Tag Archives: Gaza

Telling Only One Side Of The Story

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Yesterday Townhall posted an article about the reporting of the violence on the Israeli border with Gaza. First of all, let’s look at some of the history of Gaza. In 2005, Israel turned over Gaza to Arabs who wanted a Palestinian state. The Arabs immediately destroyed the greenhouses that supported the Gaza economy and began using Gaza as a launching pad for missile attacks against Israel. In June 2007, Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by America. They have definitely lived up to their name.

The article at The Hill shows some of the headlines from the mainstream media about the violence:

CNN: “37 Palestinians killed in Gaza protests ahead of US embassy opening”

ABC News: “Death toll in massive Palestinian protests climbs to at least 41, bloodiest day in Gaza since 2014 war”

Washington Post: “Israelis kill dozens of Palestinians in Gaza protesting U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem”

Los Angeles Times: “At least 37 Palestinians killed by Israeli army at Gaza border”

Let’s add a few facts to this just to make it interesting. News outlets reported that the ‘protestors’ set tires on fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air, and hurled firebombs and stones toward Israeli troops across the border. Doesn’t sound like a peaceful protest to me. It was also noted that at least three people were killed because they were about the detonate a bomb. This sounds like self defense to me, but it is not being reported that way.

The article concludes:

The media’s biased reporting on Israel is nothing new. It has been a staple of liberal media reporting. Anti-Israel bias is also rampant amongst Democrat politicians. Even some liberals cannot understand it, calling it a double-standard. Howard Kurtz uses some very appropriate terminology when he discusses the media’s double-standard on Trump reporting in his new book Media Madness, calling the media’s biased reporting a “decimation of original reporting.” “The lines between news and opinion were not just blurred, they were all but obliterated,” Kurtz writes. That exact bias is all too familiar in the reporting of Israeli defense against Palestinian violence. Just as mainstream media has been irresponsibly spreading fake news about Trump, so too have they been spreading lies about Israel – vilifying Israel and victimizing Palestinian aggression.

If you would like unbiased insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I suggest you read analysis by self-proclaimed left-wing Arab, Fred Maroun. 

But until the media stops with the fake news, take heed what you read.

Israel is a small postage stamp in a football field of Arab nations. It is truly sad that the Arab nations will not let them live in peace.

 

Until We End Summer Camps Like This, Jihad Is Going To Be A Problem

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John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line yesterday about summer camp in Gaza. The article includes pictures of the camp activities that are going on under the supervision of Hamas’s Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades.

These are the pictures:

Camp1Camp2Camp3The article reports:

According to Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam officials, “the goal of the camps is to stoke the embers of jihad among the generation of liberation, to inculcate Islamic values and to prepare the army of victory for liberating Palestine.”

Look at the age of these children. It should break your heart that they are being robbed of their innocence and taught to hate.

I recently read The Blood of Lambs by Kamal Saleem. Kamal Saleem was recruited by the Muslim Brotherhood in Lebanon at the age of seven and trained as a terrorist. As a child, he was sent on suicide missions that he miraculously survived. He came to America to commit terrorism in America. The book tells the story of his training and his mission, and explains why he is no longer involved with the Muslim Brotherhood or in terrorism. The book illustrates the problem and gives the answer to the problem. However, until we stop funding children’s camps in Gaza and other places that train young jihadists, we will not see peace in the Middle East.

Things That Make Middle East Peace Difficult

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John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article yesterday about the collapse of an underground tunnel going into Israel that was being repaired. The article reminds us that in the last Israeli war, Israel destroyed thirty or more tunnels built by Hamas for terror attacks into Israel. The collapse of the tunnel as it was being repaired killed seven Hamas members.

The article reports what was said at the funeral of these Hamas members. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s deputy chief, said:

There are heroes east of Gaza City, digging the rocks and building tunnels. And west of Gaza, heroes are testing rockets every morning and every day and it is all preparations.

Under the ground and above the ground, in tunnels and above the ground and into the sky, with rockets and in the sea and everywhere, it is the permanent preparation for the sake of Jerusalem and Palestine, and for the sake of the intifada of Jerusalem and the sake of our people.

If the people who are supposed to negotiate peace are celebrating people who were killed repairing a tunnel to be used for terrorism, the chances of actually negotiating anything that would result in peace are slim to none.

Just as a side note, the crowds for the funeral of the Hamas members were so large that people were standing on a roof to see the funeral procession. The roof collapsed.

Until Hamas terrorists are no longer celebrated, there is no reason Israel should even consider making peace with the ‘Palestinians.’ Thus far, giving up land for peace has only provided Hamas with more places to launch rockets against Israel and build terrorist tunnels. Why in the world should they be given more land in the name of peace?

The Pictures Tell The Story

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The map below shows the land originally given for the State of Israel in 1920:

The map below shows the changes made to that land in 1922:

As you can see, land was taken away from the land originally promised to Israel and given to the Arabs to form Trans-Jordan. The Jews were left with 23% of the land they were originally promised. They were willing to accept that–the Arabs were not.

The map below appeared on MSNBC this week:

MSNBC maps

This is totally misleading. There never was a country of Palestine–Palestine was the name given by the British to the Jewish land they occupied after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

The Washington Free Beacon posted a story yesterday about the MSNBC map.

The article states:

MSNBC has admitted that highly controversial graphics aired on the network that depicted Israel as stealing land from the Palestinians were “factually wrong” and that the broadcast would be corrected on Monday, according to a network spokesperson.

The cable news network has been fighting off criticism after it aired the graphics and analysis, including a map linked to conspiracy groups branded as anti-Semitic, that portrayed Israel as existing on territory expropriated from Palestine.

The graphics garnered criticism from pro-Israel advocates and has now prompted the network to acknowledge that the graphics were highly misleading.

“In an attempt to shed light on the geographic context of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, we aired a map that was factually wrong,” the spokesperson said on Sunday.

Two MSNBC broadcasters, Kate Snow and Martin Fletcher, “will address the map in a segmentMonday about agendas and disinformation on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the spokesperson said.

Fletcher, a Middle East analyst, said on Sunday that the map and analyses were “dead wrong.”

If you don’t understand the history of Israel, it is easy to conclude that Israel is in some way responsible for the current wave of violence against Israel. Nothing is further from the truth. The violence is being agitated from the Gaza Strip and probably rooted in orders from Iran. Right now, Iran is pulling the strings in the Arab world. They are quite capable of causing all sorts of distractions from the nuclear agreement that is in the process of going into effect. The nuclear agreement Iran agreed to is not the same nuclear agreement that was signed in Vienna (rightwinggranny). It is quite possible that what is happening in Israel is being done to create a military response from Israel in order to give the Arab world an excuse to attack Israel. Remember, wars in the Middle East are as much about propaganda as they are about the military. That is what makes the showing of the erroneous map by MSNBC so egregious.

This Isn’t Anything New

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From the time of the Iranian revolution in 1978, the goal of Iran has been to restore the Islamic caliphate that vanished with the end of the Turkish Empire. We need to remember that the caliphate existed about a hundred years ago–it is not ancient history. Therefore, the book that has been published by Iran on how to outsmart the United States and destroy Israel should not come as a surprise to anyone. What should come as a surprise is why would the United States negotiate with a country whose goal is to destroy one of our allies and eventually destroy us.

Meanwhile, yesterday The New York Post posted a story about a book called “Palestine,” published by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This charming masterpiece is described in the article:

Khamenei makes his position clear from the start: Israel has no right to exist as a state.

He uses three words. One is “nabudi” which means “annihilation.” The other is “imha” which means “fading out,” and, finally, there is “zaval” meaning “effacement.”

Khamenei claims that his strategy for the destruction of Israel is not based on anti-Semitism, which he describes as a European phenomenon. His position is instead based on “well-established Islamic principles.”

One such principle is that a land that falls under Muslim rule, even briefly, can never again be ceded to non-Muslims. What matters in Islam is ownership of a land’s government, even if the majority of inhabitants are non-Muslims.

Khomeinists are not alone in this belief.

Dozens of maps circulate in the Muslim world showing the extent of Muslim territories lost to the Infidel that must be recovered.

There is a tenet in Islam that says all land controlled by Muslims at any time must be regained to form the caliphate. That tenet has a lot to do with Iran’s desire to have a nuclear bomb.

The article also reminds us that Khamenei plans to eliminate Israel through making life so unpleasant there that the Jews leave and the land goes to the Arabs as a result of demographics.

The article concludes:

Khamenei boasts about the success of his plans to make life impossible for Israelis through terror attacks from Lebanon and Gaza. His latest scheme is to recruit “fighters” in the West Bank to set up Hezbollah-style units.

“We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006 and in the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip,” he boasts.

Khamenei describes Israel as “a cancerous tumor” whose elimination would mean that “the West’s hegemony and threats will be discredited” in the Middle East. In its place, he boasts, “the hegemony of Iran will be promoted.”

Khamenei’s book also deals with the Holocaust which he regards either as “a propaganda ploy” or a disputed claim. “If there was such a thing,” he writes, “we don’t know why it happened and how.”

This is what Iran’s leaders are preaching to their people and their allies in the Middle East. Do we really want to give succor?

In looking at the nuclear agreement with Iran, one has to consider the Islamic principle of taqiyya, loosely explained as “lying for the sake of Islam.” Taqiyya allows Muslims to issue two statements on any one issue–one to Muslims and one to non-Muslims. I have no doubt that what Iran is telling America about the nuclear deal is very different from what is being told to the Iranians. I pray that the Senate has the courage to turn down the nuclear deal with Iran.

If You Get All Your News From The Mainstream Media…

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CBN News posted a story today about an article written by Associated Press reporter Matti Friedman. After the war last summer between Hamas and Israel, Mr. Friedman wrote an article entitled, “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth.” The article is his account of how the press covered that war.

CBN News reports:

“I decided at the end of the summer to write an essay looking at what has gone wrong through the lens of my own experiences,” Friedman told CBN News. 
 
For seven years, Friedman reported for the Associated Press, a giant news organization that provides information to many other media outlets worldwide. He says the AP and the mainstream press suffer from two malfunctions. One, Israel gets a disproportionate amount of coverage and two, the press has taken sides.

“The mainstream press corps here [in Israel] has largely adopted an advocacy role. They’ve decided to play a political role in the conflict,” he explained. “They’ve decided to lobby for the side that they think is right and political decisions are disguised as journalistic decisions.”
 
Friedman says Hamas took advantage of the bias.    

Friedman described the strategy of Hamas as provoking Israel by attacking civilians with rockets and then using civilians to shield weapons and soldiers. Then Hamas would show the news media the civilian casualties without mentioning that they were being used as human shields. Unfortunately, the news media either did not see through the strategy or were taking sides.

The CBN News story concludes:

Friedman maintains the world is getting a skewed version of what’s actually happening here in Israel.

“The story is — if you read between the lines and through the lines of the stories themselves — is that Israel is faced with a clear moral choice and is making the wrong choice.  Israel could have peace but it chooses war. That story is false. But everything is done to maintain it. Even in the face of contradictory evidence.”

Meanwhile, Hamas is attempting to use the United Nations to establish a terrorist state right next to Israel. This is not a good time to be on the wrong side of history, particularly where Israel is concerned.

Why We Need To Abolish Hamas And All The People Who Support It

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Arutz Sheva posted a story today quoting Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri as to the actual goals of Hamas. Some of us have been led to believe that all Hamas wanted was to end the blockade of Gaza (we saw how much good that blockade has done in keeping weapons and tunnel-building material out of Gaza). It seems that we have been lied to.

This is the quote from the article:

“The time has come for us to say that the true war is not aimed at opening border crossings,” Sami Abu Zuhri said. “Our true war is aimed at the liberation of Jerusalem, Allah willing.” His words were translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI. 

He then chanted “Khaybar, Khaybar al Yahood,” an Arabic phrase meaning that Allah will return to expel (or kill) the Jews. Khaybar was a Jewish village north of Medina, Saudi Arabia, which was conquered by Islamists in 629 CE. Crowds waving Hamas flags cheered him on. 

“The army of Mohammed has begun its return,” he continued. “Resistance, resistance. . .we are all with the resistance.”

“The war will continue,” Abu Zuhri affirmed. “However, it is not only the blockade which is rejected by our people. Our people refuses to accept the defiling of the land by the occupier.” 

“Therefore, as of today, the resistance is not preparing for the opening of a border crossing here or there, but rather, for the liberation of our Palestinian land,” he continued. “This is the truth that Netanyahu should understand.”

“We have become more resolute to wage the war of liberation, in order to end the settlements and Judaization, and in order to liberate our land and holy places.”

Israel is not ‘an occupier.’ Israel left Gaza in 2005, turning it over to the Arabs. There were greenhouses there and the structure to form a prosperous society. The Arabs promptly destroyed the greenhouses there, and turned Gaza into a terrorist haven and training camp. They showed a total disregard for the people who lived there–destroying their means to make a living. The majority of the people who lived in Gaza before 2005 were better off under Israeli rule than they have been under Arab rule. Hamas turned a place where people prospered and lived in peace into a war zone. That will also happen in areas where ISIS takes over. Both organizations need to be destroyed.

There Are Relationships And There Are Relationships

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I24 News posted a story today about the deteriorating relationship between Israel and the Obama Administration.

The article reports:

Relations between Israel and the US are so bad now that the Obama administration has seen fit to tighten its control over wartime weapons shipments, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday morning. According to the report, citing unnamed senior officials, the White house had requested that the Pentagon put on hold a shipment of ‘Hellfire’ missiles Israel had requested and instructed them to “consult with policy makers at the White House and the State Department before approving any additional requests.”

The change in policy was related to the fact that a UN school was struck by an IDF missile.

This is a bit one-way. We are continuing aid to Hamas as they use human shields and deliberately target civilians. Secretary of State Kerry wanted the blockade of Gaza lifted so that Hamas could receive more concrete to build tunnels to attack Israel. And there has been no decrease in American aid to Hamas even after it became obvious that the aid was being used for weapons and tunnels–not to build hospitals, schools, and homes for the people of Gaza.

The article further reports:

US policymakers, were apparently fine with equipping the IDF with defensive equipment, especially the jointly funded and widely touted Iron Dome, but were concerned about the transfer of weapons of a more offensive nature. They were reportedly particularly worried by the IDF’s widespread use of artillery that provided cover for Israel’s ground incursion into Gaza, because of its less precise nature and higher risk of hurting innocent civilians.

The report quoted a senior Obama administration official saying that the weapons transfers shouldn’t have been a routine “check-the-box approval” process, given the context. “The official said the decision to scrutinize future transfers at the highest levels amounted to the United States saying ‘The buck stops here. Wait a second…It’s not OK anymore.’ “

“They decided to require White House and State Department approval for even routine munitions requests by Israel,” the article reads, citing officials. “Instead of being handled as a military-to-military matter, each case is now subject to review—slowing the approval process and signaling to Israel that military assistance once taken for granted is now under closer scrutiny.”

The Wall Street Journal report paints the weapons issue as part of a widening gulf between the Netanayahu and Obama administrations, which has reached “the lowest point” since Obama took office.

Note to White House–Hamas is a terrorist organization. Sending them money is supporting terrorism. Their charter includes the destruction of Israel. They are not the good guys. If Palestinians want their own state, they should not elect terrorists to run it.

A Hospital, A Mosque, A University, and An UNRWA Ambulance

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What do a hospital, a mosque, a university and an UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees) ambulance have in common? According to Breitbart.com, they were all part of the killing of IDF Officer LT Hadar Goldin, 23.

The article reports:

An unnamed Israeli military source spoke to Breitbart News about the story of how Hamas used an UNRWA ambulance, a mosque, and the Islamic University to carry out the attack that killed the three IDF soldiers.

The officer explained how, after the suicide bombing that killed Lt. Goldin, a second kidnapping team of Hamas terrorists grabbed parts of his body and ran back into the tunnel from which the terrorists emerged. The tunnel led back into a mosque. From the mosque, they escaped in a clearly marked UNRWA ambulance. The terrorists then made contact with high-ranking Hamas officials hiding in the Islamic University. 

As a result Abu Marzook, a senior member of Hamas, announced in Cairo that Hamas had kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israeli intelligence intercepted a conversation between the kidnappers and the Hamas officials at the Islamic University and thus got all the particulars regarding the hiding place of the kidnappers. Within minutes, the IAF attacked both the kidnappers’ location and the Islamic University.

So what can we learn from this? Hamas has no problem using hospitals, universities and mosques to hide its activities and its tunnel network. Hamas has no problem using a clearly-marked UNRWA ambulance as part of a battle plan. I think it is time we stopped giving money to the United Nations to fund UNRWA. They seem to have forgotten their mission (as has the United Nations–we should stop funding them also).

The war in Gaza began with the constant rocket attacks on Israel and the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli students. We need to keep that in mind as the Palestinian propaganda machine ramps up its charges of crimes against humanity against Israel. War is actually supposed to conducted according to rules. Hamas and its cousin ISIS have broken every rule of civilized warfare in their attacks on Israel and on non-Muslims in other countries. There needs to be some outrage by the World Court, the United Nations, and other organizations that are always blaming Israel for war crimes. These organizations need to either speak out against what ISIS and Hamas or doing or they need to disband as useless. There really is no other option.

There Are Numbers And There Are Numbers

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This graph is from an article in Tuesday’s New York Times. It has to do with the reporting of civilian casualties in Gaza.

aaaapalestinian1aaaapalestinain2

The New York Times reminds us that all civilian casualties reported in Gaza are not civilians:

But the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the Israeli group that analyzed the first Palestinian deaths, accused the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry of “concealment and deception” in order “to create an ostensibly factual infrastructure for a political, propaganda and legal campaign against Israel.”

The Times analysis, looking at 1,431 names, shows that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided. At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population and 33 percent of the known-age casualties.

We need to remember that Hamas soldiers do not always wear uniforms. Those infiltrating Israel through the tunnels wore IDF uniforms. As has been previously stated, Hamas routinely puts rocket launchers in heavily populated civilian areas. That is part of their strategy in the propaganda war. Now that the journalists are leaving Gaza, they are reporting rockets being fired from directly under their hotel rooms and in civilians areas. The world needs to understand the propaganda war being waged by Hamas and not fall prey to the misinformation that is being reported.

A website called Israellycool reports:

Tyler Hicks, the New York Times photographer, begins by telling us that Hamas fighters are hiding in civilian areas, embedded within the civilian population and firing rockets from residential neighborhoods:

I was stationed in Gaza, and covered the Palestinian side of the war where you saw most of the casualties.  One of the reasons for that is because the Hamas fighters are living among the civilian population. . . .  This is a situation where the fighters fire rockets from all over the Gaza Strip, from neighborhoods to cemeteries, from parking lots, from any number of places.

And no, the reason they do this is not because “Gaza is pretty small.”  Hicks next tells us that the fighters seek safety at the expense of the civilian population:

Hamas fighters are not able to expose themselves.  If they were to even step a foot on the street they would be spotted by an Israeli drone and immediately blown up.  We don’t see those fighters.  They are operating out of buildings and homes and at night.

Israel is fighting a terrorist neighbor. The world has a choice. They need to understand that this is a fight against terrorism and for democracy. They can choose to help Israel or they can ignore what is going on. The problem with ignoring what is going on is that the terrorists in Gaza are not a unique entity. They are linked (at least in philosophy) with Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, etc. We allow them to continue ruling Gaza at our own peril.

Strange Alliances Caused By Bad Behavior

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I have posted a lot of articles about the bad behavior of Hamas. The American media has ignored a lot of that bad behavior, but countries in the Middle East have been taking notes.

CBN News is reporting today that the war between Israel and Hamas has caused some of the alliances in the Middle East to shift dramatically.

The article reports:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a new level of regional cooperation he said would surprise many. It would be a very important asset for the State of Israel, he said, and would open new possibilities when the campaign against Hamas ends.

It’s a move that may indicate a major shift in the Middle East.

“It’s probably the first time in its history it [Israel] finds itself in a kind of de facto member of one regional camp against another,” Middle East expert Jonathan Spyer told CBN News.

Spyer said this unprecedented alliance unites Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel to face their common enemy — Iran.

“So the sense in which this emergent alliance is an alliance of countries associated or allied with the U.S. but which are nevertheless deeply disappointed or dismayed at the direction that U.S. policy has taken on a number of Middle East files and perhaps most importantly on Iranian nuclear ambitions,” he said.

This alliance is probably the only positive result of President Obama’s Middle East policy–these nations realize that the United States is willing to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. The Obama Administration is so short-sighted that they do not realize that those weapons will eventually be aimed at America. Meanwhile, the nations of the Middle East understand how those weapons will change the balance of power in the region. They also understand that Iran is run by the ayatollahs–not the president of Iran. The ayatollahs believe in a version of Islam that says that chaos will usher in the coming of the Islamic messiah. They have no problem creating chaos. Their neighbors, many of whom are prosperous at this time, have no desire for chaos.

This alliance is the result of both the war in Gaza and American foreign policy in the Middle East. Both are horrible, but the result is positive.

Meanwhile, in February of this year, Jews News reported that Sheikh Admed Aladoan of Amman, a member of Jordan’s well-known Adwan tribe, posted to Facebook this week that there is no such place as “Palestine,” and provided references from the Koran to back up his assertion.

The article states:

One of the Koranic verses provided states that Allah gave the Holy Land to the sons of Israel until the Day of Judgment (Surah Al-Ma’ida, verse 21), and the other (Surah Al-Shara’a, verse 59) says that the land was bequeathed to the Jews.

The sheikh turned to those who “distort the words of the Koran,” whom he labeled as liars, and questioned where they had even come up with the name “Palestine.” He insisted their claims to the Land of Israel were forfeit because “Allah is the protector of the Children of Israel.”

And if that wasn’t enough, the sheikh went on to turn the tables on the anti-Israel propaganda machine by accusing the Palestinians of killing children, the elderly and women, of using human shields, and of having not an ounce of mercy for even their own children.

Stay tuned.

 

A Reality Check For Israel’s Left

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On Tuesday, Caroline Glick posted an article in the Jerusalem Post about the war between Israel and Hamas. She relates the story of a phone call from President Obama to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night during an Israeli security cabinet meeting.

The article reports:

But then the telephone rang. And Obama told Netanyahu that Israel must lose. He wants an unconditional “humanitarian” cease-fire that will lead to a permanent one.

And he wants it now.

And by the way, the eventual terms of that cease-fire must include opening Hamas-controlled Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel and ending Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the cease-fire must allow Hamas to rebuild its arsenal of death and destruction quickly, with US political and financial support.

Until Obama made the call, there was lingering doubt among some Israelis regarding his intentions. Some thought that US Secretary of State John Kerry might have been acting of his own accord last Friday night when he tried to force Israel to accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms.

But then Obama made his phone call. And all doubts were dispelled.

The request from President Obama did not take into account what would happen if that cease-fire went into effect–Israel would again be defending itself against never ending rocket attacks on civilians and a rebuilding of tunnels that were destroyed. A cease-fire without the destruction of Hamas is an invitation to another war a few years down the road.

The article concludes:

Obama is as involved in the Middle East as all of his immediate predecessors were. He is personally leading US policy on every front. Kerry is not an independent actor.

The problem is that in every war, in every conflict and in every contest of wills that has occurred in the Middle East since Obama took office, he has sided with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, against America’s allies.

Under Obama, America has switched sides.

It will be amazing if we have any allies left by the end of the Obama Administration.

 

 

 

Missing The Forest For The Trees

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Yesterday I posted an article at rightwinggranny.com about the plans Hamas had for the tunnel system it had built into Israel. The plans included explosions under kindergartens and the slaughter of kindergarten school children. After thinking about that for a while, I realized that in spite of all I have written about the war between Israel and Hamas, there are some very basic things that I did not understand.

The article I posted included Hamas’ plans for the tunnel system:

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.  Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible.  The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

Think about that for a minute. This is not a war about territory. Hamas wants the land, but more than that they want to kill all of the people in the land—children included. Their intention is to eliminate the Jewish people in Israel. This is genocide. This is what Hitler intended. After Hitler, the world said, “Never again.” Did we mean it?

This is not an ordinary war. This is a war in which the people of Israel are fighting to live. Hamas in Gaza needs to be dealt with the same way that Hitler was dealt with—they need to be taken out of power, tried for war crimes, and their supporters put in jail. Hamas was elected—the people in Gaza knew what Hamas was and voted for them anyway. I don’t trust the United Nations to set up a neutral government in Gaza, but control of Gaza has to be taken away from Hamas and other similar terrorist groups.

The criticism of Israel’s military action in Gaza needs to stop. The criticism is coming from people who either don’t understand what is actually going on or have a political agenda. The amount of propaganda coming from Hamas makes it very difficult to realize that Israel is fighting for the lives of its people. Israel did not begin this war, but in the interests of the people in Israel, it has to end the war with the total defeat of Hamas.

The Plan Behind The Tunnels

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On Sunday, the Daily Caller posted an article about the battle plan related to the tunnels between Gaza and Israel. The article contained a map of the tunnels:

Gaza1

The article explains the plan:

Israeli security sources, citing information acquired in interrogations of captured brigands, described a scenario under which hundreds of heavily armed Hamas fighters would have spilled out into Israel in the dead of night and within 10 minutes been positioned to infiltrate essentially all Israeli communities surrounding the Gaza Strip.  Waiting then in hiding until schools and kindergartens were occupied, the terrorists would then attempt to kill the children first, and then kill and kidnap as many Israelis as possible.  The plot was set to take place during Jewish New Year, on September 24.

…Israeli military officials reported that the tunnels are stocked with tranquilizers, handcuffs, syringes, ropes and other materials used for subduing abductees, civilians and soldiers.  The tunnels also had fantastic quantities of explosives and additional military materiel meant to be used in the up-coming mega attack.  Much of these explosives had already been placed underneath Israeli kindergartens.  Some of these tunnels were as deep as 30 meters underground.

The italics are mine. We are not dealing with civilized people. The really bad news here is that the technology and strategy connected to these tunnels is also appearing at the United States’ southern border. This is not Israel’s war–this is the war for Western Civilization.

 

Booby Traps In An UNRWA Health Clinic

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UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. They have hospitals, schools, and clinics in Gaza. Today the Times of Israel is reporting that three IDF soldiers were killed in a booby-trapped UNRWA health clinic that housed the opening of a tunnel. The soldiers were taking precautionary measures to limit the damage to the building while blowing up the tunnel when the explosives rigged by the Hamas fighters detonated, collapsing the building and killing the soldiers.

On July 20, I reported the following (rightwinggranny.com):

Here is the UNRWA’s “apology” for allowing rockets to be stored in one of their schools in Gaza and here is a follow-up article stating that they did not turn said weapons over for destruction to UN forces or some other legal body that respects human rights but rather gave them back to Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization that has to date committed numerous war crimes and various human rights violations according to the fourth Geneva Conventions.

UNRWA apologized for the incident, but obviously did not change its actions. The article at the Times of Israel reports that many of the buildings that house the tunnels have been booby trapped.

The Times of Israel also reports:

Turgeman ( IDF Southern Command head Maj. Gen. Sami Turgeman) said the IDF is “days away” from completing the military goal of destroying all of the tunnels, though the process is complex. Four tunnels have been destroyed in the past 24 hours, he added.

Turgeman revealed that the IDF expanded its operation on Tuesday night, targeting new sites in the north and center of the coastal enclave.

With the amount of concrete Hamas poured into the tunnel project, two hospitals, 20 schools, 20 healthcare centers, and 100 kindergartens could have been built, he said.

It is a shame that the United Nations did not supervise Gaza to make sure that hospitals, schools, and healthcare centers were built instead of the tunnels used to attack Israel. I truly believe that with the building of these tunnels, Gaza has given up its right to be an independent state.

Why There Is So Little Reporting On The Actions Of Hamas

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A website called Legal Insurrection posted an article yesterday about the lack of reporting in the mainstream media about the activities of Hamas.

You may recall a April 11, 2003, New York Times article by Easton Jordan entitled “The News We Kept To Ourselves.” The article states:

Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN’s Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard — awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.

For example, in the mid-1990’s one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government’s ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency’s Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.

That is the way thugs in the Middle East handle reporters. Things have not changed–that is the modus operandi used by Hamas.

The article at Legal Insurrection reports:

The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were questioned and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away.

The article at Legal Insurrection included tweets from reporters and stories of intimidation of reporters. The reason we are not hearing both sides of the story of the Gaza-Israeli war is that one side is a bunch of thugs who are endangering their own civilian population and doing everything they can to hide the truth.

The Game Changer In The Israeli-Gaza War

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This is a picture from Monday’s New York Times:

IsraeliMapTunnels1 The Israeli military said it had uncovered about two dozen tunnels with more than 60 access points, many of them in this Gaza City neighborhood where there has been some of the most intense fighting. 2 In early July, the Israeli Air Force struck a tunnel that led to this kibbutz, near where Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, was captured in 2006. 3 Hamas gunmen emerged from a tunnel about a mile from this kibbutz last Thursday. Israeli officials cited this as the final straw before the ground invasion. 4 Eight Palestinian militants emerged from a tunnel near here on Saturday, armed with automatic weapons and wearing Israeli military uniforms. 5 A deadly battle ensued between Israeli troops and Hamas militants on Monday after the militants emerged from a tunnel about 500 yards from this community’s homes. 6 Some of the militants tried to make their way here. 7 Residents of this kibbutz were warned to stay inside.

There is no way Israel can stop fighting until all of the tunnel network is destroyed. Any call for a cease fire without the destruction of the tunnels will result in a continued attack on Israeli civilians. The world generally ignored the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians as they continued over the years. We cannot ignore the attacks that would come from the tunnels if the tunnels were left intact.

This video from Palestinian television might explain why peace in the region is so difficult:

The video can be found at YouTube.

Just as America and its allies had to defeat Germany completely to stop Hitler, the Israelis will have to defeat Hamas and other terrorists whose goal is to eliminate Israel completely. Until that happens, Israel will have to defend herself against those who attack settlements and kill civilians.

We Are Funding A Terrorist State

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The battle in the Gaza Strip is not just about Israel. Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to forming a worldwide caliphate. The organization was founded in Egypt, where at various times the Egyptian government, understanding the threat from the Brotherhood, has made it illegal. Iran also desires the formation of a worldwide caliphate, which they believe will usher in the coming of the Mahdi, their messiah. The Iranian mullahs believe that they can hasten the coming of the Mahdi by creating chaos and war in the region. There is no regard for individual lives–all actions are aimed at forming the caliphate. That is the reason Iran sent young boys into minefields to clear the mines for the tanks during the Iran-Iraq war.

Another example of this disregard for human life is found in the digging of the tunnels between Gaza and Israel. Paul Mirengoff at Power Line posted an article yesterday citing a Journal of Palestine Studies (edited by President Obama’s pro-Palestinian friend Rashid Khalidi) article reporting that in 2012 Hamas was using children to dig the tunnels into Israel. Children were used because they are small and agile.

The article reports:

The author of the paper, Nicolas Pelham accompanied a police patrol in Gaza during December 2011. He reported that “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies.”

He also found that “at least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials.” And, as noted, this was as of the end of 2011. How many more Palestinian children have died digging tunnels for Hamas since then?

So what was the purpose of the tunnels?

According to a YNet News article posted on Sunday:

Hamas had been preparing a murderous massive assault on Israeli civilian targets during the upcoming Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah – this according to anonymous sources in the Israeli security services cited by the Israeli daily Maariv.

The Hamas attackers were to be wearing IDF uniforms.

In its conclusion, the YNET News article reminds us:

Writing for Gatestone, Lawrence Franklin says that the construction of network of tunnels used hundreds of tons of concrete that might otherwise have been used by the Palestinians for building homes, shopping malls, parks, schools, hospitals and libraries.

Hamas was legally elected by the people of Gaza. Gaza has become a terrorist state that chooses to be a terrorist state. I see no choice but to disarm that state and bring it to a point where it cannot build tunnels or fire rockets at Israel. Enough is enough. If the people of Gaza are willing to live in peace, we should do everything we can to help them achieve that goal, if they are not, we need to make sure they cannot rebuild tunnels or build rockets.

Israel Did Not Hit The Hospital And The Playground

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Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article today about the hospital in Gaza that was supposedly attacked.

The article quotes The Algemenier:

The Israeli army said it was not operating in the vicinity of Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza on Monday, where an explosion reportedly killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians.

“A short while ago Al-Shifa Hospital and Al-Shati Refugee Camp were struck by failed rocket attacks launched by Gaza terrorists,” the army said in a statement sent to reporters.

The failed attempt to fire the projectile apparently hit a car near the center, according to Israel’s Channel 2 News, causing the casualties.

The station said that a “Hamas Fajr-5 rocket aimed at central Israel, which was fired from a playground outside the Shifa hospital and exploded on the site causing casualties, had at least a 100 kg (220 lbs) warhead,” according to The Times of Israel.

The article at Power Line includes a photo with the comment:

The Algemeiner performs the service of running the suggestive photograph below with the caption: “Nick Casey, The Wall Street Journal’s Middle East Correspondent, posted a photo to Twitter of a Hamas spokesman being interviewed on camera at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital, which Hamas uses as a base. The photo has since been removed. Photo: Nick Casey / Twitter.”

The fact that Hamas uses a hospital as a base of operations and fires rockets from a playground tells us all we need to know about how Hamas feels about protecting civilians.

The Experiment Failed, There Is No Reason It Should Continue

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Today’s New York Post posted an article about the calls for a cease-fire in the Israeli–Gaza conflict. Michael Goodwin, who wrote the article, points out that even with a cease-fire, there is no way to return to the status quo. The discovery of the complex network of tunnels from Gaza for the purpose of attacking innocent Israelis and destroying Israel cannot be ignored.

The article reports:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu already declared that the threat caused by the tunnels means Israel cannot accept a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.

“If we were to pull out of Judea and Samaria, like they tell us to,” he said in speech four days after the war began, “there’d be a possibility of thousands of tunnels” being dug to attack Israel.

Noting that the West Bank is 20 times the size of Gaza, he said his country would never “create ­another 20 Gazas.”

Veteran Israeli journalist David Horovitz, writing in the Times of Israel, said the speech “spells the end” to any notion the prime minister would ever agree to the kind of free Palestinian state that President Obama and most of Europe, along with the Palestinians, demand.

Gaza has forfeited its right to become an independent state. It has taken the money given to its leaders for infrastructure and used it for weapons.

The article concludes:

It is not lost on Israelis that the tunnels were reinforced with steel and concrete. The supposed shortage of building materials in Gaza, routinely denounced as cruel by ­Israel’s critics, did not stop Hamas from diverting tens of thousands of tons into preparation for war.

That material could have been used to build houses, hospitals or schools. The tunnels even could have served as bomb shelters to protect Gaza’s civilians from Israeli bombs.

Instead, a determination to kill Jews took precedence over every ­aspect of life in Gaza. That included Hamas leaders urging and sometimes forcing civilians to stay in the line of fire, turning them into human shields to protect rockets and ­ammunition dumps. Nothing better illustrates the Hamas culture of ­hatred and death.

And now that nihilism, endorsed by Gazans who elected Hamas as their government, has destroyed any chance of a sovereign Palestinian state in the near future.

Naturally, much of the world will use a new Israeli hard line to accuse it of genocide and apartheid, blah blah blah. But the facts are clear: Once again, the Palestinians have only themselves to blame.

When a man who was in jail for armed robbery gets out of jail, you do not hand him a gun (or the money to buy one). Gaza was given a chance to become a sovereign state. The first thing they did was destroy the greenhouses that would have allowed them to prosper. Until they can behave, they should not be allowed to have a country.

Increasing The Stakes In The Propaganda War Because You Are Losing The Real War

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Today’s Jerusalem Post is reporting that a flotilla is preparing to set sail from Turkey to Gaza to bring humanitarian aid. According to the report, the flotilla will be protected by the Turkish military.

The article reports:

Harold Rhode, a senior fellow at the New-York-based Gatestone Institute and a former adviser at the in the office of the American defense secretary on Islamic affairs, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Sunday that the real issue in the ongoing conflict is that Turkey and Qatar are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in their goals.

“[Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan has been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood long before he was prime minister,” Rhode said.

It should now be clear to all that Erdogan “is now out of the bag,” Rhode said, adding that US President Barack Obama does not speak to the Turkish leader anymore despite previously describing him as one of his closest friends among the world’s leaders.

“Erdogan is doing whatever he can to help Hamas,” he said, asserting that it will only hurt the Palestinian people in the end.

Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Gaza. They have treated residents of Gaza in Israeli hospitals with the same care given to Israelis. As word gets out that Hamas is using human shields and storing weapons in schools, Hamas begins to lose the propaganda war. The flotilla is an attempt to turn public opinion against Israel. Meanwhile, America is promising aid to Gaza. Where has the aid to Gaza gone in the past? It certainly has not been spent on the people or the infrastructure. The money we give to Gaza goes to weapons and to line the pockets of the leaders of Hamas and Fatah. It is time that we attached enough strings to any money given to Gaza so that we know it is spent on the people there to raise their standard of living. If we can’t do that, we should cut off the money.

Black Is White And White Is Black

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On Sunday, I posted an article about UNRWA. giving back weapons to Hamas after the weapons were found in an UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) in Gaza (rightwinggranny.com). Well, it is getting worse.

Today’s Jerusalem Post is reporting that the UN Human Rights Council decided yesterday to open an international inquiry into Israeli violations that may have been committed during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. This is the same UN Human Rights Council that sat silent as rockets from Gaza rained down on the civilian population of Israel.This is the same UN Human Rights that sat silent as Hamas protected their rocket launchers by placing them in hospitals, mosques, and in civilian populations.

In case you missed it, this is the graph of rockets fired at Israel from Gaza since 2001:

graph

Where is the investigation of the rockets fired on Israeli civilians from Gaza? It is time for America to stop funding the United Nations. If we want an international organization dedicated to human rights and world peace, we need to start our own with the democracies and free nations of the world.

 

 

The Logic Of These Statements Escapes Me

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Yesterday Hot Air posted an article citing some comments by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Included in the article:

…she (Secretary Albright) conceded that it is hard to dispute that forces loyal to Hamas in the Gaza Strip are using human shields in order to protect their military assets. She implied that this tactic has resulted in an inordinate number of Palestinian causalities over the course of the ongoing conflict with Israel.

…After conceding that Hamas is intentionally making civilian casualties more likely, she said that it was nevertheless the case that those causalities are sapping Israel of its “moral authority.”

Isn;t using human shields a war crime under international law? What about the fact that thousands of rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza aimed at Israeli civilians? This has been going on ever since Israel turned Gaza over to Hamas. The real bottom-line question in this war is simple, “Does Israel have the right to defend itself?”

World opinion will probably force Israel to stop fighting before it cleans up the rocket launchers and tunnels in Gaza. Unfortunately that will result in continuing rocket attacks and the need for Israel to invade Gaza again in the near future. The only way to stop the rocket attacks on Israel and the civilian casualties in Gaza is to allow Israel to destroy Hamas in Gaza. Unfortunately the world has lost its moral clarity and does not have the integrity to allow Israel to do that.

A Brief Primer On Israel And Gaza

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Israel turned Gaza over to the Palestinians (there has never actually been a Palestinian state) in 2005. Just to refresh your memory, there was no cry for a Palestinian state until after the 1967 war. As Walid Shoebat stated, “One day during the 1960s I went to bed a Jordanian Muslim, and when I woke up the next morning, I was informed that I was now a Palestinian Muslim, and that I was no longer a Jordanian Muslim.” That is a part of the history of the Middle East that is often ignored.

So what is this current war about? This is a chart from the IDF blog:

graph

This is a picture of a playground in Sderot, Israel:

This cute little piece of playground equipment is actually a bomb shelter. Children is Sderot have 15 seconds to get to a bomb shelter when the sirens go off. The reason we have not seen massive civilian casualties in Israel caused by the Hamas rocket attacks is that Israel uses the Iron Dome to keep the rockets from hitting the ground and the Israeli population has been spending a lot of time in bomb shelters. (There is also the ‘God thing.’ Israel has a Biblical relationship to God that includes ownership of the land they now possess. The Bible clearly says that the person who blesses Israel will be blessed and the person who curses Israel will be cursed. History bears that out.)

Please remember when you hear the hysterical cries of Palestinian casualties that those casualties are planned by the Palestinian government. When Israel tells people to leave an area they are about to attack, the Palestinian government orders the civilians to stay there–the Palestinian government understands the optics of Palestinian civilian casualties in the propaganda war. Israel is not targeting civilians–the government of Gaza has targeted Israeli civilians for years. Don’t believe the current propaganda.

The Planning For The Hamas Attack On Israel Must Have Gone On For Some Time

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CBN News posted an article today about the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The article mentioned the tunnels going from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

The article reports:

The tunnels are designed to infiltrate communities close to the border. Gaza is about a mile away and some of these tunnels are more than a mile long and 60 feet deep with multiple exits. It proves Hamas has been planning this for a very long time.

The article explains the strategy of Hamas being used in the war:

Meanwhile on Sunday, 13 IDF soldiers died in an attack on one Hamas stronghold in Shejaiya. More than 100 Palestinians were killed in the incident, both terrorists and civilians. 

For three days, Israel warned residents by phone calls and leaflets to get out of harms’ way, while the Hamas interior minister told them to stay there. 

“Hamas is effectively conducting self-genocide,” Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said. “They’re placing their women and children around missile launchers, shooting rockets at Israel [and] waiting for us to retaliate in order for them to kill their own, and that’s what’s happening.”   

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said using civilians as human shields is part of Hamas’ strategy.

“They have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own civilians so the rest of the world will condemn them,” he said.

Middle Eastern terrorists have long used the media to aid them in their cause. The thing to remember when hearing stories of the war between Israel and Hamas is that Israel is using the Iron Dome to protect its citizens and its military. Hamas is using civilians to protect its military and its weapons. That alone illustrates the values of the two sides.