International pressure is beginning to mount, the mainstream media is turning nasty, and even the Bush Administration is starting to waver in its support as Operation Summer Rains enters its second week.
But there is also every indication that Israel’s refusal to negotiate and give in to terrorist blackmail is working. Continue reading »
Jerusalem Post columnist Yehuda Avner has pointed out something that I for one am embarrassed to say I missed - the absurdity of seeking terrorists’ recognition of Israel’s right to exist. Avner quotes liberally from former prime minister Menachem Begin in showing how Israel’s current leadership should respond to international requests that Hamas accept the Jewish state. Continue reading »
A newly-formed fully-Hamas militia will soon be integrated into the official Palestinian Authority security forces.
These new “policemen” are full-fledged terrorists, members of an organization recognized the world over as a terrorist entity.
It is worth noting that Israel’s “moderate peace partner” PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas has no problem with this. But that is because Abbas does not see the Hamas killers of Jewish men, women and children as terrorists.
Can any other nation fathom having to live with this kind of neighbors?
Israel, America and Europe have taken a good first step by cutting off both aid to and contact with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
Yet all three continue this ridiculous charade of dealing with Mahmoud Abbas, head of the PLO and “president” of the PA, as if he were some separate entity capable of making decisions and implementing policy on his own.
The PA is more democratic than most governments in this region because of Western pressure. The West can’t have its cake and eat it too by now expecting Abbas to exercise dictatorial powers.
In fact, it was the West that pushed for Abbas’ current post to either be eliminated or made purely ceremonial.
What they got was a PA equivalent in functionality to a US Congress that appoints all government secretaries and exercises full control over the military, while the president is still considered the chief executive. The result is chaos and instability.
Abbas’ utter impotence in this morass of power was again demonstrated in the aftermath of Monday’s Tel Aviv “suicide” bombing.
The PLO chief condemned the attack for the harm it had done to the “Palestinian cause” (he would take a different route to relieving the Jews of their homeland), while the Hamas government backed it as a legitimate act of “self defense.”
Guess who’s word matters more. In the current set-up, Abbas’ displeasure with Monday’s massacre will result in not even one arrest or any action to prevent additional atrocities.
The reason this untenable situation exists is because the West and the Israeli government in their misguided handling of the “peace” process believed they could side-step Yasser Arafat’s intransigence by forcing him to create and transfer his own powers to the position of prime minister - essentially transforming the PA from a presidential system of government to a parliamentary one.
The only problem was everyone assumed the blood-soaked demagogue Arafat would fully relinquish his lucrative absolute hold on government.
He didn’t, and the vast power he retained for himself then passed to Abbas with the blessing of the West, which had apparently forgotten that it previously wanted the position of PA “president” to be bestowed with no more real political power than the English Throne.
Well, that worked out OK so long as the majority parliament faction, and therefore the prime minister and his cabinet, were all of the same party as Abbas.
But democracy doesn’t work that way, and the people voted in Hamas.
And so the time has come for Israel and the West to recognize the mistake they made when Arafat was in power and either endorse Abbas as an absolute dictator, or acknowledge his irrelevance.
Obviously the latter option would be chosen in line with America’s democracy agenda, which would then necessitate recognizing that the vast majority of “Palestinians” knowingly and willingly chose a group of unrepentant terrorist killers as their leaders - something the West is trying feverishly to avoid doing, at least publicly.
It’s time for some tough decisions. Are Israel and her allies in Washington up to it? I doubt it. Though Hamas through its own actions may take the luxury of choice out of everyone’s hands.
According to the Hamas Authority, the Palestinian Arabs are now at war with Israel.
Israel’s decision to this week to close it’s last remaining regional coordination office with the Palestinian Authority in Jericho is a declaration of war, insisted Hamas.
War has only now begun? What has been going on for the past 5 years? The past decade? The past half century?
How is this a declaration of war, but the thousands of annual “Palestinian” terror attacks against Israel - a large portion carried out by Hamas itself - are not?
War was declared a long time ago, but not by Israel.
Further displaying the hypocritical nature of the PA’s position, “President” Mahmoud Abbas also decried the closing of the Jericho office as an Israeli violation of signed agreements.
Right. That move, and not the PA’s long refusal to end anti-Jewish terrorism that led to such measures, is the culprit.
Could they be any more transparent?
Once again, the international media is breathless over what it perceives as the “moderating” of Hamas.
The source of their barely-contained excitement this time: An ostensibly conciliatory letter from Hamas Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
First reports gleefully declared that in the letter, which was sent Tuesday, Zahar made mention of the “two-state solution,” a de facto recognition of Israel.
On Wednesday Zahar took some of the wind out of the media’s sails, insisting that “such a sentence was not used in the letter.”
He showed a copy to Reuters, which confirmed the letter made no such mention.
But still the media clings to its insistance Zahar is moderating, pointing to his written desire to live in peace with regional neighbors:
“Like all other people in the world, we look forward to live in peace and security for our people to live a dignified live in freedom and independence, side by side with our neighbors in this sacred part of the world.”
However, there is little reason to take this as evidence Hamas is suddenly willing to live in peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state, or is even moving in that direction.
The wording of the allegedly conciliatory portion of the letter doesn’t even mention Israel.
If Hamas were truly moderating then why not simply come out and say, “We no longer seek Israel’s destruction, and respect its right to exist side-by-side with us”?
Everyone insists the “Palestinians” voted for Hamas for purely socio-economic reasons anyway, so they certainly won’t be betraying their voters with such a policy shift.
Zahar’s interview with China’s Xinhua news agency earlier this week also makes it hard to believe he or his Hamas colleagues are undergoing a process of moderation.
“I dream of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it. …our dream to have our independent state on all historic Palestine will become real one day. I’m certain of this because there is no place for the state of Israel on this land.”
Those remarks received considerably less coverage than Zahar’s letter to Annan, perhaps not surprisingly, as they obviously give the lie to claims that upon assuming power Hamas ceased to be a belligerent terrorist organization.
The honey-coated wording of the last sentence of Zahar’s letter is likely the product of Hamas’ growing adeptness at smooth-talking the Palestinian Authority’s financial benefactors, rather than some kind of conciliatory message.
In other words, its just a sales pitch. And a fairly transparent one at that.
Since Hamas’ overwhelming electoral victory in January, the international media has gone to great lengths to assuage global shock and dismay over this turn of events by insisting the Palestinian Arabs voted for the blood-soaked terrorists for purely socio-economic reasons.
The latest example of this self-delusion comes from the pen of chief CNN Palestinian-apologist Christiane Amanpour, who wrote in a piece titled “From terrorism to trash collection”:
“During this year’s election, Palestinians fed up with the rampant corruption and lawlessness of the late Yasser Arafat’s government turned to the only alternative, Hamas.”
This theory, however, was easily discredited by analyst Robert Satloff (via HonestReporting.com:
“Other parties on the ballot offered alternatives to Fatah, including the good-government Third Way, but Hamas won 74 seats and the squeaky-clean liberals just 2. Indeed, it is an uncomfortable truth that an absolute majority of Palestinians voted for parties publicly committed to the destruction of Israel… To suggest that Palestinians were oblivious to the political meaning of their votes is, as President Bush has argued in a different context, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Even if the assertions of Amanpour and her colleagues did contain a hint of truth, it must be remembered that there are many other organizations besides Hamas providing charitable social services to the Palestinian Arabs - including the United States government.
So why is Washington so hated and Hamas is popular enough to become the sole ruling part of the “Palestinian” legislature?
The difference between Hamas and all these other groups, organizations and governments is one thing - Jewish body count.
Hamas is widely popular - far more so than any other humanitarian group - precisely because it has combined its social efforts with a successful campaign of mass murder against Israel’s Jews.
Without the blood is has spilled, Hamas could not stand out as it does today and could not have performed such a massive electoral coup.
How many times must Hamas make comments like this:
“There is no place for Israel on this land.”
before the West will stop threatening to cut off and isolate the Palestinian Authority and actually do it?
My guess? They never will, because, as I wrote earlier, Hamas is learning the fine art of balancing their true aims with the kind of sweet-talk the world likes to hear.
The international media this week unsurprisingly and enthusiastically took Hamas’ desire to hold talks with the Middle East Quartet as proof of its assertion that the terror group had moderated upon assuming power.
Hamas it seems is doing a good job of following Arafat’s example of covering its blood-stained hands in silk gloves in its dealings with the outside world.
Very quickly will the international media start to totally ignore more hostile statements like this:
“The Koran is our constitution, Mohammed is our prophet, jihad [holy war] is our path and dying for the sake of Allah is our biggest wish.”
And this:
“We cannot recognize Israel. The land of Palestine is ours and not for the Jews.”
In favor of statements made for Western consumption, such as this:
Hamas “won’t spare any effort to reach a just peace in the region…we’re not warmongers and we don’t call for terrorism and bloodshed.”
Of course, none of the above statements, even the supposedly “moderate” one, says anything about peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state.
A “just peace” for Hamas means the eradication of Israel and its replacement with an Arab Muslim state.
