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I've been asked once or twice for my thoughts on the current troubles in Israel. Here goes.
1) "Disengagement."
Pulling out of Gaza struck me as a bad idea from the get-go. To cede territory for no promise of peace struck me as something that could not possibly be understood as anything other than a victory for Hamas' sustained campaign of terror. Indeed, these comments in 2004 from Hamas movement's spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, that "all the Israeli statements about a withdrawal from Gaza Strip are due to the Palestinian resistance operations"(Palestinian National Authority State Information Service (PNA/SIS)) made this abundantly clear.
As soon as the withdrawal was complete, Qassam rockets began flying into Israel, thus demonstrating the correctness of Israel's long-time justification for holding the settlements: that the 1967 borders are not defensible.
The US press gave very little coverage to the rocket fire, except as afterthoughts in articles reporting that Israeli troops had killed the Palestinian children that organizers of these attacks were shielding themselves with.
2) Elections
Hamas' win of the PA elections earlier this year drew the all too predictable response from the West. "You elected terrorists! Kiss your funding goodbye!" As I've noted before this response was poor strategy, as well as being morally reprehensible. A large part of the problem, too, is the nature of the funding that the Muslim world provides. It should not escape our notice that a fund called "The Student Fund for Demolishing Israel" (YNet) was established at the University of Tehran. Let us leave alone for a moment the obvious implication of intent to destroy Israel, and consider the implications this name has for the Palestinians. It is not called "the Fund to Feed Palestinians," but rather the "Fund for Demolishing Israel," as if there is no reason for an Iranian to help a Palestinian except insofar as that Palestinian is an instrument for the destruction of Israel. General Arab policy towards Palestinian refugees* seems designed to ensure that Palestinians serve chiefly as weapons delivery devices and not as human beings. This dehumanizing attitude becomes readily apparent in the return of a TV ad soliciting children as suicide bombers with popular singer Aida singing to them "How pleasant is the smell of the earth whose thirst is quenched by blood pouring out of young bodies." (Ha'aretz)
3) Explosion on the Beach
Israel was mistaken to express any regrets until the truth could be known. As it stands, most took Israel's expression and promise to investigate as an admission of culpability.
The facts, so far as we know them, is that IDF forces were trading rocket-fire with a crew of Qassam launchers that had been shelling Sderot for weeks at least. While this was happening there was an explosion and casualties inflicted on a picnicking family. The investigation did not reveal shrapnel consistent with Israeli rockets.(Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
The incident remains something of a Rorschach test, and certainty will probably never prevail.
4) Corporal Shalit.
Well, at last, an attack on a military target and the taking of a prisoner. Do not make the error of supposing the Gaza incursion is about this. I hope he is recovered safely, but not through the exchange of prisonders or anything else that could be regarded as an Israeli capitulation. Because truly, penetration of the border is an act of war. As is the constant shelling by Qassam, and most recently Katyusha missiles by Palestinians (this is the aid they get from the Arab world, not food, but missiles). And now even more Katyushas fall on Israel from Lebanon as I write this.
4) Lebanon
My quote from Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was incomplete. Here it is in full:
all the Israeli statements about a withdrawal from Gaza Strip are due to the Palestinian resistance operations. We are completely confident that as the Hezbollah Organization managed to kick the Israeli forces out of Lebanon, the Palestinian resistance will kick them out of the Palestinian territories, and we will continue our resistance.
I cannot help but think it fitting to be retaking Gaza and Reoccupying Lebanon is really the only possible answer to people who congratulate themselves on the efficacy of targeting civilians.
*A note on these "refugees:" I do not still have the key to my Grandfather's house in Poland. I suspect this is because my grandfather was allowed to settle in the US and build a new life for himself. Perhaps if the Arab world would accept these "refugees" as citizens, as Israel has done with so many of the Jews that Arab countries have dispossessed, there wouldn't be quite so much poverty or strife. If every Palestinian were to move into a home in the Arab world that a Jewish family was evicted from, there would be no "refugee problem."
1) "Disengagement."
Pulling out of Gaza struck me as a bad idea from the get-go. To cede territory for no promise of peace struck me as something that could not possibly be understood as anything other than a victory for Hamas' sustained campaign of terror. Indeed, these comments in 2004 from Hamas movement's spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, that "all the Israeli statements about a withdrawal from Gaza Strip are due to the Palestinian resistance operations"(Palestinian National Authority State Information Service (PNA/SIS)) made this abundantly clear.
As soon as the withdrawal was complete, Qassam rockets began flying into Israel, thus demonstrating the correctness of Israel's long-time justification for holding the settlements: that the 1967 borders are not defensible.
The US press gave very little coverage to the rocket fire, except as afterthoughts in articles reporting that Israeli troops had killed the Palestinian children that organizers of these attacks were shielding themselves with.
2) Elections
Hamas' win of the PA elections earlier this year drew the all too predictable response from the West. "You elected terrorists! Kiss your funding goodbye!" As I've noted before this response was poor strategy, as well as being morally reprehensible. A large part of the problem, too, is the nature of the funding that the Muslim world provides. It should not escape our notice that a fund called "The Student Fund for Demolishing Israel" (YNet) was established at the University of Tehran. Let us leave alone for a moment the obvious implication of intent to destroy Israel, and consider the implications this name has for the Palestinians. It is not called "the Fund to Feed Palestinians," but rather the "Fund for Demolishing Israel," as if there is no reason for an Iranian to help a Palestinian except insofar as that Palestinian is an instrument for the destruction of Israel. General Arab policy towards Palestinian refugees* seems designed to ensure that Palestinians serve chiefly as weapons delivery devices and not as human beings. This dehumanizing attitude becomes readily apparent in the return of a TV ad soliciting children as suicide bombers with popular singer Aida singing to them "How pleasant is the smell of the earth whose thirst is quenched by blood pouring out of young bodies." (Ha'aretz)
3) Explosion on the Beach
Israel was mistaken to express any regrets until the truth could be known. As it stands, most took Israel's expression and promise to investigate as an admission of culpability.
The facts, so far as we know them, is that IDF forces were trading rocket-fire with a crew of Qassam launchers that had been shelling Sderot for weeks at least. While this was happening there was an explosion and casualties inflicted on a picnicking family. The investigation did not reveal shrapnel consistent with Israeli rockets.(Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
The incident remains something of a Rorschach test, and certainty will probably never prevail.
4) Corporal Shalit.
Well, at last, an attack on a military target and the taking of a prisoner. Do not make the error of supposing the Gaza incursion is about this. I hope he is recovered safely, but not through the exchange of prisonders or anything else that could be regarded as an Israeli capitulation. Because truly, penetration of the border is an act of war. As is the constant shelling by Qassam, and most recently Katyusha missiles by Palestinians (this is the aid they get from the Arab world, not food, but missiles). And now even more Katyushas fall on Israel from Lebanon as I write this.
4) Lebanon
My quote from Hamas Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was incomplete. Here it is in full:
all the Israeli statements about a withdrawal from Gaza Strip are due to the Palestinian resistance operations. We are completely confident that as the Hezbollah Organization managed to kick the Israeli forces out of Lebanon, the Palestinian resistance will kick them out of the Palestinian territories, and we will continue our resistance.
I cannot help but think it fitting to be retaking Gaza and Reoccupying Lebanon is really the only possible answer to people who congratulate themselves on the efficacy of targeting civilians.
*A note on these "refugees:" I do not still have the key to my Grandfather's house in Poland. I suspect this is because my grandfather was allowed to settle in the US and build a new life for himself. Perhaps if the Arab world would accept these "refugees" as citizens, as Israel has done with so many of the Jews that Arab countries have dispossessed, there wouldn't be quite so much poverty or strife. If every Palestinian were to move into a home in the Arab world that a Jewish family was evicted from, there would be no "refugee problem."
