RUTHFULLY YOURS

Israel acting disproportionately? Think again

Once again, millions of Israelis are under assault from the threat of rockets from Gaza. And once again, truth, morality and international law are coming under vicious assault.

In a short piece in Wednesday’s Guardian, Owen Jones decried the BBC’s lack of balance. After condemning Palestinian rocket attacks, he objected to a headline which stated that Israel was ‘under renewed Hamas attack’.

In his words, it was ‘as perverse as Mike Tyson punching a toddler, followed by a headline claiming that the child spat at him’. This was because Israel, ‘a military superpower’, was being pitted against Gazans with ‘almost entirely ineffective missiles’.

Echoing these thoughts in Wednesday’s Independent, Robert Fisk, hardly one to resist an anti-Israeli calumny, made a similar point. ‘OK’, he declared, ‘so by this afternoon, the exchange rate of death in two days was 40-0 in favour of Israel’.

Then there was an outrageous cartoon in the same paper by Dave Brown, purporting to show Israeli jets pounding Gaza while evoking a Biblical verse from Leviticus. The suggestion was that Israel was exacting disproportionate and inhuman revenge for Palestinian wrongs.

At the UN, Ban Ki Moon has condemned rocket fire but added this warning to Israel: “The excessive use of force and endangering of civilian lives are also intolerable.”

According to these views, the divergence in the casualty count shows that Israel is automatically in the wrong. Worse, its ‘Mike Tyson’ tendencies make it a demented regional bully, one which responds to ‘primitive’ attacks with gargantuan force. This view is supported by BBC images of suffering Palestinian civilians, with a clear subtext that they are victims of Israeli wrongdoing.

While western leaders have been broadly sympathetic to Israel’s predicament, the mood music could easily change. In the past, world leaders have been quick to accuse Israel of using disproportionate or excessive force while the UN has echoed the more serious accusation that civilians have been targeted. Yet these charges are egregious falsehoods, the result of lazy thinking, bigotry and a failure to understand international law.

The U.S. government is generally expected to act in the interest of the people of the United States.

The influx of children across our southern border is troubling. First, because they are not all children — not by a sight — but images of children are useful for stirring emotions to muddy the policy waters. Second, because it is not all that unusual: As the Wall Street Journal reports, between 23,000 and 47,000 minors illegally entered the United States and were apprehended in each of the past five years; in 2013, we ordered only 3,525 deportations, suggesting that something on the order of nine in ten, or more, of minor illegal aliens — again, of the number apprehended — are allowed to stay. The number not apprehended is very large, the number of non-minors is very large, and that is how we find ourselves with not millions but tens of millions of illegal aliens resident in these United States.

Don’t tell my friend Mark Krikorian, who recently praised my views on immigration as “patriotic,” but I am something of a liberal on the question. I am generally in favor of relatively high levels of immigration, at least of certain kinds of immigrants. But whether you are a hawk like Krikorian or a squish like me, there are some things we can and should agree upon.

1. Borders are a fundamental aspect of national sovereignty. They are, in part, what defines a country — indeed, the word “define” means to put borders around something. In the United States, we have a federal system, in which the national government exists to do things that are impossible or impractical for the states to do severally. The federal government generally comes into play when the states have disputes with one another or when they interact with foreign powers and foreign peoples. National governments set the terms under which non-nationals may enter a country or immigrate to it. Even putative open-borders schemes realistically incorporate a role for the national government, inasmuch as they assume that it will do things such as screen for diseases or contraband, that it will distinguish between immigrants and foreign agents or militaries, etc.

2. Where the national government acts to establish rules and standards for immigration, it must first establish the controlling criterion, answering the question of what it intends to accomplish through its immigration policies. While some governments may be liberal in the sense that Robert Frost understood the term — too broadminded to take their own side in a fight — the government of the United States is generally expected to act in the interest of the people of the United States. Sometimes it engages in humanitarian efforts in service to a consistently ungrateful world, but its controlling principle is the national interest of the United States.

3. The United States, like any country, has many kinds of national interests: economic, military, cultural, etc. It is not chauvinistic, jingoistic, or yahooistic to recognize that fact and to expect that our national immigration policy, like our defense policy and our economic policy, is organized around those interests.

The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood. If it becomes clear that [Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be a temporary accord and… we will have no choice but to abrogate it. And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places it is about to leave in the upcoming months.

– Yossi Beilin on the Oslo Accords

Everything is reversible.

– Yitzhak Rabin on the Oslo Accords

Truth be told, I found it difficult to write my column this week. I spent hours staring at my laptop’s keyboard, unable to compose a single sentence, feeling waves of anger, frustration and disbelief wash over me as the news of the bombardment of the country came streaming through the television set beside me.

Depressing déjà vu

It was not that there was a dearth of topics to write about. There was a surplus of issues that could be subject matter for a column relating to the events of the last few days.

For example:

• The “original sin” of Oslo, that made the perverse – and previously scorned – notion of Palestinian statehood the center-piece of Israeli policy, which opened the flood gates of terror across the country, and eventually precipitated the current situation in Gaza;

• The continuous poor judgment by the Israeli leadership over the last two decades as to developments in Gaza and how they should be dealt with;

• The debilitating distortions and ridiculous restrictions imposed on the formulation and conduct of Israeli policy regarding Gaza by the diktats of political correctness;

As a liberal Zionist, certain statements are expected from me at times like this, so let’s get it out of the way:

1. The kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers was an abominable crime.

2. So was the kidnap and murder of a Palestinian teenager.

3. Palestinians have a right to a state of their own, secure in its own borders,

4. But so does Israel.

5. Hamas is a wholly malevolent organization who would be recognized as neo-Nazis if they happened to be white Christians.

6. The Israeli government, whatever my disagreements with it, is still a liberal democracy doing its best under highly adverse circumstances.

7. This doesn’t mean that every innocent Palestinian killed isn’t a tragedy, but…

8. War is war.

Are we done now? Can we not have this printed and bound in pamphlet form, to be distributed by the well-wrung hands of liberal writers each time events in the Holy Land take another apocalyptic turn? Because I’m a bit exhausted, to be honest. The kind of existential, moral exhaustion that might also be called despair.

This is how I feel, as a coddled third-hand observer a happy ocean or two away, so what Israelis and Palestinians feel must be beyond the power of words to describe. In 2017, Israel will have held the Palestinian territories for half a century, and the solution keeps on receding into the distance.

As my list above implies, I can’t pretend to be entirely neutral: I stand with Israel, as the hashtag has it. Even if I didn’t find the Zionist claim to a state in the historical Jewish homeland compelling, I’d still feel inclined towards Israel for reasons of solidarity.

What I mean by this was expressed beautifully by Howard Jacobson in 2009. So little has changed since then that, after I read it for the first time recently, I assumed it had been written this week. You should take the time to read the whole thing, but the nub is this: there is legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy, and then there is the international anti-Zionist movement, and the two bear scant relation to one another.

THIS WAS WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY 2009….JAN POLLER REMINDED ME…..RSK

Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the ‘criticism’ of Israel for what it really is Emotions have run high over recent events in Gaza. And in this impassioned and searching essay, our writer argues that just below the surface runs a vicious strain of ancient prejudice

I was once in Melbourne when bush fires were raging 20 or 30 miles north of the city. Even from that distance you could smell the burning. Fine fragments of ash, like slivers of charcoal confetti, covered the pavements. The very air was charred. It has been the same here these past couple of months with the fighting in Gaza. Only the air has been charred not with devastation but with hatred. And I don’t mean the hatred of the warring parties for each other. I mean the hatred of Israel expressed in our streets, on our campuses, in our newspapers, on our radios and televisions, and now in our theatres.
A discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged and as far as I can see irreversible revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in here – the free exchange of opinions, the clear-headedness of thinkers and teachers, the fine tracery of social interdependence we call community relations, modernity of outlook, tolerance, truth. You can taste the toxins on your tongue.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is, I am assured, “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. In the matter of Israel and the Palestinians this country has been heading towards a dictatorship of the one-minded for a long time; we seem now to have attained it. Deviate a fraction of a moral millimetre from the prevailing othodoxy and you are either not listened to or you are jeered at and abused, your reading of history trashed, your humanity itself called into question. I don’t say that self-pityingly. As always with dictatorships of the mind, the worst harmed are not the ones not listened to, but the ones not listening. So leave them to it, has essentially been my philosophy. A life spent singing anti-Zionist carols in the company of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway is its own punishment.

But responses to the fighting in Gaza have been such as to drive even the most quiescent of English Jews – whether quiescent because we have learnt to expect nothing else, or because we are desperate to avoid trouble, or because we have our own frustrations with Israel to deal with – out of our usual stoical reserve. Some things cannot any longer go unchallenged.

My first challenge is implicit in the phrase “the fighting in Gaza”, which more justly describes the event than the words “Massacre” and “Slaughter” which anti-Israel demonstrators carry on their placards. This is not a linguistic ploy on my part to play down the horror of Gaza or to minimise the loss of life. In an article in this newspaper last week, Robert Fisk argued that “a Palestinian woman and her child are as worthy of life as a Jewish woman and her child on the back of a lorry in Auschwitz”. I am not sure who he was arguing with, but it certainly isn’t me.

The ability of the Jews in their State of Israel to defend themselves against an ongoing barrage of rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists in Gaza has lifted the thin veil of supposed objectivity claimed by major media outlets.

Instead of condemning Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists for terrorizing a country with 8,180 million people (6,135 million Jews; 1,694 million Arabs, and 348,000 non-Arabs), and holding them responsible to all of the casualties both in Gaza and in Israel, the Washington Post is protesting against “The lopsided death tolls in Israel-Palestinian conflicts.” Time’s “Civilian Casualties Rise as Israel Hammers Gaza From the Air,” audaciously claims Israel is to blame for Hamas’s attacking “Israel any way they can, and the way that works best is missiles.” And the New York Times, commiserates: “For Gazans, a Tense and Somber, Ramadan.” The obscene refusal to point the finger at the cause for all this — Hamas — attests to the success of Hamas’s and the Palestinian’s virulent decades-long anti-Israeli propaganda campaign.

Like the media, U.S. President Obama, has failed to tell Hamas “Stop shooting! Stop attacking Israel and stop ordering Gaza residents to ignore Israeli warnings.” Instead, Obama and the media call on Israel to stop defending its citizens, i.e., stop retaliating against Hamas.

Yossi Kuperwasser, director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, told Time’s reporter, “We have to make sure that we end this confrontation with a clear result, that Hamas stops the launching of rockets and terrorist attacks on Israel, and that it has no appetite to resume these kind of activities in the future. That is the goal of this operation.”

Time and again Israel has caved in to U.S. and European pressure. American-dictated “cease-fire” has only lead to increased Palestinian terrorism, by Hamas, the PLO, or others. It’s time Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu does not cave in to American, or “world opinion” pressure. He and the country he leads cannot afford it anymore.

For too long Israel has jeopardized its national security by oversimplifying Palestinian terrorism. Fed up with wars they deluded themselves again and again that the Palestinians also wish to raise their children peacefully, develop businesses and become good neighbors. This wishful thinking led to ” the credulous notion that “talking minimizes shooting,” wrote Ambassador (ret) Yoram Ettinger, in Israel Hayom.

Today, in David Wilder’s letter from Hebron, Israel he notes “The existence of the “Iron Dome” system, which shoots the terror missiles while still in the air is a double miracle. The very fact that such a weapon exists, and the fact that it actually works. According to IDF statistics, the success rate stands (or flies) at 90%. The system not only identifies the attacking missiles’ trajectory, but also where it is expected to land. If the targeted area is populated, the ‘iron dome’ explodes into action. If it projects that the rocket will land in an unpopulated place, it does not operate. ” I thought immediately of the American patriot who worked tirelessly to develop and implement a missile defense system “Star Wars”.

This is a tribute from November 20, 2012
http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?s=GENERAL+DANIEL+GRAHAM

WHEN I READ WITH PRIDE OF THE SUCCESS OF ISRAEL’S DOME SYSTEM I AM REMINDED OF THE LATE LT. COL. DANIEL GRAHAM, A FRIEND, A STALWART CHRISTIAN ZIONIST AND SUPPORTER OF AMERICANS FOR A SAFE ISRAEL. UNTIL HIS DEATH HE WORKED TO DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT A MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM AND ALWAYS MENTIONED THE LATE HERBERT ZWEIBON AS ONE OF HIS BEST ALLIES. RSK

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/dograham.htm

Born in Portland, Oregon, Daniel O. Graham attended college at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He later attended the Army’s Command and General Staff College and the U.S. Army War College. During his 30 years in the military, Graham saw active duty in Germany, Korea, and Vietnam. Some key assignments included Estimator of Soviet and East European Affairs; the Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army; the Office of National Estimates of the Central Intelligence Agency, Chief of Current Intelligence and Estimates for the Military Assistance Command in Vietnam; and Director of Collections, and Director of Estimates of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
From 1973-1974, Graham served as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and from 1974-1976 as Director of its military counterpart, the Defense Intelligence Agency. During his military career, Graham received some of the highest decorations our nation bestows: the Distinguished Service Medal; the Distinguished Intelligence Medal; the Legion of Merit with two oak-leaf clusters; and in 1980 the National Armed Services Award presented by the Veterans of Foreign Wars. He served as military advisor to Ronald Reagan in both the 1976 and 1980 Presidential campaigns. In 1978, Graham became Co-Chairman of the Coalition for Peace through Strength.
In 1981, he founded and became Director of High Frontier. Lieutenant General Graham (Ret.) passed away on 31 December 1995 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

TRIBUTE TO GENERAL D.O. GRAHAM
HON. DANA ROHRABACHER
in the House of Representatives
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1996
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Speaker, Gen. Daniel Graham’s service to this country has been matched by few Americans. As a tribute to him and his achievements, I would like to submit for the Record, a letter that Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote to General Graham last year, and General Graham’s obituary as it appeared in the January 3, 1996, edition of the New York Times.
U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC, May 10, 1995.

Dear Dan: I am sorry I am not able to join you this evening. However, I do not want my appreciation of your achievements to go unstated.
Your contributions to U.S. national security and the U.S. space program are exceptionally well known in Congress. As Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, your unflinching analysis of Soviet capabilities and intentions reminded us that the Soviet Union was an unfailing adversary that wished the United States immense harm. Your fortitude in telling elected officials the cold, hard truth, even when they sometimes did not want to hear it, served as a guidepost by which we could reorient U.S. foreign policy and win the Cold War.

Even in retirement, General Graham, you were dedicated and forward-thinking which you proved by founding High Frontier, a citizen’s organization dedicated to leading the United States towards a secure future in space. Your leadership helped President Reagan launch the Strategic Defense Initiative, which has brought us ever closer to ending the threat of nuclear annihilation. However, you were not satisfied to simply improve national security, but you led High Frontier and its sister organization, the Space Transportation Association, to creatively think about the U.S. future in space. Today, under you care and instruction, these two organizations are among the most creative sources of thinking on developing outer space as a national resource. The X-33 program to create a reusable rocket that dramatically lowers the cost of access to space, for example, would not be happening today without the contributions of you and your colleagues.

In closing, I can only say thank you for your past service in the Cold War and your wonderful contributions to America’s future. In formulating a vision for space development, you planted, watered, and nurtured a seed that is growing as we speak and will one day surpass our wildest imagination. Thank you Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham for helping save America.
Your friend,
Newt Gingrich.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/us-navy-and-marine-team-a-global-combat-force-for-good

Debate over the type of response America should demonstrate against the fanatical Islamic killers called ISIS is cloudy, confused and murky in DC.

This is especially true inside the Obama Administration.

Vice President Biden early on wanted a three part geographic division of Iraq, Sunni, Shia, and Kurds.

While Ambassadors’ Susan Power, now at UN, and Susan Rice, now NSC Director, along with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initiated a war in Libya called Odyssey Dawn, which they justified, by the ever evolving Obama Doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” or in DC speak R2P.

However right now – today – the President heeding the advice from his team’s previously offered insights, could initiate truly significant U.S. combat action to save lives while also degrading the combat capability of ISIS.

Protecting Kurdistan and saving Christians could be a brilliant military move.

Time is short but fortunately a Navy Marine Combat Force, to challenge ISIS with both airpower and an insertion force of US Marines are now ready on station in the Persian Gulf.

First to arrive was the USS George H.W. Bush with escort ships the Destroyer USS Truxton, and the guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea.

The Bush has been joined by a Navy/Marine Amphibious Group; USS Bataan including the USS Mesa Verde and USS Gunston Hall with the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) embarked.

The 22nd MEU is a battalion sized force of Maries with indigenous air assets the MV-22s, MH-53, MH-60 and AV-8 Harrier.

Additionally, one of the unheralded contributions of the Navy/Marine team being combat ready at all times is at sea support from our Military Sealift Command (MSC).

That fleet’s ready professionalism was expressed in a recent interview with MSC Commander Rear Admiral T.K. Shannon USN.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/daniel-greenfield-on-the-invasion-on-our-southern-border-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s special guest on The Glazov Gang was Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog, The Point, at Frontpagemag.com.

Daniel discussed The Invasion on Our Southern Border, unveiling the horror of Obama’s border disaster. He also discussed Israel vs. Hamas, Obama’s Iraq Throwaway, Hillary’s Rape Defense Lies, and much, much more.

Don’t miss it:

The House passed a bipartisan resolution by unanimous consent today to support Israel “as it defends itself against unprovoked rocket attacks from the Hamas terrorist organization.”

Reps. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.) introduced the resolution two days ago, and it was fast-tracked to the floor with more than 140 co-sponsors.

“I applaud the passage of this bipartisan resolution affirming U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself against violence,” said Israel, who is also chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “It demonstrates the strong and unwavering partnership between the U.S. and the State of Israel and sends a clear message to Hamas and other terrorist organizations that acts of terror against Israel will not be tolerated.”

Cole said the House “reinforced its support of our friends in Israel during times of great tension and unrest in the region.”

“Over the last several weeks, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, putting the lives of our Israeli friends in grave danger. As Israel combats these acts of terror, I am pleased that this resolution shows that America stands behind our friends,” he said. “I am also very proud that the Iron Dome, a joint Israeli-American project that intercepts missiles, has helped in the fight against terror and protected millions of lives. During these times of unrest, this technology is proving indispensable.”

The Iron Dome battery has enjoyed strong bipartisan support in Congress since they went into action in 2011.

The resolution “reaffirms [House] support for Israel’s right to defend its citizens and ensure the survival of the State of Israel, condemns the unprovoked rocket fire at Israel, and calls on Hamas to immediately cease all rocket and other attacks against Israel.”

It included an amendment from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) noting that Iran is an enabler of Hamas.

“Hamas and their supporters remain committed to armed struggle against Israel’s right to exist–as they deliberately target Israeli population centers using many weapons provided by Iran,” Royce said. “With these threats arrayed against Israel, we will continue stand with the Israeli people.”