Israel-Gaza conflict: What has Israel achieved in 26 bloody days?

[OriZ 3,157]

In the spring of 2009, Roger Cohen, the New York Times columnist, surprised some of his readers by claiming that Iran’s remaining Jews were “living, working and worshiping in relative tranquility.”

Cohen wrote: “Perhaps I have a bias toward facts over words, but I say the reality of Iranian civility toward Jews tells us more about Iran—its sophistication and culture—than all the inflammatory rhetoric.”

Perhaps.

In this, and other, columns, Cohen appeared to be trying to convince his fellow Jews that they had less to fear from the Iran of Khamenei and (at the time) Ahmadinejad than they thought. To me, the column was a whitewash. It seemed (and seems) reasonable to worry about the intentions of those Iranian leaders who deny or minimize the Holocaust while hoping to annihilate the Jewish state, and who have funded and trained groups—Hezbollah and Hamas—that have as their goal the killing of Jews.

It is a dereliction of responsibility not to try to understand the goals and beliefs of Islamist totalitarian movements.

Cohen’s most acid critics came from within the Persian Jewish exile community. The vast majority of Iran’s Jews fled the country after the Khomeini revolution; many found refuge in Los Angeles. David Wolpe, the rabbi of Sinai Temple there, invited Cohen to speak to his congregants, about half of whom are Persian exiles, shortly after the column appeared. Cohen, to his credit, accepted the invitation. The encounter between Cohen and an audience of several hundred (mainly Jews, but also Bahais, members of a faith persecuted with great intensity by the Iranian regime) was tense but mainly civil (you can watch it here). For me, the most interesting moment came not in a discussion about the dubious health of Iran’s remnant Jewish population, but after Wolpe asked Cohen about the intentions of Iran and its allies toward Jews living outside Iran.

“Right now,” Wolpe said, “Israel is much more powerful than Hezbollah and Hamas. Let’s say tomorrow this was reversed. Let’s say Hamas had the firepower of Israel and Israel had the firepower of Hamas. What do you think would happen to Israel were the balance of power reversed?”

“I don’t know what would happen tomorrow,” Cohen answered. This response brought a measure of derisive laughter from the incredulous audience. “And it doesn’t matter that I don’t know because it’s not going to happen tomorrow or in one or two years.” Wolpe quickly told Cohen that he himself knows exactly what would happen if the power balance between Hamas and Israel were to be reversed. (Later, Wolpe told me that he thought Cohen could not have been so naïve as to misunderstand the nature of Hamas and Hezbollah, but instead was simply caught short by the question.)

At the time, Cohen suggested that he was uninterested in grappling with the nature of Hamas and its goals. “I reject the thinking behind your question,” he said. “It’s not useful to go there.”

“Going there,” however, is necessary, not only to understand why Israelis fear Hamas, but also to understand that the narrative advanced by Hamas apologists concerning the group's beliefs and goals is false. “Going there” also does not require enormous imagination, or a well-developed predisposition toward paranoia. It is, in my opinion, a dereliction of responsibility on the part of progressives not to try to understand the goals and beliefs of Islamist totalitarian movements.

(This post, you should know, is not a commentary on the particulars of the war between Israel and Hamas, a war in which Hamas baited Israel and Israel took the bait. Each time Israel kills an innocent Palestinian in its attempt to neutralize Hamas’s rockets, it represents a victory for Hamas, which has made plain its goal of getting Israel to kill innocent Gazans. Suffice it to say that Israel cannot afford many more “victories” of the sort it is seeking in Gaza right now. I supported a ceasefire early in this war precisely because I believed that the Israeli government had not thought through its strategic goals, or the methods for achieving those goals.)

While it is true that Hamas is expert at getting innocent Palestinians killed, it has made it very plain, in word and deed, that it would rather kill Jews. The following blood-freezing statement is from the group's charter: “The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The day of judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say ‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

While Hamas is expert at getting innocent Palestinians killed, it has made clear that it would rather kill Jews.

This is a frank and open call for genocide, embedded in one of the most thoroughly anti-Semitic documents you'll read this side of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not many people seem to know that Hamas’s founding document is genocidal. Sometimes, the reasons for this lack of knowledge are benign; other times, as the New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch argues in his recent dismantling of Rashid Khalidi’s apologia for Hamas, this ignorance is a direct byproduct of a decision to mask evidence of Hamas’s innate theocratic fascism.

The historian of totalitarianism Jeffrey Herf, in an article on the American Interest website, places the Hamas charter in context:

The question Roger Cohen refused to answer at Sinai Temple was addressed in a recent post by Sam Harris, the atheist intellectual, who is opposed, as a matter of ideology, to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (or to any country organized around a religion), but who for practical reasons supports its continued existence as a haven for an especially persecuted people, and also as a not-particularly religious redoubt in a region of the world deeply affected by religious fundamentalism. Referring not only to the Hamas charter, Harris writes that, “The discourse in the Muslim world about Jews is utterly shocking.”

[T]he Hamas Covenant of 1988 notably replaced the Marxist-Leninist conspiracy theory of world politics with the classic anti-Semitic tropes of Nazism and European fascism, which the Islamists had absorbed when they collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. That influence is apparent in Article 22, which asserts that “supportive forces behind the enemy” have amassed great wealth: "With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. With their money, they took control of the world media. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about here and there. With their money, they formed secret societies, such as Freemason, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there."

The above paragraph of Article 22 could have been taken, almost word for word, from Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish propaganda texts and broadcasts.

The first time I witnessed Hamas’s hatred of Jews manifest itself in large-scale, fatal violence was in late July of 1997, when two of the group’s suicide bombers detonated themselves in an open-air market in West Jerusalem. The attack took 16 lives, and injured 178. I happened to be only a few blocks from the market at the time of the attack, and arrived shortly after the paramedics and firefighters. Over the next hours, a scene unfolded that I would see again and again: screaming relatives; members of the Orthodox burial society scraping flesh off walls; the ground covered in blood and viscera. I remember another Hamas attack, on a bus in downtown Jerusalem, in which body parts of children were blown into the street by the force of the blast. At yet another bombing, I was with rescue workers as they recovered a human arm stuck high up in a tree.

Not only is there Holocaust denial—there’s Holocaust denial that then asserts that we will do it for real if given the chance. The only thing more obnoxious than denying the Holocaust is to say that it should have happened; it didn’t happen, but if we get the chance, we will accomplish it. There are children’s shows in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere that teach five-year-olds about the glories of martyrdom and about the necessity of killing Jews.

And this gets to the heart of the moral difference between Israel and her enemies. ...

What do we know of the Palestinians? What would the Palestinians do to the Jews in Israel if the power imbalance were reversed? Well, they have told us what they would do. For some reason, Israel’s critics just don’t want to believe the worst about a group like Hamas, even when it declares the worst of itself. We’ve already had a Holocaust and several other genocides in the 20th century. People are capable of committing genocide. When they tell us they intend to commit genocide, we should listen. There is every reason to believe that the Palestinians would kill all the Jews in Israel if they could. Would every Palestinian support genocide? Of course not. But vast numbers of them—and of Muslims throughout the world—would. Needless to say, the Palestinians in general, not just Hamas, have a history of targeting innocent noncombatants in the most shocking ways possible. They’ve blown themselves up on buses and in restaurants. They’ve massacred teenagers. They’ve murdered Olympic athletes. They now shoot rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas.

After each of these attacks, Hamas leaders issued blood-curdling statements claiming credit, and promising more death. “The Jews will lose because they crave life but a true Muslim loves death,” a former Hamas leader, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, told me in an interview in 2002. In the same interview he made the following imperishable statement: “People always talk about what the Germans did to the Jews, but the true question is, ‘What did the Jews do to the Germans?’”

I will always remember this interview not only because Rantisi's Judeophobia was breathtaking, but because just as I was leaving his apartment in Gaza City, a friend from Jerusalem called to tell me that she had just heard a massive explosion outside her office at the Hebrew University (not far, by the way, froman attack earlier today). A cafeteria had just been bombed, my friend told me. This was another Hamas operation, one which killed nine people, including a young woman of exceptional promise named Marla Bennett, a 24-year-old American student who wrote shortly before her death, “My friends and family in San Diego ask me to come home, it is dangerous here. I appreciate their concern. But there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now. I have a front-row seat for the history of the Jewish people.”

Hamas is an organization devoted to ending Jewish history. This is what so many Jews understand, and what so many non-Jews don’t. The novelist Amos Oz, who has led Israel's left-wing peace camp for decades, said in an interview last week that he doesn't see a prospect for compromise between Israel and Hamas. "I have been a man of compromise all my life," Oz said. "But even a man of compromise cannot approach Hamas and say: 'Maybe we meet halfway and Israel only exists on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.'"

In the years since it adopted its charter, Hamas leaders and spokesmen have reinforced its message again and again. Mahmoud Zahar said in 2006 that the group "will not change a single word in its covenant." To underscore the point, in 2010 Zahhar said, "Our ultimate plan is [to have] Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy."

In 2011, the former Hamas minister of culture, Atallah Abu al-Subh, said that "the Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the Earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah. Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world." Just last week, a top Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, accused Jews of using Christian blood to make matzo. This is not a group, in other words, that is seeking the sort of peace that Amos Oz—or, for that matter, the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas—is seeking. People wonder why Israelis have such a visceral reaction to Hamas. The answer is easy. Israel is a small country, and most of its citizens know someone who was murdered by Hamas in its extended suicide-bombing campaigns; and most people also understand that if Hamas had its way, it would kill them as well.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/what-would-hamas-do-if-it-could-do-whatever-it-wanted/375545/?single_page=true

Edited August 7, 2014 by OriZ

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and border.

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and border.

[OriZ 3,157]

Internet issues. Got to love Comcast.

[Expat1 971]

You are yet again wrong about Hamas. Why was Hamas created? It was not for the west bank and gaza. The Hamas Charter states that "our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious" and calls for the eventual creation of an Islamic state in Palestine, in place of Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and the obliteration or dissolution of Israel. The charter also states that Hamas is humanistic, and tolerant of other religions as long as they "stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region". The Charter adds that "renouncing any part of Palestine means renouncing part of the religion" of Islam.

In the late 1980s, the PLO sought a negotiated solution with Israel in the form of a two-state solution. This was not acceptable to Hamas, and the covenant was written to bridge the ideological gap between the PLO and Muslim Brotherhood. Meaning - Hamas did not get established BECAUSE of the occupation and LACK of negotiations, rather, because they were opposed to Israel and the PLO negotiating, which is also why the late 90's and early 2000's when negotiations were in high gear saw dozens of suicide attacks killing over 1,000 Israelis just in order to get the peace process to end.

The Hamas Charter reads like a modern-day 'Mein Kampf.'" According to the charter, Jewish people "have only negative traits and are presented as planning to take over the world. The charter claims that the Jews deserve God’s/Allah’s enmity and wrath because they received the Scriptures but violated its sacred texts, disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew their own prophets. "The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, 'O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.' Only the Gharkad tree would not do that, because it is one of the trees of the Jews."(related by al-Bukhari and Muslim)

The charter contains references to anti-semitic canards, such as the assertion that through shrewd manipulation of imperial countries and secret societies, Jews were behind a wide range of events and disasters going as far back in history as the French Revolution. The document also quotes Islamic religious texts to provide justification for fighting against and killing the Jews, without distinction of whether they are in Israel or elsewhere. It presents the Arab Israeli conflict as an inherently irreconcilable struggle between Jews and Muslims, and Judaism and Islam, adding that the only way to engage in this struggle between "truth and falsehood" is through Islam and by means of jihad, until victory or martyrdom.

An Israeli reporter met with Ahmed Yassin(one of Hamas' founders) in 1988 -

Do you see a Palestinian state and an Israeli state living side by side in the peaceful coexistence?

No. Such a solution can exist only temporarily. These two countries will endure side by side for a short time. Then resume the conflict even more. The Palestinian people will rebel again and again. Palestine is a holy place for Jews, Christians and Muslims so the only solution is that all these religions live together in one country.

You mean an Islamic state in which Jews and Christian citizens will be tolerated? "I personally prefer, Islam will rule this country and it will be Islamic., I'll offer people accept Islam as dominant in their new state law but will not force it on them. Whether the majority will refuse to accept the Sharia, I'll accept it."

In the conversation that developed after the interview you could understand that the intent of Sheik Yassin, a Palestinian Islamic state, would also includ Jordan which would guarantee a large and stable Muslim majority. Hence the democratic generosity he shows, does not constitute for Sheikh ideological deviation.

What do you think of autonomy in the territories? "Negative. Practical implications of autonomy is, Jews have it all and Palestinians will have nothing."

How about a unilateral withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories? "It would be an act of madness on your part, if you do such a thing without early security arrangements. At Least you should make sure there's presence of a UN force in the territories before you leave. If you leave without such security arrangements - your safety will be at risk.

The Sheik does not say so explicitly, but clearly, the possibility of an Israeli withdrawal unilaterally is the most frightenning possibility to him because of the expected internal bloodbath between the various Palestinian factions. He also believes that this bloodbath will slide even going to Israel in the form of terrorism.

So even Yassin thought it would be an act of maddness, yet Israel did it in Gaza and that is exactly what happened.

Yassin opposed the peace process between the Palestinians and Israel. He supported armed resistance against Israel, and was very outspoken in his views. He asserted that Palestine is an Islamic land "consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day" and that no Arab leader had the right to give up any part of this territory. Yassin's rhetoric did not distinguish between Israelis and Jews, at one point stating that "Reconciliation with the Jews is a crime." Yassin's inflammatory rhetoric was often scrutinized in the news media. On one occasion, he opined that Israel "must disappear from the map". Yassin's declaration that "We chose this road, and will end with martyrdom or victory" later became an oft repeated mantra among Palestinians.

Some more about Yassin and Hamas:

http://www.economist.com/node/2536004

And here's some more libel from Hamas against Jews from just a few days ago. Funny how on American TV they always pretend to be so peaceful, but when they speak on their own networks, in their own language, they say completely different things. This is how they lie to people, how they brainwash people, along with the pallywood photos and all the other lies. That's how you make everyone hate Israel and feel sorry for Hamas.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/wolf-blitzer-confronts-hamas-spox-for-his-disturbing-blood-libel-remarks/

Neither is going to happen at this point and I've already explained why. The one state solution - not enough trust exists on either side, the two state solution - in negotiations sure, not unilaterally again. Israel tried that with Gaza and look what happened. Without having security arrangements - as even Yassin suggested, Israel could never get out of the west bank. If, however, it could make sure whether by security measures for the first few years after an agreement(which the Palestinians so far have opposed), or by certain international guarantees, or both, that what happened in Gaza will not repeat itself in the west bank, then I'm sure there would be lots to talk about.

As long as Israel is sitting on annexed, occupied land fencing in the people who own it and are supposed to live there then anything their victims do or say is justified. Israel has tried NOTHING but swapping one part of occupied territory for another and like bankers or pawnshop owners expect to walk out of any and every deal with gain for their side and loss for the other.

Hamas is asking for specific territory back. Territory that the entire community of nations has declared does not belong to Israel anyway. No combination of words, pictures, words, articles, or sentences will change the fact that Israel has robbed these people and then cried self-defense when they try to get what is fairly theirs returned to them.

If you rob someone openly, it is difficult for others to visualize you as victims. That is the point. What happens between the two sides after the robbery is a consequence of the initial act and if the two sides bleed each other dry so be it. It borders stupidity though for someone to believe that Palestine and the private property is operated like a bank or pawnshop or moneylending scheme where every transaction has to benefit only one party.

The terms for the ceasefire were offered. Return specific sections of land and lift the blockade. Israel, not Hamas, categorically rejected those terms. So don't come in here with your nonsense about the wonderful things Israel has tried to do with their occupied property. They took it, and are murdering the people they took it from, and it's a simple wrong or right issue that Israel is on the wrong side of.

Edited August 7, 2014 by Expat1

[Rich and Wen 101]

Here's a scenario which you may find enlightening.

The Menominee tribe of Wisconsin proclaims their undying dedication to the removal of occupiers from their ancestral lands, and eradication of the entire Caucasian race, wherever situated, and begins to lob rockets at Green Bay and Madison. What would be the result of such action? Multiply that by all the Native American tribes now confined to "reservations" which are a fraction of the size of their former holdings.

Methinks your outrage is misplaced.

Modified to remove a typographical error

Edited August 7, 2014 by Rich and Wen

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Hamas is asking for specific territory back.

I did not think there was any dispute on the border in the Gaza area?

[OriZ 3,157]

As long as Israel is sitting on annexed, occupied land fencing in the people who own it and are supposed to live there then anything their victims do or say is justified. Israel has tried NOTHING but swapping one part of occupied territory for another and like bankers or pawnshop owners expect to walk out of any and every deal with gain for their side and loss for the other.

Hamas is asking for specific territory back. Territory that the entire community of nations has declared does not belong to Israel anyway. No combination of words, pictures, words, articles, or sentences will change the fact that Israel has robbed these people and then cried self-defense when they try to get what is fairly theirs returned to them.

If you rob someone openly, it is difficult for others to visualize you as victims. That is the point. What happens between the two sides after the robbery is a consequence of the initial act and if the two sides bleed each other dry so be it. It borders stupidity though for someone to believe that Palestine and the private property is operated like a bank or pawnshop or moneylending scheme where every transaction has to benefit only one party.

The terms for the ceasefire were offered. Return specific sections of land and lift the blockade. Israel, not Hamas, categorically rejected those terms. So don't come in here with your nonsense about the wonderful things Israel has tried to do with their occupied property. They took it, and are murdering the people they took it from, and it's a simple wrong or right issue that Israel is on the wrong side of.

lol this is how I know you never actually read anything posted here and don't let facts confuse you cause you keep repeating the same old thing even though you've been proven otherwise. According to you, the international community doesn't even recognize Israel, if you say that the territory they want is only territory that does not belong to Israel. They want all of Israel. So I guess Israel doesn't belong to Israel. Silly me for thinking otherwise.

[_Simpson_ 250]

If, in some strange parallel universe both sides were to get around the negotiating table is there any chance that Israel will concede territory and agree to the creation of a viable Palestinian state?

I'm not convinced.

Let's pretend Israel gives back territory and agrees to the creation of a viable state. Am I to believe or anybody in there right mind that it ends there. You are being a little naive here or maybe playing devils advocate. Regardless Hamas and other countries in the middle east want much much more. They want Israel gone. Until that happens there will always be turmoil.

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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama continued his forceful defense of Israel on Wednesday, blaming Hamas for the conflict in Gaza that has left nearly 1,900 Palestinians and 67 Israelis dead.

"I have no sympathy for Hamas. I have great sympathy for ordinary people who are struggling within Gaza," Obama said at a press conference, when asked if he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that Israel's bombardment of Gaza was both "justified" and "proportionate."

Obama, who has publicly stood by Israel throughout the crisis, reiterated many of the talking points he and his administration have employed since the war began on July 8.

"I have said from the beginning that no country would tolerate rockets being launched into their cities," he said. "As a consequence, I have consistently supported Israel's right to defend itself, and that includes doing what it needs to do to prevent rockets from landing on population centers and, more recently as we learned, preventing tunnels from being dug under their territory that can be used to launch terrorist attacks."

The United Nations has estimated that three-quarters of the Palestinians killed in the fighting were civilians, while Israel contends that about 900 of them were militants. The Israeli death toll includes 64 soldiers and three civilians.

Obama was once again reticent to criticize Israel on Wednesday, noting that he has expressed his "distress at what's happened to innocent civilians, including women and children." He said he was glad that a 72-hour ceasefire has offered the people of Gaza a temporary reprieve, as indirect negotiations continue in Egypt.

"The U.S. goal right now would be to make sure that the ceasefire holds, that Gaza can begin the process of rebuilding, and that some measures are taken so that the people of Gaza feel some sense of hope and so the people of Israel feel confident that they're not going to have a repeat of the kind of rocket launches that we've seen over the last several weeks," Obama said.

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As long as Israel is sitting on annexed, occupied land fencing in the people who own it and are supposed to live there then anything their victims do or say is justified. Israel has tried NOTHING but swapping one part of occupied territory for another and like bankers or pawnshop owners expect to walk out of any and every deal with gain for their side and loss for the other.

Hamas is asking for specific territory back. Territory that the entire community of nations has declared does not belong to Israel anyway. No combination of words, pictures, words, articles, or sentences will change the fact that Israel has robbed these people and then cried self-defense when they try to get what is fairly theirs returned to them.

If you rob someone openly, it is difficult for others to visualize you as victims. That is the point. What happens between the two sides after the robbery is a consequence of the initial act and if the two sides bleed each other dry so be it. It borders stupidity though for someone to believe that Palestine and the private property is operated like a bank or pawnshop or moneylending scheme where every transaction has to benefit only one party.

The terms for the ceasefire were offered. Return specific sections of land and lift the blockade. Israel, not Hamas, categorically rejected those terms. So don't come in here with your nonsense about the wonderful things Israel has tried to do with their occupied property. They took it, and are murdering the people they took it from, and it's a simple wrong or right issue that Israel is on the wrong side of.

^^^^ This!

Great post, totally agree.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Let's pretend Israel gives back territory and agrees to the creation of a viable state. Am I to believe or anybody in there right mind that it ends there. You are being a little naive here or maybe playing devils advocate. Regardless Hamas and other countries in the middle east want much much more. They want Israel gone. Until that happens there will always be turmoil.

So I guess we can continue justify having a few million people living in an open air concentration camp.

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So I guess we can continue justify having a few million people living in an open air concentration camp.

Elections have consequences, how do you get rid of Hamas?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Elections have consequences, how do you get rid of Hamas?

They do, but Hamas didn't come out of nowhere either.

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Nor did ISIS, the question is how you deal with them.