Israel Tries Logic To Make Its Case! Will it Work?

This was sent to me by a dear friend, avowed conservative and fellow memo reader. I do not share this admittedly angry woman's conclusions but do believe the points she raises are enough of a possibility to cause discomfort. Should they come to pass, her more dour outlook would be less that of an angry and frustrated person expressing angst to one with omniscience. You decide. (See 1 below)

The conference call with Livni was cancelled because she was unable to attend but other key Israeli government officials with first hand knowledge substituted, one from the defense ministry.

Another speaker told of what it was like under a rocket attack as he experienced it first hand while in Sderot.

Spirit is high in Israel and the entire population is on the same page and unified.

The surgical nature and relevance of the incursion is not fully understood by the press and media. The mosque that was hit and which was prominent in the news when hit exploded for tens of minutes afterwards because of stored munitions. Hamas is using schools and hospitals and they are now considered targats because Israel has no alternative choice if they are to defeat hamas. Israel is determined and the job must be completed. Even if a cease fire is eventually reached there will be Israeli insistance it be effective, one which curtails Hamas' ability to wreak havoc upon Israel. The U.N. is not deemed the place to resolve the problem because there is no moral equivalency from Israel's viewpoint. Support from the US and this administration has been helpful in that regartd.

Hamas must be eliminated as a functional terrorist organization both for the sake of Israel but for Palestinians as well who have suffered at their hands. Though democratically elected they have been tyrannical intheir rule. Also, unlike propaganda reports there is no crisis in terms of relief because trucks with food and medical supplies are going into Gaza. No question the destruction and fighting has created severe stress and problems for the gaza residents who want to live in peace as the Israelis do. They have Hamas to thank for their problems and conditions.

That said, ending Israel's incursions prematurely would only result in a futurerecurrence and larger more devastating confrontation.

Over 800,000 telephone numbers werecollected by Israeli intelligence for the purpose of warning Palestinians before specific attacks.

Hamas rocket attacks have been diminished from 100's to 15/day (30 today) and Israel has been quietly told by Arab nations to pursue the war because they too know the risk they face as well should Hamas be allowed to come through unscathed. However, the Arab League was less than co-operative in their pubic statements and rejected US representative efforts to get them to be more co-operative publicly.

IDF operating in difficult terrain, Hamas has been preparing but the Israeli troops also have been well trained and equipped and with the IAF support have the advantage. Israel's homefront is working well having learned from past mistakes etc. The country is united behind its leadership.

Obviously the comments were for American consumption and the road ahead is fraught with risks but Israel understands this war cannot end as with Hezballah. Israeli leadership and military know they must send a signal to Iran that Israel remains no push over. Sadly the Arab world understands Israel is also doing their heavy lifting but they fear going public. That is the tragic irony called the Middle East

Perhaps Peres' speech is too logical for those with another agenda. Will the simplicity of his words sink in when too much of the world is fearful of reality? (See 2 below.)

It will take time for Israel to rub Hamas' nose into it but Israel is prepared. Is the world prepared to allow Israel to save it from a wider war later? (See 3 below.)

More from the war front. (See 4 below.)

Mark Steyn writes about Palestinian rocket science and the gulf that exists in Western understanding of Arab terrorist motives. (See 5 below.)

Dick

1)COMMENTARY FROM A FEMALE AIR FORCE VETERAN WHO IS NOW A TALK SHOW HOST.
My Predictions for the New Obama "Presidency".

Now that America has shown that affirmative action even works in politics, I've compiled a list of things you can probably expect to happen. These predictions are 80% gleaned from information all of us have access to, and 15% gut instinct based on many years of research, historical study, and being glued to current affairs. The other 5% is just anger at my countrymen's stupidity--I admit it.

- Websites and mass emails offering "free grants," courtesy of the government and "Obama's wealth redistribution." Actually, this one's a freebie, because I have an email with a date and timestamp of literally minutes after Obama was declared the winner, offering exactly that.

- Israel will understand this election was the end of any type of assistance, military or otherwise, from the U.S., and will stop holding back their defense at the request of the American administration. Look for a first strike on Iran soon, as well as increased activity by the Israeli military in general. Israel is on her own now, and God help us all because of it.

- Look for Iranian retaliation--against American targets. That goes doubly for other terrorist organizations. We just elected a man with the full endorsement of every major terrorist group in the world as leader of the free world. It's the political equivalent of hiring a child molester to babysit your kids while you leave for the weekend. Not only is HE going to have fun with your child, but he'll probably sit and watch while his friends come over and do it too.

- Look for far-left justices appointed to the Supreme Court, effectively tying up the entire government in a trifecta of liberal humanism, the buzzwords of which r emain empty platitudes like "hope and change," and the ultimate goal of which is socialism--and soon, sharia law.

- Military cases of troops being tried and convicted for killing the enemy in combat will continue to rise--and the conviction/plea-bargain rate will stay at nearly 100%, as the government seeks to use the best men and women this country has to offer as sacrificial lambs on the altar of global appeasement. Those brave and honorable men who currently reside in prison cells across the country, stripped of their rank, their careers, families, and their good name, will not taste free air again for many years. Their sacrifices and their stories will be forgotten by the general public, remembered only by those of us who continue to fight for them.

- Look for the slow but steady erosion of rights you have enjoyed for your entire lives--all the while being told it's "for your own good." Restrictions on gun ownership, home schooling, encouraged dependen ce on the ever-growing federal government. More nanny-state provisions will be put into place to protect the "disadvantaged" and the "poor," (read: lazy, uneducated, unwilling to better themselves) even while groups like the unborn, the mentally handicapped, elderly, and terminally ill are slowly pushed toward euthanasia. Of course, this will be done with feel-good phrases like "death with dignity," "not wanting to be a burden," and "merciful release from suffering," all of which ignore the basic fact that we are killing people without their consent for the "good of the people." Before you tell me I'm crazy, let's just remember that Barack Obama was the ONLY senator in the Illinois state senate to vote against providing medical care for babies who were inconsiderate enough to survive an abortion. Also, look for taxes to go up. Yes, they'll go up.

- You think the economy is bad now? Just wait. You'll have the most expensive "free" health care ever. Bread lines aren't just for Russians anymore. We have traded experience for color, freedom for slavery--and the irony is that the average American sheeple thinks their vote somehow righted an ancient wrong, somehow ENDED the spectre of slavery and ushered in some beautiful era of liberty. In reality, we are about to be less free than you ever thought possible.

I watched the faces of those crowded into the mob (excuse the pun) in Chicago. They stared at Obama like he was a god, an idol, a panacea to their every want and need. We have truly failed as a nation if we are at the point where we feel we must look to one man to take care of us all, to be our father figure and our sugar daddy. We have lost not only the "can-do" attitude of past generations, but the "MUST-do" attitude of our forefathers. We have allowed ourselves to become reduced from Patrick Henry's proud cry of "liberty or death" to the sniveling, whining idea that we are owed something. We have gone from being the honorable defenders of freedom to being told we are the problem.

The eyes of Obama and McCain were also telling. McCain acted with class and grace in his concession speech, offering the most honorable response I've seen yet. I don't agree with all of McCain's positions, but it cannot be denied that the man has served his nation--at permanent and severe detriment to himself--for half a century. His eyes were clear and sincere, honest. His speech underlined the very reasons why, of the two men offered, he was hands down the better choice.

On the other hand, Obama's eyes were cold, calculating. His manner was smug and still carried the arrogance he has always had. His facial expression was one of barely disguised disdain for everything people like me believe in. His body language was smooth, polished--too much so. He talked of patriotism as though it is a value he is familiar with--and yet, his horrifying attitude toward the country he now leads is as well-documented as his friendships with those who seek its demise. He is charismatic to those who don't know what to look for, and he is inspiring to those who cannot or will not think for themselves. However, too many who voted for him are guilty of the most dangerous kind of hypocrisy. You see, we are told daily that we must not see color, just mankind. (We are all family, you know--or so we're told.) And yet Barack Obama was handed the White House on a silver platter by a fawning media, a bevy of foreign donors (who, to this day and in violation of U.S. election laws, remain nameless and unaccounted for), and a populace who voted based on color instead of right and wrong--even in the face of the most damning evidence against a Presidential candidate in many years, perhaps ever.

It is said that the people receive the government they deserve. Sadly, I fear that's correct. We have become complacent, unwilling to see the writing on the wall, content to frolic in the warm water without bearing to notice that it's been getting hotter by the minute. We are two seconds from a rolling boil--and perhaps it is already too late.

So, liberals, enjoy your victory. Jump around. Have a party, file for your free grants. Scream "Gimme my handout!" and make fun of those of us who fought to make sure your "messiah" didn't get access to the most powerful position in the world. Just remember when it all comes crashing down: You own the White House, the Congress, and soon the Supreme Court. You have no one to blame but yourselves for the mess you just created.

That is, those who voted for him. Interesting commentary. Time will tell.

2) PRESIDENT OF ISRAEL SPOKESPERSON'S OFFICE

President Shimon Peres Has Made A Special Statement on "Operation Cast Lead" and the Ongoing Palestinian Rocket Attacks



This morning, President Shimon Peres made a special statement to the media regarding Operation Cast Lead (Israel's attack on the Hamas terror infrastructure in Gaza) and the ongoing Palestinian rocket fire on civilian areas in southern Israel. A transcript of the statement, which is also available on video from the Associated Press and Reuters, is below.


It is the first time in the history of Israel that we, the Israelis, cannot understand the motives or the purposes of the ones who are shooting at us. It is the most unreasonable war, done by the most unreasonable warriors.

The story is simple. Israel has left Gaza completely, out of our own free will, at a high cost. In Gaza there is no single Israeli civilian or soldier. They were evacuated from Gaza, our settlements, which called for a very expensive cost. We had to mobilize 45,000 policemen to take out our settlers from there. We spent $2.5 billion. The passages were open. Money was sent to Gaza. We suggested aid in many ways - economically, medically, and otherwise. We were very careful not to make the lives of the civilian people in Gaza difficult. Still I have not heard until now a single person who could explain to us reasonably: why are they firing rockets against Israel? What are the reasons? What is the purpose?

And I must say also that the phenomenon about Israel is the restraint of the army and the unity of the people. The army waited and waited; the Palestinians asked for a ceasefire, and we agreed. They themselves have violated the ceasefire. Again, we didn't know why, until it came to a point where we were left without a choice but to bring an end to it. The operation was planned carefully and the army was true to its principles: namely, to be precise in its targets and careful not to hit civilian life. There is a problem because many of the bombs were stored in private houses. We have contacted the owners of the houses, the people that dwell there, and told them leave it. You can't live with bombs. We have to bring an end to the source of the bombs.


Israel doesn't have any ambition in Gaza. We left out of our free choice. We have never gone back to the idea of returning to Gaza. It's over. But we cannot permit that Gaza will become a permanent base of threatening and even killing children and innocent people in Israel for God knows why. I feel that in our hearts, we don't have any hatred for the Gazan people. Their suffering doesn't carry any joy in our hearts. On the contrary, we feel that the better they will have it, better neighbors we shall have. Now that Hamas is turning to the Arab world for help, the truth is that the Arab world has to turn to Hamas for the help of Hamas. If Hamas will stop it, there is no need for any help. Everything can come again to normalcy. Passages: open; economic life: free; no Israeli intervention; no Israeli participation in any of the turnarounds in Gaza.


As a nation, we feel united. As a nation, there is wholehearted support for the army, the way they handled it, their restraint, their discrimination, and their responsibility. The great winner can be reason, and reason will lead to peace. We are very serious, in a serious mood. Many of our children are still in the shelters, and we would like them, like the children of Gaza, to breathe fresh air again. This is the story, and whoever asks us to stop shooting - they have to change the address. Let them turn to Hamas and ask them to stop shooting, and there won't be shooting. Thank you very much.

3) Analysis: Making Hamas realize its mistake
By Yaakov Katz

Ask an IDF officer how much time is left for the ground operation and the answer will likely be along the lines of: "We have a detailed plan that is not limited by time."

In reality, though, the IDF brass, including Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Yoav Galant, recognize that starting Monday international pressure will begin to mount on Israel, and when the international pressure goes up the operations usually begin to scale down.

The diplomatic press is expected to pick up with the visit of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to the region. In addition, the US is working with the Egyptians on reaching a cease-fire and assessments in Israel are that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will want to resolve the current conflict in Gaza before Barack Obama is inaugurated later this month.

As the IDF ground operation entered its second day, defense officials expressed satisfaction with the results, claiming that the units had reached their targets and achieved their objective - to take over territory, prevent the launching of long-range Grad-model Katyushas, and hunt down Hamas terrorists and infrastructure.

While a week passed between the beginning of the aerial strikes and the ground offensive, they are part of the same operation, the plan for which was drafted three years ago and had been practiced a number of times.

The IDF is now in the midst of the second stage of the plan, the ground operation.

Under Galant, the Southern Command has been calling for a ground operation for the past year-and-a-half, since Hamas violently took over Gaza in the summer of 2007.

As Israel has done with the regard to the Iranian nuclear threat, the Southern Command set a "technological threshold" back then it recommended Hamas not be allowed to cross, and that, if the need arose, force be used to stop it from doing so.

The threshold was defined as the point when Hamas obtained large quantities of high-grade explosives (made in part with fertilizer) and improved propellant, and began using them together. The new propellant made the rockets more accurate and extended their shelf-life, and the new warheads replaced homemade explosives.

The political echelon and Ashkenazi were against a preemptive strike, and Hamas began manufacturing the rockets. The operation launched last week caught Hamas in the middle of its production cycle, after it had manufactured only a few thousand rockets and not the tens of thousands it was expected to create.

The current IDF ground operation is meant to serve as a supplement to the aerial bombardment. While more than 1,000 targets have been hit from the air, Hamas's military wing was not sufficiently weakened. The ground operation aims to change that. With predictions that diplomatic efforts will bear fruit by the end of the week, the IDF does not have much time.

What Israel ultimately would like to see is Hamas's Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh or its chief of staff Ahmed Ja'abri being interviewed after the operation and repeating what Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said after 2006's Second Lebanon War with Hizbullah: "Had I known that this is what the IDF would do, I never would have fired rockets into Israel."

4) Major clashes between IDF and Hamas reported in north Gaza
YAAKOV KATZ

Major clashes between IDF troops and Hamas gunmen were reportedly taking place late Monday evening in the northern Gaza Strip.

The clashes marked the first time the IDF extended its ground operation into the densely populated Gaza urban centers.

Live footage from Al-Jazeera showed numerous explosions and fires in the area where the soldiers were said to be operating. Heavy firepower could be heard, and reports told of dozens of artillery shells, as well as air support which had been concentrated in the area.

Just over an hour earlier, the IAF bombed at least 40 smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza's southern border with Egypt. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the strikes.

Meanwhile, seven IDF soldiers were wounded Monday afternoon, four moderately and three lightly, in exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas gunmen in the northern Gaza Strip. The soldiers were evacuated for medical treatment.

In the early hours of Monday morning, five IDF soldiers and an officer were lightly to moderately wounded in the tenth day of Operation Cast Lead.

Overnight Sunday, the IAF attacked more than 30 Gaza targets, including an underground Hamas bunker, weapons caches and sites from where Grad rockets were fired at Ashkelon.

In related news, the IDF announced on Monday that dozens of Hamas operatives have been taken prisoner since the start of the ground offensive, Israel Radio reported.

Details regarding how the gunmen were captured and when were not released.

5) Gaza has its version of rocket scientists
By Mark Steyn


So how was your holiday season? Over in Gaza, whether or not they're putting the Christ back in Christmas, they're certainly putting the crucifixion back in Easter. According to the London-based Arabic newspaper al Hayat, on Dec. 23 Hamas legislators voted to introduce Sharia — Islamic law — to the Palestinian territories, including crucifixion. So next time you're visiting what my childhood books still quaintly called "the Holy Land" the re-enactments might be especially lifelike.

The following day, Christmas Eve, Samuel Huntington died at his home at Martha's Vineyard. A decade and a half ago, in his most famous book "The Clash Of Civilizations," professor Huntington argued that Western elites' view of man as homo economicus was reductive and misleading — that cultural identity is a more profound behavioral indicator than lazy assumptions about the universal appeal of Western-style economic liberty and the benefits it brings.

Very few of us want to believe this thesis.

"The great majority of Palestinian people," Condi Rice, the secretary of state, said to commentator Cal Thomas a couple of years back in a report that first appeared on JWR, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Secretary Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

I think she knows she doesn't know it. But in the modern world there is no diplomatic vocabulary for the kind of cultural fault line represented by the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so even a smart thinker like Dr. Rice can only frame it as an issue of economic and educational opportunity. Of course, there are plenty of Palestinians like the ones the secretary of state described: You meet them living as doctors and lawyers in Los Angeles and Montreal and Geneva � but not, on the whole, in Gaza.

In Gaza, they don't vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it's to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza from Hamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French President Sarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel's "disproportionate" response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than from Hamas. That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of "desperation."

Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid." For whatever that's worth. Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba, returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It's "desperation" born of "poverty" and "occupation."

If it was, it would be easy to fix. But what if it's not? What if it's about something more primal than land borders and economic aid?

A couple of days after Hamas voted to restore crucifixion to the Holy Land, their patron in Tehran (and their primary source of "aid") put in an appearance on British TV. As multicultural "balance" to Her Majesty The Queen's traditional Christmas message, the TV network Channel 4 invited President Ahmadinejad to give an alternative Yuletide address on the grounds that it was a valuable public service to let viewers hear him "speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

In fact, Caroline Glick pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, the great man "speaks for himself" all the time — when he's at the United Nations, calling on all countries to submit to Islam; when he's presiding over his international conference of Holocaust deniers; when he's calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" — or (in his more "moderate" moments) relocated to a couple of provinces of Germany and Austria. Caroline Glick forbore to mention that, according to President Ahmadinejad's chief adviser, Hassan Abbassi, his geopolitical strategy is based on the premise that "Britain is the mother of all evils" — the evils being America, Australia, Israel, the Gulf states, Canada and New Zealand, all the malign progeny of the British Empire. "We have established a department that will take care of England," Mr. Abbassi said in 2005. "England's demise is on our agenda."

So when Britain's Channel 4 says that we don't get the chance to see these fellows speak for themselves, it would be more accurate to say that they speak for themselves incessantly but the louder they speak the more we put our hands over our ears and go "Nya nya, can't hear you." We do this in part because, if you're as invested as most Western elites are in the idea that all anyone wants is to go to university, get a steady job and settle down in a nice house in the suburbs, a statement such as "England's demise is on our agenda" becomes almost literally untranslatable. When President Ahmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map, we deplore him as a genocidal fantasist. But maybe he's a genocidal realist, and we're the fantasists.

The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington's book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from "moderation" and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.

To be fair to President Ahmadinejad's hosts at Channel 4, the "department that will take care of England" probably doesn't get the lion's share of the funding in Tehran. On the other hand, when Hashemi Rafsanjani describes the Zionist Entity as "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" with "a single atomic bomb," that sounds rather more specific, if not teetering alarmingly on the "disproportionate." Unlike its international critics in North America and Europe, Israel has no margin for error.