UC Irvine Student Government Approves Anti-Israel Boycott

by Arnold Ahlert


Even as missiles launched from Gaza are killing innocent Israelis, there is no rest for the anti-Semitic, Israel-bashers at the University of California, Irvine. On Tuesday night, the student senate passed a non-binding resolution requesting that the school divest from eight companies currently doing business with the Jewish State. In a unanimous 16-0 vote, the Associated Students-UC Irvine (ASUCI) targeted Caterpillar, Cement Roadstones Holding, Cemex, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Raytheon, Sodastream, and L-3 Communications, as companies that “profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestine.” The resolution awaits the approval of UC Irvine student government’s executive board, a body that would forward it to the school’s administration. If both entities approve, UC-Irvine would be the first California campus to do so.

Given UC-Irvine’s track record of anti-Semitism, such a “ground-breaking” move would doubtlessly thrill campus leftists, most notably UC-Irvine’s Muslim Student Union (MSU). In an article for Commentary Magazine in 2010, Kenneth Marcus outlines that track record. ”During the first years of the 21st century…on the campus of the University of California at Irvine, Jewish students were physically and verbally harassed, threatened, shoved, stalked, and targeted by rock-throwing groups and individuals,” he writes. “Jewish property was defaced with swastikas, and a Holocaust memorial was vandalized. Signs were posted on campus showing a Star of David dripping with blood. Jews were chastised for arrogance by public speakers whose appearance at the institution was subsidized by the university. They were called ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘f**king Jew,’ told to ‘go back to Russia’ and ‘burn in hell,’ and heard other students and visitors to the campus urge one another to ‘slaughter the Jews.’”

The MSU on campus has staged many anti-Israel events, including a large gathering every spring where some of the more virulent anti-Semites, including leaders of the Sabiqun movement, which advocates for the creation of a global Islamic state, bash Israel with impunity.

In May 2010, Imam Abdul Malik Ali, leader of a mosque in Oakland, compared Jews to Nazis, expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and called for the destruction of the “apartheid state of Israel.” Ali’s speech was part of the MSU-hosted program called “Israeli Apartheid Week: A Call to Boycott, Divest and Sanction,” which included other anti-Israel speakers such as author Norman Finkelstein, who has made a career out of distorting the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Alison Weir, who frames Israel as a violent aggressor, with the United States acting as its accomplice; and Hatem Bazian, president of the anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine. This event was part of an effort to jumpstart the divestment process mentioned above.

In 2009, the MSU hosted a lectures series titled “Israel: The Politics of Genocide.” Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who supports anti-Semitic groups such as the Nation of Islam and the New Black Panther Party, and former British MP George Galloway, who told GQ magazine in 2006 that it would be “morally justified” for a suicide bomber to kill former British Prime Minister Tony Blair because of Britain’s support for the Iraq war, were in attendance. Ali was also there, giving presentations during which he stated that “Zionists” are “the new Nazis” and “the party of Satan,” and that “Zionism must be destroyed.”

In 2008, the MSU hosted three separate bash-fests titled “Never Again? Palestinian Holocaust,” ”Gears of War: Blood, Oil and University,” and ”From Auschwitz to Gaza: The Politics of Genocide.” Various speakers accused Israel of being a “hateful and expansionist militant nation state,” bringing their “misery” and “hostility” from Europe to the Middle East, and engaging in ”ethnic cleansing to get more of Palestine.”

A video compilation of events occurring in 2008, gives one a good sense of the overt hostility generated by both speakers and students a UC-Irvine. It opens with Imam Muhammad Al-Asi, former prayer leader at the Islamic Center of Washington, accusing Israel of “crimes against humanity,” and students chanting the slogan of Israel’s destruction: ”from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.” It shows several testimonials by students, speaking about the regular harassment they receive for either being Jewish or daring to speak out against the prevailing “climate of fear perpetuated on campus,” as one student put it.

In 2007, the MSU hosted ”Israel: Apartheid Resurrected” and ”Holocaust Memorial Week.” During the former event, it was alleged that the U.S. knew about 9/11 in advance, and those who supported Israel were referred to as “Zio-Nazis.” At the utterly misnamed latter event, Jews were accused of running and financing the slave trade.

Similar events go back as far as 2001. All of them present the common themes of Israel as the oppressor, and the United States as its eager collaborator, along with a “Zionist-controlled Western media” that distorts the truth.

One of the low points of anti-Jewish activity at UC-Irvine occurred in February 2010, when 11 students were arrested for repeatedly disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. In a classic use of the “heckler’s veto,” Oren was repeatedly assailed with modern-day blood libels, accusing him of being an accessory to genocide and ethnic cleansing, as he attempted to give a talk on the Middle East peace process. A video of the event reveals the coordinated effort of students to prevent Oren from speaking.

Leaked emails subsequently revealed that the MSU orchestrated the disruption. The 11 students were convicted of two misdemeanors, conspiracy and speech disruption. In June, the MSU was banned the for one year and placed on disciplinary probation for an additional year, beginning on September 1.

Yet on September 3, 2010, UC-Irvine officials relented, upholding the suspension for only four months, through Dec. 31. The MSU was also expected to complete 100 hours of community service and remain on probation through December 2012.

Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez sent an email to students filled with typical leftist bromides. “This has been a difficult decision,” it read. “But in the end, this process demonstrates the University of California Irvine’s commitment to values, principles and tolerance. Although this has been a challenging experience for all involved, I am confident that we will continue to move forward as a stronger, more respectful university community.”

Such a statement rings utterly hollow in light of a report by Front Page Magazine, revealing that UC-Irvine students, participating in a program known as the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), met with Aziz Duwaik, a prominent leader of the terrorist organization Hamas, during a trip to the Middle East in 2009. Tellingly, the students were reportedly told to keep the trip a secret. In 2011, a Freedom of Information Act filing unearthed a letter addressed to UC-Irvine Chancellor Michael V. Drake demanding an investigation, yet the letter itself was dated October 8, 2009. If an investigation occurred, it wasn’t publicized.

As this latest episode at UC Irvine has demonstrated, on leftist-dominated college campuses across the nation, virulent anti-Semitism has been legitimized and is accepted to an astounding degree. Just imagine if a college student group invited a series of speakers to discussing topics even remotely offensive to ethnic minorities or gay students. There is no doubt that the campus left and administration officials would vocally oppose such programming. Yet Jewish students are routinely exposed to an atmosphere where their religious symbols, the Jewish homeland and much more are heinously mocked and degraded by their fellow students.

UC-Irvine student Sabreen Shalabi, a co-author of the boycott legislation, was proud of her handiwork. “Our work today stands tall in the noble tradition of students advocating for justice, joining the ranks of those brave and visionary students who demanded that our Universities divest from the terrible crimes of South African apartheid,” she said. No, it doesn’t. It is nothing more than an expression of anti-Semitism being purported as something noble. Despicable is more like it.

Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at atahlert@comcast.net.

Source: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/uc-irvine-student-government-approves-anti-israel-boycott/

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

“Tough” Israelis Understand Region Better than the New York Times

by Jonathan S. Tobin


The most frustrating thing about being a liberal critic of Israel these days is the fact that the generally fractious people of the Jewish state are more or less united behind their government as it attempts to defend the country against terrorist assaults from Hamas. This consensus is rooted in the knowledge that neither the Islamist-controlled enclave in Gaza nor the supposedly more moderate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has the faintest interest in peace. Left without any peace partners, Israelis understand their nation’s only choice is to do what it must to lessen the peril from rocket attacks while preparing for even greater threats such as that of a nuclear Iran.

The need to take a realistic approach to an intractable problem is merely common sense, but it still grates on Israel’s critics who still prefer to blame the victim rather than the aggressors. A classic example of such thinking was found in the form of an op-ed masquerading as a news analysis on the front page of the New York Times yesterday. Writing by former Times Jerusalem Bureau chief Ethan Bronner, the piece took as its premise that Israel was stuck in an outmoded mindset that refused to take into account the changing circumstances of the Middle East. Instead of realizing that the rise of a new wave of Islamist sentiment in the wake of the Arab Spring meant they should be more accommodating, Bronner wrote that the foolish Israelis are simply doubling down on their old tactics of being “tough” with the Arabs.
As Bronner writes:

What is striking in listening to the Israelis discuss their predicament is how similar the debate sounds to so many previous ones, despite the changed geopolitical circumstances. In most minds here, the changes do not demand a new strategy, simply a redoubled old one.

But what Bronner fails to comprehend is that the changes in the Arab world are exactly why Israel’s policies are correct.


At the heart of this critique is a belief that Israelis don’t care about peace. This is ridiculous since, even now, it is probable that a comfortable majority could be found for even the most far-reaching land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians if it could be reasonably asserted that such a treaty would actually end the conflict rather than merely continue on terms that are less advantageous for the Jewish state. Unfortunately, that is all the Oslo peace process turned out to be. Both the collapse of Oslo in the terror of the second intifada and the transformation of Gaza after Israel’s complete withdrawal from that territory in 2005 into a missile launching pad has convinced the overwhelming majority of Israelis that peace is not possible in the foreseeable future.

That leaves them with no choice but to hang tough until a sea change in the political culture of Palestinians enables them to produce a leadership that might dare to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.

That angers deluded observers who cling to the idea that the only real obstacles to peace are those created by Israeli policies. But unless you believe, as one Arab academic quoted in Bronner’s piece asserts, that Israel’s creation was a “crime” that must be rectified for there to be peace, the only rational response to Hamas attacks is a periodic effort to “cut the grass” that will make it harder for the terrorists to kill more Jews.

Taken out of the context of Arab intransigence and a fanatical Islamist determination to continue the conflict until Israel is weakened and ultimately destroyed, talk of “cutting the grass” in Gaza seems cynical and hard-hearted. That depiction dovetails with a mindset that views Israelis as military aggressors and out of touch with their neighbors. But it is Bronner’s piece that is detached from reality, not the Israeli grass cutters.

Israel tried repeatedly to make peace in the last 20 years, but only a tiny minority in the country has failed to comprehend that all they accomplished was to trade land for terror and to empower Hamas in the process. The decision of Turkey to abandon its alliance with Israel in pursuit of pan-Islamic glory and the transformation of Egypt from cold peace partner to active ally of Hamas (as well as the tacit acceptance of these developments by the United States) has rendered talk of more concessions even more absurd.

Most Israelis understand the choice facing their country is not between holding onto territory or settlements and peace. It is between death and survival in a war with Palestinian Islamists that has no end in sight. That is a reality that Israel’s liberal critics at the Times and elsewhere haven’t yet come to terms with.

Jonathan S. Tobin

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/18/tough-israelis-understand-region-better-than-the-new-york-times-bronner-arab-spring/

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

The Real Test of Obama’s Support

by Max Boot


I think it’s fair to say that most friends of Israel were deeply unhappy with President Obama’s relations with the Jewish state during his first term and deeply fearful of what the second term would bring, now that he was freed of any need to court pro-Israel votes in the future. His reaction to the new Gaza war has, therefore, been as welcome as it is unexpected. He has been whole-hearted in his support of Israel’s right to defend itself against missile attacks. During a press conference today in Thailand he said: “Israel has every right to expect that it does not have missiles fired into its territory.”

That’s an excellent start and will help to reassure Israelis (as Obama no doubt hopes) that he is a reliable ally—which in turn would give him more credibility to forestall an Israeli air strike on the Iranian nuclear program. The question is whether his support will hold if Israel feels compelled to order a ground offensive to clear out the Hamas infrastructure responsible for terrorizing much of southern Israel—something that is notoriously difficult to accomplish from the air.


Obama did go on to issue a veiled warning against a possible Israeli ground offensive: “If that can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that’s preferable. It’s not just preferable for the people of Gaza. It’s also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they’re much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.”

There is nothing in that statement that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could disagree with on its face—he too is very wary of sending Israeli troops into Gaza, not only because of the risk of casualties on both sides but also because of the diplomatic risks involved: A Gaza incursion could lead Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government to sever or at least suspend ties with Israel.

But, much as Israel may be reluctant to move ground troops into Gaza, it may be unavoidable unless Hamas can be convinced to stop firing rockets in the meanwhile. If a Gaza ground incursion were to occur, Israel will need the U.S. to run diplomatic interference at the United Nations and elsewhere to buy time for its troops to finish the job. This is always a difficult undertaking and even the George W. Bush administration–led by the most pro-Israeli president in U.S. history—put considerable pressure on Israel in 2006 to end its incursion into Lebanon after a few weeks. The real test of President Obama’s attitudes will come if there is indeed a ground war. But in the meantime, his full-throated backing for Israel is certainly welcome.

Max Boot

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/11/18/the-real-test-of-obamas-support-israel-gaza/#more-811502

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Iran's Enhanced Nuclear Capabilities

by IPT News


Iran may be capable of doubling the number of centrifuges dedicated to enriching uranium within days. This was reported by one of three diplomats from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in conjunction with the issuance of the latest IAEA Iranian Safeguards report issued Friday.

An additional 700 centrifuges are believed to have been installed at the Fordow fuel enrichment plant near Qum. That brings the total number of centrifuges at Fordow to nearly 2,800, which would mean nearly 1,400 in operation at a given time at the facility. Fordow was designed to hold approximately 3,000 centrifuges so it is now near its capacity and is buried deep inside a mountain, making it a particularly hardened target.

The IAEA report noted a sharp increase in Iran's supply of a more purified form of enriched uranium that can be more easily converted to weapon's grade fissile material. This 20 percent uranium can quickly be converted to the highly enriched form used in weapons. Over the past three months, Iran's supply of 20 percent uranium increased by nearly half.

It remains to be seen how these latest developments will impact Israel's posture toward Iran and its nuclear program. In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly there was a "red line" on Iran's nuclear program that would trigger Israeli military action. It's believed that is the point Iran has amassed enough uranium, purified to a level of 20 percent, that could quickly be enriched further and be used to produce an atomic bomb.

IPT News

Source: http://www.investigativeproject.org/3818/iran-enhanced-nuclear-capabilities

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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

by Melanie Phillips


In Israel, an enormous call-up of reservists suggests that a ground invasion of Gaza is imminent – and this morning’s further attacks on Tel Aviv make that more likely still. The prospect of a ground invasion fills Israelis with dread. A ground invasion means that Israeli soldiers will go into Gaza street by street and house by house to destroy the rocket launchers, rockets and ammunition dumps where they have been stored. Many have been situated in residential neighbourhoods, for two reasons: first, to deter the Israel Defence Force from attacking them for fear of killing civilians as a consequence; and second, to ensure that many Gazan civilians are indeed killed, thus guaranteeing an international outcry so that Israel will be forced to stop its operation to destroy these weapons.
Such a ground operation, where from past experience many of these places have been booby-trapped, carry the certainty of a high casualty rate among the Israeli soldiers. 

That is why Israel today waits in dread. People in Britain and elsewhere who have the luxury of living in a country that has not been under existential attack for six decades have absolutely no idea of the extraordinary pressure under which so many Israeli families live. Their children are conscripted into the armed forces because Israel is under permanent threat of attack by an Arab and Muslim world which is determined to wipe Israel off the map. 

And so these young Israelis are sent to fight and some of them -- maybe many of them -- will die, in a country where every such life that is lost is a national tragedy because the Jewish people was almost wiped out half a century ago, and their families will be torn apart – all because millions of murderous fanatics who believe the Jews must not be allowed to live in their own historic homeland continue to try to destroy that homeland and murder as many Jews as possible. And many more of Israel’s children will die if the Israel Defence Force starts a ground war in Gaza. Yet Israelis also know that if the rockets and missiles from Gaza are to stop, a ground war may be the only way to destroy these weapons since there is a limit to what can be achieved by aerial bombardment. 

This is the kind of rock and very hard place indeed dilemma under which Israelis live week in, week out – and have done for more than sixty years, all because a bunch of fanatics are bent on their annihilation. Yet none of this is acknowledged by those in Britain, whose hearts bleed for the Palestinians who are the aggressors in this conflict but never for the Israelis who are their victims – and whose motives in mounting such a military operation must therefore be assumed to be malevolent or evil. 

Among western leaders, the hypocrisy is particularly odious. Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague, who has been saying Israel has the right to defend itself against attack, nevertheless also says :

‘Israel does have to bear in mind that it is when ground invasions have taken place in previous conflicts that they have lost international support and a great deal of sympathy around the world.’

In the US similarly there are reports that Obama is telling Israel not to mount a ground invasion –because the likely toll of civilian casualties would benefit Hamas. So according to these leaders, Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself -- but not actually to take the action that will defeat its attackers! And just whose international support might Israel lose by such a casualty toll? Why, the support of leaders like Hague and Obama!  What hypocrisy, furthermore, from those who have been bombing the living daylights out of Afghanistan but impose a totally different standard on Israel. 

Of course, no-one in Israel imagines that even the most successful operation in Gaza will defeat the Hamas. The most they hope for is to degrade its capabilities for mass murder so that Israelis can have a few years free of attack before they have to do the same thing all over again.  

The reason why this conflict goes on and on in this interminable way, leaving Israel in a state of permanent siege, is quite simple. It is that the so-called civilised world, for all its empty pledges of support for Israel, actually leaves it to swing in the wind. 

It persists in casting the conflict entirely falsely as a fight over land boundaries. It totally ignores the Judeophobic incitement to hatred and murder of Israelis with which the Palestinians indoctrinate their children; it totally ignores the Nazi-style (and yes , it is straight from the Nazi lexicon) deranged racist demonisation of the Jews as cosmically evil people responsible for all the ills in the world and controlling everything that moves in the west; it totally ignores the statements made even by so-called moderates such as Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestinians  will never accept Israel as a Jewish state, thus committing them to permanent war against it; it totally ignores the fact that this is a religious war against the Jews (read the Hamas Charter); it totally ignores the gross inversion and misrepresentation of history by which the Arabs have concealed the fact that it is only the Jewish people for whom Israel was ever their national homeland.

 Instead it ludicrously blames Israel for the impasse because of the ‘settlements’, thus taking demonstrably absurd Arab propaganda at face value; states that the Palestinians ‘deserve’ a state of their own (since when did racist aggressors deserve anything at all?); and insists that Israel must negotiate with the Palestinians to arrive at a solution (with increasing voices urging it to negotiate even with the Hamas). But the only solution that can be negotiated with fanatics committed to the eradication of a country is a final one.

In order to arrive at a solution, it is essential first to identify the problem correctly. The problem here is not, as Britain, the US and Europe insist, a conflict between two equal claims to land, two peoples with equal rights to that land, two peoples with an equal moral case. The problem is the implacable, nine-decade attempt by the Arab and Muslim world to remove the Jews by force from their own country and historic homeland. The reason this problem has not been solved – the overriding reason – is that from the very first Arab pogrom in the 1920s against the returning Jews of Palestine, the so-called civilised world led by Britain has rewarded the belligerents and punished their victims. 

The only way a solution to this terrible conflict will ever be achieved is if America, Britain and Europe start calling this war of annihilation against Israel for what it actually is and instead of treating the Palestinian aggressors as putative statesmen, start treating them appropriately as global pariahs.

Meanwhile, clearly horrified by the support for Israel that has so far been shown by western leaders who have had the temerity to condemn the Hamas as the aggressor, UK broadcasters have been attempting to remedy this by showing footage of child victims of heartless Israelis bombing Gaza -- rather than presenting them, as they actually are, as the hapless victims of brutal and cynical Palestinians who are deliberately using children and other civilians as human shields. 

For sure there are civilian casualties in Gaza, including children, which is awful; but Hamas are still up to their Pallywood tricks, as this example reported in Tablet shows -- a picture of a distraught father holding a dead child which the Hamas claimed was taken in Gaza but was actually taken in Syria during the fighting there. 

And then of course there was this unspeakable cartoon by Steve Bell in the Guardian, presenting  Israel’s Prime Minister as a puppet-master pulling the strings of Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague and former Prime Minister Tony Blair – simply because they correctly condemned Hamas as the aggressor!! – thus echoing, as many horrified people have been pointing out, the defining trope of ancient Jew-hatred depicting the Jews as sinister puppeteers controlling world events in their own interests. Arguably even worse in this vile carton was the depiction of Netanyahu surrounded by phalanxes of bombs formed out of the Israeli flag under the rubric ‘Vote Likud’ -- thus suggesting that Israel’s Prime Minister is some kind of murderous psychotic who is bombing Gaza to in order to win the forthcoming Israeli general election.

The ludicrous extent to which the left is going to deny the blindingly obvious, which is that Israel is taking military action in response to thousands of rockets and missiles bombarding its population as any other country would do, in order to impute some kind of cosmic malice to Netanyahu by constructing scenarios which are totally out to lunch, suggests that any psychosis is rather to be found amongst such people when it comes to attitudes towards the State of Israel.

Melanie Phillips

Source: http://melaniephillips.com/between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place

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

Here’s How—As With This Israel-Hamas War—Western Elites Are Baffled by the Middle East

by Barry Rubin


Update 2: Perhaps Hamas was hoping for a spectacular provocation.  After Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil arrived for a visit to the Gaza Strip, November 15, Hamas launched a barrage of rockets and mortars at Israel, perhaps trying to provoke an Israeli counterattack that might shake up or even injure the Egyptian leader and get Cairo to escalate its involvement in the war.
Update 1: A few sirens went off in Tel Aviv around 6:30 PM, November 15 — not the whole system or the one outside my window but those a few blocks away — and didn’t stay on very long. Then there were two loud but short booms, the sound of anti-rocket missiles being fired. Rumors followed.
This being the age of social media, people insisted that something must have happened because somebody in California said so. Some people said with certainty that a rocket hit in this or that place; one claimed he saw the smoke from a building that had been struck. In the end, it was announced that a rocket from the Gaza Strip had been shot down far to the south. The atmosphere was reminiscent of 1991 when three dozen Iraqi rockets did hit Israel, one of them a few blocks from my home, and anti-missile batteries could be heard nightly firing at incoming missiles from Iraq.

Of course, there’s nothing funny about a war. Less than an hour’s drive to the south people are under fire. There are casualties on both sides, including civilians. This is a serious matter, made no less so by its relative familiarity. Yet there is a difference between the horrors of war and imagining away a conflict, an inescapable situation, because one wants to do so. Only by confronting the reality can there be the best possible response to a crisis. Wishful thinking or ignoring real conflicts makes things worse.
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The new war between Hamas and Israel has a lot of important lessons for international diplomacy and U.S. policy today. It once again shows that a country, especially one faced by a hostile adversary who cannot be turned away by words or compromises, has limited choices. And in that case a government must do what it must do.

 

A key to the problem of Western comprehension of international realities is admirably summarized by a New York Times editorial on the subject:

No country should have to endure the rocket attacks that Israel has endured from militants in Gaza, most recently over the past four days. The question is how to stop them permanently.

The answer to that question is simple to understand, if not easy to implement. The attacks can only be stopped if Hamas is removed from power and replaced, given contemporary circumstances, by the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA is certainly no prize, but that’s a reasonable goal for what is often referred to as the international community.

Yes, Hamas won an election in 2007, but then it staged a violent coup and threw out the opposition, and has thus governed as an unelected dictatorship. It has no legal basis, since Hamas never accepted the Oslo Accords agreements. Hamas is also a terrorist group. And it daily voices not only its opposition to Israel’s existence but also advocates — and teaches the children of Gaza to carry out some day — the commission of genocide against all Jews.

So the answer to the Times’ question is a no-brainer, right? Of course, this response is not what the Timeshas in mind. Instead, the newspaper and like-minded people present the following list:

– Israel should negotiate with Hamas.

Great idea but an impossible one because of a factor Western leaders, academics, and journalists often do not take seriously nowadays: ideology. Hamas means what it says, intends to continue the violence for years in the belief it can win total victory, and is indifferent to the sacrifice of its own people. So in this case, negotiations are not an option.

– If there is a comprehensive Israel-Palestinian peace there would be no more war.

Actually, even if such an agreement were to be reached — which is impossible because the PA won’t make one — Hamas would step up attacks in an attempt to destroy the agreement.

The PA could not make a deal that would include the 40 percent of the Palestinians who live in Gaza. And Hamas would try to overthrow the PA in the West Bank, and might even succeed. Then Hamas, perhaps with the Fatah people who allied with it, would have a fully sovereign state to use as a platform for an intended war of genocide against Israel.

Part of the problem is that the West is not psychologically prepared to deal with fanatics, people who don’t measure the balance of forces before entering a war and are indifferent to the suffering of their own civilians. Westerners tend to use a materialistic yardstick: holding elections, having to govern themselves, a higher living standard, and more education will make people moderate. The problem is that this has been tried out in the Middle East — as it is being tried now — and it doesn’t work.

– Israel should just shut up and let Hamas attack it whenever that group so chooses or at most respond with only minimal force.

This concept is often implicit in coverage of the issue, as in the one prestigious newspaper whose main article explained that Israel’s killing of the military chief of Hamas, whose main job was to plan terrorist attacks on Israelis, threatened to create a regional crisis.

An acquaintance of mine bragged that nobody in her European country supported Israel. That means, of course, that they all supported Hamas. But what if they say that they actually just supported the people of Gaza? That would be like saying during World War Two bombing raids that one opposed them out of support for the people of Germany. The sympathy for civilians is understandable; the violence and casualties are a tragedy. Yet the root cause is a regime that both oppresses the people and sets off a war.

So given the fact that it does not want to reoccupy and govern Gaza (though one of the accusations thrown against Israel is that it still occupies Gaza!), Israel has limited choices. The best of the lot is to limit any material that gets into Gaza that can be used for war, and to retaliate as necessary to obtain several years of relative peace. That means, in the Times’ euphemism, that Hamas often observes a ceasefire — that is, in the minutes between rocket, mortar, and cross-border attacks by itself or the small groups it uses as an excuse for aggression.

Another part of the problem is the external situation. Egypt is ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood regime. The Gaza Strip is governed by a Muslim Brotherhood regime. See any pattern here? What saves the situation for the present is that the Egyptian government doesn’t want an all-out confrontation right now.

Just hours before the war began, Egypt received a pledge of $6 billion in aid from the European Union. This is, of course, a noble endeavor to help Egypt’s people, though it also puts billions of dollars in the hands of anti-Western, anti-Semitic extremists. Maybe it will moderate them; it is certain that the money will strengthen them.

As for the United States, it supports Egypt but it also supports Israel. So it will encourage a ceasefire, and probably after a few days there will be a ceasefire. Hamas will “partly” observe it until the next time it chooses to attack Israel. Perhaps by that point the Salafists in Egypt will be ready for a fight, and the Brotherhood regime will need to stir up some hysteria to help it fundamentally transform the country and to distract attention from its domestic dictatorship and failures.

So the lesson of this new Gaza war is that terrorist regimes must be removed from power. Otherwise, they will keep provoking war, terrorism, and instability. Having ruled out that option, the only alternative is periodic conflicts like the one going on now in the Gaza Strip.

Can Israel sustain this situation? Of course, that is basically the framework in which it has been living and prospering for 64 years. Is it preferable? Of course not. What is the world going to do to make it better? Nothing.

And what does Hamas’ behavior tell us about that of other Islamists in power? A great deal, once one factors in patience and subtlety on the part of such regimes as those in Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, and, perhaps soon Syria.

I said above that the lesson of the Gaza Strip is that terrorist, radical regimes should be removed from power. It goes without saying that they should not be helped into power by the West in the first place. Unfortunately, that is a lesson that the Obama administration still doesn’t understand.

Barry Rubin  is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, and a featured columnist for PajamasMedia at http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan)

Source: http://www.gloria-center.org/2012/11/here%E2%80%99s-how%E2%80%94as-with-this-israel-hamas-war%E2%80%94western-elites-are-baffled-by-the-middle-east/

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Israel Preparing to Significantly Expand Gaza Operation

by Lilach Shoval, Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti and Gideon Allon

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas • Message from Jerusalem to the Egyptians and Turks, who are trying to mediate truce between the sides, is that any conditions from Hamas are a non-starter • Some 40,000 Israeli troops amassed on Gaza border.

Israeli troops gather near the Gaza Strip border over the weekend.

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Photo credit: Lior Mizrahi

Soldiers near the Gaza border rest before a briefing.

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Photo credit: Ziv Koren

Children wave at troops headed to a gathering point near the Gaza border.

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Photo credit: Lior Mizrahi

IDF tanks gather near the border with Gaza ahead of a possible ground incursion.

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Photo credit: AFP

Soldiers train in urban warfare ahead of a possible Gaza invasion.

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Photo credit: Ziv Koren

Smoke billows in Gaza following an Israel Air Force strike.

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Photo credit: AP

The Israel Defense Forces are prepared for a major expansion of their operations in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, as Operation Pillar of Defense entered its fifth day.

One possible sign of this were reports from Arab and international media outlets that the IDF had taken over the radio frequencies in Gaza and was broadcasting warnings to residents living near the Israel border to move away, possibly in preparation for a ground offensive. The IDF has moved significant hardware and troop numbers to the Gaza border area.

Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said, "By now the IDF has attacked over 1,000 terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip and it is continuing its operations as we speak. It is achieving significant hits on weapons aimed at Israeli citizens, as well as on those who use these weapons and those who dispatch them. We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the [other] terrorist organizations, and the IDF is prepared for a significant expansion of its operations."

The prime minister also commented on his telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama over the weekend in which Obama affirmed Israel's right to defend itself.

"Over the weekend, I spoke again with U.S. President Barack Obama. I thanked him for his support of Israel's right to defend itself and for his contribution, and that of the American people, in developing Iron Dome," Netanyahu said. "I repeat and praise the restraint, determination and resilience of Israel's citizens on the homefront, and I repeat my request to all of you to follow the instructions from IDF Homefront Command because it saves lives."

On the possible launch of a ground operation in Gaza, in addition to the IDF's current surgical airstrikes, Netanyahu said, "The operation in the Gaza Strip is continuing and we are prepared to expand it. I appreciate the rapid and impressive mobilization of the reservists, who have come from all over the country and turned out for the mission at hand. Reserve and conscripted soldiers are ready for any order they might receive."

Meanwhile, as rockets continued to hit Israel on Sunday, with two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv but intercepted by Iron Dome, it appeared that both sides were not drawing nearer to any cease-fire, despite reports a day earlier in the Arab media suggesting a truce was in the works. A senior Palestinian official told the French news agency AFP that Egypt, Turkey and Qatar were working to reach a truce between Hamas and Israel by Sunday or Monday. "It is possible to reach understandings for calm," the unnamed Palestinian official said.

The reports said deliberations were being held aimed at reaching a cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel, including the possibility that a senior Israeli official would visit Cairo. The reports were denied in Israel, but the option of Israel holding its fire was not rejected if Hamas stops its rocket attacks. 

Simultaneously, reserve troops continued to amass along the Gaza border over the weekend.

"As of now, we have struck more than 1,000 targets, so Hamas should do the math over whether it is worth it or not to agree to a cease-fire," said Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

"If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack," he wrote on Twitter.

Fifty Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 14 children, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, Palestinian officials said. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three civilians and wounding dozens of , including a rescue worker who was seriously wounded in Shaar Hanegev in the south on Sunday.

One rocket salvo fired on Sunday also wounded two people after hitting a house in the coastal city of Ashkelon, police said.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying, "There is hope,” but that it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

At a Gaza news conference, Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida voiced defiance, saying: "This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy, and it is only the beginning."

Hamas said Israeli missiles destroyed the office of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday, two days after he met there with Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, and struck police headquarters.

According to Arab news outlets, Hamas' political bureau chief Khaled Mashal, his deputy Moussa Abu Marzouk, and the head of the Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Salah, met in Cairo on Saturday with the head of Egyptian intelligence, Gen. Mohamed Raafat Shehata. Egyptian sources said that senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials would agree to a cease-fire on condition that Israel lifted the siege from Gaza and promise to abstain from targeted killings, and that Egypt completely opened the Rafah border crossing — a move that Cairo has so far opposed. Hamas also demanded that the international community ensure that Israel uphold the conditions and stop airstrikes on Gaza.

A senior Egyptian source confirmed the reports: "While Hamas is interested in a cease-fire based on certain conditions to be presented to Israel, the message from Jerusalem to the Egyptians and Turks, who are trying to mediate between the sides, is that any conditions from Hamas are a non-starter."

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi said Saturday, "There are indications that a cease-fire is possible in the near future."

Israeli officials in the Prime Minister's Office and from the Defense and Foreign Ministries said that no negotiations for a cease-fire were currently underway and that no Israeli representative was in Cairo. However, Israeli officials said that if Egypt forced a cease-fire on Hamas, it could be assumed that Israel would accept it. 

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said over the weekend, "If you launch a ground operation, you can't stop in the middle. In Operation Cast Lead [in 2008-9] this is what happened, and we paid a heavy price in international public opinion and the objective wasn't reached."

Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau, also from Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party, said at the cabinet meeting, "We are not yet at the point of a cease-fire. A cease-fire now would be a serious mistake. The goals of the operation must be achieved at any price, even with a ground incursion, if it can't be avoided. We can't repeat the mistakes of the past, when we stopped operations in the middle, before ensuring that we had destroyed the terrorist infrastructure and before ensuring that we had made sure they could no longer smuggle weapons. This matter requires perseverance and patience."

Meanwhile, the IDF continued preparing for a possible ground invasion over the weekend. After the government authorized the enlistment of 75,000 reserve troops, some 40,000 have amassed so far near the border with Gaza. According to the London Times, on Friday the IDF was directed to be ready for a ground incursion "within an hour's notice." 

Appearing before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said, "In the past year and a half, all of the combat troops have undergone training on mission-related models to prepare them for a ground operation. The sense that we are getting from the soldiers is, 'Let us in.'"

It appears that senior IDF officers, among them Gantz, believe that if a diplomatic solution cannot be reached, a ground operation would be required, which according to the plan would be conducted on a larger scale than Operation Cast Lead.

GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Tal Russo said: "We have a plan in place that is incremental in its use of force. In Gaza there is a huge arsenal of weapons and missiles, and we will have to take care of it with whatever means necessary. The Fajr missile threat has mainly been destroyed, but there could be several more here and there."

Alongside the army's preparations intended to increase pressure on Hamas, it seems the IDF's higher command predefined a relatively modest goal for the mission: improvement of the security situation based on strengthening the IDF's deterrence capabilities. There is no talk of toppling Hamas or trying to implement any other type of geopolitical rearrangement. At this stage, the IDF appears to be satisfied with the operation's achievements, which went according to plan, and apparently believes that from this point on the success of the past few days can only be blurred.

On Sunday, the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza, which was closed over the weekend due to the security situation, was reopened and Gaza is expected to receive shipments of food and medicine. This arrangement was coordinated by Maj. Gen. Eitan Dangot, head of the Civil Administration, and senior Palestinian Authority officials.

Lilach Shoval, Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti and Gideon Allon

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=6452

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

It’s Jihad Against the Jews, Stupid

by Ruthie Blum

Several similarities between curret events and those of four years ago cannot be ignored. During the same period in 2008, Barack Obama had just been elected president of the U.S., Hamas rocket barrages from Gaza were about to precipitate Operation Cast Lead, and the Israeli elections were on the horizon.

But there is one other eerily tragic likeness — the slaughter of Rivka Holtzberg in Mumbai in November 2008 and that of Mirah Scharf in Kiryat Malachi on Thursday — that should remind us what the Palestinians’ real war against Israel is all about. 

Holtzberg and her husband, who ran the Chabad House in Mumbai, were murdered in their home by Pakistani Islamists in front of their two-year-old son. She was five months’ pregnant. The orphaned boy, who was rescued by his Indian nanny, was brought to Israel to be raised by his grandparents.

Scharf and her husband also ran the Chabad House in New Delhi. During a home visit to Israel, Scharf, also pregnant, was killed by a missile that struck the apartment where she was staying in Kiryat Malachi. Her husband and three young children were all wounded in the same attack. As each was hospitalized, none was able to attend her funeral.

The horrible irony here is that Scharf had scheduled this trip to enable her to do two things: attend a memorial service marking the four-year-anniversary of the deaths of her colleagues, the Holtzbergs, and to give birth in Israel. Instead, the 25-year-old and her soon-to-be-born baby were laid to rest in Jerusalem on Thursday evening.

On Friday, a delegation headed by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil arrived in Gaza to “broker a cease-fire” between Hamas and Israel. To call this ridiculous would be the understatement of the century. There is no need for “brokering.” The minute the rockets stop flying into Israel, there will be an end to Israeli strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza, pure and simple.

But Egypt finds itself in a bit of a bind. On the one hand, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government has no problem with the street demonstrations in Cairo calling for Israel’s destruction. On the other, President Mohammed Morsi can’t afford to forfeit all the billions of dollars and euros he is about to receive to help keep his people from starving to death and rebelling against him. So acting as some kind of mediator with his close allies in Gaza provides a good show for America and Europe.

Aside from taking cynicism to new heights, this charade is yet another indication that the world still doesn’t get it. The conflict with Israel on the part of the Arabs has nothing to do with Gaza blockades or West Bank settlements. The Middle East, which has been falling like dominoes into the hands of Islamist parties, is on a religious path of jihad against all infidels.

Their first stated order of business is to wipe out the Jews. Indeed, the Hamas charter includes the hadith (oral directives handed down from the Prophet Muhammad) according to which, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'” 

It is this tenet that is being chanted by imams across the globe. It is this belief that jihadists the world over take literally and act upon accordingly.

Indeed, the Holtzbergs were not gunned down by Pakistanis in India four years ago because of the borders of the State of Israel. They, like Mirah Scharf in Kiryat Malachi this week, were murdered for being Jews. 

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the Arab Spring," available on Amazon and in bookstores in Europe and North America.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2887

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

Minorities in Pakistan

by Saman Ataurehman

Due to increasing extremism and intolerance, members of minority communities are not able to find even simple labor jobs, even if employers would like to hire them, without their lives being threatened.

Liaqat Masih, the name he gave, said that he and his refined and elegant wife had given up their positions in the school system and moved to Lahore to build a better future their son. Minority communities migrated to the big cities hoping there would be less discrimination there.
At first, he said, he could not find a job, apparently because of his name, Masih [Jesus], until he joined The Morgan Bread Factory as an Assistant Administrative Manager in February 2011.
After a few days at this job, he said, a part-time worker, who was a cleric and prayer leader in a mosque nearby, demanded that the canteen manager to keep separate utensils for him, due to his Christian faith. When he brought this matter to the attention of the owner of the factory, the owner immediately fired the part-time worker; but after a few months, the same complaint surfaced through another worker. That worker, too, was made to quit, and Liaqat was encouraged to stay in his job, especially as he had managed to reduce theft in the factory by half.

Soon, however, complaints against him became routine. His coworkers began accusing him of preaching Christianity and favoring America. He began receiving death threats, he said, but still did not quit the job. "I did not want to die of starvation," he said.

In November 2011, the owner of the factory received a letter demanding that Liaqat be expelled or assassinated. The owner of the factor told him it was impossible to provide adequate security, so Liaqat Masih was fired from his job.

He said he is still receiving death threats and is unable to find work: he has been threatened with death if he does. The only way to work, he was told, would be to embrace Islam.

As early as 2005, the bishop of Peshawar, Bishop Munarwar Rumalshah, had stated in an interview with The News (Aug 7, 2005): "If I am asked to single out one major point of discrimination against my community, it is that jobs are not available to its members. As a result, the struggle for survival has left us out. If you close the tap of economic survival on us, there is no need of physically killing us. So all this talk of protection is meaningless [unless something is done about the economic welfare of Christian community]."

During the last two decades, a number Christians have migrated to Lahore in search of a livelihood. The increase of Christians has raised their presence there to about 10% of the city. Christians are about 1.5% of the population of Pakistan, but due to increasing extremism and intolerance, members of minority communities are not able to find even simple labor jobs, even if employers would like to hire them, without their lives being threatened.

Social justice now apparently includes demands for firing workers, denying them promotion, excluding them from renting places to live.

Even though the factory owner was willing to retain Liquat, his vulnerability in being denied the ability to earn his bread is another way to kill him.

Saman Ataurehman

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3454/pakistan-minorities

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

CAMERA: NY Times Coverage of Operation “Pillar of Defense” Whitewashes Hamas Terror

by jns.org


A Nov. 14 New York Times online news story that covered Israel’s “Pillar of Defense” operation, which came in response to an onslaught of rockets launched on the Jewish state by Hamas, in its headline described the operation as a “Ferocious Israeli Assault on Gaza.”

On its editorial page, the Times used similar language, saying Israel “launched one of the most ferocious assaults on Gaza since its invasion four years ago.” The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) noted that the newspaper described Hamas terror chief Ahmed Jabari, who was killed in the Israel operation, “deceivingly as simply a ‘military commander.’”

“Disregard that [Jabari] was involved in multiple terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, including a 1998 attack on a school bus that killed two children,” CAMERA wrote on its blog, regarding the Times editorial. “Ignore the fact he commanded the operation in which Gilad Shalit was abducted and two other IDF soldiers killed. Forget that he ordered the launching of rockets into Israeli cities. All the above facts went unmentioned.”

The Times editorial also said Hamas “has mostly adhered to an informal cease-fire with Israel after the war there in the winter of 2008-09,” when it reality “the number of rockets launched into Israel had been steadily increasing to more than 650 fired during 2011 and more than 800 fired in 2012,” according to CAMERA.

jns.org

Source: http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/11/16/camera-ny-times-coverage-of-operation-pillar-of-defense-whitewashes-hamas-terror/

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