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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Gaza</title>
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		<title>Why Do 80% of Palestinians Support Murder?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/why-do-80-of-palestinians-support-murder/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=why-do-80-of-palestinians-support-murder</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2014 05:03:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247961</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The one issue that unifies Palestinians more than any other. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/F121214IR01-1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247962" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/F121214IR01-1-450x299.jpg" alt="F121214IR01-1" width="342" height="227" /></a>In most parts of the world, it&#8217;s not easy to find a major issue on which 80% of the population agrees. An election victory in the United States is considered a &#8220;landslide&#8221; if the winner receives more than about 60% of the vote. (Such as Richard Nixon winning 65% of the vote against George McGovern in the 1972 presidential race.)</p>
<p>But among Palestinian Arabs in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza, it turns out there is one issue on which there is more support than any other: randomly murdering Israeli Jews.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research last week asked a sample of 1,270 Palestinian Arab adults in the territories what they thought of the recent wave of attacks in which Palestinians stabbed Israelis or ran them over with their cars. Fully 80% responded that they support such attacks.</p>
<p>Note that the respondents weren&#8217;t talking about theoretical future attacks. They were commenting on recent attacks which they know all about. Here is what they are endorsing:</p>
<p>&#8211; Ramming a car into a crowd at a train station in Jerusalem. The fatalities included a three-month old infant.</p>
<p>&#8211; Stabbing an unarmed young woman standing at a bus stop in Gush Etzion.</p>
<p>&#8211; Axing and machine-gunning four rabbis at prayer in a Jerusalem synagogue.</p>
<p>Could the 80% endorsement be a fluke? A one-time aberration? A momentary lapse in good judgment, spurred by recent tensions?</p>
<p>Hardly. There is a remarkable consistency in Palestinian public opinion. The same polling institution surveyed 1,200 Palestinians in the territories in late September and found that 80% support resuming the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.</p>
<p>Why is it that 80% of Palestinians embrace the brutal murder and terrorization of Israeli civilians?</p>
<p>Three reasons stand out.</p>
<p>First, there is the general brutality of Palestinian Arab society. Violence by relatives against women suspected of immorality, violence by Muslim extremists against Christian Arabs, violence by the Palestinian Authority regime against dissidents&#8211;it&#8217;s all commonplace in the territories. That makes it easier for the average citizen to see violence as acceptable.</p>
<p>Second, there is a sense that violence works. Kidnapping Israelis led to the release of thousands of Palestinian terrorists from prison. Decades of bombings and hijackings led to widespread international support for Palestinian statehood. The recent attacks in Jerusalem have led to calls to redivide the city (including, most recently, by U.S. Mideast envoy Martin Indyk).</p>
<p>Third, and perhaps most important, is the influence of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement by the Palestinian leadership. Secretary of State John Kerry has correctly pointed out that the Jerusalem synagogue slaughter was, as he put it, &#8220;a pure result of incitement.&#8221; The constant declarations by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other leaders praising terrorists as heroes and accusing Israel of desecrating Muslim religious places, have created an atmosphere in which support for murdering Jews has become the norm.</p>
<p>The normally alleged justification for Palestinian violence – a reaction to “the occupation” – does not stand up. Since 1995, over 95% of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) Palestinians have lived under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, which controls all aspects of Palestinian life except for visas and external security. And since 2005, Palestinians in Gaza have controlled even these.</p>
<p>The Oslo Accords were supposed to have put an end to all that. Palestinian leaders were supposed to educate the public to embrace peace. They promised to change the hearts and minds of average Palestinians, to raise a generation ready to live in peace with Israel. Instead, they decided to do exactly the opposite. And, as the new poll demonstrates, they succeeded.</p>
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		<title>Israel-Bashing from Amnesty International</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/israel-bashing-from-amnesty-international/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-bashing-from-amnesty-international</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:25:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[amnesty international]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244735</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A new report turns the victim into the villain. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/aarm8tfmfr6zgsx6l3na.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244737" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/aarm8tfmfr6zgsx6l3na-450x332.jpg" alt="Amnesty raises awareness for human rights situation in Mali" width="344" height="254" /></a>In a predictable development, Amnesty International (AI) has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/world/middleeast/amnesty-international-says-israel-showed-callous-indifference-to-gaza-civilians.html?_r=0"><span style="color: #1255cc;">accused</span></a> Israel of committing war crimes during its 50-day engagement with Hamas this past summer. The report, <a href="http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/032/2014/en/613926df-68c4-47bb-b587-00975f014e4b/mde150322014en.pdf"><span style="color: #1255cc;">&#8220;Families Under the Rubble: Israeli Attacks on Unihabited Homes,&#8221;</span></a> claims the Israeli military demonstrated a “callous indifference” with regard to civilians. It further insists &#8220;the onus is on Israel to provide information concerning the attacks and their intended targets.”</p>
<p>AI gives the game away early in the report. First, in a 49-page report detailing eight specific cases of alleged &#8220;war crimes&#8221; and violations of international law committed by Israel, there is but a single paragraph acknowledging that &#8220;Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups fired thousands of indiscriminate rockets and mortar rounds into civilian areas of Israel.” A second paragraph notes that AI &#8220;has documented and is continuing to document serious violations of international humanitarian law, including unlawful killings and injures to civilians and destruction of civilian property, both by Israel and by and Palestinian armed groups,” but it is clear from this report that taking Israel to task first and foremost is the group’s priority.</p>
<p>AI’s primary indictment against Israel centers around the feckless notion of “disproportionate&#8221; response. It is the pernicious nonsense that posits higher rates of casualties and property damage in Gaza than Israel is de facto evidence of human rights violations. Conspicuously missing from that argument is the reality that Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups bear the lion’s share of the blame for the damage and casualties, because they <i>routinely</i> use their own civilians as human shields. And ostensibly civilian locations such as mosques and schools are <i>routinely</i> used as weapons depots.</p>
<p>That reality was driven home during the conflict, when the United Nations found terrorist rockets <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/31/why-hamas-stores-its-weapons-inside-hospitals-mosques-and-schools/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">hidden</span></a> in at least three of its own schools—one of which sat adjacent to other schools used to accommodate displaced Palestinians. Moreover, <i>Washington Post</i> reporter William Booth observed a “group of men” moving small rockets into a mosque, even as he further noted that Shifa Hospital in Gaza City had “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.”</p>
<p>Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) explained the dual motivation for such <i>genuine</i> callousness. “Hamas chooses to use these protected areas for military purposes in order to shield itself from IDF strikes,” they said at the time. “And to draw international condemnation of Israel if the IDF is forced to respond.”</p>
<p>AI’s take on terrorist inclinations? In a section of the report entitled “Precautions and ‘Human Shields,’” they explain that warring parties have &#8220;an obligation to protect civilians and civilian objects under their control against the effects of an attack by the adversary,” and the those adversaries must, to the extent feasible, “avoid locating military objectives within or near densely populated areas.” They use a Red Cross definition of feasibility, indicating that “no one can be required to do the impossible,” and that a party to the conflict &#8220;cannot be expected to arrange its armed forces and installations in such a way as to make them conspicuous to the benefit of the adversary.”</p>
<p>That’s a remarkable statement&#8211;one that seems to imply that AI is actually <i>endorsing</i> the use of human shields as a means of making military targets &#8220;less feasible” to attack. AI seemingly doubles down on this notion, insisting, &#8220;the fact that Palestinian fighters are located within civilian areas does not in any way negate Israel’s obligations to those citizens…”</p>
<p>Palestinian obligations to <i>their own</i> citizens, or the reality that they do in fact use them for human shields? Not even mentioned. Furthermore, AI dismisses as insufficient Israel’s unprecedented effort to minimize civilian casualties, despite the reality the IDF drops pamphlets, makes phone calls, <a href="http://etc.to/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">etc.</span></a> to warn Palestinian civilians (and by extension the terrorists) of impending attacks. Few armies on earth go to such lengths to protect the civilian population of their sworn enemy.</p>
<p>Israeli officials were <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/11/05/amnesty-international-accuses-israel-war-crimes-against-civilians/7f2kv4m77ZE8HGHcGgRxxI/story.html?comments=all&amp;sort=NEWEST_CREATE_DT"><span style="color: #1255cc;">quick to notice</span></a> the blatant discrepancy. “The report does not mention the word terror in relation to Hamas or other armed Palestinian groups, nor mention tunnels built by Hamas to infiltrate Israel and perpetrate terror attacks,” read a statement from Israel’s embassy in London, where AI’s report was released. “By ignoring the nature of the enemy Israel faced in Gaza — a terror group recognized as such by the European Union, the United States, and others — Amnesty’s report fails to contribute to the important discussion needed to solve the conflict. Instead Amnesty serves as a propaganda tool for Hamas and other terror groups.”</p>
<p>At the end of the report, AI issues a series of recommendations for both sides and other states. The only recommendation for the Palestinians is that they should accept the International Criminal Court&#8217;s jurisdiction over crimes committed since 2002, and accede to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court"><span style="color: #1255cc;">“Rome Statute”</span></a> of that Court, which has established four international crimes, defined as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes of aggression.</p>
<p>The list of recommendations for Israel includes that one, as well as granting AI access to Gaza, revising their military doctrines and tactics—and providing reparations to all victims of “serious violations of international law, including victims whose homes and properties were unlawfully destroyed or damaged during Operation Protective Edge.”</p>
<p>There is tremendous irony attached to that last recommendation. It is Israel, bowing to pressure from the international community following Israel’s <i>and</i> Egypt’s closure of its borders with Gaza, who supplied the territory with most of the cement used to build a series of <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/180007/concrete-facts-about-hamas#undefined"><span style="color: #1255cc;">terror tunnels</span></a> with exits located in the Jewish State &#8212; terror tunnels built by Palestinian children, costing at least <a href="http://palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/42605"><span style="color: #1255cc;">160 of them</span></a> their lives, according to Hamas officials. Eighteen of the tunnels discovered by Israel used more than 800,000 tons of concrete, an amount more than enough to construct eight skyscrapers as big as Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest. Egypt <a href="http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=680987"><span style="color: #1255cc;">discovered and destroyed</span></a> additional tunnels under its border with the Gaza strip.</p>
<p>One thousand, three hundred and seventy of them.</p>
<p>AI’s recommendations to other states include similar legal suggestions, yet one other stands out: they believe all other nations should suspend shipping arms, munitions, weapons and military equipment to Israel until it is held accountable for its previous humanitarian violations, and mechanisms are put it placed to prevent future ones. Again no mention whatsoever of ongoing Iranian <a href="http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Cyprus-and-Egypt-stop-Iranian-ships-with-weapons-for-Hamas-and-Hezbollah-14358.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">efforts</span></a> to supply Hamas with weapons, or the Syrian-made <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/middle-east-unrest/hamas-firing-china-designed-syria-made-m-302-rockets-israel-n152461"><span style="color: #1255cc;">rockets</span></a> that have boosted Hamas&#8217;s missile capability from a range of three or four miles, to approximately 70 miles.</p>
<p>This extended range puts the entire nation of Israel at risk of missile attack.</p>
<p>Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of <span style="color: #1255cc;"><a href="http://www.ngo-monitor.org/articles.php?type=about">NGO Monitor</a>,</span> an organization that monitors non-governmental organizations “claiming to advance human rights and humanitarian agendas,” adds some much needed perspective to AI’s claims. &#8220;Amnesty&#8217;s claims had no validity when they were first made, without evidence, during the fighting, and they have no more credibility now, despite the façade of &#8216;research&#8217; and ‘investigations,’” he declared. &#8220;For many years, we have shown that Amnesty&#8217;s &#8216;reports&#8217; on Israel lack credibility and are based on double standards that reflect a radical ideological agenda under the façade of universal human rights.”</p>
<p>It is far worse than that. AI suffers from a staggering level of self-inflicted myopia. Iran is in the middle of its latest round of human rights violations, including the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/14/iran-executions-surge-amid-us-nuclear-talks/?page=all"><span style="color: #1255cc;">execution</span></a> of 560 citizens with dubious convictions over the past nine months. Several of those victims were minors. Acid attacks against women are also on the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-iran-politics-women-attacks-idUSKBN0IP15K20141105"><span style="color: #1255cc;">upswing</span></a>, likely in response to an initiative allowing private citizens to enforce &#8220;morality&#8221; laws. ISIS has cut one of modern history’s bloodthirstiest swaths, torturing, raping and executing innocent men, women and children, and <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/10/26/james_foley_other_isis_hostages_suffered_horrific_torture_before_execution.html"><span style="color: #1255cc;">conducting</span></a> a series of high-profile beheadings. Boko Haram has <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/boko-haram-kidnaps-dozens-more-young-girls-n232641"><span style="color: #1255cc;">kidnapped</span></a> more young girls, many of whom have been “married” or <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/missing-nigeria-schoolgirls/boko-haram-nigerian-terror-group-sells-girls-slavery-n93951"><span style="color: #1255cc;">sold</span></a> into slavery. And <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-genocide-of-mideastern-christians-1410474449"><span style="color: #1255cc;">genocide</span></a> is being perpetrated against Middle East Christians.</p>
<p>Yet AI chooses to focus on the efforts of Israel to <i>defend</i> itself against Hamas, a terror group whose charter of existence calls for Israel’s destruction. By contrast, Hamas gets a virtual free pass on that reality, as well as its determination to use its fellow Palestinians as cannon fodder whenever they deem it necessary. And we’re all supposed to wait for “continuing” documentation of humanitarian rights violations that may—or may not&#8211;get around to detailing the depredations of Hamas.</p>
<p>At a later date, of course. Until that time, the libelous assault on Israel will continue—even as the cavalcade of atrocities committed in the name of Islam are conspicuously ignored by the ideologically bankrupt organization known as Amnesty International.</p>
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		<title>Palestinians Being Evicted in Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/palestinians-being-evicted-in-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinians-being-evicted-in-gaza</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 05:10:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[egypt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[eviction]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244699</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Guess why the press isn't talking about it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eviction-notice.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244700" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/eviction-notice-428x350.jpg" alt="eviction-notice" width="344" height="281" /></a>Once more, Gaza&#8217;s border is in flames.</p>
<p>Civilians  are being evicted from their homes, a curfew has been imposed, and a crossing that enables Gazans to leave has been closed. Yet the world is silent. Isn&#8217;t that strange?</p>
<p>Hundreds of residents along one of Gaza&#8217;s borders have suddenly been ordered to evacuate, on just two days&#8217; notice. Their homes are to be demolished. There is no talk of compensation. Why isn&#8217;t the United Nations Security Council denouncing this outrage?</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Because it is Egypt, and not Israel, that is doing the evicting. (See the New York Times, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/world/middleeast/egypt-orders-evacuation-along-gaza-border-to-thwart-militants.html">October 28 edition</a>.)</p>
<p>The Egyptians have decided they need a buffer zone along their border with Gaza. They don&#8217;t trust the Hamas regime, which they say has been assisting terrorists who have been attacking Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. Apparently Cairo does not accept the Obama Administration scripted fiction that the new Hamas-PA government is run by &#8220;technocrats.&#8221; Egypt understands that a Hamas-appointed &#8220;technocrat&#8221; is, first and foremost, a functionary of Hamas.</p>
<p>So the bulldozers are rumbling in Rafah. As a result of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979, the city of Rafah was split in half. Part of it is on the Gaza side of the border. Residents in the &#8220;Egyptian&#8221; part of town are now being evicted willy-nilly, in order to make room for a buffer zone that will be nine miles long, and with water-filled trenches that will be more than 500 yards wide &#8212; that&#8217;s half a kilometer, or five football fields.</p>
<p>Yet nary a word of protest from the White House, nor any suggestion of delaying any U.S. arms deliveries to Egypt.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not all. In response to the recent attacks in Sinai, the Egyptians have imposed a dawn-to-dusk curfew all along the Egypt-Gaza border. In other words, no resident of Rafah can leave his or her home after dark, for any reason.</p>
<p>Yet Thomas Friedman has not written any columns in the New York Times with heart-rending stories about Rafah  women being forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions because they can&#8217;t travel to the local hospital after sundown.</p>
<p>Egypt has also shut down the only crossing along the Egyptian side of the Gaza border. With the passageway closed, no Gazan can get out.</p>
<p>So where are the snarky political cartoonists depicting Gaza as a Holocaust-era ghetto? Nor is Secretary of State John Kerry warning of Egypt becoming ostracized and isolated in the world. Western academics are not threatening to boycott their Egyptian counterparts. J Street is not lobbying for U.S. intervention against this new assault on Arab civilians.</p>
<p>Could the hypocrisy of the international community be any more blatant?</p>
<p>Evidently, if they genuinely cared about the well-being of the residents of Rafah, the White House would be holding up arms to Egypt &#8212; exactly as it held up Hellfire missiles to Israel. If he were sincerely concerned about Arab lives, Thomas Friedman would be blasting the Egyptians on the op-ed page of the New York Times. If they truly wanted to help the evacuees, J Street&#8217;s lobbyists would be working overtime to get the Obama Administration to intervene against Cairo.</p>
<p>But the truth is that they don&#8217;t really care about the welfare of Arab civilians at all, unless there is an opportunity to bash Israel. When Arabs are mistreated by their fellow-Arabs, the State Department and the pundits and the &#8220;peace camp&#8221; fall silent.</p>
<p>So let&#8217;s all learn an important lesson from this experience. Israel and its supporters should stop worrying about the latest Thomas Friedman diatribe or the latest J Street conference or the latest unfriendly remarks by the Obama White House and the State Department. They will go on blaming Israel &#8212; and excusing Egypt and other Arab countries &#8212; no matter what. Nothing Israel does will ever satisfy them &#8212; so there&#8217;s no point in trying.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated. </em></p>
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		<title>Anti-Semitism Denial</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/richard-l-cravatts/anti-semitism-denial/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=anti-semitism-denial</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/richard-l-cravatts/anti-semitism-denial/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 04:38:46 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Richard L. Cravatts]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AMCHA Initiative report]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professors]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243576</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Leftist professors and doublethink.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/antisemitism.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243580" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/antisemitism-450x300.jpg" alt="antisemitism" width="251" height="167" /></a>As yet more evidence that academics are regularly able to engage in what George Orwell sardonically referred to as “doublethink,” “the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one&#8217;s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them,” this month 40 professors of Jewish studies published a denunciation of a study that named professors who have been identified as expressing “anti-Israel bias, or possibly even antisemitic rhetoric.”</p>
<p>While the 40 academic “heavyweights” claim they, of course, reject anti-Semitism totally as part of teaching, they were equally repelled by the tactics and possible effects of the AMCHA Initiative report, a comprehensive review of the attitudes about Israel of some 200 professors who signed an online petition during the latest Gaza incursion that called for an academic boycott against Israeli scholars—academics the petitioners claimed were complicit in the “latest humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel’s new military assault on the Gaza Strip.”</p>
<p>“We believe the professors who have signed this petition may be so biased against the Jewish state that they are unable to teach accurately or fairly about Israel or the Arab-Israel conflict, and may even inject antisemitic tropes into their lectures or class discussion,” wrote Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith, co-founders of the AMCHA Initiative and authors of the report.</p>
<p>Calling “the actions of AMCHA deplorable,” the indignant professors were insulted by the organization’s “technique of monitoring lectures, symposia and conferences,” something which, they believe, “strains the basic principle of academic freedom on which the American university is built.” That is a rather breathtaking assertion by academics; namely, that it is contrary to the core mission of higher education that ideas and instruction being publicly expressed by professors cannot be examined and judged, and that by even applying some standards of objectivity on a body of teaching by a particular professor “AMCHA’s approach closes off all but the most narrow intellectual directions and,” as academics who do not want the content of their output to actually be examined for the quality of its scholarship are always fond of saying, “has a chilling effect on research and teaching.”</p>
<p>Only in the inverted reality of academia could a group of largely Jewish professors denounce a study which had as its core purpose to alert students to professors who have demonstrated, publicly and seemingly proudly, that they harbor anti-Israel attitudes, attitudes which unfortunately frequently morph into anti-Semitic thought and speech as part of discussions about Israel and the Middle East. Since the individuals named in the report teach in the area of Middle East studies, they are also likely to bring that anti-Israel bias into the classroom with them, and students, therefore, would obviously benefit from AMCHA’s report.</p>
<p>Specifically, it shows which professors have demonstrated that they bring to their teaching a clear bias against the Jewish state, and in fact have gone even further with that enmity by mobilizing as part of the global BDS movement to turn Israeli academics in intellectual pariahs by excluding them from the intellectual marketplace of ideas. Not Syrian academics; not Iranian academics; not North Korean academics; not Saudi Arabian academics; not the scholars of many other countries with despotic regimes and a prevailing absence of human and civil rights, not to mention academic freedom. Only Israeli academics.</p>
<p>Can anyone believe that had the AMCHA Initiative or other organization issued a report that revealed the existence of endemic racism, or homophobia, or sexism, or Islamophobia in university coursework, and had warned students who might be negatively impacted to steer clear of courses taught by those offending professors, that these same 40 feckless professors would have denounced such reports as potentially having a negative effect on teaching and learning? That they would question the motives of the organization that published the report? That they would deem the research and publication of such reports as being “McCarthyesque” or somehow undermining the civility of higher education by actually holding academics responsible for some of the intellectually deficient or corrupt ideologies to which they adhere and which they are more than happy to hoist on others—including, of course, their students.</p>
<p>Why should a professor’s political attitudes <em>not</em> be known to students, especially, as in this case, when those anti-Israel attitudes are extremely germane to their area of teaching, namely Middle East studies? The AMCHA researchers did not furtively investigate the private lives of the 200 professors, nor did they delve through their association memberships, reading habits, or private writings without the professors’ knowledge or consent. They were not spied upon and their courses taped by students.</p>
<p>The findings were based on the public utterances and writings of the professors, behavior and attitudes they apparently had no problem with making public and for which they were not hesitant to take responsibility. In fact, as often happens when anti-Israel academics are called upon to defend their libels and intellectual assaults against the Jewish state, they wish to freely pontificate on the many predations of Israel but do not like to be inconvenienced by being challenged on those often biased, and intellectually dishonest, views by others with opposing viewpoints.</p>
<p>Instead of defending their assertions and ideologies, they retreat from the argument, contending, at least in the Israeli/Palestinian discussion, that when their views are challenged, it is not done in good faith—an actual scholarly debate—but only as a way of suppressing their opinions, derailing their pro-Palestinian activism, and sheltering Israel from what they believe is justifiable and necessary criticism.</p>
<p>And there is another, more psychologically interesting aspect to a group of Jewish professors opposing a study that attempted to protect Jewish students and others from the pernicious effects of anti-Semitism in coursework, an aspect that Harvard’s insightful Ruth Wisse dealt with in her book, <em>If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews: </em>the professors attacked the AMCHA study specifically because it deals with Israel, and how academia reacts to the debate about the Jewish state and its surrounding Arab neighbors. Rather than confront the lies and distortions promulgated by the Arab world against Israel over its alleged racism, apartheid, settlements, and lack of a just solution to the occupation, anti-Israel liberal Jews completely accept the spurious new narrative of Israel being the sole villain, and in fact often abet it with their own condemnations of the Jewish state. For Wisse, this behavior could “more accurately be described as the desire to disassociate oneself from a people under attack by advertising one’s own goodness,” a psychological pattern that has manifested itself conspicuously on campuses and seems to be at play in the current instance with the Jewish Studies professors. So worried are the 40 professors that by defending a report exposing academic anti-Semitism they will somehow be seen to be complicit in defending Israel, they would rather denounce the report and expose Jewish students to potential harm than stand up for principles that might tarnish their liberal credentials.</p>
<p>The signatories were also skeptical about the guidelines used by AMCHA to gauge instances of anti-Semitism and an acceptable definition by which campus speech, teaching, publications, and events could be judged to include manifestations of anti-Semitism and not just vituperation and critique of Israel—as anti-Israel activists regularly claim.   AMCHA’s “definition of antisemitism is so undiscriminating as to be meaningless,” the professors’ statement asserted, ignoring the fact that AMCHA based its own definition on earlier working definitions of anti-Semitism carefully developed by the U.S. State Department, the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now the Fundamental Rights Agency), and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law, among others.</p>
<p>And the professors also claim, without bothering to support the accusation with any proof, that AMCHA’s report—intent on exposing anti-Semitism in speech and behavior that can and has created a hostile campus environment for Jewish students—will somehow contribute to contracting, rather than enlarging, scholarly debate. In their zeal to preempt the insulating force of their notion of “academic freedom,” they seek to deprive those with alternate views of the same rights and protection; that is, while they want their fellow academics to be able to utter any calumny against the Jewish state and suffer no recriminations for their speech, even when it crosses the line into anti-Semitic expression, these professors view any speech from those challenging their views to be oppressive, stifling, and unacceptable. In fact, the professors contend, “Instead of encouraging openness through its efforts, AMCHA’s approach . . . has a chilling effect on research and teaching,” absurdly suggesting that excluding anti-Semitism from pro-Palestinian activism and teaching constricts scholarship and debate to “all but the most narrow intellectual directions.”</p>
<p>It is not as if campuses are unaware of the prevailing sensitivities of groups who are normally considered to be protected classes—black students, gay students, Muslim students, Hispanics, among others. Just this month, in a breathtaking act of moral incoherence, Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS) voted <em>against</em> condemning ISIS after the Black Students Officer, Malia Bouattia, opposed the motion, not because students did not have sincere concern for Syrians and Kurds being slaughtered, but because “condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for . . . blatant Islamophobia.” In April, the Fifth Annual Conference on Islamophobia was held at UC Berkeley&#8217;s Boalt Law School, organized by Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian activist, co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, and professor of a current Berkeley course called &#8220;De-Constructing Islamophobia and the History of Otherness,” with part of the course requirements being that students open a Twitter account and tweet at least once a week about “Islamophobia.”</p>
<p>None of the Jewish Studies professors seemed to be concerned with investigations of purported instances of Islamophobia on campus and elsewhere, and how exposing those occurrences might lead to a stifling of someone’s academic free speech or “chilling” of scholarly debate. In fact, FBI statistics indicate that acts of anti-Semitism occur with eight times the regularity of anti-Muslim incidents, and that between 2011 and 2012 alone, the number of anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses tripled.</p>
<p>So regardless of how significant the professors seem to think the problem of anti-Semitism actually is, and whether they wish to minimize the virulence of anti-Semitism because they insist on conflating it with, and making it part of, the furious academic debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the AMCHA report shows us that the “oldest hatred” is still with us, creeping noxiously up the ivy walls.</p>
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		<title>Revealed: U.S. Cut Off Arms Supply to Israel During Gaza War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/davidhornik/revealed-u-s-cut-off-arms-supply-to-israel-during-gaza-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=revealed-u-s-cut-off-arms-supply-to-israel-during-gaza-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 04:50:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[P. David Hornik]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arms]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Operation Protective Edge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supply]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[weapons]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=243510</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the decision likely came from the White House. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/140730_FOR_GazaIDFInvasion.jpg.CROP_.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-243514" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/140730_FOR_GazaIDFInvasion.jpg.CROP_.promovar-mediumlarge-450x298.jpg" alt="140730_FOR_GazaIDFInvasion.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge" width="343" height="227" /></a>Last August 14 the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-sway-over-israel-on-gaza-at-a-low-1407979365"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reported</span></a> that, in July, after Israel had launched Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Washington had surprised Israel by turning down an Israeli request for “a large number of Hellfire missiles.” Hellfires are an important air-to-surface precision weapon, suited to the kind of warfare Israel was waging against Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza.</p>
<p>But as Amir Rapaport, a veteran Israeli military-affairs writer and editor of the <i>Israel Defense</i> site, now <a href="http://www.israeldefense.com/?categoryid=483&amp;articleid=3169"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a>:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>The full truth…is much more severe: apparently, during Operation Protective Edge, the USA had completely stopped all connections with Israel’s defense procurement delegation based in the USA. For days, no item whatsoever could be shipped. The expected airlift of US ammunition had never even arrived at its point of departure.</i></p>
<p><i>The crisis began about ten days into Operation Protective Edge, pursuant to allegations that the percentage of uninvolved civilian deaths in the Gaza Strip was extremely high (IDF admitted that about one half of all Palestinian deaths were probably civilians who had not been involved in the fighting).</i></p>
<p><i>At that stage, the Israeli defense establishment submitted to the USA a request for various types of munitions, including Hellfire missiles, to replenish the dwindling inventories of IDF….</i></p>
<p><i>The order to stop the processing of all Israeli requests came from a senior echelon—probably the White House, among other reasons, because Israel had ignored the initiatives of Secretary of State John Kerry and preferred to end the operation through a direct channel with the Egyptians. The State Department had been annoyed with Israel for several months, since it was revealed that Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had referred to Kerry as “Messianic” in closed sessions.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>No less than three reasons are given here for Washington’s ire toward Israel. Regarding the first—the allegedly high Palestinian civilian casualties—an ongoing study by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center has <a href="http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/article/20719"><span style="color: #0433ff;">found</span></a>, so far, that the death rate was indeed about 50%-50% between Palestinian combatants and civilians. This <a href="http://www.jpost.com/opinion/op-ed-contributors/a-salute-to-the-idf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">compares favorably</span></a> with ratios of three civilians killed for every one combatant in Afghanistan, and four civilians for every one combatant in Iraq and in Kosovo.</p>
<p>As for Israel’s “ignor[ing]” of Kerry’s “initiatives,” those initiatives entailed negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas through the good offices of Turkey and Qatar—a move that was staunchly opposed by both Israel and Egypt because Turkey and Qatar are patently pro-Hamas actors.</p>
<p>And as for Yaalon dubbing Kerry “messianic,” he did so in the context of Kerry’s attempted Israeli-Palestinian peace process in which U.S. political and military officials had usurped Yaalon’s authority as Israeli defense minister by intensively planning an Israeli military retreat from the Jordan Valley—a step that Yaalon views as incompatible with Israel’s security.</p>
<p>In any case, Rapaport calls the munitions cutoff a “major trauma in US-Israeli relations” that has already had repercussions. Among other impacts, he reports that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>within the Israeli defense establishment, this recent affair has led to a reassessment of the almost automatic reliance on an airlift of ammunition from the USA as a part of practically every wartime scenario.</i></p>
<p><i>Among the measures currently under consideration is…a massive transition to Israeli-made munitions. For example, the Hellfire missiles the Americans failed to deliver may be replaced by IAI [Israel Aerospace Industries] missiles, while precision guided munitions by Rafael may replace US-made air-to-surface munitions. Since Operation Protective Edge, Israeli defense industries have already received urgent procurement orders for arms and munitions worth billions of NIS.</i></p></blockquote>
<p>Rapaport notes, however, that</p>
<blockquote><p><i>the arms issue was resolved toward the end of Operation Protective Edge and…despite the recent events, the strategic defense relations between the two countries continue even now, including extensive intelligence cooperation. US DOD [Department of Defense] and IMOD [Israel Ministry of Defense] are also proceeding with numerous joint research and development projects and US defense aid will remain a substantial element of the Israeli defense budget, which enables Israel to acquire such extremely costly systems as the F-35 future fighter aircraft. The Americans have also increased their support for the Iron Dome project during Operation Protective Edge….</i></p></blockquote>
<p>All in all, this episode may signal a major learning experience for Israel and a step toward its maturation as a country: the realization that, while the United States is a friend and ally, it is not a Big Brother to be relied on to the extent that one puts one’s fate in its hands.</p>
<p>By Rapaport’s account and others, the deeply institutionalized U.S.-Israeli strategic relationship is surviving and even thriving in the Obama era. But that does not mean an ideologically hostile administration like Obama’s will not exploit Israel’s dependence to punish it for perceived wrongs, even—or especially—at a time when Israel is under attack as it was from thousands of Hamas rockets last summer.</p>
<p>Since there may well be other such ideologically hostile or Israel-unfriendly administrations in the future, it is good to know that Israel is reassessing its “almost automatic reliance” on U.S. airlifts and considering a “massive transition to Israeli-made munitions.” It would be a lot more realistic.</p>
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		<title>Americans just gave every Gazan $200</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/americans-just-gave-every-gazan-200/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=americans-just-gave-every-gazan-200</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/americans-just-gave-every-gazan-200/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 16 Oct 2014 22:08:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242909</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The current pledges add up to around $5 billion.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/obama_abbas.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-233209" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/obama_abbas.jpg" alt="obama_abbas" width="400" height="274" /></a></p>
<p>It&#8217;s a sizable bump from the already sizable amount of assistance that the Palestinian Arabs have been getting from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>The current pledges add up to around $5 billion. That comes out to something like $2,700 for every Gazan. That&#8217;s not bad considering that it&#8217;s around half the local yearly salary.</p>
<p>Over $200 million of that money is coming from the United States with another $200 million in &#8220;humanitarian&#8221; aid. Or to put it another way, Americans just gave every Gazan 200 bucks.</p>
<p>Of course that&#8217;s a fraction of the various trails of foreign aid that flow from the US to the West Bank and Gaza. We went from $75 million a year under Clinton to $360 million under Bush to $900 million in Obama&#8217;s first year. And that&#8217;s an incomplete accounting because it doesn&#8217;t take into account every loophole for funneling more money to terrorists.</p>
<p>Good thing we have so much money ourselves that we can dump a whole lot of it on Hamas terrorists.</p>
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		<title>Benny Gantz’s Troubling Assessments</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/benny-gantzs-troubling-assessments/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=benny-gantzs-troubling-assessments</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/benny-gantzs-troubling-assessments/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 14 Oct 2014 04:46:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Benny Gantz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Borders]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[IDF]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242998</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Israel's IDF chief of staff is facilitating the opening of Gaza's borders. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3277243153.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-242999" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/3277243153-444x350.jpg" alt="3277243153" width="320" height="252" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-World-Benny-Gantzs-troubling-assessments-378793">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The outcome of the donor conference for Gaza reconstruction that was held in Cairo on Sunday was not surprising.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Representatives of 50 countries convened to pledge funds to Hamas and the PLO. The Palestinians had hoped to receive $4 billion in pledges. They raised $5.4b.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Most of the money will be transferred to the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas. But at least $1b. will go directly to Hamas, from its primary financier, Qatar.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">With its $1b. Hamas will be able to pay its terrorist operatives and rebuild its terrorist forces.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The air force revealed last week that Hamas is rebuilding its rocket arsenal already.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As for the money that will be transferred to Abbas, the billions in funding will give the PLO the money it needs to finance Abbas’s rapidly escalating political war against Israel in the international arena.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At least some of the money will also go to Hamas, Abbas’s partner in the unity government.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The entire nature of the conference was surreal, but again predictable.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Surreal because it was based on a total disregard for reality.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In last summer’s war, Hamas wantonly and deliberately waged an unprovoked, illegal missile campaign against Israel for the third time in five years. It fired 4,500 projectiles at Israeli territory. It also used tunnels it dug into Israeli territory to attack Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Had Hamas not attacked, Israel would not have counterattacked. There would have been no damage to repair in Gaza.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">If the US, Europe and the Arab world were interested in actually helping Gaza, rather than organize a conference to fund Hamas and the PLO, they would have enjoined Israel to finish the job two months ago and end Hamas’s criminal, terrorist state in Gaza once and for all.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Yet, they did no such thing. Throughout the war, the US and the EU joined Qatar and Turkey in blaming Israel for Hamas’s illegal war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And on Sunday, they put their money where their mouths are. They pledged billions to the PLO and its political war against Israel. And they funded Hamas – both directly and indirectly. Moreover, they gave Hamas a political victory by agreeing to fund Abbas, even though he is the head of a PLO-Hamas government.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">All of this was predictable because it happens every time Israel is attacked, whether by terrorist armies in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, or in Lebanon.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Every time the Palestinians and Lebanese Hezbollah attack Israel, the US and Europe eventually side with the Arabs and demand that Israel stop defending itself.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The only difference between the most recent war with Hamas and its predecessors is that this time, the US was even more adamantly opposed to Israel’s attempts to defeat Hamas than the Europeans and many Arab governments.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, the only difference between the most recent war and its predecessors is that the level of hostility towards Israel – and conversely support for Hamas – among leading members of the international community was unprecedented.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel’s job in contending with this hostile environment should have been similarly unprecedented.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel should have been offering to lead an international force in Gaza to overthrow Hamas and arrest its leaders pending war crimes trials. It should have been sticking the international community’s nose in the stench of its hypocrisy and anti-Israel bias.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Operationally, it should have recognized that Israel’s chief achievement in the war was its ability to withstand US pressure and maintain Gaza’s physical isolation by maintaining the borders shut, and so preventing the terrorist regime from resupplying and rearming.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">At least on the last count, keeping Gaza sealed was Israel’s unflinching position throughout the war. To prevent the opening of Gaza’s borders, and through it, the rebuilding of Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure and political power, at great diplomatic cost, Israel repeatedly rejected US demands for an open border.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But today, this position is collapsing. True, Israel is insisting officially that stringent controls be placed on all dual use goods brought into Gaza. But officials openly acknowledge that there is no way to enforce the controls once the goods are imported.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Far worse than accepting that its position is difficult to enforce, Israel is actually facilitating the opening of Gaza’s borders. In so doing, Israel is giving Hamas the victory it failed to achieve on the battlefield.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And worst of all, the chief proponent of this policy is not Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, or even Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. Its chief advocate is IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Throughout the war, tremors of criticism were heard in governing circles and the media against the IDF leadership in general, and against Gantz, in particular.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In a series of media interviews on the eve of Yom Kippur, Gantz showed that not only was the criticism warranted – it was far too mild.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">For years, it has been rightly said that Israel suffers from a chronic shortage of strong leaders. But what Gantz showed in his interviews is that even if Israel was blessed with the strongest leaders in Jewish history, it is far from clear that they would have the capacity to act on their convictions.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In Israel, as in all countries, for a government to get things done political leaders require the assistance of professional echelons who develop tactical options for achieving strategic goals and implement government policies.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The chief criticism of Gantz during the war was that he failed to present the government with options for defeating Hamas or that when he did present them, he did so in ways that made it impossible for the government to adopt options he opposed.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It was also said that he failed to respect the government’s sovereign authority to determine policy, and interjected his position on issues that were well beyond the professional authority of the IDF.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In his interview with Maariv, Gantz said that the only way to guarantee that the cease-fire will hold is by paying off Hamas. That is, he made clear that he sides with the US and the rest of the international community against the government.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In his words, “At the end of the day, 1.8 million Palestinians live there, and the quiet is also dependent on the trend of creating economic hope there.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Gantz placed the blame for their supposed hopelessness on Israel, and its measures to contain Hamas’s threat to Gaza. In his words, “The people there need to live, and they are caught between Egypt on one side, us on another side and the sea with a six mile fishing zone on the other side.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Later in the interview, Gantz insisted that Israel’s interest is in enabling the international community to fund Hamas, arguing that terrorism is simply the result of economic privation.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As he put it, “The Palestinians also do not want to see terrorism operating from within them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas absorbed a mighty blow and sustained great damage. It needs to see economic recovery, and this need, for economic growth is an opportunity for us.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The question of whether or not Gaza should be enriched is not a military one. But that doesn’t bother Gantz. After dictating what the government’s position must be, he then coyly winked, “I leave this for the elected leadership.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Throughout the war, Israel’s elected leadership insisted that Gaza remain sealed.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The Left has followed Gantz’s lead and attacked the government for not opening Gaza’s borders and even participating in the Cairo conference.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But again, reality tells a different tale.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel has nothing to gain from participating in a Hamas funding drive.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">It does however have an interest in influencing the international agenda. To do so, the most basic requirement for the government is to reject the lie that Israel is to blame for Hamas’s aggression. Israel’s leaders – elected and appointed – need to internalize the fact that the war this summer, like all previous acts of Hamas aggression against Israel stemmed not from privation and hopelessness, but from empowerment and hopefulness.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas doesn’t attack Israel because it needs money. It attacks Israel because doing so empowers it and weakens Israel – as we saw in Cairo on Sunday.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Unfortunately, for as long as our unelected professional class is led by men who have internalized our enemies’ narratives, there is no way that Israel can act on these basic strategic truths regardless of whom voters elect. And as a result, we shall continue to witness our soldiers’ hard won victories being squandered by our leaders – in and out of uniform.</span></p>
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		<title>Obama to Spend $414 Mil to Rebuild Hamastan</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-to-spend-414-mil-to-rebuild-hamastan/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-to-spend-414-mil-to-rebuild-hamastan</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-to-spend-414-mil-to-rebuild-hamastan/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 12 Oct 2014 21:15:28 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=242859</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Wasn't that generous of him? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/384-9XzEa.AuSt_.55.jpeg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-242860" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/384-9XzEa.AuSt_.55-444x350.jpeg" alt="384-9XzEa.AuSt.55" width="444" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>What&#8217;s<a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/us-pledges-212-miliion-dollars-for-rebuilding-gaza/2481071.html"> a mere $414 million</a>? That&#8217;s not even half a billion? And we&#8217;re in an administration that uses billion dollar bills as toilet paper.</p>
<blockquote><p>Countries from around the world have pledged $5.4 billion to help rebuild the war-torn Gaza Strip</p></blockquote>
<p>And that should do it until the next war in two years which will be partially paid for by all that money which Hamas diverts to rockets.</p>
<blockquote><p>Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende announced the total Sunday at the close of a 30-nation donor conference in Cairo.</p>
<p>“The people of Gaza can not be held hostage to negotiations that may or may not produce the desired outcome. Letting Gaza fester while leaving the parties to their own devices is the surest way of setting ourselves up for another round of war a year or two down the road,” he said.</p></blockquote>
<p>Actually putting more money into Hamastan is the surest way of rerunning this war a year or two down the road. But international diplomacy means never learning from history.</p>
<blockquote><p>Among the biggest donors was Qatar, the Persian Gulf state with natural gas riches, which pledged $1 billion.</p></blockquote>
<p>Qatar is also a prolific state sponsor of terror for groups such as ISIS and Hamas.</p>
<blockquote><p>U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced an immediate American donation of $212 million, which is in addition to $202 million in humanitarian aid the U.S. had already committed.</p></blockquote>
<p>Wasn&#8217;t that generous of him?</p>
<blockquote><p>United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the world community has &#8220;clearly recognized the massive needs&#8221; in Gaza.</p>
<p>But he said this &#8220;must be the last Gaza reconstruction conference.&#8221; He said the &#8220;cycle of building and destroying must end. Enough is enough.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Sure. Put more money into Hamastan and then insist that it&#8217;s going to be the last time.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/u-s-secretary-state-john-kerry-eu-foreign-policy-chief-catherine-ashton-attend-gaza.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-242862" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/u-s-secretary-state-john-kerry-eu-foreign-policy-chief-catherine-ashton-attend-gaza-450x288.jpg" alt="u-s-secretary-state-john-kerry-eu-foreign-policy-chief-catherine-ashton-attend-gaza" width="450" height="288" /></a></p>
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		<title>Hamas Shot Gazans Who Didn&#8217;t Want to be Human Shields</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hamas-shot-gazans-who-didnt-want-to-be-human-shields/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-shot-gazans-who-didnt-want-to-be-human-shields</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hamas-shot-gazans-who-didnt-want-to-be-human-shields/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:33:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241364</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["The rest were forced to return to their homes and get bombed."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hamas-rally-600x310.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-240177" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hamas-rally-600x310-450x232.jpg" alt="hamas-rally-600x310" width="450" height="232" /></a></p>
<p>Some Gazans appear to be less than thrilled with Hamas. While Hamas polled well after the war, not everyone liked being used as a human shield <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4706/gazan-hamas-war-crimes">and shot at if they tried to opt out</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>K, another graduate student at an Egyptian university who had gone to Gaza to see his family but was unable to leave after the war started, said on July 22:</p>
<p>&#8220;When people stopped listening to Hamas orders not to evacuate and began leaving their homes anyway, Hamas imposed a curfew: anyone walking out in the street was shot without being asked any questions. That way Hamas made sure people had to stay in their homes even if they were about to get bombed. God will ask Hamas on judgment day for those killers&#8217; blood.&#8221;</p>
<p>S. a medical worker, said:</p>
<p>&#8220;The Israeli army sends warnings to people [Gazans] to evacuate buildings before an attack. The Israelis either call or send a text message. Sometimes they call several times to make sure everyone has been evacuated. Hamas&#8217;s strict policy, though, was not to allow us to evacuate. Many people got killed, locked inside their homes by Hamas militants. Hamas&#8217;s official Al-Quds TV regularly issued warnings to Gazans not to evacuate their homes. Hamas militants would block the exits to the places residents were asked to evacuate. In the Shijaiya area, people received warnings from the Israelis and tried to evacuate the area, but Hamas militants blocked the exits and ordered people to return to their homes. Some of the people had no choice but to run towards the Israelis and ask for protection for their families. Hamas shot some of those people as they were running; the rest were forced to return to their homes and get bombed.&#8221;</p>
<p>Another Gazan journalist, D., said:</p>
<p>&#8220;Hamas fired rockets from next to homes. Hamas was running from one home to another. Hamas lied when it claimed it was shooting from non-populated areas. To make things even worse for us, Hamas would fire from the balconies of homes and try to drag the Israelis into door-to-door battles and street-to-street fights &#8212; a death sentence for all the civilians here. They would fire rockets and then run away quickly, leaving us to face Israeli bombs for what they did. They are cowards. If Hamas militants are not afraid of dying, why do they run after they fire rockets from our homes? Why don&#8217;t they stay and die with us? Are they afraid to die and go to heaven? Isn&#8217;t that what they claim they wish?&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>There&#8217;s a lot more in <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4706/gazan-hamas-war-crimes">Mudar Zahran&#8217;s full Gatestone piece</a> including an assessment from a Hamas member that the civilian population was prevented from evacuating as part of a strategic plan.</p>
<p>This shoots down the official media narrative that Gaza was too small and that there was nowhere to go. As one Gazan says, the entire population was viewed as a human shield.</p>
<p>It should however be remembered that there were those who chose to be human shields, voluntarily climbing onto the roofs of Hamas buildings, and that Hamas did win an election. Not everyone is on board with it, but it does have plenty of local support.</p>
<p>But it has also racked up some grudges.</p>
<blockquote><p>H., who did not want his profession to be mentioned, lost one of his legs in an Israeli raid. I asked him who he thought was responsible for his injury. He stated:</p>
<p>&#8220;Hamas was. My father received a text-message from the Israeli army warning him that our area was going to be bombed, and Hamas prevented us from leaving. They said there was a curfew. A curfew, can you believe that? I swear to God, we will take revenge on Hamas.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
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		<title>Hamas Tries to Shut Down Partying in Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hamas-tries-to-shut-down-partying-in-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-tries-to-shut-down-partying-in-gaza</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Sep 2014 14:32:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=241213</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hamas security agents are nicknamed "ground drones" ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gaza-siege.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-221594" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gaza-siege-450x300.jpg" alt="gaza siege" width="450" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>The Hamas narrative, the one rebroadcast by BDS activists and clueless media outlets, is that Gaza is a giant prison made out of pieces of smashed buildings and crying children.</p>
<p>In reality it has <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/palestinian-authority-1700-hamas-millionaires-in-gaza/">a whole lot of millionaires</a> (many of them affiliated with Hamas), <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/starving-gazans-snap-up-iphone-5/">shopping malls</a>, posh neighborhoods and <a href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/new-york-times-reporters-covering-the-hamas-war-stay-at-the-luxurious-gaza-grand-palace-hotel/">five-star hotels</a>.</p>
<p>And despit<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/gazans-rush-enjoy-life-ruinous-war-184211918.html">e this AP story&#8217;s </a>attempt to tone down the reality, the parties are back to the frustration of Hamas which wants lots of photos of crying kids.</p>
<p>Not men and women having a good time. Especially not together.</p>
<blockquote><p>After a ruinous war, Gaza is rushing back to a veneer of normalcy at astonishing speed. Street cafes and beaches are packed with people until late at night. Families crowd the few public parks. Wedding halls are booked solid.</p>
<p>The burst of liveliness is startling. Cafes on the streets or on Gaza&#8217;s Mediterranean beaches are a main venue for nightlife, since under Hamas there are no cinemas or theaters. In the three weeks since fighting ended, coffeehouses have thronged with men, women and families. Commercial streets are choked with shoppers.</p>
<p>The Hamas government appears to have been caught off guard. Last week, authorities banned street parties, saying it was acting out of respect for the families of the dead. That put an end to bachelor celebrations traditionally held in the streets ahead of weddings — but not other forms of nightlife.</p>
<p>Hamas has run Gaza with an iron fist, tolerating little or no dissent and weighing heavily on people&#8217;s lives with an overwhelming narrative of religious piety and resistance against Israel.</p>
<p>Its security agents are so omnipresent people nickname them the &#8220;ground drones&#8221; — a play on the Israeli drones that often hover over Gaza. Hamas at times intervenes to separate mixed-gender activities among young people or to halt cultural programs it deems immoral or influenced by the West. Most main squares are adorned with giant billboards extolling jihad against Israel.</p></blockquote>
<p>Gaza isn&#8217;t destroyed and it&#8217;s being weighed down by Hamas and its insistence on professional misery to manipulate the world&#8217;s emotions.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gaza-atrocities.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-221595" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gaza-atrocities-450x274.jpg" alt="gaza atrocities" width="450" height="274" /></a></p>
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		<title>Bombing Doesn&#8217;t Radicalize Gazans, It De-Radicalizes Them</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/bombing-doesnt-radicalize-gazans-it-de-radicalizes-them/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bombing-doesnt-radicalize-gazans-it-de-radicalizes-them</link>
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		<pubDate>Sat, 13 Sep 2014 23:07:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=238142</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An overwhelming 92 percent of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are in favor a long-term ceasefire]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140804-islamic-university.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-238154" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140804-islamic-university-450x305.jpg" alt="140804-islamic-university" width="450" height="305" /></a></p>
<p>An article of faith among media talking heads and foreign policy experts is that bombing terrorists only increases &#8220;radicalization&#8221;. Bomb a terrorist and you get more terrorists, they insist, in contravention of the laws of biology and physics.</p>
<p>Terrorism is a response to the blockade, to oppression, they insist. But the latest poll shows that Gazans still support Hamas, but<a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-huge-majority-in-gaza-want-lasting-ceasefire/"> they are unenthusiastic about more fighting</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>An overwhelming 92 percent of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip are in favor a long-term ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and 72% hope their leaders will work to achieve a lasting peace agreement with the Jewish state, a new poll has found</p>
<p>Twenty-five percent of Palestinian respondents to an Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya survey on Gazan attitudes toward Operation Protective Edge said they believe Hamas had won the conflict. Eight percent said Israel was the victor, 14% said it was a draw, and 46% said both sides had lost. Sixty-seven percent said Hamas was not to blame for the destruction in the Gaza Strip, and some 68% said they would prefer the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip over the option of rearming the militant factions there.</p></blockquote>
<p>An extended fight doesn&#8217;t make people more enthusiastic for more of the same. This though is why Hamas will have to keep up fighting in the hopes of forcing a concession from Israel to prove that it &#8220;won&#8221; and that the fight was a good idea.</p>
<p>Gazans are not feeling especially enthusiastic about more fighting, no matter how much Hamas shouts about martyrdom. That will change however once the initial weariness from this round of the war wears off.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not the battlefield that makes people want to fight, but the erosion of the memory of the fighting.</p>
<p>Right now a long term ceasefire and rebuilding looks good. A year from now, when there&#8217;s lots of new construction and daily broadcasts about the heroic Hamas victory and the martyrs of the war, destroying Israel will look good again.</p>
<p>Muslim terrorism isn&#8217;t a response to oppression. It&#8217;s opportunistic religious and nationalistic violence that comes from confidence and arrogance. Dent the arrogance and confidence and the terrorism dies down a bit.</p>
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		<title>Did Hamas Deliberately Shell its Own People?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/did-hamas-deliberately-shell-its-own-people/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=did-hamas-deliberately-shell-its-own-people</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/did-hamas-deliberately-shell-its-own-people/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Sep 2014 13:13:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240493</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hamas not only used its own people as shields, but also used them as targets.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/shifa-shati.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-240511" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/shifa-shati-400x350.jpg" alt="shifa shati" width="400" height="350" /></a></p>
<p>Just when you think Hamas has gotten as evil as it&#8217;s going to get, it leapfrogs that by doing something even more evil. Just to make sure that the civilian casualties and <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/09/hamas-shot-rockets-at-its-own-people.html#.VA0M2_lr7J8">urban devastation in Gaza would be maximized for PR purpose</a>s&#8230; it shelled Gaza.</p>
<blockquote><p>Not only Israel was said to have been in the crosshairs of Hamas [rockets]: A total of 875 [rockets] fired during the war and an unknown number of mortar shells fell in Gaza itself down. Many of them were duds &#8211; the weapons are chronically inaccurate.</p>
<p>Others were aimed at Israeli troop concentrations in Gaza itself. But a large part &#8220;were in my opinion deliberately fired by Hamas on densely populated areas in Gaza,&#8221; said the Israeli officer. Otherwise he could not explain their trajectory.</p>
<p>The terrorists who fired the rockets were not aiming at Israel or at Israeli forces. (IDF ground troops never went that far into Gaza.)  Rockets aren&#8217;t that inaccurate.</p></blockquote>
<p>That leaves two possibilities.</p>
<p>Some of the rocketeers were trying to settle internal scores with a little shelling, but the rockets aren&#8217;t that accurate. Or the rockets were meant to create &#8220;Israeli&#8221; atrocities.</p>
<p>Considering some of the targets here, it does look as if Hamas not only used its own people as shields, but also used them as targets.</p>
<p>Since victory conditions for Hamas were dependent on Israel being forced to withdraw due to world outrage, manufacturing atrocities was Hamas&#8217; ticket to the finish line.</p>
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		<title>The UN&#8217;s Perversion of Human Rights</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/the-uns-perversion-of-human-rights/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-uns-perversion-of-human-rights</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/joseph-puder/the-uns-perversion-of-human-rights/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Sep 2014 04:02:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Joseph Puder]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democracy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Human Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[UNHRC]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[United Nations]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240428</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Investigating the IDF instead of Hamas for "war crimes."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/22nd-session-of-the-human-rights-council-at-the-united-nations-in-geneva.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240429" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/22nd-session-of-the-human-rights-council-at-the-united-nations-in-geneva-450x328.jpg" alt="Delegates talk before the 22nd session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva" width="296" height="216" /></a>If one doubted that the world has gone topsy-turvy, where good is being persecuted and evil labeled as victim, all that is needed for proof is to consider the behavior and actions of the United Nations (UN), and especially the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where non-democratic regimes hold sway, and Israel is the habitual scape-goat. What is over the top, however, is the UN decision to send an Inquiry Committee to investigate alleged “war crimes” committed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) during the recent Protective Edge operation in Gaza.</p>
<p><i>Reuters</i> reported (Monday, August 11, 2014) that the UN named experts to an international commission of inquiry into possible human rights violations and war crimes committed by both sides during Israel&#8217;s military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The so-called “experts” include William Schabas, a Canadian professor of international law who will head the panel, and Doudou Diene, a Senegalese veteran UN human rights expert.  Amal Alamuddin, a British-Lebanese lawyer engaged to be married to Hollywood actor George Clooney was also named, but Alamuddin has announced she will not be participating in the inquiry.</p>
<p>While the fighting in Gaza was ongoing and Hamas was firing rockets daily at civilians throughout Israel, the UNHRC had already condemned Israel. Its resolution was adopted by a vote of 29 states in favor, 1 against, and 17 abstentions. It stated that “The Council strongly condemns the failure of Israel, the occupying power, to end its prolonged occupation of occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem; and condemned in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic, and <a href="http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=14897&amp;LangID=E"><span style="color: #0433ff;">gross violation</span></a> of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations carried out in the occupied Palestinian Territory since 13 June 2014 that may amount to international crimes, directly resulting in the killing of more than 650 Palestinians, most of them civilians…” Throughout the resolution Hamas’ name was not mentioned nor was it pointed out that Hamas provoked the conflict by deliberately firing rockets at Israel.</p>
<p>Even before the Israeli–Hamas ceasefire agreement went into effect, the UNHRC in Geneva rushed to set up a kangaroo court headed by the blatantly anti-Israel William Schabas. The same Schabas said last year that he “would like to see <a href="http://mida.org.il/2014/08/13/schabas-netanyahu-head/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Netanyahu</span></a> within the dock of the International Criminal Court.” Confronted by a reporter on his visceral hatred of Netanyahu, Schabas explained that he was echoing the Goldstone Report that related to Operation Cast Lead of 2008-2009, except that it was Ehud Olmert and not Netanyahu who served as Prime Minister then. When asked if he considered Hamas a terrorist organization and whether Hamas too, will be investigated, Schabas declined to respond.</p>
<p>Speaking before Israeli naval cadets on Tuesday (September 2, 2014), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the UN hypocrisy. He stated that “All of you IDF soldiers are part of the most moral army in the world, and we will stand against any attempts of hypocritical organizations to criticize you. If the <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/184691"><span style="color: #0433ff;">UN</span></a> wants to set up a commission of inquiry – let them investigate Hamas’ war crimes instead of the Israeli soldiers who behaved in an exemplary manner.”</p>
<p>In the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), both the coalition and the opposition criticized the UN for dispatching a commission of inquiry to Gaza to investigate alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. They were likewise critical of the appointed head of the commission William Schabas, whose biased statement against Israeli leaders made the commission nothing but a kangaroo court.</p>
<p>During the Protective Edge operation in Gaza last month, the IDF dropped leaflets in 14 areas in Gaza, urging residents to temporarily leave their homes. The IDF provided instructions as to which areas civilians may go to in order to seek safety. Juxtapose that with the Hamas’ behavior of deliberately risking the lives of its people by using them as human shields, which is in contravention of international law and constitutes a war crime.</p>
<p>British army Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan had this to say (July 27, 2014) about the IDF, “I believe that on the basis of everything that I&#8217;ve seen, that everything the IDF does to <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4548821,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">protect civilians</span></a> and to stop the death of innocent civilians is a great deal more than any other army, and it&#8217;s more than the British and the American armies.”</p>
<p>What is most disturbing about the UNHRC is the hypocrisy when it comes to Israel. The UNHRC Commission of Inquiry on Syria presented its findings on August 27, 2014. In it was a detailed human cost of the Syrian conflict. It charged that both the Assad regime and the opposition groups, and in particular the fanatical jihadist ISIS, were responsible for mass killings (170,000 at the minimum), civilian suffering and disregard for the safety of women and children. ISIS in particular committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, murder, enslavement of women, public executions, amputations, lashing in public squares, and training children as young as ten in military camps.</p>
<p>While the truth about ISIS committing war crimes and crimes against humanity have been largely revealed, those committed by Hamas (publicly executing 20 Palestinians for alleged collaboration with Israel) in Gaza have not, at least not by UNHRC. Professor Michael Curtis pointed out that Hamas’ relentless aggression against Israeli civilians was publically exposed on July 9, 2014 by Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian representative to the UNHRC. Khraishi stated that “The rockets fired from Gaza toward Israel are each and every one a <a href="http://www.thecommentator.com/article/5197/comparing_crimes_against_humanity_hamas_and_isis"><span style="color: #0433ff;">crime against humanity</span></a> whether they hit or miss, because they are directed at civilian targets. That is why Israel resorted to an attack against Gaza.”</p>
<p>Hamas, with total disregard for its civilian population, stored rockets in hospitals, schools, and mosques, as well as in apartment buildings and private homes. It used the civilians at these locations as human shields, anticipating that an Israeli retaliation (following over 4000 rockets fired at Israel) would kill Palestinian civilians, particularly women and children. Hamas sacrificed its people in order to win the public relations war. Still, the international media by and large bought into Hamas’ charade. Hamas’ cynical exploitation of its civilian deaths, its use of human shields, and the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>To understand the perversion that is the UNHRC, let us look at the UN as a whole. Of the 193 member states, 120 belong to the Non-Allied Movement (NAM) and of the 120, 57 are members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which in turn is dominated by the 22 Arab League states. Arab/Muslim leverage has turned the UN into a blunt instrument against Israel. The 29 states who voted in favor of the blatantly prejudiced resolution are non-free states according to the Freedom House. The U.S. was the only state to vote against the resolution. The European Union states of Britain, France, Germany and Italy, all with a colonial past, and beset by guilt, abstained. They were fearful to upset the NAM.</p>
<p>The UNHRC is probably the best example of a world gone topsy-turvy. The non-free nations run the show at the UN while the free democracies cower before them. In the process, Israel, a country with a just cause, a praise worthy democracy in a sea of oppression, is being scapegoated and condemned. It is time for nations seeking justice and fairness to end this bizarre show called UNHRC, and reestablish a UNHRC based on nations with bona fide human rights credentials.</p>
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		<title>61% of Palestinian Arabs Would Vote for Hamas, More Popular in West Bank than Gaza</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/61-of-palestinian-arabs-would-vote-for-hamas-more-popular-in-west-bank-than-gaza/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=61-of-palestinian-arabs-would-vote-for-hamas-more-popular-in-west-bank-than-gaza</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Sep 2014 21:29:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240176</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Nearly four-fifths of all Palestinian Arabs were satisfied with Hamas’s defense of Gazan civilians]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hamas-rally-600x310.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-240177" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hamas-rally-600x310-450x232.jpg" alt="hamas-rally-600x310" width="450" height="232" /></a></p>
<p>This is the real reason why Abbas won&#8217;t hold elections and has been ruling unilaterally for quite a while. It&#8217;s because all Hamas needs to do to w<a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/gazan-deaths-and-destruction-dramatically-drives-popularity-for-hamas/2014/09/03/">in an election is start a war</a>.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s also why peace is hopeless. A two state solution <a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/poll-hamas-would-rule-judea-and-samaria-in-new-elections/2014/09/02/">that depends on negotiations is a non-starter</a>. Abbas doesn&#8217;t represent anyone except the PLO. Hamas&#8217; idea of a final solution is the genocide expressed in Article 7 of its charter.</p>
<blockquote><p>Hamas would win election in Judea and Samaria and well as Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh would defeat Mahmoud Abbas if elections were held today, according to a new poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.</p>
<p>Before the war in Gaza, Abbas had a 12 point margin over Haniyeh, 53 percent against 41 percent.</p>
<p>The new survey was carried out on the last day of the war and during the first four days of last week’s cease-fire. If elections were held today, Haniyeh would trounce Abbas by a 2-1 margin, with 61 percent support of the voters as opposed to only 32 percent for Abbas.</p>
<p>In addition, 72 percent of Arabs in Judea, Gaza and Samaria support the Hamas strategy of using arms to attack Israelis in Judea and Samaria.</p>
<p>An overwhelming majority of 79 percent believe that Hamas won the war.</p></blockquote>
<p>Hamas is even more popular in the West Bank than Gaza. This isn&#8217;t surprising as Gazans actually live under Hamas rule.</p>
<blockquote><p>The percentage of Arabs who live in what they call the “West Bank” who would vote for Hamas’s Haniyeh comes in at 66 percent, which is even higher than his standing in Gaza (53 percent).</p>
<p>Hamas was viewed favorably both in terms of its offense against Israel, but also on defense. Nearly four-fifths of all Palestinian Arabs were satisfied with Hamas’s defense of Gazan civilians during the war (78 percent).</p></blockquote>
<p>The peace thing? It&#8217;s not happening.</p>
<p>Unless the two-staters can explain how Israel can have peace with Hamas without destroying it, they really need to stop talking.</p>
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		<title>The Unfinished War</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/the-unfinished-war/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-unfinished-war</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 04:25:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Caroline Glick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240066</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What Israel must do to prevent the next onslaught from Hamas. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/image.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-240067" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/image.jpg" alt="image" width="305" height="245" /></a>Originally published by the <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-world-The-unfinished-war-374131">Jerusalem Post</a>. </em></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">The war with Hamas is not over. What we are experiencing today is a temporary cease-fire.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The most basic reason the war is not over is because Hamas has no existence outside its war against the Jewish state. Hamas exists to obliterate Israel. The goal of each round of fighting is to soften Israel up for the next round.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas will only stop fighting when it is defeated. And Israel did not defeat Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Not only did Israel not defeat Hamas, according to Haaretz, senior IDF commanders are now lobbying the government to enable Hamas to credibly claim victory.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">According to Amos Harel, senior IDF commanders want Israel to bow to Hamas’s demands for open borders with Israel and for the steady transfer of funds to Hamas’s treasury.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Harel quoted a senior IDF source who said that if Israel doesn’t give in to Hamas’s demands for open borders, Hamas will renew its attacks at the end of September.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In the senior commander’s words, “If we can assist [Hamas] by expanding fishing grounds and easing restrictions on border crossings of people and goods into and from Israel, this will help maintain the quiet.”</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So to delay the next Hamas onslaught against us, the IDF is lobbying the government to surrender to Hamas.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">This behavior demonstrates two basic truths about Hamas’s war against Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">First, it is impossible for Israel to deter Hamas, but Hamas has apparently deterred the IDF General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During Operation Protective Edge Hamas absorbed massive blows to its war machine. The IDF destroyed Hamas’s offensive tunnels that penetrated into Israel. It destroyed thousands of Hamas’s rockets, missiles and launchers. It killed hundreds of Hamas fighters, including some top commanders.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">And yet, less than a week into the cease-fire, the IDF prefers to capitulate to Hamas’s demands, and so allow Hamas to recoup its losses, rather than face its depleted forces on the ground in four weeks.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, despite the blows it suffered, it is Hamas that has deterred the IDF.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Harel’s report is just the most recent indication that the IDF senior command echelon is Hamas’s ace in the hole. Throughout the war, news reports revealed that under Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, the General Staff refused to present the security cabinet with any viable plan to defeat Hamas. And now, having failed to defeat Hamas, they insist that it is Israel that should surrender.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Hamas went to war with Israel because its back was up against the wall. Due to Egypt’s decision a year ago to seal its borders with Gaza, Hamas lost the ability to expand its arsenal, fuel Gaza’s smuggling-based economy and pay its terrorists their salaries.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Its leadership figured that the best way to reopen its supply lines was by going to war against Israel. The risk-averse behavior of the General Staff both during the war and today tell Hamas’s leadership that they were right.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The General Staff’s behavior isn’t the only reason that Hamas thinks aggression is the way to go. The US and Europe have gone out of their way, both during the fighting and today, to show Hamas that they are right to attack Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">US President Barack Obama adopted Hamas’s demand for open borders as the official position of the US government almost at the outset of the conflict.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">He sought to replace Hamas foe Egypt as mediator with Hamas’s principle state sponsors Qatar and Turkey.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Under Obama the Federal Aviation Administration instituted a discriminatory and unwarranted flight ban on Israel. The repercussions of that move continue to harm Israel’s economy.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Today, the US and the EU are working together at the UN Security Council to draft a resolution that would see the deployment of international military forces to Gaza. The defined role of the force would be to oversee Gaza’s demilitarization, seemingly in line with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s demand.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But the notion that UN forces would take any steps to disarm Hamas is absurd. The minute such forces arrive in Gaza they will become human shields preventing Israel from defending itself against Hamas aggression. If they are deployed to Gaza, then in the next round of Hamas’s war against the Jews, IDF troops will have to constrain their offensive operations still further to avoid killing Western forces.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">In other words, the deployment of such a force in Gaza will make it all but impossible for Israel to fight Hamas in the future.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">The current discussions at the Security Council tell Hamas it is winning.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">By attacking Israel, the genocidal jihadist group won the support of the West. At the UN today the US and the EU are crafting a resolution that will allow it to attack Israel from behind Western human shields.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So between the IDF General Staff and the West, Hamas now knows that all they have to do to survive, thrive and expand their war on Israel, is shake the tree. Something will fall out that will reward their aggression.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">If they pay any price at all, it will involve nothing more than the death of the civilians of Gaza. And Hamas leaders couldn’t care less. For them, the death of civilians is yet another means of attacking Israel.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Facing this dire state of affairs, our leadership must dedicate itself today to preparing for the next round of war.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To this end, Israel must begin acting in three areas, now.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">First, Israel must use whatever means it has at its disposal to scuttle the US’s attempts to pass any resolution related to Gaza at the UN Security Council.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Second, the government must clean the stables in the IDF General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Gantz is due to complete his tour of duty in February. Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon need to use his departure as an opportunity to replace not only Gantz but several other senior generals. Their replacements must be commanders who understand that the role of the IDF is to win wars, not lose them.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">To date, Netanyahu and Ya’alon have given no indication of their intentions. Senior ministers and the public should use both the General Staff’s support for surrender and its lack of strategic ambition and tactical imagination during the war as a means of pressuring Netanyahu and Ya’alon to conduct a major shakeup of the General Staff.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Finally, the time has come for Israel to expand its military industries.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">During the war both the US and European governments placed obstructions in the path of IDF resupply.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Israel cannot remain dependent on undependable foreign military suppliers. Israel needs to develop its own production lines, starting immediately.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">We have the technology. We have the economic wherewithal. And we have the external markets to cover the costs of development.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">True, this is a long-term undertaking.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">But it has to begin now.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Residents of the south are livid at the government for opting for a ceasefire rather than mounting a full invasion of Gaza and dismantling Hamas piece by piece, terrorist by terrorist. As they see it, Operation Protective Edge failed to bring them the security they deserve and require to lead normal lives.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">There is much validity to their claims. Hamas’s declarations of victory would sound far more disingenuous if the IDF’s leadership wasn’t intent on proving them right.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Their celebrations would ring hollow and even pathetic if the Americans and Europeans weren’t laboring to set up a mechanism to prevent Israel from fighting in the future.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">As it stands, the only way for our leaders to prove their credibility now is by rejecting Hamas’s demand for open borders, even if doing so will require us to go back into battle in a month. After we have seen what Hamas is capable of, the notion that we should allow them to resupply and so rebuild and expand their military capabilities is simply outrageous.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Every general even obliquely tied to this initiative should be given his walking papers.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">So too, our leaders need to demonstrate that they understand the nature of the diplomatic battlefield whose contours are being designed in Washington as well as Europe. To meet this threat, we must devise a clear plan to scuttle the cease-fire initiative at the Security Council, and we must diminish our dependence on our unreliable defense partners by building our own production lines.</span><br style="color: #000000;" /><br style="color: #000000;" /><span style="color: #000000;">Absent these responses, it is difficult to see how we will weather the next rapidly approaching storm. Absent these responses it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the time has come for new elections.</span></p>
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		<title>Hamas Praises &#8220;Media Martyrs&#8221; who were the Sources for World Media</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hamas-praises-media-martyrs-who-were-the-sources-for-world-media/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-praises-media-martyrs-who-were-the-sources-for-world-media</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 01:24:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media Bias]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=240023</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["The source from which the world's media derived all that was going on in Gaza..." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hamaswood.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-240025" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/hamaswood.jpg" alt="hamaswood" width="407" height="292" /></a></p>
<p>Finally the media <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2014/08/hamas-calls-media-partners-in-victory.html#.VATRJ_lr7J8">gets the recognition it deserve</a>s. (via <a href="http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/">Elder of Ziyon</a>)</p>
<blockquote><p>Gaza&#8217;s Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh praised the media and journalists as &#8220;partners in the victory&#8221; against Israel.</p>
<p>During a ceremony to honor &#8220;martyrs of the media,&#8221; which was organized by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Information, Hanieyahsaid that the media &#8220;contributed to the steadfastness of the Palestinian people.&#8221;</p>
<p>He said, &#8220;The Palestinian people has triumphed over the Israeli aggression on all levels, including militarily, politically and morally and in the media.&#8221;</p>
<p>Haniyeh said that &#8220;the men of the Palestinian media have formed the source from which the world&#8217;s media derived all that was going on in Gaza&#8230;&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>Haniyeh is referring to Hamas media outlets such as Al Aqsa TV, which mainstream media outlets sometimes describe as journalists, and praises them for influencing Western mainstream media.</p>
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		<title>40 Lessons from Hamas&#8217; War Against the Jews</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/steven-plaut/40-lessons-from-hamas-war-against-the-jews/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=40-lessons-from-hamas-war-against-the-jews</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:41:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Steven Plaut]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The hard truths the Jewish State must internalize if it wants to prevail.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas2.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239776" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hamas2.jpg" alt="hamas" width="339" height="254" /></a>1.      Nice fences do not stop missiles, rockets, and mortars.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">2.      Complete removal of Israeli forces and Jewish settlers from an area merely signals Israeli weakness and invites escalated Arab terror and aggression.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">3.      Hamas (and Hezb&#8217;Allah and ISIS) cannot be defeated with air strikes.  There is no effective alternative to ground invasion and ongoing military control of the ground retaken.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">4.      Unless the Israeli military controls the ground on the other side of fences, those fences achieve nothing.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">5.      Goodwill gestures by Israel increase terror.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">6.      Goodwill gestures by Israel never produce moderation of Arab goals and demands.  They also do not win Israel friends in the West but rather encourage outbursts of anti-Semitism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">7.      Terror is not caused by Israeli settlements but by the removal of Israeli settlements.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">8.      Terror is not caused by Israeli military occupation but by the removal of Israeli military occupation.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">9.      It is impossible for two sovereign entities to exist between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">10.      No matter how many concessions Israel makes, the world will always justify Arab terrorism because there will always be still one more capitulation Israel failed to make.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">11.      No matter how nice Israel is to its own Arab citizens and no matter how many affirmative action programs it implements, Israel will always be accused of being an &#8220;apartheid regime.&#8221;</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">12.      The Israeli far left is an openly anti-Semitic movement that seeks Israel&#8217;s destruction and automatically endorses the enemies of Israel in nearly all things.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">13.     The Likud is too cowardly to defeat the terrorists.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">14.       The real enemy of Israel is not Arab fascism but Jewish leftism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">15.       Much of the world has no qualms about seeing Jewish civilians murdered by terrorists.  In fact it celebrates these Jewish deaths and complains that there are too few of them.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">16.       The Israeli Left will oppose every conceivable act of Israeli self-defense.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">17.       Israeli niceness and flexibility fan anti-Semitism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">18.       Arab terrorists do not morph into statesmen.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">19.       Israel bashers do not care about dead Arab civilians, other than as a useful tool with which to bludgeon Israel.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">20.      Many on the worldwide Left would not raise an eyebrow if Israeli Jews were shipped off to concentration camps in cattle cars – except perhaps to demand improved rail service.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">21.      The vast majority of Israeli Arabs and nearly all Israeli Arab politicians support terrorism and wish to see Israel destroyed.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">22.      There are hundreds of Jewish professors in Israel who serve as an academic Fifth Column and who collaborate with the enemies of their country.  They are the moral equivalent of American and British jihadis who fight for the ISIS.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">23.      The Arabs will not accept an independent Israel within any set of borders, no matter how small. Hence reducing Israel&#8217;s territory does nothing but signal weakness and destructibility.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">24.      The only country on earth expected to respond to the mass murder of its civilians by turning of the other cheek is Israel.  The only country on earth that has spent years trying to defeat aggression and terrorism by turning the other cheek is Israel.  It failed.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">25.      No matter how Israel responds to aggression and terrorism, it will always be denounced as a &#8220;disproportionate&#8221; response.  The only &#8220;proportionate&#8221; response is complete capitulation by Israel.  If an Israeli coughs in the general direction of Gaza, this would be a disproportionate war crime and act of genocide.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">26.      Those who claim that anti-Zionism is different and distinct from anti-Semitism tend, on close inspection, to be anti-Semites themselves.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">27.      The only people on earth whom the Left believes should be denied the right to self-determination and self-defense are the Jews.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">28.      &#8220;Palestinians&#8221; are not a nation in any true sense of the term and never were. They are simply Arabs who happened to migrate or infiltrate into Western Palestine.  They have no &#8220;right&#8221; to statehood.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">29.      Israeli leftists, rather than learn from the failures of their policies and &#8220;ideas,&#8221; will always complain that their policies have not been applied thoroughly enough.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">30.      The moral and legal responsibility for every single Arab civilian killed or injured in the Middle East conflict rests squarely on the shoulders of the Arab terrorists and their Western amen choruses.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">31.      There is no moral or legal reason for Israel to refrain from attacking terrorists and murderers when they hide among civilians.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">32.     Israel is the only country in the Middle East that is NOT an apartheid regime.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">33.      Palestinians are the Sudeten Germans of the Middle East.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">34.      There are no non-military solutions to the problem of terrorism.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">35.       One can only make peace with one&#8217;s defeated enemies.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">36.      There are no significant differences between the agenda of the PLO and the agenda of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Moslem Brotherhood, and ISIS.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">37.      One cannot make peace by pretending that war does not exist.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">38.      One cannot buy off anti-Semites and Islamofascists with trade concessions and subsidies.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">39.       The only way to stop terrorism is to kill terrorists.</span><br style="color: #222222;" /><br style="color: #222222;" /><span style="color: #222222;">40.       No terrorist has ever murdered anyone after he was executed.</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>
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		<title>Hamas Declares &#8216;Victory&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ari-lieberman/hamas-declares-victory-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-declares-victory-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Aug 2014 04:00:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ari Lieberman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cease-fire]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239793</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The terrorist group lives to fight another day after ceasefire. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Khaled-Meshaal.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239800" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Khaled-Meshaal.jpg" alt="Khaled-Meshaal" width="279" height="230" /></a>No sooner had the guns fallen silent in Gaza than Hamas leaders, some emerging from Shifa Hospital, others from five-star Qatari hotels, proclaimed “victory” before a paid crowd of shills and an adoring media. Speaking from his plush surroundings in the pseudo country of Qatar, some 1,000 miles away from the battle, Hamas’s political leader, Khaled Mashaal <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4565395,00.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">comically noted</span></a> that his terrorist group “dazzled the world with its victory and its endurance.” The perfunctory victory proclamation, following defeat at the hands of Israel, has become a cyclical, near ritualistic event in the Arab world.</p>
<p>Gamal Abdel Nasser did it in 1956 after Israel’s takeover of Sinai and routing of his forces stationed there. Anwar Sadat did it in 1973 following the encirclement of his armies by the Israel Defense Forces. Yasser Arafat did it in 1982 when his PLO gangsters were expelled from Lebanon and banished to different parts of the Mideast. Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah did it in 2006 when Lebanon was set back 10 years and Hamas has become proficient in these types of declarations, having performed identical victory rituals twice before, in 2009 and 2012.</p>
<p>Of course these silly, fantasy-like proclamations bare no rational resemblance to reality. In this current round, Hamas took a nasty beating. It lost at least 1,000 of its fighters and some 200 were taken prisoner. Its military leadership was decapitated in a series of punishing strikes. Its rockets were swatted out of the sky by Israel’s marvelous Iron Dome missile defense system and its rocket arsenal was severely depleted. Its command and control was left in tatters and its offensive tunnels, which took years to build and soaked up hundreds of millions of dollars, are no more. Most importantly, none of its demands, the creation of a seaport and an airport and the lifting of the blockade, were met.</p>
<p>The terms which Hamas had agreed to on day 49 of Operation Defensive Edge were precisely the same as those which the organization rejected during the initial days of conflict. To say that Hamas is back to square one would be inaccurate for Hamas emerges from this conflict with substantially less than what it had when it started.</p>
<p>Having been soundly defeated on the battlefield – 10 times since 1948 – Israel’s regressive enemies have adopted a new paradigm for victory – survival.  As long as the aggressor survives the battle with his capital intact – more or less – he can declare victory over the Zionist infidels.</p>
<p>It is not a difficult threshold to meet given that the EU and other Western enablers will always seek to prevent Israel from effectuating complete and total victory. A former high level security official noted that had the Israel Defense Forces been unencumbered by political constraints, it could have <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Fundamentally-Freund-Defeating-terrorists-From-Sri-Lanka-to-Gaza-371428"><span style="color: #0433ff;">conquered Gaza</span></a> within a week and that assessment was echoed by others within the security establishment. Humanitarian concerns and negative world reaction foreclosed that option.</p>
<p>And so, as the brave Hamas groundhogs emerge from their underground shelters situated beneath Shifa hospital and scan the scale of destruction that surrounds them, they declare victory. For the average Westerner, this warped mindset is difficult to explain. But for those well versed in the convoluted machinations of the Arab Middle East, this mentality is a natural outcome of the negative influences that permeate the region.</p>
<p>The Arab world, fed on a steady diet of religious dogma, racist supremacism and xenophobia, where Jews are considered to be the descendants of apes and pigs and non-Muslims are deemed second class citizens, produces thought processes vastly different from those of more progressive societies. Reversals and setbacks, which in the West would produce cause for reflection and introspection, are routinely ignored in the Arab world. A cognitive dissonance of sorts has set in whereby every loss, no matter how complete or devastating, is explained as merely being the will of Allah and a bump on the road toward the path of victory over the infidels.</p>
<p>The guns have now fallen silent in Gaza. In Israel, things will quickly return to normal. Universities will impart knowledge, businesses will thrive and scientific innovation will continue apace. In Gaza too things will return to normal. Hamas will continue to divert humanitarian goods for war making and the Imams will continue preach hate and anti-Semitism, setting the stage for the eleventh round and yet another Arab defeat.</p>
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		<title>Hamas Negotiator Gets Legs Broken by Hamas</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hamas-negotiator-gets-legs-broken-by-hamas/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hamas-negotiator-gets-legs-broken-by-hamas</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hamas-negotiator-gets-legs-broken-by-hamas/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Aug 2014 23:27:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239755</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Al-Almi’s fellow Hamas terrorists and other attacked him and broke both his legs]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/emadalami.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-239756" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/emadalami-450x232.jpg" alt="emadalami" width="450" height="232" /></a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/al_alami.html">Emad al-Alami</a> was deported by Israel to Lebanon in the nineties but the Jewish State was forced to accept the terrorist&#8217;s<a href="http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-diplomats-reporters-and-human.html"> return under pressure from the international</a> community.</p>
<p>Al-Alami was the last Hamas leader out of Syria to abandon Bashar Assad. He&#8217;s <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/hamas-in-crisis-isolation-and-internal-strife">also Hamas&#8217; conduit to Iran</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The most adamant proponent of this view is Imad al-Alami, the group&#8217;s former permanent envoy in Tehran and head of the &#8220;Intifada Committee,&#8221; now returned from Damascus to Gaza.</p></blockquote>
<p>He was now a negotiator in Cairo. So the question is&#8230;<a href="http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/hamas-negotiator-attacked-both-legs-broken/2014/08/28/"> who decided to break his legs</a>?</p>
<blockquote><p>Amad Al-Almi, a senior Hamas official who represented Gaza in Cairo during the negotiations with Israel, returned to Gaza, to what seems to be some unsatisfied friends and coworkers.</p>
<p>Al-Almi’s fellow Hamas terrorists and other attacked him and broke both his legs, according to Channel 2′s Ehud Ya’ari.</p>
<p>The reason why Al-Almi was attacked is still not known, but we can guess. Yesterday Hamas kingpin Khaled Mashaal told the Hamas leadership that the ceasefire agreement is a loss for Hamas.</p></blockquote>
<p>Obama, with Qatar and Turkey, did manage to get Hamas some of what it wanted, but Israel held out long enough and did enough damage that there isn&#8217;t much to show for it.</p>
<p>And specifically, Hamas&#8217; battle with Egypt, with Qatar in the wings, fell apart, since the Egyptians got their way. And all this appears to have exposed plenty of internal tensions within Hamas.</p>
<p>Mashaal is taking orders from Qatar. Al-Alami took his orders from Iran. There&#8217;s all sorts of internal conflicts going on between the various puppeteers pulling Hamas&#8217; strings.</p>
<p>And it led to Al-Almi getting some broken legs.</p>
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		<title>Hillary&#8217;s Hand in Hamas&#8217; Terror Tunnels</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/moshe-phillips-and-benyamin-korn/hillarys-hand-in-hamas-terror-tunnels/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=hillarys-hand-in-hamas-terror-tunnels</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Aug 2014 04:10:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[biden]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[building]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Kerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[supplies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[terror tunnels]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=239433</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One accomplishment from Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p style="color: #232323;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hillary1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-239435" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/hillary1-409x350.jpg" alt="hillary1" width="291" height="249" /></a>Much has been said and written about the terror tunnels that Hamas built in Gaza. But too little has been said about who it was that put the cement into Hamas’ hands, thus making the construction of the tunnels possible in the first place.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Until now.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">In a bombshell revelation, Dennis Ross, the senior Mideast policy adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2011, has admitted that it was he who was assigned the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza, in the events after Israel&#8217;s withdrawal from that region in 2005.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">&#8220;I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,&#8221; Ross revealed in the Washington Post on August 10. &#8220;They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.&#8221;</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Not that Hillary&#8217;s State Department had been acting independently of the White House on the issue of cement. For example, Vice President Joe Biden told interviewer Charlie Rose, on Bloomberg TV in 2010: &#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.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">But now that Mrs. Clinton is attempting to distance herself from the president’s debacles in foreign affairs, Ross’s admission shows that it was she who sent her personal envoy to push for a policy that ultimately enabled Hamas to build the terror tunnels.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Israeli officials have long been justifiably concerned about the danger of dual-use items such as cement. On the one hand, cement could be used for innocent purposes such as home construction, in the hands of a peace-seeking, trustworthy government. But in the hands of untrustworthy elements &#8212; such as the Hamas terrorist regime that rules Gaza &#8212; it could also be used for other purposes. Such as terror tunnels.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">President Obama recently remarked, in his much-discussed interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times: &#8220;Because Israel is so capable militarily, I don’t worry about Israel’s survival.&#8221; Secretary Clinton evidently shared that dismissive attitude when she sent Ross on his mission to put cement into Hamas&#8217; hands.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">It seems Obama and Clinton forgot that Israel is the only country in the world that is threatened with annihilation by a nearby regime rushing to build nuclear weapons. Israel is the only country in the world that, in the space of just 65 years, has been forced to fight four major defensive wars and five smaller ones, in order to survive. Israel is the only country in the world whose next-door neighbors have built dozens of tunnels into Israel to perpetrate massacres of civilians.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Today, at least thirty-two terror tunnels later, we know that Clinton, Obama and Ross have been wrong, while Israel is right.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Hamas spent between $1-million and $10-million to build each of those tunnels, using as many as 350 truckloads of cement and other supplies per tunnel, according a report in to the Wall Street Journal, quoting Israeli military officials.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And it is &#8220;likely that there are additional tunnels&#8221; that the Israelis have yet to uncover, according to the Journal’s report.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Instead of lethal purposes, the materials used for each tunnel could have built 86 homes, or 19 medical clinics, or seven mosques, or six schools. But Hamas had other priorities.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">And Secretary Clinton consciously turned a blind eye. Just as she turned a blind eye to other aggressive and anti-peace behavior by the Palestinians, such as the Palestinian Authority&#8217;s sheltering of known terrorists, its payments to imprisoned terrorists, the anti-Israel and anti-America propaganda that fills the PA-controlled media, and the anti-Semitic hatred in the textbooks used in the PA&#8217;s schools.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What are the real-life consequences of ignoring such Palestinian actions? An entire generation of young Palestinians have grown up incited to hatred of Jews and Israel, and glorifying terrorists as heroes and martyrs.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">What are the real-life consequences of Mrs. Clinton putting cement into Hamas&#8217;s hands? The tunnels into Israel were used to carry out the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and numerous other attacks in which Israelis were murdered. They were being prepared to carry out a mass coordinated attack on Israeli towns and kibbutzim, this year on Rosh Hashanah.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Imagine a scenario in which a surgeon decided that she wanted to employ a controversial and risky technique. She was warned repeatedly that it was too dangerous, but proceeded anyway and in the process nearly killed the patient. Surely that would be deemed malpractice. The surgeon probably would be barred from ever again practicing medicine.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Secretary of Stated Hillary Clinton committed diplomatic malpractice. Her own top aide has revealed that it was she who put the cement into Hamas&#8217; hands, even after Israel warned repeatedly that doing so was too dangerous. And Israel continues to suffer the consequences.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;">Another lesson of the Gaza war: Even as we condemn Hamas’ diversion of cement from the construction of housing to the construction of terror tunnels, let us not forget that it was Hillary Clinton who pushed through the policy that made those tunnels possible.</p>
<p style="color: #232323;"><em>[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn are members of the board of the Religious Zionists of America. This article is part of a series. To view previous installments, please visit <a href="http://www.phillyreligiouszionists.org/lessons-from-the-gaza-war/"><span style="color: #1255cc;">http://www.phillyreligiouszionists.org/lessons-from-the-gaza-war/</span></a>.]</em></p>
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