Poetic Justice! Do Gazans and Liberal Jews Have Something in Common - Blind Stupidity?

Last memo because off again to a family wedding in Miami.  Returning
Monday and during our short trip we will visit our kids in Orlando, stop and have lunch with my cousin, Lynn's cousins and the widow of a dear friend from our Atlanta days.

While in Miami we will get to be with Daniel, Tamara and Stella.
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There is something perverse about the fact that Obama received an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize, ran for the presidency as the candidate best suited to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and because of his incompetent, hesitant and feckless leadership is now engaged in a war and will preside over one of the worst periods of genocide in recent history.

Why is this so?

I am no psychiatrist but I suspect Obama has a vision of himself as a healer but lacks the ingredients to accomplish his mistaken self-image.

Part of his problem also seems to be his narcissistic personality prevents him from believing he does not know it all.  Another part of his problem must relate to the fact that he believes he is never wrong and thus, must always find a reason to blame others.  Consequently, Obama  never can learn from his mistakes because he is infallible and never makes any.

Those who defend Obama claim he was elected by Americans who wanted us out of Iraq because they did not believe we were threatened by Iraq and never had been.  It was all something G.W dreamed up after 9/11 so he could get Saddam who wanted his father killed.

I believe that is as good a dreamy defense as Obama defenders can come up with but I submit a wise president instructs and must make every effort to lead voters  away from their views if they are deemed naive, emotionally based and can ultimately prove to be wrong.

That does not mean a president must be clairvoyant but to be a good and effective  leader he should see further because he has more at his disposal to allow him to do so and sometimes he must go against the crowd because that can eventually lead to the right path and what is best for the nation.

Of course, all presidents are politicians but when they succumb to basing every decision on political considerations they will eventually fall on their sword. That is now where Obama finds himself. Obama's poll results are dropping, he is being challenged by a Russian thug and found wanting by radical islamists who are challenging him at every turn.

Ironically, Obama is now being brought down, attacked and rejected by the very voters who drank his Kool Aid, followed his empty words.  Poetic justice?

Johnson did went against the crowd when it came to Civil Rights. Nixon did it when he recognized China. Clinton, with prodding from Gingrich, did it when it  came to welfare and dependency reform. G.W did it when it came to The Surge, which eventually stabilized Iraq and which Obama, now has undone and lied about while attempting to shift the blame.

God only knows what two more years of his presidency will bring .

Meanwhile, according to this article most Jews seem willing to hang with him because they are liberal no matter what facts confront and reality them.  (See 1 below.)

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Are Gazans as stupid as  most liberal Jews or are they just frightened and leaderless?

(See 2 below.)

Daniel Pipes, Khaled Toameh and  Michele Chabin offer their thoughts about lessons gleaned . (See 2a, 2b and 2c below.)

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Dick

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1)  Why Do Most Jews Stay with Obama?

Posted By Arnold Steinberg 

It was implausible to me that Barack Obama never knew Rev. Jeremiah Wright hated Jews. At best, Obama made a deal with this anti-Semitic racist ^[1], who helped Obama launch his political career.

Still, back in 2008, Jews — displaying the cognitive dissonance of a captive Democratic voter bloc — gave Obama the benefit of the doubt for the same reason most Jews continue to support him: he’s (half) black. Jews favor underdogs and victims (though really, Obama is neither).

As many Jews assimilated into America over the last century, some downplayed their Jewish identity — changing names, intermarrying and, most of all, converting… to the secular religion of liberalism. Although Jews became leaders in the civil rights movement, black anti-Semitism persists; leftist Jews don’t see to care that the Congressional Black Caucus is largely anti-Israel, as was the last Democratic National Convention.

There is a double standard. Obama’s first foreign policy act was his “apology tour” to the Arab world. Obama then favored the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and opposed its moderate successor government. Secretary of State John Kerry similarly snubbed moderate Arabs countries and bypassed the Palestinian Authority to curry favor with Hamas. Imagine if Secretary of State Jim Baker had done the same thing during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.

Following World War II, the myth had persisted among Jews that FDR was a bold leader who helped save Jews, when, in fact, he was a feckless polemicist who was indifferent to the Holocaust. Republican Sen. Robert Taft’s principled opposition to the ex post facto Nuremberg trials was misinterpreted. That same older generation of Jews also thanked Democrat Harry Truman in 1948 for recognizing Israel and faulted Republican Dwight Eisenhower for pressuring Israel during the 1956 Suez crisis.

To this day, few Jews recognize that at Israel’s greatest time of existential threat — the 1973 surprise attack known as the Yom Kippur War — Republican Richard Nixon saved Israel ^[2]: his friend, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir called in the middle of the night; Nixon unilaterally overruled the Pentagon to airlift massive military supplies to our beleaguered ally.

More background — the Holocaust itself had produced a postwar disaffection among Jewish baby-boomers who were raised by parents in permanent recovery mode. These Jews, now middle-aged and older, tacitly rebelled against Judaism; how could God permit the extermination of millions of their pious ancestors?  At the risk of irreverence, I would suggest that Jews in Europe should have been less trusting and better armed, and maybe God now wants American Jews to support the Second Amendment and oppose gun control.

Jews have long been seduced into generational mythology. It’s true that many European Christians hated Jews and collaborated with the Gestapo, as did many Polish Catholics, and the Polish government which oppressed Jews. But the Christian tradition in America is different, and also Catholics here are not hostile to Jews. Given the support for Israel among evangelical Christians, conservatives still cannot understand how “prayer in schools” sent alarm bells to some Jews who irrationally saw the slippery slope of a theocracy.

Also, how convenient for liberal Jews to forget that Nazis were national socialists ^[3] who defamed the free market ^[4] as Jew-profiteering and that Mussolini’s fascism was a corporatist state ^[5], much like what Obama envisions with his crony capitalism. In fact, the European “far right” and American conservatism are mutually exclusive. Indeed, a free market economy in a pluralistic society is uniquely hospitable to Jews, but many Jews, despite the Jewish roots of Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and an array of Jewish free market economists, do not yet get it.

In the last generation or two, many younger, alienated Jews, raised in post-Holocaust cynicism and ignorant of Mideast history, have fallen victim to the propaganda that Zionists are colonialists and racists who unjustly occupy Palestinian territory. At some point, hopefully not too late, they will learn that Islamists (as the Nazis did) want to kill all Jews, even politically correct Jews who are Israel-bashers. The silver lining is that perhaps the attacks on Jews in Europe will awaken Jews here to their heritage and its political derivative, American conservatism. After all, many of the major American figures in libertarian philosophy and the conservative movement were Jewish.

But for now, many “Jews” attend the Progressive Church, or they remain atheists, agnostics or religiously unobservant. Indeed, compared to others, Jews have the lowest affiliation or attendance rate with a house of worship. Generally, the more orthodox (religiously observant) a Jew, the more likely he is a conservative or a Republican. While the ranks of orthodox Jewry grow, they remain very small.

I would more likely find support for Israel today in an evangelical Christian church than in a reform (politically liberal, nontraditional) synagogue, which is preoccupied with trendy causes. Even worse is the most leftist “reconstructionist” shul, where a heroic figure in the congregation likely would be a teachers’ union leader who, after several abortions, outed herself as a lesbian and, with her Latina partner, works with “people of color” lobbying for the fourth generation of perennial Palestinian refugees and, in her spare time, fights the NRA.

Liberalism, discredited, is now repackaged as progressivism. America historically and uniquely has enfranchised liberty and opportunity for Jews; yet, many Jews — seemingly inexplicably — reject American exceptionalism in favor of Obama transforming our nation into an egalitarian bore, an economy lacking organic growth. So Obama’s plunge into mediocrity with mandated income redistribution is a good fit, especially for Jews who feel guilty about their own material success.

But if we continue to degenerate into a secular Europe, devoid of values and hostile to Jews, will American Jews finally realize Obama’s dream is their nightmare? Even in the totalitarian Soviet Union, Jews who never thought of themselves as Jews asserted their identity when the communists, after the 1967 6-Day War, targeted “Zionists” and outlawed Hebrew as a political language.

For too many young American Jews, Israel’s founding is ancient history. It seems all-powerful. Obama’s statement last week that he “does not worry about Israel’s survival” was more than a Freudian slip. It lent credence to the apathy among young Jews. Iron Dome seems to confirm Israel’s invulnerability, so why worry about Israel, or probe the origins and implications of Obama’s bumbling?

It is disheartening to me that Israel is unimportant to many Jewish university graduates in the last decade or two. With Israel, as with the world, these relatively younger Jews have no institutional memory and a scant knowledge of history. After all, like the rest of America’s college students, they often are indoctrinated by leftist professors who hate America and its allies, especially Israel. A counter-trend: Sheldon Adelson and other Jewish philanthropists fund Birthright, which pays for American Jews under age 25 to visit Israel. My talks with these young adults suggest they come back both pro-Israel and pro-American.

Liberalism/progressivism repudiates Judaism, because it rejects the permanent things, especially tradition and prudence and, most of all, the ordered liberty that posits this: an individual must be free to choose virtue, not coerced into it by government. “Tikkun Olam” (Hebrew for “repairing the world) has become the Jewish equivalent of the humanism of the National Council of Churches or the liberation theology of activist Catholics. Simply put, the political Jews, like the political Protestants and political Catholics, see social justice as defining not the relations between man and man, but between man and government.

In other words, many leftist Jews who do attend synagogue are like many leftist Christians who attend church. They repudiate religious teachings that urge “you” to pursue a virtuous life. Instead, they want government to do it all. And that’s why many of them are sticking with Barack Obama.

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2)   Fear, fatalism or support: Why isn't Gaza revolting against Hamas?

Author:  Elhanan Miller 

Israel may wish that Gaza’s dire situation would push residents of the Strip to rise up against their Hamas rulers, but more than a month into Operation Protective Edge, there are very few indications of that happening.

There have been sporadic reports of civil unrest directed at Hamas over the past week: the physical assault of Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri outside Shifa hospital; a small demonstration crushed by the Islamic movement, some members summarily executed. But even these relatively minor incidents could not be confirmed by independent sources.

Bassem Eid, a veteran Jerusalem-based human rights activist and political analyst, said that Gazans are reluctant to demonstrate for fear of Hamas.

“There is no doubt there’s an atmosphere of fear and terror in Gaza,” Eid told The Times of Israel, citing the killing of Hamas official Ayman Taha in Gaza last week over suspicions of corruption and collaboration with Arab intelligence agencies. “Others were executed in various gatherings under the pretext of their being collaborators with Israel.”

Eid said he is trying to investigate reports of political repression in Gaza, and estimated that the number of dissidents killed by Hamas over the course of Operation Protective Edge ranged from 10 to 35.

“Hamas has a physical presence in almost every house in Gaza and can listen to what’s being said. It’s a Stasi regime par excellence,” he continued, referring to the East German secret police notorious for its eavesdropping capabilities.

A Hamas police officer carrying a rifle on June 28
(photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

“The population is much more scared of Hamas than it is of the Israeli soldiers,” Eid said. Hamas, for its part, is more worried about the possible return of control of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority than it is of an Israeli military incursion.

“In my opinion, Hamas is willing to pay its last drop of blood to prevent Abbas and his PA from setting foot in Gaza. These people (Hamas) are fighting for their existence.”

Palestinian Authority media repeatedly gives credence to Eid’s reports of an atmosphere of terror in Gaza. Official Palestinian news agency WAFA has told of Fatah activists being placed under house arrest by Hamas from the early days of the Israeli operation. Fatah’s official Facebook page reported shots being fired at the legs of Fatah members, including the bodyguards of Fatah official Abdullah Ifranji. When PA Health Minister Jawad Awwad visited Gaza one week into the operation to survey the city’s hospitals, his vehicle was pelted with stones; Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk condemned the attack as “inappropriate.”

But Mkheimer Abusada, a political science professor at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, said that anti-Hamas demonstrations were unlikely to emerge in a society which largely regards Israel as the main cause of its suffering.

“Even if there’s anger at Hamas, people are mostly angry at Israel,” Abusada told The Times of Israel in a phone conversation from Gaza. “Hamas may bear responsibility for the war, but it’s Israel which is destroying homes and killing civilians.” (Of almost 2,000 deaths reported by health officials in the Hamas-run Strip, Israel says 750-1,000 are Hamas and other gunmen.)


A Hamas security officers checks IDs after stopping a car at a checkpoint on the outskirts of the border between Rafah and Israel to prevent Palestinian collaborators from escaping into Israel, April 15, 2013
(Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The IDF has closely followed indications on Gaza’s streets of civil unrest, with some military observers speaking of preliminary signs of mounting popular criticism of the Islamist government as residents return to their destroyed homes. But when, last Friday, one large demonstration did take place in Gaza, it was organized by Hamas.

Hamas and other armed factions in Gaza have launched over 3,000 rockets and mortar shells into Israel during Operation Protective Edge, many of them from densely populated areas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has charged Hamas with using the civilian population in Gaza as “human shields” — firing rockets and building tunnels from residential areas, providing Gazans with no protection, and sometimes even urging civilians to remain in fighting zones despite IDF warnings — while Hamas’s leadership has taken to hiding in underground tunnels. But Abusada indicated that Gazans viewed themselves as victims of Israel, not Hamas.

“I’m surprised at the Israeli hypothesis that people would demonstrate against Hamas,” Abusada said, adding that he was unaware of Hamas intimidating civilians against demonstrating.

The Fatah-Hamas unity government created in early June, as well as the cross-faction Palestinian delegation sent to Cairo to negotiate the ceasefire, gave Palestinians in Gaza the sense that true reconciliation is underway, he said.

“There have been recent attempts to solve the dispute between Fatah and Hamas,” Abusada said. “But let’s be realistic. Even granted that Palestinian politicians have no answer for the problems facing Palestinians, who [else] are the people of Gaza meant to trust? The Arab governments which have forsaken them? Israel, which kills their children and destroys their homes? Ultimately, they have no choice but to place their trust with the political leadership.”

2a)

Lessons of the War in Gaza

Author:  Daniel Pipes 

As Israeli operations against Hamas wind down, here are seven insights into the month-long conflict:

Missile shield: The superb performance of Iron Dome, the protective system that shot down nearly every Hamas rocket threatening life or property, has major military implications for Israel and the world. Its success signals that “Star Wars” (as opponents maliciously dubbed it upon introduction in 1983) can indeed provide protection from short-range and also presumably from long-range rockets and missiles, potentially changing the future of warfare.

Tunnels:Tunneling behind enemy lines is hardly a new tactic; historically, it has had success, such as the 1917 Battle of Messines, when British mines killed 10,000 German soldiers. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) knew of Hamas' tunnels before hostilities began on July 8 but failed to appreciate their numbers, length, depth, quality of construction, and electronic sophistication. Jerusalem quickly realized, as the Times of Israel wrote, that “Israel's air, sea and land supremacy is not mirrored underground.” The IDF thus requires additional time to achieve subterranean dominance.

Consensus in Israel: Hamas' unrelenting barbarism created a rare consensus among Jewish Israelis in favor of victory. This near unanimity both strengthens the government's hand in dealing with outside powers (Prime Minister Netanyahu admonished the U.S. administration never again to second-guess him) and is likely to move Israeli domestic politics decisively to the right into the nationalist camp.

Middle Eastern response: With the exception of Hamas' state patrons (Turkey, Qatar, Iran), the Islamist terrorists found almost no governmental support in the region. In one striking example, Saudi king Abdullah said of Hamas killing Gazans, “It is shameful and disgraceful that these terrorists are [mutilating the bodies of innocents and proudly publicizing their actions] in the name of religion.” How well he knows his mortal enemy.

Rising antisemitism:Especially in Europe but also in Canada and Australia, antisemitism came to the fore, mainly from Palestinians and Islamists as well as from their far-left allies. This response will, in all probability, increase immigration to the two havens of Jewish life, Israel and the United States. By contrast, Middle East Muslims kept quiet, with the exception of Turks and those Arabs living under Israeli control.

Elite vs. popular responses: It's not every day that the secretary-general of the United Nations and all 28 foreign ministers of the European Union side with Israel against an Arab enemy, but that did occur. In the U.S. congress, the Senate unanimously approved and the House voted 395-8 in favor of an additional $225 million for the Iron Dome program. In contrast, among the wider public, pro-Israel sentiment declined almost everywhere (although not in the United States). How to explain this disparity? My hunch: Leaders imagine what they would do if faced with enemy rockets and tunnels, while the public focuses on photographs of dead babies in Gaza.

Dead babies: Which brings us to the most complex, counterintuitive, and strange aspect of the entire conflict. Because the IDF enjoys a crushing advantage over Hamas on the battlefield, their confrontation resembled a police operation more than a war. Thus, Israelis were judged primarily by the clarity of their leaders' public statements, the judicious use of force, and the handling of evidence. Accordingly, media attention invariably drifted from the military sphere to questions of proportionality, morality, and politics. Hamas' greatest strategic weapon in its effort to damage Israel's reputation and ostracize it was neither rockets nor tunnels but wrenching photographs of dead civilians purportedly killed by the IDF.

This leads to the bizarre situation in which Hamas seeks the destruction of Palestinian property, compels civilians to sustain injuries and death, inflates casualty figures, and may even intentionally attack its own territory – while the IDF takes gratuitous fatalities to spare harm to Palestinians. The Israeli government goes further, providing medical care and food and sending technicians into harm's way to make sure that Gazans continue to enjoy free electricity.

It's a curious war in which Hamas celebrates Palestinian misery and Israel does its best to keep life normal for its enemy. Strange, indeed, but this is the nature of modern warfare, where opeds often count for more than bullets. In Clausewitzian terms, war's center of gravity has moved from the battlefield to public relations.

In all, the civilized and moral forces of Israel came off well in this face-off with barbarism. But not well enough to forestall, for too long, yet another assault

2b)  The Real 'Siege' of the Gaza Strip

Author:  Khaled Abu Toameh 

Recent calls for lifting the “siege” on the Gaza Strip have ignored that Hamas's main demand, even more than for an airport or seaport, is that Egypt reopen the Rafah border crossing, the Palestinians' only gateway to the Arab world.

Hamas wants open borders because it wants to pursue its ultimate goal of “liberating all Palestine, from the river to the sea.” Now that it has lost most of its smuggling tunnels as a result of Egyptian military operations, Hamas is searching for other ways to bring weapons into the Gaza Strip.

Hamas's leaders know that their chances of getting an airport or a seaport are extremely low. In the past, material brought into Gaza has included mainly weapons, cement taken to build attack-tunnels into Israel, and dual-use material.

Much of this was either brought into Gaza through smuggling tunnels, or else through Egypt's Rafah terminal, along its Gaza border which is nearly nine miles [14 km] long.

Egypt's Rafah terminal with Gaza, however, has been closed most of the time since Hamas seized control over the Gaza Strip in July 2007, while border crossings with Israel, such as Kerem Shalom and Erez, have remained open.

Even during the current Operation Protective Edge, the Egyptians rejected demands to reopen the Rafah terminal indefinitely. In the first two weeks of the war, the Egyptians did open the terminal briefly – but only to allow Egyptians citizens and some foreigners trapped in the Gaza Strip to leave.

Facing increased criticism at home and in the Arab world, the Egyptian authorities also permitted some wounded Palestinians to cross through the terminal for medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals.

Egypt has not only turned the Gaza Strip into an “open air prison.” It has also prevented many activists and countries from delivering humanitarian and medical aid to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, both before and during the war.

Egypt does not want anyone to talk about its blockade and other restrictions against the Gaza Strip.

At the cease-fire discussions currently taking place in Cairo between Israel and Hamas through Egyptian mediators, the Palestinians have been asked not to talk about Egypt's Rafah border crossing.

The Egyptians want the world to blame only Israel for the “siege” on the Gaza Strip. They continue to ignore the fact that Hamas's main demand continues to be the reopening of the Rafah border crossing.

Hamas and the Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip have apparently chosen to comply with the Egyptian demand to remain silent about the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing.

In fact, the Palestinians seem to have lost any hope that Egypt would ever agree to the indefinite opening of the terminal. That is why Hamas is insisting, now more than ever, on an airport and seaport in the Gaza Strip that would serve as an alternative to the Rafah border crossing.

Palestinian sources said that the Egyptians have encouraged the Palestinians to insist on their demand regarding an airport and seaport.

When the Egyptians say that they support the Palestinian demand for lifting the “siege” on the Gaza Strip, they mean that the Palestinians are entitled to any border crossing except the Rafah terminal. Egypt would like the Palestinians to have their own airport and seaport so they would never have to use an Egyptian border crossing with the Gaza Strip.

Moreover, the Egyptians would like to see the Gaza Strip turned into an Israeli, and not Egyptian, problem.

In an attempt to divert attention from Cairo's responsibility for the blockade, Egypt's Foreign Ministry issued a statement this week calling on Israel to lift the “siege.”

“Egypt insists on the lifting of the Israeli siege,” the statement read. “We are continuing our efforts to end the inhumane siege imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip.”

Today, it is a sign of hypocrisy that Egypt is calling on Israel to lift the “siege” on the Gaza Strip.

The statement, of course, made no reference to Egypt's role in the “siege.” Nor did the ministry mention the tough security measures taken by Egypt recently, including the destruction of more than 1600 smuggling tunnels along its shared border with the Gaza Strip over the past year.

In the last three weeks, the Egyptian army destroyed 20 tunnels. This occurred as the Israel Defense Forces were also targeting tunnels inside the Gaza Strip.

Yet this has not prevented the Egyptians from continuing with their efforts to mislead the world about the situation in the Gaza Strip.

Alarmed by growing criticism of Egypt's measures against the Gaza Strip, an Egyptian diplomat described the allegations as “lies and fabrications.”

The Egyptian diplomat's defense of his country came as representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Arab Red Crescent denounced Cairo's refusal to allow humanitarian and medical aid into the Gaza Strip during the war as “unjust and incapacitating.”

It also followed a call by a Palestinian foreign ministry committee to reopen the Rafah border crossing to save the wounded. The committee also condemned the closure of the Rafah as a “breach of international law and human values.”

Last March, the Egyptian authorities deported 62 Western women who arrived in Cairo to protest against the closure of the Rafah border crossing. Egyptian Gen. Zakariya Hussein praised the authorities for deporting the French and Belgian women. “Egypt should not be used as a gate to other countries such as Libya, Palestine and Sudan,” he said.

The anti-Egyptian campaign reached its peak last year, when more than 100 Muslim scholars signed a petition warning against the “crime” of keeping the Rafah border crossing shut.

The petition accused Egypt and other Arab countries of participating in the siege on the Gaza Strip by keeping the Rafah terminal closed and preventing medical and humanitarian aid, and the destroying the smuggling tunnels.

It is no secret that Egypt's President, Abdel Fattah Sisi, sees Hamas, an offshoot of Muslim Brotherhood, as a threat to Egypt's national security.

Last year, a retired Egyptian army general, Sami Hassan, talked about a plan by Sisi to tighten the siege on the Gaza Strip and bring down Hamas. Hassan said that Sisi's main goal is to prompt Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to rise against Hamas. Egypt has allocated $750 million to carry out its plan and bring the Palestinian Authority back to the Gaza Strip.

According to Palestinian sources, the Egyptians have over the past few weeks expressed fierce opposition into turning the Rafah terminal into another official border crossing with the Gaza Strip. The Egyptians, the sources said, are worried that the reopening of the Rafah terminal would facilitate terrorist attacks by radical Islamist groups against Egyptian targets, especially in Sinai.

While the Egyptians continue to impose strict restrictions, hundreds of trucks of food and basic supplies are being transported into the Gaza Strip through border crossings with Israel. This is happening even as even rockets are being launched at the Kerem Shalom border crossing. A total of 2,772 trucks entered the Gaza Strip through Kerem Shalom since July 8. Meanwhile, only a few trucks were allowed to enter through Rafah.

Israel has also allowed ambulances and medical staff into the Gaza Strip over the past few weeks, while the Egyptian side of the border crossing has been closed. On August 8, there were a total of 169 ambulance transfers through the Erez border crossing with Israel. In addition, a total of 38 medical professionals from Israel and the West Bank have entered the Gaza Strip over the past two weeks. The Egyptians did not send even one physician to the Gaza Strip during the same period.

The Egyptian blockade and severe security measures against the Gaza Strip, including the closure of the Rafah border crossing, are part of the reasons why the last war erupted. But the Egyptian authorities do not want to accept any responsibility. Instead, they are doing their utmost to shift the blame toward Israel.

Whatever is ultimately decided, Hamas's leaders will find ways to smuggle weapons into Gaza because their outspokenly main goal is to destroy Israel and the Jews.

2c) Israelis' quandary: How to aid Gazans but not Hamas

Author:  Michele Chabin 

JERUSALEM — When the Rev. Raed Abusahliah, director of the Catholic humanitarian aid group Caritas Jerusalem, sought donations of food, clothing and other vital supplies for Gazans, he hoped for generous support from Christians and Muslims eager to help their beleaguered brethren recover from the destruction left by Israel's conflict with Hamas militants.

What Abusahliah didn't anticipate was the outpouring of support from Israeli Jews, who he said constituted about half of the 600-700 donors to the campaign. “I admit that I am somewhat surprised,” the Palestinian Catholic priest said. “Many Jews have also sent us messages of solidarity and offers of everything from baby clothes to blood donations.”

As a new cease-fire was holding Monday while Israel and Hamas seek a longer-term truce, the casualties of the war have confronted many Israelis with a dilemma: how to help Gaza's civilians without boosting Hamas.

The Israeli government said it lost 64 soldiers and three civilians. The United Nations has tallied more than 1,900 Gazan deaths, including 448 children and nearly 1,000 other civilians. An additional 250,000 Gazans have been left homeless, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. (Israel claims nearly half the Palestinian deaths were Hamas fighters.)

While polls in Israel show that a vast majority of Jews believe the Israel Defense Forces had no choice but to shell Gaza to stop nearly 3,500 Hamas rocket attacks over the past five weeks, “that doesn't mean we believe the civilians in Gaza are the enemy,” said Angy Shavit, one of the Jews who promoted Cariatas' campaign through social media.

Shavit, who is politically left wing, said many of her Palestinian friends in Gaza relayed their need for toilet paper, diapers, baby formula and eye drops.

After spending time at St. Anthony's Church in Jaffa, where cartons full of sugar, flour, bottled water, diapers, baby wipes and other essentials with Hebrew lettering were piled high, Shavit surmised that most of the Jewish Israelis donating “don't feel guilty” about Israel's military operation against Hamas, which the United States, European Union and Israel classify as a terror organization. “It's just that when a baby needs diapers you donate diapers.”

This and other initiatives, such as an effort by peace activist Gershon Baskin to buy surplus potatoes in Israel to donate to the people of Gaza, however, have their critics in Israel.

“I've received many phone calls from people who didn't understand why we would be funding 'terror' or people who are afraid these donations will end up in Hamas' hands,” Shavit said. “But Hamas's tunnels won't be built with diapers.”

An elderly woman receives goods at an aid distribution point on Aug 2 in the West Bank town of Deir al-Hatab.
(Photo: Jaafar Ashtiyeh, AFP/Getty Images)

Shavit said some callers insist there can be no shortages in Gaza because of all the humanitarian aid Israel and Egypt have been allowing into the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Aid organizations such as Caritas Jerusalem say the deliveries fall far short of meeting the needs in Gaza, where the main power station and most bakeries and factories were destroyed during the war.

“The situation is terrible everywhere in Gaza,” Abusahliah said.

The distrust about aiding Gazans is not just in Israel. An Israeli women's organization that is donating large amounts of items for new mothers and their babies did not want its name mentioned for fear Hamas officials who govern Gaza will reject the contributions if they know they were donated almost entirely by Jewish Israelis. So they are being delivered by a third party.

Hamas is not permitting Palestinians to be treated at an Israeli military field hospital and its blood bank politely declined Israeli blood donation offers.

Abusahliah said every donation is vital regardless of its source. Caritas, which also launched an international campaign to raise nearly $2 million, is providing medical supplies to the hospital run by the Anglican church, operating a medical clinic and providing food and other assistance to the 3,000 people who have taken refuge in Gaza's Christian institutions.

Only 1,311 Christians live in Gaza, so the vast majority of the organization's aid is going to needy Muslims, he said. “All Palestinians are suffering. We make no distinctions based on religion.”

Kathleen Saba, a Palestinian Israeli who donated to Caritas, said it is “heart-warming” to see Christians, Muslims and Jews pull together for the people of Gaza. “This is what giving is supposed to be,” she said.

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