Caroline Glick: Israel’s Endgame in Gaza

by Caroline Glick


Originally published by the Jerusalem Post. 
 
The fighting is still raging in Gaza. Each day the IDF destroys more and more tunnels and other terrorist infrastructure. Each day, we discover new facets of Hamas’s depravity.

The three soldiers from the Maglan commando unit who were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip, were buried in the rubble of a UN clinic. They entered the building to seal a terror tunnel whose entry shaft was located inside the clinic.

A Hamas terrorist was inside the tunnel waiting for them. He detonated the building. Works out that Hamas had booby-trapped the structure, hiding 12 barrels with 80 kg. of explosives each, in a wall.

In a press briefing following the bombing, the commander of the Gaza Division reported that to date Hamas has used more than a thousand improvised explosive devices. Its bombs have destroyed thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip.

OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Sami Turgeman told reporters that with the amount of concrete Hamas used in its tunnels it could have built 100 kindergartens, two hospitals, 20 schools and 20 clinics.

Clearly Hamas’s priorities do not include economic or social development projects for the residents of the area. Dual use materials will always be used first for terrorist purposes. Concern for the welfare of Gaza’s citizenry is at best a distant second.

Indeed, the terror group’s practice of using clinics, kindergartens, schools, hospitals and mosques as weapons storage areas, missile launching sites and command centers makes clear that the welfare of Gaza residents doesn’t even rank in Hamas’s list of organizational goals. As a consequence, the concept of providing “humanitarian aid” to Gaza with Hamas in power is laughable. Every smidgen of aid it receives will go to Hamas’s war machine.

And this brings us to the heart of the matter.

Even in the midst of the fighting it is apparent that we are moving toward the endgame.

The question is, what is the desired end-state? How will we know if we have won? Certainly following America’s lead is not an option. Indeed, the Obama administration is the greatest constraint Israel faces today on its road to victory.

From the actions and words of senior administration officials, it is easy to ascertain where President Barack Obama wants this conflict to end.

First, the administration wants Hamas to remain armed and in control of Gaza. This point was made clear by Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn, who heads the US Defense Intelligence Agency. In congressional testimony Flynn told US lawmakers, “If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse.”

This of course is absurd. Hamas wants to kill every Jew in the world. As a practical matter then, it is impossible for any successor regime to be worse. But from Israel’s perspective, more important than discovering that the head of the DIA is an idiot, is Flynn’s revelation that the US wishes to save Hamas from Israel.

The administration’s other positions have all been aligned with this strategic goal of maintaining Hamas in power. Both the US draft cease-fire agreement that Israel rejected, and the White House readout of President Obama’s telephone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night made clear that the US wants Hamas to be able to prosper.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s cease-fire proposal was explicit on this issue.

A permanent cease-fire deal, it read, must include “arrangements to secure the opening of the crossings, allow the entry of goods and people and… transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries for public employees… ” The last component of the administration’s desired end-state of the war is to use it as a means to force Israel to concede land to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, or at least use Israel’s refusal to do so as a means for blaming Israel for continued Palestinian aggression.

Obama made this clear in his conversation with Netanyahu. As the White House’s summary of the conversation reported, “The president stressed the US view that, ultimately, any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the demilitarization of Gaza.”

In other words, the Palestinians will keep shooting until Israel coughs up Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and Obama is okay with that.

To summarize, the Obama administration wishes to end the war with Hamas armed and in charge of Gaza, enjoying open borders to the world, and rolling in the dough of international donor dollars and euros, and so in a position to replenish its arsenals and rebuild its tunnels.

The US seeks as well to use this end-state as a means of reinstating its pressure on Israel to surrender land in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

Israel’s end-state is of course entirely different. Indeed, if the US gets what it wants, then Israel will have lost the war.

The question is, given that this is the US’s position, what can Israel do to win? As the scandalous Federal Aviation Administration flight ban last week made clear, the administration has effectively limitless means to harm Israel. The ban served to instill massive uncertainty into Israel’s export- and tourism-based economy. As Israeli leaders noted, it was the greatest gift to terrorists the US had ever given. Moreover, it was unwarranted and prejudicial.

Whereas the FAA claimed that it acted out of an abundance of caution after a Hamas missile landed a mile from Ben-Gurion Airport, the fact is that such caution exists nowhere else. There is no FAA flight ban on Pakistan, where a civilian aircraft was shot down last month, or in Ukraine. There is no FAA flight ban in Afghanistan or Yemen. Clearly a double standard was used against Israel.

And predictably, when US Sen. Ted Cruz stood up to the administration and demanded an explanation of the FAA’s action and its use of a double standard against Israel, the State Department accused him of lack of concern for US air carriers and passengers.

It was a testament to Cruz’s moral courage that he was willing to risk being wrongly accused of reckless indifference to the safety of US airline passengers in order to decry the administration’s prejudicial treatment of Israel.

And while Sen. Cruz played a central role in revoking the flight ban after 36 hours, the act itself showed how easy it is for the US to hurt Israel without openly attacking it. Other punitive actions have already been undertaken.

While the administration acts in accordance with congressional will and resupplies the IDF and increases the US investment in Iron Dome, it has stopped providing visa services to Israelis interested in traveling to the US. According to I24 News, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv is not issuing travel visas except in emergency circumstances, due to staff reductions during the war.

In light of the constraints Israel faces from the administration, certain operational goals that might otherwise have been achievable must be ruled out. Other actions that might have been reasonable, make no sense, under the circumstances.

The government has determined that the ground operation will go on until the tunnels are destroyed. Whether the operation takes days or weeks or longer, Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will continue to operate on the ground – even in the framework of a cease-fire – to destroy Hamas’s tunnels.

If we assume that Netanyahu and his ministers will continue to withstand US pressure and continue the operation until it has been completed, the question becomes, what happens then? To neutralize Hamas as a military threat in the future, Israel only needs to secure one goal: In any cease-fire arrangement, Gaza’s borders must remain sealed.

Egypt must continue to prevent smuggling from Sinai to Gaza.

Israel must maintain its naval blockade.

Gaza must remain cut off from the international banking system.

Hamas is fighting to open these borders. And if it makes any gains in this area, Hamas will win. Assuming Israel destroys all or most of Hamas’s offensive capabilities before the fighting ends, the only way to keep Hamas from fighting again is to prevent it from resupplying.

To achieve its goal of keeping Gaza’s borders shut, Israel needs to do two things. First, it needs to complete its operations on the ground as quickly as possible. The faster the IDF removes our ground forces from Gaza the more difficult it will be for Obama to demand that Israel end its maritime blockade of the Gaza coast.

Second, Israel must avoid any cease-fire agreement that involves any international supervision or presence in Gaza. The best option for Israel would be a cease-fire in the form of a letter from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas setting out broad conditions of a cease-fire arrangement.

Any cease-fire that involves US guarantees or supervision or international guarantees or supervision will be an invitation for renewed pressure on Israel and Egypt to open the borders of Gaza and allow Hamas to rebuild its machinery of murder.

The same is the case for international peacekeepers.

Any agreement that involves the deployment of foreign forces to Gaza for any purpose is an agreement that imports human shields to Gaza. As has been Hezbollah’s practice with UN forces in south Lebanon for the past four decades, foreign forces will not interfere with any Hamas operations, but through their very presence in on the ground, they will impede the IDF’s capacity to fight Hamas in the event that such operations becomes necessary.

Netanyahu has stated that Israel’s seeks the demilitarization of Gaza. There are only two ways to achieve that goal – through the reinstitution of Israeli military control over Gaza, and through attrition.

In light of the Obama administration’s support for Hamas’s war goals and actions it has already undertaken to undermine Israel’s war effort, it is fairly clear that it would be unwise for Israel to reconquer Gaza at this time. The price Obama would extract for such a move would in all likelihood outweigh the benefits Israel would gain from physically damaging Hamas directly.

The other option – demilitarization through attrition – is consequently Israel’s strongest option for a victorious endgame today. And attrition can only be secured if Gaza’s borders remain sealed.

War is an ugly thing. War with terrorist murderers who lack a shred of human decency is a very ugly thing.

There are no guarantees that Israel will not have to fight again. And if Obama gets even some of what he is demanding, Israel will have to fight again, and soon.

Under these circumstances, Israel’s best bet is to destroy the tunnels quickly and secure cease-fire terms that keep Gaza isolated to reduce to a minimum Hamas’s ability to fight again.


Caroline Glick

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/israels-endgame-in-gaza/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

UN accuses Israel of another 'war crime': Not sharing Iron Dome with Hamas

by Rick Moran

A UN human rights official is accusing Israel of "war crimes" - one of which is Israel's refusal to share the missile interceptor system Iron Dome with Hamas.

Breitbart:

The UN's top human rights official again condemned Israel for its military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, accusing the Jewish state of “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.”

Navi Pillay told reporters following yet another "emergency" meeting of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians. "There is a strong possibility,” said the known Israel critic, “that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”
Among the UN’s long bill of particulars against the beleaguered Jewish state comes the almost unbelievable accusation that Israel’s refusal to share its Iron Dome ballistic missile defense shield with the "governing authority" of Gaza – i.e. Hamas, the terror group created to pursue the extermination of the Jewish state and now waging a terrorist war against it – constitutes a war crime against the civilians of Gaza.
The UN chairwoman criticized the U.S. for helping fund Israel's Iron Dome system which has saved countless Israeli and Palestinian lives. "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling," she said.
Just because Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately aimed at Israeli civilian population centers without provocation and fires them from within its own population centers does not “absolve” Israel from its own legal violations, Pillay told reporters Thursday.
Marking the end of her contentious, six-year term as chairman of the notoriously anti-Israel UNHRC, Pillay saved her harshest condemnations for what she termed Israeli "targeting" of UN-run schools and hospitals in Gaza. She did not mention, nor was she reminded by any of the reporters present, that as of this writing, at least three UN-run schools in Gaza have been used as rocket warehouses, a gross violation of international law that clearly falls within the category of war crimes. Neither did she mention, nor was she reminded, that in at least two of the three cases cited above, the terror rockets found on UN property in Gaza were returned to Hamas by the UN.
"What I'm seeing now is a recurrence of the very acts that the Gaza fact-finding mission indicated as constituting war crimes and crimes against humanity," she said.

The UNHRC consists of some of the most brutal regimes in the world.

Current members of the UN Human Rights Council include China, Russia, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. Iran and North Korea have been recent active members of the body. So execrable were the actions and abuses of the UNHRC in the past that the body was in fact disbanded in 2006 after the late terrorist leader of Libya Muammar Gaddafi was elected President of the Council.

The mindset of the left in this country is that it is unfair that Israel has a vastly better army and better weapons than Hamas. That, and the battle cry "proportional response" is how the left responds to any effort by Israel to protect itself. With that logic, you can see how the UN human rights official wouldn't bat an eye in insisting that Israel hand over Iron Dome to Hamas - otherwise, War Crime!

War makes people insane - especially, it appears, putative peacemakers.

Rick Moran

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/08/un_accuses_israel_of_another_war_crime_not_sharing_iron_dome_with_hamas.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Defund the UNRWA!

by Daniel Greenfield





The UNRWA is on the front lines of the Hamas War in Gaza. In the headlines, its schools are forever being fired on or found to be stockpiling rockets. If individual Gazans are being used as human shields, the UNRWA often seems as if it is one big organizational human shield.

But the UNRWA isn’t Hamas’ human shield. The UNRWA is Hamas.

The “UN” part of the UNRWA, the blue logos and symbols, fool us into thinking of it as an international humanitarian organization. But the UNRWA in Gaza functions as a large Palestinian Arab organization with a smattering of foreign supervisory staff.

And those foreign staffers often tend to leave during a conflict.

The UNRWA is not an international organization operating in the Middle East. Effectively it’s a local Arab Muslim organization funded and regulated internationally. Since the UNRWA classifies 80% of Gazans as “refugees”, it administers the biggest welfare state in the world on their behalf.

The UNRWA is the biggest employer in the West Bank and Gaza after the Palestinian Authority and the vast majority of its employees are “locally recruited”. Varying figures place the share of local employees at between 90 and 99 percent.

Even though there are more Arab Muslims living in the West Bank than in Gaza, there are more “official” refugees in Gaza, which means that more UNRWA funding and efforts are directed there. The UNRWA only runs 96 schools in the West Bank, but it runs 245 schools in Gaza. It employs less than 3,000 education staffers in the West Bank, but over 10,000 in Gaza.

Why does Hamas, which is obsessed with brainwashing the next generation into martyrdom, allow a foreign organization to run an educational system for 232,000 pupils?

It’s because in Gaza, Hamas and the UNRWA are the same thing.

The UNRWA’s Gaza staff has its own union. In the 2012 election, a pro-Hamas bloc won the support of most of the union with 25 out of 27 seats on a union board.

When there was talk of reforming the UNRWA by removing Hamas members from its ranks, the editor of a Hamas paper wrote that, “Laying off the agency employees because of their political affiliation means laying off all the employees of the aid agency, because…they are all members of the ‘resistance,’ in its various forms.”

The official word from Hamas was that it and the UNRWA are the same thing. The UNRWA’s vast majority of locally sourced Gazans are part of Hamas.

The UNRWA does not see that as a problem.

“I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll,” a former UNRWA Commissioner General said, “and I don’t see that as a crime.”

“Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another,” he added.

Also if the UNRWA fired Hamas members from its Gaza staff, it would have no one left.

Hamas control over the UNRWA in Gaza is reflected in the schools which promote Islamic terrorism. UNRWA schools have become flashpoints in conflicts between Israel and Hamas because the UNRWA schools are Hamas bases of recruitment and operation.

The current accusations and counter-accusations over attacks on and from UNRWA schools are a reenactment of the same set of events taking place in 2009. Only the locations and the names have changed. The same headlines, “Israeli shelling kills dozens at UN school in Gaza,” and “Massacre of Innocents as UN school is shelled” are repeating all over again.

Then, as now, Hamas launched attacks on Israeli forces from around a UNRWA school. Then it turned out that the attack had happened outside the school and no one had actually died inside the school. Nothing has changed since then. The “massacres” in which Hamas terrorists using UNRWA schools as a base are killed pop up in every paper. The UNRWA repeats the same lies.

Then it “discovers” Hamas rockets in three of its schools. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg because every UNRWA school is a Hamas school.

The UNRWA has admitted that Hamas uses its schools to store rockets. It admits that it has Hamas members in its ranks. It admits that rockets have been fired “into Israel from the vicinity of UN facilities and residential areas.”

What it refuses to admit is that it should in any way be held accountable for functioning as an arm of a terrorist organization.

If an organization consists largely of Hamas members who use it pursue Hamas goals, then the organization is Hamas.

The UNRWA is Hamas.

Hamas use of the UNRWA as its public face is a war crime, but terrorists commit war crimes without a second thought. The UN and the UNRWA however are complicit in the war crime by allowing Hamas to go on exploiting the UN brand.

Hamas is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It’s against the law for the United States to fund it. By funding the UNRWA, the United States is paying Hamas and participating in its war crimes. Using civilian and humanitarian facilities for military purposes is a war crime. Using them to stage attacks against civilians by attackers out of uniform adds further crimes to the total.

The United States provided $130 million to the UNRWA in 2013. The UNRWA’s operations in Gaza would not be viable without that money.

When Kerry visited Gaza in 2009, the UNRWA’s Gaza chief passed along a letter to him from Hamas. The incident showed that not only was the locally recruited staff working for Hamas, but the UNRWA leadership was clearly cooperating with the terrorist group.

The original “refugees” that the UNRWA was set up to cater to are for the most part dead. The UNRWA has become another UN boondoggle funding a welfare state for “refugee camps” that are older, bigger and more developed than many Middle Eastern cities.

UNRWA staff act as terrorists when they use UNRWA facilities for military purposes, but then switch back to UNRWA when Israel fights back. Hamas carries out attacks. The UNRWA demands ceasefires. Hamas uses UNRWA schools and the UNRWA denounces Israel when an attack happens.

The UNRWA has become the mask that Hamas wears.

It’s a tactical asset for a terrorist group that empowers its human shield strategy. The UNRWA is not only endangering Israeli civilians, but it is also endangering Gazans who are exploited as human shields by members of a terrorist group masquerading as the staff of an international humanitarian organization.

This issue has come up before and the UNRWA’s long record of evasions and denials, admitting the substance of the claims about the Hamas takeover of the UNRWA, while insisting that its Hamas members are neutral and that all the rocket stores and rocket attacks around UNRWA facilities are unrelated to the Hamas members on its staff, are not good enough anymore.

The United States should not be in the business of funding the corruption of young minds. Money should not be taken from American schools to fund the spread of hatred and terrorism.

It’s time to defund the UNRWA.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/defund-the-unrwa/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Under Gaza's Shadow, Islamic State Advances

by Jonathan Spyer



In recent weeks, far from the attention of the world's media, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS, formerly ISIS) has been fighting its enemies and expanding its borders.
There is mounting evidence that IS has obtained a chemical weapons capacity of some kind, and has utilized it on at least one occasion during intense combat against the Kurdish YPG militia in northern Syria. The organization has achieved signal successes against regime forces in Raqqa and Hasakeh provinces that culminated in the capture of the Division 17 base, and the subsequent gruesome execution of over 200 members of the garrison.

There is also clear evidence of Palestinians, specifically Gazans, fighting in Syria in an organized unit under the IS banner, and of at least one clearly IS-linked group operating in northern Sinai and in Gaza itself.

The overall picture is one of a vigorous, capable and savagely brutal Islamist entity, but one which nevertheless has clear limitations on its capabilities.

Lets take a look: Following its lightning capture of Mosul on June 10, many observers expected the jihadi group to continue to push on into Iraq, and perhaps make a bid for the capital city, Baghdad.

This has not happened. IS has set about implementing its brutal version of Shari'a in the city, but has made no serious effort to push further east.

Instead, the movement has integrated the weapons taken in Mosul into its structures in Syria, and is concentrating its attention on expanding in a westward and northern direction.

The first IS assault using the new weapons systems was launched against the Kurdish enclave of Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) adjoining the Syrian-Turkish border. This area of Kurdish autonomy juts into the IS area of control; it prevents the movement from using the direct road from Raqqa city, which it controls, to Jarabulus and Menbij, on the Syrian-Turkish border.

IS has long sought to destroy this enclave. On July 2, it launched renewed offensives against Kobani from the west and the east. The offensives included the use of US-made Humvees, captured in Mosul.

It also, according to Kobani Health Minister Nisan Ahmed, used a chemical agent which killed three Kurdish fighters while leaving their bodies unmarked. According to Ahmed, a medical team assembled by the Kurdish authorities found that "burns and white spots on the bodies of the dead indicated the use of chemicals, which led to death without any visible wounds or external bleeding." Perwer Janfrosh, a local Kurdish activist, said the attack took place on July 12, in the village of Avdiko in eastern Kobani.

These claims have yet to be examined by international medical bodies. But an article on the Lebanese Almodon news website (in Arabic) quotes a resident of Raqqa city who alleges that IS has transported chemical weapons materials from the Muthanna complex, northwest of Baghdad, which has fallen into its hands. The source notes that among the materials transported was cyanogen chloride, an agent whose use might be consistent with the claims made by the Kurdish officials (which require further investigation).

Despite the introduction of the captured weaponry, however, the IS offensive on Kobani ran aground following a Kurdish mobilization; the Kobani enclave remains intact.

IS then turned its attention to the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. On July 24, the movement launched attacks on regime positions in the Raqqa and Hasakeh provinces, adjoining the western borders of the "Islamic State," and near Aleppo city.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attacks gained ground and took a heavy toll on regime soldiers. The Division 17 base fell on July 25.

Most of the garrison managed to escape to the nearby Brigade 23 base, but around 200 remained behind. The Observatory reported that at least 50 of these men were subsequently decapitated by IS forces. Footage has become available on the Internet showing severed heads placed on a fence in Raqqa city; according to the voiceover, the heads belong to soldiers from the Division 17 garrison.

The IS gains against regime forces reflect the movement's desire to clear Assad's men out of the Euphrates Valley, and incrementally expand their area of control.

The IS presence is now nudging up against the main Kurdish enclave in Hasakeh province. But the failure of the regime to make a major effort to defend the areas in question also likely reflects its priorities.

Assad can afford to cede isolated positions in the remote north and east of Syria, without these constituting any threat to his survival. His stronghold in the south and west of Syria is not currently threatened by IS.

As far as IS links to Gaza: An identifiable Gaza contingent named the Sheikh Abu al-Nur al-Maqdisi Brigade is active with IS forces in northern Syria, and photographic evidence has emerged of this group's activities. This group is named after a well-known Salafi sheikh from southern Gaza, killed in an abortive revolt against the Hamas authorities in 2009.

IS also has an identifiable franchise within Gaza and northern Sinai itself, according to a prominent researcher of the IS phenomenon, UK-based Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi; the name of the group in question is Ansar al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Bayt al-Maqdis.

At the moment, these are relatively minor phenomena. Yet Tamimi suggests that the presence of the Gazan contingent in northern Syria indicates that genuine contacts with IS exist, and these are not merely enthusiasts seeking to borrow the symbolism of jihadi success that IS represents.

So IS remains on the advance, and continues to shock with its astonishing brutality. At present, it has focused its energies back on Syria. Its forces have suffered setbacks against the determined and well-trained fighters of the YPG – defending an enclave that the Kurds consider vital for their "Rojava" project.

IS has enjoyed greater successes against regime forces – in the process raising a big question mark about recent claims by non-IS rebel spokesmen and supporters that the movement is a puppet of Assad or the Iranians.

IS may also have used chemical weapons. Lastly, the first signs of its appearance on the front against Israel may be discerned.

The recent global media focus on the fighting in Gaza should not be allowed to obscure potentially far more significant developments in the broader region. The Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria is on the march.


Jonathan Spyer is a senior research fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: http://www.meforum.org/4765/syria-islamic-state-advances

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Obama and the U.N.’s Alternate Universe

by Bruce Thornton


Barack Obama has managed to push American foreign policy into an alternate universe in which everything the human race has learned over the past 2500 years about human nature, aggression, and its deterrence has been stood on its head. He is not solely to blame for this. For 150 years the West had indulged the illusion that human nature is progressing away from our violent past toward a world of reason in which conflict can be resolved and negotiated away without force or the credible threat of force. But Obama and his foreign policy team have completely detached this idea, serially mugged by the violent reality of the last century, from any recognition of morality or even fact. The result is the disastrous decline in American global authority and influence.

The administration’s handling of the current war between Israel and Hamas is no doubt one of the most shameful examples of such a corruption of intellect and failure of moral nerve. Indeed, one has to go back to September 1938 and the despicable British and French abandonment of Czechoslovakia during the run-up to the Munich conference to find supposed allies treating a friend so shabbily and working on the side of its enemies. As Germany bullied and threatened Czechoslovakia, the British thought the solution was “for Prague to get a real twist of the screw,” while the French threatened that if the Czechs were “unreasonable” about defending their country, France “considered herself released from her bond.”

Fast-forward 76 years to Obama’s FAA forbidding U.S. flights to Ben Gurion airport, giving Hamas a propaganda victory; John Kerry’s off-mike mocking of Israel’s historically unprecedented attempts to avoid civilian casualties; and both Obama and Kerry pressuring Israel for “an immediate, unconditional humanitarian cease-fire,” which evokes England’s demand in 1938 that the Czechs “go forthwith to the very limit of concession.” The only effects of such a “cease fire” would be to rescue Hamas by leaving its remaining rockets and tunnels in place, and those already destroyed to be replenished by Iran and funded by the subsequent “humanitarian aid” that would flow into Gaza.

Yet Obama’s behavior today is more despicable than was England’s in 1938, even if it is unlikely to have consequences as globally destructive as Chamberlain’s appeasement. At that time Hitler was an autocrat and thug, yet he was the legitimately elected head of the biggest state in Europe. Hamas is nothing other than a tiny gang of fanatic murderers, a group sanctioned as a terrorist organization by our own State Department. Its major state sponsor, Iran, is identified by that same State Department as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, with American blood on its hands for the last 35 years. Hamas’s charter identifies its purpose as the genocidal destruction of Israel, and the group has never shown any interest in the fantastical “two-state solution” or in living “side by side with Israel in peace.”

Only in an alternate universe does an American administration have even indirect diplomatic contact with such terrorists, or with its state sponsors and funders, let alone pressure a loyal and valuable ally into offering concessions to a common enemy, an outlaw that scorns the international laws of war, willingly sacrifices its own children and wives, and has made it clear that it does not ever want any accommodation with Israel, only its destruction. Only in an alternate universe does a liberal democracy ruled by law send $47 million to a gang of murderers, and indulge a cowardly moral equivalence that does not discriminate between genocidal terrorists and a legitimate state exercising its right to defense. Only in an alternate universe does a president who sends drones thousands of miles to kill terrorists and everybody around them, including 250 civilians by some estimates, criticize Israel’s “disproportionate response” when it seeks to destroy terrorists who live next door and rain rockets down on its people, and unlike Obama, it tells civilians the attack is on the way.

The bizarrerie, however, extends far beyond the morally bankrupt policies of the Obama administration. We also had this past weak another surreal spectacle at the laughably denominated U.N. Human Rights Council. It issued a resolution titled “Ensuring Respect for International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which alone is replete with Orwellian distortions of reality, since Gaza is not “occupied” by the Israelis. They turned it over to the Palestinians in 2005, after dismantling 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza and 4 in Judea and Samaria. What they got in return has been over 11,000 rockets fired against their citizens.

As for “respect for international law,” other than a brief, general condemnation of Hamas’s barrage of rockets fired against Israel’s cities and civilians, the whole resolution focuses on Israel’s alleged violations, such as the “deliberate targeting of civilians and other protected persons and the perpetration of systematic, flagrant and widespread violations of applicable international humanitarian law and international human rights law in situations of armed conflict constitute grave breaches and a threat to international peace and security.” As Churchill said of Hitler’s preposterous lies about his bullying of the Austrian chancellor, “One can hardly find a more perfect specimen of humbug and hypocrisy . . . What is astounding is that it should have been regarded with anything but scorn by men and women of intelligence in any free country.”

Unfortunately, we don’t have leaders of Churchill’s calibre to expose the UNHRC’s nonsense and duplicity in its resolution. The word “deliberate” is a lie, of course. Civilians are dying in Gaza because Hamas deliberately and flagrantly uses them as shields, places its ammo dumps, rockets, and fighters in and under mosques, residences, hospitals, and schools, and prevents Gazans from heeding Israel’s many and varied warnings that a site is going to be destroyed, even beating them when they try to flee. As for violations of “international law,” Andrew McCarthy details specifically how everything Israel has done in its defence is consistent with international law, and everything the “unlawful combatants” of Hamas has done is in deliberate and flagrant violation of it.

But despite the clear and unambiguous truth that Israel is waging a legal defensive war, in the alternate universe of the U.N., the Human Rights Council votes “to urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council, to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law” and “to establish the facts and circumstances of such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and to identify those responsible, to make recommendations, in particular on accountability measures.”

If such an investigation does take place, expect a reprise of the discredited Goldstone Report, issued by the U.N. after the Israelis’ 2008-9 Operation Cast Lead against Gaza’s rockets, and later renounced by its own author. As Goldstone himself admitted, the UNHRC’s “history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted,” so can we can expect this new report to slander Israel in order to prepare the way for international lawfare against its leaders, including war-crimes charges and suits filed in the International Court of Justice. But past history does not cut any ice in the alternate universe of the U.N. Where else could anyone pass with a straight face a resolution on human rights from a council that includes notorious human-rights violators like China, Congo, Cuba, Morocco, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela? At least the U.S. voted against the resolution, unlike Euro-weasels like France, Great Britain, Austria, Germany, and Italy, who bravely abstained.

Yes, we all know the U.N. is a morally bankrupt, corrupt congeries of international thugs and creeps, along with invertebrate Western states who mask their fear and appeasement with the Kabuki dance of international diplomacy. But only in an alternate universe does the U.S. spend one minute on a nakedly ideological outfit like the UNHRC, or give half a billion dollars a year to an organization like the U.N., the purpose of which is to damage America’s security and interests at every turn.

And let’s not forget the media. They report casualty numbers from the current conflict, including the number of civilians killed, without a caveat that these numbers come from Hamas or their U.N. minions, or that terrorists don’t wear uniforms and hence are frequently counted as “civilians.” The media abandon their critical faculties despite the Palestinian Arabs’ long history of exaggerating such statistics, faking photogenic atrocities like the Jenin massacre and the IDF’s killing of Mohammed Dura, and tweeting gruesome images of dead women and children killed in other conflicts like Syria, or even taking scenes from horror movies, and claiming they happened in Gaza. Only in an alternate universe would a media presumably dedicated to getting the story right and distrustful of information it can’t confirm themselves repeat as fact what actually is propaganda, or at least preface such information with a statement like, “According to Hamas spokesmen” when reporting casualty numbers.

A foreign policy based on illusion leaves our country vulnerable to various global autocrats, thugs, and terrorists. Those shrewd, hard men (see Putin, Vladimir) know how to manipulate our delusions and exploit our weaknesses, particularly our leaders’ penchant for substituting diplomatic words for military deeds to serve their short-term political needs. This illusion of action creates complacency of the sort we experienced in the 90s, when we lived in an alternate reality where al Qaeda’s declarations of war and terrorist attacks were treated as criminal matters rather than acts of war. And we all remember how gruesomely we were reintroduced to reality.


Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-thornton/obama-and-the-u-n-s-alternate-universe/

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Hamas Executes Alleged Spies, Shoots Protesters in Gaza

by Ariel ben Solomon

Palestinian media reports Hamas has executed more than 30 civilians accused of collaborating with Israel.

Hamas Photo: REUTERS

 

Hamas shot some 20 Palestinians on Monday night for protesting against Hamas for the massive destruction inflicted on their neighborhood in Shejaia by the IDF in the past weeks, Channel 10 reported on Tuesday.



Over the past few days, Hamas has executed more than 30 civilians from various parts of the Gaza Strip which it suspected of collaborating with Israel, unidentified Palestinian security sources told the Palestine Press News Agency.


Hamas claimed it had detected alleged “spies” in the area of Shejaia and said that they were executed after an investigation into some of them. Such investigations reportedly revealed weapons and communication devices in the possession of the "spies."

In the past Palestinian sources have quoted Hamas’ armed wing, Ezaddin al-Qassam as saying that it has used agents in civilian clothes to monitor the movement of suspected informants.

Ariel ben Solomon

Source: http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/Report-Hamas-executes-alleged-spies-shoots-protesters-in-Gaza-369331

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

China Voice: Murder of Xinjiang Religious Leader Intolerable

by Ren Zhongxi


Hat Tip: Pinchas Calafiura

[Editor: We in the West (including Israel) are generally uninformed about China's struggle with radical Islam. Here is one article that gives us a glimpse of the problem and how it is being dealt with.]

BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- The appalling murder of Jume Tahir, a renowned Islamic religious leader in Xinjiang, is another flagrant challenge by the violent terrorists to the common rules of the entire human society and it can by no means be tolerated.

Police have shot dead two suspects and captured another in their investigation of the murder of the imam of China's largest mosque, the Id Kah Mosque in the city of Kashgar in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The 74-year-old was killed on Wednesday morning after he finished hosting the morning ritual.

Police investigation found that the suspects have been influenced by religious extremism.
By committing the bloodshed, the terrorists and the religious extremist forces behind them have once again trampled on basic human rights and justice and defied the bottom line of humanity and civilization.

Such enormity will not be accepted in any country or community around the world.

It is also a reminder that heavy-handed measures and decisive actions are needed to combat terrorism and the fight will not allow even a moment of slackness.

It should be clearly understood that the anti-terror efforts will be a long-term and arduous work facing complicated situations.

The terrorists have brazenly violated Chinese law and it is for sure that they will eventually be brought to justice.

The recent killing has also revealed the evil nature of the terrorism, separatism and extremism.

The patriotic, peaceful, moderate, lenient and benevolent ideas in the Islamic teachings need to be further promoted and the extremist elements should be opposed.

The terrorists thought their violent attacks will help them achieve their separatist intentions, and the fact will tell them that they will never make it.


Ren Zhongxi

Source: http://english.cntv.cn/2014/08/01/ARTI1406851190005299.shtml

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Spanish Anti-Semitism is Alive and Well

by Soeren Kern

"There is no territory more occupied than the body of a Palestinian woman, or a strip... severed by the violent imposition of the superstitions of Allah and the followers of Mohammed. We had better not even mention the situation of Palestinian homosexuals. This selective outrage by top progressives when it involves Israel is indeed anti-Semitism." — Alberto Moyano, Spanish newspaper editor.
"It is possible legitimately to criticize Israel. But it smells fishy when all of the blame is attributed to Israel, without even mentioning the small detail that a terrorist and jihadist group that rules Gaza has infringed on every conceivable humanitarian principle, by using civilians as human shields, and launching missiles from apartment blocks, while their leaders are living comfortable in Qatar, guests of a sheik." — Ángel Mas, Spanish analyst.
There has been virtually no public outcry whatsoever in Spain over the deaths of more than 160,000 people during three years of fighting in Syria; the decimation of ancient Christian communities at the hands of Islamists in Iraq; the kidnapping of 300 girls by Islamists in Nigeria; or the downing of a civilian passenger plane in Ukraine.
"The most anti-Semitic people are supposedly the most educated and well-informed." — Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs report on anti-Semitism in Spain.

Israel's military operation in the Gaza Strip is drawing attention, once again, to the persistent scourge of anti-Semitism in Spain.

As in many other European countries, Spanish media coverage of the conflict has been decidedly biased against Israel. Print and broadcast media from across the political spectrum have portrayed Israel as the aggressor, and have made scant effort to report that the current conflict was prompted by rocket attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza that escalated even before Hamas-affiliated militants kidnapped and murdered three Jewish teenagers in June.

Beyond the biased reporting, which is actually nothing new, some of the anti-Israel rhetoric in Spain has become so virulent that it has plainly crossed the line into unabashed anti-Semitism, observers say.

A glaring example involves the center-right El Mundo, the second-largest circulation newspaper in Spain, which on June 24 published a blatantly anti-Semitic op-ed article that decries the war in Gaza and seeks to justify the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the basis that they "were not made to coexist with others."

The article—entitled, "The Chosen Ones?"—was written by Antonio Gala, an award-winning octogenarian novelist and playwright whose deep-seated disdain for Israel and the Jewish people is self-evident. Gala writes:

"The Hebrew people, tested since antiquity by ups and downs and the intimate dealings with their God, could have done much good for humanity: due to their prudence, their wisdom and endurance, their apparent religious fidelity and their proven administration of money.
"What is happening is that suddenly humanity is sick and tired of them: a phenomenon that has been repeated throughout their history, as if they were not made to coexist with others.
"This is how it is and will remain, as it always has been. No matter what the Jews call their civil or military leaders, they end up creating problems for everyone: it is ancient history. Now you must suffer their abuses in Gaza, and review it all with an apparent injustice. They are never clear.
"They ask for what was given to them and they accepted; but with new means, dimensions and benefits, with new pressure from a power situated elsewhere in the world and an invisible community of blood. It is normal that they manage to screw the weakest or those who today enjoy their ancient lands. It is always the same. It's not strange that they have been so frequently expelled. What is surprising, is that they persist. Either they are not good, or someone is poisoning them. I am not a racist."

This is not the first time El Mundo—a newspaper close to the ruling center-right Popular Party—has published one of Gala's anti-Semitic screeds.

In a column published by El Mundo in December 2012, Gala accused Israel of "making a living out of post-World War II guilt." In another column published in June 2012, Gala said the Jews have no one to blame but themselves for the persecution they suffered in medieval Spain.

In a column published by El Mundo in September 2011, Gala wrote that Israelis are "bloodthirsty" and are themselves to blame for the "antipathy that the Jew awakens in the non-Jew." In another column published in February 2009, Gala wrote that "Jewish greed" is the reason why Jews have been persecuted throughout history. He added:

"Zionism has given the wrong result: it has increased greed and a desire for more territory, a disregard for the lives and possessions of other people, and an increase in terrorism... the Jews do not want to coexist.

It remains unclear why El Mundo continues to publish Gala's anti-Semitic rants. Presumably, the newspaper's editors believe that anti-Semitism is good for business.

The Jewish Community of Madrid has now said enough is enough. On July 29 it filed a lawsuit against Gala for violating a Spanish law prohibiting anti-Semitic hate speech.

To be sure, the newspaper's anti-Israel bias has not been limited to the op-ed pages. On July 21, for example, El Mundo published an essay entitled, "From the Nazi to the Zionist Holocaust," in which Najib Abu-Warda, a Palestinian professor of international relations at the Complutense University of Madrid, accuses Israel of "committing crimes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, aggression and state-sponsored terrorism."

The article, which El Mundo describes as an "analysis," is laced with Palestinian historical revisionism that repeatedly denies the legitimacy of the State of Israel. In a barefaced lie, for example, Abu-Warda asserts that a Palestinian state was actually in existence 100 years ago, before it was occupied by the British after World War I, and later partitioned by the United Nations in order to create a Jewish state "on top of part of Palestine."

In fact, Palestine has never existed as an autonomous state, nor has there ever been a distinct "Palestinian" culture or language. In 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization official Zuheir Mohsen, who admitted:

"The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the State of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism."

Abu-Warda ends his article with a threat against Israel:

"Today, 70 years after the Nazi genocide against the Jews, Israel is committing war crimes and genocide in Palestine.... The Zionist government forgets that the greater the attack, the greater the reaction, and that the Palestinian people cling to the right to defend against aggression, occupation and genocide. It is only a matter of time."

To its discredit, El Mundo has made no effort to refute Abu-Warda's falsehoods by pointing out that Hamas has deliberately been using its own citizens as human shields, placing rockets and explosives in or near schools and mosques, and using a hospital as a command center.

Meanwhile, Spanish actor Javier Bardem accused Israel of committing "genocide" against the Palestinian people. In an open letter that was published by El Mundo on July 25, Bardem wrote:

"In the horror happening right now in Gaza there is NO place for distance or neutrality. It is a way of occupation and extermination waged against a people with no means, confined in a minimum territory, with no water, and where hospitals, ambulances and children are targets and presumed to be terrorists. It's hard to understand and impossible to justify."

Bardem denied that he was anti-Semitic by noting that he has many Jewish friends and that his child was born at a Jewish hospital in Los Angeles.

A subsequent open letter signed by more than 100 Spanish actors who represent the vanguard of Spain's ideological left, condemned Israeli "genocide" against the "civilian population of Palestine."

According to Spanish analyst Ángel Mas, the frivolous accusations of Israeli genocide are a reflection of the Spanish left's deep-seated anti-Semitism disguised as legitimate criticism of Israel. In an op-ed article entitled, "The Delegitimizers of Israel," Mas writes:

"It is inevitable. When certain people open an article by announcing that they have many Jewish friends, what will follow is a virulent, disproportionate and sectarian attack against the State of Israel.
"Javier Bardem has done nothing new by using this trick in his recent letter about Gaza. It is in the manual of the delegitimizers of the only Jewish state to make reference to Jewish friends (not named) who are equally horrified by the actions of a diabolical state that does not represent them.
"Bardem wants to show that criticizing Israel is not anti-Jewish, since some Jews also criticize Israel…. In reality, Bardem has a long history of delegitimizing, demonizing, dehumanizing and using double standards in his criticism of Israel. These four Ds today denote a politically correct way to express hatred for Jews disguised as ferocious criticism of Israel.
"It is possible legitimately to criticize Israel. But it smells fishy when all of the blame is attributed to Israel, without even mentioning the small detail that a terrorist and jihadist group that rules Gaza has infringed on every conceivable humanitarian principle, by using civilians as human shields, and launching missiles from apartment blocks, while their leaders are living comfortable in Qatar, guests of a sheik.
"It is not difficult to unmask an anti-Semite: someone who frivolously abuses the term "genocide," a word that has such profound significance for the Jewish people."

Elsewhere in Spain, a Roman Catholic religious festival in honor of the Apostle James in the Spanish city of Ceuta on July 25 was hijacked by activists protesting the "extermination of the Palestinian people." A video of the demonstration, which was held in front of the only synagogue in Ceuta, and was attended by dozens of local officials, shows a local Muslim politician shouting into a megaphone:

"Jews for thousands of years have wanted to exterminate... every person on the face of the earth other than Jews. In the Torah the Jews say they are the chosen people. I swear to God that they are going to fear us until the Day of Judgment. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! [Allah is greater]."

An anti-Semitic demonstration in Ceuta, Spain, on July 25. (Image source: Libertad Digital YouTube screenshot)

On July 24, SOS Gaza, a coalition of more than 40 Spanish pro-Palestinian NGOs, organized a protest in front of the Israeli embassy in Madrid. Protestors held banners condemning Israeli "genocide," "war crimes," and "super terror." One banner read: "You are making Hitler look like a saint." A protest organizer told Spanish media that Israel is once again committing war crimes, which "has always been linked to the history of Israel since the creation of their state."

On July 23, the United Left (IU), a coalition of far left political parties, called on the Spanish government to expel the Israeli ambassador to Spain and to suspend diplomatic relations with Israel.

Also on July 23, a coalition of Spanish feminist organizations called on the Spanish government to isolate the "Zionist government" through an economic boycott because of the "planned genocide that Israel has been carrying out for more than sixty years against the Palestinian people."

The statement added: "We cannot remain indifferent and silent, as if such events did not concern Spanish women, feminists and any other honorable association."

On July 16, pro-Palestinian activists called on the organizers of the Vitoria Jazz Festival, an annual jazz festival held in the Basque Country, to prevent the Israeli singer Noa from performing at the event. Her performance went ahead as planned, but was interrupted by shouts of "Israeli genocide" and "Free Palestine."

Spanish activists often claim that they are not anti-Semitic, just critical of Israeli policies. In practice, however, they are obsessed with Israel and the Jews, especially if one considers that there has been virtually no public outcry whatsoever in Spain over the deaths of more than 160,000 people during three years of fighting in Syria; the decimation of ancient Christian communities at the hands of Islamists in Iraq; the kidnapping of 300 girls by Islamists in Nigeria; or the downing of a civilian passenger plane in Ukraine.

In an essay in the Basque newspaper Diario Vasco, commentator Alberto Moyano reflects on Spanish society's "perplexing moral inconsistency" when it comes to Israel:

"Of course, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. But there is a 'political class,' and another 'ethics caste,' which operates strictly according to ideological criteria, with à la carte ethics, which appear and disappear in order to unleash outrage whenever convenient.
"From the lesser to the greater, one is surprised by the frivolity of those who, on the one hand, claim that the Basque conflict is very complex, that outsiders cannot possibly understand it, and that in any case, you have to listen to all the parties involved, and then turn around and deal with the Middle East conflict in batches of 140 characters linked to grisly images which are often rescued from archives.
"There is no territory more occupied than the body of a Palestinian woman, or a strip narrower than the female spirit severed by the violent imposition of the superstitions of Allah and the followers of Mohammed. We had better not even mention the situation of Palestinian homosexuals. This selective outrage by top progressives when it involves Israel is indeed anti-Semitism."

The depth of anti-Semitism in Spanish society was brought to the fore in May 2014, after nearly 18,000 people posted comments on Twitter using profane and anti-Semitic hashtags after Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated Real Madrid in the final of Europe's main basketball tournament.

Spanish police specializing in hate crimes launched a formal investigation but said they were able to identify only five Twitter users (the rest were apparently anonymous). Some of the more hateful tweets included:

"We've been defeated by bloody Jews. Hitler would not have allowed this to happen."
"Sh*tty Jews. You should all be thrown in the ovens."
"Jewish sons of b*tches. The ovens of Auschwitz your home. Syria bomb Israel."
"Now I understand Hitler and his hatred for the Jews."
"Maccabi needs to take a shower after the game. But in the gas chamber, I hope."

Maccabi Tel Aviv said that while it had dealt with anti-Semitism while playing in Spain in the past, "nothing like this has ever been experienced."

Meanwhile, opinion polls consistently show that Spain is one of the most anti-Semitic countries in Europe.

A May 2014 survey by the Anti-Defamation League places Spain as the third most anti-Semitic country in Europe, behind Greece and France. Separately, the latest "Report on Anti-Semitism in Spain," published in May 2013, shows a steep jump in anti-Semitic attacks in Spain.

The document records anti-Semitic attacks on persons and on property, anti-Semitism in the Spanish media and on the Internet, efforts to trivialize the Jewish Holocaust, dissemination of anti-Semitic literature, as well as anti-Semitism in public institutions.

According to a poll commissioned by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 58.4% of Spaniards believe that "the Jews are powerful because they control the economy and the mass media." This number reaches 62.2% among university students and 70.5% among those who are "interested in politics." More than 60% of Spanish university students say they do not want Jewish classmates. "These numbers are as surprising as they are worrying: the most anti-Semitic people are supposedly the most educated and well-informed," the report says.

The poll also shows that more than one-third (34.6%) of Spanish people have an unfavorable or completely unfavorable opinion of Jewish people. But as in other European countries, anti-Semitism is more prevalent on the political left than it is on the political right. For example, 34% of those on the far right say they are hostile to Jews, while 37.7% of those on the center-left are hostile to Jews. And sympathy for Jews among the extreme right (4.9 on a scale of 1-10) is above the average for the population as a whole (4.6).

Among those who recognize themselves as having "antipathy for the Jewish people," only 17% says this is due to the "conflict in the Middle East." Nearly 30% of those surveyed say their dislike of Jews has to do with "their religion," "their customs," and "their way of life." Nearly 20% of Spaniards say they dislike Jews although they do not know why.

The survey data on Spanish anti-Semitism raises many questions, including one that seems never to have been asked: How many Spaniards have actually ever met a Jew? Not very many, it would appear. In fact, Spain today has one of the smallest Jewish communities in Europe; the country has only around 40,000 Jews out of a total Spanish population of 47 million, which works out to less than 0.08 percent.

Reflecting on the sad state of affairs in contemporary Spain, the Spanish Jewish author Jacobo Israel Garzón, writes:

"Over many years I have observed that every time there is a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, there is a spontaneous eruption of outcry in the Spanish media…. The clamor from this group of supposed intellectuals has nothing to do with their love for Muslims or Arabs. They feel no special sympathy toward them….
"What we have here is something far more simple: hatred of Jews. Some say Jews have lots of money and lots of power, but in our country there is not a single Jewish banker, no Jewish politician of note, no Jewish military official of high rank. There are no powerful Jews in Spain. No, Jewish power cannot be the cause of anti-Semitism in Spain....
"As I reflect on the anti-Jewish articles that we have been reading in the Spanish newspapers of late, I must conclude that they are not the product of unconscious ignorance, but rather the conscious manifestation of hatred against the Jew.
"Imagine my disappointment and sadness. I have lived among Spaniards for more than seventy years. I attended grade school and college in Spain, and I have worked here all of my life. Spanish is my language and Spain is my country. And now as I reflect back on all those years, I have to ask myself what the German Jew could have done during the 1930s in Germany? How could I not have realized that so many of my fellow countrymen hate me, not for what I have done, but for who I am? How could I have been so blind?
"When I see that a national newspaper is capable of publishing two articles in the same week that blame the expulsion of the Jews during centuries past on the poison that we carry within ourselves, it generates not only anger. It also generates deep disappointment and sadness that I have lived all my life in a society where many people hate me for who I am."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4562/spanish-antisemitism

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.