Erilc Lee: Israel and London in the blitz

Nick Clegg's historical amnesia

[The following was submitted as a letter to the Guardian in response to this article:guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/07/nick-clegg-israel-gaza-war.]

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, writing in the Guardian today ("We must stop arming Israel"), tosses a sop to Israel with the following sentences:

"Of course, Israel has every right to defend itself. It is difficult to imagine what it must be like to live with the constant threat of rocket attacks from a movement which espouses terrorist violence ..."

He then goes on to call for Britain and the rest of the EU to crack down hard on Israel, to cut off arms supplies and much more. But as I re-read the lines above, I couldn't help but think of the historical amnesia Clegg and those like him are suffering from.

He is in effect saying that we in Britain cannot understand what Israelis are feeling. Never having been under rocket attack ourselves as a nation.

Aren't we forgetting something here, Mr. Clegg? It was called the Second World War. You might wish to ask some older people about it.

Not only did Britain suffer the full wrath of a terrorist regime under the Blitz, but even as the war was ending and that regime ceased to be an existential threat to this country, the Nazis fired V1 and V2 rockets indiscriminately, killing innocent civilians.

And even though there was no real danger at this point of the Nazis winning the war, that generation of British leaders took the view that the best way to put an end to rocket attacks against London and other British cities was through the strategic bomber offensive against Germany.

German cities were flattened. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians were killed. Goebbels and his propaganda machine howled about "war crimes". And then the war ended.

Ironically, Clegg's forerunner as Liberal leader, Archie Sinclair, served as Secretary of State for Air in Churchill's government. In that role, he helped plan the fire-bombing of Dresden.

Imagine if back in 1945 there was a political leader somewhere in the world, in a neutral country, who called for Britain to stop bombing Germany. Such a person might well have pointed out that bombing Germany would only anger Germans, and unite them behind the most extreme Nazi elements. There would be no chance of a negotiated peace with the Third Reich so long as the bombing went on. Such a politician might even have called for an arms embargo against Britain to prevent it from waging war against the Nazi regime.

History would not look kindly upon such views today. They would seem to be, at the very least, naïve in the extreme.

Britons do not have to imagine what it would be like to live under rocket attack. They've had the experience already and back in 1945, they knew how to respond.

Eric Lee
London

An Arab view of Gaza: Hamas must step down as Gaza's keeper

From the Beirut Daily Stair:

Hamas must step down as Gaza's keeper
By Sultan Al-Qassemi
Commentary by
Tuesday, January 06, 2009

 

 

Regardless of the outcome of Israel's barbaric "Operation Cast Lead," one thing is certain: It is high time for Hamas to step down as keeper of Gaza. People will object and remind me that the movement was democratically elected. My answer to that is yes, but Hamas also happens to be incompetent. Most of us in the Middle East still believe that incompetence is a trait that is exclusive to Arab dictators. However modern history has proven that democracy and incompetent governance aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, George W. Bush and Mikheil Saakashvili were both democratically elected and yet they are responsible for disastrous wars.

 

Hamas has not mastered the art of politics. As the veteran British journalist Robert Fisk recently noted in The Independent, nor does the movement have the military discipline of Lebanon's Hizbullah. Hamas also missed the opportunity of a reconciliation with Fatah brokered by the Saudi King Abdullah last year, and it didn't mend that relationship when this might have allowed it to take partial control of the vital Rafah crossing with Egypt.

 

Then there is the audacity of Khaled Meshaal, the head of the Hamas political bureau, who currently resides in Syria. Soon after the Gaza attack began, he called for the launch of a third intifada, even as his own personal security was being increased by the Syrian regime. Does Meshaal believe that his life is more important than that of the scores of dying, innocent Palestinians in Gaza who he is responsible for as the representative of a supposedly democratically elected party? Meshaal can wake up in tranquil Damascus, turn on the television set, read the newspaper and have breakfast with his wife and seven children, then he can say live on Al-Jazeera - where else? - that "we want armed resistance, a military uprising to face the enemy." Couldn't he smuggle himself into Gaza to be with his resistance fighters?

 

This resistance has for many years been funded by donations from wealthy Arabs in the Gulf, among others, to cover an annual budget that the Council on Foreign Relations has estimated at $70 million. Yet Hamas has hardly managed to amass a significant arsenal or military capabilities thanks to this money. All the movement really has to show for its income, and after all this time, is an arsenal basically of long-range firecrackers whose launch against neighboring towns in Israel has done more damage to Hamas' own image than to Israeli infrastructure. Meshaal, who declared that the resistance "has lost very few people" as the body count approached 434, displayed the same disdain for human life as Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who said in Paris last week that there was "no humanitarian crisis in Gaza."

 

Many thought that Gaza and the West Bank were inseparable entities until Hamas' bloody takeover of Gaza in summer 2007 undermined that promise. The movement's 18-month rule has been marred by lawlessness, extrajudicial public killings, and gang warfare reminiscent of Somalia.

 

Time magazine reported on the violence that followed the takeover, observing that "[g]angs have tossed enemies alive off 15-story buildings, shot one another's children and burst into hospitals to finish off wounded foes lying helplessly in bed." Recently, Taghreed El-Khodary of The New York Times reported that militants in civilian clothing had again resorted to killing wounded former inmates of Gaza's central jail who were accused of collaboration with Israel. These alleged collaborators were executed in public even though Palestinian human rights groups repeatedly claimed that "most of these people are completely innocent." Hamas seemed to be either unable or unwilling to stop these extrajudicial executions. 

 

On the first anniversary of Hamas' takeover of Gaza, reporters from The Christian Science Monitor found a lack of medicines in hospitals, as well as a lack of clean drinking water in the territory and raw sewage streaming into the sea. And this wasn't because Hamas' dignity prevented it from meeting with the enemy. Hamas' propaganda machine around the Arab world mysteriously failed to report on meetings between some of its members and Israeli representatives. For example, according to the BBC, in early 2006 the Hamas-affiliated acting mayor of the West Bank town of Qalqilya met for 90 minutes with an official from the Israeli state electricity company in order to sort out the town's electricity needs. The Palestinian official, Hashem Masri, told the station: "It was civil, without any problem between him and I."

 

By any standards Hamas has failed. It has failed in peace, it has failed in governance, and it is failing in war. In addition to Hamas' ambiguous political agenda, the movement's goal seems to be resistance for the sake of resistance, where it is the journey that ends up being the destination. It is time for Khaled Meshaal to step down before he causes even more damage to the Palestinian cause. He must allow more competent leaders to emerge.

 

Sultan Al-Qassemi is a Sharjah-based businessman, graduate of the American University of Paris and founder of Barjeel Securities in Dubai. He wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR.

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

A Conflict Hamas Caused

 

 

» Links tothis article

By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, January 6, 2009; Page A13

Nearly a year ago, I was in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where, on almost any day, you could see the current war coming. "The next Middle East war may start over Sderot," I wrote back then. I came by my prescience the hard way -- in a bomb shelter. That day, three Qassam rockets had hit the city. It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel.

 On some days, dozens of rockets fell on Sderot. A blimp hovered over the town, and when it electronically spied an incoming rocket, the sirens went off. In Sderot, the sirens were virtually a single, long wail on some days. Everyone took shelter because shelters are everywhere -- a constant reminder of the nearness of death or, at the very least, destruction. Even a dud can bust through the roof of a house.

I get the impression that Israel is expected to put up with this. The implied message from demonstrators and some opinion columnists is that this is the price Israel is supposed to pay for being, I suppose, Israel. I am informed by a Palestinian journalist in a Post op-ed that Israel is trying to stop "amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities." In Sderot, I saw homes nagged to smithereens.

 

While I was reading the online version of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz for all the latest news about the war, a pop-up ad announced itself: "Camp Kimama, Israel, 2009 -- What childhood memories should be made of." The picture shows kids frolicking in the water. Placed next to stories about battle, it was a jarring -- but vivid -- statement of war aims: the expectation of normal life.

The CIA's World Factbook says that Israel has a population of 7,112,359. Of these, about 5,434,000 are Jews. That includes 187,000 settlers in the West Bank, about 20,000 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights bordering Syria, and about 175,000 in East Jerusalem. It does not include, however, the approximately 750,000 Israelis living in the United States -- some for a brief amount of time, some for an extended period, some permanently. For a variety of reasons -- and often with considerable pain -- they have given up on the country of their birth.

As the leaders of Hamas understand, the war in Gaza is about Israel's incessant fight to be a normal country. Maybe that's impossible. The war between Arab and Jew predates the founding of Israel in 1948. For the Palestinians, it is a fierce fight for Arab justice, for Arab pride, for Arab myth -- for ancestral houses and orange groves that few living have ever seen. For Israel, it is so kids can swim in a lake.

Three years ago, Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip. Good, the world said. Next, pull out of the West Bank, the world said. But then Hamas, which has vowed to destroy Israel, won the election in Gaza. Sderot soon became hell. The West Bank is controlled by Fatah, the moderate Palestinian organization, which once had control of Gaza, too. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, will rockets come from there? If you lived in Tel Aviv, a spit from the West Bank, would you take the chance?

Anyone could have seen this war coming. The diplomats and demonstrators who are now so engaged in the problem and the process were nowhere to be found when rockets began raining down on southern Israel. The border between Gaza and Egypt is riddled with tunnels -- some for food, some for weapons. The international monitors that are so evidently needed now were just as evidently needed then.

Conventional wisdom says that when Israel went into Lebanon in 2006, it lost that war. Hezbollah stood up to the mighty Israeli army; Israel could not muzzle Hezbollah's rockets. That may not be the way Hezbollah sees things, however. After the war, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, said he had miscalculated. He was not prepared for the fury of the Israeli attack. He apologized. Now, Hezbollah takes no role in the current war. It will be back, but it still has wounds to lick.

The horrors of war are not to be dismissed or demeaned. In 2006, Israel accidentally killed 28 civilians in the Lebanese village of Qana when it attempted to take out a nearby rocket site. In Gaza, innocent Palestinians are being killed. The suffering is great and cannot be ignored. But what has been ignored is the series of events that led to this war. Anyone could see how it was going to start. As always, though, it's a lot harder to see how it ends.

cohenr@washpost.com

Gaza Cease Fire Rumors and Premonitions - 1701 all over again?

What is the end goal of the Gaza operation? Your guess might be as good as any. Toppling Hamas is not on the menu according to repeated Israeli announcements. It is not even a "nice to have" addition to the requirements list. Some things that are afoot:

Egypt to demand Hamas accept immediate truce in Gaza - Egyptian officials said Monday that Cairo was set to demand an immediate cease-fire from Hamas in the Gaza Strip, as Israeli forces moved into their 10th day of a military offensive on the coastal territory.

 

And more interestingly, a report that Israel is examining an international treaty that would isolate Hamas:

 

The United States has launched an international effort, which includes Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians, to formulate a ceasefire agreement that would neutralize Hamas' influence in the region, diplomatic sources in Jerusalem reported Sunday night.

The move will be carried out with the support of the international community.

....

According to Olmert, Israel is interested in a ceasefire agreement that would bring to an isolation of Hamas and include the following conditions: A stop to the rocket fire and the terror emanating from Gaza, as well as to Hamas' military buildup, and the deployment of international forces in the Gaza Strip to enforce the implementation of a truce.

The release of Gilad Shalit will also be stipulated as one of Israel's terms for a halt to the fighting as part of any future agreement.

A senior source in Jerusalem said Sunday: "After Israel launched the ground incursion, the world realized it must wake up and abide by the conditions set by Israel.

"... the American initiative is based on the agreement of the four elements that surround the only geographical territory in the world
that is ruled by a terrorist entity - Gaza."

The official explained that the initiative does not include negotiations with Hamas, but rather forcing such a regional treaty on the organization.
He added that Olmert has made it clear to the Americans and to other world leaders involved in the move, that Israel's conditions were not negotiable, and that if they are not obtained through a diplomatic course, they would be secured through the military operation.

 

One suspects that Gilad Shalit may be returned in parts. It is not clear why Hamas would agree to any such conditions, or who would enforce them or how. Does anyone believe any UN "monitors" will risk getting blown up in order to stop Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Popular Resistance Committees from launching rockets at Israel? Hamas, after all, can claim that it is these other organizations that are violating the conditions.  It seems that Condoleezza Rice has cooked up another UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and sold it to Zippy Tzipi Livni again.

 

Ami Isseroff

Ian O'Doherty: Why Israel had enough of Hamas

The independent is Ireland's larget selling newspaper I am told. It should not be necessary to repeat what is obvious, but it is.

Why the Israeli people have finally had enough

 

Enough is enough: An Israeli man stands on the scene after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza landed near the town of Sderot

By Ian O'Doherty

Monday January 05 2009

So, it's genocide now, is it? Or is it actually another holocaust, something which one typically restrained Palestinian analyst described as "worse than Hitler's war against the Jews"?

Are we watching the ethnic cleansing of an entire people? Are we witnessing the deliberate eradication of a race?

Well, no actually, we're not.

Yet the conventional dinner party wisdom which we've had to put up with in the media, both here in Ireland and generally across Britain, is that somehow Israel is the aggressor in the rapidly worsening situation in Gaza.

Footage of air strikes with the ensuing photogenic explosions and dramatic plumes of smoke, quickly followed by clips of collapsed buildings and enraged mourners, makes far better copy than actually looking at the reasons why Israel has done what it's done.

Anyone who devotes only a cursory glance at the news, both print and television, would be forgiven for thinking that, out of spite, might and malice, Israel has decided to destroy the Palestinian people.

The problem with that conclusion -- and it's not something you're going to learn from the BBC and most other outlets -- is that, contrary to the currently popular belief, Israel is actually acting with a ridiculous degree of restraint.

Over the last couple of years, thousands of rockets have been landing on Israeli soil and, finally, they have had enough.

But behind that statistic there is a human dimension which tends to be rather ignored.

I know many people in the southern Israeli town of Sderot and what is remarkable about their stories is not the number or make of rockets which have fallen on them on a daily basis for years, but the psychological carnage this wreaked upon them.

One woman freely admitted to me that she hasn't had a proper night's sleep in more than two years as she and her family now basically live in their bomb shelter and it's hard to tell who she hates more -- the Muslim terrorists of Hamas or the Israeli government which she thinks has abandoned them.

It's a common feeling amongst residents of southern Israeli towns who have been the silent victims of a long campaign of violence, intimidation and murder carried out by Hamas. And now, finally, that the Israelis have said that enough is enough, they are somehow meant to be the aggressors?

There are people of good conscience on both sides of this argument, but one of the main problems in this debate lies in the cowardly tendency of the Western media to apply equivalence to both sides.

Thus, Hamas is seen to be as legitimate a government as the Israelis, and its rocket attacks across the border from Gaza are seen as being part of a yet another, intractable, interminable Middle Eastern dispute.

There's just one problem with that approach -- it's completely wrong.

Hamas is a fundamentalist Islamic organisation intent on the eradication of the state of Israel and all its citizens; a violent fascist regime that allows honour killings and the execution of homosexuals to continue in its sphere of influence. Bankrolled by Iran, it manages to make even Hezbollah look like a moderate organisation.

But Hamas is clever.

As a friend of mine from Sderot pointed out, one of its favourite tactics is to launch Qassams from Palestinian schoolyards -- while the schools are still in session.

Hamas does this, you see, knowing that the IDF can't immediately strike back (they can vector a rocket launch site within 90 seconds) because the last thing the Israelis need is footage of a devastated Palestinian school with dead kids.

And, over the last week, we have seen carefully manipulated footage of dead civilians, with the fact that they were effectively used as human shields conveniently ignored. When Israel pulled out of Gaza -- ironically, the last battalion of IDF troops to leave Gaza contained some people from Sderot -- they were acceding to international and internal pressure. The doves on the Left said it was to prove to Palestinians that they wanted to give Palestinians independence, the hawks on the Right -- and there are some truly scary right-wingers in Israel, even as ardent a supporter of the country as I am will freely admit that -- prophesied that it would lead to carnage.

And, lo and behold, virtually as soon as the last jeep left Gaza the rockets started. And then the blockade began, and the whole damn mess started all over again.

But there's a bigger picture here, something which Israelis have been trying to broadcast to the world, but which, thanks to their spectacular inability to accurately and sympathetically portray their point of view, has not been properly transmitted. It's this -- Israel is the front line of the war between democracy and Islamic fascism.

Would you rather live in a society with a free press, equal rights for women -- and anyone who knows an Israeli woman will know that they're not easily suppressed, anyway -- equal rights for gay people and a proud and stubborn belief in the right of the individual to lead their life in the way that they see fit or would you rather exist in a society where women who dare to speak their mind are executed, where gay people are not just shunned but murdered and where having a dissenting thought marks you out for death?

The civilian deaths in Gaza are to be mourned, and anyone who says otherwise is reprehensible. But in a sick and twisted irony, they are mourned more by Israelis than by Hamas, who know that every dead Palestinian kid is worth another piece of propaganda.

Here in the West, where we share the same values as Israel, we need to start standing shoulder with this tiny oasis of democracy in a vast desert of savagery.

To do otherwise is moral cowardice of the most repugnant kind.

The Middle East Studies Mess at MESA

Mesa is fully as bad as is portrayed here, and somewhat worse. In more private forums, many MESA members are openly anti-Semitic and for example, praise the Holocaust denying Iranian PressTV Web site.

 

Middle East Studies on the Mend?

by Jonathan Schanzer
American Thinker
January 4, 2009

 

In recent years, Campus Watch (CW) analysts have leveled a barrage of criticism against the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) as a bastion of groupthink for scholar-activists peddling a politicized agenda. CW's current director, Winfield Myers, noted that its "reputation has been shattered by years of politicized scholarship, one-sided teaching, and bullying students." Jonathan Calt Harris, formerly with CW, called the organization a "hive of academic opposition to America, Israel, and, in the larger sense, rationalism itself." After years of responding to such criticism with cries of "McCarthyism," MESA just might be owning up to a few of its failures.

The 2008 MESA conference, held in Washington, DC in November, consisted of 12 sessions over four days with more than 1,500 scholars and professionals in attendance.

In recent years, even after the 9/11 attacks, MESA has failed to offer useful information on the Middle East and Islam and almost completely ignored American national security issues. Not surprisingly, critics charged that MESA was increasingly irrelevant.

This year, MESA actually hosted several panels to correct the problem. Indeed, MESA's 2008 lineup reflected real improvements from 2007. Though few in number, there are positive indications that MESA may grasp, at least in some small way, why critics charge that the field has become a den of corruption and activism posing as scholarship.

One panel, titled "International Relations of the Middle East," featured a number of senior scholars -- including Gilles Kepel of France's Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris and Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland -- who conducted some soul-searching. In MESA's description of the panel, the organization admitted that "academic research has not always prioritized" policy issues. The session was held to assess "the state of the field: what has gone right, what has gone wrong, and the future of the field over the next decade." Former MESA president Lisa Anderson also served on the panel. The willingness of MESA to engage in a bit of self-criticism is a welcome departure from its traditional insistence that all is well in Middle East studies.

While many panels covered arcane subjects (i.e., The Diversity of Yemeni Poetry), as is customary throughout academia, there were a few earnest attempts to put the Middle East academic brain trust to work for the good of society. Ghada Al-Madbouh of the University of Maryland addressed a critical policy topic in "Inquiry into the Struggle between the Palestinian Authority Fatah's and Hamas over Governance." An entire panel was reserved for Iraqi scholars to provide suggestions on the "Role of Academics in Building Civil Society in Iraq."

MESA even included the study of Israel and the participation of Zionist Israelis this year, although it seems that Zionists seldom mixed with Arabists on panels. One homogenous panel, sponsored by the Association of Israel studies, examined "Israeli Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy after the Annapolis Conference." Chaired by veteran Johns Hopkins professor Robert O. Freedman, the panel also included Tel Aviv University's Eyal Zisser, a respected scholar of Syria. The goal appeared to be a serious presentation of scholarship on Israel and its security needs rather than MESA's usual drubbing of the Jewish state.

These and other small improvements suggest that the efforts of off-campus groups that closely monitor and critique Middle East studies have forced MESA to make some much-needed changes.

These changes are small, however. It must be noted that the politicized, anti-Western old guard still holds the reigns at MESA. Extremist professors like Juan Cole and Joel Beinin made a joint appearance to discuss "solutions" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The late Edward Said's dangerously anti-Western book Orientalism was celebrated, and panelists predictably presented papers that vilified Israel (Ilan Pappé on "The Vicissitudes of Israeli Historiography on 1948"). One University of California, San Diego student was honored (not challenged) for a paper that downplays the spiteful impact of Hamas' al-Aqsa television channel.

A further sign that the old guard remains strong was a panel hosted by the Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), a federally funded (Title VI recipient) organization that boasts some of the most politicized professors of the field. Titled, "New Studies in Palestinian Society and Economy," the panel provided a soap box for Palestinian apologists and Israel detractors to talk about "the Palestinian Economy after 40 Years of Occupation," the "Impact of Israeli Movement Restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," and the "Survival Narratives of Internal Refugees under Military Rule in Nazareth."

That taxpayers continue to fund PARC, via the Departments of State and Education, so that it can peddle propaganda at a scholarly conference is an outrage. Moreover, that MESA would host another PARC panel, as it has done in years past, is a continued black eye for the discipline.

Ideological change within the field of Middle East studies has only just begun. Professors continue to bully their students, apologize for jihadists, and teach fringe ideas in the classroom.

It is therefore too early to know if MESA's small first steps toward long-needed improvement will continue, or whether next year's annual meeting will be a return to the status quo.

MESA's change did not come easily. Six years of critique yielded just small improvements. Only continued external criticism will ensure reform.

Jonathan Schanzer, an adjunct scholar at Campus Watch, is director of policy for the Jewish Policy Center and author of Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave 2008).

Israel's case in Gaza

Robert Fulforrd argues the case for Israel forcefully and well in this article.

 

Robert Fulford: Israel vs. Hamas; civilization vs. terror
Posted: January 03, 2009, 7:00 PM by NP Editor
Robert Fulford, Israel

 

Day after day the advice rains down on Israel: Restrain yourself, pull back, look at the cost in human lives, show respect for global opinion. It comes from all the usual places...

Try to imagine any other state receiving randomly targeted rockets from a sworn enemy and refraining from violent response. Russia's foreign minister has urged Israel to end its Gaza campaign because of "the suffering." Can one imagine how long Russia would keep its bombers on the ground if Georgia fired rockets onto Russian soil? France, as the current head of the EU, deplored "disproportionate use of force." Is France prepared to hold its fire if Belgium starts lobbing explosives across its border? Would Russia or France tolerate 5,500 missiles exploded on its soil? That's Israel's record.

...

Israel, the world's most endangered democracy, has once again been cast as a cruel aggressor, its tormentors as victims.

 

The Israelis are fighting an enemy of a kind that few of us can even imagine. Who, for instance, stores missiles in a place of worship? When Israeli aircraft bombed a Gaza City mosque on Wednesday, having learned rockets were stored there, their bomb set off a chain of secondary explosions. Those were the rockets. Sometimes Israel notifies civilians of an impending attack, so Hamas responds by placing civilians on the roofs of targeted buildings. This follows the policy articulated last winter by a Hamas representative in the Palestinian parliament: As human shields, he said, women, the elderly and children excel, "as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death as you desire life."

 

In September, 2005, when the Israelis moved out of Gaza, the new regime could conceivably have seized the chance to demonstrate that a peaceful two-state policy will work. It was possible. Palestinians are a talented people, as they demonstrate whenever they migrate to countries offering opportunities rather than victimhood. And it was obvious that Gaza's only hope for prosperity depends on co-operation with Israel in trade.

 

But a few months later, Hamas defeated Fatah in the Palestinian election. Hamas wasn't even vaguely interested in improving the lives of 1.5 million Gaza residents now under its control. It raised an army of 16,000 and built 50 kilometres of tunnels to Israel and Egypt. It began smuggling in rockets from Iran. In June, 2007, during a violent Palestinian vs. Palestinian struggle, Hamas killed or frightened off Fatah's supporters. Rockets flying toward Israel, targeted at population centres, soon became Gaza's foreign policy.

 

Until now, Israeli casualties have rarely been heavy, but psychological and economic damage has been severe. People are frequently sent running to bomb shelters, which depresses business, disrupts schools and produces widespread stress. The latest rockets from Gaza have a 40-kilometre range, meaning they can reach 900,000 Israelis.

 

This week, Israel destroyed many Hamas rocket sites. Even so, a quick cease-fire (if forced on Israel by the West) will allow Hamas to reorganize itself, restock its armoury and begin anew the campaign to destroy Israel. That's what it knows how to do. It has no other significant program.

 

Israelis have not gone to war just to silence the rockets for a few months. They want (at least their supporters hope they want) an end to Hamas rule and the destruction of all its weapons. That won't resolve the argument between Palestinians and Israelis, but it will demonstrate that Israel's passivity can't be taken for granted. It will open up the possibility of a relatively democratic Gaza. It will severely disappoint Hamas's sponsors, Iran and Syria.

 

In this war, the Israelis are fighting on civilization's side against a terror state. What can we do? Understand.

 

National Post
robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Eric Lee Responds to biased Gaza op article

Progressive labor activist Eric Lee responds to yet another "Israel is always wrong" article that appeared at Engage....

Eric Lee's response to Jonathan Freedland on Gaza
January 4, 2009

This response by Eric Lee is to this piece by Jonathan Freedland.

 

The worst thing about Jonathan Freedland's article is not the lyrics but the melody.

 

The article is song-like in its constant repetition of a refrain of "Palestinians say this" followed by "Israelis says that", paragraph after paragraph, an unending rhythm, beautiful in its simplicity.

 

But Freedland describes symmetry where there is no symmetry. He equates that which cannot be equated.

 

Writing from the safety of chilly England, Freedland looks down upon the hot-tempered fools in the Middle East who can't see things as clearly as he does. He can't understand why the residents of Ashkelon, Beersheba and Sderot – and today, all Israelis – are cheering on the IDF. They must all be mad.

 

It's perfectly obvious to Freedland that both sides are responsible for this mess, that neither side is right, and neither side is wrong.

 

Despite the attempt at an oh-so-English even-handedness, the article bristles with contempt for Israel – and not for this or that Israeli politician, but for the whole country. Israel, he writes, is "dazzled by its own military might" and believes "that force is almost always the answer".

 

Freedland believes that in this case, force is not the answer. The answer to the incessant Hamas rocket barrage – which consisted of some 6,000 attacks on Israel – should have been … opening Gaza's borders. Hug your enemies and turn the other cheek. That obviously would have worked. I wonder why Israel didn't try that.

 

Freedland's carefully-chosen language betrays his own bias. He speaks of "supporters of the Palestinians" — but Israel's "cheerleaders". He asks if what Israel is doing makes any sense – but he doesn't ask the question of Hamas. He is neutral on the issue of who broke the cease-fire, but ignores the broader issue of what Hamas is (a fascist movement with genocidal intentions) and what it has done to Gaza since Israeli unilaterally withdrew its settlements and troops.

 

Freedland is convinced that if Israel does anything at all to defend itself it will only make things worse. He says that when Israel acts in self-defence, "Gazans blame Israel - and close ranks with Hamas". He quotes approvingly a Palestinian who says "anything which doesn't kill Hamas makes them stronger."

 

What utter nonsense. Wars end when the losing side becomes convinced that the enemy cannot be beaten, and that the use of force is counter-productive. That lesson was clearly learned by the Germans and Japanese in 1945. Killing lots of Germans may well have enraged them and caused them to "close ranks" and so on. But in the end, that's how wars are won.

 

Jonathan Freedland is no enemy of Israel and certainly no fool. Yet he buys into the idiotic argument that Israel dare not defend itself for fear of angering its enemies. He's equating the fire-fighters with the arsonists and is doing precisely what he accuses Israel of doing: avoiding the tough questions.

Hamas Is Perpetrating The death of its People

Hamas Is Perpetrating The death of its People
By: Elias Bejjani*

 

January 05/09

 

The genuine sympathy and empathy with the civilian massive casualties, disastrous human sufferings and extensive material loses that are sadly taking place in Gaza, should not by any mean derail or blind the actual focus of the free world countries and Human Rights'advocacy organizations away from the prime causes of the actual problem that led to the current Israeli-Palestinian bloody confrontation.

 

What has been going on in Gaza for the last two weeks is an unfortunate tragedy that has been instigated by the Axis of Evil countries, Syria and Iran through their terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah. Gaza city, the impoverished Palestinian city has been turned into a theatre for a bloody tragedy.

 

This tragedy is a scheme planned and orchestrated directly by Syria and Iran. The tool in the implementation is fundamentalist Hamas.

 

A bloody and criminal tragedy holds the Palestinian people in Gaza and its suburbs mere hostages. The Gaza inhabitants are denied any say in this tragedy. The Axis of Evil countries and organizations are disregarding the security, destiny and livelihood for the people of Gaza

 

The entire world knows that Syria and Iran totally control Hamas leadership, finance it directly and in secret, train its fighters, and supply it with weapons and equipment.

 

Yes, according to all standards, the people of Gaza today are hostages in Hamas' hands who bargain their blood mercilessly under the false slogans of resistance and liberation. Hamas' conspiracy against its own people has been overt in all its provocative practices.

 

In reality, Hamas is mimicking Hezbollah, who, back in July 2006, murdered the Lebanese civilians and destroyed their infrastructure when it instigated, perpetrated and started its futile and destructive war with Israel to serve the interests, plans, and conspiracies of Teheran and Damascus, and then claimed the defeat of the Israeli army calling it a divine Victory.

 

This is precisely what Hamas has been doing and continues to do. It kept on provoking Israel through firing rockets and missiles on Israeli civilians and refused to renew a truce with the Jewish State that had been in effect for six months. It gave Israel all the justifications for waging its destructive and devastating on-going war against Gaza. Hamas has so far caused the death and injury of more than 4000 people and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian targets in Gaza.

 

Hamas and Hezbollah's practices and slogans are directly ordered by Teheran and Damascus. They are nothing but military terrorists and bloody instruments in the hands of Iran and Syria in achieving the expansionist goals of these two countries.

 

It is crystal clear that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and all other moderate Arab countries are at the same main targets of the Axis of Evil countries (Syria & Iran) and their terrorist organizations tools (Hamas and Hezbollah).

 

Pro-Iranian and pro-Syrian demonstrators in Beirut uncovered this plot when they attempted to sack the Egyptian embassy while throwing shoes at it. At the same time and within the context of the same evil strategy, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's General Secretary openly and boldly called on the Egyptian people to demonstrate by the millions and open the Gaza-Egyptian crossings with their bare chests.

 

Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leadership also called for the Egyptian army officers and soldiers to pressure the Egyptian government into helping Hamas. They lashed at all Arab states and accused them of conspiracy against the Palestinian people, and to be sleeping in the same bed with the Israelis and the Americans.

 

The Iranian-Syrian loud anti-Israel rhetoric of theatrical threats and military boasting to destroy the Jewish state and send its people back to their countries of origin, as Iran's president Ahmad Najad keeps on uttering, has proved during the last two weeks to be just mere rhetoric that is void of any seriousness or actual military capabilities that backs the threats.

 

Therefore, the obvious question is, where are Iran's missiles, navies, and bombs?
Why have Iran and Syria refrained from coming to the rescue of their tool, Hamas?
Where is this Syrian army that has destroyed our Lebanon and massacred our people?
Where is Hezbollah's bravery and threats, and why don't they rush to the aid of Hamas?

 

The answer remains as it was since the establishment of the state of Israel. Just mere demagogic empty speeches that are motivated with hatred, fundamentalism, lies, and a poisonous rejection of the other. The leaders of Iran and Syrian like many others in the Middle East, have been addicted to insulting the intelligence of their people. They say one thing and do just the opposite. Their verbal and paper claims of illusionary triumphs and divine victories had led their people into disasters, poverty, ignorance and fundamentalism.

 

We may have believed the sincerity and nationalism of those Lebanese politicians who made speeches, issued statements, and organized demonstrations in Beirut had they refused to be the stooges and propaganda drums of Iran and Syria. They have instead screamed against Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations, burned Israeli and American flags, and attempted to ransack the Egyptian embassy.

 

It would have been more productive and honorable for them to witness the truth, and demand that Iran and Syria along with their terrorist instruments Hamas and Hezbollah, have mercy on the Lebanese and Palestinian people. To release them from bondage. To stop using them as hostages. To halt the murder of their young. To quit using Lebanon and Gaza as theatre of action for the wars of others.

 

It is sad and distressing that some political and religious leaders in Lebanon, and other middle East countries delivered speeches contrary to their convictions. For when they cheered Hamas and blessed its actions, they simply practiced Dhimmitude and committed a crime and a sin. For they surely know the destructive, terrorist, and criminal roles of Hamas and Hezbollah since they call for their disarmament and elimination in secret.

 

These leaders must honestly declare their stances, break out from the web of fear, and clearly state matters as they are. The only long lasting solution for the Lebanese-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli ongoing bloody conflict is a peace treaty through direct negotiations as already did Egypt and Jordan.

 

It remains, that Lebanon Gaza, and the whole Middle East will not know peace and security until the destructive Iranian-Syrian role is ended and the terrorist organizations of Hamas and Hezbollah are disarmed and their military teeth extracted.

 

*Elias Bejjani

 

Canadian-Lebanese Human Rights activist, journalist and political commentator

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas leader, becomes a Christian

 

 

 

The son of one of the most revered leaders of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has renounced his religion to move to America and become an evangelical Christian.

 

By Catherine Elsworth in Los Angeles and Carolynne Wheeler in Ramallah
Last Updated: 2:21PM BST 24 Aug 2008

Photo: FOX NEWS

Mosab Hassan Yousef, 30, said that his decision to abandon his Muslim faith and denounce his father's organisation had exposed his family to persecution in his home town of Ramallah and endangered his own life.

But despite the cost, Mr Yousef told The Daily Telegraph that he is convinced that speaking out about the problems of Islam and the "evil" he witnessed back home would help to address the "messed-up situation" in the Middle East and one day bring about peace and enable him to return.

"I'm not afraid of them, especially as I know that I'm doing the right thing, and I don't see them as my enemies," he said. "I do think about this a lot. But what are they going to do? Are they going to kill me?

"If they want to kill me, let them do it. I'm not going to stop anyone. It's going to be my freedom.

"My soul's going to be free of my body, not flesh any more."

Mr Yousef, who is known as Joseph by friends at the Barabbas Road church in San Diego, California, arrived in America 18 months ago but only recently made "the biggest decision of my life" to go public with his conversion to draw attention to how the Palestinian leadership is "misleading" and exploiting its people.

"Palestinians look really ugly in front of everybody in the world and they are very, very good people ... they are misled, and their picture is very dark because of this leadership.

"They need some help, they need people to stop lying to them, and lying to the world."

Mr Yousef was raised as a Muslim by his politically powerful family. His father, Hassan Yousef, a highly respected sheikh born in the West Bank town of al-Ghaniya near Ramallah, is a founding member of Hamas, whose military wing has instigated dozens of suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel since it was formed in 1987.

Hamas now governs the Gaza strip after ousting the more moderate Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas, whose administration now only controls the West Bank.

Mr Yousef said that the decision to leave the home he loves and his family including five brothers and two sisters had made life hard for them.

"They are definitely suffering because of what I've done," he said. "They are not a regular family, they are a very famous family, and Muslims around the world praise my family, praise my father. So when I came with a step like this, it was impossible to think about, it was crazy.

"I knew from the beginning my family would face an impossible situation. It wasn't their choice but they have had to carry it with me. It's difficult for my mother, she's crying all day long. Every time I talk to her, she's crying."

His mother, Salsabin, told The Daily Telegraph that she and her children were "in daily contact with Mosab" but she declined to comment further on his new life.

Mr Yousef said that his father, who has spent more than a decade in Israeli jails for his involvement with Hamas, was in prison when he "got the worst news in his life" - that his son had become a Christian and left Ramallah. "But at the same time he sent me a message of love.

"Everybody is asking him to disown me. You understand if he disowns me he will give terrorists a chance to kill me. "He loves me as a son and he believes that what I've done was something I believed in, but at the same time it's very difficult for him to understand and he won't be able to understand."

Many saw him as heir apparent to his father, who retains great influence both within Hamas and in Palestinian society, winning election to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January 2006 from his prison cell.

But Mr Yousef said that his questioning of Islam and Hamas began early. His father, a pragmatist who has even suggested Hamas would be willing to talk to Israel under certain conditions, would often accept his concerns, such as the targeting of civilians.

Mr Yousef said that his doubts about Islam and Hamas crystallised when he realised not all Hamas leaders were like his father, a moderate who he describes as "open-minded, very humble and honest".

Mr Yousef said that he was appalled by the brutality of the movement, including the suicide bombers seeking glory through jihad.

"Hamas, they are using civilians' lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate," he said.

It was after a chance encounter nine years ago with a British missionary that Mr Yousef began exploring Christianity.

He found it "exciting", he said, and began secretly studying the Bible, struck by the central tenet "love your enemies".

Nevertheless he does not advocate the "collapse of Islam", but rather for people to acknowledge that after 1,400 years "it's not working any more".

He said: "It's not taking them anywhere. It's making them look ugly."

He hopes that Muslims will begin to question their religion and "fix it" by rejecting the parts that call for "killing others, cutting hands, cutting legs, torturing people and asking for destruction of entire civilisations".

He said that after he converted to Christianity, he decided he had to escape and "live my life away from violence because I couldn't coexist with that situation as a Christian."

"I was thinking, what is my responsibility now? To see people dying every day or to stand up and say, this is wrong, this is right and be strong about this? So I had to make this move."

He plans to write a memoir about his "transformation" that he hopes will inspire others and to found an international organisation to educate young people about Islam and preach a message of "forgiveness", the only way he thinks "the endless circle of violence" between Israelis and Palestinians can be broken.

"I know this take a longer time, but this is the right way to do it, to build a new generation, a new generation who understand how to forgive, how to love."

It is a vision his new church shares. In a posting on the Barabbas Road website entitled "Joseph's story", the most unlikely member of the congregation is described as "a miracle" who left a society steeped in "brutal and bloody warfare" and instead "turned to Jesus".

"He is most certainly the face of things to come; an Ambassador to those oppressed by Islam. He is passionate about liberating his brothers and sisters from the darkness of a false religion, and living the truth that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Light."

Back in the West Bank, however, many are distressed about his move.

"It is upsetting not only to his community and to his family but to all Muslims," said Abdel-Jaber Fuqaha, an Islamist parliamentarian and friend of the family who described Mr Yousef as "a straightforward, observant Muslim".

"But the worst impact is on his family, and his father. This is a thing that is more unique to our Middle Eastern culture. It is the most difficult thing, to convert from one religion to another."

He suggested that Mr Yousef may have been pressured into conversion in exchange for financial help or permission to stay in the US, given his background - allegations Mr Yousef rejects.

"I didn't come to Christianity for money, I came to Christianity because this is the way we can live a better life," he said.

"I love my people. They have the right to live like any other nation on Earth. But at the same time, I want to help them [get] on the right track."

To my Arab Brothers

 

To my Arab brothers: The War with Israel Is Over — and they won. Now let's finally move forward

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0706/ibrahim.php3

By Youssef M. Ibrahim

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | With Israel entering its fourth week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits, letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks. The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren:

The war with Israel is over.

You have lost. Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children.

We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness.

At the moment, brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan. It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends.

You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem. You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty army down upon you. You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools, and your economy are all in ruins.

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Your young people are growing up illiterate, ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day.

What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all? More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots?

We, your Arab brothers, have moved on.

Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan, have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq, frankly could not care less about what happens to you.

Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine, even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.

Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods — more pain, greater corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives — while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former New York Times Middle East Correspondent and Wall Street Journal Energy Editor for 25 years, is a freelance writer based in New York City and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Comment by clicking here.

Gaza and the mood of Israel

This article, for all its faults, and despite the unfortunate headline, captures the mood of Israel fairly well.

As My Son Goes to War, I Am Fully Israeli At Last

 

By Yossi Klein Halevi
Sunday, January 4, 2009; B01

 

JERUSALEM

 

"I just heard on the news that Gavriel's base has been shelled," my wife, Sarah, said to me last Tuesday, referring to our 19-year-old son, a member of an Israeli army tank unit waiting on the Gaza border for the order to enter. And, she added in a deliberately calm tone, "A soldier was killed." We texted Gavriel, and within five minutes he called, safe. How, Sarah asked, did families survive war before cellphones?

 

For days we waited for a cabinet decision: Will there be a land invasion or a new cease-fire? The politicians began to bicker while our soldiers waited on the border, in the rain and the mud. Anything but this, I said to Sarah. Not another Lebanon War, which, like Gaza, began with an impressive show of Israeli air power but ended with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah predicting the imminent end of "the Zionist entity." If we don't win this time -- deliver an unambiguous blow if not topple Hamas entirely -- our deterrence will further erode, inviting more rocket attacks and encouraging the jihadist momentum throughout the Middle East.

 

And then I caught myself: How can I be hoping for an outcome that will send my son into battle? This is my first experience as the father of a soldier, and now, after 26 years of living in Israel, I finally understand the terrible responsibility of being an Israeli. I had assumed that I'd become initiated into Israeliness when I myself was drafted into the army as a 34-year-old immigrant in 1989. But perhaps only now have I become fully Israeli. Zionism promised to empower the Jews by making them responsible for their fate; the price for that achievement is to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for one's commitments.

 

I know Gaza from a previous conflict. During the first intifada of the late 1980s, when Palestinians revolted against the occupation, I was part of a reservist unit that patrolled Gaza's refugee camps. There I learned that there is no such thing as a benign occupation, as Israelis had once deceived themselves into believing. Our unit not only arrested terrorist suspects but also dragged people out of their beds in the middle of the night to paint over anti-Israel graffiti and rounded up innocents after a grenade attack just to "make a presence," in army terminology. At night, in our tent, we argued about the wisdom of turning soldiers into policemen of a hostile civilian population that didn't want us there and which we didn't want as part of our society.

 

A majority of Israelis emerged from the first intifada convinced that we need to do everything possible to end the occupation and ensure that our children don't serve as enforcers of Gaza's despair. That was why I initially supported the 1993 Oslo peace process that took a terrible gamble on Yasser Arafat's supposed transformation from terrorist to peacemaker. And even after it became clear that Arafat and other Palestinian leaders never intended to accept Israel's legitimacy, I supported the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, simply to extricate us from that region, knowing that we would not receive peace in return.

 

And now my son is fighting in Gaza. The conflict he and his friends confront is far worse than my generation's experience in Gaza. In our time, we were confronted with mere rocks and Molotov cocktails; my son faces Iranian-supplied anti-tank weapons -- one more price we will pay, along with the missile attacks on our towns, for the Gaza withdrawal, just as the Israeli right had warned.

 

Still, I don't regret that withdrawal. If Israelis are united today about our right to defend ourselves against Gaza's genocidally minded regime, it is at least partly because we are fighting from our international border. My son and his friends have one crucial advantage over my generation's experience in Gaza: They know, as we did not, that Israel was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for peace, uprooting thousands of its citizens from their homes and endorsing a Palestinian state. My son confronts Gaza knowing that its misery is now imposed by its leaders. He knows that his country was even prepared to share its most cherished national asset, Jerusalem, with its worst enemy, Arafat, for the sake of preventing this war. That empowers him with the moral self-confidence he will need to get through the coming days. The face of my Gaza enemy was a teenager throwing rocks; the face of Gavriel's Gaza enemy is a suicide bomber.

 

But we are hardly free of moral anxiety. Even as I pray for Gavriel's physical safety, I pray too for his spiritual well-being: that his tank doesn't accidentally shell civilians, that he isn't caught in some terrible mistake, which can so easily happen in a war zone where terrorists hide behind innocent people.

 

For the past eight years, Israel has fought a single war with shifting fronts, moving from suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to Katyusha attacks on Israeli towns near the Lebanon border to Qassam missiles on Israeli towns near the Gaza border. That war has targeted civilians, turning the home front into the actual front. And it has transformed the nature of the conflict from a nationalist struggle over Palestinian statehood to a holy war against Jewish statehood. Except for a left-wing fringe, most Israelis recognize the conflict in Gaza as part of a larger war that has been declared against our being and that we must fight.

 

But how? Even some right-wingers are saying that we should have declared a unilateral cease-fire after the initial airstrike and then dared Hamas to continue shelling our towns, rather than risk another quagmire. And even some left-wingers are saying that we should now destroy the Hamas regime and then offer to turn Gaza over to international control or, if possible, an inter-Arab force led by Egypt. Every option is potentially disastrous. Most Israelis agree on two points: that we cannot live with a jihadist statelet on our border, and that we cannot become occupiers of Gaza again.

 

The despair of Gaza is contagious. One friend, a Likud supporter, said to me, "I don't know what to hope for anymore."

 

Meanwhile, I try to reassure myself about Gavriel's safety. Growing up in Jerusalem during the suicide bombings in the early 2000s, he has already known danger, intimacy with death. A 13-year-old acquaintance was stoned to death, and was so mutilated that he could be identified only by his DNA. A friend lost the use of an eye in a bus bombing on his way to school. At least now, Gavriel and his friends can defend themselves. Perhaps one reason most of them volunteered for combat units was because now the generation of the suicide bombings can finally fight back.

 

Just before the conflict in Gaza began, I happened to visit Gavriel at his base. His unit's barracks had been turned into what young Israelis call a "zula" -- a hangout. There were muddy couches, chairs without backs, a darbuka drum, a TV (Jay Leno was on). It could have been a teenage scene anywhere in the West, except that hanging on the walls were Hamas banners captured by the unit's veteran members in a previous round of fighting in Gaza. In a corner of the room hung a photograph of a fallen soldier. Across the bottom someone had written, "What was the rush, Shachar? Why did you have to leave us so soon?"

 

Even now, perhaps especially now, I feel that our family is privileged to belong to the Israeli story. Gavriel, grandson of a Holocaust survivor, is part of an army defending the Jewish people in its land. This is one of those moments when our old ideals are tested anew and found to be still vital. That provides some comfort as Sarah and I wait for the next text message.

 

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the author of "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land."

 

 

Benny Morris on Hamas and Iran

Benny Morris, once the darling of anti-Zionists, has turned out to have quite a different point of view than was attributed to him at one time.

Israel has no choice but to be tough on Hamas - and Iran

Benny Morris

After a week of air assaults on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian retaliatory rocketing of Israel's southern cities, the Israeli leadership was at a crossroads. It had to decide whether to embark on a ground offensive or to call it quits and find a face-saving diplomatic endgame (which would leave Hamas with most of its military manpower and firepower intact).

A third alternative was to continue the air campaign while sending in ground forces with limited objectives, designed to curtail Hamas rocketing in specific sectors and to interdict Hamas resupply from Egypt through the tunnels under the Philadelphi axis along the Gaza-Sinai border. A number of Israeli brigades were massed along the Israel-Gaza border, and the troops, according to reports, were raring to go. Last night they went into Gaza.

I believe Israel is right to go ahead: to deliver ground incursions, in various sectors, to bleed Hamas and ultimately to destroy its will and ability to rocket Israel by occupying the border area permanently.

The Israeli cabinet, however, may be more cautious. It has apparently rejected the idea of conquering the strip and crushing Hamas - given the densely packed urban terrain, the limitations imposed by international and internal Israeli opinion and the cost in military and civilian lives.

These considerations are compounded by the fact that the defence minister and Labor party leader, Ehud Barak, and the foreign minister and Kadima party leader, Tzipi Livni, face general elections on February 10 and an electorate unwilling to countenance big sacrifices. At the same time, the leaders cannot allow Hamas to continue rocketing Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod - cities with a total population of some 750,000.

From Israel's viewpoint, the problem is that Hamas, like Hezbollah, will remain - and at some point down the road it can be expected to harass or assault Israel, independently or in collaboration with Hezbollah or Iran. And the basic realities of the contemporary Middle East will remain the same, with Israelis continuing to feel boxed in and under threat.

Israeli foreboding has general sources and specific causes. The general problems are simple. First, the Arab and wider Islamic worlds have never accepted the legitimacy of Israel's creation or the continued existence of the Jewish state, notwithstanding Israel's peace treaties with the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes, signed respectively in 1979 and 1994.

Second, public support for Israel in the West (and in democracies, governments can't be far behind) has steadily withered over the past few decades, as the memory of the Holocaust - which in an ill-defined but general way underwrote Israel - has dimmed and as Arab power and assertiveness have surged. As well, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and its occasionally heavy-handed treatment of the Arabs have played a part.

More specifically, Israel faces a combination of dire short- and medium-term threats. To the east, Iran is advancing its nuclear project, which most Israelis and most of the world's intelligence services believe is designed to produce nuclear weapons. The fact that Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly threatened Israel with destruction quite naturally leaves Israelis deeply perturbed.

In the next year or so, if the world community does not force the Iranians through diplomacy and economic sanctions to halt their nuclear programme, then either the US or Israel will have to attack and destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities.

To the north lies another threat: Hezbollah, a fundamentalist Shi'ite Muslim organisation that vows to destroy Israel and is funded by Iran. It has recovered from the thrashing it received in 2006 when Israeli forces struck into south Lebanon and reportedly now has an arsenal of 30,000-40,000 rockets, some of which can reach Tel Aviv and Dimona, the site of Israel's nuclear facility.

To the south, Hamas will remain Israel's implacable foe, its charter/constitution of 1988 proclaiming the necessity of Israel's destruction "at the hands of Islam".

Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the conventional threats posed by the armies of the Arab states, trouncing them repeatedly. But the current threats are unconventional and pose a far more difficult challenge. This past week, Israel has taken on one of them, the Hamas rocketry; in future, it is likely to confront - in the absence of cogent western intervention - the far more dire threat of Iran's atomic programme.

Only a change of mindset among the Palestinians, and the wider Arab and Islamic worlds, could allow for peace. And that's not going to happen as long as the Arab world is so strong (and growing stronger) and, at the same time, governed by a mentality of grievance and victimhood.

Benny Morris teaches Middle East history at Ben-Gurion University, Israel, and is author of 1948, A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

Ground op underway: IDF troops enter Gaza

Israeli TV Channel 1 is showing nightvision photos of infantry entering Gaza. Location of the entry points and scope and duration are not given.

Alea iacta est.  

Ground op underway: IDF troops enter Gaza

 

Ground operation underway: Following heavy artillery bombardment, IDF soldiers enter Gaza Saturday evening; forces invade northern section of Strip; earlier, army fires hundreds of shells at areas adjacent to Gaza fence

 

Hanan Greenberg
Latest Update:  01.03.09, 20:42 / Israel News

 

IDF invades Gaza: IDF ground troops entered the northern Gaza Strip Saturday evening, as the army launched its long anticipated ground operation.

 

 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met Friday night and approved the ground incursion. The operation was approved in principle in the cabinet session 10 days ago.

 

Earlier in the day, artillery cannons started to shell targets in the Strip. The IDF said that by Saturday evening hundreds of shells had been fired at precise targets in Gaza. Much of Gaza was enveloped by darkness as night fell.

 

Meanwhile, Air Force aircraft continued to drop leaflets in Gaza, calling on residents to leave their homes in order to avoid injury. The leaflets dropped Saturday read: "Area resident, as result of the acts undertaken by terror activists in your area against Israel, the IDF is forced to respond immediately and operate in this area. For your own safety, you are asked to leave the area immediately."

 

Earlier Saturday, the Air Force attacked a vehicle in Khan Younis carrying Hamas officer Muhammad Maaruf and another group member. The two were reportedly killed in the strike. Saturday morning, a senior Hamas commander was assassinated.

 

Gaza and the rights of the oppressed

This from Tom Carew of  Safra VeSaifa aka no surrender-ne pasaran

 

I listened to a once highly reputable Irish broadcaster and author, Brendan O'Brien on Newstalk 106 FM this Saturday morning, a man who has contributed probing, insightful and courageous work on NI, deal with Gaza, aided by ex-Irish Army Junior Officer and Irish Times *Security orrespondent*, Tom Clonan, with only Susan Philips to inject a note of sanity and balance and objectivity.
 I was amazed to hear O'Brien indulge in uncritical and partisan broadcasting, systematically siding with the anti-Israeli view, and even frequently  *leading the witness* in his interviews.

I began to reflect on this widespread phenomenon,  which seems to have sunk to new lows in Irish media since the recent  Israeli operations in Gaza from Sat, Dec 27, 2008.

But this is not merely about ongoing bias against Israel, or bias on just  this occasion, or sloppy, sub-professional  media operations.
There is, it now seems to me,  a terrifying, but unspoken and unexamined set of assumptions lurking behind all this, a deep, ongoing and long-festering  Western cultural crisis, an undeclared, subversive re-definition of what it is to be human, and of history, ethics, politics, and of truth itself, which might be outlined as follows:-.

1.  Its all about pain or conflict  [and possibly also loss of life ] as the main, if not the only evil. It is not about reasons or reasoning or *principles* as ways to understand or guide life or issues. It is totally subjective and beyond intelligibility.

2.  And *dialogue* is always possible, and always mandatory.
And with anybody - no matter their agenda or ideology or goals or ethics or record or priorities.

3.  All sides are always morally equal - we must never be *judgemental* - but especially when  it comes to either  the methods, or the goals, or the results, of  *The Other*. 
We must always, and without question, value and cherish not merely *other-ness*, and *the other-ness of the other, as other*, but  we must also value and cherish *difference* as such.
For its own sake.
And without any reference to our own perspective on what is valuable, or even tolerable.
Otherwise we are *racist* or *Islamo-phobic*, and guilty of *Hetero-Phobia*.

Fear or challenge of sinister principles or values is now conflated with fear, or rather with undiscriminating hatred for all people who belong to an entire tradition, and open debate or free exploration or frank controversy,  is outlawed, as *hate-speech*.

4.  Everything is *culturally-specific*,  and totally relative.

WE must never *privilege* our own insights or principles or values or concerns or interests or traditions or achievements.
That is the sole and absolute entitlement of the oppressed.

5.  There cannot be any universal rights or obligations, or even any minimum standards which might define even the outer limits of human decency and tolerability.
Therefore we can never be *impartial*  - for that would  imply some objective standards.

6.  But nevertheless, we must never be *neutral* or be *critical* - we must become *engaged* - and *committed* - we must be in *solidarity* with the *oppressed*.

7.  The *oppressed* are constituted, and identifiable, simply  by their being poorer or weaker.
 As measured by them, and by them alone, and solely by their chosen standards.

8.   The *oppressed*, those self-defined  and self-identified  WOE  [ *Wretched of The Earth* ],  therefore must define not only their own agenda and values, but also ours, as we are committed to the *Pedagogy of  [ which means always and only Pedagogy BY and FROM ] the Oppressed*, who alone are the uncorrupted, and incorruptible, voice of progress, the vanguard of the future, the sole anchor and destiny of humanity, and whose *discourse* alone must always be *privileged*, and remain free from the *cultural hegemony* of any external criticism or evaluation or challenge.

9.  The WOE [ *Wrethced of The Earth* ]   can never be responsible, in any way, or to any extent, or ever be held responsibile,  for their own plight.

10.  And the WOE are responsible and answerable only to themselves, and to those values and concerns and priorities, which they, in their oppression, are forced to adopt. .

11 .  The *oppressed* have no choice,  but are permanently forced to *resist* their cruel oppressors, none of whom can exist among the oppressed, and by whatever methods the oppressor may choose.
And the *oppressed* in turn, can never  become the oppressor.

12.   It is never for us to say, much less to tell the oppressed, how or when to *resist*.
Or to suggest who their oppressor may be.
Or to challenge their definition of their oppression.

13.    Nothing has a context or roots. 

 The only context is oppression,
the only roots are those of oppression,
 the only enemy is the oppressor,
and the only goal is liberation of the oppressed.

14  Only the oppressed can tell us who is the most oppressed.   And by whom.

15.  The picture, the image,  is all -  feelings are all - there is no place for any questioning - of them, much less for any evaluation of them -  or of their *authors*, or of  their *meaning*, if their *authors* are the oppressed.
Their meanings are whatever the oppressed declare them to be, at any *given* time.
And the interpretation by the oppressed is the only valid interpretation.

Otherwise we are guilty of  Cultural Hegemony, and of the Patriarchic Fallacy,
and guilty of  *Logo-Philia* and  *Logo-Centricity*.

The sceam and suffering of the oppressed has no need for the words of their oppressor.

The resistance of the oppressor does not answer to the ideology of their oppressor.

Questioning, unless by the oppressed, and according to their own sovereign values, is always further oppression and Cultural Hegemony,  and Cultural Imperialism.

Tom Carew
An un-reconstructed Hespero-phile