So much for "moderate" Muslims

The American Muslim Student Association is a Muslim Brotherhood front. Whole watching this clip, bear in mind that Hamas was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Post by Chaim Schwartz.

Discrimination

Details

Tool, meet tool

A terrorists' tool meets a terrorists' tool: Gaza Reporter Startled by Palestinian Rocket Launch during Live Broadcast

HT: Atlanta Rofters

Because it does not fit the narrative

Post by Mirjam Katz.

What must Israel do to win the Left's approval?

The answer is simple: Disappear.

Hamas has been launching rockets into Israel for years. Altogether, more than 6,000 rockets fired into Israeli towns without distinction whether they land in civilian or military areas. In the last two weeks along, Hamas has launched almost 2,000 rockets.

Their rockets have over time become increasingly sophisticated, longer-ranged and more explosive. Between 70-80 percent of all Israelis are within range of Gaza.

So ask your local peace Leftist one simple question: How many rockets per day should Israel simply endure and absorb before you, Mr. Peace Leftist, would personally agree that Israel has the moral and legal authority to strike back to destroy Hamas' rockets and Hamas' ability to continue rocket attacks in the future?

Ten rockets per day? Two dozen? One hundred? Or in fact is there any number of rockets Hamas can launch at Israel that justifies a military response?

The honest Leftist will simply answer no, that in fact Israel is never allowed to respond. But since there are no honest Leftists, the answer you will get goes something like this:

The Palestinian people have been oppressed by Israel for decades to the point where it is no surprise that they want to strike back. I wish the whole situation could be peacefully resolved but as long as Israel continues with the occupation of Palestinian lands there is little hope. Of course I regret every loss of life, but don't forget that Israel is slaughtering Gaza civilians by the hundreds while only a couple of Israeli civilians have been killed. This shows that it is Israel that has no regard for life. Without Israeli aggression and oppression, this war would not have occurred. It is Israel's fault that it does not live in peace with with neighbors. If it would agree to restore the pre-1967 borders for a true Palestinian state, honoring the right of return of displaced Palestinians to their ancestral homes, then there could be peace.

Do not bother to respond with facts and reason, for you cannot argue someone factually and reasonably out of a position that they didn't arrive at by facts and reason.

At least, however, there is one American Leftist who is "done apologizing for Israel."

Hamas and its crimes

Hamas is Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity 

Hamas loves its rockets, not its children

‘Here’s the difference between us,” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained on Fox News Sunday. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.” 

It’s a classic talking point. It’s also objectively true ... .

The Palestinian ‘Genocide’ Lie

Egyptians Hoping Israel Will Destroy Hamas

Egyptians Hoping Israel Will Destroy Hamas

Over the past week there are voices coming out of Egypt and some Arab countries -- voices that publicly support the Israeli military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

They see the atrocities and massacres committed by Islamists on a daily basis in Iraq and Syria and are beginning to ask themselves if these serve the interests of the Arabs and Muslims.

"Thank you Netanyahu and may God give us more [people] like you to destroy Hamas!" — Azza Sami of the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram.

Isolated and under attack, Hamas now realizes that it has lost the sympathy of many Egyptians and Arabs.

Once you remember that Hamas was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt, it make sense.

Tel Aviv, Jerusalem struck by rockets

Hamas terrorists in Gaza have fired more than 40 rockets into central Israel, including parts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over the last day or so. This is in addition to smaller, shorter-range rockets that have been falling in others areas of country for weeks. In fact, Israelis have been under Hamas rocket fire for many years. More here.

An Israeli friend, Dr. Susan Jackson, emailed me today, saying "Day to day we are safe, and praying that God will protect the Land and all of its inhabitants." She also reminded me of this Prayer for the Welfare of the State of Israel, from the IFCJ website,

Our Father in Heaven, Protector and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel, the first flowering of our redemption. Shield it beneath the wings of Your love and spread over it Your canopy of peace. Send Your light and truth to its leaders, officers, and counselors, and direct them with Your good counsel.

Strengthen the defenders of our Holy Land; O God, grant them salvation and crown them with victory. Establish peace in the land and everlasting joy for its inhabitants.

Remember our brethren, the whole house of Israel, in all the lands of their dispersion. Speedily bring them upright to Zion, Your city, to Jerusalem, Your name's dwelling-place, as it is written in the Torah of Your servant Moses: "Even if your outcasts are dispersed to the uttermost parts of the heavens, from there HASHEM your God will gather you and take you in. HASHEM your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it, and He shall make you more prosperous and numerous than your forefathers."

Unite our hearts to love and revere Your Name, and to observe all the precepts of Your Torah. Speedily send us Your righteous messiah of the house of David to redeem those who long for Your salvation.  

Shine forth Your glorious majesty over all the inhabitants of Your world; let every creature that breathes proclaim: "HASHEM, God of Israel, is King; His dominion rules over all." Amen. Selah.

In 2007 I spent half a day in the Israeli town of Sederot, not long after it had been struck by a handful of Hamas rockets. See here. Since then Hamas' rockets have become much more powerful and accurate.

Hamas: Ceasefire changes nothing

The ceasefire brokered yesterday between Hamas and Israel makes Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, its architect, look good. But it changes nothing on the ground. The Jerusalem Post reports,

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal declared a position on Palestinian statehood that is nearly identical to that of his Fatah rival, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in an interview with CNN aired Wednesday.

"I accept a Palestinian state according [to] the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital, with the right to return," the Hamas leader told Christine Amanpour in Cairo.

Pushed about his party's refusal to recognize Israel, Mashaal said such a declaration could only be made once a Palestinian state has been created.

"After this state is established, it decides its standing toward Israel," the Hamas leader said.

All this means is that Mashaal has started a PR offensive. This "new" position changes nothing regarding Hamas' stand toward Israel. Consider:

Asked if Hamas is willing to renounce violence, he said, "We are ready to resort to a peaceful way, purely peaceful way without blood or weapons."

Such a move, however, would be conditional on the attainment of Palestinian national demands, namely, "the elimination of occupation and the (creation of a) Palestinian state and ending the occupation and the wall."

So let's deconstruct this and see why not even the peace factions in Israel will fall for it.

1. a Palestinian state according [to] the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as the capital, with the right to return

The myth of the 1967 borders

There are no "1967 borders." What are inexplicably called "borders" are really just a ceasefire line drawn in 1949 at the end of Israel's first war for independence. The lines were drawn on a map with a green pencil, hence their former name, now rarely used, of the "green line." The armistice explicitly recognized that the line was not a territorial border and was of no significance except as a military demarcation line. To this day there is no international agreement recognizing the lines as international borders.

In 1967's Six Day War, Israel advanced into the West Bank, then usually called the Transjordan, and entered Jerusalem, the capital of biblical Israel. In the south, Israel also captured the entire Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. It has since withdrawn altogether from both. Israel has mostly withdrawn from the West Bank, but retains possession of Jerusalem, which it has made its capital city. There are also a number of Israeli towns that have been built inside the West Bank. Most of the West Bank is actually entirely autonomous under the rule of the Palestinian Authority or is mostly so.

There has never been a Palestinian state of any kind, anywhere, ever. The UN resolution creating Israel in 1948 included the authority to create a homeland for Arabs not wishing to live inside the Jewish state. This was 100 percent rejected by Arab governments. It was again rejected by then-leader of the Palestinian Authority, Yasir Arafat, in 1998 at the Wye River negotiations under the auspices of the Clinton administration.

Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital

What Hamas' Maashal is saying is that all Israelis must withdraw completely not only from the West Bank but from Jerusalem. This is quite simply impossible, since the remains of the ancient Temple are there, the holiest site in Judaism. It would be like a demand that Muslims permanently evacuate Mecca.

Such a "border" adjustment would also mean Israel's withdrawal from the Golan Heights bordering Syria. Possession of the Heights is central to Israel's security to the north.

The "right to return"

The "right to return" is the claimed right of Palestinians to return to homes inside Israel that they vacated because of the 1948 war. Most left of their own volition, having been encouraged by Arab governments. Others were removed by the nascent Israeli army because of military necessity. This is how the West Bank and Gaza came to be filled with Palestinians.

UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948 is claimed as the basis. It states in part, "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date... ." Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas say that this return is a requirement of international law that Israel may not rightfully deny, and that the right is inheritable by the descendants of the original refugees.

On the other hand, UN General Assembly resolutions have never been afforded the weight given to binding resolutions of the UN Security Council, nor have refugees' rights ever before been extended to their descendants. Israel retorts as well that "should be permitted" does not equal must be permitted, and that the return is in any case prior dependent upon the refugees' willingness to live at peace inside Israel (meaning, Israel as a Jewish state).

To Hamas and the PA, the "right of return" means the removal of Jews from Israel while filling it with Palestinians.

2. Peace is contingent upon "the elimination of occupation and the (creation of a) Palestinian state and ending the occupation and the wall."

Usually, western commentators speak of "ending the occupation" as meaning the withdrawal of Israelis from the West Bank and the Golan Heights, that is, a return of the Jews to within the pre-1967 military demarcation line. This is not what Maashal means. Historically, Hamas has equated "occupation" with the simple existence of a Jewish state to begin with. That is, all of the state of Israel is an occupation of land that rightfully belongs to Palestinians.

"Ending the occupation" means to Hamas the disestablishment of Israel as an independent Jewish entity and the ejection of all Jews from the Levant, nothing less.

Hamas has always referred to a Palestinian state as one that encompasses all of present Israel, plus the West Bank and Gaza.

All of which means that nothing Maashal has said changes any of the precepts of the Hamas charter or its basic aims. Maashal has simply used language designed to tickle western ears to say that it will accept a period of respite before resuming its war.

Related:

The Telegraph

My Hamas-related posts

Myth of the 1967 Borders

Background paper on Arabs and Israelis

Mort Zuckerman: "Gaza Ceasefire Doesn’t Solve the Fundamental Problem"

Message from Iron Dome defenders

Found via my Israeli friends.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!

The clueless reelected president

Obama warns against 'ramping up' in Gaza crisis - Yahoo! News:

BANGKOK (AP) — President Barack Obama said Sunday an incursion by Israel's forces into the Gaza Strip could only deepen its death toll, cautioning against an escalation even as he defended the Jewish state's right to defend itself. Obama also warned Palestinians the crisis could crush peace hopes for years.

"The crisis could crush peace hopes for years." To Hamas, that's a feature, not a bug. Hamas does not want peace. Let me repeat that for the intellectually-challenged among us:

Hamas. Does. Not. Want. Peace.

Hamas wants only the destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew living there. Read this. Then all this. The only peace Hamas wants is the peace of the grave for every Jewish Israeli.

Map of Hamas' rocket threat

From the IDF blog:

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis - a substantial minority of whom are Arabs, not Jews - live within range of Hamas' rockets.

One of the rockets yesterday hit a family's back yard.

Life under the rocket

A wedding guest in Israel was taking video when the Hamas rockets came. The IDF countered with its defenseive Iron Dome anti-rocket system. All caught on vid:



In 2007, I visited the Israeli town of Sederot, where six Hamas rockets had already landed that day.

The Tweet War

It's a war of weapons, but also a war of words:

The IDF is also live-blogging the conflict.

Live Updates: Operation Pillar of Defense on Terror Targets in Gaza
Published on: November 14, 2012

In response to the incessant rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip – more than 700 have struck Israel since the beginning of the year, and more than 120 since Saturday – the IDF has launched a widespread campaign against terror targets in Gaza. The operation, called Pillar of Defense, has two main goals: to protect Israeli civilians and to cripple the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.

Israel and the "land for peace" fiction

Caroline Glick :: The land-for-peace hoax:

Indeed the land-for-peace formula will be exposed as a twofold fiction. First, it is based on the false proposition that the peace process is a two-way street. Israel gives land, the Arabs give peace. But the inevitable death of the Egyptian-Israeli peace accord under an Egyptian jihadist regime makes clear that the land-for-peace formula is a one-way street. Israeli land giveaways are permanent. Arab commitments to peace can be revoked at any time.

The conflict is not about land. 

The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.

The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders."

Read the rest.

Israel and "land for peace"

President Obama says that the basis for peace between Israel and the Palestinians should be the (so-called) pre-1967 borders "with land swaps." Set aside the now the fact that there is no such thing as "pre-1967 borders" because even if there were, reverting to the pre-'67 lines would not mean peace for Israel.

The conflict is not about land. 

The plain fact is that Hamas, Fatah/Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah are united in one goal: the elimination of Israel as an independent, Jewish state. This has also been Syria's goal since modern Israel was founded in 1948. Syria is an Iranian client and I am sure no pixels need be expended to explain Iran's hostility to the Jewish nation. Israel's enemies want to destroy the country as a political entity. Hamas has said bluntly, over and again, that all Jews must be expelled or killed.

The conflict is not about land. The conflict is over Israel's very existence, not its "borders." In 2000, Israeli PM Ehud Barak and staff met with Yassir Arafat and staff at Camp David. The conference was sponsored by President Clinton. Using the pre-67 lines as a basis, Barak proposed a modification of the lines based on defensibility, but offered a hectare-for-hectare swap to the PA for each modification. Barak also offered to dismantle dozens of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Israel also offered the PA control over two of Jerusalem's four historic quarters, but Arafat demanded actual sovereignty over East Jerusalem and all its holy sites, including the Western Wall, the holiest site of Judaism. There were other issues, too, mainly the "right of return," but basically Barak offered Arafat about 95 percent of what Arafat had been demanding all along.

Arafat's response was simply to leave and return to the West Bank without making a counter-proposal of any kind. Subsequently, President Clinton and his chief Middle East envoy, Dennis Ross, both wrote that Arafat was solely responsible for the conference's failure. Ross said that Arafat's staff told him that Arafat was shocked by Barak's offer because it was so generous and that Arafat said before he flew away that if he accepted Barak's offers, he (Arafat) would be murdered by other Palestinians within a week.

Why? Because Fatah/PA and Hamas have never sought and do not want a "Palestinian state" with Israel as a Jewish state alongside. They are driven instead by their desire to incorporate all Israel under Arab rule and sovereignty. Fatah would grant the Jews who remained severely restricted religious and political rights. Hamas says that all Jews who do not leave must be killed.

This issue is not over what happened in 1967. It is over what happened in 1948 - the creation of the modern state of Israel.

The situation on the ground

Hamas controls Gaza. Fatah/PA controls the West Bank. Hezbollah controls Lebanon. Hamas and Hezbollah are longtime allies. Hamas was a sub-faction of Palestinian terrorism until 2005, when Israel completely pulled out of Gaza. Hamas took over Gaza in 2006 by force, killing PA officials and Fatah fighters who tried to oppose them. Only now have Hamas and Fatah/PA become realigned with one another. But make no mistake. The end of Israel has always been their goal. That is explicitly the reason Hamas was founded. Hamas is not a nationalist organization. It is a terrorist one. It does not seek to build but only to destroy. Its very charter states plainly:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. "

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Fatah's goal is no different. True, in 1988 Yassir Arafat, Fatah's supreme commander in the 1950s and 1960s, declared in English before Western cameras that he explicitly recognized Israel's right to exist. This apparent breakthrough ultimately led to the Oslo Accords in 1993, which in turn made possible the founding the the PA as a proto-state for Palestinians, of which Arafat served as first president.

However, what Arafat did not say to Western media or audiences in English is what he made abundantly clear to his domestic audiences in Arabic: that the right of Israel to exist, that Arafat claimed to recognize, was not its right to exist as a Jewish state separate from an Arab nation of Palestine. In fact, Palestinian curricula for kindergartens on up graphically made clear that "Palestine" consists of all of Israel, the West bank and Gaza - that is to say, the very same geography that Hamas claims.

Fatah's reputation as moderates is unjustified. While Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at southern Israel in the last several years, it was from the West Bank, always under Fatah's rule, that the vast majority of suicide bombers entered Israel. These bombers killed multiples more Israelis than Hamas's rockets.

The conflict is not about land. It is about Israel itself. To close, here is a video of

Hamas MP and Cleric Yunis Al-Astal the Jews were brought to Palestine for the “great massacre” in preparation for the United States of Islam caliphate for which Palestine will be the capital.

Israel's Coming Rocket War

How would you like to live in a town where every block has one or more of these structures?

This is a bomb shelter in the town of Sederot, Israel. More accurately, it is a rocket shelter.The morning of the day that I visited Sederot in 2007, Hamas in Gaza fired six Qassam rockets toward the town and environs. No one was hurt, but Sederotis have learned to run fast when the siren sounds.

Only two years ago, so many Hamas rockets had fallen on Israel from Gaza that Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, a bombing campaign against Hamas followed by an armored incursion. It was only temporarily successful. Not only has Hamas rearmed, they are better armed now than ever.

The coming year will be one of existential decision for Israel. Its enemies, which are legion not only in the Middle East but across Europe, will try to move decisively to isolate Israel politically. Their goal is the same as it has always been, to vanquish Israel as a Jewish state and to evict Jews from the land. These are the open objectives of Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah alike, with only the latter apparently preferring diplomatic moves over military ones. Israel has probably never been in a more precarious predicament since the end of its war for independence.

Read the rest.

"How to stop 50% of West-hating terrorist attacks"

James Lileks, as usual, exposes the intellectual vapidness of the American political class, whose cluelessness become evermore obvious when discussing peace in the Middle East. Link.

Hamas: Murder, Inc.

My Israeli friend and colleague, Daniel Jackson, has written two accounts of the recent Hamas attacks inside Israel, one of which took place literally down the street from Daniel's home, and the other against a rebbe known well by his family.

A resumption of violence against Israel by Hamas was bound to happen, but I am unhappy that they struck so close to my friends. But this seems to be starting off with the same old pattern: Small strikes (unless, of course, you are one of the strikees) that probe Israel's vulnerabilities and just as important, its response.

The question is, since Hamas has already said, "We did it," why has Israel not already retaliated against Hamas inside Gaza? I mean, is there some minimum threshold of dead Israelis that has to be passed before Bibi will decide enough is enough?

Suppose that on Dec. 7, 1941, a Japanese midget sub had sneaked into Pearl Harbor and sunk the destroyer USS Shaw. But suppose that was the only attack of the day. If Franklin Roosevelt was like Israel's leaders or like President Obama, he would immediately take to radio to say that the US government would continue its peace talks with Japan and the sinking of Shaw served only to increase our resolve to continue the peace process.

Then, on Dec. 14, a lone Japanese bomber flies across Pearl and blows up USS Arizona. No matter, insists Roosevelt. Our resolve to have peace with Japan is unshakable. The peace process will continue!

You see my point - when would it become evident that the Japanese were not actually interested in peace? At what point would the president absorb the fact that his country had been attacked incrementally, but nonetheless devastatingly?

So Israelis must be wondering - and Daniel would know this better than I - if Hamas killed 400 Jews in one fell swoop, would that evoke retaliation? If so, then why not four?

Oh, I know the answer: the "peace process." And our president, ever seeing events through the lens of how they reflect on him personally, remains lost in neverland of political fantasy: "Obama Says West Bank Attack Shows Terrorists Want to Undermine Peace Talks."

Political naïf that I am, it seems to me that the attack shows that Hamas wants to kill Jews, same as they always have. Even CNN gets it: "Hamas pledges to continue targeting Israelis."

But what do I know? Nope, the murders were merely a political act, you see - stopping Barack Obama's program. And here I thought they was just murders, pure and simple, done by Hamas, today's main Murder, Inc.

End note: Here is a headline for you: "Hamas leader rejects compromise, peace with Israel." Quick, when was this headline written?

a. This week
b. Last year
c. 2004
d. 1995
e. All of the above

The correct answer, of course, is "e."

Hamas' murderousness has nothing to do with the "peace process." They simply want to eradicate Israel as a political entity and kill or expel every Jew who lives there. That's actually in Hamas' charter.