GW: Gracious Departure - Decent Man of Stature!

Blowback? (See 1 below.)

IT”S TIME TO CALL THE HAND OF THE UK MEDIA – WHETHER BBC, SKY, GUARDIAN OR WHATEVER, THEIR LIES, INSINUATIONS, MISINFORMATION ETC HAS BEEN AT THE VERY CORE OF ANTI- ISRAEL/SEMITIC RHETORIC. AL JEZEERA OFTEN HAS MORE BALANCED REPORTING THAN THE UK MEDIA. (See 2 below.)

Egypt beginning to actually play hard ball as a consequence of Israeli gains against Hamas. (See 3 below.)

Mosque weapons stockpile found. (See 4 below.)

Like the very cowards the Hamas leaders are. (See 5 below.)

The U.N. and Falk continue to be blinded by Israeli 'attrocities' or maybe they see only what they want to see. (See 6 6a below.)

Is Western Democracy suited for the Middle East? (See 7 below.)

Pipes believes Israeli strategic incompetence perists. (See 8 below.)

President Bush gave his last press conference and in the process , except for the bashers, demonstrated the decency and character of the man. Again, I repeat, his reputation will rise because, though he made mistakes, some bad personnel judgments, he was a far better president than the press, media and his vile detractors portrayed him.

He will now return to Texas and I am positive GW will conduct himself with principle and dignity, something one cannot say about our two former President C's - Carter and Clinton.

GW's comments about and to Obama were beyond gracious.

His detractors spent their lives knocking him down but GW leaves the Oval Office head and shoulders abover all of them. (See 9 below.)

Jeff Barak wriutes that Livni has proven unworthy again because the idf has given the government ample cease fire opportunities which thyey have not taken. Perhaps Barak has fallen into the cease fire trap himself. (See 10 below.)

When the Washington Post calls Pelosi's actions high handedness that is something to behold! (See 1 below.)

Dick

1)No, we are not all Hamas nowDominic Lawson I was startled by the monument that stands at the entrance to Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's memorial to the Holocaust. One side of Nathan Rappaport's diptych is what looks like a caricature of Jews. The hunched, twisted figures, with hooked noses and heavy-lidded eyes, seem devoid of physical energy. The other panel displays a group of heroic young men and women who are heavily muscled, standing tall, weapons at the ready.

It turns out that the first group is meant to depict Jews being marched to their deaths, while the second is the leaders of the Warsaw uprising; the whole monument is constructed of granite imported from Sweden by the Nazis for the construction of what was meant to be one of the Third Reich's victory towers.

The message is in fact close to the view expressed with brutal clarity by Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion: "That masses of exiled Jews walked to the death trains . . . silently, stupidly . . . is a decisive, embarrassing and painful statement of the disintegration of spiritual-ethical strength. What is their place among us?" Ben-Gurion envisaged that "new Jews", with the security of their own nation state, would erase what he saw as the shameful memory of a "submissive, lowly camp of strange creatures . . . who know only how to arouse pity". Indeed, so anxious was Ben-Gurion to obliterate such memories that he opposed any memorial to the Holocaust. That was one battle he lost.

A Briton entering Yad Vashem might do so in the hope that he would see a compliment to his own nation's fight against the Nazis. He would be disappointed. Instead, there is footage of a long dead emissary to London recording how Britain's wartime foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, told him the plight of the Jews was not an important consideration in the war effort. Later, he would see pictures of British soldiers dragging Jewish immigrants from ships on the shores of Tel Aviv and of Holocaust survivors behind the wire of British camps in Cyprus, prevented from reaching the promised land. The message here is equally clear. No one will protect the Jews except themselves.

That remains the position. After all, there was no great perturbation within the UN building in New York during the month upon month that Hamas rained rockets on southern Israel, still less any international pressure on the government of Gaza to desist. Ten months ago I was in Sderot, 30 seconds' rocket flying time from Gaza, talking to an Israeli nurse whose home had been hit by one of thousands of Qassam missiles which Hamas had fired without fear of reprisal. She still had shrapnel lodged, irremovably, near her brain.

The nurse said she constantly tells her four-year-old son, who was also injured, that "there are so many good people in Gaza who are not trying to kill us". Her anger was principally against her own government: "The day Israel withdrew from Gaza, I knew it was a terrible idea, I knew we would be a target. And I know my Arab friends will suffer when the IDF [Israel Defence Force] goes back into Gaza." Now, they are indeed suffering terribly, as the images on our television screens show all too graphically - and yet infinitely less than the pictures that are too horrific to be shown and are left to our imagination. This is what war means.

All the same, even the majority of those Israelis who passionately believe that the Palestinians should have their own state, and that the West Bank should be handed over to them, are convinced there was no choice for their government but to act as it has over the past fortnight. These Israelis were bitterly opposed to the military campaigns against Lebanon, but see this campaign as much closer to the spirit of the six-day war and the Yom Kippur war. "Ein brera", they tell me, which is Hebrew for "no choice".

It was no longer just Sderot which was taking hits from the Qassams, and where parents would not let their children play outdoors. The Iranian-supplied Hamas ordnance was becoming ever wider in its range. Ashkelon (which incidentally supplies all of Gaza's electricity) and even the city of Beer-sheba are now reachable targets, and more than 800,000 Israelis the potential victims.

It is undeniable that the consequences for the people of Gaza have been far worse, in numbers of innocent dead and in sheer intensity, than anything the people of Israel have suffered. The word "disproportionate" is inevitably used to describe the Israeli response, with the equally inevitable failure to acknowledge that Hamas targets civilians on purpose and with open expressions of bloodthirsty delight when it succeeds.

Those who claim the IDF also deliberately targets civilians don't have to believe the official spokesman's denials: they could speak to someone such as Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded British Army campaigns in Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, and was most recently senior military adviser to the Cabinet Office. Kemp told me that "Hamas deploys suicide attackers including women and children, and rigs up schools and houses with booby-trap explosives. Its leaders knew as a matter of certainty this would lead to civilian casualties if there was a ground battle. Virtually every aspect of its operations is illegal under international humanitarian law - 'war crimes' in the emotive language usually reserved for the Israelis".

Colonel Kemp points out that if the IDF had no regard for civilian lives it would never have leafleted and telephoned residents in Gaza, warning them when it was about to attack their area: after all, that also gives Hamas notice - hardly the act of an army devoted to military victory at all costs. Similarly, the IDF's unilateral commitment to a daily three-hour ceasefire to permit the evacuation (to Israel) of casualties, and for the passage of "humanitarian aid", also allows Hamas time to regroup and redeploy for future attacks.

Of course, none of these arguments can penetrate the brains of the superannuated Stalinists, vicarious jihadists and attention-seeking actors and pop stars who think it's cool to go on marches chanting, "We are all Hamas now". Even if these luvvies might not be aware that on Christmas Eve Hamas legalised crucifixion as a punishment for those who "weaken the spirit of the people", and have been shooting such political enemies in the head when they find them in hospitals conveniently injured by Israeli bombing raids, they still deserve to be dismissed as useful idiots for a depraved death cult.

There are also perfectly sensible people - both inside and outside Israel - who say the IDF's campaign is worse than a crime: it is stupid. They cite the Lebanon war of 2006 as a dire precedent. Leave aside the terrible casualties - although that's hard enough - they say it left Hezbollah unconquered and elevated in prestige on the "Arab street".

Perhaps so, but consider this: since that campaign, no Hezbollah missiles have been fired on northern Israel. Indeed, when on Thursday three rockets were fired from Lebanon, Hezbollah rushed to reassure the Israeli government that it was not involved and that the rockets were not the sort it even possessed.

This is not exactly the classical doctrine of deterrence: it's supposed to stop people attacking you in the first place. Yet the Israeli attack on Gaza is part of the same policy of delayed deterrence. Paradoxical though this might seem, it is also essential if the process towards an independent Palestinian state is to havea future. For until the people of Israel believe that such a state - including the heights of the West Bank, which overlook Tel Aviv - is not a threat to their own existence, they will never support a government which abandons those territories, won in an earlier war of self-defence.

If you believe otherwise, go to Yad Vashem.

2) The foulest fight
By David Horovitz

Hamas shows indifference to any 'rules' of war. And reportage has failed to keep pace with the Islamists' innovation.

Amid all the international criticism of Israel's fighting tactics in Gaza these past few days, from the gentle to the hysterical, from the supercilious chiding about disproportionate response to the vicious Nazi comparisons, one prominent aspect has curiously escaped marked comment.

Israel is bombing mosques in Gaza. Six of them and counting.

In recent years, the purported disrespect for Islam displayed in the writings of authors such as Salman Rushdie has been sufficient to provoke death sentences and mass rallies. The dissemination of Danish cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad, one of which showed the prophet with a bomb in his headdress in an artistic critique of the hijacking of Islam by extremists, prompted violent demonstrations around the world that rather underlined the cartoonists' point.

But today, with Gaza mosque after mosque targeted by the Israel Air Force, this unprecedented assault on Islamic places of worship has passed without particular hysteria.

Part of the reason is that critics and protesters are focusing on Israel's broader "crime" of trying to defend its civilians against ever deeper and more devastating Hamas rocket attacks. But still, the repeated direction of Jewish fire-power into Islam's places of worship, one might have assumed, would inflame the Arab world and its supporters into an orgy of anti-Israel fury.

As of this writing, that hasn't happened.

And it hasn't happened because the Islamists know they've been found out.

In a terrible incident on Tuesday, Israel hit an UNRWA school, and in the subsequent explosions a reported 40-plus people were killed, many of them civilians. An outraged UNRWA emphatically denied an IDF claim that a Hamas mortar battery had been firing from the school, and that secondary blasts indicated the presence of further explosives there; the Associated Press cited eyewitness accounts of "a small group of militants firing mortars near the school and running away." The accusations and counter-accusations will rumble on, and there's little likelihood of a definitive narrative emerging.

As regards the mosques, by contrast, Israel's declaration that it is firing on them because they are hubs of Hamas terrorism has met with no emphatic denials, no aggrieved assertions from Hamas clerics that their buildings are innocent places of humble worship, no pleas to the international community to enter the buildings and document their purity.

Britain's Observer newspaper reported last Sunday, after the IAF struck the Ibrahim al-Maqadma mosque in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya, that Al-Jazeera's Gaza correspondent, Ayman Mohyeldin, believed the attacks "could galvanize the Arab world into taking action against Israel." But this doubtless objective correspondent's professional assessment did not prove prophetic.

The name of that mosque rather gives the game away, of course. Maqadma was one of the founders of Hamas and its military chief. He was killed in an Israeli helicopter strike in Gaza in March 2003, soon after a series of Hamas terror attacks, including a suicide bombing on an Egged bus in Haifa that killed 17 people.

Israeli security officials say the mosques that have been struck, long known as centers of Islamist indoctrination and vicious anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish incitement, are being used as weapons stores, command centers, as cover for networks of tunnels - in short, Hamas military positions. Again, there has been no frenzied rush by Gaza's clerics to dispute this devastating accusation.

"We did not easily take the decision to hit mosques," an Israeli security official said this week. But one of those targeted was the entry point to a whole series of tunnels, he said. Another was a storehouse for Grad missiles fired into Israel. (On Wednesday, the IDF released footage of a rocket being launched into Israel from immediately adjacent to the wall of a mosque.) "When you see, day after day, people going back into a mosque for their rocket supplies," the official said, "you have to act."

Along with the absent protestations of innocence, however, there is also a regrettable absence of internal Islamic condemnation of the abuse by Hamas of its holy places. Imagine the intra-Jewish storm were a synagogue's sanctity to be compromised in any remotely comparable manner. So where are the Islamic leaders, in Gaza and beyond, bitterly castigating Hamas for its unholy disrespect? And where are the horrified rank and file worshipers?

The leaders' silence only bolsters the perception of Islam as a religion inexorably being overwhelmed by violent extremists, with its moderates intimidated into silence. The tacit complicity of the worshipers - some of whom have lost their lives in recent days when the IAF struck, even though attacks were timed to avoid prayer services - underlines the extent of support and tolerance for Hamas's brand of Islam in Gaza. No surprise there; some two-thirds of Gazans chose to vote for Hamas in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections.

THE DESECRATION of the mosques is only one expression of Hamas's egregious indifference to any hitherto accepted "rules" of war.

Civilians are supposed to be off limits. So too, by extension, homes, schools and places of worship. Yet Hamas stores its ammunition and manufacturers its weaponry in precisely such places. On the very first day of Operation Cast Lead - 10 days, that is, before the tragic incident at the UNRWA school - Israeli security sources specified that Hamas was operating at or close to schools in some of Gaza's most dense population centers. The initial air strikes, which hit targets that had been evaluated for many months, eschewed numerous key Hamas positions precisely because they had been so callously established in the heart of civilian areas.

Hamas has for years been diverting Israeli electricity supplies to the Strip for weapons manufacture. This week, it cried humanitarian disaster even as it commandeered some of the food, fuel and medical supplies flowing into Gaza and blocked others.

Hamas gunmen, even more cynical than their Hizbullah counterparts, are fighting out of uniform - they look like innocent civilians, deserving of protection, until they pull out guns or rush at IDF soldiers with suicide-bomber belts. Security officials say some are maintaining a years-long practice of taking children with them when they prepare missile attacks into Israel, confident that the IDF won't touch them. Sometimes, the officials say, they have children with them when they confront soldiers at close quarters, as well.

ISRAEL DID prepare more effectively than in 2006 to clarify the asymmetry of the wars it is now regularly forced to fight, against terrorists who have ruthlessly recast the theater of war in a civilian environment.

The IDF spokesman's rapid, if vehemently disputed, response to the UNRWA school shelling contrasted with the long hours of official silence that followed the IAF's strike on a building in south Lebanon's Kafr Kana close to Katyusha launch sites at the end of July 2006, in which more than 20 civilians died. IDF spokespeople have been much in evidence on Arabic TV stations, and competent officials have articulated Israel's narrative in many languages across TV world.

But Hamas prepared well, too.

Hizbullah prevented the televised documentation of its uniformed fatalities, and thus protected its forces' morale. Hamas, too, has managed to censor most evidence of its aggression and of its losses; that's easier to achieve when your gunmen are clad as civilians in life and in death.

Hamas's push for legitimacy has not been hindered, either, by certain media outlets' openness to its message. Pride of place here goes to the UK, fast becoming the mother of misguided democracy, where a major television network two weeks ago invited President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver a Christmas message as an alternative to the queen's traditional broadcast. Channel 4's scheduling chiefs didn't show the Iranian president at the same time as Her Majesty, according to an insider quoted by the London Times, because "We didn't want to imply an equivalence between the two." Bless them.

This week, Britain's Guardian published an op-ed article by Hamas's Khaled Mashaal, headlined "This brutality will never break our will to be free."

Damascus-based Mashaal has graced the Guardian's columns before; in February of 2007, he penned a piece on the just-signed Fatah-Hamas Mecca power-sharing agreement titled "Our unity can now pave the way for peace and justice." Four months later, Hamas viciously overthrew the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza, with the deaths of more than 100 fellow Palestinians in circumstances some way short of peace and justice, but Mashaal's credibility with that newspaper was apparently unharmed.

The Guardian also published an informative obituary of the man who oversaw that coup, Nizar Rayyan, the Hamas terror chief killed by Israel on January 1. The Guardian obit categorized Rayyan as a "political leader" and described him as "a man of the street... He was famed for fighting alongside his men and being seen with them publicly. And he was not merely a fighter. He was highly regarded as an Islamic academic."

In this cynical new theater of war, journalists discredit themselves and their profession if they fail to look beyond the immediate and into the context. Why is the Israel-Gaza border not quiet? Why has Hamas been firing rockets into Israel for years? Who is to blame for the presence of civilians in the combat zone? These are the kinds of questions that have not been asked enough, if at all, on would-be fair-minded TV and radio stations these past two weeks.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials - whose government provides electricity for the enemy, sends in food and medicine, and telephones terror chiefs to warn them that their homes are about to be blown up so that their families can be evacuated - are relentlessly assailed for purported indifference to Gaza's suffering. If no Palestinian official is available to answer the wider questions, then reporters have an obligation to explore them themselves.

Gaza is by no means the only combat zone where Iranian-Islamist terror tactics are deliberately placing civilians in the line of fire. The footage is clearer than ever, but right and wrong are harder to discern these days in many places where the guns are firing and the bombs are falling. Death and injury to civilians on one side of the battle zone may not be principally the responsibility of the combatants on the other side. A keener focus is required. Too little journalism, for now, is keeping pace with the extremists' cynically innovative methodologies.

HAMAS EXPLOITATION of civilian suffering reaches its apogee when it comes to the hospitals.

Earlier this week, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin briefed ministers to the effect that part of the Hamas leadership was operating from a bunker constructed under Gaza City's main Shifa Hospital. There have been reports of sightings in the hospital wards, and of the commandeering of ambulances.

Very early in Operation Cast Lead, Hamas announced, falsely, that it was moving all patients out of Shifa, because, it claimed, Israel was about to bomb the hospital. Israeli officials publicly and immediately dismissed the notion as Hamas propagandist misinformation, of which there has been plenty. This was more than a week before Diskin dropped his bunker bombshell. Plainly, Hamas knew it had every reason to fear an Israeli attack on the hospital.

In fact, a senior security official said this week, Israel would under no circumstances target Shifa. Hamas leaders, safely protected by the civilians they deliberately placed in harm's way, can evidently sleep soundly.


3) Ultimatum: Hamas must turn over all rocket stocks to third party


Israel and Egypt are playing hard ball with the Hama delegation who arrived in Cairo Saturday to seek a ceasefire in Gaza hostilities.
Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said Monday: We are closer than ever before to ending the rocket fire and getting Hamas' arms traffic under control.

As Israel tightened its military pressure with added reservists units, Egyptian intelligence minister Gen. Omar Suleiman rejected Hamas negotiators' appeal for compromises and told them the deal on offer was take-it-or-leave-it: Accept or face an all-out Israeli assault on all fronts.

Analysts note this was the first time the Egyptian government has used Israeli military gains as currency to further its national interests, namely, breaking the back of an Islamist movement deemed a destabilizing element for the Mubarak regime.

Suleiman informed the Palestinian delegation that Israel was holding out for Hamas to collect all its rocket and missile stocks and weapons in the hands of other Palestinian terrorist groups and turn them over to a third party. This party would also take charge of security in the Philadelphi Corridor.

Hamas would be given a month to implement the handover, but no longer.

Israel was also adamant about retaining its army on the battle lines held in the Gaza Strip when the ceasefire goes into effect until a new military mechanism is put in place on the Philadelphi Corridor and has proved capable of effectively stemming the arms traffic entering through tunnels from outside sources.

Some of the smuggling is still going on - but at a much reduced pace since the Israeli aerial bombardments began 17 days ago. The number of firings has dropped from 60 to 23.

The Hamas negotiators also ran into a blank Egyptian wall when they proposed setting a six-month time cap on the proposed ceasefire and reopening the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Sinai as a face-saving gesture to mark the onset of a truce. Suleiman said firmly that Rafah would reopen only when all six Gaza crossings into Israel were reactivated by Palestinian Authority personnel and European military monitors.

He said that Cairo was consulting with Jerusalem on the possible transfer of the two halves of Rafah - the Gazan and the Egyptian - to the Palestinian Authority and its chairman, Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Sunday, an Egyptian military plane ferried the Hamas-Gaza delegation to Damascus to seek the endorsement of hardline Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal for the truce terms dictated by Egypt and Israel. Gen. Suleiman directed them to pass this message on to Meshaal: Give up your illusions; Hamas' only remaining option now is to bow to the Middle East Quartet's primary condition: Recognize Israel.

Israel's negotiator Amos Gilead put off his mission to Cairo from Monday to await the return of the Hamas-Gaza delegates from Damascus. All parties are clear that a negative Hamas response will signal the onset of the next stage of Israel's Gaza offensive.

4) IDF finds Hamas weapons stockpile in raid on Gaza mosque

The Israel Air Force on Monday bombed a mosque in southern Gaza City, on day 17 of its offensive against Hamas' infrastructure in the coastal territory.

Israeli ground forces who entered the premises following the attack found a mass stockpile of weapons, including Qassam and Katyusha rockets.

The Israel Defense Forces continued its offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip before dawn on Monday, attacking dozens of targets across the territory.


IDF ground forces - comprising infantry, tanks, combat engineers, artillery and intelligence -were assisted by aerial attacks during the overnight operations.

The IAF reported attacking 10 Hamas targets, including five armed operatives, four weapons storehouses, two smuggling tunnels dug under the house of militants, one tunnel dug under Gaza's border with Egypt and one rocket launching position.


Troops from the Golani Brigade reported a number of hits on armed gunmen during gunbattles in the northern Gaza Strip. The Givati Brigade, meanwhile, uncovered one mortar shell.

The Israel Navy accompanied the ground forces during the raids, attacking Hamas locales from the sea.

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday began deploying reservist troops to the Gaza Strip, for the first time since Israel began its offensive on the Hamas-ruled coastal territory 17 days ago.

An IDF spokesman said that despite the deployment, thousands more reservists who would comprise a new, expanded phase in the ground operation were still in training and have not been sent to battle.

Meanwhile, IDF troops late Sunday continued to surround Gaza City while the Israel Air Force launched a fierce attack on some 20 smuggling networks in the southern Gaza Strip.

Palestinian medical officials said some 60 Palestinians died in Gaza on Sunday, including 17 who succumbed to their wounds from days earlier. The IDF said some 40 militants were either wounded or killed during the army's Sunday offensive.

The location of the ground fighting, on the southwest side of the Hamas-ruled territory's biggest population center, suggested Israel was intensifying a more than two-week-old offensive. Troops had previously kept to the outskirts of urban areas in Gaza.

5) Sources: Hamas leaders hiding in basement of Israel-built hospital in Gaza
By Amos Harel


Senior Hamas officials in Gaza are hiding out in a "bunker" built by Israel, intelligence officials suspect: Many are believed to be in the basements of the Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City, which was refurbished during Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Shifa, the coastal strip's largest hospital, was built while Gaza was under Egyptian rule, before 1967.


During the mid-1980s the building underwent massive refurbishment as part of a showcase project to improve the living conditions of residents.

Millions were invested in the project, which was overseen by Shmuel Goren, the coordinator for activities in the territories at the time.

The Israeli civil administration in the territories constructed the hospital complex's Building Number 2, which has a large cement basement that housed the hospital's laundry and various administrative services.

During a cabinet meeting a week ago, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin said senior Hamas officials found refuge in the hospital basement because they know Israel would not target it, due to the patients in the upper floors. Palestinian sources told Haaretz that not all the senior Hamas leaders are hiding in one place.

Rather, they have spread out, and some are constantly changing locations. Some of the bunkers they are using were linked by tunnels Hamas built in recent years.

6) UN Rights Council to probe Israeli actions in Gaza


UN Human Rights Council adopts resolution harshly condemning Israel for 'grave' human rights violations against Palestinians; to send fact-finding mission to Strip



The UN Human Rights Council on Monday adopted a resolution condemning Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip and accusing it of "grave" human rights violations against Palestinians.



UN Special Rapporteur on human rights observance in West Bank, Gaza sent back to Geneva after landing. Israeli Foreign Ministry says emissary denied entry because his mandate is 'profoundly distorted and conceived as an anti-Israel initiative'
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The resolution, setting up a fact-finding mission to investigate Israeli violations against Palestinians, was passed after a split opened up between Western countries and the others over the wording.


Thirty-three African, Asian, Arab and Latin American countries voted for the resolution. Thirteen European states abstained, while Canada was the only country to vote against.


The 47 member states in the UN's Human Rights Council normally take their decisions by consensus.

Some Western countries said the resolution put forward by Arab and African states was too one-sided and failed to clearly recognize the role that rocket attacks launched by Palestinian militants played in triggering the offensive.


The resolution released by the UN Council "strongly" condemned the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip, saying it had "resulted in massive violations" of the human rights of Palestinians.


Last week, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Richard Falk accused Israel of committing "crimes against humanity" in the Gaza Strip and called "the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”


Falk, known as a particularly harsh critic of Israel, said during a press conference in Brazil that the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip that Israel has used sophisticated weaponry against the Palestinian community, against which the Palestinians are largely unable to protect themselves.


While condemning the rocket attacks by Hamas, which Falk points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”


7) Arab Liberal Criticizes European Parliament President for Suggesting That the Middle East Does Not Deserve The Democracy Enjoyed By The West

During a December 20, 2008 visit to the Omani capital Muscat, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering stated that democracy in the Middle Eastmust evolve from within, that it must reflect local traditions and values, and that the West should not pressure the region to adopt a European-style democratic system. This statement sparked criticism among Arab intellectuals; the next day, 'Omran Salman, editor of the reformist website Aafaq.org, [1] posted an article harshly critical of Poettering's statements.

Following are excerpts from Salman's article:

Western Officials Would Rather Keep the Middle East Under Dictatorships

"…What is the meaning of statements [such as Poettering's]... that the democratic system followed in Europe is appropriate for countries all over the world except in the Arab region?

"Naturally, such statements are not innocuous, nor are they for the benefit of these alleged exceptions [i.e. the Arab countries]; rather, they are manifestations of racist tendencies as well as self-serving objectives.

"These people [like Poettering] believe that Arabs deserve nothing better than their present governments - [that is,] they do not deserve the democracy enjoyed by civilized nations. It follows that it is better not to pressure dictatorial regimes but instead to grant their wishes, [and receive] in exchange agreements, money, and profits - while the people there can go to hell.

"In reality, the European Parliament president, who should be ashamed of himself, is not the only traitor in this group [of Western statesmen]. Unfortunately, many senior European and U.S. officials share his opinion, with some of them [even] vying to turn over a new leaf [in relations with] dictatorial governments like those of [Syrian President] Bashar Al-Assad, [Libyan Leader Mu'ammar] Al-Qaddafi, and others.

"Their positions are based on the following premises:

"-People are not equal in how they achieve democracy - that is, there are first-class nations and second-class nations. The first class - Europe and the West - deserve the highest level of democracy, while the Arab nations are second class and [hence] inherently different, and must obey the rules of their [respective] governments.

"-The best way to safeguard Western interests is by preserving the existing tyrannical regimes - not by offering [these] nations an opportunity to embrace democracy, since such [a development] may harm these [i.e. Western] interests.

"-The democratic experience is by nature cumulative; thus there is no need to promote or facilitate democracy, especially for Arab countries. However, this does not apply to Eastern Europe, South America, or Asia, [where democracy was implemented quickly].

"-Each nation in the region has its own unique cultural characteristics and traditions, which must be respected; it would therefore be a mistake either to impose democracy on them [i.e. the Arab nations] or to pressure them to adopt [democracy].

"As I have already said, this is [all] just an excuse used by some Western politicians to justify their ties with tyrannical and corrupt governments in the Arab world. This [attitude] shows their disdain for the nations of this region, and [shows that] they are being treated as inferior species."


Arab Peoples Want Freedom and Democracy Too

"The truth is - even though these [Western] opportunists do not think so according to their logic - that all nations are equally [entitled] to freedom and democracy. There is no nation that is not striving and fighting for freedom - and the Arab nations are no exception.

"Furthermore, democracy is not some garment that people wear because of their traditions, or because of the local climate. It is a universal human value that transcends continents and cultures.

"Rule of law, a government elected by the people, [the government's] accountability to [its citizens], separation of authorities, pluralism, transfer of power by peaceful means - [all these] do not depend on unique [characteristics] or regional custom. If they are good for the West, they are also good for the East, and for anywhere else in the world.

"The only thing left to say is that all reformists, and all those who defend democracy and freedom in the Arab countries, must condemn the racism and opportunism of these politicians - including the president of the European Parliament…"

8) Israel's Strategic Incompetence in Gaza
By Daniel Pipes

Commentary on the Israel-Hamas war has tended toward partisan pleading, making the moral case for or against Israel. That's a crucial debate but not the only one; there's also a need for a cool strategic assessment; who is winning, who is losing?

Hillel Frisch argues that Hamas (which he calls "a small isolated movement that controls a small strip") has "grossly miscalculated" by antagonizing the Egyptian government and making war on Israel. He concludes Hamas has embarked on "strategic suicide."

Perhaps, but scenarios exist in which Hamas gains. Khaled Abu Toameh notes the powerful and growing support for Hamas around the Middle East. Caroline Glick offers two ways for Hamas to win: a return to the status quo ante, with Hamas still in charge of Gaza, or a ceasefire agreement whereby foreign powers form an international monitoring regime to oversee Gaza's borders with Israel and Egypt.

As this suggests, an assessment of Hamas' war record depends primarily on decisions made in Jerusalem. Those decisions being the real issue, how well has Israel's leadership performed?

Disastrously. Jerusalem's profound strategic incompetence continues and heightens the failed policies since 1993 that have eroded Israel's reputation, strategic advantage, and security. Four main reasons lead me to this negative conclusion.

First, the team in charge in Jerusalem created the Gaza problem. Its leader, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert immortally explained in 2005 the forthcoming unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza: "We [Israelis] are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies."

Olmert had a vital role in (1) initiating the Gaza withdrawal, which ended the Israel Defense Forces' close control of the territory, and (2) giving up Israeli control over the Gaza-Egypt border. This latter, little noted decision, enabled Hamas to build tunnels to Egypt, smuggle in matériel, and launch missiles into Israel.

Secondly, Olmert and his colleagues failed to respond to the barrage of rockets and mortar shells. From the Israeli withdrawal in 2005 until now, Hamas has launched over 6,500 missiles into Israel. Incredibly, Israelis endured nearly eight attacks a day for three years; why? A responsible government would have responded to the first rocket as a casus belli and immediately responded.

Thirdly, a committee of the French parliament published an important technical report in mid-December, establishing that "there is no longer doubt" about the military purposes of the Iranian nuclear program, and that it will be up and running in 2-3 years.

The waning days of the Bush administration, with the current president nearly out the door and the president-elect yet in the wings, offers a unique moment to take care of business. Why did Olmert squander this opportunity to confront the relatively trivial danger Hamas presents rather than the existential threat of Iran's nuclear program? This negligence has potentially dire repercussions.

Finally, from what one can discern of the Olmert government's goal in its war on Hamas, it seems to be to weaken Hamas and strengthen Fatah so that Mahmoud Abbas can re-take control of Gaza and re-start diplomacy with Israel. Michael B. Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi captured this idea in a recent article title: "Palestinians need Israel to win: If Hamas gets away with terror once again, the peace process will be over."

Bitter experience, however, invalidates this thesis. For one, Fatah has proven itself a determined enemy intent on eliminating the Jewish state. For another, Palestinians themselves repudiated Fatah in 2006 elections. It strains credulity that anyone could still think of Fatah as a "partner for peace." Rather, Jerusalem should think creatively of other scenarios, perhaps my "no-state solution" bringing in the Jordanian and Egyptian governments.

More dismaying even than Olmert's ineptitude is that the Israeli election a month from now pits three leaders of his same ilk. Two of them (Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak) currently serve as his main lieutenants, while two (Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu) failed badly in their prior prime ministerial stints.

Looking beyond Olmert and his potential successors comes the worst news of all, namely that no one at the upper echelons of Israel's political life articulates the imperative for victory. For this reason, I see Israel as a lost polity, one full of talent, energy, and resolve but lacking direction.


9) Bush defends presidency in final news conference
By JENNIFER LOVEN

Byurns wistful, aggressive and joking in the final news conference of his presidency, President George W. Bush vigorously defended his record Monday but also offered an extraordinary listing of his mistakes — including his optimistic Iraq speech before a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner in 2003.

After starting what he called "the ultimate exit interview" with a lengthy and personalized thank-you to the reporters in the room who have covered him over the eight years of his presidency, Bush showed anger at times when presented with some of the main criticisms of his time in office.

"I think it's a good, strong record," he said. "You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature."

He particularly became indignant when asked about America's bruised image overseas.

"I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he said. "It may be damaged amongst some of the elite. But people still understand America stands for freedom."

Bush said he realizes that some issues such as the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have created controversy at home and around the world. But he defended his actions after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including approving tough interrogation methods for suspected terrorists and information-gathering efforts at home in the name of protecting the country.

With the Iraq war in its sixth year, he most aggressively defended his decisions on that issue, which will define his presidency like no other. There have been over 4,000 U.S. deaths since the invasion and toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

But it was in that area that he also acknowledged mistakes. He said that "not finding weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment." The accusation that Saddam had and was pursuing weapons of mass destruction was Bush's main initial justification for going to war.

He also cited the abuses found to have been committed by members of the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq as "a huge disappointment."

"I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were — things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way," Bush said.

And he admitted another miscalculation: Eager to report quick progress after U.S. troops ousted Saddam's government, he declared less than two months after the war started that "in the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," a claim made under a "Mission Accomplished" banner that turned out to be wildly optimistic. "Clearly, putting `Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake," he said Monday. "It sent the wrong message."

He also defended his decision in 2007 to send an additional 30,000 American troops to Iraq to knock down violence levels and stabilize life there.

"The question is, in the long run, will this democracy survive, and that's going to be a question for future presidents," he said.

On another issue destined to figure prominently in his legacy, Bush said he has "thought long and hard about Katrina — you know could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge." Bush was criticized for flying over the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and waiting until four days after it hit to visit the scene.

But he also said he disagrees with those who say the federal response to the storm was slow.

"Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there were 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. ... Could things been done better? Absolutely. But when I hear people say the federal response was slow, what are they going to say to those chopper drivers or the 30,000 who got pulled off the roof?" he said.

He also defended his record on Mideast peace.

A bruising offensive by Israel in the Gaza Strip has dashed any slight hopes for an accord soon that produces a Palestinian state. But Bush, asked why peace hasn't been achieved, said his administration had made progress. He said he had laid out the vision for "what peace would look like" and got all sides to agree on a two-state solution to the long-running Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

"It's been a long time since they've had peace in the Middle East," he said. "The challenge, of course, has been to lay out the conditions so that a peaceful state can emerge. ... Will this ever happen? I think it will. And I know we've advanced the process."

He called President-elect Barack Obama "a very smart, engaging person" and said he wishes his successor all the best. He hinted at the enormous responsibility Obama is about to assume, describing what it might feel like on Jan. 20 when, after taking the oath of office, he enters the Oval Office for the first time as president.

"There'll be a moment when the responsibility of the president lands squarely on his shoulders," Bush said.

He gave his view of the most urgent threat facing the incoming president: an attack on the United States. He chose that risk over the dire economic problems now facing the nation.

"I wish that I could report that's not the case, but there's still an enemy out there that would like to inflict damage on America — on Americans."

He said he would ask Congress to release the remaining $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money if Obama so desires. But, he said, Obama hadn't made that request of him yet.

That soon changed. Shortly after the news conference, the White House said Obama had asked for the request and Bush had agreed to make it.

That will take at least one burden off Obama's shoulders involving a program that is extraordinarily unpopular with many lawmakers and much of the public.

The last news conference of Bush's presidency lasted 46 minutes, and he took questions from more than a dozen reporters.

The last previous time the president had taken questions in a public setting was Dec. 14 in Baghdad, a session that hurtled to the top of the news when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi threw his shoes at Bush during a question-and-answer session with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Bush's last previous full-blown news conference was July 15. He refused to hold another during the final months of last year's presidential campaign, concerned that the questions would be mostly related to political events and determined to stay out of GOP nominee John McCain's spotlight as much as possible. But even though aides had suggested that would change after the election, Bush still declined to participate in a wide-ranging question-and-answer session until now, just eight days before leaving office.

He has been granting a flurry of legacy-focused interviews as he seeks to shape the view of his presidency on his way out the door.

He gave advice to both his Republican Party and his Democratic successor.

To the GOP, he said it must be "compassionate and broad-minded" to come back from the drubbing it received in last year's elections, in which Republicans lost the White House and sank deeper into the minority in Congress. He said the immigration debate of two years ago was harmful, because conservative opposition to broad reform made it appear that "Republicans don't like immigrants."

"This party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party," he said.

Bush cautioned Obama not to listen to too much criticism — including from "your so-called friends" — and to focus on doing what he thinks is right. He also said to ignore talk of the isolation of the office.

"I have never felt isolated, and I don't think he will," Bush said. "One reason he won't feel isolated is that he's got a fabulous family and he cares a lot about his family."

He went on to mock the way some describe the job.

"I believe the phrase 'burdens of the office' is overstated," he said. "You know, it's kind of like, `Why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?' It's just pathetic, isn't it, self-pity? And I don't believe that President-elect Obama will be full of self-pity."

Bush seemed to struggle to envision himself on Jan. 21, his first day back at home and without a job.

"I'm a Type A personality. I just can't envision myself, you know, the big straw hat and a Hawaiian shirt sitting on some beach," he said. But, he added, it would probably be a pretty low-key day with him and his wife, Laura, at his ranch in Texas. "I wake up in Crawford on Tuesday morning — I mean, Wednesday morning, and I suspect I'll make Laura coffee and, you know, go get it for her."

10) Livni squanders the IDF's achievement
By JEFF BARAK


While Operation Cast Lead has shown that the IDF, under the cautious and calculated leadership of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, has learned the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, it is becoming depressingly clearer that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has not. Livni did not measure up to the job in the Second Lebanon War when she failed to temper Ehud Olmert's rash enthusiasm for a military clash with Hizbullah and was unable to persuade the cabinet of the need for a quick, diplomatic exit from Lebanon. This time, in one of the strangest reversal of roles seen around an Israeli cabinet table, the foreign minister is ignoring the defense establishment's ability to provide the government with reasonable exit points from a military operation, thereby ensuring the fighting continues.

In the wake of the Second Lebanon War, the government determinedly set low goals for Operation Cast Lead. Thankfully, instead of choosing the sound bite-attractive but difficult-to-achieve policy of regime change and the toppling of Hamas, which as the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan has shown is not always the best way forward, it rightly declared that its sole aim was to stop Hamas' firing of rockets from Gaza. Even the return of captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit was not mentioned as a war aim.

Now, two weeks after the fighting started, this declared aim has been achieved. True, rockets may still be falling, but this is because as long as the fighting officially continues, Hamas will continue firing even though it knows it has lost. After more than 850 Palestinians have been killed, dozens of smuggling tunnels destroyed and Hamas offices bombed into oblivion, Hamas, like Hizbullah before it, has learned its lesson the hard way of assuming that Israel would never react. A cease-fire, on terms favorable to Israel, is there for the reaching.

IN ACHIEVING this point, with low Israeli casualties, Barak has proved his worth. First, he was right to delay the operation and to proceed with the six-month truce with Hamas. Not only did this give the residents of the South a much-needed respite from the daily rocket fire from Gaza, it gave the IDF more time to prepare for a military operation should it be needed, even at the cost of allowing Hamas to develop and smuggle in its longer-range rockets. More importantly, the six-month quiet also gave Jerusalem the moral legitimacy when the time eventually came to launch its counterattack.

Despite the growing international criticism, which was inevitable once innocent Palestinian civilians became increasingly the victims of the response, it is important to remember that at the beginning of Operation Cast Lead, Israel received a free hand from the international community to respond to Hamas' breach of the six-month cease-fire. Given that the Arab world was also surprisingly acquiescent at the beginning of the operation, it is fair to say that the initial quiet international support was not simply a result of the Christmas holiday period.

Secondly, Barak and Ashkenazi structured the IDF's campaign to give the government a chance to declare victory at a number of convenient exit points, all designed to avoid the need of reoccupying the Gaza Strip and becoming entrenched there just as the country was bogged down in the First Lebanon War. That war was initially launched as a short-term campaign to remove the North from the threat of Palestinian terrorism and ended up as a two-decade occupation of southern Lebanon and the creation of Hizbullah as a new enemy.

THE FIRST exit point came immediately after the successful air assault on Gaza and the French suggestion for a 48-hour humanitarian cease-fire. This diplomatic proposal was supported by Barak but immediately shot down by Livni. The then inevitable deployment of ground forces, which has been accompanied by the first IDF combat fatalities as well as the killing of scores of civilians, created the second exit point, with the UN Security Council resolution at the end of last week calling for an immediate cease-fire, a resolution which notably was not vetoed by the US, despite Olmert's last-minute pleas to President George W Bush.

The government's rejection of this resolution increases the chances of Operation Cast Lead turning into the operation it did not want: an all-out war against Hamas and reoccupation of the Gaza Strip. Livni, who unlike Barak and Olmert has spent the whole of the IDF campaign in front of the cameras and microphones in what seems to be a desperate attempt to impress next month's voters of her relevance, told The Washington Post this weekend that the government opposes the UN call for a cease-fire because it grants Hamas legitimacy and places the organization on the same level as Israel.

The Security Council resolution is indeed unsatisfactory. First of all, it fails to place the blame for the current round of fighting, as it should, on Hamas. If Hamas were not firing rockets, the IDF would have had no need to launch Operation Cast Lead. Moreover, the cease-fire call does not address the vital issue of how to prevent the future smuggling of rockets into Gaza via the tunnels under its border with Egypt and neither does it call for returning the Strip to the control of the Palestinian Authority and for the disarming of Hamas and other terror groups there.

But had the foreign minister been more effective in building up an international coalition of diplomatic support for Israel's position, both during the six-month cease-fire and the first days of the conflict, then a more favorable UN resolution could have been crafted. The army has done its job; Livni so far has squandered the opportunity the IDF has created.

11) Irregular Order
House Democrats did not live up to their promises to treat the minority fairly in the 110th Congress. And the 111th?



"BILLS SHOULD generally come to the floor under a procedure that allows open, full and fair debate consisting of a full amendment process that grants the minority the right to offer its alternatives, including a substitute." So promised Nancy Pelosi, now House speaker, before her party regained control of Congress two years ago. That fairness, it turned out, was easier to preach than practice.

When they took over in 2007, Democrats set aside their pledge in order to muscle through their agenda during the first 100 hours; their promises continued to prove hollow in the ensuing months. As with the GOP takeover in 1994 and its accompanying pledges of open debate and fair treatment, Democrats' asserted good intentions yielded to the realities of governing in the face of an opposing party more interested in making mischief than law. Democrats brought more measures to the House floor under closed rules -- permitting no amendments -- than any of the six previous Republican-controlled congresses.

As Sarah Binder, Thomas Mann and Molly Reynolds put it in a new report from the Brookings Institution, "Democratic leaders in 2007 quickly concluded that implacable opposition to their agenda by President Bush and the Republican congressional leadership, combined with the 60-vote hurdle in the Senate, made it virtually impossible to return to regular order in committee, on the floor or in conference and still advance their agenda. . . . Their pledge to curb the procedural abuses of the previous Republican majority would for the most part have to be set aside. The choice was not surprising. Still, it had the effect of exacerbating partisan tensions in Congress and further fouling the toxic atmosphere permeating Washington."


A first-day-of-session skirmish over new House rules suggests that the situation in the 111th Congress may not be much better. The dispute involved a particularly arcane aspect of the rules: whether a "motion to recommit," essentially the minority's right to offer an alternative, must include the word "forthwith," in which case the alternative is immediately adopted if approved, or whether it can use the word "promptly," in which case the measure is sent back to committee and effectively killed for the time being. Democrats tightened the rules to end the latter practice, which had become a popular tool in the previous Congress. They argued that Republicans had repeatedly abused these motions, wording them to put vulnerable members in a bind by having to choose between killing a bill or taking a politically unpalatable vote destined to turn up in a 30-second attack ad. What was taken away, House Rules Committee Chairman Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), told us, was "a gimmick that was used to kill bills. . . . The intent was to bring up guns, abortion, illegals -- whatever they wanted to, even if it had nothing to do with the bill."

Republicans countered that Democrats were unfairly limiting one of their few procedural powers. "A rules package that literally shreds the Obama vision" of bipartisanship, charged California Republican David Dreier, the ranking member of the Rules Committee. His complaints seem hyperbolic. "I'm not that upset about this being a major diminishment of minority rights," Donald Wolfensberger, the former Republican staff director of the rules panel, told us.

But there is a legitimate concern about whether the House can return to a semblance of "regular order": committee hearings and markups rather than measures brought precipitously to the floor with little time for review; reasonable allowance for amendments on the floor rather than closed rules allowing no changes; and conferences to resolve differences between the chambers rather than leadership-dictated products. With a bolstered majority and a new president promoting bipartisanship, House Democrats ought to try loosening the reins -- and Republicans ought to show that they are more interested in writing legislation than playing political gotcha.