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About Us & RulesMedia Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
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Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 5:25 pm
Last Sunday, Arizona Senator John McCain urged President Obama to send Secretary of State John Kerry to Israel to prevent the conflict there from “spiraling out of control.” J Street, which actively promotes negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, has called on Kerry to issue a blueprint for a two-state solution. But Kerry is in China for a “strategic and economic dialogue,” and State Department officials insist that it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations. Asked about the idea of the United States putting out its own plan, one official, speaking on background, said, “There are no good historical examples of this working.”
Is the United States reneging on its global responsibilities? American diplomacy could probably contribute to a ceasefire in Gaza between the Israeli government and Hamas, neither of which appear enthusiastic about continued escalation there, but as the earlier failure of negotiations over Palestinian statehood showed, even the most energetic American efforts are unlikely to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the cycle of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. The United States would have to go from proposing a framework to the parties to imposing one—and even if an American administration could overcome the domestic opposition to do that, it still might not hold.
A Timeline of the Current Conflict
The current conflict, like many of the previous ones, has consisted of a series of responses and counter-responses. The question of who provoked whom is itself part of the conflict. Here is the timeline, as best as I can tell. Negotiations over a Palestinian state ended on April first, when Mahmoud Abbas, in response to the Israeli refusal to release, as promised, 104 Palestinian prisoners, and to the announcement of 700 new apartments in East Jerusalem, declared that the Palestinian Authority would apply for membership in 15 United Nations organizations.
On April 23, Abbas’s Fatah Party and Hamas announced their intention to form a unity government composed of technocrats rather than party officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted angrily, breaking off the negotiations that had already collapsed, but blaming Abbas for their breakdown, and seeking to punish the Palestinian Authority for the move. After the Unity government was assembled on June 1, and sworn in, the Israeli government announced plans for 3,300 new housing units in the West Bank.
There was tension over the next days—including a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, a Palestinian teenager killed by Israeli policy at a Nakba Day demonstration, and an occasional rocket fired at Israel from Gaza by an outlier group not under Hamas’s control. Then on June 12, three Jewish teenagers from a settlement were kidnapped and murdered. The perpetrators have still not been caught, but Israeli officials suspect two Hamas members from Hebron. Hamas’s political and military leadership denied involvement in the attack, and there is reason to believe them: The suspects were members of a Hebron clan that had previously staged attacks against Israelis contrary to Hamas ceasefire agreements.
The Israeli government seems to have known after a day or two that the kidnappers had murdered the three boys, but it continued to insist publicly—and the press was under a gag order not to contradict them—that the boys were still alive. Their bodies were finally uncovered and the murder publicly confirmed on June 30. The government was also informed almost immediately about the disappearance of the two suspects from Hebron, but during this time, the Israelis went on the offensive against Hamas throughout the West Bank. Over 600 Palestinians were arrested and more than 1,500 homes, schools, and places of business were raided. The army arrested and imprisoned 51 Hamas members who had been included in the deal freeing hostage Gilad Shalit. The police even raided Birzeit University, arresting two pro-Hamas students and confiscating Hamas flags and literature.
On July 2, a group of Israelis kidnapped and burned alive a Palestinian boy. Six suspects were arrested, and three have confessed. That prompted demonstrations among Palestinians in Israel and in East Jerusalem. At a demonstration, or his uncle’s home—the details are still murky—the police arrested and brutally beat a Palestinian American who was the 16-year-old cousin of the murdered boy. That brought a protest from the State Department. Then on July 6, the Israeli air force bombed a tunnel in Gaza, killing six Hamas men. Before that, there had been sporadic rocket attacks against Israeli from outlier groups, but afterwards, Hamas took responsibility for and increased the rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israeli government launched “Operation Protective Edge” against Hamas in Gaza. The Israelis are now bombarding Gaza, while Hamas and other Islamist groups in Gaza are launching rockets, most of which are intercepted by Israel’s anti-missile system.
In summary, the fuse was lit for this latest conflagration by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli and one Palestinian teenager. But horrific acts like these have, sadly, always been a part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu also played a role by using the investigation into the kidnapping as the pretext for attempting to destroy the Fatah-Hamas unity government. (Those who find this a reasonable objective should consider that the Netanyahu government and party contain high officials who want to deny Palestinians the right of self-determination.)
Abbas has, typically, tried to play a moderating role. Speaking in Saudi Arabia to an Arab audience, Abbas condemned the kidnapping of the Israeli teens. But Hamas deserves part of the blame for the escalation. While denying Hamas’s role in the kidnapping, Hamas leader Khalid Mashal said that Palestinians should “applaud and take our hats off” to the kidnappers. Hamas’s rocket attacks (like Netanyahu’s attempt to destroy the unity government) have a strategic rationale. These attacks rarely hit targets, but they provoke a furious Israeli response that leads to hundreds of casualties and deaths, including women and children who have no direct connection with Hamas. These attacks rouse sympathy for Hamas in Europe and among the Arab states and can lead to welcome financial contributions and to the isolation of the Israeli government, but they come at an enormous cost to the people Hamas represents.
What can the United States do?
For once, McCain is right. A little “shuttle diplomacy” by Kerry probably could help prevent a protracted conflict. Netanyahu knows that he can’t finally eliminate Hamas in Gaza except by actions that would bring the wrath of nations down upon Israel. Israeli officials refer obscenely to the periodic assault on Gaza as “mowing the lawn.” Mashal, too, would like to limit the damage to his people and to Gaza. But to date, the only Washington official who is speaking publicly in Israel is the National Security Council Middle East expert Phillip Gordon, who criticized the Israeli occupation at a conference in Tel Aviv. But Gordon was not there, it seems. to mediate the conflict.
Kerry is probably right, however, in resisting another effort at renewing the peace process. Kerry and his negotiators made serious mistakes during the negotiations earlier this year—most notably, they tried to work out terms of a framework with the Israelis without concurrently talking to the Palestinians. Abbas, presented with a fait accompli, balked. But that wasn’t the main reason Kerry’s effort failed. The main reason, as Kerry’s people indicated to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea (before they later tried to walk the story back), was Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s government kept announcing new housing starts in the occupied territories, inflaming the Palestinians. He made minor concessions in negotiations, but wouldn’t budge on specifying the borders of a Palestinian state; he wouldn’t limit the time for an Israeli occupation force in the Jordan Valley; and he wouldn’t discuss allowing a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Jerusalem lawyer Danny Seidemann, whom the Kerry team consulted, said in a press briefing, “When my prime minister says that I support the two-state solution, but I oppose any compromise on Jerusalem, there is a literal transition for that. I oppose the two state solution.” His convictions aside, Netanyahu was hampered by his own coalition. To give ground in the negotiations, and even in the end to keep his promise of releasing the prisoners, he would have had to create a new majority coalition, which he was unwilling to do.
The United States can influence Israeli politics. It can threaten to withhold economic or military assistance. The Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush administrations were able to use these kind of threats to force concessions. But the Obama administration appears completely unwilling to undertake this kind of diplomacy toward Israel. Obama and Kerry know that if they tried to withhold aid, they would face an immense uproar on Capitol Hill. J Street has acquired some clout among liberal Democrats, but what support AIPAC and the other groups that back Netanyahu have lost among Democrats, they have more than made up among Republicans.
And if Obama and Kerry wanted to restart negotiations, they would also have a problem with the Palestinian side. Abbas has been a receptive negotiating partner – he made significant concessions during the talks with the Israelis, including agreeing to an Israeli army presence in the Jordan Valley for up to five years – but he is increasingly hampered by old age and illness. As a result of the negotiation’s failure, and the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority’s security force with the Israelis, Abbas has also become increasingly unpopular. One Fatah official estimated his support among Palestinians as ten percent. But he has no replacement in sight.
Hamas has a political base in the West Bank as well as Gaza. In May, Hamas got 40 percent of the vote in the highly politicized university student council elections in the West Bank. These are a good test of support among the most active Palestinians. But Hamas is crippled by the loss of funding from Egypt, Syria, and Iran. In the unity government, it was willing to accept Abbas’s leadership in negotiations with the Israelis, but it does not appear ready on its own to undertake negotiations aimed at ending the conflict with Israel. It may change—the PLO, after all, changed its charter to accept Israel’s existence—but not in the immediate future. The United States lacks an effective negotiating partner either among the Israelis or Palestinians.
Analogies are always treacherous but maybe this one makes sense: In the United States in the ‘60s, the conflict over civil rights had turned violent. Race riots occurred in major cities. But stepping back, one could believe that after the fires were put out and smoke cleared, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement would carry the day. History was moving in that direction. It is hard to feel the same way about what is happening in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel, of course, has its equivalent of the Northern liberal Democrats who backed the civil rights movement; polls even indicate a majority support for a two-state solution. But the movement on the ground—the inexorable increase of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlers, the four-decade old turn toward conservatism and away from European social democracy, the incendiary sentiments among the ultra-orthodox and the settlers—are creating a growing political base against any accommodation.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118630/israel-palestine-murders-cause-criss-will-john-kerry-step
I think that is a very accurate summing up of the situation. J Street are Pro Israel and Pro Peace and Pro a 2 State Solution, but even they can see what Netanyahu has been doing.
Is the United States reneging on its global responsibilities? American diplomacy could probably contribute to a ceasefire in Gaza between the Israeli government and Hamas, neither of which appear enthusiastic about continued escalation there, but as the earlier failure of negotiations over Palestinian statehood showed, even the most energetic American efforts are unlikely to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the cycle of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. The United States would have to go from proposing a framework to the parties to imposing one—and even if an American administration could overcome the domestic opposition to do that, it still might not hold.
A Timeline of the Current Conflict
The current conflict, like many of the previous ones, has consisted of a series of responses and counter-responses. The question of who provoked whom is itself part of the conflict. Here is the timeline, as best as I can tell. Negotiations over a Palestinian state ended on April first, when Mahmoud Abbas, in response to the Israeli refusal to release, as promised, 104 Palestinian prisoners, and to the announcement of 700 new apartments in East Jerusalem, declared that the Palestinian Authority would apply for membership in 15 United Nations organizations.
On April 23, Abbas’s Fatah Party and Hamas announced their intention to form a unity government composed of technocrats rather than party officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted angrily, breaking off the negotiations that had already collapsed, but blaming Abbas for their breakdown, and seeking to punish the Palestinian Authority for the move. After the Unity government was assembled on June 1, and sworn in, the Israeli government announced plans for 3,300 new housing units in the West Bank.
There was tension over the next days—including a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, a Palestinian teenager killed by Israeli policy at a Nakba Day demonstration, and an occasional rocket fired at Israel from Gaza by an outlier group not under Hamas’s control. Then on June 12, three Jewish teenagers from a settlement were kidnapped and murdered. The perpetrators have still not been caught, but Israeli officials suspect two Hamas members from Hebron. Hamas’s political and military leadership denied involvement in the attack, and there is reason to believe them: The suspects were members of a Hebron clan that had previously staged attacks against Israelis contrary to Hamas ceasefire agreements.
The Israeli government seems to have known after a day or two that the kidnappers had murdered the three boys, but it continued to insist publicly—and the press was under a gag order not to contradict them—that the boys were still alive. Their bodies were finally uncovered and the murder publicly confirmed on June 30. The government was also informed almost immediately about the disappearance of the two suspects from Hebron, but during this time, the Israelis went on the offensive against Hamas throughout the West Bank. Over 600 Palestinians were arrested and more than 1,500 homes, schools, and places of business were raided. The army arrested and imprisoned 51 Hamas members who had been included in the deal freeing hostage Gilad Shalit. The police even raided Birzeit University, arresting two pro-Hamas students and confiscating Hamas flags and literature.
On July 2, a group of Israelis kidnapped and burned alive a Palestinian boy. Six suspects were arrested, and three have confessed. That prompted demonstrations among Palestinians in Israel and in East Jerusalem. At a demonstration, or his uncle’s home—the details are still murky—the police arrested and brutally beat a Palestinian American who was the 16-year-old cousin of the murdered boy. That brought a protest from the State Department. Then on July 6, the Israeli air force bombed a tunnel in Gaza, killing six Hamas men. Before that, there had been sporadic rocket attacks against Israeli from outlier groups, but afterwards, Hamas took responsibility for and increased the rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israeli government launched “Operation Protective Edge” against Hamas in Gaza. The Israelis are now bombarding Gaza, while Hamas and other Islamist groups in Gaza are launching rockets, most of which are intercepted by Israel’s anti-missile system.
In summary, the fuse was lit for this latest conflagration by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli and one Palestinian teenager. But horrific acts like these have, sadly, always been a part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu also played a role by using the investigation into the kidnapping as the pretext for attempting to destroy the Fatah-Hamas unity government. (Those who find this a reasonable objective should consider that the Netanyahu government and party contain high officials who want to deny Palestinians the right of self-determination.)
Abbas has, typically, tried to play a moderating role. Speaking in Saudi Arabia to an Arab audience, Abbas condemned the kidnapping of the Israeli teens. But Hamas deserves part of the blame for the escalation. While denying Hamas’s role in the kidnapping, Hamas leader Khalid Mashal said that Palestinians should “applaud and take our hats off” to the kidnappers. Hamas’s rocket attacks (like Netanyahu’s attempt to destroy the unity government) have a strategic rationale. These attacks rarely hit targets, but they provoke a furious Israeli response that leads to hundreds of casualties and deaths, including women and children who have no direct connection with Hamas. These attacks rouse sympathy for Hamas in Europe and among the Arab states and can lead to welcome financial contributions and to the isolation of the Israeli government, but they come at an enormous cost to the people Hamas represents.
What can the United States do?
For once, McCain is right. A little “shuttle diplomacy” by Kerry probably could help prevent a protracted conflict. Netanyahu knows that he can’t finally eliminate Hamas in Gaza except by actions that would bring the wrath of nations down upon Israel. Israeli officials refer obscenely to the periodic assault on Gaza as “mowing the lawn.” Mashal, too, would like to limit the damage to his people and to Gaza. But to date, the only Washington official who is speaking publicly in Israel is the National Security Council Middle East expert Phillip Gordon, who criticized the Israeli occupation at a conference in Tel Aviv. But Gordon was not there, it seems. to mediate the conflict.
Kerry is probably right, however, in resisting another effort at renewing the peace process. Kerry and his negotiators made serious mistakes during the negotiations earlier this year—most notably, they tried to work out terms of a framework with the Israelis without concurrently talking to the Palestinians. Abbas, presented with a fait accompli, balked. But that wasn’t the main reason Kerry’s effort failed. The main reason, as Kerry’s people indicated to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea (before they later tried to walk the story back), was Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s government kept announcing new housing starts in the occupied territories, inflaming the Palestinians. He made minor concessions in negotiations, but wouldn’t budge on specifying the borders of a Palestinian state; he wouldn’t limit the time for an Israeli occupation force in the Jordan Valley; and he wouldn’t discuss allowing a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Jerusalem lawyer Danny Seidemann, whom the Kerry team consulted, said in a press briefing, “When my prime minister says that I support the two-state solution, but I oppose any compromise on Jerusalem, there is a literal transition for that. I oppose the two state solution.” His convictions aside, Netanyahu was hampered by his own coalition. To give ground in the negotiations, and even in the end to keep his promise of releasing the prisoners, he would have had to create a new majority coalition, which he was unwilling to do.
The United States can influence Israeli politics. It can threaten to withhold economic or military assistance. The Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush administrations were able to use these kind of threats to force concessions. But the Obama administration appears completely unwilling to undertake this kind of diplomacy toward Israel. Obama and Kerry know that if they tried to withhold aid, they would face an immense uproar on Capitol Hill. J Street has acquired some clout among liberal Democrats, but what support AIPAC and the other groups that back Netanyahu have lost among Democrats, they have more than made up among Republicans.
And if Obama and Kerry wanted to restart negotiations, they would also have a problem with the Palestinian side. Abbas has been a receptive negotiating partner – he made significant concessions during the talks with the Israelis, including agreeing to an Israeli army presence in the Jordan Valley for up to five years – but he is increasingly hampered by old age and illness. As a result of the negotiation’s failure, and the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority’s security force with the Israelis, Abbas has also become increasingly unpopular. One Fatah official estimated his support among Palestinians as ten percent. But he has no replacement in sight.
Hamas has a political base in the West Bank as well as Gaza. In May, Hamas got 40 percent of the vote in the highly politicized university student council elections in the West Bank. These are a good test of support among the most active Palestinians. But Hamas is crippled by the loss of funding from Egypt, Syria, and Iran. In the unity government, it was willing to accept Abbas’s leadership in negotiations with the Israelis, but it does not appear ready on its own to undertake negotiations aimed at ending the conflict with Israel. It may change—the PLO, after all, changed its charter to accept Israel’s existence—but not in the immediate future. The United States lacks an effective negotiating partner either among the Israelis or Palestinians.
Analogies are always treacherous but maybe this one makes sense: In the United States in the ‘60s, the conflict over civil rights had turned violent. Race riots occurred in major cities. But stepping back, one could believe that after the fires were put out and smoke cleared, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement would carry the day. History was moving in that direction. It is hard to feel the same way about what is happening in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel, of course, has its equivalent of the Northern liberal Democrats who backed the civil rights movement; polls even indicate a majority support for a two-state solution. But the movement on the ground—the inexorable increase of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlers, the four-decade old turn toward conservatism and away from European social democracy, the incendiary sentiments among the ultra-orthodox and the settlers—are creating a growing political base against any accommodation.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118630/israel-palestine-murders-cause-criss-will-john-kerry-step
I think that is a very accurate summing up of the situation. J Street are Pro Israel and Pro Peace and Pro a 2 State Solution, but even they can see what Netanyahu has been doing.
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 5:35 pm
For once Bee we agree, but then we always have over this subject.
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:12 pm
good thing im on hand to bust through the media lies and eecption
White House Middle East coordinator Phillip Gordon scolded Israel on Tuesday, even as Israelis hid from Hamas rockets that plunged from the heavens like deadly hailstones.
Israel “cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely,” Gordon said in a Tel Aviv speech. “Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Gordon added that Israel’s leaders “should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate.”
Gordon addressed Israel’s role in the West Bank and its relationship with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. However, Gordon just as easily could have invoked the Gaza Strip.
Advertisement
As if psychically predicting Gordon’s speech, Israel in August 2005 decided that it could not “maintain military control of another people indefinitely.” So it capitalized on “the opportunity to negotiate” and did something astonishing:
Israel expelled from Gaza some 9,000 Jews in 25 settlements. Those who lingered were ejected by Israeli soldiers. And then — in a major confidence-building gesture — Israel bequeathed the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, like a landlord handing a tenant a home deed. Jew-free at last, which pleased many Palestinians, Gaza’s denizens faced a golden opportunity.
“We want to build the most dynamic bank between Gibraltar and the Taj Mahal,” Gaza’s leaders could have said. Financiers from Wells Fargo to Sumitomo would have flown in and shown them how — pro bono.
“We want the deepest-thinking university in this time zone to blossom in this soil,” top Gazans could have announced. Deans and professors from Stanford to Georgetown to Oxford would have rushed there to develop curricula, erect academic buildings, and stock libraries with Earth’s most compelling books and periodicals. World-class faculty would have flocked in.
“We want the loveliest tourist spot on the eastern Mediterranean,” Gaza’s honchos could have stated. Experts from Hilton to Club Med to Carnival Cruises would have sailed in with their talents.
By now, Gaza could be developing into the Hong Kong, Berkeley, or Cancun of the Middle East. “And we, the Palestinians, built this — once Israel left,” Gazans could have said, as proud as Americans after Cornwallis and the Redcoats sailed home in defeat.
But no.
Gaza’s Palestinians have done little with their territory other than turn it into a launch pad for heaving projectiles at Israel. Beneath the iron fist of the Islamic extremists of Hamas, anti-Semitic rockets have become Gaza’s chief export.
“Since June 30, 450 missiles were fired into Israel, of which 58 were intercepted,” Yigal Palmor tells me. The spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Jerusalem, added, “The others fell in open areas, and only a couple were missed by Iron Dome,” Israel’s extremely effective and relatively low-cost anti-missile defense system.
Last month saw 36 rocket attacks from Gaza, versus nine in May. These assaults have skyrocketed lately, along with tensions after the kidnappings and murder of teenage yeshiva students Naftali Fraenkel (an American citizen), Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrah. The alleged revenge killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir by Israeli Jews has brought everything to a boil.
Gazan missiles sent Philip Gordon’s audience scrambling for safety at the David Intercontinental Hotel just hours before he spoke there. To stop such onslaughts, Israel destroys launch sites, many cynically stationed by Hamas in civilian neighborhoods — all the better to create martyrs for Allah and bloody videos that boost sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
While Israel always gets blamed for anything worse than a paper cut among the Palestinians, a website called Elder of Ziyon notes that some Gazan casualties are caused by terrorist rockets that drop short of Israel and land inside Gaza. When they go boom, Hamas fingers the Jews.
In an irony of almost biblical proportions, the Gazan rockets would not be roaring down from the skies if Israel had not generously pried its citizens from Gaza and delivered the strip on a serving tray to the Palestinians. And the thanks Israel gets could not be more vividly displayed.
In this respect, Israel has become a 13,000-square-mile metaphor for the fact that no good deed goes unpunished.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/382474/strange-way-say-thank-you-deroy-murdock
White House Middle East coordinator Phillip Gordon scolded Israel on Tuesday, even as Israelis hid from Hamas rockets that plunged from the heavens like deadly hailstones.
Israel “cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely,” Gordon said in a Tel Aviv speech. “Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Gordon added that Israel’s leaders “should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate.”
Gordon addressed Israel’s role in the West Bank and its relationship with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. However, Gordon just as easily could have invoked the Gaza Strip.
Advertisement
As if psychically predicting Gordon’s speech, Israel in August 2005 decided that it could not “maintain military control of another people indefinitely.” So it capitalized on “the opportunity to negotiate” and did something astonishing:
Israel expelled from Gaza some 9,000 Jews in 25 settlements. Those who lingered were ejected by Israeli soldiers. And then — in a major confidence-building gesture — Israel bequeathed the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, like a landlord handing a tenant a home deed. Jew-free at last, which pleased many Palestinians, Gaza’s denizens faced a golden opportunity.
“We want to build the most dynamic bank between Gibraltar and the Taj Mahal,” Gaza’s leaders could have said. Financiers from Wells Fargo to Sumitomo would have flown in and shown them how — pro bono.
“We want the deepest-thinking university in this time zone to blossom in this soil,” top Gazans could have announced. Deans and professors from Stanford to Georgetown to Oxford would have rushed there to develop curricula, erect academic buildings, and stock libraries with Earth’s most compelling books and periodicals. World-class faculty would have flocked in.
“We want the loveliest tourist spot on the eastern Mediterranean,” Gaza’s honchos could have stated. Experts from Hilton to Club Med to Carnival Cruises would have sailed in with their talents.
By now, Gaza could be developing into the Hong Kong, Berkeley, or Cancun of the Middle East. “And we, the Palestinians, built this — once Israel left,” Gazans could have said, as proud as Americans after Cornwallis and the Redcoats sailed home in defeat.
But no.
Gaza’s Palestinians have done little with their territory other than turn it into a launch pad for heaving projectiles at Israel. Beneath the iron fist of the Islamic extremists of Hamas, anti-Semitic rockets have become Gaza’s chief export.
“Since June 30, 450 missiles were fired into Israel, of which 58 were intercepted,” Yigal Palmor tells me. The spokesman for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in Jerusalem, added, “The others fell in open areas, and only a couple were missed by Iron Dome,” Israel’s extremely effective and relatively low-cost anti-missile defense system.
Last month saw 36 rocket attacks from Gaza, versus nine in May. These assaults have skyrocketed lately, along with tensions after the kidnappings and murder of teenage yeshiva students Naftali Fraenkel (an American citizen), Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrah. The alleged revenge killing of Muhammad Abu Khdeir by Israeli Jews has brought everything to a boil.
Gazan missiles sent Philip Gordon’s audience scrambling for safety at the David Intercontinental Hotel just hours before he spoke there. To stop such onslaughts, Israel destroys launch sites, many cynically stationed by Hamas in civilian neighborhoods — all the better to create martyrs for Allah and bloody videos that boost sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
While Israel always gets blamed for anything worse than a paper cut among the Palestinians, a website called Elder of Ziyon notes that some Gazan casualties are caused by terrorist rockets that drop short of Israel and land inside Gaza. When they go boom, Hamas fingers the Jews.
In an irony of almost biblical proportions, the Gazan rockets would not be roaring down from the skies if Israel had not generously pried its citizens from Gaza and delivered the strip on a serving tray to the Palestinians. And the thanks Israel gets could not be more vividly displayed.
In this respect, Israel has become a 13,000-square-mile metaphor for the fact that no good deed goes unpunished.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/382474/strange-way-say-thank-you-deroy-murdock
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:15 pm
Terrorism is a game. The rules are simple. You have three choices. 1. Destroy the terrorists. 2. Live with terrorism. 3. Give in to the terrorists.
There are no other choices.
The first choice comes from the right. The third choice comes from the left. The second choice is what politicians choose when they don’t want to make a decision that will change the status quo.
Despite all the explosions in Gaza, Israel is still stuck on the second choice. The air strikes aren’t meant to destroy Hamas. They are being carried out to degrade its military capabilities which will buy a year or two of relative peace. And that will be followed by more of the same in the summer of 2016 when Hamas will have deadlier Iranian and Syrian weapons that will terrorize more of the country.
That doesn’t sound like much of a deal, but these kinds of wars have bought more peace than the peace process ever did. The peace process led to wars. The wars lead to a temporary peace.
This status quo became the mainstream choice ever since Israelis figured out that the peace process wasn’t going to work and that their leaders weren’t about to defy the UN, the US, the UK and all the other U’s by actually destroying the terrorists.
When Netanyahu first ran against Peres, the difference between the center-right and the center-left was that he campaigned on security first and appeasement second, while Peres campaigned on appeasement first and security second. The center-right has dominated Israeli politics because most Israelis accepted Likud’s security first as a more reasonable position than Labor’s appeasement first.
Living with terrorism was a viable choice in the 80s. It stopped being a viable choice after Israel allowed terrorist states to be set up under the peace process. It’s one thing to manage terrorism in territories that you control. It’s another thing to deal with entire terrorist states inside your borders. Even physical separation isn’t enough. Not when terrorist groups can shell all your major cities.
Israel responds to that threat with light air strikes which damage Hamas’ military capabilities. Hamas loses a few commanders, fighters and rockets, but scores a PR victory. Israel buys two years of peace while encouraging its enemies to attack it as a bunch of racist baby killers. Then Hamas replaces the rockets and fighters and launches a new operation and the whole thing begins again.
The left’s argument, framed by Washington Post pundits, Israeli leftists, Obama, assorted diplomats, retired security chiefs, activist busybodies funded by radical billionaires and the entire gang of foreign and domestic enemies, is that Israel has no choice except to default back to choice three; appeasement.
Israel has to gamble on appeasement because its situation is constantly worsening, they argue. What they neglect to mention is that the situation is worsening as part of their pressure on Israel to appease terrorists even though the current problems exist because of earlier appeasement.
“Drink this poison,” the doctors of diplomacy say. “It’ll cure you of all the aches and pains you’re suffering from the last time we told you to drink poison.”
“If you don’t drink more poison, you’ll get sicker and die,” they say. And if you do get sicker after drinking more poison, they’ll say it’s your own fault for not drinking enough poison. If only you had given away all of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the terrorists wouldn’t be attacking you again.
Israel has been caught between choices two and three, either live with terrorism or make concessions to terrorists, and it has been bouncing between these choices.
People and politicians choose the option that causes the least pain at any given time. Israel chooses appeasement in response to international pressure. And when appeasement leads to terrorism, it does enough damage to Hamas to serve as a temporary deterrent, without leading to too much international outrage, again choosing the least painful option.
This is the true cycle that Israel is caught in. It’s not a cycle of violence. It’s a cycle of expediency.
The first choice, destroying the terrorists, is the most painful option in the short term, but the least painful option in the long term. The third choice, appeasing the terrorists, causes the least pain in the short term, but the most pain in the long term and the medium term. The second choice, living with terrorism, is slightly more painful in the short term, less painful in the medium term, but still quite painful in the long term.
Israelis have accepted short term and long term pain in exchange for a certain amount of relief in the immediate future. The occasional terrorist attack and the more ominous escalating conflict, an example of which we are seeing now, is accepted in exchange for a year or two of relative quiet.
It’s easy to criticize Israel for not finishing off Hamas, but let’s look at what is really standing in its way.
Israeli Prime Minister Rabin deported 400 Hamas terrorists, including many Hamas leaders. In a Knesset speech he warned that, “We call on all nations and all people to devote their attention to the great danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. That is the real and serious danger which threatens the peace of the world in the forthcoming years.”
Instead the international community decided that the peace of the world was threatened by deporting Hamas terrorists. The media spent months covering the “suffering” of the deported Hamas terrorists. The United States voted for a UN resolution condemning Israel and ordering it to “insure the safe and immediate return of all those deported.”
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations said that deporting Hamas terrorists does “not contribute to current efforts for peace.”
In 1988, Israel had deported a handful of Hamas and PLO terrorists.
One of them, Jibril Mahmoud Rajub, vowed that if Israel didn’t let them back in that they would “infiltrate in as human bombs with explosives belted around our waists.”
Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead warned Israel that if it didn’t reconsider the deportations “damage to our bilateral relations will occur.”
If that was the reaction by the Reagan and Bush administrations to deporting a few terrorists, imagine the reaction by Obama and the EU to a comprehensive effort to force Hamas and the PLO out of Israel.
And yet the inevitable can’t be postponed forever.
If Israel had not folded in the peace process, it might have been able to maintain the status quo of the intifada. But the second choice is no longer a viable long term option. The attacks have long since passed the point of mere terrorism and are taking place on a military scale.
Tolerating terrorism has ceased to be a long term strategy. That is something that both the left and the right agree on. The attacks are pushing Israel into choosing either large scale conflict or large scale appeasement. Appeasing terrorists has failed every time. Only destroying them can work.
Israel has a left that is eager to embrace the destructive policies of appeasement without regard to the consequences. It needs a right that is equally heedless of consequences when it comes to war to overcome that pain threshold which prevents it from doing the right thing and reclaiming the future.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/a-game-changer-in-gaza/
There are no other choices.
The first choice comes from the right. The third choice comes from the left. The second choice is what politicians choose when they don’t want to make a decision that will change the status quo.
Despite all the explosions in Gaza, Israel is still stuck on the second choice. The air strikes aren’t meant to destroy Hamas. They are being carried out to degrade its military capabilities which will buy a year or two of relative peace. And that will be followed by more of the same in the summer of 2016 when Hamas will have deadlier Iranian and Syrian weapons that will terrorize more of the country.
That doesn’t sound like much of a deal, but these kinds of wars have bought more peace than the peace process ever did. The peace process led to wars. The wars lead to a temporary peace.
This status quo became the mainstream choice ever since Israelis figured out that the peace process wasn’t going to work and that their leaders weren’t about to defy the UN, the US, the UK and all the other U’s by actually destroying the terrorists.
When Netanyahu first ran against Peres, the difference between the center-right and the center-left was that he campaigned on security first and appeasement second, while Peres campaigned on appeasement first and security second. The center-right has dominated Israeli politics because most Israelis accepted Likud’s security first as a more reasonable position than Labor’s appeasement first.
Living with terrorism was a viable choice in the 80s. It stopped being a viable choice after Israel allowed terrorist states to be set up under the peace process. It’s one thing to manage terrorism in territories that you control. It’s another thing to deal with entire terrorist states inside your borders. Even physical separation isn’t enough. Not when terrorist groups can shell all your major cities.
Israel responds to that threat with light air strikes which damage Hamas’ military capabilities. Hamas loses a few commanders, fighters and rockets, but scores a PR victory. Israel buys two years of peace while encouraging its enemies to attack it as a bunch of racist baby killers. Then Hamas replaces the rockets and fighters and launches a new operation and the whole thing begins again.
The left’s argument, framed by Washington Post pundits, Israeli leftists, Obama, assorted diplomats, retired security chiefs, activist busybodies funded by radical billionaires and the entire gang of foreign and domestic enemies, is that Israel has no choice except to default back to choice three; appeasement.
Israel has to gamble on appeasement because its situation is constantly worsening, they argue. What they neglect to mention is that the situation is worsening as part of their pressure on Israel to appease terrorists even though the current problems exist because of earlier appeasement.
“Drink this poison,” the doctors of diplomacy say. “It’ll cure you of all the aches and pains you’re suffering from the last time we told you to drink poison.”
“If you don’t drink more poison, you’ll get sicker and die,” they say. And if you do get sicker after drinking more poison, they’ll say it’s your own fault for not drinking enough poison. If only you had given away all of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, the terrorists wouldn’t be attacking you again.
Israel has been caught between choices two and three, either live with terrorism or make concessions to terrorists, and it has been bouncing between these choices.
People and politicians choose the option that causes the least pain at any given time. Israel chooses appeasement in response to international pressure. And when appeasement leads to terrorism, it does enough damage to Hamas to serve as a temporary deterrent, without leading to too much international outrage, again choosing the least painful option.
This is the true cycle that Israel is caught in. It’s not a cycle of violence. It’s a cycle of expediency.
The first choice, destroying the terrorists, is the most painful option in the short term, but the least painful option in the long term. The third choice, appeasing the terrorists, causes the least pain in the short term, but the most pain in the long term and the medium term. The second choice, living with terrorism, is slightly more painful in the short term, less painful in the medium term, but still quite painful in the long term.
Israelis have accepted short term and long term pain in exchange for a certain amount of relief in the immediate future. The occasional terrorist attack and the more ominous escalating conflict, an example of which we are seeing now, is accepted in exchange for a year or two of relative quiet.
It’s easy to criticize Israel for not finishing off Hamas, but let’s look at what is really standing in its way.
Israeli Prime Minister Rabin deported 400 Hamas terrorists, including many Hamas leaders. In a Knesset speech he warned that, “We call on all nations and all people to devote their attention to the great danger inherent in Islamic fundamentalism. That is the real and serious danger which threatens the peace of the world in the forthcoming years.”
Instead the international community decided that the peace of the world was threatened by deporting Hamas terrorists. The media spent months covering the “suffering” of the deported Hamas terrorists. The United States voted for a UN resolution condemning Israel and ordering it to “insure the safe and immediate return of all those deported.”
The United States Ambassador to the United Nations said that deporting Hamas terrorists does “not contribute to current efforts for peace.”
In 1988, Israel had deported a handful of Hamas and PLO terrorists.
One of them, Jibril Mahmoud Rajub, vowed that if Israel didn’t let them back in that they would “infiltrate in as human bombs with explosives belted around our waists.”
Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead warned Israel that if it didn’t reconsider the deportations “damage to our bilateral relations will occur.”
If that was the reaction by the Reagan and Bush administrations to deporting a few terrorists, imagine the reaction by Obama and the EU to a comprehensive effort to force Hamas and the PLO out of Israel.
And yet the inevitable can’t be postponed forever.
If Israel had not folded in the peace process, it might have been able to maintain the status quo of the intifada. But the second choice is no longer a viable long term option. The attacks have long since passed the point of mere terrorism and are taking place on a military scale.
Tolerating terrorism has ceased to be a long term strategy. That is something that both the left and the right agree on. The attacks are pushing Israel into choosing either large scale conflict or large scale appeasement. Appeasing terrorists has failed every time. Only destroying them can work.
Israel has a left that is eager to embrace the destructive policies of appeasement without regard to the consequences. It needs a right that is equally heedless of consequences when it comes to war to overcome that pain threshold which prevents it from doing the right thing and reclaiming the future.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/a-game-changer-in-gaza/
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:16 pm
Hamas-rockets
Since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas and its co-jihadists have fired more than 8,000 rockets into Israel. They have been conducting an unrelenting Nazi-style rocket blitz for years, except during cease-fires that are hastily negotiated after Israel strikes back. Hamas’s rocket blitz has intensified massively in recent days to new heights. Over the past several days, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 550 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel, with the intent to kill and terrorize innocent civilians, including children.
On July 9th alone, Hamas fired nearly 100 rockets towards Israeli population centers. And it has raised the ante in terms of the sophistication and reach of its rockets, with longer range rockets targeting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Israel’s nuclear power plant in the city of Dimona. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has had remarkable success so far. It prevented what could have been a horrible nuclear disaster by intercepting one of the rockets out of the sky near Dimona. Iron Dome has also knocked out rockets over Tel Aviv and other major population centers. But no defense system is foolproof. Hence, after warning Hamas to no avail that it will face sharp reprisals if it does not stop the rocket attacks, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge.
To date, Israel has responded with air strikes aimed at Hamas strongholds, hitting more than 560 targets in Gaza during the past two days. Its targets consist of arms storage facilities and manufacturing plants, military compounds, tunnels, buried rocket launching pads, a command and control base and homes of Hamas and Jihad Islamist commanders. Israel does not deliberately target Palestinian civilians. To the contrary, whenever possible, the Israeli military makes phone calls to suspected Hamas operatives’ homes and drops leaflets in advance of strikes to warn occupants to get out of harm’s way immediately.
Although Israel has also authorized the call-up of approximately 40,000 reservists and amassed tanks near the Israeli-Gaza border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has to date resisted calls for launching a ground operation. However, his patience is running out. “The army is ready for all possibilities,” the prime minister said after a meeting of his security cabinet. “The operation will expand and continue until the fire toward our towns stops and quiet returns.”
In a sign that the start of a ground operation may be very near if the rocket firing does not stop, it has been reported by DEBKAfile that, on July 10, “the IDF advised 100,000 Palestinian civilians to leave their homes in the northern Gaza villages of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Greater Ibsen and Smaller Ibsen and head west to the coast or south to remove themselves from danger.”
Hamas remains defiant. Its political chief, Khaled Meshal, rejected any efforts at mediation, declaring in a televised speech: “We receive calls from mediators from Arab and Western sides to broker a ceasefire. We say to those who ask us for a lull: Go back!”
Hamas also put out a video promising: “Zionists, wait and see stabbing attacks everywhere. Wait for suicide attacks on every bus, café and street.”
Hamas has the backing of its unity government partner Palestinian Authority President Abbas, whom, playing the usual Palestinian victimhood card, accused Israel of committing “genocide.”
Here is the perverse logic of the Palestinian propaganda offensive in a nutshell: Hamas and its co-jihadists can launch long-range rockets aimed indiscriminately at Israeli civilians in major population centers and try to precipitate a nuclear disaster with impunity, but when Israel strikes back selectively to take out military targets in Gaza used to launch or support the rocket firings, Israel, according to Abbas, is committing “genocide.”
Not surprisingly, the Palestinians are successfully pushing this outrageous, truth-challenged narrative in their favorite venue, the United Nations.
At the insistence of the Palestinian UN observer state delegation and its Arab allies, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on July 10th. The Palestinians want the Security Council to take action against Israel for what they brand as Israel’s “aggression.” After UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned the Security Council of the “risk of an all-out escalation in Israel and Gaza” and appealed to both sides for “maximum restraint” – his favorite phrase of late – Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour accused Israel of war crimes. He said that Israel was cynically using “this latest aggression against the Palestinian people to bring about collapse of our government.”
Ambassador Mansour emoted how Palestinian children were being killed by Israeli air strikes, neglecting to mention how Hamas uses Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields.
“I speak on behalf of the suffering and grieving Palestinian people,” Mansour said, “who are enduring yet another barrage of death, destruction, trauma and terror, which is being perpetrated willfully and maliciously against them by the Israeli occupying forces before the eyes of the world as it persists with its nearly five-decade long belligerent military occupation.”
Ambassador Mansour also announced that Palestinian President Abbas has officially requested from the Swiss government that it convene the High Contracting Parties of the Geneva Conventions. The ostensible purpose would be to investigate and possibly sanction Israel for alleged violations of its responsibilities as the occupying power and for the alleged commission of war crimes.
Apparently, Ambassador Mansour and his boss President Abbas have forgotten that Israel vacated Gaza completely in 2005. It is Hamas, not Israel, which exercises all the functions of government in Gaza, which in turn is part of what the Palestinians claim to be the State of Palestine. Hamas’s idea of how to govern is to use Gaza as a base from which to launch attacks against Israeli civilians. The Israeli government’s idea of how to govern is to defend and protect its citizens against such wanton and potentially deadly assaults from an area it does not control.
Recall that after Israel vacated Gaza, it kept the border crossings between Israel and Gaza open with security arrangements mutually agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. That worked until Hamas took over Gaza and expelled Abbas’s Fatah faction. Has Ambassador Mansour forgotten the Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza inflicted by Hamas during its clashes with Fatah? Now Ambassador Mansour is defending the actions of the same Hamas against the civilians of Israel, which he must do since Hamas is officially a co-equal partner in what he calls the “national consensus government.”
In fact, when asked by reporters at a press briefing after the July 10th Security Council meeting if the Palestinian Authority accepted responsibility for the rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza, Ambassador Mansour responded, “The Palestinian people are one. The government is one. The president is president Abbas.”
If that is so, then this unity government must accept responsibility at minimum for Hamas’s current round of hundreds of rocket launchings targeting Israeli civilians in major population centers. The “State of Palestine,” which became a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention earlier this year and now seeks to invoke the Convention against Israel, is itself in direct violation of Article 33 of the Convention prohibiting “all measures of intimidation or of terrorism.”
Ambassador Mansour claimed that Hamas’s rocket firings were in self-defense. “We did not start this round of attacks,” he declared. “It is the Israeli government. After the killing of the three settlers [Eyal, Gilad and Naftali], they started this attack against our people. The rockets came after that.”
This is sheer propaganda. Note Ambassador Mansour’s clever reference to “this round of attacks.” The fact is that Hamas and its cohorts have been firing rockets and mortars at Israel continuously all throughout 2014 – more than 100 – way before the latest crisis and “this” most recent round, not to mention the thousands of rockets launched against Israeli civilians before 2014.
Even Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the cause and effect of the current crisis, while urging both sides to stop the violence. He noted in his remarks to the Security Council that civilians were “caught between Hamas’s irresponsibility and Israel’s tough response.” He added that further escalation, including a possible ground operation, is “preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing.”
Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor, in his own address to the Security Council on July 10th, pointed out that Hamas was committing war crimes against both Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians:
“Hamas is exploiting our concern for human life by hiding in Palestinian homes, schools, and mosques and using the basement of a hospital in Gaza as its headquarters. They are committing a double war crime: targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians.”
Ambassador Prosor told the Security Council that, while Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered his remarks to the Council, “another five rockets were fired from Gaza,” with one landing on a house. Israel isn’t looking “for a Band-Aid solution that will allow Hamas to rest and regroup,” he added. Israel’s goal “is to remove the threat posed by Hamas by dismantling its military infrastructure and restore quiet in Israel. Hamas must understand that it cannot target Israeli civilians.”
Israel’s leaders have a responsibility to protect their own civilians, which the government is doing while trying to mitigate any unintended collateral damage. The Palestinian leaders, including President Abbas, are failing to fulfill their responsibilities to their own people by placing them in harm’s way as a direct result of the jihadists’ war to destroy Israel. Hamas is simply following through on its Charter’s declaration that “’Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”
The United Nations and other bodies reflecting the opinions of the so-called international community enable this jihad so long as they try to impede Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself and protect its civilian population.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/the-palestinian-rocket-and-propaganda-offensive/
Since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Hamas and its co-jihadists have fired more than 8,000 rockets into Israel. They have been conducting an unrelenting Nazi-style rocket blitz for years, except during cease-fires that are hastily negotiated after Israel strikes back. Hamas’s rocket blitz has intensified massively in recent days to new heights. Over the past several days, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 550 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel, with the intent to kill and terrorize innocent civilians, including children.
On July 9th alone, Hamas fired nearly 100 rockets towards Israeli population centers. And it has raised the ante in terms of the sophistication and reach of its rockets, with longer range rockets targeting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Israel’s nuclear power plant in the city of Dimona. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has had remarkable success so far. It prevented what could have been a horrible nuclear disaster by intercepting one of the rockets out of the sky near Dimona. Iron Dome has also knocked out rockets over Tel Aviv and other major population centers. But no defense system is foolproof. Hence, after warning Hamas to no avail that it will face sharp reprisals if it does not stop the rocket attacks, Israel launched Operation Protective Edge.
To date, Israel has responded with air strikes aimed at Hamas strongholds, hitting more than 560 targets in Gaza during the past two days. Its targets consist of arms storage facilities and manufacturing plants, military compounds, tunnels, buried rocket launching pads, a command and control base and homes of Hamas and Jihad Islamist commanders. Israel does not deliberately target Palestinian civilians. To the contrary, whenever possible, the Israeli military makes phone calls to suspected Hamas operatives’ homes and drops leaflets in advance of strikes to warn occupants to get out of harm’s way immediately.
Although Israel has also authorized the call-up of approximately 40,000 reservists and amassed tanks near the Israeli-Gaza border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has to date resisted calls for launching a ground operation. However, his patience is running out. “The army is ready for all possibilities,” the prime minister said after a meeting of his security cabinet. “The operation will expand and continue until the fire toward our towns stops and quiet returns.”
In a sign that the start of a ground operation may be very near if the rocket firing does not stop, it has been reported by DEBKAfile that, on July 10, “the IDF advised 100,000 Palestinian civilians to leave their homes in the northern Gaza villages of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, Greater Ibsen and Smaller Ibsen and head west to the coast or south to remove themselves from danger.”
Hamas remains defiant. Its political chief, Khaled Meshal, rejected any efforts at mediation, declaring in a televised speech: “We receive calls from mediators from Arab and Western sides to broker a ceasefire. We say to those who ask us for a lull: Go back!”
Hamas also put out a video promising: “Zionists, wait and see stabbing attacks everywhere. Wait for suicide attacks on every bus, café and street.”
Hamas has the backing of its unity government partner Palestinian Authority President Abbas, whom, playing the usual Palestinian victimhood card, accused Israel of committing “genocide.”
Here is the perverse logic of the Palestinian propaganda offensive in a nutshell: Hamas and its co-jihadists can launch long-range rockets aimed indiscriminately at Israeli civilians in major population centers and try to precipitate a nuclear disaster with impunity, but when Israel strikes back selectively to take out military targets in Gaza used to launch or support the rocket firings, Israel, according to Abbas, is committing “genocide.”
Not surprisingly, the Palestinians are successfully pushing this outrageous, truth-challenged narrative in their favorite venue, the United Nations.
At the insistence of the Palestinian UN observer state delegation and its Arab allies, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on July 10th. The Palestinians want the Security Council to take action against Israel for what they brand as Israel’s “aggression.” After UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned the Security Council of the “risk of an all-out escalation in Israel and Gaza” and appealed to both sides for “maximum restraint” – his favorite phrase of late – Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour accused Israel of war crimes. He said that Israel was cynically using “this latest aggression against the Palestinian people to bring about collapse of our government.”
Ambassador Mansour emoted how Palestinian children were being killed by Israeli air strikes, neglecting to mention how Hamas uses Palestinian civilians, including children, as human shields.
“I speak on behalf of the suffering and grieving Palestinian people,” Mansour said, “who are enduring yet another barrage of death, destruction, trauma and terror, which is being perpetrated willfully and maliciously against them by the Israeli occupying forces before the eyes of the world as it persists with its nearly five-decade long belligerent military occupation.”
Ambassador Mansour also announced that Palestinian President Abbas has officially requested from the Swiss government that it convene the High Contracting Parties of the Geneva Conventions. The ostensible purpose would be to investigate and possibly sanction Israel for alleged violations of its responsibilities as the occupying power and for the alleged commission of war crimes.
Apparently, Ambassador Mansour and his boss President Abbas have forgotten that Israel vacated Gaza completely in 2005. It is Hamas, not Israel, which exercises all the functions of government in Gaza, which in turn is part of what the Palestinians claim to be the State of Palestine. Hamas’s idea of how to govern is to use Gaza as a base from which to launch attacks against Israeli civilians. The Israeli government’s idea of how to govern is to defend and protect its citizens against such wanton and potentially deadly assaults from an area it does not control.
Recall that after Israel vacated Gaza, it kept the border crossings between Israel and Gaza open with security arrangements mutually agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. That worked until Hamas took over Gaza and expelled Abbas’s Fatah faction. Has Ambassador Mansour forgotten the Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza inflicted by Hamas during its clashes with Fatah? Now Ambassador Mansour is defending the actions of the same Hamas against the civilians of Israel, which he must do since Hamas is officially a co-equal partner in what he calls the “national consensus government.”
In fact, when asked by reporters at a press briefing after the July 10th Security Council meeting if the Palestinian Authority accepted responsibility for the rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza, Ambassador Mansour responded, “The Palestinian people are one. The government is one. The president is president Abbas.”
If that is so, then this unity government must accept responsibility at minimum for Hamas’s current round of hundreds of rocket launchings targeting Israeli civilians in major population centers. The “State of Palestine,” which became a party to the Fourth Geneva Convention earlier this year and now seeks to invoke the Convention against Israel, is itself in direct violation of Article 33 of the Convention prohibiting “all measures of intimidation or of terrorism.”
Ambassador Mansour claimed that Hamas’s rocket firings were in self-defense. “We did not start this round of attacks,” he declared. “It is the Israeli government. After the killing of the three settlers [Eyal, Gilad and Naftali], they started this attack against our people. The rockets came after that.”
This is sheer propaganda. Note Ambassador Mansour’s clever reference to “this round of attacks.” The fact is that Hamas and its cohorts have been firing rockets and mortars at Israel continuously all throughout 2014 – more than 100 – way before the latest crisis and “this” most recent round, not to mention the thousands of rockets launched against Israeli civilians before 2014.
Even Secretary General Ban Ki-moon acknowledged the cause and effect of the current crisis, while urging both sides to stop the violence. He noted in his remarks to the Security Council that civilians were “caught between Hamas’s irresponsibility and Israel’s tough response.” He added that further escalation, including a possible ground operation, is “preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing.”
Israeli UN Ambassador Ron Prosor, in his own address to the Security Council on July 10th, pointed out that Hamas was committing war crimes against both Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians:
“Hamas is exploiting our concern for human life by hiding in Palestinian homes, schools, and mosques and using the basement of a hospital in Gaza as its headquarters. They are committing a double war crime: targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians.”
Ambassador Prosor told the Security Council that, while Secretary General Ban Ki-moon delivered his remarks to the Council, “another five rockets were fired from Gaza,” with one landing on a house. Israel isn’t looking “for a Band-Aid solution that will allow Hamas to rest and regroup,” he added. Israel’s goal “is to remove the threat posed by Hamas by dismantling its military infrastructure and restore quiet in Israel. Hamas must understand that it cannot target Israeli civilians.”
Israel’s leaders have a responsibility to protect their own civilians, which the government is doing while trying to mitigate any unintended collateral damage. The Palestinian leaders, including President Abbas, are failing to fulfill their responsibilities to their own people by placing them in harm’s way as a direct result of the jihadists’ war to destroy Israel. Hamas is simply following through on its Charter’s declaration that “’Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”
The United Nations and other bodies reflecting the opinions of the so-called international community enable this jihad so long as they try to impede Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself and protect its civilian population.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-klein/the-palestinian-rocket-and-propaganda-offensive/
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 7:19 pm
What is Hamas doing? Hamas isn’t going to defeat Israel.
It isn’t going to gain any territory. Israel isn’t going to withdraw from Ashkelon or Sderot under a hail of rockets.
So if Hamas can’t win, why is it fighting? Why rain down destruction and misery on millions of Israelis with your Iranian missiles and your Syrian rockets and invite a counter-assault on your headquarters and weapons warehouses, which you have conveniently placed in the middle of the Palestinian people on whose behalf you are allegedly fighting? Hamas is in a precarious position. When the terror group took over Gaza seven years ago, things were different.
It had a relatively friendly regime in Cairo that was willing to turn a blind eye to all the missiles Iran, Syria and Hezbollah were sending over to Gaza through Sinai.
Hamas’s leaders were comfortably ensconced in Damascus and enjoyed warm relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran.
International funds flowed freely into Hamas bank accounts from Fatah’s donor-financed Palestinian Authority budget, through the Arab Bank, headquartered in Jordan, through the UN, and when necessary through suitcases of cash transferred to Gaza by couriers from Egypt.
Hamas used these conditions to build up the arsenal of a terror state, and to keep the trains running on time. Schools were open. Government employees were paid. Israel was bombed. All was good.
Today, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, faces an Egyptian regime that is locked into a life-and-death struggle with the Brotherhood. To harm Hamas, for the past year the Egyptians have been blocking Hamas’s land-based weapons shipments and destroying its smuggling-dependent economy by sealing off the cross-border tunnels.
Syria and Hamas parted ways at the outset of the Syrian civil war when Hamas, a Sunni jihadist group, was unable to openly support Bashar Assad’s massacre of Sunnis.
Fatah has lately been refusing to transfer payments to Hamas due to congressional pressure to cut off the now-illegal flow of aid to the joint Fatah-Hamas unity government.
As for Hamas’s banker, stung by terror victim lawsuits, the Arab Bank now refuses to transfer monies to Hamas from third parties. The UN is also hard-pressed to finance the terror group’s bureaucracy.
In Gaza itself, al-Qaida affiliates including ISIS (now renamed the Islamic State) have seeded themselves along with the Iranian proxy Islamic Jihad. These groups challenge Hamas’s claim to power. Lacking the ability to pay government employee salaries, Hamas is hard-pressed to keep its rivals down.
Given these circumstances, it was just a matter of time before Hamas opened a full-on assault against Israel.
Jew-hatred is endemic in the Muslim world. Going to war against Israel is a tried and true method of garnering sympathy and support from the Muslim world. At a minimum it earns you the forbearance, if not the support of the US and Europe. And you get all of these things whether you win or lose.
When Saddam Hussein shot 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, he didn’t attack because he thought doing so would destroy Israel. He attacked Israel because he was trying to convince the Arab members of the US-led international coalition to abandon the war against him.
Moreover, when Saddam launched the Scuds against Israel, he knew that Israel wouldn’t be able to retaliate. He knew that the US would force Israel to stand down in order to maintain the support of his Jew-hating fellow Arabs in its coalition.
So attacking Israel was a freebie that he only stood to gain from.
Hezbollah’s leaders also never deluded themselves into believing their group can conquer Israel. But by attacking the hated Jews, they were able to present themselves and their Iranian bosses as the guardians of the Muslims worldwide.
Then there was the US’s response.
As it protected Saddam from Israel in 1991, so in 2006, the US gave Hezbollah the upper hand in the war. Then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice forced Israel to accept a cease-fire with Hezbollah that placed the illegal terror group on equal legal and moral footing with Israel.
This US legitimization of Hezbollah enabled the Iranian proxy to intimidate its Sunni and Christian compatriots in Lebanon and coerce them into accepting effective Hezbollah control over the entire state.
As for Hamas, from the outset of Hamas’s previous missile campaigns in 2009 and 2012, the Obama administration made it clear to Israel that it would not tolerate Israeli strikes that were sufficiently comprehensive to wipe out Hamas’s capacity to continue attacking Israel. In other words, President Barack Obama chose to protect Hamas – an illegal terrorist organization, waging a war of indiscriminate, criminal missile strikes against Israeli civilians – from Israel.
Today, Hamas has every reason to take heart from the responses it has received from its current offensive.
In the internal Palestinian arena, Fatah, Hamas’s partner in the Palestinian Authority unity government, is standing shoulder to shoulder with Hamas.
As The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reported, Fatah militias in Gaza are actively participating in the Hamas-led missile campaign against Israel. Fatah terrorists have boasted shooting dozens of rockets and mortar shells at Ashkelon and Sderot.
On Wednesday, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Fatah posted a placard proclaiming that the military wings of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are “brothers in arms” united by “one God, one homeland, one enemy and one goal.”
Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is Hamas’s diplomatic champion. Indeed, his wild accusations against Israel have moved from the realm of exaggeration to rank incitement that raises concern he is planning to open a second front against Israel from Judea and Samaria.
Although Egypt has still not indicated any willingness to support Hamas, the longer Hamas continues attacking Israel, the more difficult it will become for Egypt to seal off the border between Gaza and Sinai. Hamas’s war strengthens the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Then there is the Obama administration.
Obama administration spokesmen have been issuing prepared statements blaming the hostilities on Hamas and mouthing support for Israel while praising its restraint. But at the same time, they have been transmitting messages which indicate that Obama is more intent than ever to give Hamas a victory even as it continues to rain down terror on Israel.
As Tel Aviv, Hadera and Jerusalem absorbed their first missile salvos from Gaza on Tuesday, Obama’s Middle East envoy Philip Gordon spoke at Haaretz’s “peace” conference.
It was a jaw dropping performance.
Gordon blamed Israel for the failure for the administration’s efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the PLO while effusively praising Fatah leader and Hamas partner Abbas.
And it only went down from there.
After insisting Israel is inadequately committed to peace, Gordon threatened to withdraw US support for Israel at the UN and open the door to the criminalization of Israel by the corrupt international body.
“How will we prevent other states from supporting Palestinian efforts in international bodies, if Israel is not seen as committed to peace?” he asked rhetorically.
Gordon’s remarks were not disputed by the State Department.
And State Department spokespersons themselves have continued to insist – absurdly – that Hamas is not a member of the Fatah-Hamas unity government.
From Hamas’s perspective, the Obama administration’s response to its aggression is an invitation to keep going. Gordon’s speech allayed any concerns they may have had how the US would respond.
Hamas now knows that the US will coerce Israel into standing down while Hamas is still standing, and so enable the jihadists to claim victory and place Egypt in a bind.
And as with Hamas, so with Hamas’s Iranian sponsors.
On July 20, the US and its partners are supposed to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran.
Many Western experts and even some Israeli ones insist that Iran’s nuclear weapon program is not a serious threat to Israel because Iran’s primary aspirations have little to do with Israel.
Iran, they say, wants nuclear weapons in order to dominate the Persian Gulf, and through it, the Muslim world as a whole. Iran’s targets, it is argued, are Mecca and Medina, not Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
While this is probably true, it is certainly irrelevant for Israel’s strategic assessment.
The same dynamics that inform Hamas’s decision to launch its offensives against Israel inform Iran’s thinking about how it will use a nuclear arsenal. Iran would not attack Israel with nuclear weapons because it wishes to conquer Israel per se. Iran would attack Israel with nuclear weapons because doing so would give it a massive public relations boost in its campaign to dominate the Persian Gulf generally, and Saudi Arabia in particular.
In other words, far from being a hindrance to accomplishing its central goal, Iran views attacking Israel as a means of advancing it.
Unfortunately for Israel, just as the US has made clear that it opposes Israel taking any offensive steps to destroy Hamas’s capacity to rain terror on its citizens, so the Obama administration, through word and deed, has made clear that it will defend Iran and Iran’s nuclear weapons program from Israel.
The talks that are set to conclude next week can only bring about bad or worse results for Israel. In recent days and weeks, Iranian leaders have said that the only deal they will sign is one that will facilitate their nuclear weapons program by giving international license to their massive uranium enrichment activities. So if a deal is concluded, it will give the imprimatur of the US, the UN and the EU to a nuclear-armed Iran.
If no deal is concluded, the Obama administration will undoubtedly continue to protect Iran’s nuclear installations from Israel in the hopes of concluding an agreement with Iran at a later date, perhaps after the congressional elections in November.
In an op-ed in Haaretz published this week, Obama wrote, “While walls and missile defense systems can help protect against some threats, true safety will only come with a comprehensive negotiated settlement. Reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians would also help turn the tide of international sentiment and sideline violent extremists, further bolstering Israel’s security.”
Unfortunately, Obama misses the point completely. As the dozen agreements Israel already signed with the Palestinians show, pieces of paper are meaningless if they don’t reflect the underlying sentiments of the populations concerned.
Peace can only come to Israel and its neighbors when the Muslim world liberates itself from its hatred of Jews. Until that happens, everyone from Hamas to Hezbollah to Fatah to al-Qaida to Iran and beyond will continue to view attacking Israel as the best way to make a name for themselves in the world, and the best way to get the attention – and support – of the West.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/hamass-and-irans-fail-safe-strategy/
It isn’t going to gain any territory. Israel isn’t going to withdraw from Ashkelon or Sderot under a hail of rockets.
So if Hamas can’t win, why is it fighting? Why rain down destruction and misery on millions of Israelis with your Iranian missiles and your Syrian rockets and invite a counter-assault on your headquarters and weapons warehouses, which you have conveniently placed in the middle of the Palestinian people on whose behalf you are allegedly fighting? Hamas is in a precarious position. When the terror group took over Gaza seven years ago, things were different.
It had a relatively friendly regime in Cairo that was willing to turn a blind eye to all the missiles Iran, Syria and Hezbollah were sending over to Gaza through Sinai.
Hamas’s leaders were comfortably ensconced in Damascus and enjoyed warm relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran.
International funds flowed freely into Hamas bank accounts from Fatah’s donor-financed Palestinian Authority budget, through the Arab Bank, headquartered in Jordan, through the UN, and when necessary through suitcases of cash transferred to Gaza by couriers from Egypt.
Hamas used these conditions to build up the arsenal of a terror state, and to keep the trains running on time. Schools were open. Government employees were paid. Israel was bombed. All was good.
Today, Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, faces an Egyptian regime that is locked into a life-and-death struggle with the Brotherhood. To harm Hamas, for the past year the Egyptians have been blocking Hamas’s land-based weapons shipments and destroying its smuggling-dependent economy by sealing off the cross-border tunnels.
Syria and Hamas parted ways at the outset of the Syrian civil war when Hamas, a Sunni jihadist group, was unable to openly support Bashar Assad’s massacre of Sunnis.
Fatah has lately been refusing to transfer payments to Hamas due to congressional pressure to cut off the now-illegal flow of aid to the joint Fatah-Hamas unity government.
As for Hamas’s banker, stung by terror victim lawsuits, the Arab Bank now refuses to transfer monies to Hamas from third parties. The UN is also hard-pressed to finance the terror group’s bureaucracy.
In Gaza itself, al-Qaida affiliates including ISIS (now renamed the Islamic State) have seeded themselves along with the Iranian proxy Islamic Jihad. These groups challenge Hamas’s claim to power. Lacking the ability to pay government employee salaries, Hamas is hard-pressed to keep its rivals down.
Given these circumstances, it was just a matter of time before Hamas opened a full-on assault against Israel.
Jew-hatred is endemic in the Muslim world. Going to war against Israel is a tried and true method of garnering sympathy and support from the Muslim world. At a minimum it earns you the forbearance, if not the support of the US and Europe. And you get all of these things whether you win or lose.
When Saddam Hussein shot 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, he didn’t attack because he thought doing so would destroy Israel. He attacked Israel because he was trying to convince the Arab members of the US-led international coalition to abandon the war against him.
Moreover, when Saddam launched the Scuds against Israel, he knew that Israel wouldn’t be able to retaliate. He knew that the US would force Israel to stand down in order to maintain the support of his Jew-hating fellow Arabs in its coalition.
So attacking Israel was a freebie that he only stood to gain from.
Hezbollah’s leaders also never deluded themselves into believing their group can conquer Israel. But by attacking the hated Jews, they were able to present themselves and their Iranian bosses as the guardians of the Muslims worldwide.
Then there was the US’s response.
As it protected Saddam from Israel in 1991, so in 2006, the US gave Hezbollah the upper hand in the war. Then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice forced Israel to accept a cease-fire with Hezbollah that placed the illegal terror group on equal legal and moral footing with Israel.
This US legitimization of Hezbollah enabled the Iranian proxy to intimidate its Sunni and Christian compatriots in Lebanon and coerce them into accepting effective Hezbollah control over the entire state.
As for Hamas, from the outset of Hamas’s previous missile campaigns in 2009 and 2012, the Obama administration made it clear to Israel that it would not tolerate Israeli strikes that were sufficiently comprehensive to wipe out Hamas’s capacity to continue attacking Israel. In other words, President Barack Obama chose to protect Hamas – an illegal terrorist organization, waging a war of indiscriminate, criminal missile strikes against Israeli civilians – from Israel.
Today, Hamas has every reason to take heart from the responses it has received from its current offensive.
In the internal Palestinian arena, Fatah, Hamas’s partner in the Palestinian Authority unity government, is standing shoulder to shoulder with Hamas.
As The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reported, Fatah militias in Gaza are actively participating in the Hamas-led missile campaign against Israel. Fatah terrorists have boasted shooting dozens of rockets and mortar shells at Ashkelon and Sderot.
On Wednesday, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Fatah posted a placard proclaiming that the military wings of Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are “brothers in arms” united by “one God, one homeland, one enemy and one goal.”
Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is Hamas’s diplomatic champion. Indeed, his wild accusations against Israel have moved from the realm of exaggeration to rank incitement that raises concern he is planning to open a second front against Israel from Judea and Samaria.
Although Egypt has still not indicated any willingness to support Hamas, the longer Hamas continues attacking Israel, the more difficult it will become for Egypt to seal off the border between Gaza and Sinai. Hamas’s war strengthens the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
Then there is the Obama administration.
Obama administration spokesmen have been issuing prepared statements blaming the hostilities on Hamas and mouthing support for Israel while praising its restraint. But at the same time, they have been transmitting messages which indicate that Obama is more intent than ever to give Hamas a victory even as it continues to rain down terror on Israel.
As Tel Aviv, Hadera and Jerusalem absorbed their first missile salvos from Gaza on Tuesday, Obama’s Middle East envoy Philip Gordon spoke at Haaretz’s “peace” conference.
It was a jaw dropping performance.
Gordon blamed Israel for the failure for the administration’s efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the PLO while effusively praising Fatah leader and Hamas partner Abbas.
And it only went down from there.
After insisting Israel is inadequately committed to peace, Gordon threatened to withdraw US support for Israel at the UN and open the door to the criminalization of Israel by the corrupt international body.
“How will we prevent other states from supporting Palestinian efforts in international bodies, if Israel is not seen as committed to peace?” he asked rhetorically.
Gordon’s remarks were not disputed by the State Department.
And State Department spokespersons themselves have continued to insist – absurdly – that Hamas is not a member of the Fatah-Hamas unity government.
From Hamas’s perspective, the Obama administration’s response to its aggression is an invitation to keep going. Gordon’s speech allayed any concerns they may have had how the US would respond.
Hamas now knows that the US will coerce Israel into standing down while Hamas is still standing, and so enable the jihadists to claim victory and place Egypt in a bind.
And as with Hamas, so with Hamas’s Iranian sponsors.
On July 20, the US and its partners are supposed to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran.
Many Western experts and even some Israeli ones insist that Iran’s nuclear weapon program is not a serious threat to Israel because Iran’s primary aspirations have little to do with Israel.
Iran, they say, wants nuclear weapons in order to dominate the Persian Gulf, and through it, the Muslim world as a whole. Iran’s targets, it is argued, are Mecca and Medina, not Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
While this is probably true, it is certainly irrelevant for Israel’s strategic assessment.
The same dynamics that inform Hamas’s decision to launch its offensives against Israel inform Iran’s thinking about how it will use a nuclear arsenal. Iran would not attack Israel with nuclear weapons because it wishes to conquer Israel per se. Iran would attack Israel with nuclear weapons because doing so would give it a massive public relations boost in its campaign to dominate the Persian Gulf generally, and Saudi Arabia in particular.
In other words, far from being a hindrance to accomplishing its central goal, Iran views attacking Israel as a means of advancing it.
Unfortunately for Israel, just as the US has made clear that it opposes Israel taking any offensive steps to destroy Hamas’s capacity to rain terror on its citizens, so the Obama administration, through word and deed, has made clear that it will defend Iran and Iran’s nuclear weapons program from Israel.
The talks that are set to conclude next week can only bring about bad or worse results for Israel. In recent days and weeks, Iranian leaders have said that the only deal they will sign is one that will facilitate their nuclear weapons program by giving international license to their massive uranium enrichment activities. So if a deal is concluded, it will give the imprimatur of the US, the UN and the EU to a nuclear-armed Iran.
If no deal is concluded, the Obama administration will undoubtedly continue to protect Iran’s nuclear installations from Israel in the hopes of concluding an agreement with Iran at a later date, perhaps after the congressional elections in November.
In an op-ed in Haaretz published this week, Obama wrote, “While walls and missile defense systems can help protect against some threats, true safety will only come with a comprehensive negotiated settlement. Reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians would also help turn the tide of international sentiment and sideline violent extremists, further bolstering Israel’s security.”
Unfortunately, Obama misses the point completely. As the dozen agreements Israel already signed with the Palestinians show, pieces of paper are meaningless if they don’t reflect the underlying sentiments of the populations concerned.
Peace can only come to Israel and its neighbors when the Muslim world liberates itself from its hatred of Jews. Until that happens, everyone from Hamas to Hezbollah to Fatah to al-Qaida to Iran and beyond will continue to view attacking Israel as the best way to make a name for themselves in the world, and the best way to get the attention – and support – of the West.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/hamass-and-irans-fail-safe-strategy/
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 9:29 pm
Don't know what you are saying Smelly, but keep going then I can keep this thread in the limelight, as it tells the real story.
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Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 9:49 pm
Last Sunday, Arizona Senator John McCain urged President Obama to send Secretary of State John Kerry to Israel to prevent the conflict there from “spiraling out of control.” J Street, which actively promotes negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, has called on Kerry to issue a blueprint for a two-state solution. But Kerry is in China for a “strategic and economic dialogue,” and State Department officials insist that it is up to Israelis and Palestinians to resume negotiations. Asked about the idea of the United States putting out its own plan, one official, speaking on background, said, “There are no good historical examples of this working.”
Is the United States reneging on its global responsibilities? American diplomacy could probably contribute to a ceasefire in Gaza between the Israeli government and Hamas, neither of which appear enthusiastic about continued escalation there, but as the earlier failure of negotiations over Palestinian statehood showed, even the most energetic American efforts are unlikely to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the cycle of violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. The United States would have to go from proposing a framework to the parties to imposing one—and even if an American administration could overcome the domestic opposition to do that, it still might not hold.
A Timeline of the Current Conflict
The current conflict, like many of the previous ones, has consisted of a series of responses and counter-responses. The question of who provoked whom is itself part of the conflict. Here is the timeline, as best as I can tell. Negotiations over a Palestinian state ended on April first, when Mahmoud Abbas, in response to the Israeli refusal to release, as promised, 104 Palestinian prisoners, and to the announcement of 700 new apartments in East Jerusalem, declared that the Palestinian Authority would apply for membership in 15 United Nations organizations.
On April 23, Abbas’s Fatah Party and Hamas announced their intention to form a unity government composed of technocrats rather than party officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted angrily, breaking off the negotiations that had already collapsed, but blaming Abbas for their breakdown, and seeking to punish the Palestinian Authority for the move. After the Unity government was assembled on June 1, and sworn in, the Israeli government announced plans for 3,300 new housing units in the West Bank.
There was tension over the next days—including a hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, a Palestinian teenager killed by Israeli policy at a Nakba Day demonstration, and an occasional rocket fired at Israel from Gaza by an outlier group not under Hamas’s control. Then on June 12, three Jewish teenagers from a settlement were kidnapped and murdered. The perpetrators have still not been caught, but Israeli officials suspect two Hamas members from Hebron. Hamas’s political and military leadership denied involvement in the attack, and there is reason to believe them: The suspects were members of a Hebron clan that had previously staged attacks against Israelis contrary to Hamas ceasefire agreements.
The Israeli government seems to have known after a day or two that the kidnappers had murdered the three boys, but it continued to insist publicly—and the press was under a gag order not to contradict them—that the boys were still alive. Their bodies were finally uncovered and the murder publicly confirmed on June 30. The government was also informed almost immediately about the disappearance of the two suspects from Hebron, but during this time, the Israelis went on the offensive against Hamas throughout the West Bank. Over 600 Palestinians were arrested and more than 1,500 homes, schools, and places of business were raided. The army arrested and imprisoned 51 Hamas members who had been included in the deal freeing hostage Gilad Shalit. The police even raided Birzeit University, arresting two pro-Hamas students and confiscating Hamas flags and literature.
On July 2, a group of Israelis kidnapped and burned alive a Palestinian boy. Six suspects were arrested, and three have confessed. That prompted demonstrations among Palestinians in Israel and in East Jerusalem. At a demonstration, or his uncle’s home—the details are still murky—the police arrested and brutally beat a Palestinian American who was the 16-year-old cousin of the murdered boy. That brought a protest from the State Department. Then on July 6, the Israeli air force bombed a tunnel in Gaza, killing six Hamas men. Before that, there had been sporadic rocket attacks against Israeli from outlier groups, but afterwards, Hamas took responsibility for and increased the rocket attacks against Israel, and the Israeli government launched “Operation Protective Edge” against Hamas in Gaza. The Israelis are now bombarding Gaza, while Hamas and other Islamist groups in Gaza are launching rockets, most of which are intercepted by Israel’s anti-missile system.
In summary, the fuse was lit for this latest conflagration by the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli and one Palestinian teenager. But horrific acts like these have, sadly, always been a part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu also played a role by using the investigation into the kidnapping as the pretext for attempting to destroy the Fatah-Hamas unity government. (Those who find this a reasonable objective should consider that the Netanyahu government and party contain high officials who want to deny Palestinians the right of self-determination.)
Abbas has, typically, tried to play a moderating role. Speaking in Saudi Arabia to an Arab audience, Abbas condemned the kidnapping of the Israeli teens. But Hamas deserves part of the blame for the escalation. While denying Hamas’s role in the kidnapping, Hamas leader Khalid Mashal said that Palestinians should “applaud and take our hats off” to the kidnappers. Hamas’s rocket attacks (like Netanyahu’s attempt to destroy the unity government) have a strategic rationale. These attacks rarely hit targets, but they provoke a furious Israeli response that leads to hundreds of casualties and deaths, including women and children who have no direct connection with Hamas. These attacks rouse sympathy for Hamas in Europe and among the Arab states and can lead to welcome financial contributions and to the isolation of the Israeli government, but they come at an enormous cost to the people Hamas represents.
What can the United States do?
For once, McCain is right. A little “shuttle diplomacy” by Kerry probably could help prevent a protracted conflict. Netanyahu knows that he can’t finally eliminate Hamas in Gaza except by actions that would bring the wrath of nations down upon Israel. Israeli officials refer obscenely to the periodic assault on Gaza as “mowing the lawn.” Mashal, too, would like to limit the damage to his people and to Gaza. But to date, the only Washington official who is speaking publicly in Israel is the National Security Council Middle East expert Phillip Gordon, who criticized the Israeli occupation at a conference in Tel Aviv. But Gordon was not there, it seems. to mediate the conflict.
Kerry is probably right, however, in resisting another effort at renewing the peace process. Kerry and his negotiators made serious mistakes during the negotiations earlier this year—most notably, they tried to work out terms of a framework with the Israelis without concurrently talking to the Palestinians. Abbas, presented with a fait accompli, balked. But that wasn’t the main reason Kerry’s effort failed. The main reason, as Kerry’s people indicated to Israeli journalist Nahum Barnea (before they later tried to walk the story back), was Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s government kept announcing new housing starts in the occupied territories, inflaming the Palestinians. He made minor concessions in negotiations, but wouldn’t budge on specifying the borders of a Palestinian state; he wouldn’t limit the time for an Israeli occupation force in the Jordan Valley; and he wouldn’t discuss allowing a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Jerusalem lawyer Danny Seidemann, whom the Kerry team consulted, said in a press briefing, “When my prime minister says that I support the two-state solution, but I oppose any compromise on Jerusalem, there is a literal transition for that. I oppose the two state solution.” His convictions aside, Netanyahu was hampered by his own coalition. To give ground in the negotiations, and even in the end to keep his promise of releasing the prisoners, he would have had to create a new majority coalition, which he was unwilling to do.
The United States can influence Israeli politics. It can threaten to withhold economic or military assistance. The Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush administrations were able to use these kind of threats to force concessions. But the Obama administration appears completely unwilling to undertake this kind of diplomacy toward Israel. Obama and Kerry know that if they tried to withhold aid, they would face an immense uproar on Capitol Hill. J Street has acquired some clout among liberal Democrats, but what support AIPAC and the other groups that back Netanyahu have lost among Democrats, they have more than made up among Republicans.
And if Obama and Kerry wanted to restart negotiations, they would also have a problem with the Palestinian side. Abbas has been a receptive negotiating partner – he made significant concessions during the talks with the Israelis, including agreeing to an Israeli army presence in the Jordan Valley for up to five years – but he is increasingly hampered by old age and illness. As a result of the negotiation’s failure, and the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority’s security force with the Israelis, Abbas has also become increasingly unpopular. One Fatah official estimated his support among Palestinians as ten percent. But he has no replacement in sight.
Hamas has a political base in the West Bank as well as Gaza. In May, Hamas got 40 percent of the vote in the highly politicized university student council elections in the West Bank. These are a good test of support among the most active Palestinians. But Hamas is crippled by the loss of funding from Egypt, Syria, and Iran. In the unity government, it was willing to accept Abbas’s leadership in negotiations with the Israelis, but it does not appear ready on its own to undertake negotiations aimed at ending the conflict with Israel. It may change—the PLO, after all, changed its charter to accept Israel’s existence—but not in the immediate future. The United States lacks an effective negotiating partner either among the Israelis or Palestinians.
Analogies are always treacherous but maybe this one makes sense: In the United States in the ‘60s, the conflict over civil rights had turned violent. Race riots occurred in major cities. But stepping back, one could believe that after the fires were put out and smoke cleared, Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement would carry the day. History was moving in that direction. It is hard to feel the same way about what is happening in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel, of course, has its equivalent of the Northern liberal Democrats who backed the civil rights movement; polls even indicate a majority support for a two-state solution. But the movement on the ground—the inexorable increase of West Bank and East Jerusalem settlers, the four-decade old turn toward conservatism and away from European social democracy, the incendiary sentiments among the ultra-orthodox and the settlers—are creating a growing political base against any accommodation.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118630/israel-palestine-murders-cause-criss-will-john-kerry-step
I think that is a very accurate summing up of the situation. J Street are Pro Israel and Pro Peace and Pro a 2 State Solution, but even they can see what Netanyahu has been doing.
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Fri Jul 11, 2014 11:20 pm
Hi Ben
This is getting silly now, people are spoiling debates in two aspects, one by spamming them with countless articles in full, where there is no need, just part of the articles to back their view they are making, as this to me constitutes spamming and leaves no room for debating. It is also illegal to post some of them in full also.
Second, if posters are going to place people on ignore, then why are they then responding to them? It seems like this is being used to excuse them from debating and just only allows for more disruption on the thread. If they want to place people on ignore, hat is their choice, but that means they should then do so, and not add silly childish comments, as all it does is create disruption from the debates.
I mean look at this whole thread, not exactly a debate is it and all I can say to that is this:
This is getting silly now, people are spoiling debates in two aspects, one by spamming them with countless articles in full, where there is no need, just part of the articles to back their view they are making, as this to me constitutes spamming and leaves no room for debating. It is also illegal to post some of them in full also.
Second, if posters are going to place people on ignore, then why are they then responding to them? It seems like this is being used to excuse them from debating and just only allows for more disruption on the thread. If they want to place people on ignore, hat is their choice, but that means they should then do so, and not add silly childish comments, as all it does is create disruption from the debates.
I mean look at this whole thread, not exactly a debate is it and all I can say to that is this:
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:11 am
hey didge i see you have mustered the courage to comeback after that rinsin you got a few weeks ago
didge if you dont like the thread dont post on it - no one is forcing you to
didge if you dont like the thread dont post on it - no one is forcing you to
Guest- Guest
Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Ben Reilly Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:22 am
Didge wrote:Hi Ben
This is getting silly now, people are spoiling debates in two aspects, one by spamming them with countless articles in full, where there is no need, just part of the articles to back their view they are making, as this to me constitutes spamming and leaves no room for debating. It is also illegal to post some of them in full also.
Second, if posters are going to place people on ignore, then why are they then responding to them? It seems like this is being used to excuse them from debating and just only allows for more disruption on the thread. If they want to place people on ignore, hat is their choice, but that means they should then do so, and not add silly childish comments, as all it does is create disruption from the debates.
I mean look at this whole thread, not exactly a debate is it and all I can say to that is this:
I say let it go, people like Smelly get their ideas from sites and sources that are leading them by their hateful noses. Everything people like this post is more insight into who they are, what they stand for, and especially, where they get their so-called information. It will make it easier for democracy to relegate them to kook status and remember them, in the end, as being among the same type that set fire-hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters.
Always remember that these people are willing to lie in an effort not only to slander billions of people, but to bring about their deaths. It really tells you everything you need to know about them!
Ben Reilly- King of Texas. Gigantic Killer Robot. Robin Hood of Epping Forest. Fifty Shades of Cray.
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:36 am
my name is ben ------------->
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by The Puzzler Sat Jul 12, 2014 8:53 am
You really are a disgusting, anti semitic ----.Lone Wolf wrote:
KNOWING their history in such matters, it wouldn't even surprise me if members of the Israeli military itself actually instigated the killing of those three teenage yobs, somehow...
Simply to give them an "excuse" to then invade Palestinian territories ~ and to wind up this latest war begun by the Israelis..
IF it wasn't for the USA/UK/NATO protective umbrella over Israel, they would have been dragged up before international courts yonks ago.
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WRONG AGAIN on both counts, You pussy little shithead, but that's nothing new ~ you have always been wrong, no matter which of your multiple I.D's you're using on the day... Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by nicko Sat Jul 12, 2014 11:01 am
Lone wolf, He loves the insults doesn't he ?when he see's em he has an orgasm over his key board!!
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by The Puzzler Sat Jul 12, 2014 11:22 am
It's about time the prick got a taste of his own medicine...nicko wrote:Lone wolf, He loves the insults doesn't he ?when he see's em he has an orgasm over his key board!!
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Lazy and unimaginative little neo-nazi bully boys that they are.. Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by Guest Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:35 pm
Shouldn't this thread be locked Benji-boy?
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by The Puzzler Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:46 pm
We can add rampant homophobe to anti semite then...
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by SEXY MAMA Sat Jul 12, 2014 12:49 pm
The Puzzler wrote:We can add rampant homophobe to anti semite then...
Like your despicable post
You disgust me
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by The Puzzler Sat Jul 12, 2014 1:04 pm
What's truly despicable is wolfboy calling the 3 Israeli lads who were murdered, 'yobs'. But then I'm not surprised you ignored that, talk about selective reading.SEXY MAMA wrote:The Puzzler wrote:We can add rampant homophobe to anti semite then...
Like your despicable post
You disgust me
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by SEXY MAMA Sat Jul 12, 2014 1:07 pm
The Puzzler wrote:What's truly despicable is wolfboy calling the 3 Israeli lads who were murdered, 'yobs'. But then I'm not surprised you ignored that, talk about selective reading.SEXY MAMA wrote:
Like your despicable post
You disgust me
No im talking about your disgusting comment that was deleted yesterday.
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Re: Media Gag - Israeli Government knew Hamas did not kidnap the teenages
by nicko Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:03 pm
Wolf man, a sad little fcuker sitting at home dreaming of things he could have done if only he had the guts.but he can only insult on his computer.Iget the impression he's about 50 yrs old and still lives with his mom. When he gets on line he turns into a roaring lion, in fact he's a little pussie. HARK lonely, your momma's calling you for your supper!!!
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