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Palestinians goal is genocide against Israeli civilians.
Palestinians goal is genocide against Israeli civilians.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1027506426953
Aug. 2, 2002
COLUMN ONE By CAROLINE B. GLICK: No tolerance for genocide
The television camera lens moves with seeming effortlessness from the pictures of suffering and death at the Hebrew University to the carnival in Gaza City, where thousands take to the streets in celebration of the pictures from Jerusalem. Gazing at the revelers on the screen, one strains one's eyes to find an expression of shame, guilt, or remorse on the faces in the crowd. One unconsciously prays to discern anything that would show that those in front of the camera are there by accident or because they were forced to be there. But no, the faces on the screen are uninhibited, joyful ones.
Far from being forced to participate in the festivities, each and every one of the people at the parade in Gaza makes a personal decision to leave his or her home and join the crowd in applauding the mass murder of Jews. They are there because they support the murders. They are there because such murders make them happy.
These Gazans, and their counterparts at Balata refugee camp near Nablus, were not celebrating a military victory. There was no battle at the cafeteria in the Frank Sinatra International Student Center. These Palestinians men, women, teenagers, and small children came together to celebrate another massacre in their genocidal campaign against the Jewish people.
Yes, genocide. The Palestinians have reached a point in this war where it has now become clear that their goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called "occupation," but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews because they are Jewish. That is, the Palestinian goal today is genocide.
In a seminal article in Commentary magazine this past February on the recent rise of anti-Semitism, Hillel Halkin argued, counterintuitively, that the Holocaust is the main reason why it is so difficult for Jews today to accept the fact of anti-Semitism. In his words, "The Holocaust has made some Jews less, rather than more, able to see anti-Semitism around them. This is because if the Nazis demonized the Jew, they also demonized the anti-Semite." In short, if an anti-Semite is not a Nazi, then it is hard for Jews to perceive him as a threat.
Just so, even as generations of Jews adopted "Never Again" as their rallying cry, the Holocaust made it difficult for us to notice when genocide is adopted as a policy against the Jewish people, without gas chambers present. The fact that the Palestinians currently lack the means used by the Germans to perpetrate their genocidal policy against the Jews blinds us from the fact that their desire to do so is the same as that of the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s.
The absence of the trappings of the Nazi Holocaust also prevents us from properly identifying repeated massacres of Israelis by Palestinians. Contrary to what we tell ourselves, these attacks are not expressions of rage or reactions to specific actions by the IDF. They are acts of genocide perpetrated against Jews as Jews because the Palestinians have descended to the level of depravity where they do not view the Jews as human beings whose murder is an inherently immoral act.
The fact that the Palestinians don ski masks and keffiyehs rather than brown shirts and swastikas also makes us undervalue the fact that, like the Nazis, the Palestinians are utilizing all their technological know-how and military resources to kill Jews and are making their best efforts to constantly improve and enhance these resources to increase their kill rate.
Daniel Goldhagen showed in his masterful book, Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, that contrary to popular belief, the Holocaust was not a Nazi-specific affair, but rather a German affair. While Hitler and his Nazi Party dominated Germany, the Germans allowed themselves to be dominated. While the Nazis were the architects of the Holocaust, they perpetrated it with the active support and participation of many rank-and-file Germans from all walks of life, in all sectors of German society regardless of membership in the Nazi Party.
Such is also the case in Palestinian society today. It is not just Hamas or Tanzim or Islamic Jihad that we must fight, but Palestinian society itself must be transformed for there to be peaceful coexistence. All major indicators point to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians is complicit in the aim of committing genocide against the Israelis. Poll after poll shows that a solid majority of Palestinians from all socio-economic levels supports suicide bombers and other forms of terrorism against Israel. In fact the polls show that the higher the socio-economic level of the respondents, the stronger their support for terrorism.
Virulent, Nazi-style Jew hatred and dehumanization has become for the Palestinians, as for the Germans before them, the central unifying theme of society. The best-seller lists in the PA for years have included such works as Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Being a relative of a suicide bomber is a status symbol.
From the schoolrooms to the mosques to the daily papers to the art studios, Palestinians teach, preach, write and paint in praise of genocide. Even Yasser Arafat's purportedly democratic and pro-Western opposition has no moral qualms about massacring Israelis. Leaders like the much-feted Sari Nusseibeh argue against suicide bombings not because they are morally reprehensible, but because of their tactical inconvenience.
In an interview on Al-Jazeera television on July 14, translated by Palestinian Media Watch, Nusseibeh praised everyone involved in jihad against Israel. Explaining that he did not want to pass moral judgment on the murderers when he signed a petition a month earlier calling for an end to suicide bombers, Nusseibeh said that terrorism presents no moral dilemma, it is only a question of whether or not "political benefit" accrues from killing Israeli civilians.
Nusseibeh's explanation echoes the official PA condemnations of every attack. There is never a moral judgment made, only a cost-benefit analysis. That killing Jews is acceptable is quite simply taken for granted.
Once we understand that this is the situation in Palestinian society, we reconcile ourselves with the fact that we are not in a struggle against a political movement for national sovereignty. We are being victimized by a genocidal campaign for our violent elimination supported by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians.
To defuse the danger presented to Israel by the genocidal Palestinians, we must also look to the German experience and take our cue from the Allied policy for the de-Nazification of postwar Germany. In World War II it was clear to the Allies that Germany would have to undergo a long process of social and political transformation before the Germans could again be trusted with sovereignty. The first step on the road was an unconditional surrender of the German army to Allied forces. As part of their military surrender, German nationals were forcibly deported from the strategically vital Danzig corridor and East Prussia, which were handed over to Poland. The Germans ceded all claims to the territory and deported nationals were banished with no right of return.
Furthermore, the surrender terms for Germany involved the stationing of a permanent occupation force on German soil, which still exists today, 58 years later, and forced limitations on German military capabilities and troop levels.
The transformation of German politics involved permanently banning anyone involved in the Nazi regime or supportive of that regime from participation in German political life.
There is no longer any room to doubt that the Palestinians, to become a nation that will live at peace with Israel, must undergo a similar transformation. Whether Israel can force such a process onto the Palestinians by itself or whether such a transformation will necessarily take place as part of a reshuffling of the Arab world that supports its genocidal program remains to be seen. But what is clear enough is that there can be no negotiations, no legitimacy, and no tolerance for a society whose central organizing principle is the physical elimination of the Jewish people.
Aug. 2, 2002
COLUMN ONE By CAROLINE B. GLICK: No tolerance for genocide
The television camera lens moves with seeming effortlessness from the pictures of suffering and death at the Hebrew University to the carnival in Gaza City, where thousands take to the streets in celebration of the pictures from Jerusalem. Gazing at the revelers on the screen, one strains one's eyes to find an expression of shame, guilt, or remorse on the faces in the crowd. One unconsciously prays to discern anything that would show that those in front of the camera are there by accident or because they were forced to be there. But no, the faces on the screen are uninhibited, joyful ones.
Far from being forced to participate in the festivities, each and every one of the people at the parade in Gaza makes a personal decision to leave his or her home and join the crowd in applauding the mass murder of Jews. They are there because they support the murders. They are there because such murders make them happy.
These Gazans, and their counterparts at Balata refugee camp near Nablus, were not celebrating a military victory. There was no battle at the cafeteria in the Frank Sinatra International Student Center. These Palestinians men, women, teenagers, and small children came together to celebrate another massacre in their genocidal campaign against the Jewish people.
Yes, genocide. The Palestinians have reached a point in this war where it has now become clear that their goal in this struggle is not the end of the so-called "occupation," but rather the organized, premeditated mass murder of Jews because they are Jewish. That is, the Palestinian goal today is genocide.
In a seminal article in Commentary magazine this past February on the recent rise of anti-Semitism, Hillel Halkin argued, counterintuitively, that the Holocaust is the main reason why it is so difficult for Jews today to accept the fact of anti-Semitism. In his words, "The Holocaust has made some Jews less, rather than more, able to see anti-Semitism around them. This is because if the Nazis demonized the Jew, they also demonized the anti-Semite." In short, if an anti-Semite is not a Nazi, then it is hard for Jews to perceive him as a threat.
Just so, even as generations of Jews adopted "Never Again" as their rallying cry, the Holocaust made it difficult for us to notice when genocide is adopted as a policy against the Jewish people, without gas chambers present. The fact that the Palestinians currently lack the means used by the Germans to perpetrate their genocidal policy against the Jews blinds us from the fact that their desire to do so is the same as that of the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s.
The absence of the trappings of the Nazi Holocaust also prevents us from properly identifying repeated massacres of Israelis by Palestinians. Contrary to what we tell ourselves, these attacks are not expressions of rage or reactions to specific actions by the IDF. They are acts of genocide perpetrated against Jews as Jews because the Palestinians have descended to the level of depravity where they do not view the Jews as human beings whose murder is an inherently immoral act.
The fact that the Palestinians don ski masks and keffiyehs rather than brown shirts and swastikas also makes us undervalue the fact that, like the Nazis, the Palestinians are utilizing all their technological know-how and military resources to kill Jews and are making their best efforts to constantly improve and enhance these resources to increase their kill rate.
Daniel Goldhagen showed in his masterful book, Hitler's Willing Executioners Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, that contrary to popular belief, the Holocaust was not a Nazi-specific affair, but rather a German affair. While Hitler and his Nazi Party dominated Germany, the Germans allowed themselves to be dominated. While the Nazis were the architects of the Holocaust, they perpetrated it with the active support and participation of many rank-and-file Germans from all walks of life, in all sectors of German society regardless of membership in the Nazi Party.
Such is also the case in Palestinian society today. It is not just Hamas or Tanzim or Islamic Jihad that we must fight, but Palestinian society itself must be transformed for there to be peaceful coexistence. All major indicators point to the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians is complicit in the aim of committing genocide against the Israelis. Poll after poll shows that a solid majority of Palestinians from all socio-economic levels supports suicide bombers and other forms of terrorism against Israel. In fact the polls show that the higher the socio-economic level of the respondents, the stronger their support for terrorism.
Virulent, Nazi-style Jew hatred and dehumanization has become for the Palestinians, as for the Germans before them, the central unifying theme of society. The best-seller lists in the PA for years have included such works as Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Being a relative of a suicide bomber is a status symbol.
From the schoolrooms to the mosques to the daily papers to the art studios, Palestinians teach, preach, write and paint in praise of genocide. Even Yasser Arafat's purportedly democratic and pro-Western opposition has no moral qualms about massacring Israelis. Leaders like the much-feted Sari Nusseibeh argue against suicide bombings not because they are morally reprehensible, but because of their tactical inconvenience.
In an interview on Al-Jazeera television on July 14, translated by Palestinian Media Watch, Nusseibeh praised everyone involved in jihad against Israel. Explaining that he did not want to pass moral judgment on the murderers when he signed a petition a month earlier calling for an end to suicide bombers, Nusseibeh said that terrorism presents no moral dilemma, it is only a question of whether or not "political benefit" accrues from killing Israeli civilians.
Nusseibeh's explanation echoes the official PA condemnations of every attack. There is never a moral judgment made, only a cost-benefit analysis. That killing Jews is acceptable is quite simply taken for granted.
Once we understand that this is the situation in Palestinian society, we reconcile ourselves with the fact that we are not in a struggle against a political movement for national sovereignty. We are being victimized by a genocidal campaign for our violent elimination supported by the overwhelming majority of Palestinians.
To defuse the danger presented to Israel by the genocidal Palestinians, we must also look to the German experience and take our cue from the Allied policy for the de-Nazification of postwar Germany. In World War II it was clear to the Allies that Germany would have to undergo a long process of social and political transformation before the Germans could again be trusted with sovereignty. The first step on the road was an unconditional surrender of the German army to Allied forces. As part of their military surrender, German nationals were forcibly deported from the strategically vital Danzig corridor and East Prussia, which were handed over to Poland. The Germans ceded all claims to the territory and deported nationals were banished with no right of return.
Furthermore, the surrender terms for Germany involved the stationing of a permanent occupation force on German soil, which still exists today, 58 years later, and forced limitations on German military capabilities and troop levels.
The transformation of German politics involved permanently banning anyone involved in the Nazi regime or supportive of that regime from participation in German political life.
There is no longer any room to doubt that the Palestinians, to become a nation that will live at peace with Israel, must undergo a similar transformation. Whether Israel can force such a process onto the Palestinians by itself or whether such a transformation will necessarily take place as part of a reshuffling of the Arab world that supports its genocidal program remains to be seen. But what is clear enough is that there can be no negotiations, no legitimacy, and no tolerance for a society whose central organizing principle is the physical elimination of the Jewish people.
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Black's racism and hostility toward Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular - is only exceeded by his hatred of organized labor. Hollinger's assets now include: The Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, a large number of community newspapers in the Chicago area and a portfolio of new media investments. Most have have been subjected to vicious union busting campaigns by Hollinger management. .
Black's Canadian newspapers are primarily in Ontario and British Columbia and are owned through Hollinger Canadian Newspapers, Limited Partnership. In addition, the Company also has a 50% interest in The National Post Company, and a 15.6% equity interest in CanWest Global Communications Corp., an international media company with substantial interests in conventional television, specialty cable channels, radio networks and newspapers. In April 2002, Hollinger sold its ineterest in The National Post Company to CanWest Global Communications, the owner of the other 50% interest.
Hollinger's international advisory board indcludes former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Chair), noted war criminal Henry Kissinger, rightwing gadfly William F. Buckley, and Bush national security advisor Richard ( Let's go to Baghdad Right Now!) Perle.
For more info, visit the Newpaper Guild website Newshttp://www.newsguild.org/iw/display.php?storyID=117#hollinger
,
Known for its unconditional support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and the Likud Bloc, the Jerusalem Post is also a wholly owned subsidary of Hollinger International, a media conglomerate owned by rightwing media mogul Conrad Black.
Black, whose hatred of Arabs in general - and Palestinians in particular - is only surpassed by his hostility toward organized labor, currently controls assets that includeThe Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, and The Jerusalem Post.
HollingersThe Canadian newspapers are primarily in Ontario and British Columbia and are owned through Hollinger Canadian Newspapers, Limited Partnership. In addition, the Company also has a 50% interest in The National Post Company, and a 15.6% equity interest in CanWest Global Communications Corp., an international media company with substantial interests in conventional television, specialty cable channels, radio networks and newspapers. In April 2002, the Company sold its ineterest in The National Post Company to CanWest Global Communications, the owner of the other 50% interest.
Hollinger's International Advisory Board includes former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, noted war criminal Henry Kissinger, rightwing columnist and gadfly, William F. Buckley, and Bush national security advisor Richard Perle.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-120601holy.story
Sheikh Muhammed Siyam, a Hamas military leader said this.
"I've been told to restrict or restrain what I say. I hope no one is recording me or taking any pictures, as none are allowed, because I'm going to speak the truth to you," Siyam reportedly said at the conference. "It's simple. Finish off the Israelis. Kill them all! Exterminate them! No peace ever! Do not bother to talk politics."
Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin says, that the date of the establishment of the Islamist state in Palestine, will be built on the ruins of Israel in 2027.
On the same day in 1993 on which Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, he spoke the following words on Jordan TV:
"Since we cannot defeat Israel in war we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."
Arafat’s speech in front of 40 Arab diplomats in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 30, 1996. Was titled "The Impending Collapse of Israel".
"We will take over everything including all of Jerusalem," he declared repeatedly. Arafat's plan has two main components aimed to cause the Jews to abandon Israel. "Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Arafat explained that this will be the beginning of a pressure campaign resulting within a few years in Israel's ultimate destruction. "You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews will not want to live among us Arabs!"
Faisal Husseini right before he died, said Oslo was a Trogan horse and that Israel wouldn't exist in 20 years and he said, there would be a Palestinian state the Jordan to the Mediterranean and no Israel.
===
Anyway, I think we all need to read some Lenni Brenner!
Here is his some of his bio and a homepage:
Lenni Brenner was born into an Orthodox Jewish family. He became an atheist at 12, and a Marxist at 15, in 1952. His involvement with the Black civil rights movement began on his first day in the organized left, when he met James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality, later the organizer of the "freedom rides" of the early 60s. He was active in the mid 50s with Bayard Rustin, later the organizer of Martin Luther King's 1963 "I had a dream" March on Washington.
He is presently editing a collection of documents re Zionist collaboration with Hitler.
http://www.angelfire.com/co4/eccmei/J/host/brenner.html
===
This is a review of his book from 1983.
In lieu of a new introduction
Edward Mortimer
Contradiction, Collusion and Controversy
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that “each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews”?
No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organization and later still the first president of the state of Israel.
And where might you find the following assertion, originally composed in 1917 but republished as late as 1936: “The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligation, knows no order nor discipline”?
Not in Der Stürmer but in the organ of the Zionist youth organization, Hashomer Hatzair.
As the above quoted statement reveals, Zionism itself encouraged and exploited self-hatred in the Diaspora. It started from the assumption that anti-Semitism was inevitable and even in a sense justified so long as Jews were outside the land of Israel.
It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join the war on Germany’s side in 1941, in the hope of establishing “the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich”.
Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to join.
That fact gives an extra edge of topicality to what would in any case be a highly controversial study of the Zionist record in the heyday of European fascism by Lenni Brenner, and American Trotskyist writer who happens also to be Jewish. It is short (250 pages), crisp and carefully documented. Mr Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler’s; he is careful also to put on record the opposition to such policies within the Zionist movement.
In retrospect these activities have been defended as a distasteful but necessary expedient to save Jewish lives. But Brenner shows that most of the time this aim was secondary. The Zionist leaders wanted to help young, skilled and able-bodied Jews to emigrate to Palestine. They were never in the forefront of the struggle against fascism in Europe.
That in no way absolves the wartime Allies for their callous refusal to make any serious effort to save European Jewry. As Brenner says, “Britain must be condemned for abandoning the Jews of Europe”; but, “it is not for the Zionists to do it.”
Q: Israel's record and its attitude toward Hamas have evolved over the years. Didn't Israel once favor it?
A: They not only favored it, they tried to organize and stimulate it. Israel was sponsoring Islamic fundamentalists in the early days of the intifada [the uprising of Palestinians within Israel against the Israeli government]. If there was a strike of students at some West Bank university, the Israeli army would sometimes bus in Islamic fundamentalists to break up the strike.
Sheikh Yaseen, an anti-Semitic maniac in Gaza and the leader of the Islamic fundamentalists, was protected for a long time. They liked him. He was saying, "Let's kill all the Jews." It's a standard thing, way back in history. Seventy years ago Chaim Weizmann was saying: Our danger is Arab moderates, not the Arab extremists.
The invasion of Lebanon was the same thing. Israel wanted to destroy the PLO because it was secular and nationalist, and was calling for negotiations and a diplomatic settlement. That was the threat, not the terrorists. Israeli commentators have been quite frank about that from the start.
Israel keeps making the same mistake, with the same predictable results. In Lebanon, they went in to destroy the threat of moderation and ended up with Hezbollah [Iranian-backed fundamentalists] on their hands. In the West Bank, they also wanted to destroy the threat of moderation -- people who wanted to make a political settlement. There Israel's ending up with
Hamas, which organizes effective guerrilla attacks on Israeli security forces.
It's important to recognize how utterly incompetent secret services are when it comes to dealing with people and politics. Intelligence agencies make the most astonishing mistakes -- just as academics do.
In a situation of occupation or domination, the occupier, the dominant power, has to justify what it's doing. There is only one way to do it -- become a racist. You have to blame the victim. Once you become a raving racist in self-defense, you've lost your capacity to understand what's happening.
The US in Indochina was the same. They never could understand -- there are some amazing examples in the internal record. The FBI right here is the same -- they make the most astonishing mistakes, for similar reasons.
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/pfrm/pfrm-06.html
======================================
Shocked?
I don't know how widely known this information is.
Anyway...
It's a good question to ask who the hell are Hamas, and how did they get to where they are now.
Many years ago I by chance heard a line that stuck in my mind from an award-winning journalist doing a story on Israel/Palestine on a serious current affairs program - something about Hamas being funded by Israel in the past. It struck me as rather bizarre, but I knew next to nothing about this issue then.
Do a search on http://www.google.com/ by putting "Israel" "funded" "Hamas" and you will be as horrified as I was at what you find. Of course, you can find anything on the net, so you have to decide how credible you consider your source to be...
...........................................................................................
Mideast Murder, Inc.
http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/IsraelBotched.html
by Eric Margolis © 1997 Eric Margolis
...........................................................................................
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1998
The Real Significance of the Attempted Israeli Assassination of Khaled Meshal in Jordan
http://www.washington-report.org/backissues/0198/9801008.htm
by Dr. Israel Shahak
There is nothing new in the fact that Israel is a terrorist state which, almost from its inception, has used one of its intelligence agencies, the Mossad, to carry out violence or terror, including assassination, it considers necessary for its ends.
............................................................................................
Israel plays Hamas against Palestinians as Ross arrives
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/971005/1997100502.html
Palestine, Politics, 10/5/1997
It is not clear how the Palestinian-Israeli talks will resume today with both parties being over-occupied with the diplomatic and political aspects of what can now be named "Mishal-Gate" after the aborted Israeli Mossad attempt on the life of Khaled Mishal, head of the political department of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, in Amman some 10 days ago.
Palestinian official sources said they believe a new political role is being designed for Hamas to play in the region in an attempt to counter-balance the influence of the PNA. A senior member of the PNA cabinet said Sunday that Israel would like to see Jordan as the party strong and capable of eliminating Hamas military activities against Israel in order to discredit the PNA.
"It is difficult for me to guess what the upcoming steps of the PNA will be vis-a-vis Hamas. Israel wants us to combat Hamas while Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu releases Sheikh Ahmad Yassin," said the PNA official who did not try to hide his discontent at the recently-forged rapprochement between Jordan and Hamas.
............................................................................................
We expected it - which doesn't make it less horrible by Adam Keller
http://www.indymedia.org.il/imc/israel/webcast/10682.html
Sun Dec 2 '01
And 15 innocent bus passengers in Haifa, blown to death in another horrid explosion, don't open the eyes of Israelis for the fact that by killing Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu-Hunud a week ago, our army was actually putting an end to a tacit understanding between Arafat and Hamas, which had prevented this kind of suicide bombing over the past few months. (The possible implications of assassinating Abu Hunud were quite frankly discussed in the media just a week ago, but the size of today's horror seems to have caused in our society a sort of collective amnesia.)
...........................................................................................
January 4, 2002
Is Israel more secure now? by Edward Said
http://www.counterpunch.org/saidsecure.html
The suicide bombers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad have of course been at work, as Sharon knew perfectly well they would be when, after a ten-day lull in the fighting in late November, he suddenly ordered the murder of the Hamas leader Mahmoud Abu Hanoud: an act designed to provoke Hamas into retaliation and thus allow the Israeli Army to resume the slaughter of Palestinians.
After eight years of barren peace discussions 50 per cent of Palestinians are unemployed and 70 per cent live on less than 2 dollars a day. Every day brings with it unopposable land grabs and house demolitions. The Israelis even make a point of destroying trees and orchards on Palestinian land. Although five or six Palestinians have been killed in the last few months for every one Israeli, the obese old warmonger has the gall to keep repeating that Israel has been the victim of the same terrorism as that meted out by Bin Laden.
...
He has had a well-publicised entente with Hamas since the latter's June bombings: Hamas wouldn't go after Israeli civilians if Arafat left the Islamic parties alone. Sharon killed off the entente with Abu Hanoud's assassination: Hamas retaliated and there was nothing to stop Sharon squeezing the life out of Arafat, with American support. Having destroyed Arafat's security network, his jails and offices, and having physically imprisoned him, Sharon made demands that he knows can't be fulfilled (even though Arafat, with a few cards always up his sleeve, has managed, astonishingly, to half-comply). Sharon stupidly believes that, having dispensed with Arafat, he can make a series of independent agreements with local warlords and divide 40 per cent of the West Bank and most of Gaza into several non-contiguous cantons whose borders the Israeli Army will control. How this is supposed to make Israel more secure eludes me, but not, alas, the people with the relevant power.
.............................................................................................
This article deserves to be more well known. I'll post a more readable version later but I will include this link because of who the message was sent by - Yigal Arens, the son of Moshe Arens, a former Likud Defense Minister (1990-1992) and Foreign Minister (1988-1990) as well as Israel's Ambassador to Washington from 1982 to 1983. ( http://www.ou.org/chagim/yomhaatzmauth/arens.html )
The most honourable Yigal is a 'draft dodger' and I read elsewhere that he has to get special permission to visit Israel so as not to be arrested. He is now an academic living in the US. (Zio-spammers - don't fuck with him, you will make Moshe and Arik very unhappy and you wouldn't want that now would you?!)
Israel gave major to aid to Hamas
http://www.shamash.org/listarchives/pjml/010225
“ Underlying this and countless other Israeli stupidities is their total blindness to the fact that their adversaries actually have legitimate grievances against them. As the Israelis saw it, the PLO's struggle against Israel was some kind of ego trip that Yasser Arafat engaged in -- not an attempt by Palestinians to right real wrongs and gain compensation for valid suffering. So they figure, if they just create a rival group, these "imaginary" causes will be forgotten in the internecine struggle. ”
Israel gave major to aid to Hamas
By RICHARD SALE, Terrorism Correspondent
Saturday, 24 February 2001
NEW YORK, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, speaking of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas recently described it as "the deadliest terrorist group that we have ever had to face." Active in Gaza and the West Bank Hamas wants to liberate all of Palestine and establish a radical Islamic state in place of Israel. It has gained notoriety with its assassinations, car bombs and other acts of terrorism.
But Sharon had left something out.
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years.
Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.
...........................................................................................
January 1996
A Painful Peace by Noam Chomsky
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9601-painful-peace.html
All universities in the territories were built solely with private funding and donations from foreign states, without a penny from Israel,” apart from the Islamic University in Hebron, originally supported by Israel as part of its encouragement of Islamic fundamentalism to undermine the secular PLO, now a Hamas center.
..........................................................................................
A Devil Theory of Islam by Edward W. Said
http://www.thenation.com/issue/960812/0812said.htm
Although Miller is obsessed with Hamas, she is clearly unable to connect it with the sorry state of affairs in territories run brutally by Israel for all these years. She never mentions, for instance, that the only Palestinian university not established with Palestinian funds is Gaza's Islamic (Hamas) University, started by Israel to undermine the P.L.O. during the intifada.
..........................................................................................
This passage is from the American feminist Robin Morgan’s ‘Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism’. The chapter ‘What Do Men Know About Life? : The Middle East’ is about her time spent in Gaza and the West Bank in the late 80s. (I found of copy in a second hand bookshop years ago. An updated version was published after September 11 called ‘The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism’).
---
The genius of male collusion pretending to be enmity is fascinating. Palestinian secular resistance is forbidden (the Palestinian flag is illegal, displaying the colors of that flag is seen as provocative, and the use of the word “Palestine” itself is regarded by the Israeli government as an insult to the State).
But “religious freedom” is much trumpeted. Is it surprising, in such conditions, that hitherto secular Palestinian resistance begins to merge with Islamic fundamentalism?
There is only one university for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It was founded in 1978 by the Saudi Arabian government and is fundamentalist; Al Azhar University in Cairo --- the greatest seat of Arab and Muslim learning in the world --- refuses to accredit it.
This fundamentalist school was welcomed by the Israelis. But when a group of Palestinian scholars in Gaza wanted to found a secular university there, that was not permitted.
Women attending the fundamentalist university must wear the full hijab, not only the head veil but the complete body veil, and must cover their faces and wear gloves. There is no other source of higher education in the Strip. So the women go, like movable bolts of cloth, and each day as they leave, they peel off the veils and gloves.
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Cries of Rage and Frustration by Karen Armstrong
http://cs.hofstra.edu/~vbarr/armstrong.html
Islamic fundamentalists initially directed their efforts against their own countrymen. Thus the movement that eventually gave birth to Hamas began as a revolt against the Palestine Liberation Organisation; members were fighting for the Islamic soul of Palestine, and wanted to give the Palestinian struggle a Muslim, rather than a secularist, identity. Israel recognised this and, at first, funded Hamas to undermine the PLO; it was only after the outbreak of the 1987 intifada that Hamas began to target Israelis.
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I find this interesting because while the writer is no leftist (and neither is Eric Margolis nor the late Israel Shahak above) and sees himself as ‘a friend of Israel’ (whatever he thinks that means) he does not seem too interested in making excuses for what he sees as his friend’s stupidity. I think he comes over as a rather snotty Brit actually, but anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that he is not the sort of person to make baseless accusations against Israel.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft talks to ex-prime minister Shimon Peres, revisits the history of Zionism, and considers which is the more divisive: proportional representation or the bombs of Hamas
http://www.unnu.com/newhome/Gallery/etexts/israelorthodox.htm
November 1997
Israel's system of PR has produced a mushroom growth of small parties. Not only the religious parties and the fringe groups on left and right; the Russian immigrants of the past 15 years, now representing 20 per cent of the Israeli electorate, have formed yet another party, under Natan Sharansky. This proliferation means that no one party ever wins a clear majority of seats in the Knesset.
PR means that every government is a coalition, as Paddy Ashdown would no doubt like. But it also means that every government is in hock to the small parties which hold the parliamentary balance. This is why the religious parties have imposed strict sabbatarianism on what is still a large non-orthodox majority. And it is why they can have the clocks changed at their convenience.
This is a question of democracy, not of religious rights, or of contempt for the orthodox. It is hard not to be impressed and moved by the groups of haredim walking through Jerusalem on high holy days, wearing a costume designed for the 18th century Lithuanian winter rather than for the Levantine summer - heavy black coats, heavier prayer shawls, even heavier fur hats. But these are also the communities which produce those zealots who massacre worshippers in a Hebron mosque and assassinate Israeli statesmen.
Their zealotry is matched on the other side by the killers of Hamas. But then that is partly a problem of Israel's making. The Israeli intelligence services do not always seem very - well - intelligent. When they were looking for a Palestinian terrorist in Norway some years ago they bumped off the wrong man, who was completely innocent. When they tried to bump off another man in Jordan a few weeks ago they cocked it up, got arrested and caused huge political embarrassment.
In a fine demonstration of what "too clever by half" can mean, it was secret Israeli support that built up Hamas in the first place, in Gaza in the late 1970s. What the Israelis wanted was an Islamic counterweight to the secular PLO. What they got were young men and women prepared to blow themselves to pieces - as well as anyone else in the vicinity - in the sure and certain hope of Paradise (not to say the voluptuous sensual delights promised there), and an insoluble challenge to the fundamental Israeli belief that every problem must have an answer.
The reality of this new terror was brought home to me as I walked up the street in west Jerusalem where the latest bomb had gone off, and later as I sat at a pavement restaurant with an Israeli writer. He jumped up suddenly and walked over to embrace a man who was passing by. On returning, my companion explained that this man's young daughter had been horribly injured by the latest bomb; he had been taking a break from the vigil he was keeping at her hospital bedside.
And yet the most startling reaction to that latest suicide bomb came from the mother of another victim. Nurit Peled-Eichanan blamed the death of her 14-year-old daughter on her own country, or at any rate on the Netanyahu government, who "betrayed me. They are sacrificing our children for our megalomania." This is a country which 30 years ago, in the summer of 1967, was more united than any country in history, more than England in the summer of 1940. Today it is a country where 42 per cent of people said in an opinion poll a year ago that they feared a civil war: not war with Arabs, war between Jews.
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Finally, it pays to read widely and you can find some gems in the Israeli English language (less so than what’s printed in Hebrew but it's better than nothing) "mainstream" media that you are not likely to find in the US...
Tuesday, December 04, 2001 Kislev 19, 5762
Careful - you could get Ahmed Yassin
by Akiva Eldar
The report of the bombing in Haifa halted Silvan Shalom's speech. He quickly shifted gears and told the members of the cabinet that no government can survive if it does nothing in the face of such a wave of terror. "Either we drop everything and get out of there," he said, referring to the territories, "or we throw him out," meaning Arafat.
Usually, that's when Shimon Peres interrupts with an angry retort, "What nonsense! Arafat's our only partner." This time, Peres's depression was evident on his face. He preferred a much less forceful warning that if we get rid of Arafat, we'll end up with the Hamas.
None of the ministers protested when Shalom threw back at Peres, "There's nothing to be ashamed of if you admit a mistake. Between Hamas and Arafat, I prefer Hamas."
Shalom said Arafat is a terrorist in a diplomat's suit, while the Hamas can be hit unmercifully. Everyone will understand who we're dealing with, he implied, and there won't be any international protests.
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How interesting this recent quote looks here:
“This exactly what Sharon wants,” a Palestinian political analyst from the West Bank told the Palestine Chronicle in condition of anonymity. “Every time you have some progress and calm, Sharon provokes Palestinians to retaliate. It’s his policy and ever-successful agenda.”
“The fact that the attack targeted a Hamas leader was a response to the offer made by Sheik Yassin to end hostility and occupation. Sharon doesn't want to give Hamas the chance to appear reasonable before the world media. Now, what else do you expect from Hamas but to hit back, and when they do, the Israelis will scream foul and say that they are fighting a war on terror.”
http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/news/2002/07/60932.php
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Shalom didn't invent that approach. But up until recently it's been hidden away in the pages of Nekuda, the settlement movement's weekly, and at the Yesha council's Web site. Ministers Uzi Landau, Natan Sharansky and the Shas representatives in cabinet - and of course Avigdor Lieberman - constantly reiterate that there's no reason to fear Arafat's successor will be worse than him. As far as they're concerned, Arafat is the worst of all.
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Check out this quote from the article:
"According to several reliable sources, Arafat gave permission to Prof. Sari Nusseibeh and then to Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabo, to publicly announce that the PLO recognizes the Jewish identity of the State of Israel, and that the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem would not be at the cost of that identity. "
Was this widely reported in the US media???
It's no wonder the Palestinians look elsewhere for hope and Israel has done its bit to make Hamas that elsewhere.
BRET STEPHENS'S EYE ON THE MEDIA: Great white hopes
By BRET STEPHENS
Here's a story for The New York Times. On July 18, 1937, the Times published an article by Judah L. Magnes, founder and president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, on the subject of "Palestine Peace Seen in Arab-Jewish Agreements." At the time, Magnes had lived in Palestine for 15 years, devoting part of his life to academia, the rest to building bridges with the Arab community, whose hatred of the Jews he ascribed largely to Jewish failings.
"The failure of my own people is hardest to become reconciled to," he informed the Times's readers. "With Jewish help Arab lands would have the chance of rising to their former economic, political and cultural glory. I believe that there are Arab statesmen both in Palestine and elsewhere, of sufficient stature to know that that is worth a real price....
"If a meeting of minds was possible even during the rebellion for a few Jews and a few Arabs by no means the least among their people, this should be possible today, the more so in view of the hostility which partition arouses among both peoples.... [T]here should be many opportunities for... openly negotiated agreements for limited periods between Jews and Arabs, between Jews of the world and Arabs of the world. If a first period of comparative peace from five to ten years could be established, as I firmly believe it can, there would be a necessary breathing space during which to prepare for the next five to ten years....
"It may well be that all these efforts would result in failure. But as in every effort to end war, it is our duty to make the attempt...."
WOULD THAT Magnes were alive to see his university today.
On Wednesday, within sight of the domed law school building that once housed Magnes's office, a powerful bomb exploded in a campus cafeteria, killing at least seven students and injuring almost 100, some of them Israeli Arabs. Hamas claimed responsibility; the Palestinian Authority offered a perfunctory condemnation, then rationalized the attack as just another episode in the "cycle of terror" for which Ariel Sharon is ultimately to blame.
Not surprisingly, university students and faculty are in shock: How could this happen to them? In their dispatch from Mount Scopus, Times reporters James Benet and John Kifner quote student union president Kobi Cohen as saying, "We always believed that because there are Arab students here and Arab workers, nobody will try to hurt us here." The Washington Post notes that "students said they consciously avoid trips to bars, shops, restaurants and malls in downtown Jerusalem," but that "they had few worries as they attended classes, ate meals and strolled across the 76-year-old campus."
The bombing will likely put paid to such thinking. What had previously seemed like a shield against terror now appears like a gateway to it. The accommodative attitudes encouraged by Magnes have literally blown up in the face of his successors. It did not matter to Palestinian terrorists that, in planting a bomb at Hebrew U, they were attacking the very Israelis most likely to look sympathetically on the Palestinian cause. Their aim was to kill Jews, even if it meant harming Arabs. They succeeded.
FOR MOST ISRAELIS, all this has been evident for some time, which is why they support Sharon and the unity government by a lopsided margin, and why efforts to form a new leftist coalition have gone nowhere. By and large, however, the Western news media play it differently, thereby providing crucial life support for Israel's political fringe.
In May, The Guardian hosted a "debate" between an Israeli and a Palestinian over how to resolve the conflict. The Palestinian spokesman was Yasser Abed Rabbo. The Israeli was... Yossi Beilin! Apparently, the organizers of the event believed that he is a representative Israeli voice.
The Economist routinely makes mention of Meretz leader Yossi Sarid as head of the country's "opposition," without giving much indication that Sarid's views are about as representative of the Israeli body politic as Ralph Nader's are of America's. Last month, Reuters headlined a story "Israelis Debate Wisdom of Gaza Attack" It quotes Shimon Peres, Haim Ramon, and Sarid condemning the Shehadeh killing, but fails to cite a single Israeli defending it. Meanwhile, Western reporters and columnists hostile to Israel routinely cite Ha'aretz writers Gideon Levy, Akiva Eldar, Doron Rosenblum, and Amira Hass to provide cover for their views.
In fairness, the existence of a national unity government means that the media are to some extent obliged to go to the fringe in order to obtain a contrary political view. But this does not explain either the frequency with which they employ this recourse or the weight they give to fringe views.
Consider "Arafat and peace; the big myth," a June 24 column by The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof.
"In several columns in recent months," he writes, "I sneered at the Palestinian leader and reiterated the common view that he had rejected very generous peace deals proffered by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.... But prompted by various readers, I've been investigating more closely and interviewing key players."
Kristof concedes that the peace plan offered by Barak was "courageous and path-breaking." Yet plainly that was not enough: "it still would have left the Palestinian state shorn of at least nine percent of the West Bank." Then too, "the common view in the West that Arafat flatly rejected a reasonable peace deal, and that it is thus pointless to attempt a strategy of negotiation, is a myth."
How does Kristof know this? Well, because Yossi Beilin says so. "The mistake was to put all the blame on Arafat," Kristof quotes Beilin as saying. "Maybe he deserved part of the blame, and maybe it is true that the Palestinians did not initiate ideas, but it was a tactical mistake to put all the blame on one side."
One wonders just how much "investigating" Kristof did to reach his conclusions. He describes Beilin only as a "former Israeli negotiator," thus giving the impression that Beilin is an impartial authority on the subject of Camp David rather than a vocal left-wing ideologue.
Kristof quotes Clinton negotiator Robert Malley to the effect that the idea that Palestinians "reject any peaceful two-state solution" is an "unfair and incorrect characterization," without also noting that at Camp David Malley told the Israelis that the Palestinians "want to humiliate you."
Finally, Kristof cites former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami as saying, somewhat blandly, that "the problem with Arafat is that he's never clear." But Kristof does not mention that Ben-Ami is also on record as saying that "Arafat is not a partner. Worse, Arafat is a strategic threat; he endangers peace in the Middle East and in the world."
Given that Kristof is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who brags about the pains he took to uncover the truth about Camp David, one can only assume these oversights are deliberate. Then again, maybe not; the conclusions men like Ben-Ami and most other Israelis reached after Camp David ("We mustn't forgo Jewish and Israeli patriotism any longer, and we must understand that the blame does not always lie with us") are so radically at variance with the political hopes, ideological premises, and emotional impulses of today's liberals that it's just as easy to believe that Kristof simply couldn't assimilate the information.
It reminds me somewhat of old Marxists who cannot think politically except in terms of the class struggle. All countervailing data is either ignored or otherwise squeezed awkwardly into the same old boxes of thesis and antithesis, labor and capital, bourgeoisie and proletariat.
The fact is, while few Israelis have a clear idea of what's to come, a broad consensus has developed in this country on at least a few points: That the premises, both tactical and strategic, of Oslo were mistaken; that Yasser Arafat is not a partner for peace; that Palestinians do not recognize Israel's moral right to exist; that a policy of unilateral concessions does not abate, but rather whets Palestinian ambitions; that the issue of the territories is merely a proxy in the same old battle for Israel's survival; that the Arab-Israeli conflict is, at bottom, a civilizational one, and that the civilization that opposes Israel cannot be so easily mollified by a "rational" process of negotiation and compromise.
Instead of coming to terms with this, the media seizes on the utterances of people like Beilin so they may feel safe in maintaining their old prejudices. They foster the illusion that a philosophical divide still reflects a political divide in Israel, and that their own predilections aren't really all that out of step with the sentiments of Israel's democratic majority.
IN MAGNES'S DAY, to hold stubbornly to the view that better mutual understanding, statesmanlike compromise, and Jewish noblesse oblige toward an Arab people fallen from former glory were the essential ingredients for a peaceful settlement may have been justifiable as idealistic. In the wake of the Hebrew University attack, it just looks like intellectual flabbiness.
The pity is that, as long as the media persists in deceiving itself, it will continue to deceive its readers as well.
On the same day in 1993 on which Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn, he spoke the following words on Jordan TV:
"Since we cannot defeat Israel in war we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel."
Arafat's speech in Sweden in 1996.
Arafat’s speech in front of 40 Arab diplomats in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden, on January 30, 1996. Was called "The Impending Collapse of Israel".
"We will take over everything including all of Jerusalem," he declared repeatedly. Arafat's plan has two main components aimed to cause the Jews to abandon Israel. "Within five years we will have six to seven million Arabs living on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Arafat explained that this will be the beginning of a pressure campaign resulting within a few years in Israel's ultimate destruction. "You understand that we plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian State. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion; Jews will not want to live among us Arabs!"
First, the International Crisis Group (ICG) a private multinational organization working to address global conflicts has produced a detailed set of recommendations for reaching bilateral agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon.
The ICG proposal is unique in recognizing the broader dimensions of the Israeli-Arab conflict and the need to address Syrian and Lebanese issues as well as Palestinian ones in the context of the Arab Peace Initiative.
Indeed, some of the more interesting aspects of the ICG effort are the serious proposals that it offers for the Syrian and Lebanese tracks, which have been largely overlooked since the collapse of the Israeli-Syrian negotiations during former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s administration. The ICG plan also carves out a prominent role for the international community in monitoring compliance with agreements, patrolling borders, deterring attacks, helping with reconstruction, and assisting refugees.
Second, the former director of the Israeli internal security service, Major General Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, the top PLO representative in Jerusalem, recently produced a plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on Israeli recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with land swaps and slight border revisions, in exchange for Palestinian concessions on the right of return.
Third, Ziyad Abu Zayad, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, has released a working document from a group of Palestinian intellectuals that looks generally like the Clinton proposal from December 2000. Both the Ayalon-Nusseibeh and Abu Zayad concepts include significant concessions on the refugee issue and the concept of sovereignty over the Al-Haram Al-Sharif Mosque.
Fourth, former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo are leading an effort to complete the work started at the bilateral negotiations held in Taba, Egypt, in January 2001. These talks benefit from being led by two of the main participants at Taba.
All four of these efforts attempt to revitalize and improve upon many of the concepts proposed by Clinton toward the end of his presidency. It would be preferable for the Bush administration itself to be picking up the threads of the peace talks and attempting to build upon them. But these proposals still perform the vital function of putting alternatives to violence into the public forum in the hope of stimulating debate and perhaps building momentum for political change....
Mark Rosenblum is the founder and policy director of Americans for Peace Now
The excuse of most Germans was that "They didn't know."
Well, this time the world knows that the Arabs are deliberately murdering women, children and non-combatants. This is not "collateral" attacks -- this is the deliberate targeting of civilians.
And unlike the Germans, the Arabs know, and cheer and dance in the streets and hand out candy. The Nazis tried to hide their acts; they had guilty consciences. The Arabs celebrate murder. Who would believe that there would be groups that would make the Nazis look good in comparison.
Here's a good article. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1027506446043
Israel has a habit of complaining that the world does not treat the terrorists who attack us as terrorists. The truth is that Israel does not always do so either. While the leaders of al-Qaida are wanted men, the leaders of Hamas live out in the open, available to be interviewed by one and all.
In one of many interviews from his comfortable home in Gaza City, Hamas "spiritual" leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was asked by the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera why Hamas targets civilians, such as university students, he explained, "They are considered by us to be enemy soldiers." Asked whether bombing at Hebrew University was in response to Israel's killing of its top terrorist mastermind, Salah Shehadeh, Yassin responded, "We don't operate that way. These are not acts of retribution. We do not struggle out of revenge, but rather to liberate our land." Finally, when asked whether Hamas would be satisfied with an Israeli withdrawal to its pre-June 1967 borders, Yassin stated, "Israel was born in violence and it will die in violence. The Jews have no right to the land of Palestine."
Behind the rhetoric of revolution and justice, there is a word for Hamas's stated goal: genocide. As our columnist Caroline Glick pointed out on Friday, Hamas's leaders are not only openly spouting the modern day equivalent of Mein Kampf and the Final Solution, they are carrying it out on a daily basis. They are murdering Jews as Jews, with the goal of annihilating the Jewish state.
Given its genocidal intentions and actions, distinguishing between the "political," "spiritual," and "military" leaders of Hamas is ludicrous and offensive. Would it have mattered if Nazi brown shirts also ran food kitchens? How does calling Yassin a "spiritual" leader show respect for religion in general and Islam in particular?
Earlier this year, Great Britain went farther than the European Union in that it outlawed 21 terrorist groups but even Britain was careful to ban only Hamas's "military" wing. Again, this distinction tends to drive Israelis batty, but it is a distinction that Israel has, at least until now, clearly followed.
Salah Shehadeh's replacement, Muhammad Deif, reportedly lives in hiding with the knowledge that Israel could attempt to eliminate him at any moment. Yassin, and a small steering committee of Hamas leaders, live in their homes surrounded by their families, advisers, and supporters.
On June 25, The New York Times reported on one such a group of "150 young men who gathered outside Sheikh Yassin's house to protect him."
Said, a 20-year-old member of this crowd, explained why they were there: "We want jihad." These terrorists, in other words, are surrounded by ready-made crowds of "civilians" who knowingly risk their lives as part of their fevered support for jihad read genocide against Israel.
Israel should obviously attempt to kill or capture these men as surgically as possible, without unduly risking the lives of our soldiers. But we should not be deterred by their deliberate use of civilians as human shields, contrary to the laws of war and the practice of any besieged democracy.
Some argue that it is a mistake to target "political" leaders, because it would open Israel to attacks against our political leadership. But Israel has already had one minister assassinated, and there is no reason to believe that our leaders are not already targets. More fundamentally, it is wrong for Israel to recognize any parallel between its elected leadership and terrorist chieftains.
Finally, there is the argument that "political leaders" are easily replaced. Perhaps. But anyone who not only calls for, but plays an active, decision-making, role in a genocidal campaign against the Jewish people should fear for their lives. The harsh truth is that, while Israel leads the roster of victims in the global war against terrorism, in fighting back we lag behind.
Saying that they are worst than Nazis is an understatement.