Gaza Aftermath.

 

by David Solway

The current eruption of violence in Gaza has temporarily obscured some of the underlying concerns in the region. These will re-emerge now that a "ceasefire" has been declared. Primary among these issues is the question of a two-state solution, subsumed under the rubric of the "road map to peace," to resolve the political and military impasse between Palestinians and Israelis.

Unfortunately, the road map will prove to be nothing more than a roadblock. To begin with, many Palestinians are not interested in a two-state solution to their predicament. Palestinian political behaviour and a myriad of polls and studies strongly indicate that the majority of Palestinians do not want a state of their own alongside a Jewish state. They want Israel to disappear. Hamas and Fatah have made it abundantly clear that their agenda is the complete eradication of Israel—Israel is the "occupied territories." The Hamas charter declares that "Israel will exist only until Islam destroys it." The Fatah charter pledges that "Our struggle will not cease until the Zionist state is entirely eliminated."

The only difference between Hamas and Fatah is that the latter is more flexible in its strategy, pursuing not the thunderbolt policy of Hamas but the road map to serialized conquest. Hamas, like Iran, wishes to obliterate Israel militarily, Fatah to dismember it through negotiations.

For Fatah, Israel need not be reduced to ashes but annihilated bit by bit in all its aspects—economic, political, martial, demographic and cultural. This program should be seen for what it is, a rejuvenated version of Yasser Arafat's "strategy of slices" or "phases," originally recommended by Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba and by Mohammed Heikal, the former editor of the Eygptian newspaper Al Ahram.

This is precisely the goal that would be attained by implementing a second proposal that has been gathering momentum of late, namely the creation of a "single bilateral state." Indeed, many prominent figures have abandoned the two-state policy. Leila Farsakh, a professor at the University of Massuchesetts, has published an article in the Palestinian advocacy site The Electronic Intifada, reprinted in Le monde diplomatique for March 7, 2007, blaming stalled negotiations on "Israeli apartheid" and opting for a "one-state solution." Her position is by no means anomalous; it is widely shared by many of her peers and colleagues, both in the Middle East and the West. In fact, her article merely reprises PLO legal advisor Michael Tarazi's op-ed piece in the New York Times for October 4, 2004 in which, speaking in his master's voice, he put paid to the notion of a two-state political settlement and proposed that Israel and the Territories merge into a single state.

In an article in The New York Review of Books for October 23, 2003, entitled "Israel: The Alternative," historian Tony Judt, by now a leading figure in the ideological constituency of the anti-Israeli Left, had already called for the dissolution of Israel, arguing for "a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs." The recently retired Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, has also picked up the cudgels, objecting to Israel as a Jewish state and opting for a "political, normal state for Christians, Muslims and Jews." Sabbah is plainly of one mind with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat who, two weeks before the Annapolis peace conference, articulated the position that "no state in the world connects its national identity to a religious identity."

This, of course, is pure nonsense. The Palestinian Authority's Basic Law declares that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine," just as the Contitution of Pakistan establishes Islam as the State religion and Saudi Arabia requires by law that all its citizens be Muslims.

Naturally, in such a single-state scenario with its Palestinian majority, the very real likelihood that those Jews who had not been purged would be marked as dhimmis does not ruffle the single-stater's serenity. "How anyone in their right mind," marvels Menachem Keller in the essay collection The Jewish Divide over Israel, "could believe that…this mooted 'state of all its citizens' would respect the rights of minorities (or of majorities for that matter) is beyond comprehension. People who hold this view are either cynical in the extreme or naïve in the extreme. In the former case they knowingly condemn my family and me to persecution and probable death; in the latter case, they insouciantly and casually condemn us to the same fate."

In the event, the Palestinians would then get their state ready-made, without having to endure the labour of building it for themselves. The Israelis will have done all the work, developing a nonpareil scientific and academic establishment, forging a strong industrial base, devising irrigation techniques to reclaim the desert, draining the malarial marshlands and making world-class discoveries in cybernetics, medical technology and research paradigms. The Palestinians would then inherit what they do not deserve and what they have, up to now, done everything in their power to thwart—and, if their performance in Gaza is any indication, would more than likely run into the ground in no time flat. Israeli society may be far from perfect, but Palestinian society is not even close to being far. We might put it this way: Israel is a land that looks old and works new; Palestine is a land that looks old and doesn't work at all.

In the present context, a return to the status quo ante may be the only way to keep the lid on the boiling cauldron. The counterproductive peace sham must be put out of its misery and new and different initiatives undertaken. With regard to the "peace process," we might reverse the old maxim: if it's not fixable, break it—and try something more "creative." The prolonged and anticlimactic "peace" negotiations are like a mumblecore film, improvised, scriptless, heavy on verbiage, camera-reliant, second-rate actors like Olmert, Livny, Abbas and Mashaal pretending to be stars.

Thus it may be politically expedient to apply a clause of prudential revocation to a peace process that is all process and no peace, and engage rather in a "mediatorial process" that envisages the return of the Gaza Strip to Egypt and most of the West Bank to Jordan. After all, Gaza was Egyptian territory by force majeure until 1967 and the West Bank, originally mandated as part of the Jewish "national home" by the League of Nations in 1922, was formally annexed by the Hashemite emirate of Jordan in 1950.

Threatened by a zymotic Palestinian enclave, Jordan is profoundly involved in an effort to bring political chaos under control. An independent Palestine may pose a greater threat to Jordanian security than a closely monitored internal province. Similarly Egypt, despite having walled Gaza off, is distinctly uncomfortable with the prospect of sharing a border with an expansionist Islamic state, closely allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is precisely what Hamas-controlled Gaza would become.

The only viable way of dealing with so explosive a situation is to opt for what we might call a "three-state solution": Egypt, Jordan and Israel, bound to date by peace treaties. Forget Gaza and the West Bank. Otherwise, Gaza will remain a simmering brew of semtex and ideology, stirred by the Iranian ladle, and the West Bank will persist as a mafia of kleptocrats and terrorist cartels. Under these circumstances the day might come when there are no states at all in the region.

David Solway is the award-winning author of over twenty-five books of poetry, criticism, educational theory, and travel. He is a contributor to magazines as varied as the Atlantic, the Sewanee Review, Books in Canada, and the Partisan Review. His most recent book is The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity.

 

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

 

A terrible shame.

 

by Leonard Stern

The reason for the latest fighting in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, so we're told, easy enough to understand: Palestinians in the Gaza strip have been firing rockets across the border into Israel, and Israel has gone in to stop them.

But what really is this about? Israel evacuated Gaza three years ago, so that Gaza could eventually become part of a new Palestinian state. Israel didn't want anything to do with Gaza; couldn't wait to leave the place. Why would Palestinian Arabs engage in a national suicide project and start raining crude rockets on Israel, bringing grief to themselves and delaying the emergence of their independent state?

Richard Landes could have the answer. A professor at Boston University, Mr. Landes last year published a provocative take on the Israeli-Arab conflict. He argues that Palestinian behaviour toward Israel makes little sense until we understand the role of "honour and shame in Arabic culture."

Mr. Landes notes that to westerners, Arab rejectionism - the refusal to acknowledge or accept Israel's existence - seems both irrational and self-destructive. But that's because we in the West believe that conflict between Israelis and Palestinians derives "from a calculus of rights and wrongs" that can be negotiated - for example, swapping land for peace.

What if the conflict is something else entirely from the Palestinian point of view? What if it derives "from a calculus of honour and shame" and thus is not amenable to negotiation but instead can be resolved only "in victory over the humiliating enemy"?

A historian, Mr. Landes argues that outsiders do not appreciate just what a profound symbol of humiliation Israel is to its Arab-Muslim neighbours. For 13 centuries, "Islam had only known the Jews as a subject people … living in exile, forced to live by the laws and at the whim of foreign rulers and kings." To be confronted in the 20th century with an independent Jewish state in the Muslim Middle East was unbearable.

It was bad enough that over the generations Islam had already lost ground at the frontiers of its dominion, in Spain, the Balkans and India. But the Middle East, too? As Mr. Landes puts it, what could be more humiliating than "to lose territory at the heart of Islam, not to a great and worthy foe (the Christian West, hundreds of millions of Hindus), but to a tiny people without honour" - the dispossessed Jews.

It doesn't matter that the modern state of Israel occupies barely a sliver of the Middle East or that its Jewish inhabitants claim ancestral, indeed indigenous rights. In 1948 the Arab armies attacked anyway, but were repulsed. Same thing in 1967. The repeated Arab defeats compounded the humiliation.

This humiliation expresses itself in the dysfunctional behaviours of Arab leaders, such as denial (refusing to recognize or even speak the name "Israel") and the emergence of ingrained conspiracy theories to explain Israel's military victories.

"Not recognizing Israel is a fundamental, one might even say dogmatic form of denial, denial that the Arabs were defeated by a tiny subject people, denial of a catastrophic loss of face," writes Mr. Landes.

"As long as the Arab world does not recognize Israel … honour can still be salvaged. The war continues, the defeat goes unregistered, and the hope of restoring face by wiping out the humiliation can still dominate public discussion."

If Mr. Landes is right about the Arabic culture of honour and shame, it's hard to see how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will resolve. As a western society, Israel has always expected that peace will be achieved through negotiation and compromise. But shame cultures operate on a zero-sum principle. "Any victory for Israel is a defeat for the Arab and Muslim nation," writes Mr. Landes.

A compromise that accepts Israel will make permanent the humiliation of its Arab neighbours.

The Palestinian decision to fire rockets into Israel, while insane from our western perspective, takes on a certain logic. Every homemade Qassam rocket is a symbol of Arab honour. As long as one single rocket launcher remains operational, the Palestinians get to pretend that Israel is but a temporary blight on the Muslim Middle East.

Mr. Landes essay was written before the current troubles in Gaza but it couldn't be more timely. Interested readers can find it in the valuable new book Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict, one of whose editors is McGill University anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman.

A final point: Analyzing the Middle East through an anthropological lens is a sensitive business. Mr. Landes warns that in some academic quarters it is taboo to discuss the role of Arab honour and shame, and doing so invites accusations of "cultural racism."

That's unfortunate. For six decades Israel has been under siege. If this conflict were an ordinary geo-political one it would have been fixed a long time ago - but it isn't and it hasn't, and it's important to ask why.

LEONARD STERN is the Citizen's editorial pages editor.

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

 

 Richard Landes and Philip Carl Salzman are members of the SPME Board of Directors and Postcolonial Theory and the Arab-Israel Conflict (Routledge, 2008) was the resultant publication from an SPME Conference at Case Western Reserve University in 2005.

 

The Israel Exception.

 

 

by Alan M. Dershowitz

FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, January 21, 2009

 

Every time Israel seeks to defend its civilians against terrorist attacks, it is accused of war crimes by various United Nations agencies, hard left academics and some in the media. It is a totally phony charge concocted as part of Hamas’ strategy—supported by many on the hard left—to delegitimate and demonize the Jewish state. Israel is the only democracy in the world ever accused of war crimes when it fights a defensive war to protect its civilians. This is remarkable, especially in light of the fact that Israel has killed far fewer civilians than any other country in the world that has faced comparable threats. In the most recent war in Gaza fewer than a thousand civilians—even by Hamas’ skewed count—have been killed. This, despite the fact that no one can now deny that Hamas had employed a deliberate policy of using children, schools, mosques, apartment buildings and other civilian areas as shields from behind which to launch its deadly anti-personnel rockets. The Israeli Air Force has produced unchallengeable video evidence of this Hamas war crime.

Just to take one comparison, consider the recent wars waged by Russia against Chechnya. In these wars Russian troops have killed tens of thousands of Chechnyan civilians, some of them willfully, at close range and in cold blood. Yet those radical academics who scream bloody murder against Israel (particularly in England) have never called for war crime tribunals to be convened against Russia. Nor have they called for war crime charges to be filed against any other of the many countries that routinely kill civilians, not in an effort to stop enemy terrorists, but just because it is part of their policy.

Nor did we see the Nuremburg-type rallies that were directed against Israel when hundreds of thousands of civilians were being murdered in Rwanda, in Darfur and in other parts of the world. These bigoted hate-fests are reserved for Israel.

The accusation of war crimes is nothing more than a tactic selectively invoked by Israel’s enemies. Those who cry “war crime” against Israel don’t generally care about war crimes, as such, indeed they often support them when engaged in by country’s they like. What these people care about, and all they seem to care about, is Israel. Whatever Israel does is wrong regardless of the fact that so many other countries do worse.

When I raised this concern in a recent debate, my opponent accused me of changing the subject. He said we are talking about Israel now, not Chechnya or Darfur. This reminded me of a famous exchange between Harvard’s racist president, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and the great American judge Leonard Hand. Lowell announced that he wanted to reduce the number of Jews at Harvard, because, “Jews cheat.” Judge Hand replied that “Christians also cheat.” Lowell responded, “You’re changing the subject. We are talking about Jews.”

Well, you can’t just talk about Jews. Nor can you just talk about the Jewish state. Any discussion of war crimes must be comparative and contextual. If Russia did not commit war crimes when its soldiers massacred tens of thousands of Chechnyans (not even in a defensive war) then on what basis could Israel be accused of accidentally killing a far fewer number of human shields in an effort to protect its civilians? What are the standards? Why are they not being applied equally or selectively? Can human rights endure in the face of such unequal and selective application? These are the questions the international community should be debating, not whether Israel, and Israel alone, violated the norms of that vaguest of notions called “international law” or the “law of war.”

If Israel, and Israel alone among democracies fighting defensive wars, were ever to be charged with “war crimes,” that would mark the end of international human rights law as a neutral arbitrator of conduct. Any international tribunal that were to charge Israel, having not charged the many nations that have done far worse, will lose any remaining legitimacy among fair-minded people of good will,

If the laws of war in particular, and international human rights in general, are to endure, they must be applied to nations in order of the seriousness of the violations, not in order of the political unpopularity of the nations. If the law of war were applied in this manner, Israel would be among the last, and certainly not the first, charged.

 

Alan M. Dershowitz is a Professor of Law at Harvard. His most recent book The Case Against Israel’s Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand In The Way of Peace is being published by Wiley at the end of this month.

 

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

 

Reaffirming the right of israel to exist - a detailed reminder to the next leader of the free world

 

by Mort Zuckerman

What the world cannot remember the Israelis cannot forget. The Israelis know the Jewish nation has been one defeat away from extinction for 70 years. They know that every partition plan in the region, from the dawn of Zionism to the present day, has failed because of the Arab failure to accept the State of Israel. They know that the Palestinian leadership is virtually hopeless, wherein the people who are moderate are not effective and the people who are effective are not moderate.

Today the impossible Yasser Arafat has been replaced by the impotent Mahmoud Abbas. It was Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who presided over the division of the Palestinians into Fatah and Hamas. Hamas doesn't want peace, and Fatah can't deliver it. Fatah is so weak that it cannot enforce the rule of law against terrorism or make compromises for fear of the radical Islamists. Indeed, without the support of the Israeli Defense Forces, even now it is under threat of being displaced by Hamas. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a major Hamas leader, underlined Fatah's weakness when he said, "Fatah can't stop us from seizing control of those [West Bank] territories. It is only a matter of time."

Israel is so small it has no margin for error. A Hamas takeover of the West Bank would put Ben-Gurion Airport and major cities like Tel Aviv in the firing line, which would render Israel virtually uninhabitable. This is not guesswork. When Israel left the West Bank, it became a base for suicide bombers, ultimately forcing the Israelis to go back at great cost. They've since built a security fence, but a fence will not protect people from rockets. The rockets and mortars launched against Israel from Gaza have gained greater lethality, accuracy, and range, going from 20 kilometers before the truce to 40 after. And without the current operation, it is estimated that within two to three months new rockets supplied to Hamas by Iran and assembled in Gaza would have been able to hit Tel Aviv. One of them just reached the outskirts.

 

Acceptable response.

 Over 20 percent of the Israelis were vulnerable even before Tel Aviv came within range. No government could ignore these threats to its people. Yet Israel's belated response has been challenged as "disproportionate". This is ridiculous. In the first place, it was Hamas's intention that at least thousands of Israelis would die from its 7,000 rockets. Would it fit the doctrine of proportionality if Israel were to respond with 7,000 missiles against Gaza civilians? Or must it wait until the number of dead is piled high enough to justify a "proportioned" response. And what of the emotional trauma inflicted on the living? Men, women, and children have 15 seconds to reach a bunker, which they must do several times a day. They must live with the constant fear of death and maiming.

Would America sit back if, over three years, 7,000 rockets and missiles were launched at our citizens from Mexico or Canada? We would attack these missile sites and wipe them out. End of story. The "disproportionate" criticism is a cop-out. Hamas sought this battle. It was Hamas that broke the six-month truce organized by Egypt. Both Fatah and Egypt urged its continuance; the current violence would have been avoided, as Abbas stated, had Hamas not fired its missiles.

Tony Blair, now the special envoy of the Mideast quartet, concedes he understands the consequences now more than when he was prime minister of Britain: "I would hesitate to cede the West Bank to the Palestinians after the nightmare Israel has faced since the Gaza withdrawal." He recognizes that Hamas has sabotaged years of negotiation. "Land for peace," he warns, "is in itself not sufficient. Not less important is the character of the Palestinian state."

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya has made it clear what kind of state his Palestine would be. Hamas seeks nothing less than an Islamic state as its covenant describes: "To raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." To that end, Hamas has turned Gaza into a home for every brand of radical Islamist engaged in a holy war that sanctifies bloodshed, glorifies murder, and educates children to die as shahids -martyrs. There was to be no Israel alongside a Palestinian state. Over and over again Haniya has said that Hamas will never recognize Israel nor honor any of the existing agreements with the infidels. Its founder, Abdul Aziz Rantizi, is explicit: "We will not leave one Jew in Palestine."

To achieve the extermination of Israel, Hamas is ready to sacrifice its followers: "We are not," says Haniya, "seekers of office but seekers of martyrdom." The Palestinian people are like the prisoners in a hijacked plane: hostage to the death cult of radical Islamists. Hamas calculates that no state can tolerate its citizens being vulnerable day after day to the russian roulette of rocket fire that hits children, kindergartens, playgrounds, and hospitals. The attacks are designed to provoke Israel while its perpetrators hide behind their own civilians and keep women and children in their forces. They keep TV cameras at the ready to transmit every image of dead Palestinians, especially children. Except for dead Israelis, there is nothing Hamas leaders like better than dead Palestinians, given the global media's appetite for pictures-all to damage the image of Israel. Who else but Hamas leaders would put their headquarters in a hospital or move about in the street only when they are surrounded by children or carry them in their arms because they reckon this will protect them from the more scrupulous Israelis?

They are abetted in this cynical game by the United Nations World Relief Association headquartered in Gaza, headed by and staffed by Palestinians. U.N. schools in Gaza have long ago stopped being just schools where children are taught. They are places of refuge for Hamas terrorists-and points of provocation. There is video footage of terrorists firing mortar rounds from the U.N. school and then running so that others might pay the price for their deadly work. Haniya and other Hamas leaders openly boast about the effectiveness of their human shield tactics, yet it is Israel that gets blamed when some of them die.

Israeli aid.

The hypocrisy of it all is manifest on the issue of humanitarian aid. Who else but Israel would suspend the war effort for three hours every couple of days to aid in the provision of humanitarian assistance? Could you imagine England doing something like that when it was being bombarded by Hitler's V-2 rockets during WWII? Israel delivers to Gaza about 2,500 tons a day of food and fuel and other vital supplies. Hamas repeatedly attacks this mercy operation. Last May I visited the border and saw firsthand the result of these attacks on Israelis whose sole purpose for being there was to place bales of humanitarian aid on big flat-bed trucks, drive them through the crossings, deposit them 150 yards on the other side, and return. A week earlier, suicide terrorists exploded bomb-laden cars adjacent to one of the crossings.

The unthinking street crowds in European capitals with their Hamas flags don't give Israel credit for these humanitarian efforts nor its strenuous efforts to avoid civilian casualties: Leaflets are dropped and warnings phoned, even though this will alert the terrorists to escape. The protesters give Hamas a free pass for murder.

How rare it is for the truth to penetrate the moral fog! The Czech foreign minister, Karel-Schwarzenberg, now the president of the European Union, asks a good question. Given that Hamas "deliberately puts its military targets in civilian centers," he asks, "why am I one of the few that have expressed understanding for Israel? I enjoy the luxury of being able to tell the truth."

President Bush has the clearest perception of what is at stake. At Israel's 60th anniversary he said: "Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong because the United States of America stands with you." Alas, this pledge was shamefully compromised by one member of that audience, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. When it came to a vote at the U.N., the United States abstained. But for some reason best known to her, she drafted and urged the U.N. into supporting a resolution that called for a cease-fire without the protections of prior agreements, or the cessation of rocket attacks, or the prevention of Hamas rearming itself. In short, she was behind a resolution guaranteeing a continuance of the terrorism.

Any cease-fire must include cast-iron guarantees. They must decisively end the smuggling of arms, largely through the tunnels from Egypt. They must ensure that the firing of rockets will stop-not just for now but for good. That means the guarantees must leave open not the remotest chance that Hamas can be rearmed. Otherwise, as the National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley put it, the cease-fire would be "a prescription for the resumption of hostilities at some point in the future."

Hamas, in short, must be made to fail and be seen to fail. Israel is not trying to take over Gaza; it is trying to protect itself from Gaza. It is trying to preserve the possibility of a Mideast peace process. If the international community will not permit Israel to respond to ceaseless terrorism launched from land from which Israel has withdrawn, it ends any hopes for a two-state solution. What incentive would Israel have to withdraw from the West Bank were it to become a launching pad for terrorism? Hamas will fight tooth and nail to retain this terrorist option. That is why it must be defanged.

The Middle East conflict must also be framed on a bigger canvas. It is not just about creating a Palestinian state. It is also about preventing the region's takeover by radical Islam, especially Iran, which has co-opted Hamas and Hezbollah. If Hamas is successful in manipulating world opinion to impose a premature cease-fire, it will proclaim victory and continue its murderous ways. Iran and the radical Islamists are out to destroy Western interests in the Middle East-and to replace Arab regimes with radical Islamic states, Iranian-style.

On a visit to Sderot, President-elect Barack Obama said, "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I am going to do everything in my power to stop that, and I would expect Israelis to do the same." As president, he should continue speaking truth to terror.

Mort Zuckerman

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

 

 

Living next door to a serial killer.

 

by Barry Rubin

Israel has won a huge military victory in a defensive war against the radical Islamist Hamas group which rules the Gaza Strip. So what does Israel want?

Its first choice would be a moderate movement running the Gaza Strip which would negotiate a deal for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel, resettling refugees there, and being a prosperous, stable state. All Israel desires is that such a country wouldn't attack it with rockets, war, terrorism, or inciting such terrible hatred as to ensure future wars.

Hamas, however, is too extreme to make peace; its rival, the Palestinian Authority (PA) which rules the West Bank, is too weak and indecisive to do so. Having Hamas as a neighbor is like living next door to a serial killer, who abuses his children and threatens to kill them if you go in after him. You can defend yourself but if the police won't arrest him the only choices left are to build a wall around him, stop him from getting weapons, and sending in food. This is Israel's dilemma. The world demands peace but isn't prepared to do too much to help. The West's basic stand is to keep Hamas ruling Gaza, comparable to ensuring continued Taliban rule in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.

Thanks to such international "support" Gaza's people will be able to "enjoy" a dictatorial regime dedicated to spending the next century fighting-and losing--wars.

Remember, that the Hamas regime was not elected as such. Yes, it won an election but then seized total power by a bloody coup against the PA. Now, it imposes a radical Islamist regime on its unfortunate subjects. Hamas has no policy for creating jobs or raising living standards. Its educational system doesn't teach useful skills or civic virtues but indoctrinates children with the ambition to become suicide bombers.

So the world should consider. Is this the kind of regime you want to save and succor? Do you want to keep Hamas in power when even most Arab states would like to see it fall? Why talk about a peace process while following a policy ensuring no peace process can succeed.

Understand that Hamas believes the deity insists on its victory. It doesn't matter how long it takes or how many die. Its educational policy isn't aimed at training productive citizens but rather future suicide bombers, Well, it looks like the West is going to make that mistake, the PA itself isn't going to help provide an alternative government, and Israel can't solve this problem by itself.

So the next best thing is a ceasefire that works for a while. What is the basis for such a plan, which recognizes the fact that Israel won the war and that Hamas wants to restart it again? First, Hamas must perceive itself beaten no matter what it says publicly. This doesn't mean it will give up but does mean it will be slower to launch attacks in future.

Second, Palestinians must perceive that Hamas was beaten so that they follow a more productive path of moderation and diplomacy.

Third, the Arabic-speaking world-or as much of it as possible-must perceive Hamas is beaten so that Arab states are encouraged in their battle against radical Islamism, Iran, and Syria, while the flow of recruits to extremist movements decline.

Fourth, Hamas must perceive itself as isolated. If it knows that cross-border terror attacks, firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and cynically using its own people as human shields brings international sympathy and political profits these tactics will be used again by them, and be imitated by others elsewhere.

All of these are realizable goals. The West can help by giving Hamas no recognition, no support, and no help. A terrorist, genocidal movement which oppresses its own people and uses them as human shields should not be rewarded. That should be obvious.

What about the actual terms? Among the key provisions are these:

 

• A seriously effective regime of inspection and blocking smuggling must be put into place on the Egypt-Gaza border. This means Egyptian forces helped by a force which will really act to block tunnels and stop arms from coming in, not just sit and watch the contraband go by. If more weapons get in, that will bring another war.
• Israel has the right to maintain sanctions, which means that while humanitarian and necessary goods for Gaza's society will be allowed to cross the border it can keep out items that have military applications.
• Aid money to rebuild in Gaza and sustain Palestinian society must be kept out of Hamas's hands. Not only would Hamas use such funds for military purposes, it would also steal them from being used for real relief. For example, Hamas cries there is not enough fuel but that is because it diverts gasoline from civilian purposes for its own use.
• Gilad Shalit, a hostage seized by Hamas in a cross-border raid into Israel, should be released unconditionally. It is bad enough to reward terrorists for their crimes; it is ridiculous to do so after they have been thoroughly defeated after launching an aggressive war.

Finally, we should remember the aims of the two sides. Israel's goal is very modest: security for its citizens, no cross-border attacks. Hamas's goal is the destruction of Israel, wiping out its citizens, revolution throughout the Middle East, treating women as chattel, and the creation of what it considers to be Allah's government on earth.

Knowing that, you can decide which side to support.

 

Barry Rubin

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

 

 

Peace and Hamas.

 

Peace is the last thing Hamas terrorists and gangsters want. Peace means the game is up. Peace means they've disappointed their god. Peace means no more excuses. They couldn't bear peace for six months. This is a war to the bitter end. And we're afraid to admit what it's about. It's not about American sins or Israeli intransigence. It's about a sickness in the soul of a civilization - of Middle-Eastern Islam - that can only be cured from within.

 

In order to understand the spirit of evil just open :

 

http://www.memritv.org/video.html

 

Ending The Gaza War: Choices, Not Solutions.

 

by Barry Rubin

Last December, Hamas unilaterally ended its ceasefire with Israel and escalated the kind of cross-border attacks continually attempted even during the ceasefire. With massive public support, Israel struck back against a neighboring regime which daily attacked its citizens and called for its extermination.

For decades, Israel's history shows a general pattern: its neighbors attack, Israel responds, Israel wins the war, and the world rushes to ensure that its victory is limited or nullified. If, as sometimes happens, the diplomatic process really improves the situation and provides progress for peace that, of course, is beneficial.

Yet Israel's experience has shown that international promises made in return for its material concessions are often broken. Most recently, in 2006 the international community pledged to keep Hizballah out of south Lebanon and curb its arms' supply, failed totally, yet took no action in response to this defeat. Israel is understandably skeptical.

In addition, Israelis know that Hamas is totally dedicated to their personal and collective destruction. The group will not moderate, cannot be bought off, and will not respect any agreement it makes. As a result, the usual kinds of diplomatic tools — concessions, confidence-building, agreements, moderation resulting from having governmental responsibilities, will not work. Any solution short of Hamas's fall from power will bring more fighting in future.

What should happen is that the international community cooperates in the removal of the Hamas regime. It is an illegal government, brought to power by an unprovoked war against the Palestinian Authority (PA) which was the internationally recognized regime in the Gaza Strip. Hamas may have won the elections but it then seized total power, suspended representative government, and destroyed the opposition.

Moreover, Hamas is a radical terrorist group which openly uses antisemitic rhetoric and actively seeks to wipe Israel off the map. It oppresses the Palestinian population and leads them into endless war. It teaches young Palestinians that their career goal should not be as a teacher, engineer, or doctor but as a suicide bomber.

From a strategic standpoint, Hamas is a member of the Iran-Syria alliance which seeks to overthrow every Arab regime in the Middle East and replace it with an anti-Western, war-oriented, radical Islamist dictatorship. Hamas's survival is a big threat to both Western interests and to those of Arab nationalist regimes. Keeping Hamas in power is equivalent to an energetic Western diplomatic effort to have kept the Taliban regime in power in Afghanistan, despite its role in the September 11 attacks.

If, however, the world is not going to support Hamas's fall from office, Israel cannot bring about this result by itself. At the same time, the world will be making a big mistake if it pushes for a ceasefire at any price, thus encouraging future violence and terrorism, not only regarding Gaza but also in the region generally.

What then are Israel's options?

Two possible outcomes are rejected: Israel will not take control of the Gaza Strip again, and Israel will not accept a return to the previous situation in which Hamas repeatedly attacked Israel under cover of a ceasefire.

There are at least six major things Israel can obtain realistically:

• The practical weakening of Hamas. Granted it will continue to be aggressive in future, its losses will reduce Hamas's ability to hurt Israeli citizens.

• Deterrence, while retaining its longer-term goals, Hamas will be more reluctant to attack Israel lest it produce another such Israeli response.

• Border control, a change from the situation in which Hamas can import weapons fairly freely to a stricter order in which humanitarian aid but not arms can come in.

• The return of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, seized in a Hamas attack on Israeli soil and held hostage, lacking any contact with international humanitarian groups.

• A reduction of Hamas's standing among Palestinians. Despite macho and religious rhetoric about Hamas's strength, Gaza Palestinians are more eager for a return of the PA; West Bank citizens, living under more moderate PA rule, realize that extremism is disastrous.

• Regional perception of Hamas's defeat, lowering support for the Iran-Syria alliance and encouraging more moderate Arab forces to resist radical Islamism and Tehran's power.

Despite this being the best realistic program, Israel also knows significant factors that might mean it won't work entirely:

Hamas will break any agreement and not change.

The international community is weak and contains tendencies toward appeasing extremists to avoid trouble.

Egypt even when well-intended is not so efficient at controlling the border.

Thus, even this best-case scenario has problems. First, Hamas will return to building up its forces for future confrontations, teaching a whole generation that it should prepare to sacrifice itself to achieve a "final solution" of the Israel problem. In short, any outcome that leaves Hamas in place is at best a lull until the next round.

Second, it is quite possible that within days or weeks of any agreement, Hamas — partly to prove to itself and others how it remains unbowed — will return to firing rockets and mortar rounds into Israel as well as trying to carry out terrorist attacks across the border. In that case, Israel will have to respond much more seriously than it has in the past to such behavior. A world which guarantees the ceasefire better be prepared to remember Israel's legitimate interests in enforcing it.

Finally, as long as Hamas survives as rulers of the Gaza Strip, it will be impossible to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The PA will be too intimidated to make compromises and cannot even deliver its own people. There can be no Palestinian state with half the territory being controlled by an organization which will never accept an agreement and will do everything possible to wreck it.

"Saving" Hamas and making the main or sole priority pushing for a ceasefire at any price is a very short-sighted policy for the international community which will be paid for in future. If the Gaza war is going to be ended, it should be in the framework of solving the problems that let Hamas create the war in the first place.

Barry Rubin

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

 

"WAR CRIMINALS" OR "MORAL CRIMINALS"? Part I

 

 

I. FIRST GAZA, THEN THE WORLD

 

The confrontation in the Gaza Strip is not between Hamas and Israel, but rather between Al Qaeda, Iran and radical Islam, and the free world

 

by Ben Dror Yemini

 

1^st part of 4

 

Some of Israel’s most blatant critics have written that for every Israeli killed, about a hundred Palestinians were killed. A half-truth is worse than a lie, but this is not even a half truth. This is deception. Because months and years of rockets fired at a civilian population are not a matter for bloody accounts. It is a nuisance that no country, neither Syria nor Sweden, would tolerate. It is a provocation that requires a tough response. And if we are already going for bloody accounts, we should do the overall math. We can suffice with just the accounting in the Arab-Muslim world.

 

So, since the establishment of the State of Israel, close to 12 million Arabs and Muslims have been butchered, most of them by Arabs and Muslims. Israel’s “contribution,” since its establishment, is 60,000, and that includes all the wars and the two Intifadas. In other words, half a percent.

 

And more importantly, the confrontation is not between Hamas with its rockets and Israel. The confrontation is between Hamas, as one of the entities that compose radical Islam, and the free world. Its declared goal is to establish a world Islamic caliphate as part of an anti Semitic ideology that also calls for the annihilation of the Jews. Explanations will follow. And since political Islam has already annihilated millions without any announcement, we should take it seriously when there is an announcement about annihilation.

 

Is Hamas part of the global Jihad? Section 7 of the Hamas Covenant explains that it is not a local movement, nor even a national movement. The heading is “The global nature of the Islamic resistance movement.” And later, “Because the Muslims are spread throughout the entire world, the movement is global.” To remove any doubt, Dr. Yunis Al Astal, a member of the Palestinian parliament, one of the senior Hamas officials, who served as dean of the faculty are of Shariyah and chairman of the Islamic Law Department at Islamic University, stated that  "We Will Conquer Rome, and from There Continue to Conquer the Two Americas and Eastern Europe." 

 

Is this a movement that calls for the annihilation of the Jews? That is what is written in a continuation of the same section. “The messenger (Mohammed) said, “The Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees, and then the stones and the trees will say, ‘Oh, Muslim, Abd Allah, there is a Jew who is hiding, come and kill him.” And this is in addition to blaming the Jews for all the wars in the world, for world domination, etc.

 

The problem is not with quotes from the sources. After all, even Judaism has Rabbi Shimon, who said, “The best gentile is a dead one.” But that did not become the foundation for any movements. Certainly not for a government party. To the contrary. There are innumerable interpretations explaining the circumstances of that statement and its lack of relevance. Not so with Hamas. The old imperative has become a practical instruction. And the Hamas leaders leave no room for doubt.

 

Sheikh Muhsin Abu Ita stated on the Al Aqsa channel that “The annihilation of the Jews is a wonderful blessing.”  Dr. Ahmed Bahar, acting speaker of the Palestinian parliament stated that “the Jews are cancer, and they and the Americans should be destroyed to the last person.” According to the Palestinian constitution, this man, Bahar, will become the head of the Palestinian Authority if Abu Mazen ceases to function. Dr.  Al Astal made clear that the annihilation order is a matter for our time and not for the future, and that "we are sure that the Holocaust is still to come upon the Jews".

 

The book by Dr. Matthias Kuntzel, “Jihad and Jew-Hatred,” elaborates on the annihilation ideology of radical Islam, including among Hamas. We have not yet succeeded in imparting this awareness to the world. It is still not too late.

 

 

There is no logic in madness

 

The most symbolic event occurred in Iraq. A Shi’ite suicide bomber carried out his attack during a Sunni demonstration of identification with Hamas. A bit confusing, no? After all, this Shi’ite terrorist was supposed to be serving Iranian interests. Iran, as we know, is the country that aids Hamas. And even the battle cries of the demonstrators contained the common denominator of the Shi’ites and the Sunnis: burning Israeli flags and calling for its extermination. So why commit suicide there, of all places? Who was he working for? What exactly was he trying to achieve? Against whom was he protesting? Don’t look for answers, because we are dealing with madness. And any attempt to find some logic is doomed to failure.

 

 

Slaughter for the sake of slaughter

 

Samuel Huntington  the prophet of the Clash of Civilizations  died. He was wrong. There is primarily another war, of political Islam against Muslims. And, in effect, it is not a war. It is one-sided slaughter in which the radicals slaughter others, and the others have no idea of how they might have sinned. Women and children who were butchered in villages in Afghanistan and Algeria by the Taliban or the Islamic Front were not collaborating with the West.

 

It was slaughter for the sake of slaughter. Just like the hundreds of Indians in Mumbai, among whom were 44 Muslims (far more than the Westerners or Jews) who were massacred by other Muslims. Exactly like hundreds of Muslims who are slaughtered by other Muslims in innumerable suicide attacks in Pakistan,.

 

But there is a small addition. In the case of Muslims, 95% of the protest from Pakistan through Um el Fahem to Londonistan, is in favor of the radical Muslims. Muslims in favor of those who are massacring them. Like the demonstrators in Iraq. The fact that they came to demonstrate for Hamas and against Israel did not help them. They, too, were worthy of slaughter. We have already said that there is no logic. We reiterate it.

 

 

Israel is defeating itself

 

Lately, when the prevarication mills (the “industry of lies”) began working at full steam on the bitter fate of the refugees in the Gaza Strip, who once again were forced to experience violence, the Cinematheque in Tel Aviv screened the film, The Forgotten Refugees, by director Michael Grynszpan. The film has already been shown in many places around the world, including in the U.S. Congress, but not on any channel in Israel.

 

The film deals with the Jewish communities in Muslim countries  a million people at the end of the second world war  who were forced to leave or expelled with an enormous amount of property expropriated. They became refugees, primarily in Israel.

 

The Nakba occurred because the Arabs rejected the UN proposal, and because they declared a war of annihilation on Israel. The Nakba of the Jews in Islamic countries, in contrast, occurred without a reason. The Jews of Morocco or Yemen or Iraq or Egypt did not declare any war. But despite that, in some cases, in Iraq and in Libya, dozens of Jews were slaughtered.

 

There is no "progressive" academic who does not inflate the Dir Yassin episode. But the slaughter of Jews by Arabs is never mentioned. Most of them arrived with absolutely nothing. They lived in immigrant camps. But they were not perpetuated as an open wound, as refugees, like the Palestinians.

 

Israel, for reasons that are hard to understand, has never played the card of the Jewish refugees. The story of the forgotten refugees could have been the unequivocal Israeli response to the issue of the Palestinian refugees. After all, the right of the Jewish refugees to reparations is far greater than the right of the Palestinians.

 

The former suffered and were forced out, despite the fact that they started no war and declared no annihilation. The latter did. So the Jews, and only the Jews, have the right to reparations. Those who didn't succeed in executing their plots of annihilation have no right to reparations. There is no historical precedence for an aggressor who turns himself into a victim. Such an absurdity has never existed, nor will it. Even in this matter, Israel has defeated itself in the propaganda battle. And here, too, it is not too late to rectify the error.

 

Ben Dror Yemini

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