<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Blockade</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/blockade/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 15:24:55 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Israel’s Endgame in Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/israels-endgame-in-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-endgame-in-gaza</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/israels-endgame-in-gaza/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:54:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cease-fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237652</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What Israel must do to win its war against Hamas -- and the Obama administration. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/IDF-Tank-Operation-protective-Edge-.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237656" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/IDF-Tank-Operation-protective-Edge-.jpg" alt="IDF-Tank-Operation-protective-Edge-" width="279" height="245" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Column-one-Israels-endgame-in-Gaza-369651">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The fighting is still raging in Gaza. Each day the IDF destroys more and more tunnels and other terrorist infrastructure. Each day, we discover new facets of Hamas’s depravity.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The three soldiers from the Maglan commando unit who were killed on Tuesday in the southern Gaza Strip, were buried in the rubble of a UN clinic. They entered the building to seal a terror tunnel whose entry shaft was located inside the clinic.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">A Hamas terrorist was inside the tunnel waiting for them. He detonated the building. Works out that Hamas had booby-trapped the structure, hiding 12 barrels with 80 kg. of explosives each, in a wall.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In a press briefing following the bombing, the commander of the Gaza Division reported that to date Hamas has used more than a thousand improvised explosive devices. Its bombs have destroyed thousands of buildings in the Gaza Strip.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Sami Turgeman told reporters that with the amount of concrete Hamas used in its tunnels it could have built 100 kindergartens, two hospitals, 20 schools and 20 clinics.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Clearly Hamas’s priorities do not include economic or social development projects for the residents of the area. Dual use materials will always be used first for terrorist purposes. Concern for the welfare of Gaza’s citizenry is at best a distant second.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Indeed, the terror group’s practice of using clinics, kindergartens, schools, hospitals and mosques as weapons storage areas, missile launching sites and command centers makes clear that the welfare of Gaza residents doesn’t even rank in Hamas’s list of organizational goals. As a consequence, the concept of providing “humanitarian aid” to Gaza with Hamas in power is laughable. Every smidgen of aid it receives will go to Hamas’s war machine.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And this brings us to the heart of the matter.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Even in the midst of the fighting it is apparent that we are moving toward the endgame.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The question is, what is the desired end-state? How will we know if we have won? Certainly following America’s lead is not an option. Indeed, the Obama administration is the greatest constraint Israel faces today on its road to victory.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">From the actions and words of senior administration officials, it is easy to ascertain where President Barack Obama wants this conflict to end.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">First, the administration wants Hamas to remain armed and in control of Gaza. This point was made clear by Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn, who heads the US Defense Intelligence Agency. In congressional testimony Flynn told US lawmakers, “If Hamas were destroyed and gone, we would probably end up with something much worse.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This of course is absurd. Hamas wants to kill every Jew in the world. As a practical matter then, it is impossible for any successor regime to be worse. But from Israel’s perspective, more important than discovering that the head of the DIA is an idiot, is Flynn’s revelation that the US wishes to save Hamas from Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The administration’s other positions have all been aligned with this strategic goal of maintaining Hamas in power. Both the US draft cease-fire agreement that Israel rejected, and the White House readout of President Obama’s telephone conversation with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night made clear that the US wants Hamas to be able to prosper.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Secretary of State John Kerry’s cease-fire proposal was explicit on this issue.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">A permanent cease-fire deal, it read, must include “arrangements to secure the opening of the crossings, allow the entry of goods and people and&#8230; transfer funds to Gaza for the payment of salaries for public employees&#8230; ” The last component of the administration’s desired end-state of the war is to use it as a means to force Israel to concede land to the Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, or at least use Israel’s refusal to do so as a means for blaming Israel for continued Palestinian aggression.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Obama made this clear in his conversation with Netanyahu. As the White House’s summary of the conversation reported, “The president stressed the US view that, ultimately, any lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must ensure the disarmament of terrorist groups and the demilitarization of Gaza.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, the Palestinians will keep shooting until Israel coughs up Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, and Obama is okay with that.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To summarize, the Obama administration wishes to end the war with Hamas armed and in charge of Gaza, enjoying open borders to the world, and rolling in the dough of international donor dollars and euros, and so in a position to replenish its arsenals and rebuild its tunnels.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The US seeks as well to use this end-state as a means of reinstating its pressure on Israel to surrender land in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to the Palestinians.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel’s end-state is of course entirely different. Indeed, if the US gets what it wants, then Israel will have lost the war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The question is, given that this is the US’s position, what can Israel do to win? As the scandalous Federal Aviation Administration flight ban last week made clear, the administration has effectively limitless means to harm Israel. The ban served to instill massive uncertainty into Israel’s export- and tourism-based economy. As Israeli leaders noted, it was the greatest gift to terrorists the US had ever given. Moreover, it was unwarranted and prejudicial.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Whereas the FAA claimed that it acted out of an abundance of caution after a Hamas missile landed a mile from Ben-Gurion Airport, the fact is that such caution exists nowhere else. There is no FAA flight ban on Pakistan, where a civilian aircraft was shot down last month, or in Ukraine. There is no FAA flight ban in Afghanistan or Yemen. Clearly a double standard was used against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And predictably, when US Sen. Ted Cruz stood up to the administration and demanded an explanation of the FAA’s action and its use of a double standard against Israel, the State Department accused him of lack of concern for US air carriers and passengers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It was a testament to Cruz’s moral courage that he was willing to risk being wrongly accused of reckless indifference to the safety of US airline passengers in order to decry the administration’s prejudicial treatment of Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And while Sen. Cruz played a central role in revoking the flight ban after 36 hours, the act itself showed how easy it is for the US to hurt Israel without openly attacking it. Other punitive actions have already been undertaken.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">While the administration acts in accordance with congressional will and resupplies the IDF and increases the US investment in Iron Dome, it has stopped providing visa services to Israelis interested in traveling to the US. According to I24 News, the US Embassy in Tel Aviv is not issuing travel visas except in emergency circumstances, due to staff reductions during the war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In light of the constraints Israel faces from the administration, certain operational goals that might otherwise have been achievable must be ruled out. Other actions that might have been reasonable, make no sense, under the circumstances.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The government has determined that the ground operation will go on until the tunnels are destroyed. Whether the operation takes days or weeks or longer, Netanyahu has made it clear that Israel will continue to operate on the ground – even in the framework of a cease-fire – to destroy Hamas’s tunnels.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">If we assume that Netanyahu and his ministers will continue to withstand US pressure and continue the operation until it has been completed, the question becomes, what happens then? To neutralize Hamas as a military threat in the future, Israel only needs to secure one goal: In any cease-fire arrangement, Gaza’s borders must remain sealed.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Egypt must continue to prevent smuggling from Sinai to Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel must maintain its naval blockade.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Gaza must remain cut off from the international banking system.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas is fighting to open these borders. And if it makes any gains in this area, Hamas will win. Assuming Israel destroys all or most of Hamas’s offensive capabilities before the fighting ends, the only way to keep Hamas from fighting again is to prevent it from resupplying.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To achieve its goal of keeping Gaza’s borders shut, Israel needs to do two things. First, it needs to complete its operations on the ground as quickly as possible. The faster the IDF removes our ground forces from Gaza the more difficult it will be for Obama to demand that Israel end its maritime blockade of the Gaza coast.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Second, Israel must avoid any cease-fire agreement that involves any international supervision or presence in Gaza. The best option for Israel would be a cease-fire in the form of a letter from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas setting out broad conditions of a cease-fire arrangement.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Any cease-fire that involves US guarantees or supervision or international guarantees or supervision will be an invitation for renewed pressure on Israel and Egypt to open the borders of Gaza and allow Hamas to rebuild its machinery of murder.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The same is the case for international peacekeepers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Any agreement that involves the deployment of foreign forces to Gaza for any purpose is an agreement that imports human shields to Gaza. As has been Hezbollah’s practice with UN forces in south Lebanon for the past four decades, foreign forces will not interfere with any Hamas operations, but through their very presence in on the ground, they will impede the IDF’s capacity to fight Hamas in the event that such operations becomes necessary.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Netanyahu has stated that Israel’s seeks the demilitarization of Gaza. There are only two ways to achieve that goal – through the reinstitution of Israeli military control over Gaza, and through attrition.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In light of the Obama administration’s support for Hamas’s war goals and actions it has already undertaken to undermine Israel’s war effort, it is fairly clear that it would be unwise for Israel to reconquer Gaza at this time. The price Obama would extract for such a move would in all likelihood outweigh the benefits Israel would gain from physically damaging Hamas directly.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The other option – demilitarization through attrition – is consequently Israel’s strongest option for a victorious endgame today. And attrition can only be secured if Gaza’s borders remain sealed.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">War is an ugly thing. War with terrorist murderers who lack a shred of human decency is a very ugly thing.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There are no guarantees that Israel will not have to fight again. And if Obama gets even some of what he is demanding, Israel will have to fight again, and soon.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Under these circumstances, Israel’s best bet is to destroy the tunnels quickly and secure cease-fire terms that keep Gaza isolated to reduce to a minimum Hamas’s ability to fight again.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/israels-endgame-in-gaza/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>40</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>First Lesson of Gaza War: The Blockade Works</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/first-lesson-of-gaza-war-the-blockade-works/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=first-lesson-of-gaza-war-the-blockade-works</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/first-lesson-of-gaza-war-the-blockade-works/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:40:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terrorism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236258</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amnesty International and the Left owe Israel an apology. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20100617_uniraq_560x375.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236259" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/20100617_uniraq_560x375-446x350.jpg" alt="20100617_uniraq_560x375" width="283" height="222" /></a>During the first 24 hours of the Gaza war, Palestinian terrorists fired more than two hundred rockets into Israel. Yet only one Israeli was wounded, and none were killed. How is that possible?</p>
<p>When Israel fires missiles at enemy targets, they strike with pinpoint accuracy. Sometimes they hit a lone terrorist on a motorcycle, or a single, targeted apartment in the middle of a dense cluster of apartment buildings.</p>
<p>Yet when Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian terror groups fire rockets into Israel, the vast majority land in empty fields or parking lots or other uninhabited sites.</p>
<p>The difference is not that the Israelis have better aim. The difference is that the Israelis have the right equipment, and the Palestinians don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>Israel has the sophisticated computer systems necessary to ensure that their missiles lock on the desired target. The Palestinians don&#8217;t have that technology.</p>
<p>The reason they don&#8217;t is because of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s right, the much-maligned Israeli blockade&#8211;the focus of so much griping by the Arabs, by Palestinian support groups around the world, by the United Nations and even by the Obama administration. That blockade. It&#8217;s working.</p>
<p>Israel took a lot of heat for intercepting the Mavi Marmara, the ship of pro-Hamas extremists from Turkey and elsewhere that tried to bust the blockade of Gaza in 2010. In the aftermath of that episode, various groups adopted the blockade issue as their cause du jour.</p>
<p>In 2011, for example, a panel of five &#8220;independent human rights experts&#8221; for the United Nations declared that the blockade is &#8220;a flagrant contravention of international human rights law.&#8221; In 2012, the UN&#8217;s annual report on the Gaza situation called the blockade &#8220;collective punishment.&#8221; In 2013, the UN&#8217;s &#8220;humanitarian coordinator&#8221; for Gaza, James Rawley, claimed that &#8220;Gaza is becoming uninhabitable&#8221; because of the blockade. And just this part March, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency declared that the blockade &#8220;is illegal and must be lifted.&#8221;</p>
<p>The other usual suspects have chimed in as one might expect. Amnesty International has charged that the blockade is &#8220;suffocating Gaza.&#8221; Human Rights Watch has complained that the blockade is having &#8220;an awful effect.&#8221; The International Red Cross has declared the blockade to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions.</p>
<p>Even the Obama administration, which one would have hoped would not fall in line with the knee-jerk Israel bashers of the world, has tried to get Israel to ease up on the blockade. &#8220;Gaza Blockade Untenable, U.S. Believes,&#8221; read the headline of an NBC News report back in 2010. &#8220;The Obama administration believes Israel&#8217;s blockade of Gaza is untenable and wants to see a new approach that would allow more supplies&#8221; into the territory, NBC reported.</p>
<p>That same week, Vice President Joe Biden told interviewer Charlie Rose, on Bloomberg TV: &#8220;We have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials&#8221; and other forbidden items into Gaza. Biden seemed oblivious to the fact that many construction materials are what is known as dual-use items: in addition to their primary purpose, they can also be used for terrorist purposes. Concrete for the foundation of a building can also be used to make an arms-smuggling tunnel.</p>
<p>Fortunately, Israel resisted all this international pressure. It maintained the blockade. And as a result, Palestinian rocketeers without target-locating computers continue to fire their missiles into open fields instead of supermarkets and kindergartens.</p>
<p>Amnesty International and the rest owe Israel an apology. But we won&#8217;t hold our breath waiting for that. Instead, we&#8217;ll just carefully note whose advice has proved sound, and what lessons can be learned from this experience.</p>
<p>The first lesson from the Gaza war: <i>Blockading the enemy works.</i></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/first-lesson-of-gaza-war-the-blockade-works/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>56</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Obama Blockade</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-obama-blockade/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-obama-blockade</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-obama-blockade/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Oct 2013 04:40:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[old faithful]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[parks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[shutdown]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=206883</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Berlin blockade and Obama’s shutdown theatrics.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/r.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-206884" alt="r" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/r.jpg" width="291" height="230" /></a>In the spring of ’48, the collision of wills between the free world and the red slave empire of the east came to a head in Berlin.</p>
<p>The Communist strategy had been to push forward, to violate the spirit of the agreements and then the letter of the agreements while claiming to be the aggrieved party. Their takeovers in Eastern Europe baffled a West that could not believe the Reds would show such poor sportsmanship.</p>
<p>Had the USSR waited a little longer, a weary United States would have withdrawn. Instead Stalin decided to humiliate the United States and demonstrate its impotence in international affairs.</p>
<p>The Berlin Blockade was a siege in all but name. Beyond the sheer fact of food and coal being cut off to a city of millions were a thousand minor humiliations by Soviet officials designed to break the will of their enemies to resist.</p>
<p>That was their mistake. And it’s a mistake that the left often makes.</p>
<p>The barricades around the Lincoln Memorial and the WW2 Memorial, the traffic cones blocking the view of Mt. Rushmore and the sawhorses around Old Faithful are no Berlin Blockade, but they come out of the same meanness of spirit and the same motives.</p>
<p>The petty harassment extended to a 24-hour blockade of an inn that had tried to stay open and rangers arriving to block Old Faithful every time it erupted. There are few moments that sum up the meanness of spirit of the Obama Blockade as well as a park ranger angrily telling senior citizens to get back on the bus and stop taking photos because they are engaging in forbidden “recreating”.</p>
<p>The Obama Blockade has no valid justification. Like the Berlin Blockade, it is about power and control.</p>
<p>No one actually has to go to the Lincoln Memorial or the WW2 Memorial or any of the other national monuments that were closed off. They are places that Americans assumed they could always go because they were part of their national heritage. It never occurred to them that they would be shut down.</p>
<p>The Pisgah Inn, the Cliff House, the Claude Moore Colonial Farm or any of the other private non-profits or restaurants on Federal land run themselves. It takes more resources to shut them down, to blockade them, than it would to let them keep on operating.</p>
<p>But it’s not about what’s easier. The Communists picked a fight over Germany’s future currency. The current fight is over ObamaCare. But ObamaCare, like the Communist Ostmark, is about more than its substance—it’s also about control.</p>
<p>The siege of America, unlike the siege of Berlin, is virtual; but it also depends on seizing control over the distribution of vital necessities. In Berlin, that meant food and coal. In America, that’s health care.</p>
<p>The question is will you agree to ObamaCare, just as in Berlin the question was whether you would get a Soviet ration card, fill your wallet with Ostmarks and submit to a Soviet takeover. The Communists assumed that cutting off food would force the residents of Berlin to use Soviet ration cards and currency.</p>
<p>They were wrong.</p>
<p>The residents were able to see that short term food from the USSR would mean decades of little food under Communist rule. Similarly any temporary benefits from ObamaCare will mean national shortages of health care in the future.</p>
<p>The National Park Service’s abusive antics, which include kicking senior citizens out of their cabins and detaining others at a hotel under armed guard, are about power. For these same reasons, Soviet officials subjected trains and water freight to pointless inspections, made petty demands and resorted to buzzing the Allied aircraft carrying out the Berlin Airlift. The tactics may have been petty, but they were making a big statement; this is our territory. We are in control here.</p>
<p>The Obama Blockade can shut down websites that go on running anyway, it can refuse to pay death gratuities, take down the Amber Alert and harass tourists, but it can’t do what it would really like to punish the Americans who, like the Berliners, insist on voting to the right of the left, by taking away anything more vital.</p>
<p>And that is what this battle is really about.</p>
<p>The petty harassment of the Obama Blockade is a sign of impotence. It must satisfy its spite harassing individuals, throwing out senior citizens from their homes and denying the families of soldiers killed in its botched war money to help pay for their funeral expenses, because it can’t inflict a greater misery and torment on the country at large. And it can’t do that until it completely controls health care.</p>
<p>The Obama Blockade is not a sign of strength, pettiness never is, it’s a sign of weakness.</p>
<p>Like the Soviets, Obama is hoping to rattle Republicans into backing down and giving in. He’s hoping that the accumulation of inconveniences and deprivations will turn Americans against the Yankee Running Dog Capitalists of the Republican Party, the way that the Communists hoped that being cold and hungry would turn Berliners against the United States.</p>
<p>Stalin lost his gamble and Obama is being forced to reconsider his. Instead of the easy victory he hoped for, his blockade created a backlash.</p>
<p>The photos of WW2 veterans storming the WW2 memorial have echoes of the Berlin Airlift; a seemingly small action whose greater resonances attain heroic proportions by pushing back against tyranny. Family restaurants that defy the blockaders and fight to stay open send a message that there still is room for private lives and private concerns even on government land.</p>
<p>The Soviet Union hoped that Berliners would turn to the Communists. Instead they turned against them. Obama’s own approval ratings have fallen sharply. The speeches and putdowns roaring at record pace out of the White House have not changed the basic fact that Obama’s position, like that of the USSR, is that he will not negotiate over an economic power that he considers to be absolutely his in every way.</p>
<p>The tactics of the Communists shook Americans of their complacency. Even those who had thought that Stalin was a reasonable man willing to be our partner understood that there could be no middle ground. The Soviet Union was not looking for a compromise. It wanted everything and if it didn’t get it, it would make life as miserable as it could for everyone.</p>
<p>That has been Obama’s message. Either Congress completely capitulates and recognizes his power to do whatever he likes or memorials will be shut down, senior citizens will be thrown out of their homes and the families of the soldiers killed in the line of duty will have to struggle to cover funeral expenses.</p>
<p>The Berlin Blockade woke up Americans to what the Soviet Union really was. The Obama Blockade is waking up Americans affected by it to what Obama really is.</p>
<p>Behind the big ideas and the big speeches is a meanness and smallness of spirit that desires power above all else, that lacks any sense of decency and honor, and that when denied, lashes out viciously against anyone in the grip of its power.</p>
<p>The Berlin Blockade showed millions of people why they never wanted to find themselves under Communist control. The Obama Blockade, the meanness and pettiness in its needless power plays, is a warning of what life will be like if the left gains even more control over America.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-obama-blockade/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>15</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>An Undeserved Apology to Islamist Turkey</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/an-undeserved-apology-to-islamist-turkey/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=an-undeserved-apology-to-islamist-turkey</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/an-undeserved-apology-to-islamist-turkey/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:33:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pressure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=182906</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why Netanyahu bowed before pro-Hamas Prime Minister Erdogan. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/an-undeserved-apology-to-islamist-turkey/erdogan-speaking/" rel="attachment wp-att-182908"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-182908" title="Erdogan-speaking" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Erdogan-speaking-436x350.jpg" alt="" width="262" height="210" /></a>Thanks to President Barack Obama, Turkey&#8217;s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan extorted an undeserved apology from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in return for promising to restore normalized diplomatic relations with Israel and dropping trumped up charges against Israeli military personnel. After exacting his pound of flesh, Erdogan then began to backtrack on both of his own promises.</p>
<p>Before departing Israel for Jordan on the last leg of his trip to the Middle East, President Obama arranged for Prime Minister Netanyahu to submit to Erdogan&#8217;s demand to apologize for the deaths of eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish-American citizen resulting from Israel&#8217;s interdiction of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship that was part of an anti-Israel activist flotilla attempting to break Israel&#8217;s lawful naval blockade of Gaza in 2010. Israel will also be paying several millions of dollars in compensation to the victims&#8217; families.</p>
<p>&#8220;In light of the Israeli investigation into the incident, which pointed out several operational errors,&#8221; according to an Israeli government statement issued following the apology, &#8220;Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized to the Turkish people for any errors that could have led to loss of life and agreed to complete the agreement on compensation.&#8221;</p>
<p>Prime Minister Erdogan accepted the Israeli apology on behalf of the Turkish nation. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Prime Minister Netanyahu&#8217;s apology, and his offer of compensation and to further ease restrictions along the Gaza border with Israel, satisfied all of Turkey&#8217;s demands. Erdogan himself reportedly delivered the message that Israel had acceded to his conditions in a call to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. But Erdogan did not wait long to draw back from his reciprocal promises to restore normal diplomatic relations and put an end to the legal proceedings against the Israeli soldiers who took part in the operation to prevent the Mavi Mamara from breaking Israel&#8217;s lawful naval blockade.</p>
<p>Just a day after receiving Netanyahu&#8217;s apology, Erdogan told Turkish reporters that it was too early to talk about dropping the Mavi Marmara case against the Israeli soldiers, and that normalizing diplomatic relations would come gradually. “We will see what will be put into practice during the process. If they move forward in a promising way, we will make our contribution. Then, there would be an exchange of ambassadors,” Erdogan said.</p>
<p>The spokesperson for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had issued a statement on the day of Israel&#8217;s apology last Friday stating, &#8220;The Secretary-General welcomes that Governments of Israel and Turkey have agreed to restore normal relations between them.&#8221;  When I asked him the following Monday whether he had any comment on Erdogan&#8217;s quick backtracking from his promises, the answer was &#8220;I don&#8217;t have anything further beyond the statement.&#8221;</p>
<p>Moreover, Erdogan failed to offer any apology of his own for his recent speech at a United Nations sponsored Alliance of Civilizations conference in Vienna, where he equated Zionism with fascism and characterized Jews&#8217; quest for their own nation in their historic homeland as a &#8220;crime against humanity.&#8221; In fact, he said just days before Netanyahu&#8217;s apology that he stood by his remarks in Vienna, although he claimed they had been misunderstood.</p>
<p>What makes this forced submission to Erdogan&#8217;s demands, engineered by Obama, so galling, however, is not just Erdogan&#8217;s backtracking within 24 hours of receiving the apology he had demanded, or his refusal to back down from his blood libel against Zionism. Most galling is the evidence that Erdogan himself helped precipitate the Mavi Marmara episode with full knowledge that it could lead to the type of tragedy on board that ensued. The flotilla was not an innocent humanitarian mission, as the Islamists and their &#8220;useful idiot&#8221; supporters would have the world believe. Israel had proposed to transfer any humanitarian supplies into Gaza via its Mediterranean seaport of Ashdod, but was rebuffed by the Mavi Marmara crew.</p>
<p>The flotilla was organized, and the Mavi Marmara ship purchased, by the Turkish Islamist IHH organization which had about 40 of its operatives on the Mavi Marmara ship.  While the crew and passengers of the other five ships in the flotilla cooperated peacefully with Israel&#8217;s forces whom had boarded their ships and did not suffer any injuries, the IHH operatives aboard the Mavi Marmara were readying themselves for a fight.</p>
<p>IHH has close ties with Hamas and the Turkish government led by Erdogan, who reportedly saw the flotilla as an opportunity to goad Israel into a potentially embarrassing confrontation. If true, as appears to be the case, the evidence summarized below of the Erdogan regime&#8217;s part in the Mavi Marmara episode puts the onus of the deaths aboard the blockade-running ship squarely on Erdogan&#8217;s shoulders for which Erdogan, not Netanyahu, should apologize and make amends.</p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/18098">2010 report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC)</a>, that relied in part on statements by Mavi Marmara passengers and computer files, stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>According to statements from the passengers, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan maintains close contacts with IHH. The flotilla set sail with the full knowledge and agreement of Erdogan, who expressed personal interest in its success and his intention to exploit it [sic] promote his status in Turkey and the Arab-Muslim world. Passengers said that before the flotilla set sail, Prime Minister Erdogan constructed a scenario based on a possible confrontation with Israel which he could use to further his own needs. The statements were supported by descriptions found in files on laptop computers belonging to the passengers.</p></blockquote>
<p>A journalist on board the Mavi Marmara with &#8220;good connections with the heads of the Turkish government and with Bülent Yildirim, head of IHH&#8221; was quoted by the report as saying, &#8220;The Turkish government was behind the flotilla to the Gaza Strip and its objective was to embarrass Israel: &#8216;The Turks set a trap for you and you fell into it.&#8217; The flotilla was organized with the support of the Turkish government and Prime Minister Erdogan gave the instructions for it to set sail. That was despite the fact that everyone knew it would never reach its destination.&#8221;</p>
<p>Additional evidence of the close links between the IHH and the Erdogan regime was found in computer files in laptops confiscated from Mavi Marmara passengers.</p>
<p>On board, according to the report, &#8220;the ordinary passengers were separated from the hard core of IHH operatives,&#8221; whom had been permitted to board the ship in Istanbul without undergoing a security check that the other passengers had to undergo. This supports the conclusion that the Erdogan regime was easing the way for the IHH operatives to board and assume control of the ship.</p>
<p>The IHH operatives had a free hand to prepare for a violent confrontation with the Israeli forces once they attempted to board the ship. The IHH operatives armed themselves, the report stated, with &#8220;cold weapons which had been collected and manufactured on board the ship,&#8221; including &#8220;knives, axes, tools, metal cables and metal clubs which had been sawed off the ship’s railings.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Israeli forces who boarded the Mavi Marmara did not draw lethal weapons as they began their mission, but had to resort to using live ammunition in self defense once they realized they were in severe danger of being killed. As recounted in <a href="http://www.beyondimages.info/b285.html">Briefing Number 285</a> published by &#8220;Beyond Images,&#8221; the following is testimony from two Israeli soldiers included in the final report of the Turkel Commission, an independent Israeli panel which investigated the incident:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>Israeli Soldier:</strong>  “Before I managed to touch my feet on the deck, about ten people jumped onto me and began brutally beating me from every direction using clubs, metal rods and fists&#8230;. At this stage I was not armed.</p>
<p>&#8230;.A number of attackers grabbed me by the legs and my torso and threw me over the side to the deck below, about 3.5 meters.</p>
<p>Upon landing on the middle deck, I fractured my arm, and a mob of dozens of people attacked me and basically lynched me – including pulling off my helmet, strangling me, sticking fingers into my eyes to gouge them out of their sockets, pulling my limbs in every direction, striking me in an extremely harsh manner with clubs and metal rods, mostly on my head.   I truly felt that I was about to die, way beyond what we define as life-threatening.  The behaviour of the people at this stage was definitely like fighters of an enemy which has come to kill the other side, that is, me.   I felt at any moment I would take a blow to the head which would kill me&#8230;..”</p>
<p><strong>Israeli Soldier:</strong>  “As I reached the deck, I saw a terrorist with an iron crowbar waiting to strike me on the head, but when he tried to hit me, I pushed him, and immediately another four terrorists jumped onto me while one of them wrapped the chain around my neck and strangled me. While I am struggling with them I thought of drawing my pistol but I felt that if I drew it, because they were up against me and kicking me, I wouldn’t be able to shoot and they would grab the pistol from me.  At this stage, I lost consciousness (apparently from the strangling – I saw stars) and when I awoke, I felt that I was in the air, and three/four terrorists are throwing me from the upper deck to the bridge deck.  I was very heavy, and I felt a very quick and forceful fall.  About 20 men were waiting for me there with poles, axes and more, and as I fell they grabbed me and dragged me inside the ship&#8230;.”</p></blockquote>
<p>In short, it would appear from the evidence that the tragic confrontation President Obama pressured Prime Minister Netanyahu into apologizing for was put into motion by the Hamas-allied Turkish Islamist IHH organization with the help of the Turkish prime minister to whom Netanyahu apologized. The IHH operatives intended to kill or seriously maim the Israeli soldiers who were attempting to carry out their mission as peacefully as had been accomplished successfully aboard the other flotilla vessels. But this would not faze Obama, our nation&#8217;s apologizer-in-chief, who has no problem with delivering his own mea culpas for the United States, as he demonstrated during his trip to Turkey at the beginning of his first term.</p>
<p>&#8220;The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history,&#8221; President Obama told the Turkish Parliament in a speech he delivered in Ankara, Turkey on April 6, 2009. &#8220;Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans&#8230; I know that the trust that binds the United States and Turkey has been strained, and I know that strain is shared in many places where the Muslim faith is practiced. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world &#8212; including in my own country.&#8221;&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama wanted to return home from his first presidential trip to Israel with a diplomatic feather in his cap. A restoration of relations between Israel and Turkey, gained by forcing Netanyahu to submit to Erdogan&#8217;s extortion with an apology, seemed to be the most achievable tangible accomplishment of a trip that consisted mostly of nice-sounding speeches and ceremonies. In doing so, however, Obama played right into Erdogan&#8217;s hands as the devious Turkish prime minister prepares to visit with the Hamas terrorists in Gaza next month.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/joseph-klein/an-undeserved-apology-to-islamist-turkey/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>217</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>UN Blames Israel for Gaza&#8217;s &#8216;Inviable&#8217; Future</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/un-blames-israel-for-gazas-inviable-future/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=un-blames-israel-for-gazas-inviable-future</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/un-blames-israel-for-gazas-inviable-future/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:25:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[livable]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[siege]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=141922</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When will the Palestinians be held accountable for the society they create? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/qassam_610.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-141925" title="qassam_610" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/qassam_610.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) held a conference on August 27th entitled “Will the Gaza Strip be Viable in 2020?” The conclusion, predictably, was that the Israeli government was fully responsible for the difficult human living conditions in the Gaza Strip and that the Gaza population will face a real disaster on all levels by 2020 if the Israeli &#8220;siege&#8221; were not immediately ended.</p>
<p>In attendance at the Israel-bashing conference were the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, Maxwell Gaylard, Director of UNRWA operations in Gaza Robert Turner, and UNICEF Special Representative in the Palestinian Territory, Jean Gough.</p>
<p>Gaylard said that the Gaza population is expected to expand by a half million, reaching 2.1 million in 2020, while access to water and electricity, education and health resources will get worse over the same period, unless major remedial action is taken immediately.</p>
<p>“Despite their best efforts the Palestinians in Gaza still need help,” Gaylard said. “They are under blockade. They are under occupation and they need our help both politically and practically on the ground.”</p>
<p>Best efforts? Gaylard may not have noticed, but Gaza is not under Israeli occupation today. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas has controlled Gaza for the last five years after its forcible ejection of its Fatah rivals. Gaylard neglected to point out the reason for what remains of the Israeli blockade. Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups have used Gaza to launch thousands of rockets, missiles and mortars into Israel during the years of Hamas control -  542 this year alone to date. Indeed, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired seven rockets into Israel in the past few days. Two of them narrowly missed a school just as the new Israeli school year got underway.</p>
<p>Despite the Palestinian terrorists&#8217; continuing onslaught of unprovoked attacks, Israel has relaxed its defensive blockade at great risk to the security of its citizens. Building materials and many goods are regularly imported into the Gaza Strip without Israeli interference. Tons of agricultural products are exported without Israeli interference. And Israel is helping the Gaza economy by supplying six times as many megawatts of electricity to the Gaza Strip as Egypt does.</p>
<p>As a consequence, Gaza&#8217;s economic situation is not the dire catastrophe that Gaylard makes it out to be.  In 2011 the Gaza Strip enjoyed a 27% growth rate compared to 2010. This growth contributed to a rise of about 23% in the per capita Gross Domestic Product. In the first quarter of 2012, the Gaza Strip showed 6% growth compared to the first quarter of the previous year. By comparison, the Gross Domestic Product in Egypt expanded 5.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 over the same quarter of the previous year. Saudi Arabia&#8217;s gross domestic product grew 5.94 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period a year ago.</p>
<p>Unemployment in the Gaza Strip dropped to 28.4% in the second quarter of 2012 &#8211; very high to be sure, but not that much higher than Spain&#8217;s and South Africa&#8217;s unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent during the same period.</p>
<p>What about the critical water shortage in Gaza?  Jean Gough, the UNICEF Special Representative in the Palestinian Territory, warned that there may not be any drinking water in Gaza by 2016. Water demand is expected to increase by 60% in the upcoming years, while, according to UNRWA, only a quarter of Gaza waste water is treated. Seventy-five percent of waste water, including raw sewage, is being pumped into the Mediterranean Sea or contaminating underground water sources.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/joseph-klein/un-blames-israel-for-gazas-inviable-future/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>74</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Turkey&#8217;s Hypocrisy Over Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/stephenbrown/turkeys-hypocrisy-over-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=turkeys-hypocrisy-over-gaza</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/stephenbrown/turkeys-hypocrisy-over-gaza/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jul 2012 04:44:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Stephen Brown]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[apology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Armenia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mavi Marmara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=138692</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Where is the international outrage over the 20-year blockade of Armenia?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/turkey-erdogan-nato-libya-obstacle.preview.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-138715" title="turkey-erdogan-nato-libya-obstacle.preview" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/turkey-erdogan-nato-libya-obstacle.preview.gif" alt="" width="375" height="248" /></a>It must be one of the biggest cases<em> </em>of diplomatic hypocrisy in the world today.</p>
<p>Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s most recent efforts to improve damaged relations with Turkey ran into a brick wall once again, receiving only <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-ignores-lieberman.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=26288&amp;NewsCatID=338">a dismissive response</a> from Israel’s former ally. Lieberman stated Israel is ready “to solve any outstanding disputes” with Ankara but was ignored by Turkish officials despite the deteriorating Middle East environment. Meeting with Turkish journalists, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also contributed this week to the diplomatic push to <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=278765">re-establish close ties</a> with Israel’s one-time friend, telling the journalists Israel and Turkey &#8220;were &#8216;important and stable&#8217; countries in an unstable region” and this regional instability makes reconciliation especially important.</p>
<p>“Turkey and Israel have relations that go a long way,” <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=278765">said</a> Netanyahu. “We need to find ways to restore the relationship that we had, because I think it is important for each of our countries.”</p>
<p>But the appeals of both senior Israeli politicians fell on deaf ears in Ankara. As with past efforts to patch up relations between the two countries, the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insists <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=234163">three outstanding issues</a> must be settled before discussions regarding improvement can even begin.</p>
<p>The first condition is that Israel must apologize for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident. The Mavi Marmara is a Turkish ship that tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in 2010 but was boarded by Israeli naval commandos. Nine people on the ship died in the ensuing fight with the commandos. The second condition is that Israel must compensate the families of those who were killed, while the third concerns Turkey’s demand that Israel lift its blockade of Gaza.</p>
<p>“As long as Israel does not apologise, does not pay compensation and does not lift the embargo on Palestine, it is not possible for Turkish-Israeli ties to improve,” Erdogan <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=234163">said</a> in 2011 when dashing last year’s efforts to renew friendly ties.</p>
<p>Israel has always said it would never apologize for enforcing its legal blockade of Gaza, which is necessary for its security. Also, the people on the Mavi Marmara were the ones who provoked the violence by ignoring Israeli warnings to stay away and then attacked the commandos with iron bars. Besides, Lieberman said in <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=233355">an Israel Radio interview</a> last year that an apology would not make any difference in Israeli-Turkish relations due to the negative stance the Islamist Erdogan government has adopted towards Israel since it came to power in 2002.</p>
<p>“Whoever sees the positions expressed by Turkey [regarding Israel and the Palestinians] in the international community does not have any illusions that an apology will dramatically improve Israel’s ties with Turkey,” <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=233355">said</a> Lieberman.</p>
<p>And an apology, according to Lieberman, may even be dangerous for Israel, since it may signal weakness in a region where weakness is not liked.</p>
<p>“It is forbidden to be weak, and an apology is first and foremost a message of weakness,” said Lieberman.</p>
<p>But it is Turkey’s last demand, that Israel lift its legal blockade of Gaza, which really stands out due to its hypocrisy. Almost unmentioned by the mainstream media during the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident was the fact that while Turkey was bitterly complaining about the Israeli embargo on Gaza, championing the Palestinian cause before the world, it was at the same time blockading landlocked Armenia, an embargo it has maintained since 1993. Turkey closed its border that year with Armenia, a former Soviet republic in the southern Caucasus Mountains, and has refused to reopen it since, a move that has seriously disrupted the development of the small Christian nation’s economy.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/stephenbrown/turkeys-hypocrisy-over-gaza/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>21</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Israel&#8217;s Right to Blockade</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/israels-right-to-blockade/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-right-to-blockade</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/israels-right-to-blockade/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:00:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[article]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[authority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[civilian population]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[declaration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enemy countries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza Strip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[international law experts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[law]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Laws]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[legitimate methods]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[London]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[london declaration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Manual]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[manual article]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[neutral states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[population]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Remo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[San]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[san remo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[southern Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[suicide bombings]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62470</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Counting the ways in which the law is on the Jewish state's side. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/blockade.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62714" title="blockade" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/blockade.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="224" /></a></p>
<p>Does Israel&#8217;s blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and its enforcement of the blockade comply with international law? The evidence suggests that the answer is an overwhelming yes:</p>
<p>The <em>1909 Declaration Concerning the Laws of Naval War</em> (the London Declaration), the first international instrument to acknowledge the legality of blockades, specifically recognized the right of nations to blockade their enemy.</p>
<p>So does the <em>San Remo Manual</em>, which is a compilation by international law experts of agreed upon international law on blockades and related subjects. The blockade must be declared against a belligerent, and notified to all belligerents and neutral states (Article 93). The declaration must specify the commencement, duration, location, and extent of the blockade and the period within which vessels of neutral States may leave the blockaded coastline (Article 94). The blockade may be enforced and maintained by a combination of legitimate methods and means of warfare provided this combination does not result in acts inconsistent with the rules set out in the San Remo Manual (Article 97).</p>
<p>A blockade is prohibited, according to the <em>San Remo Manual</em>, if (a) it has the sole purpose of starving the civilian population or denying it other objects essential for its survival; or (b) the damage to the civilian population is, or may be expected to be, excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated from the blockade (Article 102).</p>
<p>Hamas is the self-declared enemy of Israel, sworn to its destruction, as set forth in Hamas&#8217; Charter. Hamas has backed up its belligerency toward the Jewish state by suicide bombings and thousands of rocket attacks launched from Gaza against civilians in Israel. Hamas&#8217;s armed terrorist militia is funded, trained and armed by Israel&#8217;s enemy countries, including most notably Iran which has managed to smuggle some arms to Hamas via land routes, and has attempted to do so by sea.  If Iran were as successful in arming Hamas with sophisticated rockets and other weaponry as it has been in arming Hezbollah on Israel&#8217;s northern border, Israel would face an imminent existential threat on both its northern and southern borders.  Thus, the predicate for a blockade &#8211; a state of belligerency with the blockaded belligerent &#8211; is clearly established.</p>
<p>When Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, it had made arrangements with the Palestinian Authority for freedom of movement across the Israeli-Gaza border on the understanding that the Palestinian Authority would implement certain specified security arrangements. Those arrangements were never implemented. Nevertheless, even after  Hamas&#8217; victory in parliamentary elections and its stated refusal to abide by any agreements reached between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Israel did not immediately institute a blockade.  Only after Hamas kidnapped an Israeli soldier from the Israeli side of the border, took forcible control of Gaza from the Palestinian Authority and began launching rockets from Gaza into southern Israel did Israel restrict the flow of most goods entering into and leaving Gaza.</p>
<p>Hamas&#8217; supporters, including the Free Gaza Movement which helped organize the flotilla in which the fatalities occurred after Israeli commandos met armed resistance when they boarded one of the ships, argue that the blockade is nevertheless illegal under international law. Under Article 102 of the <em>San Remo Manual</em> (quoted above), they argue, the blockade is illegal because Israel&#8217;s purpose is to starve the Gazan population and deprive them of other necessities for survival, and the damage to Gaza&#8217;s civilian population is disproportionately excessive in relation to any legitimate military need.</p>
<p>However, this argument ignores two basic facts (not &#8220;biased opinions&#8221; as some might allege):</p>
<p>First, food and medical supplies have been permitted continuously into Gaza during the blockade, including even during Operation Cast Lead, showing that Israel&#8217;s purpose was certainly not to starve the Gazan civilian population or to deny them other necessities for their survival. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, the amount and variety of supplies permitted into Gaza have increased, despite the fact that there is still no agreement on effective security arrangements in accordance with Israel&#8217;s understanding with the Palestinian Authority and that Israeli&#8217;s kidnapped soldier is still in Hamas custody without access by the International Red Cross.</p>
<p>Second, Israel tried to work out a compromise with the flotilla organizers which would permit its humanitarian cargo to be delivered to the Gazan civilian population. Israel proposed on several occasions that once it had the opportunity to inspect the ships for arms and supplies that could be used for military purposes and to remove them, all other cargo on the ships would be delivered to the civilians in Gaza through international agencies.  Israel&#8217;s offer was an attempt to balance its military security requirements with mitigation of damage to Gaza&#8217;s civilian population by allowing the bulk of the cargo to reach them through reliable means. Both Hamas and the Free Gaza Movement leaders rejected the offer.</p>
<p>Aside from the fact that Muslim Brotherhood members and other Islamic jihadists were participating in the flotilla &#8211; raising questions about the true humanitarian nature of the mission &#8211; the organizers of the flotilla admitted that their main purpose was to break the blockade: &#8220;This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it&#8217;s about breaking Israel&#8217;s siege on 1.5 million Palestinians.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Free Gaza blockade runners&#8217; willingness to deny the Gaza civilian population the humanitarian aid they claimed to be carrying if they could not succeed in breaking the blockade shows that Hamas&#8217; supporters &#8211; not Israel &#8211; were the ones willing to put Hamas&#8217; military objective of breaking the blockade over the needs of Gaza&#8217;s civilian population.</p>
<p>Israel&#8217;s enforcement of the blockade, including its boarding of the ships in the flotilla which refused inspection at an Israeli port, was fully in compliance with the following provisions of the <em>San Remo Manual</em>:</p>
<p>98. Merchant vessels (defined as a vessel, other than a warship, an auxiliary vessel, or a State vessel such as a customs or police vessel, that is engaged in commercial or private service) believed on reasonable grounds to be breaching a blockade may be captured. Merchant vessels which, after prior warning, clearly resist capture may be attacked.</p>
<p>103. If the civilian population of the blockaded territory is inadequately provided with food and other objects essential for its survival, the blockading party must provide for free passage of such foodstuffs and other essential supplies, subject to:</p>
<p>(a) the right to prescribe the technical arrangements, including search, under which such passage is permitted;</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>(b) the condition that the distribution of such supplies shall be made under the local supervision of a Protecting Power or a humanitarian organization which offers guarantees of impartiality, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.</p>
<p>104. The blockading belligerent shall allow the passage of medical supplies for the civilian population or for the wounded and sick members of armed forces, subject to the right to prescribe technical arrangements, including search, under which such passage is permitted.</p>
<p>The ships on which there was no violent resistance to an inspection encountered non-violence from the Israeli side.  But on the one ship carrying Turkish activists, who had declared their jihadist intentions, Israeli soldiers descended with only paintballs in hand (pistols not drawn) and encountered violent resistance.  They had the right to protect themselves and their colleagues with lethal force once they were attacked by packs of assailants using knives, metal rods, clubs, etc. who had also begun to take the soldiers&#8217; pistols away from them.</p>
<p>Hamas&#8217; supporters turn a blind eye to the terrorist group&#8217;s violence against innocent Israeli civilians and to its crimes against its own people.  Here is an excerpt from a speech delivered by Hamas MP Fathi Hammad, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 29, 2008:</p>
<p>Fathi Hammad: [The enemies of Allah] do not know that the Palestinian people has  developed its [methods] of death and death-seeking. For the Palestinian people, death has  become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land.  The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they  have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen,  in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the  Zionist enemy: &#8220;We desire death like you desire life.&#8221; (Emphasis added)</p>
<p>There can be no real peace so long as the Hamas terrorists and their state sponsors such as Iran want more innocent Jews to die for death’s sake and will settle for nothing short of Israel’s extermination, even at the expense of innocent Palestinian civilians. The Free Gaza Movement and their supporters should spend their time seeking to free Gaza from the grip of Hamas, not trying to end Israel&#8217;s lawful blockade.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/israels-right-to-blockade/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Religious Rally Against Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/religious-rally-against-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=religious-rally-against-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/religious-rally-against-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:00:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anglican communion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[antiochian orthodox church]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bank]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bishop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMEP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[D.C.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[episcopal church presiding bishop]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[episcopal peace fellowship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[greek archdiocese]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mainline protestant denominations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[methodist federation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[middle east peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religious]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Schori]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S. Episcopal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.  Its]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62422</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Churches for Middle East Peace gets on the side of those lusting for genocide. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/presiding-bishop-katharine-jefferts-schori.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-62731" title="presiding-bishop-katharine-jefferts-schori" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/presiding-bishop-katharine-jefferts-schori-300x229.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="229" /></a></p>
<p>Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) tries to organize American religious opinion against Israel with relatively measured tones.  Its participants predictably include officials from the left-dominated Mainline Protestant denominations, liberal Catholic orders, and the Greek Archdiocese of North America, as well as the Antiochian Orthodox Church in the U.S.  Its official &#8220;friends&#8221; include more overtly anti-Israel diehards like Friends of Sabeel &#8211; North America, which essentially wants to dissolve Jewish Israel in favor of a multi-ethnic &#8220;Palestine.&#8221;   Various advocates of anti-Israel divestment, an otherwise largely defeated cause, are also &#8220;friends&#8221; to CEMP, including the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, and the Methodist Federation for Social Action.</p>
<p>The star of CMEP&#8217;s annual &#8220;advocacy&#8221; conference in Washington, D.C. starting June 13 will be Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.  Comfortably liberal Episcopal refinement is exactly the sort of tone that CMEP often prefers to mask its more provocative agenda.  Bishop Schori is enmeshed in the melt-down of her own denomination, including lawsuits against departing local congregations, and its schism with the more theologically orthodox global Anglican Communion.  But denouncing Israel still merits her attention.</p>
<p>Last week, she wrote President Obama a relatively long, substantive and, by Religious left standards, temperate denunciation of Israel&#8217;s interception of the Gaza-bound flotilla. But the bias and preoccupation with Israeli sins, perceived or real, are still obvious, even if cloaked in Episcopalian politesse.  Admitting all the details of the flotilla event are still unclear, she still insisted:   &#8220;It is clear, however, that the deaths of civilians working to deliver humanitarian aid could not have happened absent the counterproductive Israeli blockade of Gaza.&#8221;  Ostensibly there are &#8220;far better ways to protect Israel&#8217;s security and promote moderate political leadership in Gaza than a blockade that intensifies human suffering and perpetuates regional insecurity.&#8221;</p>
<p>What are the alternatives to counteracting Hamas rule in Gaza short of a partial blockade against it?  Like most Israel critics, Bishop Schori does not say.  And as with other professions of supposed concern about Israel&#8217;s &#8220;security,&#8221; Bishop Schori and other clerics who publicly pontificate about the Middle East almost never offer substitute proposals for whatever Israeli defenses they reject.  The security wall is supposedly an outrage, but what else will impede suicide bombers?  Israel&#8217;s continued security oversight of the West Bank is purportedly oppresses the Palestinians.  But since most Palestinians still seem to reject a Palestinian state existing peacefully alongside a Jewish Israel, what are the other options?  Religious and secular complainants insist that removal of Jewish settlements from the West Bank is prerequisite for peace.  But the abrupt closure of all Jewish settlements in Gaza hardly generated good will and instead seemed only to stimulate appetite for more Israeli concessions.  Browbeating Israel into endless accommodations that only feed an inexhaustible expectation by Palestinians for further Israeli retreat and eventual Arab/Islamist triumph seems to be the Religious Left&#8217;s main strategy for Middle East &#8220;peace.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Instead of enhancing Israel&#8217;s security, the blockade has harmed its international standing and imposed an inexcusable humanitarian toll on the people of Gaza,&#8221; Bishop Schori insisted in her letter to Obama.  &#8220;While Israel has allowed a very limited amount of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, the restriction on basic goods for agriculture, fishing, and infrastructure construction has caused poverty and joblessness to soar.&#8221;  This may be true, but why is Israel exclusively at fault for Gaza&#8217;s suffering?  How was Gaza faring before to the blockade, and under the rule of the Palestinian Authority?  What evidence is there for Palestinian leadership genuinely interested in responsible governance rather than indefinite conflict?</p>
<p>Bishop Schori provided details about the number of trucks with supplies entering Gaza per day. The concern is partly admirable, if sincere.  But why is a U.S. Episcopal Bishop obsessed with living standards for Gaza, or the Palestinians, when hundreds of millions globally live in far greater poverty?  Would Palestinian GNP, in Gaza or the West Bank, interest liberal U.S. bishops at all, absent Israel as the targeted culprit?  How many anti-Western dictators have blockaded or literally starved hostile populations much larger than Gaza, without a murmur from Bishop Schori or the Religious Left?</p>
<p>Rather than tacitly backing an ill-advised blockade, the U.S. should work with its ally, Israel, to promote constructive new policies toward Gaza that serve the aims of peace and security,&#8221; Bishop Schori lectured.  The former oceanographer and teacher wants &#8220;continued efforts to halt violence, and credible long-term strategies to support Palestinian leaders who are actively working for peace,&#8221; while also drawing &#8220;support and legitimacy from across Palestinian society.&#8221;  She suggests &#8220;political reconciliation so that a future Palestinian government can draw strength both from its internal support and from its external actions on behalf of peace.&#8221;  How does the Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop, unable to reconcile the divisions within her own denomination of tea sippers and Volvo drivers, propose to reconcile Hamas with other Palestinians, much less Israel?</p>
<p>For Schori, the goals for the Middle East are simple.  The Episcopal Church has &#8220;repeatedly&#8221; supported a &#8220;secure Israel with defined borders, whose right to exist is universally recognized; a sovereign, independent and secure state for the Palestinian people; and shared custody and protection of the holy sites in Jerusalem held sacred by the three great Abrahamic faiths.&#8221;  This rhetoric appeals to Episcopalians snugly secure in their New England hamlets.  But how many Palestinians, even outside Hamas, share this vision?</p>
<p>Schori instructed Obama to shift our nation&#8217;s posture&#8221; towards &#8220;lifting the blockade,&#8221; while also &#8220;robustly&#8221; encouraging &#8220;long-term peace.&#8221;  She also expects &#8220;direct negotiation between the parties,&#8221; i.e. apparent recognition for Hamas.  How will abandoning the Gaza blockade and recognizing Hamas, which would surely inflate that Islamist group’s prestige and ambitions, advance peace?   In the rarified and often beautiful world of Episcopal liturgy, noblesse oblige, gothic spires, and ancient endowments, simply demanding “long-term peace’ may seem quite attainable over a lunch at the country club.  In the real world of guns, power, and even more ancient hatreds, appeasement often only breeds greater conflict.</p>
<p>Bishop Schori’s pleas to appease Hamas were relatively more thoughtful than other Religious Left voices.  United Methodist lobbyist Jim Winkler histrionically bewailed Israel’s “high-seas piracy” against the “Freedom Flotilla.”  But her appeal to Obama, and her likely commentary to Churches for Middle East Peace later this week, are just as feckless, and, if heeded, just as dangerous.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/religious-rally-against-israel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>30</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Israel&#8217;s Critics and Hollow Lies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rick-moran/israels-critics-and-hollow-lies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-critics-and-hollow-lies</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rick-moran/israels-critics-and-hollow-lies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Jun 2010 04:20:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Sullivan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arsenal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daily basis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Europe]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genuine peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Georgia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hezballah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[idea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli policy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[job]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[laws of the sea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[matter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michael Rubin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[missile crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moral behavior]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Oslo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pakistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian activists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[part]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peace activists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peace flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pie in the sky]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Prime Minister Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[propaganda victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[proportionality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rick Moran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state of israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62329</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dismantling the propaganda one lie at a time. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<div><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/sullivan.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62625" title="sullivan" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/sullivan.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="334" /></a></div>
<div><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">In the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla incident, we have witnessed a tsunami of virulent, over-the-top criticism of the state of Israel for its actions in interdicting the so-called “peace activists” before they could dock at the port of Gaza.</span> </strong></div>
<div>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Reasonable people can argue whether the decision on the methods used to stop the ships was the correct course for the Israeli government to take. Indeed, there is a<strong> </strong></span><strong><a href="http://jta.org/news/article/2010/06/01/2739392/flotilla-raid-stokes-debate-on-price-of-gaza-blockade"><span style="font-weight: normal;">healthy debate</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> within Israel itself over this very issue, including questions about intelligence, tactics, and whether the propaganda victory handed to pro-Palestinian activists could have been avoided while still maintaining the blockade.</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Even the efficacy of the blockade itself is being discussed in Israel, as it has been since the quarantine was intensified nearly 3 years ago. For these internal critics, and those elsewhere who do not wish to see the state of Israel or its people destroyed, it is much too glib to ascribe their opposition as anti-Semitic or even anti-Israeli. But we can certainly put a reasonable question to these critics that never seems to get answered amidst the bombast and posturing from both the Jew haters and genuine “peace” seekers alike.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">What is it you would have the Israeli government do to protect itself?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Indeed, what marks the critic of Israeli policy is a disconnect between the perilous reality of Israel’s exposed position vis-a-vis the Palestinians and those nations that support them. They hold a pie-in-the-sky belief that if Israel would only remove the irritants the Palestinians suffer on a daily basis, that the animosity felt by Israel’s enemies would magically disappear.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Consider what these critics have been harping on for years:</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"><strong> </strong></span><strong><strong><span style="font-weight: normal;"><em>The Blockade</em></span></strong></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Israel<strong> </strong></span><strong><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177195"><span style="font-weight: normal;">justifies its blockade</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> of Gaza under recognized treaties regarding the Laws of the Sea. This includes interdiction of ships in international waters, as anyone who has read anything about the US blockade of Cuba during the missile crisis can attest.</span></strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal;">But let’s ignore all of that and grant Israel’s critics their wish and raise the blockade. What would be the probable outcome?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Judging by what happened on Israel’s southern border following their war with Hezbollah, it would be a military calamity and a security nightmare. Without inspecting each and every ship that docked at the Port of Gaza (and if Egypt allowed the free flow of goods and people into Rafah), the likelihood that the Palestinians would be supplied by Iran and Syria with much more sophisticated and deadly arms would be assured.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Why? Because of the spectacular failure of the United Nations International Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) whose job after the war was to prevent the resupply of Hezbollah. Their mission was to guard the border with Syria to keep Iran’s puppet Bashar Assad from moving arms into Lebanon to replace (and as it turned out, augment) Hezballah’s arsenal of 40,000 rockets. Not only were the terrorists easily resupplied, but it appears that </span><a href="http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htart/articles/20100602.aspx"><span style="font-weight: normal;">recent additions </span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;">to Hezballah’s arsenal include medium range ballistic missiles capable of hitting every major city in Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Given such incompetence on the part of the UN, are Israel’s critics seriously suggesting that, 1) lifting the blockade would not result in an avalanche of sophisticated weapons pouring into Gaza; and 2) any other party would do as good a job as the Israelis themselves in keeping these weapons out?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Israel controls the Port of Gaza as a result of the Oslo accords. They have a legal right to self defense, and a legal justification for the blockade, including the right to interdict shipping in international waters &#8211; as the Americans did during the Cuban Missile Crisis. If Israel’s overwrought critics could assure the Israeli government that lifting the blockade would not result in Hamas improving their capability of murdering a lot of innocent Israeli citizens, I am sure that Prime Minister Netanyahu would be interested in hearing how they would propose doing so.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><em>The Fence</em></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">It doesn’t matter to critics what Israel is trying to keep out by building a 450 mile fence largely along what was once known as the “Green Line” that separated the West Bank from Israel. Rarely does one come across </span><a href="http://www.auphr.org/thewall/"><span style="font-weight: normal;">criticism of the barrier</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> that gives the Israeli rationale for constructing it in the first place. There have been all sorts of fantastical claims about why Israel is building the Fence, ignoring the most obvious reason; it will save the lives of Israeli citizens.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Again, there appears to be a disconnect on the part of critics who can safely catalog Israeli concerns and shuffle them off to the side somewhere, while railing against the purported effects of the fence on Palestinians.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Most observers would agree that the barrier imposes burdens on the Palestinians. The way the wall is being constructed creates enclaves of Palestinians who will be isolated from their neighbors and the rest of the West Bank. But for critics, military necessity and the security of innocent Israeli citizens just never seems to make </span><a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/14/pope-decries-israeli-wall/"><span style="font-weight: normal;">much of an impression.</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> Otherwise intelligent, discerning analysts bewail the plight of Palestinians &#8211; and, in some cases, it is indeed tragic that families are separated, commerce affected, and property expropriated.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">But we come back to the question that critics of Israeli policy refuse to even consider; what is the government supposed to do to protect their citizens from such an implacable, deadly enemy? The fence is a far less draconian and brutal solution than other governments have chosen in the past in a similar situation &#8211; namely, mass slaughter of their enemies. If that is Israel’s goal, they are doing a horrible job of achieving it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Instead, the fence inoculates Israel from most of the terrorist acts that would kill many of its citizens while advancing the least obnoxious alternative that places the smallest possible burden on the Palestinian people. In fact, building the Fence has resulted in far fewer terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis. </span><a href="http://www.securityfence.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/questions.htm#q26"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The three years</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> prior to building the fence saw 117 terrorist attacks resulting in the loss of 477 civilians while wounding thousands of others. In areas where the Fence has been completed, the number of attacks has dropped to near zero.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Critics also rarely mention that some Israeli citizens in the settlements oppose the fence because it separates them from the rest of Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><em>The “Proportionate Response” Canard</em></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Perhaps no complaint of Israel’s critics reveals the massive disconnect between reality and sophistry as much as the idea that because the Palestinians are weak militarily, and fewer in number, that it is the responsibility of Israel to pull its punches and react “proportionately” to Palestinian provocations; or, in the case of the Gaza raid, provocations from anyone.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">First, </span><a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWFlMmU4ZjUxNGEwYjE2NWZhNzA1YWMwZmU0YzIwNGE="><span style="font-weight: normal;">Michael Rubin</span></a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> writing at The Corner demolishes this nonsense:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">But why should any democratic government empowered to defend its citizenry accept Europe’s idea of proportion? When attacked, why should not a stronger nation or its representatives try to both protects its own personnel at all costs and, in the wider scheme of things, defeat its adversaries?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Likewise, when terrorists seek to strike at the United States, why should we find ourselves constrained by an artificial notion of proportionality when responding to those terrorists or their state sponsors?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ultimately, it may be time to recognize that, in the face of growing threats to Western liberalism, strength and disproportionality matter more to security and the protection of democracy than the approval of the chattering class of Europe or the U.N. secretary general.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">I have never heard of “proportionality” applied to any other nations except Israel and the United States. I don’t recall such arguments when Russia invaded Georgia, destroying several towns with massive artillery bombardments, ripping up rail centers, and killing wantonly. They may have been criticized for the invasion but the words “disproportionate response” were not used, as far as I can recall, to describe their action. Even if the phrase was used, there would be no comparison with the frequency with which that criticism is directed against Israel.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Neither am I aware of anyone criticizing Pakistan for using tanks and helicopters to engage Taliban fighters armed only with AK-47’s and a few outdated mortars.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">But the idea of “proportionality”  in war is very important to people like </span><a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/06/the-real-neocon-line-disproportion-as-policy.html"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Andrew Sullivan:</span></a></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Kudos to Michael Rubin for conceding that the Cheney-Netanyahu approach to terrorism is exactly a question of deliberate disproportion…</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;">Ah, yes. Why not torture, mass murder, and an abandonment of basic principles of the rules of law? </span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Note the towering straw men set up by Sullivan. Is he accusing Israel of doing all of that? Or is he saying that Israel is capable of doing those things? Or is he positing the notion that commando raids using much restrained force until the “peace” activists put the lives of the soldiers at risk automatically escalates into “torture, mass murder, and an abandonment of basic principles of the rules of law?”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">In fact, the reason there were not hundreds killed on that ship was because Israel did, indeed, engage in a proportional response to the violence directed against them. They didn’t have to. They could have rappelled down those ropes armed with automatic rifles instead of paint guns and at the first sign of trouble, blazed away, killing dozens. I daresay that most nations would have taken that route. It is much safer for the attacker, and success is more assured, if the IDF had gone Sullivan’s “mass murder”  route.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">But they didn’t. They couldn’t. Israel is a civilized nation engaged with barbarians whose blood-lust against the Jews is so profoundly ingrained that many of the activists fervently sang and chanted about martyrdom prior to their little cruise. Willing to give their lives for a propaganda stunt? What is “proportional”  when engaging people like that?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Did Sullivan and his ilk expect the commandos to rappel down to the deck armed with knives, steel bars, and baseball bats? Would that have been a “proportional response?”  Yes, it’s as silly as that.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">It really doesn’t matter to Israel’s critics. Like the blockade and the Fence, the commando raid is beside the point. What matters is finding a way to place Israel in the weakest moral position possible in the eyes of the world. In order to do this, critics will go to astonishing lengths, twisting their arguments into pretzels of logic, salted with half truths, while ignoring the entire issue of Israel’s necessary self defense against those who wish to destroy her and her people. And through all of that virulent, off-balance criticism, not one word about alternatives that they would recommend the Jewish state employ except near total surrender to their enemies.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span><span style="font-weight: normal;">Perhaps we shouldn’t ask what critics want Israel to do. The answer might very well horrify all of us.</span></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
</div>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/rick-moran/israels-critics-and-hollow-lies/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>68</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Free Gaza Movement</title>
		<link>http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1218&#038;utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-free-gaza-movement</link>
		<comments>http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1218#respond</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:36:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Discover The Networks]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[DTN Profiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agendas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[campaign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Click]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[look]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[overview]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[worldview]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62565</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A look at the worldview, agendas, tactics, and supporters of the campaign to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. (Click here to see the complete overview.)]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/free-gaza-movement.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-62566" title="free-gaza-movement" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/free-gaza-movement.jpg" alt="" width="426" height="605" /></a></p>
<p>A look at the worldview, agendas, tactics, and supporters of the campaign to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. (<em><a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1218">Click here</a> to see the complete overview.</em>)</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1218/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Will the West Back the Jihad or Israel?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/will-the-west-back-the-jihad-or-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=will-the-west-back-the-jihad-or-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/will-the-west-back-the-jihad-or-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 08 Jun 2010 04:33:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ali Shirazi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ayatollah ali khameini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[binyamin netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Efraim Inbar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incident]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Liz Cheney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval warships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Netanyahu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prime minister recep tayyip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prime minister recep tayyip erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[recep tayyip erdogan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[republican presidential candidates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sarah Palin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sunday]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supreme leader ayatollah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tehran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vice President Joe Biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[week]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=62286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The stakes are more than very high.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Obama.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-62389" title="Obama" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Obama.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="292" /></a></p>
<p>Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-group-who-attacked-idf-troops-boarded-ship-separately-1.294459">told his cabinet</a> this week that “the world is beginning to become aware” of what really happened in the “flotilla incident” in which nine of the “activists” trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza were killed. Namely, that the “activists” on the <em>Mavi Marmara</em>—actually “martyrdom”-seeking jihadists tied to the <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/gj_e007.htm">terror-linked IHH organization</a> with some sort of backing from the Turkish government—fell upon inadequately-armed Israeli soldiers with knives, clubs, iron bars, and guns and forced them to fight for their lives.</p>
<p>Is Netanyahu right that this accurate picture of the events is sinking in? True, Vice-President Joe Biden <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100603/pl_afp/israelconflictgazausbiden">said</a> Israel “has an absolute right to deal with its security interest…. It’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight—3,000 rockets on my people.’” The <em>Washington Post</em> asked why Israel was taking all the blame and <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060404806.html">called for</a> Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s role in the incident to be probed. Prospective Republican presidential candidates <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/palin-reacts-flotilla-incident">Sarah Palin</a> and <a href="http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGE4NzkyY2FhZDIzMzMxM2NmMDE2MWFmNmUzM2JiMDA=">Liz Cheney</a> both came out solidly in defense of Israel.</p>
<p>But, even if some understand that last week’s round of media and diplomatic Israel-bashing over the affair was again baseless and slanderous, it still appears to be too little, too late. There have already been reports, and concerns, in Israel that the next flotilla might be escorted by Turkish naval warships, or include Erdogan himself as one of the passengers. This week Iran, too, is getting into the act, with one <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7145279.ece">report</a> claiming Tehran is already planning to send two aid ships to Gaza, and Ali Shirazi, representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini within the Revolutionary Guards, <a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100606/world/international_us_israel_flotilla_iran">saying</a> that “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities.”</p>
<p>Bluff? Threats made to keep Israel off balance and keep the spotlight off Iran’s continuing progress toward nukes? It’s impossible to know at this point. But what is clear is that the radical bloc led by Iran—which also includes Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah and, increasingly, Turkey—feels all the more emboldened by its successes and by Western weakness. To those successes—which include, along with Iran’s unimpeded nuke program, the ongoing, extensive armament of Hezbollah—can now be added igniting another storm of Western fury at Israel over last week’s incident, which included the usual professions of “shock” by Western leaders, the usual pounding of Israel in the Western mainstream media, the usual cooperation by Western countries with anti-Israeli votes in the Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council, as well as the Obama administration’s repeated calls—<a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=177672">steeped in contempt</a> for Israeli democracy—for an Israeli investigation of the flotilla incident with “international components.”</p>
<p>The West will have to decide whether it wants to keep encouraging the radicals or finally start discouraging them. Regarding Turkey itself, Israeli analyst Efraim Inbar <a href="http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/docs/perspectives108.pdf">notes</a> that “support in public opinion for [Erdogan’s] ruling Islamic party is in decline.” If that trend persists, as Inbar points out, a new government could well emerge in Turkey’s July 2011 elections—and that could be precisely why Erdogan is now trying to whip up the masses by upping the ante with Israel. When the result of the flotilla-ploy against Israel is that the West indeed turns in wrath upon the Jewish state, it paints Erdogan as a hero in many Turkish eyes and only bolsters the extremist, anti-Western proclivity.</p>
<p>More generally, one doesn’t have to have excessively fine instruments to detect the escalating saber-rattling against Israel by the Iranian-led bloc, with Turkey now adding its voice emphatically. An armed challenge to Israel’s blockade of Gaza could be the match that lights the fuse. Even if some Western leaders appear to regard Israel as a burdensome rogue, not really worth sticking up for, they would have to think about what such a Middle Eastern conflagration would mean for stability, oil availability and prices, and the like. The sides are heavily armed and the stakes are very high.</p>
<p>Standing up for Israel, imparting the sense that it has Western support, calms the winds and keeps war at bay. Raging against Israel for killing nine jihadists in self-defense is a way of telling the radicals that it’s open season.</p>
<p><em>P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator in Beersheva, Israel. He blogs at </em><a href="http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/" target="_blank"><em>http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com</em></a><em>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/will-the-west-back-the-jihad-or-israel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Casting the First Stone</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/casting-the-first-stone/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=casting-the-first-stone</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/casting-the-first-stone/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:00:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cambodia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Clerk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethiopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[famine in ethiopia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[genocide in cambodia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[God]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[invasion of afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[khmer rouge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[khmer rouge genocide]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lutheran theologian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North Korea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Olav Fykse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Parsons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peace activists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peace flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Presbyterian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Saddam Hussein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[soviet invasion of afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tveit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WCC]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61917</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Religious Left upholds the tradition of condemn Israel first. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/wcc-urges-pakistan-to-repeal-blasphemy-law.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-61951" title="wcc-urges-pakistan-to-repeal-blasphemy-law" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/wcc-urges-pakistan-to-repeal-blasphemy-law-300x195.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="195" /></a></p>
<p>The Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) has yet really to condemn the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia 35 years ago.  Or the Marxist orchestrated famine in Ethiopia that killed almost as many during the 1980&#8242;s.  It never directly condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  Saddam Hussein&#8217;s hundreds of thousands of murdered victims also failed to arouse the WCC&#8217;s concern across 25 years. Nor has the multitude of crimes by Iran&#8217;s theocracy across 30 years interested the WCC.  North Korea&#8217;s slave state for the WCC is a place of pilgrimage but not criticism.  Even North Korea&#8217;s recent unprovoked torpedoing of a South Korean ship, killing 46 sailors three months ago, has not caused the WCC to peep.</p>
<p>But the WCC needed less than 24 hours to condemn Israel&#8217;s &#8220;deplorable&#8221; interception of a &#8220;peace&#8221; flotilla trying to bust the blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza.  The 9 anti-Israel &#8220;peace&#8221; activists killed after the Israelis were resisted with metal poles and other weapons, were apparently more sacred to the WCC than the millions of victims slain by communism, Islamists and other anti-Western tyrannies over the last 4 decades.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is with great distress that the World Council of Churches received the news that the Israeli naval forces stormed a Gaza-bound vessel carrying humanitarian aid in international waters before dawn on Monday, killing at least 10 civilians and injuring many more,&#8221; immediately bemoaned WCC chief Olav Fykse Tveit.  A Norwegian Lutheran theologian, Tveit seems steadfastly committed to the WCC tradition of bashing only Israel and America.  &#8220;We condemn the assault and killing of innocent people who were attempting to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza, who have been under a crippling Israeli blockade since 2007.&#8221;</p>
<p>Why has Gaza been blockaded by Israel, and, though unmentioned by the WCC, also by Egypt?  Could its rocket-firing Hamas regime be part of the explanation?  The WCC is not interested in such details. &#8220;We further condemn the flagrant violation of international law by Israel in attacking and boarding a humanitarian convoy in international waters,&#8221; Tveit continued.  &#8220;We pray for all those who are affected by the attack, especially the bereaved families.&#8221;</p>
<p>Tveit demanded Israel repatriate all of the flotilla&#8217;s activists, release the impounded ships and, naturally, end the blockade of Gaza.  He also wants a &#8220;full&#8221; United Nations investigation into Israel&#8217;s &#8220;assault.&#8221;  For that, Tveit almost certainly will get his wish.  He concluded:  &#8220;The deplorable events which occurred yesterday off the coast of Gaza remind us yet again of the pressing need for an end to the Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories.&#8221; But of course, Gaza is not Israeli occupied.  It is governed by its Islamist &#8220;liberators,&#8221; Hamas.  And most of the West Bank is governed by the Palestinian Authority.  It&#8217;s never entirely clear what the Religious Left means by &#8220;occupation.&#8221;  But certainly it ignores the considerable problems created by Gaza&#8217;s and most of the West Bank&#8217;s ostensible liberation from direct Israeli control.</p>
<p>The WCC&#8217;s major U.S. member, the Presbyterian Church USA, also chimed in quickly over the Gaza flotilla in slightly more measured tones.  &#8220;A severe blockade of Gaza by Israel in response to the free election of Hamas representatives in 2006 and the military incursions of Operation Cast Lead in late 2008 and early 2009 have dramatically increased the already acute humanitarian need,&#8221; surmised the church&#8217;s Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons. &#8220;We grieve the killing and injuring of participants in the humanitarian effort, as well as the injuring of members of the Israeli military forces that occurred when the Israeli forces stormed one of the ships and those on board resisted.&#8221;</p>
<p>Parsons noted that the Presbyterian tradition is &#8220;not strictly pacifist,&#8221; which is surely an understatement, but &#8220;honors peaceful resistance, including nonviolent disobedience to unjust government policies and actions.&#8221;  He opined that the flotilla could have been a &#8220;powerful&#8221; instrument for peaceful resistance.  And he warned,  &#8220;These actions sometimes incite violent responses,&#8221; but the &#8220;long-term success of this kind of resistance requires a nonviolent response on the part of the demonstrators, even when they are under attack.&#8221;  Parsons sounds like a Presbyterian Gandhi.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Jerusalem-based Sabeel, a center for Palestinian Liberation Theology with Western affiliates, including Friend of Sabeel &#8211; North America, has quickly issued a prayer litany of solidarity with the failed Gaza flotilla.  &#8220;The Israeli attack on the Gaza Flotilla resulted in numerous deaths, dozens of injuries, and hundreds of arrests,&#8221; Sabeel bewailed.  &#8220;Almighty God, comfort the bereaved, heal the injured, and grant freedom to the prisoners. We pray that you will strengthen each of us to do what is necessary to end the siege on Gaza. Help us to recognize and to fight the structures of oppression, wherever we may encounter them.&#8221;</p>
<p>Do these &#8220;structures of oppression&#8221; include the Hamas regime in Gaza, or its chief patrons, the Islamist theocrats who tyrannize Iran?  If so, Religious Left groups in the West, who are Sabeel&#8217;s main patrons, will not say so audibly.  Maybe the WCC is praying quietly, very quietly, for Hamas&#8217;s victims.  These silent prayers are perhaps similar to the inaudible prayers that the WCC and rest of the international Religious Left may have lifted up for so many otherwise unacknowledged victims of tyranny and oppression over the last 40 years. Apparently only Israel&#8217;s and America&#8217;s victims can benefit from the Religious Left&#8217;s very loud prayers.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/casting-the-first-stone/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>67</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Netanyahu to International Community: Stop the Hypocrisy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/netanyahu-to-international-community-stop-the-hypocrisy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=netanyahu-to-international-community-stop-the-hypocrisy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/netanyahu-to-international-community-stop-the-hypocrisy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jun 2010 04:38:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Aviv]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brian Cowen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Cameron]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IDF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[incident]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iron bars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Malta]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marmara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mavi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[media storm]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[military morale]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[minister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Monday]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval commandos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peace activists]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[President Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rachel Corrie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stun grenade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria-friendly]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[un security council]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[water hoses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[youtube]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61899</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What nation in the world would forbid its soldiers to protect their own lives?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/net.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61910" title="net" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/net.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="303" /></a></p>
<p>The IDF has released two more videos from the incident Monday morning on the <em>Mavi Marmara</em>, the largest in the Turkish-organized six-ship flotilla that challenged Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and the only one to prepare a violent ambush. One of these two videos is even more dramatic than the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjkLUcbJWo">one released on Monday</a>, now viewed by over a million on YouTube, that shows <em>Mavi Marmara</em> “peace activists” among other things beating the soldiers with iron bars.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6sAEYpHF24&amp;feature=player_embedded">relatively less dramatic</a> of the two newly released videos shows the “activists”—actually <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3898109,00.html">jihadists seeking “martyrdom”</a>—attacking the soldiers with a stun grenade, a box of plates, and water hoses as they try to board the ship. The other newly released video is actually almost purely <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFGuwUGaI9o&amp;feature=player_embedded">audial footage</a> of a frenetic exchange between soldiers on the <em>Mavi Marmara</em> and the nearby IDF ship. The former, in a state of acute panic, shout that they need reinforcements, are being fired at from all directions, and have to be evacuated immediately. For a while the jihadists can be heard chanting something in the background.</p>
<p>The iron-bars video was released only late Monday afternoon after the “Israel kills peace activists” media-storm had already swept through the world for eight or nine hours, and some in Israel have bitterly charged that releasing it a good deal earlier, if not immediately, could have saved Israel much of the media and diplomatic damage. The reason for the delay was a concern for military morale: seeing soldiers of the Naval Commandos—one of the most legendary of all IDF units—being abjectly beaten, and in one case thrown over the side of the boat, is not the sort of imagery the IDF and Israel itself want to project of these fighters.</p>
<p>But if the iron-bars video is problematic in that regard, the new one in which the soldiers shout, in panic, for their lives is even more so. Why, then, was it released now, when the UN Security Council, <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/joining-jackals">with President Obama’s acquiescence</a>, has already condemned Israel over the incident, the UN Human Rights Council is <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3898157,00.html">preparing another Goldstone-type “investigation,”</a> and Israel has generally been dragged through another worldwide round of condemnation? This new video proves beyond a doubt to any reasonable human being that the soldiers finally opened fired, killing nine of their attackers, solely to save their own lives. But what good could it do at this point?</p>
<p>The answer is that Israel realizes its troubles from this incident are not over and indeed are just beginning. Another ship, the <em>Rachel Corrie</em> (named after the young anti-Israeli activist accidentally killed by an IDF bulldozer in 2003), is <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/activists-we-have-funding-for-another-larger-gaza-flotilla-1.293748">already on its way</a> to Gaza from Malta; while carrying only fifteen activists, Irish prime minister Brian Cowen has described it as Irish-owned and is calling on Israel to let it through. A group called the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza claims to be planning a new, much larger flotilla than the one intercepted by Israel this week. Newly elected British prime minister David Cameron is <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-faces-growing-world-pressure-to-lift-gaza-blockade-1.293800">calling on Israel</a> to lift the Gaza blockade altogether.</p>
<p>In other words, the democratic world is now getting into the act too—with a vengeance. It was one thing for increasingly-Islamist, Iran- and Syria-friendly, Hamas-supporting Turkey to send the first flotilla. It is quite another thing—and well beyond the usual, de rigueur, but shameful cooperation with Arab-, Islamic-, and “nonaligned”-bloc calumny against Israel in the UN—for Western governments to start getting on this bandwagon as well.</p>
<p>It was in response to the increasingly alarming situation that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=177286">gave a brief, terse statement</a> to the nation Wednesday night in which he said: “The state of Israel faces an attack of international hypocrisy. This is not the first time we have faced this; two years ago we faced a massive attack of missiles fired by Hamas who hid behind civilians. Israel went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties; but whom did the UN condemn? It condemned Israel.”</p>
<p>Noting that “It is our right according to international law to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza and that is why the naval blockade was put in place,” Netanyahu pointed out that two ships intercepted by the Israeli navy in recent years—the <em><a href="http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/iranian-arms-ship-captured-by-israel-shows-tehran%E2%80%99s-real-aims/">Francop</a></em> in 2009 and the <em><a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2002/Seizing%20of%20the%20Palestinian%20weapons%20ship%20Karine%20A%20-">Karine-A</a></em> in 2002—were carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian-supplied weapons, and that while the smuggling of Iranian weapons into Gaza through tunnels continues, what can be delivered by sea is incomparably vaster and would result in an Iranian port in Gaza threatening not only Tel Aviv but also “other countries in the region.”</p>
<p>Turning finally to the uproar over the <em>Mavi Marmara</em>, Netanyahu, noting that he had talked personally with the wounded soldiers and heard firsthand accounts of how their lives were endangered, stated:</p>
<blockquote><p>The soldiers defended their lives with incomparable restraint. What would any other country do?&#8230; I ask the international community, what would you do instead? We’ll continue to defend our citizens and assert our right to self-defense, which is my first duty as prime minister.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>It is important that we stay united on this issue, which is a matter of life and death.</p></blockquote>
<p>The questions Netanyahu raised are indeed very much open. It is no longer clear whether the international community, including its democratic component, is prepared to tolerate the soldiers of the Jewish state shooting back when shot at by a mob, and no longer clear whether it is prepared to countenance the Jewish state defending itself, or existing, at all. Israel, meanwhile, is still trying to make its case, hardly confident that it makes a difference.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/netanyahu-to-international-community-stop-the-hypocrisy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>141</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Israel&#8217;s Actions: Entirely Lawful</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/israels-actions-entirely-lawful-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israels-actions-entirely-lawful-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/israels-actions-entirely-lawful-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:08:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Alan M. Dershowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Act]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[acts of war]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agricultural facilities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cuba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[doubt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza Strip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli civilians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[legality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[missile crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval blockades]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[productive area]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[right]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[serious doubt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[status]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united-states]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[warfare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61810</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Stopping the Gaza flotilla was entirely consistent with both international and domestic law.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dersh.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61812" title="dersh" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dersh.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="258" /></a></p>
<p>While the international community has, once again, ganged up on Israel, one thing is for certain: the legality of Israel&#8217;s actions in stopping the Gaza flotilla is not open to question.  What Israel did was entirely consistent with both international and domestic law.  In order to understand why Israel acted within its rights, the complex events at sea must be deconstructed:</p>
<p>First, there is the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which included a naval blockade.  Recall that when Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, it did not impose a blockade.  Indeed it left behind agricultural facilities in the hope that the newly liberated Gaza Strip would become a peaceful and productive area.  Instead Hamas seized control over Gaza and engaged in acts of warfare against Israel.  These acts of warfare featured anti-personnel rockets, nearly 10,000 of them, directed at Israeli civilians.  This was not only an act of warfare, it was a war crime.  Israel responded to the rockets by declaring a blockade, the purpose of which was to assure that no rockets, or other material that could be used for making war against Israeli civilians, was permitted into Gaza.  Israel allowed humanitarian aid through its checkpoints.  Egypt as well participated in the blockade.  There was never a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, merely a shortage of certain goods that would end if the rocket attacks ended.</p>
<p>The legality of blockades as a response to acts of war is not subject to serious doubt.  When the United   States blockaded Cuba during the missile crisis, the State Department issued an opinion declaring the blockade to be lawful.  This, despite the fact that Cuba had not engaged in any act of belligerency against the United   States.  Other nations have similarly enforced naval blockades to assure their own security.</p>
<p>The second issue is whether it is lawful to enforce a legal blockade in international waters.  Again, law and practice are clear.  If there is no doubt that the offending ships have made a firm determination to break the blockade, then the blockade may be enforced <span style="text-decoration: underline;">before</span> the offending ships cross the line into domestic waters.  Again the United States and other western countries have frequently boarded ships at high sea in order to assure their security.</p>
<p>Third, were those on board the flotilla innocent non-combatants or did they lose that status once they agreed to engage in the military act of breaking the blockade?  Let there be no mistake about the purpose of this flotilla.  It was decidedly <span style="text-decoration: underline;">not</span> to provide humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza, but rather the break the entirely lawful Israeli military blockade.  The proof lies in the fact that both Israel and Egypt offered to have all the food, medicine and other humanitarian goods sent to Gaza, if the boats agreed to land in an Israeli or Egyptian port.  That humanitarian offer was soundly rejected by the leaders of the flotilla who publicly announced:</p>
<p>&#8220;This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it&#8217;s about breaking Israel&#8217;s siege on 1.5 million Palestinians.&#8221; (AFP May  27, 2010.)</p>
<p>The act of breaking a military siege is itself a military act, and those knowingly participating in such military action put in doubt their status as non-combatants.</p>
<p>It is a close question whether &#8220;civilians&#8221; who agree too participate in the breaking of a military blockade have become combatants.  They are certainly something different than pure, innocent civilians, and perhaps they are also somewhat different from pure armed combatants.  They fit uncomfortably onto the continuum of civilianality that has come to characterize asymmetrical warfare.</p>
<p>Finally, we come to the issue of the right of self defense engaged in by Israeli soldiers who were attacked by activists on the boat.  There can be little doubt that the moment any person on the boat picked up a weapon and began to attack Israeli soldiers boarding the vessel, they lost their status as innocent civilians.  Even if that were not the case, under ordinary civilian rules of self defense, every Israeli soldier had the right to protect himself and his colleagues from attack by knife and pipe wielding assailants.  Less there be any doubt that Israeli soldiers were under attack, simply view the accompanying video and watch, as so-called peaceful &#8220;activists&#8221; repeatedly pummel Israeli soldiers with metal rods.  (http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk) Every individual has the right to repel such attacks by the use of lethal force, especially when the soldiers were so outnumbered on the deck of the ship.  Recall that Israel&#8217;s rules of engagement required its soldiers to fire only paintballs unless their lives were in danger.  Would any country in the world deny its soldiers the right of self defense under comparable circumstances?</p>
<p>Notwithstanding the legality of Israel&#8217;s actions, the international community has, as usual, denounced the Jewish state. In doing so, Israel&#8217;s critics have failed to pinpoint precisely what Israel did that allegedly violates international law.  Some have wrongly focused on the blockade itself.  Others have erroneously pointed to the location of the boarding in international waters.  Most have simply pointed to the deaths of so-called peace activists, though these deaths appear to be the result of lawful acts of self-defense.  None of these factors alone warrant condemnation, but the end result surely deserves scrutiny by Israeli policy makers.  There can be little doubt that the mission was a failure, as judged by its results.  It is important, however, to distinguish between faulty policies on the one hand, and alleged violations of international law on the other hand.  Only the latter would warrant international intervention, and the case has simply not been made that Israel violated international law.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/alan-m-dershowitz/israels-actions-entirely-lawful-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>71</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>What Makes Intelligent People Like Andrew Sullivan So Stupid? Gaza Again.</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/what-makes-intelligent-people-like-andrew-sullivan-so-stupid-gaza-again-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=what-makes-intelligent-people-like-andrew-sullivan-so-stupid-gaza-again-2</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/what-makes-intelligent-people-like-andrew-sullivan-so-stupid-gaza-again-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 04:08:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Horowitz]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Sullivan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ashdod]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[effort]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaza attack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[international waters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli school]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[militaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[obfuscation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[purpose]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religious fanatics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[resistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seriously]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tinier]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[turkey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61841</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why excuse supporters of a genocidal terrorist organization who try to run a naval blockade in the middle of a war? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/hamas.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61843" title="hamas" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/hamas.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="272" /></a></p>
<p><strong>Visit <a href="http://www.newsrealblog.com">Newsreal</a></strong></p>
<p><a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/05/a-second-mini-cast-lead.html">Here is Andrew Sullivan </a>on the latest Gaza attack on Israel:</p>
<blockquote><p>“It staggers me to read defenses of what the Israelis have done. They attacked a civilian flotilla in international waters breaking no law. When they met fierce if asymmetric resistance, they opened fire. And we are now being asked to regard the Israelis as the victims.</p>
<p>Seriously.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Seriously, Andrew, these supporters of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization which has sworn to obliterate Israel and exterminate the Jews, tried to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk#p/a/u/2/qKOmLP4yHb4">run a naval blockade </a>of Gaza in the middle of a war. In a war, what in the world is an “asymmetric resistance” except an obfuscation to avoid facing the facts? This was an orchestrated effort to break a naval blockade whose purpose was to keep weapons out of the hands of Hamas. If the ship had another purpose — e.g., to deliver humanitarian aid — it would have accepted Israel’s offer to unload the ship at the port of Ashdod. It didn’t because it was part of an organized effort by Turkey and Hamas to break the blockade. Here’s the Hamas terrorist in chief <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=176812">claiming  victory</a> through this attack in breaking the naval blockade designed to keep out the rockets aimed at Israeli school children.  It was an act of war and those who perpetrated it got what they deserved.</p>
<p>Andrew again:</p>
<blockquote><p>“This is like a mini-Gaza all over again. The Israelis don’t seem to grasp that Western militaries don’t get to murder large numbers of civilians because they don’t like them, or because they could, on a far tinier scale, hurt Israelis.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Oh, I get it. Seven thousand rockets fired into Israeli towns and schoolyards is such a tinier scale of aggression — after all it is only targeting Jews — as to be ignored by civilized people like Andrew. There is no other country but this tiny Jewish one surrounded by terrorist armies led by religious fanatics (who would hang Andrew from a crane if they could get hold of him) that Andrew would ask for such forbearance.  And of course Andrew is not asking; he is threatening: The Israelis seem to be making decisions as if they can get away with anything. It’s time the US reminded them in ways they cannot mistake that they cannot.</p>
<p>Nice Andrew. Call on Uncle Sam to strike a blow for the Hamas and Turkey’s Jew haters.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/david-horowitz/what-makes-intelligent-people-like-andrew-sullivan-so-stupid-gaza-again-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>52</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>World Regrets Deaths of Jihadists, Vilifies Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/world-regrets-deaths-of-jihadists-vilifies-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=world-regrets-deaths-of-jihadists-vilifies-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/world-regrets-deaths-of-jihadists-vilifies-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:14:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Afghanistan]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bosnia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commando force]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[early monday morning]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[flotilla]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[force]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanitarian supplies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[international incident]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iron bars]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli authorities]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[israeli naval commandos]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Istanbul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marmara]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mavi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[May]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muhammad]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[naval blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nicolas Sarkozy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ramallah]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ramallah lynch]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Secretary William Hague]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Syria]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=61656</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What did the “Allah Akbar”-chanting, knife, club and gun-wielding “activists” aboard the Mavi Marmara really hope to accomplish?
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/boat.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-61673" title="boat" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/boat.gif" alt="" width="400" height="282" /></a></p>
<p>Much regret is being expressed about the deaths of the “activists” who were among those attacking Israeli naval commandos with knives, clubs, iron bars, chairs, and snatched handguns on the <em>Mavi Marmara</em> early Monday morning. The ship was one in a six-ship flotilla of Muslim and radical-Leftist anti-Israeli activists that was approaching Gaza with the expressed aim of breaking Israel’s naval blockade of the Strip and bringing purportedly badly needed humanitarian supplies. The <em>Mavi Marmara</em> was also known by the Israeli authorities to be the largest and most hostile ship in the flotilla.</p>
<p>Yet, either out of poor intelligence or naiveté on the part of their superiors, the commandos descended onto the ship unprepared, <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896796,00.html">bearing only paintball rifles</a>. It was only after several of them had already been severely injured and at least one of them thrown off the boat (see some of the brutality <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3897046,00.html">here</a>) that the commandos finally got permission to open fire with their handguns and saved their comrades and themselves.</p>
<p>One of the soldiers said the scene on the deck <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177019">“looked like the Ramallah lynch”</a> of 2000, in which two off-duty Israeli soldiers strayed into the West Bank town of Ramallah and were horrifically <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Ramallah_lynching">lynched by an Arab mob</a>. In that case there were only two soldiers and they were unable to defend themselves; but it would hardly have been regrettable if more soldiers had been able to come to their aid in time and killed as many of their attackers as was necessary to save their lives.</p>
<p>That is not to say the rioters aboard the <em>Mavi Marmara</em>—although their snatching and use of the handguns was a clear attempt to kill some of the soldiers—had any hope of prevailing over the commando force. What, then, in relentlessly attacking an elite military force mostly with knives, clubs, and the like, did the devout, “Allah Akbar”-chanting “activists” hope to accomplish? Clearly, that some of them would be “martyred” and thereby create yet another anti-Israeli international incident—at which, of course, they succeeded.</p>
<p>They succeeded even though the flotilla their ship was part of was organized by the IHH—a Turkish radical-Islamist organization that, as <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e105.htm">documented</a> by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, closely cooperates with the Hamas rulers of Gaza and with global jihad networks in Chechnya, Bosnia, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan while having ties with Al-Qaeda.</p>
<p>They succeeded even though, four days ago on May 28, members of the flotilla were <a href="http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2489.htm">filmed</a> chanting “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return” (a reference to a seventh-century massacre of Jews by Muslims) along with songs of the mass-murderous “Palestinian intifada,” and saying “We are now waiting for one of two good things—to reach Gaza or to achieve martyrdom”; and even though, three days ago on May 29, organizers of the flotilla <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_e108.htm">explicitly told</a> Al Jazeera TV that they were aiming for a confrontation with Israel that would have maximal media coverage.</p>
<p>They succeeded even though it is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKOmLP4yHb4">incontrovertibly evident</a> that the <em>Mavi Marmara</em> was warned by Israel—before the commando boarding—that it was “approaching an area of hostility which is under a naval blockade,” and was invited instead to peacefully dock at Israel’s Ashdod port, have the supplies it was carrying peacefully transferred to Gaza after security checks, and then have its passengers peacefully sail back to their home ports—to which the “martyrdom”-seeking, weapons-hoarding <em>Mavi Marmara</em> replied for all the world to hear: “Negative, negative. Our destination is Gaza.”</p>
<p>They succeeded even though, despite the usual accusations of Israel doing a poor public-relations job with this latest crisis, since May 25 the Israeli Foreign Ministry has <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Israeli_humanitarian_lifeline_Gaza_25-May-2010.htm">posted information</a> clearly refuting the myth of the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza” that was the ostensible justification for the flotilla, detailing instead the voluminous food, medical, building, electric, sanitation, and other supplies that regularly cross into Gaza from Israel.</p>
<p>But those are mere facts, something the world doesn’t want to be confused with when Palestinians, Arabs, or other Muslims manage to provoke yet another bloody media confrontation with Israel. And so, in absolutely de rigueur, numbingly predictable fashion, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896586,00.html">professed</a> to be “shocked by reports of killing of people in boats carrying supply to Gaza,” Israel’s purported “friend” French president Nicolas Sarkozy condemned “the disproportionate use of force,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he “deplore[d] the loss of life,” the European Union called for a comprehensive inquiry into Israel’s actions, the UN Security Council was set to meet in emergency session—and so on ad nauseam.</p>
<p>This, of course, being relatively restrained compared to the Arab and Muslim world, where, for instance, Turks in Istanbul <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3896895,00.html">chanted</a> “Israel you will drown in blood,” Israel’s “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas condemned the “massacre” and proclaimed three days of mourning in the Palestinian Authority, Israeli-Arab Member of Knesset Mohammad Barakeh said “the crimes of the pirate government” were “beyond international and human law” and “tyrants like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will find themselves in the suitable place in the garbage can of history,” and the noted humanitarian, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said, “All these acts indicate the end of the heinous and fake regime and will bring it closer to the end of its existence”—for which he can expect to be rewarded with his next invitation to address the UN.</p>
<p>Much was also made of the fact that the commando boarding was carried out in international waters—as if to introduce a new norm in international relations where, for instance, a ship carrying WMD cargo in the middle of the Atlantic would have to be allowed to sail all the way to U.S. territorial waters before it could be interdicted; as if interdictions in international waters of ships breaking embargos, carrying illegal weapons, and so on were not common occurrences—except, of course, when Israel, the pariah and “Jew among the nations,” dares to do it.</p>
<p>As for President Barack Obama, he <a href="http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=177041">reportedly</a> postponed his Tuesday meeting with Netanyahu as the latter hurried back to Israel from Canada, and “expressed deep regret at the loss of life in today’s incident.” Netanyahu, for his part, also said he <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/netanyahu-i-regret-gaza-flotilla-deaths-but-israeli-troops-had-right-to-self-defense-1.293187">regretted</a> the deaths while going so far as to affirm that Israeli troops have the right to defend themselves when their lives are in danger.</p>
<p>The ten or so knife-, club-, and gun-wielding jihadists killed aboard the <em>Mavi Marmara</em> will, then, be among the most regretted, apologized-for casualties in history, probably generating a greater total of “regret” than literally millions of unarmed civilians killed in the Congo and Sudan. Israel will again be dragged through the mud, its already threadbare legitimacy given yet another pounding. The sanctimonious hypocrisy of democratic leaders—who know just what they’d do if terrorist ships were speeding toward their waters and could, of course, handle the situation without a smidgeon of violence—is as always not pretty to see. Israel, however, has the strength to cope with the attacks, slanders, and vituperation, because it doesn’t have any choice.</p>
<p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /><input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/davidhornik/world-regrets-deaths-of-jihadists-vilifies-israel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>212</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How Hamas Tortures Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/how-hamas-tortures-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-hamas-tortures-gaza</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/how-hamas-tortures-gaza/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:05:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Klein]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[agreement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al Montar]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[authority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border crossings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[child population]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[daily basis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drop in the bucket]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[failure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza Strip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[good faith]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human suffering]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Ging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[June]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mideast quartet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestine refugees]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[security]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[southern Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[truckloads]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[united nations headquarters]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=59098</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is it really a mystery who brings human suffering to the Palestinians? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/hamas.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-59100" title="hamas" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/hamas.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a></p>
<p>John Ging, the Director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) Operations in Gaza, briefed correspondents at the United Nations headquarters in New York last week on the humanitarian plight of the people in Gaza. He said that the Palestinian people in Gaza faced “a struggle to survive on a daily basis.”</p>
<p>Ging noted that Gaza’s infrastructure was in a state of collapse, as there was no legitimate economy anymore due to lack of commercial trade into or out of the area, nor was there any prospect of a restoration of it as long as the blockade instituted by Israel at the border crossings continued.  He also blamed the blockade for preventing the import of vital construction materials needed to build more UNRWA-run schools and classrooms to accommodate the expanding child population in Gaza.</p>
<p>While acknowledging some recent positive developments as Israel has allowed more commercial truckloads to enter Gaza, he said they were “a drop in the bucket.”</p>
<p>“So, if we can have 20 truckloads of aluminium (sic) a month; then why not 50?  And if you can have 50, why not a 100?” Ging asked.</p>
<p>Ging blamed the current situation on the failure to implement the detailed Agreement on Movement and Access in Gaza that Israel and the Palestinian Authority negotiated in November 2005 with the help of the World Bank and the Special Envoy of the Mideast Quartet.  Although the agreement had specified certain steps to be taken to keep the crossings open and vital supplies flowing into Gaza, those steps were never taken, he claimed, resulting in “bewildering human suffering and misery” for 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza.</p>
<p>What Ging neglected to mention is that Hamas and its radical Islamic allies bear much of the blame for the human suffering in Gaza because they are the reason that the Agreement on Movement and Access in Gaza was never fully implemented.</p>
<p>For its part, Israel had in good faith begun to implement this agreement by allowing a significant increase of truckloads into and out of Gaza through the crossing points bordering Israel, after it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and turned over governing responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Authority had agreed on a number of key security measures, including:</p>
<p>• Using international experts and Israeli recommendations to develop a</p>
<p>comprehensive security plan for one of the key border crossings;</p>
<p>• Establishing a secure perimeter to include security fencing, cameras, and motion detectors;</p>
<p>• Establishing a central security control room;</p>
<p>• Procuring appropriate cargo scanning equipment; and</p>
<p>• Developing and documenting security procedures and instructions, including those for coordination with Israeli personnel, and for the training of security personnel.</p>
<p>Israel began following through on its commitments despite the Palestinians’ failure to follow through on their security obligations spelled out in the agreement.  And the reason for the Palestinians’ failure was the rise of Hamas in Gaza, the terrorist group that has refused to abide by agreements entered into between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.</p>
<p>Even after Hamas won a majority of legislative seats in January 2006 on a platform that included the vow to destroy the Jewish state, the truckloads continued to flow into and out of Gaza.  Data compiled by the Palestine Trade Association provides compelling proof of Israel’s incredible forbearance in the face of Hamas&#8217; provocations and threats to its security.  Israel was still hoping to work with Fatah, which maintained some executive powers in Gaza following its legislative defeat and which maintained control of most of the Palestinian security apparatus, to provide for the security that was the condition for Israel to maintain more open border crossings.</p>
<p>Israel’s forbearance continued even after Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in a summer 2006 cross-border raid and after Hamas resumed the launching of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel in June 2006 with this threat:</p>
<p>&#8220;The earthquake in the Zionist towns will start again and the aggressors will have no choice but to prepare their coffins or their luggage.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Al Montar/Karni crossing was the main crossing of the Gaza Strip for both imports and exports.  This was the crossing that the Palestinian Authority was supposed to help secure in particular.  That did not happen.  Nevertheless, between December 2005 and June 2007, according to the Palestine Trade Association, an average of 450 truckloads a day was imported, and an average of 70 truckloads a day was exported. Sufa was used exclusively for the imports of construction materials, with a daily average of about 160 truckloads.</p>
<p>The event that forced Israel’s hand and finally led to the full-blown blockade was when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip completely in a bloody coup against Fatah in June 2007.  Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called Hamas’ take-over a &#8220;coup against the Palestinian legitimacy.&#8221;  Not only did Israel lose the partner it had reached agreement with and upon whom it had relied to help ensure its security.  The very entity that Israel saw as the main threat to its security from Gaza was now in complete charge of Gaza.</p>
<p>Beginning June 14, 2007, the Al Montar/Karni crossing was officially closed for both imports and exports. The crossing reopened on June  28, 2007 for limited imports of goods such as wheat and animal feed. Since then, Sufa and Karem Abu Salem /Kerem Shalom crossings were also used, primarily for imports of humanitarian goods, including basic food commodities (e.g. wheat flour, rice, pulses, cooking oil), animal feed and medical equipment.  From January 2008 until June 19,  2008, when a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel commenced, over 2000 rockets and mortars were launched by Hamas and its extremist Islamic terrorist allies against Israel.</p>
<p>During the cease-fire or “hudna” period, that started on June 19, 2008 and ended on December 19, 2008, commercial goods were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip including aggregates, cement, construction metal, wood, car tires, clothes, shoes, and fruit juice, but at a much diminished rate compared to the pre-coup period.  Hamas “concession” was to agree to stop the launching of unprovoked rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.</p>
<p>Hamas put on a show of discouraging rocket attacks from other terrorist groups during the cease-fire period but explicitly stated it would not police the border with Israel.  Some rocket attacks still continued. As reported by Human Rights Watch, while Hamas made some arrests of people accused of firing rockets, all were later released, and no charges were brought against them.</p>
<p>Hamas believed that its restraint in tamping down rocket attacks against innocent Israeli civilians should have been rewarded by an end of the Israeli blockade altogether.  Hamas conditioned its willingness to extend the cease-fire upon the complete lifting of the blockade even though by November 2008 about 700 truck loads of goods went into Gaza, which was about the amount of material that would have gone through in a single day even without a blockade.</p>
<p>Hamas’ offer of undertaking to continue trying to stop all rocket attacks against Israel in exchange for a complete lifting of the Israeli blockade was extortion pure and simple, as Hamas had no intention of fulfilling the original security obligations undertaken by the Palestinian Authority in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access in Gaza.</p>
<p>On December 20, 2008, Hamas officially announced that it would not agree to extend the cease-fire, which had expired on December 19th, citing Israeli border closures as the primary reason, and resumed its shelling of the western Negev.  On December 24, 2008 alone, Hamas launched eighty-seven mortar shells and Katyusha and Qassam rockets in an operation it called &#8220;Operation Oil Stain.”  Hamas also rejected European mediation of the talks to release Gilad Shalit.</p>
<p>Israel waited eight days after the expiration of the cease-fire, which Hamas refused to renew, and issued a final warning to Hamas.  Despite the rocket attacks, Israel even reopened five crossings between Israel and Gaza for humanitarian supplies.  Hamas continued the rocket barrage.  Israel finally had enough and responded by launching Operation Cast Lead.</p>
<p>Since coming to power in Gaza, Hamas has followed a reckless course that put the Palestinian people living in Gaza in harm’s way.  Hamas is responsible for the continuing blockade because its actions have heightened the very security threat that Israel had negotiated with the Palestinian Authority to help prevent, as an integral part of the deal to open up the border crossings in the first place.</p>
<p>Israel is cautiously testing the waters by restoring the level of truckloads of imports entering Gaza in March 2010 to the level it was during the pre-Operation Cast Lead cease-fire period.  However, as long as Hamas continues to smuggle arms into Gaza for use against Israel, keeps in effect its Charter’s vow to destroy Israel and continues to renege on agreements entered into between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, including the Palestinians’ security commitments in the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access in Gaza, it is unreasonable to expect Israel to fully open its borders to the threat of more terrorism.</p>
<p>It is Hamas that continues to hold its own people hostage to its extremist agenda rather than act like the responsible partner for peace that Israel had expected after it turned Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority nearly five years ago.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/joseph-klein/how-hamas-tortures-gaza/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>9</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Religious Left Targets Israel</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/the-religious-left-targets-israel/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-religious-left-targets-israel</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/the-religious-left-targets-israel/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:03:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mark D. Tooley]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arab world]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bank]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[beneficiaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian Palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[church advocacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Churches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[concern]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conflict]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[denominations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecumenical forum]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza Strip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gazans]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Holy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[illegal occupation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[interest]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[justifications]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[land]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Left]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[legitimacy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[militants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[new wave]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[newsletter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[occupation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[own website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestine israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peace]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[peace and justice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PIEF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[presence]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[productive nation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religious]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religious action]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seemingly]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WCC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[West]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[World]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[world council of churches]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yasir Arafat]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=50264</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The World Council of Churches prepares a new anti-Israel initiative.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/acc.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-50385" title="acc" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/acc.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="492" /></a></p>
<p>Seemingly not content with its already extensive anti-Israel activism, the Swiss-based World Council of Churches, comprised of over 300 denominations, is highlighting a new anti-Israel initiative.</p>
<p>The WCC’s blandly but revealingly named “Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum” (PIEF) has been around a few years but has just unveiled its <a href="http://www.oikoumene.org/en/programmes/public-witness-addressing-power-affirming-peace/churches-in-the-middle-east/pief/pief-home.html">own website</a> and newsletter, presumably in a new wave of protest against “The Occupation.”</p>
<p>According to PIEF’s new website, it plans to “catalyze and coordinate new and existing church advocacy for peace, aimed at ending the illegal occupation in accordance with UN resolutions, and demonstrate its commitment to inter-religious action for peace and justice that serves all the peoples of the region.”</p>
<p>Translation:  the WCC wants to fine tune its Religious Left alliances for undermining Israel’s legitimacy by faulting Israel exclusively for Palestinian suffering.  Tragically, the Religious Left’s ostensible concern for Palestinians is similar to much of the Arab world’s supposed concern.  For both, the Palestinians are mostly useful props for assailing Israel.   A more sincere and thoughtful empathy for Palestinians might them urge to follow the example of Israel’s founders 60 years ago:  take the deal available and strive to create a productive nation.</p>
<p>Ironically, the Religious Left’s contrived solidarity with Palestinians, like the international secular Left’s, will only help fuel unrealizable Palestinian hopes for demographically, if not militarily, deconstructing a Jewish Israel.  The ultimate beneficiaries of these anti-Israel campaigns are Hamas-style militants, who prefer unending conflict with Israel, and the West, to any decent settlement for Palestinians.</p>
<p>Either groups like the WCC and its PIEF are insidiously clever or simply willfully naïve, probably the latter. PIEF wants to target “government” and “public”  support for The Occupation, as well as its ostensibly “theological and biblical justifications.”  In other words, a primary objective is to discredit pro-Israel Christians in the U.S., not to mention Jewish historic rootedness to Israel.   It also wants to help uphold a “viable the Palestinian Christian presence in the Holy Land.”</p>
<p>Almost all the anti-Israel Religious Left groups profess to be very interested in defending the Christian presence in the West Bank and Gaza. Their interest is largely limited to identifying Israel as the anti-Christian persecutor, because they typically have little interest in often more threatened Christian communities in neighboring Arab countries.  Nor do they delve very deeply into why Christians are leaving the Holy Land, an ongoing exodus that long predates Israel’s founding, and which has accelerated since the Palestinian Authority’s creation and Israel’s partial withdrawal.   Obligingly, the Religious Left, including WCC/PIEF, quote Christian prelates in the West Bank, without admitting the political necessity for Christian Palestinians, as merely one percent of Palestinians, to burnish their anti-Israel credentials in a bid for survival among often hostile Muslims.</p>
<p>Radical Islam’s threat to Christians, to Israel, and to non-militant Palestinians goes unremarked by WCC/PIEF, as it usually does by the Religious Left as a whole.  PIEF’s website complains about Israel’s Gaza incursion and the “continuing blockade of the Gaza Strip” as “increasingly stringent” and a likely “form of collective punishment.”  This “blockade” has subjected 1.5 million Gazans to “unemployment, penury and malnutrition,” the WCC/PIEF bewail.  But Hamas’s misrule, terrorism and arms smuggling are naturally unmentioned as the cause for closing Gaza’s borders.  That Egypt has joined Israel in containing Hamas-controlled Gaza is likewise unnoted.</p>
<p>PIEF’s first newsletter focuses on Gaza’s “humanitarian and political crisis” as an obstacle to “just and durable solutions.”  Apparently Gaza would be fine if only Israel had not militarily interceded to halt rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel.   Or at least so PIEF asserts. In fact, even before the Hamas putsch against less rabid Palestinian rule, Yasir Arafat’s regime was scandalously bleeding Gaza of its already limited wealth in support of lavish living by Arafat cronies.  Theoretically, Gaza could be a thriving beach resort for European tourists, further engorged by endless international aid.  But of course its Palestinian rulers, with not inconsiderable public support from Gazans, prefer self-defeating conflict with Israel to any meaningful economic or political future.</p>
<p>According to PIEF, millions of dollars in international aid for Gaza has not helped Gazans because “essential supplies to Gaza are cut off.”  But Gaza’s declining fortunes began well before the Israeli and Egyptian border restrictions. “Churches must intercede in a way to guarantee that aid reaches the suffering swiftly,” PIEF implores.  “There needs to be concerted insistence on the assertion of accepted humanitarian practices and policy which guarantee that aid reaches those who need urgent without impediments of any sort.”</p>
<p>The Religious Left’s professed humanitarian concerns would be laudable, absent the crass political calculations behind it.  The Religious Left has long championed relief for impoverished Cuba, only because U.S. sanctions can be faulted.  The Religious Left similarly was supposedly very concerned about the Iraqi people under United Nations sanctions against Saddam Hussein, but only because the U.S. was the ultimate villain.  North Korea’s deplorable poverty and starvation periodically arouse Religious Left interest, but again only because of the U.S. angle.   The Palestinian Authority’s failed regime in the West Bank, and even more deplorable Hamas despotism in Gaza, with all the consequent suffering, would likely never cross the Religious Left radar screen, or generate groups like the WCC’s PIEF, were Israel and its U.S. ally not the final targets.</p>
<p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /> <input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /></p>
<p><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden" /><input id="jsProxy" onclick="jsCall();" type="hidden" /></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/mark-d-tooley/the-religious-left-targets-israel/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>32</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Eyeless in Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/anav-silverman/eyeless-in-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=eyeless-in-gaza</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/anav-silverman/eyeless-in-gaza/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Jan 2010 05:03:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Anav Silverman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alice Walker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american novelist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anna Selini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[article]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[attention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benjamin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Blockade]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cause]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Col. Moshe Levi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conflict]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[enemy territory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[english dictionaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Epstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fact]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Floyd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[freedom march]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gaza conflict]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza Strip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haaretz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hedy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Holocaust]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[human rights groups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[humanitarian aid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IDF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islamic]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[January]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[last winter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Levi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[major resources]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[March]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Medea]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[medea benjamin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ministry of foreign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ministry of foreign affairs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moshe levi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[narrative]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[operation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian organizations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pink]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[pink floyd]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[place]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Press]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Protestors]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[regime]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roger Walters]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Seige]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[siege]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[support]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wave]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[way]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[wing groups]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[worldwide media attention]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[year]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47389</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How radical critics distort Israel's alleged “siege” of Palestinian territory.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47479" title="313207631_e62fda9efd" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/313207631_e62fda9efd.jpg" alt="313207631_e62fda9efd" width="500" height="375" /></p>
<p>The past year brought a fresh wave of anti-Israel rhetoric and accusations, most of which cited Israel’s &#8220;siege&#8221; of Gaza during last winter’s <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3646673,00.html">Operation Cast Lead </a>as evidence of Israel’s injustice toward the Palestinians. The international press frequently echoed calls by human rights groups and activists to “end Israel’s illegal blockade” and “liberate Gaza.” Such messages have been conceived to undermine Israel and present a very misleading picture of the actual Gaza conflict.</p>
<p>In a typical blockade, no supplies would be allowed to enter into enemy territory. Similarly, most English dictionaries define siege as an “act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies.” But in fact Israel has allowed substantial shipments of aid into Gaza. Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ website has reported that in 2009 alone, Israel allowed 703, 224 tons of humanitarian aid and 105,600,128 liters of fuel to be delivered into the Gaza Strip following Operation Cast Lead.</p>
<p>“The IDF invested major resources to enable the flow of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip,” said Col. Moshe Levi, the head of the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, in November 2009. According to Levi, humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip increased by 900 percent compared to the previous year. Over 22, 893 humanitarian aid trucks entered into Gaza throughout 2009.</p>
<p>All of this has been pointedly ignored by Israel’s critics. Most recently, the Gaza Freedom March illustrated the way in which pro-Palestinian organizations and left-wing groups have been able to use the international press and media to communicate their Gaza narrative using the “blockade” and “siege” narrative. Organized by <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6149">Code Pink</a>’s co-founder, <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=626">Medea Benjamin</a>, who also happens to be Jewish, the Gaza Freedom March received worldwide media attention as protestors set to break the “siege” of Gaza.</p>
<p>The march was able to attract some well-known celebrities, like Roger Walters of Pink Floyd and American novelist Alice Walker. But it was not the support of these two celebrities and others like them that attracted the attention of the press. The Gaza Freedom March organizers had <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2096">Hedy Epstein</a>, an 85-year old Holocaust survivor and pro-Palestinian activist affiliated with the radical <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6233">International Solidarity Movement</a>, put in the spotlight for their cause. When Epstein declared a hunger strike to support the Gaza Freedom March, she became an instant international poster girl for the march and made headlines across the world. In its reports about the Gaza Freedom March, the <em>Huffington Post</em> quoted Epstein explaining her support for the Palestinians by likening Israel to Nazi Germany. “[E]everything is due to the Holocaust,” Epstein explained. “But Israel is not being persecuted now. Israel is now the persecutor.”</p>
<p>Unfortunately, those who support the Gaza Freedom March and Palestinian rights, like Hedy Epstein and Medea Benjamin, disregard the other side of the Mideast conflict. Operation Cast Lead took place to stop the thousands of Gaza rockets striking Israeli schools, playgrounds, homes and communities each year. Equally absurd is the way such groups ignore Israeli policies that are set to ensure Palestinians’ access to humanitarian aid and goods – despite the fact that Palestinian terror attacks continue on the Israeli border crossings through which these goods pass.</p>
<p>The original intention of the Gaza Freedom March protestors was to demonstrate that Israel was the sole cause of hardship for Gaza’s Palestinians. Inadvertently, the Gaza Freedom March actually brought to light the siege-like policies of Hamas, the extremist Islamic regime that took over Gaza in 2007.</p>
<p>Haaretz reported earlier this month the Hamas government imposed a “siege” of its own on Gaza residents, prohibiting them from providing lodgings to several hundred international protestors. According to the article, “tough, Hamas security men,” accompanied the peaceful activists during their visit to Gaza and blocked them from speaking with ordinary Gazan residents. “The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators. Hamas hijacked the initiative and we gave in,” said one protestor quoted in the article.</p>
<p>There were barely any Palestinians who took part in the Gaza Freedom March, and absolutely no Palestinian women. Italian photojournalist Anna Selini reported that most of the marchers were international supporters. “Hamas did not encourage, even discouraged local people from participating,” Selini said. Haaretz has similarly reported that activists got the impression that “non-Hamas residents live in fear, and are afraid to speak or identify themselves by name.</p>
<p>This is not surprising. In December 2008, the Hamas parliament imposed Islamic Sharia law onto the Palestinian judicial system. Hamas punishments for Palestinian offenders include whipping, severing hands for stealing, crucifixion and even hanging. Few if any among the 1,300 international protestors of Israel’s alleged repression of Gaza realized that their message of freedom for Gaza would have been far more effective had it been directed towards Hamas.</p>
<p><em>Anav Silverman is the international correspondent for <a href="http://sderotmedia.org.il/">Sderot Media Center</a>, a social media organization dedicated to bringing the voices of Sderot and Negev residents to the attention of the global community.</em></div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/anav-silverman/eyeless-in-gaza/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>28</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 2166/2385 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 10:45:39 by W3 Total Cache -->