try to murder them on an almost daily basis? I know it is a cliché, but what would any other country do?

Israel agreed to the latest ceasefire, supposed to last for 72 hours, and part of the agreement was that it would remove its forces from Gaza. Numerous sophisticated tunnels which had been dug under the border to allow terrorists to infiltrate Israel and attack soldiers and civilians have been destroyed, but it is generally thought that there are still tunnels that have not been found. It is also certain that a large number of rockets with various ranges, probably including the ones that can threaten Ben-Gurion Airport, remain.

Hamas is demanding that borders be opened and even that it have a seaport. Of course this would permit the importation of even more rockets and other weapons from Iran. At this point Hamas does not represent an existential threat to Israel, but — especially combined with the much larger and more sophisticated arsenal of Hizballah in Lebanon — there would be much more to worry about.

Meanwhile the debate in Israel continues about what to do. Because Hamas’ installations in Gaza are embedded in the civilian population, destroying them from the air would result in a large number of noncombatant deaths. Despite the fact that this is permissible according to the international law of war, it is repugnant to Israelis, and of course would result in international condemnation and pressure on Israel.

The alternative is a ground invasion to root out the Hamas infrastructure, which would be much more costly in casualties to Israel, since Hamas will boobytrap structures and fortifications, lay ambushes, place mines, etc. There would be fewer casualties among Gaza residents, but experience shows that exaggerated figures would be published which would be accepted by world media.

Diplomatic solutions like those of John Kerry simply do not exist, because there is no offer that can be made to Hamas that is better than what they are doing now. Their reason for being — read the charter — is to destroy Israel. They are not interested in a better life for the residents of Gaza.

For various reasons — nobody wants war, there is pressure from the US — the easy way out is to do as little as possible in order to maintain quiet. So far this has been the alternative chosen by the government. As long as Hamas is cut off from resupply, this is tolerable. But the ‘international community’, which is practically (if not in principle) supporting Hamas, is pushing harder and harder to ‘rebuild’ Gaza for ‘humanitarian’ purposes. Can we trust any international guarantees to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its military capabilities if borders are opened?

As I hinted above there is a real danger to the Jewish state from a combined assault from the north and south. Hizballah has tens of thousands of missiles and rockets, including accurate GPS guided ones, and almost certainly chemical weapons from Syria. Their fighters are well-trained (much better than Hamas) and they doubtless have built a system of tunnels under the border like Hamas, tunnels which have yet to be discovered.

Hamas is not going away by itself, Hizballah is not going away by itself, and behind them stands Iran, whose officials have said several times that Israel will be destroyed by local forces. I think we should take their threats seriously.

There is no perfect solution. There isn’t even a good one. There is only a choice between bad and worse.

The moral imperative is to survive, not to commit suicide. Hamas must be destroyed, whatever it takes.

Posted in War | 1 Comment

Hamas, a resistant strain of pathogen

Posted on August 3, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

As my faithful readers know, tomorrow I expect to board a flight from Los Angeles to Israel, with a one-way ticket and enough household stuff in 6 suitcases and duffel bags for my wife and myself to survive for the month or so it will take the rest of our goods (presently in a container on a ship in the East China sea) to follow us. So this blog will be quiet for a few days while we get the new World Headquarters of Abu Yehuda organized in Rehovot.

Possibly by the time I get there, the government’s Gaza strategy will be more clear. Today much of the IDF in Gaza is withdrawing, while other units are continuing to destroy tunnels. It has been announced that Israel will not participate in any ceasefire talks with Hamas, and that the operation will continue. But it seems clear that there isn’t going to be a thrust at Hamas’ heart.

It looks as though the plan, once the tunnel threat is eliminated, is to allow Hamas to continue firing rockets while Israel hits back at launchers from the air. Ultimately Hamas will run out of rockets and will lose more and more of its personnel and infrastructure. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers will be out of harm’s way — safe, especially, from capture — and Iron Dome will keep the rockets from doing more than ‘acceptable’ damage.

In other words, Israel wants to turn the conflict into a war of attrition against Hamas, held at arms length for weeks while it is battered to a pulp by air strikes and artillery.

It might work, given several conditions:

1. The tunnel threat is completely neutralized. The danger from even one tunnel that is not detected — the kidnapping of Israelis or a mass-casualty terror attack — is very great.

2. Hamas will not get lucky with one or more of its rockets.

3. The US and other players can be kept at bay. A recent remarkably stupid State Department statement (one analyst called it a “near-hysterical press release” couched in “intemperate and irresponsible language”) makes one wonder.

I can understand the desire to avoid further IDF casualties. The problem is that if this strategy doesn’t work, if the inevitable ‘humanitarian’ rebuilding of Gaza allows a still-living Hamas to spring back like an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, then the next round will be uglier than this one. This time, the tunnels were almost a game-changer. Next time it might be chemical or radioactive warheads, or missiles with multiple warheads that Iron Dome can’t intercept. Who knows?

Whether Hamas will be crushed by a massive, expensive blow — which also raises the tough question of what will replace it in control of Gaza — or whether the IDF will try to wear it down to the point that it can be forced to give up the arms it has left, one thing is certain: any ending that doesn’t both totally disarm Hamas and ensure that it can’t rearm will guarantee an even more vicious conflict next time.

Posted in War | 2 Comments

Kill the cancerous UN

Posted on July 31, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Soldiers of Israel's Maglan unit in a training exercise

Soldiers of Israel’s Maglan unit in a training exercise

News item:

Three soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces’ elite Maglan unit were killed Wednesday by an explosion that took place as their unit was inspecting a tunnel entry shaft discovered in an UNRWA clinic in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis. Fourteen soldiers were wounded in the incident.

This hurts in a personal way. Maglan is my son’s unit, with which he served in the late 1990’s. He still does reserve duty with some of the same soldiers who went through the training cycle — one of the toughest in the IDF — together. Maglan isn’t as well-known as some of the other special forces units like the Sayeret Matcal, but it is always in the thick of the fighting. In 2002, its commander, Dror Weinberg, was killed in a vicious firefight with terrorists in Hevron, and it lost several of its members in the Second Lebanon War.

So here is yet another case of UN — UNRWA — facilities being used by terrorists, following three cases in which rockets were found stored in UNRWA schools. Karen McQuillan has assembled a few facts about UNRWA:

UNRWA — the UN Agency dedicated solely to helping Palestinian “refugees” — has 30,000 employees; all but 200 are Palestinian.  And we, the U.S. taxpayer, support them with almost a quarter of a billion dollars a year!  … [The US is the single largest donor to UNRWA, paying about 1/3 the total cost. The EU is the second largest].

Since there are only 30,000 Palestinians alive today who were displaced by the Arab war against Israeli in 1948, that’s a one to one staff to refugee ratio.  Of course, for the Palestinians there’s a special definition of being a refugee and qualifying for money — no it’s not for life, it’s for the generations, and it makes no matter if you become the citizen of another country. (2 million Palestinian ‘refugees” became citizens of Jordan.)  It doesn’t matter how much you earn, or if you own a mansion.

We are now supporting the fourth generation of Palestinians.  They need only have one-eighth of a connection to Israel, that is, one great-grandparent who once worked in Israel (not lived there, worked there – and part time counts). They are still entitled to your money.  The U.N. even defines Palestinians as refugees who always lived on the Arab side of the 1949 armistice line.  There are supposedly 5 million Palestinians whom we owe.

In contrast, U.N. international staffing for all other refugee services in the world is less than 6,000 people – that’s for  126 countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and in Africa – where there are genuine refugees in need of emergency food and housing.  The most staff any one country gets is 437.  Yes, 437 compared to 29,800 for Palestinians.  Other people only get to be called refugees until they are resettled somewhere.

Naturally, Palestinian refugees receive larger stipends when they have more children, a recipe for exponential growth. And  UNRWA schools teach them that their future is not in assimilation or even in the creation of an independent Palestinian state, but rather in ‘return’ (all 5 million of them) to the land that is now Israel. How is this anything but a recipe for future war?

UNRWA is highly politicized and maintains only the thinnest pretense of impartiality. Most, if not all, of its Gaza employees support Hamas. Even if some of them are opposed to terrorism, they would be crazy to try to prevent Hamas from using their facilities as they wish.

UNRWA, like the several other UN agencies dedicated to supporting the Muslim nations’ war against the Jewish state, exists in its present form because the UN itself is controlled and corrupted by those nations. Joshua Muravchik explains how the UN, which recommended the creation of a Jewish state in 1947, became its deadly enemy:

How did it all turn around so dramatically? During its early decades, in the aftermath of World War II, when American power and prestige was high, the US largely dominated the UN.

Washington pressured its European allies to relinquish their empires, and the UN pushed decolonization. Thus were scores of new nations born in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The UN grew from 51 to 193 members.

Many formed the Non-Aligned Movement. Originally this meant non-aligned in the Cold War, but NAM did not disappear with that conflict. Today it has 120 members, thus controlling every UN body except the Security Council where the “Permanent Five” hold vetoes.

Fifty-seven of the NAM’s 120 members are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, meaning that the OIC dominates the NAM. And the core of the OIC is the 22-strong Arab League. Thus, through telescoping leverage have the Arab states turned the UN into a kind of crusade organization against Israel.

Today Israel is in the front line of the struggle between those who accept the Western ideal of free, democratic, religiously tolerant societies with equal rights for all, and those who believe that the seventh-century vision of Islam — unfree, undemocratic, intolerant and based on a hierarchy of rights in which the Muslim male rules all others — is the proper form of human society.

That is ultimately what those rockets Hamas is launching are about. If Israel falls, any hope of saving the Middle East from division into Sunni and Shiite Islamist caliphates is doomed. The survival of Western civilization itself will be in question.

The UN, which was created as a result of the horrors of 20th century world wars as a way to ensure peace in the future, has become something entirely different. Today it is no more or less than the diplomatic wing of the Islamic jihad that is moving aggressively against the West in the military sphere as well.

It’s past time to kill this cancer that we have been feeding. I suggest that those UN agencies that perform valuable functions — the World Health Organization, for example — and that have not already been turned into political weapons, be spun off as independent organizations that will be beholden to their funders and not under control of UN bureaucracy. The rest of it should be left to die — including UNRWA.

 

Posted in The UN | 1 Comment

Moving to Israel for moral clarity

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
Anti-Israel demonstration in Seattle, July 12, 2014 (courtesy The Mike Report)

Anti-Israel demonstration in Seattle, July 12, 2014 (courtesy The Mike Report)

As you can see from the counter at the top right of this page (right under the Abu Yehuda logo), I will be returning to live in Israel in a few days, after 26 years in California. A few weeks ago, when it wasn’t clear that the Iron Dome system would work as well as it has, I was hearing remarks like “hmm, is this a good time?” or “don’t forget to duck.” But these have stopped. Now what I hear are comparative casualty numbers, and suggestions that maybe Israel is going a bit too far, and maybe Israel should try harder to fight a war without hurting anybody.

Before I continue, because I really do want to talk about moving back to Israel, here are a few things to keep in mind about the unequal casualty figures:

1. Palestinian numbers come from Palestinian sources beholden to Hamas, and are wildly exaggerated.
2. Hamas counts every Palestinian as a civilian and anyone less than about age 20 as a ‘child’.
3. Analysis based on lists of names from Palestinian sources, information about funerals, from Facebook pages, etc., shows that about half of them are probably combatants. This is supported by age and sex distributions (most casualties are males of fighting age, despite the fact that half of all Gazans are women and 34% of them are under the age of 15).
4. Hamas does its best to prevent Gaza residents from obeying IDF warnings to leave areas that will be bombed. This is a war crime.
5. The tunnels and fortifications that Hamas has built are used to shelter fighters, rockets and weapons — not civilians.
6. Israel has spent billions on a missile defense system and shelters for its people. Hamas has spent zero and deliberately launches rockets and fires mortars from places where civilians, especially children, are found (another war crime).
7. Many Hamas rockets fall short or misfire, causing deaths and destruction in Gaza.
8. A ratio of 1 civilian to 1 combatant casualty in close urban warfare is equal to or superior than the record of other Western armies, including NATO and the US in recent wars.

So I am tired of hearing about the ‘genocidal’ behavior of the IDF for which these numbers are supposedly evidence. They are not — they actually point to the very great care that the IDF is taking to protect innocents while fighting a defensive war that it had no choice but to fight.

I am sick of reading this ugly lie in letters to the editor, hearing it implied if not made explicit in news reports. I am disgusted by the anti-Israel demonstrations that veer into Jew-hatred that is supposedly justified by Israel’s ‘brutality’ and ‘disproportionate’ actions.

And I am beyond exasperation when it is announced that our President is “increasingly concerned” by the number of “innocent Gazans” hurt, and — as always — wants to stop the fighting before Israel wins a decisive victory.

In all this, what has been forgotten is the massive rocket barrage that Israel is parrying at great cost, a barrage aimed at civilian towns and cities (you guessed it: a war crime), not to mention the fact that Hamas started the war, rejecting or breaking 4 or 5 ceasefires along the way.

You can understand why, for example, groups like Students for Justice in Palestine don’t give these facts much play. But one would hope that the White House and the State Department might get it; and sadly, they don’t (see here and here).

And therefore in addition to my desire to live in Israel where most of my children and grandchildren live, where it’s possible to feel comfortable as a Jew in so many ways, and where Jewish holidays are national holidays, there’s the moral clarity of knowing that my nation is on the right side in the struggle for civilization against barbarism. There is the feeling that my Prime Minister, who is less than perfect in many ways, can at least tell the difference between good and evil.

Maybe it’s easier to see from Jerusalem than from Washington.

Posted in Jew Hatred, US-Israel Relations, War | 3 Comments

An exercise in Obamical exegesis

Posted on July 28, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

Yesterday, President Obama telephoned PM Netanyahu. I’m going to try to explicate the White House ‘readout’ of the call so that non-diplomats can understand it.

It seems to me that he proposes a three-stage process: an immediate ceasefire, a medium-term amelioration of conditions in Gaza, and a long-term ‘solution’ to the conflict. While the demands of Hamas are met in the second stage, Israel’s needs are left for the last one.

President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke again today by phone about the situation in Gaza.  The President underscored the United States’ strong condemnation of Hamas’ rocket and tunnel attacks against Israel and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself.

This is the ritualistic incantation of his inherent pro-Israelness. It is abstract, not concrete: it is intended to reassure his pro-Israel constituents and does not imply any specific actions.

The President also reiterated the United States’ serious and growing concern about the rising number of Palestinian civilian deaths and the loss of Israeli lives, as well as the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza.

He expresses his feeling that innocent people are getting hurt, but he separates Palestinian and Israeli deaths and mentions Palestinian ones first. He decries the “worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza” but he doesn’t mention the effects on Israel of the sustained rocket barrage and other terrorism emanating from Gaza.

Building on Secretary Kerry’s efforts, the President made clear the strategic imperative of instituting an immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire that ends hostilities now and leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities based on the November 2012 ceasefire agreement.

This is the first stage. He wants the all military activity to stop in place, now. He does not mention Israel’s concern about the imminent danger from tunnels (the 2012 agreement simply calls for an end to hostilities with other issues to be dealt with later). Presumably negotiations will follow in which Israel and Hamas’ concerns will be taken up.

The President reaffirmed the United States’ support for Egypt’s initiative, as well as regional and international coordination to end hostilities.

He is saying that other parties in addition to Egypt should be involved in the negotiations. Based on the mention of “Secretary Kerry’s efforts” in the previous quotation, I assume he means the US, UN, EU, Arab League, the PA, Turkey and Qatar, all of which are mentioned in Kerry’s draft proposal . Turkey and Qatar are the major backers of Hamas, and none of the others are particularly friendly to Israel.

The President underscored the enduring importance of ensuring Israel’s security, protecting civilians, alleviating Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, and enacting a sustainable ceasefire that both allows Palestinians in Gaza to lead normal lives and addresses Gaza’s long-term development and economic needs, while strengthening the Palestinian Authority.

This seems to be the intermediate-term goal, after the initial end of hostilities. There is a single mention of Israel’s security, and then a longer, more detailed, nod to Hamas’ demands (opening crossings, paying salaries, lifting the blockade). The emphasis is clearly on conditions in Gaza, and it’s hard to avoid feeling that he’s thinking much more about this than about Israel’s 13-year experience with rockets. There is no suggestion that Hamas give up its rockets or other weapons.

The President stressed the U.S. view that, ultimately, any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the demilitarization of Gaza.

Finally we arrive at the third stage, when we “ultimately” develop a “lasting solution” to the conflict.

Only at this point does he talk about disarming terrorists and demilitarizing Gaza!

The implication is that this will take place as part of a complete solution, which I presume he envisages as including the creation of a Palestinian state, etc. For reasons which should be abundantly clear by now, this is not likely to happen in any of our lifetimes.

Israelis are not willing to continue fighting a war every several years, each time against a more sophisticated enemy with a larger arsenal of more effective rockets. A ceasefire which does not include concrete steps to take away the rockets and other weapons, destroy all attack tunnels, and provide mechanisms to ensure that the terrorists do not rearm would render Israel’s heavy sacrifices in this conflict worthless. The ‘rebuilding’ of Gaza that would take place in Obama’s second stage would include (probably primarily comprise) the rebuilding of Hamas’ offensive capabilities.

No ceasefire plan that does not include concrete steps to disarm the terrorists as soon as possible can be accepted by Israel. Obama places the satisfaction of Hamas’ demands — couched in the language of humanitarianism but practically enabling the strengthening of its military capabilities — ahead of Israel’s security concerns, which are relegated to the hoped-for future alluded to by the third stage.

The only alternative that Israel has is to keep fighting until Hamas and the other factions are effectively neutralized or until the international community proposes a ceasefire plan that provides for their effective and speedy disarmament.

If Obama and others really care about the fate of Gaza residents, they will support that kind of ceasefire.

Posted in Terrorism, US-Israel Relations, War | 4 Comments

Kerry, come quick! The Jews are winning!

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal

ceasefire draft
The draft of a ceasefire agreement developed by John Kerry and Hamas supporters Turkey and Qatar — without input from Israel, Egypt or the PA — and presented to Israel on Friday, is precisely as bad as was reported yesterday.

It allows Hamas to keep its rockets and tunnels (they are not mentioned) and grants Hamas most of its demands. It does not suggest that Hamas will pay any penalty for its aggression and war crimes; indeed it will be rewarded.

It’s interesting that the word “Hamas” doesn’t even appear. “The Palestinian factions” are not listed, probably because some of them are designated as terrorist entities by the US and other nations, and “payment of salaries of public employees,” skates close to financing terrorism — something prohibited by US and international law (h/t: SB).

Of course this proposal was not accepted by Israel. If it is allowed to continue, Israel will destroy the remaining tunnels and rocket launchers and possibly even bring down the Hamas government. It will take at least a few weeks, and during this time there will be an accelerating humanitarian crisis in which the civilian population of Gaza will suffer enormously. Israel, too, will suffer casualties.

For that reason, an end to the fighting is desirable. But an agreement to end it must do more than provide Hamas with a respite to rebuild its tunnels and restock its rocket warehouses. It must effectively provide for the disarmament of Hamas and for the punishment of Hamas leaders who are guilty of war crimes.

Participation in the process of ending the conflict should be limited to the countries that are directly affected by conditions in Gaza: Israel, Egypt and the PA (perhaps also Jordan). Turkey and Qatar have no more place at the table than New Zealand. Why should they?

The UN, John Kerry, various governments and media that have expressed anguish over the humanitarian situation should realize that this is the best hope to end the conflict and save innocent lives.

But if they persist in demanding that Israel surrender to aggression, then they bear the responsibility for the suffering of innocents no less than the Hamas war criminals that precipitated it.

Posted in Terrorism, War | 1 Comment

Shame on Kerry: US comes down on side of Hamas

Posted on July 26, 2014 by Victor Rosenthal
John Kerry gets together with Foreign Ministers of Qatar and Turkey to produce Hamas-friendly cease fire proposal

John Kerry gets together with Foreign Ministers of Qatar and Turkey to produce Hamas-friendly cease fire proposal

This is absolutely incredible (or, sadly, maybe not). Let me quote Ha’aretz diplomatic writer Barak Ravid, anything but a right-winger:

The draft [cease fire agreement] Kerry passed to Israel on Friday shocked the cabinet ministers not only because it was the opposite of what Kerry told them less than 24 hours earlier, but mostly because it might as well have been penned by Khaled Meshal. It was everything Hamas could have hoped for.

The document recognized Hamas’ position in the Gaza Strip, promised the organization billions in donation funds and demanded no dismantling of rockets, tunnels or other heavy weaponry at Hamas’ disposal. The document placed Israel and Hamas on the same level, as if the first is not a primary U.S. ally and as if the second isn’t a terror group which overtook part of the Palestinian Authority in a military coup and fired thousands of rockets at Israel. …

The secretary of state’s draft empowered the most radical and problematic elements in the region – Qatar, Turkey, and Hamas – and was a slap on the face to the rapidly forming camp of Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, who have many shared interests. What Kerry’s draft spells for the internal Palestinian political arena is even direr: It crowns Hamas and issues Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a death warrant.

This is so upside-down that it defies parody. The biggest war criminals on the planet launch an unprovoked attack against Israel’s civilian population, fire hundreds of rockets from behind the skirts of their own civilians and prepare a mass-casualty terrorist attack that would rival anything al-Qaeda has been able to pull off. They are stopped only by Israel’s virtually miraculous technology and actually miraculous good luck.

So Israel sends its people’s army into battle, rips thousands of reservists away from their families and their jobs, and starts grinding the enemy down at great cost. Some of its young men — and some not-so-young ones — will never go home from this war. Tens of thousands of Israelis attend the funerals of two Jewish youths that came to Israel from the safe haven of the US to fight for their people.

Then along comes the Secretary of State of the United States of America, a representative of the President who brags about the “unbreakable bond” between his country and Israel. But instead of offering the Hamas leadership a trip to The Hague where they would be tried and imprisoned or executed for their crimes against humanity, he conspires with Hamas’ greatest supporters to reward them.

Instead of telling them that either they can surrender or his country will stay out of the way while Israel crushes them like the venomous insects that they are, he tries to throw Hamas a lifeline.

Instead of supporting the historic (if temporary) alignment of Israel, Egypt, the PA, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Islamic radicalism, he cleaves to the side of Hamas and the forces of jihad.

ISIS recently announced that Christians in Mosul had the options to convert to Islam, flee or die. Most fled and were relieved of their possessions on the way out. Hamas is slightly less radical in action, but the ideology is the same. Is this what Kerry and Obama think the US stands for?

The Israeli cabinet told Kerry unanimously that the proposal was a non-starter. We already saw the stick that is being used along with the carrot of military aid, when the FAA banned flights to Ben-Gurion Airport in order to pressure Israel. Apparently domestic politics forced the administration to back down, but certainly it has other sticks in reserve. Israel would do well to learn to live without US military aid.

Meanwhile, shame on John Kerry and Barack Obama. Can this be the policy the American people want? I don’t think so.

Posted in US-Israel Relations, War | 3 Comments