Terrible news out of Jerusalem

The world’s useful idiots never get it.  Israel targets Palestinian soldiers, and is terribly troubled when she inadvertently kills the civilians amongst whom the fighters hide.  The Palestinians deliberately target civilians, and try to kill the largest number possible.  Today, they succeeded:

A bus explosion in Jerusalem has caused dozens of casualties, police said Wednesday.

Scores of ambulances converged on the area near the central bus station and a city conference hall in a Jewish neighborhood of downtown Jerusalem, Reuters reported, citing Israeli TV and radio.

People were lying on the ground and taken away on stretchers, according to The Associated Press.

The explosion appears to be the first bus bombing in several years and comes amid rising tension between Hamas militants and Israel.

Israel is fighting a principled war; if Sherman’s March through Georgia is any guide, the Palestinians are the ones who, ultimately, will be fighting a successful war.  Wars end, not when the military gives up, but when the civilians give up.  That’s why the Palestinians target that population.  As long as Israel goes after buildings and specific fighters, she stiffens resistance, I think, without achieving a military goal.

Having said that, I’m not sure I see an option for Israel.  She’s in an untenable situation, made worse by the fact that the world forgives the mass murderers and pillories the principled fighters.

 

Gazan suffering

The popular meme amongst the unholy cabal that is Islam and the Left is that Israel is a murderous genocidal regime that is currently using the blockade to impose unimaginable suffering on the Gazans.  Fortunately, modern communications allow us to see the full extent of that “suffering” (h/t Sadie):

By the way, Gaza is governed by Hamas, and I thought I’d share with you some gems from the Hamas charter:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).

“The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. ”

“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

“After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.”

“Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.’ (related by al-Bukhari and Muslim).”

Random fascinating stuff out there, plus a few opinions of my own about the California Academy of Sciences *UPDATED*

Although it’s been open for more than a year now, I went for the first time today to the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  My visit there was an interesting contrast to my first visit, some years ago, to the newly rebuilt De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.

Although I can’t find it now (I think it was on my old Word Press blog), my review of the De Young Museum was that, on the outside, it looks like a series of stacked chicken coops but that, on the inside, it is an exceptionally lovely museum, with beautiful flow and lighting.  And since I go to see the art and not the exterior, it’s basically a very satisfying experience to visit the place.  It makes the art accessible, which is all one can ask for.

I have the exact opposite view of the newly rebuilt Academy of Sciences.  On the outside, the designers managed to create a facade that is both classical and streamlined in a very modern way.  It nestles contently on the eastern side of the Park’s main concourse, and is a chic, appealing visual treat.  Inside, however, it is utterly chaotic.  Various exhibits all seem to struggle to occupy the same space.  There is no flow whatsoever, which is disastrous for a building that is meant to cater, not only to crowds, but to crowds composed, in significant part, of highly kinetic little children.

The underground aquarium, for example, is a maze of short tunnels, each of which has exhibits placed randomly in the center of the walkway, as well as along the sides.  Tossed about by the milling crowds, it is impossible to discern where one is or what one is seeing.  Although I grasped, intermittently, that there was some overarching geographic organization (e.g, fresh water, salt water, tide pools, etc.), everything was so noisy and chaotic, I couldn’t make sense of the exhibits.  The old Academy may have had a pokey rectangular layout, but it sure was easy to move through, to see things, and to understand.

Nor has the Academy improved the food problem that always vexed it.  For as long as I can remember, the old Academy offered vile food at a shabby underground food court dominated by a stuffed grizzly.  The new Academy now has three food venues:  a fancy hot dog stand, a buffet style restaurant, and a very pricey restaurant.  Oh, did I say that only the last named was very pricey?  Forgive me.  They all are.  If you want anything more than a $3.00 pork bun, feeding a family of three in the Academy will run you close to $50.  The prices are justified by the fact that everything is organic this and organic that, but the fact is that the all-organic ham and cheese sandwich tastes remarkably like an ordinary ham and cheese sandwich, only $4.00 more than I usually pay.  Of course, the food prices are consistent with the admission prices.  It cost me almost $50.00 to take my two kids there, which is a pretty hefty price tag for an experience that left me with an eyeball popping headache.

The new Academy also disappointed me for a very personal reason:  they’ve done away entirely with the old gem and mineral collection.  Although not of the scale or caliber of the amazing gem and mineral collection at the New York Museum of Natural History, this was a lovely, little gathering of precious, semi-precious and simply interesting stones.  For me, it was always one of the highlights of a visit to the Academy, and I sorely missed it today.

Speaking of all-powerful centralized government, if you haven’t thought long and hard about the implications of Obama’s appointing a “Food Czar,” you should.

What I also disliked about the Academy (and what I also dislike about the newly, and nicely, refurbished San Francisco Zoo), is the hectoring tone all these places take.  In the old days, the message was, “Aren’t these natural wonders great?”  Nowadays, the relentless message is “These natural wonders are great, but you’re destroying them by your very existence.”  I don’t take kindly to spending massive amounts of money only to be insulted.

The only part of the Academy that I thought was wonderful, although it too had design problems, was the rain forest dome, which was almost, standing alone, worth the price of admission.   It’s a clear plastic dome that has a spiral walkway that takes one up through three levels teaming with trees, plants, birds, butterflies, moths, frogs and lizards.  It’s truly beautiful and really well done.  The only down side is that the only way to get out is to stand in line at the very top, waiting for an elevator.  The lines are long and chaotic.  Additionally, since the elevator is at the very top of a rain forest dome, it’s incredibly hot, steamy and, as with the rest of this echo-y, clamorous place, incredibly noisy.

I will say that what made the trip there a much greater pleasure than it would otherwise have been was the fact that I met up with my brother-in-law and niece there.  My two were delighted in the company of their cousin, and I always feel lucky when I get to spend time with my brother-in-law, no matter where that time is spent.  What a nice man he is.

Whining is finished now.  This is where I put in all the links for the things I read today, many of which readers brought to my notice (thank you!), but that I really didn’t get a chance to think about.

I think I am the last conservative blogger in America to link to it, but link to it I will.  You must read Angelo Codevilla’s America’s Ruling Class — and the Perils of Revolution, which pretty accurately spells out the state of American politics.  You won’t be less worried or frustrated when you’re done reading it, but you will be enlightened.

Did I mention whining a couple of paragraphs above?  That’s actually something important to think about.  Although I do it all the time, I’m aware that whining is not an attractive quality.  A couple of PR and public policy experts have figured out that Israel has been whining lately.  The whines are completely righteous and justified, but they fall into a vacuum of ignorance.  Listeners are not sympathetic.  It turns out that the effective way for Israel to deal with her plight is to do exactly what the Palestinians and their fellow travelers have been doing for so long:  she needs to demonize the opposition.  And what’s so great about this tactic is that, rather than making things up, as her enemies do, all that Israel has to do is broadcast the opposition’s actual words and deeds.  When people see what Israel is up against, as opposed to just hearing how Israel suffers, they become remarkably more sympathetic to Israel’s situation and dire security needs.

By the way, those same Palestinians who have managed to convince just about everyone in the world that the Israelis are worse than Hitler, have managed to hide from the world’s view the fact that, with Israel as their enemy, they are living high on the hog, enjoying standards far in excess of those Arab Muslims in lands that don’t have the good fortune to have Israel as their next door neighbor and enemy.

I loooove Andrew Breitbart.  Seriously.  I’m just crazy about the guy.  I think he is one of the most brilliant political thinkers in America right now.  He’s figured out what the PR folks are talking about:  show the opposition’s ugly side, using real footage of them being really ugly.  And to that end, immediately after the NAACP made waves complaining about unprovable and almost certainly non-existent Tea Party racism, he came out with actual footage of vile racism courtesy of — the NAACP.  Genius.  Sheer genius.  Here’s just one example of the ugly, discriminatory race obsession that characterizes the NAACP and its fellow travelers:

UPDATE:  Andrew Breitbart jumped the gun.  The snippet he got was taken out of context and, when put back into context, shows Sherrod explaining that, having once been a racist, she’s learned the error of her ways.  It also appears that the NAACP audience, which should have been the real focus of this video, as the video was a counter-attack to the NAACP’s decision to lambaste the Tea Party on racism grounds, murmurs approvingly when Sherrod reveals her new, enlightened views of race.

If you need it, here’s a little more on the Democrats’ entire ugly obsession with race, one that turns on its head Martin Luther King’s vision of an America in which people are judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  Oh, and here’s one more thing about that race obsession, and how Obama’s administration uses it to consolidate power, while sowing civil dissent.

When I wrote my post about burqas as a weapon, not just a type of clothing, I dragged in discussions of mosques and minarets too.  I entirely forget to mention in that article the mosque that is plotted for Ground Zero.  Pat Condell did not forget:

Even the New York Times periodically recognizes that federalizing school funding with no regard whatsoever for the situation at the ground is unfair, disruptive and damaging.  What staggers me is that these same NYT types are incapable of recognizing an overarching principle, which is that reactive government closer to home is always more understanding than directive central government far away.

Whether you’re in the military or not, don’t believe this administration when it claims to love the military and cries crocodile tears over its sufferings.

It took me almost half a lifetime to figure out that the NRA has always been right:  “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”  I needed to see crime rates soaring in London, in Chicago, and in Washington, D.C., as well as the chaos in post-Katrina New Orleans neighborhoods that did not have gun owners to finally understand this simple principle.  More and more, statistics are revealing the obvious:  a law-abiding, armed citizenry is safer than a law-abiding unarmed citizenry.  Contrary to liberal fears that arms will automatically turn us into Liberia or some equally horrific anarchic society, it’s clear that what effects such a change is leaving arms only to the criminals.

We have not forgotten Gilad Shalit

StandWithUs is circulating a petition directed to the International Committee of the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the United Nations, aimed at putting pressure on Hamas to free Gilad Shalit. Given that those organizations are all rabidly antisemitic and anti-Israel within their own four walls, I think it’s an excellent idea to apply as much external pressure as possible.

Please take a minute to sign the petition.

Bizarre British comedy video that is actually intelligently pro-Israel

I’m really not quite sure what to make of this comedy video.  It’s from England, yet it’s fact-filled and pro-Israel.  I wonder how long before these two people are banned from YouTube:

Probing questions for the useful idiots aboard the Hamas Flotilla — by guest blogger Lulu

1. Are you aware that Iran was caught smuggling weapons into Gaza?
2. Do you think Israelis have any legitimate reason to be concerned that Hamas may try to receive weapons via boat?
3. Did you know that Hamas activists have shot about 4000 rockets into southern Israel since Israel withdrew form Gaza?
4. Does that trouble you?
5. Do you think it is possible that weapons might have been aboard your ship?
6. Here are pictures of an Israeli soldiers being beaten with metal poles, another held behind a door by armed guards, and another lying in a pool of his own blood. How do you reconcile this with the concept of peace advocacy?
7. There has been much news made of Helen Thomas’ statement essentially stating that she believes Israel should be ethnically cleansed of Jews. Do you share that sentiment?
8. Do you think Israel has a legitimate right to exist? What about Australia? New Zealand? Canada? The United States? Jordan? Pakistan?
9. Is there a reason you don’t object to living in the United States when you are not a Native American?
10. If Israelis are killed by weapons brought into Gaza because you succeed in ending the blockade would you feel morally responsible?
11. What is your opinion of suicide bombings?
12. As a peace activist would you be willing to advocate for the release of Gilad Shalit who has been totally denied his human rights for the past 4 years, denied any contact with the Red
13. Cross or anyone else, and held in unknown conditions by Hamas?
14. Would you be willing to visit Israel and hear their side of the story?
15. Are you aware that Hamas’ charter calls for the mass murder of Israelis and Jews?
16. How do you explain your support of this murderous regime while still claiming to be for peace?
17. If Israel were ethnically cleansed where do you propose the Israelis should go?
18. Where do you suggest Jews with ancestry from Arab lands that do not accept Jewish residents should go?
19. What about those Israelis whose families have lived in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the land of Israel for thousands of years?
20. Do you like Jews?

(Bookworm here: What do you think the odds are that any news journal will ask the useful idiots these questions?)

With friends like these, who needs enemies?

Yesterday, White House officials were telling Jake Tapper that Obama would support Israel.  Any minute moments of hope I cherished that the administration actually meant what it said were swiftly dashed.  This is Obama’s version of support:

The Obama administration considers Israel’s blockade of Gaza to be untenable and plans to press for another approach to ensure Israel’s security while allowing more supplies into the impoverished Palestinian area, senior American officials said Wednesday.

The officials say that Israel’s deadly attack on a flotilla trying to break the siege and the resulting international condemnation create a new opportunity to push for increased engagement with the Palestinian Authority and a less harsh policy toward Gaza.

As is this:

President Barack Obama said Thursday that the deadly Israeli raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip was “tragic”, but he stopped short of condemning the actions of Israeli forces.

While Obama said the deaths of nine people were unnecessary, he said the U.S. wants to wait for “an investigation of international standards” to determine the facts. Israel, he said, should agree to such an investigation.

“They recognize that this can’t be good for Israel’s long-term security,” Obama said in an interview with CNN’s Larry King airing Thursday night.

Just so you know, even though the Obama administration seems to have misunderstood the facts on the ground, there is a good reason for the blockade:

Hezbollah in Lebanon, which shares a land border with Syria and is not under blockade, has a gigantic arsenal of rockets and missiles, more than most governments in the Middle East, and that arsenal includes missiles that can reach every single inch of Israeli territory, including Jerusalem, downtown Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion International Airport, and the Dimona nuclear power plant. The next war between Israel and Hezbollah will likely mean missiles, artillery shells, and payloads from air strikes will explode all over the Eastern Mediterranean, making last year’s small war in Gaza look even smaller.

Hamas has a relatively tiny arsenal of crude rockets, but if the Gaza Strip were not under military blockade, it could acquire whatever weapons Syria and Iran felt like sending by ship. Gaza could bristle with as many destructive projectiles as Hezbollah has. Food and medicines are allowed into the Strip already, so the most significant difference between Gaza now and a Gaza without a blockade will be the importation of weapons and war material.

More Israelis would be likely to die during the ensuing hostilities, and an even larger number of Palestinians would be likely to die when Israel fights back harder against a better armed and more dangerous adversary.

And again, let me remind everyone (although I know Obama isn’t listening to little ol’ me), the blockade blocks weapons, not anything else.

Having now gotten a glimpse at Obama’s “support,” I have to ask:  What the Hell does life look like if you’re on Obama’s enemies list, rather than receiving his “support”?  Does he come in the night and flay you alive while robotically reciting his boring, pompous meaningless speeches?  I’m no longer pretending that Obama is inept, or misguided, or stupid, although I think he is all those things.  I’m convinced he is evil, as only a true antisemite can be.

It’s a sad day when the only person in a presidential administration making any sense and showing any signs of human decency is Joe Biden, who really stepped up and said the right thing this time:

“I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest. I put all this back on two things: one, Hamas, and, two, Israel’s need to be more generous relative to the Palestinian people who are in trouble in Gaza,” Biden said, according to a transcript of the interview, in which he went on to discuss Hamas’s control of Gaza:

“[The Israelis have] said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship–if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight–3,000 rockets on my people,’ ” Biden said.

Kudos to Biden.  He’s not right often, but when he’s right, he lands it square in the middle of the target.

To clear your brain from the miasma that is Obama-think, please read Michael Oren’s op-ed, which the New York Times at least had the decency to publish.

God bless Israeli TV, which is using humor as a line of attack against the flotilla lies

Please, please, please, please, spread this video:

Dead men talking *UPDATED*

These men aren’t dead yet, but they will be if they’re ever released back to Hamas’ TLC.  The men of whom I speak are Gazans whom Israel captured during the recent Gaza incursion, and who have spilled the beans about Hamas’ myriad war crimes and financial defalcations — all of which consistently starve, murder, and make targets of the Palestinian people:

Nuaf Atar spoke about the use of Gazan schools to shoot rockets at Israel. Zabhi Atar revealed that Hamas used food coupons to entice Palestinians to join its ranks and Hamad Zalah said Hamas took control of UNRWA food supplies transferred to Gaza and refused to distribute them to people affiliated with Fatah.

These are three examples of testimony from Hamas and Islamic Jihad men who were captured by the IDF during Operation Cast Lead. Details of their interrogations have been released for publication by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).

[snip]

Nuaf Atar, 25, lives in Atatra, in the northwest Gaza Strip, and was captured by paratroopers on January 11. In his interrogation by the Shin Bet, Atar said Hamas government officials “took over” humanitarian aid Israel allowed in to the Strip and sold it, when it is supposed to be distributed for free.

Hamas set up rocket launchers and fired rockets into Israel from within school compounds since the operatives knew that the Israel Air Force would not bomb the schools, he said.

Palestinians who opposed Hamas’s use of their land and homes as launch pads were shot in the legs, Atar added.

[snip]

Hamad Zalah, 29, is also a resident of Jabalya and was captured by the IDF on January 12. During his interrogation, he revealed that together with his brother, he was tortured by Hamas at a headquarters in Jabalya for his affiliation with Fatah and his intention to light a memorial candle for Yasser Arafat.

He said that he was whipped and beaten with electrical cords. In 2007, Hamas operatives shot and killed his brother, who was a security guard at the home of a Palestinian Authority official in Gaza.

Since June 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza, the terror group, Zalah said, also took control of all humanitarian aid sent into the Strip and refused to distribute it to Palestinians affiliated with Fatah.

You can read the rest of this illuminating inside look into Hamas rule here.  Then, if you’re truly disgusted, you’ll probably get some savage joy out of watching this video (h/t American Thinker):

UPDATE:  For those of you who arrived to late to see this video, the only possible violation could have been that it offended Muslim sensibilities.  It should a Hamas man firing a mortar at 6 second intervals, with every firing preceded by an off-camera man crying “Allah Akbar.”  At about the 7th round, something happened, and fireball fills the screen, at which point the video cuts off.  No blood; just a martyr on his way to meet the virgins.

AP serves as Hamas propaganda arm — again

Here’s a sickening AP story blaming Israel for the “trauma” inflicted on Gazan children.  The story’s only acknowledgment that Hamas itself placed the children in the line of fire is the following paragraph, one that is carefully crafted to make it seem as if it was Israel’s fault that the poor Hamas fighters had to crowd into those child-infested residential areas:

Facing the Israeli invasion, Hamas gunmen often operated from densely populated Gaza neighborhoods, drawing massive Israeli fire that killed and wounded large numbers of civilians, along with fighters. Tens of thousands fled their homes, seeking shelter in U.N. schools.

Even worse, the whole article fails even to mention that Hamas has been raining rockets on Israel for years, with schools as its favorite target, or that it is Hamas that has created a perpetual war culture that puts its children at risk.

The story is a gross piece of propaganda that is entirely consistent with AP’s manifest bias.  And I say all this with due sympathy for the poor children who are victimized, not by Israel — a nation that called in its attacks in advance to give the children time to escape — but by their own countrymen, who gleefully use them as intentional targets precisely so that they can garner this kind of maudlin, dishonest (but sadly far-reaching) press coverage.

Food for thought while I don’t blog

I’ve had some family management issues taking up my time today (all is good, but, boy, was the management time-consuming), but my faithful friends send me wonderful, thought-provoking things that I can pass along to you.  Here’s a good video trying to help Americans understand what Israelis have suffered for the last ten years — without even touching upon the fact that, over ten years, Israelis have experienced an ever increasing barrage, with rockets of steadily greater range:

Ralph Peters rips the Left (and Hamas) a new one

Peters has said everything I’d like to say.

Land of the stupid

I can guarantee you that Mr. Jim Bramell, a Mill Valley resident spouting this kind of belly-gazing crap, was not on the streets protesting at any time during the last several years as Hamas fired thousands of missiles into Israel, destroying myriad little castles (for footage of some of those destroyed little Israeli castles, many of which were intentionally targeted schools, check out this post):

“Everybody has a right to a home,” Bramell said. “My home is my castle and the Palestinians’ home is their castle.”

These people turn my stomach, they really do.  Their little brains are bounded by a willful lack of information, compounded by a complete absence either of morality or coherent thinking.

UPDATE:  Typos fixed.  Rage, phone calls, and laundry all put me into incoherent territory.

This is why Hastings is a second rate law school *UPDATED*

I’m sorry, but when a law professor writes this kind of prima facie garbage, you have to wonder about an administration that keeps him on board.  Without even delving into actual facts, let me just fisk the relevant parts of Bisharat’s article regarding Israel and war crimes to reveal logical inconsistencies and outright gibberish:

Israel’s current assault on the Gaza Strip cannot be justified by self-defense. Rather, it involves serious violations of international law, including war crimes. Senior Israeli political and military leaders may bear personal liability for their offenses, and they could be prosecuted by an international tribunal, or by nations practicing universal jurisdiction over grave international crimes.  Hamas fighters have also violated the laws of warfare, but their misdeeds do not justify Israel’s acts.  [This is Bisharat’s premise.  Let’s see if he can support it.]

The United Nations charter preserved the customary right of a state to retaliate against an “armed attack” from another state. The right has evolved to cover nonstate actors operating beyond the borders of the state claiming self-defense, and arguably would apply to Hamas. However, an armed attack involves serious violations of the peace. Minor border skirmishes are common, and if all were considered armed attacks, states could easily exploit them — as surrounding facts are often murky and unverifiable — to launch wars of aggression. [Classic lawyer’s trick:  use a wimpy term to define your own parameters.  We’re just looking at a “border skirmish here” — which ignores the Hamas charter calling for Israel’s total destruction.  In other words, on Hamas’ side at least, this is not a mere border skirmish over a few acres of land.] That is exactly what Israel seems to be currently attempting.

Israel had not suffered an “armed attack” immediately prior to its bombardment of the Gaza Strip. [Another lawyer’s trick, akin to “it depends what is” means.  What does he mean by immediately?  Within the five minutes before Israel’s attack perhaps.  Can outside of that five minute margin and you discover that Hamas had unilaterally absolved itself of the ceasefire and increased the number of missiles going into Israel, this time adding in long-range missiles, probably from Iran.]  Since firing the first Kassam rocket into Israel in 2002, Hamas and other Palestinian groups have loosed thousands of rockets and mortar shells into Israel, causing about two dozen Israeli deaths and widespread fear. As indiscriminate attacks on civilians, these were war crimes. During roughly the same period, Israeli forces killed about 2,700 Palestinians in Gaza by targeted killings, aerial bombings, in raids, etc., according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.  [I think he’s saying that it’s unfair that Israel was a more effective fighter.  Please note that even Bisharat doesn’t have the chutzpah to pretend that Israel copied Hamas’ tactic of indiscriminately targeting civilians.]

But on June 19, 2008, Hamas and Israel commenced a six-month truce. Neither side complied perfectly. Israel refused to substantially ease the suffocating siege of Gaza imposed in June 2007. Hamas permitted sporadic rocket fire — typically after Israel killed or seized Hamas members in the West Bank, where the truce did not apply. Either one or no Israelis were killed (reports differ) by rockets in the half year leading up to the current attack.  [Did you catch all the double-talk?  Behind the babble lies the fact that, while Israel never violated the truce, simply keeping her borders intact, and fired on territories in which there was no truce, Hamas used Israel’s incursions into territory that had no truce to justify firing into Israel — which, if you didn’t catch it, broke the truce.  In other words, behind all the double-talk in the paragraph, you discover that only Hamas broke the truce.]

Israel then broke the truce on Nov. 4, raiding the Gaza Strip and killing a Palestinian. Hamas retaliated with rocket fire; Israel then killed five more Palestinians. In the following days, Hamas continued rocket fire — yet still no Israelis died. Israel cannot claim self-defense against this escalation, because it was provoked by Israel’s own violation.  [Now we’re going to phase two of the double-talk.  We’ve established that Israel never broke the truce.  Hamas retaliated on behalf of attacks against people who were not parties to the truce, effectively breaking the truce.  But in Bisharat’s view, which Israel retaliated against Hamas, which had already broken the truce, it was Israel that broke the truce.  Worse, Israel actually functioned efficiently, unlike Hamas which, despite firing thousands of missiles into Israel, aimed at schools and civilian communities, was unable to murder as many civilians as it intentionally targeted.]

An armed attack that is not justified by self-defense is a war of aggression. [So, the fact that Gaza broke the truce, and fired rockets at civilians nevertheless does not trigger Israel’s war of self-defense.  That’s true, only in Bisharat’s skewed view where, factually, Israel does nothing to break the truce while Hamas does everything to break the truce, but theoretically, Hamas is morally incapable of breaking the truce, whereas anything Israel does breaks the truth.] Under the Nuremberg Principles affirmed by U.N. Resolution 95, aggression is a crime against peace.

Israel has also failed to adequately discriminate between military and nonmilitary targets. Israel’s American-made F-16s and Apache helicopters have destroyed mosques, the education and justice ministries, a university, prisons, courts and police stations. [Bisharat lives in an alternate universe where there isn’t video footage confirming, over and over again, that Hamas has been using its mosques, ministries, schools, prisons, etc., to house weapons and fighters, to cover up weapons smuggling tunnels, and to serve as launching pads for morters and rockets.  In other words, these aren’t mosques, ministries, schools, prisons, etc., at all, they’re fortresses and, as such, legitimate targets.  They’re the building equivalents of spies, and deserve to be shot on sight for being out of uniform] These institutions were part of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure. And when nonmilitary institutions are targeted, civilians die. Many killed in the last week were young police recruits with no military roles. Civilian employees in the Hamas-led government deserve the protections of international law like all others. Hamas’s ideology — which employees may or may not share — is abhorrent, but civilized nations do not kill people merely for what they think.  [No, they kill them for what they do.  And Hamas bends all its efforts to killing Israeli civilians and then using its own civilians, especially its children, as a defensive barrier.  It’s worth pointing out here that Bisharat makes no mention of the fact that Israel provides three hours of warning in advance of any attacks structures that might house civilians.  In other words, it’s not attacking civilians, but Hamas is making sure to place its own citizens in buildings it knows will be targets.]

From this point own, everything Bisharat says is legal garbage, because it’s premised on a skewed factual view that excuses Hamas from thousands of missile strikes and that criminalizes Israel for firing on civilians that Hamas intentionally put into harm’s way.

Incidentally, would it surprise you to learn that Bisharat is not only a shoddy thinker, but also one of the myriad UC professors who is radically anti-Israel?  It should disturb you, as it disturbs me, that he has a law school full of students into whom he can pour this illogical, unfair, self-serving, double standard crap.

UPDATED:  An intelligent counterpoint.

A Swiftian view of the death of Palestinian children

Hamas has been making much of its dead children.  It had a field day with photos of those children who died when the IDF shot shells into a “UN school.”  Most of the world (including, of course, a credulous and/or complicit media) managed to ignore the fact that it’s bizarre that, in the midst of war, people would congregate their children in one place; to ignore the fact that shots were fired from the school grounds; and to ignore the fact that the place was booby trapped internally so that it blew up, killing the occupants.  For all of them, in their wrath, it is enough that the Palestinian children are dead.

Likewise, Hamas has had a field day with the mysterious CNN footage of a child dying in a hospital.  Again, the usual crowd has ignored the fact that this footage shows, in the role of doctor, a rabid Marxist known for loathing Israel; to ignore the fact that the child was manifestly the victim of on-camera malpractice; and, of course, to ignore the fact that the camera-man is a well known computer guru for Hamas.  That’s all irrelevant.  What’s relevant is that it is, yes, another dead Palestinian child.

To all those who are so upset, I say to you:  You’ve got it wrong.  Rather than castigating the Israelis and demanding their deaths, you should be celebrating and thanking them.  Why?  Because the Israelis have enabled these children to achieve their cultural destinies.  From the time of their birth (indeed, for generations before their birth), these little Arab children have been taught that their highest purpose is to die for Palestine.  (Don’t believe me?  Check out this and this and this and this and . . . you get the picture.)

If Israel hadn’t gone into Gaza as it did, and targeted the myriad Hamas armaments around which the children were clustered; fired missiles into booby trapped schools; or warned Palestinians in advance about which buildings were targets, so Hamas could hustle the children into the building, those children would have been denied the fulfillment of their dreams.

If you’re confused about how meritorious Israel has been in ensuring that Palestinian children achieve the career success for which they’ve been groomed, think of it this way:  We all know that Prince Charles of England has been raised for one job and one job alone:  to be King.  Wouldn’t it be the ultimate tragedy if something interceded to destroy the one job he’s fitted for, making the whole of his life effectively useless and irrelevant?  So too have the children of Hamas been raised to die for Hamas.  How banal their existence would be if the Israelis foolishly sat back and let Israeli children steal that Palestinian destiny by dying in their stead, the victims of repeated Hamas attacks, instead of the other (and appropriate) way around.

So to all you silly people around the world decrying the fact that Palestinian children are dying (and, funnily enough, I don’t remember hearing a peep out of any of you when Israeli children were the target of 6,000 or so missile strikes), give it up.  You’ve got it wrong.  You should be celebrating the fact that, thanks to yet another act of Israeli benevolence (with other examples being Israel’s decision to ship food and health supplies into Gaza, even as Egypt and Jordan refuse to do so), Palestinian children are finally getting the chance to achieve career goal and are enjoying the martrydom they crave.

________________________________________

For those of you who wonder whether I serious when I wrote the above little essay, I admit to being quite serious — up to a point.  Certainly a six year old has no idea what being killed really means (although many of these children have seen death up close).  Sadly, though, children don’t choose the society into which they are born, and these poor souls had the profound misfortune to be born into a society that sees them, not as the future, but as the weapons as the present.  Even more sadly, their society recognizes that they are useful weapons whether dead or alive.  In that paradigm, the international community doesn’t help the situation at all by allowing this same sick society to perpetuate itself generation after generation.  Instead, in the face of this type of evil, the kind thing is to reduce break that society entirely, allowing room for a new culture to grow in its place.

And if you doubt me, try to imagine whether Naziism would have gone away if the Allies had not so decisively defeated it.  If the Allies had kept backing off when the fighting got just too icky for them to feel comfortable, they would have done nothing more than prune the Nazi leadership, always leaving room for new, and stronger, shoots to grow in place of the dead.  That’s what Israel has done to the Palestinians.  Rather than destroying a poisonous plant, Israel has repeatedly allowed the roots to survive, enabling the plant to sprout again and destroy yet another generation.

The tremendous evil that is Palestinian culture — a culture that values its children more dead than alive —  will not stop until the roots are dead.  In the case of the Palestinians, “dead roots” will be the moment when the citizens of that benighted land realize that a culture that trains its children to embrace death, and that has a leadership that intentionally kills its children as part of its weaponry, is a dead end and MUST STOP.

All of which means that, while I recognize the tragedy that is a child’s death (how could I not, with children of my own?), I also realize that this Palestinian cultural madness has to be stopped, definitively, or many more children will die in the ensuing years.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Let’s hope Obama is smarter than his followers about Gaza

Not a conversation in which I was involved (nor was it politic or appropriate to become involved), but I heard someone this morning praising Carter’s execrable editorial (and I’m not going to dignify that with a link) castigating Israel for defending itself.

The liberal praising the article, when asked about the rocket attacks, said “Well, it’s just one town in Israel.  They should leave.  That’s the smart thing to do.  It’s better than killing Palestinian children”  It did not seem to occur to this guy that Israel had already pulled out of Gaza and that he’s essentially advocating an incremental approach to Hamas’ ultimate goal:  namely, driving Jews out of every town on the land and pushing them into the sea.  Nor did it seem to occur to him that, by the same analysis, the Palestinians should just retreat, because that’s better than killing Jewish children.

Living in Marin is an alternative universe, since one is surrounded with ostensibly smart people who have stupid ideas and are completely amoral.

Nooooo!! Israel is buckling again

Hamas’ tried and true tactic worked again — it put children in the line of fire and Israel, rather than moving forward to protect her own children, is caving:

Israel has shown the first signs of bowing to the international outcry over its 11-day onslaught of Gaza after some 40 Palestinians sheltering in a United Nations school were killed.

Many children were among the dead in what Gordon Brown called the ‘darkest moment yet’ in the Gaza crisis.

The horrific attack prompted renewed attempts to broker a ceasefire with Britain and France backing a new initiative by Egypt to bring about an immediate halt in hostilities.

Last night came the first sign that Israel was listening to the growing international anger over its offensive as prime minister Ehud Olmert agreed to set up a “humanitarian corridor” to allow in aid to the devastated Palestinian territory.

Under the plan, Israel would suspend attacks in specified areas of Gaza to allow the people to get supplies of food, medicine and fuel. The goal was to ‘prevent a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip’.

Israel has clearly lost the stomach to survive.

I remember back in 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon, an Israeli soldier said (rightly) that sometimes you have to cut out healthy flesh to remove a cancer, but it’s still better than leaving the cancer there and letting the patient die.  Israel is dying and, if we’re all correct that this is a proxy war with Iran, we’re going down too.  I’m just sickened.

A mish-mash

It’s been an incoherent day, one that never gave me the opportunity for contemplation and writing.  Instead, I’ve been bopping here and there, and dealing with one thing and another.  Nevertheless, I have been tracking the news, so I thought I’d just write up a mish-mash of thoughts about current issues and events.

Gaza

The top issue/event, obviously, is Gaza.  By now you’ve all seen the hysterical headline about Israel having blown up a UN school, killing scores of civilians.  At the exact second I read the words “UN school,” I knew it wasn’t a school at all but was, instead, a weapons storage facility and a headquarters for fighters.  Why did I know this?  Because the UN in Gaza is completely complicit with Hamas.  In that part of the world, the two are one and the same entity.  I also knew that the school wasn’t really a school because Gaza intentionally places fighters and weapons around children precisely so that it garner this type of scare headline.  Michelle Malkin has a fact-filled post detailing all the many ways in which my instincts on this one were dead on the money.

Speaking of Hamas setting its children up as targets so that it can further vilify Israel in the eyes of the world, you really must read Ron Rosenbaum’s article explaining why, to the extent there are differences between Hamas and the Nazis, Hamas is infinitely worse.  As part of that line of thinking, it’s worth noting that even the Nazis weren’t willing to sacrifice their own children merely to score propaganda points.

As is always the case, everyone in the world outside of America is urging Israel to back down.  (In America, while Obama is ominously quiet, even Dirty Harry Reid has acknowledged Israel’s right to defend against the non-stop rocket attacks that have poured death and destruction on the land for years now.)  In the past, Israel has listened.  This time, I’m hoping against hope that she gives the world the middle finger and does what she has to do to defend herself.  I’ve never understood why Israel, rather like the pathetic nerdy kid in high school, keeps twisting herself into damaging contortions to satisfy people who will despise her regardless.  Eventually, the nerd just has to go it alone and the hell with the critics.

Incidentally, although the world doesn’t deserve good fortune, if Israel is wise enough to give it the finger, it may just get good fortune anyway — the good fortune in this case being that an Israeli victory against Hamas in Gaza is also an Israeli victory against the mad Mullahs in Iran.  As has been the case for decades now, Israel is our proxy, and we should be grateful that she’s putting her bodies on the line so we don’t have to.

And one last word on the subject:  Reader Lulu send me an email pointing out something interesting, which is that Hezbollah is doing nothing right now.  You’d think that this would be a perfect time for Hezbollah to force a two-front war on Israel.  That it’s not doing so might be a good indication that, all propaganda to the contrary, Israel may have inflicted serious damage on it back in 2006.  Iran can replace the arms, but maybe she can’t replace the men.

God

In England, the atheists have launched an ad campaign encouraging people to abandon religion so that they can be happy.  One of the brains behind this initiative is Ariane Sherine. She decided to launch the ad campaign because “she became angry after noticing a set of Christian advertisements carrying a website address which warned that people who reject God are condemned to spend all eternity to ‘torment in Hell.'”

I’m perfectly willing to admit that trying to scare people into religion may not be the smartest way to go about things.  I do find the ad campaign peculiar, though, because I was under the impression that polls show religious people are more happy, not less happy, than the average atheist (putting aside the fact that the average vocal atheist always seem to be a pretty darn angry person).

As you all know, I’m a big believer in the many virtues of religion, although not particularly religious myself.  Aside from liking the core moral aspects religion brings, I’ve also always appreciated (and envied) the way religion brings meaning to life.

In a religious world, man is not just a random collection of atoms, molecules, cells and organs, put on earth to procreate and scrabble for food until he dies.  Instead, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition with which I’m familiar, man’s life has meaning and purpose.  Whether God used evolution as his tool or instant creation, man exists in God’s image.  His corporeal body may not necessarily be the mirror image of God’s being, but he is in God’s image to the extent that his mind and spirit are attuned to justice and a higher purpose.  We’re not just meaningless bugs.  We are something special and our time on earth has meaning, whether we emphasize that in our own lives or not.

All of which is to say that it strikes me as mighty darn peculiar to advertise an absence of religion as the answer to the search for happiness.  You might as well say, “You’re a meaningless bug.  Get used to it.”

Tolerance

While the first wave of hysteria following the passage in California of Prop. 8 has finally died down, hard feelings continue.  A Catholic Church in San Francisco was covered with offensive graffiti, likening the church and its parishioners to Nazis. The beautiful irony of this story is that this particular church, located near the Castro district, has always been a welcoming place to gays.

Aside from the fact that vandals, by their very nature, can’t be expected to be intelligent (I guess), I find it strange that we live in a world in which hewing to unexceptional traditional values that span all cultures and all times is an invitation to vandalism.  As you know, I’d be perfectly happy to see the state get out of the marriage business, leaving that to religion, and instead get into the domestic partnership business, with an emphasis on encouraging stable behaviors that strengthen society.  Pending that unlikely situation, however, I can’t help but wonder if the gay marriage advocates realize that offending ordinary people who support ordinary values is not likely to advance their cause.

How liberals would fight wars *UPDATED*

Vacation is over and I’m back to my work schedule, which means no more morning blogging (not that I was very inspired in the morning during vacation).  Still, I had to share this gem with you.

I spoke with a liberal friend yesterday, who is lukewarm about Israel, and he told me that Israel absolutely cannot fight this war because it’s killing children and that’s unacceptable.  This dialogue ensued:

Me:  Did you know that before any strike on a building, Israel gives a warning to the residents to evacuate?

LF:  No.  If that were true, it would be headlined in the news.

Me:  It is true.  It’s just buried in the stories.  What’s also buried is that the Gazans use those warnings to hustle children back into the buildings.

LF:  No.  That’s not true.  If it were true, it would be headlined in the news.

(This went a few rounds and then stopped.)

Me:  You do know that Gaza has fired over 5,000 rockets into Israel, right?

LF:  Yeah, but they didn’t do any harm.

Me:  You do know that the last few, supplied by Iran, fell within about 13 miles of Tel Aviv?  (Note:  I think I got those mileage stats correct.)

LF:  Well, I guess they have to defend themselves.

Me:  How would you have them defend themselves?

LF:  They should have announced to the world that, if Gaza didn’t stop firing rockets by January 2, then they’d attack Gaza.

Me:  They did announce to the world that they were going to attack Gaza.

LF:  No.  that’s not true.  If it were true, it would be headlined in the news.

At this point, we glared at each other in frustration, and the conversation ended.

UPDATE:  I wonder if this kind of editorial, in a reputable liberal paper (the LA Times), would change my friend’s mind.  It spells out carefully the real issues involved in the current war (Iranian hegemony in the Middle East, the fact that Israel is not the only nation out there that fears Iran, and the way in which Hamas manipulates the media precisely in order to fool credulous liberals).

How to define proportionality in the face of evil

Alan Dershowitz gives us some insights into the evil that is Hamas (and I use the word evil deliberately and without any artistic hyperbole), and then explains how, under international law, the concept of “proportionality” properly works in the face of that kind of evil.  Incidentally, it’s not far from my post from a couple of days ago about a party’s intentions governing the appropriate response:

In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family’s house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.

Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if Israeli authorities did not learn there were civilians in the house and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead. Israel held its fire. The Hamas rockets that were protected by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.

[snip]

[P]roportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday, when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children’s lives.

While Israel installs warning systems and builds shelters, Hamas refuses to do so, precisely because it wants to maximize the number of Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by Israel’s military actions. Hamas knows from experience that even a small number of innocent Palestinian civilians killed inadvertently will result in bitter condemnation of Israel by many in the international community.

Read the rest here and wonder, as I do, why Dershowitz still aligns himself with the Democratic party.  (This would be the same Democratic party whose members think Israel should still be talking and negotiating as the rockets rain down upon her.)  He’s taking an unusually long time to cross that Rubicon.

And while we’re on the subject of the moral clarity that should be attending this war (but is not), you should also read Charles Krauthammer’s article about the way good and evil play out in that benighted strip of land attached to Israel.  Krauthammer opens his piece with a snippet buried deep within an AP article:

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons.

It is with this factoid, widely ignored by a world bound and determined to point the finger of blame at Israel that Krauthammer, a la Dershowitz (and Bookworm), explains that the differing intent guiding Israel and Hamas must be taken into consideration to understand the evil that is Hamas and the righteousness of Israel’s actions:

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis — 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years — deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

[snip]

For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous.

[snip]

At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed to saving as many lives as possible — also on both sides.

[snip]

That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza — peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005.

[snip]

There’s only one grievance [that guides Hamas’ militant actions since Israel handed over Gaza in 2005] and Hamas is open about it. Israel’s very existence.

[snip]

Since its raison d’etre is the eradication of Israel, there are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of Israel.

As you can see from the snips, I’ve left a lot out, all of it worth reading.  These two articles are perfect bookend to the way in which all thinking people should analyze Israel’s war against the sovereign terrorist state of Gaza.

Hamas’ “Heroes” — and the need for total victory over evil

I have an embarrassing confession to make:  When I was young, one of my favorite shows was Hogan’s Heroes.  I found it a weekly marvel to see the dashing, clever Colonel Hogan run rings around the Germans.  Nor was I at all perturbed by the asymmetry of it all, with the Germans portrayed as bumbling nincompoops, as compared to the ridiculously accomplished POWs.  To me, it seemed eminently logical that the good guys would be smart and competent, while the bad guys would be yahoos — evil, but still yahoos.

As I child, good and competent versus evil and incompetent seemed like a fair fight. And I still think that way.

I mention this all because of the usual cries of outrage about the asymmetry in Israel’s attack on Gaza.  The thinking on the Left (and you can see it in a thousand op-ed and news stories from America and the rest of the world) is that Israel, because she is vastly more efficient and effective when it comes to warfare, should not fight back.  “It’s not fair!” is the cry that is raised when Israel, having suffered through thousands of rocket attacks, finally says “Enough” and goes in with surgical precision to remove the rocket launchers and the men who fire them.  The usual suspects, even those who concede that Hamas is an exceptionally malevolent organization, just can’t stomach the sight of bad men — men whose entire life purpose is the slaughter of innocents — themselves getting killed.

I see things entirely differently.  In the case of Hamas, evil is measured by intent and acts.  Members of Hamas have as their stated goal the desire to kill as many Israelis (especially vulnerable civilians) as possible.  Their acts are entirely consistent with those goals.  For months now, they have fired as many missiles as they possibly could into Israel.  The know that what they lack in ability will eventually be made up for by sheer volume and dumb luck.  (As an aside, keep in mind that a large part of the Soviet strategy against the Germans was to force the Germans to use up time and munitions against the millions of bodies, so many tragically unarmed and untrained, that the Soviets kept throwing in their path.)  The evil that is Hamas is made even more manifest by the fact that, to offset their incompetency, the Hamas soldiers hide amongst the women and children.  If you can’t be efficient, be diligent and surround yourself by soft camouflage, right?

Because Hamas is devoted to evil acts, it should not be rewarded for its ineptitude.  It is entirely appropriate that it be defeated.  It’s ludicrous, therefore, for the world to argue that the only appropriate way to defeat Hamas is to approach it with an equal degree of primitive weaponry and inefficient tactics.  That way lies madness.

Sadly, though, Israel itself buys into this madness.  A moral country, she is horrified by the depravity into which Hamas (or Hezbollah) pulls her and, every time, when she is on the cusp of a determinative outcome, she pulls back to save the innocents.  One has to ask, though, how many innocents (by which I mean children, who have no control over the situation in which they find themselves) are ultimately saved if Israel repeatedly leaves enough of Hamas standing so that it can regroup and continue its self-imposed apocalyptic battle?  Sometimes, total conquest is the most merciful end to a battle.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m reading Rabbi Joseph Teluskin’s Biblical Literacy: The Most Important People, Events, and Ideas of the Hebrew Bible.  He recounts God’s mandate when the Jews left the desert and entered Canaan:  kill all the Canaanites.  To modern sensibilities, this is a horrific directive, and one with which modern Jews and Christians have struggled mightily.  Yes, it was the normative approach to conquest three thousand years ago and, yes, God mandated it, but those two explanations don’t assauge our distress at the death of the innocents.  I do think, though, that there is a certain pure logic in it, a logic that arises once one decides, for whatever reason, to conquer a land.

Keep in mind that we’re not talking border or territory skirmishes when I say this.  Instead, we’re talking about conquest.  The Jews conquered Canaan because it was their God promised land.  The Allies conquered Germany and Japan because those two nations, having started the war, made it apparent that only complete conquest would end it.  And Israel, clinging to her 300 x 150 mile patch of land, considers herself already the conqueror having won the land through purchase, League of Nations Directives, UN mandates, and the spoils of previous defensive wars.

The fact is, you cannot be said to have conquered a land — you cannot remake it in your own image — if there remains a critical mass of hostile indigenous people.  The Bible shows that, despite God’s mandate, the Jews did not kill all the Baal worshipping Canaanites, and these people proved to be a practical, military and moral thorn in Israel’s flesh for centuries to come.  Conversely, the Allies did defeat a critical mass of the indigenous people in Germany and Japan and were able to rebuild both countries as strong Democratic entitities.  And modern Israel, repeating the errors or her Biblical forbearers, has “conquered” a land without ever having taken it over.  Her morals are exemplary; her tactics, less so.

My thinking is now, as it was when I watched Hogan’s heroes:  that evil is incompetent is a blessing and should not be treated as a curse.  It also doesn’t give evil a pass.  If you have visited your moral compass, if you truly believe that the opposing party is not merely misguided but genuinely evil and determined on your destruction, and if you decide that the only way to deal with that opposing party is warfare — YOU MUST WIN THAT WAR.  There is no middle ground of compromise.  There is only victory.  As the Allies showed after WWII, victory can be incredibly magnanimous, must you must have victory before you have magnanimity.  Do it backwards, and your ass is cooked.

The attack on Gaza

Israel finally said “enough is enough” and counterattacked Gaza.  I think John Podhoretz nails everything that needs to be said on the subject in the short-term, and I’m impressed enough with his depth and brevity to reproduce his entire paragraph right here:

Israel launched a massive air campaign against the infrastructure of Hamas terror in Gaza — which is what it actually means when you read in the media that Israel’s strike was on “Palestinian security forces.” It will be a day or two until it becomes clear what happened and how successful the mission was. But there are three things to say about it immediately. First, when you hear people call on Israel to show “restraint,” remember that “restraint” is precisely what Israel has been showing for the past three and a half years as Hamas has launched thousands of Kassam rockets at Sderot and other locations inside Israel. Second, this was not an attack but a counter-attack, almost purely an act of self-defense that featured extensive warnings in the days before it was launched in an effort to minimize civilian casualties. Third, the Hamas terror bases were evidently located in civilian neighborhoods. According to international law, the responsibility for any civilian casualties in such a situation rests entirely with those who a) failed to wear uniforms and b) interwove themselves with non-combatants. The fault is Hamas’s, not Israel’s.

Call me Ishmael

I’ve been reading two things that seem to twine together.  The first is the ongoing news out of Gaza, about Hamas continuously firing missiles into Israel (as well as into their own population).  Noah Pollak wrote a very good commentary in response to a question about why Hamas, through its outpost in Gaza, keeps fighting and fighting and fighting.  The answer, of course, is that Hamas fights because that is its nature.  Fighting is its raison d’etre.  Without fighting, there is nothing.

The second thing I’ve been reading, which at first glance seems unrelated, is Rabbi Joseph Teluskin’s Biblical Literacy: The Most Important People, Events, and Ideas of the Hebrew Bible — a very informative and enjoyable retelling of the Old Testament, along with Rabbinical commentary.

The story of Abraham and Sarah, of course, brings up the history of Hagar and Ishmael. Telushkin reminds us of two things about Ishmael. First, he repeats the prophecy that God’s angel made about Ishmael:  “He shall be a wild ass of a man, his hand against every man and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” (Genesis, 16:12.) The second is the fact that the Muslim Arabs claim descent from this same Ishmael.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

[Link fixed. Thanks, Gringo.]

The enemy of my enemy is my friend *UPDATED*

Sometimes, the bizarre nature of the Middle East defies description (all emphasis mine):

Nine Palestinians were killed and dozens hurt in battles in Gaza City between forces of the rival Hamas and Fatah movements on Saturday, prompting Israel to open its border to fleeing Fatah members.

The fighting, which lasted most of the day, was sparked when Hamas security forces tried to arrest suspects thought to be behind a July 25 bombing that killed five Hamas militants and a little girl on a Gaza beach.

Hamas blames Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas for the attack, but the secular group denies any involvement. Over the past week the two sides have engaged in tit-for-tat spates of arrests.

Hamas said two of its men were killed and medical officials reported seven more dead, mainly civilians, in Saturday’s firefights that broke out around a house belonging to the influential pro-Fatah Helis clan in the Shujwa neighbourhood of Gaza City.

More than 90 people were also wounded, including seven reported to be in a serious condition, the medical sources said.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri charged that members of the Helis family and other unidentified associates had “fired mortar rounds at the Hamas police as well as a rocket at Gaza City” from inside the Shujwa house.

Several members of the Helis clan “are responsible” for the deadly July 25 bomb attack and Hamas is determined to round up the suspects, Abu Zuhri told AFP.

But Adel Helis, a Fatah leader, denied clan members opened fire on Hamas.

“These are lies. We never fired rockets or mortar rounds. Hamas is the one committing crimes. We have asked all the Palestinian factions, Islamists and nationalists, to use their influence so that these crimes cease,” he said.

Clan leader Ahmad Helis told AFP that Hamas militants “laid siege to our house, firing mortar rounds… targeting our women and our children.”

The two main Palestinian factions have been deeply divided since Hamas expelled Abbas’s security forces from Gaza in a week of bloody street battles in June 2007, cleaving the territories into rival entities.

Abbas himself called Ahmed Helis “to express his support and denounce the Hamas attack,” according to a statement by Abbas’s office.

The Palestinian president also told Helis that “Hamas’s attacks undermine my call for national dialogue between Palestinian factions.”

Shortly after the fighting subsided, dozens of Fatah members, including Ahmed and Adel Helis, fled to the Nahal Oz crossing with Israel in a bid to escape to the West Bank city of Ramallah, home to Abbas’s headquarters.

Israel allowed a total of 150 Palestinians who put down their guns to cross as a “humanitarian measure,” an army spokesman said. The wounded were taken to hospital and the rest were transported to Ramallah.

Israel’s Magen David Adom medical services treated six Palestinians for serious wounds and three more who were lightly injured, spokesman Zaki Heller said.

Funnily enough, no one in the wider world seems to be outraged by the women and children who are being killed, not as collateral damage, but as direct targets.  Equally funnily (do you hear me laughing?), no one seems to be impressed by Israel’s graciousness.  This is another reminder, if one needs it, that to the Left, it’s never been about humanitarianism and “the children.”  It’s always about Israel’s special, evil status in their eyes.

UPDATE: And now they’re going back home again, apparently at Abbas’ request (I guess he needs his fighters home, and not hiding in Israel).

Ah, these linguistic subtleties!

Did you know that a rocket could break a truce?  I didn’t.  Being neither a scientist nor a weapons expert, nor a member of the MSM, I kind of thought that, absent human intervention, rockets would just lie around inert.  It’s just always seemed to me that, for a rocket to fly through the air and strike something far away, there has to be a human who placed it in a launcher and pressed the button.

Thanks to the AP, which I dare not quote since it will bankrupt me if I do, I’ve now learned how wrong I am.  You see, when I went to Drudge at 11:14 P.S.T. today, I saw a headline that said “Rockets break truce.”  While Drudge may not be an . . . ahem . . . rocket scientist, even he must know that rockets probably don’t have the intelligence to do any truce breaking.  Curious about this peculiar headline formation, I clicked on his link and discovered that AP story from which I dare not quote.  I can tell you however, that the AP was the one who misled poor Matt Drudge by telling him about those rockets, using an even more mangled headline than Drudge’s.

Ah, heck!  I’m going to live dangerously here and actually quote that headline, since it defeats paraphrasing:

Rockets hit Israel, which says truce broken

So, the rockets acted without human intervention but Israel, that spoilsport, is once again backing out of its sacred obligations to Hamas.

It’s only when you read the story that you discover that it was those darned “Palestinian militants” (is that a copyrighted phrase?) that actually launched the rockets that hit Israel.  What’s really funny is that the AP, after explaining that it was humans who were parties to a truce that launched the rockets, injuring civilians, goes on to add that this behavior presents that same truce with “a serious test.”  (Please tell me that’s not a copyrighted phrase either.)

Again, in the “silly me” category, I actually thought truces were binary.  Both sides promise not to fight.  If one side breaks that promise, the truce is gone.  It’s vanished as if it never existed.  It’s dead.  It’s not a truce any more if only one side sticks with it.  In AP-land, however, it appears that a truce continues to exist as to the Israelis, but that the Palestinians may violate it with impunity.

Indeed, in that same faraway AP-land, Palestinian truce violations are probably a good thing, since we here in America like “testing.”  We see tests as a way of proving how well things are doing.  If that truce can survive the Palestinian test of unfettered rocket launches against Israeli civilians, it must be a very strong truce.  It gets the AP seal of approval, that’s for sure.

I’m sick of this whole thing.  Can the reading audience really be as stupid and biased as the AP writers?  Sadly, I’m going to bet that Israel can be even more stupid, since I think it’s going to let the Palestinians pass this test and, in the face of a blatant truce violation, do either nothing or so little in response that it’s tantamount to nothing.

Good idea, bad leader *UPDATED*

Richard Baehr initially supported Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw Israel from the Gaza Strip.  He now believes that the withdrawal was a terrible mistake, and carefully explains why.  As for me, I don’t think it was a mistake then.  I think it collapsed for a reason that could not be foreseen.  Let me explain.

What I said at the time was that, as long as the territories were under Israel’s aegis, Israel could not wage war against them.  If they were a separate hostile nation, however, she could treat them as one would any other hostile nation on one’s own border — with full-scale warfare.  I believe that Ariel Sharon would have done that.  However, Ariel Sharon was struck down, and in his place is Olmert, whose only significant skill seems to be to retain office with a zero approval rating.  Sharon would not have allowed 3,000 rockets to rain down on Israel from an enemy nation.  Olmert has.

Olmert is terrified of looking bad in the eyes of the world.  Mr. Olmert, a hint:  The world already hates Israel.  Short of voluntarily turning the country over to the Arabs and then having all Jewish residents take a farewell march into the Meditteranean, the world will always hate you.  You are the unpopular kid in school, and nothing will change that.  Stop trying to get in with the in-crowd and take care of yourself.

UPDATE:  Here’s a bit more about the truly horrible Olmert.

I give it an hour or two at best

Hamas never enters into truces with an eye to peace.  It enters into truces with an eye to getting its troops rested and rearmed before the next offensive.  Israel, equipped with knowledge of both core Islamic doctrine (hudna) and Hamas’ own past behavior, nevertheless keeps giving its opponent a breather, rather than keeping the pressure on when Hamas is on the ropes.

When I was growing up in the 1970s, common currency in the Jewish community was the joke about how much smarter Jews were than their Arab opponents.  The one I remember best from the 1973 Yom Kippur War (although it’s certainly not the best joke) went this way:

Shocked by their losses, the Arabs regrouped and began studying their Israeli enemy.  They realized that one out of every three Israeli soldiers was named David.  They therefore came up with a new strategy.  When they were within shouting distance of the Israelis, the Arab soldiers would holler out “Hey, David,” confident that the David’s would rise up, ready to be shot down by snipers.  It didn’t work quite as planned.  When the Arabs yelled out “Hey, David,” the Israelis would holler back, “Is that you, Mohammed?”  Half the Arab soldiers would then rise up and get shot down by snipers.

Bad joke, but you get the point.  These jokes have no currency now.  Israel has been strategically out-thought at every turn.  All she has left is brute force.

The myth of the occupied territories

I’m beginning to think that incrementalism is one of the most dangerous things out there, whether it’s the way Obama leaks out the truth about his big lies or the way in which the jihadists keep asking for little things from us — no pigs, no dogs, no occupied territories.  As to that latter bit of incrementalism, Charles Krauthammer reminds us of the big lie behind the current theory that the whole problem with Israel is the occupied territories  (so that, if she just gave them up, everything would be hunky-dory, with no further demands against her):

[In the 1948 War of Independence, which had all the Arab nations massed at 650,000 Jews] Israel prevailed, another miracle. But at a very high cost — not just to the Palestinians displaced as a result of a war designed to extinguish Israel at birth, but also to the Israelis, whose war losses were staggering: 6,373 dead. One percent of the population. In American terms, it would take 35 Vietnam memorials to encompass such a monumental loss of life.

You rarely hear about Israel’s terrible suffering in that 1948-49 war. You hear only the Palestinian side. Today, in the same vein, you hear that Israeli settlements and checkpoints and occupation are the continuing root causes of terrorism and instability in the region.

But in 1948, there were no “occupied territories.” Nor in 1967 when Egypt, Syria and Jordan joined together in a second war of annihilation against Israel.

Look at Gaza today. No Israeli occupation, no settlements, not a single Jew left. The Palestinian response? Unremitting rocket fire killing and maiming Israeli civilians. The declared casus belli of the Palestinian government in Gaza behind these rockets? The very existence of a Jewish state.

Israel’s crime is not its policies but its insistence on living. On the day the Arabs — and the Palestinians in particular — make a collective decision to accept the Jewish state, there will be peace, as Israel proved with its treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Until that day, there will be nothing but war. And every “peace process,” however cynical or well-meaning, will come to nothing.

Jimmy Carter, loathsome old man

The New York Times again gave a forum to Jimmy Carter. This time Carter defends his immoral, illegal decision to consort with terrorists, something that would be objectionable if the ordinary private citizen were to do it, but that rises to outrageous levels of indecency when a former President does the same thing.

Carter’s most recent column is worth fisking because it either shows the thought process of a senile immoral old man or, more scarily, the thought processes of a liberal immoral old man:

A COUNTERPRODUCTIVE Washington policy in recent years has been to boycott and punish political factions or governments that refuse to accept United States mandates. [That’s cute. Hamas, which (a) took over Gaza by war, (b) announced its intention to destroy Israel, (c) terrorizes its own citizens, and (d) routinely and purposely attacks civilian targets, especially children, is just a “political faction[] or government[] that refuse[s] to accept United States mandates.” This is truly an Orwellian perversion of language.] This policy makes difficult the possibility that such leaders might moderate their policies.

Two notable examples are in Nepal and the Middle East. About 12 years ago, Maoist guerrillas took up arms in an effort to overthrow the monarchy and change the nation’s political and social life. Although the United States declared the revolutionaries to be terrorists, the Carter Center agreed to help mediate among the three major factions: the royal family, the old-line political parties and the Maoists.

In 2006, six months after the oppressive monarch was stripped of his powers, a cease-fire was signed. Maoist combatants laid down their arms and Nepalese troops agreed to remain in their barracks. Our center continued its involvement and nations — though not the United States — and international organizations began working with all parties to reconcile the dispute and organize elections. [I can’t comment about this, knowing nothing about it. Any information from others who do would be helpful.]

The Maoists are succeeding in achieving their major goals: abolishing the monarchy, establishing a democratic republic and ending discrimination against untouchables and others whose citizenship rights were historically abridged. After a surprising victory in the April 10 election, Maoists will play a major role in writing a constitution and governing for about two years. To the United States, they are still terrorists. [Considering that Maoists are arch communists, and considering that arch communists have invariably enacted arch repression, I rather wonder about Carter’s sanguine view of these guys as just good old liberal style Democrats. After all, the original Maoist — that would be Mao himself — was a psychopath who oversaw the death of 70,000,000 of his people. Again, information on this subject would be appreciated.]

On the way home from monitoring the Nepalese election, I, my wife and my son went to Israel. My goal was to learn as much as possible to assist in the faltering peace initiative endorsed by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Although I knew that official United States policy was to boycott the government of Syria and leaders of Hamas, I did not receive any negative or cautionary messages about the trip, except that it might be dangerous to visit Gaza. [Who are you going to believe — Rice or Carter? Given that Carter has been caught in lie after lie over the years, while Rice has not been shown up as a liar even once (one may disagree with her, but she doesn’t lie), I have absolutely no doubt but that this is a blatant lie.]

The Carter Center had monitored three Palestinian elections, including one for parliamentary seats in January 2006. Hamas had prevailed in several municipal contests, gained a reputation for effective and honest administration and did surprisingly well in the legislative race, displacing the ruling party, Fatah. [Except for that little fact that it eventually took over leadership from Fatah by a small civil war, complete with atrocities. Apparently things like that just don’t bother Carter, the cheerleader for leftist oppressors. Bad as Fatah is, Hamas is worse.] As victors, Hamas proposed a unity government with Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah as president and offered to give key ministries to Fatah, including that of foreign affairs and finance.

Hamas had been declared a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel, and the elected Palestinian government was forced to dissolve. [Aside from the fact that it took over and rules Gaza by terror, there is that little problem of Hamas’ stated policy of destroying Israel, one dead child at a time. Frankly, if Carter doesn’t consider that a terrorist, what is a terrorist? George Bush? Cheney? That lying skank Condi Rice (Carter’s theory, not mine, of course)? I’d really like him to set down his definitions so we can get an insight into his Orwellian use of language.] Eventually, Hamas gained control of Gaza [care to explain how, Mr. Carter, or would that raise too many twisted linguistic difficulties?], and Fatah is “governing” the Israeli-dominated West Bank. [You ,appreciate, I’m sure, all the deep meaning behind those quotation marks. Gaza is “real” government, Fatah is a puppet government. We know which Carter prefers.] Opinion polls show Hamas steadily gaining popularity. [Because a terrorist organization is liked by a population raised to hate and kill, does that mean it’s no longer a terrorist organization? Apparently in Carter-world it does.] Since there can be no peace with Palestinians divided, we at the Carter Center believed it important to explore conditions allowing Hamas to be brought peacefully back into the discussions. (A recent poll of Israelis, who are familiar with this history, showed 64 percent favored direct talks between Israel and Hamas.)

Similarly, Israel cannot gain peace with Syria unless the Golan Heights dispute is resolved. [There’s not much of a dispute. When Syria held the Golan Heights, it used that advantage to kill Jews. It will do the same again. Of course, since Carter has no problem with the Jews — he did want to “f**k them” in 1980, blaming them for his defeat — I can see where he thinks there might be a dispute: dead Jews versus not dead Jews. Hmmm.] Here again, United States policy is to ostracize the Syrian government and prevent bilateral peace talks, contrary to the desire of high Israeli officials. [The US might be ostracizing the Syrian government for a few other little problems, such as the fact that it’s a shill of Iran and Hezbollah, that it sponsors world-wide terrorism, and that it’s planning to go nuclear. Silly stuff like that, you know. Even in Carter-land, is it really possible for everything to be caused only by Jewish conspiracies?]

We met with Hamas leaders from Gaza, the West Bank and Syria, and after two days of intense discussions with one another they gave these official responses to our suggestions, intended to enhance prospects for peace [Please keep in mind as you read this that Hamas had the last laugh by denying all the agreements Carter purported to make on its behalf]:

•

Hamas will accept any agreement negotiated by Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel provided it is approved either in a Palestinian referendum or by an elected government. Hamas’s leader, Khaled Meshal, has reconfirmed this, although some subordinates have denied it to the press. [I notice that Meshal hasn’t gone out of his way to repudiate those denials. In any event, given that Palestinians by a vast majority have announced their intense desire to murder all Israelis, I don’t see many of them passing this referendum. Same for the “elected” Hamas government.]

•

When the time comes, Hamas will accept the possibility of forming a nonpartisan professional government of technocrats to govern until the next elections can be held. [Pardon me while I laugh myself sick. These are the people whose only skill is sucking up world dollars and turning them into bombs.]

•

Hamas will also disband its militia in Gaza if a nonpartisan professional security force can be formed. [Only someone truly naive or deeply evil would believe this given Hamas’ history. It’s like speaking with Hitler in 1942, and then writing an op-ed saying he’ll be pleased to disband the Gestapo, or at least to rename it to something with fewer negative connotations, such as the “Friends of the Jews” organization.]

•

Hamas will permit an Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian militants in 2006, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, to send a letter to his parents. If Israel agrees to a list of prisoners to be exchanged, and the first group is released, Corporal Shalit will be sent to Egypt, pending the final releases. [This is truly obscene. Hamas has held in captivity for two years a young man who was merely standing guard duty. In exchange for his freedom, they except the release of hundreds of convicted killers. Not guards, killers. Aside from how disgusting this is, I’d like to remind all of you that Israel has frequently released killers in return for promises from the Palestinians. None of the promises have been kept, but the killers have done what killers will do: killed again.]

•

Hamas will accept a mutual cease-fire in Gaza, with the expectation (not requirement) that this would later include the West Bank. [I believe this promise. The cease fires usually last one or two days while Hamas/the Palestinians regroup, and then, having enjoyed a breather, the cease fire magically terminates. I believe the technical term for this strategic little breather is hudna.]

•

Hamas will accept international control of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, provided the Egyptians and not the Israelis control closing the gates. [Hamas apparently hopes that it will have the fox guarding the hen house. Or at least Carter hopes that’s the case. More cynically than the American fool, Hamas probably hopes that Egypt, which is less then thrilled by having radical Islamic guerrillas stream into the country, will be less adept than Israel at preventing incursions.]

In addition, Syria’s president, Bashir al-Assad, has expressed eagerness to begin negotiations with Israel to end the impasse on the Golan Heights. He asks only that the United States be involved and that the peace talks be made public. [1938, 1938, 1938, 1938, 1938, 1938….]

Through more official consultations with these outlawed leaders, it may yet be possible to revive and expedite the stalemated peace talks between Israel and its neighbors. In the Middle East, as in Nepal, the path to peace lies in negotiation, not in isolation.

Now that I’ve fisked what Carter has to say, I feel confident concluding that he manages to be both a fool and entirely evil. This is a very, very bad man, and the US should muzzle him with every weapon in its arsenal of laws against treason and consorting with enemies.

A bipartisan Congressional attack against Carter

Congress isn’t actually doing anything beyond complaining about how upset it is, but I was very pleased nevertheless to see that two representatives have sponsored a bipartisan resolution specifically mentioning Carter in connection with Hamas and reiterating that Hamas is a dangerous terrorist organization that should be isolated, not courted.  To date, it has 47 signatories or co-sponsors.  Most of them are Republicans, but there are enough Democrats on board to earn my kudos for people who can put principles ahead of politics.

Can we try him for treason?

Hamas is an official terrorist organization. That minor detail, however, doesn’t seem to deter President Jimmy Carter, a man who has never met a sleazy Islamic or communist terrorist he doesn’t admire and trust:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said in remarks to air on Sunday that his upcoming visit to the Middle East probably would include a meeting in Syria with leaders of the militant group Hamas.

“I’ve not confirmed our itinerary yet for the Syrian visit, but it’s likely that I will be meeting with the Hamas leaders,” Carter said, according to a transcript of his interview on ABC News’ “This Week.”

The Bush administration and close U.S. ally Israel oppose the meeting, which would take place during Carter’s nine-day trip to the Middle East that begins on Sunday.

U.S. policy has been to isolate Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last June, and to bolster pro-Western President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules the West Bank and is in U.S.-sponsored talks with the Israelis.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who sought Carter’s counsel on his own previous Arab-Israeli peacemaking efforts ahead of a U.S.-hosted Middle East conference in Annapolis last November, called Hamas a “terrorist organization” on Friday.

With regard to his travel plans, here is what Carter said:

“I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Europe is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Nazis, that Hitler will have to be included in the process,” said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

“I think someone should be meeting with Hitler and the Nazi Party to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative,” he added.

Carter, who served one term as president from 1977 to 1981, would be one of the most prominent Americans to meet with the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler.

“We’ll be meeting with the Nazis, the Italian Fascists, the Japanese Imperialists, the Vichy Government, and with the whole gamut of people who might have to play a crucial role in any future peace agreement that involves Europe and the World,” Carter said of his trip.

Oh, silly me. I was having a weird historical flashback. What Carter really said was:

“I think there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their [sic — proving that he’s not only an idiot, but a grammatical cretin] next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process,” said Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

“I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative,” he added.

Carter, who served one term as president from 1977 to 1981, would be one of the most prominent Americans to meet with the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal.

“We’ll be meeting with the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudi Arabians, and with the whole gamut of people who might have to play a crucial role in any future peace agreement that involves the Middle East,” Carter said of his trip.

You can see where I might suffer some temporal confusion when it comes to a bumbling idiot, who lacks anything approaching a moral compass and who doesn’t even have the common sense of an old-fashioned real politician (a la Kissinger), inserting himself into foreign policy.

Two more things: First, a reminder that not only was it morally wrong to talk to Hitler, it was also useless. Hitler simply used those talks as a way to buy time to arm himself. He then kept making incremental terror steps, broken by brazen apologies to the West, and each of which was followed by an even bigger step, all of which culminated in WWII itself. Hitler loved to talk because he had no interest in cooperation or peace. For him, talk was as much weapon in his arsenal as anything else.

Second, if you find Carter’s conduct utterly loathsome, remember that Obama will be even worse, because he’ll be in the White House when he meets with Ahmadinijad.

Reality check for the economic equivalence argument

In today’s Guardian, there is a glowing review of Ron Paul, particularly with regard to Paul’s stance on American support for Israel:

If that weren’t enough, when the House of Representatives was recently passing another denunciation of Palestinian violence, Paul refused to support it. He abhorred all attacks on civilians, he said – but on Palestinians by Israelis as much as on Israelis by Palestinians.

“It is our continued involvement and intervention – particularly when it appears to be one-sided – that reduces the incentive for opposing sides to reach a lasting peace agreement,” he said. “We must cease making proclamations involving conflicts that have nothing to do with the United States. We incur the wrath of those who feel slighted while doing very little to slow or stop the violence.” It says something about US politics today that words as sane and humane as those come from an “extremist”.

No doubt this excellent man’s bid for the Republican nomination was by way of being a romantic gesture. But what about Ron Paul for secretary of state?

Frankly, I’ve considered Paul such a crackpot in so many ways that I never seriously considered the idiocy in this statement, now embraced by Geoffrey Wheatley, a Guardian columnist (or something).

It’s that bit about “our continued involvement and intervention — particularly when it appears to be one-sided…” that got me. I did some digging. According to one site, US aid to Israel in 2006 broke down to about $2.4 billion dollars.  I’ll accept that as true.

But is that really one sided? How about if we look at US aid to Israeli’s opponents, the Palestinians. And, if we’re counting outside help from other parties, how about aid from the rest of the world, including the UN, to the Palestinians. Here’s the aid information for 2006, when there was an ostensible embargo on Palestinian aid after Palestinians elected a government that boasted about its intention to destroy a UN member and commit genocide against its people (that would be Hamas):

Despite the international embargo on aid to the Palestinian Authority since Hamas came to power a year ago, significantly more aid was delivered to the Palestinians in 2006 than in 2005, according to official figures from the United Nations, United States, European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Finance Minister Salam Fayyad estimates that the Palestinian Authority received more than twice the amount of budget support in 2006 than in 2005.

Instead of going to the Palestinian Authority, much of the money was given directly to individuals or through independent agencies like the World Food Program.

The International Monetary Fund and the United Nations say the Palestinians received $1.2 billion in aid and budgetary support in 2006, about $300 per capita, compared with $1 billion in 2005.

While the United States and the European Union have led the boycott, they, too, provided more aid to the Palestinians in 2006 than 2005. Washington increased its aid to $468 million in 2006, from $400 million in 2005.

As for European giving in 2006:

In 2006, Ms. Udwin said, the European Union and its states spent $916 million on the Palestinians, not including United Nations contributions.

Even UN employees note the overwhelming outpouring of world money into Palestinian hands, as well as the deleterious effects of that money:

In 2007, the United Nations began a humanitarian appeal for the Palestinians of more than $450 million, twice the 2006 appeal, the third largest United Nations request, after Sudan and Congo, ahead of 18 other disasters.

“These numbers are quite stunning,” said Alexander Costy, head of coordination for Álvaro de Soto, the United Nations special Middle East envoy, “given the relatively small size of the population of the Palestinian territory.”

He added: “What we do know for sure is that Palestinians, and their economy and society, are becoming increasingly dependent on humanitarian handouts, and this dependency is growing fast. For a state in the making, I think this was a step backwards in 2006 and a cause for alarm.”

What’s amazing is that even the above, from the International Monetary Fund, from the UN, from the Americans, and from the Europeans, is not all that the Palestinians received during an embargo year:

But Salam Fayyad, the finance minister in the new Palestinian unity government, thinks the Palestinians received at least 250 percent more than that in direct support when cash from Iran and Arab nations is counted, as well as the amount smuggled in by Hamas officials after trips abroad.

“I say the minimum for direct budgetary support was $880 million in 2006 compared to about $350 million the year before,” Mr. Fayyad said. He estimates total aid in 2006 was closer to $1.35 billion.

Please keep in mind a few things:  (a) this was money during an alleged embargo on money and (b) most of this money goes directly into the hands of the terrorists, either as graft with which they enrich themselves (remember Arafat’s $10 billion estate) or to fund weapons.  Further the story above just looks at cash handouts.  It doesn’t calculate the massive amounts of military aid sent to Palestinians from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

The above report also doesn’t take into consideration the fact that Palestine’s have created for themselves just one enemy — Israel, which is a reactive enemy only, in that it simply seeks to take out weapons aimed at it, and terrorists handling those weapons.  Israel, on the other hand, faces active hostility from Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinians, and Iran.  (And let’s not forget that Hussein funded terrorism against Israel when he was alive and operating.)

All of which means that it’s nonsensical for Paul and his followers to pretend that America has been giving Israel an unfair advantage by giving her money.  America has, instead, been giving Israel a clearer path to a level playing field.  If Paul and his fellow-travelers truly wants funding in that region to stop, before they pull the plug on Israel, they’d better be damned sure to pull the plug on all funds flowing to the Palestinians as well — and they should stop funding nations that fund the Palestinians, such as Egypt.

I’m sure Israel would love to see the cash flow to Palestinians stop, because the latter might then be forced to turn their energies to creating an economy, instead of just to creating ever increasing numbers of zombies, trained only to kill.  Indeed, I’m willing to be that if the world promised to stop funding Palestinians, Israel might be happy, in exchange, to subsist on its own thriving economy.

The stupid dance begins again *UPDATED*

We now know that the Gazans instant collapse into existential despair the last time Israel reduced their electricity flow was a carefully choreographed dance that served two purposes: it enabled Hamas to knock down the wall Egypt had built (a wall about which no one in the West ever complained) and it gave photo ops to the useful idiots in the Western press. It looks as if the whole grotesque dance is starting all over again:

Israel began reducing the amount of electricity it sells to Gaza as part of sanctions against continued rocket fire, Israeli officials said on Friday. The move prompted a warning from the United States not to “worsen the humanitarian situation” of the civilian population in Gaza, and was followed by the firing of yet more rockets at Israel by militants there.

Israel began reducing its electricity flow into the Gaza Strip by less than one percent late Thursday night. By Friday afternoon, 21 rockets had been launched against Israel, an Army spokeswoman said, with several landing in and around the Israeli border town of Sderot and in open areas south of Ashkelon, a larger Israeli coastal city north of the strip.

Israeli officials said the electricity had been cut by about one megawatt out of the 124 megawatts that Israel provides to Gaza, and that an additional megawatt could be cut each week depending on the security situation and the needs of the Gaza population. Israel said it would continue to provide the necessary minimum to prevent harm to the safety or health of the residents.

Has there ever been a time in the history of the world when Country A repeatedly states its wish to destroy Country B and then acts upon that wish, only to have Country B continue to keep vital material flowing into Country A? I’d like to say that it’s gotten to the point that Israel is too stupid to deserve the gift of national survival, but I won’t. It’s true that the Israelis, for reasons unclear to me, keep the amazingly ineffectual Olmert in office, and it is true that the Israeli peace movement could more aptly be named the National Suicide Pact, but there’s more to it than that.

The fact is, Israel inadvertently made a pact with devil when she began to rely. Because America is a necessary part of the Israeli war machine and the Israeli economy, Israel can’t afford to alienate her — that would be a suicidal act as sure as just opening the borders and letting in the Palestinians. So as long as the US has this bizarre “let’s make nice with your killers” attitude, Israel is completely handicapped. She cannot fight a war against her open enemies and, instead, ends up subsidizing them as they fight a war against her.

It always was a Catch-22, of course, because Israel could never have survived as long as she did without US aid. It’s like steroids I guess: first they make you stronger, then they destroy you.

UPDATE:  While Israel is forced by world pressure to support her enemy, fellow Arabs have no such constraints.  As James Taranto describes:

Arabs love Palestinians in the abstract–as a symbol of the putative evil of the hated Jews. But they’re not so crazy about Palestinians as actual human beings. Here is a prominent Egyptian who is so averse to Palestinians that even their money isn’t good enough for him.