RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-bad-optics-of-fighting-for-your?token=eyJ1c2Vy

I am weeping.

It appears that standing up for the right of innocent people to protect themselves from a genocidal terrorist organization has become extremely risky to one’s “brand.” And so lies have replaced truth. Memes have replaced morality. Hashtags have replaced history.

I’m speaking, of course, about Israel. 

In the past 48 hours, according to the Israel Defense Forces, more than 1,500 rockets have rained down on Israeli cities. Those rockets are being launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and by Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since Israel unilaterally withdrew from it and forcibly evacuated every last Jewish resident from  the territory in 2005.

Israelis have gotten used to living life in a kind of perpetual war. On Tuesday, Nellie was on a call with a journalist in Tel Aviv who abruptly hung up because the sirens started wailing. A friend sent a photo of his mother crouched in a bomb shelter. All ok, he said. Friends across the country told me about huddling with their crying children in safe rooms. It’s fine, they insisted.

But living like this is not fine:

Israel Under Fire @israelunderfire
Moments of horror in Israel. A rocket hits directly an Israeli bus. #IsraelUnderFire #IsraelUnderAttack

May 11th 2021

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It will never be fine to have children killed by terrorists whose explicit aim is to kill them:

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/05/12/why-wont-israelis-let-themselves-be-killed/

“There is nothing positive in contemporary Israel-bashing. In its naivety, it assists the rise of Hamas. In its arrogance it empowers the West to determine the fate of the Middle East. All of this stores up more conflict and hatred for the future.”

Two weeks ago Turkish forces launched a military assault in the Duhok region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Villagers were forced to ‘flee in terror’ from raining bombs. It was only the latest bombardment of the beleaguered Kurds by Turkey, NATO member and Western ally. It did not trend online. There were no noisy protests in London or New York. The Turks weren’t talked about in woke circles as crazed, bloodthirsty killers. Tweeters didn’t dream out loud about Turks burning in hell. The Onion didn’t do any close-to-the-bone satire about how Turkish soldiers just love killing children. No, the Duhok attack passed pretty much without comment.

But when Israel engages in military action, that’s a different story. Always. Every time. Anti-Israel fury in the West has intensified to an extraordinary degree following an escalation of violence in the Middle East in recent days. Protests were instant and inflammatory. Israeli flags were burned on the streets of London. Social media was awash with condemnation. ‘IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child’, tweeted The Onion, to tens of thousands of likes. Israel must be boycotted, isolated, cast out of the international community, leftists cried. Western politicians, including Keir Starmer, rushed to pass judgement. ‘What’s the difference?’, said a placard at a march in Washington, DC showing the Israeli flag next to the Nazi flag. The Jews are the Nazis now, you see. Ironic, isn’t it?

This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly?

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/the-collapse-of-israels-dream-palace-of-normalcy-and-how-israel-can-still-achieve-a-great-victory/

Every intelligence officer in the United States at one point in his formal training learns about the great Israeli intelligence failure in the 1973 war.  The lesson was clear, and the same one identified by Roberta Wohlstetter about the great failure of surprise in Pearl Harbor in 1941: a set of ideas, or “conception” can so thoroughly dominate elites and the professional strategic and intelligence communities that it overpowers the increasing pace of evidence and information suggesting an approaching tectonic change.  Israel has just been shaken because it suffered in recent days the second great, indeed catastrophic, “failure of conception,” with dramatic human and strategic consequences.  And it will face a grave national challenge going forward beyond the horrific affairs of massive missile barrages from Gaza because its entire understanding of its situation and the defense concepts that flow from it have collapsed.

And yet, Israel also faces a great opportunity.  A proper response could deliver Israel a tremendous victory, perhaps one its greatest, and leave Israel more strengthened and valued in the long run as an appealing potential ally for others struggling to survive in a dangerous region.

The Dream Palace of Illusions

With respect to Iran’s nuclear program and attempts to establish Iran’s power in Syria, Israel has embraced the original strategy of preemption which served it so well in its first years, to deny an avowed genocidal enemy the means to execute its ambition. And yet, other than Iran, for the last several decades, Israel turned in response to its other enemies from preemption to deterrence, and a “quiet for quiet” formula.  It turned to relying on American support rather than enjoying freedom of action to shape their environment into a less dangerous form. It watched massive stockpiling of missiles in Gaza and in Lebanon, but believed its overwhelming force, and the willingness to use it, guaranteed the success of its reliance on deterrence. Israel believed it could absorb constant attacks on border communities as a below-the-threshold simmering that can be tolerated, much to the chagrin of the people living in those communities.  And Israel believed it could pay blood money to a desperate Hamas via the Qataris to keep them quiet.

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-the-end-of-jewish-arab-coexistence/

Jews cower in their homes as Arabs set fire to synagogues and comb the streets for Jewish victims. Failing that, they attempt to break into Jewish homes. They burn cars and whatever else they can lay their hands on.

These events, more reminiscent of the Pale of Settlement, are taking place now, for the last two days, in Israel proper, in the city of Lod, a half hour’s drive from Tel Aviv.

More than one eyewitness has called it a pogrom. The city’s mayor compared it to Kristallnacht.

What makes it different, indeed intolerable, is that it’s taking place in the Jewish State, established to end such horrors.

Lod is a mixed city. Its Jewish population has been shouting for help as they remain trapped in their own homes as Arabs run riot. The government has quite rightly been criticized for its tepid response. Only about 30 rioters have been arrested. Finally, on Tuesday evening, the government ordered 16 Border Police companies to the city and declared a state of emergency.

As pathetic as has been the government and police response, it’s Lod’s Arabs who deserve the most censure. They are Israeli Arabs. They have grown up in Israel, not on the other side of some imaginary line, not in the so-called ‘occupied territories.’ Israel makes enormous effort to help its Arab citizens feel a part of the country, despite propaganda to the contrary. In short, there is no excuse for the savagery of this ungrateful minority.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamas-tests-israeland-biden-11620772433?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The jihadists of Hamas on Tuesday launched the biggest single-day rocket attack on the Jewish State in memory, with hundreds flying toward Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as well as the usual civilian targets in southern Israel. Israel struck back at 500 targets in Gaza, and this has the potential to become a larger conflict after a relatively long period of Mideast quiet.

The Hamas attacks come after days of Palestinian riots in Jerusalem, some prompted by long-running property disputes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Israeli courts ruled in favor of Jewish owners and against Palestinian leaseholders who claim rights to the property dating to Jordan’s occupation of East Jerusalem after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The case’s Supreme Court hearing was delayed.

Mahmoud Abbas, who runs the Palestinian West Bank region adjacent to Jerusalem, has been held up as a moderate negotiating partner for Israel. Yet his party fomented the Jerusalem violence, broadcasting that it “calls on everyone to raise the level of confrontation in the coming days and hours in the Palestinian lands,” according to Palestinian Media Watch.

The 85-year-old Mr. Abbas, who has headed the Palestinian Authority since 2005 without standing for re-election, may want to turn up the temperature to compensate for falling public confidence in his rule. He’s in competition with Hamas and even more extreme groups, which he shut out of power in the West Bank last month by postponing elections yet again. Hamas, which promises the destruction of Israel, one-upped Mr. Abbas’s riots by reigniting its military confrontation.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/dark-face-palestinian-terror-joseph-klein/

The “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” is spinning out of control toward another possible all-out war. Blame should, of course, fall on the Palestinian terrorists operating from Gaza, who have once again fired hundreds of rockets inside Israel against civilian targets. This time, the terrorists deliberately escalated what began as a local fracas over the possible eviction of Palestinians from homes they have been occupying in an area of East Jerusalem known as Sheikh Jarrah. Israeli Jews claim that this land belongs to them. After a barrage of rocket attacks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) struck back. The Palestinians are complaining. Here we go again.

The pattern is very familiar by now. Palestinians use a pretext to start a riot. The Israeli police and security forces respond proportionately. The Palestinians up the ante, prompting a further Israeli response. Then Palestinian terrorists in Gaza use the territory they control to launch rocket attacks into Israel against civilian targets. Israel warns the terrorists to stop the rocket fire, which the terrorists ignore. After the Israeli military retaliates proportionately in an effort to target the terrorists responsible for the rocket attacks and their facilities, Palestinian government leaders cry foul. They point to unintended Palestinian civilian casualties, which are often caused by the Palestinian terrorists putting the civilians, including women and children, in harm’s way. Then, with their usual crocodile tears, Palestinian diplomats run to the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and other globalist forums to reprise their false narrative of victimhood at the hands of the “oppressor,” “murderous,” “apartheid” Israeli regime. The Palestinians can count on leftist support for their cause in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere.

In short, Palestinian militants provoke violence to which Israel responds. Palestinian terrorists target innocent civilians deliberately. Israel targets the terrorists and their facilities, with policies and practices in place to minimize civilian casualties. And like the youth who kills his parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he’s an orphan, the Palestinians ask the so-called “international community” to rally around them.

The Israeli Supreme Court had not even ruled yet on the Sheikh Jarrah dispute before Palestinian agitators exploited the situation. They used the dispute, together with a peaceful Jerusalem Day parade celebrating Israel’s reunification of Jerusalem following Israel’s victory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, as an excuse to riot. Israeli police responded, leading to an outbreak of violence in and around the Temple Mount.

Then Hamas and Islamic Jihad entered the fray by firing hundreds of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel and several rockets into the Jerusalem area. Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas’s armed wing, said it had launched “a rocket strike against the enemy in the occupied Jerusalem in response to their crimes and aggression against the holy city and its aggression against our people in Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa mosque.” This was the first time since the 2014 Gaza War that Hamas has aimed its rockets at Jerusalem.

While Israel’s Iron Dome defense system managed to intercept some of the rockets, others got through and killed at least two Israeli civilians, injured scores of other Israelis, and destroyed homes.

On Tuesday evening, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, Palestinian terrorists launched rockets reaching the Tel Aviv region. One of the rockets hit a bus, causing several injuries, including to a 5-year-old girl.  

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-is-twitter-letting-irans-ayatollah-khamenei-incite-rocket-attacks-on-israeli-civilians/?utm_source=

As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians intensified on Tuesday night, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who helps fund and direct Hamas’s actions, tweeted out the following:

Khamenei.ir

·Palestinians are awake and determined. They must continue this path. One can only talk with the language of power with these criminals. They must increase their strength, stand strong, confront the enemy, and force them to stop their crimes. #FreePalestine

Within minutes, the IDF reported sirens were sounding in Tel Aviv as one of its largest cities came under a barrage of rocket fire.

It’s worth remembering that when Donald Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter while still an office holder, Twitter cited, “the risk of further incitement of violence.”

Yet in this case Ayatollah is using Twitter to directly signal to his terrorist proxy group Hamas that they should continue attacking civilians. Why does that not count as inciting violence?

To be clear, this is not a one off tweet by Ayatollah. He has continually used the account to urge Palestinian terrorists to continue attacks on Israel. Here is a sampling of tweets over just the past few days.

https://nypost.com/2021/05/11/barrage-of-rockets-launched-at-tel-aviv-from-the-gaza-strip/?utm_source=maropost&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=news_alert&utm_content=20210511&mpweb=755-9375372-720223421

Tel Aviv came under a barrage of 130 rockets launched by Hamas from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, sending residents fleeing for shelter as air raid sirens blared across Israel’s second-largest city.

Israel’s anti-rocket defense systems were activated Tuesday night, with the streaks of multiple interceptor missiles lighting up the skies over the area.

The heavy bombardment came in retaliation for an Israeli strike earlier on Tuesday evening that leveled a high-rise building in Gaza, which housed the offices of several top Hamas officials. That strike had come in ralition for earlier Hamas bombings.

Both sides had been firing at each other almost nonstop throughout the day, in some of the worst fighting between Israel and the terror group since their 2014 war.

As the rockets launched into the skies from Gaza on Tuesday night, mosques blared with chants of “God is great,” “Victory to Islam” and “Resistance.”

One of the rockets appeared to have hit an oil pipeline belonging to an Israeli state-owned energy company, setting a large storage tank on fire. Videos showed flames engulfing the tank in the city of Ashkelon, which reportedly burned for hours.