Israel: Cook With Politcally Correct Proportions!

If history means anything to London's Guardian newspaper then why is the British Pot calling the Israeli Kettle black? (See 1 below.)

Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" will not stay down for the count! (See 2 below.)


Israel's war with Hamas has become a matter of proportionality. Sounds more like a prescription for a cooking class where Israel is held to a standard of exact ingredient measurement.


These are the rules Israel bashing spoilers impose on the spoils Israel never seeks to gain from winning wars it would prefer not to fight.


Proportionality is the politically correct demand European sycophants, seeking to curry favor with the Arabs, reserve only for Israel. Is it because they fear the threat Arabs posed to their own tranquility, is it because of European tendencies to be passive about defending their own freedoms or is it just historical European anti-Semitism?


Israel not only must win on the ground but also in the court of biased world opinion.
What obvious blatant nonsense and double standards always reserved only for them.


As for The New York Times, facts no longer matter as long as they can continue to portray Israel in the most negative light.


Sarah Palin made an intesrting observation recently when she said it will be interesting to observe how the intellectually elite snobs who pumelled her, handle the Caroline Kennedy 'I want to be your Senator episode.' I recently listened to Kennedy respond to a question about her qualifications and she flopped like a beach whale. She came across far more sophomoric than Palin during the Couric interview but nary a word from press and media.


Members of the 'fourth estate' shape our thinking, they influence decision makers. Sadly, they have become more dangerous than enlightening. This is not a healthy state of affairs because democracies need a free press and media but also a responsible, objective and balanced one. (See 3 and 3a below.)


Ah, but one objective analsyst who works at a very prominent think tank in D.C. points out why Israel can win against Hamas.


He alludes to Arab propaganda Western primadonas in the press and media bought regarding Hezballa's 'victory.' By reading their own distorted and biased reports many in the Western press and media continue deluding themselves and readers who swallow their tripe.


The question becomes will the West permit Israel to again do them a favor? GW seems more than willing but his time is running out and Obama, no doubt, may have other views. (See 4 below.)


Dick Morris has a low opinion of Al Franken and so he should. Why? Because theFranken-Soros fix is in!


Repubicans fighting the 'fix" allege Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid are lusting to declare Al Franken the "winner" in the contested Minnesota seat that Republican Norm Coleman is fighting to keep.


For weeks after the election, Norm Coleman led Franken by hundreds of votes and Reid and company were very quiet. After Franken raised millions with Soros' financial help, Franken waged a fierce legal battle over a handful of rejected ballots and now claims to be ahead of Coleman by about 225 votes.



Billionaire George Soros and ACORN-backed Democrat Minnesota Secretary of State, Mark Ritchie's Canvassing Board have backed Franken's outrageous subversion of the vote process: some Franken voters have voted twice, Coleman votes have been rejected, and the Franken camp literally makes up the recount rules as they go along.


Irregularities in this Election Contest are shocking enough and with the questionable help of Minnesota's liberal Sec. of State Mark Ritchie, rewritten rules have allowed Franken to declare he has a "lead." Apparently Ritchie has taken votes that were clearly for Coleman and rejected them, putting them in a pile for the courts to decide at a later date. Meanwhile, Franken votes have been accepted, giving Franken an artificial lead.



During the recount supposed "errors" were corrected, almost always favoring Franken. Though this is statistically improbable, the votes were counted for Franken.



In one voting precinct that clearly benefitted Coleman, the Ritchie led Canvassing Board ruled that the recount will not include them - instead that one precinct will have to live with the final vote total as of election night.


The Ritchie led canvassing board admitted they are "not going to be entirely consistent" when reviewing challenged ballots and has ruled a number of votes as votes for Franken when his circle is marked and not so when the Coleman circle is identically marked.


The effort to subvert a fair vote is so obvious that even a Democrat election official in Minneapolis admitted votes are being counted twice. "I know it happened in several precincts," she said.


Is Franken about to become the new Huey Long? (See 5 below.)


No doubt the economic news is bad and will remain so for some time regardless of what 'stimulus' the incoming administration proposes and gets passed.


The irony is that we will never know how long it would take for the economy to improve on its own because doctor Obama is going to rely on modern medicine , ie stimulus to the tune of a trillion big ones.


Stimulus medicine, even taken with a good strong drink, will take quite a while. For math sake let's say it will take a year and let's assume no hangover effect from such a strong dose. That means we will be spending 80 plus billion a month to accomplish what might take 18 months at far lesser cost. Then we have the residual ongoing interest cost of all this new debt and maybe one day we are even called upon to pay it off through much higher taxes.

My impression of Obama's economic thinking, gleaned both from his sparse record of accomplishments but more from his finely tuned campaign rhetoric, is that he sincerely believes government solutions are preferable to free market ones. If truth be told, there is, and perhaps has not been for many decades, free markets because they have been politicizied and constrained by all various government interference, ambiguities and costly constraints. So expect the heavy hand of increased government to bail us out of the mess we are in.


Furthermore, I suspect Obama is singing doom and gloom probably for two reasons:


a) To provide a cover for quick fix action by Congress.


b) To set the expectation bar low so any positive results henceforth, will permit the Obama Adminsitration "spin rights."


Yes, Ayn Rand was right so go read 2 below again!



Dick



1) From: Myths and Facts
By Eli E. Hertz


This is dedicated to Mr. Tony Blair, the Quartet's envoy to the Middle East, and to Mr. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister for the United Kingdom.

"Demolishing the homes of Arab civilians ... Shooting handcuffed prisoners... Forcing local Arabs to test areas where mines may have been planted..." These sound like the sort of accusations made by British and other European officials concerning Israel's recent actions in Jenin.


In fact, they are descriptions from official British documents concerning the methods used by the British authorities to combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in Jenin and elsewhere in 1938. The documents were declassified by London in 1989. They provide details of the British Mandatory government's response to the assassination of a British district commissioner by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in Jenin in the summer of 1938.Even after the suspected assassin was captured (and then shot dead while allegedly trying to escape), the British authorities decided that "a large portion of the town should be blown up" as punishment. On August 25 of that year, a British convoy brought 4,200 kilos of explosives to Jenin for that purpose. In the Jenin operation and on other occasions, local Arabs were forced to drive "mine-sweeping taxis" ahead of British vehicles in areas where Palestinian Arab terrorists were believed to have planted mines, in order "to reduce [British] landmine casualties."


The British authorities frequently used these and similar methods to combat Palestinian Arab terrorism in the late 1930s. BRITISH forces responded to the presence of terrorists in the Arab village of Miar, north of Haifa, by blowing up house after house in October 1938."When the troops left, there was little else remaining of the once-busy village except a pile of mangled masonry," The New York Times reported. The declassified documents refer to an incident in Jaffa in which a handcuffed prisoner was shot by the British police. Under Emergency Regulation 19b, the British Mandate government could demolish any house located in a village where terrorists resided, even if that particular house had no direct connection to terrorist activity. Mandate official Hugh Foot later recalled: "When we thought that a village was harboring rebels, we'd go there and mark one of the large houses. Then, if an incident was traced to that village, we'd blow up the house we'd marked." The High Commissioner for Palestine, Harold MacMichael, defended the practice: "The provision is drastic, but the situation has demanded drastic powers." MacMichael was furious over what he called the "grossly exaggerated accusations" that England's critics were circulating concerning British anti-terror tactics in Palestine. Arab allegations that British soldiers gouged out the eyes of Arab prisoners were quoted prominently in the Nazi German press and elsewhere. The declassified documents also record discussions among officials of the Colonial Office concerning the rightness or wrongness of the anti-terror methods used in Palestine. Lord Dufferin remarked: "British lives are being lost and I don't think that we, from the security of Whitehall, can protest squeamishly about measures taken by the men in the frontline." Sir John Shuckburgh defended the tactics on the grounds that the British were confronted "not with a chivalrous opponent playing the game according to the rules, but with gangsters and murderers."There were many differences between British policy in the 1930s and Israeli policy today, but one stands out - the British, faced with a level of Palestinian Arab terrorism considerably less lethal than that which Israel faces today, utilized anti-terror methods considerably harsher than those used by Israeli forces.


2) 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years Article
By STEPHEN MOORE


Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.


Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.


Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.


For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.


In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that?
These acts and edicts sound farcical, yes, but no more so than the actual events in Washington, circa 2008. We already have been served up the $700 billion "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act" and the "Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act." Now that Barack Obama is in town, he will soon sign into law with great urgency the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan." This latest Hail Mary pass will increase the federal budget (which has already expanded by $1.5 trillion in eight years under George Bush) by an additional $1 trillion -- in roughly his first 100 days in office.


The current economic strategy is right out of "Atlas Shrugged": The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you. That's the justification for the $2 trillion of subsidies doled out already to keep afloat distressed insurance companies, banks, Wall Street investment houses, and auto companies -- while standing next in line for their share of the booty are real-estate developers, the steel industry, chemical companies, airlines, ethanol producers, construction firms and even catfish farmers. With each successive bailout to "calm the markets," another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as "Atlas" grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate "windfalls."



When Rand was writing in the 1950s, one of the pillars of American industrial might was the railroads. In her novel the railroad owner, Dagny Taggart, an enterprising industrialist, has a FedEx-like vision for expansion and first-rate service by rail. But she is continuously badgered, cajoled, taxed, ruled and regulated -- always in the public interest -- into bankruptcy. Sound far-fetched? On the day I sat down to write this ode to "Atlas," a Wall Street Journal headline blared: "Rail Shippers Ask Congress to Regulate Freight Prices."


In one chapter of the book, an entrepreneur invents a new miracle metal -- stronger but lighter than steel. The government immediately appropriates the invention in "the public good." The politicians demand that the metal inventor come to Washington and sign over ownership of his invention or lose everything.
The scene is eerily similar to an event late last year when six bank presidents were summoned by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to Washington, and then shuttled into a conference room and told, in effect, that they could not leave until they collectively signed a document handing over percentages of their future profits to the government. The Treasury folks insisted that this shakedown, too, was all in "the public interest."


Ultimately, "Atlas Shrugged" is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear -- leaving everyone the poorer.


One memorable moment in "Atlas" occurs near the very end, when the economy has been rendered comatose by all the great economic minds in Washington. Finally, and out of desperation, the politicians come to the heroic businessman John Galt (who has resisted their assault on capitalism) and beg him to help them get the economy back on track. The discussion sounds much like what would happen today:
Galt: "You want me to be Economic Dictator?"
Mr. Thompson: "Yes!"
"And you'll obey any order I give?"
"Implicitly!"
"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."
"Oh no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that . . . How would we pay government employees?"
"Fire your government employees."
"Oh, no!"


Abolishing the income tax. Now that really would be a genuine economic stimulus. But Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Washington want to do the opposite: to raise the income tax "for purposes of fairness" as Barack Obama puts it.


David Kelley, the president of the Atlas Society, which is dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas, explains that "the older the book gets, the more timely its message." He tells me that there are plans to make "Atlas Shrugged" into a major motion picture -- it is the only classic novel of recent decades that was never made into a movie. "We don't need to make a movie out of the book," Mr. Kelley jokes. "We are living it right now."


3) Israel's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate': Hamas are the real war criminals in this conflict.
By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ

Israel's actions in Gaza are justified under international law, and Israel should be commended for its self-defense against terrorism. Article 51 of the United Nations Charter reserves to every nation the right to engage in self-defense against armed attacks. The only limitation international law places on a democracy is that its actions must satisfy the principle of proportionality.


Since Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, Hamas has fired thousands of rockets designed to kill civilians into southern Israel. The residents of Sderot -- which have borne the brunt of the attacks -- have approximately 15 seconds from launch time to run into a shelter. Although deliberately targeting civilians is a war crime, terrorists firing at Sderot are so proud of their actions that they sign their weapons.


When Barack Obama visited Sderot this summer and saw the remnants of these rockets, he reacted by saying that if his two daughters were exposed to rocket attacks in their home, he would do everything in his power to stop such attacks. He understands how the terrorists exploit the morality of democracies.
In a recent incident related to me by the former head of the Israeli air force, Israeli intelligence learned that a family's house in Gaza was being used to manufacture rockets. The Israeli military gave the residents 30 minutes to leave. Instead, the owner called Hamas, which sent mothers carrying babies to the house.


Hamas knew that Israel would never fire at a home with civilians in it. They also knew that if Israeli authorities did not learn there were civilians in the house and fired on it, Hamas would win a public relations victory by displaying the dead. Israel held its fire. The Hamas rockets that were protected by the human shields were then used against Israeli civilians.


These despicable tactics -- targeting Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians -- can only work against moral democracies that care deeply about minimizing civilian casualties. They never work against amoral nations such as Russia, whose military has few inhibitions against killing civilians among whom enemy combatants are hiding.


The claim that Israel has violated the principle of proportionality -- by killing more Hamas terrorists than the number of Israeli civilians killed by Hamas rockets -- is absurd. First, there is no legal equivalence between the deliberate killing of innocent civilians and the deliberate killings of Hamas combatants. Under the laws of war, any number of combatants can be killed to prevent the killing of even one innocent civilian.


Second, proportionality is not measured by the number of civilians actually killed, but rather by the risk posed. This is illustrated by what happened on Tuesday, when a Hamas rocket hit a kindergarten in Beer Sheva, though no students were there at the time. Under international law, Israel is not required to allow Hamas to play Russian roulette with its children's lives.


While Israel installs warning systems and builds shelters, Hamas refuses to do so, precisely because it wants to maximize the number of Palestinian civilians inadvertently killed by Israel's military actions. Hamas knows from experience that even a small number of innocent Palestinian civilians killed inadvertently will result in bitter condemnation of Israel by many in the international community.
Israel understands this as well. It goes to enormous lengths to reduce the number of civilian casualties -- even to the point of foregoing legitimate targets that are too close to civilians.


Until the world recognizes that Hamas is committing three war crimes -- targeting Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and seeking the destruction of a member state of the United Nations -- and that Israel is acting in self-defense and out of military necessity, the conflict will continue.

3a) New York Times Attacks Israel on its Op-Ed Page

Given the New York Times' disgraceful history* of skewing its editorial and Op-Ed pages with anti-Israel opinion columns, it is unsurprising that on January 8, in the midst of Israel's war with Hamas, it loaded its Op-Ed page exclusively with columns condemning Israel.


Regular columnist Nicholas Kristof contributed "The Gaza Boomerang" faulting Israel with everything from "helping nurture" Hamas to undermining peace, while fellow Times/International Herald Tribune columnist Roger Cohen (in the online edition) repeatedly asserts in "The Dominion of the Dead," that he is "shamed by [Israel's] actions."


Instead of balancing these anti-Israel views with others presenting a different perspective, New York Times editors selected two guest columns — "Fighting to Preserve a Myth " by Gideon Lichfield and "What You Don't Know About Gaza" by Rashid Khalidi — which went even further in attacking Israel.


Lichfield. argues that Israel should not respond with military force to Hamas' attacks against civilians within Israeli sovereign territory, that Israel should accept whatever Hamas offers, even if it is only a temporary truce.


Rashid Khalidi, a well-known propagandist and a former PLO spokesman – a fact that the New York Times neglects to mention in its author blurb – presents a list of anti-Israel canards. Khalidi's column is full of glaring errors, including one that is contradicted in the news section of the same newspaper issue.


He contends that "nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year." But according to news coverage on the same day:


The United Nations estimated a few days ago that a quarter of the dead were civilians.... But Palestinian residents and Israeli officials say that Hamas is tending its own wounded in separate medical centers, not in public hospitals, and that it is difficult to know the number of dead Hamas fighters, many of whom were not wearing uniforms. (Steven Erlanger, "As Gaza Battle Goes On, Israel Is Set to Negotiate With Egypt on Cease-Fire")


Khalidi trots out the usual canards about Israel's 1948 war, "occupation," "blockade", etc. For example, he claims that Gaza is still occupied by Israel even though it completely withdrew its troops and settlers more than three years ago:


Israel still controls access to the [Gaza] area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out.
Although Israel does, of course, control its own border with the Gaza Strip, the Gaza-Egypt border is controlled by Hamas and Egypt – not Israel. This has been made clear by Egypt's periodic opening of the crossing point without regard to Israel's wishes. (See: BACKGROUNDER: The Rafah Crossing and Restrictions on Cross-Border Movement for Gaza Palestinians)


The writer also contends that Israel is "choking" off "fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip" to "punish" Gaza's civilian population "for exercising its democratic rights." Surely Khalidi cannot mean to imply that it is a democratic right to rocket and shell Jewish civilians within Israel's sovereign territory?



Perhaps most egregious is Khalidi's conclusion of his column with a fabricated quote. He writes:



Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: "The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people."


Khalidi uses the same fabricated quote in his book Resurrecting Empire, citing in the footnote an interview with Ari Shavit in Haaretz Magazine, August 30, 2002, as quoted in Arnaud de Borchegrave, "Road Map or Road Rage?" Washington Times, May 28, 2003.


But, in fact, Ya'alon said no such thing in the Shavit interview. On the contrary. He said that Palestinian Arabs must understand that terrorism would not make Israelis into a defeated people. Khalidi, in other words, reverses the meaning of Ya'alon's words with a fabricated quote. (Click here for the full interview: Part I and Part II )


Below is Shavit's question and Ya'alon's answer:


Shavit: "Do you have a definition of victory? Is it clear to you what Israel's goal in this war is?

Ya'alon: "I defined it from the beginning of the confrontation: the very deep internalization by the Palestinians that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold. If that deep internalization does not exist at the end of the confrontation, we will have a strategic problem with an existential threat to Israel. If that [lesson] is not burned into the Palestinian and Arab consciousness, there will be no end to their demands of us."
Ya'alon repeated in the same interview:


The facts that are being determined in this confrontation — in terms of what will be burned into the Palestinian consciousness — are fateful. If we end the confrontation in a way that makes it clear to every Palestinian that terrorism does not lead to agreements, that will improve our strategic position.
While the New York Times is more constrained on its news pages, its editors feel they have free reign to attack Israel on the Op-Ed pages. As Andrew Rosenthal, New York Times editorial page editor, acknowledged, "we do not feel the obligation to provide the kind of balance you find in news coverage – because it is opinion."


But although no journalistic code requires the Times to present a balanced picture on its opinion pages, one would expect a basic commitment to fair-play. Moreover, Times editors do have an obligation, according to the journalistic code of ethics, to fact-check the opinion columns they run — something they clearly have not done.


4) Yes, Israel Can Win in Gaza: Israel is significantly weakening Hamas – with Palestinian help.Article
By EDWARD N. LUTTWAK


It seems most of the West's news reporters and pundits agree with Islamists everywhere that an Israeli victory in Gaza is impossible. They decry Israel's defensive attack on Hamas, prophesying an inevitable strengthening of Islamism among Palestinians and a dark future for the Jewish state.


How do our commentators come to this conclusion? They point, most frequently, to Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, and echo Hezbollah's claim that it won a great victory. Indeed, this narrative goes, in launching their rockets at Israel, Hamas leaders were imitating Hezbollah's winning strategy.


In fact, Hezbollah was thoroughly shocked by the Israeli bombing campaign, and its supporters, who mostly live in southern Lebanon, are not likely to tolerate another wave of destruction caused by another Hezbollah attack. Even the inconclusive Israeli ground actions in Lebanon, which never involved more than six companies (roughly 600 men), resulted in the loss of some 400 Hezbollah fighters in direct face-to-face combat while Israel suffered only 30 casualties.


Of course, none of this prevented the Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah from claiming that he had won a great victory for God. Had his victorious claims actually been true, Israel should have been deterred from attacking Hamas. And by his logic, Israel would have cowered in fear of thousands of more rockets from Hamas, and the even more powerful rockets that Hezbollah would launch in tandem. Nasrallah certainly encouraged Hamas to attack Israel in language that implied he would intervene if a war ensued -- a credible promise had he really won a victory in 2006.
But as soon as the fighting started in Gaza, Nasrallah reversed the terms of his declarations -- threatening Israel if it attacked Lebanon (which of course nobody in Israel would want to do). When three rockets were fired from inside Lebanon on Thursday, Hezbollah wasted no time assuring the Israelis that it had nothing to do with it, and that it did not even have that type of rocket in their inventory. This is a familiar trope of the Palestinian experience. There is always some extremist leader ready to instigate the Palestinians to fight, implicitly promising his valiant participation -- until the fighting begins and the promises are forgotten in fear of Israeli retaliation.


Another familiar Palestinian experience is that the extremists can always prevail politically over the moderates, but in so doing they split Palestinian society. A key metric of this disunity is, in fact, the success of Israel's current war against Hamas.


Consider: According to Gaza sources, until the ground fighting started some 25% of the 500 dead were innocent civilians. The Israelis claimed that 20% of the casualties from the aerial attack were civilians. Either way, this was an extremely accurate bombing campaign. (Even in the 1991 and 2003 U.S. air campaigns against Iraq, when most of the bombs were already precision-guided, gross targeting errors killed many civilians.)


A targeting accuracy of 75% -- by the lowest estimate -- cannot have been merely obtained by overhead photography from satellites or reconnaissance aircraft, because few Hamas objectives were classic "high-contrast" targets such as bunkers or headquarters. Most targets were small groups of people in nondescript civilian vehicles that blend in with traffic, or inside unremarkable buildings. Nor could telephone intercepts have yielded much intelligence, because all Palestinians know that the Israelis have long combined voice recognition with cellular-grid location in order to aim missiles very accurately at single vehicles in traffic, or even at individuals standing about with their cellphones switched off.


So how did Israel do it? The only possible explanation is that people in Gaza have been informing the Israelis exactly where Hamas fighters and leaders are hiding, and where weapons are stored. No doubt some informers are merely corrupt, paid agents earning a living. But others must choose to provide intelligence because they oppose Hamas, whose extremism inflicts poverty, suffering and now death on the civilian population for the sake of launching mostly ineffectual rockets into Israel. Hamas completely disregards the day-to-day welfare of all Gazans in order to pursue its millenarian vision of an Islamic Palestine.


Some in Gaza must also resent Iran's role in instigating the barrage of rockets fired on Israel. And all must know that the longer-range rockets are supplied by Iran along with money for Hamas leaders, while ordinary Palestinians languish in poverty. Senior Hamas leader Nizar Rayan, killed on Jan. 1, was a poorly paid academic, yet he died with his four wives and 10 of his children in spacious quarters. He obviously had enough money to heed the Quranic injunction against marrying more wives than one can afford. That too must arouse bitter opposition among poor Palestinian civilians, inducing some to help Israel target Hamas. Perhaps these informers include Fatah members, further antagonized by persecution. Last week alone, some 50 were reportedly tortured by Hamas.


Hamas won the 2006 election because it was the only available alternative when a majority of voters were disgusted by Fatah's blatant corruption. Since then, many nonfundamentalist Palestinians have been oppressed by the puritanical prohibitions imposed by Hamas, while all Gazans have been greatly impoverished.


There is no evidence that support for Fatah has therefore increased, or that its surviving leaders could still rally their followers. This reality sets an upper limit on what Israel can achieve by ground combat -- it cannot change the regime.
What Israel can do is weaken Hamas further in its current ground operations by raiding targets that cannot be attacked from the air -- typically because they are in the basements of crowded apartment buildings -- and by engaging Hamas gunmen in direct combat. Simply reducing the combat strength of Hamas is crucial, as it was in 2006 against Hezbollah, because while many like to parade dressed in the robes of martyrs, when there is actual fighting enthusiasm rapidly wanes.


With few exceptions, Israeli ground forces are not advancing frontally but are instead mounting a multiplicity of raids. If their target intelligence remains as good as it was during the air attack, they will run out of targets in a matter of days. That is when a cease-fire with credible monitoring would be possible and desirable for both sides as the only alternative to renewed occupation.
Hamas will claim a win no matter what happens, but then so did Hezbollah in 2006. And yet, for the most part, Hezbollah remains immobile and the Israeli northern border with Lebanon remains quiet. If Israel can achieve the same with Hamas in Gaza, it would be a significant victory.



5) Message from Dick Morris


Al Franken is trying every trick in the book to get into the U.S. Senate.

Recently Franken was "certified" of the recent recount, but as the liberal Sec. of
State of Minnesota admitted, this does not mean he is the election winner.


In fact, the result is now open for legal challenge.


I believe a fair court ruling will negate Franken's phony victory and declare Norm Coleman the winner - who was ahead by hundred of votes on election night.


This week the Wall Street Journal came out with guns blazing for the out-and-out vote theft going on in Minnesota.


The Journal noted that shockingly almost every controversial dispute during the vote recount went in the favor of Al Franken.


The Journal said: "We can't recall a similar recount . . . in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate (Franken). If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be appointing a tainted and undeserving senator."



Exposing Al Franken's vote fraud won't be easy. Franken has gotten millions from George Soros and his liberal Hollywood friends.


Even Sen. Harry Reid relented and said he won't seat Al Franken yet.



If Democrats get Franken in the Senate they are just one vote shy of a filibuster proof Senate.

Dick Morris