Describing Hamas As Insane Is Far too Kind

Moral clarity in Gaza

By Charles Krauthammer July 17, 2014 

Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza cease-fire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.

“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”

Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel-Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows Hamas’ proudly self-declared raison d’etre: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.

Apologists for Hamas attribute the blood lust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? Does no one remember anything? It was less than 10 years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling die-hard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.

And there was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.

The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. No one seems to remember that, simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s desire to leave the West Bank as well and thus achieve an amicable two-state solution.

This is not ancient history. This was nine years ago.

And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them — an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then, instead of building a state with its attendant political and economic institutions, they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.

Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. (Just Thursday, the U.N. announced that itfound 20 rockets in a Gaza school.) And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Why? The rockets can’t even inflict serious damage, being almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”

It makes no sense. Unless you understand, as Tuesday’s Post editorial explained, that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire.

This produces dead Palestinians for international television. Which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.

To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense.

In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.

It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.

International Sympathy? Who Needs It

  Foreign Secretary, William Hague, warned Israel that if it sent troops into Gaza to confront Hamas, it risked losing the sympathy of the international community.

                 On November 19th, a Jewish woman in Britain, Mindy Wiesenberger, sent the following letter to Mr. Hague, in response. The letter has been published in many newspapers, including the Times of Israel .

                 Dear Mr. Hague
                You have stated that if Israel tries to defend its population through a ground offensive in Gaza 'it risks losing the sympathy of the international community.' 

              Let me tell you something about the sympathy of the international community Mr. Hague. My father was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945, having lost his entire family but gaining the sympathy of the international community at the time. After 6 million Jews had been annihilated at the hands of the Nazi regime, the international community had plenty of sympathy for the Jewish people. There is always plenty of sympathy for victims.

             Israel doesn't need the sympathy of the international community. What it needs is to defend its citizens.

             When as a tiny country it gained its independence in 1948 it had to absorb 800,000 Jews who were thrown out of Arab lands in the Middle East, and it did so without fuss and with dignity giving them shelter and a place of security in which their children could grow up to become productive citizens. When Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria tried to destroy Israel in 1948 and again in 1967 they took in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs, but did they give them dignity or shelter? No they left them to rot in refugee camps in order to maintain a symbol of grievance againstIsrael and use them as a political tool against the Jewish state. What has arisen in those camps is a complicated situation, but it is what has led to Gaza today. 

                So don't lecture Israel on international sympathy Mr. Hague. Not when Israel has just sent in 120 truck loads of food into Gaza to feed the Palestinian people there, because their own leadership is more interested in using its population as human shields, launching rockets against Israel from within major civilian centers.

                Don't lecture Israel on international sympathy Mr. Hague. Not when Israel targets with as much military precision as it can, only terrorists and their bases, trying its utmost to prevent civilian casualties.

                Don't lecture Israel on international sympathy Mr. Hague. Not when the Palestinian media deliberately uses images of victims of the Syrian civil war and presents them as casualties in Gaza to gain international sympathy.

               Go read your history books Mr. Hague, go see that since the beginning of the twentieth century all the Arabs wanted to do was destroy Israel. Go look at the country of Israel now since the Jews have established a state there. Go read what advances in science, medicine, biotechnology, agriculture and high tech Israel has developed, and dedicated that knowledge to making the world a better place for humanity. Can you imagine any other country that after 60 years of continuously being under attack could have achieved so much.

               So Mr. Hague don't lecture Israel on international sympathy. Israel will do whatever it takes to defend itself from outright attack on its citizens, whether it be from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other country or terrorist group that attacks it.

                And if it loses the sympathy of the international community so be it. We don't need the international community's sympathy.

              We don't need another 6 million victims.

Gaza Rockets FAQ

What you need to know about the attacks on Israel’s southern region.
by Leadership Action Network


March 13, 2012

As a fragile cease-fire goes into effect, it is important to note the background facts:

(1) Over 210 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel over the past three days, targeting as many as one million civilians (15% of the Israeli population). Rockets reached past Ashdod to Gedera, about 20 miles south of Tel Aviv. Today alone, 47 rockets exploded in Israeli territory and 13 were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system which protects populated areas in the target zone.

(2) Schools in southern Israel have remained closed all week in an attempt to protect children and civilians, and 200,000 children are huddled in shelters rather than in school. The preemptive action of closing schools saved many lives at an elementary school in Beer Sheva and at a preschool in Ashkol that were hit with Grad missiles. Grad missiles, which come via Sinai, are much more accurate and destructive than Kassam rockets.

(3) While Israel’s Iron Dome mobile air defense system has a 90% success rate, Israelis have been injured in these missile attacks and a million lives have been disrupted. It costs about $20,000 each time the Iron Dome is deployed. Israeli government officials clearly state that cost is not a factor in protecting the lives of the Israeli people.

(4) Israel reacted with carefully targeted responses. Of 44 strikes, 18 struck high trajectory missiles and 15 hit weapons facilities. The balance hit terrorists carrying out or supplying planned attacks.


(5) The elevated activity began after the Israeli Air Force targeted and killed two members of the Popular Resistance Committee (PRC), a terror organization funded and supported by Hamas and based in Gaza. The PRC was thought to be planning a terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days. Ahmed Karsi, a senior operative and political commander, was a leader that planned, funded and directed the combined terror attack that took place near the resort town of Eilat in August 2011. The infamous attacks included ambushing a bus going to Eilat and bombing a passenger car, leaving 8 Israelis murdered and 40 injured. The PRC was also responsible for firing rockets into Israel and attacking the Nahal Oz fuel terminal in which Israeli citizens were murdered.

(6) The Israeli government considers “Hamas responsible for all of the terrorist activity in Gaza, and demands that it carry out its responsibility.” Hamas is funded, supported and trained by Iran. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Iran provides Hamas “significant support, which some diplomats say could amount to $20 million to $30 million per year.” The latest dangerous developments could also be seen as an attempt by Iran to divert the world’s focus off their nuclear ambitions.

(7) Since the fall of Mubarak’s government in 2011, Hamas has been able to smuggle advanced weapons into Gaza with the help of the Bedouins who control much of the Sinai. “We have smuggled thousands of shoulder-launched (surface-to-air) SAM missiles to Gaza through the tunnels for a transporting fee,” a Bedouin tribal leader told CNN. According to the same report, large stockpiles of RPGs, machine and anti-aircraft guns are also being held by Bedouins to fight the Egyptians whom they have accused of committing treason. According to military sources, it is only a matter of time before Hamas escalates the war on Israel with missiles that can reach Tel Aviv.

(8) A 2009 New York Times article reports that “even Israel’s critics agree that Hamas’ regular use of rockets to fire at civilians in Israel, and its use of civilians as shields in Gaza, are also violations of the rules of war. Israeli military men and analysts say that its urban guerrilla tactics, including the widespread use of civilian structures and tunnels, are deliberate and come from the Iranian Army’s tactical training and the lessons of the 2006 war between Israel and Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

(9) Since the 2005 withdrawal, the rocket attacks from Gaza have reached as far north as Rehovot, just 12 miles south of Tel Aviv, resulting in thousands injured and numerous deaths. In 2011, an average of two rockets a day were terrorizing Israeli civilians. Many attacks deliberately target children in kindergartens and school buses. The constant attacks have caused long-term psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with children particularly affected. According to the U.N.’s Palmer Report (paragraph 71), “The enormity of the psychological toll on the affected population cannot be underestimated….The purpose of these acts of violence, which have been repeatedly condemned by the international community, has been to do damage to the population of Israel.”

(10) Hamas’ arms caches are deliberately hidden in civilian homes, schools, and heavily populated areas to create a moral dilemma for the Israel Defense Forces. During the 2008/9 Operation Cast Lead, Hamas officials called upon Palestinian civilians, including children, to congregate near buildings that contained military units, bombs and/or rockets. Prior to striking, the Israeli Air Force dropped leaflets warning of coming attacks, losing the element of surprise and possibly putting themselves at risk in order to save Palestinian lives. The Israeli military also made hundreds of thousands of phone calls to warn civilians of strikes near or targeting their homes where terrorists had taken refuge. The Israel Defense Forces operate in a strategic manner in order to target terrorists while minimizing collateral damage.

(11) Hamas, a militant offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, violently wrested control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2007. The United States has classified Hamas as a terrorist organization, as have Britain, the European Union, Japan and Canada. Jordan banned Hamas in 1999.

(12) Contrary to media reports, Hamas recognizes that Gaza is not occupied by Israel. On January 3, 2012, in response to Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal’s statement that Hamas will demonstrate against Israel, Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar said, "Against whom could we demonstrate in the Gaza Strip?... [Only] when Gaza was occupied, that model was applicable."

(13) The Hamas charter is awash with anti-Semitism. Excerpts:

“The time of judgment shall not come until Muslims fight the Jews [and kill them] so that the Jews hide behind and trees and stones and each tree and stone will say: ‘O Muslim! there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’.” — Article 7

“The Nazism of the Jews targeted both women and children. The terror they spread is directed at everyone. They fight people by destroying their livelihood, stealing their money and trampling their dignity. Their horrible treatment of people is like that of the worst war criminals.“ — Article 20

(14) Hamas continues to refuse to recognize the State of Israel. In a public address delivered on Al-Aqsa TV in December 2011, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya declared: “The principles [of Hamas] are definitive and non-negotiable: Palestine means Palestine in its entirety, from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea. There will be no concession of a single inch of the land of Palestine.” This clearly targets the elimination of the State of Israel.

(15) Hamas suppresses free speech in Gaza and Palestinians who dare to speak about Hamas’ human rights abuses put themselves at risk. In January 2012, Mahmoud Abu Rahma, International Relations Director at the Gaza based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, was stabbed multiple times. Rahma had been receiving threats since his article, “The Gap Between Resistance and Governance,” was published. Palestinian journalists in Gaza believe Hamas militiamen were responsible for the attack.

(16) The Gazan economy is growing. According to the World Bank, growth in Gaza during the first half of 2011 was 28%. Currently, Israel allows all goods of a civilian nature to enter Gaza via established land corridors, with the exception of arms, weapons, war materials, and certain items that can have both military and civilian applications. In the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, over 190,000 tons of supplies entered Gaza through Israel. These supplies included but were not limited to food, water, medicines, hygiene products, clothing, and school supplies.

Call to Action

Make everyone aware that:

• Firing missiles from Gaza at innocent civilians, particularly defenseless children cannot continue and must be condemned by all.
  
• No government can tolerate such acts against its people, and Israel is no exception.
  
• Hamas is funded and supported by Iran.
  
• Iran's continuing export of terror is yet another reason why a nuclear Iran is unacceptable not just for Israel, but for the entire region and the world at large.
  

Write to your Senators, Congressman, the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State – and urge them to condemn the actions of Hamas against innocent civilians.

FBI Hosts Hamas Operative

FBI Escorts Known Hamas Operative Through Top-Secret National Counterterrorism Center as “Outreach” to Muslim Community

Posted by Patrick S. Poole Sep 27th 2010 at 3:52 am in Featured Story, Islamic extremism

A known Hamas operative and unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history – Kifah Mustapha – was recently escorted into the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center and other secure government facilities, including the FBI’s training center at Quantico, during a six-week “Citizen’s Academy” hosted by the FBI as part of its “outreach” to the Muslim Community. The group was accompanied by reporter Ben Bradley of WLS-Chicago (ABC), who filed a report on the trip to Washington D.C. on Sunday, who observed:

Sheik Kifah Mustapha, who runs the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, asked some of the most pointed questions during the six week FBI Citizens’ Academy and trip to Washington. He pushed agents to fully explain everything from the bureau’s use of deadly force policy to racial and ethnic profiling. “I saw a very interesting side of what the FBI does and I wanted to know more,” Sheik Mustapha explained after returning from D.C. He hopes the FBI’s outreach runs deeper than positive public relations.

Yes, I bet he wanted to know everything about the FBI’s policies.

Curiously, Bradley’s report on the Citizen’s Academy fails to make note Mustapha’s extensive terrorist ties and support for Hamas, including his former employment with the Holy Land Foundation, which was listed as a specially designated terrorist group by the U.S. government in December 2001, and whose executives were convicted of terrorism support in 2008 and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Mustapha was personally named unindicted co-conspirator (#31) in the case and employment records submitted by federal prosecutors during the trial showed that he received more than $154,000 for his work for the Holy Land Foundation between 1996 and 2000. During the trial, FBI Special Agent Lara Burns testified that Mustapha also sang in a band sponsored by the Holy Land Foundation that regularly featured songs dedicated to killing Jews and glorifying Hamas. In a deposition he gave in a civil trial concerned with the murder of a Chicago teenager killed by Hamas while waiting for a bus in Israel, Mustapha admitted that he was the registered agent for the Holy Land Foundation in Illinois, and also to his involvement with other Hamas front groups, including the Islamic Association for Palestine. He was later hired as an imam by the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, which the Chicago Tribune reported in 2004 has long been a hotbed of Hamas support.

Bradley’s omission of this information about Kifah Mustapha in his report on Sunday is all the more curious since his own station aired an extensive investigative report of Mustapha’s terrorist ties earlier this year.

The WLS investigation into Mustapha’s terrorist ties was prompted by a report published by the Investigative Project on Terrorism in January, which noted that Mustapha had been selected and trained as a chaplain by the Illinois State Police despite his documented terrorist support. The State Police eventually withdrew Mustapha’s appointment as chaplain and just last month he filed a lawsuit against the agency claiming discrimination aided by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, another FBI-identified Hamas front group.

There are several obvious problems with this episode, the first being the FBI’s “outreach” to a known Hamas operative (identified as such by federal prosecutors) and walking him through some of our country’s most sensitive counter-terrorism facilities. Why should terrorist operatives have to covertly case potential targets when the FBI will happily escort them and taken them into areas they would never be able to reach on their own? Who’s next on the FBI’s “outreach” calendar, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow GITMO detainees?

This ongoing “outreach” to terror-linked individuals and leaders of known terrorist front groups by senior leaders of our national security, homeland security and law enforcement agencies is the kind of behavior criticized by my colleagues and I in the Team B II’s report released earlier this month, “Shariah: The Threat to America“. As I observed last week here at Big Peace, Matt Duss of the Center for America Progress and ThinkProgress.org demands that we continue this insane national policy of embracing the same individuals and organizations who have been caught openly cheerleading for Islamic terrorists and have called for the destruction of the U.S. and Western Civilization.

The other glaring problem is that a reporter working in one of the largest media markets in the country can travel to such an event and be unaware of or unwilling to mention his own station’s reporting on his travel partner’s terrorist support activities. Such is the state of the establishment media today.

Response to CAIR

Rep. Myrick Responds to CAIR Attacks

Rep. Sue Myrick op-ed:

Last week, I held a press conference on Capitol Hill attended by three of my colleagues in the House of Representatives to call for a federal investigation (s) into a non-profit group called the Council on American Islamic Relations (C.A.I.R.)

Here are the facts:

1. CAIR has documented ties to the terrorist organization HAMAS. This is stated fact by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In an April 28, 2009 letter to US Senator Jon Kyl, the FBI wrote the following:
“As you know, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in the United States v. Holy Land Foundation et al. (Cr. No. 3:04-240-P (N.D.TX.). During that trial, evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and its Executive Director) and the Palestinian Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestinian Committee and HAMAS, which was designated a terrorist organization in 1995. In light of that evidence, the FBI suspended all formal contacts between CAIR and the FBI.”

In case you are not familiar with the Holy Land trial referenced above, it was a Dallas, Texas trial that ended with guilty verdicts on 108 counts of funneling money ($12 million) to HAMAS.

2. The purpose of our press conference was to make public an internal CAIR memo that documented CAIR's stated goal of placing CAIR interns in the offices of members of Congress, especially the members who serve on the Homeland Security, Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Let me be clear here, CAIR, a group whom the FBI says is affiliated with the terrorist group HAMAS, is trying to place their interns in the offices of those members who serve on the three committees that handle national security related issues. National Security is the first responsibility of the federal government.

3. Following our press conference, CAIR, immediately labeled we four members as bigots and started their public relations campaign to discredit us by claiming that we were against Muslims working on Capitol Hill. We never said that. At no time during our press conference did we even insinuate that we were investigating Muslims being interns on Capitol Hill. Go to http://www.youtube.com/suemyricknc09 and watch the press conference yourself.

Our focus was and is on CAIR and CAIR alone, not Muslims.

Likewise CAIR tried to make this a Republican vs. Democrat thing, because the four members at the press conference happened to be Republican.

How then does CAIR explain Democrat Senator Charles Schumer’s call earlier this year for a government-wide ban on CAIR in the federal government due to their ties to HAMAS? Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer has likewise made public her opinions of CAIR and any Google search will find her remarks.

4. CAIR is spending time, money and energy to position themselves as the spokespeople for the moderate Muslim community. Problem is CAIR is not a moderate Muslim organization. It is a radical front group for HAMAS. So who is CAIR competing with for this designation? The real moderate Muslim groups/individuals in America. Groups and individuals like the following who are committed to countering Islamist extremism:

Dr. Hedieh Mirahmadi – President World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE)
Zeyno Baran – Director for the Center for Eurasian Policy at the Hudson Institute
Farid Ghadry – President of the Reform Party of Syria
Manda Zand Ervin – Founder and director of the Alliance of Iranian Women
Omran Salman – Arab Reformists Project, 'Aafaq (Arabic for “horizons”).
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser – American Islamic Forum for Democracy
Karim Bromund – Director of Inter-Religious Affairs for the Islamic Supreme Council of America

I SUPPORT the Muslim individuals and groups mentioned above. These groups renounce terrorists and their radical ideology. They are trying their hardest to be heard and recognized in America, but are being overshadowed and out-funded by CAIR. Today, when something happens that impacts the Muslim community, the media calls CAIR (an unindicted co-conspirator to terrorism and a HAMAS front group) for comment on behalf of American Muslims. What an insult the media is performing on the Muslim community. Instead they should be calling Muslim groups/individuals like those named above. This is part of the reason we are focusing our attention on CAIR and exposing them for who they are. For one they pose a threat to our national security, and two, they deny the ability of legitimate Muslim groups to gain credibility.

5. In July of this year I held a summit on Capitol Hill where I introduced the leaders of eight moderate Muslim organizations to the heads of several US Agencies, Members of Congress and congressional staff. For example, they met with representatives from the State Department, USAID, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense. How can I be against Muslims working on Capitol Hill and hold such an event? Go to this site and read for yourself about this summit.

See through the lies and realize what is really going on here.

We are trying to expose a HAMAS Front Group (CAIR) for who they are, and they are crying we are anti-Muslim hoping that media outlets will ignore the terrorist claim and instead pick it up as a race/religion story. When those claims don’t work, they claim it’s a Republican political thing.

Americans, on this subject we need to stop the Republican vs. Democrat, Conservative vs. Liberal, Christian vs. Muslim division and unite on one simple point…. CAIR is a front group for HAMAS. It was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terrorism case that lead to 108 convictions of funneling $12 million to HAMAS. Because of the evidence produced in that case, the FBI severed all ties with them. This same CAIR, by their own admission, is trying to place people inside the offices of members of Congress who deal with national security issues (judiciary, homeland security and intelligence committees). I serve on one of those committees, Intelligence, am the co-chairwoman of the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus, and have spent the better part of the last four years working every day on terrorism related issues.

If we Americans fail to set aside our political, religious and ideological differences and unite when we encounter the enemy in such stark and plain terms, then God help us.

Hamas Peace Gambit

The Hamas 'Peace' Gambit
Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 08, 2009

"Apart from the time restriction (a truce that lapses after 10 years) and the refusal to accept Israel's existence, Mr. Meshal's terms approximate the Arab League peace plan ... "
-- Hamas peace plan, as explained by The New York Times

"Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"
-- Tom Lehrer, satirist WASHINGTON -- The Times conducted a five-hour interview with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal at his Damascus headquarters. Mirabile dictu, they're offering a peace plan with a two-state solution. Except. The offer is not a peace but a truce that expires after 10 years. Meaning that after Israel has fatally weakened itself by settling millions of hostile Arab refugees in its midst, and after a decade of Hamas arming itself within a Palestinian state that narrows Israel to eight miles wide -- Hamas restarts the war against a country it remains pledged to eradicate.

There is a phrase for such a peace: the peace of the grave.

Westerners may be stupid, but Hamas is not. It sees the new American administration making overtures to Iran and Syria. It sees Europe, led by Britain, beginning to accept Hezbollah. It sees itself as next in line. And it knows what to do. Yasser Arafat wrote the playbook.

With the 1993 Oslo accords, he showed what can be achieved with a fake peace treaty with Israel -- universal diplomatic recognition, billions of dollars of aid, and control of Gaza and the West Bank, which Arafat turned into an armed camp. In return for a signature, he created in the Palestinian territories the capacity to carry on the war against Israel that the Arab states had begun in 1948 but had given up after the bloody hell of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Meshal sees the opportunity. Not only is the Obama administration reaching out to its erstwhile enemies in the region, but it begins its term by wagging an angry finger at Israel over the Netanyahu government's ostensible refusal to accept a two-state solution.

Of all the phony fights to pick with Israel. No Israeli government would turn down a two-state solution in which the Palestinians accepted territorial compromise and genuine peace with a Jewish state. (And any government that did would be voted out in a day.) Netanyahu's own defense minister, Ehud Barak, offered precisely such a deal in 2000. He even offered to divide Jerusalem and expel every Jew from every settlement remaining in the new Palestine.

The Palestinian response (for those who have forgotten) was: No. And no counteroffer. Instead, nine weeks later, Arafat unleashed a savage terror war that killed 1,000 Israelis.

Netanyahu is reluctant to agree to a Palestinian state before he knows what kind of state it will be. That elementary prudence should be shared by anyone who's been sentient the last three years. The Palestinians already have a state, an independent territory with not an Israeli settler or soldier living on it. It's called Gaza. And what is it? A terror base, Islamist in nature, Iranian-allied, militant and aggressive, that has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians.

If this is what a West Bank state is going to be, it would be madness for Israel or America or Jordan or Egypt or any other moderate Arab country to accept such a two-state solution. Which is why Netanyahu insists that the Palestinian Authority first build institutions -- social, economic and military -- to anchor a state that could actually carry out its responsibilities to keep the peace.

Apart from being reasonable, Netanyahu's two-state skepticism is beside the point. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, worshiped at the shrine of a two-state solution. He made endless offers of a two-state peace to the Palestinian Authority -- and got nowhere.

Why? Because the Palestinians -- going back to the U.N. partition resolution of 1947 -- have never accepted the idea of living side by side with a Jewish state. Those like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who might want to entertain such a solution, have no authority to do it. And those like Hamas' Meshal, who have authority, have no intention of ever doing it.

Meshal's gambit to dress up perpetual war as a two-state peace is yet another iteration of the Palestinian rejectionist tragedy. In its previous incarnation, Arafat lulled Israel and the Clinton administration with talk of peace while he methodically prepared his people for war.

Arafat waited seven years to tear up his phony peace. Meshal's innovation? Ten -- then blood.

Aid For Sale

Aid for sale in Hamas' Gaza
by Asaf Romirowsky and Nicole Brackman
Philadelphia Daily News
March 4, 2009

There was a bit of head-scratching going on recently in the hallowed halls of the UN.

After weeks of rebuking Israel for preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, UN officials were forced to cancel deliveries of aid into the Hamas-controlled territory after terrorists broke into a UN Relief and Works Agency warehouse and made off with 800 tons of blankets, food and other basic commodities to sell them to the highest bidders.

Israeli officials have been saying all along that Hamas routinely diverts humanitarian aid. In April, fuel trucks destined for UNRWA warehouses were overtaken. It was reported in August that Hamas gunmen had hijacked more than 10 trucks destined for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society full of food and medical supplies.

All that is only more ironic given the worldwide castigation of Israel for allegedly preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza during the military operation.

And the criticism wasn't limited to the issue of aid. The UN (and the international community) was quick to condemn Israel for allegedly targeting an UNRWA-run school, despite widespread acknowledgement that Hamas routinely employs such facilities as "civilian shields" in an attempt to draw Israeli fire.

The incident where IDF fire hit an UNRWA school in the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza is indeed tragic. At the time, UNRWA insisted there were no terrorists in the school compound and the Israelis were "careless," with UNRWA Operations Director John Ging claiming that mortars had hit the school, killing dozens and wounding more.

Just days ago, though, UN officials admitted that Israel had not hit the school at all, but an area outside it. Ging admitted that his original claims were wrong.

It may have taken the embarrassment over such a glaring error to get the UN to acknowledge what the Israelis have been saying all along: that Hamas' callous use of civilians as shields is itself a humanitarian crisis.

Despite the new information, it's worth taking a close look at the historical ties between UNRWA and Hamas. UNRWA has long been a major employer for Hamas members, and has lent its facilities to Hamas and other terror organizations for weapons-related purposes.

For example, in May, we learned that Awad al-Qiq, who was targeted by the Israeli military, was a U.N. employee and headmaster of a top prep school in Gaza. Al-Qiq, a science teacher, was also in the rocket business while at the same time educating Palestinian youth.

Since Hamas' takeover of Gaza in 2006 after Israel's unilateral withdrawal in August 2005, UNRWA hasn't raised explicit objections to the brutal Hamas violence that enabled the terrorist group to take the Gaza Strip by force.

UNRWA appears to be chiefly concerned with its own survival and continued funding. As Karen AbuZayd, the commissioner general of UNRWA, said after the Hamas takeover, "We are not scared. Donor countries have not in any way said they will stop their aid to UNRWA.

"On the contrary, we were approached by many of these countries, even Israel, asking us to continue our services to Palestinian refugees and perhaps even extend these services to do things we haven't done before."

To be perfectly blunt, the theft of humanitarian aid by Hamas (not to mention its ruthless use of its own people as targets as well as shields) only proves the point: Dead civilians are not Israel's goal but Hamas'.

According to Hamas' thinking, the more Palestinian victims there are, the more the international community will try to pressure Israel to avoid any further military operations.

Now that the shooting has stopped, the Obama administration has pledged to provide some $900 million to help rebuild Gaza. Governments and NGOs serious about assisting Palestinian Gazan society must insist on accountability whereby that reconstruction funding is allocated independently and transparently.

When it comes to doling out the money, UNRWA and Hamas - both of whom seem to be more focused on empty rhetoric rather than working towards a peaceful Palestinian civil society - should be bypassed.

Asaf Romirowsky is an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum and manager of Israel and Middle East affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Nicole Brackman is a former Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Obama Invites Terrorists to America

Dr. Paul L. Williams
Pres. Obama Invites Hamas Terrorists to America
February 7, 2009

Bos Smith and Michael Travis contributed to the writing of this article.

By executive order, President Barack Obama has ordered the expenditure of $20.3 million in migration assistance to the Palestinian refugees and conflict victims in Gaza.

The "presidential determination" which allows hundreds of thousands of Palestinians with ties to Hamas to resettle in the United States was signed on January 27 and appeared in the Federal Register on February 4.

President Obama's decision, according to the Register, was necessitated by "the urgent refugee and migration needs" of the "victims."

Few on Capitol Hill took note that the order provides a free ticket replete with housing and food allowances to individuals who have displayed their overwhelming support of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the parliamentary election of January 2006.

The charter for Hamas calls for the replacement of the nation of Israel with a Palestinian Islamic state.

Since its formation in 1994, Hamas has been responsible for hundreds of terrorist attacks, including the 2002 Passover suicide bombing. The leaders of the movement signed the World Islamic Statement of 1998 – a document, penned by Osama bin Laden, which declared war on America and Israel.

President Obama's executive order is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many with ties to radical Islam, to our shores, furthering a process that was inaugurated in 1995 by Senator Ted Kennedy and the Cedar-Hart bill.

The Open Gate

In 1965, Allah in His mercy raised up Senators Ted Kennedy and Edward Celler to initiate changes in the immigration law that made it possible for millions of Muslims to make their way to the New World – as the Christian Europeans had done in the early years of the 20th Century. The Cedar-Hart bill, which was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on October 3, 1965, abolished the national-origin quotas that had been in effect since 1924. In the spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it barred discrimination on the basis of race, creed, religion, or national origin. America, by fiat of liberal secular humanists, was to be become a multicultural country – a country severed from its Judeo-Christian roots.

Remaining cognizant of the common roots as the American people, our legislative had enacted stringent laws pertaining to immigration and naturalization. The Naturalization Act of 1790 stipulated that "any alien, being a free white person, may be admitted to become a citizen of the United States" The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited Chinese families from immigrating to the United States. The Immigration Act of 1907 reorganized the states bordering Mexico (Arizona, New Mexico and a large part of Texas) into Mexican Border District to stem the flow of immigrants into the US.

The Immigration Act of 1924 further limited the number of new immigrants by the establishment of a stringent quota system. The number of newcomers was now limited to 2 percent of each nationality who lived in the country not in 1924 but in 1890. The reliance of this legislation on the ethnic composition of the country before the turn of the century guaranteed that the majority of new arrivals would be from Northern Europe. Since few Italians and Eastern Europeans lived in the US in 1890, the quotas for these nationalities became fixed at marginal rates and the number of new immigrants from "undesirable" regions greatly reduced. The following chart shows the effects of this legislation:

Immigration Statistics, 1920-1926

Year Total Entering U.S. Country of Origin
Great Britain Eastern Europe* Italy

1920 430,001 38,471 3,913 95,145

1921 805,228 51,142 32,793 222,260

1922 309,556 25,153 12,244 40,319

1923 522,919 45,759 16,082 46,674

1924 706,896 59,490 13,173 56,246

1925 294,314 27,172 1,566 6,203

1926 304,488 25,528 1,596 8,253


It is hard to conceive of an act of Congress that could be more culturally biased than the Immigration Act of 1954 and yet it received nearly unchallenged bipartisan support. Yet The New York Times editorialized: "The country has a right to say who shall and who shall not come in...The basis of restriction must be chosen with a view not to the interest of any group or groups in this country...but rather with a view to the country's best interests as a whole."

In 1952, The McCarran Walter Immigration Act affirmed the national-origins quota system of 1924 and limited total annual immigration to one-sixth of one percent of the population of the continental United States in 1920, or 175,455. The act exempted spouses and children of US citizens and people born in the Western Hemisphere from the quota.

The Kennedy Promise

But, in 1965, Kennedy and company viewed such legislation as pig-headed and prejudicial. Few elected officials, Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina – being one of the exceptions, dared to disagree with them. Championing the Celler-Hart bill, which called for the abolished all quotas, Kennedy, being far from prescient, said: "Contrary to the charges in some quarters, S500 will not inundate America with immigrants from any other country or area, or the most populated and economically deprived nations of Africa and Asia...The charges I have mentioned are highly emotional, irrational, and with little foundation in fact. They are out of line with the obligation of responsible citizenship. They breed hate of our heritage."

Forty years after Senator Kennedy made this pledge, Dean Steven Gillon of the Honors College at Oklahoma University assessed the results of the 1965 Immigration Act by noting:

"The US added at least 40 million immigrants after 1965. Before 1965, 95 percent of the new immigrants had come from Europe. After 1965, 95 percent came from the Third World. The 1965 act has transformed American society and had consequences exactly the opposite of what we were promised."

In his speech before Congress, Senator Kennedy had said; "Our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually." The level of immigration, he swore, would remain substantially same as it was in 1965 – 156,700. This, too, proved to be woefully incorrect. The present immigrant rate exceeds 1.5 million annually. Noting this, Pat Buchanan writes:

The 1965 Cedar-Hart bill was the greatest bait-and-switch in history. Americans were promised one result, and got the opposite result that they had been promised would never happen. They were misled. They were deceived. They were swindled. They were told immigration levels would remain roughly the same and the ethnic composition of their country would not change. What they got was a Third World invasion that is converting America into another country.

From 1965 to the present, more than half of all the immigrants to America from the Middle East and Asia have been Muslim with radical ideologies.

Malcolm is surely smiling in his grave, for he had written:

As the Christian Crusade once went East, now the Islamic Crusade is going West. With the East – Asia – closed to Christianity, with Africa rapidly becoming converted to Islam, with Europe rapidly becoming un-Christian, generally today it is accepted that the 'Christian' civilization of America – which is propping up the white race around the world – is Christianity's remaining strongest bastion.

Well, if this is so – if the so called 'Christianity' now being practiced in America displays the best that the world Christianity has to offer – no one in his right mind should need any much greater proof that very close at hand is the end of Christianity.

Are you aware that some Protestant theologians, in their writings, are using the phrase "post-Christian" era – and they mean now?

Dear Citizen Of Gaza

I Am The Soldier Who Slept In Your Home

Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

I spent many days in your home. You and your family's presence was felt in every corner. I saw your family portraits on the wall, and I thought of my family. I saw your wife's perfume bottles on the bureau, and I thought of my wife. I saw your children's toys and their English language schoolbooks. I saw your personal computer and how you set up the modem and wireless phone next to the screen, just as I do.
I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I wanted you to know that despite the immense disorder you found in your house that was created during a search for explosives and tunnels (which were indeed found in other homes), we did our best to treat your possessions with respect. When I moved the computer table, I disconnected the cables and lay them down neatly on the floor, as I would do with my own computer. I even covered the computer from dust with a piece of cloth. I tried to put back the clothes that fell when we moved the closet although not the same as you would have done, but at least in such a way that nothing would get lost.

I know that the devastation, the bullet holes in your walls and the destruction of those homes near you place my descriptions in a ridiculous light. Still, I need you to understand me, us, and hope that you will channel your anger and criticism to the right places.

I decided to write you this letter specifically because I stayed in your home.

I can surmise that you are intelligent and educated and there are those in your household that are university students. Your children learn English, and you are connected to the Internet. You are not ignorant; you know what is going on around you.

Therefore, I am sure you know that Qassam rockets were launched from your neighborhood into Israeli towns and cities.

How could you see these weekly launches and not think that one day we would say "enough"?! Did you ever consider that it is perhaps wrong to launch rockets at innocent civilians trying to lead a normal life, much like you? How long did you think we would sit back without reacting?

I can hear you saying "it's not me, it's Hamas". My intuition tells me you are not their most avid supporter. If you look closely at the sad reality in which your people live, and you do not try to deceive yourself or make excuses about "occupation", you must certainly reach the conclusion that the Hamas is your real enemy.

The reality is so simple, even a seven year old can understand: Israel withdrew from the Gaza strip, removing military bases and its citizens from Gush Katif. Nonetheless, we continued to provide you with electricity, water, and goods (and this I know very well as during my reserve duty I guarded the border crossings more than once, and witnessed hundreds of trucks full of goods entering a blockade-free Gaza every day).

Despite all this, for reasons that cannot be understood and with a lack of any rational logic, Hamas launched missiles on Israeli towns. For three years we clenched our teeth and restrained ourselves. In the end, we could not take it anymore and entered the Gaza strip, into your neighborhood, in order to remove those who want to kill us. A reality that is painful but very easy to explain.
You must lead a civil uprising against Hamas.

As soon as you agree with me that Hamas is your enemy and because of them, your people are miserable, you will also understand that the change must come from within. I am acutely aware of the fact that what I say is easier to write than to do, but I do not see any other way. You, who are connected to the world and concerned about your children's education, must lead, together with your friends, a civil uprising against Hamas.

I swear to you, that if the citizens of Gaza were busy paving roads, building schools, opening factories and cultural institutions instead of dwelling in self pity, arms smuggling and nurturing a hatred to your Israeli neighbors, your homes would not be in ruins right now. If your leaders were not corrupt and motivated by hatred, your home would not have been harmed. If someone would have stood up and shouted that there is no point in launching missiles on innocent civilians, I would not have to stand in your kitchen as a soldier.

You don't have money, you tell me? You have more than you can imagine.

Even before Hamas took control of Gaza, during the time of Yasser Arafat, millions if not billions of dollars donated by the world community to the Palestinians was used for purchasing arms or taken directly to your leaders bank accounts. Gulf States, the emirates - your brothers, your flesh and blood, are some of the richest nations in the world. If there was even a small feeling of solidarity between Arab nations, if these nations had but the smallest interest in reconstructing the Palestinian people - your situation would be very different.

You must be familiar with Singapore. The land mass there is not much larger than the Gaza strip and it is considered to be the second most populated country in the world. Yet, Singapore is a successful, prospering, and well managed country. Why not the same for you?

My friend, I would like to call you by name, but I will not do so publicly. I want you to know that I am 100% at peace with what my country did, what my army did, and what I did. However, I feel your pain. I am sorry for the destruction you are finding in your neighborhood at this moment. On a personal level, I did what I could to minimize the damage to your home as much as possible.
Instead of sinking into self-pity, build a flourishing and prospering country.

In my opinion, we have a lot more in common than you might imagine. I am a civilian, not a soldier, and in my private life I have nothing to do with the military. However, I have an obligation to leave my home, put on a uniform, and protect my family every time we are attacked. I have no desire to be in your home wearing a uniform again and I would be more than happy to sit with you as a guest on your beautiful balcony, drinking sweet tea seasoned with the sage growing in your garden.

The only person who could make that dream a reality is you. Take responsibility for yourself, your family, your people, and start to take control of your destiny. How? I do not know. Maybe there is something to be learned from the Jewish people who rose up from the most destructive human tragedy of the 20th century, and instead of sinking into self-pity, built a flourishing and prospering country. It is possible, and it is in your hands.

I am ready to be there to provide a shoulder of support and help to you.

But only you can move the wheels of history.

Regards,
Yishai, (Reserve Soldier)

The above was a letter that was originally published in the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Ma'ariv, and translated into English by the Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA)

The War With Israel Is Over ... They Won

M. Ibrahim

From an Arab to his Arab Brethren ...

To my Arab brothers: The War with Israel Is Over - and they won. Now let's finally move forward With Israel entering its fourth week of an incursion into the same Gaza Strip it voluntarily evacuated a few months ago, a sense of reality among Arabs is spreading through commentary by Arab pundits,letters to the editor, and political talk shows on Arabic-language TV networks.

The new views are stunning both in their maturity and in their realism. The best way I can think of to convey them is in the form of a letter to the Palestinian Arabs from their Arab friends:

Dear Palestinian Arab brethren: The war with Israel is over. You have lost.Surrender and negotiate to secure a future for your children. We, your Arab brothers, may say until we are blue in the face that we stand by you, but the wise among you and most of us know that we are moving on, away from the tired old idea of the Palestinian Arab cause and the "eternal struggle" with Israel.

Dear friends, you and your leaders have wasted three generations trying to fight for Palestine, but the truth is the Palestine you could have had in 1948 is much bigger than the one you could have had in 1967, which in turn is much bigger than what you may have to settle for now or in another 10 years. Struggle means less land and more misery and utter loneliness. At the moment,brothers, you would be lucky to secure a semblance of a state in that Gaza Strip into which you have all crowded, and a small part of the West Bank of the Jordan.

It isn't going to get better. Time is running out even for this much land, so here are some facts, figures, and sound advice, friends. You hold keys, which you drag out for television interviews, to houses that do not exist or are inhabited by Israelis who have no intention of leaving Jaffa ,Haifa , Tel Aviv, or West Jerusalem . You shoot old guns at modern Israeli tanks and American-made fighter jets, doing virtually no harm to Israel while bringing the wrath of its mighty
army down upon you.

You fire ridiculously inept Kassam rockets that cause little destruction and delude yourselves into thinking this is a war of liberation. Your government, your social institutions, your schools,and your economy are all in ruins. Your young people are growing up illiterate,ill, and bent on rites of death and suicide, while you, in effect, are living on the kindness of foreigners, including America and the United Nations. Every day your officials must beg for your daily bread, dependent on relief trucks that carry food and medicine into the Gaza Strip and the West Bank , while your criminal Muslim fundamentalist Hamas government continues to fan the flames of a war it can neither fight nor hope to win.

In other words, brothers, you are down, out, and alone in a burnt-out landscape that is shrinking by the day. What kind of struggle is this? Is it worth waging at all?

More important, what kind of miserable future does it portend for your children, the fourth or fifth generation of the Arab world's have-nots? We, your Arab brothers, have moved on. Those of us who have oil money are busy accumulating wealth and building housing, luxury developments, state-of-the-art universities and schools, and new highways and byways. Those of us who share borders with Israel, such as Egypt and Jordan , have signed a peace treaty with it and are not going to war for you any time soon. Those of us who are far away, in places like North Africa and Iraq , frankly could not care less about what happens to you. Only Syria continues to feed your fantasies that someday it will join you in liberating Palestine , even though a huge chunk of its territory, the entire Golan Heights, was taken by Israel in 1967 and annexed. The Syrians, my friends, will gladly fight down to the last Palestinian Arab.

Before you got stuck with this Hamas crowd, another cheating, conniving, leader of yours, Yasser Arafat, sold you a rotten bill of goods - more pain, greater
corruption, and millions stolen by his relatives - while your children played in the sewers of Gaza.

The war is over. Why not let a new future begin?

Youssef M. Ibrahim, a former New York Times Middle East Correspondent and Wall Street Journal Energy Editor for 25 years, is a freelance writer based in NewYork City and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

Hamas Inflates Numbers

January 22, 2009
War Is Deceit: Gaza doc says Palestinian death toll inflated

Will the world take note? What do you think? War Is Deceit Update: "Gazan doctor says death toll inflated," from Ynet, January 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):

What really is behind the numbers reported on the number of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip? Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported Thursday that a doctor working in Gaza's Shifa Hospital claimed that Hamas has intentionally inflated the number of casualties resulting from Israel's Operation Cast Lead. "The number of deceased stands at no more than 500 to 600. Most of them are youths between the ages of 17 to 23 who were recruited to the ranks of Hamas, who sent them to the slaughter," according to the newspaper article.
The doctor wished to remain unidentified, out of fear for his life.

A senior Palestinian Health Ministry official later denied the claims, and the Israel Defense Forces' estimate on the number of casualties in Gaza has also remained unchanged.

Despite the claims, the IDF stood behind its estimate that between 1,100 to 1,200 people were killed in the Strip during the fighting, more than two-thirds of them Hamas members.

The army initially believed that the number of civilian casualties was higher, as many Hamas men walked outside their houses dressed in civilian clothes, leaving their weapons at home.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain, who is in change of the emergency department at the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, denied the figures presented by the Italian paper.

Hassanain told Ynet that the Palestinian figures were issued cautiously, without any political considerations, and that several casualties may not have been reported as their bodies are still under the rubble or have not been handed over to the rescue forces and authorized medical officials.

'Mostly armed teenagers'

A Tal al-Hawa resident told the newspaper's reporter, "Armed Hamas men sought out a good position for provoking the Israelis. There were mostly teenagers, aged 16 or 17, and armed. They couldn't do a thing against a tank or a jet. They knew they are much weaker, but they fired at our houses so that they could blame Israel for war crimes."

The reporter for the Italian newspaper also quoted reporters in the Strip who told of Hamas' exaggerated figures, "We have already said to Hamas commanders – why do you insist on inflating the number of victims?"...

For propaganda's sake, Einstein.

5 Minutes To Midnight

5 Minutes to Midnight

By Gerard Group Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Ilana Freedman

These are dangerous times. The volume and ferocity of anti-American chatter across the Internet have reached a level we have not seen since the days leading up to 9/11. The radical Islamists, who would use violence against those who do not accept their view of life, have become arrogant enough to bring their savage methods to new depths of depravity. To understand this bolder enemy, we must recognize what they are capable of.

Mumbai Last November, a handful of terrorists came into Mumbai by stealth, and within hours brought a city of 18 million to its knees. They attacked ten symbolic sites favored by tourists, murdered some 200 people, and left a wake of indescribable destruction, shattering thousands of lives in their wake.

They singled out American, British, and Jewish targets, and ordered the terrorists to “kill to their last breath”. Many of their victims were savagely tortured before being murdered. So brutal was the torture that experienced doctors who later examined the bodies were in shock and could not find the words to even speak about it.

Gaza In Gaza, Hamas brought a different kind of terror into the news. Hamas fights her enemies with cowardice and unspeakable cruelty. While terrorists have been given free reign to shell civilians living in southern Israeli towns, they hide behind the women and children of Gaza, drawing Israeli fire to its rocket launchers which are placed deep in densely populated areas, putting their own people at mortal risk.

During the last two years, nearly 6,000 rockets were fired from Gaza, aimed at schools and homes, mostly in the little town of Sderot, which has taken the brunt of the ceaseless barrage. Israel finally responded with a mighty attack to silence the rockets that had plagued its citizens for the last eight years, and while the number of rockets has been reduced, they did not stop, continuing to terrorize the people of southern Israel.

The True Face of Hamas

There is now a mountain of documentation demonstrating that over recent months, Hamas has acquired massive caches of weapons and explosives which they stored in mosques, schools, and throughout residential neighborhoods.

They have humiliated, brutalized, and murdered their Christian and Fatah ‘enemies’ in cold blood. And after Israel dropped leaflets in Gazan neighborhoods, urging civilians find shelter away from the aerial attack, Hamas forced them back into their homes, preventing them from finding safety from the bombs. No wonder the number of civilian casualties is so high.

On December 24, in a final blow to any semblance of civilized governance, Hamas passed a new penal code firmly rooted in Shari’a law. Among the punishments that this new code enables are forty lashes for drinking wine, cutting off hands for theft, and crucifixion for ‘treason’.

Their reversion to a seventh century penal code underscores their intention to achieve ultimate power that will drive the lives of their people back into the dark ages. The current plight of the people of Gaza can be laid squarely at the feet of Hamas.

What This Means for the West

Hamas supporters have used the current conflict as another excuse to stir the boiling cauldron of Islamist hatred against the West. Their mantra of “Death to Israel, Death to America” feeds their frenzy and has spawned demonstrations throughout the United States, demonstrations that are growing increasingly hysterical and out of control.

Last week in New York City, seven police officers were hurt - two with head wounds - when a pro-Hamas demonstration became violent.

In San Francisco, pro-Hamas demonstrators shouted, “I want you to watch as I kill your children, cover your children in their own blood! I want you to watch me blow your children’s brains out”.

In Florida, a demonstrator screamed, “Go back to the oven,” referring to the murder of Jews in the Holocaust, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need.”

Here in America, we watch these events unfold as if we were viewing a new kind of reality show. But this is not theater and we, who watch passively, as we sit comfortably in front of the television, need to be alarmed.

It is difficult for Westerners to comprehend the depth of hatred that radical Islamists feel against those who are unwilling to adopt their faith. For them, multi-culturalism is not an acceptable way of life, it is evil.

Their view of life demands that we either convert to their version of Islam, or die. They have made it plain that their goal is to globalize jihad, and turn the world into a global Islamist state ruled under shari’ah law. For them, negotiation is not an option, there is only one way, and there is nothing to negotiate.

A few years ago, Abdurahman Alamoudi presented himself as a so-called ‘moderate’ Muslim, and that he had a large following. He was an open supporter of Hamas and Hezballah, yet so highly esteemed that he had access to the White House (before he went to federal prison for his role in an assassination plot against the Saudi Crown Prince).

Not surprisingly, few took note when he told a Muslim conference in Chicago, “Muslims sooner or later will be the moral leadership of America . . . either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country.” It was one of many warnings that we ignored.

Yousef al-Khattab, a NYC taxi driver, enjoys the benefits of life in America, even as he runs a website called RevolutionMuslim.com. On his website, he wrote, “We pray that we may witness the dismantlement of western, secular dominance across the world as we hold it to be pagan and idolatrous in the majority of its presumptions.

We seek a resurrection of the just example set forth by centuries of Islamic rule throughout the ages and we hold it to be self evident for the objective soul and mind that Allah is One and that Muhammad ibn Abdullah is His Prophet and that the religion offers the solution to all of the world’s ills and afflictions.” Is anybody listening?

Radical Islam has taken a firm hold in our society. Hamas is only one of an undetermined number of radical Islamic groups that aim to do us harm. They have used the freedoms that they profess to hate to achieve access to our universities, our industries, our government, and our collective conscience.

They use our sense of fair play against us to impose their moral superiority, and demand our sensitivity to their rights, while simultaneously demanding that we forfeit our own.

So now, while Christian children can no longer pray in school, the same schools have adopted programs that teach our children what it is like to be Muslim, how they eat, and how they pray.

There are now terrorist cells in virtually every state in the union. Their aim is to globalize jihad, and replace our Constitution with the Koran, our penal code with shari’a law.

They range from the well known names such as al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood (which masquerades under many other names), and includes lesser known groups like Jamaat al-Fuqra, Darul Uloom, and Islamic Jihad. Associated with these groups are not-for-profit front organizations through which these groups launder money to support terroist activities.

For example, Jamaat al-Fuqra compounds have sprung up all over the country to provide Muslim warriors with rural campuses for combat training. Security is high and outsiders are not welcome.

Darul Uloom, the school of Islam embraced by the Taliban, have active centers in Florida, Maryland, Texas, Connecticut and New York.

And CAIR, which claims to be nothing more than “a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group”, was named as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the recent Holyland Foundation terrorist funding trial, Never-the-less, it provides sensitivity training to the FBI.

Today, in unassuming Muslim centers in Brooklyn, NY; Jersey City, NJ; Boston, MA; Fairfax, Virginia; and Dearborn, Michigan, jihad is being plotted, while we bend over backwards to ensure that they are not disturbed.

Today, we in America stand on the threshold of madness as we allow our nation to be undermined by those who would destroy all that generations of Americans have fought and died for.

The time is 1939 and we are Europe denying the growing threat of the Third Reich. Here in America, it is five minutes to midnight and it is time to wake up.

Ilana Freedman is the Editor of IntelAnalysis and is CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.

The Evil of Hamas

From her lips to God's ear: The fury of a bereaved Palestinian mother captures evil of Hamas in Gaza

Tuesday, January 6th 2009, 4:00 AM

Katib/Getty


The collateral damage that has been inflicted on the residents of Gaza is a sorrowful consequence of living under the rule of rocket-firing fanatics. It is because of Hamas, and only Hamas, that Palestinians are suffering.

At least some of them know the identity of their tormentors. A New York Times dispatch captured an excruciating moment that took place in a hospital morgue, where a mother had just found half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter.

"May God exterminate Hamas!" screamed the woman in crystal-clear understanding that the terrorist band's reckless, inhuman actions had brought death to her child.

There will likely be more tragedies as Israel presses an assault on Hamas by air and, now, on the ground. Each will trace to Hamas' refusal to desist, once and for all, from raining rockets onto Israeli soil. And, perversely, each will increase pressure on Israel to stand down prematurely.

Calls for a truce have mounted with the European Union, the secretary general of the UN, Arab countries and others urging both sides to come to an immediate ceasefire.

Both sides? Let's start with one: the bad actor.

All the world knows that Israel would give up the fight in the event Hamas stopped firing and agreed to verifiably disarm. Those terms are both the short-term fix and the long-term solution that the international community should be demanding.

Lacking either one, Israel is waging a high-risk, highly skilled operation to destroy Hamas' capacity to lob missiles at will into Israeli territory, some with a range of 25 miles. The group's arsenal is formidable.

More than 3,000 rockets hit Israel in 2008. More than 500 have struck since Hamas ended a "truce" on Dec. 19. And, 10 days into the offensive, Hamas was still able yesterday to fire several dozen, including one that blasted an empty kindergarten.

The weapons stores must be dismantled and Hamas' supply routes - tunnels into Gaza from Egypt - must be shut, with oversight to prevent Hamas from rearming. Israel and the U.S. are properly seeking such terms.

Hamas' unending barrage had forced hundreds of thousands to live in fear, yet the onslaught drew barely a fraction of the outrage now directed at Israel's exercise of self-defense.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy went so far as to say, revoltingly, that Israel had hurt the cause of peace in the Mideast by sending ground troops into Gaza. There had been no peace - and there will be no peace until Hamas lacks the will and/or the way to attack.

Given no choice but to push in that direction, the Israeli military has done an extraordinary job of targeting Hamas fighters and arms in crowded environments - while holding down civilian casualties. It is up against demented enemies who sacrifice their own people.

Gaza's Rocket Scientists

Gaza has its version of rocket scientists

Westerners seem to expect more civilized behavior from Israel than from its adversaries.

Mark Steyn
Syndicated columnist

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gaza-israel-think-2272631-hamas-president#slComments

So how was your holiday season? Over in Gaza, whether or not they're putting the Christ back in Christmas, they're certainly putting the crucifixion back in Easter. According to the London-based Arabic newspaper al Hayat, on Dec. Hama 23 Hamas legislators voted to introduce Sharia – Islamic law – to the Palestinian territories, including crucifixion. So next time you're visiting what my childhood books still quaintly called "the Holy Land" the re-enactments might be especially lifelike.

The following day, Christmas Eve, Samuel Huntington died at his home at Martha's Vineyard. A decade and a half ago, in his most famous book "The Clash Of Civilizations," professor Huntington argued that Western elites' view of man as homo economicus was reductive and misleading – that cultural identity is a more profound behavioral indicator than lazy assumptions about the universal appeal of Western-style economic liberty and the benefits it brings.

Very few of us want to believe this thesis.

"The great majority of Palestinian people," Condi Rice, the secretary of state, said to commentator Cal Thomas a couple of years back, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Secretary Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

I think she knows she doesn't know it. But in the modern world there is no diplomatic vocabulary for the kind of cultural fault line represented by the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so even a smart thinker like Dr. Rice can only frame it as an issue of economic and educational opportunity. Of course, there are plenty of Palestinians like the ones the secretary of state described: You meet them living as doctors and lawyers in Los Angeles and Montreal and Geneva … but not, on the whole, in Gaza.

In Gaza, they don't vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it's to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza from Hamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French President Sarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel's "disproportionate" response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than from Hamas. That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of "desperation."

Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid." For whatever that's worth. Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba, returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It's "desperation" born of "poverty" and "occupation."

If it was, it would be easy to fix. But what if it's not? What if it's about something more primal than land borders and economic aid?

A couple of days after Hamas voted to restore crucifixion to the Holy Land, their patron in Tehran (and their primary source of "aid") put in an appearance on British TV. As multicultural "balance" to Her Majesty The Queen's traditional Christmas message, the TV network Channel 4 invited President Ahmadinejad to give an alternative Yuletide address on the grounds that it was a valuable public service to let viewers hear him "speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

In fact, as Caroline Glick pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, the great man "speaks for himself" all the time – when he's at the United Nations, calling on all countries to submit to Islam; when he's presiding over his international conference of Holocaust deniers; when he's calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" – or (in his more "moderate" moments) relocated to a couple of provinces of Germany and Austria. Caroline Glick forbore to mention that, according to President Ahmadinejad's chief adviser, Hassan Abbassi, his geopolitical strategy is based on the premise that "Britain is the mother of all evils" – the evils being America, Australia, Israel, the Gulf states, Canada and New Zealand, all the malign progeny of the British Empire. "We have established a department that will take care of England," Mr. Abbassi said in 2005. "England's demise is on our agenda."

So when Britain's Channel 4 says that we don't get the chance to see these fellows speak for themselves, it would be more accurate to say that they speak for themselves incessantly but the louder they speak the more we put our hands over our ears and go "Nya nya, can't hear you." We do this in part because, if you're as invested as most Western elites are in the idea that all anyone wants is to go to university, get a steady job and settle down in a nice house in the suburbs, a statement such as "England's demise is on our agenda" becomes almost literally untranslatable. When President Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map, we deplore him as a genocidal fantasist. But maybe he's a genocidal realist, and we're the fantasists.

The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington's book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from "moderation" and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.

To be fair to President Ahmadinejad's hosts at Channel 4, the "department that will take care of England" probably doesn't get the lion's share of the funding in Tehran. On the other hand, when Hashemi Rafsanjani describes the Zionist Entity as "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" with "a single atomic bomb," that sounds rather more specific, if not teetering alarmingly on the "disproportionate." Unlike its international critics in North America and Europe, Israel has no margin for error.

©MARK STEYN

Hamas Must Not Win in Gaza

Egypt's Mubarak to EU: Hamas must not be allowed to win in Gaza

By Barak Ravid, Avi Issacharoff and Zvi Bar'el

Tags: Gaza, Israel, Israel News

Hamas must not be allowed to win its conflict with the IDF, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Monday told a delegation of European foreign ministers in a closed conversation.

The comment occurred even as Hamas, for the first time since the fighting began, sent representatives to Cairo to discuss a cease-fire. Following a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, Hamas officials said they had received an Egyptian proposal and would consider it.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday told French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was visiting Jerusalem, that Israel would not honor a cease-fire imposed by the UN Security Council without its consent. Arab states are currently pushing for a Security Council resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire.

Israel is mainly pinning its hopes on the United States and France to thwart the Arab effort in the Security Council. However, it has sent messages to several Security Council members informing them that Israel will not accept an imposed cease-fire, and especially that it will not accept any resolution that places Israel and Hamas on the same level by calling for both to cease their fire impartially.

The European foreign ministers, headed by Karel Schwarzenberg of the Czech Republic, whose country currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency, came to Jerusalem after visiting Cairo, and briefed Livni on their meeting with Mubarak. Inter alia, they reportedly told her that Mubarak had said Hamas "must not be allowed to emerge from the fighting with the upper hand."

Regarding Israel's demand that Egypt halt arms smuggling from its territory into Gaza as part of any cease-fire agreement, the ministers said Mubarak denied that any such smuggling takes place. He insisted that the weapons arrive not via tunnels from Sinai, but in barrels thrown overboard from ships passing near Gaza's coast.

The ministers told Livni it is imperative to achieve a cease-fire as soon as possible, so as to enable peace talks between Israel and the PA to resume. They also asked for Israel's aid in sending humanitarian assistance into Gaza, to which Livni agreed.

On another issue, Israel asked France to press the Red Cross to arrange to visit kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, who is held by Hamas in Gaza. Shalit holds dual French-Israeli citizenship. Sarkozy will apparently raise this issue with Syrian President Bashar Assad, who has influence with Hamas' Damascus-based political wing, when he meets him today in Damascus.

Livni also told the European foreign ministers that Israel "would not be able to ignore the Shalit issue in the framework of any cease-fire."

The Egyptian cease-fire proposal would require Israel to end its military operation and withdraw from Gaza, while Hamas would have to end rocket fire into Israel. The border crossings into Gaza would reopen, but PA officials would be stationed at the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

In addition, Egypt is demanding that Hamas resume reconciliation talks with Fatah.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political wing, told Reuters that Hamas was open to a truce, but said taht any proposal must guarantee an Israeli withdrawal and an end to the blockade of Gaza.

"Any initiative not based on ending the aggression, opening the border crossings and an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has no chance of succeeding," he said.

Meanwhile, Turkish Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin charged in Antalya on Saturday that "Israel is the world's greatest terrorist provocateur. The war on terror cannot succeed as long as Israel continues its provocations."

He was followed on Sunday by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who, during a visit to Saudi Arabia, blamed Israel for the outbreak of fighting. "Hamas observed the truce for six months, but Israel did not honor the agreement to lift the embargo on Gaza," he said. "People in Gaza live in a sort of prison. Essentially, all of Palestine is a prison."

Also on Sunday, Jordanian Prime Minister Nader Dahabi said Jordan was liable to reconsider its relations with Israel in light of the Gaza operation.

... Just The Beginning

U.S. Intelligence Official about Israel: “This is just the beginning”

U.S. Intelligence official "breaks silence" on Israel situation"

31 December 2008: Northeast Intelligence Network director Doug Hagmann interviewed a highly-placed U.S. intelligence official late yesterday who not only confirmed rumors about escalated and more intensive Israeli military operations against the Muslim terrorists in Gaza, warned of the increasing probability of abandonment of Israel by the U.S. and other Western countries based on what he termed “malicious intelligence.”

“Remember that term,” advised this well-placed intelligence official, “you’ll be hearing it again.”

“This is just the beginning,” stated this intelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous. This official stated that the possibility for a much more protracted ground war is more likely today than at any other time in the past, adding that Israel is exercising her right to protect herself from her enemies in Gaza. But there is a catch, noted this official, and a big one at that: Israel could be about to lose the support of the United States.

“I have every reason to believe, based on what I’ve seen at my level of [security] clearance especially over the last several years, that Israel will soon be completely on their own… or worse.” When asked what could be worse than losing the support of the United States, he stated: “when our administration provides more support to Arab countries [with] financial and military aid, undercutting Israel’s defense efforts all while pushing Israel to succumb to the pressure of unreasonable demands designed to end with their political annihilation as a nation.”

According to this official, the U.S. has been slowly proceeding down this road. He cited the 2005 surrender of Gush Katif to the Palestinian Authority as one critical example of the slow dismantlement of Israel as a viable nation. “Despite critical intelligence outlining in every possible manner imaginable that this would be a disastrous move leading to the events we are seeing today, it was done anyway,” he stated.

“We are seeing the very scenario play out today that was outlined in intelligence briefs three and four years ago. Knowing that, there is something very wrong with this picture,” he stated.

He added that Western media is also playing a very big role in the current war in the Middle East, thanks, in part, to carefully worded statements prepared by political officials in Washington. Officials in the current administration, like some previous administrations, submit carefully crafted informational releases to a media that is controlled by those having special interests that are contrary to a legitimate peace in the Middle East.

“The game is rigged. At the highest levels of power in the U.S. and even by some in power in Israel, the game is rigged,” he emphasized.

The next obvious question in this interview was, of course, “how is it rigged?” followed by ”how are you in a position to know?”

This official responded by stating that he has spent the last two decades serving in “an unfortunate position where intelligence and politics meet and often collide.” Now, merely days away from retirement, he stated that he is looking forward to leaving his position after conducting over 20 years of intelligence work “that has been molded and massaged to advance the agendas of a select few.”

He continued: “When an intelligence work product that has been thoroughly and properly vetted is submitted to those in Washington, and I see a completely different and entirely inaccurate product intentionally submitted and aired in the media, only to be told ‘that is the way it must be,’ then I know it’s time for me to leave.”

“It is obvious to me that most Americans don’t understand or don’t care what is actually happening in the Middle East relative to Israel. People don’t understand history, or have been subjected to revisionist history based on lies and more lies. Add to that a media that fails to provide an accurate assessment of what is taking place in Israel, in Gaza, and you end up with a very bad situation for Israel,” stated this source. He added that the disinformation coming and going to and from Washington is getting worse, as is the media bias against Israel.

The events currently taking place in Israel are extremely perilous for Israel and especially perilous for the national security of the United States, according to this source. Contrary to the accepted assessments of “Middle East experts” in the news, our intelligence services have “ample evidence to prove active collusion and support between HAMAS and other terrorist organizations, both Sunni and Shite. Further, there is a level of Iranian complicity in this war that is not being talked about, or being dismissed out of hand because of the schism between the Sunni and Shia sects,” stated this source.