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.