[ Apropos below:
Some 30 years ago, we were visiting Tokyo for the first time and took a half-day tour of the city to acclimatise ourselves. The assorted group of tourists came from all over the world. The guide was busy enumerating the various ethnic groups residing in Tokyo, but no mention of any Jewish people. An American voice from the back called out : "any Jews?" The guide kept asking, -"please?" after the questioner repeated it a second and third time, but still no understanding from the guide. Eventually another passenger yelled out:"there is orange juice, apple juice, all kinds of juices!"]
"DEATH TO ALL JUICE"
DAVID HARSANYI (Denver Post, USA)
In our nation, even twisted extremists are welcome to express their opinions.
Take, for instance, the young Muslim woman in Florida who used her constitutional right to tell Jews to "go back to the oven!" last week. Or the more befuddled protester in New York who brandished a sign that read, "Death to all Juice." (And I thought we Jews ran the country. Clearly, someone is sleeping on the job.)
These rare but revolting displays of hate do offer the "Juice" a valuable reminder that a secure Jewish state in Israel is a historic imperative.
Nevertheless, it is distressing to hear the large number of supposedly peace- loving critics of Israel in essence defend Hamas, one of the most virulently un-intellectual, illiberal, bellicose, misogynistic, hateful and violent brands of religious fanaticism on Earth.
That's no easy trick, mind you. After all, the magnificently overused "cycle of violence" — a platitude that shrewdly spreads blame equally among the culpable and innocent — has thankfully cliched itself to death. So now, detractors have turned to a feeble argument that claims Israel is guilty of failing to deploy a "proportional" response against Hamas.
It is said that every story has two sides. In this tale, one group has a nihilistic interest in placing Jews in ovens (though Hamas, without Iran, lacks the technological capacity to construct a match, much less an oven) and the other side has a stubborn habit of postponing this fate.
For Israel, there is no choice. There is no political solution. No happy ending. The present circumstance in Gaza refutes the Left's quixotic notion that antagonists can just, you know, hug it out for peace. It also counters the neoconservative idea that democracy will spread among people who place no value in it.
Because Gaza is free. Obviously the Palestinians cannot be placated with an independent state — a gift they never had until Israel handed them Gaza with nary a condition. But this is not a 3,000-year-old war steeped in ancient history, despite widespread perceptions. This was a 20th century battle between Jewish and Arab nationalists. It has turned into a more insidious 21st century war with Islamic fundamentalism.
Hamas will not be romanced by the idea of "building bridges" with Israel. There are not enough conference rooms in Oslo or Davos to persuade Hamas to even recognize the existence of a Jewish state. And Hamas is uninterested in ceasefires, except when it is in need of re-loading rocket launchers — supplied by Iran.
When asked if he could ever imagine a long-term ceasefire with Israel, Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan responded: "The only reason to have a hudna [cease-fire] is to prepare yourself for the final battle."
Reportedly, Rayyan celebrated the idea of martyrdom and death in this glorious battle against Jews, not only for himself, but for his family as well. The Israeli air force blew Rayyan into nano-pieces last week in what we call a "win-win" situation. Rayyan's four wives and 11 of his children unfortunately died along with him.
But make no mistake: Every Arab civilian that perishes does so at the hands of Hamas. The group provoked Israel with thousands of rocket attacks indiscriminately aimed at civilian centers. Once Israel responded — after years of warnings — Hamas placed caches of weapons near schools, mosques and homes in an effort to cause carnage on its own people. Civilian death is the point.
Most reasonable Americans will understand that Israel did not invade Gaza to terrorize the civilian population or murder the innocent. Israel is there to dismantle Hamas' infrastructure and dispose of as many jihadists as possible.
Will Israel's latest assault radicalize Palestinians even further? It's possible. But what other nation would allow a terror state to attack it on a daily basis without defending itself? The answer is none.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
GAZA: FALLOUT FOR JEWS AND ANALYSIS OF CAMPAIGN
THE BBC IS NOT KNOWN FOR ITS PRO-ISRAEL STANCE!On the contrary, it is usually shrill in its condemnations of Israel at every opportunity. Hence it is surprising to see such an interview aired.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
From the BBC ..strange that our Australian news organisations have decided not to show it...
BICOM - Videos - BBC News: Military analysis :interview of expert.
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/operation-cast-lead/videos/bbc-news--military-analysis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Standing against a tide of hatred
It is not Israel's action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate. There's only one explanation: antisemitism
Elizabeth Wurtzel
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 January 2009 10.00 GMT
Is it good for the Jews?
If you were so inclined, you could ask that question about the Madoff mess, the Gaza offensive, the latest screed from Alan Dershowitz – or about a new recipe for angel-food cake. Which is to say, if you are looking for antisemitism, you can find it anywhere, even in a dessert cookbook. But if even paranoids have enemies, I think it's fair to say that these are tough times for Jews.
While I would prefer to equate the fate of the Palestinians with that of Israel – meaning, I'd like to believe we're all on the same side – I think that might be a difficult political fiction to maintain at the moment. And while I'd like to artificially separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism, like most American Jews, I'm not willing to make that false distinction: when there is more than one Jewish state, the world's hatred of Israel might become no different from its exasperation with any other country, but since Israel is the only homeland, and really it is nothing more than six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey, I can't pretend that the problem with Israel is that it's a poorly located country that happens to be at odds with its neighbours and only coincidentally happens to be Jewish. The trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews.
This situation makes me profoundly uncomfortable. As the kind of left-leaning liberal who tends to agree with the positions taken by The Nation in most instances, I hate having to differ so completely on the Israel issue with many I otherwise would align with. As it is my good fortune to be American, I live in the only country that as a matter of policy is pro-Israel regardless of party allegiance; Democrats and Republicans equally unite behind the blue-and-white. But to communicate with anyone I think of as rightminded (and left-leaning) in any other part of the world is to experience the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era. In fact, in Europe right now, it is de rigueur to liken the current regime in Israel with the Nazi party, and to view the experience of the Palestinians as a form of ethnic cleansing. Hamas and Hezbollah are thought by the French and British to be social welfare organisations, and Israel is viewed as a terrorist state. Here, we honor the linguistic discoveries of Noam Chomsky and otherwise experience him as a quaintly brilliant crank, but in the bookstores in London there are entire sections devoted to his political thought – and he is read as if the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy had genuine consequence in today's world.
Excepting a business trip I took to England, Scotland and Ireland in early 2002, I have not been to Europe since 9/11. It's become an unbearable place to be, as the anti-American feelings in light of the Iraq war have mingled with antisemitism to a point where they are indistinguishable, the new phobias of the First World. Because I like taking the occasional trip abroad, especially now that even the Euro is sinking, I am doing my best to understand the European perspective, or somehow excuse it. After all, beyond being a Jewish homeland, Israel is also a geopolitical actor with nuclear weapons, and it might be construed as fair to criticise the actions the country has taken as a very well-armed American client that is dropping bombs on Hamas targets, to the terrible detriment of the civilian population. It's impossible not to feel sorry for the plight of the Palestinians, and it's even more impossible to imagine how any Palestinian could feel anything for Israel but animosity. I can see the problem.
But I think it is this very fact – my attempt to understand both sides – that disturbs me the most. Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish. The most vehement critics of Israel and champions of the Palestinians – hello, Professor Chomsky; greetings, Norman Finkelstein – are always Jews: we are always trying in our even, level, thoughtful way to see reason in the behaviour of those who are lobbing rocket grenades at us. As a people, we are hopeless Talmudists, we examine all the arguments and try to sort out an answer. What is both strange and difficult for Jews to watch in the case of Israel is that, as a nation surrounded by enemies, it does not make such calculations; it does not have the luxury of rationality that is eventually irrational. Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless. Israel, hell-bent on survival, has learned to shoot first – or, at least, second – and blow away the consequences. Whereas it actually hurts my feelings when someone says something nasty about Israel, or even the United States, for Israelis, this is just the way of the world: they probably manufacture their flags to be flammable.
So, it is quite difficult to be Jewish, on the sidelines of this international crisis. Or maybe it's just difficult to be Jewish. Before his death, the literary philosopher Jacques Derrida described the experience of living in the Jewish ghetto in Paris during the Nazi occupation: because Jews were not allowed to work or attend school, but had always been the most brilliant professors and teachers, this shtetl existence was gloriously intellectual and incandescent – the only problem was that they were stuck, imprisoned by their Jewishness. This, Derrida explained, is what it's like to be Jewish: to know everyone around you is gifted, and to wish you could find a way out. Jews pride themselves on the over two hundred Nobel Prizes the group has won; and Jews pride themselves on being told: "But you don't seem Jewish." Or better still: "You certainly don't look Jewish."
Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.
I watch the pro-Palestinian rallies that have been staged in capitals across the globe, and I try to tell myself that these people are not against me, or even Israel; that they just are dismayed with all the violence. I tell myself, as Jean Renoir pointed out with such pellucid irony in The Rules of the Game, that everybody has their reasons. But here is what I finally know: with all the troubles in the world, with the terrible things that the Chinese do in Tibet, and do to their own citizens; with the horrors of genocide committed in Darfur by Sudanese Muslims; with all the bad things that Arab governments in the Middle East visit upon their own people – no need for Israel to have a perfectly horrible time – still, the focus is on what the Jews may or may not be doing wrong in Gaza. And it makes people angry and vehement as nothing else does. The vitriol it inspires is downright weird. But that makes sense, because antisemitism itself – creepy, dark, ancient and insidious – is, more than anything else, just plain weird.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaza war's outcome determined in first 4 minutes
January 19, 2009, 9:12 PM (GMT+02:00)
The Israel air force demolished two key Hamas war systems in the first 4 minutes of its massive offensive on Gaza Saturday morning, Dec. 27, DEBKAfile's military sources report. The bombers destroyed six mosques in Gaza City which held the terrorists' biggest weapons arsenals and scores of "beehives" containing launchers primed for the simultaneous, automatic release of hundreds of powerful rockets against Israeli cities.
These launchers were rigged for precision-targeting in Israeli town centers. They were operated by a unit of 300 special Hamas operatives trained for their mission at a Syrian military bases under the instruction of Hizballah rocket specialists.
The aerial offensive knocked out 80 percent of the rockets Hamas had prepared to launch and saved Israel's southern cities. The Palestinian Islamists were left only with inferior projectiles. Therefore, 98 percent of the hundreds o f missiles they managed to fire in the 22-day war missed their targets and exploded in open ground.
Answering questions about the extreme destruction wrought in Gaza and the high number of casualties – more than 1,300 - Israel commanders described combat conditions as the most complicated they had ever faced: Every second apartment building was booby-trapped and every third building concealed arms caches. Weapons were concealed under children's beds and in basements. Inside of fighting out in the open, Hamas gunmen by and large avoided engaging Israeli troops, relying on these death traps.
Monday, Jan. 19, the second day of the ceasefire, the second-echelon of the Hamas leadership emerged from their fortified bunkers after three weeks underground, claiming they had vanquished the Israeli enemy. The top leaders remained invisible. The homeless people picking their way through the rubble for their broken possessions were not exactly welcoming.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2000-2007 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 9:32 AM
What a way to start the life of a child?
Log on to the following Internet site.
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
WESTERN PROXY WAR AGAINST IRAN
Daily Mail,
5 January 2009
War is always terrible and to be avoided if humanly possible. War in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists are embedded within densely crowded areas, is particularly awful. No one wants to see civilians being killed. Every decent person will be dismayed that it has come to this. What is profoundly troubling, however, is that as the Israeli ground offensive escalates hostilities still further, so many in Britain don’t understand that, appalling as this war is, the alternative is even worse.
This is a war that Israel spent more than seven years trying to avoid, while no fewer than 6,000 rockets and other missiles rained down from Gaza upon its southern towns. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands while its traumatised children were raised in bomb shelters!
The often-made comparison with IRA terrorism spectacularly misses the point. Hamas actually run Gaza. The equivalent would have been the Irish government firing 6,000 rockets at England. Does anyone seriously doubt that, in such a hypothetical situation, Britain would have been at war with Ireland long before that total had been reached?
Far from acting out of political opportunism, as some so offensively suggest, Israel has taken massive risks on every front with this operation. A ground war almost certainly means many of its soldiers will die. If just one of its shells were to go astray and hit a school or hospital, a hostile western world would unleash the furies against it.
And in Lebanon, Hezbollah may launch its ferocious arsenal of rockets pointing at northern Israel, forcing it to fight on two fronts. But the brutal fact is that tiny, besieged Israel is damned if it does and dead if it doesn’t. While Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blame Hamas for provoking this war, it is Israel which is drawing western protests. These are not confined to the thuggish demonstrations organised by an alliance of Islamists and the far-Left we have seen on the streets of London at the weekend. Many others also share the view that Israel is in the wrong. So why is a country under attack from genocidal fanatics pilloried for defending its citizens against slaughter?
The main complaint is that Israel’s response is ‘disproportionate’, since some 500 Palestinians have been killed compared with ‘only’ four Israelis (now eight!) since the war started nine days ago. This is absurd. In World War II, 20 times more civilians were killed in Germany than in Britain. Did that make the war against the Nazis ‘disproportionate’? Of course not.
Then there’s the belief that the Hamas rockets are some kind of homemade, harmless Dad’s Army effort which could and should be ignored. But the only reason more Israelis haven’t been killed by them is that in the south, the population has been all but living in bomb shelters. And there is nothing ‘homemade’ about the Russian-designed Katyushas and Iranian Grad rockets now putting around one-tenth of Israel’s population within their range.
Contrary to Arab propaganda, the Israelis are taking enormous pains to avoid civilian casualties in their attempt to curb these rocket attacks. The UN has confirmed that the vast majority (75 per cent) of the dead in Gaza have been Hamas terrorists. Given the huge number of bombing sorties that have been conducted, this proves that the Israelis are specifically targeting the Hamas infrastructure. Alas, the civilian death toll will unavoidably mount, which is deeply regrettable. But what must be understood is that Hamas have deliberately situated their weapons under apartment blocks, in mosques and in hospitals.
The Israelis build bomb shelters for their civilians; Hamas store bombs underneath their civilians in order to create as many civilian casualties as possible to manipulate world opinion. What people find so hard to grasp is that Hamas actually want to maximise the number of Palestinians who are killed because, as they boast: ‘We desire death as you desire life.’ Despite this fanaticism, many fear that Israel’s attack will merely create yet more suicide bombers. There is a grain of sense in this — but only a grain. This is because every single act of self-defence against Islamist aggression is used as a recruiting sergeant for the Islamic holy war. So if this is allowed to dictate world responses, it follows that no one can ever defend themselves against Islamist rockets and bomb attacks — not just in Israel but in Afghanistan or against Al Qaeda anywhere.
Islamists such as Hamas are galvanised into battle by the perceived weakness of their victims, and are deterred only by implacable strength. That’s why the ferocity of suicide bomb attacks actually rises after peace initiatives. Gaza’s rocket barrage against Israel went up by 500 per cent after Israel ended its occupation. And the 2000 Intifada which killed thousands of Israelis was the Palestinians’ response to being offered more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza for a state of their own. What is so distressing is the desperate unfairness of so much Western reaction. Thus Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, even though it is allowing hundreds of trucks of supplies through the crossing points — so that at one stage aid agencies in Gaza said their storehouses were full. Few are aware that wounded Gazans — 65 per cent of whom voted for Hamas — are continuing to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Nor are they aware that in a Gaza hospital, by contrast, Hamas shot dead five suspected Palestinian ‘collaborators’ — and murdered a further 30 elsewhere. Killing 35 of their own civilians?!
The reason for this grotesquely unfair reaction is that so many in Britain now believe as fact the Arab lies about the Middle East impasse. Many think, for example, that the Palestinians are the rightful inheritors not just of Gaza and the West Bank but Israel itself. But this is totally false. The Jews are the only people for whom ‘Palestine’ was ever their nation state, hundreds of years before Mohammed was even born. It was in recognition of that inalienable right that in the 1920s the British undertook the legally binding international obligation — never rescinded — to settle Jews in every part of Mandatory Palestine. That included not just modern Israel but the West Bank and Gaza, too. Despite this, Israel is willing for the Palestinians to have their own state — as was first offered to them in 1937 — but not if its only purpose is to be a launching pad for the final destruction of its Israeli neighbour.
No other country on the planet has ever been expected to make suicidal concessions to its enemies even while they continue to try to destroy it. Yet that is what the world expects of Israel. Now the British Government, among others, has called for an immediate ceasefire. But this would effectively mean victory for Hamas. Gordon Brown wouldn’t dream of calling for a ceasefire with al Qaeda. So why the double standard where Israel is concerned? Most important of all, this war is not actually about Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas is controlled by Iran. Unless Hamas is stopped, Iran’s growing influence in the region will be entrenched and put Britain and the West in even greater danger from Islamist aggression and blackmail.Israel may or may not eventually manage to stop the Hamas rockets. But the Middle East conflict will not end until and unless the West comes to realise that Israel is in the frontline of the West’s own fight for survival, and starts properly defending the country struggling to defend civilisation instead of siding with those waging holy war against it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
From the BBC ..strange that our Australian news organisations have decided not to show it...
BICOM - Videos - BBC News: Military analysis :interview of expert.
http://www.bicom.org.uk/news/operation-cast-lead/videos/bbc-news--military-analysis
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Standing against a tide of hatred
It is not Israel's action, but the vitriolic reaction to it that has been disproportionate. There's only one explanation: antisemitism
Elizabeth Wurtzel
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 January 2009 10.00 GMT
Is it good for the Jews?
If you were so inclined, you could ask that question about the Madoff mess, the Gaza offensive, the latest screed from Alan Dershowitz – or about a new recipe for angel-food cake. Which is to say, if you are looking for antisemitism, you can find it anywhere, even in a dessert cookbook. But if even paranoids have enemies, I think it's fair to say that these are tough times for Jews.
While I would prefer to equate the fate of the Palestinians with that of Israel – meaning, I'd like to believe we're all on the same side – I think that might be a difficult political fiction to maintain at the moment. And while I'd like to artificially separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism, like most American Jews, I'm not willing to make that false distinction: when there is more than one Jewish state, the world's hatred of Israel might become no different from its exasperation with any other country, but since Israel is the only homeland, and really it is nothing more than six million Jews living together in an area the size of New Jersey, I can't pretend that the problem with Israel is that it's a poorly located country that happens to be at odds with its neighbours and only coincidentally happens to be Jewish. The trouble with Israel is the trouble with Jews.
This situation makes me profoundly uncomfortable. As the kind of left-leaning liberal who tends to agree with the positions taken by The Nation in most instances, I hate having to differ so completely on the Israel issue with many I otherwise would align with. As it is my good fortune to be American, I live in the only country that as a matter of policy is pro-Israel regardless of party allegiance; Democrats and Republicans equally unite behind the blue-and-white. But to communicate with anyone I think of as rightminded (and left-leaning) in any other part of the world is to experience the purest antisemitism since the Nazi era. In fact, in Europe right now, it is de rigueur to liken the current regime in Israel with the Nazi party, and to view the experience of the Palestinians as a form of ethnic cleansing. Hamas and Hezbollah are thought by the French and British to be social welfare organisations, and Israel is viewed as a terrorist state. Here, we honor the linguistic discoveries of Noam Chomsky and otherwise experience him as a quaintly brilliant crank, but in the bookstores in London there are entire sections devoted to his political thought – and he is read as if the distinctions between Leninist and Trotskyite philosophy had genuine consequence in today's world.
Excepting a business trip I took to England, Scotland and Ireland in early 2002, I have not been to Europe since 9/11. It's become an unbearable place to be, as the anti-American feelings in light of the Iraq war have mingled with antisemitism to a point where they are indistinguishable, the new phobias of the First World. Because I like taking the occasional trip abroad, especially now that even the Euro is sinking, I am doing my best to understand the European perspective, or somehow excuse it. After all, beyond being a Jewish homeland, Israel is also a geopolitical actor with nuclear weapons, and it might be construed as fair to criticise the actions the country has taken as a very well-armed American client that is dropping bombs on Hamas targets, to the terrible detriment of the civilian population. It's impossible not to feel sorry for the plight of the Palestinians, and it's even more impossible to imagine how any Palestinian could feel anything for Israel but animosity. I can see the problem.
But I think it is this very fact – my attempt to understand both sides – that disturbs me the most. Because trying to see all sides, such an instinct is particularly Jewish. The most vehement critics of Israel and champions of the Palestinians – hello, Professor Chomsky; greetings, Norman Finkelstein – are always Jews: we are always trying in our even, level, thoughtful way to see reason in the behaviour of those who are lobbing rocket grenades at us. As a people, we are hopeless Talmudists, we examine all the arguments and try to sort out an answer. What is both strange and difficult for Jews to watch in the case of Israel is that, as a nation surrounded by enemies, it does not make such calculations; it does not have the luxury of rationality that is eventually irrational. Israel fights back, which is very much at odds with the Jewish instinct to discuss and deconstruct everything until action itself seems senseless. Israel, hell-bent on survival, has learned to shoot first – or, at least, second – and blow away the consequences. Whereas it actually hurts my feelings when someone says something nasty about Israel, or even the United States, for Israelis, this is just the way of the world: they probably manufacture their flags to be flammable.
So, it is quite difficult to be Jewish, on the sidelines of this international crisis. Or maybe it's just difficult to be Jewish. Before his death, the literary philosopher Jacques Derrida described the experience of living in the Jewish ghetto in Paris during the Nazi occupation: because Jews were not allowed to work or attend school, but had always been the most brilliant professors and teachers, this shtetl existence was gloriously intellectual and incandescent – the only problem was that they were stuck, imprisoned by their Jewishness. This, Derrida explained, is what it's like to be Jewish: to know everyone around you is gifted, and to wish you could find a way out. Jews pride themselves on the over two hundred Nobel Prizes the group has won; and Jews pride themselves on being told: "But you don't seem Jewish." Or better still: "You certainly don't look Jewish."
Judaism will be enmeshed in pride and shame for as long as it endures. But to endure as a country, Israel must shun both these tendencies.
I watch the pro-Palestinian rallies that have been staged in capitals across the globe, and I try to tell myself that these people are not against me, or even Israel; that they just are dismayed with all the violence. I tell myself, as Jean Renoir pointed out with such pellucid irony in The Rules of the Game, that everybody has their reasons. But here is what I finally know: with all the troubles in the world, with the terrible things that the Chinese do in Tibet, and do to their own citizens; with the horrors of genocide committed in Darfur by Sudanese Muslims; with all the bad things that Arab governments in the Middle East visit upon their own people – no need for Israel to have a perfectly horrible time – still, the focus is on what the Jews may or may not be doing wrong in Gaza. And it makes people angry and vehement as nothing else does. The vitriol it inspires is downright weird. But that makes sense, because antisemitism itself – creepy, dark, ancient and insidious – is, more than anything else, just plain weird.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gaza war's outcome determined in first 4 minutes
January 19, 2009, 9:12 PM (GMT+02:00)
The Israel air force demolished two key Hamas war systems in the first 4 minutes of its massive offensive on Gaza Saturday morning, Dec. 27, DEBKAfile's military sources report. The bombers destroyed six mosques in Gaza City which held the terrorists' biggest weapons arsenals and scores of "beehives" containing launchers primed for the simultaneous, automatic release of hundreds of powerful rockets against Israeli cities.
These launchers were rigged for precision-targeting in Israeli town centers. They were operated by a unit of 300 special Hamas operatives trained for their mission at a Syrian military bases under the instruction of Hizballah rocket specialists.
The aerial offensive knocked out 80 percent of the rockets Hamas had prepared to launch and saved Israel's southern cities. The Palestinian Islamists were left only with inferior projectiles. Therefore, 98 percent of the hundreds o f missiles they managed to fire in the 22-day war missed their targets and exploded in open ground.
Answering questions about the extreme destruction wrought in Gaza and the high number of casualties – more than 1,300 - Israel commanders described combat conditions as the most complicated they had ever faced: Every second apartment building was booby-trapped and every third building concealed arms caches. Weapons were concealed under children's beds and in basements. Inside of fighting out in the open, Hamas gunmen by and large avoided engaging Israeli troops, relying on these death traps.
Monday, Jan. 19, the second day of the ceasefire, the second-echelon of the Hamas leadership emerged from their fortified bunkers after three weeks underground, claiming they had vanquished the Israeli enemy. The top leaders remained invisible. The homeless people picking their way through the rubble for their broken possessions were not exactly welcoming.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2000-2007 DEBKAfile. All Rights Reserved.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: Friday, January 09, 2009 9:32 AM
What a way to start the life of a child?
Log on to the following Internet site.
http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
WESTERN PROXY WAR AGAINST IRAN
Daily Mail,
5 January 2009
War is always terrible and to be avoided if humanly possible. War in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists are embedded within densely crowded areas, is particularly awful. No one wants to see civilians being killed. Every decent person will be dismayed that it has come to this. What is profoundly troubling, however, is that as the Israeli ground offensive escalates hostilities still further, so many in Britain don’t understand that, appalling as this war is, the alternative is even worse.
This is a war that Israel spent more than seven years trying to avoid, while no fewer than 6,000 rockets and other missiles rained down from Gaza upon its southern towns. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands while its traumatised children were raised in bomb shelters!
The often-made comparison with IRA terrorism spectacularly misses the point. Hamas actually run Gaza. The equivalent would have been the Irish government firing 6,000 rockets at England. Does anyone seriously doubt that, in such a hypothetical situation, Britain would have been at war with Ireland long before that total had been reached?
Far from acting out of political opportunism, as some so offensively suggest, Israel has taken massive risks on every front with this operation. A ground war almost certainly means many of its soldiers will die. If just one of its shells were to go astray and hit a school or hospital, a hostile western world would unleash the furies against it.
And in Lebanon, Hezbollah may launch its ferocious arsenal of rockets pointing at northern Israel, forcing it to fight on two fronts. But the brutal fact is that tiny, besieged Israel is damned if it does and dead if it doesn’t. While Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blame Hamas for provoking this war, it is Israel which is drawing western protests. These are not confined to the thuggish demonstrations organised by an alliance of Islamists and the far-Left we have seen on the streets of London at the weekend. Many others also share the view that Israel is in the wrong. So why is a country under attack from genocidal fanatics pilloried for defending its citizens against slaughter?
The main complaint is that Israel’s response is ‘disproportionate’, since some 500 Palestinians have been killed compared with ‘only’ four Israelis (now eight!) since the war started nine days ago. This is absurd. In World War II, 20 times more civilians were killed in Germany than in Britain. Did that make the war against the Nazis ‘disproportionate’? Of course not.
Then there’s the belief that the Hamas rockets are some kind of homemade, harmless Dad’s Army effort which could and should be ignored. But the only reason more Israelis haven’t been killed by them is that in the south, the population has been all but living in bomb shelters. And there is nothing ‘homemade’ about the Russian-designed Katyushas and Iranian Grad rockets now putting around one-tenth of Israel’s population within their range.
Contrary to Arab propaganda, the Israelis are taking enormous pains to avoid civilian casualties in their attempt to curb these rocket attacks. The UN has confirmed that the vast majority (75 per cent) of the dead in Gaza have been Hamas terrorists. Given the huge number of bombing sorties that have been conducted, this proves that the Israelis are specifically targeting the Hamas infrastructure. Alas, the civilian death toll will unavoidably mount, which is deeply regrettable. But what must be understood is that Hamas have deliberately situated their weapons under apartment blocks, in mosques and in hospitals.
The Israelis build bomb shelters for their civilians; Hamas store bombs underneath their civilians in order to create as many civilian casualties as possible to manipulate world opinion. What people find so hard to grasp is that Hamas actually want to maximise the number of Palestinians who are killed because, as they boast: ‘We desire death as you desire life.’ Despite this fanaticism, many fear that Israel’s attack will merely create yet more suicide bombers. There is a grain of sense in this — but only a grain. This is because every single act of self-defence against Islamist aggression is used as a recruiting sergeant for the Islamic holy war. So if this is allowed to dictate world responses, it follows that no one can ever defend themselves against Islamist rockets and bomb attacks — not just in Israel but in Afghanistan or against Al Qaeda anywhere.
Islamists such as Hamas are galvanised into battle by the perceived weakness of their victims, and are deterred only by implacable strength. That’s why the ferocity of suicide bomb attacks actually rises after peace initiatives. Gaza’s rocket barrage against Israel went up by 500 per cent after Israel ended its occupation. And the 2000 Intifada which killed thousands of Israelis was the Palestinians’ response to being offered more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza for a state of their own. What is so distressing is the desperate unfairness of so much Western reaction. Thus Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, even though it is allowing hundreds of trucks of supplies through the crossing points — so that at one stage aid agencies in Gaza said their storehouses were full. Few are aware that wounded Gazans — 65 per cent of whom voted for Hamas — are continuing to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Nor are they aware that in a Gaza hospital, by contrast, Hamas shot dead five suspected Palestinian ‘collaborators’ — and murdered a further 30 elsewhere. Killing 35 of their own civilians?!
The reason for this grotesquely unfair reaction is that so many in Britain now believe as fact the Arab lies about the Middle East impasse. Many think, for example, that the Palestinians are the rightful inheritors not just of Gaza and the West Bank but Israel itself. But this is totally false. The Jews are the only people for whom ‘Palestine’ was ever their nation state, hundreds of years before Mohammed was even born. It was in recognition of that inalienable right that in the 1920s the British undertook the legally binding international obligation — never rescinded — to settle Jews in every part of Mandatory Palestine. That included not just modern Israel but the West Bank and Gaza, too. Despite this, Israel is willing for the Palestinians to have their own state — as was first offered to them in 1937 — but not if its only purpose is to be a launching pad for the final destruction of its Israeli neighbour.
No other country on the planet has ever been expected to make suicidal concessions to its enemies even while they continue to try to destroy it. Yet that is what the world expects of Israel. Now the British Government, among others, has called for an immediate ceasefire. But this would effectively mean victory for Hamas. Gordon Brown wouldn’t dream of calling for a ceasefire with al Qaeda. So why the double standard where Israel is concerned? Most important of all, this war is not actually about Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas is controlled by Iran. Unless Hamas is stopped, Iran’s growing influence in the region will be entrenched and put Britain and the West in even greater danger from Islamist aggression and blackmail.Israel may or may not eventually manage to stop the Hamas rockets. But the Middle East conflict will not end until and unless the West comes to realise that Israel is in the frontline of the West’s own fight for survival, and starts properly defending the country struggling to defend civilisation instead of siding with those waging holy war against it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Imagine a British Blog, January 3rd, 1944.
This blog was filed on January 3rd 1944. There may have been a slight delay with the post appearing due to server problems...
Dateline: January 3rd 1944
Fury continues to mount worldwide about the senseless loss of civilian life in Germany caused by England's callous bombing of German cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden.
As of today many innocent German women and children have died in these utterly brutal bombing missions. And now there are ground offensives starting on mainland Europe.
The English have claimed that they are merely retaliating against the V-1 flying bombs being launched indiscriminately by Nazis at their civilian population in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Coventry and other cities. The English point out that their enemy is sworn to its utter destruction and has used the missiles and flying bombs against its civilians without any regard to English loss of life. Moreover it makes the case that their own bombing missions are specifically directed to military targets that the German army has intentionally planted in the heart of civilian populations to try and deter English counter-attacks.
These points may of course be true - but they are utterly besides the point.
Of course England has a right to exist. Of course England has a right to defend itself. But it should ensure that its responses are PROPORTIONATE.
Since many more Germans are dying than English - the English should either tone down the success and accuracy of their bombing - or allow the Germans to catch up on the death count.
To be honest - if more English women and children were dying - we wouldn't feel quite so bad about the number of Germans dying. But it's just so UNFAIR that more Germans are dying...
Perhaps some English people could arrange to kill themselves to match the number of Germans dying as a result of the English retaliation bombing? It would be so considerate - and it might help England's critics feel less miserable about the number of Nazis dying. Something that is causing them so much concern.
It would also put paid to that wretched proportionality argument.
Alternatively, perhaps the English could arrange to be less effective in their bombing? Or only bomb military targets that are nowhere near civilians - even though the vast majority of the V-1 rockets are intentionally being launched from the heart of civilian population centers.
Now the English will argue that the Germans have INTENTIONALLY positioned all their launch pads for the V-1 rockets in the middle of civilian populations to inhibit the English from bombing those launch sites. Well - tough noogies to the Brits! Sorry - but if the Germans are smarter or more skillful at cynically using their civilians as human shields than you - tough luck!
You can't have it both ways. If you truly wish to save your nation from being annihilated by Nazi missiles you'd better stop looking to win a popularity contest. The Nazis are waging this war to win and to utterly destroy England. If all you Brits care about is popularity - then you may as well resign yourself to speaking German...
It's about time that little nations who wish to defend themselves wised up to their responsibilities.
Otherwise the same stupid complaints will be made at some point in the 21st Century when some little nation finds itself under constant attack from rockets fired at its civilian population by a terrorizing enemy that has sworn to destroy it....
Cliffs Notes To Assist the Hard-Of-Thinking
"Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?" - Adolf Hitler - circa 1938
"We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this bate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end." - Adolf Hitler - 24 February 1945
"I will carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony have been obliterated." Adolf Hitler - 28th November 1941 to Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (The Grand Mufti) - seen in the photo at the top of this page saluting his SS buddies in 1941. Oh the ties that bind...
"We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity" - Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza - January 2nd 2009
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." - Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant
Dateline: January 3rd 1944
Fury continues to mount worldwide about the senseless loss of civilian life in Germany caused by England's callous bombing of German cities including Berlin, Hamburg and Dresden.
As of today many innocent German women and children have died in these utterly brutal bombing missions. And now there are ground offensives starting on mainland Europe.
The English have claimed that they are merely retaliating against the V-1 flying bombs being launched indiscriminately by Nazis at their civilian population in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Coventry and other cities. The English point out that their enemy is sworn to its utter destruction and has used the missiles and flying bombs against its civilians without any regard to English loss of life. Moreover it makes the case that their own bombing missions are specifically directed to military targets that the German army has intentionally planted in the heart of civilian populations to try and deter English counter-attacks.
These points may of course be true - but they are utterly besides the point.
Of course England has a right to exist. Of course England has a right to defend itself. But it should ensure that its responses are PROPORTIONATE.
Since many more Germans are dying than English - the English should either tone down the success and accuracy of their bombing - or allow the Germans to catch up on the death count.
To be honest - if more English women and children were dying - we wouldn't feel quite so bad about the number of Germans dying. But it's just so UNFAIR that more Germans are dying...
Perhaps some English people could arrange to kill themselves to match the number of Germans dying as a result of the English retaliation bombing? It would be so considerate - and it might help England's critics feel less miserable about the number of Nazis dying. Something that is causing them so much concern.
It would also put paid to that wretched proportionality argument.
Alternatively, perhaps the English could arrange to be less effective in their bombing? Or only bomb military targets that are nowhere near civilians - even though the vast majority of the V-1 rockets are intentionally being launched from the heart of civilian population centers.
Now the English will argue that the Germans have INTENTIONALLY positioned all their launch pads for the V-1 rockets in the middle of civilian populations to inhibit the English from bombing those launch sites. Well - tough noogies to the Brits! Sorry - but if the Germans are smarter or more skillful at cynically using their civilians as human shields than you - tough luck!
You can't have it both ways. If you truly wish to save your nation from being annihilated by Nazi missiles you'd better stop looking to win a popularity contest. The Nazis are waging this war to win and to utterly destroy England. If all you Brits care about is popularity - then you may as well resign yourself to speaking German...
It's about time that little nations who wish to defend themselves wised up to their responsibilities.
Otherwise the same stupid complaints will be made at some point in the 21st Century when some little nation finds itself under constant attack from rockets fired at its civilian population by a terrorizing enemy that has sworn to destroy it....
Cliffs Notes To Assist the Hard-Of-Thinking
"Nature is cruel; therefore we are also entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?" - Adolf Hitler - circa 1938
"We have suffered so much that it only steels us to fanatical resolve to hate our enemies a thousand times more and to regard them for what they are destroyers of an eternal culture and annihilators of humanity. Out of this bate a holy will is born to oppose these destroyers of our existence with all the strength that God has given us and to crush them in the end." - Adolf Hitler - 24 February 1945
"I will carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony have been obliterated." Adolf Hitler - 28th November 1941 to Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (The Grand Mufti) - seen in the photo at the top of this page saluting his SS buddies in 1941. Oh the ties that bind...
"We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity" - Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza - January 2nd 2009
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." - Article 7 of the Hamas Covenant
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Hamas vs.Israel. Daily Mail. + Letter from Gedera.
ISRAEL'S LAST STAND AGAINST TERRORISTS' INTRANSIGENCE.
Hamas, AlQueda, Hitzbullah, Taliban, Jihadists,- all in the same boat!
Daily Mail,
5 January 2009
War is always terrible and to be avoided if humanly possible. War in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists are embedded within densely crowded areas, is particularly awful. No one wants to see civilians being killed. Every decent person will be dismayed that it has come to this. What is profoundly troubling, however, is that as the Israeli ground offensive escalates hostilities still further, so many in Britain don’t understand that, appalling as this war is, the alternative is even worse.
This is a war that Israel spent more than seven years trying to avoid, while no fewer than 6,000 rockets and other missiles rained down from Gaza upon its southern towns. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands while its traumatised children were raised in bomb shelters!
The often-made comparison with IRA terrorism spectacularly misses the point. Hamas actually run Gaza. The equivalent would have been the Irish government firing 6,000 rockets at England. Does anyone seriously doubt that, in such a hypothetical situation, Britain would have been at war with Ireland long before that total had been reached?
Far from acting out of political opportunism, as some so offensively suggest, Israel has taken massive risks on every front with this operation. A ground war almost certainly means many of its soldiers will die. If just one of its shells were to go astray and hit a school or hospital, a hostile western world would unleash the furies against it.
And in Lebanon, Hezbollah may launch its ferocious arsenal of rockets pointing at northern Israel, forcing it to fight on two fronts. But the brutal fact is that tiny, besieged Israel is damned if it does and dead if it doesn’t. While Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blame Hamas for provoking this war, it is Israel which is drawing western protests. These are not confined to the thuggish demonstrations organised by an alliance of Islamists and the far-Left we have seen on the streets of London at the weekend. Many others also share the view that Israel is in the wrong. So why is a country under attack from genocidal fanatics pilloried for defending its citizens against slaughter?
The main complaint is that Israel’s response is ‘disproportionate’, since some 500 Palestinians have been killed compared with ‘only’ four Israelis (now eight!) since the war started nine days ago. This is absurd. In World War II, 20 times more civilians were killed in Germany than in Britain. Did that make the war against the Nazis ‘disproportionate’? Of course not.
Then there’s the belief that the Hamas rockets are some kind of homemade, harmless Dad’s Army effort which could and should be ignored. But the only reason more Israelis haven’t been killed by them is that in the south, the population has been all but living in bomb shelters. And there is nothing ‘homemade’ about the Russian-designed Katyushas and Iranian Grad rockets now putting around one-tenth of Israel’s population within their range.
Contrary to Arab propaganda, the Israelis are taking enormous pains to avoid civilian casualties in their attempt to curb these rocket attacks. The UN has confirmed that the vast majority (75 per cent) of the dead in Gaza have been Hamas terrorists. Given the huge number of bombing sorties that have been conducted, this proves that the Israelis are specifically targeting the Hamas infrastructure. Alas, the civilian death toll will unavoidably mount, which is deeply regrettable. But what must be understood is that Hamas have deliberately situated their weapons under apartment blocks, in mosques and in hospitals.
The Israelis build bomb shelters for their civilians; Hamas store bombs underneath their civilians in order to create as many civilian casualties as possible to manipulate world opinion. What people find so hard to grasp is that Hamas actually want to maximise the number of Palestinians who are killed because, as they boast: ‘We desire death as you desire life.’ Despite this fanaticism, many fear that Israel’s attack will merely create yet more suicide bombers. There is a grain of sense in this — but only a grain. This is because every single act of self-defence against Islamist aggression is used as a recruiting sergeant for the Islamic holy war. So if this is allowed to dictate world responses, it follows that no one can ever defend themselves against Islamist rockets and bomb attacks — not just in Israel but in Afghanistan or against Al Qaeda anywhere.
Islamists such as Hamas are galvanised into battle by the perceived weakness of their victims, and are deterred only by implacable strength. That’s why the ferocity of suicide bomb attacks actually rises after peace initiatives. Gaza’s rocket barrage against Israel went up by 500 per cent after Israel ended its occupation. And the 2000 Intifada which killed thousands of Israelis was the Palestinians’ response to being offered more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza for a state of their own. What is so distressing is the desperate unfairness of so much Western reaction. Thus Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, even though it is allowing hundreds of trucks of supplies through the crossing points — so that at one stage aid agencies in Gaza said their storehouses were full. Few are aware that wounded Gazans — 65 per cent of whom voted for Hamas — are continuing to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Nor are they aware that in a Gaza hospital, by contrast, Hamas shot dead five suspected Palestinian ‘collaborators’ — and murdered a further 30 elsewhere. Killing 35 of their own civilians?!
The reason for this grotesquely unfair reaction is that so many in Britain now believe as fact the Arab lies about the Middle East impasse. Many think, for example, that the Palestinians are the rightful inheritors not just of Gaza and the West Bank but Israel itself. But this is totally false. The Jews are the only people for whom ‘Palestine’ was ever their nation state, hundreds of years before Mohammed was even born. It was in recognition of that inalienable right that in the 1920s the British undertook the legally binding international obligation — never rescinded — to settle Jews in every part of Mandatory Palestine. That included not just modern Israel but the West Bank and Gaza, too. Despite this, Israel is willing for the Palestinians to have their own state — as was first offered to them in 1937 — but not if its only purpose is to be a launching pad for the final destruction of its Israeli neighbour.
No other country on the planet has ever been expected to make suicidal concessions to its enemies even while they continue to try to destroy it. Yet that is what the world expects of Israel. Now the British Government, among others, has called for an immediate ceasefire. But this would effectively mean victory for Hamas. Gordon Brown wouldn’t dream of calling for a ceasefire with al Qaeda. So why the double standard where Israel is concerned? Most important of all, this war is not actually about Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas is controlled by Iran. Unless Hamas is stopped, Iran’s growing influence in the region will be entrenched and put Britain and the West in even greater danger from Islamist aggression and blackmail.
Israel may or may not eventually manage to stop the Hamas rockets. But the Middle East conflict will not end until and unless the West comes to realise that Israel is in the frontline of the West’s own fight for survival, and starts properly defending the country struggling to defend civilisation instead of siding with those waging holy war against it.
-----
From
Michele
Gedera.
Dear Family and Friends,
Please forward this mail to everyone you know. It is important that people will be aware of what is TRULY going on !!!!
This morning a missile caused damage to my cousins' house in Gedera. Thank God that the family was in the shelter room and there are no life casualties!!!
Be sure that the Israelis are fighting for our life and our future in this country. We have a lasting and unfinished struggle with terrorist - defined as such by the whole world. They are neither peace seekers nor peace makers. For 8 years they are constantly devastating families' lives in the southern part of Israel. Children and their families are paying an unbearable toll for these terrorists' hatred. This must be stopped!!! This time - the Israeli government took the expected decision - to put an end to the Hamas terror and bloodshed.
Watch the film and see how little babies are brought up... be sure - this kind of terror will be spread all over the world. "September 11" - was just a reminder of what terror can be and do.
Please pass this mail to your friends. See the source ofHmas hatred.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8
Thanks,
Shlomit
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Those Australians, Americans and other coalition soldiers who, in trying to help free the Afghanis and Iraqis, but are dying fighting the Taliban , AlQueda and similar terrorist groups killing and maiming their own, - they understand very well what Israel is up against in Gaza with Hamas.
When a New York based UN official was asked (3LO this morning) whether Israel would have deliberately attacked the latest UN-school in Gaza, said ' I cannot believe that,- I can't get my head around that'.
They know very well the tactics used,- the leaders cower underground, while the populations is deliberately exposed for the benefit of the international media. The reverse of course is true about Israelis who value human lives and therefore safeguard them.
Too many locals in response choose to believe the worst of Israel and take the side of the terrorists' spin.
Is that ignorance, bias, fear of Islamic backlash or blatant anti-semitism?"
Miriam M.
Melbourne.
__._,_.___
__._,_.___
Hamas, AlQueda, Hitzbullah, Taliban, Jihadists,- all in the same boat!
Daily Mail,
5 January 2009
War is always terrible and to be avoided if humanly possible. War in Gaza, where Hamas terrorists are embedded within densely crowded areas, is particularly awful. No one wants to see civilians being killed. Every decent person will be dismayed that it has come to this. What is profoundly troubling, however, is that as the Israeli ground offensive escalates hostilities still further, so many in Britain don’t understand that, appalling as this war is, the alternative is even worse.
This is a war that Israel spent more than seven years trying to avoid, while no fewer than 6,000 rockets and other missiles rained down from Gaza upon its southern towns. No other country in the world would have sat on its hands while its traumatised children were raised in bomb shelters!
The often-made comparison with IRA terrorism spectacularly misses the point. Hamas actually run Gaza. The equivalent would have been the Irish government firing 6,000 rockets at England. Does anyone seriously doubt that, in such a hypothetical situation, Britain would have been at war with Ireland long before that total had been reached?
Far from acting out of political opportunism, as some so offensively suggest, Israel has taken massive risks on every front with this operation. A ground war almost certainly means many of its soldiers will die. If just one of its shells were to go astray and hit a school or hospital, a hostile western world would unleash the furies against it.
And in Lebanon, Hezbollah may launch its ferocious arsenal of rockets pointing at northern Israel, forcing it to fight on two fronts. But the brutal fact is that tiny, besieged Israel is damned if it does and dead if it doesn’t. While Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas blame Hamas for provoking this war, it is Israel which is drawing western protests. These are not confined to the thuggish demonstrations organised by an alliance of Islamists and the far-Left we have seen on the streets of London at the weekend. Many others also share the view that Israel is in the wrong. So why is a country under attack from genocidal fanatics pilloried for defending its citizens against slaughter?
The main complaint is that Israel’s response is ‘disproportionate’, since some 500 Palestinians have been killed compared with ‘only’ four Israelis (now eight!) since the war started nine days ago. This is absurd. In World War II, 20 times more civilians were killed in Germany than in Britain. Did that make the war against the Nazis ‘disproportionate’? Of course not.
Then there’s the belief that the Hamas rockets are some kind of homemade, harmless Dad’s Army effort which could and should be ignored. But the only reason more Israelis haven’t been killed by them is that in the south, the population has been all but living in bomb shelters. And there is nothing ‘homemade’ about the Russian-designed Katyushas and Iranian Grad rockets now putting around one-tenth of Israel’s population within their range.
Contrary to Arab propaganda, the Israelis are taking enormous pains to avoid civilian casualties in their attempt to curb these rocket attacks. The UN has confirmed that the vast majority (75 per cent) of the dead in Gaza have been Hamas terrorists. Given the huge number of bombing sorties that have been conducted, this proves that the Israelis are specifically targeting the Hamas infrastructure. Alas, the civilian death toll will unavoidably mount, which is deeply regrettable. But what must be understood is that Hamas have deliberately situated their weapons under apartment blocks, in mosques and in hospitals.
The Israelis build bomb shelters for their civilians; Hamas store bombs underneath their civilians in order to create as many civilian casualties as possible to manipulate world opinion. What people find so hard to grasp is that Hamas actually want to maximise the number of Palestinians who are killed because, as they boast: ‘We desire death as you desire life.’ Despite this fanaticism, many fear that Israel’s attack will merely create yet more suicide bombers. There is a grain of sense in this — but only a grain. This is because every single act of self-defence against Islamist aggression is used as a recruiting sergeant for the Islamic holy war. So if this is allowed to dictate world responses, it follows that no one can ever defend themselves against Islamist rockets and bomb attacks — not just in Israel but in Afghanistan or against Al Qaeda anywhere.
Islamists such as Hamas are galvanised into battle by the perceived weakness of their victims, and are deterred only by implacable strength. That’s why the ferocity of suicide bomb attacks actually rises after peace initiatives. Gaza’s rocket barrage against Israel went up by 500 per cent after Israel ended its occupation. And the 2000 Intifada which killed thousands of Israelis was the Palestinians’ response to being offered more than 90 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza for a state of their own. What is so distressing is the desperate unfairness of so much Western reaction. Thus Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian disaster in Gaza, even though it is allowing hundreds of trucks of supplies through the crossing points — so that at one stage aid agencies in Gaza said their storehouses were full. Few are aware that wounded Gazans — 65 per cent of whom voted for Hamas — are continuing to be treated in Israeli hospitals. Nor are they aware that in a Gaza hospital, by contrast, Hamas shot dead five suspected Palestinian ‘collaborators’ — and murdered a further 30 elsewhere. Killing 35 of their own civilians?!
The reason for this grotesquely unfair reaction is that so many in Britain now believe as fact the Arab lies about the Middle East impasse. Many think, for example, that the Palestinians are the rightful inheritors not just of Gaza and the West Bank but Israel itself. But this is totally false. The Jews are the only people for whom ‘Palestine’ was ever their nation state, hundreds of years before Mohammed was even born. It was in recognition of that inalienable right that in the 1920s the British undertook the legally binding international obligation — never rescinded — to settle Jews in every part of Mandatory Palestine. That included not just modern Israel but the West Bank and Gaza, too. Despite this, Israel is willing for the Palestinians to have their own state — as was first offered to them in 1937 — but not if its only purpose is to be a launching pad for the final destruction of its Israeli neighbour.
No other country on the planet has ever been expected to make suicidal concessions to its enemies even while they continue to try to destroy it. Yet that is what the world expects of Israel. Now the British Government, among others, has called for an immediate ceasefire. But this would effectively mean victory for Hamas. Gordon Brown wouldn’t dream of calling for a ceasefire with al Qaeda. So why the double standard where Israel is concerned? Most important of all, this war is not actually about Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas is controlled by Iran. Unless Hamas is stopped, Iran’s growing influence in the region will be entrenched and put Britain and the West in even greater danger from Islamist aggression and blackmail.
Israel may or may not eventually manage to stop the Hamas rockets. But the Middle East conflict will not end until and unless the West comes to realise that Israel is in the frontline of the West’s own fight for survival, and starts properly defending the country struggling to defend civilisation instead of siding with those waging holy war against it.
-----
From
Michele
Gedera.
Dear Family and Friends,
Please forward this mail to everyone you know. It is important that people will be aware of what is TRULY going on !!!!
This morning a missile caused damage to my cousins' house in Gedera. Thank God that the family was in the shelter room and there are no life casualties!!!
Be sure that the Israelis are fighting for our life and our future in this country. We have a lasting and unfinished struggle with terrorist - defined as such by the whole world. They are neither peace seekers nor peace makers. For 8 years they are constantly devastating families' lives in the southern part of Israel. Children and their families are paying an unbearable toll for these terrorists' hatred. This must be stopped!!! This time - the Israeli government took the expected decision - to put an end to the Hamas terror and bloodshed.
Watch the film and see how little babies are brought up... be sure - this kind of terror will be spread all over the world. "September 11" - was just a reminder of what terror can be and do.
Please pass this mail to your friends. See the source ofHmas hatred.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGbP55HGi8
Thanks,
Shlomit
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Those Australians, Americans and other coalition soldiers who, in trying to help free the Afghanis and Iraqis, but are dying fighting the Taliban , AlQueda and similar terrorist groups killing and maiming their own, - they understand very well what Israel is up against in Gaza with Hamas.
When a New York based UN official was asked (3LO this morning) whether Israel would have deliberately attacked the latest UN-school in Gaza, said ' I cannot believe that,- I can't get my head around that'.
They know very well the tactics used,- the leaders cower underground, while the populations is deliberately exposed for the benefit of the international media. The reverse of course is true about Israelis who value human lives and therefore safeguard them.
Too many locals in response choose to believe the worst of Israel and take the side of the terrorists' spin.
Is that ignorance, bias, fear of Islamic backlash or blatant anti-semitism?"
Miriam M.
Melbourne.
__._,_.___
__._,_.___
Thursday, January 01, 2009
GAZA- FAQS.
1. HAMAS REALITY
This video was made not by Israelis, but by an Arab, a Palestinian
who shows you who and what Hamas really is!
Israel has been telling this to the world for years , but
the world prefers to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the
sad truth ! Hamas against the Palestinians ! This is how they
succeeded in being elected - by force !
Please watch the video , if you don't have 10 minutes
to spend on it it's OK - the first 2-3 minutes are enough
to understand .
I am still shocked from what I've seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OGhj43GAE
Like the coalition forces trying to free the Afghanis from the grip of
the Taliban and the Iraqis from Saddam and now AlQueda,
the Gazan Palestinians may yet be grateful to be freed from Hamas.
The Lebanese would have loved to get free from the Hitzbullah.
Israel was stopped short of doing it. The soft West hasn't the stomach
to fight them for " freedom and democracy (!) ".
I SHUDDER TO THINK WHAT THEIR POOR WOMEN ARE SUFFERING.
2.Questions about Operation Cast Lead
Why did Israel start this war?
Israel did not start this war.
They were provoked into responding to attacks over 8 years.
This war was started by Palestinian terrorists, who in 2008 alone have launched over 3000 missiles from Gaza into Israel, targeting civilian centres.
In June 08, a temporary calm was brokered by Egypt. This so called truce had a six month expiry date. Despite the “truce”, rockets continued to be fired across the Israeli border, sending the people of Sderot and other southern Israeli towns running several times daily to bomb shelters.
On December 19 2008, the truce expired. Israel wanted to continue it, and Egypt was prepared to broker its renewal. Hamas rejected this and commenced increased bombardment of Israeli towns and villages.
Israel has a responsibility and an obligation to protect and defend her citizens. No other country would allow such provocation without a response.
Ultimately, Israel has engaged in this war to show Hamas that continued attacks on Israeli citizens can’t and won’t be tolerated.
Israel wants peace. Israel wants to see the creation of a sustainable and flourishing Palestinian state alongside it, with peaceful borders, hence it withdrew totally and completely from Gaza in 2005. When the Palestinians cease attacks and commit to negotiation, peace in the region will be that much closer.
Click here to view the website of Palestinian Media Watch, which has great resources and articles on this topic.
Why did Hamas send rockets into Israel, knowing full well that ultimately Israel would respond?
Hamas has a very clear objective – to annihilate the state of Israel. It’s in their charter. See Article 31,
http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html,
Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation, and their actions are designed to continually terrorise the Israeli civilian population and keep them under constant threat.
Hamas has had an unrelenting strategy of launching missiles from Gaza into Israeli population centres since 2001. Over a quarter of a million Israelis live in terror and fear of the next attack. The fact that the 8200 missiles launched have not killed or injured more people is because:
(a) Israel has taken responsibility for the safety of her citizens and ensured that bomb shelters were built and detection and evacuation procedures are in place; and
(b) The inaccuracy of the Palestinian missiles.
Yet the damage caused by these attacks has been terrible. Dozens have been killed and hundreds injured. Communities have been destroyed. Sirens sound off day and night, requiring everyone to run to the shelters within 15 seconds.
15 Seconds
Hamas well knew that escalating these attacks would provoke a response from Israel. They anticipated the media’s response, and the likelihood of media picking up on inevitable instances of civilian fatalities and casualties. They maximise the possibilities by locating military targets and operations within their own civilian centres, putting their own people at grave risk.
Why are there so many Palestinian deaths and so few Israeli deaths?
Israeli citizens are protected by their government, by ensuring adequate shelter protection for all. Palestinian leaders hide, while leaving their civilian brethren exposed to danger.
Israel has scrupulously and meticulously targeted military and strategic locations in Gaza. They try to warn the population by leaflet-drops, even phoning the targeted militants to send their families out before their homes will be blown up!
Even the UNRWA has estimated that 15% of the Palestinian deaths, are civilian and over 85% are Hamas militants (terrorists). Sadly too many of the civilian deaths are children.
The unfortunate consequence of any war is the inevitable loss of innocent lives.
Israel has attempted to limit such fatalities by:
(a) Specifically targeting military sites;
(b) Telephoning and flyer dropping to warn civilians to leave their homes, where they are located close to Hamas targets, even though this detracts from strategic surprise elements;
Hamas, on the other hand, has a defined strategy of placing its installations amongst civilian population centres, putting its own people at grave risk. As was written in the Boston Globe on 30/12:
“In direct contravention of international law, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, utilizing homes, schools and community centers as launching pads, content in the knowledge that if innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the cross-fire, it will be Israel that is criticized. This amounts to a sort of Daily Double of human rights violations: the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields for the infliction of violence upon innocent Israelis.” While Israel regrets the loss of innocent lives and does everything possible to limit it, Hamas specifically targets civilians in Israel. http://www.aish.com/movies/15seconds.asp
During the eight years of sustained attacks by Hamas, Israel has built shelters for the people in the south, fortified community, school and kindergarten buildings and ensured that people know the procedures when the “code red” siren sounds.
Conversely, Hamas has built tunnels for smuggling weapons, developed its weapons infrastructure and built its weapons stores within civilian population centres.
Why is Israel’s response so disproportionate?
The Australian (31/12) ran an article which goes a way to explaining what disproportionate is – or is not. Here’s an excerpt:
“LET'S have a pointless discussion about Gaza and begin it by talking about
whether Israel's bombing is "disproportionate".
To illustrate the meaninglessness of such a debate, let us attempt to agree what "proportionate" would look like.
Would it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City?
There is a chance, though, that since Gaza is more densely packed than Israel, casualties might be much the same as they are now, so although the ordnance would be proportionate, the deaths would not.
Of course, if one of Gaza's rockets did manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending on how you look at it), then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. Would you be happy then? “ (From “Sound and Fury… and it still signifies nothing” David Aaronovitch, The Australian; 31/12/08).
Since when is war a mathematical equation? The basic objective of any warring party is to inflict maximal damage on the enemy while minimizing its own casualties. Was there anything proportional about the US war in Iraq? Or about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for that matter? Or about Russia's recent war against Georgia? Israel is doing exactly what any other country has done in the past. This is how war works.
Would an Australian citizen complain that "too few" Australian soldiers are being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan? Probably not.
And on a more elementary note: Palestinian military inferiority is not an indication of moral superiority. Palestinian insistence on resorting to violence despite this military weakness is an indication of poor judgment perhaps - yet it is by no means an indication of moral virtue. Being militarily weak does not make the Palestinians right. It makes them indifferent to the possible repercussion of their actions towards their own civilians.
Is there a relationship between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?
YES – a resounding yes.
They share a dedication to Israel’s destruction – Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and Iran’s Ahmadinejad have notoriously declared their goal to wipe Israel off the map.
Hamas belongs to the school of extremist elements espousing violence, such as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the World Jihad, and others. This is manifested in instructions to carry out terror, training and drills, smuggling means of warfare, supplying monies, etc. In an interview with the Sunday Times published on March 9, 2008, a Hamas official related, “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been training Hamas operatives in Tehran ever since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip…in field warfare tactics and weaponry. The operatives come into the Strip with skills they have acquired in advanced technologies, rocket firing, setting off charges, sharpshooting and other tactics similar to those used by Hezbollah.”
For more information: visit the Zionist Council of Victoria’s website
www.zcv.org.au
This video was made not by Israelis, but by an Arab, a Palestinian
who shows you who and what Hamas really is!
Israel has been telling this to the world for years , but
the world prefers to turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the
sad truth ! Hamas against the Palestinians ! This is how they
succeeded in being elected - by force !
Please watch the video , if you don't have 10 minutes
to spend on it it's OK - the first 2-3 minutes are enough
to understand .
I am still shocked from what I've seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_OGhj43GAE
Like the coalition forces trying to free the Afghanis from the grip of
the Taliban and the Iraqis from Saddam and now AlQueda,
the Gazan Palestinians may yet be grateful to be freed from Hamas.
The Lebanese would have loved to get free from the Hitzbullah.
Israel was stopped short of doing it. The soft West hasn't the stomach
to fight them for " freedom and democracy (!) ".
I SHUDDER TO THINK WHAT THEIR POOR WOMEN ARE SUFFERING.
2.Questions about Operation Cast Lead
Why did Israel start this war?
Israel did not start this war.
They were provoked into responding to attacks over 8 years.
This war was started by Palestinian terrorists, who in 2008 alone have launched over 3000 missiles from Gaza into Israel, targeting civilian centres.
In June 08, a temporary calm was brokered by Egypt. This so called truce had a six month expiry date. Despite the “truce”, rockets continued to be fired across the Israeli border, sending the people of Sderot and other southern Israeli towns running several times daily to bomb shelters.
On December 19 2008, the truce expired. Israel wanted to continue it, and Egypt was prepared to broker its renewal. Hamas rejected this and commenced increased bombardment of Israeli towns and villages.
Israel has a responsibility and an obligation to protect and defend her citizens. No other country would allow such provocation without a response.
Ultimately, Israel has engaged in this war to show Hamas that continued attacks on Israeli citizens can’t and won’t be tolerated.
Israel wants peace. Israel wants to see the creation of a sustainable and flourishing Palestinian state alongside it, with peaceful borders, hence it withdrew totally and completely from Gaza in 2005. When the Palestinians cease attacks and commit to negotiation, peace in the region will be that much closer.
Click here to view the website of Palestinian Media Watch, which has great resources and articles on this topic.
Why did Hamas send rockets into Israel, knowing full well that ultimately Israel would respond?
Hamas has a very clear objective – to annihilate the state of Israel. It’s in their charter. See Article 31,
http://www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html,
Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation, and their actions are designed to continually terrorise the Israeli civilian population and keep them under constant threat.
Hamas has had an unrelenting strategy of launching missiles from Gaza into Israeli population centres since 2001. Over a quarter of a million Israelis live in terror and fear of the next attack. The fact that the 8200 missiles launched have not killed or injured more people is because:
(a) Israel has taken responsibility for the safety of her citizens and ensured that bomb shelters were built and detection and evacuation procedures are in place; and
(b) The inaccuracy of the Palestinian missiles.
Yet the damage caused by these attacks has been terrible. Dozens have been killed and hundreds injured. Communities have been destroyed. Sirens sound off day and night, requiring everyone to run to the shelters within 15 seconds.
15 Seconds
Hamas well knew that escalating these attacks would provoke a response from Israel. They anticipated the media’s response, and the likelihood of media picking up on inevitable instances of civilian fatalities and casualties. They maximise the possibilities by locating military targets and operations within their own civilian centres, putting their own people at grave risk.
Why are there so many Palestinian deaths and so few Israeli deaths?
Israeli citizens are protected by their government, by ensuring adequate shelter protection for all. Palestinian leaders hide, while leaving their civilian brethren exposed to danger.
Israel has scrupulously and meticulously targeted military and strategic locations in Gaza. They try to warn the population by leaflet-drops, even phoning the targeted militants to send their families out before their homes will be blown up!
Even the UNRWA has estimated that 15% of the Palestinian deaths, are civilian and over 85% are Hamas militants (terrorists). Sadly too many of the civilian deaths are children.
The unfortunate consequence of any war is the inevitable loss of innocent lives.
Israel has attempted to limit such fatalities by:
(a) Specifically targeting military sites;
(b) Telephoning and flyer dropping to warn civilians to leave their homes, where they are located close to Hamas targets, even though this detracts from strategic surprise elements;
Hamas, on the other hand, has a defined strategy of placing its installations amongst civilian population centres, putting its own people at grave risk. As was written in the Boston Globe on 30/12:
“In direct contravention of international law, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, utilizing homes, schools and community centers as launching pads, content in the knowledge that if innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the cross-fire, it will be Israel that is criticized. This amounts to a sort of Daily Double of human rights violations: the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields for the infliction of violence upon innocent Israelis.” While Israel regrets the loss of innocent lives and does everything possible to limit it, Hamas specifically targets civilians in Israel. http://www.aish.com/movies/15seconds.asp
During the eight years of sustained attacks by Hamas, Israel has built shelters for the people in the south, fortified community, school and kindergarten buildings and ensured that people know the procedures when the “code red” siren sounds.
Conversely, Hamas has built tunnels for smuggling weapons, developed its weapons infrastructure and built its weapons stores within civilian population centres.
Why is Israel’s response so disproportionate?
The Australian (31/12) ran an article which goes a way to explaining what disproportionate is – or is not. Here’s an excerpt:
“LET'S have a pointless discussion about Gaza and begin it by talking about
whether Israel's bombing is "disproportionate".
To illustrate the meaninglessness of such a debate, let us attempt to agree what "proportionate" would look like.
Would it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City?
There is a chance, though, that since Gaza is more densely packed than Israel, casualties might be much the same as they are now, so although the ordnance would be proportionate, the deaths would not.
Of course, if one of Gaza's rockets did manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending on how you look at it), then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. Would you be happy then? “ (From “Sound and Fury… and it still signifies nothing” David Aaronovitch, The Australian; 31/12/08).
Since when is war a mathematical equation? The basic objective of any warring party is to inflict maximal damage on the enemy while minimizing its own casualties. Was there anything proportional about the US war in Iraq? Or about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for that matter? Or about Russia's recent war against Georgia? Israel is doing exactly what any other country has done in the past. This is how war works.
Would an Australian citizen complain that "too few" Australian soldiers are being killed in Iraq or Afghanistan? Probably not.
And on a more elementary note: Palestinian military inferiority is not an indication of moral superiority. Palestinian insistence on resorting to violence despite this military weakness is an indication of poor judgment perhaps - yet it is by no means an indication of moral virtue. Being militarily weak does not make the Palestinians right. It makes them indifferent to the possible repercussion of their actions towards their own civilians.
Is there a relationship between Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran?
YES – a resounding yes.
They share a dedication to Israel’s destruction – Hezbollah’s Nasrallah and Iran’s Ahmadinejad have notoriously declared their goal to wipe Israel off the map.
Hamas belongs to the school of extremist elements espousing violence, such as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, the World Jihad, and others. This is manifested in instructions to carry out terror, training and drills, smuggling means of warfare, supplying monies, etc. In an interview with the Sunday Times published on March 9, 2008, a Hamas official related, “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have been training Hamas operatives in Tehran ever since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip…in field warfare tactics and weaponry. The operatives come into the Strip with skills they have acquired in advanced technologies, rocket firing, setting off charges, sharpshooting and other tactics similar to those used by Hezbollah.”
For more information: visit the Zionist Council of Victoria’s website
www.zcv.org.au
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