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ISRANET DAILY BRIEFING ARCHIVE Volume
IX, No. 2,017 • Friday
PERES:
ERDOGAN SPAT ‘NOTHING PERSONAL’ Despite his public spat with Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the World Economic Forum over the Gaza fighting, President Shimon Peres said Friday that his relationship with the Turkish prime minister had always been good and remained so.… Peres said he spoke to Erdogan after the row in which the Turkish prime minister stormed off the stage. “I called him up and said, ‘I do not see the matter as personal,’” Peres said. “My respect for him didn’t change. We had an exchange of views—and the views are views.” Erdogan said he left not because of a dispute with Peres, but because he was not given time to respond to the president’s remarks. Erdogan also complained that Peres had 25 minutes while he was only given 12 minutes.… Meanwhile, Erdogan received a hero’s welcome upon his return to Istanbul as some 5,000 supporters waving Turkish and Palestinian flags flooded Istanbul’s airport when his plane touched down before dawn.… During the forum, Erdogan had become enraged over being cut off by a panel moderator after listening to an impassioned monologue by Peres defending Operation Cast Lead. Peres’s defense was prompted by harsh criticism leveled at Israel not only by Erdogan, but also by the two other panelists, Arab League head Amr Moussa and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “You are killing people,” Erdogan declared to Peres. However, a finger-pointing Peres told Erdogan that he would have done the same if rockets had been hitting Istanbul. “Do you understand the meaning of a situation where hundreds of rockets a day are falling on women and children who cannot sleep quietly, who need to sleep in shelters? What is the matter with you? You don’t understand, and I am not prepared for lies.” Peres’s comments were met by hearty applause, which apparently irritated the Turkish prime minister.… “I have known Shimon Peres for many years and I also know Erdogan. I have never seen Shimon Peres so passionate as he was today. I think he felt Israel was being attacked by so many in the international community. He felt isolated,” said former Norwegian prime minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. “I was very sad that Erdogan left. This was an expression of how difficult this situation is,” he added. Moussa, the former Egyptian foreign minister, said Erdogan’s actions were understandable. “Mr. Erdogan said what he wanted to say, and then he left. That’s all. He was right,” Moussa said.… Hamas hailed Erdogan on Friday for storming off the stage. “Hamas appreciates the courageous step by the Turkish prime minister, who in Davos, defended the victims of the criminal war of the Zionists against our women and children in Gaza,” said Fawzi Barhoum, one of the group’s spokesmen in the Strip.
LAND
OF BROTHERS I have three children serving in the Israel Defense Forces. I am the father of Sgt. Nathan Weinberger (almost 21), Cpl. Rebecca Ross (19 and a half), and Pvt. Ruthie Ross (18). President-elect Barack Obama has spoken repeatedly of the need to engage young people in service for their country and for the world; in Israel, service is mandatory. Nathan is two-thirds of the way through his required three years of service, Rebecca is halfway through her two years of service and Ruthie was inducted on Nov. 5. We moved to Israel from Miami in the summer of 1997. Thanks to the Russian immigration boom that preceded our arrival, when I showed up at the ripe old age of 36, the Israel Defense Forces was not interested in my services. My children, however, all immigrated way before the induction process begins, and the IDF very much expects to induct each one of them. A few weeks before a child turns 17 the Induction Administration sends parents a letter, which reads in part: “We believe that enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces represents a joint family experience and that you also, as close family members, are excited and curious in advance of the enlistment. We very much appreciate the guidance, support, and encouragement of the candidate through the various stages of enlistment, and we will help you in this as much as we are able.” I felt relieved when I first received this letter in advance of Nathan’s induction process four years ago. While I was not given the opportunity to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, I have a part to play in supporting the service of my children. How is it different to live in a country with mandatory military service? As the parent of three soldiers, I am very much touched by the fact that the whole country loves my children. Because service is mandatory, when Israelis look upon my uniformed children, they see not only young people serving their country, but they also see themselves, as well as their own mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters who once served, who are serving or who will serve. It is because of this, too, that the military’s achievements are naturally experienced as our achievements and its failures our failures (and oh how difficult it is to admit failure).… For a parent, there is a huge difference between noncombat military service and combat military service. When your son goes into a combat unit (there are almost no girls in these), you can say goodbye to sleep for a few years. Thankfully, I am not yet the father of a combat soldier (though it’s almost certain that one or both of my youngest two, both boys and both now in high school, will be in combat).… I think that a big difference between me and my peers in the States, whose children are in college rather than in military service, comes down to pride. I can feel that the whole country is proud of my children, and in turn I am completely and utterly proud of them. Were I in the States, and were my children, respectively, a freshman, a sophomore and a junior in college, I would certainly be proud of them, but I don’t believe that pride would be the key emotion in my relationship to them. I would be concerned about paying for their tuition and about their future. After the often tense high school rebellious adolescent years, it’s wonderful to have pride be one’s overwhelming feeling for one’s child. I am proud that when called upon by their country to serve, my children have responded in the affirmative. SAMUEL
HUNTINGTON’S WARNING The last of Samuel Huntington’s books—Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity, published four years ago—may have been his most passionate work. It was like that with the celebrated Harvard political scientist, who died last week at 81. He was a man of diffidence and reserve, yet he was always caught up in the political storms of recent decades. “This book is shaped by my own identities as a patriot and a scholar,” he wrote. “As a patriot I am deeply concerned about the unity and strength of my country as a society based on liberty, equality, law and individual rights.” Huntington lived the life of his choice, neither seeking controversies, nor ducking them. Who Are We? had the signature of this great scholar—the bold, sweeping assertions sustained by exacting details, and the engagement with the issues of the time. He wrote in that book of the American Creed, and of its erosion among the elites. Its key elements—the English language, Christianity, religious commitment, English concepts of the rule of law, the responsibility of rulers, and the rights of individuals—he said are derived from the “distinct Anglo-Protestant culture of the founding settlers of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Critics who branded the book as a work of undisguised nativism missed an essential point. Huntington observed that his was an “argument for the importance of Anglo-Protestant culture, not for the importance of Anglo-Protestant people.” The success of this great republic, he said, had hitherto depended on the willingness of generations of Americans to honor the creed of the founding settlers and to shed their old affinities. But that willingness was being battered by globalization and multiculturalism, and by new waves of immigrants with no deep attachments to America’s national identity. “The Stars and Stripes were at half-mast,” he wrote in Who Are We?, “and other flags flew higher on the flagpole of American identities.” Three possible American futures beckoned, Huntington said: cosmopolitan, imperial and national. In the first, the world remakes America, and globalization and multiculturalism trump national identity. In the second, America remakes the world: Unchallenged by a rival superpower, America would attempt to reshape the world according to its values, taking to other shores its democratic norms and aspirations. In the third, America remains America: It resists the blandishments—and falseness—of cosmopolitanism, and reins in the imperial impulse. Huntington made no secret of his own preference: an American nationalism “devoted to the preservation and enhancement of those qualities that have defined America since its founding.” His stark sense of realism had no patience for the globalism of the Clinton era. The culture of “Davos Man”—named for the watering hole of the global elite—was disconnected from the call of home and hearth and national soil. But he looked with a skeptical eye on the American expedition to Iraq, uneasy with those American conservatives who had come to believe in an “imperial” American mission. He foresaw frustration for this drive to democratize other lands. The American people would not sustain this project, he observed, and there was the “paradox of democracy”: Democratic experiments often bring in their wake nationalistic populist movements (Latin America) or fundamentalist movements (Muslim countries). The world tempts power, and denies it. It is the Huntingtonian world; no false hopes and no redemption. In the 1990s, when the Davos crowd and other believers in a borderless world reigned supreme, Huntington crossed over from the academy into global renown, with his “clash of civilizations” thesis. In an article first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (then expanded into a book), Huntington foresaw the shape of the post-Cold War world. The war of ideologies would yield to a civilizational struggle of soil and blood. It would be the West versus the eight civilizations dividing the rest—Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese. In this civilizational struggle, Islam would emerge as the principal challenge to the West. “The relations between Islam and Christianity, both orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other’s Other. The 20th-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity.” He had assaulted the zeitgeist of the era. The world took notice, and his book was translated into 39 languages. Critics insisted that men want Sony, not soil. But on 9/11, young Arabs—19 of them—would weigh in. They punctured the illusions of an era, and gave evidence of the truth of Huntington’s vision. With his typical precision, he had written of a “youth bulge” unsettling Muslim societies, and young, radicalized Arabs, unhinged by modernity and unable to master it, emerging as the children of this radical age. If I may be permitted a personal narrative: In 1993, I had written the lead critique in Foreign Affairs of his thesis. I admired his work but was unconvinced. My faith was invested in the order of states that the West itself built. The ways of the West had become the ways of the world, I argued, and the modernist consensus would hold in key Third-World countries like Egypt, India and Turkey. Fifteen years later, I was given a chance in the pages of The New York Times Book Review to acknowledge that I had erred and that Huntington had been correct all along. A gracious letter came to me from Nancy Arkelyan Huntington, his wife of 51 years (her Armenian descent an irony lost on those who dubbed him a defender of nativism). He was in ill-health, suffering the aftermath of a small stroke. They were spending the winter at their summer house on Martha’s Vineyard. She had read him my essay as he lay in bed. He was pleased with it: “He will be writing you himself shortly.” Of course, he did not write, and knowing of his frail state I did not expect him to do so. He had been a source of great wisdom, an exemplar, and it had been an honor to write of him, and to know him in the regrettably small way I did. We don’t have his likes in the academy today. Political science, the field he devoted his working life to, has been in the main commandeered by a new generation. They are “rational choice” people who work with models and numbers and write arid, impenetrable jargon. More importantly, nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism that marked Samuel Huntington’s life and work is derided, and the American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and simpletons, the affliction of people clinging to old ways. The Davos men have perhaps won. No wonder the sorrow and the concern that ran through the work of Huntington’s final years. (Fouad Ajami is professor
of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins University, Shabbat Shalom to all our readers Volume
IX, No. 2,016 • Thursday
IRAN
IS THE TERRORIST ‘MOTHER REGIME’ …“I don’t think Israel can accept an Iranian terror base next to its major cities any more than the United States could accept an al Qaeda base next to New York City,” [says former—and, if his poll numbers hold up through the Feb. 10 election, soon-to-be—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.]… “If we accept the notion that terrorists will have immunity because as they fire on civilians they hide behind civilians, then this tactic will be legitimized and the terrorists will have their greatest victory.…” When Mr. Olmert announced Israel’s cease-fire late Saturday night, he could hardly keep a grin off his face. In his estimate, along with that of his senior military brass, Israel had scored a clear win…. Ordinary Israelis, however, seem less confident in the result, and Mr. Netanyahu gives voice to their caution. He is quick to applaud the “brilliant” performance of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the “perseverance and strength” of Israeli civilians under Hamas’s years-long rocket barrages. But, he adds, “we have to make sure that the radicals do not perceive this as a victory…. Notwithstanding the blows to the Hamas, it’s still in Gaza, it’s still ruling Gaza, and… Hamas can smuggle new rockets unless [the Philadelphi corridor is] closed, to fire at Israel in the future.”… A “Memorandum of Understanding” agreed to last week by Israel, the U.S. and Egypt could be effective in stopping the flow of arms, but that’s assuming Cairo lives up to its responsibilities.… Within days, his doubts are confirmed when the Associated Press produces video footage of masked Palestinian smugglers moving through once-again operational tunnels. Rather than looking for solutions from Egypt, however, Mr. Netanyahu’s gaze is intently fixed on Iran.… “The arming of Iran with nuclear weapons…will pose an existential threat to Israel directly, but also could give a nuclear umbrella to…terrorist bases.” How to stop that from happening? Mr. Netanyahu mentions that he has met with Barack Obama both in Israel and Washington…. I ask: Did Mr. Obama seem to him appropriately sober-minded about the subject? “Very much so, very much so,” Mr. Netanyahu stresses. “He [Mr. Obama] spoke of his plans to engage Iran in order to impress upon them that they have to stop the nuclear program. What I said to him was, what counts is not the method but the goal.”… Mr. Netanyahu’s…prescriptions for a settlement with the Palestinians—what he calls a “workable peace”—differ markedly from the approaches of the 1990s. He talks about “the development of capable law enforcement and security capabilities” for the Palestinians, adding that the new National Security Adviser Jim Jones had worked on the problem for the Bush administration. He stresses the need for rapid economic development in the West Bank, promising to remove “all sorts of impediments to economic growth” faced by Palestinians. As for the political front, Mr. Netanyahu promises a gradual, “bottom-up process that will facilitate political solutions, not replace them.” “Most of the approaches to peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” he says, “have been directed at trying to resolve the most complex problems, like refugees and Jerusalem, which is akin to building the pyramid from the top down. It’s much better to build it layer by layer, in a deliberate, purposeful pattern that changes the reality for both Palestinians and Israelis.”… But [Mr. Netanyahu] makes it equally clear that he is prepared to go only so far to reach an accommodation…. “We’re not going to redivide Jerusalem, or get off the Golan Heights, or go back to the 1967 boundaries,” he says. “We won’t repeat the mistake our [political opponents] made of unilateral retreats to merely vacate territory that is then taken up by Hamas or Iran.” This brings Mr. Netanyahu to the political pitch he’s making—so far successfully—to Israelis ahead of next month’s election. When elections were held three years ago, bringing Mr. Olmert to power, “we [his Likud Party] were mocked” for warning that Gaza would become Hamastan, and that Hamastan would become a staging ground for missiles fired at major Israeli cities such as Ashkelon and Ashdod. “I think we’ve shown the ability to see the problems in advance,” he says. “Peace is purchased from strength. It’s not purchased from weakness or unilateral retreats. It just doesn’t happen that way. That perhaps is the greatest lesson that has been impressed on the mind of the Israeli public in the last few years.” The polls seem to agree. As of Wednesday, an Israeli poll gives Likud a 30-seat plurality in the next Knesset, ahead by eight of Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party. Well behind both of them is the left-leaning Labor Party of Defense Minister Ehud Barak (at about 15 seats), which in turn is running roughly even with Avigdor Lieberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu…. ‘WITHOUT
IRAN, THERE IS NO HIZBULLAH AND NO HAMAS’ [Avigdor Lieberman, head of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party,] whose separation plan had Peace Now comparing him last year to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and still has many on the Right rejecting him for his willingness to relinquish territory—has become more mainstream. Or, at least, more acceptable to a wider societal spectrum. Whereas his core base has been voters from the former Soviet Union, a broader cross section of the public has come to consider him an option—particularly among those secular right-wingers who have grown disillusioned with Likud…and with its leader, Binyamin Netanyahu…. (The following exchange took place less than a week before Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza, and subsequent “agreement” on the part of Hamas to adopt the same policy.…) Seeing the results
of the disengagement from Gaza, do you not have second thoughts about
your party platform, which involves territorial exchanges? Is the conflict
between the Jews and Arabs in this region really an issue of “real
estate”? [But] if you’ve already decided to progress toward a two-state solution, why is one of them a state and a half—since all Israeli Arabs identify themselves as Palestinians—and the other half a state? If the aim is two states, at least let’s have two states for two peoples…. Cyprus used to be in the condition that we are in. Greeks and Turks lived together, and there was…bloodshed and terrorism. In 1974, they put 100 percent of the Turks on the northern side of the island, and 100% of the Greeks on the southern side. There is no peace agreement to this day. But there is stability, security and prosperity. That is our ambition. If this was your argument
[with PM Ariel Sharon], what possessed you to join the government headed
by Ehud Olmert? There are three Irans: Iran via Hizbullah from Lebanon; Iran via Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Gaza; and Iran with unconventional weapons and long-range missiles. Without Iran, there is no Hizbullah, no Hamas and no Islamic Jihad, most of whose budget, weaponry, technology and training comes from Iran. These groups are unable to exist without Iranian backing. Moreover, Iran is not part of our internal debate. It doesn’t split the nation from within. There’s no essential difference between [former Meretz MK] Yossi Beilin and Avigdor Lieberman regarding Iran. No one is suggesting we annex it or liberate it or establish settlements there.… [T]he whole idea was to shift the debate from the Palestinian track to the Iranian. And we did for a year, until Olmert went to Annapolis. As soon as he returned…and began negotiating on core issues, we left the government.… [I]s it realistic
to expect anyone in this country or abroad to agree to the uprooting
of even a single Arab? You can’t separate the populations entirely, but you can with a large portion. All the Arab settlements on the line between us and the PA—Umm el-Fahm, for example—won’t be moved. We’ll move the border. We won’t have to pay for their unemployment, or health, or education. We won’t have to subsidize them any longer…. Do you anticipate
a different ending to this operation from the Second Lebanon War? Is
the cease-fire going to mean a retreat on the part of the IDF, and a
subsequent renewal of weapons amassing? What about completely
destroying Hamas? Wasn’t that your hope, as well? But can that be accomplished
without breaking Iran first? THE
DOMESTIC DIMENSION OF OPERATION CAST LEAD… One lesson that democracies have learned in modern warfare is the critical role of domestic support for war. Famous examples of the debilitating role of deteriorating domestic support are France’s war in Algeria and the US Vietnam War, as well as the recent protracted war in Iraq. The State of Israel also experienced such ordeals. In both the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon wars, public opinion rallied behind the war at the outset, but then became critical of the political leadership’s management of the war. In light of these experiences one would have expected hesitation on the part of Israeli leadership in entering a military operation in the Gaza Strip…. Surprisingly, the Israeli media was, for the most part, supportive of the IDF offensive in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, most of the Israeli political Left supported the war too…. How do we explain the mobilization of these traditional bastions of criticism behind the Gaza operation? To what extent did the fact that Operation Cast Lead took place in the midst of an election campaign play a role in the conduct of the war? Paradoxically, it seems that the elections played a significant role in engendering stability in Israeli domestic politics throughout the war…. On the leadership level, the elections served as an inducement for the military offensive. Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni undoubtedly feared electoral punishment if the IDF had continued to abstain from retaliating to the daily shelling of Israeli towns in the south…. Both feared that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu would take advantage of the government’s failing to react. For Ehud Olmert…he did not aspire to leave the scene as a failing prime minister who abandoned southern Israel to the terror of Hamas rockets. For its part, the Israeli media could not ignore the suffering of Israeli citizens being terrorized every day, especially since the breakdown of the six-month ceasefire…. Hence, it directed criticism at the Israeli government’s “paralysis.” It is also possible that the mostly-left-of-center media feared the ascendance of Netanyahu in light of this paralysis. Once action was taken, they mobilized behind the two candidates that they preferred over the contender from the right…. Domestic politics played a role in other areas of Operation Cast Lead. Israel has learned…that “non-existential” wars cannot be allowed to become protracted. Public opinion in democracies can be mobilized behind a “small war” as long as it does not develop into an enduring exhausting experience. The number of casualties is a major factor in this type of a thorny confrontation.… Having waited eight years, the government and military had little difficulty assuring the Israeli public that this war against Hamas war belonged to the category of “no-choice” wars. At the same time, the IDF adopted a military strategy that kept Israeli casualties low…. Finally, we must ask the question: Why did Hamas miscalculate and cancel the ceasefire on the eve of Israeli elections? First, they may have wanted to show valor prior to January 9, when Abu Mazen’s tenure as PA president was scheduled to end—in order to score points among the Palestinians. In addition they may have believed that Israel would not dare start a major operation before its elections.… Another answer may lie in a theory taken from social psychology. In his landmark 1968 study, Prof. Yehoshafat Harkabi argued that Arab hate of Israel on the emotional level reinforces their image of the Jews on the cognitive level. In other words, if the Jews are bad and cruel, they are also cowards. It is noteworthy that Hizballah leader Hassan Nassrallah after the outbreak of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and Hamas leader [Khaled] Mashal following the Gaza War, both admitted that they underestimated the Israeli reaction to their provocation. In accordance with Harkabi’s insight, we can say that they misconstrued Israel’s ethos and underestimated its resolve because of their revulsion for Israel. …On the strategic level Israeli leaders feel strongly that, when provoked, the Jewish State must not evince cowardice or show apprehension of going to war—for in the Mideast this is the equivalent of signing your own death certificate. Likewise, on the political level, no Israeli government could have failed to meet the Hamas challenge on the eve of a national election. (Prof. Shmuel Sandler is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, at Bar-Ilan University.) Please see our Picks of the Week for Benjamin Netanyahu’s forecast of the future of Obama-Israel relations. Volume
IX, No. 2,015 • Wednesday
WEEKLY QUOTES “There was no [foreign media] ban. Israel did not want to endanger the lives of the workers at the crossings so we didn't open them, not for humanitarian reasons and not for foreign journalists. Those spoiled crybabies just didn't want to put a little effort in [to getting into Gaza]. We never arrested anyone who went in, nor are we running after them now. In hindsight, next time we should make it an actual policy. This week proves it. All of the reporters have been let in and they are accepting everything everyone says at face value. Maybe 3% are calling and asking for an Israeli response, or talking to the IDF spokesman. They are a fig leaf for Hamas. Their coverage right now is a disgrace to the profession. Instead of reporting, they are settling scores. Reporting without both sides, without a context is an abuse of the profession.”—Israeli Government Press Office head Danny Seaman, denying that there had been any policy ban on media access to the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 25) “[M]y job is to
communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being
of the Muslim world that the language we use has to be a language of
respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim
countries…. And my job is to communicate to the American people
that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply
want to live their lives and see their children live better lives. My
job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not
your enemy…. “Those who say they want to make change, this is the change they should make: they should apologize to the Iranian nation and try to make up for their dark background and the crimes they have committed against the Iranian nation.”—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, responding to President Obama's offer to extend a hand of peace to Iran. Ahmadinejad, speaking at a rally in western Iran, listed a range of U.S. "crimes" such as trying to block Teheran's nuclear program, hindering Iran's development, and other alleged actions by several administrations for more than 60 years. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran is months away from crossing the developmental threshold that could put it on course to build a nuclear weapon by 2010. (Reuters, Daily Telegraph-UK, Jan. 28) “Breaking the lock on the Holocaust box and opening it is tantamount to cutting the Zionist regime's life jugular and the bulk of the [Zionist] philosophy would collapse.”—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, launching a new verbal attack on Israel on Tuesday, in a message read at the Sharif Technical University conference called “Holocaust, the West's sacred lie”. Ahmadinejad’s statement alleged that the subject of the Holocaust had been used to expand the international influence of the United States and Britain after World War Two and that “power-seeking networks introduced themselves as defenders of a number of victims and issued an order that the survivors...must receive blood money, part of which was the establishment of the Zionist regime on Palestinian territory.” Ahmadinejad caused international outrage in 2005, when he stated that Israel should be wiped off the map, and in 2006, for staging a Teheran conference that sought to cast doubt on the Holocaust. (Ha’aretz, Jan. 27) “We have the responsibility not to allow genocide of the Jewish people, nor of any other people. We have the responsibility to learn and to teach the lessons of the Holocaust, to prevent it from ever reoccurring. We have the responsibility not to remain silent. For, to remain silent and indifferent to the horrors of the Holocaust is probably the greatest sin of all, let alone denying it…. We have the responsibility to act against the forces of anti-Semitism, bigotry, and racism in any form.”—Professor Gabriela Shalev, Israel's ambassador to the UN, speaking at the UN ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. UN General Assembly President Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, a Catholic Priest from Nicaragua, skipped the UN ceremony after American Jewish leaders and Amb. Shalev threatened to demonstratively exit the event if he used the podium to attack Israel. D'Escoto, who has repeatedly made anti-Israel statements, was to be the event's host by virtue of his official position and was scheduled give the opening speech. (Ha’aretz, Jan. 27) “Hamas has an enormous responsibility for what happened here in Gaza…. I intentionally say this here: Hamas is a terrorist movement and it has to be denounced as such.”—EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Louis Michel, condemning Hamas for using civilians as human shields and fighting in populated areas. Michel described Hamas rocket fire as a provocation. (Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, Jan. 26) “We don’t want to go on to reconstruct Gaza every I-don’t-know-how-many-years. This is not what we want… [The Palestinian] population has to decide if it wants…peace.”—Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU External Relations Commissioner, insisting that while she expected humanitarian aid to Gaza to flow quickly, the Gaza reconstruction would only begin when the EU had an acceptable Palestinian partner. (Jerusalem Post, Ha’aretz, Jan. 26) “We cannot talk about Gilad Schalit until Israel verifies what happened to the captured soldier. It's possible that they bombed him like they bombed other detainees during their latest operation in the Gaza Strip.”—Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas, discussing the status of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit. Last week, another senior Hamas official told the London-based Al-Hayat that “it's possible Gilad Schalit was injured and it is possible that he is fine. It doesn't interest us any longer. We did not allocate special security to him because he is equal in worth to a cat or less. His fate doesn't concern us and doesn't preoccupy us any longer.” (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 21) “The New York Review of Books, of all publications, approvingly reprinted the Yediot Aharonot interview, despite its previous disdain for Olmert. The NYRB is virtually the house organ for a certain kind of Jewish anti-Zionism as embodied by its frequent contributor Tony Judt. It weeps crocodile tears to this day over the demise of the putative Jewish paradise in Weimar Germany, and for the past several years has been propounding the notion that Hamas is actually a moderate and diplomatically accessible organization. Olmert's mea culpa about the settlement enterprise conformed to the NYRB's party line.”—Columnist Samuel Freedman, critiquing the New York Review of Books for reprinting Yediot Aharonot’s interview with PM Olmert. In the interview, Olmert suggested that a two-state solution could only be implemented by withdrawing from the West Bank and re-dividing Jerusalem. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 22) “You probably hear of many anti-Semitic incidents, but where we live, the anti-Semitism is sanctioned; it comes from the president, through the government, and into the media. Since the government is very involved in the day-to-day lives of its constituents, its influence is much more effective.”—Abraham Levy Ben Shimol, president of the Jewish community in Venezuela, explaining the difficult situation for Jews under President Hugo Chavez. (Ha’aretz, Jan. 26) “[W]hile the Vatican's reconciliation with the SSPX [Society of Saint Pius X] is an internal matter of the Catholic Church, the embrace of an open Holocaust denier is shameful, a serious blow for Jewish-Vatican relations, and a slap in the face for the historic efforts of Pope John Paul II, who following his predecessors, made such remarkable efforts to eradicate and combat anti-Semitism. I am sure that the lifting of the excommunication was not an affirmation by the Church of Holocaust denial. However, the failure to take into consideration his outrageous opinions is deplorable. Williamson should not have been included in this embrace.”—American Jewish Committee director of Interreligious Affairs, Rabbi David Rosen, commenting on the lifting of the excommunication of four bishops, including British Holocaust denier Richard Williamson. The Society of Saint Pius X rejects the reforms of the 1965 Second Vatican Council. Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris understood Pope Benedict XVI’s desire for Christian unity, but thought that the pope could have excluded Williamson, saying that “I’m certain as a man who has known the Nazi regime in his own flesh, he understands you have to be very careful and very selective.” (Jer. Post, Jan. 25) SHORT TAKES DISPUTES AND DISCREPANCIES IN GAZA DEATH TOLL—(Jerusalem) Israel is privately contesting Palestinian figures for the number of civilians killed in Operation Cast Lead, but has yet to release any official figures on the overall death toll or on the number of Hamas operatives killed. Foreign journalists have relied exclusively on Palestinian-supplied figures, which claim that 1,314 people died in the fighting, 412 being children alone. Conversely, Italian journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi has reported that the number of Palestinian dead could not have exceeded five or six hundred. Reporting from Gaza for the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Cremonesi claims that the hospitals and morgues simply do not contain enough bodies to account for the Hamas death toll. Israeli officials have already compiled a list of over 900 names of Palestinians who have died during the operation, of whom 750 are believed to be Hamas operatives. (Ha’aretz, Jer. Post, Jan. 22) HAMAS REGAINS CONTROL OF ALL GAZA TUNNELS—(Jerusalem) Hamas is once again in control of the remaining smuggling tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, according to the Jerusalem Post. During Operation Cast Lead the IDF destroyed about 80 percent of Hamas’ tunnel networks, with the remainder intentionally left undisturbed amid humanitarian and security concerns. “Bringing arms into Gaza is not smuggling. The natural situation would be for all Arab and Muslim countries, along with the rest of the free world, to officially allow weapons into the Strip... Meanwhile, we believe it is our right to bring arms in any way we see fit,” Abu Obaida, Hamas spokesman, told reporters. (Jer. Post, Jan. 19, 22) ARMS SHIPMENTS TO GAZA INTERCEPTED—(Jerusalem) On Jan. 21 the U.S Navy intercepted an Iranian ship in the Red Sea carrying weapons intended for Gaza, raising Israeli fears of that Hamas will eventually obtain long-range Fajr missiles that can strike Tel Aviv. The Iranian-owned commercial vessel with a Cypriot flag was boarded and found to be carrying artillery shells. The ship was permitted to sail toward the Suez Canal, where Egyptian authorities will search the vessel again. “This is a big test for the Egyptians,” a senior U.S. defense official said. “So far the Egyptians have prevented the ship from crossing the Suez and we hope it will stay that way.” (Jer. Post, Jan. 25, 26) HAMAS CRACKS DOWN ON FATAH—(Jerusalem) Fatah members reported that immediately after the ceasefire took effect on Jan.18, Hamas began conducting raids on the rival Palestinian faction, which included torturing and murdering Fatah individuals who allegedly collaborated with Israel. Hamas recently executed a Palestinian field worker Haidar Shanem, 46, who had been condemned to death by a Palestinian Authority court for being a Shin Bet agent, but whose sentence had not previously been carried out because of pressure from human rights group. Shanem worked for the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem. (Jer. Post, Jan 19, 25) HAMAS DOLING OUT CASH TO GAZANS—(Jerusalem) Hamas has begun to distribute money to families whose homes were destroyed in Operation Cast Lead. On January 22 Hamas promised to distribute $35 million to $40 million in reconstruction money. They said that each family whose home had been destroyed would receive roughly $5,200, half-damaged homes would receive $2,600, families of people who died in the latest Gaza operation would receive $1,300, and injured people would get $650. As of January 25, only payments of $1000 have been given out to claimants with Hamas saying it needs more time. Israel, concerned that Hamas is attempting to take credit for the reconstruction efforts in the same manner as Hezbollah in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon War, is working with the West Bank Palestinian Authority and international community to find ways of transferring aid money into Gaza. (New York Times, Jan. 23; Reuters, Jan. 26) BBC WON’T BROADCAST GAZA APPEAL—(London) Citing a journalistic duty to cover the Gaza conflict in a balanced manner, the British Broadcasting Corporation has refused to air a three-minute Gaza appeal for funding prepared by the Disasters Emergency Committee, an umbrella organization representing eleven relief agencies. The BBC does not accept advertising but has been known in the past to broadcast appeals for other humanitarian causes. Sky News, a privately-owned independent broadcaster, also decided to not air the appeal. Three other broadcasters, the publicly-owned Channel 4, and private broadcasters, ITV and Channel 5, have shown the appeal. (New York Times, Jan. 27; Jer. Post, Jan. 26) JEWISH AGENCY REPORTS RISE IN ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS—(Jerusalem) The Jewish Agency reported Sunday that 250 confirmed antisemitic attacks were carried out worldwide during Israel’s three-week military operation against Hamas in Gaza in January 2009, compared to 80 reported attacks in January 2008. Incidents in France included the stabbing of a Jewish man outside of Paris and two firebombings of synagogues in Saint Denis; in Sweden, a burning object was thrown through a window of a synagogue; in Chicago, on the third day of the Israeli operation, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at Temple Sholom, and on Jan. 10 four more synagogues were vandalised; in Malibu, California windows were shattered and swastikas painted Jewish Center and Synagogue. (Ha’aretz, Jan 25; Jer. Post, Jan.11) ARAB REPAYMENT FOR JEWISH PROPERTY—(Jerusalem) The Israeli Pensioners Affairs Ministry has created a new department over the past two weeks that will begin to collect specific claims by Jews who lost their property when they left Arab countries during the 20th century. More than 850,000 Jews fled or were expelled from Arab lands and Iran, most after Israel's founding in 1948. Estimates of the value of the property they were forced to leave behind are hard to come by, ranging from as low as $16 billion in known assets to as high as $300 billion when estimates of the value of their abandoned real estate are included. (Jer. Post, Jan. 27) EX-JIHADIS RETURN TO TERROR—(Riyadh) The Saudi Interior Ministry acknowledged failures with its rehabilitation program for former jihadists following the arrests of nine graduates for rejoining terrorist organisations. The program of religious re-education and therapy is designed to assist the former jihadists with reintegrating into their families and jobs. The confession, after an announcement that two other alumni had joined al Qaeda in Yemen, raised concerns over how Saudi officials had lost track of them in the first place. Some of them are released Guantanamo captives, including one suspected of a deadly attack in Yemen last year. (NYT, Jan. 27) NORTH KOREA CLAIMS IT WEAPONIZED PLUTONIUM—(Beijing) North Korea claims it can produce four or five nuclear weapons, according to Selig Harrison, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a policy institute in Washington D.C.,. Senior North Korean officials told him this week that 30.8kg of plutonium that their government had listed as part of a preliminary disarmament six-party agreement had been incorporated into warheads or other arms. He said the claims could not be verified, but they represent a hardening of the state's position, despite offers of cooperation to U.S. President Barack Obama. (Reuters, Jan.18) WILDERS TO BE PROSECUTED FOR INCITING HATE—(The Hague) Before drawing international attention last year for his film Fitna, Geert Wilders, the Netherlands’ right-wing Freedom Party leader, called for a ban on the Qu’ran “the same way we ban Mein Kampf ”, since both Hitler's work and the Muslim holy book contain passages that contradict Western values. The Amsterdam Appeals Court called the statements in his film, newspaper articles and media interviews "one-sided generalizations...which can amount to inciting hatred", reversing a decision last year by the public prosecutor's office that the film and interviews were painful for Muslims but not criminal. Wilders will appeal the judgment. (International Herald Tribune, Jan. 21) YORK STUDENTS CONDEMN ISRAEL—(Toronto) Last week, Jewish students descended on the Toronto campus to protest the misdirected priorities of their student government (the York Federation of Students) who, in the midst of a twelve-week labour dispute that has ended classes at York University, unanimously resolved to “issue a public statement of its condemnation” of Israel’s operation in Gaza and issued a proposal to ban Israeli academics on Ontario campuses. (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, Jan. 22) Volume
IX, No. 2,014 • Tuesday
THE
HOLOCAUST DID NOT BEGIN IN THE GAS CHAMBERS—IT BEGAN WITH WORDS On this United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day, words may ease the pain, but they may also dwarf the tragedy. For the Holocaust is uniquely evil in its genocidal singularity, where biology was inescapably destiny, a war against the Jews in which, as Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Wiesel put it, “not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.” This year, in the immediate aftermath of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international Magna Carta of human rights born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, and the Genocide Convention—the “Never Again” Convention which has tragically been violated again and again—we should ask ourselves: What have we learned, and what must we do? Lesson 1—THE IMPORTANCE OF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE—The first lesson is the importance of remembrance itself. For as we remember the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust—first defamed, demonized and dehumanized, as prologue or justification for genocide, then murdered—we have to understand that the mass murder of millions is not a matter of abstract statistics. For unto each person there is a name—unto each person there is an identity. Each person is a universe. As both the Talmud and Koran teach us, whoever saves a single life, it is as if he or she has saved an entire universe—just as whoever has killed a single person, it is as if they have destroyed an entire universe. And so the abiding imperative: that we are each, wherever we are, the guarantors of each other’s destiny. Lesson 2—THE DANGER OF STATE-SANCTIONED INCITEMENT TO HATRED AND GENOCIDE: THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PREVENT IT—The enduring lesson of the Holocaust and the genocides that followed is that they occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of a state-sanctioned ideology of hate. This teaching of contempt, this demonizing of the other—this is where it all begins. As the Canadian Supreme Court recognized…the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers—it began with words…. These are the catastrophic effects of racism. Sixty years later, these lessons not only remained unlearned, but the tragedies have been repeated.… At present, we are witnessing yet another state-sanctioned incitement to hate and genocide, whose epicentre is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran—denying the Nazi Holocaust as it incites to a Middle Eastern one. This constitutes a direct violation of the overriding prohibition in international law against the direct and public incitement to genocide, and a clear legal trigger for the international community to intervene in fulfilment of its obligation to prevent genocide, as established in the Genocide Convention. As one involved as Minister of Justice in Canada in the prosecution of Rwandan incitement, I can state that the aggregate of precursors of incitement in the Iranian case are more threatening than were those in the Rwandan one. Lesson 3—THE DANGERS OF SILENCE, THE CONSEQUENCES OF INDIFFERENCE: THE DUTY TO PROTECT—Indeed, the genocide of European Jewry succeeded not only because of a culture of hate and an industry of death, but because of crimes of indifference and conspiracies of silence. And we have witnessed an appalling indifference and inaction in our own day which took us down the road to the unthinkable—ethnic cleansing in the Balkans—and down the road to the unspeakable—the preventable genocides in Rwanda and Darfur. No one can say that we did not know. We knew, but we did not act…. Let there be no mistake about it: indifference in the face of evil is acquiescence with evil itself—it is complicity with evil. Lesson 4—COMBATING MASS ATROCITY AND THE CULTURE OF IMPUNITY: THE RESPONSIBILITY TO BRING WAR CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE—If the last century—symbolized by the Holocaust—was the age of atrocity, it was also the age of impunity. Few of the perpetrators were brought to justice; and so, just as there must be no sanctuary for hate, no refuge for bigotry, there must be no base or sanctuary for these enemies of humankind. In this context, the establishment of the International Criminal Court must be seen as the most dramatic development in international criminal law since Nuremberg. But it requires active support to prevent it from being another opportunity for impunity….
CONCLUSION—We should reaffirm today that never again will we be indifferent to racism and hate; that never again will we be silent in the face of evil; that never again will we ignore the plight of the vulnerable; that never again will we acquiesce in the face of mass atrocity and impunity. We will speak and we will act against racism, against hate, against anti-Semitism, against mass atrocity, against injustice—and against the crime whose name we should shudder even to mention: genocide. May this day be not only an act of remembrance, which it is, but a reminder to act, which it must be. (The Hon. Irwin Cotler is
the former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General KEEPING
MEMORIES ALIVE There were once two young boys—Yitzhak, 8, and Shalom, 12. They lived in Botchki, one of the hundreds of small villages scattered throughout Eastern Europe known in Yiddish as “shtetls.”.… While these boys and their family did not have much, theirs was a life imbued with faith, love and even hope. That was, until Sept. 2, 1939. That was the day the Nazis invaded Poland, and life was forever changed for the Jews of Europe.… But on one fateful day in November 1943 when the boys’ father Max was outside the ghetto searching for food and clothing, the Nazis began the liquidation of Botchki. With sirens wailing and dogs snarling at their heels, Botchki’s Jews were rounded up and placed in cattle cars and trucks for immediate transport to the Treblinka death camp. Upon arrival at the camp, every one of Botchki’s 453 Jews, including Yitzhak and Shalom, were herded into the gas chamber, their lives snuffed out in barely an instant. Max was caught outside the ghetto, but, astonishingly, was able to escape his captors. With the aid of a thousand miracles, he survived the inferno that was the Holocaust by fighting with a partisan unit. Upon triumphant return to his village, he discovered that every Jew in Botchki had been murdered by the Nazis. He was the last remnant of a once vibrant Jewish community. Max made his way to a Displaced Persons’ camp and finally, when Canada opened its doors to Jewish immigration, journeyed to Ottawa. There he met my mother, Gertrude, and like all survivors, determined to begin again.… Over the years, I have told my father’s story many times. I have related how important it is to keep these memories alive. In the age of the Internet and instant communications, the ability to use the Holocaust to teach about tolerance becomes more important as Holocaust survivors enter the winter of their lives. Thankfully, today we have memoirs, diaries, films and survivor testimony to continue sharing this legacy.… Imagine, then, my shock when I recently read in a poll conducted by the Association of Canadian Studies that 13 per cent of Canadians aged 18-24 had never heard of the Holocaust. From time to time through my work at Canadian Jewish Congress, otherwise well-meaning people tell me that Canadians hear too much about the slaughter of 6 million Jews, as though there can ever be too much to hear. It sobers me, putting me at a loss for words. But no longer.… In 2008, as atrocities and murders mount in Darfur, as we read of brutalities committed against innocents everywhere from the Congo to Southeast Asia, as we remember the genocides of the modern era including Rwanda, the killing fields of Cambodia, and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, we must collectively vow never to let the candlelight of memory be extinguished. Only our memory can serve as the vehicle for tolerance. Let us hope that in the fullness of time the tragedies of the past, never forgotten, will become the strength to ensure a more hopeful future. (Bernie M. Farber, son of a Holocaust survivor, is CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress.) TUSKEGEE
AIRMEN OVER AUSCHWITZ The invitation to members of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black units of World War II pilots, to attend the presidential inauguration, is an important reminder of the long road America has traveled from the era of segregation to the election of the first African-American president. It also offers an opportunity to reflect on a little-known episode involving the Tuskegee Airmen and the Holocaust—and on the question of how the new president will respond to genocide in our own time. Defying racist War Department officials who regarded them as inferior and did not want them to fly, the Tuskegee Airmen scored extraordinary achievements in battle. Tuskegee squadrons shot down more than 100 German planes and repeatedly won Distinguished Unit Citations and other medals for performance in their missions over Europe. They were so admired by their fellow pilots that bomber groups often specifically requested the Tuskegee units as escorts for their bombing raids. One of those raids took place in the skies over Auschwitz. On the morning of August 20, 1944, a group of 127 US B-17 bombers, called Flying Fortresses, approached Auschwitz.… On the ground below, Jewish slave laborers, including 15 year-old Elie Wiesel, cheered the bombing. In his best-selling memoir, Night, Wiesel described their reaction: “We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the prisoners’ barracks], it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death.… The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!” But it did not. Even though there were additional US bombing raids on German industrial sites in the Auschwitz region in the weeks and month to follow, the gas chambers and crematoria were never targeted…. US officials claimed such raids were “impracticable” because they would require “considerable diversion” of planes needed for the war effort. But the Tuskegee veterans know that claim was false. They were right there in the skies above Auschwitz. No “diversion” was necessary to drop a few bombs on the mass-murder machinery or the railways leading into the camp.… The decision to refrain from bombing Auschwitz was part of a broader policy by the Roosevelt administration to refrain from taking action to rescue Jews from the Nazis or provide havens for them. The US did not want to deal with the burden of caring for large numbers of refugees. And its ally, Great Britain, would not open the doors to Palestine to the Jews, for fear of angering Arab opinion. The result was that the Allies failed to confront one of history’s most compelling moral challenges. Today, America again faces the challenge of responding to genocide. The Darfur genocide continues, yet the Arab League, China and Russia are trying to prevent the prosecution of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for his role in the slaughter. What will the United States do? Iranian leaders have threatened genocide against Israel, and Syria is developing nuclear weapons to go along with its other weapons of mass destruction. How should America respond? The Roosevelt administration had the opportunity to send the Tuskegee Airmen and other pilots to interrupt the Nazi genocide, but it chose not to do so. The Obama administration will face comparable moral challenges. … (Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies) TELLING
THE HOLOCAUST LIKE IT WASN’T Toward the end of the new film about postwar Germany The Reader, a Holocaust survivor in New York curtly instructs a visiting German lawyer named Michael Berg that he would do well to remember that the camps were neither a form of therapy nor a university. “Nothing,” she says, “came out of the camps. Nothing.” With Holocaust Memorial Day to be observed on Jan. 27, it’s a timely admonition. It’s not, however, one that either The Reader or a host of memoirs or films about the Third Reich appear to be heeding. Rather, the further the Holocaust recedes into the past, the more it’s being exploited to create a narrative of redemption.… Perhaps the most striking development… has been the recent profusion of films about the Third Reich, which tend to infantilize the Holocaust. In The Reader…the film blurs the distinction between victim and perpetrator. The judge is unable to respond convincingly when [the former SS concentration camp guard Hanna] Schmitz asks him how he would have responded to orders from above. Schmitz herself comes across simply as an unthinking tool of the Nazi regime rather than a fervent anti-Semite. Similarly, the British production The Boy in the Striped Pajamas distorts the relationship between victim and murderer. It is an escapist fantasy about a friendship between two little boys, one of whom is trapped in “the farm” with its smokestacks, the other the son of the Nazi commandant. If these films attenuate the difference between victim and perpetrator, Edward Zwick’s Defiance might seem to be the reverse. By choosing Daniel Craig to play the Jewish partisan commander Tuvia Bielski, complete with white horse, Mr. Zwick turns resistance to the Nazis into an action film, an emotionally glorious moment. As rousing as this vision of Jewish combat may be, it does raise a problem identified by the historian Raul Hilberg… “when relatively isolated or episodic acts of resistance are represented as typical, a basic characteristic of the German measures is obscured…the drastic actuality of a relentless killing of men, women and children is mentally transformed into a more familiar picture of a struggle—however unequal—between combatants.”… Perhaps nothing came out of the Holocaust other than the determination to prevent a repetition of the crimes. But there is a disjunction between the political sphere and the entertainment industry’s focus on redemption. The one area in which a lesson from the Holocaust does currently seem to apply is in international efforts to punish and deter genocide. On Dec. 18, the International Criminal Tribunal sentenced three officers culpable for the Rwandan genocide to life in prison. Three Croatian generals are being prosecuted at The Hague for authorizing war crimes in the Balkans in 1995. And in the United States, the Institute for Peace and the Holocaust Museum released a task force report presided over by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen called “Preventing Genocide.” It calls for, among other things, a National Intelligence Estimate on “worldwide risks of genocide and mass atrocities.” Empty words? Perhaps. But they may hold out more promise than saccharine promises of redemption. (Jacob Heilbrunn is a senior editor at The National Interest.) HIGHEST
ANTI-SEMITISM RATES IN 2 DECADES The number of anti-Semitic attacks around the world during Israel’s three-week military operation against Hamas in Gaza was up more than 300 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching a two-decade high, according to figures released Sunday by the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism. The Israeli forum’s annual report…also cited the “conspicuous” comparisons being made between Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza and those of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. More than 250 anti-Semitic incidents
were reported around the world…compared to 80 during the same
period last year, according to the report. The bulk of the incidents
were carried out in Western Europe and were led by local Muslims, including
100 each in France and Britain, the report found. The violent assaults
included attacks against both synagogues and Jewish communities, as
well as vandalism of privately owned Jewish property…. In a related development, Yad Vashem announced Sunday that it would launch its Web site, as well as a YouTube channel, in Spanish this week…marking the fourth annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the participation of Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos. “The Holocaust has become the brand name of man’s inhumanity against mankind,” said Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center. “For some people it is the best way to get back at Israel and hit us where it hurts.… Our major challenge now and in the future is to protect and inoculate mainstream society from the fallacious distortions and inversions of the extremists who seek to manipulate the Holocaust for their own purposes.” Separately, the New York-based Anti-Defamation League urged the leaders of several European countries on Sunday to publicly condemn “the explosion of anti-Semitic rhetoric” and Holocaust comparisons at anti-Israel rallies against the Gaza operation.… The ADL leaders wrote to the heads of eight countries—Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland—where “anti-Semitic displays have been present and condemnations from the highest level of government have been absent,” the organization said in a press release…. The document declared unambiguously that international developments or political issues, including those in Israel or elsewhere in the Middle East, never justify anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, a renewed blast of anti-Semitic vitriol is expected to be aired at the Durban II United Nations World Conference, to be held in Geneva in April.… (Greer Fay Cashman contributed to this report.) Volume IX, No. 2,013 • Monday, January 26, 2009
ISRAEL
SCORED A TACTICAL VICTORY …All wars eventually end. The question most Israelis are asking is whether this one [in Gaza] has merely gone on vacation. So why are the top echelons of Israel’s political and military establishment delighted by the war’s result? Long answer: They think that Israel has re-established a reputation for invincibility tarnished in the 2006 war with Hezbollah; that they bloodied and humiliated Hamas while taking few casualties; that they called overdue international attention to the tunnels… [and] that they put the onus to end the violence squarely back on Hamas’s shoulders. Short answer: They think the war may be a regional game changer.… “We have no desire to go back into Gaza,” [the military official] says. “We decided we’re not going to spend five years [in Gaza] like the five years Americans spent in Iraq.” On the contrary: Far from seeking regime change in Gaza, the official seems at ease that the Palestinians will remain bifurcated between Hamastan and Fatahland for many years more, the way Germany was divided during the Cold War.… [Hamas could relate to the West Bank] somewhat in the way East Germany served West Germany as a monument to everything that was wrong with communism. This leads the official to his second remarkable comment, after I ask whether Israel deliberately chose not to kill Ismail Haniyeh, the elected Palestinian prime minister and Hamas’s political leader in Gaza. “Israel tried to target people from the security apparatus and military wing,” he answers. “At this moment, we prefer that the less-radical wing will take over.”… Palestinians, he says, no longer look to Hamas as the party of clean and competent government. Instead, they see a group whose leaders needlessly provoked a ruinous war they didn’t have the courage to fight themselves. No wonder the third intifada in the West Bank, on which Hamas had counted, never materialized. Elsewhere, Hamas’s former patrons in the Arab world have split with the group ever since it became a client of Tehran. A dozen Arab states, along with the Palestinian Authority, boycotted an emergency summit of the Arab League, which had been intended as a show of support for Hamas supremo Khaled Mashal. Then there is Egypt. For years, it took an ambivalent view of Hamas: partly worried by the threat it poses to its own secular regime, partly delighted by the trouble it causes Israel. Now the Mubarak government at last understands that Hamas is also a strategic threat to Egypt. “An Iranian base can play against Egypt the same way it played against Israel,” says the official.… Now the Israeli government is prepared to believe that the Egyptians will finally clamp down on the smuggling. Israel might even allow Egypt to deploy its army in greater force in the Sinai, despite the provisions against it in the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. Finally there is Iran. “They have drawn a lesson,” says the official. “Once again, they saw that Israel has a good air force and good intelligence, and that the combination of the two can be deadly. Unlike in 2006, they saw a well-trained ground force. They found that asymmetrical warfare does not always play for them; that we can use asymmetrical approaches to overpower an asymmetrical threat.” All this, of course, could be overturned the moment Iran goes nuclear and attempts to thwart Israel’s freedom of action.… Bottom line: Israel has scored an impressive tactical victory. But it has missed the strategic opportunity to rid itself of the menace on its doorstep. In the Middle East, opportunities don’t always knock twice. PRELIMINARY
ASSESSMENT OF ISRAEL’S OPERATION CAST LEAD On January 18, Israel announced its military withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, following the three-week offensive Operation Cast Lead. Although no definitive judgments can be made at this point… Israel has made several tangible gains during the Gaza campaign in contrast to the inconclusive outcome of the 2006 war with Hizballah. One thing is clear: Israel has sharply degraded Hamas’s ability to fire rockets at Israeli cities. At the start of the war, Hamas was able to fire up to eighty rockets per day, but by the end, that number dropped to no more than twenty. In contrast, during the 2006 war, Hizballah was able to fire more than 150 rockets per day throughout. In addition, some of the tunnels that Palestinian groups use to smuggle rockets were destroyed. Overall, the Israeli army was much better prepared for this conflict on nearly every level—planning, training, equipment, and force readiness—than it was in 2006. In particular, reserve units were carefully deployed and only committed after a period of training. Israel sustained far fewer fatalities and injuries than it did in 2006. Arab casualties likewise were lower in Gaza than in Lebanon, but were still considerable. Much of this decrease in casualties resulted from Hamas’s inability to offer serious opposition on the ground—a fact that will make it difficult for the organization to credibly claim that it defended Gaza, let alone scored a victory.… Although many thought Israel’s deterrence was eroded in the 2006 war, Israeli officials state that it was restored after the current fighting with Hamas. In fact, Hizballah’s absence during the Gaza campaign can be seen as an indicator of this renewed deterrence. Another Israeli achievement is a fresh international focus on the tunnel network between the Egyptian Sinai and Gaza. The issue of border security has become increasingly important for Israel, and since the network is crucial to Hamas’s ability to rearm, this renewed focus is critical.… In 2006, UN Security Resolution 1701 addressed the issue of arms smuggling by calling for an embargo on weapons to Lebanese militias; the provision, however, has never been enforced.… This time, in contrast, a practical means of interdicting the rockets—instead of another UN resolution—has been the focus. Last week, the United States and Israel signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that authorizes U.S. assistance to Egypt to halt the flow of arms. Last weekend, European leaders offered their support to the interdiction effort as well. This international assistance could potentially involve U.S. Navy and NATO elements to help police international waters…. The Obama administration must follow up, work with allies, and make sure that verbal commitments to stop arms smuggling are transformed into reality. For Egypt, the stakes are high. The Gaza conflict sobered Egypt to the implications of an Islamist-ruled entity on its eastern border, armed with sophisticated weaponry. The hope is that Cairo will now take steps to prevent Hamas from rearming—rather than casting a blind eye to the smuggling…. If the current effort fails, the Egypt-Gaza border will assuredly become a flashpoint, triggering another Israeli intervention.… Another significant difference between 2009 and 2006 was the ability of moderate Arab regimes to maintain their antagonism for Hamas. To be sure, Arab enmity toward Israel rose sharply as pictures of Palestinian casualties filled Arab satellite television programs, putting pressure on the Arab regimes to support Hamas. Some key Arab leaders, however, seemed to withstand these public demands. For example, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak withstood protests throughout the Arab world, and refused to give in to Hamas’s demand to open the Rafah crossing. In addition, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia boycotted an Arab conference in Qatar, which they deemed too supportive of Hamas. An additional success is the broad support, even from Hamas, for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA) to return—after their violent expulsion by Hamas in June 2007—to operate the crossing points in southern Gaza. Furthermore, in a major policy change, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert indicated clearly to visiting European leaders that his country does not oppose reconstruction of Gaza—so long as it does not bolster Hamas.… Some critics say the Israeli offensive was not successful because Hamas remains in power in Gaza. The Israeli government, however, clearly indicated from the outset that this was not an objective of the campaign. This stance contrasts with Israel’s contention in 2006 that it would deal Hizballah a blow from which it would not recover.… (David Makovsky is a senior
fellow and director of The Washington AFTER
OSLO, A WAY FORWARD When it comes to America’s foreign policy and diplomacy, the significance of the Gaza conflict is clear. The disintegration of Hamas-run Gaza represents the final step in the demise of the Oslo two-state paradigm. On the question of what role the United States should play moving forward, the path is also clear, but it will require the new administration, and the foreign policy establishment, to shed its fixation with the stagnant two-state model and work toward a regional solution that would lead to a more promising and secure future for Palestinians and Israelis. The background to the current fighting illustrates the failure of the Oslo paradigm. Founded to destroy the entire State of Israel through “a great and serious struggle against the Jews,” Hamas has implemented its goals through a policy of wholesale slaughter of innocent Israeli civilians. In 2001, Hamas began launching rockets into southern Israel, only seven months after former prime minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a state on 98 percent of the land sought by Palestinians for that purpose. Rather than pacifying the Palestinians, Israel’s territorial overtures sparked a second intifada led by the Palestinian Authority itself, killing and wounding thousands of innocent people. Nonetheless, Israel pushed ahead with the two-state formula, seeking to alleviate conditions that Palestinians were using to justify their violence. In 2005, Israel fully evacuated its military presence in Gaza, and forcibly removed all Jewish presence from there as well. But the gesture backfired again, driving more Palestinians into the ranks of radical groups like Hamas, culminating with Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2006, after it easily brushed aside the feckless Fatah forces under Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.… No doubt, President-elect Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers are in the midst of evaluating US Middle East policy and planning for the new administration. The key question for the president will be whether to resuscitate the two-state proposal and ask Israel to entrust more land in the hands of the PA. His conclusion should be the same as that of a trauma doctor facing a painful reality: that after administering many defibrillations—Wye River, Camp David II, the road map and Annapolis—the two-state plan, based on land for peace, has flat-lined.… However, the failure of the two-state plan does not leave the new president without options. Doing away with a plan that has crumbled away over 15 years opens a rare opportunity for Middle East experts and diplomats to get back to the fundamental question of how best to fulfill Palestinians’ political and economic aspirations while improving security for Israel. At a moment of uncertainty in the Middle East, as well as one of transition in American politics, we should be encouraging creative thinking in foreign policy rather than continuing to resurrect a stagnant proposal. One important idea that merits attention is to shift our policy to one that expects, perhaps even requires, both Jordanian and Egyptian participation in shaping the future of the territories they border. Doing so would inject a new sense of trust and responsibility among all the stakeholders of this conflict. It would also stimulate discussion of more viable political arrangements, such as Palestinian federation or confederation.… Why would Jordan and Egypt get involved? First, both countries have grave interests at stake in the future of the West Bank and Gaza, most significantly to halt the spread of Iranian-backed extremism in their backyards.… [T]o the extent that Egypt and Jordan can provide security guarantees where the Palestinians cannot, the process would provide reassurance to otherwise skeptical Israeli security officials. As such, increased Jordanian and Egyptian roles and responsibilities in the territories should be made a key component of our Middle East policy. Opponents of this idea argue that the regional approach denies Palestinians the right to self-determination. Not so. Polling indicates that a growing number of Palestinians—including several high-ranking PA officials—support the idea of confederation over independence. This makes sense if one considers that the only accomplishment of the PA has been an increase in poverty, violence, corruption and despair.… In truth, the obstacle to pursuing such a plan comes not from the Palestinians, the Egyptians or the Jordanians, but from our own foreign policy establishment…. But the cause of peace requires an honest assessment of what has worked and what has not. The time has come to cut our losses on a failed experiment and pursue regional solutions that will lead to peace and prosperity in a troubled region. (Sam Brownback is a Republican US senator from Kansas.) THE
BATTLE OF GAZA What took place in Gaza and Israel over the past three weeks was not a war—it was one battle in a war. Or, to be more precise, it was one battle in what the soldier/scholar John Nagl has described as a “global insurgency” aimed at overthrowing the existing order, what we used to call—in a more confident era—the Free World. “Yes, Allah is greater than America.” Hamas supreme leader Khaled Mashaal said on al-Jazeera television a few years ago. “Allah is greater than the superpowers. We say to this West: By Allah you will be defeated.” Too many people refuse to understand: Hamas is not fighting for a Palestinian state. Hamas is fighting for the annihilation of Israel which it would replace with an Islamic emirate. Not the same thing at all. Hamas takes inspiration, funding, and instructions from the ruling mullahs of Iran, heirs to the Iranian Revolution that erupted 30 years ago next month when the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France and established his theocratic regime. In the years since, Syria has become Iran’s client; Hezbollah, based in Lebanon but with terrorist branches as far flung as South America, its proxy.… [But i]n Arab and Muslim capitals, it did not go unnoticed that, as Hamas was being pounded by Israel, Iran did nothing to help. Nor was Hezbollah willing to open a second front on Israel’s northern border. But as soon as a cease-fire was declared, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spun into action—by spinning: According to official Iranian press reports, he called Mashaal—who resides in Damascus rather than Gaza—and told him: “Today is the beginning of victory!”… The European Union has warned that while humanitarian aid will be forthcoming, Gazans should not expect reconstruction assistance if Hamas continues to provoke new battles. “We don’t want to go on to reconstruct Gaza every I-don’t-know-how-many-years,” said EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. “We have been at the side of the Palestinian population always and we will be at their side, but at the same time it’s also for the Palestinian population on both sides to say, ‘We want this peace.’ “ That’s a taller order than she probably understands. Prior to this battle, it was not clear that most Palestinians wanted peace more than they wanted Israel’s extinction. It’s too soon to say whether their minds have been changed by the suffering they have endured. Even if that is the case, it would be unsafe for Gazans to say out loud that they’d prefer compromise in pursuit of coexistence to martyrdom in pursuit of victory.… Over the days ahead, Hamas may resume its attacks on Israel, or dig new tunnels to smuggle in new missiles to prepare for future attacks. If so, Israel may feel the need to respond strongly… [Meanwhile] Iran will continue its drive to acquire nuclear weapons, a potential game-changer. But this is no game. It’s a series of battles in a war that is likely to be as consequential as any in history. (Clifford D. May is the president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.) Please see our Picks of the Week for Asher Susser’s discussion of the long-term existential issues at stake in Gaza, Shimon Shapira’s analysis of how to block Iran during Gaza’s rehabilitation, and an interview with Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland about Egypt’s cooperation in halting Hamas’ arms smuggling.
BUCHAREST KRISTALLNACHT:
JANUARY 21-23, 1941 In loving memory of Malca z”l
The painful events of January 1941, at the hands of the Romanian Nazi regime, the ‘Legionaries,’ signalled the beginning of the Romanian Jewish Holocaust. I was 21 years old. I was there. I am a witness to the Bucharest Kristallnacht. Five historians describe the infamous days of January 21-23, 1941 as follows: NORA LEVIN: “The violence has been described by eyewitnesses as an unspeakable butchery. Iron Guardists stormed into the Jewish quarter in Bucharest, burning synagogues and demolishing homes and stores. For miles around the city, bodies were found without clothes and without teeth. In the morgue, bodies were so cut up they were no longer recognizable as human. IN the municipal slaughterhouse [where on January 25th I went to search for my missing father—BC], bodies were observed hanging like carcasses of cattle.”—The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945. Thomas Y. Crowell Company N.Y. 1968, pp 566-567. MATATIAS CARP: “The fascist terror and persecution exerted on the Jewish communities within the bounds of Romania were as violent and destructive as they were in other countries of Nazi domination and influence. Romanian fascism had its own ‘original’ methods in order to exterminate ‘their’ Jews. In three days—January 21-23, 1941, one hundred and thirty Jews were brutally killed.”—The Black Book: Cartea Neagra. Diogene Publishing, Bucharest 1946, reprinted 1996, p. 263. LUCY S. DAWIDOWICZ: “In January 1941, a massacre took place in Bucharest, in which about 170 Jews were murdered in an especially abhorrent manner.”—The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, N.Y. 1975, p. 385. I.C. BUTNARU: “For a period of more than seventy-two hours the Jewish districts were at the mercy of the masses. During this interval, several thousand Jews were hauled out of their houses, arrested in the streets, houses of prayer, stores, places of work and transferred to legionary headquarters, police precinct houses, or even to some synagogues, for example the Malbim Synagogue, which had been occupied and converted into a torture center….The Jewish districts in Bucharest were left for a period of three days and three nights at the mercy of the vilest and most barbarian fascist elements, which had been educated, incited and trained for years for that ‘great’ hour!”—The Silent Holocaust: Romania and its Jews. Greenwood Press, New York, 1992, pp. 82-83. RADU IOANID: “Most of the
murders during the three days took place in Jilava Forest, the rest
at the slaughterhouse at the intersection of the roads of Fundeni and
Pantelimon, in Bucharest’s Noi district. On January 21, the ‘Legionaries’
gathered about two hundred Jews into the basement of their headquarters.
The fascists did not forget to take all of the victims’ valuables
before they set upon the Jews. They drove the Jews in the basement up
to the attic under the rain of blows. Prisoners were finally made to
drink from their basin in which Rabbi Gutman had been permitted to wash
the blood from his head. * * * * * On October 22-23, 2008 at the Giurgiului Bucharest Jewish Cemetery, a symbolic pogrom took place, indicating that in today’s Romania, anti-Semitism, hooliganism and fascism are as present as they always have been. One hundred and thirty three graves were destroyed. The Romanian authorities discovered the perpetrators of this crime: children of the ages of twelve to thirteen. Since no disciplinary measures could supposedly be taken against children, case closed: this is today’s Romania, whose Jewish population numbers some 6,000 elderly people, out of a former Jewish population of 900,000 prior to the Second World War. BEHIND THE HUMANITARIAN
MASK IN SCANDINAVIA Last week CNN aired a heartrending videotape of a “dying” Palestinian child receiving “CPR,” ostensibly one more Gazan victim of Israel’s inhumanity. It was quickly blogged on by alert medical professionals as an obvious hoax. The “war crime” was a stunt engineered or abetted by a Norwegian doctor, Mads Gilbert, who was filmed narrating the bogus scenario for the videographer, supposedly the “victim’s” brother, but in fact the owner of a Hamas-supportive Web site. Gilbert is not your average do-gooder medic. A radical Marxist member of the Norwegian Maoist Party, he has supported terrorism against Israel for decades. Emblematic of a larger problem, Gilbert’s activism is funded by the Norwegian Aid Committee, in its turn funded by the Norwegian government. Scandinavia is so outwardly peaceful, internal political attitudes there are rarely critically scrutinized. Countries like Sweden, Denmark and Norway are reflexive bywords for humanitarian compassion. In reality, all of the Scandinavian countries revel in an invented moral superiority that ignores entrenched anti-Semitism. Long active before the Second World War, then briefly subdued by the Holocaust, Scandinavian anti-Semitism reappeared in the 1970s, wearing the humanitarian mask of sympathy for the victims of “Nazi” Zionism. That Scandinavian anti-Zionism is just old-fashioned Jew hatred in disguise is made painfully clear throughout the collected essays in a just-published book, Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel and the Jews, edited by Manfred Gerstenfeld. As a cascade of irrefutable data demonstrates in these pages, none of the Scandinavian countries has properly confronted its history of anti-Semitism, or its complicity with Jewish genocide during the Holocaust. Sweden and Norway refuse to prosecute Nazi war criminals. Other insalubrious Holocaust-related facts emerge for the first time in this book from reluctantly opened archives. Norway is particularly problematic. In spite of its paucity of Jews—barely 1,300—Norwegians’ anti-Semitism is deeply embedded in their history. Norway’s ban on the kosher slaughtering of animals, for example, was introduced even before Hitler’s. The rationale for the ban—humanitarianism—doesn’t jibe with the fact that Norway permits whaling with agony-causing harpoons, or with the fact that Norway accommodates halal slaughter strictures (similar to kosher) for Muslims. Never acknowledging Hamas and Hezbollah’s exterminationist motivation, both Norway’s politicians and cultural elites project virulent anti-Zionism. Norwegian unions remain the world’s most relentless Israeli trade and academic boycott obsessives. Although ranked amongst the leading countries for press freedom, the Nordic media are notable for their bias against Israel. Norwegian journalists deliberately dumb down Middle East complexity to a fairy tale of Evil Powerful Israel vs. Innocent Helpless Palestine. Worse are cartoons in the Norwegian press that rival pre-war Nazi propaganda. Popular cartoonist Finn Graff specializes in them, for example depicting Israeli Prime Minister Olmert as a sadistic Nazi commandant. Yet he was awarded Norway’s equivalent of the Order of Canada because he is an “inspiration” to other illustrators. Two years ago Norwegian “comedian” Otto Jespersen tore pages from the Jewish Bible and burned them on TV. This past Nov. 27, he “joked” on camera: “I would like to take this opportunity to remember all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background.” Jespersen defended his “satire” on the grounds that “people oppose the apartheid-state Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.” The station supported him. And so, apparently, did the Norwegian population, for he is still welcome in their living rooms. Mere criticism of Israeli policy? Please. Behind the Humanitarian Mask is important scholarship. Sadly, I have but scratched the surface of the many dispiriting revelations in the book. We learn that, amongst other ironies, Norway’s number one ranking amongst 121 countries on the Global Peace Index can co-exist in hypocritical harmony with the “civilized” world’s oldest, but still permissible hatred. NORWAY—A
PARADIGM FOR ANTI-SEMITISM ‘I would like to take the opportunity to remember all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background.” This is what Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen said on Thursday 27 November on the country’s largest commercial TV station. Much worse, however, is that the director of the station defended this expression of “satire.” A week later Jespersen, in his weekly TV appearance, gave a “satiric” monologue of mixed anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli remarks. He concluded by wishing the Jews a happy Christmas. But then as an afterthought, he said this was not proper as the Jews had murdered Jesus. Two years ago the same comedian burned pages from the Tanach in front of a TV camera, but this was no reason to terminate his employment. Jespersen explained that he wouldn’t burn the Koran if he wanted to live longer than a week. Last week, on four consecutive days, there were anti-Israeli articles in Norway’s second-largest daily Aftenposten.… Two years ago the conservative Aftenposten got international attention when it published an op-ed by Jostein Gaarder which until this day remains the vilest anti-Semitic article published in a European mainstream paper since the Second World War. Whoever wants to understand how Jews might live in a future democratic Europe if no major counter-forces are mobilized should study Norway. Among parts of the elite there, Jew-hatred and rabid anti-Israelism intermingle. The country’s population numbers only 4.6 million. The Jewish population, even before the war, was never more than 2,000. It now numbers 1,300, of which only 700 affiliate with the organized community. Yet Norway must figure prominently in any future history of post-war European anti-Semitism.… Norway has a long history of anti-Semitism. In 1929 a great majority of its parliament voted to forbid shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter)—several years before Hitler’s Germany did so. It is still forbidden, although hunters, including government ministers, can legally kill animals in as cruel a manner as they want. Last year Norway aimed to kill 1,000 whales, but succeeded in finding only 500. If all needs for kosher beef were met by local shechita,it would require at most several tens of cows annually. During the war, the Norwegians were the ones who rounded up Jews and robbed them before shipping them off to Auschwitz. After the war, emergency help was given to what the Norwegians called the two “hardest-hit groups”—fishermen and residents of the northern part of the country. The Jews, however, were robbed further by the Norwegian democrats. During the restitution process, they had to pay for the administration of those of their assets recovered from the looters. About 10 years ago a senior Norwegian Nazi official proudly told a Jewish visitor that he had no regrets, and still had paintings and furniture taken from Jews. In the new round of restitution in the mid-1990s, several authorities did their utmost to avoid paying. Berit Reisel, the only Jewish member of the commission of inquiry, states that she was threatened by chairman Oluf Skarpnes, a former Justice Minister. He told her that if she didn’t go along with his proposed report, it would cost her dearly as far as her life and health were concerned. Reisel added that a few days later she was attacked on a street in Oslo. After the beginning of the second intifada, several Jewish children were harassed in school. The aggression was supported by teachers on several occasions.… Norwegian hate cartoons often mix anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. Some are straight-out anti-Semitic, such as one which appeared in the Labor movement daily Dagsavisen in 2003. It portrayed a Jew with a long beard reading the new Ten Commandments, including “murder, kill, liquidate, execute.” During the Second Lebanon War, anti-Semitic incidents in Oslo were the most severe in Europe.… Anti-Israelism has been built up systematically in Norway by trade unions, media, some prominent Christians and politicians [and] NGO Monitor has analyzed how significant governmental development aid reaches NGOs engaged in political campaigning against Israel and in support of extreme Palestinian demands. The good the Norwegian government does, including subsidizing the rebuilding of synagogues in Poland, cannot be offset against the infrastructure of hatred it supports. (Manfred Gerstenfeld’s most recent book,
Behind the Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, VIENNA, VIENNA ‘Remember,” says the reporter as we walk down a busy, beautiful street in Vienna, “this is the city of both Herzl and Hitler.” To underline the point, at that moment we are walking down Karl Lueger Strasse, named after the city’s famous anti-Semitic mayor. The fact that Lueger’s anti-Jewish positions were largely cynical populism and that he had Jewish friends tells something about the spirit of Vienna. But one also remembers what the Viennese Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg asked: What would anti-Semitism lead to if not to violence? Now, 70 years after Germany annexed Austria into the Third Reich, the country has assembled its new government coalition after elections in which almost 30 percent of the population voted for extreme right-wing parties that combine anti-immigrant and anti-Jewish sentiments. But that’s not the biggest bad news. The truly startling development is that almost half of first-time young voters supported the radical right Freedom Party and the split-off party of [recently decease] Jorg Haider. Some genuinely favor far-right policies; others are trying to provoke their parents’ generation. Yet the fact remains that only in Austria of all European countries has an extreme right-wing party become a major factor. Just elected to be the third president of parliament, and thus the fourth most powerful person in government, is Michael Graf of the Freedom Party. Graf has a neo-Nazi background, having participated in uniformed war games, and is a member of the pan-German Olympia group which, for example, invited an anti-Semitic pop star whose lyrics include the line: With 6 million dead the fun begins.… But once Austria became a tiny country with no empire after 1918, contending left and right political forces tore it apart between the wars. By 1934, Austria became a neo-fascist dictatorship whose regime opposed the German Nazis’ efforts to annex it on nationalist grounds. Becoming part of the big German state, however, suited many Austrians, who already backed a political philosophy similar to their neighbors.… The resistance, though heroic, was small. But for geopolitical reasons, during the war the Allies deemed Austria not to have been an enemy but merely the “first victim of fascism.” This was, and is, the critical combination; Austria in a sense became the only country whose own fascist tradition was exonerated. Even today, unlike any other country in Europe, the extreme right remains relatively unstigmatized. There are even many elements in the powerful Social Democratic Party ready to deal with politicians little removed from being neo-Nazis.… The problem is intensified by the fact that while the right is anti-Jewish, much of the left is anti-Israel with anti-Jewish tinges. While the Green Party has broken somewhat with this tradition, it remains a powerful factor in the nation’s political and intellectual life. Does tiny Austria matter in the international balance? Well, yes, in some ways it does. Austria is one of the few European countries openly opposing sanctions on Iran. And the country is about to hold a seat on the UN Security Council. Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik has said the emphasis must be on dialogue with Teheran. The main point of discussion, however, has not been Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, anti-Semitic statements, backing for terrorism or human rights record but rather a major oil and gas deal. The state company signing the agreement is 30 percent owned by the government and headed by a former top Social Democratic politician and state official. The problem, then, is that Austrian political culture has a sense of self-justification. Other European countries have been inoculated against fascism and anti-Semitism by history, whether seriously or partly. Austria feels itself immune from these diseases.… (Barry Rubin is director of Global Research in International
Affairs Center AUSTRIA: REMEMBRANCE
WITHOUT REMEMBERING For Austria as well as Israel, 2008 is a year of commemoration: here of the Anschluss 70 years ago, there the founding of the state 60 years ago. But almost nobody in this country seems interested that these events are linked. In particular the refusal on the part of almost all of Austria’s important politicians to acknowledge the extent of the current Iranian threat to Israel and to act accordingly, beyond lip service, amounts to a disgrace. It is not surprising that the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), the inheritor of German-born racial anti-Semitism, regards Israel’s enemies as its friends. Recently, one could read in the academic magazine Die Aula, which is close to the FPÖ, that “Israel and the lobbies supporting it” were “doing everything they could to embroil us in World War III.” Iran should, even must, accelerate nuclear armament, it writes, so that “the Israelis would become aware of the clear possibility of their own annihilation,” thereby making it possible for others to blackmail them. Seventy years after the Anschluss pogrom… it is possible to speculate openly in Austria about the annihilation of Jewish women and men.… The recent election of the right-wing extremist Martin Graf as the third president of the Austrian parliament by 109 members of parliament (out of a total of 183), again highlights Austria’s problematic relation with its past. FPÖ-member Graf refuses to talk about Jews murdered in the Nazi gas chambers. Confronted with criticism from Israel, party colleague Harald Stefan announced that he will open a bottle of champagne if the Israeli ambassador to Austria leaves the country.… At the EU level, Austria is one of the few states working to prevent further sanctions being applied against Iran. Its trade with Iran—such as the planned billion dollar deal of the partially state-owned gas company OMV—is flourishing. How can anyone expect Austria to use its non-permanent seat in the UN security council to expand sanctions on Iran? That the Austrian government is willing to engage its 30% share of OMV with a country out to destroy Israel speaks louder than any diplomatic double-speak.… Nothing about this fundamental separation—between mellifluous avowal of solidarity with the victims of anti-Semitism on the one hand, and diametrically opposite activities on the other—is going to change.… (Simone Dinah Hartmann is spokesperson of STOP THE
BOMB Austria and co-editor of the book
Volume
IX, No. 2,011 • Thursday
LIVING NEXT DOOR
TO A SERIAL KILLER Having Hamas as a neighbor is like living next door to a serial killer who abuses his children and threatens to kill them if you go in after him. You can defend yourself, but if the police won’t arrest him, the only choices left are to build a wall around him, stop him from getting weapons, and send in food. This is Israel’s dilemma. The world demands peace but isn’t prepared to do too much to help. The West’s basic stand is to keep Hamas ruling Gaza, comparable to ensuring continued Taliban rule in Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks. Thanks to such international “support,” Gaza’s people will be able to “enjoy” a dictatorial regime dedicated to spending the next century fighting—and losing—wars. Remember that the Hamas regime was not elected as such. Yes, it won an election but then seized total power in a bloody coup against the PA. Now it imposes a radical Islamist regime on its unfortunate subjects. Hamas has no policy for creating jobs or raising living standards. Its educational system doesn’t teach useful skills or civic virtues but indoctrinates children with the ambition to become suicide bombers. So the world should consider: Is this the kind of regime you want to save and succor? Do you want to keep Hamas in power when even most Arab states would like to see it fall? Why talk about a peace process while following a policy ensuring no peace process can succeed? Understand that Hamas believes the deity insists on its victory. It doesn’t matter how long it takes or how many die. Its educational policy isn’t aimed at training productive citizens but rather future suicide bombers, Well, it looks like the West is going to make that mistake, the PA itself isn’t going to help provide an alternative government, and Israel can’t solve this problem by itself. So the next best thing is a cease-fire that works for a while. What is the basis for such a plan, which recognizes the fact that Israel won the war and that Hamas wants to restart it again? First, Hamas must perceive itself beaten no matter what it says publicly. This doesn’t mean it will give up but does mean it will be slower to launch attacks in the future. Second, Palestinians must perceive that Hamas was beaten so that they follow a more productive path of moderation and diplomacy. Third, the Arabic-speaking world—or as much of it as possible—must perceive Hamas as beaten so that Arab states are encouraged in their battle against radical Islamism, Iran and Syria, while the flow of recruits to extremist movements declines. Fourth, Hamas must perceive itself as isolated. If it knows that cross-border terror attacks, firing rockets at civilians and cynically using its own people as human shields brings international sympathy and political profits, these tactics will be used again and be imitated by others elsewhere. All of these are realizable goals. The West can help by giving Hamas no recognition, no support and no help. A terrorist, genocidal movement which oppresses its own people and uses them as human shields should not be rewarded. That should be obvious. What about the actual terms? Among the key provisions are these: A seriously effective regime of inspection and blocking smuggling must be put into place on the Egypt-Gaza border. This means Egyptian forces helped by a force which will really act to block tunnels and stop arms from coming in, not just sit and watch the contraband go by. If more weapons get in, that will bring another war. Israel has the right to maintain sanctions, which means that while humanitarian and necessary goods for Gaza’s society it can keep out items that have military applications. Aid money to rebuild in Gaza and sustain Palestinian society must be kept out of Hamas’s hands. Not only would Hamas use such funds for military purposes, it would also steal them from being used for real relief. For example, Hamas cries there is not enough fuel, but that is because it diverts gasoline from civilian purposes for its own use. Gilad Schalit, a hostage seized by Hamas in a cross-border raid, should be released unconditionally. It is bad enough to reward terrorists for their crimes; it is ridiculous to do so after they have been thoroughly defeated after launching an aggressive war. Finally, we should remember the aims of the two sides. Israel’s goal is very modest: security for its citizens, no cross-border attacks. Hamas’s goal is the destruction of Israel, wiping out its citizens, revolution throughout the Middle East, treating women as chattel and the creation of what it considers to be Allah’s government on earth. Knowing that, you can decide which side to support. (Barry Rubin is director
of the Global Research in International Affairs Center at the Interdisciplinary
SIMPLE QUESTIONS
FOR A COMPLEX SITUATION The Israeli-Hamas conflict, with its evocative images of human suffering, has engaged the hearts and minds of people the world over. Indeed, the death of any innocent—Israeli or Palestinian—is a tragedy, and no one can fail to be moved by the human suffering and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But the immediate cessation of violence that was declared over the weekend—and that has so far held—may not endure. If we want to prevent further tragedies, it is important to go beyond the “fog of war”—to go behind the daily headlines that cloud understanding and the cliches (the “cycle of violence”) that corrupt it—and ask some fundamental questions about the root causes of this war and the basis for its resolution. 1. Do you agree that Israel, like any other state, has the right to live in peace and security, free from any threats or acts of force? 2. Are you aware that Hamas has launched over 8,000 missiles, rockets and mortars from behind civilian areas, deliberately targeting and terrorizing the Israeli civilian population these last three years, constituting an armed attack prohibited by the UN Charter? Are you aware that despite a six-month truce, Hamas launched close to 3,000 armed attacks in 2008 alone? 3. Do you agree that Israel—like any other state—has an obligation to protect its citizens, and a right to self-defence against armed attack as set forth in Article 51 of the UN Charter? As then-U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice put it to the UN Security Council, echoing the words of both U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “The situation before the current events in Gaza was clearly not sustainable. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis lived under the daily threat of rocket attack, and frankly, no country, none of our countries, would have been willing to tolerate such a circumstance.” 4. Do you agree that Israel’s exercise of self-defence must comport with the principles of international humanitarian law, including the principle of proportionality and the prohibition against the infliction of unnecessary suffering? 5. Do you agree that Palestinians in Gaza have the same right as Israelis to live in peace and security? Are you aware of the domestic repression by Hamas of Palestinian rights in Gaza, including converting the civilian infrastructure to a weapons depot and exploiting the civilian population as human shields, as is now being observed even in the Arab press? 6. Do you agree that the ceasefire must be durable and sustaining to protect the peace and security of both Israelis and Palestinians? If so, then let us look deeper at what this conflict is truly about. 7. Are you aware that the border crossings—between Egypt and Gaza, and between Gaza and Israel—have been used to smuggle terrorists, weapons, munitions and contraband, when they should be open instead for the movement of people and trade, as set forth in the 2005 Israeli-Palestinian Agreement on Movement and Access? 8. Are you aware that Hamas is designated a terrorist entity by Canada, the United States and the European Union, and that UN Security Council resolutions require Palestinian governing authorities to deny safe havens to terrorists? 9. Are you aware that the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they might be? 10. Are you aware that this genocidal ideology is shared not only by Hamas but also by Iran and its proxy immediately north of Israel, Hezbollah. Did you know that Iran is training, financing, supplying and instigating terrorist action by Hamas and Hezbollah to carry out this existential threat to Israel? 11. Are you aware that Hamas—not only during the present hostilities, but before them, too—has propagated a state-sanctioned culture of hate, in the mosques, in the schools, in the broadcasting system and in the summer camps and training camps, which teaches that Jews are inherently evil, a cancer, responsible for all the evils of the world, the sons of apes and pigs and the defilers of Islam? 12. Do you agree that such statements promote hatred and contempt for Jews, and constitute an obstacle to peace? The next generation of Palestinians must be one that is capable of keeping the peace with Israel. It is in the interests of neither Israelis nor Palestinians themselves to perpetuate this false “conflict of civilizations”—and yet perpetual conflict is exactly what Hamas, by its own acknowledgment, wants, until Israel’s demise. So then, a final question: 13. Do you agree that a comprehensive and enduring ceasefire must include: the reaffirmation—as a bottom-line commitment, as President Obama has put it—of Israel’s right to live in peace; the cessation of all acts of terror and violence against Israeli civilians, the casus belli of these hostilities; the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza; the establishment of an international protection and stabilization force to enforce the ceasefire and protect against smuggling and the manufacture of weapons; the deployment of a massive humanitarian undertaking to ensure assistance reaches those in need; the opening of border crossings; the initiation of a comprehensive program for the reconstruction of Gaza and the rehabilitation of its citizens; and the freeing of Palestinian society from the cynical and oppressive culture of hate and incitement fuelled by Hamas? I close on a personal note. I write not only as a law professor and MP, but as one who has family in Israel and friends in Palestine, and who has lived and worked in the region and been engaged in the struggle for peace for more than 35 years. The overriding truth of these past 35 years for me has always been clear and remains the same. I will stand with those who support the right of peoples in the Middle East—Israelis and Palestinians alike—to live in peace and security, free from any threats or acts of force, a cornerstone of UN principle and Canadian foreign policy; and I will oppose all those, like Hamas and its patron Iran, who seek the destruction of any people or state in violation of the UN Charter and all civilized norms. (Irwin Cotler, a professor of law, is the MP for Mount Royal and Canada’s Opposition Critic for Human Rights.) OFFICIALS DENY
REPORT THAT NO MORE THAN 600 DIED IN GAZA Despite a report by Lorenzo Cremonesi, a correspondent for Italy’s Corriere della sera, that the number of Palestinians killed in Operation Cast Lead did not exceed five or six hundred, Israeli defense officials on Thursday said there were around 1,300 Palestinians killed during the fighting in Gaza and that a majority of them were Hamas operatives. The IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration has already compiled a list with 900 names of Palestinians killed during the operation, out of which 750 are believed to be Hamas operatives. The IDF estimated that two-thirds of those killed were gunmen affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian terror factions. At least 500 are believed to have been members of Hamas’s military wing…. In addition to reporting that no more than 500 or 600 Palestinians were killed in Gaza during the IDF operation, Cremonesi, who based his report on tours of hospitals in the Gaza Strip and on interviews with families of casualties, assessed the number of wounded to be far lower than 5,000, the number quoted by Hamas and repeated by the UN and the Red Cross in Gaza. “It is sufficient to visit several hospitals [in the Gaza Strip] to understand that the numbers don’t add up,” he wrote. In the European hospital in Rafah, one of the facilities which would presumably be filled with wounded from the “war of the tunnels,” many beds were empty, according to Cremonesi. A similar situation was noted in the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, and in the privately-run Amal Hospital Cremonesi reported that only five out 150 beds were occupied. Cremonesi interviewed Gazans who echoed Israel’s insistence of how Hamas gunmen used civilians as human shields. One Gazan recalled civilians in Gaza shouting at Hamas and Islamic Jihad men, “Go away, go away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill us all? Do you want our children to die under their bombs? Take your guns and missiles with you.” “Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?” the religious fanatics of Hamas reportedly responded. Other Palestinians told Cremonesi of Hamas operatives donning paramedic uniforms and commandeering ambulances. A woman identified as Um Abdullah, 48, spoke of Hamas using UN buildings as launch pads for rockets. Cremonesi reported that he had difficultly gathering evidence as the local population was terrified of Hamas. Please see our Picks of the Week for Gil Troy’s discussion of “Israel’s democratic resilience” and British Col. Richard Kemp’s analysis of the challenges the IDF were facing in Gaza. Volume
IX, No. 2,010 • Wednesday
ISRAEL HOLDS ITS
FIRE Citizens of Israel, Exactly three weeks ago as the Sabbath ended, we sat here before you—my friend Ehud Barak, the Vice Prime Minister Tzipi Livni and myself—and detailed the considerations and goals which guided us in launching a military operation in the Gaza Strip. Today, we face you again and can say that the conditions have been created so that our targets, as defined when we launched the operation, have been fully achieved, and more so: • Hamas was badly stricken, both in terms of its military capabilities and in the infrastructure of its regime. Its leaders are in hiding. Many of its members have been killed. The factories in which its missiles were manufactured have been destroyed. The smuggling routes, through dozens of tunnels, have been bombed. The Hamas’s capabilities for conveying weapons within the Gaza Strip have been damaged. The scope of missile fire directed at the State of Israel has been reduced. The areas from which most of the missiles were launched are under the control of IDF forces. The estimate of all the security services is that the Hamas’s capabilities have been struck a heavy blow which will harm its ability to rule and its military capabilities for some time. • The IDF and the Israel Security Agency have succeeded in conducting an outstanding operation, utilizing all the elements of Israel’s force—on land, at sea and in the air. The military operation was characterized by determination, sophistication, courage and an impressive ability in intelligence and operations, which led to significant and numerous achievements. The current campaign proved again Israel’s force and strengthened its deterrence capability vis-a-vis those who threaten us. • The reserves soldiers, who are the foundation for the IDF’s strength, proved that the spirit of volunteerism and a willingness to sacrifice still very much exist. These forces were made ready in a thorough manner, equipped with all they needed and thus could demonstrate their professionalism and fierceness of spirit. • During all the days of fighting, the Israeli home front demonstrated its strength, despite hundreds of rockets and mortar shells indiscriminately fired at a population which numbers one million residents; it was the home front that created an unshakable foundation which strengthened us and gave us the ability to continue fighting. Two years of preparation on the home front proved that we learned our lessons and were properly organized. The Government and the heads of the regional local authorities under attack demonstrated the patience, endurance and that same strong spirit which allowed the political echelon to make the right decisions, knowing that the home front could withstand the consequences of those decisions. • As a decision-making body, the Government of Israel demonstrated unity with regard to goals, and acted professionally and in coordination to achieve those goals. The decisions were all made in a responsible and educated manner, following clarification and in-depth discussions. As an executive branch, the Government met the demands and needs of the population and the fighting forces. • Alongside the successes, we must also remember the fallen and those who sacrificed their lives to achieve a better reality in the South. The campaign claimed the lives of three residents of the South and ten of our soldiers. Tonight our hearts are with their families. We send our wishes for a speedy recovery to the residents of the South and to the IDF soldiers injured during the operation. • Today, and in large part due to the success of the military operation, the entire international community is ready to mobilize in order to achieve maximum stability, and knows that, for this to occur, the process of Hamas’s strengthening must stop. To this end, we reached a number of understandings—the importance of which cannot be underestimated—which will ensure that the strengthening of Hamas will decrease. We formulated understandings with the Egyptian government with regard to a number of central issues, the realization of which will bring about a significant reduction in weapons smuggling from Iran and Syria to the Gaza Strip. • On Friday we signed a memorandum of understanding with the American government, in the framework of which the United States will mobilize to take the necessary steps, together with the other members of the international community, to prevent weapons smuggling by terrorists in Gaza. I wish to thank and express my great appreciation to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice Prime Minister for her efforts to reach this agreement, for her contribution to the diplomatic steps and for the widespread diplomatic effort she made over the past several weeks, which were an important contribution to the international backing given to the Israeli effort against the terrorist organizations headed by Hamas. • Today I received a letter from the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel and the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, in which all four expressed their profound commitment to assisting in any way in order to ensure that weapons will not succeed in reaching the murderous terrorist organizations in Gaza. I have no doubt that were it not for the determined and successful military action, we would not have reached diplomatic understandings, which together create a full picture of impressive accomplishment. Citizens of Israel, The Government decided to launch the operation in Gaza only after long thought and great consideration, and only after all attempts through other means to stop the firing and other acts of terror by Hamas failed. Israel, which withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the last millimeter at the end of 2005—with no intention of returning—found itself under a barrage of missiles. Hamas violently took control of the Gaza Strip and began attacking the communities in the South more intensely. Hamas’s methods are incomprehensible. It placed its military system in crowded residential neighborhoods, operated among a civilian population which served as a human shield and operated under the aegis of mosques, schools and hospitals, while making the Palestinian population a hostage to its terrorist activities, with the understanding that Israel—as a country with supreme values—would not act. The external Hamas leadership, which lives in comfort and quiet, continued to set extremist policies while ignoring the population’s ongoing suffering and out of a conspicuous unwillingness to ease its situation. Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons. Iran, which strives for regional hegemony, tried to replicate the methods used by Hizbullah in Lebanon in the Gaza Strip as well. Iran and Hamas mistook the restraint Israel exercised as weakness. They were mistaken. They were surprised. The State of Israel has proven to them that restraint is an expression of strength which was exercised in a determined and sophisticated manner when that which we had avoided became unavoidable. During the operation, the State of Israel demonstrated great sensitivity in exercising its force in order to avoid, as much as possible, harming the civilian population not involved in terror. In cases where there was any doubt that striking at terrorists would lead to harming an innocent civilian population—we abstained from acting. There are not many countries which would act thusly. We have no disagreement with the residents of Gaza. We consider the Gaza Strip a part of the future Palestinian state with which we hope to live a life of good neighborliness, and we wish for the day when the vision of two states is realized. During the operation, we made widespread and concerted efforts to see to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population. We allowed for the transfer of equipment, food and medicine to prevent a humanitarian crisis. In addition, I appointed Minister Isaac Herzog, the Minister of Social Welfare and Social Affairs, to head up this effort, and tonight the Cabinet instructed him to invest all his efforts in preparing a comprehensive plan so that in the next few days, we will be able to provide an appropriate and comprehensive answer to the civilian population’s needs in the Gaza Strip. I wish to express my great appreciation to the international organizations which acted and continue to act tirelessly to assist us in providing the Palestinian population with appropriate living conditions. Israel will continue to cooperate with them, especially in the coming days and weeks on behalf of the Gazan population. Citizens of Israel, Today, before the Government meeting, I spoke with the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who presented Egypt’s initiative to me, along with his request for a ceasefire. I thanked the President for Egypt’s commitment to finding a solution to this crisis and for the important role it plays in the Middle East. I presented the President’s statement to the Cabinet, along with the totality of our achievements in the operation, as well as the completion of the goals. The Cabinet decided to accept my proposal to declare a ceasefire. Beginning at 2:00 a.m., Israel will cease its actions against the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and will remain deployed in the Gaza Strip and its environs. It must be remembered that Hamas is not part of the arrangements we came to. These are agreements involving many countries, and a terrorist organization like Hamas is not and need not be a part of them. If our enemies decide that the blows they have already suffered are not enough and they wish to continue fighting, Israel will be ready for that scenario and will feel free to continue responding with force. Hamas was surprised a number of times during the past several weeks. It did not predict the State of Israel’s determination or the seriousness of its intentions to bring about a change in the reality in the region. Hamas’s leaders did not believe that the State of Israel would launch a military operation on such a scale on the eve of elections; it did not predict the force of the military attack and moreover—it did not predict the outcome. Hamas still does not fully appreciate the difficult blow it received. If Hamas decides to continue its wild terrorist attacks, it may find itself surprised again by the State of Israel’s determination. I do not suggest that it or any other terrorist organization test us. This statement tonight would be incomplete if I did not mention the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. One hundred meters from here, there is a demonstration for his release, and I respect each and every one of the participants. The intensive efforts to secure Gilad’s release began long before the operation, continued during it and will continue after as well. The Government of Israel is working on many levels to bring him home, and during the operation we carried out various actions to bring us closer to this goal. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, I will not go into detail. I will only say that Gilad is at the top of our agenda, and we do not need any prodding or reminding in this matter. I am hopeful tonight as well that we will soon see him in his family’s embrace. On a personal note: For weeks I have been watching the people of Israel day and night as we make the unprecedented effort to fight for and realize our right of self-defense. I saw the brave soldiers, our dear and beloved sons; I saw their commanders and the spirit which buoyed them; I saw the residents of the South, their fierce sprit; and the leadership of the mayors who took care to provide for the needs of their residents; I also saw the actions of the Home Front Command, which quietly and efficiently coordinated the assistance campaign for the southern region; and I heard the bereaved families. Dear families, the things you said, the pain you expressed, the fierce spirit you demonstrated—these are the foundation for the people of Israel’s strength. On behalf of the entire nation, on behalf of the Government of Israel, I share your profound pain and thank you for the encouragement, the strength and the inspiration your strong stance has granted the entire nation. I also wish to say something to the people of Gaza: even before the military operation began, and during it, I appealed to you. We do not hate you; we did not want and do not want to harm you. We wanted to defend our children, their parents, their families. We feel the pain of every Palestinian child and family member who fell victim to the cruel reality created by Hamas which transformed you into victims. Your suffering is terrible. Your cries of pain touch each of our hearts. On behalf of the Government of Israel, I wish to convey my regret for the harming of uninvolved civilians, for the pain we caused them, for the suffering they and their families suffered as a result of the intolerable situation created by Hamas. The understandings we reached with Egypt, the international backing of the United States and the European countries—all these do not ensure that the firing by Hamas will stop. If it completely stops—the IDF will consider withdrawing from Gaza at a time which it deems right. If not, the IDF will continue to act in defense of our residents. This is the time to convey our appreciation and gratitude, first and foremost to you, Mr. Minister of Defense, for your work, for the tremendous effort you made, for your skill, professionalism and the understanding you demonstrated throughout he operation—thank you very much. I wish to thank the soldiers of the IDF, their commanders, the Head of the Southern Command Yoav Galant, and the Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi; to the Israel Security Agency, its fighters and its head, Yuval Diskin; to the Mossad and its hidden fighters, headed by Meir Dagan; to the Israel Police and the emergency services, Magan David Adom and the Fire Department. Blessed is the nation with such an army and such security and rescue services. I wish to express my hope that tonight the first step towards a different reality, one of security and quiet for the residents of Israel, will be taken. From the bottom of my heart, I thank the people of Israel, its fighters and their commanders for the fierceness of spirit and the social solidarity they demonstrated over these past weeks. This is the secret of our strength—it is the foundation for our power and it is the hope of our future. Thank you. Volume
IX, No. 2,009 • Tuesday
ISRAEL CHANGES
THE FACTS ON THE GROUND, …Israeli pundits have already concluded that Israel gained almost nothing militarily: Hamas continues to rule Gaza and retains military capabilities and the loyalty of Gazans, and breakaway jihadi factions such as Islamic Jihad will relaunch rockets after a short lull. The small gains Israel achieved, they believe, are more than balanced by the huge diplomatic price Israel paid as daily pictures of Palestinian deaths drew widespread condemnation throughout the world and alienated Israel’s few “friends” in the Muslim world, most notably Turkey. Are they right? When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defence Minister Ehud Barak said from the very start of the air offensive on Dec. 27 that the aim of the Israeli incursion was to put an end to the rocket fire, they also stressed their goal to change the “situation on the ground.” Before Dec. 27, Hamas’s military capabilities—its command and control systems, its rocket smuggling and launching abilities, its 15,000 regular/irregular ground forces—were intact. Hamas leaders had repeatedly threatened that if a single Israeli entered Gaza, it would become an Israeli cemetery. Three weeks of fighting proved that to be an empty boast. The reality is that Hamas’s forces have been seriously beaten down. Some analysts may claim that the core of Hamas’s military capability has survived in the bunkers and tunnels of Gaza City. Possibly. But the military initiative is now Israel’s. The Israel Defence Forces set the agenda, drove the fight, kept the enemy on its heels, destroyed significant enemy capability (including many of the smuggling tunnels) and showed Hamas that IDF soldiers are now highly skilled in urban insurgent war. Israel now has the military initiative in the south and will set the terms. It is no longer merely Hamas’s antagonist; it is its unquestioned military superior. The lesson will not be lost on Iran or Hezbollah. Strategically, the “situation on the ground” has clearly changed. But the Gaza fight was not just a military demonstration — it had political objectives as well. Israel taught Hamas that future provocation will be painfully costly. It also taught Hamas in Gaza that it is very easy for its titular leader, Khaled Meshaal, and his entourage in Damascus to call for a fight to the last breath against the Zionists. After all, he is protected by Syria…. If both Israel and Hamas can agree to a long-term, monitored truce, Mr. Meshaal will lose all relevancy. Israel taught Hamas that no one but the Arab street really cares about the plight of Gaza under Hamas rule and, though noisy, the Arab street doesn’t matter. No other country attacked Israel. Jordan maintained diplomatic relations. Iran fulminated but did nothing. Egypt, which once openly tolerated the tunnels, will no doubt clamp down hard on Hamas’s smuggling. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was especially shrill in condemning Israel, but the $141-million Christmas deal between Israeli firms and the Turkish air force to upgrade Turkey’s F-4 Phantoms remains intact. Israel also taught Hamas that the streets of Europe may be crowded with pro-Hamas demonstrators for a few days or a few weeks, but that European countries, the United States and even Russia and China have no love for Hamas and view it, rightly, as Iran’s proxy. And that is not likely to change…. It is, of course, tragic that hundreds of Gazans were killed. But it is hard to understand how Hamas did not see that this would happen. Maybe it doesn’t really care about Gazans, either. (David Bercuson, a CIJR
Academic Fellow, is director of the Centre TUNNEL
VISION Israel’s deference to Egyptian sensitivities enabled Hamas to build up its military strength. If the diplomats fail again, the next confrontation will be far worse. In late December 2007, at a meeting with a very senior Israeli defense official, The Jerusalem Post was told about a videotape, compiled by the security establishment, which documented Egypt’s failure to effectively seal its border with Gaza. The tape, the Post was told, featured evidence of Egyptian assistance in arms smuggling and included footage of Egyptian security personnel aiding Hamas terrorists crossing illegally into Gaza.… The Post was told that the tape was being sent to the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and we reported this. The security establishment’s intention and expectation was that the tape would be made available on Capitol Hill. The aim was to encourage Congress to use the leverage of US financial aid to Egypt to press for more effective controls…. [Yet, the] videotape was not, in fact, swiftly made available in Washington. …In fact, as the Post then established, the tape was shown only to some US administration officials and not made available to Congress because Israel’s political and diplomatic leaders decided it did not want to infuriate the Egyptians by distributing it more widely…. As we reported, “The perception that won the day this time was that over-involvement would be seen by Cairo as an infringement of certain diplomatic ‘rules’ between the two countries and could lead to a major crisis.”… On December 24, 2007, at a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Likud’s Yuval Steinitz directly challenged Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on the issue, asking why her ministry had intervened to block distribution of the tape. “Israel could have scored a major victory with the US Congress, and persuaded them that Egypt is incapable of defending the border,” said Steinitz. Livni was unmoved. Egypt’s “performance on the Gaza border is awful and problematic,” she acknowledged. “The weapons smuggling lowers the chances that pragmatic factions in Gaza and the West Bank will regain control.” But some things are “done behind the scenes,” she declared. “Every move needs to be calculated. To take an extreme scenario, would you sever relations with Egypt over weapons smuggling?”… Over the past three weeks, the IDF has carried out repeated bombing attacks on the tunnel network beneath the Philadelphi Corridor, destroying dozens upon dozens of smuggling routes. But the challenge is considerable. It is estimated that no fewer than 300 tunnels were operating at the start of Operation Cast Lead, many of them coming up to air inside Palestinian homes that had encroached ever closer to the border…. Quite unrepentant, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit twice this week dismissed Israeli complaints about the tunnels. As far as he knew, only food and other essential supplies were being spirited into the Israeli-blockaded Strip. How, he asked aloud, could Egypt intervene to stop such essential supplies reaching the Palestinian people? Arms were reaching Hamas, Aboul Gheit allowed, but from the sea, where it was Israel’s responsibility to intercept them.… Unfortunately, in contrast to last year, the new US aid appropriation features no provision for the withholding of funds over Egypt’s dismal performance at the Philadelphi Corridor. Evidently, US legislators were not alerted by Israel to the possibility that such leverage might be useful…. The foreign minister argues credibly that Israel should not be concluding cease-fire deals with a terrorist group, legitimating its rule. But it is not clear why she does not share her other leadership colleagues’ awareness of the imperative to attain a viable, enforceable anti-smuggling regimen as a central condition for ending the fighting. On this vital point, as when preventing defense chiefs from highlighting the danger 13 months ago with the videotape, Livni again finds herself at odds with much of the Israeli security establishment.… Hamas, in “victory,” will depict Israel’s disinclination to cause further civilian anguish by eschewing a lengthy battle in the heart of the refugee camps as evidence of Israel’s gutlessness and of its fighters’ heroism. The failure of Hizbullah, Syria and Iran to provide any assistance and the betrayal of the rest of the Arab world, Hamas will crow from amid Gaza’s ruins, merely render its “resistance” all the more admirable. But these “successes” will only have real value for Hamas if, after the guns fall silent, it can emulate its tenacious big brother [Hizbullah] to the north. For while Hamas may be deterred from provoking another round of conflict with Israel so long as it is weakened, its response will be simply to ensure it is stronger next time. And if a repeat of Israeli diplomatic foolishness, and misplaced deference to Egypt, facilitate a Hizbullah-style enhancement of Hamas’s capacity to kill, then the numbers, next time, really will speak for themselves. GAZA
BEDFELLOWS UNRWA AND HAMAS …Hamas has been running Gaza as a territory reduced to basically two industries: aid and terrorism. Pivotal to this arrangement is one of the UN’s oldest and most oddly configured agencies: the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA. Set up in 1949 with a temporary, three-year mandate to provide aid and jobs for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA has survived for almost 60 years, expanding its scope, budget and influence by extending refugee status to descendants of its beneficiaries.… From an original refugee population listed by UNRWA as some 900,000 in 1950, UNRWA now provides for a Palestinian “refugee” clientele of more than 4.6 million. They are spread throughout camps—which physically look more like squalid towns—in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. Into this system flows an annual UNRWA budget now well above $400 million per year, doled out variously in the form of cash, goods, medical care, schooling, job-training programs and so forth. To handle these operations, UNRWA employs more than 24,000 staffers. That’s more than any other UN agency, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, which with some 6,300 staffers…is responsible for all other refugees worldwide, totaling more than 11 million. At UNRWA, more than 99% of the staff are local Palestinians…. Since late December, when Israel began its campaign to end the thousands of rocket and mortar attacks launched by Hamas from Gaza, UNRWA officials have given a parade of briefings via UN headquarters in New York. [T]hey have ignored what UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Koning Abuzayd has described as their “nonpolitical” mandate. With Abuzayd in the lead, they have detailed their outrage on behalf of the Palestinians, excoriated Israel and stepped further into the political arena to demand an immediate ceasefire—something these same UNRWA officials did not do when the attacks were one-way out of Gaza into Israel…. And while blaming Israel, UNRWA officials also have plenty of incentive to present the worst possible picture. The greater the perceived distress, the better the prospects not only for immediate relief, but for future fundraising. UNRWA’s interests in Gaza are by now so entwined and, in many ways, so aligned with Hamas’ interests that it is often hard to tell them apart…. Support in cash and kind, in dollars and tons, has been pledged by donors ranging from Iran to Japan to the European Union to the Arab Gulf States to the U.S. (already the top donor to UNRWA, with $148 million in contributions last year, and now promising an immediate $5 million in response to UNRWA’s latest flash appeal for Gaza, plus another $80 million for the agency to spread around in places including Gaza)…. When this largesse eventually arrives in Gaza, how exactly will it be spent, distributed and supervised?… This past September, Democratic Rep. Steve Rothman, with a bipartisan group of five co-sponsors, submitted a concurrent resolution noting that “UNRWA has employed staffers affiliated with terrorism.” The resolution cited specific examples of UNRWA ambulance and schools having been used to abet terrorism and mentioned a number of figures, including Awad al-Qiq, headmaster of an UNRWA school in Gaza, “who also led Islamic Jihad’s engineering unit that built bombs and Qassam rockets.”… In pushing for an ever-bigger dole and in using the UN stage as a megaphone to help elicit sympathy, drum up funds, denounce Israel and drape in UN baby blue the interests and demands of the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hamas, they do a terrible disservice not only to the cause of world peace, but to the prospects of the Palestinians themselves for forsaking terror and building better lives. (Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.) REFUSING
TO WIN Imagine that at the outbreak of World War II RAF bombers had managed to bomb Berlin by surprise and inflict enormous material damage, but had deliberately refused to hit sites that housed top Nazi brass. Imagine that only after several days of bombing, the British finally attacked the German headquarters, after warning of the impending attack. How would the British public have reacted? How would it have reacted if its government willfully missed the chance to kill many Nazi leaders? Would it have accepted the explanation that every leader can be replaced, that one must warn enemy leaders of a planned attack to prevent hitting innocent neighbors? Wouldn’t the killing of many Nazi leaders shorten the war, it would probably ask. Is it not moral to save hundreds of thousands of lives and prevent the terrible suffering of a prolonged war even if this requires hurting some innocent civilians? Such questions were not raised in Israel. Only after three days of bombing did the IAF finally bomb Hamas headquarters, and it took 16 days before it bombed the residence of Hamas’s top commander.… So why is our government so reluctant to win? … [E]very terrible mess in Israel originates in “a conception.” Against all historical evidence, and against common sense, most leaders, egged on by the media, have sold themselves on the conception that “there are no wars in existence anymore that can be won like the wars of yore”…in other words that “terror cannot be vanquished by force.” This is nonsense, of course. Almost every terrorist movement was vanquished by force, from the 11th century Assassins to the 1936 Arab Revolt, from the post World War II communist insurrections in Greece or Malaya to terrors groups in Italy, Germany, Japan, etc. It is also absurd to claim that the IDF, which is supposed to fight several Arab armies simultaneously, cannot vanquish a ragtag guerrilla force of 20,000 fighters lacking armor or airpower. The IDF cannot win only if—like in Lebanon—it fights without a clear plan for victory and under a leadership that does not enable it to win. The goal of the “plan” enunciated by the Olmert-Barak-Livni government is “to stop the firing of Kassams from Gaza and to stop the smuggling of war materiel into it” (not, God forbid, to win a decisive victory over Hamas). It is based on relying on the Egyptians to stop the huge volume of arms smuggled from the Sinai into Gaza.… But Egypt will do all it can to prevent us from finally vanquishing Hamas. Since Egypt has realized that its chances of beating us by direct military confrontation are not great, it has used Hamas for a proxy war of attrition, as the Syrians do with Hizbullah. Egypt hopes to gradually bleed us to death and then get rid of us when an opportunity arises.… Since our war against Hamas—an Iranian proxy—is part of the worldwide war against terror, our failure to vanquish Hamas will also have grave repercussions for the stability of Egypt and Jordan, besides negatively affecting our deterrent capacity and international standing. The upshot is that if you do not seek victory in war you become the loser, even if the spin doctors convince you, like they did during the Lebanon war, that defeat is actually victory. FACING
REALITY: THE ANSWER TO THE ISRAELI- …The [Israel-Hamas] dispute has many causes, but one root cause. If I own an old junker Buick that’s worthless to me, and a stranger offers me $10,000 for it, naturally I’ll take the money. But at the same time I might grow suspicious (or at least thoughtful): Maybe the thing is valuable after all. Maybe I could have got more for it. And suppose the new owner proceeds to enthuse rapturously over the old car, and repairs and rebuilds it and makes it shine, makes it better than new, and starts exhibiting it at car fairs and winning big prizes. Under those circumstances, I’m even more likely to feel aggrieved, cheated, angry, and (especially) stupid—if I’m the kind of person who dwells on old hurts and imagined grievances. And my friends can make matters worse by egging me on. (Everyone loves a fight, especially if he can watch from the sidelines.) Now, every human being on earth who cares about facts and can tell a lie from a truth knows that there was no such thing as “Palestinian nationalism” until modern Zionism created it out of whole cloth, by placing enormous value on a piece of land that used to seem as precious to its landlords as a rat-ridden empty lot in a burnt-out neighborhood in the middle of nowhere, in the suburbs of nothing. The Jews gradually got possession of an arid stony wasteland (where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief / And the dry stone no sound of water)—complete with the odd picturesque, crumbling, dirty town; and they loved it. They turned it into a gleaming, thriving modern nation, not only a military but an intellectual powerhouse. And so it is only natural that the former owners’ descendants want it back, and remember how much their ancestors loved it, and how the new owners only got possession by wickedness and deceit. Such memories have the strange property of growing clearer instead of cloudier every day. Only one thing can restore the former owners’ peace of mind. They must be kicked firmly in the pants and told “stop whining and get lost” so many times that they finally move on to another grievance. Any competent psychologist will agree: When someone is mooning over a thing he can’t have because it belongs to someone else, the responsible and humane course of treatment is not temporizing sweet-talk but a blunt lesson in the facts of life…. There is no irreconcilable difference in the fight between Israel and the Palestinians, no bone-deep dispute that will haunt humanity forever. There is only greed and envy. They never disappear, but can easily move from one target to the next. The problem will be solved as soon as the world stops trying to solve it. When the international community moves on to fresh causes, so will the Palestinians. Islam too is held up as a basis of “irreconcilable differences” between Israel and the Palestinians. But we ought to remind ourselves that Israel fought the Six Day War in 1967 (and took possession of the West Bank and old Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and Gaza—as well as Sinai, since returned to Egypt) with the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, supported by Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Except for the Saudis, every one of these Arab governments was a secularist or modernizing autocracy.… No one doubts that the Muslim religion can inspire gigantic ferocity—yet Islam, like horseradish, is available in anything from super-hot to extra-mild. Only with the rise of Khomeini’s Iran in 1979, the Saudis’ increasingly lavish support for the spread of Wahhabism, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 did modern Islam become the dominant hate engine of the Middle East, powering anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, anti-Western bloodlust. The Arabs are an intensely religious-minded people, like the Jews, but the same religious devotion that is focused today on blood-and-guts Islam could also be focused on a kinder, gentler variety, such as the one preached in the 19th century by the Emir Abd el-Kader…. Religious devoutness persists from generation to generation, but can take many different systems and causes as its target—as Jews are well aware. The Bush administration, which has done so many small and medium things wrong and the biggest of all things right, could leave the world a parting gift by introducing some appropriate resolution in the Security Counsel or General Assembly. A proclamation that “anti-Zionism is a form of racism” might be just the thing. (The infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution, passed in 1975 and rescinded in 1991, remains a perfect symbol of depraved worldwide attitudes to Israel.) Or a U.S. resolution might call on the U.N. to take the unprecedented step of enforcing its own charter and booting out members that preach the destruction of Israel. (Article 2 part 4: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”) To start the ball rolling, Iran might be designated for immediate expulsion. The resolution would be savaged and hooted down. But here and there it might make people think. (David Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale.) Volume
IX, No. 2,008 • Monday The
latest issue of ISRAZINE exploring “Muslim Antisemitism”
CRACKS
IN HAMAS As the fighting continued in Gaza, important changes took place in Hamas—changes that will have a powerful effect at the end of the war. Of course, Hamas leaders will crown themselves with the victors’ laurels and try to sell a tale of success. But as Israel’s campaign entered its third week, the were hard-pressed to find buyers for their stories. In the Arab world, an atmosphere of skepticism about Hamas’s claims of achievements on the battlefield prevailed, since, for the most part, these claims have turned out to be little more than transparent lies. The growing criticism was best expressed on the important Arabic electronic newspaper ELAPH by Abd al-Fattah Shehadeh, who wrote on January 9 that Hamas is hiding behind the civilian population instead of defending it, as it had promised. Hamas, wrote Shehadeh, dug bunkers and tunnels, instead of building shelters for the residents of Gaza. They brought catastrophe upon the Palestinians with the misguided calculation they had learned from Hizballah: “They turned houses and mosques into battlegrounds so that the people would protect them and those who trusted them now regret it.”… The simple fact is that Hamas was not fighting in the areas penetrated by the IDF, even though its defensive doctrine—drawn up under Iranian supervision with the assistance of Hizballah—is based on an attempt to stop the IDF’s infantry brigades outside of Gaza City, or at least to detain them.… Hamas fighters have hurriedly shed their uniforms. Many of them simply deserted and returned to their families, taking their guns with them. In some locations, Hamas prevented civilians from leaving neighborhoods that were in the line of fire; overall, it invested great effort in blocking civilians who wished to flee to the south of the Strip. Hamas forcefully appropriated the few international aid deliveries, hijacked ambulances in order to move from one location to another, and carried out public executions of Fatah activists.… All of this was going on while the entire political leadership of Hamas was hiding in the basements of hospitals such as Shifa in Gaza City or Kamal Adwan near Beit Lahiya. Sporadically, they released videos from their places of hiding. The rather pathetic impression they created is that of a leadership that abandoned its population and was busy trying to save its own skin. The same goes for the military leadership. The entire command of the Izz-al-din al-Qassam Brigades went into hiding…. Voices began to emerge from within Hamas—in particular from activists in the West Bank, but also from Gaza—contending that the movement’s military wing not only carried out a putsch in June 2007 when it captured the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, but did the same thing within the movement as well, taking over the decision-making process in the political wing of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood. These critics contend that the organization thus dragged the Strip into a premature and hopeless military conflict.… What we have seen thus far during the fighting is a transformation of Hamas from a government to an underground body, from a popular mass movement to a loose group of armed gangs. This situation will not necessarily continue for a long time, but its memory will not be easily erased. Hamas has the ability to rehabilitate itself and this should not be taken lightly. But this time it will be hard to mollify Palestinian public opinion. There is no enthusiasm for Hamas’s period in power; its fighting prowess has hardly inspired awe, and there is no longer any faith in its leaders. WHERE
HAMAS GETS ITS MONEY Amid international condemnation of Israel, one would never guess that humanitarian aid and even cash is flowing into Hamas coffers, while its rockets continue to hit Israel. It is important to alleviate the suffering of innocent Palestinians. However, since Gaza is under Hamas control, we have to ask: Will aid reach the suffering populace? If the past is any indication, most funds and supplies will end up with Hamas. The world community that berates Israel for defending itself from constant attacks by the terrorist group also facilitated Hamas’ victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority election, when it was allowed to run under the name “List of Change and Reform.” Since then, despite repeated promises to cut off funds for Hamas, international aid organizations and many countries kept on sending money to Gaza, purportedly for humanitarian aid. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, raises money for Gaza through its Web site, with payments going through WorldPay (part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group), the Arab Bank PLC in Gaza and HSBC in Amman, Jordan. Those funds come in addition to UNRWA’s annual budget of $400 million. The $7 billion to $10 billion that the Palestinian Authority has received since 1993 has come from the European Union, the U.N., the U.S., Saudi Arabia and other Arab League countries. France alone has sent more than $3 billion. This influx of cash has done little to advance the development of a viable Palestinian state or of peace in the region. Rather, it has helped to fuel the Palestinian leadership’s terrorist agenda, and kept the Palestinian people oppressed and disenfranchised.… In a meeting hosted by Abu Dhabi on Jan. 12, representatives from the Palestinian Authority and several donor countries, including Egypt, Britain and the U.S., met to discuss efforts to raise and send undisclosed amounts of money to help Palestinians in Gaza. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) also pledged to rebuild schools, mosques, hospitals and 1,300 damaged Gaza houses. In addition, the Emirates raised more than $87 million in a nationwide telethon on Jan. 9. How would the money find its way to Gaza? “It is now the job of experts to funnel the cash,” said UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash. The experts do not have to look hard: They can funnel the money through the vast tunnel network that runs from the Egyptian border into Gaza. The Israelis have destroyed many of these tunnels, but enough remain through which to continue to smuggle cash and other supplies, including weapons. The buildup of this underground complex sped up after March 2007, when the U.S. gave Egypt $23 million in special aid to stop underground smuggling into Gaza. Despite that apparent failure, on Friday, Jan. 16, under American and international pressure, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni signed an agreement with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, under which the U.S. will commit resources to help Egypt patrol the boundary. Supplies and cash for Hamas have been pledged from all over the world, not merely from Iran, On Jan. 3, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz donated $8 million of the more than $26.7 million raised in a national fundraising telethon for the “Relief of the Palestinian People in Gaza.” Qatar, which pledged $50 million when Hamas was elected in 2006, promised to send more. While condemning Israel, the European Union pledged more than $4 million in “humanitarian aid” to Gaza. In 2008, it provided Gaza with $55.6 million. In addition, European Union member states pledged more than $41 million, including $10.5 million from the British government’s Department for International Development. Japan pledged $10 million, and terror-struck India said it would send $1 million. Norway has announced a pledge of about $4.5 million, while Australia is adding $3.5 million in addition to the $32 million it gave in 2008. Additionally, other countries sent tons of medical and humanitarian supplies. This more than meets the UNRWA emergency appeal for $34 million. Incredibly, Israel also supplies Hamas with cash. It began transferring truckloads of cash to Gaza after Hamas’ violent takeover of the territory in June 2007. The first transfer of more than $51 million (delivered in Israeli shekels) was purportedly to strengthen the influence of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the Gaza Strip and pay the salaries of 35,000 Palestinian Authority employees then allegedly loyal to him. Among those employees, however, were Ismail Haniya, the Hamas-appointed prime minister in Gaza, and Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas’ foreign minister. Zahar prides himself on many successful terrorist attacks against Israel, and his position regarding Israel is clear. “All of Palestine, every inch of Palestine belongs to the Muslims,” he has said. If the goal was to strengthen Abbas’ position, the cash should have been delivered to him in the West Bank city of Ramallah. From there, he could have transferred the money to Gaza, as he has done in the past, and claim credit for it. Yet the Israelis relied on Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s promise that the money would not reach Hamas or be used for any terrorist activity—even though Fayyad has little control over Palestinian Authority funds in Fatah-controlled West Bank, let alone in Hamas-controlled Gaza. Not long ago, Fayyad himself stated (and not for the first time) that controlling Palestinian finances “is virtually impossible.” Besides, promises by Fatah leaders that they will stop funds from going to Hamas are dubious at best. Despite Fatah-Hamas disagreements, the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah-led government announced on Jan. 15, 2008, its intentions to give Hamas 40% ($3.1 billion) of the $7.4 billion pledged in December 2007 by international donors. In October 2008, despite the crackdown on Fatah members in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority was paying the salaries of 77,000 “employees.” In December 2008, under U.S. and international pressure, Israel delivered between $64 million and $77 million in cash to Gaza. When Hamas rocket attacks intensified, Israeli banks started refusing to transfer cash to Gaza. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and Tony Blair, who is now Mideast envoy for the E.U., Russia, the U.N. and the U.S., sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert complaining that such refusals are “counterproductive and ultimately harm Palestinian moderates.” Clearly, the world community is set on seeing the terrorist group Hamas as legitimate. But demanding that Israel pay its own executioners goes way too far. (Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is
director of the American Center for Democracy and author LIMITS
OF RESTRAINT Neither Hamas nor Gaza or the Qassams are the target of the Gaza war or the criteria for its success. The war in Gaza is over the fate of regional radicalism and the myth of the Muqawma (“resistance”.) This is well understood in Tehran, Beirut, and Damascus, and also in Cairo and Amman. It would be good for us in Israel to also weigh our moves in the framework of this broad perspective. In the second half of the previous century, the military struggle against Israel reached a dead-end. This perception started sinking into the Arab public’s consciousness in the Six-Day War. It was institutionalized when the peace treaty removed Egypt from the cycle of active confrontation, when the superpower that armed the Arabs collapsed, and when Iraq’s military power was eliminated.… When a proper response for suicide attacks was found, in the form of the security fence and operation Defensive Shield, the radicals turned to rockets. The Second Lebanon War illustrated that there is no military solution to rocket attacks on the home front, with the exception of permanent Israeli presence within the territory and population that hosts the threat. As Israel cannot and does not wish to control Lebanon and Gaza, let alone Syria and Arab states, the radicals reached the conclusion that they possess the ultimate weapon that would embitter Israel’s existence and present it as helpless. The entrenchment of such perception in the Arab world poses a strategic threat to Israel and the region.… The war in Gaza was aimed at preventing the entrenchment of the perception that the rocket resistance in conjunction with Islamic zealotry is the ultimate weapon Israel cannot cope with. Yet we can and should prove that even though Israel has no operative solution for it, it does possess a strategic response to this challenge. The strategic response is political willingness (in addition to military capabilities) to sow disproportional destruction and hurt the assets that are dear to those who fire rockets at Israeli population centers. The main objective is not to hit the last rocket, but rather, to enforce a fundamental change in the Muqawma’s cost-benefit equation by dramatically raising the cost. The urban legend regarding the infinite determination of Arab radicals was shattered in the 2002 Defensive Shield operation, and even in Hizbullah’s recoil from confrontation in the wake of the missed-out Lebanon War. Now is the time to prove the futility of this myth in Gaza as well. The results of the war will not be determined by the nature of the diplomatic agreement that ends it, but rather, by Israel’s willingness to pulverize Hamas during the war, and especially to respond wildly to the first rocket launched after the war; for example, by assassinating Hamas leaders after they emerge from their trenches. Destruction in Gaza contributes to the prevention of war with Lebanon and Syria, assists Egypt and Jordan in fighting radical elements, and signals Israel’s limits of restraint to Iran. (Dr. Dan Shiftan heads the National Security Studies Center at the University of Haifa.) CAUTION:
MYTH AHEAD One of the casualties of the Israel Defense Forces operation in the Gaza Strip is the collection of myths that have been propagated during the past two years by Israel’s leaders to explain their unwillingness to send ground troops into the Gaza Strip in order to bring to an end the rocketing of Israel’s civilian population in the south. The myths were used to justify the do-nothing policy of the defense minister, and the disastrous six-month cease-fire with Hamas that provided the organization with the breathing space to equip itself with long-range rockets…. The first myth that fell in Operation Cast Lead was that an operation using IDF ground troops in the Strip would result in the loss of the lives of hundreds of Israeli soldiers. A forecast like that is enough to make any Israeli shy away from such an operation.… Why, one could well have asked, should we expect the casualty rate of an IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip to be so large? The IDF is vastly superior in numbers and weaponry to the few thousand Hamas fighters there. The IDF had many months to plan and train for such an operation…. [I]ndeed, as one should have expected, the warnings about unbearable casualty rates turned out to be baseless. Israel has taken losses, it’s true, but there is no war without losses. In this case, they have been mercifully small. The second myth was that an IDF ground operation in Gaza would not succeed in putting an end to the launching of rockets against Israel from there. Why this seemingly magic capability was ascribed to Hamas in the Strip, an ability to continue firing rockets even with an IDF presence in the launching areas, was never explained.… It is true that even now, after the IDF has reached certain parts of the Strip, the rocket launching, though considerably reduced, is continuing. But these rockets come from areas not yet under the army’s control. Were the IDF to continue on to all the launching zones, the rocketing would cease. The third myth, presented as the ultimate argument against a ground operation, was that once we had entered the Gaza Strip we would not be able to leave—that we would be stuck there forever.… But now that we are there, it suddenly seems as if it will be quite easy to leave. What were we afraid of? All the IDF has to do, if that is what we decide, is to make a U-turn.… In no time, Israel found the exit strategy that escaped our leaders for so many months. There goes the third myth. It was the belief in these three myths that allowed our defense minister to lead the Olmert government to agree to the six-month cease-fire with Hamas last summer. As we now know, and should have known already then, that was the period in which they smuggled the longer-range rockets into the Strip, the ones that have been hitting Ashdod and Be’er Sheva in recent weeks. You can trust Hamas to utilize any future cease-fires for similar purposes. Three myths have been exploded, and now a fourth myth has been produced by our leadership. The ground operation, they say, has achieved all its objectives and there is nothing more left to do. So we might as well go home.… We seem to be on the point of wasting the fruits of what could be a decisive victory over the forces of terror on our doorstep. That would be a grave mistake. SAVED
BY THE CEASEFIRE The hollowness of the “ceasefire” the Israeli cabinet declared on Saturday evening is all too easy to point out. No sooner was it declared than Hamas fired eight rockets at Israel. On Sunday it fired about 15 more before announcing at 2 p.m., along with Islamic Jihad, a ceasefire of its own conditional on Israel’s evacuating Gaza within a week. Four hours later two more rockets hit Israel. During last year’s “ceasefire” from June 19 to December 19, a total of over 500 rockets and mortars hit Israel from Gaza. In announcing Israel’s latest ceasefire on Saturday night, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that “our targets, as defined when we launched the operation, have been fully achieved, and more so.” The proclaimed targets were to put an end to the rocket fire and to Hamas’s smuggling of weapons across the Gaza-Egypt border. The first, clearly, was not achieved; what about stopping the smuggling?… Since the early 1990s successive Israeli governments have been consumed with the idea that Israel need no longer defend its own borders because other parties will do so instead. The last few days, though, have seen a new milestone: now it is not just the likes of UNIFIL, the Lebanese army, or Egyptian border guards who are supposed to protect Israel, but the whole international community—the same community that races to slap ceasefires on it the minute it lifts a finger to defend itself and whose media, NGOs, governments, and institutions fiercely condemn it with words and imagery evoking classic anti-Semitism.… The head of Israel’s General Security Service, Yuval Diskin, told the cabinet on Sunday that Hamas would resume the smuggling within a few months and would soon rebuild the tunnels that Israel destroyed during Operation Cast Lead—these having numbered in the hundreds although a large quantity still remain. Regarding both goals of Operation Cast Lead, then—the rocket fire and the smuggling—the outlook was bleak. And by Sunday night Israel was already complying with Hamas, Sarkozy, and Mubarak’s wishes—though without Sarkozy’s proviso of a stoppage of the shelling—and starting to withdraw from Gaza. It was doing so without having secured the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006 and held—presumably—in Gaza ever since without visits by the Red Cross or anyone else. Olmert and other top officials told a perturbed Israeli public that dealings were afoot on the matter of Shalit and it was best to keep these hushed; few if any were convinced.… Even if the Olmert government had relatively clear aims for the war, it had no clear idea of how to go about achieving them—let alone enough backbone to face the fact that the only effective force against the smuggling is a restored Israeli presence along the border with Egypt. Though all the assessments concur that Hamas suffered a considerable blow, fanatic movements with powerful state sponsors can recover surprisingly fast.… The geopolitical implications, however, are grim… even proficient armies usually cannot achieve their goals—or anything close to them—when the international community gives them a timeline of a few weeks at most. Could a tougher Israeli government have better withstood the pressure? With Israeli elections scheduled for February 10, and with the problem of Hamastan hardly solved, we may soon find out. THE
OPERATION IS OVER BUT THE WAR CONTINUES …While Operation Cast Lead may be over, the Israel-Hamas war continues, although this time with new understandings. When the IDF embarked on the operation, the goals set for it by the government included weakening Hamas, restoring Israel’s level of deterrence and changing the security reality in the South. Hamas is without a doubt weakened, both militarily and governmentally. Its government and municipal offices have been completely destroyed and most of its long-range rocket capability has been knocked out. More than 200 homes belonging to its military commanders were destroyed. The homes were not just residences but also served as command-and-control centers, weapons storehouses and training centers. Over 2,000 targets were bombed throughout the operation, and of the 1,300 Palestinians casualties, the IDF believes three-quarters were gunmen. Close to 300 weapons-smuggling tunnels were also destroyed along the Philadelphi Corridor. Throughout the operation, the IDF stuck to its opening “Shock and Awe” tactic, based on a US military doctrine also called “rapid dominance,” which calls for the use of overwhelming military power, dominant maneuvers and spectacular displays of force to paralyze an adversary. Hamas, the IDF believes, was surprised by Israel on four different occasions throughout the operation. The first surprise came on December 27, when Israel bombed over 110 targets in less than 30 minutes in two separate bombing waves, killing close to 250 Palestinians. The second surprise was the intensity and force used by the IDF, which caused unprecedented destruction throughout the Strip. The third surprise was the January 3 decision to launch a ground offensive, and the fourth surprise was the unilateral cease-fire.… The second goal, that of restoring Israel’s deterrence, is more difficult to assess since deterrence is not something that can be quantified. The IDF believes that deterrence has been restored and that Hamas now knows it can no longer fire rockets into Israel without paying a heavy price. The IDF’s assessment is based on intelligence and conversations it has intercepted between Hamas leaders. Time will tell, and while many Israelis are skeptical, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi likes to remind people that while the destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor and the assassination of Hizbullah’s military chief in Damascus are both attributed to Israel, neither Syria nor Hizbullah have responded. Ashkenazi understands this to be due to powerful Israeli deterrence. The third objective is the trickiest of all since the creation of a new security reality in the South is not just dependent on Operation Cast Lead but also on Egypt, the United States and the European Union, which have all been asked to help curb the flow of arms from the Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza Strip. The memorandum of understanding signed on Friday between the US and Israel regarding the smuggling does not discuss actual steps that will be taken…. [It] will take weeks, if not months, before that memorandum is translated into practical steps. Egypt’s efforts will also come under scrutiny but will not change immediately. There too, it will take some time before the facts change on the ground. Egypt still has to decide what type of physical barrier, if any, it is willing to build to stop the smuggling. Ultimately though, Israel will, as usual, only be able to rely on itself, and will need act consistently with its claim that it will no longer tolerate rocket attacks from Gaza. If it allows the attacks and the smuggling to continue, Operation Cast Lead will soon become just another chapter in the Israel-Hamas war. Please read David Golinkin’s analysis on our Picks of the Week. Volume
IX, No. 2,007 • Friday
ENDING
THE WEST’S PROXY WAR AGAINST ISRAEL As the world decries Israel’s attempt to defend itself from the rocket attacks coming from Gaza, consider this: When Hamas routed Fatah in Gaza in 2007, it cost nearly 350 lives and 1,000 wounded. Fatah’s surrender brought only a temporary stop to the type of violence and bloodshed that are commonly seen in lands where at least 30% of the male population is in the 15-to-29 age bracket. In such “youth bulge” countries, young men tend to eliminate each other or get killed in aggressive wars until a balance is reached between their ambitions and the number of acceptable positions available in their society. In Arab nations such as Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists’ war against their own people between 1999 and 2006), the slaughter abated only when the fertility rates in these countries fell from seven children per woman to fewer than two. The warring stopped because no more warriors were being born. In Gaza, however, there has been no demographic disarmament. The average woman still bears six babies. For every 1,000 men aged 40-44, there are 4,300 boys aged 0-4 years. In the U.S. the latter figure is 1,000, and in the U.K. it’s only 670. And so the killing continues. In 2005, when Israel was still an occupying force, Gaza lost more young men to gang fights and crime than in its war against the “Zionist enemy.” Despite the media’s obsession with the Mideast conflict, it has cost many fewer lives than the youth bulges in West Africa, Lebanon or Algeria. In the six decades since Israel’s founding, “only” some 62,000 people (40,000 Arabs, 22,000 Jews) have been killed in all the Israeli-Arab wars and Palestinian terror attacks. During that same time, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in wars and terror attacks—mostly at the hands of other Muslims. What accounts for the Mideast conflict’s relatively low body count? Hamas and their ilk certainly aim to kill as many Israelis as possible. To their indignation, the Israelis are quite good at protecting themselves. On the other hand, Israel, despite all the talk about its “disproportionate” use of force, is doing its utmost to spare civilian deaths. Even Hamas acknowledges that most of the Palestinians killed by Israeli air raids are from their own ranks. But about 10%-15% of Gaza’s casualties are women and minors—a tragedy impossible to prevent in a densely settled area in which nearly half the people are under 15 and the terrorists hide among them. The reason for Gaza’s endless youth bulge is that a large majority of its population does not have to provide for its offspring. Most babies are fed, clothed, vaccinated and educated by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Unlike the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, which deals with the rest of the world’s refugees and aims to settle them in their respective host countries, UNRWA perpetuates the Palestinian problem by classifying as refugees not only those who originally fled their homes, but all of their descendents as well. UNRWA is benevolently funded by the U.S. (31%) and the European Union (nearly 50%)—only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources. Thanks to the West’s largesse, nearly the entire population of Gaza lives in a kind of lowly but regularly paid dependence. One result of this unlimited welfare is an endless population boom. Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza’s population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million. The West basically created a new Near Eastern people in Gaza that at current trends will reach three million in 2040. Within that period, Gazans may alter the justifications and directions of their aggression but are unlikely to stop the aggression itself. The Hamas-Fatah truce of June 2007 allowed the Islamists again to direct all their energy on attacking Israel. The West pays for food, schools, medicine and housing, while Muslim nations help out with the military hardware. Unrestrained by such necessities as having to earn a living, the young have plenty of time on their hands for digging tunnels, smuggling, assembling missiles and firing 4,500 of them at Israel since 2006. While this gruesome activity has slowed the Palestinian internecine slaughter, it forced some 250,000 Israelis into bomb shelters. The current situation can only get worse. Israel is being pushed into a corner. Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. One rocket master killed is immediately replaced by three young men for whom a martyr’s death is no less honorable than victory. Some 230,000 Gazan males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could be taking up arms within the coming 15 years. As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza’s extreme demographic armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA’s budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza’s untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the Jews of Israel. If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA’s help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance. If we make this urgently needed reform, then by at least 2025 many boys in Gaza—like in Algeria—would enter puberty as only sons. They would be able to look forward to a more secure future in a less violent society. If the West prefers calm around Gaza even before 2025, it may consider offering immigration to those young Palestinians only born because of the West’s well-meant but cruelly misguided aid. In the decades to come, North America and Europe will have to take in tens of millions of immigrants anyway to slow the aging of their populations. If, say, 200,000 of them are taken from the 360,000 boys coming of age in Gaza in the next 15 years, that would be a negligible move for the big democracies but a quantum leap for peace in the Near East. Many of Gaza’s young—like in much of the Muslim world—dream of leaving anyway. Who would not want to get out of that strip of land but the international NGOs and social workers whose careers depend on perpetuating Gaza’s misery? (Gunnar Heinsohn heads the
Raphael Lemkin Institute at the University of Bremen, ROCKETS
AND MEDICINE It escapes me now if Shimon Peres was serving at the time as treasury secretary or minister of commerce and industry. But, in any event, I have been thinking lately about the time he came to pay a visit to two tax collectors—who had suffered serious burns after Molotov cocktails were thrown at them—while they were being treated in the intensive care unit of Hadassah Hospital, where I work, in Jerusalem. First, the security detail arrived armed with visible earphones and guns well-hidden under their tailored suits. When they found nothing suspicious that could endanger the life of our greatest statesman, Mr. Peres was allowed to proceed. As burn wounds present a serious danger of contamination and infection, everyone visiting burn victims must wear a special surgical gown and mask—even people who have won a Nobel prize. As Mr. Peres approached the patients’ beds, one of the physicians on our staff tied the gown behind his back and handed him the mask. As Mr. Peres found it difficult to tie the mask himself, the task fell to the same doctor, who was very moved by the fact that he was allowed to approach the back of an Israeli minister under the unobservant gaze of the security detail, who found it difficult to watch the injured patients. This particular doctor—his name is Dr. Halil Al-Nahal and he is a graduate of our anesthesia department and the intensive care unit—was interviewed several times this week on Israeli television. He is now the director of the intensive care unit at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. He was arrested in Gaza some years ago for distributing the flyers of a then-small organization called Hamas. After we vouched for him, he was released. We kept in touch by phone for many years until, for his own safety, the contacts were stopped. At the Al-Shifa hospital, Dr. Halil Al-Nahal has no medical equipment and an insufficient number of beds. He can not actually run an intensive care unit because he has none of the tools required for delivering intensive care. This week he said, in Hebrew, in a TV interview “Hevre ... Tafsiku!” (“My friends, stop!”). The tunnels created in response to the blockade on the Gaza Strip constitute the main path for bringing equipment and supplies to the blockaded population. Hamas has transported dozens of tons of equipment into the strip, but this has been equipment designed for killing and destruction, such as bombs, rockets and grenades. Missiles with a range of 30 miles have been broken into three parts so that they could be moved through the tunnels and then reassembled and fired at the Zionist enemy. Fuel and food have also been moved through the tunnels, but mostly through private initiatives. What was not been transported through the tunnels, as far as I can tell, is medical equipment. What have not been disassembled into three parts for easy moving are respirators and monitoring equipment for Dr. Al-Nahal’s ICU. Had Hamas used the tunnels to import computers for their children, text books for their schools, public health equipment, beds, sheets, wound dressings, it may have been possible to save some of the victims. But it hasn’t. A comparison is instructive. In 1912, before the First World War, Henrietta Szold sent two public health nurses to neglected, dirty Jerusalem. These two nurses began an aggressive public health campaign. A bit later, despite the very difficult conditions, groups of well equipped doctors arrived. They travelled the long way through Egypt. Gradually, Hadassah took over and created a universal health system that served “every worker.” The myth that Israel was born from the efforts to till the soil and dry the swamps is incomplete. It was the health enterprise, whose fruits we are still enjoying today, that was critical to the creation of Israel. The pre-state defence forces paid from the earliest stages great attention to the need for a sophisticated medical corps. During the worst times, the Yishuv made a point to acquire and install first-rate medical facilities. As a physician who can understand what the enemy feels, and as a physician who is not comfortable with all that is done within the framework of Operation Cast Lead, I can nonetheless not understand how Hamas can devote so much energy to stockpiling rockets, while totally ignoring medical needs. Perhaps this is the difference between a terror organization and a national liberation movement.
Shabbat Shalom to all our readers. Volume
IX, No. 2,006 • Thursday
WELCOME
TO THE NEW MIDDLE EAST In Iran, elements from within the regime are reportedly offering a $1-million reward for the assassination of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak because of his opposition to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, the leader of Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and Syria, merely calls for the Egyptian government’s overthrow. In response to this, Tariq Alhomayed, a Saudi who is editor-in-chief of the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, describes Hamas as Iran’s tool, and argues that “Iran is a real threat to Arab security.” Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, agrees, and he is not alone. When Arab states met to discuss the Gaza crisis, Saudi Arabia vetoed any action. Even the Palestinian Authority blames Hamas for the fighting. Activists in Fatah, which runs the Palestinian Authority and is Hamas’s nationalist rival, make no secret of their hope that Hamas loses the war. Welcome to the new Middle East, characterized no longer by the Arab-Israeli conflict but by an Arab nationalist-Islamist conflict. Recognizing this reality, virtually all Arab states—other than Iran’s ally, Syria—and the Palestinian Authority want to see Hamas defeated in Gaza. Given their strong self-interest in thwarting Islamist revolutionary groups, especially those aligned with Iran, they are not inclined to listen to the “Arab street”—which is far quieter than it was during previous conflicts, such as the 1991 war in Kuwait, the 2000-2004 Palestinian uprising or the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. Today’s Middle East is very different from the old one. First, the internal politics of every Arab country revolves around a battle between Arab nationalist rulers and an Islamist opposition. In other words, Hamas’s allies are the regimes’ enemies. An Islamist state in Gaza would encourage those who seek to create similar entities in Egypt, Jordan and every other Arab country. A tremendous price has already been paid for this conflict. The violence has included civil wars among Palestinians and Algerians, the bloodshed in Iraq and terrorist campaigns in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In the Palestinian case, after winning an election and making a deal with Fatah for a coalition government, Hamas turned on its rival and drove it out of Gaza by force. In return, the Palestinian Authority has been repressing Hamas in the West Bank. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been trying to bully its more moderate Sunni Muslim, Christian and Druze rivals into submission. Second, because Arab states confront an Iranian-Syrian alliance that includes Hamas and Hezbollah, in addition to internal conflicts, there is a regional battle between these two blocs. An aspect of this is that the largely Sunni Muslim-led states face a largely Shia Muslim-led competitor for regional hegemony. These two problems pose far greater dangers to the existing states than does any (largely fabricated) Israeli threat, and the region’s rulers know it. On the other side of the divide, Iran and its allies have put forward the banners of jihad and “resistance.” Their platform includes Islamist revolution in every country; Iran as the region’s dominant state, backed up by nuclear weapons; no peace with Israel and no Palestinian state until there can be an Islamist one encompassing all of Israel (as well as the West Bank and Gaza); and the expulsion of Western influence from the region. This is a very ambitious program, probably impossible to achieve. Nevertheless, it is a prescription for endless terrorism and war: Both pro- and anti-Iranian revolutionary Islamists believe they will win because God is on their side and their enemies are cowardly, and they are quite prepared to spend the next half-century trying to prove it. While this seems to be a very pessimistic assessment of the regional situation, the radical Islamist side has many weaknesses. Launching losing wars may make Islamists feel good, but being defeated is a costly proposition, for their arrogance and belligerence antagonize many who might otherwise be won over to their cause. The situation also provides a good opportunity for Western policy-makers. The emphasis should be on building coalitions among the relatively moderate states that are threatened by radical Islamist forces, and on working hard to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons—a goal that is in the interests of many in the region. The worst mistake would be to follow the opposite policy—an inevitably futile effort to appease the extremists or seek to moderate them. Such a campaign actually disheartens the relative moderates who, feeling sold out, will try to cut their own deal with Tehran. The crisis in Gaza is only one aspect of the much wider battle shaking the region. Helping Hamas would empower radical Islamism and Iranian ambitions, while undercutting the Palestinian Authority and everyone else, not just Israel. Arab states don’t want to help their worst enemy. Why should anyone else? (Barry Rubin is director of the Israeli-based Global Research in International Affairs Center.) BUSH
DESTROYED A DICTATOR. CLINTON INSTALLED ONE. As President George W. Bush prepares to leave office amid a media chorus of reproach and derision, there is at least one comparison with his predecessor that speaks greatly in his favor. Mr. Bush removed the most ruthless dictator of his day, Saddam Hussein, thereby offering Iraqi citizens the possibility of self-rule. Bill Clinton’s analogous achievement in the Middle East was to help install Yasser Arafat, the greatest terrorist of his day, as head of a proto-Palestinian state. This is not how these events are generally perceived. The image that still looms in the public mind is that of President Clinton, peacemaker, standing between Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in the Rose Garden on Sept. 13, 1993. With the best intentions, Mr. Clinton had worked hard for this peace agreement and would continue to strive for its success, hosting the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization at the White House more than any other foreign leader. But the “peace process” almost immediately reversed its stated expectations. Emboldened by his diplomatic victory, Arafat adopted Islamist terminology and openly preached jihad. The casualties suffered by Israel in the years following the Oslo Accords exceeded those of previous decades, and dangers to Israel and the world have increased exponentially ever since. This so-called peace agreement rewarded terrorist methods as fail-safe instruments of modern warfare, and accelerated terrorist attacks on other democratic countries. Though Mr. Clinton did not foresee these consequences, his speech at the signing ceremony betrayed the self-deception on which the agreement was based. Throughout the speech, Mr. Clinton invoked the significance of the “sliver of land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea” to “Jews, Christians, and Muslims throughout the world.” He repeatedly linked the “descendants of Isaac and Ishmael,” and the “shared future shaped by the values of the Torah, the Koran, and the Bible,” as though their “memories and dreams” were all equivalent. But Judaism is quite unlike Islam. The Jews claim solely that “sliver of land” and accept their minority status among the nations. By contrast, Islam seeks religious and territorial hegemony, most especially in the Middle East. Hence 21 countries descendant from Ishmael have denied the descendants of Isaac their ancestral home. This difference of political visions is precisely what propels the Arab war against Israel. To be sure, the signing ceremony at the White House may not have been the best time to recall Arafat’s complete record as the “father of modern terrorism,” a title accorded him by the press for masterminding such acts as the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, the murder of a schoolroom of children in northern Israel, and the establishment of a PLO missile base in Lebanon. But some mention of his profession was surely in order. The PLO was founded, and funded, by Arab leaders as a terrorist proxy before 1967—that is, before Israel gained the disputed territory of the West Bank that retroactively served as a Palestinian casus belli. Arafat had never been anything other than a terrorist. He had threatened Arab rulers in Jordan and Lebanon no less than the Jews of Israel. Mr. Clinton’s speech contained no hint of these facts, concealing the realities it purported to be changing. To be fair, Israel’s role in this self-deception was, if anything, even greater. The Oslo Accords made Israel the first country in history ever to arm its enemy with the expectation of gaining security. The burden of soldiering in a defensive war for the “right to exist”—which ought to have been theirs from the outset—understandably saps the morale of Israelis. In this case, it also undermined their common sense. The Oslo “peace accord” made the world more dangerous and subjected Palestinian Arabs to a rule of violence, corruption and intimidation. Arafat’s dictatorship has since been outmatched by an even more brutal Hamas regime that serves as the terrorist outpost of Iran. President Bush’s military intervention, by contrast, destroyed a terrorist state and made the world safer for its citizens. (Ruth Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard.) THE
‘OLDEST HATRED’ In Toronto, anti-Israel demonstrators yell “You are the brothers of pigs!”, and a protester complains to his interviewer that “Hitler didn’t do a good job.” In Fort Lauderdale, Palestinian supporters sneer at Jews, “You need a big oven, that’s what you need!” In Amsterdam, the crowd shouts, “Hamas, Hamas! Jews to the gas!” In Paris, the state-owned TV network France-2 broadcasts film of dozens of dead Palestinians killed in an Israeli air raid on New Year’s Day. The channel subsequently admits that, in fact, the footage is not from January 1st 2009 but from 2005, and, while the corpses are certainly Palestinian, they were killed when a truck loaded with Hamas explosives detonated prematurely while leaving the Jabaliya refugee camp in another of those unfortunate work-related accidents to which Gaza is sadly prone. Conceding that the Palestinians supposedly killed by Israel were, alas, killed by Hamas, France-2 says the footage was broadcast “accidentally.” In Toulouse, a synagogue is firebombed; in Bordeaux, two kosher butchers are attacked; at the Auber RER train station, a Jewish man is savagely assaulted by 20 youths taunting, “Palestine will kill the Jews;” in Villiers-le-Bel, a Jewish schoolgirl is brutally beaten by a gang jeering, “Jews must die.” In Helsingborg, the congregation at a Swedish synagogue takes shelter as a window is broken and burning cloths thrown in; in Odense, principal Olav Nielsen announces that he will no longer admit Jewish children to the local school after a Dane of Lebanese extraction goes to the shopping mall and shoots two men working at the Dead Sea Products store; in Brussels, a Molotov cocktail is hurled at a Belgian synagogue; in Antwerp, lit rags are pushed through the mail flap of a Jewish home; and, across the Channel, “youths” attempt to burn the Brondesbury Park Synagogue. In London, the police advise British Jews to review their security procedures because of potential revenge attacks. The Sun reports “fears” that “Islamic extremists” are drawing up a “hit list” of prominent Jews, including the Foreign Secretary, Amy Winehouse’s record producer, and the late Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Islamic non-extremists from the British Muslim Forum, the Islamic Foundation and other impeccably respectable “moderate” groups have warned the government that the Israelis’ “disproportionate force” in Gaza risks inflaming British Muslims, “reviving extremist groups,” and provoking “UK terrorist attacks”—not against Amy Winehouse’s record producer and other sinister members of the International Jewish Conspiracy but against targets of, ah, more general interest. Forget, for the moment, Gaza. Forget that the Palestinian people are the most comprehensively wrecked people on the face of the earth. For the past sixty years they have been entrusted to the care of the United Nations, the Arab League, the PLO, Hamas and the “global community”—and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. You would have to be very hardhearted not to weep at the sight of dead Palestinian children, but you would also have to accord a measure of blame to the Hamas officials who choose to use grade schools as launch pads for Israeli-bound rockets, and to the UN refugee agency that turns a blind eye to it. And, even if you don’t deplore Fatah and Hamas for marinating their infants in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire, any fair-minded visitor to the West Bank or Gaza in the decade and a half in which the “Palestinian Authority” has exercised sovereign powers roughly equivalent to those of the nascent Irish Free State in 1922 would have to concede that the Palestinian “nationalist movement” has a profound shortage of nationalists interested in running a nation, or indeed capable of doing so. There is fault on both sides, of course, and Israel has few good long-term options. But, if this was a conventional ethno-nationalist dispute, it would have been over long ago. So, as I said, forget Gaza. And instead ponder the reaction to Gaza in Scandinavia, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, and golly, even Florida. As the delegitimization of Israel has metastasized, we are assured that criticism of the Jewish state is not the same as anti-Semitism. We are further assured that anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism, which is a wee bit more of a stretch. Only Israel attracts an intellectually respectable movement querying its very existence. For the purposes of comparison, let’s take a state that came into existence at the exact same time as the Zionist Entity, and involved far bloodier population displacements. I happen to think the creation of Pakistan was the greatest failure of post-war British imperial policy. But the fact is that Pakistan exists, and if I were to launch a movement of anti-Pakism it would get pretty short shrift. But, even allowing for that, what has a schoolgirl in Villiers-le-Bel to do with Israeli government policy? Just last month terrorists attacked Bombay, seized hostages, tortured them, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. The police intercepts of the phone conversations between the terrorists and their controllers make for lively reading: “Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims. Keep your phone switched on so that we can hear the gunfire.’ “Mumbai terrorist 2: ‘We have three foreigners, including women. From Singapore and China.’“Pakistan caller 1: ‘Kill them.’ “(Voices of gunmen can be heard directing hostages to stand in a line, and telling two Muslims to stand aside. Sound of gunfire. Sound of cheering voices.)” “Kill all hostages, except the two Muslims.” Tough for those Singaporean women. Yet no mosques in Singapore have been attacked. The large Hindu populations in London, Toronto, and Fort Lauderdale have not shouted “Muslims must die!” or firebombed Halal butchers or attacked hijab-clad schoolgirls. CAIR and other Muslim lobby groups’ eternal bleating about “Islamophobia” is in inverse proportion to any examples of it. Meanwhile, “moderate Muslims” in London warn the government: “I’m a peaceful fellow myself, but I can’t speak for my excitable friends. Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it.” But why worry about European Muslims? The European political and media class essentially shares the same view of the situation—to the point where state TV stations are broadcasting fake Israeli “war crimes.” As I always say, the “oldest hatred” didn’t get that way without an ability to adapt: Once upon a time on the Continent, Jews were hated as rootless cosmopolitan figures who owed no national allegiance. So they became a conventional nation state, and now they’re hated for that. And, if Hamas get their way and destroy the Jewish state, the few who survive will be hated for something else. So it goes. But Jew-hating has consequences for the Jew-hater, too. A few years ago the poet Nizar Qabbani wrote an ode to the intifada: O mad people of Gaza, You can just about understand why living in Gaza would teach you madness. The enthusiastic adoption of the same pathologies by mainstream Europe is even more deranged—and in the end will prove just as self-destructive. Volume
IX, No. 2,005 • Wednesday
WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “Israel has a right to defend herself… I'm for a sustainable cease-fire. And a definition of a sustainable cease-fire is that Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel… The choice is Hamas's to make.”—U.S. President George W. Bush, in his final press conference before he leaves office next Tuesday, strongly backing Israel in its fight against Hamas. (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 12) “[I remain] deeply sympathetic to Israel’s desire to defend itself…[The Obama administration has] also been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East….This must only increase our determination to seek a just and lasting peace agreement that brings real security to Israel, [and] independence, economic progress and security to the Palestinians in their own state…. We cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognizes Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements. That is just, for me, an absolute.”—Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton, testifying to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is considering her nomination. Clinton has pledged to use “smart power” in order to renew American leadership in international affairs. (National Post, Jan. 14) “By accusing us of being Nazi-like, Europeans alleviate some of their own feelings of guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust. Moreover, by saying that the Jews are acting like Nazis, they are delegitimizing the very existence of the State of Israel.”—Dr. Robert Rozett, director of the Yad Vashem Libraries, explaining the “very intense” and “extremely ugly” use of Nazi imagery for describing Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip. The remarks came days after Israel condemned a senior Vatican official for comparing conditions in the Gaza Strip to a concentration camp. “Most people know just enough about the Holocaust to make superficial equations to it.” Rozett said. (Jer. Post, Jan. 11) “On Saturday, January 10, which is the day salaries are distributed in Gaza, several Hamas commanders who cannot come out of their hiding places were given their salaries at their hiding places. But those commanders who can move around Gaza made their way to Shifa Hospital to receive their salaries. Shifa Hospital has long ago ceased to be just a hospital, just as the UNRWA humanitarian and health services in Gaza long ago ceased to be just humanitarian services providing food and medical services….UN schools in Gaza long ago stopped being just schools. All these services and places are refuges for Hamas terrorists and commanders.”—Avi Dichter, Israeli Public Security Minister, explaining why Hamas leaders had taken refuge in Gaza City hospital. According to Dichter, Israel would not target the hospital “for obvious reasons. Shifa [Hospital] is in the middle of a very crowded area in Gaza, and you would have to get through half a million Gazans to get to the hospital and arrest Hamas people there. So that’s not doable.” (Jer. Post Jan. 12) “We are prepared for every possibility and are ready for all aggression... The Zionists will discover that the war they had in July [2006] was a walk in the park if we compare it to what we've prepared for every new aggression.”—Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, warning that should Israel attack Lebanon, it would suffer an even greater defeat than the one he claimed it suffered in 2006. Nasrallah said Israel will not be able to destroy Hamas or Hezbollah, addressing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he added: “I tell Olmert, the loser, the disappointed and defeated in Lebanon: ‘You will not be able to eradicate Hamas and you will not be able to eradicate Hezbollah.’” (Ha’aretz, Jan. 7) “Israel's behaviour makes me ashamed of being a Jew and Canada's servile support of the United States' position that it is all Hamas's fault makes me ashamed of being a Canadian.”—Anton Kuerti, Jewish-Canadian pianist, speaking at an anti-Israel rally in Toronto. Following on his heels, Jewish-Canadian physicist Ursula Franklin said that “[N]ever again didn't mean no Jews should ever be in a concentration camp. The never again meant no human being should ever be again in a position that power can determine their lives and there are some people who do not matter.” (Canwest News Service, Jan. 8) “Muslim brothers, God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at and whom he cursed so he made monkeys and pigs out of them. They killed prophets and messengers and sowed corruption on Earth. They are the most evil on Earth.”—Sheikh Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef, an Egyptian government-appointed preacher in Cairo’s Al Azhar Mosque, rallying the faithful against the Jews. Though Israel and Egypt have a peace treaty, popular opinion in Egypt for Hamas has eroded the support and legitimacy of the government. The Muslim Brotherhood, the organization which provides Hamas with an ideological basis, is especially popular in Egypt. (New York Times, Jan. 10) “Accountability must be ensured for violations of international law….Violations of international humanitarian law may constitute war crime, for which individual criminal responsibility may be invoked.”—Navi Pillay, United Nations high commissioner for human rights, speaking in an address in Geneva to a special session of the Human Rights Council focused on Gaza. The Council has a reputation for anti-Israel bias. The Israeli military insists that civilian casualties are due to Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields in addition to the presence of Hamas munitions in schools and mosques. (New York Times, Jan. 10) “It's clear to us that her behaviour was unsatisfactory. She is in charge of the diplomatic process. She should have prevented such a decision at the UN, and by failing she caused Israel great damage.”—Likud party head Benjamin Netanyahu, criticizing Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for not stopping the passage of a UN Security Council resolution demanding a cessation of the IDF’s operation in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and senior officials in the Foreign Ministry rallied around Livni, saying that the UN resolution was inevitable, but that Livni’s efforts minimized the criticism of the resolution. Livni responded to critics, saying that “anyone who has any understanding of what happens on the diplomatic playing field during any military operation knows that at some stage an agreement is reached similar to the one that was reached at the Security Council. Every time that Israel starts a military operation with all the legitimacy in the world, immediately there is an international effort to lower the flames.” (Jer. Post, Jan. 12) “Early Friday morning [Israel time], the secretary of state was considering bringing the cease-fire resolution to a UNSC vote and we didn’t want her to vote for it. Suddenly, within ten minutes it became clear that, the vote was going ahead….I [called the White House and] said ‘Get President Bush on the phone.’ They tried, and told me he was in the middle of a lecture in Philadelphia. I said, ‘I’m not interested, I need to speak to him now.’ He got down from the podium, went out and took the phone call. I told him that the US cannot possibly vote in favour of this resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote for it. She was left quite embarrassed.”—Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking with pride as he described how he convinced the U.S. to abstain from the UN Security Council’s vote calling for a Gaza cease-fire. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had prepared and organized the resolution. Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack denied Olmert’s version of events as “wholly inaccurate as to describing the situation, just 100-percent, totally, completely not true…[Rice] was not at all embarrassed…[Rice’s] inclination the entire time was to abstain.” (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 12; Ha’aretz, Jan. 14) “Some may feel satisfaction at repeatedly passing General Assembly resolutions or holding conferences that condemn Israel's behaviour…. There have been decades of resolutions. There has been a proliferation of special committees, sessions, etc. Has any of this had an effect on Israel's policies, other than to strengthen the belief in Israel, and among many of its supporters, that this great Organization is too one-sided to be allowed a significant role in the Middle East peace process? ... This resolution, which the Council is about to adopt with the support of your automatic majority, is not balanced, does not reflect the realities of the Gaza Strip, and does no service to the cause of peace or to the human suffering of Palestinians in Gaza….Sadly, such resolutions will only embolden Hamas, weaken the trust of the Israeli public in the United Nations and this Council…”—Aharon Leshno-Yaar, Israel’s ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council, in a statement before a vote which condemned Israel’s operation in Gaza. While another thirteen nations abstained, Canada was the sole member of the UNHRC which voted against condemning Israel. (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 12) “I am worried that some of the leaks and some of the decisions from the highest political level have been made for political reasons and I hope that the substantive decisions about when to begin and end the war have not also been made for political reasons….From my experience, the goal has to be creating a new reality so that Hamas won't dare fire a rocket or smuggle arms.…For this we don't need a UN decision or an international force. We saw how the UN decision that ended the Second Lebanon War and the UNIFIL force in Lebanon have allowed Hizbullah to rearm and didn't stop Katyushas from being fired today.”—Former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Ya’alon, expressing concerns that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni are making decisions regarding Operation Cast Lead in order to maximize their political standings. (Jer. Post, Jan. 9) “The proposed boycott is to be based on national origin. But it's abundantly clear that it is does not stop there. What about Arab-Israeli academics? The measure seems to be directed only at Israeli academics who are Jewish. Israel is not immune from criticism, and one can and should be able to engage in such criticism without being branded anti-Semitic. But when a measure explicitly singles out one country and then implicitly singles out only Jews, there is no way to describe such a measure as anything but anti-Semitic, if not—as former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers once put it—in its purpose, then certainly in its effects.”—Oren Gross, director of the Institute for International Legal and Security Studies at the University of Minnesota Law School, exposing the proposed CUPE Ontario motion that Israeli Jewish academics must publicly denounce Israel’s military operations in Gaza or face censure and boycott as little more than anti-Semitism. (Globe and Mail, Jan. 13) “It's a one-time opportunity to restore Israel's deterrence power. We only hope they'll let us finish what we started.”—Gur Rosenblatt, an IDF reserve officer in the Gaza Strip, explaining that the IDF operation in Gaza is an important national mission. He notes that his soldiers were extensively trained and equipped for Operation Cast Lead. IDF Givati Brigade Deputy Commander Lt. Col. Ronen Dagmi commented that “when the army has clear boundaries and missions, it knows how to act. That is what is happening this time in Gaza.” (Ha’aretz, Jan. 13) SHORT TAKES RALLIES IN SUPPORT OF ISRAEL, WORLDWIDE—(Jerusalem) Over 10,000 people gathered on 42nd Street in New York, outside the Israeli consulate, to show their support for the offensive. Meanwhile, thousands more pro-Israel demonstrators rallied across Europe, including Prague, Dublin, Antwerp, Berlin, London and Manchester. The demonstrations were held amid a series of pro-Palestinian protests in cities throughout North American, Europe and Muslim states, many of which have turned violent and used clearly antisemitic terms to condemn the operation. British organizers estimated that as many as 20,000 people participated in the London demonstration, which took place in Trafalgar Square. A parallel rally was held in Manchester's Albert Square. (Ha’aretz, Jan.11) OPERATION CAST LEAD: ROCKETS STILL FIRED; WEAPONS CACHE IN MOSQUE; —(Jerusalem) Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday fired their first phosphorus shell into Israel, which exploded in an open area in the Eshkol area in the western Negev. White phosphorus is not considered a chemical weapon but the substance can cause serious burns if it touches the skin and can spark fires on the ground. Since the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, the Shin Bet estimates the Palestinians have launched 565 rockets and 200 mortar shells at Southern Israel, along with 361 rockets and 303 mortars over the course of the six-month cease-fire period The Israeli Air Force bombed a mosque in southern Gaza City where ground forces found a mass stockpile of weapons, including Qassam and Katyusha rockets. (Ha’aretz, January 12, 14) IDF DECONSTRUCTS TERRORISTS’ TRAPS—(Tel Aviv) Monday, IDF troops discovered a booby-trapped school with a large amount of explosives and rigged to explode from a detonator in an adjacent zoo. The soldiers recorded a video following the fuse from the detonator through the animal cages and over to the school. Yesterday, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said that Hamas operatives have been disguising themselves in IDF uniforms to carry out suicide bombings. A paratroopers unit uncovered a tunnel dug by Hamas terrorists from a house some 300 meters from the border fence in Gaza, apparently meant to transfer suicide bombers into Israel. He also revealed that a number of tunnels had been found that were intended to be used to abduct IDF soldiers. (Ha’aretz, Jan. 12, 14) HAMAS: BOMBS MORE PRECIOUS THAN CHILDREN—(Gaza City) A new five-minute video compilation by Palestinian Media Watch of excerpts from Hamas TV documents the hateful and abusive messages, designed to indoctrinate children to Hamas values. Children are taught to value violence, hatred, and martyrdom. In one music video, a five-year-old who finds out that her mother wore an explosives belt sings, "Now I know what was more precious than us," and swears to follow in her mother's footsteps. Another shows a boy's transition from childhood to adulthood, climaxing in his heroic Martyrdom death. (Front Page Magazine, January 12) U.S. CONGRESS SUPPORTS ISRAEL—(Washington) The U.S. Senate agreed on a voice vote to a non-binding resolution co-sponsored by Democratic and Republican leaders in the chamber on Jan. 8, encouraging President George W. Bush “to work actively to support a durable, enforceable and sustainable ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible that prevents Hamas from retaining or rebuilding the capability to launch rockets or mortars against Israel”. Senate Democrat and Majority Leader Harry Reid stated, “When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel’s inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.” The House passed a similar resolution on Jan. 9. (Reuters, Jan. 8; Ynet News, Jan.9) ROCKETS FIRED FROM LEBANON & GUNSHOTS FROM SYRIA—(Nahariya) At least three Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon at northern Israel on Wednesday morning, reigniting fears of a second front opening during Israel's offensive against Hamas in Gaza. Four Katyusha rockets landed in Nahariya in Northern Israel, last Thursday. Two people were wounded when one of the rockets hit a retirement home and exploded in the kitchen during breakfast. The rockets were fired from the southern Lebanese town of Nakoura where late last month, a farmer discovered eight Katyushas pointed at Israel, and the Lebanese army diffused them. An IDF vehicle carrying civilians and soldiers who were conducting engineering work along the Syrian border in the Golan Heights came under gunfire Sunday. Israel filed a complaint with the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force. (Ha’aretz, Jan 14; Jer. Post, Jan. 8, 11) RECIDIVISM HIGH AMONG FORMER TERRORISTS—(Washington) According to the Pentagon, sixty-one former Guantanamo Bay detainees have returned to terrorism since their release, up from thirty-seven from a March 2008 estimate. “There, clearly, are people who are being held at Guantanamo who are still bent on doing harm to America…and our allies,” Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, highlighted the problem associated with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s plan to immediately close the Guantanamo Bay prison. (National Post, Jan.14) Volume
IX, No. 2,004 • Tuesday
SHAME ON BUSH
AND CONDI Betrayal. No other word describes the reversal of American foreign policy that took place on the night of Jan. 8 when the U.S. refused to veto the Security Council resolution on Gaza. A president whose friendship and alliance with Israel once appeared honest, perceptive and unshakable, decided two weeks before leaving office to throw Israel to the wolves. The resolution calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and does not even mention the word “Hamas.” There will no longer be a need for an Obama transition team on foreign policy. The outgoing president and secretary of State have done it all. Yesterday’s resolution, along with another Condoleezza Rice-inspired resolution from mid-December, draws Israel into a Security Council spider web that U.N. enthusiasts have been weaving for decades.… Arab states could scarcely contain their glee. The U.K. went out in front and accepted the idea of a much stronger resolution instead of a Security Council presidential statement, and Secretary of State Rice rolled over and played dead within minutes. Veto-wielding powers had reportedly given undertakings to Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that they would not permit a resolution. These promises were ignored in the face of allegedly enormous pressure from undemocratic thugs, state sponsors of terrorism and weak democracies cowering at the prospect of unhappy Muslim constituencies or a dent in their bank accounts from belligerent Arab sheiks. What, moaned U.S. officials, was poor Condi to do? Here is what she did:
When it was over, Secretary of State Rice “abstained” with the following words: “this resolution, the text of which we support, the goals of which we support, and the objectives that we fully support, should indeed be allowed to go forward.” These words led other ambassadors to point out that the resolution had, in effect, been adopted by consensus.… In leaving Israel to fend for itself in an international arena controlled by the enemies of decency and good, President Bush walks shamefully off the international stage, leaving in shambles everything he has stood for since Sept. 11, 2001.… (Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and editor of www.EYEontheUN.org.) THE
FALSE SYMMETRY OF UN SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1860 Most Israelis regard UN Security Council Resolution 1860 on the Gaza Conflict as a troubling development. It fails to mention the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit who has been in Hamas captivity since 2006. The word “rocket” does not even appear, only general references to condemning “violence and hostilities directed against civilians.” Reading the resolution, one would not be aware that Israel has been under constant rocket attacks since 2001, the real background to the current conflict. The resolution also suggests a diplomatic sequence that begins with an “immediate” cease-fire, and leaves for the future the efforts of UN member states to provide arrangements that “prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition.” Israel halts its defensive operations, but may well be left empty handed at a later stage. There is also a disturbing symmetry between Israel and the Palestinian side, which appears in Resolution 1860. Despite the language of the resolution, most international observers agree that Israeli civilians should not have to face rocket attacks from Hamas in the future, and hence Hamas must halt this activity. But in Resolution 1860 there is a demand of Israel in parallel, “to ensure the sustained reopening of crossing points” between Israel and Gaza. It is as though the cessation of rocket fire and the opening of the crossing points are symmetric demands that are increasingly mentioned in the same breath by commentators. This is like asking for a quid pro quo for Hamas stopping terrorism. This is moral equivalence at its worst. Israel should not pay anything to get Hamas to stop firing rockets which is an act of outright aggression against the Jewish State. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the UN Security Council did not seek Kuwaiti concessions alongside its demand of Iraq to withdraw.… In January 2006, Hamas won the Palestinian legislative elections while in June 2007 Hamas launched a military coup against the PA in Gaza. Hamas provided sanctuary to organizations like Jaish al-Islam or Jaish al-Umma which identified themselves as al-Qaeda affiliates. This put the Hamas regime in a category like the Taliban which had allowed the original al-Qaeda to grow in its domain. Given the completely changed circumstances created by the Hamas takeover, it is surprising that the Security Council came back to hold Israel to [the failed November 2005] agreement [with the P.A.’s Abbas] over [access to] Gaza…. Finally, Israel, with the backing of the Western powers, decided to embargo the Hamas regime in Gaza. Trade embargos are a state’s inherent right, like the US embargo of Iran or Cuba. Hamas is a particularly severe case for it calls for Israel’s destruction, engages in suicide terrorism against Israeli citizens, and brainwashes Palestinian children with anti-Semitic hatred. To compel Israel to open the Gaza crossing points is to deny Israel a valid economic instrument to exercise its right to self-defense…. Perhaps underpinning Resolution 1860 is an assumption of normalized relations in the future between Hamas and the State of Israel. This makes the US abstention at the UN all the more disturbing. The Bush administration, which led the diplomatic fight against terrorism after 9/11, appears to be acquiescing to granting rights to a terror regime that in reality should not earn any more international protection than the Taliban did in 2001. (Dore Gold served as Israel’s
ambassador to the UN and today HAMAS
IS A TALIBAN STATE Maybe the Israeli government will concede to a cease-fire. We’ll see. But it is clearer in my mind than ever why a cease-fire between Jerusalem and the regime in Gaza will never hold. Even the so-called cease-fire in place since the summer was not remotely close to a true pause in the fighting. That is, in the fighting from the other side of the frontier. Day-in and almost every day-out, rockets were launched from Hamas territory, and Israel did not fight back. Then, one day last week, Hamas aimed 60 missiles, some more rustic, some much less, into the Land, into eretz, as it is commonly called in Hebrew. This was one violation of the truce too many. How long was Israel to stand aside while its enemies, sworn by fanatic Islam to its destruction, rained death, injury, and terror on its population? It is sad that it had to come to this massive response of the Israeli Defense Forces. Yet, it had to. For not only were the people of the western Negev and municipalities abutting it continuously imperiled. There were the tunnels into Gaza from the Sinai peninsula, tunnels that brought all kinds of contraband and even luxury items to the Palestinians of the wretched Strip. And, of course, fuel needed by the people and also by Hamas, without which its capacity to kill would be zero. But more than that. The underground passages are Hamas’s lifeline to additional weapons and to increasingly advanced weaponry. What about Egypt? you ask. Frankly, Egypt is a failed state, except for a competent intelligence service operating in the cities…. A cease-fire can sometimes be had between civilized governments. But why isn’t anyone pressing the United States and its allies in Afghanistan into a cease-fire with the Taliban? A stupid question. Because the enemy is the Taliban, and the Taliban could as easily convert to Christianity as agree to an armistice with its opponents. Maybe they’d agree to what the Arabs call a hudna, a pause, a lull, but only on tactical grounds. The fact is that Hamas is a Taliban state, as one Israeli diplomat put it. This is almost an epiphany, a clarifying truth. Hamas operates against its Palestinian enemies like the Taliban does against its Afghani enemies. Imagine a Hamas squad enters a kindergarten in a kibbutz. Neither the Taliban nor Hamas strive for earthly aims. Armed with instruments of death, they each fight for a heavenly design. But on earth. Yes, what a heaven that would be. Death is their own blessed comrade. Go ahead, establish a cease-fire with one of them. America before Israel. The Taliban is not an analogy to Hamas. It is identical, equivalent. A cease-fire with Hamas is a delusion. Engage with whom? Israel has shown more than enough restraint through years of provocation. Or, as my friend Bret Stephens has written, “No ingenious conceit can disguise the fact war offers no outcome other than victory or defeat. This is one big thing that Hamas understands.” Let us hope that Israel grasps this, too. And the new administration, as well. THE
NEED FOR A DECISIVE ISRAELI VICTORY OVER HAMAS Since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has improved its capabilities of considerably harming Israel in a relatively short period of time. Every Grad missile that hits Beersheba and Ashdod testifies to this fact. The range of Hamas’ missiles has increased from 12 kilometers to at least 40 kilometers in less than two and a half years. The meaning of the enhanced Hamas capabilities in launching rockets is clear. Within two years or less, Hamas will be able to close down Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel’s only large international airport. A number of rockets even within proximity of the airport will lead to a cessation of all flights by foreign carriers. Reduced air traffic will have a major effect on the Israeli economy, as well as pose a strategic danger to the country. Hamas’ enhanced ballistic capabilities have far greater political and ideological significance. Since the US occupation of Iraq, which removed the power balance against Iran, there is a widespread feeling amongst Israel’s enemies that fundamentalism is in an upsurge and winning. Radical Islamic Iran and the movements it supports, Hizballah and Hamas, are thought to be on the ascent, while the power of the United States, Israel, and moderate countries are perceived to be in interminable decline. The facts supporting this perception are well known: Iran continues with its nuclear program unabated; Osama bin Laden is still at large; the Moslem Brotherhood registered relative success in the last Egyptian elections in 2005; Israel conducted an unsuccessful war against Hamas in 2006; Hamas politically and militarily defeated the Palestinian Authority in June 2007 [and] breeched the border between Gaza and Egypt in January 2008… and Hizballah defeated Hana Siniora’s government in Lebanon in the spring of 2008. Further afield, but of significance to an Arabic-speaking public, extremist Islamic forces vanquished moderate groups in Somalia. This long line of Islamic successes contributes to the euphoria of Islamic radicalism. It is not surprising that moderate Arab states, the United States, and many European countries want and expect Israel to hit Hamas hard in this offensive.… Israel’s primary goal in this offensive [should be] a decisive blow to Hamas’ organizational and military capabilities. This would be an important and long-overdue first step in rolling back the forward march of fundamentalist political Islam in the region. The achievement of a decisive military victory requires Israel to enter Gaza City and the refugee camps with full force. Israel has to dispel the belief that it is reluctant to engage the enemy in urban areas. Israel must make it clear to Hamas that there is no bunker in Gaza that is beyond IDF reach. In the 2002 Defensive Shield operation, the IDF indeed engaged the enemy in the West Bank. Since then, the IDF has succeeded in reducing terror in Judea and Samaria by 95 percent. Politically, the offensive brought the Palestinian Authority to the realization that the option of terror was no longer viable. The relative calm in Judea and Samaria during the present offensive in Gaza is the result of the military decisiveness of Defensive Shield and of the continuous IDF forays since then. Winning the campaign against Hamas must be “seen” and tangibly “felt.” Israel and the West need the Arab world to watch scenes on their television screens whereby hundreds of Hamas terrorists are taken prisoner. Israel must show the surrender of at least some of the Hamas leadership as they raise white flags in defeat. The defeat of Hamas must be palpable, conspicuous and concretely visible.… Today, Israel has a unique opportunity to begin this critically-needed educational process amongst Israel’s extreme Islamist enemies, who comprise the last swath of opponents refusing to accept the existence of the State of Israel. The question remains whether Israel’s leadership has the courage and the nerve to persevere in the battle, despite the possible high cost and in spite of international criticism. (Prof. Hillel Frisch is
a senior research associate at Bar-Ilan University’s Please see our Picks of the Week for perspectives on the conflict by Irwin Cotler and Patrick Martin. Volume
IX, No. 2,003 • Monday
HAMAS’S
ROCKETS MUST BE STOPPED When terrorists reduced the Twin Towers to rubble, the free world was shocked. When they bombed buses in London, the West was in disbelief. When terrorists detonated bombs at hotels, a train terminal and a hospital in last December in Mumbai, the world was outraged. For the past eight years Hamas has launched more than 10,000 rockets at Israeli civilians. The international community’s response: utter silence. Today Israel’s operation in Gaza, a conflict that was imposed on it by Hamas, is only the latest battle in the global war on terror. Israelis, like the citizens of New York, London, Mumbai and Montreal, are entitled to the same basic right to live in peace and safety, and this is why Israel was forced to act after eight years of restraint. For eight long years Hamas’s so-called crude rockets have instilled fear and terror in hundreds of thousands, who have mere 15 seconds to run for cover at the sound of the Code Red siren. In Sderot, only four kilometres from Gaza, this siren has sounded more than 10,000 times; an average of more than three times per day over the eight years period. Not a single nation in the world would tolerate this for a week, let alone for years on end. Israel’s current offensive does not intend to punish innocent Palestinians in any way, nor is Israel’s intention to reoccupy Gaza. The Palestinians are not Israel’s enemies, they are its neighbours, and this is why Israel is fully engaged in the peace process with the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Instead, it is Hamas that is Israel’s enemy. A member of the radical Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis, Hamas is a violent terror organization whose stated goal is the creation of a Taliban-style caliphate on the ashes of the Jewish state. Its unwillingness to compromise and respect previous agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is the major obstacle to peace today. For years, Hamas has perpetrated horrendous acts of terror in Israel, massacring hundreds with impunity in restaurants and cafés. Today it continues this legacy of terror by launching rockets indiscriminately at homes, shopping centres and schools. This is why Canada, the U.S. and the EU have recognized Hamas as a terrorist organization. Hamas is the incarnation of the Middle East’s worst nightmare. While claiming to represent the Palestinian people’s national aspirations, truth has it that no other actor has betrayed the Palestinian cause as much as Hamas.… With every missile fired at Israel and with every Fatah rival shot dead, Hamas has steered its people further from statehood and closer to brutal theocracy and perpetual conflict. In the summer of 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza completely, uprooting all of its military bases and Jewish settlements at a cost of $2.5 billion to Israeli taxpayers. The Palestinians were given a historical opportunity to alter their fate, and turn Gaza into the next Singapore. With massive international aid, they could have transformed Gaza into a centre for hi-tech and agriculture just like Israel. Instead, Hamas seized control and turned Gaza into a launch-pad for terrorism. It methodically violated all ceasefire agreements and smuggled Iranian-made weapons through underground tunnels along the border with Egypt, while consistently ignoring the basic humanitarian needs of its own population. Israel’s disengagement from Gaza was a crucial test, one that Hamas resoundingly failed.… People who have never felt what it is like to be bombed incessantly, or been forced to run for their lives on a daily basis, have accused Israel of using “disproportionate” force. What then constitutes a proportionate response? Should Israel respond by launching 10,000 rockets of its own at civilians in Gaza? Hamas deliberately fires at Israeli civilians from positions in densely populated areas, hiding their weapons in mosques and schools. Moreover it continues to use children and non-combatants as human shields in violation of international law. Israel, on the other hand, targets Hamas exclusively, dropping leaflets and sending text messages to spare civilian lives. Israel’s war against Hamas, aimed at protecting the lives of its civilians, is far more than that. It is also a fight to protect the peace process; a process that is persistently torpedoed by Hamas. If left unchecked, Hamas’s murderous terrorism and hateful ideology will scuttle all hopes for peace and bring the region into an abyss of fanaticism under the hegemony of its patron Iran. (Yoram Elron is consul-general of Israel for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.) THE
MORAL BATTLEGROUND And so now begins the second and most difficult stage. Inside Israel, there is both determination and dread as tens of thousands of Israel’s conscript army are called to the front. Untold numbers of these soldiers will lose their lives as the result not merely of the genocidal aims of Hamas (and its Iranian puppet-master) but also the indifference and pusillanimity towards Palestinian terror displayed by world governments over the past six decades of Israel’s fight for survival, along with the active encouragement of genocidal Islamists by leftists, Jew-haters, Muslims and useful idiots who were on such thuggish display yesterday in the co-ordinated demonstrations in British and other western cities. Such people have made no protest at the bombardment of Israeli towns by more than 6000 rockets in the past six years, deliberately targeting innocent civilians. They have made no protest at the way Hamas has used Gazan civilians as human shields, situating its murderous arsenals beneath apartment blocks, in schools and hospitals and mosques in order to maximise the numbers of civilians killed (in order to manipulate all-too pliable western opinion). No, their protest only starts when Israel finally takes the military action aimed at stopping this genocidal barrage. The worst thing is the moral inversion, in which the murderous victimisation of innocent Israelis is ignored while their murderers are described as ‘civilians’ when they are finally killed by the Israelis—who are demonstrably taking care to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible.… But the frenzied misrepresentations, double standards and moral inversion fuelling a hysteria in the west which in turn can only incite more genocidal violence are simply depraved. Particularly striking in its malice is the way in which the treatment of wounded Palestinians in Israeli hospitals is ignored—while news of the barbaric behaviour of Hamas in Gaza’s hospitals is airbrushed out of the picture.… Nor will many in Britain or the west be aware of this:
The moral inversion in the west is so egregious, so monstrous, that the better Israel is shown to behave the worse the vilification that rains down upon it. What other country in the world would show such restraint in the face of more than 6000 rocket attacks upon its citizens—6000!—that it took seven years before going to war to put a stop to it? What other country would treat individuals—including proven terrorists—from that enemy territory in its own hospitals? What other country would continue to provide essential foodstuffs and other supplies to those enemies who continued to fire rockets at it? What other country, when finally forced to go to war to stop the attacks, would show such concern to avoid the loss of civilian life that it contacts the population in enemy territory—even households containing identified terrorists—to warn them to flee from the imminent bombardment? And what other country would, for showing such unparalleled moral scrupulousness, be vilified and libelled as Israel is? Israel’s behaviour is moral, legal and proportionate. This conflict is revealing just who is on the side of morality, decency and sanity and who is not.… Farid Ghadry, President of the Reform Party of Syria, has written:
Alas, many in the west don’t stand with Farid Ghadry. They stand instead with Hamas. Whatever platitudes they mouthe, it is clear that they really don’t want Israel to survive at all. The moral dividing line in this battle is very clear. Those who stand with Israel are on the side of morality, justice, and civilisation. Those in the media and public life who denounce Israel for having the temerity to defend its people are the fellow-travellers of barbarism. Having done so much to embolden and strengthen Hamas and Iran, who are playing them for suckers, they are continuing to stoke the fires of irrational hatred and genocidal hysteria. As Israeli soldiers die, along with the Palestinian victims of Hamas whether as ‘collaborators’ or human shields, their blood will be on these hypocritical western hands. ENDGAME
IN GAZA Israel’s leaders have purposely obscured their war aims in Gaza. But there are only two possible endgames: (A) a Lebanon-like cessation of hostilities to be supervised by international observers, or (B) the disintegration of Hamas rule in Gaza. Under tremendous international pressure—including from an increasingly wobbly U.S. State Department—the government of Ehud Olmert has begun hinting that it is receptive to a French-Egyptian cease-fire plan, essentially acquiescing to Endgame A. That would be a terrible mistake. It would fail on its own terms. It would have the same elements as the phony peace in Lebanon: an international force that abjures any meaningful use of force, an arms embargo under which arms will most assuredly flood in, and a cessation of hostilities until the terrorist side is rearmed and ready to initiate the next round of hostilities. The U.N.-mandated disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon is a well-known farce.… Such a deal would buy Israel maybe a couple of years. After which, Round Two—with Hamas rockets by then killing civilians in Tel Aviv, making Ben-Gurion airport unusable and reaching Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. Which is why the only acceptable outcome of this war, both for Israel and for the civilized world, is Endgame B: the disintegration of Hamas rule. It is already underway. This is not about killing every last Hamas gunman. Not possible, not necessary. Regimes rule not by physically overpowering every person in their domain but by getting the majority to accept their authority. That is what sustains Hamas, and that is what is now under massive assault.… Demonstrably unable to protect their own people, [Hamas’ leaders] beg for outside help, receiving in return nothing but words from their Arab and Iranian brothers. And who in fact is providing the corridors for humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians? Israel.… At such moments, regimes are extremely vulnerable to forfeiting what the Chinese call the mandate of heaven, the sense of legitimacy that undergirds all forms of governance. The fall of Hamas rule in Gaza is within reach, but only if Israel does not cave in to pressure to stop now.…
The disintegration of Hamas rule in Gaza would be a devastating blow to Palestinian rejectionists, who since the Hamas takeover of Gaza have been the ascendant “strong horse” in Palestinian politics. It would be a devastating blow to Iran as patron of radical Islamist movements throughout the region, particularly after the defeat and marginalization of Iran’s Sadrist client in Iraq. It would encourage the moderate Arab states to continue their U.S.-allied confrontation of Iran and its proxies. And it would demonstrate Israel’s irreplaceable strategic value to the United States in curbing and containing Iran’s regional ambitions.… CLOCK’S
TICKING TOWARD AN IRANIAN BOMB Even as the international community remains focused on the heartbreaking images emerging from Israel’s confrontation with the jihadist Hamas in Gaza, the countdown has begun for a far more devastating tragedy that could lead the Middle East toward apocalypse. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, the time remaining before Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb may now be measured in months, not years. A nuclear Iran would end hopes for the eventual emergence of a sane Middle East. And if economic sanctions and diplomatic efforts fail to dissuade the mullahs from abandoning their nuclear program, Israel is likely to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. And some Arab leaders may well be hoping that Israel will do precisely that. Shared dread of a nuclear Iran has helped create the first tacit alliance between Israel and Sunni Arab states. So desperate are some Arab leaders to forestall an Iranian bomb that they have in effect sided with Israel against Iran’s proxies in the Arab world.… What was inconceivable just a few years ago—that some Arab states would side with Israel against fellow Muslims—has now become a pattern in regional politics.… Arab countries fear Iranian hegemony, fulfilment of the ancient Persian ambition of dominating the Middle East.… What keeps Israeli strategists awake at night is fear that a new strain of apocalyptic Shia theology—positing that the Hidden Imam will return when the faithful use sufficient military force to wipe out evil—has emerged within the Iranian leadership. To be sure, not all of Iran’s leaders subscribe to the new theology… [but] the circle around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has passionately embraced that politicized messianism. And while Mr. Ahmadinejad is not the ultimate authority in Tehran, he may well be positioned to gain access, say, to a nuclear suitcase [or pass it] on to a terrorist proxy. Imagine a scenario like this… a previously unknown terrorist group announces that it has planted a suitcase with a nuclear device in a European capital and will detonate the bomb if Israel retaliates. Would Israel be able to protect itself against such terrorism? Would any Western state, for that matter?… No less worrying, the prospect of a nuclear Iran has triggered a process that could lead to a nuclear arms race in the world’s least stable region. Several Arab countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have declared their interest in acquiring nuclear power, ostensibly for peaceful purposes, but in fact timed as a response to Iranian nuclear ambitions.… A nuclear Iran can still be stopped by peaceful means. The decline in world oil prices has badly undermined the already fragile Iranian economy; intensifying sanctions could encourage opposition to a widely detested regime.… If the sanctions efforts fail, the thankless task of militarily preventing a nuclear Iran will fall, by default, to Israel.… Nevertheless, a rare consensus exists among Israeli leaders—from left-wing Labour to centrist Kadima to right-wing Likud—that the Jewish state must thwart a nuclear Iran, even at the risk of all-out war against the Israeli home front.… [Barack] Obama’s first test on the Iranian crisis will be how he responds to the Gaza crisis. Israel’s operation against Iran’s ally Hamas will provide the new president with an unexpected opportunity. If he backs Israel and makes sure that Hamas achieves no diplomatic gains in exchange for a ceasefire, he will deliver a strategic defeat to Iran and enter negotiations from a position of strength. If, on the other hand, he pressures Israel into easing the siege against Hamas and allows the jihadist organization to proclaim victory, the Iranians will rightly conclude that the inexperienced president poses no real obstacle to their nuclear goals.… (Yossi Klein Halevi is a
senior fellow at the Adelson Institute Please visit the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) at http://www.memritv.org/video.html for a three-minute video, “Hamas In Their Own Voices”, documenting Hamas’ martial ideology, and our Picks of the Week for David Horovitz’s Jerusalem Post editorial about Hamas’ indifference to any “rules” of war. Volume
IX, No. 2,002 • Friday
IRAN’S HAMAS
STRATEGY Anyone who knows anything about the Middle East knows that Sunni and Shiite radicals don’t work together—er, except when they do. Proof that the conventional wisdom is badly wrong is on offer in Gaza, where the manifest destiny of the Islamic Republic of Iran is now unfolding. Tehran has been aiding Hamas for years with the aim of radicalizing politics across the entire Arab Middle East. Now Israel’s response to thousands of Hamas rocket provocations appears to be doing just that. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attends an anti-Israeli demonstration in Tehran, Dec. 12, 2008. A poster at rear shows the late spiritual leader and founder of the Hamas movement, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Born in the 1980s from the ruins of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s corrupt and decaying secular nationalism, Hamas is a grass-roots, Sunni Islamist movement that has made Shiite Iran a front-line player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Before Hamas, the mullahs had financed the Palestine Islamic Jihad, whose holy warriors became renowned suicide bombers. But Islamic Jihad has always been a fringe group within Palestinian society. As national elections revealed in 2006, Hamas is mainstream. Although often little appreciated in the West, revolutionary Iran’s ecumenical quest has remained a constant in its approach to Sunni Muslims. The anti-Shiite rhetoric of many Sunni fundamentalist groups has rarely been reciprocated by Iran’s ruling elite. Since the death in 1989 of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the charismatic, quintessentially Shiite leader of the Islamic revolution, Iran’s ruling mullahs have tried assiduously to downplay the sectarian content in their militant message. Khomeini’s successor, Ali Khamenei, has consistently married his virulent anti-American rhetoric (Khomeini’s “Great Satan” has become Khamenei’s “Satan Incarnate”) with a global appeal to faithful Muslims to join the battle against the U.S. and its allies. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the most politically adept of the revolution’s founding clerics, loved to sponsor militant Sunni-Shiite gatherings when he was speaker of parliament and later as president (1989-1997). He and Mr. Khamenei, who have worked hand-in-hand on national-security issues and have unquestionably authorized every major terrorist operation since the death of Khomeini in 1989, have always been the ultimate pragmatists, even reaching out to Arab Sunni radicals with a strong anti-Shiite bent. The most radical branch of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad Organization and its most famous member, Ayman al-Zawahiri, became favored Arab poster boys for the clerical regime in the 1980s and 1990s even though Islamic Jihad, like other extremist takfiri Sunni groups, damns Shiites with almost the same gusto as it damns Western infidels. The laissez-passers that Iran gave members of al Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001 (see the 9/11 Commission Report), the training offered to al Qaeda in the 1990s by the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah (again, see the report), and the “detention” of senior members of al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan after the American invasion are best seen against the backdrop of clerical Iran’s three-decade long outreach to radical Sunnis who loathe Americans more than they hate Shiites. In 2003, Iran launched two Arabic satellite TV channels both under the guidance of the former Revolutionary Guards commander Ali Larijani, a well-dressed, well-trimmed puritan with a Ph.D. in philosophy who crushed a brief period of intellectual openness in Iran’s media in the early 1990s. A favorite of Mr. Khamenei, Mr. Larijani pushed TV content extolling Hamas, anti-Israeli suicide bombers, anti-Semitism and an all-Muslim insurgency in Iraq. Iran’s remarkably subdued rhetoric against Arabs who gave loud support to insurgents and holy warriors slaughtering Iraqi Shiites between 2004 and 2007 is inextricably tied to Tehran’s determination to keep Muslim eyes focused on the most important issue—the battle against America and Israel. Iran’s full-bore backing of Hezbollah in the July 2006 war with the Jewish State, a conflict that Tehran and its Syrian ally precipitated by their aggressive military support of Hezbollah, drew Sunni eyes further away from Iraq’s internecine strife. The 2006 Lebanon war, which lasted 34 days and saw Hezbollah’s Iranian-trained forces embarrass the Israeli army, made Tehran’s favorite Arab son, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the most admired men in the Sunni Arab world. This was a remarkable achievement given that Hezbollah had helped Iran train some of the Iraqi Shiite militants who were wreaking a horrific vengeance against Baghdad’s Sunni Arabs in 2006—a bloodbath that was constantly on Arab satellite television. Prominent Sunni rulers—Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Abdullah—have railed against a “Shiite arc” of power forming in the Near East, only to see few echoes develop outside of the region’s officially controlled media. Although the Sunni Arab rulers have sometimes shown considerable anxiety about the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon, Sunni fundamentalist organizations affiliated with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the mother ship for Sunni Islamists, have been much more restrained in expressing their trepidation. With strong ties to its fundamentalist brethren along the Nile, Hamas has given Iran (really for the first time, and so far at little cost) an important ally within the fundamentalist circles of the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the Islamic revolution’s great disappointments was that it failed to produce more allies within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots. The revolution certainly inspired many within the movement in Egypt and in Syria. But Iran’s ties to the ruling Syrian Allawite elite—a heretical Shiite sect that Sunni fundamentalists detest—complicated its outreach to Sunni militants. When Syria’s dictator Hafez Assad slaughtered thousands of Sunni fundamentalists in the town of Hama in 1982, and revolutionary Iran remained largely silent, Tehran’s standing within the Muslim Brotherhood collapsed. With Hamas, Iran has the opportunity to make amends. The mullahs have a chance of supplanting Saudi Arabia, the font of the most vicious anti-Shiite Sunni creed, as the most reliable backer of Palestinian fundamentalists. Even more than the Lebanese Hezbollah, which remains tied to and constrained by the complex matrix of Lebanese politics, Hamas seems willing to absorb enormous losses to continue its jihad against Israel. Where Saudi Arabia has been uneasy about the internecine strife among Palestinians—it has bankrolled both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas—Iran has put its money on the former. Although Fatah, the ruling party within the Palestinian Authority, may get a second wind thanks to the excesses of Hamas and the Israelis’ killing much of Hamas’s brain power and muscle, it is difficult to envision Fatah reviving itself into an appealing political alternative for faithful Palestinians. Fatah is hopelessly corrupt, often brutal, and without an inspiring raison d’être: a Palestine of the West Bank and Gaza is, as Hamas correctly points out, boring, historically unappealing, and a noncontiguous geographic mess. Fatah only sounds impassioned when it gives vent to its anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, profoundly Muslim roots. It’s no accident that the religious allusions and suicide bombers of Fatah and Hamas after 2000 were hard to tell apart. If Hamas can withstand the current Israeli attack on its leadership and infrastructure, then the movement’s aura will likely be impossible to match. Iran’s influence among religious Palestinians could skyrocket. Through Hamas, Tehran can possibly reach the ultimate prize, the Egyptian faithful. For reasons both ancient and modern, Egypt has perhaps the most Shiite-sympathetic religious identity in the Sunni Arab world. As long as Hamas remains the center of the Palestinian imagination—and unless Hamas loses its military grip on Gaza, it will continue to command the attention of both the Arab and Western media—Egypt’s politics remain fluid and potentially volatile. Tehran is certainly under no illusions about the strength of Egypt’s military dictatorship, but the uncertainties in Egypt are greater now than they have been since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. President Hosni Mubarak, Sadat’s successor, is old and in questionable health. His jet-setting son or a general may succeed him. Neither choice will resuscitate the regime’s legitimacy, which has plummeted even among the highly Westernized elite. The popularity and mosque-power of the Muslim Brotherhood, which would likely win a free election, continues to rise. A turbulent Gaza where devout Muslims are in a protracted, televised fight with the cursed Jews could add sufficient heat to make Egyptian politics really interesting. The odds of Egypt cracking could be very small—the police powers of the Egyptian state are, when provoked, ferocious—but they are now certainly enough to keep the Iranians playing. Where once Ayatollah Khomeini believed in the revolutionary potential of soft power (Iran’s example was supposed to topple the pro-American autocrats throughout the Middle East), Khomeini’s children are firm believers in hard power, covert action, duplicity and persistence. With Gaza and Egypt conceivably within Tehran’s grasp, the clerical regime will be patient and try to keep Gaza boiling. It is entirely possible that Tehran could overplay its hand among the Palestinians as it overplayed its hand among Iraqi Shiites, turning sympathetic Muslims into deeply suspicious, nationalistic patriots. The Israeli army could deconstruct Hamas’s leadership sufficiently that Gaza will remain a fundamentalist mess that inspires more pity than the white-hot heat that comes when jihadists beat infidels in battle. But with a nuclear-armed Iran just around the corner, the mullahs will do their best to inspire. Ultimately, it’s doubtful that Tehran will find President-elect Barack Obama’s offer of more diplomacy, or the threat of more European sanctions, to be compelling. The price of oil may be low, but the mullahs have seen worse economic times. In 30 years, they have not seen a better constellation of forces. And as the Shiite prayer goes, perhaps this time round the Sunnis, too, inshallah (God willing), will see the light. (Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former
Central Intelligence Agency officer, THE
NETZARIM-TEL AVIV EXPRESS ...Israel is not fighting Hamas today because it agreed to a six-month cease-fire with the terrorist regime in Gaza last June. And it is not fighting today because Hamas decided that it wants control over Gaza’s international borders. Israel is fighting a war with Hamas today because Israel withdrew from Gaza three and a half years ago. If Israel had not withdrawn its military forces from Gaza and forcibly expelled 8,000 Israeli citizens from their homes and farms in September 2005, it would not be fighting this war today. If Israel had not withdrawn, if it had retained its forces in Gaza and retained its communities—on whose ruins the IDF now fights—in Gaza, Hamas would probably never have taken over. And even if Hamas had taken over, it would never have been able to threaten a million Israelis with missiles and rockets and mortars. When then-prime minister Ariel Sharon and his lackeys Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni began advocating the withdrawal plan in 2003, they promised that by expelling Gaza’s Jews and leaving their ruined villages to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, Israel would advance the cause of peace. They promised that no one would hold us responsible for the welfare of Gaza’s population anymore. We could simply disengage. And if we were ever attacked from Gaza after we left, the entire world would rally to our side. No one would oppose our right to defend ourselves after we rendered Gaza Judenrein. The many who opposed this withdrawal scheme warned that leaving Gaza would accomplish nothing that Sharon, Olmert and Livni promised. The Palestinians would become more radical, not more moderate, after seeing Israel destroy its own towns and farms. They warned that Hamas would take over, since by expelling the Jews and leaving, Israel would show that it was collapsing. And why bother negotiating with a nation that was disintegrating? Not only would the world continue to hold us responsible for supplying Gaza with food, electricity, medical care and employment opportunities, opponents of withdrawal warned that the international community would also oppose all future steps Israel took to defend itself against Gazan aggression even more strenuously. After all, by vacating Gaza, Israel was telling the world that as far as we were concerned, we had no right to be there. And in the time that has passed since Israel “disengaged” from Gaza, the withdrawal’s opponents have been proven right, and its supporters have been proven wrong on every single issue. And yet, unlike the public’s outcry after the Second Lebanon War, there has been no public call for an accounting by Olmert, Livni or any of the withdrawal’s supporters. No one has paid a political price for getting this wrong. With the IDF now forced to reconquer the ruins of Netzarim to defend Gedera, Ashdod and Beersheba, there has been no public demand for a commission of inquiry into the decision-making processes that led the Sharon-Olmert-Livni government to withdraw from Gaza. Indeed, Olmert, Livni and their colleagues have been promoted for their championing of Israel’s single greatest strategic error since 1993. Today the IDF owes its operational competence to the public’s humiliation and sacking of Halutz, Peretz and Olmert. On the other hand, Israel’s diplomatic incompetence, and our leadership’s continued refusal to accept that Sharon was right when he said, “As goes Netzarim so goes Tel Aviv,” is rendering a true victory over Hamas impossible. If we are ever to get on the right path in Gaza, as well as in Judea and Samaria and beyond, our first order of business as the public must be to force the politicians who brought us to this point to pay a price at the ballot box for their blind and dangerous incompetence. It is only by humiliating them in elections that we can be sure that their successors will be too frightened to repeat their mistakes. THEY’VE
BURIED YONATAN They buried Yonatan on Tuesday. He was only 27 years old and married for just over a year. Just a couple of months ago, when I was at his house on Shabbat, I watched as he covered his firstborn baby with her blanket as she lay in her cradle. I hadn’t listened to the news all day. As I drive home at 11 p.m., I turn on the radio. The announcer reads out the names of soldiers who had died the day before in Gaza. At moments like these I always say a little prayer that I won’t recognize any of the names—that it won’t be my problem, that it will be someone anonymous far away so I can get on with my life and forget the pain of the others. The first three names were blanks, but the fourth name, the fourth name—Netanel—rings a bell. Isn’t that the last name of my neighbor? Don’t they have a son who is a high-ranking officer in an elite unit? I pray it’s just a coincidence, but to be safe I drive by the street where they live. If it is him, they would have notices on the street. And as I slowly drive by I look at the houses as they pass, but I see nothing—no notices here, nor here, nor here, and I am already at the end of the street. And then I see it, all over the Jerusalem stone wall, mourning announcements, and the unthinkable has happened—Yonatan is gone. The family is gathered at the next door neighbor’s house, standing around their plasma screen rewinding the video to find the story about Yonatan on the news. I expect to find everyone in tears, but while the atmosphere is subdued, no one is crying. Instead, they seem to exude a different feeling entirely—strength. A family like this cannot be understood in conventional terms. A family where faith is not a belief, but the very reality in which they live, guiding their every movement. The eyes of Yonatan’s mother, Malchi, are bloodshot, but she too is not crying. And his young wife, holding their infant baby, turns and looks at me. I can’t say anything, so I just look away. Yonatan studied at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva High School, the same school targeted by terrorists a year ago—when eight young boys were murdered. Since the terrorists have discovered the place from which the Jewish people derive their strength, they seek to destroy it, not realizing that our true strength lies in the unbeatable souls of those who learn there. The number of secret missions Yonatan went on we will never know. He took them in stride, knowing full well he was putting himself in harm’s way and doing it anyway. I only saw him on a few of the Shabbats he was on leave, and even then he never talked about what he did. What a simple, simple soul. And so fragile. So fragile are those who wear their hearts on their sleeves. Who are we, the living, if those who die are so much better? What are we doing here on this planet when all the good ones are in heaven? After watching the rosh yeshiva of the high school being interviewed about their son, the Netanels go into their house. I am left standing outside alone with Yonatan’s father, Rabbi Amos, and what am I going to say? Anything I can think of is just going to demean the worth of their beautiful child. But thank God the tears come and I break down and he holds me. So instead of me comforting him, he comforts me. “God does not give us trials we cannot withstand. The ways of the Redemption are hidden from us, but it’s still the Redemption.” Some call them simpletons, but those who know them can only thank God that people like these exist in our world. Why should such a good, humble family pay the ultimate sacrifice, while our corrupt leaders send our boys to die putting out the fire they themselves created by surrendering Gaza to the terrorists? But just as the prime minister and his cronies do not ask what right they have to steal and lie, the Netanels do not ask what obligation requires them to sacrifice their dearest to fix that which has been broken by others. While I am bitter, the Netanels are not. They ask only one thing. Where can they help? Where can they give to others? This is their reward—knowing they have helped the Jewish people. They know this world is but a test, and that the end of those who celebrate death is death and those who celebrate life—life. God grant us that we realize our nation is not a gift, that it exists through the price of the blood of our children. What is a hero? Just an ordinary person who does the right thing. When you see a person like this up close, when you see how normal they are, how they are just like us, you can’t help but be surprised. Ordinary people who have chosen the path of courage. They buried Yonatan on Tuesday. God grant us we should be worthy of his sacrifice. (Yehezkel Laing is a marketing writer living in Jerusalem.) Shabbat Shalom to all our readers. Volume
IX, No. 2,001 • Thursday
MILITANT ISLAM
THREATENS US ALL Imagine a siren that gives you 30 seconds to find shelter before a Kassam rocket falls from the sky and explodes, spraying its lethal shrapnel in all directions. Now imagine this happens day after day, month after month, year after year. If you can imagine that, you can begin to understand the terror to which hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been subjected. Three years ago Israel withdrew from every square inch of Gaza. And since that withdrawal, our civilians have been targeted by more than 6,000 rockets and mortars fired from Gaza. In the face of this relentless bombardment, Israel has acted with a restraint that other countries, faced with a similar threat, would find hard to fathom. Israel’s government has finally decided to respond. For this action to succeed, we must first have moral clarity. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy which seeks peace and targets the terrorists, and Hamas, an Iranian-backed terror organization that seeks Israel’s destruction and targets the innocent. In launching precision strikes against Hamas rocket launchers, headquarters, weapons depots, smuggling tunnels and training camps, Israel is trying to minimize civilian casualties. But Hamas deliberately attacks Israeli civilians and deliberately hides behind Palestinian civilians—a double war crime. Responsible governments do their utmost to minimize civilian casualties, but they do not grant immunity to terrorists who use civilians as human shields. The international community may occasionally condemn Hamas for putting Palestinian civilians in harm’s way, but if it ultimately holds Israel responsible for the casualties that ensue, then Hamas and other terror organizations will employ this abominable tactic again and again. The charge that Israel is using disproportionate force is equally baseless. Does proportionality demand that Israel fire 6,000 rockets indiscriminately back at Gaza? Does it demand an equal number of casualties on both sides? Using that logic, one would conclude that the United States employed disproportionate force against the Germans because 20 times as many Germans as Americans died in World War II. In that same war, Britain responded to the firing of thousands of rockets on its population with the wholesale bombing of German cities. Israel’s measured response to rocket fire on its cities has come in the form of surgical strikes. To further root out Hamas terrorists in a way that minimizes Palestinian civilian casualties, Israel’s army is now engaged in a ground operation that places its soldiers in great peril. Carpet-bombing of Palestinian cities is not an option that any Israeli leader will entertain. The goal of this mission should be clear: To end the current round of missile attacks and to remove the threat of such attacks in the future. The only cease-fire or diplomatic initiative that should be accepted is one that achieves this dual objective. If our enemies assumed that the Israeli public would be divided on the eve of an election, they were wrong. When it comes to exercising our most basic right of self-defense, there is no opposition and no coalition. We stand united against Hamas because we know that only by defeating Hamas can we provide security for our people and hope for a future peace. We fight to defend ourselves, but in so doing we are also fighting a fanatical ideology that seeks to reverse the course of history and throw the civilized world back into a new dark age. The struggle between militant Islam and modernity—whether fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, India or Gaza—will decide our common future. It is a battle we cannot afford to lose. (Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s
ninth prime minister, is the chairman A
POUND OF PEACE What news on the Rialto? Try a re-enactment of The Merchant of Venice. Shylock, played by Israel, vacated Gaza in favour of Antonio, a. k. a. the Palestinian Authority, for the surety of a pound of peace. To make room, Israel dragged Jewish settlers kicking and screaming from the land. Instead of peace, it got Hamas and its daily bombardment of rockets exploding among the civilian population. When Shylock confronted Antonio demanding to collect his pound of peace, the Duke of Venice, going under the name of UN-EU these days, turned for advice to Portia, masquerading as Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of France, leading a delegation of EU dignitaries. “Is the Jew entitled
to his pound of peace from the death-merchant Hamas?” the ducal
UN-EU wanted to know. And there the matter stands. Israel’s “right to defend itself,” to which its Western critics are careful to pay lip service, hinges on Israel never actually doing so. The Jewish state is entitled to armed self-defence; it just cannot shed any blood. If it does, gotcha! Shylock drawing blood commits the capital offence of disproportionality. President Sarkozy pushes for an immediate truce between Hamas and Israel. It’s hard to say if he does so in the mistaken belief that it would further the cause of peace, or in the accurate belief that it would rescue Hamas, one of the most implacable enemies of peace. If the latter, then the President of France, far from being a solution, is part of the problem. It’s possible, of course, that Sarkozy doesn’t really want what he’s ostensibly pushing for. If so, he’s devious, which is pretty much what everyone expects a politician to be. Finally, since Sarkozy uses the phrase “truce as soon as possible,” he may mean “truce as soon as a reliable method of stopping Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel has been found,” in which case he may even be right. The minute the rocket fire stops for good, a truce does no harm—but until then, a truce only reduces the chances of any reasonable resolution to conflict in the region.… Imagine muggers calling 911 to stop their victims from harming them when the mugging doesn’t go their way. Next, picture the police responding and doing exactly as the muggers demand. Voila, President Sarkozy and his bizarre push for a truce—and not just Sarkozy, but the rest of the Euro-gang, headed by Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner. They flock to the region, ravens disguised as doves, the terminally naive and terminally cynical harbingers of faux-peace from angelic Europe, home continent of World Wars One and Two, to lecture Jewish victims of 60 years of relentless Arab/Islamic aggression about proportionality and humanitarian concerns. Hamas and supporters are demonstrating the art of the brazen assault, a cultural specialty, whose sheer viciousness is matched by its impertinence. Step one: We hit you as hard as we can. Step two: If you dare hit us back as hard as you can, we’ll have the law on you. Really? If you don’t want to be hit by Israel, it’s easy. Don’t hit it. The many people and places Israel never bombed or invaded have one thing in common: They never bombed or invaded Israel. The phenomenon is consistent enough to be reduced to a simple formula. For a good night’s uninterrupted sleep, avoid firing rockets into Israel the previous day. THE
TASK AT HAND We have reached a crucial stage in the IDF’s operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. If we are not careful, we may have defeat staring us in the face—another defeat, after the fiasco of the Second Lebanon War. This time at the hands of Hamas, a terrorist organization even smaller and weaker than Hezbollah. Insistent calls are being heard for a cease-fire. Some of these calls come from outside Israel and others come from within our midst. If the IDF does not complete the mission it has been assigned, of suppressing the launching of rockets from the Gaza Strip against the cities, towns and villages of southern Israel, and if the final act before a cease-fire goes into effect ends up being an avalanche of rockets fired by Hamas against Israel, not only Hamas and the Arab states, but most of the world, will consider Hamas as having succeeded in defeating Israel.… [S]uch a second defeat would do irreparable damage to the general security of Israel, serving as an invitation to further provocations and aggression by Israel’s enemies in the years to come. All of Israel’s citizens, not only those living in the south, would bear the burden of such a development. It was Henry Kissinger who said that “the conventional army loses if it does not win—the guerilla wins if he does not lose.” Any terrorist group that manages to face up to the might of the IDF and survive while continuing its attacks against Israel will invariably be seen as the victor. In the present fighting in the Gaza Strip, the IDF will lose if it does not win, and Hamas will emerge as the victor. No amount of wordage in a UN Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire, or promises offered Israel by the international community, are going to change the face of the end result. That is what happened when UN Security Council Resolution 1701 brought about the cease-fire that ended the Second Lebanon War and the deployment of UNIFIL forces in southern Lebanon. You only need to take a look at what has happened to Hezbollah, its stockpile of rockets and its position in Lebanon since the cease-fire to see what is likely to occur in the Gaza Strip in the wake of a similar cease-fire there. For some reason, it is Israel that has difficulty learning that a cease-fire with terrorists is only to the advantage of the terrorists. Terrorism has to be destroyed.… The idea that Israel may face unbearable international pressure that would limit its response against terrorist forces has little basis in fact.… [I]f we are seen as being successful, we will have nothing to fear from any quarter. If there are any doubts in our midst they can be laid to rest by recalling the statements made by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, of New York, during his recent visit to Ashkelon, and those made by senior Democratic and Republican senators and by President Bush. Most of those Israeli politicians who speak of the need to stop our military activity before international pressure forces us to stop have precious little experience with the American political establishment. Our job now is to keep our eye on the ball, and not be diverted from the task at hand. The IDF must continue to pursue the mission it has been assigned and put an end to the firing of rockets from the Gaza Strip. We have the ability to do so and it must be done. The consequences of failure, regardless of the explanations offered by Israeli politicians and the wording of the relevant UN Security Council Resolution, would bode very ill for Israel. WHY
HAS THE WEST BANK BEEN QUIET? A rally held here [Ramallah] on Tuesday in solidarity with the Gaza Strip drew about 150 protesters. Similar demonstrations in other parts of the West Bank over the past 11 days have also attracted small numbers of Palestinians. As the demonstrators in this city’s central Manara Square chanted slogans condemning Israel as a “Nazi state” and calling on the Arabs to severe their ties with Israel and on Fatah and Hamas to join forces, shopkeepers did not shut their businesses to participate in the rally.… [Y]oung men and women smoked water-pipes, sipped cappuccino and exchanged jokes, totally ignoring the protest and the graphic images broadcast on Al-Jazeera via an LCD screen hanging on the wall. The general atmosphere in this city was not different from other places in the West Bank. While the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians in the West Bank continue to express their full solidarity with their brethren in the Gaza Strip, they have not gone a step further by resorting to widespread violence against the IDF and settlers. In fact, the feeling here on Tuesday was that many Palestinians related to the war in Gaza as if it were happening in another country. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been separated for nearly two decades now. Most Palestinians living in the West Bank have never been to the Gaza Strip. Similarly, only a few Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have ever set foot in the West Bank. Even when there were no Israeli-imposed travel restrictions, there was almost no interaction between the two communities. Although they may be united politically, the Palestinians in each area have always had different traditions and attitudes.… Some Israeli and Palestinian security officials had expressed fear that the Palestinians in the West Bank would erupt into violence in response to the massive IDF operation. Their fears were based on the assessment that Hamas would try to open a new front in the West Bank so as to ease the pressure on the Gaza Strip. Last week, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal openly urged the Palestinians in the West Bank to declare a “third intifada.” Hamas supporters in the West Bank have also been trying to organize large protests, but to no avail.… Palestinians said on Tuesday there were a number of reasons why the West Bankers have chosen so far to sit on the fence. One has to do with the tough measures imposed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s security forces in the West Bank. The PA has banned pro-Hamas rallies, and Palestinians who were caught carrying Hamas flags were either beaten or detained by Abbas’s forces. The PA security forces have also been doing their utmost to prevent protesters from approaching IDF checkpoints and settlements. Demonstrators who tried to march toward soldiers and settlers in Hebron and in the Ramallah area over the past few days were dispersed by force by Abbas’s policemen. This is in addition to the fact that the IDF has been waging a relentless crackdown on Hamas supporters and other radical groups in the West Bank over the past five years. Another reason behind the relative calm is attributed to the fact that some Palestinians blame Hamas for the latest cycle of violence. They are convinced that Hamas was responsible for the misery of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip because of its refusal to extend the cease-fire and its continued rocket attacks on Israel. It’s also possible that the West Bankers today feel that they have more to lose by resorting to violence. Over the past two years, their economic situation has improved remarkably as the international community resumed financial aid to the PA. In contrast, the situation in the Gaza Strip ever since Hamas took full control over the area has only been deteriorating, on almost all levels. Moreover… [t]he massive air strikes and the high casualty toll in Gaza (more than 600 killed and nearly 3,000 wounded, according to Palestinian sources) have sent the message to the public that “the Jews have finally gone mad” and that this is not the proper time to mess with them. Finally, the West Bankers, like their brothers in the Strip, have once again been reminded of the sad fact that the Arab and Islamic governments don’t really care that much about their plight. In the absence of strong backing from the Arabs and Muslim regimes, there is less motivation among the West Bankers to engage in another round of violence. But the relative calm in the West Bank does not necessarily mean that the Palestinians living there have become more moderate or that they are willing to accept almost anything that Israel offers. If anything, the war has, at least in the short-term, radicalized all Palestinians to a point where the talk about the resumption of peace talks sounds like a joke. Please see our Picks of the Week for David Horovitz’s analysis: “As the Diplomats Falter, IDF Focuses On Philadelphi”. Volume
IX, No. 2,000 • Wednesday
WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP WEEKLY QUOTES “I’ve been closely monitoring the situation in Gaza. I understand Israel’s desire to protect itself, and that the situation now taking place in Gaza was caused by Hamas. Instead of caring about the people of Gaza, Hamas decided to use Gaza to launch rockets to kill innocent Israelis. And Israel has obviously decided to protect herself and her people.… [O]f course, [we] would like to see violence stopped—but not at the expense of an agreement that does not prevent the crisis from happening again. I know people are saying ‘let’s have that cease-fire’, and those are noble ambitions. But any cease-fire must have the conditions in it so that Hamas does not use Gaza as a place from which to launch rockets.”—U.S. President George W. Bush, while meeting the First Vice-President of Sudan in the Oval Office, addressing reporters regarding the situation in Gaza, and rejecting the calls from other leaders to halt the Israeli operation. (Press Release, The White House, Jan. 5) “We, Europe, want a ceasefire as soon as possible. Time is working against peace. The weapons must be silenced and there must be a temporary humanitarian truce.… Hamas acted in an irresponsible and unforgiveable manner... Hamas is to blame for the suffering of the Palestinians.”—French President Nicholas Sarkozy, speaking in Jerusalem after his meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Hamas responded by accusing Sarkozy of being “totally biased” towards Israel. (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 6) “Israel could not stop its military activity before it reaches the goals it has set. This can be reached through further military measures or diplomatic measures which the international community must formulate.”—Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Israel will not halt its operation in Gaza unless it can be guaranteed that Hamas will halt its attacks against Israel. Speaking on behalf of the government, Mark Regev told reporters, “We have no love for Hamas, but the goal of this operation is purely defensive… [T]he minute we can be sure the civilian population in the south of Israel is not going to be on the incoming end of Hamas rockets from Gaza, this operation can be over.” (Globe and Mail, Jan. 5) “Europe needs to open its eyes with respect to the fighting in Gaza… None of the European countries would tolerate rocket fire on their citizens, and they must understand that Hamas is a terror organization of the worst order that uses its population of women and children as human shields.”—Israeli President Shimon Peres, during a meeting with an EU delegation led by Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, explaining why Israel is rejecting European calls for an immediate ceasefire. “We are fighting with terror, and we are not reaching an agreement with terror…. Hamas targets Israel whenever it likes and Israel shows restraint… This is no longer going to be the equation in this region. When Israel is being targeted, Israel is going to retaliate,” added Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. (Jer. Post, National Post, Jan.6) “Fatah and its men are an integral part of this battle and in confronting the aggression… The Israeli aggression is directed against all the Palestinians and their cause… This is the time to join forces in combating the Israeli occupation.”—Jailed Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti, urging all Palestinian factions on Sunday to put aside their differences and unite their ranks to fight against the IDF in the Gaza Strip. Barghouti is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison for his involvement in armed attacks against Israelis during the second intifada. (Jer. Post, Jan. 4) “Hamas works for Iran. They brought us back to the Stone Age… I’m happy to see them radicated.”—Mohammed Abu Zakari, 48, former Fatah movement member in Gaza who lost his leg in a shootout with Hamas in June, 2007, commenting on the current Israeli operation in Gaza. “Hamas shoots from between houses…they hope Israel will fire at them and kill some civilians,” added Mahmoud as-Shatat, 23, a former student leader of Fatah. (Globe and Mail, Jan. 7) “The Israeli machine of destruction continues to kill, to commit the most heinous of possible crimes despite international unanimity, an unprecedented unanimity in calling for an end of this massacre against innocent civilians that do not deserve such brutality.”—Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, supporting a proposal by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for a cease-fire between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers. The Egyptian proposal may include provisions for a specialized international forces or teams, equipped to search out and destroy smuggling tunnels in the Philadelphi corridor that separates the Gaza Strip and Egypt as well as Israel and a naval contingent to prevent smuggling by sea. Any deployment to combat smuggling would require Egypt's consent. On the Palestinian side, formal consent would likely come from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Western powers want Rafah, Gaza's only border crossing with Egypt, to re-open. It has been largely closed since European observers fled when Hamas routed Abbas's forces and took full control of Gaza in June 2007. (Ha’aretz, Reuters, Jan. 7) “Any civilian suffering in any corner of this tragic territory called Gaza, Canada laments… The burden of responsibility lies now with Hamas and an end to the terrorist rocketing. Israel has said—and Canada would support—an immediate ceasefire. But only if it's a permanent ceasefire, if it's a sustainable ceasefire and if it's a durable ceasefire and if Hamas doesn't—as it has in the past—use it to rearm and continue rocketing.”—Peter Kent, Canada's junior foreign affairs minister and the Canadian government's designated spokesman on the latest Middle East conflict, in an interview with Canwest News. (National Post, Jan. 7) “Hamas often uses 14-, 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds, as well as women, as terrorists. Israel is entitled under international law to treat these children and women as the combatants they have become. Hamas cannot, out of one side of its mouth, boast that it recruits children and women to become terrorists, and then, out of the other side of its mouth, complain when Israel takes it at its word. The media should look closely and critically at the number of claimed civilian victims before accepting self-serving and self-contradictory exaggerations. … “Hamas does everything in its power to provoke Israel into killing as many Palestinian civilians as possible, in order to generate condemnation against the Jewish state. It has gone so far as firing rockets from Palestinian schoolyards and hiding its terrorists in Palestinian maternity wards. … “The reality is that the elected and de facto government of Gaza has declared war against Israel. Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, it has committed an ‘armed attack’ against the Jewish state. The Hamas charter calls for Israel’s total destruction. Under international law, Israel is entitled to take whatever military action is necessary to repel that attack and stop the rockets.”—Alan M. Dershowitz, law professor at Harvard. (National Post, Jan.7) “It is easy to feel sorry for the Palestinians in Gaza. Televised and print images of their apparently unrelieved misery suggest Israeli cruelty in the creation of shortages and in the use of armed force. Exactly the opposite is true. The moment that flagrantly illegal Hamas rocket attacks upon Israeli noncombatants cease, no harms of any kind will be imposed by Israel. “Hamas commits other egregious violations of international law. It is always a codified war crime to use civilians as ‘human shields.’ This cowardly act even has a precise legal name—‘perfidy.’ By persistently placing their most impoverished women and children in harm’s way…Palestinian terrorist leaders deliberately create Palestinian casualties.… “International law is not a suicide pact. Rather, it offers an authoritative body of rules and procedures that permits states to express their inherent right of self-defense. When terrorist organizations celebrate the explosive ‘martyrdom’ of Palestinian children, and when Palestinian leaders unashamedly seek religious redemption through the mass-murder of Jewish children, the terrorists have no legal right to demand sanctuary. Anywhere.” —Professor Louis René Beres, a political scientist at Perdue University, pointing out that unlike Hamas, “Israel has always been willing to keep its counter terrorism operations in Gaza consistent with the settled standards of humanitarian international law.” (Jer. Post, Jan. 4) “Hamas has killed the idea [of a two-state solution], and even the Holy Land is good for only one resurrection…. Instead, we should look to a 'three-state' approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty.”—Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, citing the proverbial two-state solution (Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace) as unworkable and, effectively, dead. (Washington Post, Jan. 6) SHORT TAKES HAMAS REJECTS CALLS FOR CEASEFIRE—(Jerusalem) Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, stated that Hamas’ “resistance” would continue as long as Israel continued its “occupation”, and he demanded that Israel immediately halt its offensive, withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and open all of the border crossings. The crossings were closed in 2007 when Hamas seized control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority in a bloody civil war. They were reopened in July, 2008 on the condition that Hamas discontinue its rocket and mortar fire at Southern Israel, but were periodically closed as rocket attacks persisted. (Jer. Post, Jan. 7) ARAB WITNESS SAW HAMAS TERRORISTS AT BOOBY-TRAPPED UN SCHOOL (Gaza City) At least 30 Palestinians were allegedly killed and over 50 wounded in the IDF attack on a Hamas rocket squad based in a Gaza City UN school on Tuesday. Defense officials told the Associated Press that booby-trapped bombs in the school had triggered secondary explosions that killed additional Palestinians there. “[The IDF] shot back to save their own lives,” said Ilan Tal, an Israeli military spokesman and a brigadier general in the reserves. Among the dead, the military said in a statement, were “Hamas terrorist operatives and a mortar battery cell.” The military identified two Hamas operatives, Imad Abu Asker and Hassan Abu Asker, as having been killed. A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one member of the Asker family in the area of the school right before the attack. Two other residents of the area said that they had seen a small group of terrorists firing mortar rounds from a street close to the school. The two spoke with the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. UNRWA officials are demanding an independent investigation be launched to determine the facts of the incident. (Jer. Post, Jan. 6; New York Times, Jan. 7) ONTARIO UNION PROPOSES BANNING ISRAELI ACADEMICS; MEMBERS OUTRAGED—(Toronto) In response to the Dec. 29 Israeli bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza (which housed research and development centres for Hamas) the Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee of CUPE, Ontario’s largest university workers’ union, has proposed imposing a boycott on all Israeli academics teaching in the provinces universities. The resolution is still being drafted, but it will seek to prohibit Israeli academics from teaching “unless they explicitly condemn the [Islamic] [U]niversity bombing and the assault on Gaza in general,” said Sid Ryan, president of CUPE Ontario. Some CUPE members have begun voicing their opposition to the move: “[L]et me say how ashamed and appalled I am by my union's latest antics. This call by CUPE for a boycott of Israeli academics should serve as a frightening wake-up call to anybody who values intellectual freedom. If this proposal gets passed, it will immediately transform our universities into an Orwellian gulag, reminiscent of Animal Farm, where some academics are more equal than others, depending not on their qualifications and achievements but on their passports,” writes E. Joan O'Callaghan of Toronto in the National Post. (National Post, Jan. 5, 7) HAMAS: “THANKS FOR THE GUNS”—(Gaza City) Weapons once provided by Israel to forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas are now being used by Hamas in their fight against the IDF in the Gaza Strip, claim Hamas representatives. Hamas also seized dozens of armoured vehicles once used by PA security forces in Gaza. After Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 it announced that it had seized thousands of small arms as well as heavy machineguns, night-vision goggles and bullet-proof vests. (Jer. Post, Jan. 4) HAMAS CHIEF KILLED—(Ramallah) Nizar Rayyan, the Hamas military commander killed in an air raid in Gaza, was a sworn enemy of Israel and of the Palestinian Authority and President Mahmoud Abbas. Rayyan led the Hamas forces who overthrew Abbas’ men in the Gaza Strip in 2007. A Hamas spokesman did not rule out the possibility that the PA had asked the IDF to kill Rayyan, “Sheikh Rayyan was one of the main reasons why many of Abbas’s men did not sleep well at night…. They knew that as long as the sheikh was around, they would never be able to return to the Gaza Strip.” (Jer.Post, Jan. 1) ISRAEL: ERDOGAN’S COMMENTS UNACCEPTABLE—(Jerusalem) The Israeli Foreign Ministry has protested to Turkey’s ambassador to Israel that the comments made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan were “unacceptable.” Erdogan, who has just returned to Istanbul from an unsuccessful tour of the region with the hopes of mediating a cease-fire, said Israel was “perpetrating inhuman actions which would bring it to self-destruction. Allah will sooner or later punish those who transgress the rights of innocents.” (Jer.Post, Jan. 5) ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE & U.S. ON THE RISE—(Paris) In Toulouse, France, a burning car was rammed into a synagogue gate late Monday. There were no injuries. Also, in Lyons, France, a cedar tree planted in memory of the late Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin was damaged by criminals using a saw. Meanwhile, Belguim police reported that a gang had tried to set fire to the door of a Brussels synagogue. On Sunday, slogans including "murderers... You broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on Israel's embassy in Stockholm. In Britain, the spokesman for Community Security Trust, an antisemitism monitoring centre, reported that violence against Jews and their property was running at four times the normal level for this time of year. Last week, in the U.S., Temple Shalom, one of Chicago’s oldest synagogues, was firebombed; no injuries were reported. At a Montreal pro-Hamas rally (a group defined as terrorist by the government of Canada) on Sunday, an Israeli flag was burned. (Jer. Post, Jan. 6; Ha’aretz, Agence France-Presse, Montreal Gazette, Jan.7) JEWISH HIT LIST DISCOVERED IN BELGIUM—(Brussels) The investigation of Abdelkader Belliraj, a Belgian Morrocan charged with murdering two Jews in Brussels in 1988 and ordering four more murders over the next two years, has led to the discovery of an alleged cell of eleven other suspects in Belgium. The Belgian daily La Dernière Heure reports that among the seized documents was a hit list of six names of Jewish celebrities living in France and Belgium. Included on the list is the French philosopher and noted polemicist Bernard Henri-Levy. (La Dernière Heure, Dec. 30) ISRAELI PROF CONDEMNS IDF MISSION WHILE HAMAS TARGETS HIS UNIVERSITY—(Beersheva) In the left-wing web magazine Counterpunch, Neve Gordon, chairman of the department of political science at Ben Gurion University, and Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, denounced Israel’s bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza City. Israel justified its strike on the university, claiming that it is a weapons development and storage facility for Hamas rockets. On the same day, Ben Gurion University was forced to shut down because Beersheva was subjected to rocket bombardment from the Gaza Strip. (Counterpunch, Dec. 31; Jewish Press Blog, Dec. 30) PLFP LEADER SENTENCED TO 30 YEARS—(Tel Aviv) An Israeli military court sentenced Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, to 30 years imprisonment. The PLFP was responsible for the assassination of Israeli minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001, and two PLFP terrorists have already been sentenced for the crime. Saadat was convicted for other attacks, the court said. In Gaza, Hamas stated that Saadat would be “among the first names on the list we demand for release” in exchange for IDF soldier Gilad Schalit. (Ha’aretz, Dec. 25) SHIITES ATTACKED IN BAGHDAD—(Baghdad) An explosion in Baghdad’s Kahdimiya district killed over forty people, sixteen of them Iranians, and wounded over seventy, when a suicide bomber joined a procession leading into one of Iraq’s holiest Shiite shrines. An undercover agent with the Interior Ministry described a man in a long, black coat “stuffed with explosives” who seemed to target the Iranian pilgrims. Earlier that day, a bus carrying Iranians to Kadhimiya was struck by a roadside bomb. Residents of the Kahdimiya region have expressed their dissatisfaction with efforts of the Iraqi national police to establish order and security in the area since U.S. troops ceded their responsibility to them over a year ago. Two weeks ago, a car bomb killed 24 and wounded 46 on the same road to the shrine. (New York Times, Jan. 5) TARIQ AZIZ AND “CHEMICAL ALI” ON TRIAL IN IRAQ—(Baghdad) An Iraqi court opened a new trial against two of Saddam Hussein’s main deputies for their roles in suppressing opposition to the Iraqi Ba’ath party between 1981 and 2003. Ali Hassan al-Majeed, better known as “Chemical Ali,” was responsible for gassing Saddam’s enemies, while Tariq Aziz is a former deputy prime minister to Hussein. They are charged with crimes against humanity. (New York Post, Dec. 29) TERROR IN ISRAEL ROSE IN 2008—(Jerusalem) The annual summary by Shin Bet Security Services for 2008 shows a rise in both the overall number of terrorist attacks inside Israel and the number of people who died. Eighteen hundred rockets and mortar shells launched from the Gaza Strip landed in Israel. Thirty-six Israelis were killed by terrorist attacks in 2008 compared to 13 killed in 2007. (Ha’aretz, Jan. 2)
Volume
IX, No. 1,999 • Tuesday
END THE CANT AND
HYPOCRISY Anyone seeking a case study of the forces of good facing evil incarnate would not find a better template than our current confrontation with Hamas. And yet, having for years endured bias and the application of double standards from the amoral international community, we are pained that much of the global media continues relating to us in a malevolent and hypocritical manner. In lieu of being commended for defending ourselves against terrorists, we are portrayed as the heartless killers while the barbarians committed to murdering us are depicted as innocent victims. Self-styled liberals refuse to face the brutal truth that our Hamas neighbors have created a criminal society based on death and destruction.… Whereas we grieve over the death of fellow Israelis and innocent Palestinians, Hamas celebrates the murder of both—the first as “apes and pigs,” the latter as prized martyrs of Allah whom they gleefully exploit for propaganda purposes. An independent state of Palestine is not Hamas’s primary goal. Its charter unequivocally prioritizes the destruction of the Jewish state and killing as many Jews as possible: “The annihilation of the Jews in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine,” said Palestinian cleric Muhsen Abu Ita recently on Al Aksa TV.… Hamas representative Fathi Hamad openly told Al-Aksa TV: “Palestinians formed human shields of women, children, the elderly and the mujahedeen in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It was as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy: We desire death like you desire life.” Not surprisingly, those human rights groups continuously castigating Israel refuse to concede that such behavior would qualify as war crimes under international law. No country whose citizens are continuously under missile attack from its neighbor would match the restraint displayed by Israel. I take no pride in this because I believe that the government’s failure to respond earlier was unconscionable. It emboldened Hamas terrorists, accustomed the world to accepting that as long as many people were not killed, launching missiles against Israel was “tolerable” and effectively eliminated our deterrent capability. Moreover it doomed close to a million citizens in the South to becoming refugees in their own land as they took refuge from missile attacks which, by any benchmark, were acts of war. Now, in a rare display of unity so far including even the most dovish Knesset parties, Israelis have affirmed that the outcome of this conflict must ensure that their citizens will never again be targeted by missiles. An imposed unilateral cease-fire with Hamas that fails to implement this would be akin to the US and its allies consummating an unconditional truce with a victorious Taliban in Afghanistan. That is why international public opinion is so important. If the victims who defend themselves by killing Hamas terrorists and the perpetrators who target and kill innocent civilians are viewed as morally equivalent, that would represent a clear victory for the global jihadists. Regrettably, there are sectors of the international community who once again are burying their heads. While the United States, Germany, the Czech Republic and Australia hold Hamas responsible, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for invading Gaza and employing “disproportionate” force and harming civilians. Other Europeans, led by the retiring head of the European Union, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, also accused Israel of responding in a disproportionate manner.… Would the inadvertent death of noncombatants become “more justifiable” if only more targeted Israelis were killed? Does Israel have to experience a mega massacre before implementing deterrence? What sort of sick thinking is this? As Barack Obama said in June when he visited Sderot, “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing.” Today, as never before, we need the international community to act in a responsible manner. We therefore appeal to our friends and people of goodwill everywhere. Raise your voices now and support our struggle to overcome terrorism. Hamas is not merely another brand of Taliban. It is also the surrogate of Iran. If Western governments appease this criminal organization at the expense of the security of Israel, they strengthen the forces of global jihad, signal moderate Muslims that it is futile to resist the fanatics and expose citizens in their own capitals to increased bombing attacks. BATTLING
TOWARD THE COLLAPSE OF THE HAMAS REGIME Israel’s long-term strategic goal is the elimination of Hamas control of Gaza. This is especially the goal of the Kadima and Labor parties, which are distinguished by their commitment to a negotiated final-status agreement with the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas. The Hamas takeover in Gaza reduced Abbas to a provincial governor who no longer represents effective authority in all the areas destined for a future Palestinian state. Hamas rule in Gaza is a bone in the throat of the “peace process”—one Israel is determined to remove. But how? After the Hamas takeover in June 2007, Israel imposed a regime of economic sanctions on Gaza, constricting the flow of goods and materials into Gaza via its border crossings. The idea was gradually to undermine the popularity of Hamas in Gaza, while at the same time bolstering Abbas.… So Israel’s war aim is very straightforward, and it is not simply a total cease-fire. At the very least, it is a total cease-fire that also leaves the sanctions against Hamas in place. This would place Israel in an advantageous position to bring about the collapse of Hamas rule sometime in the future—its long-term objective. The Israeli operation is meant to impress on Hamas that there is something far worse than the sanctions…. Many Western and Arab governments see the logic of this. They would like to see Abbas and the Palestinian Authority back in authority over Gaza, thus restoring credibility to the “peace process.” Because they wish to see Hamas contained if not diminished, they have moved slowly or not at all to respond to calls for action to stop the fighting. The question now is how Israel turns its military moves into political moves that achieve the shared objectives of this coalition of convenience. A hint of the solution Israel envisions comes from a senior Israeli diplomatic source: “Israel cannot agree that the only party responsible for implementing and regulating the cease-fire be Hamas.” Israel’s objective is to put another player on the ground in Gaza, which over time would be positioned to undermine Hamas. And since the objective is gradually restoring Gaza to control by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, it seems logical to assume that this mechanism will be designed to enforce Hamas submission to that authority… in the name of “national unity,” but it would become beholden to the PA. It is the PA, for example, that could be reinserted at the Egyptian border crossing at Rafah (as already demanded by Cairo). It is the PA that could be given exclusive control of reconstruction budgets to repair damaged and destroyed ministries, mosques and homes. (In the eventual reconstruction boom, Israel will hold all the cards: Gaza has no construction materials, and gravel, aggregate and cement must be trucked in from Israel.) The premise is that if economic sanctions are to be lifted—and post-war Gaza will be desperately in need of all material things—it must only be through the agency of the PA. Finally, PA security forces could be reintroduced in a police capacity, as part of the “national” reconciliation. An envelope for this restoration of the PA could be provided by the international community.… What could go wrong with this scenario? A lot. Hamas assumes (probably correctly) that its Palestinian opponents fed Israel with much of the intelligence it needed to wage precision warfare against Hamas. There is likely to be a vicious settling of scores as soon as a cease-fire is in place, if not before, and which could approximate a civil war. This could open space for small groups like Islamic Jihad and other gangs, which could shoot off rockets at their own initiative (or that of Iran).… As diplomats work to put together a cease-fire mechanism, Hamas will work hard to tempt governments to talk to it, persuading them to skirt the Quartet’s insistence that Hamas not be “engaged” until it accepts past PA-Israel agreements, recognizes Israel and renounces armed struggle. Legitimation of Hamas could seal the fate of the “peace process” and give “resistance” the reputation of a truly winning strategy.… As with any multi-stage plan, Israel’s appears clearer at the outset and fuzzier in the later stages, where consensus dissipates. In particular, the opposition Likud has less confidence in Abbas and the “peace process” as presently configured. While it is adamant about ending Hamas rule in Gaza, it would be much less concerned with restoring the unity of the Palestinians. As Israel achieves its military aims, underlying political differences, now suppressed, are bound to surface, especially as elections are only a month away. But for now, Israel is united in pursuing its war of demolition against Hamas. Its aim is not only to stop the rockets from falling in southern Israel, but to move a long stride forward toward a change of regime in Gaza. (Martin Kramer is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center’s Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem.) THE
‘BACK-TO-THE-FUTURE’ OPTION FOR GAZA Israel’s war against Hamas brings up the old quandary: What to do about the Palestinians? Western states, including Israel, need to set goals to figure out their policy toward the West Bank and Gaza. Let’s first review what we know does not and cannot work:• Israeli control Neither side wishes to continue the situation that began in 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces took control of a population that is religiously, culturally, economically and politically different and hostile. • A Palestinian state The 1993 Oslo Accords began this process, but a toxic brew of anarchy, ideological extremism, anti-Semitism, jihadism and warlordism led to complete Palestinian failure. • A binational state Given the two populations’ mutual antipathy, the prospect of a combined Israel-Palestine (what Muammar al-Qaddafi calls “Israstine”) is as absurd as it seems. Excluding these three prospects leaves only one practical approach, that which worked tolerably well in the period 1948-67: Shared Jordanian-Egyptian rule, whereby Amman rules the West Bank and Cairo runs Gaza. To be sure, this back-to-the-future approach inspires little enthusiasm. Not only was Jordanian-Egyptian rule undistinguished, but resurrecting this arrangement will frustrate Palestinian impulses, be they nationalist or Islamist. Further, Cairo never wanted Gaza and has vehemently rejected returning there.… The failures of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the “peace process,” have prompted rethinking in Amman and Jerusalem. Indeed, The Christian Science Monitor’s Ilene R. Prusher found, already in 2007, that the idea of a West Bank-Jordan confederation “seems to be gaining traction on both sides of the Jordan River.” The Jordanian government, which enthusiastically annexed the West Bank in 1950 and abandoned its claims only under duress in 1988, shows signs of wanting to return.… Israeli officialdom has also showed itself open to this idea, occasionally calling for Jordanian troops to enter the West Bank. Despairing of self-rule, some Palestinians welcome the Jordanian option. An unnamed senior PA official told [Dan Diker and Pinchas Inbari of the Middle East Quarterly] that a form of federation or confederation with Jordan offers “the only reasonable, stable, long-term solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”… Nor is this just talk: Diker and Inbari report that back-channel PA-Jordan negotiations in 2003-04 “resulted in an agreement in principle to send 30,000 Badr Force members” to the West Bank. And while Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak announced a year ago that “Gaza is not part of Egypt, nor will it ever be,” his is hardly the last word. First, Mubarak notwithstanding, Egyptians overwhelmingly want a strong tie to Gaza; Hamas concurs and Israeli leaders sometimes agree. So the basis for an overhaul in policy exists. Secondly, Gaza is arguably more a part of Egypt than of “Palestine.” During most of the Islamic period, it was either controlled by Cairo or part of Egypt administratively. Gazan colloquial Arabic is identical to what Egyptians living in Sinai speak. Economically, Gaza has the most connections to Egypt. Hamas itself derives from the Muslim Brethren, an Egyptian organization. Is it time to think of Gazans as Egyptians? Thirdly, Jerusalem could out-manoeuvre Mubarak. Were it to announce a date when it ends the provisioning of all water, electricity, food, medicine and other trade, plus accept enhanced Egyptian security in Gaza, Cairo would have to take responsibility for Gaza. Among other advantages, this would make it accountable for Gazan security, finally putting an end to the thousands of Hamas rocket and mortar assaults. The Jordan-Egypt option quickens no pulse, but that may be its value. It offers a uniquely sober way to solve the “Palestinian problem.” (Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.) GAZA
WILL NOT BE STALINGRAD …As of this writing, Hamas is trying to draw IDF forces into the cities of Gaza, and the IDF is trying to coax Hamas combatants out into the open. While Hamas is trying to pull the IDF in, the IDF currently has the time to decide where and what to strike. It’s up to the IDF to decide which bait to take and which not. But… [t]he longer the IDF waits outside the cities the greater Hamas’s power in shaping the battle. There are several ways Hamas will try baiting the IDF into the urban areas. For one, it will attempt to kidnap soldiers, which would require rescue missions. Sniper fire is another form of bait, as the sources of fire have to be taken out. At present, snipers are being killed with anti-tank rockets and helicopter fire. But once they fire from civilian buildings inside an urban setting, these methods will become tricky. Hamas will eventually fire mortars at troop concentrations outside the cities from within built-up areas and the IDF will then have to direct fire at the source of the sniper or mortar fire, which would ideally be done by tank, artillery, or helicopter, meaning from the outside.… Further movement into the heart of the built-up areas would mean deadly urban warfare, replete with house-to-house fighting in crowded streets and alleyways familiar to Hamas’s 20,000 fighters. Hamas has booby-trapped the streets of Gaza cities with explosives placed along routes and at the entrances to buildings. This will be devastating for ground forces walking into that kind of area and will cause most of the IDF’s casualties. Hamas has also dug tunnels throughout the major cities and will carry out much of its fighting through them…. In a densely populated urban setting such as Gaza City, there are a lot of hiding places for snipers to shoot from; suicide bombers can come running up from everywhere and even fall onto troops from buildings. There is not much a force can do about that, except for shooting anything that moves. Any Gazan approaching a force will be suspected of being a shooter or suicide bomber. Many members of Hamas’s military wing will not be wearing their uniforms. These two factors will make extreme prejudice on the part of the IDF very difficult. Hamas may use stone-throwing children as shields, from behind which they’ll fire at IDF units. Past experience has shown that civilians caught in the hell of urban warfare will try to run away, which means a lot of movement on the streets and much confusion about the identity of combatants and civilians. If the IDF is to perform what Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu calls a “root canal and not just a filling” on Hamas’s terror infrastructure, troops will have to go into the cities and take on the hardcore of Hamas’s military wing. The IDF believes it has a good chance of inflicting damage on Hamas fighters inside the cities, as the military’s training over the past two years has included testing fighting techniques—both in simulation and actual fighting…. Even though Hamas technically has superior numbers in the cities, the IDF can bring to bear a more effective fighting force. Technically, the IDF is invading Hamas territory, not occupying the Gaza Strip, so its operations there are offensive raids, whereas Hamas is playing defense. Since the aim is not to control the population of Gaza and occupy territory, IDF units can make aggressive incursions and retreat to staging areas.… There are two different types of urban combat: military-to-military and guerrilla. In the former, anything goes, including the use of artillery to bomb buildings, massive use of armor and indiscriminate aerial bombardment. An example of this is the battle of Stalingrad. Gaza will not be Stalingrad. In Gaza, the IDF’s armored units will become susceptible to anti-tank rockets in the narrow streets and tight corridors, which can easily disable the slow-moving machines.… In Gaza, the IDF will mostly be using infantry without armored support. Before taking over buildings, soldiers will have to sweep them for bombs. The main goal is to minimize the amount of infantry within the streets. The IDF will try to damage the enemy as much as it can “from the outside”—using suppressing fire from tanks and helicopters. Once the troops enter dense urban spaces to carry out missions, they will be operating in an extremely sensitive environment, requiring careful command and control abilities and specific fighting techniques.… The problem with urban areas is that all IDF’s technological advantage will be largely nullified. Everything becomes close-quarters battle. On the streets of Gaza it is easy to be surprised by the enemy, because targets cannot be seen properly. With technology diminished, training and technique come to the fore. Effective urban guerrilla fighting comes down to movement on the streets using cover fire from several different positions, and the IDF has been training intensively for this. A force heading towards a target will want to enter its theater of operations through several different streets, so that each part of the force can have cover fire from the other. If one force is stuck another one can outflank the enemy. In urban fighting cover fire is of supreme importance. Every corner wall that a soldier passes he momentarily loses eye contact with the rest of his force. These are perilous seconds. Command and control becomes key and here again the IDF has been putting a lot of emphasis in its training over the past two years. In an urban area a commander will not always be able to see the troops he is controlling. Each movement has to be extremely well coordinated to avoid friendly fire, which is also a very big concern in an urban area. The trick is to work slowly and systematically. Units cannot allow themselves to be drawn into traps, which is exactly what Hamas is trying to do. The forces cannot work too slowly, however, as the threat to their safety increases in proportion to the amount of time they remain in the theater of operations. Volume
IX, No. 1,998 • Monday
LORNE GUNTER:
GAZA DEALS BLOW TO PALESTINIAN MYTHS If Israel is the occupier of Gaza (as so many angry readers have told me following my recent columns in support of Israel’s attacks), how come it has no troops or military posts in Gaza and has not had since 2005? How come Israel spent the summer and early fall of 2005 forcibly evicting 7,000 Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip if it is an occupier? Israeli society—including the army—was deeply divided over the removal of the settlers. Many soldiers refused to take part in the uprooting of families, some of whom had lived in Gaza for three generations. Most settlers under 40 knew no other home and almost all resisted the expulsion with civil disobedience. But still Israel carried it out because the Palestinians insisted the presence of the settlers was their prime irritant and obstacle to peace. It cost Israel more than half a billion dollars to relocate the settlers. More than 1,000 acres (3.5 million square metres) of greenhouses were abandoned and 15% of Israel’s agricultural exports were lost due to the evacuation. Approximately 5,000 Palestinians lost their jobs processing the crops Israelis grew on the Strip. Palestinians and their supporters often complain that Israeli settlers take the best land. If only they would give it back, the Palestinians themselves would work that land and become self-sufficient. But in Gaza, all the occupied land has been given back, along with extensive cultivation and irrigation infrastructure and now—just three years later—the land is largely barren, the greenhouses and irrigation works are largely in ruins and there are almost no exports, meaning there are no export-based jobs for Palestinians and no foreign-currency income for Gazans from international produce buyers. Also in 2005, Israel removed all its soldiers from Gaza, as the Palestinians had demanded. Now it has only border patrols and checkpoints along its boundary with the Palestinian enclave.… I have been told time and again by Palestinian-friendly readers that because of Israel’s “occupation,” Gazans have been forced to dig tunnels between the Strip and Egypt just to get food and water. But Egypt, not Israel, controls its frontiers with Gaza. So how do Israel’s restrictions make Gaza-Egypt tunnels necessary? If Egypt were not just as determined to keep Gaza sealed off, the tunnels would be unnecessary no matter what Israel was doing.… And why, when Egypt controlled Gaza from 1948 to 1967, did it not allow the Palestinians to relocate freely? Why did it keep in them in their refugee camps? Doesn’t all of this make Egypt a co-occupier? Over and over, too, I have been told the existing troubles stem from the way Israel forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of their homes between 1947 and 1949 to make way for a Jewish state. But while it is true 650,000 Arabs and Palestinians were displaced by the founding of Israel, often overlooked are more than 800,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab states at the same time and told to go to Israel.… The displacement of people was hardly one-way. Israel is Gaza’s largest supplier of humanitarian aid. Since Operation Cast Lead began on Dec. 27, nearly 200 trucks have crossed into the Strip from Israel carrying 6,000 tonnes of “basic food commodities, medication, medical supplies and blood units.” The most badly wounded Palestinians are taken to Israeli hospitals for treatment, too. Iran eagerly supplies Hamas, Gaza’s rulers, with plenty of weapons to fire on Israel, but it provides precious little food or medical aid for ordinary Palestinians. Nor do Saudi Arabia or any of the oil-rich Gulf states come close to Israel’s aid levels. Israel may not be blameless in Gaza, but neither is it a cruel, unprovoked aggressor. ISRAEL’S
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT IS IN PRETTY GOOD SHAPE It’s easy to be misled by elements of Western media and academia that seem to prefer terrorists and radical Islamists to Israel. A diplomatic balance sheet from Israel’s standpoint is remarkably good, better than it has been for a very long time. Of course, there are real problems, disagreements, and specific frictions. I’ll come to that in a moment. But first the good news: • These are the countries with which Israel has great relations: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the United States, and also the European Union and NATO. Moreover, there are a long list of ex-Soviet bloc states which understand the difference between a democratic state defending itself and a bunch of ideologically driven, dictatorship-worshipping terrorists. They include the new EU chair, the Czech Republic, and a dozen others, of which Azerbaijan, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland, can stand as examples. And last but not least most of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. • Countries with which Israel has good relations include China, Russia, and Turkey. See details below. • Non-Muslim countries with which Israel has bad relations are Colombia, North Korea, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. Perhaps you can come up with a few others. Nominations are open. Of course, friendly countries have criticisms over settlements, for example, or defining “peace” as Israel not responding to Hamas attacks.… In some cases, as in France or Italy, current good links depend on the specific leader in power there.… In France, Nicolas Sarkozy replaced the notably less friendly Jacque Chirac. While Sarkozy’s soft policy toward Syria is disappointing, it doesn’t conflict with Israeli policy. His recent foray into pushing a poorly conceived ceasefire in Gaza shows impulsive interventionism (France must act as a great power), but unquestionably his is the French government most friendly to Israel in 50 years. With China, Israel has a good bilateral relationship despite that country’s arms’ sales (reportedly Chinese-made rockets sold to Iran and then given to Hamas have been shot at Israel) and reluctance to support sanctions against Iran. China is motivated by a search for money, a desperate need for oil, and fear that sanctions might be turned against itself some day. At the same time, though, China, like other countries mentioned above, has broken with the myth that it’s impossible to have good relations with both Israel and the Arab world.… Israel’s technological wealth, impressive military performance, influence with the United States, and other factors have made it an attractive friend to have. In addition, growing radical Islamist forces have scared many countries. One could (falsely) romanticize the PLO as a progressive national liberation movement. Iran, Hamas, and Hizbullah are a harder sell. Two other important Israeli relationships are the most complex. Turkey has an Islamist-rooted government which portrays itself as a center-right party. Its instinct may be anti-Israel but its behavior isn’t.… Russia benefits from a balanced policy which allows good relations with Israel, Syria, and Iran simultaneously.… Moscow sells weapons to Syria, paid for by Iran, which are given to Hizbullah. Still, constrained by its own wish to maintain good relations with Israel, Russia limits friction by not making certain sales—nuclear and anti-aircraft missiles to Iran…. The key question is whether Moscow will go too far in tilting toward Teheran and Damascus or maintain the present balance.… Regarding Gaza, there has been much real support, which counts, coupled with scattered verbal criticism, which doesn’t matter. Israel knows these countries won’t support a long war or reconquest of the Gaza Strip. But those aren’t its objectives. The question is how helpful these countries will be in creating new security arrangements that actually prevent Hamas from attacking Israel even under a declared “ceasefire.” Nevertheless, the fact remains that Israel’s diplomatic relationships are far better than is generally realized and the importance of this fact should never be underestimated. (Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center.) WHY
ISRAEL FIGHTS The Israeli assault on Hamas in Gaza is going to be a replay, we’re told, of the attempt to subdue Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2006. And the outcome, it’s asserted, will be the same: lots of death and destruction, no strategic victory for Israel and a setback for all who seek peace and progress in the Middle East. Obviously, war is an unpredictable business, so I say this with some trepidation: I think the conventional wisdom will be proved wrong. Israel could well succeed in Gaza.…
[I]n Lebanon, Israel proclaimed war goals that it couldn’t achieve—such as retrieving its two kidnapped soldiers and disarming Hezbollah. Now the Israeli government says that it seeks to weaken Hamas, lessen its ability to fire rockets from Gaza and secure new arrangements along the Egyptian-Gaza border to prevent Hamas from re-arming. These may well be achievable goals.… An Israeli success in Gaza would be a victory in the war on terror—and in the broader struggle for the future of the Middle East. Hamas is only one manifestation of the rise, over the past few decades, of a terror-friendly and almost death-cult-like form of Islamic extremism. The combination of such terror movements with a terror-sponsoring and nuclear-weapons-seeking Iranian state (aided by its sidekick Syria) has produced a new kind of threat to Israel. But not just to Israel. To everyone in the Middle East—very much including Muslims—who aren’t interested in living under the sway of extremist regimes. And to any nation, like the United States, that is a target of Islamic terror. So there are sound reasons why the United States—whether led by George W. Bush or Barack Obama—will stand with Israel as it fights. But Israel—assuming it succeeds—is doing the United States a favor by taking on Hamas now. The huge challenge for the Obama administration is going to be Iran. If Israel had yielded to Hamas and refrained from using force to stop terror attacks, it would have been a victory for Iran.… But a defeat of Hamas in Gaza—following on the heels of our success in Iraq—would be a real setback for Iran.… With respect to Iran, Obama may well face—as the Israeli government did with Hamas—a moment when the use of force seems to be the only responsible option. But Israel’s willingness to fight makes it more possible that the United States may not have to. GAZA
2009—TO WIN, ALL ISRAEL HAS TO DO IS SURVIVE No one knew Israel better than Nizar Ghayan. A professor at the Islamic University in Gaza City, as well as the most respected Hamas military and spiritual strategist since the 2004 assassination of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, no one knew better than Ghayan the maxim he taught his students: Whatever Israel does to Hamas, Hamas will win. If you kill us, we will become martyrs, the most beloved of God and the Palestinian people, and we will win. If you refrain from killing us, whether from fear or political expedience or moral considerations, we have only cemented our victory. The examples were manifold, and constantly expanding. Every move Israel made to undermine and crush and topple Hamas, he taught, only builds support for the defiance and the resistance and the national self-esteem that Hamas symbolizes and embodies. Moreover, Hezbollah’s experience in fighting Israel in the 2006 Second Lebanon War seemed the ultimate validation of the principle that all Hamas needed to do to win this war—and eventually take over the West Bank, and, in the end, all of Israel—was to survive. There was every reason to believe Ghayan was right in every respect. That is, until Israel gave the order to kill him on Thursday. Something has changed in the Mideast equation, and the killing of Ghayan [pronounced like Ryan with a hard R], is a telling indication of that change.… Ghayan knew that he could surround himself with the human shields of four wives and 11 children and survive this war. Knowing the UN and the international community, Ghayan knew that if he used mosques for Hamas armed wing headquarters and storage armories for longer-range rockets from Iran and China, Israeli military planners would not dare to attack them, fearing a grave diplomatic and public outcry. Knowing that the Israeli Air Force (in his view, demonstrating the Jew’s essential weakness) had begun warning Gazans of impending attacks, Ghayan refused to have his family take to the roof to cause Israel to call off the bombing. The human shield would suffice. In a matter of 24 hours, two mosques serving as Hamas military bases were destroyed, and Ghayan and his family killed. The world? The world has taken much more interest in New Years. The Palestinians? A central fact of the Mideast equation may, at long last, be dawning on them: To win, all that Israel has to do, is survive.… This is a war for the future of Islam. Specially, it is a war over the future of radical Islam, which for the past decade, has vigorously and skillfully labored to surpass settlements, Palestinian misrule, and a host of other factors to become the pre-eminent obstruction to peace in the Holy Land. It is a war fueled by the fact that radical Islam is riven, and murderously so, by profound disagreements over Islam itself—to the point where Sunnis and Shi’ites have taken to bombing each others’ mosques, and each other—and that there can be only one point of agreement among radical Muslims from Manila to London to Tehran: hatred of Israel and prayer for its destruction. The world however, is no longer accepting Hamas’ hydra-headed PR role as, at one and the same time, a humanitarian NGO, a sovereign government, and a resistance [read, terrorist] organization. And many Palestinians, grieved and furious as they are over the civilian deaths in Israeli air raids, are coming to the same conclusion. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, who has written eloquently of his friendships with fervent Palestinian nationalists, posted an entry this week entitled: A Fatah Friend Writes: I’m supporting the Israeli Air Force. “I’ve been talking to friends of mine, former Palestinian Authority intelligence officials (ejected from power by the Hamas coup), and they tell me that not only are they rooting for the Israelis to decimate Hamas, but that Fatah has actually been assisting the Israelis with targeting information,” Goldberg writes. One of those friends, he continues, “told me that one of his comrades was thrown off a high-rise building in Gaza City last year by Hamas, and so he sheds no tears for the Hamas dead. ‘Let the Israelis kill them,’ he said. ‘They’ve brought only trouble for my people.’”… No people on earth have been hurt more by Islamic terrorism than the Palestinians. Terrorism itself, and the ideology of Hamas, has come home to kill the cause of Palestine. When radical Islamic terrorism cost the Palestinian national movement the support of the world community and that of Israel’s moderate consensus, it cost Palestinians their nation.… ON
THE PILOT’S MIND Pilots drop bombs. Pilots kill people. Pilots destroy things that took great effort to build. Pilots do all of this without seeing the results of their actions up close. |