Israel is our only true friend and ally in the Middle East.

Their Arab neighbors, even those that profess friendship with the United States, are at best false friends — they regard us as a high roller in the purchase of their oil and as a country they would not want to go to war with, at least not overtly; they export terrorism while denouncing it for diplomatic purposes, oppose our doctrine at the United Nations when the opportunities present themselves and quietly await the expected Islamic victory over us that will place us at the mercy of Sharia Law — if that ever occurs, we will see how quickly the mask of friendship and even human respect drops from their faces as we are conquered, 7th Century style.

When Israel became a sovereign state 58 years ago, these Arab nations created “the Palestinians” and sicced those miserable, directionless people on the Jews who had “intruded” in their midst, feeding what was to become a terrorist machine disguised as an oppressively colonized underdog, pandering to the sympathies of misguided leftist intellectuals throughout the world. The goal of this propaganda was to gain support in their ambition to wipe Israel off the face of the map or, as the late Egyptian president Gamel Nasser vowed and failed to do, “push them into the sea”.

The Arab countries tried invading Israel on more than one occasion, only to find that this tiny new country of exponentially inferior numbers was able to defeat them in short order — it only took the Jews 6 days to hand them their collective touchases in 1967, and less than a month to repeat the performance in 1973 when Egypt and Syria, calling themselves the United Arab Republic, stormed the small state in a surprise invasion on the holiest of holidays, when the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) was at its least vigilant and most vulnerable.

Before and since, Israel has been under constant attack at home by terrorist organizations, and abroad by numerous countries at the United Nations (spit!), who have sided with Israel’s enemies because of their oil, and as such considered the very existence of Israel to be an inconvenience at best.

Israel’s only true friend in the world has been the United States. We have helped them financially and militarily, and we have been their primary trading partner for intelligence. To the latter end, they have been an indispensable asset in the Middle East. Back in the Cold War days, for example, whom do you think gave us a then state-of-the-art Soviet MiG-23 to dissect?

I know, I know, alright, already! Enough backgroundy stuff! Press on! Oy vey, enough is enough! C’mon!

Okay.

The Israelis have, from the beginning, bent over backwards to make the bastardly Palestinians a part of their country, to give them equal rights and privileges as Israeli citizens — and all they have received in return has been terrorism. Innocent citizens murdered by bomb, bullet and knife.

Whenever the Israelis have retaliated for a terrorist act, the propaganda forces of the left have condemned them for their actions — it is a one way street, the Palestinians can butcher Jews to their hearts’ content, but as soon as the Jews fight back, even a little bit, it is Naziesque brutality.

Over the last few decades, pressure from the U.N. combined with a genuine wish to see peace in the Middle East have prompted American Presidents and Secretaries of State to take it upon themselves to attempt to broker said peace.

Problem 1: Muslims are not on the same page as the rest of civilization, they are still living in the more barbaric times of the 7th Century and their religious doctrine mandates that they remain there. Their religion encourages lying to infidels to the point of signing on to treaties they have no intention of honoring, and therefore such agreements, for them, are matters of temporary convenience to be laughed off.

Problem 2: No matter how many times this fact is manifest, western politicians and diplomats simply cannot grasp it, their sensibilities are so programmed by their own environments that they truly believe that their logic will work when applied to Muslims.

As a result, every peace accord engendered by the United States has depended upon the “good faith” of both sides and the Israelis, an honorable people whose Jewish beliefs command that they honor their agreements, have always done so while the Palestinians have not. They will watch, smiling, as the Israelis release terrorists from prison and cede territory, honoring no part of an agreement, and the terrorism will continue, the Arabs laughing mirthfully at the stupidity of American politicians, who continually make the same mistake no matter how many times they get burned.

Actually, they don’t get burned — Israel does. At each American mediated agreement, Israel surrenders more of its security and more Jews resultantly die.

… And no matter how often this happens, our stupid, naive, idiot Presidents and secretaries of state keep on repeating their murderous error as though passing on a tradition. Clinton and Albright, now Bush and Rice.

Now, to be clear, I know they mean well, but as long as they refuse to get the obvious message that the Arabs involved are making fools of them, this idiocy will continue.

I recently had an email exchange with a very well informed Israeli who seemed, and I can’t say I blame him, to have developed a certain amount of hostility towards the Bush Administration over its newest plan, which is to pour massive monetary backing into Hamas’ opposition — Fatah, the party of Arafat, to try and oust the terrorist group through peaceful means — he has a very good point: We should have learned from the late, unlamented Arafat what happens when you give money to the Palestinians — whatever their leaders don’t deposit in their personal numbered accounts finances terrorism.

Okay –

Now, as I pointed out to my new Israeli acquaintance, I cannot fault the United States entirely here — the Israelis have been pretty damn stupid in their voting choices over the years, especially in recent ones; electing entirely too liberal leadership and allowing a spineless piece of schmutz like Olmert to remain at the top of their government at this point in time does not speak well for the intelligence of the Knesset, nor of the rank and file Israeli citizen.

Problem 3: America’s benign relationship with the Jewish State has been slowly deteriorating, thanks both to the influence of leftist organizations and the failure of the Olmert government to respond adequately to this situation.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speech at the American Task Force for Palestine’s inaugural dinner in Washington on Wednesday evening was but the latest sign that America’s alliance with Israel is weakening.
Rice’s statement that “there could be no greater legacy for America than to help to bring into being a Palestinian state,” just about says it all. The secretary of state of a president who was once friendlier to Israel than any of his predecessors now claims that the establishment of a state for a people who have distinguished themselves as the most overtly pro-jihad, terrorist society in the world, would be the greatest thing American could ever do.

Truncating,

The Democratic Party’s sharp turn leftward in recent years has been a major factor in weakening the US-Israel alliance. The ideological transformation of the party is the fruit of a collaborative effort by leading financiers, radical-leftist ideologues and political activists. Together these forces built organizations that dictate the party’s agenda; finance the campaigns of politicians who embrace this agenda; and work to defeat conservative Republicans and Democrats who disagree with their agenda.

MoveOn.org is the most influential organization of this type established in recent years. Its principal financiers are American Jewish billionaires George Soros and Peter Lewis.

To continue excerpting from the GAMLA article,

After Hamas’s electoral victory in January, American Friends of Peace Now, Israel Policy Forum and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom came together in an ad-hoc coalition to shield the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority from Congressional sanctions. Together they worked to sink the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act, which enjoyed overwhelming support in the Congress and the Senate and was backed by AIPAC. The legislation was designed to update US policy toward the PA in the wake of Hamas’s ascendance to power.

The bill called for the immediate cessation not only of direct US aid to the PA but also for the cut-off of US assistance to nongovernmental and UN organizations operating in the PA that had connections to terrorist organizations. The bill defined the PA as a terrorist sanctuary and consequently would have barred the entry of PA officials to and the operation of PA offices in the US, and placed travel restrictions on PA and PLO representatives to the UN. The bill also would have prohibited US officials from having any contacts with officials from Hamas, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The bill was approved by an enormous majority in the House of Representatives. Yet, due to the lobbying efforts of this group of Jewish leftists, the Senate version was greatly watered down, and included a presidential waiver that rendered the bill more or less declaratory. Since there was little common ground between the two versions of the bill, the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act was scuttled.

So, where y’at, Ehud?

To its discredit, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government took no steps to stymie the coalition’s machinations against the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act. Indeed, since 2003, Israel’s governments have gone out of their way to applaud these groups. Olmert’s now infamous speech in June 2005 where he said, “We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies,” was made at the Israel Policy Forum’s annual dinner.

Above emphasis mine.

What’s really needed here is strong Israeli leadership of a kind that can sit down with Bush and Rice and tell it like it is, and firmly decline the one-way “peace” proposals the terrorist bastards Palestinians love so much.

Israel’s enemies are certainly our enemies in the Global War On Terror. Had Ehud Olmert been worth even a tiny particle of feces, he would never have gone along with the ceasefire proposed jointly by the Bush Administration and the French (quadruple spit!). He would have said, “Thanks, but no thanks” and continued to make war until the IDF had decimated Hezbollah root and branch.

Israel’s alliance with the US is based on the fact that most Americans support Israel. American support for Israel finds its roots in foundations as diverse as religion, politics, morality, security, culture and economics. While the alliance is visibly weakened, its foundations remain solid. To rebuild American political support for Israel and to enhance the US-Israel alliance, it is imperative that Israel be capable of understanding the nature of this support. This understanding begins by making distinctions between our many friends and our foes and acting on these distinctions. Not all of our friends are Jews and not all Jews are our friends.

Well put, GAMLA….

Read the entire linked article, it’s definitely right on point.

Former Undersecretary of Defense(Bush 1 Administration) and author Jed Babbin has some spot-on reasons why it would be irresponsible in an extreme for the “global community” to interfere with Israel’s prosecution of their war with Hamas and Hezbollah, and by extension Syria and Iran.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair want to send an international force to separate Israel from Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon. Mr. Blair said a U.N. force should be sent to “stop the bombardment coming over into Israel and therefore [give] Israel a reason to stop its attacks on Hezbollah.” Mr. Annan said such a force could “pursue the idea of stabilization.” But their idea assumes, first, that a cease-fire would protect those worthy of protection and, second, that restoring the region’s antebellum “stability” would promote long-term peace. Both assumptions are utterly false.

Hezbollah is not some small, ragged band scattered around Lebanon. It is a huge terrorist structure, built over decades, that includes thousands of men, weapons, positions, offices and everything that enables it to control southern Lebanon. Israel is now destroying that infrastructure. A cease-fire would benefit Hezbollah and threaten Israel. It would protect both Hezbollah and the nations that support it–Syria and Iran–as well as the Lebanese who have accepted the terrorist organization as a legitimate part of their government. A cease-fire would allow Hezbollah to rebuild its power base and enable it to resume its attacks whenever Damascus and Tehran desired. For Israel, a U.N. force would create no security whatever against future attacks.

It has become rather tiresome, over the years, watching the same stupid jackass politicians, including a President I happen to like, continuously pressuring Israel into cutting off defensive actions before they’ve been completed and forcing them to go through a whole lot of diplomatic posturing in order to engender “peace” in the Mideast. I say these politicians are jackasses in this regard because they are too liberal-like when it comes to negotiating with Arabs — Hamas, Hezbollah and all the rest of Islam’s terrorist organizations break every agreement, no matter what, and these stupid, moronic, imbecillic politician dumb-asses go right back the next time and do it again. Even during “peace” negotiations, Arab bombs go off on Israeli streets, in stores and restaurants and on buses.

And every time, their only accomplishment is to get the Arabs a break so they can regroup and be fresh for their next treaty violation. I’m sorry, but these western politicians are effin’ boneheads — the only way Israel will ever have any peace is if they are allowed to destroy all the terrorist infrastructure over there, root and branch, and waste every last one of the terrorists’ leaders and supporters.

Sometimes the only way to achieve peace is through winning a war, and this is something the rest of the world has been keeping Israel from doing for a long time. These “peace” processes that all these Presidents of ours like to give themselves cudos for only serve to escalate terrorism and get more Israelis murdered.

I’m sorry, but when I hear Blair and some others want to pull the same crap yet again, it makes my blood boil. At least George W. Bush seems to have realized that his entire “Roadmap” enterprise was a complete waste of his time, to say nothing of a waste of the lives of innocent people killed by terrorists his “Roadmap” got released from Israeli prisons, and has given his blessing to Israel to do what they need to do, and that at least partly redeems him from some of the less delicate references in my above rant.

Anyway, read the rest of the OpEd here.

Finished? Good, because I’m not done yet.

Now let’s talk about the damage Israel’s liberals and the general complacency of their government have done.

Daniel Pipes is right on top of it.

For 45 years, 1948-93, Israel’s strategic vision, tactical brilliance, technological innovation, and logistical cleverness won it a deterrence capability. A deep understanding of the country’s predicament, complemented by money, will power, and dedication, enabled the Israeli state systematically to burnish its reputation for toughness.

The leadership focused on the enemy’s mind and mood, adopting policies designed to degrade his morale, with the goal of inducing a sense of defeat, a realization that the Jewish state is permanent and cannot be undone. As a result, whoever attacked the Israel state paid for that mistake with captured terrorists, dead soldiers, stalled economies, and toppled regimes.

By 1993, this record of success imbued Israelis with a sense of overconfidence. They concluded they had won, ignoring the inconvenient fact that Palestinians and other enemies had not yet given up their goal of eliminating Israel. Two emotions long held in check, fatigue and hubris, came flooding out. Deciding that (1) they had enough of war and (2) they could end the war on their own terms, Israelis experimented with such exotica as “the peace process” and “disengagement.” They permitted their enemies to create a quasi-governmental structure (the “Palestinian Authority”) and to amass hoards of armaments (Hizbullah’s nearly 12,000 Katyushas in southern Lebanon). They shamelessly traded captured terrorists for hostages.

And they gave the Palestinians — Hamas, a terrorist organization whose goal is the destruction of Israel — territory annexed in 1967 specifically for the purpose of having a security buffer zone in case of another invasion attempt by Syria. In the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the IDF had to fight tooth and nail to kick the invading Syrians off the Golan escarpment. So now an enemy sponsored by Syria occupies the security buffer zone with Israel’s blessing. Was that a brilliant move, or what?

Somewhere I was reading recently — I can’t recall exactly where, someone compared the “useful idiots” {western liberals, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s term}, of the USSR years who believed all the B.S. of Marxist propaganda spewed by communists and responded by joining the Communist Party, etc, and today’s “useful idiots”, who are this time swallowing all the “Religion Of Peace” folderol and to compound their gullibility, are so ignorant of Israel’s history and current affairs that they believe all the “occupation” and “apartheid” rhetoric generated by Islamofascist propagandists.

Now, I can see where that might be the case with western liberals, who get all their “news” from leftist bastions of bullshit like the New York Times and who know absolutely nothing about people and human nature, but from Israelis who have lived with terrorism and broken peace agreements by Arabs for so many decades, you’d expect a little more intelligence, or at least the wisdom born of long experience.

UPDATE

My blogger friend Always On Watch has indicated that the Saudis and fellow travellers have done a John Kerry and flip-flopped on us, going from condemnation of the “irresponsibility” on Hezbollah’s part that brought the wrath of Israel down on Lebanon to the standard form, general purpose condemnation and blame laid on Israel.

It is here.

These folks, and I’m speaking of Arab Muslim leaders, are about as mature as kindergartners.

…. is this excellent editorial at The New Republic.

What has been clarified by this round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, first and foremost, the character of Israel’s adversaries. They are Islamist terrorists, and proud to be so. More ominously, they are Islamist terrorists come to power. Hamas is no longer only a movement; it is now also a government. In the months since Hamas was elected by the Palestinians to govern (or misgovern) them, the regime of Ismail Haniyeh and company has presided over the launching of hundreds of Qassam rockets into Israel, applauded a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv restaurant (it would have been hypocritical of them not to applaud it!), allowed an unprecedented escalation of the conflict with the firing of a souped-up rocket into Ashkelon–the first time such a strike has been made against a major Israeli city–and, of course, kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit. All of this, again, is the work of a government. When Hamas was elected, there was an eruption of assurances in the media that power will breed responsibility, that the drudgeries of governing will usurp the ecstasies of bombing, and so on. “Hamas?” the headline on the cover of The New York Review of Books asked hopefully. But the Hamas rulers of Palestine have made it plain that they see no contradiction between governing and bombing. Success at the ballot box has had no calming effect. It has merely conferred political legitimacy upon moral depravity.

The long and the short of it is that Israel is not defending herself against guerilla activities by a faction of “downtrodden” souls, they are defending themselves against an Act Of War by a sovereign government. If the Palestinians want terrorists as leaders, well, so be it — they can reap what they’ve sown.

And as for Hezbollah and their Lebanese hosts, welllllll, they were warned a long time ago….

Hezbollah, of course, is not a government, but it is a part of a government. Its freedom of action, its unreconstructed radicalism, its pervasive presence in Lebanese politics: All this brings to mind nasty memories of a few decades ago, so that it is not incorrect to say that, over the last 30 years, Lebanon has exchanged a PLO mini-state within its borders for a Hezbollah mini-state within its borders. When Shalit was kidnapped, Hamas cited the precedent of Hezbollah’s kidnappings (and prisoner-exchanges) in the past, as if in exoneration of its own extortion. Hezbollah has always been Hamas’s teacher in the great madrassa of anti-Israeli terrorism. Now the teacher has taken a cue from the student and taken its own Israeli hostages. Israel must now remind its adversaries that it was deadly in earnest when, decades ago, it proclaimed that it would tolerate no such aggression along its northern border.

When you rent a DVD, you are deluged at the start of the feature with federal and international warnings regarding the illegality and criminal penalties of bootlegging the contents of the disc. When you see a no parking sign, there is, as often as not, a warning that if you park there, your car will be towed away and how much it will cost to get it back. A “No Trespassing” sign often makes sure you understand that if you trespass, you will be prosecuted. When I worked in a casino security department and we “86″ed someone from the property, we read them, from a card that everybody carried, a trespass warning that left no doubt that the next time the 86er was found in the casino or anyplace else on our property, he or she would be immediately arrested and sent to jail, and prosecuted. If the subject didn’t understand English or purported not to, or even had the slightest foreign accent, we would call in an employee(a dealer, change person, whoever) that was fluent in the subject’s native language and have them translate the trespass warning word-for-word. On highways, “No Littering” signs tell you how much you will be fined for littering.

The reason for all these warnings and posted explanations of the penalties for the transgressions indicated is to make unmistakeably plain what will happen if the warnings are not heeded, so that in court, the “I didn’t know” defense would not hold any water. Unscrupulous, greasy, seedy, anal-cavity liberal trial lawyers and drooling left wing judges brought this necessity upon society, but that’s one for another time.

My point being, decades ago, Israel warned the Lebanese and their terrorist Hezbollah butt-boys that there would be dire military consequences if there were any further cross border attacks — the Lebanese government is responsible for dealing with its in-house terror factions. If they choose to let them do as they please, they, like the Palestinians who voted in terrorism as their choice of leadership, deserve whatever Israel feels like dishing out. Actions have consequences, and if you indulge in the first, you have to accept the second.

And make no mistake about the culpability of other countries as well, like Iran and Syria. This is war by every “legal” definition no matter what the “international community” says — and it was declared on Israel, not the other way around, by governments that either enjoy legitimate sovereignty or, as in the case of the Palestinians, are recognized as such.

There is also a larger strategic dimension to the Hamas-Hezbollah offensive. These provocations stink of Assad and Ahmadinejad. The Hamas action in Gaza appears to have been ordered by Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader who resides in Damascus–which is to say, it is also a piece of Syrian intrigue. Nor can anything of significance take place in Lebanon without the sanction of Damascus; and Hezbollah enjoys not only the toleration of Syria but also the time-honored support of Iran, which is also Syria’s great ally in a region that may be otherwise turning in a better direction. Perhaps Meshal’s responsibility for the Gaza attack will now allow Haniyeh to masquerade as a moderate. (The Washington Post this week published an op-ed by Haniyeh that was full of outrageous assertions. It seems that an election is all that stands between terrorism and punditry.)

I sincerely hope that liberals in Israel (fat chance, if they’re anything like American liberals) have now taken to heart the consequences of making concessions to the “my way or the highway” brand of terrorism that seems to be the driving force behind Islam.

I love the last paragraph in the editorial:

It is also worth noting that the Hamas-Hezbollah aggression is aimed at damaging precisely those political forces in Israel–now represented by Ehud Olmert’s government–that withdrew Israeli settlers from Gaza and is committed to withdrawing Israeli settlers (70,000 of them) from the West Bank. It was one of the great ironies of recent times that Olmert’s party rose in Israel at the exact moment that Hamas rose in Palestine; but the irony has turned deadly. They, the Palestinians, really do want everything. And so they are about to learn, yet again, that, as long as they want everything, they will get nothing. This may satisfy the nihilists in charge, since nihilists live for nothing.

This was bound to happen after Israel ceded Gaza to the Palestinians, especially with Hamas at the helm of the Palestinian Authority. The message they sent was, “Hey, look, Mohammed, terrorism really does work, see? You’re getting Gaza! Now, keep up the good work, and remember — the harder you terrorize, the more concessions we’ll make!”

So it’s come to another war, this one against terrorists {like the war the Bush Administration is prosecuting} rather than a specific government, though the latter, as the possibility is advanced in the second article I will be linking to in this post, is strong as well in the not-too-distant future.

Here is what happens when a country is forced, by way of self defense, to go to war:

The two-storey house was reduced to rubble and rescue teams frantically searched through the wreckage for survivors while a neighbouring house was close to collapse. The force of the blast had shattered nearby windows and flying masonry had blown holes in the walls of other buildings.

Witnesses reported that the body of a child had been pulled from the wreckage of the house.

Israel defended the attack, saying that members of the Hamas military wing had been meeting in the house.
“Israel is compelled to take action against those planning to unleash lethal terror attacks against Israeli citizens,” said David Baker, an official in the office of the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert. “Palestinian terrorist leaders continue to take refuge amongst and hide behind their own civilians.”

But the strike is likely to heighten international condemnation of Israel’s reoccupation of Gaza Strip. Last week the EU and UN criticised Israel for “disproportionate use of force” against Palestinians in the territory, while the Swiss government alluded to the Geneva conventions on the laws of war in stating that the Israeli campaign amounted to “collective punishment”.

The EU and the UN can go to hell — where are their condemnations when Palestinians butcher innocent Israeli men, women and children with their rocket attacks and their suicide bombs? Oh, wait, I forgot — according to the EU, terrorism is acceptable when it doesn’t happen on their turf, but against Israel, and according to the UN, any attrocity committed against Israelis is hunky-dory. It’s fine, no problem. And what did the Swiss think when we bombed Germany during the Second World War? Did they howl then that it was “collective punishment”? I don’t think so.

The Palestinians have no right to complain about anything Israel does to defend herself against their terrorist attacks. If someone comes up to you on the street and attacks you without provocation, it’s your right to decimate them brutally and without mercy, simply because they forced you to fight against your will. Similarly, the Israelis, who have bent over backwards to achieve peace, including fulfilling their various treaty obligations on a totally one-sided basis, reserve the inalienable right to respond as forcefully as they deem necessary to protect themselves against these animals. If the Palestinians who claim to favor peaceful coexistence take umbrage with that, they shouldn’t vote terrorists into power. What they should do, however, is clean their own house, thereby eliminating the need for the IDF to do it for them.

Back in my younger days of reading western shitkicker novels, one of writer Wayne D. Overholster’s characters used an expression that has since stuck in my mind and sums things up rather well:

If you mess around with the bandwagon, you have to expect to get hit with the horn.

If the Palestinians can stand by and allow terrorism to be practiced on their behalf, then they can share in the penalties when payback time comes around.

Now, I was opposed to any surrender of land by Israel to the Palestinians, as were right thinkers and others with common sense everywhere, especially in Israel, as I’ve made more than plain on a number of occasions, but, with a hat tip to Stephanie Pearson for bringing this column to my attention, I tend to agree with Yossi Klein Halevi here regarding several factors pertinent to this post. A free suscription to The New Republic Online may be required to access the entire article.

The next Middle East war–Israel against genocidal Islamism–has begun. The first stage of the war started two weeks ago, with the Israeli incursion into Gaza in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier and the ongoing shelling of Israeli towns and kibbutzim; now, with Hezbollah’s latest attack, the war has spread to southern Lebanon. Ultimately, though, Israel’s antagonists won’t be Hamas and Hezbollah but their patrons, Iran and Syria. The war will go on for months, perhaps several years. There may be lulls in the fighting, perhaps even temporary agreements and prisoner exchanges. But those periods of calm will be mere respites.

To truncate a bit,

For the Israeli right, this is the moment of “We told you so.” The fact that the kidnappings and missile attacks have come from southern Lebanon and Gaza–precisely the areas from which Israel has unilaterally withdrawn–is proof, for right-wingers, of the bankruptcy of unilateralism. Yet the right has always misunderstood the meaning of unilateral withdrawal. Those of us who have supported unilateralism didn’t expect a quiet border in return for our withdrawal but simply the creation of a border from which we could more vigorously defend ourselves, with greater domestic consensus and international understanding. The anticipated outcome, then, wasn’t an illusory peace but a more effective way to fight the war. The question wasn’t whether Hamas or Hezbollah would forswear aggression but whether Israel would act with appropriate vigor to their continued aggression.

And of course, the unilateralists had no idea that the Arabs, with whose charactar they certainly must be quite familiar given their daily proximity, and the benefit of past experience, would view the withdrawal as a sign of defeat and press harder. No, of course not. Liberal reasoning is not restricted to the U.S., Canada and western Europe. No matter how many times a snake bites them, liberals will continue to try to reason with it.

So it wasn’t the rocket attacks that were a blow to the unilateralist camp, but rather Israel’s tepid responses to those attacks. If unilateralists made a mistake, it was in believing our political leaders–including Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert–when they promised a policy of zero tolerance against any attacks emanating from Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal. That policy was not implemented–until two weeks ago. Now, belatedly, the Olmert government is trying to regain something of its lost credibility, and that is the real meaning of this initial phase of the war, both in Gaza and in Lebanon.

Still, many in Israel believe that, even now, the government is acting with excessive restraint. One centrist friend of mine, an Olmert voter, said to me, “If we had assassinated [Hamas leader] Haniyeh after the first kidnapping, [Hezbollah leader] Nasrallah would have thought twice about ordering another kidnapping.” Israel, then, isn’t paying for the failure of unilateral withdrawal, but for the failure to fulfill its promise to seriously respond to provocations after withdrawal.

Bullshit. They are paying for both.

More weighing in by the “international community”:

Absurdly, despite Israel’s withdrawal to the international borders with Lebanon and Gaza, much of the international community still sees the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers as a legitimate act of war: Just as Israel holds Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners, so Hamas and Hezbollah now hold Israeli prisoners. One difference, though, is that inmates in Israeli jails receive visits from family and Red Cross representatives, while Israeli prisoners in Gaza and Lebanon disappear into oblivion. Like Israeli pilot Ron Arad, who was captured by Hezbollah 20 years ago, then sold to Iran, and whose fate has never been determined. That is one reason why Israelis are so maddened by the kidnapping of their soldiers.

Note that it doesn’t matter to the “international community” that Israel treats its captured terrorists humanely, just as those who condemn America for the war in Iraq, including our very own liberals, do their best to ignore the beheadings and other mutilations of prisoners by the terrorists we are at war against, and equally ignore the humane treatment of the prisoners at GITMO, who fare much better than inmates of our own prisons. As I’ve written before, Israel’s very existence is an inconvenience to the so-called “international community”, so they could care less what is done to Israel, while they defend the terrorists’ right to terrorize Israel as vigorously as they please.

In exchange for the return of captured Israeli soldiers, the terrorists demand the release of their brethren from Israeli jails, such nice believers in The Religion Of Peace and paragons of justice and virtue as one Samir Kuntar:

Another reason is the nature of the crimes committed by the prisoners whose release is being demanded by Hezbollah and Hamas. One of them is Samir Kuntar, a PLO terrorist who in 1979 broke into an apartment in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya, took a father and child hostage, and smashed the child’s head against a rock. In the Palestinian Authority, Kuntar is considered a hero, a role model for Palestinian children.

Why not free that frigging animal? Not only would he be a role model for Palestinian children, he’d also be a hero to every liberal on the planet. Perhaps he and Mr. Mumia could go on a lecture tour together.

It really illustrates just how primitive Islam is as a collective system of belief when those who purport to speak for Muslims demonstrate time and again that they are incapable of offering any compromise or even sitting down and resolving differences of opinions peacefully, as human beings are known to do.

Every solution these people produce to every problem involves violence, almost exclusively against unarmed, innocent men, women and children and the property of others, whether it is burning the vehicles of people they don’t even know, bombing embassies, blowing themselves up in crowded places… There were the transit bombings in London, the recent running amok of Muslims in France, the Van Gogh murder, the butchery of school children in Russia, there is the unending violence in Israel…

Ah, Israel, a country whose liberal lemmings have been ceding important strategic land to the Palestinians in an effort to curtail terrorism, even as the terrorists are sneering in their victory, seeing this as a sign that their terrorism works and vowing still more monstrocities until they’ve run the Jews completely out of the country.

And there’s Hamas, the terrorist organization elected by the Palestinian people to assume the mantle of the ruling class long held by Fatah, a party that was once the militant wing of the P.L.O.

In response to Hamas’ political victory, western nations have cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority(PA) because it’s as plain as day that while much of the money would continue to support Palestinian infrastructure, the bulk of it would be used to purchase armaments and explosives for the continued prosecution of terrorism against the Israelis.

These withheld funds, as I have said before, are yours and my tax dollars, among others, and since it’s our money, it is our decision to whom we give it away. We are under no obligation to give it to the PA or anyone else just because they need money. If these people weren’t murderous animals and instead were willing to honor agreements made with the Israelis and accept that Israel is there to stay, they would have a great trading partner with whom they could flourish and not have to live with a hand out for alms from other countries. Instead, mothers and fathers are willing to sacrifice their children to murder the children of others.

Golda Meir once said that there would only be peace in the Middle East when Palestinians came to love their children as much as they hate the Jews.

That will never happen as long as the Palestinians continue to make the wrong choices and support terrorism. In short, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime, sad to say.

Back on topic, as I said above, the withheld funds belong to the citizens of the nations that are withholding them. They do not belong to the Palestinians and we are under no obligation to help further terrorism by disbursing them to the PA as long as it is under Hamas control. The Palestinians got what they voted for, it’s not our responsibility, despite the guilt trips laid on us by wingnuts like former President Jimmy Carter, who says, among other things, that

One clear reason for the surprising Hamas victory for legislative seats was that the voters were in despair about prospects for peace. With American acquiescence, the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years, regardless of who had been chosen to represent the Palestinian side as interlocutor.

A) Our liberal ex-POTUS apparently believes that the best way to achieve peace is to elect terrorists with a life-and-death agenda of mass homicide to run a government, and

B) the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years? What does he call the Great Gaza Giveaway and the expulsions of settlers from West Bank towns to make way for Palestinians? I suppose chopped liver, as they say.

So the terrorist regime Carter worships has taken the Islamic approach to the situation.

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, on Monday threatened to strike at US and European interests in response to international sanctions on the Palestinian Authority.

The threat, the first of its kind, came as PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to hold talks in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin on the severe financial crisis in the PA territories. Moreover, the threat by Abbas’s Fatah party came as Palestinians marked the 58th anniversary of the nakba, or catastrophe (the secular anniversary of Israel’s independence).

“We won’t remain idle in the face of the siege imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel, the US and other countries,” said a leaflet issued by the Aksa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip. “We will strike at the economic and civilian interests of these countries, here and abroad.”

The leaflet added: “Let the entire world know that we won’t succumb in the face of the policy of blackmail, siege and starvation. In the past we did not capitulate in the face of the policy of assassinations, detentions and air raids.”

Blackmail, indeed!

“It’s the rest of the world’s responsibility to give us money, even though much of it will be spent to continue our butchery of innocent people.”

Of course it is… NOT!

Another armed group affiliated with Fatah, the Abu Rish Brigades, threatened to launch a new intifada unless the international community agreed to fund the PA. “This will be a merciless intifada that will destroy everything,” said Abu Haroon, a spokesman for the group in the Gaza Strip.

I suppose this kind of response can be categorized, like “going postal”, as “going Islamic”. How, one wonders, do these primates ever expect to earn any true respect from the global community(outside of France, certain other questionable members of the UN and liberals everywhere) if their only dialogue comes in the form of suicide vests, property destruction and bullets?

On the other hand, it’s entirely possible, if not probable, that they could care less about the respect of infidels, since the goal of Islam is to rule those infidels by fear, to make the world one big Caliphate, and the “Religion of Peace” preaches that it’s perfectly acceptable to achieve this objective via terrorism.

The bloody real estate dispute in Israel, which the Arabs are now winning do to spinal deterioration among Israelis, is just a small part of a much bigger picture.

Hat Tip: James Taranto

Pick a side in this bit of infighting, then wonder how the U.N., our own President and Israeli liberals can be so gung-ho about ceding territory to the Palestinians, and allowing either Hamas or Fatah to govern it and maintain any sort of peaceful relations with Israel. Well, I suppose the U.N.’s support for either the old or the new Palestinian administrations running things doesn’t provoke a whole lot of wonder, since as a collective body they are much more comfortable supporting terrorists and totalitarian regimes than they are free countries, and they have, by their past involvements, made it quite clear that they wish Israel would simply go away.

Hamas and Fatah leaders called for calm Monday, after clashes between armed supporters of the two groups in the Gaza Strip left three people dead.

The Hamas militant and two Fatah gunmen were
killed overnight when members of the two groups opened fire with assault rifles and an anti-tank missile in the most serious outbreak of fighting between the rival organizations since Hamas took power. At least 11 others were wounded, medical personnel said.

I’m neither shocked nor particularly disturbed by this development, the former because both major Palestinian parties are terrorist organizations, and as such are supported and staffed by animals who will always find a reason to kill other human beings, the latter because it can only be good for Israel if a bunch of these ignorant, murderous-clowns-from-hell kill each other off.

Of course, I can see why Fatah might harbor ill feelings toward Hamas — with losing the elections to them, Fatah also loses the monopoly they had on pocketable foreign aid, you know, the green stuff earmarked for the well-being of the Palestinian masses that somehow found its way into the Swiss bank accounts of the late unlamented Yassir Arafat and close political associates, or was invested in necessary Palestinian diplomatic equipment like smallarms and explosives.

Fatah, which ruled Palestinian politics for four decades, has been fighting with Hamas since the Islamic group won the January parliamentary elections. The rivals are vying for control of the security forces, with Hamas becoming increasingly frustrated that international sanctions are preventing it from paying salaries.

Sure, they need the “aid” funding. How else could they afford buy those essential tools they require in order to continue diplomatic relations with Israel, and now apparently with each other? It’s got to be said… These people call their belief system The Religion Of Peace, so what does that make Judaism and Christianity? Even during times of intense friction between Democrats and Republicans, we don’t see two-party shootouts on the Hill and we certainly don’t have Dems abducting Republicans and vice-versa.

So, as I said, sure, they need the aid funding…

Each group has been training its gunmen for possible confrontation, and Hamas recently outbid Fatah in buying a black market shipment of 100,000 bullets.

And the “International Community” wants these killer troglodytes to have political autonomy in territories better left under the more responsible, 21st Century control of the Israelis.

I could ask, “What’s this world coming to?”, but I’m afraid I’d be a little late — I think it’s already” there”.

Anybody who’s read my blog for awhile knows how strongly I feel about Israeli politicians Frenchly surrendering to terrorism and the opinions of countries whose oil interests place them firmly in the Arab camp, and ceding more and more land to the Palestinians. To Hamas.

I received this short, to-the-point post from Ryan Jones at Zionist.com, and would like to share it. Rather than rehash my opinion yet again on the Great Giveaway now being continued by new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, I’ll refer you to the post, where my condensed opinion appears as the first comment.

It is here.

It just doesn’t stop, whether it’s the Arabs, antisemitic liberals in the west or members of the U.N.

This time, it’s a South African attorney who is an envoy to the useless, feckless, soulless, spineless, corrupt, pro-terrorist, anti-American, pro-marxism bunch of diplofux at Turtle Bay, one John Dugard.

From an article emailed me today by Ryan Jones, Co-Editor and Website Manager at Jerusalem Newswire,

Almost completely disregarding Palestinian Arab aggression against Israel’s Jews, a United Nations envoy has sought to lay the blame for regional conflict at the doorstep of the Jewish state by misrepresenting and exaggerating Israel’s defensive measures and isolated acts of frustration.

In a special report prepared for next week’s annual meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission, South African lawyer John Dugard charged:

“It seems that settlers are able to terrorize Palestinians and destroy their trees and crops with impunity.”
What he failed to mention, however, are the innumerable stoning, shooting and bombing attacks carried out against the Jewish settlers by the hostile Arab population surrounding them. Often those attacks are launched from the cover of olive groves and fruit orchards, prompting frustrated and threatened Israelis to take matters into their own hands.

Dugard also criticized official Israeli defensive measures both in Gaza and the “West Bank.”

So he’s saying that the Palestinians are blameless, and the Jews are attacking them on a regular basis for no reason, right?

Left out of the equation were the hundreds of rockets and mortar shells that have been fired from Gaza at nearby Negev towns and villages since Israel withdrew from the Strip last summer. Nearly 500 Kassam rockets have been fired since the beginning of this year alone.

Dugard evidently carries with him the same attitude that all Islamist terrorists do: Whatever atrocities we subject you to are perfectly acceptable and not subject to recriminations, because Allah’s on our side and therefore anything we do is right. Anything you do to defend yourselves against our terror attacks is tantamount to oppression, genocide, unreasonable violence and acts against God.

The entire article is here.

Here is a very well laid out analysis of the significance of the Hamas victory over Fatah in Wednesday’s elections, and where this result of terrorist organization over long established, corrupt governance might lead.

The sweeping victory of the Islamist Hamas party in Wednesday’s Palestinian legislative elections can hardly be considered good news. But neither is it surprising, and it may even have the long-run benefit of educating Palestinians about the terrible cost of their political choices.

Absolutely, but that long-run benefit will come the hard way. The Hamas charter’s still all about murdering as many Jews(not considering the collateral deaths of fellow Palestinians to be of consequence)as it takes to make instant history of Israel. Having been voted into power makes them no less terrorists than they were prior to the elections.

The ruling Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas governed corruptly, ineffectually and, until the death in 2004 of founder Yasser Arafat, dictatorially. So it is understandable that Palestinians wanted an alternative. That they went for the only other major choice on offer is not necessarily an indication that they share Hamas’s goal of destroying Israel and all its citizens. The vote might even turn out to be clarifying–in the sense of showing the world that no Israeli-Palestinian peace is possible until the Palestinians have leaders who really want to live in peace with Israel.

Right, sometime soon. No doubt.

Rabin was right that Arafat would have scant regard for the rights of Palestinians. But he was wrong that Arafat would crack down on Hamas. Like every other strongman, Arafat didn’t crack down on extremists but used them to his advantage where he could. Palestinians could see that the U.S. was coddling a man who oppressed them, breeding cynicism about U.S. motives and making it hard for democratic movements to flourish. The Bush Administration is working hard to change those perceptions and build a Palestinian civil society, but this will take years.

Just one of many cases of the Bush Administration’s having to sidetrack assets from ongoing proactive projects to clean up a mess generated by the Clinton Administration years before, but I’ll digress no further.

The White House will have to resist the temptation, no doubt encouraged by Europe, to pressure Israel to deal with Hamas as it once was pressed to deal with Arafat. But given Hamas’s history and declared goals, the onus is on its leaders to show that they have an agenda beyond terror. If Hamas begins to use Gaza as a base to import weapons and attack Israel, the Jewish state will have every right to strike back in self-defense. And the U.S. should support it in doing so.

Future terrorism by Hamas, which is a certainty, will bring misery to the Palestinians via Israel’s completely justified retaliatory and self defense measures, and the Palestinian leadership will blame Israel for any collateral damage, somehow managing to make the part about the original terrorist attack go away and accusing Israel of violating territorial agreements it had made with the Palestinians.

True story: When I lived in San Francisco, I found that there are a lot of small, family run retail stores owned by Palestinians, and got to know the owners of a few in my neighborhood.

“Arafat no good.” Was a consensus among these people. “He steal. He make violence. Arafat gone, violence stop, I go home.”

About two and a half years ago, there was a Palestinian terrorist attack of particular severity that drew a smash for smite response from the Israelis more than twelve hours later.

Two of the Palestinian merchants told me that according to Al Jazeera and a couple of other Arabic news agencies, the Arab terrorist attack had been retaliation for the Israelis’ action. According to the time-line involved, this would have meant that the terrorists had been retaliating in advance.

That being the nature of Hamas and the rest of the terrorist groups purporting to speak for the Palestinians, in my own unhumble opinion I see nothing changing for the better for a long time to come, unless my own long-standing prediction comes true:

Israel exercises an extreme military option in which a lot of Palestinians die, good(collaterally, or simply too moderate for Hamas’ use and therefore executed) and evil alike, the terrorists are hammered into oblivion, destroyed root and branch, and any support among the Palestinians for any kind of militancy suffers a broken back.

Yes, we can see that ceding Gaza to the Palestinians is paying some real dividends.

Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired an almost daily portion of Kassam rockets towards Israel over the past two weeks, and yesterday’s serving included a rocket that landed in the southern areas of Ashkelon. Defense Minister Sha’ul Mofaz convened a meeting of senior defense establishment figures, and demanded that the army continue to fire artillery at northern Gaza as a deterrence measure.

And now it looks like some Israeli politicians are borrowing a chapter from the American Democratic Party, the chapter titled, “Politics Before Country.”

Mofaz was running for head of the Likud until last week, when he suddenly decided to transfer to Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party, where he is guaranteed a Knesset seat and, most likely, a Cabinet position. In light of what many viewed as his unabashed opportunism, many questions were raised as to his fitness to make life-and-death decisions in the capacity of Defense Minister.

I know I’m going to hate to see where this all ends…