December 15, 2006

Ahmadmanjihad's Effective Strategy

In engaging his full scale Holocaust denial campaign (even to the extent of having held his global conference on the subject earlier this week), the Iranian president is embacing a multifaceted and highly effective strategy that demonstrates he is, indeed, no dummy (or perhaps he is, and the leaders of certain western countries are just dumber than he is), according to an on-point analysis by megaperceptive columnist Caroline Glick.

So why is the guy who is gunning for a new Holocaust belittling the last one?

First of all, by doing so he empowers those Germans and friends of Germany who carried it out. By denying the Holocaust Ahmadinejad turns the Nazis into victims and so provides a space for them to express themselves after a sixty year silence. Indeed, in Germany neo-Nazism is a burgeoning political and social force that proudly parades its links to Iran.

The German fascist party NPD's followers demonstrated in support of Iran at the World Cup in Germany last spring. This week, Der Spiegel reported that attacks against Jewish children have increased markedly in recent years. Jewish children and their non-Jewish friends have been humiliated in anti-Semitic rituals unheard of since the Nazi era. "Jew" has become one of the most prevalent derogatory terms in use in Germany today.

Iran's adoption of Holocaust denial as an official, defiant policy gives legitimacy to this striking phenomenon. This is especially the case since Iran is blaming the Jews for silencing these poor fascists. In his same letter to Merkel Ahmadinejad wrote, "The perpetual claimants against the great people of Germany are the bullying Zionists that funded the Al Quds Occupying Regime with the force of bayonets in the Middle East."

of course does not limit his efforts to the Nazis. He is also setting the cognitive conditions for the annihilation of Israel for the international Left by presenting Israel's existence as a direct result of the Holocaust. As Iran's Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said this week, "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt."

In short, Iran views Holocaust denial as a strategic propaganda tool. By downgrading the Holocaust, Iran mobilizes supporters and paralyzes potential opponents. Its coupling of the last Holocaust with the one it signals daily it intends to carry out, wins it support among the Nazis and the Sunnis alike. Its presentation of the Holocaust as a myth used to exploit Muslims wins its support in the international Left which increasingly views Israel as an illegitimate state. So by denying the Holocaust Iran raises its leadership profile both regionally and globally.
Indeed, even if the Left doesn't buy into Holocaust denial, it can still agree with Iran's conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. As Mottaki explained, "If during this [Holocaust denial conference] it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"

Truncating,

Merkel and her fellow Germans have spent an inordinate amount of time over the past three years condemning the Nazi Holocaust. This week they even organized a special Holocaust condemning conference in response to the Iranian Holocaust denying conference.

over the same time period, they have conducted negotiations with Teheran as part of the EU-3 that have enabled Iran to continue its nuclear progress; obstructed US efforts to levy sanctions on Iran; and maintained active trade relations with Iran. Merkel's government has continued the practice of providing loan guarantees to German firms doing business with Iran. In 2005, German-Iranian trade stood at about $5 billion.
Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran's ability to move on with its nuclear bomb program.

The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent in Merkel's refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances - a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel's Prime Minister on Tuesday.

Yeah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that completely clueless waste of skin who is as much a threat to the future of Israel as is the Iranian President.

Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir for his opposition to the "nuclearlization of Iran" which Putin is actively promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas to take issue with Merkel's statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran's Holocaust denial strategy.

Read the entire OpEd here.

Posted by Seth at 05:38 AM | Comments (6) |

October 24, 2006

4 A.M. Relaxation And Thoughts On Israel

So I'm just sort of kicking back at 0400 hours, playing with my new Firefox download -- I haven't yet(after what, 10 months?) figured out how to adjust my blog clock to the east coast, so the time of this post will appear as a zillion hours or so earlier.

I have my MusicMatch library running some Bangles through my great Logitech speakers, stuff like September Gurls and my all time favorite song by that awesome group, Return Post.

I'm thinking about the present situation in Israel -- the Hamas rejects and Fatah squaring off to blow each other away, both sides arming up. Okay, so this isn't as unusual among Arab Muslims as it might be among normal, 21st Century human beings -- we discuss, they destroy. Western diplomacy consists mostly of a bunch of over-educated assholes sitting around a table engaged in two-faced, multisyllabic dialogue, but at least they usually come to some sort of agreement that preserves the peace. Arabic diplomacy is just a bit different: It usually means a lot of explosions and hot lead flying in many directions, and lots of people "expiring". The diplomats that most effectively get their points across are those that kill the most diplomats on the opposite side of whatever disagreement happens to be on the table are considered the best diplomats, even though they, personally, don't have to wax anybody.

The flotsam that lives to butcher innocent women and children are the true warriors of Islam.

The very idea that the Bush Administration wants these people to have a sovereign state is beyond me, but GWB is the President, so I suppose he must know what he's doing. Excuse me, I have to go to the head....

I think I'll let a great blog I recently discovered and blogrolled called Morning Coffee give us an update.

Meanwhile, the combatively challenged Prime Minister Olmert has agreed to bring a "hardliner" onto his team in order to avoid a slide into ruin for his own ill conceived Kadima party, one Avigdor Lieberman, and thank G-d for him, and his Israel Beiteinu Party. Lieberman's own point of view as to how to get things done is fractionally different than the politically correct Ehud Olmert's, maybe a mere 180 degrees, at most. Not too much. Did I say "thank G-d for him"?

My own model scenario would be for Fatah and Hamas to kill each other off in the civil war that seems to be brewing between the two corrupt terrorist factions that are the sum total of the so-called "Palestinian" entity, leaving a few necessarily reasonable Arabs who might be willing to assimillate themselves into the Israeli population and allow the Jewish State to get on with living in peace and prosperity, but that's probably too much to hope for....

Posted by Seth at 11:59 PM | Comments (11) |

October 17, 2006

Screwing Israel (and ourselves)

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.

Posted by Seth at 12:57 AM | Comments (21) |

July 20, 2006

Good Reasons To Let Israel Finish The Job

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.

Posted by Seth at 02:10 AM | Comments (12) |

July 13, 2006

Putting Things Into Perspective...

.... 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.

Posted by Seth at 12:49 PM | Comments (8) |

July 12, 2006

And Another War Begins....

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.

Posted by Seth at 02:29 PM | Comments (2) |

May 17, 2006

More Islam In Action

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

Posted by Seth at 11:24 AM | Comments (6) |

May 08, 2006

Animals Fighting Among Themselves

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".

Posted by Seth at 07:34 AM |

April 26, 2006

Ehud Olmert, Continuing The Giveaway

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.

Posted by Seth at 08:20 AM |

March 09, 2006

UN Envoy: It's All The Jews' Fault

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.

Posted by Seth at 08:29 AM |

January 28, 2006

Hamas Rules, Indeed

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.

Posted by Seth at 09:20 AM |

December 19, 2005

Fruits Of Sharon's Labor(no pun intended)

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...

Posted by Seth at 05:56 AM |

December 06, 2005

Citizens' Self Sufficiency In Action

In the face of deteriorating security, Jewish residents of Karmei Tzur are taking matters into their own hands.

Shlomo Ne'eman, a member of Karmei Tzur's municipality told Arutz-7 that residents have become fed up with the IDF's systematic ignoring of all their requests to deal with the Arabs who target vehicles driving on the Hevron-Jerusalem road with rocks and firebombs.

Residents say they refuse to abandon their homes, as they suspect the IDF response is intended to induce them to do. "But we are also no longer willing to be placed at the mercy of the Arab hooligans and watch as our children are targeted on their way to and from school each day," Ne'eman said.

Tuesday morning, at 7 AM, residents deployed along the main road, armed with their weapons used for guard-duty in their community. "We stood all morning near the neighboring Arab villages of Beit Umar and El Aroub and we guarded the road," Ne'eman described. "And we intend to continue guarding until the army comes to its senses and takes matters into its own hands."

This seems like the only real option they have to ensure the safety of themselves, their families and their community, and a prime example of the necessity for citizens to be armed. The situation they face is the result of their government's failing to provide them adequate protection from the animals who pursue terrorism as a substitute for compromise.

Luckily, in their case, they are issued weapons for the purpose of guarding their town, but imagine if the defeatist Sharon administration had followed the American liberal doctrine of limiting firearms ownership to military, police and criminals. The entire community might have been butchered by now, men, women and children as the local Palestinians would have known there would be no one returning fire during a terrorist attack.

The armed presence of these citizens began working right off the bat, as the "brave" Palestinians have no stomach for fighting, only for murdering unarmed children who can't shoot back and so were nowhere to be found where they had previously congregated, awaiting the passing of these school children to assault them.

American criminals of the armed robbery and home invasion persuasions are pretty much the same in that regard, they do not want a firefight during which they may be injured or killed, they want an unarmed, helpless victim as they, like their terrorist cousins, are cowards.

If they knew that prospective targets were armed, they would take their dubious "business" elsewhere, or perhaps find a new line of work.

Posted by Seth at 07:22 AM |

November 28, 2005

Mubarak's Take, Naturally

Naturally, Ariel Sharon's intentions to "give away the farm" are more than enough incentive for Hosni Mubarak to throw his two cents into Sharon's corner.

BARCELONA - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is the only Israeli politician capable of reaching peace with the Palestinians, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in an interview published here yesterday.

Mubarak's comments come days after Sharon quit the Likud party, saying he could not push for peace with the Palestinians while wasting time battling far-right rivals.

"Sharon, of all the Israeli politicians, is the only one capable of achieving peace with the Palestinians," Mubarak said in an interview with Spain's ABC newspaper. "He has the ability to take difficult decisions, commit to what he says and carry it out."

Mubarak pointed to Sharon's success in pushing through Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip despite opposition from settlers and from within Likud.

Sure, real success as illustrated here and here {Hat Tip, Israpundit}. Oh, and remember this?

At any rate, the fact that Sharon has apparently committed himself to a course of capitulation that would do France proud would naturally make him the favorite of any Arab leader. Here is, after all, an Israeli leader who is willing to do for his overt and covert neighboring enemies what they themselves have been unable to accomplish in fifty seven years, that is, get some momentum going on the unravelling of the Jewish state -- once a downhill roll commences, it's difficult if not impossible to stop -- and the handing over of what were once retained by Israel as buffer zones against repeat invasions by hostile neighbors to a murderous enemy whose ultimate goal is the total annihilation of Israel.

Middle East Newsline (MENL) reports in the name of "political sources" that Sharon has begun briefing senior U.S. officials of his intention to withdraw unilaterally from more than 95% of Judea and Samaria. Sharon is hoping to be elected Prime Minister for a third time - this time not in the Likud, however, but as head of his new Kadima Party.

One of the most valuable "acquisitions" of the Kadima Party, MK Chaim Ramon, formerly of Labor, said openly last week that Sharon will unilaterally withdraw to final borders in Judea and Samaria if Palestinian terror continues. IMRA reported that Ramon said this on a live interview on Channel 10's "London and Kirschenbaum" news program just hours after he announced his decision to join Sharon's Kadima.

Mar Sharon and his cronies are determined, it would seem, to add a geographic definition to the term downsizing.

Posted by Seth at 10:44 AM | Comments (2) |

Palestinian Self Determination

Yeah, right.

They're off to a flying start.

Posted by Seth at 09:17 AM |

November 21, 2005

C'mon, Condi!

So having been mostly raised by my grandparents, who were European Jews who both immigrated into the United States of America more than 80 years ago and being a Jew myself(a Conservative Jew and a Conservative American), I have a problem with the message{or lack of same} being delivered by my fellow Jews here in America.

It would seem that despite the lessons learned in the course of our heritage, which spans considerably more than a score of centuries, the "intellectuals" among us still haven't learned any lessons from history.

An alarming percentage of Jews in the U.S. represent the left side of the global political spectrum, a failing, I have observed, that dates back to at least the early 1900s, when too many Jews belonged to the Communist Party and served the Kremlin. Intellectualism is an integral part of our faith, and for some reason certain brands of totalitarianism attract intellectuals to the point that they forsake reality in favor of the cloistered netherworld of false Utopian discourse.

To those of us who honor and observe our religion(I'm not a golden example: I fast on Yom Kippur while asking God to forgive my sins of the previous year, avoid leavened food products during Passover and try to live as the Talmud directs, but I love pork and I miss a lot of our holidays), the security and continued existence of Israel is of paramount importance.

Israel is the capitol of my faith, just as America is the land of my birth and the country to which I owe my allegiance(while I am an American first, and the U.S.A. is my country, Israel is the capitol of a community of which I am a member that is spread across the globe, a nation that took over two millenium to recover). So while I don't live there, it is as important to me as a Jew as Washington, DC is to me as an American.

Pretty recently, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ceded the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, as dumb a move as Bill Clinton made with the assistance of the late terrorist/ Palestinian leader, Yassir Arafat, helping a man who had been a terrorist for almost three decades "win" a Nobel Peace Prize.

Israel is being given to the Arabs, component-by-component, by a Prime Minister who is apparently in leave of his senses.

I can't lay the blame on too many things he does, because I don't live in Israel, but I will say that a huge amount of the anti-Israel rhetoric we are bombarded with comes from the left and can be lain at the doorstep of influence generated by some of my fellow Jews.

Jewish American leaders urged Rice to change tactics and directly impose on Israel an agreement to re-open the Rafiah border, but even liberal leaders worry Israel's security has been breached.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week broke her previously stated policy of "guiding, but not directing" negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Rice used "unusual personal involvement" to pressure Israel and the PA, according to the liberal New York Jewish daily The Forward.

Under the agreement, Israel agreed to drop its demand for direct surveillance at the Rafiah border and to rely on video cameras without having authority to intervene on matters of security.

Our government(the United States Government), particularly the State Department, is involved heavily in peace negitiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We know this and approve, assuming that our officials are sincere about wanting peace to reign in Israel.

The problem is that like the Global War on Terror being prosecuted by the Bush Administration, the very defense of the Jewish State is under attack by the left, not only in Israel and the United Nations, but by Jews here in the United States.

HOUSTON, Nov. 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Representatives of the 1.5 million Reform Jews in North America voted overwhelmingly today to oppose the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court of the United States because it "would threaten protection of the most fundamental rights" that the Reform Movement supports.

"On choice, women's rights, civil rights and the scope of federal power," Alito would "shift the ideological balance of the Supreme Court on matters of core concern to the Reform Movement," according to the resolution adopted by the more than 2,000 voting delegates from more than 500 congregations in all 50 states. The vote came at the closing session of the Union for Reform Judaism's Biennial Convention, which met in Houston Nov. 16-20. The Union represents the largest branch of Judaism in North America.

Yes, the same folks who oppose the confirmation of a conservative SCOTUS justice candidate in the United States, someone whose beliefs echo those of our founding fathers and a political system based on the Constitution that has made America the greatest country in the world, include a more than significant number of Jews whose view, in and out of Israel, of a perfect world does not include the existence of Israel.

At least, their actions do not indicate any serious interest in any future for the Jewish State. I cannot say that all of these people, or even the majority of them wish harm to Israel, but I will say that too many of them are living in some fantasy world or other

These leftists, most of whom would indubitably resent being referred to thusly, are either living in some Utopian dream world where the general belief is that there is some remote possibility that the Palestinians will be satisfied with having a part of Israel as their own, and that once they have this parcel of real estate and the sovereignty of such political ownership, there will be peace.

They couldn't be farther from the truth.

How could they, when they are such avid proponents of the Rafah Agreement, which negates important security features of the agreed-upon Roadmap treaty, so strongly undermining Israel's authority to defend itself?

Muhammad Dahlan, one of the PA signatories on the agreement, emphasized in a post-signing press conference, "It was agreed that Israel will have no right to prevent any Palestinian citizen to pass through the Rafah Crossing after it is re-opened." Wanted terrorists could thus pass safely between Gaza and Judea.

Israel will be able to monitor those who enter, via a joint control room in Kerem Shalom, to which data and video images will be sent from the Rafah Crossing in real time or near real-time. However, if a suspected terrorist is noted, Israel will not be able to demand that he be kept out or detained.

Further,

According to the agreement, however, Israel will no longer be able to unilaterally close the crossings in such situations. In case of terror alerts, Israel must first notify the US embassy in Tel Aviv, provide the specific information that motivated the request for a closure, and then wait for Washington to approve or refuse the request.

I fear that my fellow American Jews who embrace this idiocy(picture someone lying on the pavement with cardiac arrest, and the law stating that you must first call an 800 number and weather interminable telephone menus in order to obtain permission to administer CPR) are either completely out of touch with the world's more brutal realities or, though I would hope to be wrong, anti-Israel.

The fact that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a woman I hold in the highest respect and esteem, went along with the Rafah Agreement confuses and disappoints me to no end, because she is more than conversant with all things terrorist and knows that the more you give them, the more they'll attack, considering concessions as signs of weakness and/or victories on their part.

Fatah(the party of the Palestinian Authority), Hamas, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, Islamic Jihad and the rest of the Palestinian terrorist organizations(yes, I include the PA's party) will not stop terrorizing until they have obliterated Israel. In the meantime, they play their game, patiently leering as the Israelis make concessions to the Palestinians that the U.S. Government pressures them to make while the Arabs concede nothing, in fact do quite the opposite, continuing to attack Israel.

It is unfortunate that so many of my fellow American Jews have taken the leftist approach to politics, whether they call themselves liberals or progressives, because the left's dogma apparently requires that its practitioners suspend any notion of free thinking and go with the collective's thinking 100%, in for a penny, in for a pound. Whatever the left's agendas might be, there can be no exception to any detail, there is only one drum to march to.

The followers of the left march behind their leaders into the same brand of slavery and speech restriction, suspension of freedom and individual rights that the Russians did when they succumbed to the lure of communism.

And they don't seem to perceive this reality.

And where is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the man who is ceding territory to terrorism, in all of this?

My government is not giving me unmitigated support, so I need to create a new government!

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will announce on Monday that he intends to quit the Likud and form a new centrist political party, sources close to Sharon said on Sunday.

Sharon is to visit President Moshe Katsav on Monday and ask him to dissolve the Knesset. This would set off a process that would lead to elections in 90 days, unless an MK succeeds in forming a new coalition within the next three weeks.

Sheesh!

If this man is allowed to continue and if the Israelis keep going along with the plans for it as outlined by the U.S., there will be no more Israel and we Jews will once again be without a political subdivision of our own.

WTF is wrong with these people!?

Posted by Seth at 12:03 AM | Comments (10) |

October 27, 2005

Every Chapter Is Exactly The Same, Word For Word

Briefly, though I'm sure most of us know about yesterday's news,

A suicide bomber blew himself up Wednesday next to a food stand in the central Israeli town of Hadera, wounding at least 30 people and leaving a path of destruction at an open air market, police and rescuers said.

To update the above, there have been five resultant deaths. To me, that's five cold blooded murders of innocent civilians, not to mention the crippling of numerous other soft targets.

How very nice, still more humanity from the Palestinian end of things.

Interestingly enough, it came on the heels of a prediction by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Palestinians would, through their terrorism, eventually destroy Israel and he even offered words of encouragement to that end.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday predicted a wave of Palestinian attacks that would erase Israel "from the face of the Islamic world," just hours before a suicide bomber killed five Israelis in a marketplace.
The attack, which wounded about 30, also made a mockery of a major speech by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who appealed in Ramallah yesterday for an end to attacks that he said were undermining attempts to establish a Palestinian state.
Iran's firebrand president called for Israel's destruction at a conference in Tehran titled "The World Without Zionism."

For the trillionth time or so, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the guy who let western governments, shamefully including ours, bully him into ceding Gaza to the Palestinians, said there would be no further talks with Mahmoud Abbas until he acts against armed groups.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ruled out talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas until he takes "serious action" against armed groups, the Prime Minister's Office said Thursday, a day after five Israelis were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in Hadera.

Israel and the Palestinians earlier this month had delayed a meeting set for mid-October, their first since Israel completed its Gaza pullout on September 12. Officials had said the summit could take place in late October or early November, but sporadic violence since then had cast doubt on that timetable.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also called on Abbas to rein in militants, a PA official said Thursday. Rice called Abbas and they discussed Wednesday's attack, the official said.

Impressively, liberal media icon New York Times manages to incorporate all the essentials into one article.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli army launched an offensive against Islamic Jihad militants Thursday, carrying out a series of airstrikes in what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said would be a ''broad and nonstop'' response to a suicide bombing that killed five Israelis.

The offensive will include airstrikes and artillery attacks in Gaza and arrest raids in the northern West Bank, where Wednesday's bomber came from, a military official said on condition of anonymity under military regulations. As a last resort, Israel could re-enter Gaza, which it evacuated last month. Israeli media reported that troops would also retake Palestinian towns, and conduct house-to-house searches.

The threatened Israeli response to the bombing in the central town of Hadera ratcheted up pressure on Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to confront militant groups. Abbas has refused to crack down on armed groups such as Islamic Jihad, fearing civil war.

Sharon said the military operation was necessary because of Abbas' refusal to take action and said it would be impossible to resume peace talks until the Palestinians rein in the militants.

''Unfortunately the Palestinian Authority has not taken any serious action to battle terrorism,'' Sharon said before meeting the visiting Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. ''We will not accept under any circumstances a continuation of terrorism. Therefore our activities will be broad and nonstop until they halt terrorism.''

''The state of Israel would very much have liked to move peace efforts forward,'' he added. ''To my regret, as long as terror continues we shall not be able to move forward as we would have wished.''

So as I said, it's just another chapter that is identical to all those that came before. In good faith, Israel makes concessions. Staying true to their track record, the Palestinians make terrorism.

It looks like this time out, an act of terrorism has been the straw that broke the camel's back{no un-PC reference intended, at least maybe not}.

Bush, Blair and a whole bunch of other world leaders really have to wake up to the fact that there will be no peace in Israel as long as the Palestinian Authority(Fatah, who were once the military wing of the P.L.O. and who presently "own" other, active terrorist groups) or Hamas are recognized as valid political concerns in the quest for peace in the Middle East rather than being treated by the world community as the failures they are in order for Israel to achieve positive diplomatic results via negotiating with terrorists.

Posted by Seth at 07:15 AM |

October 24, 2005

Good Shooting, Guys!

TULKARM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops on Monday shot dead a top Islamic Jihad commander in the occupied West Bank, the most senior Palestinian militant killed since the start of an eight-month-old ceasefire.

Posted by Seth at 10:10 AM |

October 22, 2005

Same Old, Same Old

So nothing in the so-called "Middle East Peace Process" has really changed since Ariel Sharon, via what I believe would be more aptly named the "Roadmap To Hell," gave Gaza to the Palestinians. Now they've got their new firebase and a staging point for attacks against Israel, and once they've gotten their seaport built, at the expense of U.S. and other nations' taxpayers, they'll have the perfect set-up for importing still more terrorists, such as al-Qaeda types.

The White House meeting between President George W. Bush and Palestinian Authority whip Mahmoud Abbas seems to have been a rather stagnant affair, nothing new to report, as it were, no problems resolved. They should've had their talk by telephone -- Abbas could've used a $5.00 phone card and saved all the money he spent travelling to the U.S. Again, our tax dollars at work.

Mohammed Dahlan's back from the hospital in Belgrade, and addressed his fellow Palestinians in Gaza.

Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan on Saturday praised his Fatah movement's armed struggle against Israel, but called on gunmen to set aside their weapons and move toward democracy.

Right, and

Without the armed resistance, the Palestinians would not have made progress in their struggle, Dahlan told the crowd, in an apparent reference to Israel's withdrawal last month from the Gaza Strip. However, he said, it was time for Fatah to control their arms, end the chaos in Gaza and focus on winning a January parliamentary vote.

"We are the pioneers in the Fatah movement and we should put an end to the division. We should be united. It's time for democracy," Dahlan said.

On the one hand, Dahlan praises the success of Palestinian terrorism against the Israelis -- sure, he calls it armed resistance, but if blowing up soft targets like women and children is "armed resistance," I wonder what he would call actually getting up on ones hind legs and going toe-to-toe with armed soldiers.

In the same breath as his praise for the murder of innocents and the destruction of property, he urges his terrorist brethren to lay down their arms and pursue democracy.

Until when? Until you've convinced the world of your sincerity, Mohammed, and foreign sources of funding have begun a deluge of largesse into your coffers to finance more mayhem when you believe the Israelis have let their guard down? Then you can praise your fellow terrorists some more when they've driven Sharon out of the West Bank, as well?

The Palestinians have proven that no matter who's in charge, nothing changes. They renege on every condition they ever agree to in peace proceedings, which from their perspective is just fine as it's okay for "the faithful" to lie to infidels, who don't count.

Israel has been the side forced to make all the concessions in every peace attempt, the Palestinians have been asked only to disband and disarm their terrorist organizations. Israel has kept its end of every deal, the Palestinians have done nothing but accept these concessions, absorb money from numerous countries and then continue to terrorize.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz laid down the law, warning Abbas that if the PA doesn't hold up their only end of the bargain and deal with the terrorist groups, diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will come to an end.

"We demand that the Palestinian Authority move from the talking phase and actively work against the terror organizations," Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said following Sunday’s terror attacks in the West Bank.

“As long as the terror attacks persist Israel will not be able to continue the diplomatic process with the Palestinians," Mofaz added.

Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem pointed an accusatory finger at Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas following the terror attacks in Gush Etzion and Binyamin, in which three people have been murdered and at least four were injured.

Abass' meek approach allowed this attack. He is not doing what is necessary. It seems that the terror organizations are trying to send him a message, that he should stop working against them," a diplomatic source told Ynet.

This entire diplomatic spectacle is just that. Even as the Israelis have given up Gaza and pursue peace talks, the terrorism continues.

More here.

The Israelis waxed a young bomber, expect some kind of violent response from the Palestinians, who become really angry when the Israelis kill one of these monsters in self defense. According to the Arab script, the Jews are supposed to cooperate and die.

A long time ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said that "there will be peace in the Middle East when the Palestinians come to love their children more than they hate the Jews." Well...

Woman carrying baby hides hand grenade
Earlier on Saturday, IDF troops arrested five wanted Palestinian militants during an arrest sweep in a village near the West Bank town of Nablus. The forces discovered in one militant?s home a suitcase containing 10 kg of explosives.

During the raids, troops also found a Palestinian woman hiding a hand grenade under her baby, an IDF officer said.

The woman, Aziza Jawabra, admitted the grenade was near her one-month-old son, but said she did not know it was in the pocket of the jacket she was wearing.

Lt. Col. Arik Chen said his troops finally searched Jawabra after they became suspicious of the way she was carrying the baby. The soldiers found she was holding the grenade just under the baby's backside, he told The Associated Press.

"To see a woman using her baby to hide a grenade is not typical," Chen said.

Right, sure, anything you say. I'm reminded of an incident awhile back in which a teenage Palestinian girl snuck out of the house, took a walk down an Israeli street and blew herself up in a suicide vest.
The father's reaction was not concern over the loss of his daughter nor for the victims of the bombing.
It was anger that his daughter had left the house without his permission nor with one of her brothers as an escort, and the admonition that had his daughter survived, he would have beaten her to death.

It would appear that nothing's changed in the violent landscape that is Israel, except that the Palestinians now own Gaza.

Posted by Seth at 11:58 AM | Comments (4) |

September 16, 2005

Terror Strip

I did a similar post to this one yesterday, but it was lost in the quagmire of the usual hotel(I'm travelling at the moment, and am staying at a hotel in Washington, DC) Internet access. There will be trackbacks at other sites I linked to, that lead to the since-deleted post that this one replaces.

So, yesterday Mahmoud Abbas claimed he had things under control in the Gaza Strip

The chaos at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt has been brought under control, according to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
"I think that the Palestinians are perfectly in control," Mr Abbas said during a visit to the Rafah crossing.

Perhaps that was merely an indication of a profoundly distorted sense of reality at work, perhaps it was just a small fib to facilitate the opinion of the rest of the world that all is hunky dory in Gaza.

Whatever.

It's difficult to believe that this could be even a remote possibility, considering that the man and his Fatah government couldn't curtail terrorism, assuming he'd even wanted to, which I doubt, in the infinitely less stressful conditions that existed before the Israelis' Gaza pullout. I say 'less stressful' because at the time, there weren't thousands upon thousands of Palestinians on the move like a thundering herd of animals, looting, burning synagogues and generally acting like...well, animals.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the chaos in Gaza is still going great guns, and the Israelis are in overdrive implementing security measures, the job a major challenge as they've long since learned that they can't depend upon the Palestinian Authority to be of any help. You know, the folks all those western leaders, including our own President{I'm sorry to say as I'm a Bush supporter on most issues and would vote for him again if he could run again}, apparently believe are somehow qualified to manage their territorial affairs of state.

Israel increased the security checks being conducted along the northern border of the Gaza Strip Friday, at the Karni goods crossing and the Erez crossing in northern Gaza, in an attempt to stop weapons and drugs from being smuggled to Gaza from Egypt.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's political and security division, said that Israel could not depend on the Palestinian Authority when it came to the security of Israel.

"The Palestinian Authority has always been considered able to make obligations to enforce law and order and unable to execute those obligations," said Gilad.

Concerned over the growing chaos in the Gaza Strip and the incapability of the Palestinian Authority to enforce law and order, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz called for a security belt to be erected on the Palestinian side of the northern Gaza security fence to distance Israeli communities from the chaos in Gaza.

"The aim is to set up a no-man's land which Palestinians will be barred from entering," a Defense Ministry official said.

I've blogged on this before, and my opinion hasn't altered one iota: Israel's ceding the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and the rest of the world giving the PA vast sums of money over the years do nothing to promote peace in the Middle East.

Giving them Gaza sends them a message that terrorism works, and that increasing same will get them an entirely Muslim, Jewish-free country over time. They made this plain at the outset of the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas and friends acknowledged their victory and vowed to terrorize even more. Yet the evacuation continued and the funds are to keep flowing.

Thus far, more of the money(taxpayers' dollars, pounds, francs, pesos, etc. from the U.S. and elsewhere) given to the Palestinian Authority seems to have found its way into the personal coffers of the late and unlamented-by-most Mr. Arafat and his Fatah cronies or been invested in weapons and explosives with which to murder Jewish civilians and any other soft targets who just happened to be in the immediate vicinity, than to bettering the lives of those Palestinians who simply want to live in peace and watch their children grow up.

All in all, the terrorists of Hamas, al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, Islamic Jihad and the rest are getting a great deal. A geographic subdivision all their own in which to stockpile weapons and explosives, congregate pretty much openly without fear of arrest as they plan and assemble the logistics for terror attacks within Israel and then stage these attacks, plus the financing, courtesy of yours and my tax dollars, to bankroll them. What a bargain!

To make self defense even harder for Israel, Gaza borders Egypt, and that country has long been one of the major ordnance conduits for Palestinian terrorist organizations. Despite any promises the Egyptians might make to secure their borders against a flow of arms to the Palestinians, they are an Arab country and Israel knows better than to place any aspects of their security in that quarter -- so they'll have to secure the Gaza-Egypt border themselves.

Israel has promised to deal "harshly" with the Palestinians in Gaza should the strip become a source of continued terrorism, and given the terror the Jews have had forced upon them by the Palestinians, I have no compunction about saying that when this inevitability occurs, the positive aspect will be that whatever the Israelis do, they won't have to worry about any Jewish collateral damage in the Gaza Strip.

In Jewish World Review, Diana West asks What have we paid for with Palestinian handouts?
They say you get what you pay for. But what exactly have we paid for? As recently as Sept. 2, according to Palestinian Media Watch, the PA's "Voice of Palestine" was sermonizing against "heretical" America, exhorting the Muslim faithful to attack Americans in Iraq — just the latest instance of anti-U.S. propaganda carried on PA-run radio. A few weeks ago, the PA's so-called Ministry of Culture released its "Book of the Month," a collection of poetry honoring murder-bomber Hanadi Jaradat. This "Rose of Palestine" killed 29 Israeli Jews and Arabs at a crowded Haifa eatery in October 2003, back when such carnage was still shocking. Palestinian Media Watch also noted a PA government newspaper report about female Hamas terrorists — photographed holding American-made automatic rifles.

All of which should make us wonder: Have we paid for a "peace process," or have we financed holy war (jihad)? Have we supported a "peace partner"? Or have we just helped create a terrorist state?

I believe a grave error has been, and is continuing to be made, and that the result will be the engenderment of exponentially more violence between Israelis and Arabs than we have seen since 1973.

On a lighter note, Vinnie of Vince Aut Morire fame suggests an alternative location for a Palestinian state and, for those of you who plan to travel in the Middle East in the near future, a list of useful phrases that might make your trip more enjoyable.

Posted by Seth at 06:47 AM | Comments (2) |

August 25, 2005

Another Arafat Heir

If there was ever a reason for a government to indulge in what the KGB used to call mokri dela(wet affairs), the Israelis need to arrange an "accident" for this son of a bitch before he gets comfortable in the Gaza Strip.

He confers often with terrorist groups and regimes and called the attacks of September 11, 2001, "a lesson to the U.S." saying it "was the first time that Arabic names entered every American household."

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | As this column reported last week, the Tunis-based head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Farouk Qaddumi, whose official position on Israel is that it should be destroyed, will move into Gaza this summer. He is a possible successor and key rival to the Palestinian Authority's current leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Qaddumi will be bringing with him a "volunteer popular army" of at least 1,500, according to Saudi press reports from August 3.

The PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel was reportedly amended in 1996, but on an appearance on ANB TV on April 25, 2005, Mr. Qaddumi said that he "does not accept any amendment." Furthermore, in an interview with an Israeli-Arab weekly on January 3, 2003, he openly stated that there is no difference between Hamas and the PLO vis-a-vis calling for the destruction of Israel. He said, "strategically we are no different from it."

The Israelis definitely don't need an asshat like that coming to town.

Posted by Seth at 10:48 AM | Comments (22) |

August 24, 2005

Jewish Settlement Pullouts Are A Done Deal

The Israeli Defense Force and police involved in the "Disengagement" have completed the job of evacuating residents of the Jewish settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, experiencing resistance only in the two West Bank settlements of Sanur and Homesh, resistance they overwhelmed quickly.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Israel's withdrawal from all 21 Gaza Strip settlements and four isolated communities in the northern West Bank will improve Israel's security by reducing friction with the Palestinians.

Right, Ariel, you just keep dreaming.

In the Arab-biased Middle East Online, the opinion is that Sharon has made a sound political move.
Right.

Again, there are some snags in the general game plan, such as evacuees not going with the program.

I tend to agree here with Bibi Netanyahu, as anyone who's spent any time at this blog will know, that the evacuation is only going to embolden the terrorist factions among the Palestinians, who already have expressed their gleeful belief that the evictions of Jewish settlers were a direct result of their terrorism, and have stated their intention to increase those murderous operations, knowing now that they work. The end result, if they are successful, will be to realize the late Gamel Nasser's intention of pushing all the Jews into the sea.

Netanyahu, however, said the pullout would only bring more terror. "Even the chief of IDF intelligence told MKs last week that terrorism would likely resume in force around springtime. The head of the Shin Bet concurred, saying terrorism will originate in the Gaza Strip."

"The prime minister is tearing the nation apart and setting a precedent for further withdrawals. The pullout is a tragedy and completely superfluous, a giving in to terror in return for nothing. Sharon has created an Islamic terror state in Israel," the Likud MK added.

The end of Israel ain't happening, friends, the Israelis just happen to possess the most powerful war machine in the Middle East, but ceding the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians will result in an exponential increase in Israeli civilian deaths from terrorist attacks as Gaza becomes the terrorism equivalent of the old American west outlaws' haven called 'Hole In The Wall.'

The evacuation was much easier, even given the pockets of resistance encountered at a few of the settlements in Gaza, Sanur and Homesh, than many had anticipated, and the IDF expects to have all their assets and equipment out of Gaza by mid September.

Mahmoud Abbas expects to take over at that time. He's another dreamer, that one. Hamas has other plans, and they answer to no one, including the Palestinian Authority{PA}, except themselves. In their incarnation as a Palestinian political party, they have their sights set on replacing Fatah(the party that is the PA, the party of the thankfully late Yassir Arafat) as the leaders of the Palestinians.

Abbas may well be out of his depth here: He inherited his position from Arafat, a seasoned terrorist leader who was wanted by the Israelis as far back as the early 1960s as a major player in Palestinian terror. Arafat was a master of the game, a brilliant strategist and a survivor who built the corruption known as the PA in his own image. Abbas is like the son of a seat-of-the-pants businessman who forged a business empire out of a hand-to-mouth existence, who inherits the business and then loses control, eventually ending up in bankruptcy court. Within a year or two, Hamas will eat him alive, one way or the other.

That's when the Gaza Giveaway will really come back to kick the Knesset in the touchas.

Posted by Seth at 01:32 PM |

August 21, 2005

More On The "Disengagement"

The Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip continues, but not without its problems as evidenced by the fierce resistance of anti-disengagement "activists" in Kfar Darom and elsewhere. As much as I believe that this entire evacuation is a colossal error of judgement on Israel's part and personally side completely with the settlers who are losing their homes, I don't for a second condone the actions of the resisters in Kfar Darom; the soldiers and police they assaulted in what they had to know was ultimately a futile attempt at avoiding eviction weren't the enemy, they were civil and military personnel doing their jobs, as dubious as the nature of the assignment may have been. As I opined in a previous post, such behavior only serves to provide the real enemy with entertainment while demonstrating a divided Jewish population(remember the phrase, "divide and conquer?"). The arson episodes were no better than the terrorism of Hamas, and one would have thought well beneath the dignity of anyone raised in the traditions of Jewish belief. Those responsible should be prosecuted as criminals, not given any leeway due to enheightened passions.

Sunday's evacuations include the last three Gush Katif settlements, during which the IDF anticipates more resistance.

With laundered clothes hanging to dry outside some of the homes and the sprinklers watering the manicured, neatly-cut grass, anti-disengagement activists piled up haystacks, wooden planks, garbage cans and a burnt-out car at the entrance to the settlement, which they planned to light up in an almost festive bonfire once the security forces arrive and try to enter the community.

Michael Matza has a column in Jewish World Review about a settler family's last Sabbath in Gaza.

While Mahmoud Abbas{Abu Mazen} works to shore up the PA's (his) authority in the Gaza Strip, Hamas assures one and all that pullout or not, nothing has changed.

But in a new challenge to Abbas, dozens of Hamas gunmen held a press conference in one of the main squares of Gaza City on Saturday, where they announced that they would continue to launch terror attacks on Israel even after the disengagement. PA policemen who arrived at the scene did not intervene.

"This retreat does not mean the end of our battle, but it is the beginning," said one of the Hamas gunmen, who identified himself as Abu Obaidah. "Our battle with the enemy is long and will continue."

 

And the greatest government blunder in the history of the State of Israel continues....

Posted by Seth at 07:03 AM |

August 17, 2005

The "Disengagement"

The evacuation of Israeli Settlers from The Gaza Strip seems to be moving a little more smoothly than anticipated, according to various Israeli military personnel, though there has been more than a little violence in response to the pullout. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a plea to the settlers to blame him for the evacuation, not to take it out on the soldiers and police personnel who are merely doing their jobs, rightly saying that things are tough and stressful enough for them as it is. The soldiers and police involved in the evacuation have apparently(no excessive force complaints have been made public at this time) both professional and sympathetic in carrying out what has to be an utterly distasteful task.

Last update - 14:51 17/08/2005

PM to settlers: Don't hurt troops over disengagement, hurt me

By Haaretz Service and agencies

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, beseeching settlers to blame him, not soldiers, for the diasengagement, Wednesday called the images of Gaza settlers being removed from their homes "heartbreaking," and praised the restraint of both settlers and soldiers. Sharon appealed to opponents of the disengagement to avoid physical and verbal confrontation with the security forces. "I want to truly appeal to everyone, not to attack the police, the women and men soldiers and police . Don't blame them. Don't make it hard on them. Don't hurt them, hurt me."                                           There are some excellent links within the article. As far as some of the ads go, remember that Haaretz is Israel's answer to the New York Times.         -"it's Bush's fault!"

                                                       

 

Some of the more tragic occurences thus far have included this and this, and Israeli media seems to have skipped lightly over a couple of attacks by Palestinians that fortunately resulted in no injuries.

There is good streaming coverage of all military related aspects of the evacuation at the IDF's website.

And of course, lurking in the background, is the specter of consequences for this entire foolish, unprecedented submission by the Israeli government to terrorism. 

If things hold up and violence does not accellerate, at least the Israelis will show the Palestinians that they are still one people, that this dumb move on the part of their government, despite uprooting so many Jews from their homes, will not drive a wedge between them that the terrorists can exploit.

Posted by Seth at 02:56 PM | Comments (2) |

August 16, 2005

Not Off To A Good Start

This was, of course, to be expected, people are people and when their own government evicts them from their homes in order to give their land away to people who have been murdering their friends and family... There were bound to be dissenters who would resort to violence.

I can't say I approve, nor can I say I disapprove. I know how disgusted I felt, here in San Francisco back when we invaded Iraq, watching hundreds of complete and total assholes blocking major street intersections in protest so that no vehicles... including ambulances... could get through. Throwing newspaper vending machines across streets, shattering store windows... I don't know what it feels like to be in the position those evictees are in, but I can well imagine. I would be seething. In a previous post about the then pending Jewish evacuation of the Gaza Strip, I referred to it as Enemy Domain, which about sums it up.

But right or wrong, it's unfortunate and it would be better if the Israeli Government reneged on the deal. It would be fine, the Palestinians have made a science of reneging on agreements they've made with Israel and there does, after all, come a time to draw the line.

I say 'unfortunate' because I think that there's a strong chance things could accellerate to the point where Israeli police and soldiers clash with civilians, I say the Knesset should renege because should the settlers decide to take a stand, that clash between uniformed and non-uniformed Jews will not only provide amusement for the Palestinians, it will also send them a message that their terrorism has done far more than simply gain them territory, it has also violently divided the Israelis. The MSM will be sure to juice things up by assembling footage of isolated violent events into a package that depicts widespread chaos and massive government brutality and countries like France that have dreamed of an end to Israel will point to the video as an example of Israel's "brutish, bullying, fiendish nature" or some such poppycock, "which has been directed toward the oppression of these poor, peaceful Palestinians whose land they stole."

Meanwhile,

Settler leaders' pledges for a non-violent resistance lasted only several minutes after the Sunday midnight closure of Kissufim Crossing. Hundreds of anti-disengagement youth attacked an IDF jeep outside of Neveh Dekalim, the largest settlement in Gush Katif.

Witnesses reported that the teens ransacked the contents of the jeep and burned it by the side of the road. Less than a half an hour later, they punctured the tires of an army vehicle. The vehicle's crew reportedly remained inside, surrounded by rioters.

 

.... A group of approximately 500 youth marched out of the settlement west toward the Mor Bridge, in the direction of the Kissufim crossing leading out of Gush Katif. The youths jammed rods into the joints of the bridge and set down bent nails in order to shred tires of IDF troops coming to aid the disengagement.

Violence against IDF forces was not exclusive to Gaza - an IDF officer was wounded late Sunday night in northern Samaria during a clash between anti-pullout activists and soldiers who had put up roadblocks around settlements due to be evacuated.

 

My take is that this is a no-win. Sharon will stick to his guns, a lot of people will resist and the inevitable will occur. When the smoke clears, the only winners will be Fatah and Hamas.

Posted by Seth at 03:06 AM |

August 14, 2005

Rats Already Fighting Over Spoils

Tomorrow is the official day for commencement of the Gaza Strip evacuation by Israelis, and the two principal Palestinian political parties are turning it into a circus, vying for control of the "spoils" of terrorism in a country whose parliamentary majority is so desperate for an end to terrorism that they're grasping at the nonexistant straws of the Palestinians' "word."

Which word that is, I have no idea, because both Fatah(the Palestinian Authority's party) and Hamas are not only arguing over whose terrorism was more responsible for the Likud party breaking an Israeli precedent and kowtowing to terrorists, but they're also both promising more of the same(terrorism, that is) with their boasts that they've only just begun and will have control over all Israel before they're done.

So what the hell are these Israelis thinking?

Hamas and Fatah are having a real outing over there

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- The militant group Hamas came out of hiding yesterday to hold a mass press conference, distributing the phone numbers of 34 multilingual spokesmen in a fight for press exposure as Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip this week.
    Among Palestinians, the struggle is between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority -- both of which take credit for successfully pressuring Israel to evacuate 21 Gaza Strip settlements and four West Bank enclaves.
    Determined to win the airwaves, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday inaugurated a special Gaza-withdrawal press center, complete with live-feed points for TV crews, a 24-hour text messaging service for news updates, maps and free hats and T-shirts.

Free hats and T-shirts. Who knows, maybe some all-beef wieners on the grill, some non-alcoholic beer and some live music, a personal appearance by Miss Semtex 2005...

    

Posted by Seth at 12:48 PM | Comments (6) |

Give Me A Break!

This is just too friggin' much.

Have Jason Alexander, Rhea Perlman, Danny Devito, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, pictured at right, spent a tad too much time in the fantasy factory?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com |(KRT) JERUSALEM — After honing his skills as a vampire, international spy and the Grim Reaper, sex symbol Brad Pitt is joining a cadre of other Hollywood stars to tackle a project that no one has ever pulled off: making peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Read the rest, LOL!

Posted by Seth at 12:34 PM | Comments (2) |

August 10, 2005

Sorry, I'm Not Done With This Yet.

In about a week, the Israeli population will watch as their government supervises a mass eviction of fellow Jews from their homes in order to cede land to the Palestinians. This is land the Israelis captured while defending themselves against an invasion by their Islamic neighbors, an invasion that, had it succeeded, would have revisited the "Final Solution" strategy of the Nazis.

The Israelis who have fought for this turn of events are obviously either as lemmingly as our own U.S. liberals or simply dumb enough to believe that just because the Palestinians have lied to them or violated every single peace agreement  they've signed off on before, this time they mean it. Once they have Gaza, all violence will cease. Can you fucking believe that? No, let me say it with feeling: Can you Fucking believe that!!!!!!!?

 

The Knesset has approved what amounts to the construction of a giant terrorist armory and firebase at the expense of Israeli civilians' homes. I suppose we could call that "Enemy domain."

 

A column by Barry Rubin in the Jerusalem Post kicks butt.

Aug. 10, 2005 10:04  | Updated Aug. 10, 2005 12:50 The logic of the Middle East By BARRY RUBIN It cannot be repeated often enough that Middle East politics are not like those of other places. It make sense once one understands the region?'s history, politics and institutions, but the region often defies the logic that semi-informed outsiders expect. So... * There will be no decline in incitement or change in the public rhetoric of Palestinian officials speaking to their own people. Thus, of course, Israeli suspicions regarding their intentions will be reinforced. * The Palestinian movement will continue to be oriented toward conquest and revenge rather than nation-state nationalism. * No stable government with real control over the territory will be created in the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority will not even try too hard to do that. On the contrary, it will ignore the road map's provisions about stopping terrorism and disarming radical groups and simply keep insisting on getting a state right away... What the hell do the Utopians in Israel believe they are accomplishing? We ought to send them every year's installment of "I'll hold the football, Charlie Brown, you come running up and kick it...."     No, dammit, I'm still not done!   Here's an article in Haaretz about Netanyahu's say on the subject: Netanyahu urges MKs to act to stop Gaza pullout By Gideon Alon and Yossi Verter, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service In his first speech before the Knesset since resigning from the government Sunday to protest the disengagement, MK Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday launched a fierce attack against the government, urging lawmakers to join the struggle to thwart the disengagement plan. "Only we in the Knesset are able to stop this evil," the former finance minister said. "Everything that the Knesset has decided, it is also capable of changing." "I am calling on all those who grasp the danger: Gather strength and do the right thing. I don't know if the entire move can be stopped, but it still might be stopped in its initial stages," said Netanyahu.   Right, like that ever happens. The "Roadmap" is about to become a steaming piece of discarded rubble ignored by those who made it so....

  

Posted by Seth at 02:54 PM | Comments (7) |

August 07, 2005

Must Be Said

I am really apprehensive about the Gaza Strip withdrawal.

It truly amazes me that the Israeli Knesset(the Jewish State's parliament) has approved this, and that Ariel Sharon is a party to it.

Here are people who have something like 57(no, not the Heinz-Kerrys) years of experience dealing with the Palestinians.

Here are people who have to know that the Palestinians will use Gaza as an explosives and munitions storehouse, and to launch terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens.

Here are people(terrorists)--yeah, it's this link again-- who have no intention of sticking to any agreements they make. Below are some revealing excerpts from the Hamas Charter. Keep in mind that Hamas is rapidly becoming the most popular political party in the Palestinian existence.

Here are people who should know better. By giving the Palestinians the Gaza Strip, they are further endangering Israeli citizens.

When Palestinian groups start attacking Israel out of Gaza, every drop of Israeli blood spilled will be the fault of the Knesset members who approved the evacuation of the Gaza Strip. Their fault 90%, the terrorists' fault 10%.

Because they should have known better.

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.

"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."

And that is what concerns me.

 

Posted by Seth at 08:49 PM | Comments (4) |

July 06, 2005

No Hamas On Fatah Cabinet

I posted on this situation this past Friday, and yesterday, it would seem, Hamas decided to decline the Palestinian Authority's kind offer of membership in their cabinet, which Mahmoud Abbas had hoped they would accept in time for both entities to work together on transitioning the Gaza Strip, after the Israeli evacuation, to Palestinian occupancy.

The Jerusalem Post has more.

Hamas' decision not to join the Palestinian Authority's cabinet poses a serious threat to the PA's efforts to impose law and order in the Gaza Strip after Israel's evacuation, PA officials warned on Tuesday.

 

....Hassan Yousef, a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank, said his movement prefers to hold parliamentary elections first before a national unity government is formed.

 

...."We are not interested in being in the PA just for the sake of it. We believe that the right way to do it is through elections." Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for Hamas in the Gaza Strip said his movement was insisting on the formation of a united national committee to run the affairs of the Palestinians after the withdrawal.

 

Hmmm, what do I read into this?

I think Hamas is being clever here, not as in sneaky(at least no more so than anyone engaging in politics), but as in smart.

a) Had they joined the PA's cabinet, the Israelis might well have objected to the terrorist organization's being part of the official mix and decided to delay the evacuation of Gaza, while the turnover of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians will be a phenomenon that will be in their best interests as it will present them with an independent subdivision on which they can stockpile weapons and from whence they can mount terrorist operations into Israel.

b) Hamas has designs upon taking the PA away from Abbas and Fatah and they realize that the most "legitimate" way of doing so in the current climate is by winning democratic elections. When they say they believe that elections are the only way to go, they are looking at the fact that they have become a popular political party and realize they could do better winning the votes of the people than suborning themselves to the Abbas faction by allowing themselves to be absorbed(keeping in mind that, as a "political party," the terror organization has both gained legitimacy among the Palestinians and also won a hell of a lot of municipal elections).

If the Palestinians finally gain statehood and then Hamas takes over their government, they'll be Terrorist Central, not only imposing Sharia law on their people but also intensifying the violence against innocent Israeli men, women and children.

Posted by Seth at 12:54 PM |

July 02, 2005

Mahmoud Abbas, Dumbass

I found this article  in tomorrow's Haaretz online(time zones, remember).

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has invited the militant group Hamas to join his cabinet immediately so the two can jointly oversee the smooth handover of the Gaza Strip following Israel's withdrawal under the disengagement plan this summer, a Hamas official said Friday.

 

Hamas is considering the offer....

 

WTF!!!?

What was it Abba Eban said, "The Palestinians never miss the chance to lose an opportunity," or something like that?

Does Abbas really think the Israelis will maintain benevolent diplomatic relations with, let alone negitiate with a government comprised in part by a terrorist organization?

It seems like every time peace negotiations over there begin moving forward, the Palestinians find some way to sabotage them.

Predictably,

"Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization responsible for countless acts of senseless violence against innocent civilians,"(Israeli foreign Ministry spokesman Mark) Regev told the Associated Press. "Hamas is no partner for us in any sort of political process. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution," he said.

 

Did I say Mahmoud Abbas is a dumbass?

He's got to be, unless....

....he's doing this to forestall any Israeli concessions in order to prolong the violence, which would no doubt suit the al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all the rest of the asshats whose only true ambitions involve killing Jews and causing whatever collateral damage(tourists, fellow Arabs, etc.) they can in the process.

Remember  this website?

Posted by Seth at 12:48 AM |

June 22, 2005

Peace for Israel via Diplomacy? When?

It amazes me that there are still people out there who believe that Israel and the United States can deal with the Palestinians as though they were doing so with a civilized nation. The Palestinians themselves are demonstrating that they are incapable of maintaining any kind of stable govenment nor of controlling the activities of their terrorist organizations, who attack Israel whether there are peace negotiations on the table or not, whether Israel gives concessions or not. 

On the one hand, there's the Palestinian Authority(P.A.), representing the PLO and led by Arafat successor Mahmoud Abbas. That body retains the same quagmire of massive corruption that it did under Arafat and exhibits a total lack of control over the plethora of terrorist organizations based among the Palestinians. 

On the other hand, there's Hamas, the premier Palestinian terrorist organization cum political party that has built its constituency in large part by vowing to end the corruption in the P.A. They have been growing increasingly popular among the Palestinian voters and threaten to become popular enough to one day become the P.A.

Hamas and their cronies in the al aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Fatah,  etc continue their terrorism against Israel as Abbas purportedly tries to hold the peace talks with Ariel Sharon and the Bush Administration together, effectively sabotaging those negotiations a)because Sharon, and rightly so, refuses to make any concessions without including the cessation of hostilities in the package, and b)because Abbas' credibility as the leader of his people is greatly diminished due to his admitted inability to curtail the activities of either the terrorist groups or the corruption in his own organization. He may not even be there for long, Hamas might become the party in power. Hamas isn't interested in peace, their goal isn't the Palestinian state envisioned by Roadmap advocates: They want the whole potato knish. They would like nothing more than a bloodbath in which they murder every Jew in Israel(fat chance), according to their charter.   

And they are recognized by a significant percentage of Palestinians as a viable political party!

An article in the Jerusalem Post about the summit meeting just wrapped up between Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas, titled Palestinians deem summit a failure,  says

....Palestinian leaders expressed frustration over Israel's insistance on linking major concessions to the cessation of violence. 

WTF! Are they saying that Israel should just accept the butchery of its citizens as just a run of the mill, day to day, inevitable, "not to worry, old man" cost of doing business with the Palestinians? There's the problem right there, the Israelis are not dealing with those of a modern human mentality that can be reasoned with, they are dealing with evil people who see nothing wrong with killing the innocent and embrace doing so with as much emotion as they might experience over going to the bathroom.

If I wasn't totally convinced before, I am now. The only way there will ever be peace between Israel and the Palestinian people will be after Israel has exercised an extreme military option. You cannot negotiate peace with any success when the other side doesn't want it. When the other side is dominated by bloodthirsty people who couldn't care less what they agree to nor what treaties they sign(it is acceptable practice, according to their beliefs, to lie, as long as you are lying to infidels) and who have no compunction about killing themselves in order to murder your people.

Sure, there are many Palestinians, some of whom I have met, who want peace and friendship with Israel and who despise both corruption and terrorism, but they seem to be a considerable minority to judge from the actions of their community.  I truly believe that when members of a given community become a danger to those of other communities, the community in question is engendered with a responsibility to clean its own house or be held accountable for the actions of its bad seed.

Sharon is absolutely right in insisting that peace on the Palestinians' side of the equation be part and parcel of any agreements he signs off on. 

You can't install the software of peace when there are too many broken links on the site.

Israel has offered, and ceded, a lot more concessions to the Palestinians than they've received in return, even releasing convicted terrorists from prison. The Israelis have set a date for razing Jewish homes in Gaza, displacing something like 7500 residents, sparking internal political turmoil as intense and disruptive as the Iraqi debate is in the United States. Most of what the Israelis get in return for concessions are further demands.

In a column in Jewish World Review, Richard Chesnoff writes

....There's growing talk that the Bush Administration, impatient over lack of viable movement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, may soon trash longstanding American policy and authorize limited U.S. diplomatic contact with Abbas' chief rival and Israel's worst enemy: the Islamic terrorist organization known as Hamas.

 

Talk about potential disasters!

 

No kidding! I refer you again to the website about  Hamas.

This extremely dangerous diplomatic turn may be precipitated in part by growing fear in the administration that Yasser Arafat's heir doesn't have the stuff needed to make peace happen and by frustration with Sharon's internal political woes.

 

It's also hard for both President Bush and Secretary of State Rice to ignore hard facts on the West Bank/Gaza ground. Abbas' PLO continues to lose popularity while Hamas gains. During recent Palestinian municipal elections, the group campaigned on a clean government platform and won nearly half the municipal councils at stake!

 

So, what's wrong with talking to Hamas? A lot. As Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy recently put it, "Hamas is more than just a party with which we disagree, it is a terrorist organization responsible for the murder of hundreds of Israelis, Americans and citizens of many other countries."

I don't  concur with the basis for Mr. Chesnoff's speculations, but the premises he offers are indeed food for thought. What I don't see happening is the Bush Administration opening up polite diplomatic dialogue with a terrorist organization. Terrorists are our enemy and their only ambition is our destruction. Once again, Hamas Charter.  Pay particular attention to the two lines that say, 

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.  

How, or even why for that matter, does one attempt to negotiate with people who uphold such a covenant?

No, I don't see Condie Rice sitting down with somebody like Hasan Yusuf to pursue "meaningful" diplomatic negotiations.

                                                      **********************

So we have these two sides to the Palestinian political structure, one that can establish control among neither its members nor its constituents, that being the P.A., and one that is dedicated to murdering as many innocent people as possible in the name of God, both vying for control of a Palestinian state. The Party of Murder is gaining, the Party of Confusion is losing.

Yeah, I know, I'm not even a little bit PC, I tend, in fact, to be downright blunt, so:

Being completely realistic, there are only two possible conclusions where the question of peace between Israel and their Palestinian neighbors are concerned.

1. Peace talks underscoring bloody violence forever, or

2. That extreme military option I mentioned above.    

 

  

Posted by Seth at 08:12 PM |