RUTHFULLY YOURS

November 2006  Outpost – Monthly Publication of Americans for a Safe Israel.During the summer of 2005, cheered by both left and right, Israel would leave Gaza. Many saw the
area as a drain on Israeli military forces and not crucial for Israel’s long-term security. And doubters relied on Ariel Sharon: if he proposed it, then it must be right. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice gushed: “This is an historic moment for both sides, and the commitment of both sides to a successful disengagement process has been impressive.”

American philanthropists, buoyed by the possibility that Gaza’s Arabs would continue the prosperous agricultural businesses created by Jews (a major source of export income) purchased existing farms, greenhouses and agricultural equipment from Jewish residents to give them to the Arabs.

This would give the Arabs, who were ostensibly ready to get down to the business of disciplined self-rule, a big economic boost. Inspired by this notion, Mortimer Zuckerman, a staunch supporter of Israel,
persuaded other moguls, not proven friends of Israel, to ante up $14,000,000 for this noble enterprise.

Just think, …the world would see how generous the Jews were…how flexible…..how devoted to
peace. Global warming was just around the corner. Right? Well, not exactly. In short order the Arabs of
Gaza ransacked, looted and destroyed the homes and farms. They turned their energies to more congenial enterprises, like digging tunnels for smuggling weapons and showering the village of Sderot with missiles.

They elected the unapologetically terrorist Hamas oneof whose leaders declared “The jihad and the resistance are the only ways to liberate our homeland, not negotiations and agreements.”

Nonetheless, the media quickly put out the spin that Hamas won because of its “humanitarian”
work in providing food, shelter, band-aids and bubblegum to the Palestinian Arabs.
And while the administration tirelessly avers that the peaceful “Palestinian people” yearn only to
live in a democratic state beside Israel, Ehud Yaari (Jerusalem Report, October 16) offers this sober assessment of the facts on the ground in Gaza. (Yaari, author of Toward Israeli-Palestinian Disengagement is currently an associate of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, hardly a right-wing group.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20090/eu-rewards-terrorism

Israel had not even buried its dead from the horrifying jihadist pogrom that Hamas terrorists unleashed on Israeli civilians in south Israel — beheading babies, burning them alive, torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering — before the European Union decided to reward the terrorists by tripling its assistance to Gaza.

“The Commission will immediately increase the current humanitarian aid envelope foreseen for Gaza by 50 million euros,” European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen said. “This will bring the total to over 75 million euros. We will continue our close cooperation with the UN and its agencies to ensure that this aid reaches those in need in the Gaza strip.”

Oh really? How? The terrorist group Hamas, a proxy of Iran, the “worst state sponsor of terrorism,” is wholly in control of Gaza and will take what shows up and dribble it out slowly to a chosen few, mainly in their military. The idea that any of it will reach the million displaced souls who were urged by the Israelis to flee to southern Gaza to save their lives is charming, but woefully starry-eyed. Food and water — if that is really what is in the uninspected trucks, rather than weapons — will go to the Hamas foot soldiers to make sure they stay fit and loyal.

“Hamas are trying to prevent people leaving northern Gaza. And that is the point… Of course we want to minimize Palestinian casualties. We want to minimize Israeli casualties. We want everybody to respect civilians. But the real clear distinction is Israel are trying to get civilians out of danger; Hamas are trying to put civilians into danger, and that is a fundamental difference between the two.” — UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, October 15, 2023.

Sadly, massive injustices were done by the international media which, without checking, wrongly blamed Israel for firing at a hospital in Gaza, supposedly killing hundreds. Video evidence and a voice recording revealed that the real cause of the explosion at the hospital was a rocket, launched toward Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that landed in the hospital parking lot. The media, it seems, could not wait to stick it to the Jews.

http://www.acpr.org.il/english-nativ/09-issue/sharon-9.htm

The second Lebanon War (the “Three Weeks of Mourning War”) of the summer of 2006 has not yet come to an end. As this is being written, one round of the war has concluded in an intermission. It is only an introduction to the prologue. Even now our enemies are aligning for another war and another one after that, for many years to come. Over the last decade and a half, ever since the foolishness of the Oslo Accords, everything has been done to erode the nation’s resolve, its strength, and its belief in the justness of its path.

Contributing to this phenomenon has been a media mobilized to the insane idea of “peace” and a “new Middle East,” various intellectuals who depicted peace as being just around the corner and prevented by the “occupation,” which, if it were only to end, the End of Days would arrive immediately and Islam would lovingly accept the Jewish state.

Orientalists and Islamists swept under the rug all of the truths crying out to them from every document that they researched, from the pages of every Arab newspaper that they read. They told the nation just how peace-loving the Syrians and the Palestinians were, how their only desire was that the occupation cease and a small state be established alongside Israel; things which do not appear in any authorized or semi-authorized Arab-Islamic document.

They did not report about that which was openly stated nor did they relate to what anyone could read on the MEMRI website: That the demand to end the occupation is just a pretext to separate Israel from the few strategic assets still under its control and hold it hostage to the kassams of Hamas and the katyushas of Hizbullah.

They repressed the fact, which they knew better than anyone else, that since 1979, when the 15th century of Islam (according to the Muslim calendar) began, the majority of the Muslim world has been engulfed in the fire of messianic expectations.

From that point on, the molten lava of jihad, shot forth, poured into the Middle East and the world in general, and began to flow through the pathways and tunnels of fanatical Islamic fundamentalism, kindling half-dormant hopes and arousing the fire of hatred for everything non-Muslim everywhere. Over the course of an entire generation it has been boiling and blistering and amassing power daily. In its wake lie the Twin Towers from September 11 along with thousands of dead in Europe, the United States and in the Arab countries themselves, especially in Iraq.

Today it is clear to everyone who is prepared to confront unadorned reality, and they are the majority of people in Israeli society with the wish to live, that we have to take advantage of the short period of time left to us to prepare the army for the inevitable next war. It is already on the way.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-needs-unconditional-surrender-from-hamas-c56d725d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Israel needs to declare the precise goals of its Gaza campaign—for its own citizens and soldiers, and to establish the credibility of its efforts in the world’s eyes. The “destruction” of Hamas has no meaning in international law and is too vague for Israelis being asked to sacrifice everything.

History provides an example of what Israel should do. At the end of World War II, the Allies’ goal was clear: The German Third Reich must agree to an “unconditional surrender.” The Allies’ demand of Germany should be the model for Israel now. Hamas’s war crimes are equal in depravity to those of the Nazis; their magnitude is far less only because Jews now have a fortified homeland and an Israeli army. Hamas and the Nazis also shared the goal of Jewish genocide. Following the Allies’ example, Israel should announce that it will obtain Hamas’s unconditional surrender.

In 1945, in the presence of representatives of the Allied Powers, German High Command officials signed military surrender documents—the Reims accord in France on May 7 and the Act of Military Surrender in Berlin on May 9. The documents required German soldiers to cease military operations. The Allies’ control of German territory enabled them to enforce that order, which they did.

At the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, the Allies agreed on a complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany, the transfer of land from Germany to Poland and the Soviet Union, and the expulsion of German populations from the countries Germany had attacked. The Allies also provided for “de-Nazification”—removing Nazis from positions of authority, eliminating Nazi political organizations, and the arrest and trial of war criminals.

The Allies pursued the removal of Nazis from positions of authority only halfheartedly; but Nazi political parties and organizations were effectively suppressed, and the highest-ranking Nazi leaders were arrested, tried and punished, including by death.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20089/hamas-represent-palestinians

The Biden administration’s assertion that Hamas is an insignificant group of terrorists that does not enjoy the support of many Palestinians is not only false; it is dangerously so. This assertion contradicts the reality, which proves that Hamas actually does represent a significant portion of the Palestinians.

This inconvenient reality is based on public opinion polls conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) and the results of elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council and university student councils and professional unions. It is also based on mass demonstrations and rallies in support of Hamas before and after the October 7 carnage in which Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,400 Israelis and wounded more than 4,000.

The most recent PSR poll, published last month, showed that if new presidential elections were held today, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would win 58% of the vote, while Mahmoud Abbas would only receive 37%. Hamas’s “armed struggle” (terrorism) against Israel was supported by 58% of the Palestinian public, the poll showed…

This means that a majority of Palestinians share Hamas’s desire to eliminate Israel as expressed in the terror group’s 1988 charter. The poll also showed that 71% of the Palestinians support the formation of armed groups to murder Israelis.

In the past few months, Hamas-affiliated students won elections at two major Palestinian universities in the West Bank.

“The [university] elections are considered the bellwether of West Bank politics… With no general Palestinian elections on the horizon, student polls are seen as a ‘test for measuring public opinion’…” — Middle East Eye, May 25, 2023.

In 2021, Abbas cancelled elections he had called for the Palestinian Authority presidency and parliament after realizing that his Fatah faction was poised to lose to Hamas, as took place in the 2006 parliamentary election.

If, according to Biden and Blinken, Hamas does not represent the Palestinians, how do they explain the fact that… hundreds of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip joined the Hamas terrorists who attacked the Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip?

The Biden administration is presenting a false claim according to which most Palestinians are opposed to Hamas and that Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, which rewards terrorists who murder Jews with monthly stipends, is a “peace partner” for Israel. This is a complete distortion of reality and does not represent the truth.

Recently, Abbas reminded everyone that he is an antisemite and a Holocaust denier.

When will Biden and Blinken grasp that there is no difference between the murderous Hamas leaders and Abbas the antisemite? Surely, Biden and Blinken are aware that Abbas has not condemned the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Abbas’s silence is a rambunctious approval of the cold-blooded massacre of hundreds upon hundreds of Israelis. Let there be no mistake about it: both Hamas and Abbas represent a majority of Palestinians whose goal is to murder Jews and destroy Israel.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20081/palestine-cause-state

Why did Hamas trigger its attack out of the blue? Hamas apologists repeat the usual shibboleths: occupation, colonial settlements, expulsions, Apartheid, the two-state solution.

A closer look, however, shows that none of those “reasons” could explain, let alone justify, why Hamas did what it did on October 7.

The [Palestinian Authority] and Hamas have preferred to pose as guardians of the flame rather than builders of state structures…. For a brief period, 2007-2013, the PA under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad tried to promote the state-building culture as opposed to the chest-beating posture of “the cause”. But both Hamas and the PA did all they could to derail Fayyad’s project.

The “Gaza first” scheme exposed the concept of “security through evacuation” as a dangerous myth that replaced another myth: land-for-peace, which has offered what amounts to lukewarm and always reversible peace.

All along, Israeli leaders tried to jump through one hoop after another to avoid seriously dealing with the “two-state” formula, which the United States and its Western allies promoted regardless of its lack of support among Israelis and Palestinians.

[T]he “Palestinian cause” [is] used, and abused, as a means of legitimizing regimes as diverse as the Islamic Republic of Iran; the AKP in Turkey and, believe it or not, the leftist outfit in Colombia. And that not to mention “return ticket revolutionaries” in the West who draw voyeuristic pleasure from watching others kill and die for “great causes.”

Throughout the Cold War, ignoring the geopolitical dimension of the Israel-Palestine issue encouraged wild-goose diplomatic chasings most notoriously symbolized by the “two-state” formula. Today, the same error is repeated by focusing almost exclusively on Hamas without asking who is funding, training, arming and manipulating Hamas in the name of “clash of civilizations”.

The current tragedy has shattered the status quo that took shape in the aftermath of the Cold War. Attempts at reviving it in one form or another would only provide a prelude to even bigger tragedies.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-radicalism-of-intersectionality

For years, left-wing intellectuals have treated “intersectionality” as an inevitability. The social theory, which holds that all oppressed peoples must join together to overthrow their common oppressor, has been an essential strategy of the Left.

There is some truth to this theory. When the fortunes of the Left are rising, intersectionality seems like a juggernaut: identity groups get aggregated into the mass, internal conflicts are subordinated to the cause of liberation, and a policy of “no enemies to the left” shifts political life in favor of the radicals. But the aura of inevitability surrounding the intersectional coalition is an illusion; moments of crisis can bring suppressed contradictions to the surface and begin a process of fragmentation.

The recent Hamas terror campaign against Israel might become such a crisis. Following the attack, the foot soldiers of intersectionality—most notably, Black Lives Matter (BLM), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the academic “decolonization” movement—celebrated the militants who murdered civilians, raped women, and butchered babies. BLM’s Chicago chapter published a graphic lionizing the Hamas paraglider terrorists who killed innocents. The DSA blamed Israel for the terror attack against it, arguing that it was the “direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime.” Ivy League professors with expertise in “decolonization” called it a “stunning victory” and said that “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle.”

For years, these academics and groups had been able to hide their ideological commitments and operate with an air of respectability. But after last week’s statements, they have encountered a well-deserved backlash. Jewish groups, including the generally left-wing Anti-Defamation League, have condemned BLM’s anti-Semitism. A Democratic congressman quit the DSA in protest. Major donors have rebuked Ivy League universities for failing to condemn Hamas forcefully. The Financial Times warned that the “left’s take on Hamas” could lead to a “Democratic party split.”

While the backlash against the radical Left’s support of terror is welcome, that support should not have come as a surprise. All of the groups have long promoted the violent “decolonization” of not just Israel but also the United States.

BLM has promoted this ideological line since its inception. In 2015, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors led a delegation to the Palestinian territories, so that the group’s activists could learn from the “Palestinian struggle.” She condemned Israel as an “apartheid state,” and the running theme of the trip was revolution, “from Ferguson to Palestine.” The same year, Cullors signed a statement drawing parallels between the Palestinian fight against Israel and the black one against America. During a speech at Harvard Law School, Cullors went further, telling the audience: “If we don’t step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project called Israel, we’re doomed.”

https://themessenger.com/opinion/hamas-attack-israel-critics-palestinians-middle-east-myths

With 1,300 Israeli Jews slaughtered and nearly 200 taken hostage, what’s more infuriating: that critics presume to tell Jerusalem how to conduct a war and run its government or that their views are shaped by blind ignorance and naïve hope?

To its critics in America, Israel’s next steps are straightforward. Yes, hunt down Hamas, but don’t let innocent Palestinians die, shelve a judicial reform plan that offends us, and make peace with the Palestinians.

The right path must seem obvious to those who don’t recall (or weren’t alive) when 3,000 deaths on 9/11 shook us to our core, uniting us amid calls across the political spectrum that Washington do whatever it must (with no caveats attached) to prevent another attack. And that call to action came after just one attack from afar — and not, as in Israel, after relentless attacks across the border since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas seized control of it from the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup in 2007.

The right path must seem even more obvious now that we Americans no longer fear another 9/11 — and that, unlike Israel, we don’t live with genocidal terrorist groups on two borders; a nearby regime (in Tehran) that funds, arms, and directs them; other nations in a turbulent region that remain at war with us; and a global community that focuses undue attention on our imperfections.

Critics concede that “Israel has a right to defend itself” (words that demean the Jewish state because they’re simply assumed about other countries rather than having to be voiced), but they also say in defending itself, Israel should take only “proportionate” action, lest it ignite another “cycle of violence” — i.e., anti-Israeli terror for which critics will later blame Jerusalem for responding.

Do Israel’s knee-jerk critics have open minds? Are they willing to view the slaughter of October 7 and Jerusalem’s response in the context of larger realities? If so, here are three myths for them to revisit:

https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-guilty-until-proven-innocent?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The blood libel heard ’round the world: So let us get this straight: terrorists burst across the border of Israel, slaughtered innocents, raped women, took captives—including toddlers who remain in their hands—then accidentally exploded a rocket in their own Gaza hospital parking lot, and somehow, in all of this, Israel is still the bad guy. 

Let’s start with the rocket. As soon as it went off, Hamas blamed Israel, which in turn said it needed a minute to verify what happened. Do you know who doesn’t need a minute? The mainstream American press. Reuters, The Washington Post, and The New York Times blindly ran with the Hamas account: an Israeli strike, a hospital, hundreds of deaths—500, according to the Times. (A great collection of those headlines can be found here.) The Times even ran an image of a blown-up building—but it wasn’t the hospital. The news ricocheted around the world, leading to attacks on synagogues and marches on embassies. It is the dominant narrative now and likely forever. Even though it is a lie. In the information war, this was a spectacular win for Hamas. 

After Biden announced that U.S. intelligence confirmed the Israeli government account—it was a failed rocket from within Gaza—there were no apologies, no corrections, just subtle headline changes to make it slightly factual-ish. (Just compare this to the uproar after Tom Cotton’s op-ed, which led to the firing of the paper’s opinion editor.) And so it was a bit of an awakening for me. This is the week I realized that the adults I thought were flawed but trying are actually on meth and don’t care. Or maybe it’s even worse: they know it’s a lie.

Of note: one of the NYT reporters doing the liveblog on the Israel-Hamas war was an intern for Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. And Rashida? Even after the facts came out and her own government said the bomb was Hamas’s, Rashida was leading a rally, citing the much too useful blood libel: “I continue to watch people think it’s okay to bomb a hospital with children.”