RUTHFULLY YOURS

Many years ago, on my first trip around the world, I was struck by how the children in the Middle East — Arab and Israeli alike — were among the nicest-looking little children I had seen anywhere. It was painful to think that they were going to grow up killing each other. But that is exactly what happened.

It is understandable that today, many people in many lands just want the fighting between the Israelis and the Palestinians to stop. Calls for a ceasefire are ringing out from the United Nations and from Washington, as well as from ordinary people in many places around the world.

According to the New York Times, Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping for a ceasefire to “open the door to Israeli and Palestinian negotiations for a long-term solution.” President Obama has urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have an “immediate, unconditional humanitarian ceasefire” — again, with the idea of pursuing some long-lasting agreement.

If this were the first outbreak of violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis, such hopes might make sense. But where have the U.N., Kerry, and Obama been during all these decades of endlessly repeated Middle East carnage?

The Middle East must lead the world in ceasefires. If ceasefires were the road to peace, the Middle East would easily be the most peaceful place on the planet. “Ceasefire” and “negotiations” are magic words to “the international community.” But just what do ceasefires actually accomplish? In the short run, they save some lives. But in the long run they cost far more lives by lowering the cost of aggression.

At one time, launching a military attack on another nation risked not only retaliation but annihilation. When Carthage attacked Rome, that was the end of Carthage. But when Hamas or some other terrorist group launches an attack on Israel, the aggressor knows in advance that whatever Israel does in response will be limited by calls for a ceasefire, backed by political and economic pressure from the United States.

It is not at all clear what Israel’s critics can rationally expect the Israelis to do when they are attacked. Suffer in silence? Surrender? Flee the Middle East? Or — most unrealistic of all — fight a “nice” war, with no civilian casualties? General William T. Sherman said it all, 150 years ago: “War is hell.”

If you want to minimize civilian casualties, then minimize the danger of war, by no longer coming to the rescue of those who start wars.

If an Israeli high-level official were caught on a hot mic candidly commenting on Secretary of State John Kerry’s ill-fated act of Israel–Hamas peacemaking, he might call it “a hell of a diplomatic foray.”

Kerry was caught sarcastically describing the Israeli offensive into Gaza as “a hell of a pinpoint operation” during his round of Sunday-show interviews two weeks ago, before telling his aide over the phone, “We’ve got to get over there” and “It’s crazy to be sitting around.”

Kerry’s belief in himself as the Indispensable Man is touchingly quaint. His conception of the U.S. secretary of state is apparently frozen in a time when it was a position of unparalleled power and respect. Those days are gone.

Or as President Barack Obama might quip, to paraphrase his put-down of Mitt Romney’s foreign-policy views during one of the 2012 presidential debates, “John, the 1980s want their secretary of state back.”

After six years of resetting, leading from behind, ending wars, nation building at home, and pivoting to Asia, the U.S. has reduced itself to a husk of its former influence. When Kerry showed up in Cairo to meet with the president of Egypt, he was wanded by the guards, as if he had just wandered in from the airport security line.

Kerry underlined his dubious relevance by his inability to secure a ceasefire, and his dubious wisdom by making it his overarching goal. At this point, after Israel has committed itself on the ground, the U.S. should be seeking to give it the time it needs to do as much damage as possible to Hamas’s military infrastructure, instead of effectively bailing out the terror group.

Kerry held an ill-advised confab in Paris with Qatar and Turkey, the patrons of Hamas. Even the Palestinian Authority blasted this as the “friends of Hamas” meeting. With the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Jordanians, and the Palestinian Authority all functionally on Israel’s side in the Gaza War, it should be in a superior diplomatic position, but its superpower patron evidently didn’t get the memo.

By the time Kerry returned home, he had been showered with so much criticism by the Israelis that the U.S. government was saying it could endanger our relationship. The question raised by Obama-administration foreign policy again and again is, How can self-styled “smart power” be so dumb and toothless?

Barack Obama’s disdain for the slow, grinding mechanisms of government has become unmistakable of late. So it is little surprise that, frustrated by congressional inaction on his proposal for “comprehensive immigration reform,” the president last month declared that he would “fix as much of our immigration system as I can on my own.” The result, intimated by White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer last week, is a “very significant” executive action to be unveiled by the end of the summer. If reports of the contents of the order are credible, not only will the action fail to “fix” America’s immigration system, it will further undo the constitutionally prescribed separation of powers that this administration has already done so much to weaken.

The White House is reportedly weighing two options for executive action similar in kind to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that was implemented — also by executive fiat, via memorandum — in 2012. One option would grant temporary legal status to illegal-immigrant parents of U.S. citizens, authorizing them to remain in the country and to work here. The second option would do the same for illegal-immigrant parents of DACA recipients. These actions could affect anywhere from 3 to 6 million people.

Although the specifics are unknown, any unilateral action of this magnitude and type would be unprecedented. Permission to work would secure for millions of illegal immigrants the benefits of lawful status despite the absence of a green card or a pathway to citizenship. Already illegal immigrants, taken in toto, represent a net drag on the American economy of $55 billion a year, according to the Heritage Foundation, since they and their families make use of direct benefits (such as Social Security and Medicare), means-tested welfare benefits, public education, and other government-funded resources. The tacit moral sanction granted by a new DACA-type program would ensure that program participants are eventually guaranteed these services.

It is not unlikely that a new program would, like DACA, be pitched as a temporary measure. DACA deferrals, for instance, are given in two-year increments, after which recipients must renew their grant. But these “temporary” programs are no such thing. Consider Temporary Protected Status, established in 1990 to provide for illegal immigrants who, for reasons of war or natural disaster, cannot return to their home countries at the moment, but who do not qualify as refugees. Not one TPS beneficiary has been deported because his status expired. TPS status still shields Honduran refugees fleeing Hurricane Mitch, which struck in 1998. By this precedent, there is no reason to believe the Obama administration will aggressively enforce any new, supposedly temporary program.

From Europe to the Middle East, we have seen how disaster follows U.S. retreat and disengagement from the world. But the one area where President Obama seemed to be leaning forward was drone strikes. He personally approved terrorist “kill lists” and has taken out many hundreds of terrorists with drones in Pakistan, Yemen and East Africa.

So why, when Iraqi officials began pleading with him one year ago to strike Islamic State terrorists with drones, did Obama repeatedly refuse — standing by while terrorists overran the country?

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce made the stunning revelation in a congressional hearing last week that Iraq had been urgently requesting drone support against the Islamic State since August 2013 and that those requests were repeatedly turned down.

Obama officials have publicly claimed that Iraq requested air support only in May of this year, after Islamic State had already taken Fallujah and was marching on Mosul. That is untrue. And it is Royce’s version of events that is borne out by the public record. On Aug. 17, 2013, in a little-noticed story entitled “Iraq Open to U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorists,” Bloomberg News reported that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari was in Washington “seeking U.S. advisers, air surveillance or even drone strikes” and that “the top Iraqi diplomat’s comments are the first time he has publicly raised the possibility of working with the U.S. on anti-terrorist drone strikes.”

That was a year ago. Had Obama acted on those requests, the Islamic State offensive might very well have been stopped. The United States could have hit the terrorists while they were still in staging areas in the western Iraqi desert, away from civilians, where they were easy targets for U.S. drones. Instead Obama did nothing, while the Islamic State massed its forces, marched into Iraqi cities, and proclaimed a radical Islamic state.

How to lose battles and gain sympathizers.

Once again neighboring enemies are warring in diametrically opposite ways.

Hamas sees the death of its civilians as an advantage; Israel sees the death of its civilians as a disaster. Defensive missiles explode to save civilians in Israel; in Gaza, civilians are placed at risk of death to protect offensive missiles.

Hamas wins by losing lots of its people; Israel loses by losing a few of its own. Hamas digs tunnels in premodern fashion; Israel uses postmodern high technology to detect them. Hamas’s missiles usually prove ineffective; Israel’s bombs and missiles almost always hit their targets. Quiet Israeli officers lead from the front; loud Hamas leaders flee to the rear. Incompetency wins sympathy; expertise, disdain.

Westerners romanticize the Hamas cause; fellow Arabs of the Gulf do not. Westerners critical of Israel are still willing to visit Israel; sympathizers of Hamas do not wish to visit Gaza.

Democracy and free markets bring Westerners liberty, human rights, and prosperity — but many Westerners scorn these things in Israel, siding with those who deny human rights, ruin their economy, and practice a brutal prejudice against women, gays, and non-Muslims. In Gaza, a gay reporter, a female reporter with bare arms, a reporter with a small crucifix around his neck, the rare journalist who, surrounded by screaming Hamas supporters, dares to broadcast the truth from Gaza — all these in private would admit to being in fear while they are in Gaza in a way they are not when in Israel.

If 1,000 Arabs a week are killed by other Arabs in Syria and Iraq — whether bombed, shot, gassed, or beheaded — the Western world snoozes. If 400 Arabs are killed in a three-week war with Israel, that world suddenly awakes to damn Israelis as killers. Apparently the West, in racist fashion, assumes that killing one another is what Arabs do best. But when Israelis kill those who wish to kill them, outrage follows.

When Israel wins militarily, it seems to lose politically. When Hamas loses, it seems to win. A European may like the idea of Westerners’ losing to non-Westerners, as long as it is not himself who loses.

Europeans do not protest much when Vladimir Putin carves up Georgia or swallows Crimea. When Russian surrogates shoot down a passenger plane carrying many Europeans, Europe nonetheless stays mostly quiet. There are no protests in Paris over the divided city of Nicosia and the harsh Turkish occupation of Cyprus, which has lasted four decades now. No one in Berlin objects that Russia occupies the Sakhalin Islands or China has absorbed Tibet. Europeans assume that the strong who could hurt them can dictate as they wish.

Once again, in warfare between Israel and its neighbors, Israel’s critics note the many more dead and wounded among the Jewish state’s adversaries than among Israelis and attack Israel for disproportionate use of force. While photos of dead and wounded civilians, or of non-combatants desperately fleeing fighting around their homes, should elicit everyone’s sympathy, the translating of that sympathy into a “proportionality” argument with which to beat Israel is less an expression of humane sensitivity to the plight of innocent victims than a display of sanctimonious depravity.

International law includes a concept of proportionality as it applies to warfare. Intentionally targeting civilians constitutes not simply a criminal act but a crime against humanity. It is also considered a crime to attack a military target when it is clear that the likely incidental civilian injuries and deaths will be disproportionate to any likely military advantage to be gained as a result of the attack.

Consider the nature of the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is explicit in its genocidal intent, stating in its charter and in myriad declarations by its representatives that its goal is not only the annihilation of Israel but the slaughter of all Jews. It makes clear that it has zero interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.

Apologists for Hamas’s Gaza regime claim that Israel, by blocking open access to Gaza, has, in effect, created an open-air prison in which Gazans suffer constant deprivation and so the organization has the right to try to break the Israeli siege. But from the time that Israel pulled all its citizens and troops out of Gaza, in 2005, the Palestinian leadership in the territory has pursued rocket attacks into Israel, and those attacks only escalated after Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. To the degree that Israel has limited access to Gaza, it has done so in response to these incessant bombardments and other assaults. In addition, its doing so is consistent with international law regarding states of belligerency and, for example, the United Nations has upheld the legitimacy of Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

Moreover, the Israeli “siege” is typically overstated as totally cutting off Gaza from the wider world. In fact, one of Gaza’s borders is controlled by Egypt, not Israel. Further, huge amounts of goods enter Gaza on an almost daily basis from Israel and many Gazans cross back and forth between Gaza and Israel. Even during the current war, Israel continues to supply electricity and water to Gaza and continues to allow the daily passage of tons of goods, including food and medicine, into Hamas-controlled territory.

Also noteworthy is that Israel not only fully withdrew from the territory but left behind assets that could have contributed to Gaza establishing itself on a sound economic foundation. With the extensive financial support poured into Gaza by the international community, it could have become a Middle East Hong Kong or Singapore.

Apparently more than willing to pour gasoline on an already raging fire, an anti-Israeli Turkish relief organization, IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, is organizing a “Freedom Flotilla II” to bring “humanitarian” supplies to the Gaza strip. The IHH is the organization responsible for the last attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza in a self-inflicted disaster that saw nine Hamas-affiliated terrorists killed by Israeli commandos, who were attacked when they attempted to board the Mavi Marmara. IHH chairman Bulent Yildrim warns that this time, the flotilla will be accompanied by Turkish Navy vessels to “protect us from any potential attack.”

As of now, no firm date has been set for this latest effort to incite a violent confrontation with the Jewish State, but Yildrim insists that once the necessary permit from the authorities in Ankara is approved, the activists will set sail. Yildrim is inviting activists who participated in the 2010 trip to join the cause. The military component is based on a demand by Yildrim that the Turkish government provide protection for its own citizens.

The move reflects the increasing deterioration of Turkish-Israeli relations, already severely damaged by the 2010 attempt by the Freedom Flotilla I to challenge Israel’s right to block weaponry from entering the Gaza strip.

After the incident aboard the Mavi Marmara, a 2011 UN report by the Palmer Commission concluded Israel was within its legal rights to form the blockade. The report further noted that the naval blockade “was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law,” that “the flotilla acted recklessly in attempting to breach the naval blockade,” and that there were “serious questions about the conduct, true nature and objectives of the flotilla organizers, particularly IHH.”

And while the report also concluded that Israel’s boarding of the Mavi Marmara was “excessive and unreasonable,” it noted that “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection.” The panel further recommended that those involved “should consult directly and make every effort to avoid a repetition of the incident.”

That isn’t likely to happen. After the incident and subsequent report, Turkey ejected Israel’s ambassador and recalled its own, but refrained from severing economic ties. But on July 19, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “barbarism that surpasses Hitler,” regarding its military incursion into Gaza. He further insisted the Jewish State was guilty of using “disproportionate force” that has “derailed efforts to normalize Turkish-Israeli ties,” according to the Associated Press. Erdogan is running for the presidency in elections that will be held next month.

The media war between Israel and Hamas is a disproportionately unequal one. It’s unequal because Israel must maintain its credibility, while Hamas and its media allies never worry about their credibility.

In an instant messaging news cycle, Israel responds to accusations of atrocities with an investigation while Hamas and its Hamasbara allies in the media package together bloody photos from local stringers along with a narrative and turn it into an instant story.

By the time the Israeli investigation nails down the real story, as with the UNRWA school in Beit Hanoun, the Hamasbara is already moving on to the next atrocity.

Every Israeli statement is pored over and examined from every angle. A Tweet by an Israeli police spokesman was spun by BuzzFeed troll Sheera Frenkel into a claim that Hamas had not kidnapped and murdered the three Israeli boys. The story was then repackaged by New York Magazine for a post that had over 200,000 social media shares. The post was dishonest and untrue… but that didn’t matter.

Meanwhile Al-Monitor’s Laura Rozen participated in the attacks against Israel by accusing Haaretz’s Barak Ravid, who had revealed the Kerry ceasefire terms favorable to Hamas, of being a liar who was passing along false Israeli claims.

Rozen’s alternative draft, which appears to have come from Al Jazeera, did not differ significantly from the Israeli copy, but it didn’t stop her from using her Qatari source to attack Israel. Obama went on to reiterate many of the basic terms in the ceasefire proposal, but by then the narrative that the Israeli media was unfairly smearing Kerry was set.

These tactics, born out of the Twitter age and the complete collapse of journalistic ethics, aren’t just a defense of Islamic terrorism, but they also borrow some of the tactics of the terrorists they defend.

Hamasbara is less dependent on developed stories and more on Tweets and blog posts. Its practitioners are just activists with a media forum. Their smear campaigns depend on quick hit and run attacks. They bring a story into being out of thin air and move on to the next attack just as quickly.

There is something of the Hamas suicide bomber in their willingness to constantly self-destruct their reputations, but journalistic credentials don’t mean what they used to. Activist journalists help manufacture a story that is picked up by second-tier media blogs and mainstream media outlets.

Napoleon once ascribed his success to being able to see things as they were, and not as reflected in a fun house mirror. “The first qualification of a general-in-chief is to possess a cool head, so that things may appear to him in their true proportions and as they really are.”

In Washington’s eyes Gaza may be the biggest conflict the Middle East; but objectively it is the littlest. The numbers tell the story. Syrian president Bashar Assad went down on his knees at a mosque following what some have called the worst week in the Syrian civil war [1] ”amid reports of an unprecedented high death toll among his troops battling Islamic extremists.”

The military casualties came as fighting intensified in the past two weeks, with militants from the al-Qaida-breakaway Islamic State group seeking to eliminate opponents from all sides, dealing a series of setbacks for government forces and rival rebels alike … about 1,240 soldiers and other Assad loyalists have been killed in the past 10 days in northern Syria.

Other activists in Syria confirmed that past weeks have seen a record death toll. Syria’s three-year civil war has already killed more than 170,000 people, nearly a third of them civilians.

Nor should we forget Iraq was always a much bigger deal than Gaza and may be about to get worse. The Daily Beast’s Jamie Dettmer [2] tells readers to get set for the coming Blitz of Baghdad. “Analysts at the U.S.-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War, who have been plotting the locations and types of attacks in the recent flurry of blasts buffeting the Iraqi capital, have noted a clear pattern developing. They say it suggests the Islamic State is building up to something big and is no longer just focused on consolidating its grip and developing governance in the lands it now controls.”

The institute’s analysts predict the caliphate may be readying for an onslaught, possibly timed for the end of the holy month of Ramadan on Monday or during the Eid holiday celebrations this week. The aim would not be to seize Iraq’s capital, which has a very large Shia population with every incentive to fight to the death against an organization that slaughters Shia prisoner en masse. The purpose of the Islamic State offensive would be to sow mayhem and to keep Iraq’s state apparatus from recovering from its stunning defeats in June, when it lost control of Mosul, the second-largest city in the country. …

There has been a burst of attacks by bombers wearing suicide vests and also car blasts “along avenues of approach to the capital and also within Baghdad proper,” the institute notes in an intelligence update.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke some seldom-heard truths when he said Tuesday [2]: “What we’re seeing here with Hamas is another instance of Islamist extremism, violent extremism that has no resolvable grievance. Hamas is like ISIS, Hamas is like al Qaeda, Hamas is like Hezbollah, Hamas is like Boko Haram.” Indeed so; and Hamas shares those groups’ implacable hatred not just of Israel, but of all Jews – based on the Qur’an’s dictum that “you will surely find the most intense of the people in animosity toward the believers to be the Jews” (5:82).

In practice, this generally manifests itself as just the opposite: in Muslims being the most intense of the people in animosity toward the Jews. That was clear last week in new calls for mass murder and genocide of Jews from supporters of Hamas and the Palestinian jihad – again making it difficult for supporters of the Palestinians to claim the moral high ground [3].
5. Qatari imam prays about the Jews: “Count them one by one, and kill them to the very last one.”

Sheikh Tareq Al-Hawwas delivered a Friday sermon [4] on Qatar TV on July 18, the day after the Israelis began their ground incursion into Gaza. “For the first time in the history of the abhorred country, the state of Israel,” the pious sheikh exulted, “sirens are heard around the clock and over three million people flee to their hideouts. Schools, governmental departments, and airports came to a halt. When have we ever heard of such things? This is the beginning of good things to come.” He concluded his peroration with an appeal to the deity:

Oh, Allah increase the pressure You exert upon the plundering Jews. Demonstrate upon them the miracles of Your might, for they are no match to You. Count them one by one, and kill them to the very last one. Do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, disperse them. Oh Lord, freeze the blood in their veins. Oh Allah, tear them asunder. Oh Allah, sow discord in their hearts. Oh Allah, do not let them prevail. Make an example of them for their allies. Oh Allah, bring down the planes of their air force, burn their infantry and sink the ships of their navy.