6 posts tagged “gaza”
The Hamas Interest in the Tahdiya (Temporary Truce) with Israel
Apparently the practice of political Islam is much more politically deceptive than I imagined. Mohammedanism has different terms for peace that has different degrees of understanding in which the Western geopolitical mind has a difficult time in grasping diplomatically. Not too long ago Egypt brokered (what the MSM called) a truce between Israel and Hamas of Gazastan. The MSM called the truce an Islamic hudna which apparently is a temporary peace; nonetheless certain members of the Israeli government were dubious of the reasons Hamas agreed to the said hudna. JRH 6/23/08 (Hat tip ICJS Research)
Unofficially Hamas has agreed to an Egyptian brokered truce with Israel. I personally suspect Mohammedan Taqiyya (deception) either to rearm or the fear that Israel was one straw from breaking the camel’s back to militarily enter Gaza with extreme prejudice to end the rocket launches into Israel.
One thing of note: Once again the Yahoo News story which was an AP Wire release, amazingly make Israel the bad guy for the tension between Israel and Hamas controlled Gaza.
Check out these quotes from the Yahoo/AP article:
In a last-minute jolt, Israeli aircraft attacked three targets in the southern Gaza Strip. One of the airstrikes destroyed a car, killing six militants inside.
A large crowd gathered around the car's smoldering remains, and a puddle of blood was visible on the asphalt. Gaza militants then fired four mortar shells at Israel, the first of the day, the military said. No one was hurt.
Hamas officials accused Israel of trying to undermine the truce, but said they would not let the violence derail the Egyptian efforts.
"We are going to commit ourselves to the start time that Egypt is going to declare regarding the calm," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. However, the group's television station said the movement would respond to "any Zionist aggression," underscoring the delicate situation.
AP Writer Ibrahim Barzak gives the impression that just as a truce is struck Israel sends war planes to southern Gaza to kill “militants.” Also the impression is given that Israel executed the attacks to “derail” the truce but noble Hamas was going to honor the truce this time anyway.
To give Barzak a little credit he makes a feeble effort to explain the whole issue of Israeli attacks in Gaza; however he still leaves out the truth of the Israeli air strikes.
Gaza militants have been bombarding southern Israel with rockets and mortars for seven years. The rate of fire increased after Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of Gaza in 2005 and stepped up further last year after Hamas wrested power from forces loyal to moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Again using the word sanitized word “militants,” Barzak writes that the hated filled murdering terrorists have been sending rockets and mortars into Southern Israel. Hence Barzak feebly explains the long term basis for Israeli reprisals but no explanation for the last attack.
Israel has responded with pinpoint air and ground attacks that have killed hundreds of Palestinians, many of them civilians. It has also imposed a strict blockade on Gaza, letting in only limited amounts of humanitarian aid, restricting fuel supplies and widening already rampant unemployment. Ending the economic sanctions by opening Gaza's crossings with Israel and Egypt has been a major Hamas demand in the cease-fire talks.
Barzak continues to demonize Israel by the Israel air attacks have been “pinpoint.” The demonization is made complete with Barzak’s pro-Arab news by saying the Israeli attacks have killed hundreds of Palestinians of which “many of them” were civilians. Thus the word “Palestinians” is a sanitized code for Jew hating terrorists and “civilians” implies innocent by-standers.
What a bunch of pro-Arab Left Wing propagandized half truths!
The “militants” and “Palestinians” spoken of are Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists which have the sole aim of destroying Israel. The Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets have been Israeli civilians. Israeli targets are Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist murdering operatives and leadership that often encircle their self with women and children that are used as human shields. When the human shields die Hamas and Islamic Jihad use it as propaganda that innocent Arabs that call themselves Palestinians were killed by Israeli military expedition.
Indeed the terrorists killed in the Israeli airstrike were Islamic Jihad terrorists and one al Qaeda associate that were involved in a recent missile strike in Israel (reporting the initial Israeli air strike).
Hmm ... al Qaeda! Isn't that the transnational terrorist organization that turned the Twin Towers into a pile of rubble killing innocent Americans on American soil?
The Israeli government is correctly mistrusting of the Hamas agreed truce but feels politically backed into a corner to stop the murdering terrorist missile launches against Israeli civilians.
The foolishness of Arab appeasers at the reception of distorted half truths from the Arab sympathetic Mainstream Media (MSM) always makes Israel the villain when so-called Arab civilian casualties occur when Israel defends itself from attacks Jew hating Arab terrorists who call themselves Palestinians.
Evelyn Gordon writing for the Jerusalem Post reveals the full story that the MSM and Palestinian propagandists leave out.
JRH 3/6/06 (Hat tip to ICEJ News)
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Civil Fights: The canard of 'disproportionate force'
Mar 5, 2008 21:35 | Updated Mar 6, 2008 14:44
International denunciations of Israel came thick and fast this week. The EU's rotating president, Slovenia, condemned the "disproportionate use of force by the Israeli Defense Forces against the Palestinian population in Gaza." UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed Israel's "excessive and disproportionate" response to Palestinian rocket attacks. Even the US State Department urged Israel to "exercise caution to avoid the loss of innocent life," which is merely a milder version of the same premise: that Israel is to blame for all Palestinian civilian casualties, either because it uses "disproportionate force" or because it exercises insufficient "caution." Yet media reports on the fighting in Gaza reveal that in fact, the blame frequently lies with Palestinian behavior.
Take, for example, an Israeli air strike that killed two Palestinian teenagers last Wednesday. According to The New York Times, "witnesses in Gaza told the Palestinian news media that the civilians were hit while standing at a launching site watching Hamas militants firing rockets." There can be no more justified military activity than targeting terrorists in the very act of firing rockets at civilians. If that is "disproportionate," all military activity is. Moreover, since Hamas eschews uniforms, the IDF has no way to distinguish rocket crews from civilians who are cheering them on. Thus any civilian who rubbernecks at a rocket launch is clearly and deliberately putting himself in danger - which in itself should absolve Israel of responsibility.
BUT MORE importantly, for that very reason, most armed forces do not allow civilians in firing zones. The IDF, for instance, generally declares active combat areas "closed military zones" from which Israeli civilians are legally barred, and it enforces such orders. Other Western armies do the same.
But Hamas needs civilian casualties to fuel Palestinian and international anger at Israel. So rather than barring civilians from its launch zones, it welcomes them. And if they do not volunteer for the victim's role, it co-opts them - as happened last weekend: "Palestinian gunmen took up positions in homes while the civilians were still inside," Haaretz reported.
Firing back at people who are shooting at you is also clearly legitimate military activity; no law of war obligates soldiers to let themselves be mown down without a fight just because there are civilians nearby. Moreover, soldiers have no way of knowing whether the civilians have fled or are still inside a house; all they can be certain of is the presence of gunmen.
Under such circumstances, civilian casualties are inevitable. But those casualties are not caused by "disproportionate force" or insufficient "caution"; they are the direct result of Hamas's decision to use civilian homes, with the people still inside, as bases for targeting Israeli soldiers.
Moreover, civilians are not always innocent. Those whose homes were invaded by Hamas were presumably unwilling hostages. But some Palestinians voluntarily serve as "human shields" for terrorists - and by actively aiding and abetting terror, they turn themselves into combatants.
In one widely publicized case in November 2006, for instance, the IDF, seeking to avoid civilian casualties, announced two planned air strikes 30 minutes in advance to enable civilians to leave. Instead, Hamas used the loudspeakers of local mosques to urge civilians to flood the area and serve as human shields. Hundreds did so, and the IDF - precisely because Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties - consequently aborted the strikes. Yet these civilians were hardly "innocent": They deliberately intervened in an armed conflict on the terrorists' behalf.
What is most noteworthy about such incidents, however, is what they say about the Palestinian claim - mindlessly parroted by the international community - that the IDF fires indiscriminately, without regard for civilians. In fact, Hamas summoned civilian reinforcements precisely because it knew a civilian presence would prevent the air strikes. And the civilians came for the same reason - not because they sought death, but because they knew the IDF would not shoot them.
IN ANOTHER incident that same month, hundreds of Palestinian women purposely entered a combat zone to shield gunmen besieged by IDF soldiers. Again, they were deliberately abetting combatants. And again, they knew they could do so safely, because the IDF would not shoot them. And indeed, the soldiers held their fire as the wanted men escaped by mingling with the crowd.
In July 2006, The New York Times described another Gaza battle as follows: "[Israeli] soldiers fired at groups of armed Palestinians who fought in the streets, sometimes surrounded by curious and excited children." Why any parent would let his children outside during a gunfight is a mystery. But unless these parents were deliberately sacrificing their children for propaganda purposes, such behavior demonstrates a truly extraordinary faith in the IDF's efforts to avoid harming civilians.
Contrast this with Palestinians' behavior when the combatants are not Israelis. During last May's Hamas-Fatah infighting, for instance, the Times reported: "The streets of Gaza City were empty except for the gunmen, with shops shuttered and residents remaining indoors, usually in interior rooms farthest from the windows." No "curious and excited" children surrounding the gunmen in these battles: Gazan parents who trusted the IDF with their children's lives evidently placed no similar reliance on Palestinian forces.
THE MEDIA reports above, and numerous others like them, make three things clear: (1) Palestinians know full well that Israel strives to avoid civilian casualties; indeed, as their behavior demonstrates, they count on this. (2) Palestinian civilians frequently deliberately put themselves in the line of fire - either to help the combatants, or, like those "excited children," merely to cheer them on. (3) Palestinian terror groups deliberately foster casualties among their own civilians: Not only do they not discourage civilians from entering combat zones; they force them to do so - for instance, by invading civilian homes - when there are no volunteers.
In short, Palestinian civilian casualties usually result not from "disproportionate force" or "insufficient caution" by the IDF, but from Palestinian behavior, on the part of both civilians and terrorists.
But of course, realizing this would require actually reading reports of the fighting. It is much easier just to skim the headlines and issue stock condemnations of Israel.
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The incompetence of Prime Minister Olmert to manage the government of Israel is appalling. Combine this with the Bush Administration intense pressure on Olmert to agree to create a Palestinian-Arab State managed by a gang of greedy turf minded terrorist thugs and you will have more violence not less.
There is only way for a Palestinian State to exist and that is for fellow Arabs to actually step in and do a Donald Trump to the fractured Islamist thugs and say, “YOU’RE FIRED!”
The only way for there to be Middle East peace is Arab nations like Jordan and Egypt to join Israel and cooperate in the front of the World’s eyes and remove the incendiary Palestinian murderous thugs.
Without major Arab cooperation the Bush Administration and Ehud Olmert are setting the Jews of Israel for a Wahhabi-Muslim Brotherhood-Syrian-Iranian dream come true: The eradication of the existence of the Land Israel.
Read Carolyn Glick’s insight on this related to Bush and Rice forcing the incompetent dolt Olmert to decease the Gaza Offensive even though CAIR’s pals the Hamas terrorists continuously sends rockets into Israeli civilian cities.
JRH 3/4/08
Here is a Ralph Peters essay on how Hamas won its victory over Fatah. It was sent via the American Congress for Truth email list.
JRH
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WHY HAMAS WON
By RALPH PETERS
Via ACT Email
Fri, 29 Jun 2007
June 19, 2007 -- HAMAS won its shut-out victory in Gaza with alarming ease. And the reason Hamas won is even more alarming: Fanaticism trumps numbers.
You'll hear no end of explanations for the terrorist triumph: Hamas was backed by Iran; Gaza is Hamas' base of support; some Fatah units ran out of ammunition . . .
All true. And all secondary factors.
Fatah's security forces in Gaza outnumbered the Hamas gunmen. Fatah had stockpiles of weapons and military gear (now in Hamas' arsenal). Fatah even had the quiet backing of Israel and America.
And Fatah folded like a pup tent in a tornado.
Hamas won because its fighters are religious fanatics ready to die for their cause. Fatah runs an armed employment agency under the banner of Palestinian nationalism. Most of the latter's security men are on the payroll because relatives or ward pols got them jobs. And they want to stay alive to collect their wages.
The result was predictable. Our government pretended otherwise. Now hairs should be standing up on the backs of thousands of necks, from the White House to the Green Zone.
Yes, Iraq is more complex than Gaza. But once you pierce the surface turbulence and look deep, the similarities are chilling: Iraq's security forces do include true patriots - but most of the troops and cops just want a job, or were ordered to join up by a sheik or a mullah, or are gathering guns until their faction calls.
The al-Qaeda-in-Iraq terrorists, the core members of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and the hard-line Sunni ghazis are willing to die for the victory of their faction and their faith. They believe they're doing Allah's will. It gives them a strength we rush to explain away.
The raw numbers suggest that Iraq's fanatics don't stand a chance. The government has a far greater numerical advantage than did Fatah. But numbers often mislead analysts during insurgencies: Iraq's government wouldn't last a week without U.S. troops.
The lesson from Gaza is that such wars are neither waged nor won by the majority of the population. A tiny fraction of the populace, armed and determined, can destroy a fragile government and seize power.
Polls showing that most Iraqis "want peace" and don't support the extremists only deceive us (because we want to be deceived). It wouldn't matter if 99 percent of the Iraqis loved us like free falafel, if we're unwilling to annihilate the fraction of 1 percent of the population with the weapons and
will to dictate the future to the rest.
At the height of last week's fighting in Gaza, one Palestinian in 300 carried a weapon in support of Hamas - a third of one percent of the population. Now Hamas rules 1.5 million people.
Numbers still matter, of course. But strength of will can overcome hollow numbers. And nothing - nothing - gives men a greater strength of will than religious fanaticism.
We don't want to hear it. Secular virtues were supposed to triumph. They didn't, but we still can't let go of our dream of a happy-face, godless world where nobody quarrels.
Our refusal to acknowledge the unifying - and terrifying -power of extremist religion has deep roots. As academics rejected and derided faith in the last century, even the Thirty Years' War - the horrible climax of Europe's wars of religion - was reinvented as a dynastic struggle, or a fight for hegemony, or a class struggle.
But the Thirty Years' War was about faith. All the other factors were in play, but the core issue, from the Protestant coup in Prague in 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was religious identity. And the atrocities committed on both sides make Iraq look like amateur hour: Wars of religion always demand blood sacrifice. (It was a compromise of bloody exhaustion that ended the Thirty Years War.)
Our problem is that, of those who rise in government, few have witnessed the power of revelation or caught a life changing glimpse of the divine. They simply can't imagine that others might be willing to die for all that mumbo-jumbo. Our convenience-store approach to faith leaves us numb to the passion of our enemies.
The true believer always beats the feckless attendee. The best you can hope for is that the extremist will eventually defeat himself.
And that does leave us some hope: Fanatics inevitably over-reach, as al Qaeda's Islamo-fascists have done in Iraq, alienating those who once saw them as allies. But the road to self-destruction can be a long one: The people of Iran want change, but the fanatics have the guns. And sorry, folks: Fanatics with guns beat liberals with ideas.
Faith is the nuclear weapon of the fanatic. And there's not going to be a religious "nuclear freeze." It doesn't matter how many hearts and minds you win, if you don't defeat the zealots with the muscles.
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Now that Hamas has booted the legitimate governing authority known as the Palestine Authority (PA) out of Gaza some interesting international outcomes will no doubt result. Hamas will start whining for humanitarian and financial aid for the poor Palestinians in Gaza that support murderous terrorism.
The victimhood DEMAND will first go to Israel that has an influence on utilities, food and money for the PA and thus Gaza. There is not a doubt in my mind that the United Nations and the European Union will exert pressure on Israel to deliver aid to the poor starving murderers living in squalor because of their on choice of lifestyle. If Israel refuses then the UN and EU will contemplate sending some sort of “Relief” to the society of terrorist murderers in Gaza.
The MK Rabbi Yitzchak Levy (MK for you Americans that don’t understand Parliamentarian government, is the equivalent of a Congressman) has suggested before any “Relief” or “Humanitarian Aid” goes to Gaza, Hamas should be forced to give up kidnapped Gilad Shalit. (Thoughts from A Blog For All)
I wonder how the Slanted Left Diplomats and Politicians will fuss about this very reasonable suggestion.
