FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

It may have been hard to notice what with all those Qassam missles falling on Sderot and vicinity, but Hamas has been maintaining a truce with Israel for the past few months.

What about the suicide bombing in Eilat recently? Silly me, that was Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in cooperation with the [Fatah] Al-Aqsa brigades. And the recent attempt to do a mass-casualty bombing in Tel Aviv was PIJ too.

The good Hamas that controls the Palestinian authority insists that they have kept the truce. It’s the bad guys in PIJ who haven’t. But now they’re fed up:

Abu Obaida, spokesman for the [Hamas] Qassam Brigades, said in the statement that “the truce with the Israeli occupation is no longer valid,” citing the “assassination of Islamic Jihad commander” Mahmoud Qassem as the reason.

Qassem was shot dead in the West Bank by Israeli Border Police on Tuesday, after security forces traced a foiled suicide bomb attack planned for Tel Aviv back to him [and after he fired on police trying to arrest him — ed.]. — YNet

Now let’s see, Hamas is maintaining a truce (except for rockets from Gaza which don’t count), and PIJ is killing Israelis. So when Israel strikes back at PIJ, elements in Hamas rush to their defense. But there’s more:

It should be noted that the statement is not a formal announcement from the Hamas movement as a whole.

Naif Hawatma, director of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine [DFLP], said on Wednesday that Hamas is involved and supportive of the political process.

Hamas, Fatah, and DFLP intend to participate in the Palestinian Unity Government, but PIJ will not participate (but will ‘support’ it).

Confused? Here’s a simple explanation: they’re all murderers.

By Vic Rosenthal

Ha’aretz reports today that Hamas may have ‘Sagger’ antitank missiles in Gaza. While these are old technology and not as dangerous as the missiles used by Hezbollah in Lebanon, they nevertheless represent an advance over the crude (but still dangerous) RPGs that they’ve had until now. The report continues:

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By Vic Rosenthal

Kibbutz Degania A, the first kibbutz in Israel (founded in 1910), is being privatized.

I spent nine years (1979-1988) as a kibbutz member. During that period, the kibbutz movements went through great changes, spurred by external economic pressures and internal social ones. They faced very difficult conditions, a period of massive inflation and increased competition from the European Economic community for their agricultural products. It became necessary for the kibbutz to industrialize or die. Such things as when to borrow money and when to pay it back, as well as the Boursa (stock market), went from irrelevant to critical. Mistakes were made, some of them not entirely honest ones. The political revolution in which, for the first time in Israel’s history, the Labor Party, patron of the kibbutz movement, lost office and was replaced by the Likud pulled a rug of subsidies out from under their feet.

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