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Technorati Tags: Regev, Goldwasser, Israel, IDF

News item:

Samir Kuntar and four Lebanese prisoners captured in the Second Lebanon War will receive an official state welcoming when they are released by Israel on Wednesday as part of the prisoner swap with Hizbullah.

The five men will be greeted at Beirut’s airport by Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and President Michel Suleiman…

In Kuntar’s home in Abey, streets are decorated with banners welcoming the return of the former member of the radical Palestine Liberation Front. “Samir Kuntar is the conscience of Lebanon, Palestine and the Arab nation. Abey welcomes the hero, prisoner Samir Kuntar,” reads one sign. [my emphasis]

Incredible. They are simply psychotic with hatred. Smashing the heads of children is national policy. Only the Nazis compare.

Meanwhile,  the President of the State of Israel illustrates that he has no understanding of what this is about:

“We do not want murderers to go free,” [President Shimon Peres] said, “but we have a moral obligation to bring home soldiers whom we sent to defend their country”, and as painful as it is for Nina Keren the mother and grandmother of Danny Haran and his daughter Einat who were killed in Nahariya by Samir Kuntar in 1982 [sic], he also had to consider the families of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev who had done so much and had been waiting for two years to have their boys come home. — Jerusalem Post

Peres  has never been more wrong. It is not about balancing the interests of the Haran, Goldwasser and Regev families. Not at all.

It is not even about the State of Israel. It is about the Jewish People and the need to show the world that murdering Jews because they are Jews will not be tolerated or excused.

Hizbullah’s commander in south Lebanon, Sheik Nabil Kaouk, said Tuesday that Wednesday’s prisoner exchange showed Israel’s “humiliating failure in confronting the resistance militarily and politically.”

He is right and Peres is wrong. Kuntar should have been executed in 1979, but there’s still time to correct the error.

Update [16 Jul 1025 PDT]: Corrected the date of the Haran murders to 1979.

Kuntar is free. Read a devastating analysis of Israel’s policy of trading prisoners with terror organizations here.

Update [16 Jul 1040 PDT]:  News item:

Abbas congratulates family of Samir Kuntar

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday sent his regards to the families of Samir Kuntar and the other four Lebanese prisoners scheduled to be transferred to Hizbullah.

Abbas praised the prisoner swap and congratulated the Kuntar family.

Israel should immediately terminate negotiations and break relations with the Palestinian Authority, which has showed itself to be a terrorist entity.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Kuntar, Lebanon, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinian Authority

Now that the obscene trade with Hezbollah is almost a done deal — supposedly it will take place on Wednesday, with brutal child-killer Samir Kuntar and others crossing the border into Lebanon at Rosh haNikra — we can start being afraid of what will be given up to Hamas in trade for Gilad Schalit.

This is much more problematic, because Schalit is almost certainly alive, while Hezbollah will be returning only bodies. Once again, Israel is being forced to make a “Sophie’s choice” between alternatives that are both horrible. Leave Schalit to die in captivity — or guarantee further kidnappings while releasing murderers who will certainly kill again.

And as always, there is an element of psychological torture involved.

YNet reports:

According to the report, Israel and Hamas previously had agreed that during the first stage of the prisoner swap 350 Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange for Shalit’s transfer to Egyptian custody. In the second phase an additional 100 prisoners will be freed upon the soldier’s arrival in Israel, and 500 more Palestinians will be returned two months after Shalit’s release.

The Palestinian source said Israel has also backed down from its agreement to release all of the female Palestinian prisoners and is particularly against freeing Amna Muna, who was charged and convicted for her involvement in the murder of 16-year-old Ofir [R]ahum in January 2001.

Amna Muna is another great hero of the Palestinian  ‘resistance’. Like Bus of Blood murderer Dalal Mughrabi, she is loved and venerated as an example for Palestinian womanhood. Muna (also spelled ‘Mona’ or ‘Mouna’) was 25 and working as a journalist in Ramallah when she met Ofir in an Israeli chat room. Posing as a tourist or new immigrant (accounts vary) named ‘Sali’, she established an online relationship with him over a period of months, and ultimately arranged a meeting. Ofir traveled from his home in Ashkelon to the bus station in Jerusalem, where Muna picked him up. She drove him to a secluded spot near Ramallah, where they met her confederates, several Fatah terrorists who shot Ofir 15 times and buried his body.

Here’s an excerpt from their last chat, the day before the murder, from Newsweek:

ofir 15/01/01 i don’t know if iI have enough to come back to ashkelon

sali 15/01/01 16:04 i told you I will bring you back to tel aviv in my friends car but she will be with us..is it ok coz I am afraid to drive at night

sali 15/0101 16:35 you don’t know how much I am waiting for wednesday but we have to say bye till wednesday

ofir 15/01/01 16:35 bye

sali 15/01/01 16:35 love you dear

In prison she has become something of an activist, recently leading a hunger strike for better treatment of what are called Palestinian political prisoners. There’s no doubt in my mind that she will go home — if not in this prisoner exchange then in the next one — to a festive Fatah celebration.

There is a way to stop this, at least in the future, and that is to establish a death penalty for terrorist murderers. Perhaps now Israelis have had enough, and it will be possible. The European Union would scream bloody murder (so to speak), but I wonder how long it will take before they are placed in exactly the same position?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Amna Muna, Ofir Rahum, Samir Kuntar, Gilad Schalit, death penalty, terrorism

In July of  2006, Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah forces crossed the Lebanese border with Israel, killed 8 Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two. Israel responded with an incursion that developed into a war in which 119 IDF soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians were killed. Over 1000 Lebanese were claimed to have been killed (this figure is in dispute), 500-600 of them Hezbollah fighters. Almost 4,000 Hezbollah rockets landed in northern Israel, injuring thousands of civilians, destroying millions of dollars worth of property and wrecking the economy of the area.

Because of the lack of preparation of the IDF and incompetence on the part of Israel’s leadership, the war’s initial goals (although the official goals changed from day to day) of returning the kidnapped soldiers, breaking Hezbollah’s grip on southern Lebanon and eliminating its military capability were not met.

34 days later, the war ended in a cease-fire and UN resolution 1701, which was supposed to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and keep it from reoccupying South Lebanon. The UN, as expected, was unable to enforce it, and Hezbollah has been fully rearmed — by Iran via Syria — and its troops are firmly ensconced in the south, even where UN ‘peacekeepers’ are deployed.

In addition to the military and diplomatic failures, Israel allowed Hezbollah to manage the content of news reporting during the war, resulting in huge propaganda victories. World-wide reporting of ‘atrocities’ was used as a justification for terrorism, such as the murder of a Jewish woman in Seattle.

Hezbollah has also taken de facto control of the Lebanese government and army.  The new Lebanese president, Gen. Michel Suleiman, although a Christian, is considered to be aligned with Syria and is supportive of Hezbollah’s militant stance against Israel.

One of Suleiman’s first acts as president was to support Hezbollah’s demand for the strategic Har Dov (Shabaa Farms) area to be transferred to Lebanese — i.e., Hezbollah — control. Although the UN certified the border between Israel and Lebanon in 2000 and placed Har Dov in the Golan Heights, the resurrection of this issue is a clear indication that the balance of power in the region has changed.

But this is not all. The outcome of the war reawakened Syria’s ambitions to recover the Golan Heights without having to give anything in return. It prompted Washington to press its program to force Israel to give up the West Bank to the Palestinians, which it formalized at the Annapolis conference, and which it has been actualizing by arming the terrorist Fatah organization. And it emboldened Hamas to follow a Hezbollah-like strategy.

Finally, to close the circle, Israel has agreed to a practically and psychologically disastrous swap with Hezbollah, which not only includes the release of unrepentant mass murderer Samir Kuntar, but also several Palestinian prisoners and the bodies of several Palestinian terrorist heros including ‘Bus of Blood’ perpetrator Dalal Mughrabi. In return, Israel will get the bodies of the kidnapped soldiers, thus ensuring further kidnappings, and guaranteeing that hostages need not be kept alive to be good bargaining chips.

Israel’s Winograd commission apportioned blame for the massive failures of the war in various places. Dan Halutz, the IDF Chief of Staff and Amir Peretz, the Minister of Defense, were forced to resign as a result. But Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, has managed to hang onto power despite his failure in the war, despite a continuous series of bad and worse decisions, despite being universally despised by Israelis and despite being accused of all manner of deceit, corruption and malfeasance.

Now that Hezbollah has been fully rearmed, now that the situation in the South can only get worse as Hamas takes advantage of the truce to prepare for even more violent conflict, and now that the Iranian nuclear program is about to reach the point of no return, now is the time for Olmert to be replaced.

Please, do it now, before he has the opportunity to make any more critical decisions for the State of Israel.

Ehud Olmert, courtesy of Israel Matzav

Technorati Tags: Israel, Second Lebanon War, Hezbollah, Olmert

A recent survey of the British media on the occasion of Israel’s 60th anniversary shows, unsurprisingly, that the British media don’t like Israel very much. This is not a shock to anyone that has ever looked at the BBC website or read the Guardian but there is one particular aspect that I want to discuss:

Eighty-three per cent of articles in all newspapers which took a position on Israel’s stance on peace contained the message that Israel did not seek peace…

Overall, only 6% of articles carried the message that Israel seeks peace. This message was only contained in three articles in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph…

Twenty-six per cent of coverage [on the BBC website] contained the message that Israel is not seeking peace.

A neutral observer on Mars, for example, might have trouble understanding this. After all,

1. Israel was attacked by the Arab nations in 1948,  preempted an imminent attack in 1967, and was attacked again in 1973. The 1948 and 1967 wars were declared by Arab leaders to be genocidal in intent. Insofar as Israel initiated hostilities, it was in response to clear acts of war such as the closing of the straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping in 1956, and the Katyusha attacks on northern Israel by the PLO in Lebanon in 1982.
2. In 1978 Israel agreed to return the entire Sinai peninsula to Egypt in the interest of peace, giving up a huge strategic advantage and a large amount of natural resources, including oil.  In return, she received a ‘cold peace’ — really just an extended truce.
3. In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo agreement with terrorist Yasser Arafat in the interest of peace. In return, she received several years of escalating terrorism against her population, culminating in Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton-Barak proposals and the murderous second intifada. Israel offered to transfer 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinian authority, give up control of Judaism’s holiest sites in east Jerusalem, etc., all for peace.
4. Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in 2000 in the interest of peace and received in return the Hezbollah buildup which led to the 2006 war.
5. In the interest of peace, Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005, at great cost to uprooted residents — who still have not received just compensation as promised — and to the nation. In return, she received a Hamas terrorist state, thousands of rockets fired on her population, cross-border attacks, and will soon have to fight another war.
6. Israel is presently negotiating with the Palestinian Authority for what may be a ‘do-over’ of the Clinton-Barak proposal, in the face of clear evidence that neither Fatah nor Hamas is prepared to accept the existence of a Jewish state of any size.
7. Most of the Arab nations, as well as the Palestinian Fatah and Hamas movements, have never stopped the continuous barrage of anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda and incitement in their official media, while the Israeli government always stresses its desire to live in peace with its neighbors.

Considering all this, you would think that the Arabs are the ones who are uninterested in peace, and that Israel has been, over and over, prepared to make great sacrifices for peace — even after they’ve been kicked in the teeth in response.

Yes, you would think this. But you are not smoking the same stuff as the British media.

Technorati Tags: British media, Israel, peace

A few days ago I wrote about how the great heros of the Palestinian people were terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi and Samir Kuntar, who ‘courageously’ murdered defenseless Israelis — especially children.

The Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority [PA] is no better in this regard than Hamas. And they don’t seem to understand — or care — how they appear to civilized people:

Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official closely associated with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, described Mughrabi, whose family originally came from Jaffa, as a “the first Palestinian woman to carry out one of the most courageous operations in Israel.” He claimed that in her will, Mughrabi, who belonged to Fatah, had asked her family to see to it that she was buried in “Palestine.”

“We want to turn Dalal’s funeral into a national wedding, a major celebration,” the Fatah official said. “The operation she carried out off the shores of her hometown of Jaffa was heroic and exemplary. She will always be remembered as a symbol for the Palestinian women’s struggle” …

An article published in Thursday’s edition of the PA-funded Al-Hayat Al-Jadedda newspaper hailed Mughrabi as a “living legend and a wonderful example for all women.” — Jerusalem Post

You would think that Mughrabi was the Palestinian Joan of Arc instead of the cold-blooded murderer of 35 people that she encountered at random, including 13 children. But what she did was exemplary, she is a “wonderful example” to be followed by Palestinian women!

Ahmed also praised Lebanese prisoner Samir Kuntar for carrying out another terror attack in Israel one year after the 1978 carnage. He described Kuntar as a “stubborn and firm fighter in the ranks of the Lebanese resistance who led a very courageous operation.”

It must have taken great firmness and courage to smash the head of 4-year old Einat after shooting her father in front of her eyes. A stubborn fighter indeed.

This from a people that is always talking about human rights, insisting for example that the security barrier  built by Israel to stop those like Mughrabi and Kuntar violates their human rights.

But at some point one is forced to wonder: what do you have to do, how far do you have to go, before you lose the right to be considered human?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, terrorism, human rights

News item:

Israel’s decision to clamp down on Hamas-affiliated institutions in the West Bank has drawn strong condemnations from the movement’s leaders.

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel on Wednesday of waging a “dirty war” against Hamas. He also accused the Palestinian Authority of “participating” in the Israeli campaign…

In recent days the IDF closed several Hamas-affiliated institutions, including a shopping mall in Nablus. The move is aimed at undermining Hamas’s influence and destroying its infrastructure in the West Bank.

Haniyeh said that altogether the IDF closed 37 institutions in Ramallah and Nablus since the beginning of the week.

“This is an ugly crime against humanity,” Haniyeh said, adding that most of the institutions were charities that provided for the needy. [my emphasis]

How ironic for Hamas to talk about dirty wars and crimes against humanity!

This is the Hamas whose  charter calls for Muslims to kill Jews, which claims all of Israel as a Muslim waqf [property or land dedicated to Allah], and which insists that the only solution to the problem of its Jewish occupancy is violent jihad.

This is the Hamas which popularized the tactic of strapping bombs to teenagers, mentally handicapped people, and disgraced women, and sending them to blow themselves up in the midst of Israeli civilians.

This is the Hamas which fires rockets and mortars into Israel at random targets, and which celebrates with glee whenever Israelis are killed.

This is the Hamas that creates childrens’ TV programs in which ‘cute’ characters preach hatred, revenge and death, and which dresses up toddlers barely able to walk as suicide bombers, to the great pride of their parents.

This is the Hamas whose entire heart and soul, its reason for being, is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish state, whose ‘charities’ serve to recruit supporters for its murderous program and as a smokescreen for its ‘military’ — that is, terrorist — wing.

So explain to me why Israel should not do its best to suppress Hamas-affiliated institutions in the West Bank. Indeed, explain why Israel stands aside and lets it grow stronger and stronger in Gaza.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, dirty war, crimes against humanity

We complain over and over about the dishonesty of the media. Do we really understand just how much damage they do? Caroline Glick does:

Over the past eight years of the jihad against Israel, among countless examples, three instances of open media collusion with Israel’s enemies stand out for their strategic impact on the course of events. First there is the al-Dura affair. It was followed by the mythical “Jenin massacre” in April 2002. That in turn was followed by the fabricated “massacre” at Kafr Kana in Lebanon in July 2006.

The al-Dura story solidified the Palestinian narrative of victimization by Israel just months after they rejected statehood and peace at Camp David [and became the emblematic justification for the intifada, the murder of the Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000, and the decapitation of Daniel Pearl — ed]

When the so-called Jenin massacre was reported in April 2002, the IDF was in the midst of Operation Defensive Shield. Just before the Palestinians began making allegations of an Israeli massacre, IDF forces uncovered documentary evidence proving that the Palestinian war against Israel was run by the PA and Yassir Arafat. By fabricating the massacre, the PA was saved from being delegitimized as an actor in Washington. The Israeli peace camp was also resuscitated from its death throes.

As the Winograd Commission documented in its final report on the Second Lebanon War, the media reports of the fabricated massacre of Lebanese civilians by an IAF bomber in Kafr Kana in South Lebanon caused US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to end US support for an Israeli military victory over Iran’s Lebanese proxy and to pressure Israel to accept a cease-fire leaving Hizbullah intact. [my emphasis]

Read the whole article here

Technorati Tags: media, Israel, Caroline Glick, Mohammed Dura, Kafr Kana, Jenin massacre

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 prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, which is expected to happen in a week or so, will include the body of Palestinian terrorist Dalal Mughrabi, according to the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

They can have her rotting bones.

She was the leader of a unit of eleven Palestinian Fedayeen who  perpetrated a bloody massacre in March 1978. Landing on the beach near Kibbutz Maagen Michael in rubber boats launched from Lebanon, the terrorists met an American nature photographer named Gail Rubin and executed her for taking pictures of ‘Palestine’ without permission.Then they hijacked a bus carrying Egged (the bus cooperative) employees and their families on an outing; there was a shootout with security forces, the terrorists shot many of the passengers and firebombed the bus. Some 35 Israelis, 13 of them children, were murdered before the terrorists were killed. The event is usually called the “Coastal Road Massacre”; Israelis also call it the “Bus of Blood”.

Above is a picture of the monument to the victims along the coastal road near Herzliya, where the bus stopped.

This is an old, familiar horror. There have been more massacres since then, lots of Jewish blood under the bridge. But here’s the important part:

To this day, Dalal Mughrabi is a heroine of Fatah, the ‘moderate’ Palestinian leadership for which my tax dollars are buying guns, ammunition and armored vehicles.  There are several girls’ schools, summer camps, and kindergartens named after her. Her name has been given to soccer teams, to police training courses, and to numerous children. There are annual ceremonies and TV broadcasts celebrating her ‘heroic action’ [Palestinian Media Watch].

Dalal Mughrabi, as well as Wafa Idris, the first female suicide bomber, master bombmaker Yehiyeh (the Engineer) Ayyash, and countless other ‘martyrs’ are venerated in Palestinian culture, and — significantly — by the official organs of the Palestinian Authority. Aaron Klein reports,

An official PA pamphlet obtained by WND asks Fatah leaders in the Gaza Strip and West Bank to prepare victory celebrations for the day Mughrabi’s body is released by Israel.

“We call upon all regional Fatah leaders to make the necessary activities, demonstrations, festivals and symbolic funerals in a very significant way to glorify this big hero. We call upon Fatah sections to form special committees with the mission of coordinating these preparations,” read the pamphlet.

The communication went on to call for Israeli Arabs to also celebrate the release of Mughrabi’s body.

The pamphlet was sent from the PA’s “ideological and organic” department, which is led by Chief Palestinian negotiator Ahmad Qurei, who has been overseeing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks initiated at last November’s U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit.

According to PA sources, preparations are underway for Mughrabi to be buried in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, which is home to the Church of the Nativity, the believed birthplace of Jesus.

When the official heros — not the cult heroes of some extremist group, the official heros of a people that wants to become a nation — are murderers and terrorists, creatures that would kill a nature photographer in cold blood because she had the temerity to take pictures of what they claim as theirs, monsters that would shoot and burn children on a holiday outing, then what does that tell us about that people? And what does it tell us about their leadership that promotes this sickness?

Here is what Israel should say to Fatah: here are the bones of Dalal Mughrabi, whom you hold up as the model for every young Palestinian girl. Have big funerals with lots of shooting in the air and giving out of candy. Talk about her heroism in confronting the Zionist oppressors (like the Zionist oppressor children of bus drivers). Make speeches about redeeming  all of Palestine with your blood, display pictures of ‘martyrs’, and above all of the Original Terrorist, the father of the Palestinian nation and still its inspiration, Yasser Arafat.

And then understand this:

We know that there can be no peace with you. We know that giving you a state, giving you anything, will only bring your terrorist ‘heros’ closer to our population. We know what’s in your hearts because you tell everyone who is willing to listen, and the message has come through loud and clear. You are our deadly enemies, and peace will not come until you no longer have the power to hurt us. And we are going to do whatever we can to bring about that state of affairs.

Just what this will mean to you in practice is up to you.

Technorati Tags: Bus of Blood, Coastal Road massacre, Dalal Mughrabi, Fatah, Israel

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.

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