FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

As everyone knows, the so-called ‘cease-fire’ agreement with Hamas has been broken numerous times since its inception on June 19.  In every case, Hamas has denied responsibility, with Islamic Jihad and Fatah (our moderate friends) being the usual suspects. Hamas has called the violators ‘criminals’. That hasn’t seemed to stop them.

Israel has responded by closing and reopening crossings. When they are closed, Hamas screams bloody murder about how Gaza residents are being strangled, something that is eminently untrue. Meanwhile, Israelis living in the Western Negev area remain quite literally under the gun.

Hamas has occupied itself by improving its military capability.

…Hamas is feverishly training as well as acquiring relevant weapons systems – of a type far superior in quality to those previously associated with the organization.

The weapons systems on which Hamas is thought to be currently training in the Gaza Strip include a wire-guided anti-tank missile, probably the AT-3 Sagger, and additional anti-tank guided missiles: the AT-4 Spigot, the tripod-fired AT-5 Spandrel and the shoulder-fired AT-14 Spriggan – all useful against armor. All these systems have ranges of several kilometers.

In addition, Hamas is thought to have brought into Gaza large numbers of RPG-29 Vampir handheld anti-tank grenade launchers with a range of 500 meters, which are capable of penetrating reactive armor and are considered far superior to the RPG 7 systems used by the movement in the past.

Hamas is also developing improvised explosive devices, i.e. bombs. The organization possesses an Iranian-developed, locally-produced system known as the Shawaz explosively-formed penetrator that it says can penetrate 20 cm. of steel [such devices have wreaked havoc in Iraq — ed.]. Hamas also claims to possess air defense missiles, though no information could be obtained on their nature or the veracity of the claim. Imports from Iran and Syria and local production are all playing a role in the movement’s development of its arsenal.

In addition to arming Gaza to the teeth, Hamas is recruiting fresh fighters. Once again, the model is Hizbullah, and the intention appears to be to develop a force part-way between a regular army and a guerrilla force, of the type developed under Iranian tutelage by the Shi’ite Lebanese group. Extensive recruitment has been taking place in the past month. New fighters have been accepted to both the Izzadin Kassam Brigades – Hamas’s long-standing military wing, and to the Executive Force – the newer group created since Hamas’s election victory in January 2006. — Jonathan Speyer, “Fortress Gaza“

At the same time, ‘progress’ is being made in the direction of unifying the Palestinian Authority, bringing Fatah and Hamas together. In an editorial today, the Jerusalem Post writes,

It may yet take months, but there is every likelihood that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will ultimately reconcile his Fatah movement with Hamas, an interim government of “technocrats” will be formed, and new Palestinian elections will be held.

Abbas was in Damascus on Sunday and Monday to discuss those prospects of reconciliation with President Bashar Assad, who is pushing for Palestinian unity. Arab leaders, though jostling for relative influence, want to see Palestinian factions form a united front…

While Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria keeps Hamas’s military wing in check, Hamas’s leaders prepare for the day when they will take control of the PA. Despite intensive well-funded Western efforts channeled through Abbas supporters to strengthen Palestinian civil society, a vast network of Hamas-affiliated social welfare organizations, supported by donations from throughout the Muslim world, boosts the popularity of an already admired organization. The IDF is expanding its efforts to close Hamas’s West Bank institutions and confiscate their property – really a job the PA should have done.

It is hard to believe that anyone – not US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, and certainly not Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – has any illusions about what would happen to Abbas and Fatah were the IDF to withdraw from the West Bank.

As Abbas’s prospects dim – a Ramallah judicial body unilaterally “extended” his term beyond January 2009 – Fatah needs the legitimacy unity would bring. And for Hamas, unity is the road to controlling the West Bank.

A Palestinian Authority government that included Hamas would be the end of Israel’s attempt to isolate Hamas internationally. And there is no doubt that such an unstable entity would quickly tilt in the direction of Hamas. Even the direct support of the US has not been enough to improve Fatah’s position, and the huge quantity of weapons being supplied to them now will ultimately be in the hands of a Hamas-dominated PA.

This blog, as well as many more authoritative commentators, opposed the truce for these reasons. We argued that there was no preventing an eventual confrontation with Hamas, which has shown no intention to moderate its radical position calling for the destruction of Israel.

We argued that Israel could have and should have mounted a large enough incursion into Gaza to cut off the weapons smuggling across the Egyptian border, and to destroy Hamas’ war-making capability, and its leadership.

Those of you who are reading this and thinking “bloody right-wing warmonger” should use their remaining brain cells to consider whether that action would have led to a greater or smaller number of dead Israelis and Arabs than the coming conflict between Israel and a Hamas which controls the West Bank as well as Gaza.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Fatah, cease-fire, Gaza, West Bank

The interpretation of polls is not as easy as it looks. For example, a recent poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes [PIPA] at the University of Maryland asked the following question:

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, do you think [country] should take Israel’s side, take the Palestinians’ side, or not take either side?

21% of Americans chose Israel’s side, 3% chose the Palestinians’, and 71% said that the US should not take sides in the conflict.

Some observers immediately concluded that Americans don’t actually support Israel as much as had been thought. Some said that this shows that the US should take a more ‘even-handed’ approach (implying that current policy is somehow unfair to Israel’s enemies).

For example, here is how Al-Arabiya spun the results:

Even Americans overwhelmingly said their government should not take sides.

In a finding that goes against the common assumption that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, seven out of ten Americans said they thought their country should not take sides in the conflict. Of the rest, 21 percent said it should take Israel’s side compared to only 3 percent who supported taking the Palestinians side… [my emphasis]

Americans, said [PIPA Director Steven] Kull, are unequivocal that U.S. policy needs to be even handed in dealing with the situation. “There is a discrepancy in this sense between the public and government foreign policy,” he added.

I don’t think so. I think the question is seriously flawed.

In American English, ‘taking sides’ has a very negative connotation. We are for fairness, and ‘taking sides’ is being unfair; being prejudiced. I think that if Americans were asked if their government should ‘take sides’ on almost any issue,  many would say no. Even the worst criminal deserves a fair trial.

We want our government to be fair, but that does not mean we don’t think that one side is not more worthy of support than the other. I’m willing to bet that most of that 71%, if asked, would have said “yes, we have to be fair to both sides, but the right thing to do is to support Israel”.

Kull’s reference to a “discrepancy…between the public and government foreign policy” suggests that the government is tilting toward Israel in opposition to what the public wants. Leaving aside the question of whether US policy really is tilted toward Israel (I’m prepared to argue that it is not), the poll results do not support this conclusion.

Now let me point out another area in which the poll is problematic. Just talking about the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” evokes pictures of Israeli tanks and stone-throwing Palestinians. But this is a focus so narrow as to distort the real nature of the conflict.

Suppose the question had been “which do you support, the continued existence of a Jewish state or the Iranian-sponsored destruction of it by the proxy armies of Hamas and Hezbollah?” then possibly the answer would have been even more interesting.

Technorati Tags: Israel, public opinion, PIPA, Steven Kull

Answer: not a hell of a lot.

Hitler and friends at the Hofbraühaus in Munich where the Beerhall Putsch took place in 1923

Prisoner Rehabilitated; Fifty Million Die
By Barry Rubin

Each day we’re told that radical Islamists, terrorists, and assorted extremists are going to moderate, so why not negotiate with them, appease them, defuse their grievances, have dialogue, and then everything will be okay.

But, those who are doubtful argue, shouldn’t we have learned from history that militant ideologies are not prone to compromise and ruthless dictators don’t change their stripes. You cannot appease them, they don’t go away; displays of weakness make them more aggressive.

Oh, no! Not the Nazi analogy again!

And yet what can you say when confronted with this New York Times headline of December 21, 1924:

“Hitler Tamed By Prison; Released on Parole, He Is Expected to Return to Austria.”

This is not a satire. See for yourself here [unfortunately the article is not free — ed.]

The correspondent explains that Hitler, once a demigod for the extreme right, was released on parole from the Landsberg fortress where he had been sent for trying to overthrow the democratic German government in what has come to be known as the Beerhouse [Beerhall] Putsch.

Prison, the article continues, seems to have moderated him. The authorities were convinced that he presented no further danger to the existing society. In fact, it was expected that he would abandon public life and return to his native land, Austria.

Well, that problem was certainly solved easily.

And also the Times learned its lesson, hasn’t it?

As the newspaper explained in a June 30 editorial:

“Few countries can afford the luxury of limiting their diplomacy to friendly countries and peace-loving parties. National security often requires negotiating with dangerous enemies.”

Right. And believing their protestations of moderation, making concessions to them, ending sanctions, blaming ourselves for problems, and never using force is the actual content of such negotiations.

Then the leaders of Hamas, Hizballah, Syria, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhoods, al-Qaida, North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, etc., will no doubt be tamed, abandon public life, and go back to their homes.

Henry Kissinger once told the joke — or at least is credited for doing so — that it is very easy to have the lion lay down with the lamb, as long as you put in a new lamb every day. Kissinger no doubt little expected at the time that this would become the democratic world’s favored strategy. No surprise that the main villain for the politically correct West is Israel, the lamb that refuses the honor.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), with Walter Laqueur (Viking-Penguin); the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan); A Chronological History of Terrorism, with Judy Colp Rubin, (Sharpe); and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley). To read and subscribe to MERIA and other GLORIA Center publications or to order books, visit http://www.gloriacenter.org.

Technorati Tags: Hitler, appeasement, NY Times, Islamism

 

Hero Moshe Plesser, immediately after shooting the terrorist

Today’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which an “Israeli Arab” driving a huge articulated loader (not a bulldozer) killed three people and injured tens more is nothing special, except for the murder weapon. But there was lots of human drama, like the mother throwing her baby out of a car window to safety before the massive bucket came down and crushed the life out of her, or the heroes that jumped up on the machine and struggled with the driver, the off-duty soldier Moshe Plesser finally shooting the terrorist to death as he yelled “Allahu Akhbar!”

For a good real-time account of the story, including video links, see IsraellyCool here.

Press reactions were the usual, with speculation about the ‘motives’ of the Arab construction worker, Husam Taysir Dwayat. Excuse me, what motivates an Arab to kill as many arbitrary Jews as he can and shout “Allahu Akhbar”, a concern for  peace, justice, and human rights?

His family and friends acted surprised. Husam was known as a drug dealer, but not a ‘political’ person, they said. Maybe he had been taunted by Jewish teenagers and just ‘lost it’, they suggested.

But Palestinians understood and cheered. Elder of Ziyon presents some Palestinian reactions to news reports. It was a big hit with them.

The Hebrew University bomber, the Merkaz haRav murderer, and now this one, all lived and worked in the Jerusalem area and had Israeli identity cards. Does this mean that there’s no future to the idea of Israeli Jews and Arabs living together peacefully, if not in friendship?

Unfortunately, that is probably exactly what it means. And the consequences of this will be terrible for Jewish and Arab Israelis. The fault lies with the Arab leadership and elites who have insisted for 60 years — no, for almost 100 years — that there must be no peace.

It lies with the Arab newspapers, TV networks, websites, religious establishment, political systems, educational systems, writers and intellectuals, Yasser Arafat, Fatah, Hamas, Azmi Bishara, the Balad party, Hosni Mubarak, Hafez and Bashar Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, Mohammed Bakri, Raed Salah, Mahmoud Abbas, the House of Saud, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, and I could go on, and on, and on if my fingers weren’t tired.

Every day there is one overwhelming message broadcast to every Palestinian and Israeli Arab from every direction: the Jews took your land, they are responsible for all of your problems, they are your deadly enemy, the highest praise is due to martyrs in the fight against them, they are destroying the al-Aqsa mosque, they are the sons of apes and pigs, they have damaged your honor, etc.

Is it any wonder that Arabs who are not engaged in organized professional terrorism often involve themselves in amateur terrorism, or that “non-political” types like Husam Taysir Dwayat often explode into ‘impulse terrorism’, the so-called “sudden jihad syndrome”?

But in fact these are distinctions without a difference. The idea of a Jewish state with a peaceful Arab minority isn’t going to fly any more.

This is one of those facts whose consequences are so bad that everyone insists that it’s not true. But it is true, and it’s probably too late to reverse the trend, which in any event is accelerating, not slowing down. This horse is already out of the barn, thanks to the abovementioned list of disseminators of hatred, and all the efforts of the “pro-peace” people are not going to put it back in.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arabs, Husam Taysir Dwayat, terrorism, Jerusalem