Democracy in Action

It has occured to me that an election is, primarily, an opportunity for a people to take responsibility for what is done in their name.
It has often been said about the American hypocracy regarding the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Apparently the fact that the Palestinians elected them is supposed to give them legitimacy that overrides their pledge to annihilate Israel. When they declared themselves absolved of all agreements and treaties with Israel the Palestinian people were still supposed to see the benefits that depended on those treaties - like the taxes and tarifs collected by Israel for the PA.
No. When a people elect a terrorist organization that doesn't recognise the right of Israel to exist that doesn't legitimize the Hamas terrorists; it delegitimizes the Palestinian people themselves. They laid down with the dogs and were surprised to find that they have fleas.
I, For one, hope the fleas bite hard and make the Palestinians act like adults next time. I'm not, however, holding my breath.

Sent from my wireless handheld device / Transmis de mon appareil portable

NO!!!!!! Not the UN!!!

Bert Raphael, in the Globe and Mail, praises Lewis MacKenzie for an insane idea:

Finally a voice of reason and logic from someone who has been there and knows the facts on the ground: I refer to the article by retired major-general Lewis MacKenzie suggesting that a solution to the Israeli-Hamas war is the deployment of a strong and armed UN force in Gaza (What Is The UN Waiting For? Deploy A Strong Force To Gaza - Jan. 6). If the United Nations gave the force the power to disarm Hamas and ensure that only humanitarian goods and not guns entered Gaza, the current problems would be solved.

I'm not sure what is more dizzyingly ludricous: suggesting that the UN would pass a resolution to protect Israel against Hamas when their man on the ground is Richard Falk , or anyone with a memory longer than a week would suggest that the son of Oil-for-food would be a good idea.

MacKenzie notes that:

Hamas makes no secret that, aided and abetted by Iran, it is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Any idea of a ceasefire in the current fighting leading to a change in Hamas's dedication to Israel's elimination is naive to the extreme.

and he is right but what is also extremely naive that an organization that would put 17 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to the 47 Member Hunam Rights Council has no true mandate to represent any solution leading to peace in the Middle East and will certainly not make any effort to guarantee the continued existance of Israel. MacKenzie is right on one point and his article would have been adequate if he had left it at:

"The UN Security Council and member states should be ashamed."

How Dare the Israelis Bomb a Mosque

Because it was a Munitions Depot!!!!

Islamic University of Gaza

Why would the Israelis target an institution of higher learning in a supposed operation against Hamas?

This is the type of question asked by Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Akram Habeeb, who tells us "that IUG is an academic institution which embraces a wide spectrum of political affinities".

This is where kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl Gilad Shalit spent months before being relocated. Fatah themselves reported that in February 2007 the Palestinian Presidential Guard stormed the university and "confiscated weapons and ammunition. Palestinian TV aired footage of dozens of rocket-propelled grenade launchers, rockets, and assault rifles, as well as thousands of bullets, that Mr. Abbas’s officials said had been found inside the university."

Far from the war crime that it has been painted in The Nation with groups of students being hit trying to find a way home from the University (Note that "There were no casualties, as the university was evacuated when the Israeli assault began on Saturday" was reported by a BBC Jounalist in Gaza though reference to that statement seems to have disappeared from the BBC Site) the IUG is an established arms factory and depot and is an obvious military target.

And let's talk about that The Nation article by the cretin Richard Falk, but later...

Proportional Response

I have just decided that I need to change my position on "Proportional Response". I have, until now believed that Proportional Response would be a totally irresponsible policy for Israel that would be equivalent to trading death for death until only one side is still standing. I realized today that proportional response is nothing like that and it is reasonable with the following guidelines:

• Base "proportional" on the inverse of Article 7 of the Hamas Charter (related by al-Bukhari and Muslem): "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (the Cedar tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews."
• End the "proportional response" when the inverse of the Hamas goal (expressed by Hamas leader Fathi Hammad in Gaza on 2 January  2009) is met: "We will not rest until we destroy the Zionist entity"
  

This was expressed well by (nom de plume) Higgs Boson at Daniel Pipes site (responding to Pipes "Israel's War on Hamas: A Dozen Thoughts" as:

Proportional Response --

• Hamas' stated goal : Total destruction of Israel and death of all Jews.
• Israel's stated goal : Total destruction of Hamas

/ Q.E.D.

There is No Such Thing as "Truce" for Israel

“BY THE time we’re finished, there won’t be a Hamas building left standing in Gaza.”
Israel’s deputy chief of staff, General Dan Harel, to a group of mayors from towns close to the Gaza Strip on 29 December 2008 (The Economist)

There are protests by Palestinian sympathizers, most of them of Palestinian or Arab extraction, around the world against the disproportionate force employed over the last few days in Gaza. DISPROPORTIONATE?!?!?! What the hell is proportionate to the indiscriminate use of Qassam rockets at Israeli towns for years? Every time I have heard a Palestinian or Arab speaker talk of this on the radio the speak of Fireworks being shot into Israel. Bullshit. Qassam may not be Tomahawk missiles but they are definitely not fireworks.
Why would the Israelis agree to a truce with Hamas? Hamas doesn't believe in Truce for any reason other than regrouping and rearming when they are losing. Whenever Israel unilaterally tries to disengage they see a dramatic incease in attacks.
Note that the August 2005 Unilateral Disengagement was closely followed by the highest levels of Qassam activity to date and that has been maintained to the present day. What is the incentive for Israel to make concessions or agree to a "truce".
No. Israel must rebuff calls for a Gaza Truce. The onus is on Hamas to stop firing rockets as a first step to peace and that is unlikely. The only way that they will have a moment of peace is to drive Hamas into the ground. They will then have to take it upon themselves to keep Hamas down because the rest of the world has shown a distinct lack of resolve to do so.

Allow the Palestinians to Grow Up

The Canadian Media, led by the CBC, poorly reported the events that led up to and followed the Israeli action in Jericho where they laid siege to and eventually took custody of several terrorist prisoners from the jail where agreement between the PA and the state of Israel (the Ramallah Agreement) determined that they would be incarcerated. The Israeli action has been described as aggressive and provocative without noting that the prisoners in the Jericho jail were supposed to have been held as prisoners and not honoured guests by the terms of the Ramallah Agreement.

Beyond relaxing all rules in the jail, as they did, for the six prisoners Hamas indicated that they planned to release them counter to the Ramallah Agreement. Mahmoud Abbas suggested that he might not block the move as if he had any control over the Hamas government. He blamed the British and American monitors for leaving the jail rather than disregarding their own safety in a situation where the Palestinian people and particularly their government are acting without respect for agreements designed to provide the sense of security required for a lasting peace.

Given the breakdown of the Ramallah Agreement the Israelis were perfectly justified in recovering the security to their people that had previously been afforded by that, now dishonoured, agreement. That the response by the Palestinians was the pandemonium that has occurred proves that the move was necessary.

The pro-Palestinian position, "How could they be expected to do anything less," is patronizing in the extreme and demeans all groups who are placed in difficult positions and don't resort to sending high velocity, warfarin coated fragments into school yards and cafes with the help of a suicide bomber. It suggests that, for this subset of the human race, it is acceptable for anger to be resolved by mass murder. This is not a condition that would be accepted in civilized society and to accept it here is to exclude the Palestinians from civilized society and place them squarely in the “Noble Savage” category – how very Victorian and Imperialistic of them.

The Palestinians need to be dealt with as equals on the world stage with the respect and dignity that implies. The first step is for them to acknowledge Israel's right to exist and protect itself. They renounced and acknowledgement of that when they elected Hamas as their government and they plunged themselves back into their dark ages. They need to renounce terrorism - the indiscriminate murder of innocents in order to highjack the peace process - and start dealing with Israel as they would wish to be dealt with.

As long as the Palestinians deal in a medieval manner with their neighbours they cannot and should not expect any other treatment from them.