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Why?

Recently I attended an ‘interfaith scholar weekend’. At a session at the local Reform Temple (others were held at a church and at a mosque), a fellow wearing a kippa stood up and was recognized as ‘rabbi’ (a visitor, not the rabbi of the Temple). He proceeded to say something in a remarkably offensive, smug tone, about Muslims being ‘ganged up on’ by extremist Jews and Christians (I am not sure if the Jews he was referring to were settlers or neo-cons; the Christians in question were Christian Zionists).

The mostly liberal Protestant audience applauded (I hissed, and soon left before making a bigger scene). Quite a statement for a rabbi to make while the rockets are falling on Sderot and the few million Jews of Israel are threatened with nuclear attack.

More and more, in intellectual, media, and liberal religious circles in the US, the ‘Palestinian narrative’ of the conflict is becoming received opinion. This despite the fact that the primary face the Palestinians are showing lately is that of the totalitarian, extremist, murderous Hamas, who fire rockets at schoolchildren and burn down Christian libraries.

In Europe, although there is a certain backlash against Muslims who burn vehicles, riot over cartoons, and threaten to blow things up, one proposition that the Right and Left seem to agree on is that Israel should be liquidated.

American politicians, nothing if not good at smelling out a trend, make statements about supporting Israel but support policies that are dangerous to her security. My expectation is that shortly even the pro-Israel statements are going to stop, when they find out that the much-discussed ‘Israel lobby’ has fewer teeth than previously thought.

Are the Palestinians and Arabs so good at public relations? Why are the clumsy Pallywood productions so universally accepted as true at first glance?

There isn’t a simple answer, but we can list some of the reasons: the turn of left-wing ideology against Israel since 1967 and the traditional left-wing bent of academics; their influence on young people, opinion-makers and media; the huge amount of recycled petrodollars that are used to buy US politicians, lobbyists, the media, and former Presidents; European feelings of guilt over the Holocaust and anger at Jewish efforts to remind people about it; the psychological tug of extremism, and the perverse reaction — the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ — to the fear of terrorism.

Unfortunately, the process of ideological change includes a positive feedback mechanism, whereby the more anti-Israel a segment of society is, the more likely it is to move even further in that direction.

Finally, it’s impossible to ignore the close relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism — or to deny the existence of antisemitism among people of Jewish extraction.

Technorati Tags: anti-Zionism, antisemitism, Israel

In an absolutely searing piece in the Jerusalem Post, editor David Horovitz takes note of the recantation of Adm. Michael McConnell, “the man responsible for the US National Intelligence Estimate”:

What McConnell is now saying amounts to the very opposite: Yes, runs the amended narrative, we think the Iranians may have halted what we narrowly, foolishly and misleadingly defined as their nuclear weapons program four years ago, we’re not sure if they’ve restarted it, but the fact is that we led you all astray with our definition of that program in the first place.

You see, the new line continues, weapon design and weaponization - those narrow aspects that might have been halted - really constitute the “least significant portion” of a nuclear weapons program. In retrospect, we should have relied on more than a footnote to make that clear. The “most difficult challenge” is actually “uranium enrichment [to] enable the production of fissile material,” and, as we probably should have stressed more prominently, work on that is proceeding apace.

Citing the “persistent threat of WMD-related proliferation,” McConnell told the [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Feb. 5] that “Iran continues to pursue fissile material and nuclear-capable missile delivery systems.” He then elaborated: “Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons. Iran continues its efforts to develop uranium enrichment technology, which can be used both for power reactor fuel and to produce nuclear weapons. And, as noted, Iran continues to deploy ballistic missiles inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and to develop longer-range missiles.”

Horovitz goes on to contrast the original treatment of the NIE in the media with the way its refutation has been almost completely ignored. And then,

When the original, exculpatory NIE was published, Iran’s would-be-Israel-eliminating President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed “victory,” the international sanctions effort stalled, Russia began shipping fuel to the reactor it had built for the Iranians at Bushehr and Ahmadinejad’s regime merrily intensified its declared centrifuge installations and operations at Natanz. Meanwhile, President Bush found himself accused by political rivals and other critics of having unwarrantably, even dishonestly, overhyped the threat posed by Iran. Some of the more hysterical voices went so far as to charge that his administration had been deliberately skewing the intelligence on Iran’s nuclear drive to justify thrusting the United States into another unnecessary war.

McConnell’s barely noticed reversal has changed none of that. It has done nothing to dent Ahmadinejad’s public confidence that nobody is going to stop the Iranian drive now, and nothing to suggest to Iran that it need halt what McConnell acknowledged last week was the range of dual-purpose activities that daily bring it ever-closer to a nuclear weapons capability. The admiral’s climbdown has injected no new urgency, and no stronger teeth, into the weak and snail-paced UN-centered sanctions effort. It has prompted no rethink by Moscow about assisting Teheran’s “peaceful” nuclear programs. And with this US administration now counting down its final months, his “recalibration” has restored no credibility to Bush’s efforts to thwart Iran - credibility that was swept away when the shattering original NIE essentially removed his administration’s military option.

Obviously a decision has been made in whatever circles actually decide US policy — and it’s by no means clear who this is — that the US will not take aggressive military or diplomatic action to prevent Iran from getting the bomb and the means to deliver it.

If not the US, then who? Apparently nobody.

Now consider that Iran has more than once threatened to destroy Israel, clearly and unambiguously. What would you do if you were the Prime Minister of Israel? What would you do if you believed that Ahmadinijad was truly threatening a second, nuclear, Holocaust?

Israel does not have the diplomatic clout of the US. Israel does not have the military might of the US either, but what do you do when your back is against the wall? What do you do when your people, who within living memory were almost wiped out in a horrific genocide, are facing annihilation again?

Now suppose also that you understand that a surgical removal of Iran’s nuclear capability would be very difficult. It would provoke retaliation and might fail to completely eliminate the threat (which is nuclear, but also chemical/biological, and which might include attacks from countries other than Iran).

What you do is wait until you are certain that an attack is imminent and then you do what is necessary to prevent it, which may not turn out to be all that surgical. Then you deal with whatever retaliation the remnants of your enemy can muster.

If you wait too long, then you absorb the strike and retaliate massively (Israel is absolutely capable of this).

Either way, we are talking about deaths in the tens of millions.

And this is what will be the consequence of the US failure to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, something which could probably be accomplished by diplomacy alone, if undertaken with sufficient resolve.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Iran, NIE, McConnell

We don’t know who killed Imad Mugniyeh in Damascus, but the terrorist establishment has decided that it was Israel. And as a result, it has declared war on world Jewry:

More than 50 Hizbullah terror cells believed to be spread across the globe could be activated and used to strike at Israeli or Jewish targets in retaliation for Tuesday’s assassination of Hizbullah arch-terrorist and operations officer Imad Mughniyeh in Syria, a senior defense official said Thursday…

FBI anti-terror units raised their alerts for fear of attacks on synagogues and other Jewish targets.

Sources in the US administration reiterated that there were no specific warnings of a terrorist attack; nonetheless, an FBI source said that the raised alertness of the Anti-Terrorism Unit, which operates in about 100 cities around the US, is not a routine step.

The counterterrorism bureau recommended that [Israeli] citizens abroad avoid staying in areas where there is a large concentration of Israelis. It advised Israelis overseas to strictly avoid visiting Arab and Muslim states where existing travel warnings are in force; to reject any tempting suggestions, unexpected gifts and offers of free travel from suspicious people or unknown elements; to reject proposals for unscheduled meetings, and to travel to meetings accompanied by someone known and trusted. — Jerusalem Post

Right now, I’m sure that many Jewish ‘world citizens’ are irritated that they have been endangered by Israel’s action (assuming for a moment that Israel is responsible). On the other hand, many non-Jews concerned with the phenomenon of the world’s descent into barbarism as represented by such as Mugniyeh are cheering. Look at what he is generally thought to have done:

• 1983 - Marine barracks and French peacekeepers bombings in Lebanon — 241 American service personnel, 58 French paratroopers killed.

• 1983 - US Embassy (Beirut) bombing, more than 60 murdered.

• 1985 - hijacking of TWA flight 847, US Navy diver Robert Stethem brutally murdered.

• 1980’s - kidnapping of numerous foreigners (especially Americans) in Lebanon, some of whom were murdered, such as CIA station chief William Buckley.

• 1992 - Israeli embassy (Buenos Aires) bombing, 29 killed.

• 1994 Argentine Jewish Association (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina) building bombing, at least 85 murdered.

• 2002 - associated with the Karine A incident, in which a ship containing 50 tons of Iranian arms bound probably for Hezbollah was intercepted by the Israeli navy.

• 2006 - kidnapping of 2 Israeli soldiers and killing of others near Lebanese border, sparking second Lebanese war, more than a thousand dead.

In addition, Mugniyeh was involved in training operatives, providing false documents, etc. for terrorist operatives all over the world, including Europe, Southeast Asia, and South America. He was a contact between Iran and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas organizations.

Jihadist forces are at pains to promote the idea that the surge of Islamic terrorism is a grass-roots movement of simple people, caused by the mistreatment of the Muslim world by European colonialists and their very special allies, the Zionists. The solution proposed by their friends is that the West must redress these grievances by appeasement, such as privileges for Muslims in Western countries — like access to Sharia courts — and above all, by not interfering with their holy duty to eliminate Israel, the Jewish thorn in the side of the Muslim Middle East.

But this analysis of the problem is entirely wrong.

Jihadism is not a grass-roots movement — it is planned and directed by individuals, usually well-educated ones, who very carefully manipulate opinion by expert use of the media and judicious application of cruelty to back their ideological appeal with a much more basic emotion — fear.

There is a way to fight terrorism, and that is to eliminate the leaders, the special people with the combination of intelligence, charisma and sadistic bent that are needed to be a terrorist star.

Mugniyeh, Nasrallah, Bin Laden, etc. — cut off the head of the enterprise and it’s possible to put an end to it.

Courtesy of the Dry Bones Blog

Technorati Tags: Mugniyeh, terrorism, Israel

The Washington Post reports:

The State Department is considering supporting the Palestinian Authority in its quest to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments won by American victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks in Israel, according to Palestinian officials and defense lawyers involved in the cases.

U.S. officials insist that no decision has been made regarding the complex litigation, which could force the Bush administration to choose between supporting compensation for victims of terrorism and bolstering the Palestinian government as the United States presses for a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Testimony in Israeli courts has connected senior Palestinian leaders — such as the late Yasser Arafat — to specific terrorist attacks involved in the lawsuits. But Palestinian officials have argued that it makes no sense for the United States to be providing millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority while U.S. courts are threatening to bankrupt it.

I couldn’t agree more. It makes no sense for the US to support a murderous terrorist faction which has killed numerous Americans, and which danced in the streets on 9/11.

Leslye Knox, a 46-year-old mother of six children and widow of Aharon Ellis, a U.S. citizen who was killed in 2002 while singing at a bar mitzvah in Hadera, Israel, said that she has sued under a law passed by Congress in 1990 after the murder of Leon Klinghoffer by terrorists who seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship. In 2006, a federal judge ordered the PLO and the Palestinian Authority to pay Knox and other Ellis relatives nearly $174 million, but nothing has been paid while Knox has struggled to support her family.

One doesn’t expect the US State department to be concerned with a few Jews and their families, but I am surprised that the State Department does not remember the murder of their own Ambassador Cleo Noel Jr.

On March 1, 1973, a gang of eight operatives of the Black September Organization stormed a party at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum. The party had been held in honor of the imminent departure of George Curtis Moore, the American charge d’affaires at the United States Embassy in Khartoum. The Black September gang took Moore and two others hostage — Cleo Noel Jr., the United States ambassador to Sudan; and Guy Eid, the Belgian embassy’s charge d’affaires. (Two other diplomats taken by the Black September operatives were released.)

The Black September gang demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy; the release of a Black September leader held in Jordan; and the release of several members of the Baader-Meinhof gang held in Germany. On March 2, President Nixon and representatives of the other two governments announced that they would not negotiate with terrorists for the release of the diplomats. That evening the Black September operatives marched Noel, Moore and Eid to the embassy basement and brutally murdered them. — Scott W. Johnson, Who Murdered Cleo Noel?, FrontPageMagazine.com

Johnson argues that not only is there indisputable proof that Black September was merely a front for Arafat’s Fatah, but that the State Department was aware of this and has made efforts to cover it up. And in fact Arafat was never held to account for this and other crimes against Americans. Here’s another, more recent case:

On October 15, 2003, three vans made their way into Gaza, carrying United States diplomats and security specialists to interview Palestinian candidates for Fulbright scholarships in America.

Two miles into the district, an explosive device planted under the road was remotely detonated, destroying the vehicle carrying the security specialists. John Branchizio, Mark Parsons, and John Linde died instantly.

This was not simply the latest in a lengthening list of Palestinian atrocities. On this occasion, Americans on an official State Department mission had been targeted, with sophisticated explosives, in territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority…

The State Department vowed to “pursue the perpetrators until they are caught.” The PA put the head of the Gaza Preventive Security Service [Rashid Abu Shabak — ed.] in charge of its inquiry, a man who was himself suspected of involvement in prior terror attacks. Like O.J.’s search for the real killers, the inquiry did not get far.

Three months later, the deputy chief of the American embassy met with PA officials to express dissatisfaction with the Palestinian “investigation.” He told them “we know that there is not a huge number of people who have the proven capability to carry out an attack like that” and warned that America would offer a reward for information and reduce Palestinian aid if the crime were not solved.

The PA arrested three persons and charged them with “manslaughter” less than 48 hours after the reward was offered. They were subsequently freed after the PA failed to present evidence against them. — Rich Richman, Getting Away with Murder, NY Sun

Both Johnson and Richman have tried to get information from the State Department by way of Freedom of Information Act requests, and have met with difficulty. It seems that Fatah leads a charmed life at Foggy Bottom.

A mystery of the current Mideast situation is the way the US and the rest of the West have adopted a particular gang of anti-American thugs, fund them (donor nations have pledged $7.4 billion to the Fatah faction of the PA), and train and arm their militia — while militia members unofficially carry out terrorism against our supposed ally, Israel. At the same time the West supports diplomatic efforts to force Israel to cede control of territory to this gang as well as to compromise security measures against terrorism.

One could be excused for being confused about US intentions and goals in the region.

Technorati Tags: Fatah, State Department, Cleo Noel, Palestinian Authority, Israel

Speaking volumes about contemporary (and perhaps today’s) British attitudes, Sir Alan Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine,  described Zionism in 1947 as a movement in which

…the forces of nationalism are accompanied by the psychology of the Jew, which it is important to recognise as something quite abnormal and unresponsive to rational treatment. — quoted in Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History, p. 187

Technorati Tags: Palestine Mandate, Alan Cunningham, Zionism

It’s an article of faith in academic circles that Zionism as understood and practiced by Ben-Gurion included the ‘transfer’ of the Arabs of Palestine. And we now ‘know’ that Golda Meir conspired with King Abdullah of Jordan in 1948 to divide up the part of Mandate allocated to the Palestinian Arabs between Israel and Transjordan. And we have ‘learned’ that most Palestinian refugees were really driven from their homes by the Jews under threat of massacre.

The ‘Zionist myths’ about the founding of the State have been debunked; even those of us who support the state need to understand that it was born in sin, thanks to the so-called New Historians such as Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Ilan Pappé, etc. Right?

Wrong!

And not only wrong, but wrong because the real sins here were of those of dishonest scholarship — worse, of national slander by means of falsification of sources, deliberate mistranslation, removing whole sentences and paragraphs from quotations in order to completely reverse their meaning, etc.

This is convincingly demonstrated in a book by historian Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History (Second, revised edition. London: Frank Cass, 2000). I almost said “a new book”, because the book has not received the attention it deserves, perhaps because the academic departments of Mideast Studies are unhappy with its contents.

Karsh shows in detail just how these historians have distorted the record, particularly Morris, who is probably the most respected and influential of them. It is not simply a question of interpretation, but — as Karsh proves conclusively — of deliberate falsification of sources.

In fact, Ben-Gurion deeply wished for a state in which Arab residents would have full citizenship and be treated fairly, and he did not advocate or favor their transfer or expulsion. King Abdullah of Jordan never believed that there should be an independent Jewish state, and Meir and others did not make a deal with him to violate the partition resolution. And only a small minority of the refugees left their homes under pressure from the Jews.

This is enormously important, because these writers provide the theoretical underpinning for the anti-Zionism of so many left-leaning Jews who have come to accept the so-called “Palestinian narrative” about the founding of the State. And because many of these ’scholars’ are anti-Zionist — Pappé is perhaps no less anti-Israel than your average Hamasnik — their dishonesty can be traced to the basest of motives.

As always, the fact that these are Jews and Israelis gives more weight and influence to their tendentious writings. Although it is impossible for anyone to truly divorce his political views from his understanding of history, the cynical substitution of propaganda for academic research does violence to the idea that there is such a thing as objective truth.

Karsh himself is no right-wing ideologue, but in fact favors an independent Palestinian state.

Read this book.

Technorati Tags: Israeli history, Efraim Karsh, Israel, Zionism

This is absolutely incredible. Do we have any idea of what our government is doing with our money?

For the first time, the Bush Administration plans to give $150 million in cash directly to the Palestinian Authority (PA) Treasury, as part of a $496.5 million “aid” package, including $410 million for development programs. This added to the $86.5 million for CIA “security training,” which Congress authorized in April 2007…

CIA Palestinian training success is best described by a member of the PA’s Chairman own security unit, - Force 17, officer Abu Yusef: “The operations of the Palestinian resistance would [not] have been so successful and “would not have killed more than 1,000 Israelis since 2000, and defeated the Israelis in Gaza without [American military] trainings,” he boasted in August 2007.

Since the Oslo Accords, the PA received some $14 billion to $20 billion in international aid, according to a 2007 Funding for Peace Coalition (FPC) report to the British Parliament. Each Palestinian received $4,000 to $8,000 per year. In comparison, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided $1 billion in humanitarian aid for 2.5 million Darfur refugees from 2003 to 2006 –only $100 per person annually. Moreover, of the $7 billion pledged international aid, only $5 billion were spent to assist more than 5 million Tsunami victims in more than 15 countries on two continents.

The PA received “the highest per capita aid transfer in the history of foreign aid anywhere,” according to former World Bank country director for Gaza and the West Bank, Nigel Roberts. Not surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of Gazans spent more than $300 million in less than two week shopping spree [OK, some of the money was phony –ed.], after Hamas blew up the border with Egypt. Yet, the Palestinian economy is in ruins, Why?

In March 2007, PA Prime Minister and former World Bank official Salam Fayyad, told London’s Daily Telegraph: “No one can give donors that assurance” that funds reach their designated destinations. “Where is all of the transparency in all of this? It’s gone.” Controlling Palestinian finances, Fayyad concluded, is “virtually impossible.” — Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen

You may well ask why don’t their fellow Sunni Arabs, the swimming-in-oil Saudis help them. Didn’t they promise big bucks as part of the Arab League peace proposal back in 2002?

Rather than $660 million in annual aid the Saudis promised in 2002, the kingdom donated only $84 million since then, according to World Bank reports. Other Arab League members, who in 2002 promised $55 million monthly to foster PA economic development, gave even less.

But not because they were stingy. They simply wanted to allocate the funds where they would do the most bad:

Meanwhile, however, the Saudis and the Gulf states funneled hundreds of millions of petrodollars–some raised in government-sponsored telethons –to reward Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas and Palestinian Jihad suicide bombers and fuel the anti-Israel Jihad. Indeed, “Saudi Arabia remains a source of recruits and finances for …Levant-based militants,” said National Intelligence Director J. Michael McConnell, before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on 5 February 2008.

McConnell should have included USAID on his terror-funding list. A Dec. 2007 USAID audit reported that the mission administering its funds gave money to groups and institutions affiliated with U.S. designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. It warned: “Without additional controls, the mission could inadvertently provide support to entities or individuals associated with terrorism.”

Real economic activity in the territories barely exists any more. The biggest source of income is the PA payroll, which is doled out to the members of the various clans and militias according to whatever it costs to buy their support.

The Palestinians, it seems, are pinning their hopes on the day that they will finally succeed in reversing the outcome of the 1948 war, at which time all the wealth of Israel will be theirs.

In the meantime, their creativity and initiative are focused on destruction and death, rather than building industries and infrastructure.

Technorati Tags: Palestinians

Hamas must understand where this is heading:

Anger boiled over in Sderot on Saturday night as residents took to the streets, demanding that the government take stronger steps against the rocket fire from Gaza following a Kassam strike that shattered one local family’s Shabbat.

Two brothers from Sderot, aged eight and 19, were seriously wounded and two other members of their family were also hospitalized when a rocket fired from northern Gaza - one of almost four dozen launched this weekend - struck two meters from where the boys were standing. — Jerusalem Post

It is becoming politically impossible for the Israeli government to not take effective steps to stop this. As I wrote yesterday, such action will have to be to totally crush Hamas. If the decision hasn’t been taken already, sooner or later it will be.

Hamas knows this. So the fact that they are continuing, even stepping up, the provocations means that they must want to engage in full-scale warfare as soon as possible.

I’m sure that they have what they believe to be surprises up their sleeve. The IDF should have contingency plans for everything imaginable, including the participation of Hezbollah or even intervention by Syria.

In my assessment, the enemy is seriously underestimating the IDF. Their thinking is based on the 2006 war but there is no doubt in my mind that the IDF has learned its lessons. There is also a real Minister of Defense this time.

I don’t think this will be easy, not for the IDF, not for Israeli or Palestinian civilians. But I know what the outcome will be.

Like everyone with family or friends in Israel (or among the Palestinians, I’m sure) I feel a degree of anxiety. It’s unfortunate that there’s no alternative.

Possibly afterwards the Palestinians will develop a leadership that understands that they will not, ever, succeed in their goal to destroy Israel. Maybe after a lot of blood flows, they will finally understand that it’s more important for them to help themselves than to hurt Jews. Maybe.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Israeli-Arab conflict

As I have written time and again, there’s no way to talk with Hamas. The very raison d’etre of Hamas is the destruction of Israel and a genocidal program against the Jews therein. Negotiations would only bring Hamas closer to international legitimacy and recognition, one of its major short-term goals, and a cease-fire would only give it breathing space to develop their capabilities for the ultimate conflict.

Recently, concrete missile-launching silos able to hold Qassams and the larger, more dangerous Russian Grad missiles were discovered in Gaza. There will be a war between Israel and Hamas; the question is when, and on whose terms.

Ami Isseroff, certainly not what anyone would call a hawk, has written an incisive analysis of Israel’s options. He writes,

Hamas is a threat at many levels, not just to Israel, but to the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, the American sponsored peace process and Arab world moderates. Hamas is a strategic threat to Israel. For any such threat, one has to decide whether to contain it and last it out, as the US did with the USSR, or to confront it decisively and eliminate it, as was done with Nazi Germany. If the latter decision is made, the only acceptable “agreement” is unconditional surrender, and the only open option is total war. Hamas will not listen to “persuasion” and half-measures will only make it stronger. [my emphasis]

Isseroff also points out, however, that a unilateral attack by Israel could end in disaster without at least tacit international support:

In order to carry out such an operation, IDF needs time. It cannot be interrupted by UN [or US — ed.] imposed cease fires that leave the other side in a position to recover. It must not be forced to leave Gaza before the Hamas movement is eradicated in the same way that the National Socialist Workers Party was destroyed in Germany after World War II. That is why the international position must be well prepared before any action is taken.

So it’s clear that Israel should begin now both to prepare the IDF for the coming conflict and to lay the diplomatic groundwork for it.

Egypt and possibly other conservative Arab governments view the Muslim Brotherhood-allied Hamas as a threat. And possibly the West is finally beginning to understand that radical Islam really does endanger our idea of civilization. So maybe there is a possibility that the diplomatic part of the struggle will succeed.

I’ll add that it’s also necessary for the public relations arms of the government to be prepared and to have the appropriate resources allocated to deal with the flood of misinformation, fake atrocity stories, invented ‘massacres’ and ‘humanitarian crises’ that will come from Hamas and friends during the war. Israel lost this part of the battle badly in Lebanon in 2006 and this must not be permitted to happen again. There are people that understand the concept of information warfare on our side, too. They must be used.

Of course, the management of an integrated diplomatic, information, and military offensive will require a competent and dedicated government. In addition, it must be able to pursue a very difficult course without being derailed by domestic political opposition. Israel does not have such a government today.

There is also the need for full support from the US, by no means a given these days.

Finally, the question of what to do with Gaza once Hamas has been crushed isn’t simple. The last thing Israel needs is to be responsible for another 1.4 million hostile Arabs.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Gaza

Remember how the Palestinians of Gaza burst out of their ‘prison’ and participated in an orgy of shopping in Northern Sinai?

Gazans return home from Egypt with purchases

Some people wondered how they could afford the appliances, furniture, motorcycles, etc. that they carried and dragged back to the Strip. After all, wasn’t the Gaza ‘economy’ a shambles?

Well, now we know.

About $1 million in counterfeit bills, apparently originating in the Gaza Strip, were seized in the Sinai Peninsula in the past few days, Egyptian security sources told Palestinian news agency Ma’an on Thursday.

According to the sources, hundreds of counterfeit bills, which are being used by merchants amongst themselves or in their dealings with the Egyptian banks, are being discovered every day.

The Egyptian security sources estimated that additional forged banknotes would be discovered in the near future in light of the fact that Egyptian residents – mainly in the el-Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zweid areas – are expected to use the money they received from Gaza residents in exchange for the various goods they sold them. — YNet

The Egyptians are not amused.

“Anyone who breaches the border will have their legs broken,” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit was quoted as saying by the official MENA news agency on public television overnight. – AFP 

But Hamas is upbeat as always:

Less than a week ago, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported that Hamas was seriously contemplating severing the Gaza Strip’s economic ties with Israel, quoting a senior advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

The advisor, Ahmed Yousef, was asked whether Hamas was also considering abandoning the use of Israeli currency in the Strip. Yousef indicated that this “might be possible in the future. Residents of Gaza can always trade in American Dollars, Jordanian Dinars or Egyptian Pounds at a later point.” — YNet

I just bet they can.

Technorati Tags: Gaza, Egypt, Israel, Hamas

Same old stuff, different day:

[Today] two young children, aged twelve and two, were lightly wounded when a Kassam rocket landed near a playground in Kibbutz Be’eri, in the western Negev.

The two kids, who were playing outside their home, were evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Beersheba suffering from shrapnel wounds. Their mother was sent into shock as a result of the attack.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the rocket fire. — Jerusalem Post

Numerous other rockets struck Sderot, damaging a house. Now here is what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said:

“Rockets are entirely pointless and must be stopped,” Abbas said in a meeting with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik.

However, he added that “Israel must not use the launchings as an excuse to collectively punish an entire population and must always allow entry of humanitarian [aid] into the Strip.” — Jerusalem Post

Leaving aside the fact that Israel does allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, it’s time to talk about ‘collective punishment’.

War is always uncomfortable for civilians on both sides. Random rockets hitting playgrounds are uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable for the Jewish residents of Jerusalem in 1948, when Jerusalem was blockaded (and they were getting shot at as well as starved out).

The fact is that Hamas is waging war against Israel. Hamas, leading the legitimately elected government of the Palestinian people — more legitimate than the Fatah rump government in the West Bank — is not hiding its intention to make war, nor of its goal to ultimately destroy the Jewish state. The great majority of the population, whether it supports Fatah or Hamas, supports violent ‘resistance’ against Israel.

As always, the world insists that Israel must behave according to some kind of unattainable standard to which no other nation has ever been held. “Yes, you have the right to defend yourselves. But don’t hurt (or even annoy) anybody doing it.” So Israel is asked to provide electricity for the rocket factories in wartime and to guarantee that when it fires a missile against enemy troops — who do their best to stay close to civilians — that only the soldiers are hit.

The contrast between Israel and her enemies, who make an effort to target civilians, is stark.

It’s a poor argument to compare Israel to the French in Algeria, the RAF and AAF over Germany, the Nazis in Russia or the Russians in Berlin. The ’siege’ of Gaza is not a siege like the Siege of Leningrad in which a million and a half civilians died of starvation and disease. Israel does allow passage of food and medical supplies, and does supply electricity, despite Hamas’ theatrics to prove otherwise. Nobody is starving.

There’s no doubt that war is undesirable, or that nations should solve their problems with diplomacy. Gratuitous brutality is wrong, even in war. But it is not reasonable to expect a nation that is under attack to provide supplies to its attacker. It is reasonable for a people to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves when they are under attack. And it is reasonable for such a nation to ignore the voices telling them to surrender because self-defense may be uncomfortable for the enemy population.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas

What can we learn about the conflict from yesterday’s terrorist bombing? For one thing, that the West’s perception of it is far enough removed from reality to be called…

Uniquely Bizarre

By Barry Rubin

The Arab-Israeli conflict definitely holds the record for the most bizarrely treated issue in modern history. It is easy to forget just how strange this situation is and the extent to which it is understood and handled so totally different from other, more rationally, perceived problems.

Let’s take a very simple example and examine the surrealistic, bizarre way in which normally sensible people and institutions respond.

On February 4, 2008, two terrorists attacked the quiet town of Dimona in southern Israel. One blew himself up near a toy store in a marketplace, killing an elderly woman and wounding forty people. The other was injured in the first blast and, before he could detonate his own bomb, was killed by a policeman.

At first, some Fatah officials claimed that one of the men was theirs, from that group’s al-Aqsa Brigades; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said the second belonged to them. Such are the bare facts. But from here it gets far stranger.

Apparently, Fatah and the PFLP did dispatch a two-man terrorist team, but they were apparently caught before crossing into Israel. At the exact same time, Hamas sent another duo, and they succeeded in reaching Dimona.

Thus, through no fault of their own, Fatah and the PFLP did not actually commit the attack. But they tried and would have preferred to have carried out the terrorist assault. From here, a number of conclusions should be obvious:

1. The nature of Fatah. Why is Fatah, the organization routinely described as moderate by Western governments and media, involved in constant terrorism attempts–and sometimes successes–against Israel?

The al-Aqsa Brigades are an integral part of Fatah. The Brigades’ founder and leader is Marwan Barghouti who has been head of Fatah on the West Bank. Many of the Brigades’ gunmen are on the Fatah payroll in various ways, often as members of security forces which are supposed to prevent…terrorism.

Of course, the leader of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and in effect Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas “condemned” the attack. That is, he said he didn’t like it. But no member of Fatah has ever been expelled from the organization or fired from the security forces for involvement in terrorism. The PA’s media regularly broadcasts incitement to commit terrorism. It does not transmit television, radio, and newspaper demands on its members not to attack Israeli civilians.

So is Fatah a terrorist organization?

Well, apparently not. Granted, Abbas personally would prefer these attacks not occur. In the Fatah spectrum he is at the moderate end. Nevertheless, he presides over a group that is terrorist and which regards itself as fighting a war against Israel whose main tactic is deliberately murdering civilians. It uses its funds for this purpose and encourages such behavior through program and propaganda.

A Reuters dispatch about the attack, when it was thought to be perpetrated by Fatah, said it was a challenge for Abbas to control “rebels within his own Fatah faction.” The point, however, is that they aren’t rebels at all but rather members in good standing who probably have more support in Fatah than does Abbas himself.

2. International policy toward Fatah. Therefore, if Fatah, and the PA, should not be shunned at least they should be subjected to serious international pressure, right? If only for their own good since presumably the world believes that they are better off if they abandon terrorism? Again, apparently not.

Fatah is the group which is being given well about $7 billion by international donors. And there are no strings attached to that aid: no measure of whether Fatah uses or advocates terrorism whatsoever. It gets the money no matter what it does. There are good reasons for the West to work with, and even aid, the PA and Fatah but there are no good reasons for that support and aid to be unconditional.

3. Motive. Fatah officials said the reason for the attack was to protest Israeli “aggression” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. To begin with, of course, Israel is merely responding to rocket and mortar attacks on its territory. If these were to cease, Israel would never attack the Gaza Strip and continue to supply it–directly and indirectly–with its electricity. But if Israel were never to attack the Gaza Strip, the Hamas regime and its junior partners in the Gaza Strip would continue to attack Israel. By definition, then, they are the ones who are aggressive.

Incidentally, there are no sanctions whatsoever against the West Bank, which Fatah rules. Thus, Fatah is at war with Israel while Israel, despite periodic raids against individuals directly involved in terrorism, treats Fatah as a partner and urges countries to give it financial aid.

But there’s more. Fatah is essentially coming to the aid of a Hamas regime which threw it out of Gaza, killed Fatah members, sometimes in cold blood, and represses its own people. Why? Because Fatah and the PA are competing for Palestinian popular support in the Gaza Strip and the way that one does this is to murder Israeli civilians. This is a very telling definition of Palestinian politics, ideology, and public opinion.

4. PA/Fatah attitude towards terrorism. The other terrorist killed was initially claimed by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical Arab nationalist group, which also tried to kill Israeli civilians on that day. Recently, the founder and long-time head of the PFLP, George Habash, died. Habash was a veteran terrorist who practically invented airplane hijacking and international terrorism. Habash was lauded by the PA and Fatah at his funeral as a great hero of the movement.

Riyad al-Malki, the PA’s Minister of Information and Foreign Affairs of the “moderate” PA is a PFLP member and ran the organization on the West Bank for many years. So when Western politicians and diplomats deal with the “moderate” PA they are talking directly to a man who played a leading role in a terrorist group which continues to make–and proudly claim responsibility for–terrorist attacks.

Arab members of Israel’s parliament went to the funeral and joined in the accolades for a terrorist whose group continues to murder their fellow citizens.

5. Israeli attitude toward Arabs. When the second terrorist fell as a result of the first explosion, Israeli medical personnel did not hesitate from rushing to help a man they thought was an Arab victim of the attack. Then the nurse saw the explosives belt and realized the man she was trying to save was about to murder her. She had to run for her life, pulling along another wounded person, and yell for help from the police.

To summarize: Fatah acts as a terrorist group; the PA facilitates terrorism and includes people leading terrorist groups; Fatah views itself as an ally of a group that attacks it and murders its own members; the West aids Fatah and the PA with no attempt to discourage their behavior; Israeli Arab politicians side with terrorism; and Israelis, at the risk of their lives, try to save Arab lives, and would like to have a two-state solution if the other side is ever able to make and implement such a deal.

Oh, yes, and guess who much of the world blames for the conflict. As I said, uniquely bizarre.

. . .

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).

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