Maybe the poor aren't as poor as the politicians would have you believe. Furthermore, if there is a top there also must be a bottom. The key to elevating the bottom is never deny those on the bottom the opportunity to improve their lot. Education and training are their best hope and self-responsibility is a necessitous key.
It is politically popular to cite the widening disparity between the top and bottom. Well, Professor Brad Schiller has some statistics to support his Monday Wall Street Journal, op ed piece entitled; "The Inequality Myth." What Schiller reveals is that the American family has changed and declined and thus the average household income implies a higher standard of living for the average household member.
Schiller also discusses the nominal annual $4 trillion increase in GDP since 2000 and pointed out that if all the money went to the wealthiest 10% their average income would be $350,000. However, according to the Census Bureau it averages only $200,000 so some money must have dripped down notwithstanding the politician's bleeding and inaccurate comments that the poor have fallen so far behind.
As the nation's ability to reason sinks the emotional appeal of hyped political rhetoric can become more convincing and determining. Perhaps this is why the current crop of politicians have been able to turn out the numbers with their "change" pitch. Perhaps one day after all the smoke has cleared we will discover we have been short changed.
Give Iran a break seems to be the growing and prevailing attitude. And why not. All Iran wants to do is eliminate Israel. Then peace will descend upon the world.
Meanwhile, Hamas admits its fighters are trained in Iran, as if there was any doubt. (See 1 and 2 below.)
Super-sonic plane being pursued by U.S. Air Force. (See 3 below.)
Israel keeps sticking their thumb in everyone's eye by proposing expanded settlements in East Jerusalem. Perhaps the Israelis learned from us as we trudged West and dispersed Native Americans. It is one thing if Israel washed its hands of the "peace process" but it is another to come into court with unclean hands.(See 4 below.)
It can't possibly be that al Qaeda claims it is in trouble in northern Iraq and how insensitive for Marcus and Crook to suggest Congress cease funding Palestinians simply because one of their terrorist killed eight bible studying Israeli students. (See 5 and 6 below.)
Report suggests Hezballah has re-armed and is ready for war. (See 7 below.)
Dick
1) BBC poll: Support for tough moves against Iran decreased
Support for military strikes or sanctions to stop Iran's nuclear program has fallen in more than half the countries surveyed in an international poll, according to a British Broadcasting Company survey released Tuesday said.
The BBC World Service poll comes as big powers have been upping pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes but the West suspects is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
Although the survey was conducted between the end of October last year and January, most interviews were carried out after the release of a United States intelligence report last December which found Tehran had halted work on nuclear weapons in 2003.
The U.S. report took some impetus out of a drive for tougher sanctions against Iran, although the United Nations Security Council did agree on a new sanctions resolution last week.
The poll found support for economic sanctions or a military strike against Iran had fallen in 13 out of 21 countries compared with a similar poll in June 2006.
"It appears that people in many countries are interested in ramping down the confrontation with Iran, while still using UN inspectors to ensure that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons," Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland in the United States, which helped conduct the poll, said in a statement.
Support for military action or economic sanctions dropped by 10 points in Australia compared with 2006 (42 percent compared with 52), by nine points in Britain (34 percent from 43), by nine points in Germany (37 percent from 46) and by six points in the United States (60 percent from 66), the poll found.
Only three countries showed an increase in support for military strikes or sanctions -- Israel (where support for tough action rose to 71 percent from 62), South Korea (53 percent compared with 47) and Turkey (33 percent compared with 21).
In the other five countries surveyed, support was broadly similar to the 2006 poll.
Israel has said a nuclear Iran would be a threat to its existence while South Korea's neighbour, North Korea, agreed last year to dismantle its nuclear program. The rise in support for tough action among Turks was unexpected as the two countries cooperate in areas such as energy.
On average across the 21 countries, 43 percent favored diplomacy to solve the crisis and 14 percent would apply no pressure at all. Twenty-six percent supported sanctions and eight percent military strikes.
The poll found many people would be prepared to allow Tehran to produce nuclear fuel for electricity, provided it was accompanied by a full program of UN inspections.
The pollsters surveyed opinion in another 10 countries for the first time. Across all 31 countries surveyed, most respondents opposed the use of economic sanctions or military strikes, the survey said.
More than 32,000 people were interviewed between Oct. 31, 2007 and Jan. 25, 2008. The margin of error per country ranged from plus or minus 2.4 to 4.4 percent.
2) Palestinian group Hamas admits that its fighters are trained in Iran.
By Marie Colvin
THE Palestinian group Hamas, blamed for last week's massacre of eight students at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem, has revealed hundreds of its fighters have been trained in Iran.
A senior commander interviewed by The Sunday Times said 300 of the group's "best brains" had been secretly sent to Tehran.
Half are still being trained by Revolutionary Guards. They are learning how
to make explosives from everyday items and produce deadlier rockets.
The rest have already returned from a Revolutionary Guard base in Tehran.
Some have been trained as snipers. Others have learnt to use tunnels in
attacks on Israeli forces.
"Iran is our mother," the commander said. "She gives us information, military supplies and financial support."
Seven separate groups of Hamas militants have spent up to six months in
Tehran since the training began in 2005.
The scale of Iran's operation exceeds Israeli intelligence suspicions that
Hamas had dispatched "tens" of fighters to Tehran. Yuval Diskin, the head of
Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, said last week: "I see this
as the strategic danger, more than any weapons smuggled into Gaza."
Israeli officials believe that Iran is waging a "proxy war" against their
country on two fronts - through Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The
Hamas commander said Iranian-trained instructors had also taught more than
700 fighters at a base in Syria.
3) Aiming high: the quest for hypersonic speed
US defence officials believe that air-breathing hypersonic propulsion has the potential to revolutionize warfare by providing US forces with the ability to take the fight to the adversary more quickly, at greater distances, and with greater firepower.
Missiles powered by supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) engines, traveling at four to 15 times the speed of sound, would vastly improve US capabilities against mobile targets, hardened and deeply buried facilities and the adversary's ability in general to deny US forces access to a theater of operations. Likewise, scramjet-equipped strike aircraft based in the USA could strike targets globally within several hours and hypersonic transports and reconnaissance aircraft could place any destination within timely reach.
Air-breathing hypersonic propulsion would also enable unprecedented safe, affordable access to space, enabling new avenues of space exploration and exploitation.
Despite the promise of this technology, US funding for hyper-sonics research has been sporadic. This is partly the result of the unfulfilled expectations of past projects like the overly ambitious single-stage to orbit National Aerospace Plane (NASP) of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It is also in part because there has been no clearly defined military need to exploit hypersonic capabilities and a belief that the command and control (C2) and sensor infrastructure is too immature to make the technology worthwhile.
Although the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently concluded two successful 'free flights' of a four-inch scramjet-powered projectile in ground tests, the USA has yet to demonstrate an air-breathing hypersonic engine in actual flight. Hopes of surmounting this symbolic barrier were dashed in June when the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) had to abort the inaugural flight of its X-43A 'Hyper-X' scramjet-powered aircraft due to an anomaly with support equipment. A second attempt may not now occur until next year.
Nevertheless, US scientists and engineers say they have made great strides in recent years in materials and engine technologies, have validated them in ground testing and are gearing up to demonstrate them in flight in the next five to 10 years.
The US Air Force (USAF) concluded ground tests in January, when engineers successfully ran a scramjet engine at speeds of M4.5 to M6.5 and recorded net thrust under operational conditions. The engine, developed by Pratt & Whitney under the USAF's Hypersonic Technology (HyTech) program, used commercially available hydrocarbon-based jet fuel without any additives. Joaquin Castro, manager of Pratt & Whitney's hyper-sonics programmes says that "this is a significant step in the history of propulsion development for aerospace".
Officials involved with the program say the ability to run the engine without fuel additives under operational conditions equates to "lighting a match in a hurricane" in terms of engineering difficulty. A derivative of this engine is scheduled to fly as part of the NASA-USAF X-43C project around 2006. If flight tests prove successful and funding is provided, Castro believes an operational scramjet missile could be possible within 10 years.
4) US, UN, EU, deplore Givat Ze'ev project
The UN, the EU and the US on Monday deplored Israel's plans to build some 400 new homes in the Givat Ze'ev settlement.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern over the previous day's decision to approve the plan for a new haredi neighborhood in the settlement located just north of Jerusalem.
"The secretary-general expresses his concern over the government of Israel's approval of a resumption of construction of 750 housing units in the West Bank settlement of Givat Ze'ev," Ban said in a statement issued by his spokesperson.
"Any settlement expansion is contrary to Israel's obligations under the Road Map and to international law," continued the statement. "The secretary-general calls on the government of Israel to halt settlement expansion and reiterates that the fulfillment of Road Map obligations by both parties is an important measure underpinning the political process between them."
For the initial stage of the project known as Agan Ha'ayalot, contractors were given permission to begin work on 330 units and to complete 200 units on which work had already begun before the project was frozen in 2000, according to the Construction and Housing Ministry. But the intent, the ministry's spokesman said was to allow for the completion of all 750 units.
The Bush administration said the plan does not help the progress of US-backed peace talks.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters US policy on expansion of settlements in disputed areas is well-known, and it is important to keep the atmosphere positive.
She made the comments after a meeting at the State Department with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.
Earlier, Rice's spokesman had called Sunday's announcement unhelpful. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack noted that Rice had spoken to Israel's defense minister twice in two days.
Meanwhile, Javier Solana, the EU's foreign and security affairs chief, said the bloc remained committed to supporting the peace process despite recent violence casting a shadow over the peace effort launched at the Annapolis summit.
"The position of the European Union is to continue to do the utmost to move the peace process forward," Solana said after discussing the Middle East with the EU foreign ministers.
But he said "we deplore" Israel's announcement of the construction of new homes in east Jerusalem. "That may put in jeopardy the peace process."
Solana said the settlements question "is part of the first phase of the roadmap (to peace). We do not like to see the extension of the settlements."
Separately Monday, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Poettering called for an immediate halt to violence, saying, "I condemn the violence by Hamas and other Palestinian extremists, and I call on government of Israel to listen to those voices calling for peace rhetoric to be replaced by peace acts and peace deeds."
Given the dire conditions in the Gaza and last week's attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner suggested the US, the EU, Russia and the UN meet soon to assess chances for peace between Israel and the Palestinians after the recent spike in violence.
She gave no date for a meeting of the so-called "Quartet" of peacemakers, nor did the EU foreign ministers take up her proposal. The EU leaders open two days of talks in Brussels on Thursday and may visit that issue.
Ferrero-Waldner said a Quartet meeting should assess "how the negotiations are going and what we can do to enhance conditions" for a peace agreement by year's end.
Several EU foreign ministers dismissed any possibility of the EU agreeing to bring Hamas into the process. The Islamic militant group seized control of the Gaza Strip last year, leaving the Palestinians split between rival leaderships.
"It is very important to stick to the position that we should work with all those who want peaceful processes and peaceful outcomes in the Middle East," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "Only a political solution ... can bring security to Israelis and an end to the hardships faced by Palestinians."
Also Monday, Jordan's King Abdullah II blasted Olmert's approval. Speaking to reporters in Amman after a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Abdullah called the construction project an "obstacle to peace."
Construction and Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim rebuffed the criticism, saying that the approval for the project was issued eight years ago.
Boim said the authorization was given in accordance with the tenders then issued, but that the project was frozen due to the outbreak of the second intifada in October 2000.
He added that the approval was reissued the following appeals by construction companies to the court.
5) Al-Qaeda Commander in Northern Iraq: We Are in Dire Straits
On February 12, 2008, the Qatari daily Al-'Arab published an interview with Al-Qaeda commander in northern Iraq Abu-Turab Al-Jaza'iri. The interview, at an Al-Qaeda hideout in northern Iraq, was conducted according to Al-Qaeda's stipulations - including no disclosure of the region where it took place and no communications or recording equipment of any kind brought to the site.
During the interview, Al-Jaza'iri acknowledged that Al-Qaeda's position in Iraq was difficult, and that Al-Qaeda had committed mistakes, including indiscriminately murdering civilians, which had caused its popularity to decline sharply. He also termed the most recent terrorist attacks in Algiers 'folly.'
The following are excerpts from the interview: [1]
We Have Been Forced to Withdraw from Several Cities
Asked about Al-Qaeda's position in Iraq, with reference to the U.S. announcement that it had been paralyzed, Al-Jaza'iri replied: "…[The Islamic Republic of Iraq] is alive, striking, bombing, and planning to attack various military targets belonging to the Crusaders and to betrayers of Islam, i.e. the Shi'ites and Kurds who have joined the occupier…
"It is true that we have lost several cities and have been forced to withdraw from others, after a large number of [Sunni] tribal leaders betrayed Islam and when their tribe members joined forces against us. However, we are still fighting, and the 'paralysis' mentioned by the Crusaders is true only for some of the regions. [Besides,] it is common knowledge that any war always involves advance and retreat, so that [even] in those regions I wouldn't call our position 'paralysis,' but rather 'the [changing] conditions of the war.'"
Al-Jaza'iri added: "…I do not want to paint a false picture: Our position is very difficult, but we are fighting, and will continue to do so…"
Reasons for the Decrease in Al-Qaeda's Popularity
Asked about possible reasons for the decrease in Al-Qaeda's popularity, Al-Jaza'iri said that indiscriminately murdering civilians had been a mistake that had "harmed the organization's reputation."
He stated: "In the Al-Anbar [district], for example, Sunni Iraqis voluntarily enlisted for jihad activity not because [they believed in] it, but because they hated the Americans and [wished] to take revenge on them and on the betrayers of Islam. Some were motivated by financial considerations, and got carried away with murdering and executing futile attacks, which killed a lot of unfortunate individuals.
"Neither can I ignore the U.S. and Iraqi intelligence apparatuses, or the media, which caters [to the Americans] and which has accused us of carrying out attacks in which we had no part - such as the attack at the Al-Habbaniyah mosque west of Al-Faluja, or the [attacks] in Al-Faluja and Al-Ramadi, where lethal chlorine gas was used. The killing of the Crusaders and of the tribal leaders who collaborated with the betrayers of Islam should have been carried out more intelligently."
Our Brothers in Algeria Disregarded the Rules
Regarding the latest incidents in Algeria, Al-Jaza'iri said: "…The attacks in Algeria sparked animated debate here in Iraq. I believe that had I been a leader there, this would not have happened - because most of the youths who enlisted in Al-Qaeda were still adolescents, motivated by resentment, revenge, and hatred of the ruling regime and the rich, who were sucking the blood of the people, rather than by shari'a.
"This is exactly what happened in Al-Ramadi, a city in western Iraq about which I have told you, where a few individuals caused a lot of bloodshed. Algeria is not under occupation like Iraq; its army and the police force are from among the people, and its people are Muslims. We have a religious principle: 'There is no imperative to kill every person whose apostasy has been proven.' How much less so if [such a person] attests that 'there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.' [Furthermore, there must be a distinction between] incidents in which the apostasy has been proven and the apostate persists in it - in which case the qadi sentences the apostate to death - and [incidents] in which the apostate [confesses] and renounces his mistake - [in which case] his repentance is accepted...
"[My] brothers in Algeria disregarded all these laws - [an omission] which has harmed our good name, and which, moreover, has damaged the entire Salafi movement - while the only one to profit was the regime that had betrayed Islam and its allies.
"By Allah! Had they told me they were planning to harm the [Algerian] president and his family, I would say: Blessing be upon them! But explosions in the streets, blood [flowing] knee-deep, the killing of soldiers whose wages are not even enough for them eat at third-rate restaurants, let alone second- or first-rate ones! - and calling all this jihad - by Allah, it's sheer idiocy!
"I appeal to them to come to the country of glory, Iraq, and to wage jihad here, in the Land of the Two Rivers. However, if they decide to remain in hiding, carrying out attacks that harm the poor, the deprived, those who are ignorant in questions of religion, and those who sin out of ignorance - [such behavior] is forbidden, and those [guilty of it] are sinners.
"Had they planned to kill the Interior Minister or his deputy, or a leader of the oppressive Algerian [regime], I would say, 'By Allah, they have devised [a worthy plan],' and we would all pray for their success. However, I have not seen or heard anything like that.
"I realize that what I have been saying will be vehemently opposed by some here in Iraq, as well as outside it in Algeria, but I stand by it. My opinion is firm, and is shared by some other commanders..."
Al-Qaeda Members Who Have Harmed Our Good Name Must Be Expelled
Asked about how to rectify Al-Qaeda's mistakes, Al-Jaza'iri replied: "...[These mistakes] can be rectified by expelling the elements that have harmed Al-Qaeda's [good name] and by following the principle of 'quality over quantity.' Today, our [organization] numbers over 9,000 fighters, but only 3,000 can be relied upon. The rest are unreliable, since they keep harming [the good name] of Al-Qaeda - as you call it - [that is,] of the Islamic State of Iraq..."
Further on in the interview, Al-Jaza'iri said: "...Al-Qaeda has been infiltrated by people who have harmed its reputation... We have started expelling them and driving them out of our ranks. This year will be marked by rectifying [mistakes] and [waging] jihad..."
The Next Few Months Will Prove Decisive
On the change in Al-Qaeda's strategy and the continuation of attacks, Al-Jaza'iri said: "It is clear that the strategy [of capturing cities and turning them into Al-Qaeda bases] has failed, so today we are fighting a guerilla war, or, as some call it, 'street fighting.' The efficacy of this [strategy] has been proven in various contexts. We have been instructed to focus our attacks on targets that are strategically and morally important to our enemies, on the eve of the U.S. election campaign."
He continued: "...It is the type of attacks and the way they are planned that will be changed. Accordingly, we will be focusing on operations that cause the maximum pain and bewilderment to the enemy. This [shift] will open a new page in the fighting, which you will notice on the fifth anniversary of the occupation of Iraq..."
Addressing Iraq's Sunnis, Al-Jaza'iri said: "The next few months will prove decisive, and by Allah! We have prepared for this - we have humiliated the Crusaders, and have made their blood flow in the streets... And what is to come will be even worse and more bitter. Therefore, I say to those who claim that we have failed, or are paralyzed...: You will receive our answer in the next few weeks..."
[1] Al-Arab (Qatar), February 12, 2008.
6)Palestinian Authority Daily: Killer of eight young men is Holy Martyr- Shahid
Action should cost PA $150 million in US aid
By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
Mahmoud Abbas's official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper has honored the killer of the eight high school students gunned down this week with the status of Shahid - Holy Islamic Martyr. In so doing, the PA is sending its people a straightforward message of support for the terror murders and the murderer. According to the PA interpretation of Islam, there is no higher status that a human being can achieve today than that of Shahid.
The official PA daily Al Hayat Al Jadida prominently placed a picture of the killer on the front page, with the caption, "The Shahid Alaa Abu D'heim." In a Page One article on the terror killings, his act is again defined as a "Shahada achieving" action.
This honoring of terror and terrorists by the PA has significant financial ramifications, particularly at this time. Last week the US Administration sent a request to Congress to allocate $150 million to the Palestinian Authority. In response to earlier PMW reports on the widespread Palestinian honoring of terror, Congress made it illegal for the US to give money to entities that "advocate" terror, as follows:
"[The US] shall terminate assistance to any individual, entity... which she has determined to be involved in or advocating terrorist activity." Congress further legislated that "none of the [US] ... assistance under the West Bank and Gaza Program may be made available for the purpose of recognizing or otherwise honoring individuals who commit, or have committed acts of terrorism."
-2008 Foreign Operations Bill Sec. 657.B - C.1
Since a society's honoring of terrorists is one of the greatest terror promotions, and as the budget for the PA newspaper comes from the PA's general budget, the incessant honoring of this and all recent terrorists by Abbas's PA as Holy Islamic Shahids should render the Palestinian Authority ineligible to receive any American money under the terms of US law.
7) Defense official: Hizbullah ready to fight Israel
By Hanan Greenberg and Neta Sela
Intelligence assessment says Lebanese Shiite organization has completed its military, logistic preparations for resumed confrontation with IDF
The Hizbullah organization has completed its military and logistic preparations for a confrontation with Israel, a senior defense official told Ynet on Monday evening, based on recent intelligence assessments.
Hizbullah's preparations reinforce the intelligence estimate that a conflict in northern Israel is closer than a wide-scale conflict in the Gaza Strip. This may be one of the reasons why the IDF is not rushing into a comprehensive operation in Gaza.
Intelligence Report:
'Chances of 3rd intifada slim' / Roni Sofer
(Video) Outbreak of limited violent revolt possible should number of Palestinian casualties increase significantly, intelligence officials tell cabinet in annual briefing, adding that Syria can be persuaded to sever ties with Iran in exchange for Golan Heights
Full story
Senior defense establishment officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, admitted several months ago that in terms of Hizbullah's missile arsenal, the group has closed the gaps created after the Second Lebanon War.
The annual intelligence review, presented to cabinet ministers Sunday by officials from the Shin Bet internal security service, Miltary Intelligence and the Mossad, said that the likelihood for a wide-scale Hamas attack in 2008 was slim.
However, the likelihood that Hizbullah will resume its violent acts against Israel is higher than the likelihood for an escalation on other fronts. An escalation on one front may lead to a similar situation on additional fronts.
Hizbullah monitoring IDF's movements
Hizbullah fighters are closely monitoring the IDF's movements on the northern border, and have even come up with dozens of scenarios for the moment Israel acts against the organization.
According to the defense establishment, Hizbullah's plans focus both on the activity in southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley.
Another estimate is that Hizbullah has decided to carry out a terror attack in response to the assassination of the group's senior official Imad Mugniyah in Damascus. Although there is no evidence that Israel was involved in the killing, the organization will seek to respond at the first opportunity it gets.
These estimates illustrate the risk in an escalation on the northern front this year, as expressed in the intelligence briefing presented to the cabinet ministers on Sunday. The IDF is preparing for such a possibility, holding a large number of exercises both among soldiers in compulsory service and among reserve forces.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that "the intelligence assessment presidents a wide picture of threats on Israel's security, from Jerusalem to Iran. We must look at reality as it is, without any illusions, and prepare for the real threats we are facing."
Barak spoke during a visit to the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, where eight students were shot to death by an Israeli Arab terrorist Thursday.
In south: Lull, with or without agreement
Barak said earlier Monday that the operational activity in Gaza would continue. According to Barak, "Whoever thinks that this is the end of the story and that there's already a truce is wrong… We haven't finished anything and the important trials are still ahead."
The minister noted that the defense establishment's goal was to stop the rocket fire at Israel and the terror emanating from Gaza, while dramatically reducing weapon smuggling into the Strip.
A ceasefire can only be considered once these things materialize, he said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni also addressed the issue Monday, saying that "We don't believe in (arriving to) a situation whereby Hamas can choose when it attacks and when it doesn't in order to strengthen itself."
According to Livni, "in the Middle East, every hesitation is taken as weakness. The states in the region are testing the leadership in the international community.
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She added that the problem of weapons smuggling from Egypt into the Gaza Strip cannot be neglected.
Despite the Israeli denials, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed the existence of a truce between Israel and Hamas. "There is an agreement in principle," he told reporters following a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah in Amman.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Do Politiicans Think They Can Screw Everything They Touch?
Olmert and Barak are proving once again they are the Israeli equivalents of Mutt and Jeff and/or Laurel and Hardy. GW is sending Cheney over to show our commitment to a peace process that should be allowed to die along with what the IDF should be allowed to do vis a vis Hamas terrorists.
What is Cheney going to accomplish that Rice has not? Does GW really believe there is a chance to create peace between Abbas and Hamas, then how can it be expected to occur between Israel, Abbas and Hamas. When will politicians simply allow reality to sink in and quit supporting denying and lying nut cases and terrorist thugs? (See 1, 2, 3 and 4 below.)
The Eliot Spitzer episode will have spill-over effect on the Democrat's campaign for who becomes their nominee and I find it even more ironic that the New York Times will have been one of the main contributors.
Spitzer's fall will serve to resurrect all the bile associated with Bill's "amorous flings." It is really amazing how so many of the world's politicians have been brought down by sex revelations. I guess it is normal for politicians to think they can screw just about everything they touch.
Dick
1) Olmert and Barak deny ceasefire accord with Hamas - as does Hamas
Creating some confusion, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas insisted in Amman that a Gaza truce had been finalized. “Hamas wanted its leaders protected,” he remarked.
The first denial came from Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak Monday, March 10, when he sharply rebuffed reports of a truce deal with Hamas and the scaling back of military operations in the Gaza Strip.
“There is no accord, nor is one close,” he stressed. “We will continue to fight until missile fire and terrorist attacks end and arms smuggling into Gaza is cut down. We are committed to these three goals.”
Until these goals are attained, we will take any military steps we think fit. But it is no one-off operation. The tough challenges are still to come.”
The minister spoke during a tour of the Technology and Logistics Base at Tel Hashomer outside Tel Aviv.
Referring to the two-day slowdown of missile fire from Gaza, Barak said no one should complain if Sapir College and Ashkelon are free of Grad and Qassam missile fire. “The military will do everything necessary to complete its mission, even if it faces long and tough challenges.” He noted that all sorts of considerations affect military decisions, such as weather conditions and the accessibility of targets.
Asked to respond to the grim intelligence report of threats facing Israel in the year go come, which was submitted to the cabinet Sunday, Barak said: “Israel is still the strongest nation in the region.”
Military sources pose a couple of questions raised by the defense minister’s remarks:
1. Are they backed by prime minister Ehud Olmert? Political sources reply in the negative. The prime minister has developed his own two-track strategy: While publicly pledging a series of military knockout blows against Hamas, he is privately engaged in indirect dialogue with Hamas representatives and forcing the IDF to hold its fire. Barak is trying to correct the public’s low opinion of this performance.
2. He correctly stated that a ceasefire deal with Hamas is nowhere near but he did not explain that the delay is not the result of Israel’s tough bargaining position but because Hamas keeps on raising new demands. The latest, endorsed Monday by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, was that Israeli forces forego their counter-terror operations not only in Gaza, but on the West Bank too.
3. Israel is commonly accepted as the strongest nation in the region. However, the Olmert government’s military policies constantly transmit weak resolve and hesitancy. This was illustrated by its stop-go handling of the Palestinian missile escalation from Gaza. These tactics are eroding the IDF’s deterrent strength. If Israel concludes a ceasefire accord with Hamas from a position of weakness, the rockets and missiles will soon be flying again.
2) Arab leader denies temple ever existed.
The al-Aqsa mosque was never the site of a Jewish temple, Sheikh Raed Salah,
the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, said Monday during a
press conference he convened in Jerusalem to respond to voices calling for
the expulsion of Israeli residents of the city who participate in terror
activities against Israel.
"Those calling for the expulsion of Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem
are hysterical and stupid and belong in the trash can," Salah said at the
conference. He went on to deny any Israeli or Jewish historical claim to the city,
denying that there ever existed a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.
"The claims of the Jews are big lies and they have no right to any speck of
dust here," he said.
Israel, he claimed, was carrying out extensive digs under al-Aqsa mosque,
and was hiding destructive tunnels under the compound which had already
caused damage to the mosque and several houses in the Muslim Quarter.
"I think that we are at a critical time. We believe that al-Aqsa is in
danger and that it is under occupation, and we believe that Jerusalem is in
danger because it is under occupation," Salah said. "Jerusalem is not only
houses - it is faith, it is history, it is a culture, it is a present, a
future and an eternal right that we will not relinquish."
In January, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz filed an indictment against
Salah, charging him with incitement to violence and racism in a speech he
made last year protesting the archeological dig carried out at the Old
City's Mughrabi Gate.
During his sermon in Jerusalem's Wadi Joz neighborhood on February 16 of
last year, Salah urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to
"save al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation."
Salah's speech also attacked Jews, saying, "They want to build their temple
at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their
food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one 'general terrorist'
to another 'general terrorist.'"
He also said, "We are not those who ate bread dipped in children's blood."
3) Fear and gullibility as weapons
By Barry Rubin
Radical forces in the Middle East have rewritten the international rulebook in a way designed so they can't lose. That is, there is no easy response to their behavior and strategies. Even more worrisome is the widespread failure in the West even to realize this is happening.
Hamas and Hizbullah fire from among civilians and use civilian homes for military purposes; Syria or Iran deploy disinformation; radical regimes pretend moderation, and there are plenty of suckers to take the bait.
Extremism makes many believe that kind words and concessions can transform them; intransigence produces the response that if they won't give up, we must do so.
HERE ARE some new rules in which "we" represents such disparate forces as Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaida, Syria, the Taliban and others, including radical Arab nationalists.
These forces are not all alike or allied, but do often follow a parallel set of rules quite different from how international affairs have generally been conducted.
1. We'll never give up. No matter what you do, we will continue fighting. No matter what you offer, we will keep attacking you. Since you can't win, you should give up.
2. We're indifferent to any pressure you put on us. We will turn this pressure against you. Against us, deterrence does not exist; diplomacy does not convince.The carrot cannot buy us off, nor the stick make us yield. There are no solutions that can end the conflict. You cannot win militarily, nor make peace through diplomacy.
3. If you set economic sanctions, we'll say you are starving our people in an act of "collective punishment." Moreover, sanctions will cost you money and generate opposition among those who lose profits.
4. In response to military operations, we'll attack your civilians. Casualties will undermine your internal support. We will try to force you to kill civilians accidentally. We won't care, but will use this to persuade many that you are evil. Thus we will simultaneously murder your civilians and get you condemned as human rights violators.
5. If you try to isolate us we will use your own media and intellectuals against you. At times, we will hint at moderation and make promises of change. We won't do so enough to alienate our own followers, but enough to subvert yours. They will demand you engage us, which means you making concessions for nothing real in exchange.
6. Talking to our own people, we will foment hatred and demonize you. Speaking to the West, we will accuse you of fomenting hatred. We will hypocritically turn against you all the concepts you developed: racism, imperialism, failure to understand the "other," and so on. These concepts, of course, describe what we are doing, but your feelings of guilt, ignorance about us, and indifference to ideology will make you fail to notice that fact.
7. We will claim to be victims and "underdogs." Because you are stronger and more "advanced," that means you are the villains. We are not held responsible for our deeds, or expected to live up to the same standards. There will be no shortage of, to quote Lenin, "useful idiots" in your societies to help echo our propaganda.
8. Since our societies are weak, undemocratic and have few real moderates, you will have to make deals with phoney moderates and dictatorial regimes weakened by corruption and incompetence.
9. Even the less radical regimes, often our immediate adversaries, partly play into our hands. Due to popular pressure — plus their desire to mobilize support and distract attention from their own shortcomings — they trumpet Arab and Islamic solidarity. They denounce the West, blame all problems on Israel and revile America, even as they accept your aid. They glorify interpretations of Islam not too far from ours. They cheer Iraqi insurgents, Hizbullah, and Hamas. They don't struggle against Iran getting nuclear weapons. They lay the basis for our mass support and recruits.
10. There is no diplomatic solution for you, though you yearn to find one. There is no military solution for you, whether you try that or not. You love life, we love death; you are divided, we are united; you want to get back to material satisfaction, we are dedicated revolutionaries.
We will outlast you.
Finally, our greatest weapon is that you truly don't understand all the points made above. You are taught, informed, and often led by people who simply don't comprehend what an alternative, highly ideological, revolutionary world view means.
In effect, we will try, and will often succeed, to turn your "best and brightest" into the worst and dimmest who think you can persuade us, who blame you for the conflicts, or expect that we will alter our course. We will use those mistakes against you.
THE ABOVE analysis seems pessimistic, but is actually the opposite. Most of this strategy's power is based on spreading illusions, depending on gullibility. Much of the rest relies on the enemy's psychological weaknesses.
In a sustained conflict, the radicals' technological and organizational weaknesses, along with their mistaken assessments and unrealistic ideology, will bring inevitable defeat. They will lose even if they never surrender. They can kill people, but not overcome societies determined to grow, prosper, and survive.
The keys to a successful response are steadfastness and understanding. To paraphrase Francis Bacon and Franklin Roosevelt, there is nothing to fear but fear — and gullibility — itself.
4) The Arab/Israeli Conflict Debate
by Cinnamon Stillwell
A Santa Clara University course optimistically titled, "The Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes," was the setting for a February 26 academic debate on one of the world's most intractable disputes: The Arab/Israeli conflict.
San Jose State University Middle East history lecturer, David Meir-Levy, represented the pro-Israeli side of the equation, and UC Berkeley Islamic studies lecturer, Hatem Bazian, argued the pro-Palestinian position. Interestingly, each embodied the nationality of his respective side of the debate. David Meir-Levy is an American-born Israeli who once served in the Israeli Defense Forces, while Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian native.
Bazian is notorious for his transparently biased approach to the Arab/Israeli conflict. His call for "an intifada in this country" at a 2004 San Francisco anti-war protest is just one of many radical statements. More of an activist than an academic, Bazian personifies the politicization of Middle East studies today.
Meir-Levy, on the other hand, is known for his scrupulous scholarship on the subject of Middle East history. His recent book, History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression," as described by Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes, "applies great common sense where demagogues and ignorami too often dominate."
Throughout the debate, Meir-Levy succeeded in turning history or, rather, the inaccurate historical narrative popular on college campuses, upside down, exposing the fallacy of Bazian's arguments in the process.
Bazian's approach was to vilify Israel and paint the Palestinians as the aggrieved party. But Meir-Levy demonstrated in no uncertain terms that a Palestinian state could have emerged many times over if not for the anti-Semitism that has subsumed their society and, in a larger sense, the Muslim world. "Absent that," he stated, "all issues could be resolved just as other nations have done."
While Meir-Levy was able to expound upon a variety of subjects, Bazian kept consulting his laptop, resulting in an array of flimsy talking points. Meir-Levy took note of the latter, accusing Bazian of engaging in "red herrings," and, at one point, stating coolly, "There's only one thing wrong with what you said. It's contrary to the historical record."
Proving his point, Bazian touted post-Zionist Israeli academic Ilan Pappé as an authority on the alleged "systematic expulsion of the Palestinians" from 1948 onward. Bazian's stated source for this outlandish claim was Pappé's book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Meir-Levy then conveyed a revealing admission the author made to him during a 2002 radio debate. As Pappé put it, "I care less about veracity because I have an agenda to advance."
The same could be said for Bazian, whose coterie of falsehoods included the assertion that Israel is depriving Palestinians of water. Bazian, Meir-Levy responded, must have "fallen prey to a misrepresentation." He then set the record straight on Israel's preservation of the water table and rebuilding of the West Bank and Gaza's sewage systems.
Following Bazian's condemnation of Israel's security barrier, Meir-Levy noted that the purportedly ominous wall is composed largely of chain-link fencing. The actual wall section, he pointed out, was built to prevent Palestinian snipers from shooting at Israelis and suicide bombers from getting into Israel. He concluded by stating the obvious: "If there was no terrorism, there would be no fence."
Taking a page from controversial Columbia University professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Bazian flatly denied Israel's archeological foundations. "There is no evidence of a major [ancient] Jewish civilization," he stated matter-of-factly.
When not promoting canards, Bazian tried to impress the audience with his credentials. He referenced his position at UC Berkeley several times for no apparent reason, and then went on to do the same with his 2004 appearance on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor." Yet, he managed to conveniently omit the fact that he was invited on the show to explain his aforementioned "intifada" comments.
In a further display of boorish behavior, Bazian, responding to Meir-Levy's favorable reference to Daniel Pipes, accused Pipes and, for good measure, David Horowitz, of being one of the "the drum beaters of Armageddon."
Despite such heated rhetoric, Meir-Levy retained his composure throughout the debate. In contrast, Bazian gave way to frustration and anger quite easily. At one point, he fumed, "This is not a discussion," and later threatened to end the debate early, exclaiming, "This is nonsense!" But the "nonsense" in question consisted entirely of facts, and it was clear that Bazian, a skilled propagandist when dealing with the uninformed, was no match for the knowledgeable. As Meir-Levy pointed out, "one side in a debate descends into hyperbole when losing."
Nevertheless, some of the students in the classroom were not ready to hear the facts, at least when it came to the bigotry and genocidal ambitions of the Palestinian "resistance." The idea that both sides of a conflict are not on the same moral footing is difficult for those indoctrinated by years of relativism to accept. Several students accused Meir-Levy of demonstrating a "lack of constructive criticism" and of being "overly negative" for his denunciation of what he termed, "Arab Jew-hatred." One young woman asked him, "Why do we have to focus on hatred?" before walking out. The majority, however, remained cordial and stuck it out until the end.
To the protestations of Bazian and his student supporters, Meir-Levy answered with a profound, yet simple, statement: "Peace begins with trust. Trust begins with truth."
Unfortunately, Middle East studies academics such as Bazian appear to have little interest in truth, and it is the students who suffer the consequences. That is why spirited debates such as this one are so important.
What is Cheney going to accomplish that Rice has not? Does GW really believe there is a chance to create peace between Abbas and Hamas, then how can it be expected to occur between Israel, Abbas and Hamas. When will politicians simply allow reality to sink in and quit supporting denying and lying nut cases and terrorist thugs? (See 1, 2, 3 and 4 below.)
The Eliot Spitzer episode will have spill-over effect on the Democrat's campaign for who becomes their nominee and I find it even more ironic that the New York Times will have been one of the main contributors.
Spitzer's fall will serve to resurrect all the bile associated with Bill's "amorous flings." It is really amazing how so many of the world's politicians have been brought down by sex revelations. I guess it is normal for politicians to think they can screw just about everything they touch.
Dick
1) Olmert and Barak deny ceasefire accord with Hamas - as does Hamas
Creating some confusion, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas insisted in Amman that a Gaza truce had been finalized. “Hamas wanted its leaders protected,” he remarked.
The first denial came from Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak Monday, March 10, when he sharply rebuffed reports of a truce deal with Hamas and the scaling back of military operations in the Gaza Strip.
“There is no accord, nor is one close,” he stressed. “We will continue to fight until missile fire and terrorist attacks end and arms smuggling into Gaza is cut down. We are committed to these three goals.”
Until these goals are attained, we will take any military steps we think fit. But it is no one-off operation. The tough challenges are still to come.”
The minister spoke during a tour of the Technology and Logistics Base at Tel Hashomer outside Tel Aviv.
Referring to the two-day slowdown of missile fire from Gaza, Barak said no one should complain if Sapir College and Ashkelon are free of Grad and Qassam missile fire. “The military will do everything necessary to complete its mission, even if it faces long and tough challenges.” He noted that all sorts of considerations affect military decisions, such as weather conditions and the accessibility of targets.
Asked to respond to the grim intelligence report of threats facing Israel in the year go come, which was submitted to the cabinet Sunday, Barak said: “Israel is still the strongest nation in the region.”
Military sources pose a couple of questions raised by the defense minister’s remarks:
1. Are they backed by prime minister Ehud Olmert? Political sources reply in the negative. The prime minister has developed his own two-track strategy: While publicly pledging a series of military knockout blows against Hamas, he is privately engaged in indirect dialogue with Hamas representatives and forcing the IDF to hold its fire. Barak is trying to correct the public’s low opinion of this performance.
2. He correctly stated that a ceasefire deal with Hamas is nowhere near but he did not explain that the delay is not the result of Israel’s tough bargaining position but because Hamas keeps on raising new demands. The latest, endorsed Monday by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, was that Israeli forces forego their counter-terror operations not only in Gaza, but on the West Bank too.
3. Israel is commonly accepted as the strongest nation in the region. However, the Olmert government’s military policies constantly transmit weak resolve and hesitancy. This was illustrated by its stop-go handling of the Palestinian missile escalation from Gaza. These tactics are eroding the IDF’s deterrent strength. If Israel concludes a ceasefire accord with Hamas from a position of weakness, the rockets and missiles will soon be flying again.
2) Arab leader denies temple ever existed.
The al-Aqsa mosque was never the site of a Jewish temple, Sheikh Raed Salah,
the head of the Islamic Movement's northern branch, said Monday during a
press conference he convened in Jerusalem to respond to voices calling for
the expulsion of Israeli residents of the city who participate in terror
activities against Israel.
"Those calling for the expulsion of Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem
are hysterical and stupid and belong in the trash can," Salah said at the
conference. He went on to deny any Israeli or Jewish historical claim to the city,
denying that there ever existed a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.
"The claims of the Jews are big lies and they have no right to any speck of
dust here," he said.
Israel, he claimed, was carrying out extensive digs under al-Aqsa mosque,
and was hiding destructive tunnels under the compound which had already
caused damage to the mosque and several houses in the Muslim Quarter.
"I think that we are at a critical time. We believe that al-Aqsa is in
danger and that it is under occupation, and we believe that Jerusalem is in
danger because it is under occupation," Salah said. "Jerusalem is not only
houses - it is faith, it is history, it is a culture, it is a present, a
future and an eternal right that we will not relinquish."
In January, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz filed an indictment against
Salah, charging him with incitement to violence and racism in a speech he
made last year protesting the archeological dig carried out at the Old
City's Mughrabi Gate.
During his sermon in Jerusalem's Wadi Joz neighborhood on February 16 of
last year, Salah urged supporters to start a third intifada in order to
"save al-Aksa Mosque, free Jerusalem and end the occupation."
Salah's speech also attacked Jews, saying, "They want to build their temple
at a time when our blood is on their clothes, on their doorsteps, in their
food and in their drinks. Our blood has passed from one 'general terrorist'
to another 'general terrorist.'"
He also said, "We are not those who ate bread dipped in children's blood."
3) Fear and gullibility as weapons
By Barry Rubin
Radical forces in the Middle East have rewritten the international rulebook in a way designed so they can't lose. That is, there is no easy response to their behavior and strategies. Even more worrisome is the widespread failure in the West even to realize this is happening.
Hamas and Hizbullah fire from among civilians and use civilian homes for military purposes; Syria or Iran deploy disinformation; radical regimes pretend moderation, and there are plenty of suckers to take the bait.
Extremism makes many believe that kind words and concessions can transform them; intransigence produces the response that if they won't give up, we must do so.
HERE ARE some new rules in which "we" represents such disparate forces as Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Iraqi insurgents, al-Qaida, Syria, the Taliban and others, including radical Arab nationalists.
These forces are not all alike or allied, but do often follow a parallel set of rules quite different from how international affairs have generally been conducted.
1. We'll never give up. No matter what you do, we will continue fighting. No matter what you offer, we will keep attacking you. Since you can't win, you should give up.
2. We're indifferent to any pressure you put on us. We will turn this pressure against you. Against us, deterrence does not exist; diplomacy does not convince.The carrot cannot buy us off, nor the stick make us yield. There are no solutions that can end the conflict. You cannot win militarily, nor make peace through diplomacy.
3. If you set economic sanctions, we'll say you are starving our people in an act of "collective punishment." Moreover, sanctions will cost you money and generate opposition among those who lose profits.
4. In response to military operations, we'll attack your civilians. Casualties will undermine your internal support. We will try to force you to kill civilians accidentally. We won't care, but will use this to persuade many that you are evil. Thus we will simultaneously murder your civilians and get you condemned as human rights violators.
5. If you try to isolate us we will use your own media and intellectuals against you. At times, we will hint at moderation and make promises of change. We won't do so enough to alienate our own followers, but enough to subvert yours. They will demand you engage us, which means you making concessions for nothing real in exchange.
6. Talking to our own people, we will foment hatred and demonize you. Speaking to the West, we will accuse you of fomenting hatred. We will hypocritically turn against you all the concepts you developed: racism, imperialism, failure to understand the "other," and so on. These concepts, of course, describe what we are doing, but your feelings of guilt, ignorance about us, and indifference to ideology will make you fail to notice that fact.
7. We will claim to be victims and "underdogs." Because you are stronger and more "advanced," that means you are the villains. We are not held responsible for our deeds, or expected to live up to the same standards. There will be no shortage of, to quote Lenin, "useful idiots" in your societies to help echo our propaganda.
8. Since our societies are weak, undemocratic and have few real moderates, you will have to make deals with phoney moderates and dictatorial regimes weakened by corruption and incompetence.
9. Even the less radical regimes, often our immediate adversaries, partly play into our hands. Due to popular pressure — plus their desire to mobilize support and distract attention from their own shortcomings — they trumpet Arab and Islamic solidarity. They denounce the West, blame all problems on Israel and revile America, even as they accept your aid. They glorify interpretations of Islam not too far from ours. They cheer Iraqi insurgents, Hizbullah, and Hamas. They don't struggle against Iran getting nuclear weapons. They lay the basis for our mass support and recruits.
10. There is no diplomatic solution for you, though you yearn to find one. There is no military solution for you, whether you try that or not. You love life, we love death; you are divided, we are united; you want to get back to material satisfaction, we are dedicated revolutionaries.
We will outlast you.
Finally, our greatest weapon is that you truly don't understand all the points made above. You are taught, informed, and often led by people who simply don't comprehend what an alternative, highly ideological, revolutionary world view means.
In effect, we will try, and will often succeed, to turn your "best and brightest" into the worst and dimmest who think you can persuade us, who blame you for the conflicts, or expect that we will alter our course. We will use those mistakes against you.
THE ABOVE analysis seems pessimistic, but is actually the opposite. Most of this strategy's power is based on spreading illusions, depending on gullibility. Much of the rest relies on the enemy's psychological weaknesses.
In a sustained conflict, the radicals' technological and organizational weaknesses, along with their mistaken assessments and unrealistic ideology, will bring inevitable defeat. They will lose even if they never surrender. They can kill people, but not overcome societies determined to grow, prosper, and survive.
The keys to a successful response are steadfastness and understanding. To paraphrase Francis Bacon and Franklin Roosevelt, there is nothing to fear but fear — and gullibility — itself.
4) The Arab/Israeli Conflict Debate
by Cinnamon Stillwell
A Santa Clara University course optimistically titled, "The Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes," was the setting for a February 26 academic debate on one of the world's most intractable disputes: The Arab/Israeli conflict.
San Jose State University Middle East history lecturer, David Meir-Levy, represented the pro-Israeli side of the equation, and UC Berkeley Islamic studies lecturer, Hatem Bazian, argued the pro-Palestinian position. Interestingly, each embodied the nationality of his respective side of the debate. David Meir-Levy is an American-born Israeli who once served in the Israeli Defense Forces, while Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian native.
Bazian is notorious for his transparently biased approach to the Arab/Israeli conflict. His call for "an intifada in this country" at a 2004 San Francisco anti-war protest is just one of many radical statements. More of an activist than an academic, Bazian personifies the politicization of Middle East studies today.
Meir-Levy, on the other hand, is known for his scrupulous scholarship on the subject of Middle East history. His recent book, History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression," as described by Middle East Forum director Daniel Pipes, "applies great common sense where demagogues and ignorami too often dominate."
Throughout the debate, Meir-Levy succeeded in turning history or, rather, the inaccurate historical narrative popular on college campuses, upside down, exposing the fallacy of Bazian's arguments in the process.
Bazian's approach was to vilify Israel and paint the Palestinians as the aggrieved party. But Meir-Levy demonstrated in no uncertain terms that a Palestinian state could have emerged many times over if not for the anti-Semitism that has subsumed their society and, in a larger sense, the Muslim world. "Absent that," he stated, "all issues could be resolved just as other nations have done."
While Meir-Levy was able to expound upon a variety of subjects, Bazian kept consulting his laptop, resulting in an array of flimsy talking points. Meir-Levy took note of the latter, accusing Bazian of engaging in "red herrings," and, at one point, stating coolly, "There's only one thing wrong with what you said. It's contrary to the historical record."
Proving his point, Bazian touted post-Zionist Israeli academic Ilan Pappé as an authority on the alleged "systematic expulsion of the Palestinians" from 1948 onward. Bazian's stated source for this outlandish claim was Pappé's book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Meir-Levy then conveyed a revealing admission the author made to him during a 2002 radio debate. As Pappé put it, "I care less about veracity because I have an agenda to advance."
The same could be said for Bazian, whose coterie of falsehoods included the assertion that Israel is depriving Palestinians of water. Bazian, Meir-Levy responded, must have "fallen prey to a misrepresentation." He then set the record straight on Israel's preservation of the water table and rebuilding of the West Bank and Gaza's sewage systems.
Following Bazian's condemnation of Israel's security barrier, Meir-Levy noted that the purportedly ominous wall is composed largely of chain-link fencing. The actual wall section, he pointed out, was built to prevent Palestinian snipers from shooting at Israelis and suicide bombers from getting into Israel. He concluded by stating the obvious: "If there was no terrorism, there would be no fence."
Taking a page from controversial Columbia University professor, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Bazian flatly denied Israel's archeological foundations. "There is no evidence of a major [ancient] Jewish civilization," he stated matter-of-factly.
When not promoting canards, Bazian tried to impress the audience with his credentials. He referenced his position at UC Berkeley several times for no apparent reason, and then went on to do the same with his 2004 appearance on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor." Yet, he managed to conveniently omit the fact that he was invited on the show to explain his aforementioned "intifada" comments.
In a further display of boorish behavior, Bazian, responding to Meir-Levy's favorable reference to Daniel Pipes, accused Pipes and, for good measure, David Horowitz, of being one of the "the drum beaters of Armageddon."
Despite such heated rhetoric, Meir-Levy retained his composure throughout the debate. In contrast, Bazian gave way to frustration and anger quite easily. At one point, he fumed, "This is not a discussion," and later threatened to end the debate early, exclaiming, "This is nonsense!" But the "nonsense" in question consisted entirely of facts, and it was clear that Bazian, a skilled propagandist when dealing with the uninformed, was no match for the knowledgeable. As Meir-Levy pointed out, "one side in a debate descends into hyperbole when losing."
Nevertheless, some of the students in the classroom were not ready to hear the facts, at least when it came to the bigotry and genocidal ambitions of the Palestinian "resistance." The idea that both sides of a conflict are not on the same moral footing is difficult for those indoctrinated by years of relativism to accept. Several students accused Meir-Levy of demonstrating a "lack of constructive criticism" and of being "overly negative" for his denunciation of what he termed, "Arab Jew-hatred." One young woman asked him, "Why do we have to focus on hatred?" before walking out. The majority, however, remained cordial and stuck it out until the end.
To the protestations of Bazian and his student supporters, Meir-Levy answered with a profound, yet simple, statement: "Peace begins with trust. Trust begins with truth."
Unfortunately, Middle East studies academics such as Bazian appear to have little interest in truth, and it is the students who suffer the consequences. That is why spirited debates such as this one are so important.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Elliot "Mess" Trips Over a Prostitution Ring!
Ne'eman offers his thoughts regarding Hamas and what Israel should do. Paralells my own thinking. (See 1 below.)
Iraq not the only place where terrorists plant IED's. And Olmert stands mute. (See 2 below.)
Avi Dichter proposes a solution that displays anger more than rational thinking. You cannot expel citizens because they are murderers. (See 3 below.)
Sent to me by one of my memo readers and I have not verified. But it reflects a certain amount of hubris that was verified by Spitzer's downfall today. The arrogance of Spitzer was demonstrated again by his press comment that politics is about ideas and not about people.His prosecutorial power has now boomeranged but he does not even comprehend that it has. I always say you should not drink your own bathwater. If Spitzer survives by not resigning it will be one more indictment against the decline in our values and standards. (See 4 below.)
Stratfor discusses China's concerns about its various ethnics and its significance to the upcoming Olympics. (See 5 below.)
I am biased but our daughter's wedding was great and I believe all enjoyed themselves. Certainly we did.
Dick
1) Closing in on Hamas ?
By Yisrael Ne'eman
Last week’s two day IDF operation in the northern Gaza Strip was a temporary, local, limited success but obviously raised macro questions concerning the overall government objectives in its policies towards the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas. There are those who demand that Israel engage in discussions with Hamas to arrange a “tahadiya” (period of calm) or even a “hudna” (Islamic cease-fire). On the opposing side others demand a full offensive to destroy the Hamas political/terror infrastructure in Gaza. And as usual, until a well thought out, well designed policy is implemented, government decision makers will decide on limited engagements and diplomatic activity to weaken the Hamas as much as possible. This middle road has its ups and downs, but one thing is for sure, there is a continual escalation with each new round of fighting. After U.S Sec. of State Rice’s visit here there is talk of arranging an overall cease-fire just as Israel is said to be planning a major offensive operation into Gaza.
The latest round broke out when five newly trained Palestinian explosives and terror experts were killed when their vehicle was rocketed by the Israeli air force last week. They had received training in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, returning to Gaza to spread their newly acquired knowledge. The Hamas responded by massive rocket attacks against Sderot and the western Negev (as usual) and then added Grad rocket attacks against Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 residents. Israel’s two day operation left 120 Palestinians dead (some 80% actively involved in battling Israel) while two Israeli soldiers and one civilian died.
Hamas has continued with its vows of exterminating Israel (just read the Hamas covenant). In interviews with Hamas activists speaking from Gaza to the Voice of Israel radio station it was made clear that Hamas wants a “tahadiya” and/or “hudna”. Some spoke of five years while others mentioned ten, but all Hamas spokesmen agreed that when it was over Israel was obligated to agree to the Hamas terms or face another round of escalation. In those intervening years we all know the Iranian sponsored Hamas will rearm and retrain as is expected during a “hudna” or Islamic cease-fire. They themselves do not deny it. Many good hearted people in Israel and the West see Hamas only as a Palestinian issue to be solved through compromise and common sense since Hamas does “acknowledge” Israel’s existence. However, Hamas (which is one wing of the international Moslem Brotherhood) is not posturing when they say they will never accept a two-state solution, meaning they fully reject Israel’s right to exist. In World War II the Nazis certainly recognized the existence of Jews, but denied their right to exist. There is little difference. It makes no sense to negotiate the terms of one’s destruction.
The government is preparing for a full-scale invasion of Gaza, or so it seems. To capture the entire Strip will cause quite a few casualties, mostly on the Palestinian side. Furthermore, Israel can be expected to lose the media war (as usual). Hamas will use human shields more than ever. This past week the Israeli public was made aware of the TV broadcasts by Hamas during the weekend conflict when a call was put out for civilians to go to the homes of Hamas activists to act as potential civilian casualties (reported on Channel 1) in an effort to deter Israeli attacks (they know Israel monitors their broadcasts). Ludicrous as it may sound, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is consulting experts on international and military law in order to know exactly under what circumstances Israel will be allowed to take out the Hamas leadership, terrorists or rockets being firing from heavily packed civilian areas. Knocking out the source of enemy fire was easy in yesteryear, today it is a legal entanglement where the terrorists who hold their own civilians hostage hope to gain immunity from return fire, while the anti-terrorists are condemned for defending themselves. Orwell would be pleased as we have now gone one step behind “double-speak” and “double-think”.
The Hamas continuation of rocket fire into Israel makes its destruction as a terror organization an imperative. Were Hamas only a political party not interested in forcing Islam beyond its borders, Israel and Gaza could live in “an under the table” mutually recognized, non-belligerent, non-peace. This is far from the case. As Likud MK Yuval Steinetz points out, Hamas and Gaza have become a forward Iranian position for raining down rockets on Israel, even worse than Hezbollah. Kadima MK Otniel Schneller agrees but believes Israel must play the diplomatic game as determined by the U.S and European Union. This includes roping Egypt and the “moderate Arab states” into the equation. Steinetz believes Egypt and the “moderates” to be unreliable and that Israel must say no to Rice & Co.
Despite diplomatic initiatives, eventually Israel will need to fully crush Hamas. But is it possible? Several steps must be taken:
* Militarily Israel needs to physically divide up Gaza, holding the open areas between the major urban zones of Gaza City/Jabalya, Khan Yunis and Rafiah while surrounding other smaller population centers. This cuts north-south traffic of men and military supplies. Rockets will still be fired at Israel but spotters can help the air force and ground forces pinpoint the launchers for destruction. Leaflets and Arabic radio broadcasts must explain to the civilian population the dangers of being in the vicinity of anyone firing at Israel since return fire is assured. Every night there must be dozens of incursions, forays, arrests and the destruction of Hamas military installations. This same policy was used in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) to break Yasir Arafat’s terror offensive from 2001 – 04 and proved successful.
* As for the Philadelphi line on the border between Gazan and Egyptian Rafiah it becomes irrelevant since Israel’s military presence between Rafiah and Khan Yunis will halt Palestinian movement northwards from the southern Gaza Strip. Diplomatic pressure must be applied to Egypt by the U.S and European Union to halt terrorists and munitions from arriving in Egyptian Rafiah. This needs to be done west of Egyptian Rafiah inside of Sinai. Hamas with Iranian support is increasingly becoming a strategic threat to Egypt by stirring hopes in the opposition Islamist Moslem Brotherhood, so maybe now Cairo will actually do something.
* For the record Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), his government and the Palestinian Legislature must be presented with the legal responsibilities they have taken upon themselves as elected officials. They can then be expected to fail in any initiative they take. This leaves Israel free to continue military actions.
* Within six months Egypt is to replace the Israeli electricity supply to Gaza. Water must be the next stage along with an arrangement for crossings from Sinai to include civilian supplies only. It has been suggested that the European inspectors be stationed on the Egyptian side of the border.
* How long should Israel stay in a divided up Gaza Strip? Unfortunately it might be a while, but the army should not sit in stationary positions but rather engage in counter terror activities and remain on the move. Only road blocks in the open areas need to be somewhat stationary (they can be moved from place to place at will). The army can move out and then return, if necessary.
* Last but certainly not least, Israel must fight the media war with full explanations concerning the Hamas/Iranian/Hezbollah/Syrian alliance. Excerpts from speeches and writings by leaders of all four entities (Khomeini, Ahmedinajad, Nasrallah, Assad, Mashal, Haniya, etc.) must become well known and in particular the West must become familiar with the Hamas Covenant and its explicit demands for Israel’s destruction and its overt anti-Semitism.
All of the above should significantly cut back on Hamas rocket attacks and attempts at infiltration into Israel while solidifying an anti-Hamas diplomatic front. With much less arms and munitions arriving, Hamas will be greatly weakened even though one should not expect their imminent collapse. Any suggestion of a “hudna” is unacceptable.
Since Israel is at war with Iran and its proxies, government policy must respond in kind.
2) Sgt. Liran Banai, 20, from Ashkelon dies of his wound.
The Givati Brigade sergeant was critically injured on March 8 by a roadside bomb which killed another member of their routine patrol of the Israel-Gaza border outside Kissufim.
Altogether 10 Israelis died last week from Palestinian terrorist attacks.
Hundreds of bombing devices planted by Palestinians are routinely defused on the Gaza-Israel border every month. Some are laid to trap Israel border patrols at the rate of five per day.
3)Expel Palestinian terrorists from Jerusalem, says security minister Dichter
Israel’s internal security minister Avi Dichter commented after a resident of Jerusalem’s Jebal Makaber shot dead eight yeshiva students Thursday that Palestinian terrorists ought to be expelled to Palestinian territory. He intends seeking to amend the law to make this possible because, said the minister, jail is no deterrent to these terrorists.
Jerusalem’s 240,000 Arabs have permanent Israeli residency status and enjoy state social security benefits and medical care as well as freedom of movement in the country.
Dichter also called for the nation to honor the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in its hour of grief and praised the religious Zionist community’s exemplary contribution to national security and advancement.
In an interview Saturday night, the internal security minister declared a third Palestinian “intifada” would not be permitted to erupt. He spoke after a day in which traffic on Israel’s main highways from Tel Aviv to Haifa and Galilee was stoned repeatedly stoned. Last week, an Israeli Arab protest rally took place at Umm Al Fahm under the slogan: “Kill the Jews.” Two municipal workers were rescued from a lynch bomb in Jerusalem last week.
4)Who said it?
1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
A. Karl Marx
B. Adolph Hitler
C. Joseph Stalin
D. None of the above
2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few...and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity."
A. Lenin
B. Mussolini
C. Idi Amin
D. None of the Above
3) "(We)...can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people."
A. Nikita Khrushev
B. Jose f Goebbels
C. Boris Yeltsin
D. None of the above
4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own...in order to create this common ground."
A. Mao Tse Dung
B. Hugo Chavez
C. Kim Jong Il
D. None of the above
5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
A. Karl Marx
B. Lenin
C. Molotov
D. None of the above
6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched."
A. Pinochet
B. Milosevic
C. Saddam Hussein
D. None of the above
Answers:
(1) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004
(2) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007
(3) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(4) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(5) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(6) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005
5) Geopolitical Diary: Beijing Eyes the Periphery
Chinese media reported on Sunday that air marshals foiled a March 7 attempt to crash a China Southern Airlines plane flying to Beijing from Urumqi in Xinjiang province. The chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, Nur Bekri, said on the sidelines of the ongoing national parliament session in Beijing that some people on the flight had attempted to “create an air disaster.” A spokesperson for China Southern Airlines told the official news agency Xinhua that “it’s up to the police” to determine whether it was a terrorist attack. Chinese media have hinted that the attempted attack was carried out by ethnic Uighur Muslim separatists from Xinjiang.
China has been warning for several years that the biggest threat to the upcoming Olympics — to be held in Beijing later this year — comes from Xinjiang’s Uighur militants, especially the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) or other East Turkistan militants. On Sunday, Wang Lequan, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, emphasized this threat when he said on the sidelines of the parliament session that in January security forces had smashed a Uighur militant cell in Urumqi that was plotting an attack against the Olympics. Wang added that the government would strike first against the “three evil forces”: terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists.
The coincidental timing of the airline incident and the announcement of the new details from the January raid raises some suspicions. Both come just after Australian tour guides traveling by bus were briefly taken captive by a bomb-wielding local from Xian — an incident that ended when Chinese security forces shot the hijacker. That incident showcased some of the broader security threats present in China — ones Beijing would rather people not focus on ahead of the surge of tourists coming for the Olympics. Rather, Beijing has kept up a steady drumbeat of warnings about militant Islamists from Xinjiang. And China has exploited the Western fear of any Islamist militant threat to avoid criticism for the aggressive security measures being put in place for the Olympics.
The frequency with which Beijing has cried “Uighur” in recent months might have more to do with politics than with a genuine security threat, but it emphasizes the central government’s long-standing concerns with China’s ethnic minorities. China’s core — the home of the Han Chinese who currently rule the country — comprises the area around the three major rivers in the East: the Yellow, Yangtze and Pearl. This fertile area has long provided the food and industry for the various Chinese states that have emerged over the centuries. But this same area, which nurtures a sedentary society, has always been vulnerable to invasion by the various nomadic peoples around it. Thus, over time, China has expanded its borders to absorb a de facto buffer zone — including Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.
These buffer states provided security for China, but also introduced a new security problem for the country: control of the ethnic minorities. Incorporating the buffer zones into China, the central government found itself constantly struggling to maintain control over minority groups that were the majority in their own lands, distant from the core. The central leadership sent military units made up of different ethnicities out to the buffer territories to provide control and security, or carried out transmigration policies, seeking to thin out the percentages of the minority populations.
Despite all of this, the central government never really has integrated the minority populations into the Chinese populace, and lingering prejudices and inequalities have been matched by long-lasting resentments and occasional uprisings. In China, additional ethnicities were added to the country, not primarily by immigration, but rather by conquest of surrounding territories — and these ethnicities were never assimilated into a greater Chinese culture. (This is in stark contrast to the United States, where immigration brought in new minority populations which were steadily blended into an American identity.)
This lack of integration has left the core of China with a constant sense of insecurity that continues to be reflected today in its national policies. It also leaves China less concerned overall about security threats from abroad than about domestic ones — whether they are real or imagined.
Iraq not the only place where terrorists plant IED's. And Olmert stands mute. (See 2 below.)
Avi Dichter proposes a solution that displays anger more than rational thinking. You cannot expel citizens because they are murderers. (See 3 below.)
Sent to me by one of my memo readers and I have not verified. But it reflects a certain amount of hubris that was verified by Spitzer's downfall today. The arrogance of Spitzer was demonstrated again by his press comment that politics is about ideas and not about people.His prosecutorial power has now boomeranged but he does not even comprehend that it has. I always say you should not drink your own bathwater. If Spitzer survives by not resigning it will be one more indictment against the decline in our values and standards. (See 4 below.)
Stratfor discusses China's concerns about its various ethnics and its significance to the upcoming Olympics. (See 5 below.)
I am biased but our daughter's wedding was great and I believe all enjoyed themselves. Certainly we did.
Dick
1) Closing in on Hamas ?
By Yisrael Ne'eman
Last week’s two day IDF operation in the northern Gaza Strip was a temporary, local, limited success but obviously raised macro questions concerning the overall government objectives in its policies towards the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas. There are those who demand that Israel engage in discussions with Hamas to arrange a “tahadiya” (period of calm) or even a “hudna” (Islamic cease-fire). On the opposing side others demand a full offensive to destroy the Hamas political/terror infrastructure in Gaza. And as usual, until a well thought out, well designed policy is implemented, government decision makers will decide on limited engagements and diplomatic activity to weaken the Hamas as much as possible. This middle road has its ups and downs, but one thing is for sure, there is a continual escalation with each new round of fighting. After U.S Sec. of State Rice’s visit here there is talk of arranging an overall cease-fire just as Israel is said to be planning a major offensive operation into Gaza.
The latest round broke out when five newly trained Palestinian explosives and terror experts were killed when their vehicle was rocketed by the Israeli air force last week. They had received training in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, returning to Gaza to spread their newly acquired knowledge. The Hamas responded by massive rocket attacks against Sderot and the western Negev (as usual) and then added Grad rocket attacks against Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 residents. Israel’s two day operation left 120 Palestinians dead (some 80% actively involved in battling Israel) while two Israeli soldiers and one civilian died.
Hamas has continued with its vows of exterminating Israel (just read the Hamas covenant). In interviews with Hamas activists speaking from Gaza to the Voice of Israel radio station it was made clear that Hamas wants a “tahadiya” and/or “hudna”. Some spoke of five years while others mentioned ten, but all Hamas spokesmen agreed that when it was over Israel was obligated to agree to the Hamas terms or face another round of escalation. In those intervening years we all know the Iranian sponsored Hamas will rearm and retrain as is expected during a “hudna” or Islamic cease-fire. They themselves do not deny it. Many good hearted people in Israel and the West see Hamas only as a Palestinian issue to be solved through compromise and common sense since Hamas does “acknowledge” Israel’s existence. However, Hamas (which is one wing of the international Moslem Brotherhood) is not posturing when they say they will never accept a two-state solution, meaning they fully reject Israel’s right to exist. In World War II the Nazis certainly recognized the existence of Jews, but denied their right to exist. There is little difference. It makes no sense to negotiate the terms of one’s destruction.
The government is preparing for a full-scale invasion of Gaza, or so it seems. To capture the entire Strip will cause quite a few casualties, mostly on the Palestinian side. Furthermore, Israel can be expected to lose the media war (as usual). Hamas will use human shields more than ever. This past week the Israeli public was made aware of the TV broadcasts by Hamas during the weekend conflict when a call was put out for civilians to go to the homes of Hamas activists to act as potential civilian casualties (reported on Channel 1) in an effort to deter Israeli attacks (they know Israel monitors their broadcasts). Ludicrous as it may sound, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is consulting experts on international and military law in order to know exactly under what circumstances Israel will be allowed to take out the Hamas leadership, terrorists or rockets being firing from heavily packed civilian areas. Knocking out the source of enemy fire was easy in yesteryear, today it is a legal entanglement where the terrorists who hold their own civilians hostage hope to gain immunity from return fire, while the anti-terrorists are condemned for defending themselves. Orwell would be pleased as we have now gone one step behind “double-speak” and “double-think”.
The Hamas continuation of rocket fire into Israel makes its destruction as a terror organization an imperative. Were Hamas only a political party not interested in forcing Islam beyond its borders, Israel and Gaza could live in “an under the table” mutually recognized, non-belligerent, non-peace. This is far from the case. As Likud MK Yuval Steinetz points out, Hamas and Gaza have become a forward Iranian position for raining down rockets on Israel, even worse than Hezbollah. Kadima MK Otniel Schneller agrees but believes Israel must play the diplomatic game as determined by the U.S and European Union. This includes roping Egypt and the “moderate Arab states” into the equation. Steinetz believes Egypt and the “moderates” to be unreliable and that Israel must say no to Rice & Co.
Despite diplomatic initiatives, eventually Israel will need to fully crush Hamas. But is it possible? Several steps must be taken:
* Militarily Israel needs to physically divide up Gaza, holding the open areas between the major urban zones of Gaza City/Jabalya, Khan Yunis and Rafiah while surrounding other smaller population centers. This cuts north-south traffic of men and military supplies. Rockets will still be fired at Israel but spotters can help the air force and ground forces pinpoint the launchers for destruction. Leaflets and Arabic radio broadcasts must explain to the civilian population the dangers of being in the vicinity of anyone firing at Israel since return fire is assured. Every night there must be dozens of incursions, forays, arrests and the destruction of Hamas military installations. This same policy was used in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) to break Yasir Arafat’s terror offensive from 2001 – 04 and proved successful.
* As for the Philadelphi line on the border between Gazan and Egyptian Rafiah it becomes irrelevant since Israel’s military presence between Rafiah and Khan Yunis will halt Palestinian movement northwards from the southern Gaza Strip. Diplomatic pressure must be applied to Egypt by the U.S and European Union to halt terrorists and munitions from arriving in Egyptian Rafiah. This needs to be done west of Egyptian Rafiah inside of Sinai. Hamas with Iranian support is increasingly becoming a strategic threat to Egypt by stirring hopes in the opposition Islamist Moslem Brotherhood, so maybe now Cairo will actually do something.
* For the record Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), his government and the Palestinian Legislature must be presented with the legal responsibilities they have taken upon themselves as elected officials. They can then be expected to fail in any initiative they take. This leaves Israel free to continue military actions.
* Within six months Egypt is to replace the Israeli electricity supply to Gaza. Water must be the next stage along with an arrangement for crossings from Sinai to include civilian supplies only. It has been suggested that the European inspectors be stationed on the Egyptian side of the border.
* How long should Israel stay in a divided up Gaza Strip? Unfortunately it might be a while, but the army should not sit in stationary positions but rather engage in counter terror activities and remain on the move. Only road blocks in the open areas need to be somewhat stationary (they can be moved from place to place at will). The army can move out and then return, if necessary.
* Last but certainly not least, Israel must fight the media war with full explanations concerning the Hamas/Iranian/Hezbollah/Syrian alliance. Excerpts from speeches and writings by leaders of all four entities (Khomeini, Ahmedinajad, Nasrallah, Assad, Mashal, Haniya, etc.) must become well known and in particular the West must become familiar with the Hamas Covenant and its explicit demands for Israel’s destruction and its overt anti-Semitism.
All of the above should significantly cut back on Hamas rocket attacks and attempts at infiltration into Israel while solidifying an anti-Hamas diplomatic front. With much less arms and munitions arriving, Hamas will be greatly weakened even though one should not expect their imminent collapse. Any suggestion of a “hudna” is unacceptable.
Since Israel is at war with Iran and its proxies, government policy must respond in kind.
2) Sgt. Liran Banai, 20, from Ashkelon dies of his wound.
The Givati Brigade sergeant was critically injured on March 8 by a roadside bomb which killed another member of their routine patrol of the Israel-Gaza border outside Kissufim.
Altogether 10 Israelis died last week from Palestinian terrorist attacks.
Hundreds of bombing devices planted by Palestinians are routinely defused on the Gaza-Israel border every month. Some are laid to trap Israel border patrols at the rate of five per day.
3)Expel Palestinian terrorists from Jerusalem, says security minister Dichter
Israel’s internal security minister Avi Dichter commented after a resident of Jerusalem’s Jebal Makaber shot dead eight yeshiva students Thursday that Palestinian terrorists ought to be expelled to Palestinian territory. He intends seeking to amend the law to make this possible because, said the minister, jail is no deterrent to these terrorists.
Jerusalem’s 240,000 Arabs have permanent Israeli residency status and enjoy state social security benefits and medical care as well as freedom of movement in the country.
Dichter also called for the nation to honor the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in its hour of grief and praised the religious Zionist community’s exemplary contribution to national security and advancement.
In an interview Saturday night, the internal security minister declared a third Palestinian “intifada” would not be permitted to erupt. He spoke after a day in which traffic on Israel’s main highways from Tel Aviv to Haifa and Galilee was stoned repeatedly stoned. Last week, an Israeli Arab protest rally took place at Umm Al Fahm under the slogan: “Kill the Jews.” Two municipal workers were rescued from a lynch bomb in Jerusalem last week.
4)Who said it?
1) "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
A. Karl Marx
B. Adolph Hitler
C. Joseph Stalin
D. None of the above
2) "It's time for a new beginning, for an end to government of the few, by the few, and for the few...and to replace it with shared responsibility for shared prosperity."
A. Lenin
B. Mussolini
C. Idi Amin
D. None of the Above
3) "(We)...can't just let business as usual go on, and that means something has to be taken away from some people."
A. Nikita Khrushev
B. Jose f Goebbels
C. Boris Yeltsin
D. None of the above
4) "We have to build a political consensus and that requires people to give up a little bit of their own...in order to create this common ground."
A. Mao Tse Dung
B. Hugo Chavez
C. Kim Jong Il
D. None of the above
5) "I certainly think the free-market has failed."
A. Karl Marx
B. Lenin
C. Molotov
D. None of the above
6) "I think it's time to send a clear message to what has become the most profitable sector in (the) entire economy that they are being watched."
A. Pinochet
B. Milosevic
C. Saddam Hussein
D. None of the above
Answers:
(1) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/29/2004
(2) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 5/29/2007
(3) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(4) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(5) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 6/4/2007
(6) D. None of the above. Statement was made by Hillary Clinton 9/2/2005
5) Geopolitical Diary: Beijing Eyes the Periphery
Chinese media reported on Sunday that air marshals foiled a March 7 attempt to crash a China Southern Airlines plane flying to Beijing from Urumqi in Xinjiang province. The chairman of the Xinjiang regional government, Nur Bekri, said on the sidelines of the ongoing national parliament session in Beijing that some people on the flight had attempted to “create an air disaster.” A spokesperson for China Southern Airlines told the official news agency Xinhua that “it’s up to the police” to determine whether it was a terrorist attack. Chinese media have hinted that the attempted attack was carried out by ethnic Uighur Muslim separatists from Xinjiang.
China has been warning for several years that the biggest threat to the upcoming Olympics — to be held in Beijing later this year — comes from Xinjiang’s Uighur militants, especially the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) or other East Turkistan militants. On Sunday, Wang Lequan, the Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, emphasized this threat when he said on the sidelines of the parliament session that in January security forces had smashed a Uighur militant cell in Urumqi that was plotting an attack against the Olympics. Wang added that the government would strike first against the “three evil forces”: terrorists, saboteurs and secessionists.
The coincidental timing of the airline incident and the announcement of the new details from the January raid raises some suspicions. Both come just after Australian tour guides traveling by bus were briefly taken captive by a bomb-wielding local from Xian — an incident that ended when Chinese security forces shot the hijacker. That incident showcased some of the broader security threats present in China — ones Beijing would rather people not focus on ahead of the surge of tourists coming for the Olympics. Rather, Beijing has kept up a steady drumbeat of warnings about militant Islamists from Xinjiang. And China has exploited the Western fear of any Islamist militant threat to avoid criticism for the aggressive security measures being put in place for the Olympics.
The frequency with which Beijing has cried “Uighur” in recent months might have more to do with politics than with a genuine security threat, but it emphasizes the central government’s long-standing concerns with China’s ethnic minorities. China’s core — the home of the Han Chinese who currently rule the country — comprises the area around the three major rivers in the East: the Yellow, Yangtze and Pearl. This fertile area has long provided the food and industry for the various Chinese states that have emerged over the centuries. But this same area, which nurtures a sedentary society, has always been vulnerable to invasion by the various nomadic peoples around it. Thus, over time, China has expanded its borders to absorb a de facto buffer zone — including Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.
These buffer states provided security for China, but also introduced a new security problem for the country: control of the ethnic minorities. Incorporating the buffer zones into China, the central government found itself constantly struggling to maintain control over minority groups that were the majority in their own lands, distant from the core. The central leadership sent military units made up of different ethnicities out to the buffer territories to provide control and security, or carried out transmigration policies, seeking to thin out the percentages of the minority populations.
Despite all of this, the central government never really has integrated the minority populations into the Chinese populace, and lingering prejudices and inequalities have been matched by long-lasting resentments and occasional uprisings. In China, additional ethnicities were added to the country, not primarily by immigration, but rather by conquest of surrounding territories — and these ethnicities were never assimilated into a greater Chinese culture. (This is in stark contrast to the United States, where immigration brought in new minority populations which were steadily blended into an American identity.)
This lack of integration has left the core of China with a constant sense of insecurity that continues to be reflected today in its national policies. It also leaves China less concerned overall about security threats from abroad than about domestic ones — whether they are real or imagined.
Monday, March 3, 2008
David Frum Points The Way but Who is Listening?
Yair Lapid discusses the Arab and Muslim's genesis of hate. (See 1 below.)
I am now reading David Frum's: "Comeback" It is his prescription of how the Republican Party can wean its way back and away from GW's schizoid management. I use the word "schizoid" because, as Frum points out, GW announced policies that did not accord with his actions, ie. Axis of Evils would not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons and the list continues.
Frum wrote i"Comeback" in order to lay out a program that takes the Republican Party away from the Reagan Era, reshapes its message so it can regain its political footing. He begins with a discussion of demographic trends that are unfavorable for Republicans and then states Republicans must address current voter concerns and move away from past issues which have either been addressed and or resolved or which no longer rate high on the concern list. They must cease defending the indefensible. Frum then argues Republicans must offer effective solutions to these concerns and in convincing ways.
In the matter of education, Frum points out, voters seemingly favor Democrats because they have been convinced more money must be thrown at the problem. In fact, Democrat allegiance to unions and the resulting lack of lack of competitiveness, backed by a slew of statistics support the regressiveness of Democrat solutions which,in fact, do great harm to the very underclass Democrats profess they want to help.
The same is true with respect to health care. Frum believes Democrats want eventually for the government to run health care and he again cites statistics comparing our system versus that in France, Germany, Britain and Canada leaving no doubt that ours is better. However,health care costs are skyrocketing for a variety of reasons, many of which are government and state induced. Furthermore, he demonstrates that while wages of workers have increased, health care costs have eaten more.
Price controls do not work and government monopolies bear hidden costs and result in both poorer delivery and inferior health care. Open competition and moving away from a distorted system is the only solution and Republicans should be foursquare in proposing these type of solutions. Many states mandate everyone have car insurance and the same should go for health insurance purchased from the private sector under competitive conditions.
Frum de-myths Democrat buzz words such as managed health care calling it what it really is - government health monopoly.
What is ironic is every time government intrudes it historically fails or makes the problem worse and yet most liberals offer more of the same as the way out of the problem. I repeat what Phil Gramm always said: "When going in the wrong direction increasing the speed is not the solution."
I still believe if either Clinton or Obama become president the nation, after four years, will be ready to re-embrace Republicans regardless of anything Frum might prescribe.
The situation then could become solutions to problems that will have become even more intractable by having been made worse.
Our possible next Commander in Chief needs a good bit of OJT regarding military matters. (See 2 below.)
Iran gets slapped with more sanctions made out of pasta. But then read 4 which is in accord with what I have been posting. GW's boastful words will prove empty once again and Iran will be allowed to retain its nuclear status for a promise as empty as N Korea's. (See 3 and 4 below.)
Has Obama gone off the charts in suggesting American Arab families are being rounded up and threatened? (See 5 below.)
Olmert pays off Rice and remains confused. Foreign opinions on what Israel should do vary from protecting itself but not reacting precipitously to negotiate with Hamas. Meanwhile,Olmert and company remain as deer in front of car headlights. (See 6 below.)
Rice arrives and spreads the word. (See 7 below.)
Caroline Glick sees Olmert as I do - Sound and Fury Equals Incompetence. (See 8 below.)
Dick
1) The Mystery of Hate
by Yair Lapid
Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of
dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including
the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in
1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him
and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived. All
this, and one cannot figure it out.
And its not only what happened but all that did not happen -
hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened,
roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from
millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the
above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of
where it all started:
Why do they hate us so much?
I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with
us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives.
Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious
that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We
all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal
way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain
the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least
be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means
that are used to run it by.
It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan
Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his
life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he
has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he
has no reason to fight?
Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map (especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center
and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and
Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the
peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push
their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to stay a
pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to
finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own
country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In
Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to
their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in
Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get
the energy to hate?
This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true
that it is a religious matter but even religious people make their
choices. The Koran (along with the Shariaa - the Muslim parallel to the
Jewish Halacha) consists of thousands of laws, why is it that we occupy
them so much?
There are so many countries who gave them much better reasons to be
angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the
colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the
Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the
British, they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We
did not even try, so how come we are the enemy?
And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers then
where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that
were evacuated? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a
school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern
surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers, why
do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?
Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism
taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something
about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone
wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little
country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others.
We didn't even ask a lot for it. Israel is spread on a smaller
territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no
minerals, without settling on another existing state's territory. Most
of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from
anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we
established them. The other katyusas landed on territories over which
no one ever questioned our right with regards to them. In Haifa there
were Jews already in the 3rd century BC and Tiberias was the place
where the last Sanhedrin sat, so no one can claim we plundered them
from anyone.
However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible.
Active hatred, poisoned, unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of
Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act for the vanishing of
Israel"' as if we were bacteria. We got used to it so much that we
don't even ask why.
Israel does not hope and never did for Iran to vanish. As long as
they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a
common border with them or even any bad memories. And still, they are
willing to confront the whole western world, to risk a commercial
boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush what's left of
their economy and all that for the right to passionately hate us.
I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to
them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main
problem of the Muslim world"? more than a billion people living in the
Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from
hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to
Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are the
main problem? How exactly are we in their way?
I refuse to accept the argument that claims "that is just the way
they are". They said it about us so many times that we have learned to
accept this - expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret
that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow to rouse the
quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has already
retreated from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland
exactly at the time they finally escaped twenty years of disasters.
We got used to telling ourselves worn expressions - "it's the Iranian
influence", or "Syria is stirring behind the scenes" - but it is just
too easy explanation. Because what about them?
What about their thoughts?
What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams?
What about their children?
When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to
say that it was all worth while just because they hate us so much?
2) Obama's Curious Tale
By Jack Kelly
"I've heard from an Army captain who was head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," Sen. Barack Obama said during his debate with Hillary Clinton Thursday night. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.
"And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier for them to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
The comment raised eyebrows among veterans.
Rifle platoons are not commanded by a captain. They are commanded by a lieutenant, usually a second lieutenant.
The heart of Sen. Obama's charge is that the captain's platoon was cannibalized in order to send soldiers to Iraq. The Army does have a program called "cross leveling" where soldiers from units which are not deploying are sent to units which are to bring them up to full strength. But the Army emphatically denies taking soldiers from units which are scheduled to deploy to a combat zone to give them to other units. This would be insane.
"As a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees..."
This is a weird non-sequitur. There is no reason why a shortage of personnel, if it existed, would translate into a shortage of ammunition, or of vehicles.
Soldiers on a mission carry a basic load of ammunition, typically seven magazines (210 rounds). It's possible to burn through this quite rapidly in a firefight, especially if the soldier lacks fire discipline. Soldiers can run low on ammo until they are resupplied, typically by helicopter, but this has nothing to do with the adequacy of ammunition stocks in theater. There has never been a shortage of ammunition in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
"They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
The basic Taliban weapon is the venerable AK-47. Many of our soldiers and Marines prefer it to the M-16 because it is less likely to jam, and has more range and stopping power. A soldier who has run out of ammunition for his weapon in a firefight eagerly would pick up an AK-47 if one were close to hand. But this would be just a temporary expedient. For one thing, it's against the law for conventional U.S. soldiers to carry enemy weapons. More practically, a soldier using the AK-47 as his basic weapon would have serious ammunition resupply problems. The AK-47 and the M-16 are of different calibers. (I doubt Barack Obama knows this.) Our cartridges don't fit into their guns, and their cartridges don't fit into ours. The basic load of ammo a Taliban guerrilla carries is less than what our soldiers carry, both because the AK's 7.62 mm round is heavier and bulkier than the M-16's 5.56 mm round, and because al Qaida is stingier with ammo than we are. The ammunition taken off the dead body of a Taliban guerrilla wouldn't last long.
Units don't deploy to Afghanistan with their organic vehicles. Afghanistan is 8,000 miles from the U.S., in a mountainous region far from seaports. It's hard to ship stuff there. So unnecessary stuff isn't shipped. Units arriving in theater fall in on the equipment that was being used by the units they are replacing.
Even though he's a member of Congress, Sen. Obama seems to be unaware that it is Congress, not the president, which funds the military. If Sen. Obama thinks the military is inadequately supplied, he should take it up with his Democratic colleagues, who routinely cut the president's defense budget requests.
ABC's Jake Tapper tracked down Sen. Obama's captain, who was a lieutenant in the summer of 2003 when his unit was sent to Afghanistan. His unit was understrength (though it was reinforced a couple of months after its arrival in theater). But the captain complained of a shortage of ammo for his heavy machine guns and grenade launchers while training at Fort Drum before deployment, not in Afghanistan. This is a rather different story from the one Sen. Obama told, and a fishy one, because infantry platoons in the 10th Mountain Division are not normally assigned heavy machine guns or Mark 19 grenade launchers.
Sen. Obama should restrict himself to talking about "hope" and "change." Whenever he stumbles into matters of substance, he demonstrates his unfitness for the job he seeks.
3)The UN Security Council imposes third round of sanctions on Iran
Iran is let off lightly
The motion, passed almost unanimously Monday, March 3, for the first time bans trade with Iran in goods with both civilian and military uses because of its refusal to shelve uranium enrichment. It was carried by 14 council members to nil, with Indonesia abstaining.
Iranian sources report the new sanctions are less painful than they sound because Tehran anticipated them well in advance.
They include freezing the assets of about a dozen companies and a dozen individuals with links to Iran's nuclear or ballistic missile programs. Countries are required to "exercise vigilance" and report the travel or transit of those individuals and a travel ban is imposed on several individuals linked to Iran's nuclear effort. All countries must exercise vigilance in entering into new trade commitments with Iran, and authorize inspections of shipments to and from Iran by sea and air that are suspected of carrying prohibited goods.
The State Bank Melli and Bank Saderat are subjected to financial monitoring over suspected links to proliferation activities.
Our Iranian sources point out that the Iranian individuals subject to travel bans have long cut their ties with the West and move around the Persian Gulf and Asia freely under aliases. The two banks have survived existing UN and US sanctions by circumventing the banking systems monitored by Washington.
If anything, Tehran took a sigh of relief Monday for three reasons:
1. This round of sanctions is the Bush administration’s parting shot against Iran before bowing out of office. It marks the dramatic reduction in the penalties faced by Iran since 2007 when a US military option was still on the table.
2. The sanctions are not powerful enough to halt any of Iran’s nuclear and missile projects.
3. Very few Security Council resolutions are ever fully or even partially implemented. This latest round will be no different.
4) Ahmadinejad in Baghdad’s Green Zone
During his 2-day visit to Baghdad, March 2-3, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iraqi hosts did a good job of ignoring the ubiquitous US military presence in Iraq - except for the Iranian president’s ritual anti-American blast. His welcome by Iraqi president, the Kurdish Jalal Talabani, and Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was played up as a bilateral event. Contact between the visitors’ retinue and the US military was nil.
Yet in Tehran, Iranian sources report, the president’s excursion into US-occupied territory was counted as a step forward in its seven-month old secret Saudi-mediated dialogue with Washington.
This dialogue has advanced in give-and-take steps on a broad set of issues.
The most prominent is Iran’s nuclear program. The third round of UN Security Council sanctions imposed Monday, March 3, banning trade with Iran did not really bother Tehran. The penalties were predicted and anticipated. Iran’s rulers can live with a motion which they see as the Bush administration’s parting shot in the dispute over the uranium enrichment issue. Not surprisingly Israel was not satisfied.
But mostly they are looking ahead to the next US president and their objective is clear: the cementing of the incumbent White House position on the North Korean nuclear weapons status as a convention which its next tenant will apply to Iran. This in rough terms means accepting a Tehran guarantee to freeze its uranium enrichment process, its nuclear bomb program and nuclear-capable ballistic missile project, without demanding their dismantlement.
This outline would be deemed in Tehran a positive basis for a nuclear deal with Washington. Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hinted broadly at its acceptability when he chose Feb. 26, the day the New York Philharmonic Orchestra played in Pyongyang, for some pointed nuclear remarks.
What does the Bush administration expect from Tehran?
According to our Washington sources, George W. Bush is keen to hand his successor a relatively stable Iraq where the violence spiral sustains its downward curve. The US president accordingly stopped direct US military action against pro-Iranian Shiite “special groups,” in the expectation that Tehran will use its influence to keep Iraq on a relatively even keel for the remainder of his term in office.
The quid pro quo runs like this: Tehran is bidding for an understanding with Washington on its nuclear program, while the US is after Iran’s help to preserve the status quo in Iraq.
Iran has two powerful resources for delivering the goods:
1. An extensive clandestine intelligence and military infrastructure across Iraq that will obey Tehran’s orders to pull in its horns.
2. Tehran’s hand on the spigot of the flow of weapons, money and extra-powerful roadside bombs to the different anti-US insurgent groups.
Military sources in Iraq report that this flow has been slowed at times but never allowed to dry up. Up until the fall of 2007, pro-Iranian groups received a sufficiency of war materiel to mount attacks on US forces. Today, it is down to a trickle, just enough for the Revolutionary Guards to keep their hand in with those militias.
The third key issue dominating the US-Iranian dialogue is southern Iraq and its oil. This is also pivotal for Iran’s bilateral relations with Iraq.
Ahmadinejad’s hosts in Baghdad have to live with the realization that their guest has more clout with the Shiites of southern Iraq than the Maliki government.
Tehran’s dominance of southern Iraq has three focii:
The shrine-cities of Karbala and Najef and the oil port of Basra. Iran and the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr at the head of his Mehdi Army militia divide control of these three cities between them.
If the central government wants any say in southern Iraq, it must stay on good terms with both its rival masters.
During his last visit to Tehran at the end of last year, prime minister al-Maliki signed an agreement to lay a pipeline taking Iraqi oil to Iranian refineries in Abadan. This was a bid to link southern Iraq’s oil to the Iranian oil fields and installations on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arb opposite Basra. The Americans, who control and defend the southern oil fields, let the agreement go through, although they are in competition against Iran in Central Asia and Turkey. The Bush administration is reconciled to including southern Iraq and its oil fields in the overall package of Iraq understandings with Tehran.
This package the White House is willing to hand over to the next president as long as the status quo is preserved in that part of Iraq too.
5) Obama: Arab-American Families Being Rounded Up?
By Lance Fairchok
"If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work."
- Senator Barack Obama
In a televised twelve-second campaign spot aired in Texas, Senator Obama gives a stirring speech to a standing ovation. It is the predictable litany of American faults he will miraculously correct: literacy, expensive prescription drugs and insufficient civil liberties. However, he seems particularly concerned for Arab-Americans. "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties."
This was an astonishing statement, an infuriating statement and a statement that speaks volumes to Obama's ideology.
Arab-American families being rounded up would not only threaten all our civil liberties, it would raise such a universal outcry, it could not long endure. Even the suggestion it could occur is a profound insult to our nation and our citizenry. It is an image of the gulag, the death camp, the dictatorship, and so inappropriate in any discussion about America, it is beneath our contempt.
Perhaps the Senator is carried away by his remarkable political ascendancy and so emboldened by the lack of critical comment in the press, he believes he can say anything. Perhaps he believes he has so mesmerized us with his oratory that we will not catch the inference of his words. Perhaps he really believes that we are that kind of country, that our people do not cherish civil liberty sufficiently to defend it for all citizens.
This despicable image of innocent families imprisoned and the ethnic cleansing it suggests is a theme the radical left nurtures. It is by design intended to portray an unjust and intolerant people, it was no error, no misstatement. It elicits moral outrage with false assumptions, endlessly repeating those assumptions until believed. It is behind the exaggeration of everything the U.S. does in the war on terror or against Islamic extremism. It is behind the hysteria over the Patriot Act.
As divorced from truth as it is, it is found everywhere in the propaganda of the left, from the Bush-Hitler signs, to the fabrications of American military wrongdoing in the press, to the invented Islamophobia in our populace. It is the motivation behind Michael Moore, Code Pink, MoveOn.Org and George Soros. It is unfortunately the message the media aids and abets.
This moral contrariness gives us American "progressives" embracing dictators and terrorists such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Iran's Ahmedinejhad and Syria's Bashar al Assad. It finds equivalence between defending America and Al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorism. It believes malevolent evil can actually be stopped with dialogue and compromise. It gravitates to a miserable "better red than dead" nihilism that allows no pride or faith in America. It excuses our enemies and indicts everything American. It is the impenitent legacy of the Carter and Clinton administrations. It is illogical and irrational and a road to failure and catastrophe.
"I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work." Yet, he also says that our country does not work, that we need change. Even as he wraps this contradiction in biblical allusion and positive words like "Hope" and "Change We Can Believe In" his underlying belief system surfaces in clues overlooked by his handlers.
The bleak fantasy of Arab-American families interred for being Arabs and, of course, for being Muslim is very plausible to the radicals that help write his speeches. Senator Obama holds a wretched America in his heart, a country he has no pride in nor wishes to preserve. If his vision starts from failure, where will it end? There is no truth in his words, just as there is no substance. One may speak well, but still speak lies. An Obama presidency would be a disaster.
6) Instead of acting to defeat Hamas, the Olmert team had apparently opted to unwittingly turn the IDF into the "red team" in military training exercises for Hamas.
The Olmert team appears to remain clueless regarding concrete specific
actions it would like the Egyptians to carry out (for example, bulldoze a
sterile zone of several kilometers deep on the Gaza-Egypt border) and
instead waits for someone else to come up with ideas for Israel to react
to.]
The Palestinian Authority is expecting US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice to provide it with a "face-saving device" that will allow it to return
to negotiations with Israel, according to assessments in Jerusalem on the
eve of Rice's visit.
Rice is scheduled to arrive at noon Tuesday, after spending some five hours
in Egypt. The prevalent feeling in Jerusalem is that despite the recent
flare-up in Gaza, her discussions in Cairo will focus on securing an
agreement between Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas regarding the
border situation. Such an agreement, according to this assessment, would be
the incentive to get the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating
table.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas suspended talks with Israel on Sunday because of
the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
According to official assessments in Jerusalem, the PA does not want to call
off the negotiations, if for no other reason than continuing talks is the
only card it holds.
"Without the negotiations, the Palestinian Authority doesn't have anything,"
one senior government official said. "The fact is that the international
community pledged billions of dollars to them in Paris because of [the PA's]
commitment to Annapolis and negotiations. If they stop the negotiations,
they will lose that international support, and without that, they have
nothing - they don't have Gaza, and they barely have control of the West
Bank."
According to this official, the IDF's surprise pullout from Gaza on Monday
was timed to coincide with Rice's visit, in order to give her an opportunity
to try to work out some kind of border agreement.
When Rice's visit was first planned several weeks ago, it was expected to
focus on two main issues: coming up with some kind of security regimen on
the Gaza-Egypt border following the breach there in January, and pushing the
diplomatic process with the Palestinians forward.
The intensified fighting in Gaza, however, threatened to change the focus of
her talks completely.
"The fact that we stopped the military action allows her to go back to the
original aims, to address an agreement on Rafah," the official said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, at a meeting with the foreign diplomatic corps
in Jerusalem Monday, stressed that the IDF leaving Gaza Monday morning did
not mean that Israel's actions there were over.
Indeed, Livni - who also met Monday with visiting EU foreign policy chief
Javier Solana - indicated that the military operation's goals were not only
to stop the rocket fire, but - even more importantly - to halt Hamas's arms
buildup and weaken its hold on Gaza.
Livni said that any decision the government took on how to deal with Gaza
would be based on the following objectives: providing security for Israeli
citizens, harming Hamas militarily, and hurting the organization
diplomatically.
"Those who control Gaza are responsible for what happens there. We will not
play by their rules, we will change the game whereby they decide when to
attack, when to stop and for how long... We will decide when to stop our
actions. That the soldiers left Gaza today... is not the end of our activity
against
terror in Gaza, which will continue," she said.
The security cabinet is expected to meet Wednesday and discuss the army's
overall objectives in the Strip.
"We need to attack [Hamas's] infrastructure, the places where weapons are
made and the terrorists themselves. But that's not enough. Anyone who wants
to solve the terrorist problem from Gaza needs to prevent Hamas's buildup,"
Livni said.
Livni alluded to the fact that the results of Israel's actions in Gaza would
have wider ramifications, echoing the position of Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin,
head of military intelligence, who said at Sunday's cabinet meeting that
Iran, Syria and Hizbullah were carefully watching the situation in Gaza.
"No one has an interest in Hamas's success expect for Iran, Syria and
Hizbullah," Livni said. "Its success is not a matter of reality, but also
one of perception."
Livni added that the regional players could not accept a spin of a Hamas
victory - not Abbas, not Israel, and not the moderate Arab states.
In Washington, meanwhile, a State Department official said the US "wants to
see negotiations resume, and we believe it's important that the parties
continue to try to work through the Annapolis process to achieve the results
that they've committed themselves to."
The official said Rice would be making it clear that Hamas must stop the
rocket attacks, which hurt the Palestinian people as well as Israelis.
Earlier Monday, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the US would use
the visit to stress the decision that is now facing the Palestinians.
"We have a clear message: The Palestinian people have a choice to make. It's
a choice between terrorism, or a choice between a political solution that
leads to a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with
Israel," he said.
He also had harsh words for Hamas, whom he blamed for the fighting. "The
number one thing that has to happen is that Hamas has got to stop targeting
Israeli citizens with rockets," he said.
When asked if Israel's response to the Gaza rocket fire had been
disproportionate in the eyes of the US, Johndroe responded, "We obviously
don't want any innocent civilians to lose their lives, but I think that
started with these rockets that have been fired from Gaza into Israel,
recently killing and injuring Israeli citizens in some of their bigger
cities."
He described the situation as being "escalated" by Hamas to "firing larger
rockets longer-range and killing people. That's got to stop," he aid.
Livni, meanwhile, said before her meeting with Solana that "these were not
easy days for Israeli citizens. Israel is in the midst of a struggle against
terrorism and will continue in this war against terror."
The foreign minister said that Israel expected the international community
to support its war against terror and "show determination" in delegitimizing
terrorist organizations, first and foremost - Hamas.
Livni's comments came even as Italy's foreign minister called on Israel to
negotiate with Hamas to bring about a cease-fire.
7) Rice arrives in Israel in bid to renew peace talks
By Barak Ravid
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel on Tuesday after saying she hoped to salvage peace talks that Palestinians suspended in protest of an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Rice said Hamas is trying to wreck chances for the peace process, after holding talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo on a stopover before heading to Israel that aimed to calm Arab ire over the operation.
Israel launched an offensive into the Gaza Strip to stop rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups on nearby Israeli cities, but the assault prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend negotiations.
"There has to be an active peace process that can withstand the efforts of rejectionists to keep peace from being made, the people who are firing rockets do not want peace," Rice told reporters in Cairo. "They sow instability, that is what Hamas is doing."
"Hamas is doing what might be expected, which is using rocket attacks on Israel to arrest a peace process in which they have nothing to gain," Rice said.
"Negotiations ought to resume as soon as possible," she said, adding that any lengthy suspension of talks handed victory to Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last June and whose stepped up rocket attacks into Israel preceded the latest offensive.
Rice's first meeting in Cairo was with Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, followed by talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
Experts say Rice faces an uphill battle to revive the peace talks -launched to much fanfare last November, in Annapolis, Maryland with the goal of getting a Palestinian statehood deal before the Bush administration's term ends in January 2009.
"I continue to believe that they can get to a deal by the end of the year if everybody has got the will to do it," said Rice, adding implementation of a deal would take a lot longer.
She dismissed sceptics who have predicted the Annapolis process will fail without including Hamas and that U.S. attempts to isolate Gaza will ultimately backfire.
"It is going to have its ups and downs. There will be good days and bad days and even good weeks and bad weeks. I am going to talk to the parties about staying focused on what needs to be done here," she said.
Rice added the stop in Egypt to her itinerary only in the past few days. Government sources said Rice would be discussing the border during her visits to Egypt, Israel and the PA.
In her talks with Israeli leaders, Rice is expected once again to raise Egypt's request to increase the number of its soldiers on the border by 750.
Rice is also expected to seek Israel's response to the plan to reopen the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and to Fayyad's plan to transfer control of the crossings between Gaza and Israel to the PA.
Olmert to tell Rice: Israel wants to renew talks
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to tell Rice on Tuesday that Israel wants to renew talks with the PA quickly.
Rice, who is due to arrive in Israel on Tuesday afternoon, will head directly for Ramallah for talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. She will later dine in Jerusalem with Olmert. Rice will meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Tuesday.
Rice's visit had been planned to gauge progress on the peace process after President George W. Bush's recent visit to the region. But in light of events in the Gaza Strip, Rice is expected to work toward getting the talks back on track.
Olmert, who is said to have been disappointed in the PA announcement on the suspension of negotiations, will reportedly ask Rice to urge the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visited Israel
Monday, proposed that the Israelis open a dialogue with Egypt and the PA as soon as possible toward clinching a "package deal" on Gaza.
He said an overall agreement of this type could include new security arrangements on the Philadelphi route, the reopening of the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, a solution to the matter of the Israel-Gaza crossings and an attempt to reach a cease-fire with Hamas through Egyptian mediation.
Solana also said that such a dialogue should not be conducted in a way that would be "an achievement for Hamas."
In light of recent calls by some European countries to immediately open the Gaza Strip crossings, Livni told Solana that Europe should not take any action that could be construed as a victory for Hamas. Livni gave a briefing to foreign ambassadors on Monday, telling them that when talking about "collective punishment" it should be remembered that Sderot and Ashkelon are also experiencing collective punishment.
8) Sound and fury signifying incompetence
By Caroline B. Glick
On Sunday, Palestinian terror forces maintained their rocket and missile offensive against Israel, shooting 40 rockets, including upgraded Katyusha missiles at Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot and surrounding areas. Whereas in 2005, 25,000 Israelis lived within Palestinian rocket and missile range from Gaza, the past week has shown that the number has expanded at least tenfold since then. Monday morning, the limited IDF ground component that was deployed in Gaza on Saturday abruptly suspended operations and pulled out. The pullout came just hours after senior IDF officials announced that the forces in Gaza were about to be augmented by additional forces and Defense Minister Ehud Barak told senior military commanders, "The time has come for action. Hamas is responsible and will pay a price."
IT IS obvious that in suspending Operation "Hot Winter" in Gaza, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government essentially crumpled in the face of pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush. Sunday night the White House issued a press release demanding that Israel end its operations in Gaza and return to the negotiating table with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.
FOR THEIR part, Abbas and his Fatah underlings have been outspoken in their support for Hamas's missile and rocket offensive against Israel. Sunday they organized joint Fatah-Hamas rallies in Hebron and Ramallah where rioters called for Israel's destruction, burned Israeli and American flags and then attacked IDF patrols and the security fence.
Truth be told, the US may have done Israel a favor preventing the escalation of operations. This is not because an offensive against Hamas's Iranian built war machine in Gaza is not vital. This is so because Operation "Hot Winter" was bereft of operational logic. Its strategic ends were unclear and, to the extent they were enunciated at all by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Barak, they bore no connection to the operations on the ground which were so limited in scope that they were incapable of achieving any long-term objective.
In one form or another, Olmert, Livni and Barak all said that the goal of Operation Hot Winter was to end the Palestinians' missile and rocket campaign against the Western Negev generally and against Ashkelon in particular. They intimated as well that the strategic objective of the campaign was to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza, and reinstall a Fatah government. Beyond that they said that they sought to kill or capture Hamas's leadership.
But the Olmert-Livni-Barak government gave the IDF insufficient tools to achieve these grandiose plans. They only allowed the IDF to deploy one infantry brigade and two partial tank battalions. They refused to expand the operation to a divisional sized force, which would still have been too small to achieve any significant or long-lasting results. The limited geographical scope of the IDF operation - in a 2-3 kilometer zone in northern Gaza - had no impact of Hamas's ability to continue to shoot off rockets and missiles whose ranges run from 5-25 kilometers. In short, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government enunciated operational and strategic objectives that it clearly had no intention of achieving.
TODAY THE Gaza Strip is a terror state run by an Iranian proxy. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005, Hamas and its terror partners in Fatah and Islamic Jihad have built terror armies along the model of Hizbullah. Hamas forces have received training in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. They have built up formidable arsenals of Katyusha and Kassam rockets as well as anti-tank missiles. And, according to Fatah and other sources, they have been augmented not only by Iranian, Syrian and Hizbullah operatives. Al-Qaida has also built up a presence in the area.
This combined force successfully overwhelmed Egyptian forces along Gaza's border with Egypt in January. Its current capacity has rendered extensive portions of southern Israel exposed to missile and mortar attacks. And unless it is routed militarily, its capabilities will only grow.
Israel has limited options to contend with the present and growing threat. For the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, the easiest solution would be to have someone else fight Hamas and its allies for Israel. But no such proxy force exists. Both the Americans and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government operate under the assumption that Fatah is a reasonable proxy. But experience has shown that this is not the case. From September 2005 when Israel withdrew its forces until June 2007 when Hamas ousted Fatah from power, Abbas and his US-trained forces did nothing to curb Hamas's growing power or limit Iran's growing control over Hamas. Confronted by Hamas forces last June, Fatah forces cut and ran rather than fight and those who remained were largely integrated into Hamas's burgeoning army. Since June, Fatah has shown no willingness to confront Hamas. And over the past week of Hamas's escalated missile offensive, Fatah stood foursquare with Hamas against Israel.
THEN TOO, the notion that an international force could be deployed in Gaza to protect Israel from the growing terror army at its doorstep similarly lacks credibility. At no time has any international force - whatever its composition - ever been interested or capable of defending Israel against Arab terror or military offensives - whether from Gaza, from Lebanon or indeed from Egypt or Syria. And there is no reason to believe that this historic state of affairs will change significantly in the future.
In the absence of proxies, Israel has two options going forward. First, it can incapacitate Hamas and second it can try to deter Hamas. To incapacitate Hamas, Israel must launch an operation aimed at cutting off Hamas's logisitical supply lines through the border with Egypt. It must fight Hamas forces on the ground with the aim of defeating them, and it must kill or capture Hamas's senior and mid-level leadership. Given that like Hizbullah, Hamas and its state-sponsors will seek to regenerate any diminished capacities by rearming and promoting new leaders, these operations must be continuous. Consequently, to incapacitate Hamas, and so secure southern Israel, Israel requires a continuous military presence in the Gaza Strip.
The Olmert-Livni-Barak government has repeatedly rejected the redeployment of IDF forces to Gaza for any significant length of time. But they have never been called on to explain why the current state of affairs, in which an Iranian-proxy army with al-Qaida components is permitted to grow in close proximity to its civilian centers is preferable to such a long-term military presence in Gaza.
AS TO deterrence, it is unclear that it is possible to embrace deterrence as a strategy without first establishing a continuous military presence in Gaza. To succeed, deterrence must be based upon a credible threat to exact a cost for aggression that Hamas is unwilling to pay. In sending its leadership to ground while encouraging Gazans to confront IDF forces and "martyr" themselves, Hamas made clear that it views the sacrifice of its leadership as an unacceptable cost for its aggression. And yet, without forces on the ground in Gaza, the IDF lacks the intelligence necessary to conduct a wide-scale and successful assault on Hamas's leaders. So today, Israel lacks the capacity to base its operations in Gaza on a deterrence model.
There is an additional option which the government seems interested in adopting which is to conduct a new offensive every so often, when attacks foment a public outcry for action. It is far from clear though that this option is less costly either militarily or politically than maintaining a continuous presence in Gaza. Given Hamas's continuously expanding capabilities, each such operation will exact a large cost in the lives of IDF soldiers who will be required to repeatedly fight their way into Gaza. Moreover, each time Israel returns to Gaza it faces renewed international condemnation for taking action. A continuous presence in Gaza would not incur such costs. Both Rice and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government argue that a renewed military presence in Gaza is a poor option because it would render negotiations towards the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem non-viable. But then, if those negotiations were successful, they would lead to the imposition of a Fatah-Hamas terror state which would not only not protect southern Israel from missile and rocket attack, it would expose central Israel to similar aggression.
It is unclear then, why the strategic aim they seek to achieve would leave Israel better off than an operation aimed at incapacitating Palestinian-Iranian terror forces and safeguarding Israeli territory from attack.
OTHER VOICES argue that a continuous Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border would make it impossible for Israel to completely disengage from Gaza by enabling the Palestinians to link up with Egypt instead of Israel for electricity and other supplies. Israel, they claim, would still be perceived as responsible for Gaza and for the welfare of its Hamas-supporting population. These voices fail to ask a simple question: In whose eyes would Israel be considered responsible for Gaza's population?
The issue of Israel's responsibility under international law for the welfare of Gazans is an open one. Israel is not obligated to advance the aims of the Palestinians by accepting such responsibility. Beyond that, whether foreign governments perceive Israel as responsible for Gaza is not something that Israel can determine. The most it can do is seek to divest others of such a perception by explaining why it is not responsible for the welfare of Gaza's population.
By sending insufficient forces willy-nilly into Gaza over the weekend while conducting aerial bombings of empty buildings, Olmert, Livni and Barak showed that they have learned none of the lessons of the Second Lebanon War. Indeed, Barak showed that he has learned nothing from his experience as prime minister at the start of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000, when he responded to the lynching of Israeli reservists in Ramallah by bombing empty buildings and making empty threats to Yasser Arafat while begging him to take the Temple Mount.
How long will this unacceptable state of affairs be allowed to continue?
I am now reading David Frum's: "Comeback" It is his prescription of how the Republican Party can wean its way back and away from GW's schizoid management. I use the word "schizoid" because, as Frum points out, GW announced policies that did not accord with his actions, ie. Axis of Evils would not be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons and the list continues.
Frum wrote i"Comeback" in order to lay out a program that takes the Republican Party away from the Reagan Era, reshapes its message so it can regain its political footing. He begins with a discussion of demographic trends that are unfavorable for Republicans and then states Republicans must address current voter concerns and move away from past issues which have either been addressed and or resolved or which no longer rate high on the concern list. They must cease defending the indefensible. Frum then argues Republicans must offer effective solutions to these concerns and in convincing ways.
In the matter of education, Frum points out, voters seemingly favor Democrats because they have been convinced more money must be thrown at the problem. In fact, Democrat allegiance to unions and the resulting lack of lack of competitiveness, backed by a slew of statistics support the regressiveness of Democrat solutions which,in fact, do great harm to the very underclass Democrats profess they want to help.
The same is true with respect to health care. Frum believes Democrats want eventually for the government to run health care and he again cites statistics comparing our system versus that in France, Germany, Britain and Canada leaving no doubt that ours is better. However,health care costs are skyrocketing for a variety of reasons, many of which are government and state induced. Furthermore, he demonstrates that while wages of workers have increased, health care costs have eaten more.
Price controls do not work and government monopolies bear hidden costs and result in both poorer delivery and inferior health care. Open competition and moving away from a distorted system is the only solution and Republicans should be foursquare in proposing these type of solutions. Many states mandate everyone have car insurance and the same should go for health insurance purchased from the private sector under competitive conditions.
Frum de-myths Democrat buzz words such as managed health care calling it what it really is - government health monopoly.
What is ironic is every time government intrudes it historically fails or makes the problem worse and yet most liberals offer more of the same as the way out of the problem. I repeat what Phil Gramm always said: "When going in the wrong direction increasing the speed is not the solution."
I still believe if either Clinton or Obama become president the nation, after four years, will be ready to re-embrace Republicans regardless of anything Frum might prescribe.
The situation then could become solutions to problems that will have become even more intractable by having been made worse.
Our possible next Commander in Chief needs a good bit of OJT regarding military matters. (See 2 below.)
Iran gets slapped with more sanctions made out of pasta. But then read 4 which is in accord with what I have been posting. GW's boastful words will prove empty once again and Iran will be allowed to retain its nuclear status for a promise as empty as N Korea's. (See 3 and 4 below.)
Has Obama gone off the charts in suggesting American Arab families are being rounded up and threatened? (See 5 below.)
Olmert pays off Rice and remains confused. Foreign opinions on what Israel should do vary from protecting itself but not reacting precipitously to negotiate with Hamas. Meanwhile,Olmert and company remain as deer in front of car headlights. (See 6 below.)
Rice arrives and spreads the word. (See 7 below.)
Caroline Glick sees Olmert as I do - Sound and Fury Equals Incompetence. (See 8 below.)
Dick
1) The Mystery of Hate
by Yair Lapid
Hundreds of years of fighting, six and a half wars, billions of
dollars gone with the wind, tens of thousands of victims, not including
the boy who laid down next to me on the rocky beach of lake Karon in
1982 and we both watched his guts spilling out. The helicopter took him
and until this day I do not know whether he is dead or survived. All
this, and one cannot figure it out.
And its not only what happened but all that did not happen -
hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened,
roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from
millions of teenagers for the sake of the army. And despite all the
above, we still do not have the beginning of a clue to the mystery of
where it all started:
Why do they hate us so much?
I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. Their dispute with
us is intimate, focused, and it has a direct effect on their lives.
Without getting into the "which side is right" question, it is obvious
that they have very personal reasons not to stand our presence here. We
all know that eventually this is how it will be solved: in a personal
way, between them and us, with blood sweat and tears that will stain
the pages of the agreement. Until then, it is a war that could at least
be understood, even if no sane person is willing to accept the means
that are used to run it by.
It is the others. Those I cannot understand. Why does Hassan
Nasralla, along with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicate his
life, his visible talents, his country's destiny, to fight a country he
has never even seen, people he has never really met and an army that he
has no reason to fight?
Why do children in Iran, who can not even locate Israel on the map (especially because it is so small), burn its flag in the city center
and offer to commit suicide for its elimination? Why do Egyptian and
Jordanian intellectuals agitate the innocent and helpless against the
peace agreements, even though they know that their failure will push
their countries 20 years back? Why are the Syrians willing to stay a
pathetic and depressed third world country, for the dubious right to
finance terror organizations that will eventually threaten their own
country's existence? Why do they hate us so much in Saudi-Arabia? In
Iraq? In Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to
their lives? What do they know about us? Why do they hate us so much in
Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat there, where do they get
the energy to hate?
This question has so many answers and yet it is a mystery. It is true
that it is a religious matter but even religious people make their
choices. The Koran (along with the Shariaa - the Muslim parallel to the
Jewish Halacha) consists of thousands of laws, why is it that we occupy
them so much?
There are so many countries who gave them much better reasons to be
angry. We did not start the crusades, we did not rule them during the
colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The Mongolians, the
Seljuk, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, the
British, they all conquered, ruined and plundered the whole region. We
did not even try, so how come we are the enemy?
And if it is identification with their Palestinians brothers then
where are the Saudi Arabian tractors building up the territories that
were evacuated? What happened to the Indonesian delegation building a
school in Gaza strip? Where are the Kuwaiti doctors with their modern
surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brothers, why
do they all prefer to help their brothers with hating?
Is it something that we do? Fifteen hundreds years of anti-Semitism
taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something
about us that irritates the world. So, we did the thing everyone
wanted: we got up and left. We have established our own tiny little
country, where we can irritate ourselves without interrupting others.
We didn't even ask a lot for it. Israel is spread on a smaller
territory than 1% of the territory of Saudi-Arabia, with no oil, no
minerals, without settling on another existing state's territory. Most
of the cities that were bombed this week were not plundered from
anyone. Nahariya, Afula, and Karmiel did not even exist until we
established them. The other katyusas landed on territories over which
no one ever questioned our right with regards to them. In Haifa there
were Jews already in the 3rd century BC and Tiberias was the place
where the last Sanhedrin sat, so no one can claim we plundered them
from anyone.
However, the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible.
Active hatred, poisoned, unstoppable. Last Saturday the president of
Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to act for the vanishing of
Israel"' as if we were bacteria. We got used to it so much that we
don't even ask why.
Israel does not hope and never did for Iran to vanish. As long as
they wanted, we had diplomatic relations with them. We do not have a
common border with them or even any bad memories. And still, they are
willing to confront the whole western world, to risk a commercial
boycott, to hurt their own quality of life, to crush what's left of
their economy and all that for the right to passionately hate us.
I am trying to remember and cannot: have we ever done something to
them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main
problem of the Muslim world"? more than a billion people living in the
Muslim world, most of them in horrible conditions. They suffer from
hunger, poverty, ignorance, bloodshed that spreads from Kashmir to
Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to injured Bangladesh. How come we are the
main problem? How exactly are we in their way?
I refuse to accept the argument that claims "that is just the way
they are". They said it about us so many times that we have learned to
accept this - expression. There must be another reason, some dark secret
that because of it, the citizens of South Lebanon allow to rouse the
quiet border, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that has already
retreated from their territory, to turn their country into a wasteland
exactly at the time they finally escaped twenty years of disasters.
We got used to telling ourselves worn expressions - "it's the Iranian
influence", or "Syria is stirring behind the scenes" - but it is just
too easy explanation. Because what about them?
What about their thoughts?
What about their hopes, loves, ambitions and their dreams?
What about their children?
When they send their children to die, does it seem enough for them to
say that it was all worth while just because they hate us so much?
2) Obama's Curious Tale
By Jack Kelly
"I've heard from an Army captain who was head of a rifle platoon -- supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon," Sen. Barack Obama said during his debate with Hillary Clinton Thursday night. "Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.
"And as a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees. They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier for them to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
The comment raised eyebrows among veterans.
Rifle platoons are not commanded by a captain. They are commanded by a lieutenant, usually a second lieutenant.
The heart of Sen. Obama's charge is that the captain's platoon was cannibalized in order to send soldiers to Iraq. The Army does have a program called "cross leveling" where soldiers from units which are not deploying are sent to units which are to bring them up to full strength. But the Army emphatically denies taking soldiers from units which are scheduled to deploy to a combat zone to give them to other units. This would be insane.
"As a consequence, they didn't have enough ammunition, they didn't have enough humvees..."
This is a weird non-sequitur. There is no reason why a shortage of personnel, if it existed, would translate into a shortage of ammunition, or of vehicles.
Soldiers on a mission carry a basic load of ammunition, typically seven magazines (210 rounds). It's possible to burn through this quite rapidly in a firefight, especially if the soldier lacks fire discipline. Soldiers can run low on ammo until they are resupplied, typically by helicopter, but this has nothing to do with the adequacy of ammunition stocks in theater. There has never been a shortage of ammunition in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
"They were actually capturing Taliban weapons, because it was easier to get Taliban weapons than it was for them to get properly equipped by our current commander in chief."
The basic Taliban weapon is the venerable AK-47. Many of our soldiers and Marines prefer it to the M-16 because it is less likely to jam, and has more range and stopping power. A soldier who has run out of ammunition for his weapon in a firefight eagerly would pick up an AK-47 if one were close to hand. But this would be just a temporary expedient. For one thing, it's against the law for conventional U.S. soldiers to carry enemy weapons. More practically, a soldier using the AK-47 as his basic weapon would have serious ammunition resupply problems. The AK-47 and the M-16 are of different calibers. (I doubt Barack Obama knows this.) Our cartridges don't fit into their guns, and their cartridges don't fit into ours. The basic load of ammo a Taliban guerrilla carries is less than what our soldiers carry, both because the AK's 7.62 mm round is heavier and bulkier than the M-16's 5.56 mm round, and because al Qaida is stingier with ammo than we are. The ammunition taken off the dead body of a Taliban guerrilla wouldn't last long.
Units don't deploy to Afghanistan with their organic vehicles. Afghanistan is 8,000 miles from the U.S., in a mountainous region far from seaports. It's hard to ship stuff there. So unnecessary stuff isn't shipped. Units arriving in theater fall in on the equipment that was being used by the units they are replacing.
Even though he's a member of Congress, Sen. Obama seems to be unaware that it is Congress, not the president, which funds the military. If Sen. Obama thinks the military is inadequately supplied, he should take it up with his Democratic colleagues, who routinely cut the president's defense budget requests.
ABC's Jake Tapper tracked down Sen. Obama's captain, who was a lieutenant in the summer of 2003 when his unit was sent to Afghanistan. His unit was understrength (though it was reinforced a couple of months after its arrival in theater). But the captain complained of a shortage of ammo for his heavy machine guns and grenade launchers while training at Fort Drum before deployment, not in Afghanistan. This is a rather different story from the one Sen. Obama told, and a fishy one, because infantry platoons in the 10th Mountain Division are not normally assigned heavy machine guns or Mark 19 grenade launchers.
Sen. Obama should restrict himself to talking about "hope" and "change." Whenever he stumbles into matters of substance, he demonstrates his unfitness for the job he seeks.
3)The UN Security Council imposes third round of sanctions on Iran
Iran is let off lightly
The motion, passed almost unanimously Monday, March 3, for the first time bans trade with Iran in goods with both civilian and military uses because of its refusal to shelve uranium enrichment. It was carried by 14 council members to nil, with Indonesia abstaining.
Iranian sources report the new sanctions are less painful than they sound because Tehran anticipated them well in advance.
They include freezing the assets of about a dozen companies and a dozen individuals with links to Iran's nuclear or ballistic missile programs. Countries are required to "exercise vigilance" and report the travel or transit of those individuals and a travel ban is imposed on several individuals linked to Iran's nuclear effort. All countries must exercise vigilance in entering into new trade commitments with Iran, and authorize inspections of shipments to and from Iran by sea and air that are suspected of carrying prohibited goods.
The State Bank Melli and Bank Saderat are subjected to financial monitoring over suspected links to proliferation activities.
Our Iranian sources point out that the Iranian individuals subject to travel bans have long cut their ties with the West and move around the Persian Gulf and Asia freely under aliases. The two banks have survived existing UN and US sanctions by circumventing the banking systems monitored by Washington.
If anything, Tehran took a sigh of relief Monday for three reasons:
1. This round of sanctions is the Bush administration’s parting shot against Iran before bowing out of office. It marks the dramatic reduction in the penalties faced by Iran since 2007 when a US military option was still on the table.
2. The sanctions are not powerful enough to halt any of Iran’s nuclear and missile projects.
3. Very few Security Council resolutions are ever fully or even partially implemented. This latest round will be no different.
4) Ahmadinejad in Baghdad’s Green Zone
During his 2-day visit to Baghdad, March 2-3, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iraqi hosts did a good job of ignoring the ubiquitous US military presence in Iraq - except for the Iranian president’s ritual anti-American blast. His welcome by Iraqi president, the Kurdish Jalal Talabani, and Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was played up as a bilateral event. Contact between the visitors’ retinue and the US military was nil.
Yet in Tehran, Iranian sources report, the president’s excursion into US-occupied territory was counted as a step forward in its seven-month old secret Saudi-mediated dialogue with Washington.
This dialogue has advanced in give-and-take steps on a broad set of issues.
The most prominent is Iran’s nuclear program. The third round of UN Security Council sanctions imposed Monday, March 3, banning trade with Iran did not really bother Tehran. The penalties were predicted and anticipated. Iran’s rulers can live with a motion which they see as the Bush administration’s parting shot in the dispute over the uranium enrichment issue. Not surprisingly Israel was not satisfied.
But mostly they are looking ahead to the next US president and their objective is clear: the cementing of the incumbent White House position on the North Korean nuclear weapons status as a convention which its next tenant will apply to Iran. This in rough terms means accepting a Tehran guarantee to freeze its uranium enrichment process, its nuclear bomb program and nuclear-capable ballistic missile project, without demanding their dismantlement.
This outline would be deemed in Tehran a positive basis for a nuclear deal with Washington. Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hinted broadly at its acceptability when he chose Feb. 26, the day the New York Philharmonic Orchestra played in Pyongyang, for some pointed nuclear remarks.
What does the Bush administration expect from Tehran?
According to our Washington sources, George W. Bush is keen to hand his successor a relatively stable Iraq where the violence spiral sustains its downward curve. The US president accordingly stopped direct US military action against pro-Iranian Shiite “special groups,” in the expectation that Tehran will use its influence to keep Iraq on a relatively even keel for the remainder of his term in office.
The quid pro quo runs like this: Tehran is bidding for an understanding with Washington on its nuclear program, while the US is after Iran’s help to preserve the status quo in Iraq.
Iran has two powerful resources for delivering the goods:
1. An extensive clandestine intelligence and military infrastructure across Iraq that will obey Tehran’s orders to pull in its horns.
2. Tehran’s hand on the spigot of the flow of weapons, money and extra-powerful roadside bombs to the different anti-US insurgent groups.
Military sources in Iraq report that this flow has been slowed at times but never allowed to dry up. Up until the fall of 2007, pro-Iranian groups received a sufficiency of war materiel to mount attacks on US forces. Today, it is down to a trickle, just enough for the Revolutionary Guards to keep their hand in with those militias.
The third key issue dominating the US-Iranian dialogue is southern Iraq and its oil. This is also pivotal for Iran’s bilateral relations with Iraq.
Ahmadinejad’s hosts in Baghdad have to live with the realization that their guest has more clout with the Shiites of southern Iraq than the Maliki government.
Tehran’s dominance of southern Iraq has three focii:
The shrine-cities of Karbala and Najef and the oil port of Basra. Iran and the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr at the head of his Mehdi Army militia divide control of these three cities between them.
If the central government wants any say in southern Iraq, it must stay on good terms with both its rival masters.
During his last visit to Tehran at the end of last year, prime minister al-Maliki signed an agreement to lay a pipeline taking Iraqi oil to Iranian refineries in Abadan. This was a bid to link southern Iraq’s oil to the Iranian oil fields and installations on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arb opposite Basra. The Americans, who control and defend the southern oil fields, let the agreement go through, although they are in competition against Iran in Central Asia and Turkey. The Bush administration is reconciled to including southern Iraq and its oil fields in the overall package of Iraq understandings with Tehran.
This package the White House is willing to hand over to the next president as long as the status quo is preserved in that part of Iraq too.
5) Obama: Arab-American Families Being Rounded Up?
By Lance Fairchok
"If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work."
- Senator Barack Obama
In a televised twelve-second campaign spot aired in Texas, Senator Obama gives a stirring speech to a standing ovation. It is the predictable litany of American faults he will miraculously correct: literacy, expensive prescription drugs and insufficient civil liberties. However, he seems particularly concerned for Arab-Americans. "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties."
This was an astonishing statement, an infuriating statement and a statement that speaks volumes to Obama's ideology.
Arab-American families being rounded up would not only threaten all our civil liberties, it would raise such a universal outcry, it could not long endure. Even the suggestion it could occur is a profound insult to our nation and our citizenry. It is an image of the gulag, the death camp, the dictatorship, and so inappropriate in any discussion about America, it is beneath our contempt.
Perhaps the Senator is carried away by his remarkable political ascendancy and so emboldened by the lack of critical comment in the press, he believes he can say anything. Perhaps he believes he has so mesmerized us with his oratory that we will not catch the inference of his words. Perhaps he really believes that we are that kind of country, that our people do not cherish civil liberty sufficiently to defend it for all citizens.
This despicable image of innocent families imprisoned and the ethnic cleansing it suggests is a theme the radical left nurtures. It is by design intended to portray an unjust and intolerant people, it was no error, no misstatement. It elicits moral outrage with false assumptions, endlessly repeating those assumptions until believed. It is behind the exaggeration of everything the U.S. does in the war on terror or against Islamic extremism. It is behind the hysteria over the Patriot Act.
As divorced from truth as it is, it is found everywhere in the propaganda of the left, from the Bush-Hitler signs, to the fabrications of American military wrongdoing in the press, to the invented Islamophobia in our populace. It is the motivation behind Michael Moore, Code Pink, MoveOn.Org and George Soros. It is unfortunately the message the media aids and abets.
This moral contrariness gives us American "progressives" embracing dictators and terrorists such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Iran's Ahmedinejhad and Syria's Bashar al Assad. It finds equivalence between defending America and Al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorism. It believes malevolent evil can actually be stopped with dialogue and compromise. It gravitates to a miserable "better red than dead" nihilism that allows no pride or faith in America. It excuses our enemies and indicts everything American. It is the impenitent legacy of the Carter and Clinton administrations. It is illogical and irrational and a road to failure and catastrophe.
"I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work." Yet, he also says that our country does not work, that we need change. Even as he wraps this contradiction in biblical allusion and positive words like "Hope" and "Change We Can Believe In" his underlying belief system surfaces in clues overlooked by his handlers.
The bleak fantasy of Arab-American families interred for being Arabs and, of course, for being Muslim is very plausible to the radicals that help write his speeches. Senator Obama holds a wretched America in his heart, a country he has no pride in nor wishes to preserve. If his vision starts from failure, where will it end? There is no truth in his words, just as there is no substance. One may speak well, but still speak lies. An Obama presidency would be a disaster.
6) Instead of acting to defeat Hamas, the Olmert team had apparently opted to unwittingly turn the IDF into the "red team" in military training exercises for Hamas.
The Olmert team appears to remain clueless regarding concrete specific
actions it would like the Egyptians to carry out (for example, bulldoze a
sterile zone of several kilometers deep on the Gaza-Egypt border) and
instead waits for someone else to come up with ideas for Israel to react
to.]
The Palestinian Authority is expecting US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice to provide it with a "face-saving device" that will allow it to return
to negotiations with Israel, according to assessments in Jerusalem on the
eve of Rice's visit.
Rice is scheduled to arrive at noon Tuesday, after spending some five hours
in Egypt. The prevalent feeling in Jerusalem is that despite the recent
flare-up in Gaza, her discussions in Cairo will focus on securing an
agreement between Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas regarding the
border situation. Such an agreement, according to this assessment, would be
the incentive to get the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiating
table.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas suspended talks with Israel on Sunday because of
the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
According to official assessments in Jerusalem, the PA does not want to call
off the negotiations, if for no other reason than continuing talks is the
only card it holds.
"Without the negotiations, the Palestinian Authority doesn't have anything,"
one senior government official said. "The fact is that the international
community pledged billions of dollars to them in Paris because of [the PA's]
commitment to Annapolis and negotiations. If they stop the negotiations,
they will lose that international support, and without that, they have
nothing - they don't have Gaza, and they barely have control of the West
Bank."
According to this official, the IDF's surprise pullout from Gaza on Monday
was timed to coincide with Rice's visit, in order to give her an opportunity
to try to work out some kind of border agreement.
When Rice's visit was first planned several weeks ago, it was expected to
focus on two main issues: coming up with some kind of security regimen on
the Gaza-Egypt border following the breach there in January, and pushing the
diplomatic process with the Palestinians forward.
The intensified fighting in Gaza, however, threatened to change the focus of
her talks completely.
"The fact that we stopped the military action allows her to go back to the
original aims, to address an agreement on Rafah," the official said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, at a meeting with the foreign diplomatic corps
in Jerusalem Monday, stressed that the IDF leaving Gaza Monday morning did
not mean that Israel's actions there were over.
Indeed, Livni - who also met Monday with visiting EU foreign policy chief
Javier Solana - indicated that the military operation's goals were not only
to stop the rocket fire, but - even more importantly - to halt Hamas's arms
buildup and weaken its hold on Gaza.
Livni said that any decision the government took on how to deal with Gaza
would be based on the following objectives: providing security for Israeli
citizens, harming Hamas militarily, and hurting the organization
diplomatically.
"Those who control Gaza are responsible for what happens there. We will not
play by their rules, we will change the game whereby they decide when to
attack, when to stop and for how long... We will decide when to stop our
actions. That the soldiers left Gaza today... is not the end of our activity
against
terror in Gaza, which will continue," she said.
The security cabinet is expected to meet Wednesday and discuss the army's
overall objectives in the Strip.
"We need to attack [Hamas's] infrastructure, the places where weapons are
made and the terrorists themselves. But that's not enough. Anyone who wants
to solve the terrorist problem from Gaza needs to prevent Hamas's buildup,"
Livni said.
Livni alluded to the fact that the results of Israel's actions in Gaza would
have wider ramifications, echoing the position of Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin,
head of military intelligence, who said at Sunday's cabinet meeting that
Iran, Syria and Hizbullah were carefully watching the situation in Gaza.
"No one has an interest in Hamas's success expect for Iran, Syria and
Hizbullah," Livni said. "Its success is not a matter of reality, but also
one of perception."
Livni added that the regional players could not accept a spin of a Hamas
victory - not Abbas, not Israel, and not the moderate Arab states.
In Washington, meanwhile, a State Department official said the US "wants to
see negotiations resume, and we believe it's important that the parties
continue to try to work through the Annapolis process to achieve the results
that they've committed themselves to."
The official said Rice would be making it clear that Hamas must stop the
rocket attacks, which hurt the Palestinian people as well as Israelis.
Earlier Monday, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the US would use
the visit to stress the decision that is now facing the Palestinians.
"We have a clear message: The Palestinian people have a choice to make. It's
a choice between terrorism, or a choice between a political solution that
leads to a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with
Israel," he said.
He also had harsh words for Hamas, whom he blamed for the fighting. "The
number one thing that has to happen is that Hamas has got to stop targeting
Israeli citizens with rockets," he said.
When asked if Israel's response to the Gaza rocket fire had been
disproportionate in the eyes of the US, Johndroe responded, "We obviously
don't want any innocent civilians to lose their lives, but I think that
started with these rockets that have been fired from Gaza into Israel,
recently killing and injuring Israeli citizens in some of their bigger
cities."
He described the situation as being "escalated" by Hamas to "firing larger
rockets longer-range and killing people. That's got to stop," he aid.
Livni, meanwhile, said before her meeting with Solana that "these were not
easy days for Israeli citizens. Israel is in the midst of a struggle against
terrorism and will continue in this war against terror."
The foreign minister said that Israel expected the international community
to support its war against terror and "show determination" in delegitimizing
terrorist organizations, first and foremost - Hamas.
Livni's comments came even as Italy's foreign minister called on Israel to
negotiate with Hamas to bring about a cease-fire.
7) Rice arrives in Israel in bid to renew peace talks
By Barak Ravid
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel on Tuesday after saying she hoped to salvage peace talks that Palestinians suspended in protest of an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.
Rice said Hamas is trying to wreck chances for the peace process, after holding talks with Egyptian officials in Cairo on a stopover before heading to Israel that aimed to calm Arab ire over the operation.
Israel launched an offensive into the Gaza Strip to stop rocket attacks by Hamas and other militant groups on nearby Israeli cities, but the assault prompted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to suspend negotiations.
"There has to be an active peace process that can withstand the efforts of rejectionists to keep peace from being made, the people who are firing rockets do not want peace," Rice told reporters in Cairo. "They sow instability, that is what Hamas is doing."
"Hamas is doing what might be expected, which is using rocket attacks on Israel to arrest a peace process in which they have nothing to gain," Rice said.
"Negotiations ought to resume as soon as possible," she said, adding that any lengthy suspension of talks handed victory to Hamas, which seized control of Gaza last June and whose stepped up rocket attacks into Israel preceded the latest offensive.
Rice's first meeting in Cairo was with Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, followed by talks with President Hosni Mubarak.
Experts say Rice faces an uphill battle to revive the peace talks -launched to much fanfare last November, in Annapolis, Maryland with the goal of getting a Palestinian statehood deal before the Bush administration's term ends in January 2009.
"I continue to believe that they can get to a deal by the end of the year if everybody has got the will to do it," said Rice, adding implementation of a deal would take a lot longer.
She dismissed sceptics who have predicted the Annapolis process will fail without including Hamas and that U.S. attempts to isolate Gaza will ultimately backfire.
"It is going to have its ups and downs. There will be good days and bad days and even good weeks and bad weeks. I am going to talk to the parties about staying focused on what needs to be done here," she said.
Rice added the stop in Egypt to her itinerary only in the past few days. Government sources said Rice would be discussing the border during her visits to Egypt, Israel and the PA.
In her talks with Israeli leaders, Rice is expected once again to raise Egypt's request to increase the number of its soldiers on the border by 750.
Rice is also expected to seek Israel's response to the plan to reopen the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and to Fayyad's plan to transfer control of the crossings between Gaza and Israel to the PA.
Olmert to tell Rice: Israel wants to renew talks
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to tell Rice on Tuesday that Israel wants to renew talks with the PA quickly.
Rice, who is due to arrive in Israel on Tuesday afternoon, will head directly for Ramallah for talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. She will later dine in Jerusalem with Olmert. Rice will meet with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Tuesday.
Rice's visit had been planned to gauge progress on the peace process after President George W. Bush's recent visit to the region. But in light of events in the Gaza Strip, Rice is expected to work toward getting the talks back on track.
Olmert, who is said to have been disappointed in the PA announcement on the suspension of negotiations, will reportedly ask Rice to urge the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who visited Israel
Monday, proposed that the Israelis open a dialogue with Egypt and the PA as soon as possible toward clinching a "package deal" on Gaza.
He said an overall agreement of this type could include new security arrangements on the Philadelphi route, the reopening of the Rafah crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, a solution to the matter of the Israel-Gaza crossings and an attempt to reach a cease-fire with Hamas through Egyptian mediation.
Solana also said that such a dialogue should not be conducted in a way that would be "an achievement for Hamas."
In light of recent calls by some European countries to immediately open the Gaza Strip crossings, Livni told Solana that Europe should not take any action that could be construed as a victory for Hamas. Livni gave a briefing to foreign ambassadors on Monday, telling them that when talking about "collective punishment" it should be remembered that Sderot and Ashkelon are also experiencing collective punishment.
8) Sound and fury signifying incompetence
By Caroline B. Glick
On Sunday, Palestinian terror forces maintained their rocket and missile offensive against Israel, shooting 40 rockets, including upgraded Katyusha missiles at Sderot, Ashkelon, Netivot and surrounding areas. Whereas in 2005, 25,000 Israelis lived within Palestinian rocket and missile range from Gaza, the past week has shown that the number has expanded at least tenfold since then. Monday morning, the limited IDF ground component that was deployed in Gaza on Saturday abruptly suspended operations and pulled out. The pullout came just hours after senior IDF officials announced that the forces in Gaza were about to be augmented by additional forces and Defense Minister Ehud Barak told senior military commanders, "The time has come for action. Hamas is responsible and will pay a price."
IT IS obvious that in suspending Operation "Hot Winter" in Gaza, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government essentially crumpled in the face of pressure from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush. Sunday night the White House issued a press release demanding that Israel end its operations in Gaza and return to the negotiating table with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas.
FOR THEIR part, Abbas and his Fatah underlings have been outspoken in their support for Hamas's missile and rocket offensive against Israel. Sunday they organized joint Fatah-Hamas rallies in Hebron and Ramallah where rioters called for Israel's destruction, burned Israeli and American flags and then attacked IDF patrols and the security fence.
Truth be told, the US may have done Israel a favor preventing the escalation of operations. This is not because an offensive against Hamas's Iranian built war machine in Gaza is not vital. This is so because Operation "Hot Winter" was bereft of operational logic. Its strategic ends were unclear and, to the extent they were enunciated at all by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Barak, they bore no connection to the operations on the ground which were so limited in scope that they were incapable of achieving any long-term objective.
In one form or another, Olmert, Livni and Barak all said that the goal of Operation Hot Winter was to end the Palestinians' missile and rocket campaign against the Western Negev generally and against Ashkelon in particular. They intimated as well that the strategic objective of the campaign was to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza, and reinstall a Fatah government. Beyond that they said that they sought to kill or capture Hamas's leadership.
But the Olmert-Livni-Barak government gave the IDF insufficient tools to achieve these grandiose plans. They only allowed the IDF to deploy one infantry brigade and two partial tank battalions. They refused to expand the operation to a divisional sized force, which would still have been too small to achieve any significant or long-lasting results. The limited geographical scope of the IDF operation - in a 2-3 kilometer zone in northern Gaza - had no impact of Hamas's ability to continue to shoot off rockets and missiles whose ranges run from 5-25 kilometers. In short, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government enunciated operational and strategic objectives that it clearly had no intention of achieving.
TODAY THE Gaza Strip is a terror state run by an Iranian proxy. Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005, Hamas and its terror partners in Fatah and Islamic Jihad have built terror armies along the model of Hizbullah. Hamas forces have received training in Iran, Syria and Lebanon. They have built up formidable arsenals of Katyusha and Kassam rockets as well as anti-tank missiles. And, according to Fatah and other sources, they have been augmented not only by Iranian, Syrian and Hizbullah operatives. Al-Qaida has also built up a presence in the area.
This combined force successfully overwhelmed Egyptian forces along Gaza's border with Egypt in January. Its current capacity has rendered extensive portions of southern Israel exposed to missile and mortar attacks. And unless it is routed militarily, its capabilities will only grow.
Israel has limited options to contend with the present and growing threat. For the Olmert-Livni-Barak government, the easiest solution would be to have someone else fight Hamas and its allies for Israel. But no such proxy force exists. Both the Americans and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government operate under the assumption that Fatah is a reasonable proxy. But experience has shown that this is not the case. From September 2005 when Israel withdrew its forces until June 2007 when Hamas ousted Fatah from power, Abbas and his US-trained forces did nothing to curb Hamas's growing power or limit Iran's growing control over Hamas. Confronted by Hamas forces last June, Fatah forces cut and ran rather than fight and those who remained were largely integrated into Hamas's burgeoning army. Since June, Fatah has shown no willingness to confront Hamas. And over the past week of Hamas's escalated missile offensive, Fatah stood foursquare with Hamas against Israel.
THEN TOO, the notion that an international force could be deployed in Gaza to protect Israel from the growing terror army at its doorstep similarly lacks credibility. At no time has any international force - whatever its composition - ever been interested or capable of defending Israel against Arab terror or military offensives - whether from Gaza, from Lebanon or indeed from Egypt or Syria. And there is no reason to believe that this historic state of affairs will change significantly in the future.
In the absence of proxies, Israel has two options going forward. First, it can incapacitate Hamas and second it can try to deter Hamas. To incapacitate Hamas, Israel must launch an operation aimed at cutting off Hamas's logisitical supply lines through the border with Egypt. It must fight Hamas forces on the ground with the aim of defeating them, and it must kill or capture Hamas's senior and mid-level leadership. Given that like Hizbullah, Hamas and its state-sponsors will seek to regenerate any diminished capacities by rearming and promoting new leaders, these operations must be continuous. Consequently, to incapacitate Hamas, and so secure southern Israel, Israel requires a continuous military presence in the Gaza Strip.
The Olmert-Livni-Barak government has repeatedly rejected the redeployment of IDF forces to Gaza for any significant length of time. But they have never been called on to explain why the current state of affairs, in which an Iranian-proxy army with al-Qaida components is permitted to grow in close proximity to its civilian centers is preferable to such a long-term military presence in Gaza.
AS TO deterrence, it is unclear that it is possible to embrace deterrence as a strategy without first establishing a continuous military presence in Gaza. To succeed, deterrence must be based upon a credible threat to exact a cost for aggression that Hamas is unwilling to pay. In sending its leadership to ground while encouraging Gazans to confront IDF forces and "martyr" themselves, Hamas made clear that it views the sacrifice of its leadership as an unacceptable cost for its aggression. And yet, without forces on the ground in Gaza, the IDF lacks the intelligence necessary to conduct a wide-scale and successful assault on Hamas's leaders. So today, Israel lacks the capacity to base its operations in Gaza on a deterrence model.
There is an additional option which the government seems interested in adopting which is to conduct a new offensive every so often, when attacks foment a public outcry for action. It is far from clear though that this option is less costly either militarily or politically than maintaining a continuous presence in Gaza. Given Hamas's continuously expanding capabilities, each such operation will exact a large cost in the lives of IDF soldiers who will be required to repeatedly fight their way into Gaza. Moreover, each time Israel returns to Gaza it faces renewed international condemnation for taking action. A continuous presence in Gaza would not incur such costs. Both Rice and the Olmert-Livni-Barak government argue that a renewed military presence in Gaza is a poor option because it would render negotiations towards the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem non-viable. But then, if those negotiations were successful, they would lead to the imposition of a Fatah-Hamas terror state which would not only not protect southern Israel from missile and rocket attack, it would expose central Israel to similar aggression.
It is unclear then, why the strategic aim they seek to achieve would leave Israel better off than an operation aimed at incapacitating Palestinian-Iranian terror forces and safeguarding Israeli territory from attack.
OTHER VOICES argue that a continuous Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border would make it impossible for Israel to completely disengage from Gaza by enabling the Palestinians to link up with Egypt instead of Israel for electricity and other supplies. Israel, they claim, would still be perceived as responsible for Gaza and for the welfare of its Hamas-supporting population. These voices fail to ask a simple question: In whose eyes would Israel be considered responsible for Gaza's population?
The issue of Israel's responsibility under international law for the welfare of Gazans is an open one. Israel is not obligated to advance the aims of the Palestinians by accepting such responsibility. Beyond that, whether foreign governments perceive Israel as responsible for Gaza is not something that Israel can determine. The most it can do is seek to divest others of such a perception by explaining why it is not responsible for the welfare of Gaza's population.
By sending insufficient forces willy-nilly into Gaza over the weekend while conducting aerial bombings of empty buildings, Olmert, Livni and Barak showed that they have learned none of the lessons of the Second Lebanon War. Indeed, Barak showed that he has learned nothing from his experience as prime minister at the start of the Palestinian terror war in September 2000, when he responded to the lynching of Israeli reservists in Ramallah by bombing empty buildings and making empty threats to Yasser Arafat while begging him to take the Temple Mount.
How long will this unacceptable state of affairs be allowed to continue?
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