FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

I’m sometimes asked “why doesn’t Israel simply talk to Hamas?” The short answer is “you can’t compromise on existence”. Here’s a longer one.

Why There’s a Hamas-Israel War
By Barry Rubin

The deliberate murder of eight and the wounding of nine Israeli rabbinical students in Jerusalem only highlights the fact that Hamas is at war with Israel. It is, from Hamas’s view, a war that will never end until Israel is exterminated and its citizens killed or expelled. No other analysis is accurate or can explain what is happening.

First, the fact that it is a war must be understood. The Gaza Strip is technically not a state, yet is functioning as one. The Gaza government of the radical Islamist Hamas has declared war on Israel. The war’s purpose is not to free Gaza from occupation, nor is it a defensive war in response to Israeli attacks.

The goal–openly and daily declared by Hamas in media and speeches, teaching in schools and sermons in mosques–is a long-term campaign to wipe Israel off the map and to kill or expel most of its citizens. There’s a word for this: genocide.

(more…)

In the library at Mercaz haRav yeshiva

In Gaza, they celebrated by giving out candy, as they always do when something bad happens to Jews. No surprise.

The BBC reported the events (and NPR rebroadcasted the BBC report), making sure to include a statement that the yeshiva was “…the ideological cradle of the settler movement in the West Bank”, and that its graduates often serve in combat units in the IDF, thus ‘explaining’ the murders. No surprise.

Mahmoud Abbas condemned the attack as he condemns “all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis”, although there are no attacks by Israel that ‘target’ Palestinian civilians. No surprise.

The UN security council was blocked from issuing a condemnation by Libya, which wants to also condemn Palestinian deaths in Gaza. Israel’s Ambassador Dan Gillerman said, correctly, “the UN has been infiltrated by terrorists”. No surprise.

The family of the “Israeli Arab” perpetrator (from East Jerusalem, like the Hebrew University bomber) put up flags of Hamas and Hezbollah around their house. No surprise.

And Condoleezza Rice called it “a terrorist attack which aims at foiling the peace efforts”. Also no surprise, and entirely wrong.

The view that there are ‘extremists’ who wish to stop the ‘peace process’ by terrorism who must be prevented from doing so — but not by Israel defending herself, because that would ‘feed the cycle’ — is nonsense.

There is no significant segment of the Palestinian population, and indeed, of the entire Arab world, which believes that there should be a Jewish state in the Mideast. None.

There are various factions whose views on what is the most effective way of destroying Israel differ. And they differ on when and how to use their best weapon, terrorism against civilians. The ‘peace process’ is an American creature in which one faction gets arms and financing which they will use to achieve their goal in their way, unless they are defeated by another faction who will take their resources to advance their (similar) goal.

Israel needs a government which will tell the US to go to hell. If the US feels that it has a better ally in the Mideast, so be it. Israel does not have to permit herself to be used as a sacrifice to solve American problems in Iraq.

Israel needs a government which will simply fight to protect its citizens, not tell them to sit still while their enemies — which the IDF could crush like the vermin that they are — sometimes randomly and sometimes carefully, pick their targets.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Merkaz haRav

Statement issued by the Islamic Jihad organization, after a bomb planted on the Israeli side of the Gaza border fence killed one IDF soldier:

We are sending our message to all the Zionist criminals,” he said. “Your threats to target the leaders of resistance… won’t scare us. We are going to continue our resistance and holy war, and we will continue to rain rockets on your colonies [Sderot, Ashkelon — all within pre-1967 Israel] until we make them ghost towns. — Jerusalem Post

Cartoon published in Qatari newspaper (more cartoons at ADL Website):

Statement of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority:

It’s very regrettable that what is happening is more than a holocaust. We tell the world to see with its own eyes and judge for itself what is happening and who is carrying out international terrorism — Ynet

Of the 130 or so Palestinians that were killed in the Gaza operation, the IDF claims that about 10% were civilians. Of course people like Abbas and pro-Hamas news agencies like the BBC or Reuters don’t believe the IDF, but it is a lot more reliable than the Palestinians who have been demonstrated time and again to simply make up civilian casualties and ‘massacres’.

Speaking of Massacres,

A Palestinian terrorist opened fire at a central Jerusalem yeshiva late Thursday night, killing eight students and wounding 10 others, police and rescue officials said.

The 8:45 p.m. shooting at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood broke a two-year lull in terror in the capital and sent students scurrying for cover from a hail of gunfire – a reported 500-600 bullets – that lasted for several minutes.

“There were horrendous screams of ‘Help us! Help us!'” recounted Avrahami Sheinberger of the ZAKA emergency rescue service, one of the first to respond to the scene. “There were bodies strewn all over the floor, at the entrance to the yeshiva, in various rooms and in the library.”

As security forces raced to the scene, the gunman fired round after round of ammunition into the library at the seminary, religious Zionism’s flagship institution. About 80 students had gathered in the library to celebrate the Hebrew month of Adar II, which begins on Friday evening. — Jerusalem Post

The Kiryat Moshe neighborhood is in West Jerusalem; it was founded in 1923. Not that the murders would be justified otherwise, but we need to understand that these scum wish to wipe out all Jewish presence in the Middle East. It’s not about ‘occupation’, it’s about killing Jews.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Massacres

Israel faces

1. Physical threats from Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, etc.
2. A political decision made in the US that the Palestinians may not be defeated, and
3. A growing internal threat:

(IsraelNN.com) Several thousand Arabs led by Arab nationalist Knesset members participated in a procession through the Israeli city of Umm el-Fahm near Megiddo Tuesday evening. The demonstration was held in protest of Israeli military operations in Gaza and involved incidents of rock throwing at Israeli cars.

The crowd chanted “Israel, the mother of terror” and held a sign that read “Stop the Zionazi” in English. Additional slogans were “Rest, O martyr, we will complete the task,” “Warm blessings to the rock children,” as well as the standard “With blood and spirit, we will redeem Palestine.” The participants held Syrian and PLO flags. Some of them covered their faces with keffiyehs, or traditional headdresses, in the manner of terrorist thugs.

Arab Knesset members from several factions spoke to the crowd and reviled Israel for what they called “the massacre in Gaza.” The speakers also justified the rocket fire on Israel and insisted it was a reaction to Israeli actions.

For some reason, it is considered irresponsible for an Israeli politician to mention problems no. 2 or no. 3 above.

It’s forbidden to protest against US interference in Israeli policy — interference which always comes about to prevent the final defeat of Israel’s enemies — whether it’s Egypt and Syria in 1973, the PLO in 1982 or Hamas today. This intervention is always done in the name of peace, but in fact leads to continued war. The dependency on the US has gone far beyond what’s healthy, and as US interests are perceived to diverge from those of Israel, the consequences for Israel grow worse. The growing rapprochement between the US and Iran is an example.

And it’s forbidden to mention the disquieting fact that a large proportion of “Israeli Arabs” are disloyal to the Jewish state that they live in. Not that this is surprising (for many reasons), but it is a fact and a fact that will become significant in the event of a wider war. But anyone who says this is accused of racism, of wanting to complete the nakba or to commit genocide.

Technorati Tags: Israel

It’s hard to keep on top of this.

The IDF has left Gaza, although they say that “operations will continue”. Palestinians have suffered about 110 killed; according to the IDF, the great majority were Hamas guerrillas. Israel has lost two soldiers. The IDF uncovered large quantities of weapons and explosives.

The much-vaunted “Hezbollah-like” fortifications, weapons and tactics apparently did not pose a big problem to the IDF.

Hamas has claimed victory; a spokesman said that the IDF was unable to defeat their fighters and so chose to massacre civilians. Total nonsense, but their friends believe it.

Rocket fire, both Qassams and Grad missiles, is continuing.

The fact that the IDF withdrew so quickly without achieving what had to be the major objective — stopping the rocket fire — means that the Israeli government has given in to pressure from the US.

This appears to have been a relatively clean military operation with minimal civilian casualties, given the fact that Hamas was deliberately fighting from civilian areas. Nevertheless, Israel was not permitted to fight.

The terrorist news organizations BBC and Reuters continue to support Hamas. I’m not going to include links; you can find them if you care.

The good news: the IDF has learned the lessons of the 2006 war and is prepared to deal with whatever Hamas and probably Hezbollah can throw at it.

The bad: the Israeli government cannot even minimally stand up to US pressure. More than any other factor, this imperils the state.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza