Sderot is a modest town in Israel, one mile from the Gaza border. A good many of its citizens are in fact immigrants expelled from the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East.
So far, for just this year from January 1, 2008, Sderot has been bombarded with over 500 Qassam rockets fired indiscriminately from Gaza at its civilian population. Children have been blown apart, with most families remaining in the town who cannot afford to move out of range of this never-ending devastation.
How would San Diego react to missiles from Tijuana? How would Seoul react to missiles from its nearby border with North Korea? No country committed to protecting its citizens would tolerate this inhumane barrage for one day never mind the 2650 days that has been Sderot’s nightmare.
Yet Israel largely bites its lip and bides its time in a macabre exercise of absurd patience and restraint.
WHY? Why indeed.
Because the international community complains of the cycle of violence, whines about disproportional responses, twists the clear evidence and views Israel as the aggressor and Gaza and its Hamas handlers as the victims.
The West threatens sanctions if Israel strongly responds in effective self defense.
So Israel waits, waits for a lessening of the rocket attacks or for more support and understanding from the West, neither of which are forthcoming.
The solution is far simpler than we imagine, than we care to contemplate.
One bomb for one rocket. An inviolate formula. Israel promises to deliver within 24 hours of receiving each Qassam rocket from Gaza, a reply of a single targeted bomb aimed at political (dual use) and military installations of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and their multifarious allies.
One for One – exactly, irrefutably, always.
The Israeli military press office then publishes with worldwide transparency a daily report:
Today Israel was subject to # missiles from Gaza, the times and locations of each being accurately listed.
Furthermore, today Israel responded with exactly # retaliatory bombs, again giving each time and destination thereof in Gaza. This press release reconfirms that the missiles from Gaza were fired indiscriminately at civilian targets. Israel further holds the Hamas government accountable.
The Gazan citizens, the Western and Arab Worlds and the media knowingly or otherwise conflate and obscure the issues. They all insist, disingenuously, that
- it's a continuing cycle of violence
- both Israel and Hamas are equally responsible
- Hamas is the victim and Gaza the downtrodden
- Israel initiates responses disproportionately
One for One
Israel can simply, once and for all, publicly and openly break this cycle, attribute responsibility, invest in clarity, expose the true victimhood and respond proportionately. It can and it must produce, advertise and act according to an inviolate formula, one bomb for one rocket, every day, immediately, always.
They will thereby reeducate the population of Gaza and the world media in a way that has been obfuscated to date. The new reality will be obvious, clear and irrefutable. This will lead inevitably to new linkages, new solutions.
The intended solutions are reasonable negotiations, meaningful agreements.
These can only come about when
- Hamas agrees to Israel’s right to exist, when
- women and children are not specifically targeted and when
- agreements are honored.
Any and all negotiations and agreements without the above three basic preconditions will obviously be irrelevant.
But Hamas won’t and never did entertain any of these three minimal preconditions
- their official charter openly still calls for the destruction of Israel
- they have broken every cease-fire agreement with Israel (and even broken their agreements with the Palestinian Authority, Fatah and Abbas).
Hamas therefore simply will not do so until either
- their support in the Western and Arab worlds dries up
- Israel’s response intensifies until the consequences for Hamas exceed their toleration levels or the Gazan population removes them from power.
“One for One” helps accomplish these eventualities until a defensive laser or missile system is fully and successfully implemented. “One for One” is the simplest, most pragmatic and internationally saleable solution Israel could devise.
America seems to be ready for change –
I believe Israel is, too.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Honor Killings - Do We Know? (Feb. 26, 2008)
Honor Killings - Do We Know?
What are these countries
who are these people that
would stone the abused and
grant freedom to the rapist
What is this religion
who are its protagonists
that would hang the victim
and venerate the victimizer
In what culture do men own
the law, the morality and the women
Where are all the activists, the human rights groups,
the discrimination organizations, the women’s movements
who all ignore the spiritual genocide foisted on Muslim women
who pass by this daily purgatory with nary a whisper of support
Perhaps they are otherwise occupied,
these important people with important issues,
perhaps they have only energy for a concrete wall
between Israel and the West Bank,
for disrespected Korans in Guantanamo
The likely future of the modern world and
certainly the future of the Muslim world
rests in the hands of the enslaved Muslim women
starved of justice, denuded of freedom
They are the ones who will change that world
They are the ones who need our change, Obama’s
celebrated change, far more than we ourselves
We ignore them at our peril
Honor Killings – Do We Care?
What are these countries
who are these people that
would stone the abused and
grant freedom to the rapist
What is this religion
who are its protagonists
that would hang the victim
and venerate the victimizer
In what culture do men own
the law, the morality and the women
Where are all the activists, the human rights groups,
the discrimination organizations, the women’s movements
who all ignore the spiritual genocide foisted on Muslim women
who pass by this daily purgatory with nary a whisper of support
Perhaps they are otherwise occupied,
these important people with important issues,
perhaps they have only energy for a concrete wall
between Israel and the West Bank,
for disrespected Korans in Guantanamo
The likely future of the modern world and
certainly the future of the Muslim world
rests in the hands of the enslaved Muslim women
starved of justice, denuded of freedom
They are the ones who will change that world
They are the ones who need our change, Obama’s
celebrated change, far more than we ourselves
We ignore them at our peril
Honor Killings – Do We Care?
Friday, February 22, 2008
Wiretapping Neurosis (Feb. 22, 2008)
Wiretapping and surveillance of suspected terrorists are causing our liberal hearts to flutter with existential anxiety. We are as a result desperately concerned about our rapidly evaporating freedoms, are we not? Yet not a single citizen has proven same, not a single court case has successfully unearthed this overbearing fear of fascism, in spite of the hordes of ACLU and CAIR lawyers awaiting their call. It would be amusing if it weren’t so ironic; these same zealous protectors of our valued freedoms have voluntarily given up these self same freedoms at our universities and in our local and international media.
Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who published those now infamous Muhammad cartoons (“Free Speech and Radical Islam,” Wall Street Journal op-ed, Feb 15, 2008) explains how hundreds of millions (if not billions) are voluntarily giving up their rights to free speech; not at the hands of our supposedly tyrannical regimes, but out of fear from rioters in France, Palestinian radicals on our campuses countrywide, fatwas in Denmark, rabid attorneys in New York or appeasing politicians in Washington.
When we lose the right to peacefully assemble and comfortably speak out, all other rights become meaningless.
It is now easier for Ahmadinejad to lecture us at Columbia University than Israel’s ex-Prime Minister Netanyahu. Every major Arab newspaper spews unchallenged a regular litany of toxic anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, anti-West cartoons (including those of blood libels); yet innocuous cartoons in usually ignored little Denmark provoke lethal riots throughout the Middle East. Saudis lecture us on human rights whilst their women have none. Creative British politicians see Jihadist terrorism as anti-Islamic. We only talk of disenfranchised militants – never murderers, thugs or terrorists. The absurdity is appalling and the irony weighs heavily all around.
These millions of appeasers would do well to consider Ben Franklin’s dictum “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
The issue is free and unencumbered speech, everywhere our lives take us, not some invisible, ineffectual and largely esoteric wiretapping.
Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who published those now infamous Muhammad cartoons (“Free Speech and Radical Islam,” Wall Street Journal op-ed, Feb 15, 2008) explains how hundreds of millions (if not billions) are voluntarily giving up their rights to free speech; not at the hands of our supposedly tyrannical regimes, but out of fear from rioters in France, Palestinian radicals on our campuses countrywide, fatwas in Denmark, rabid attorneys in New York or appeasing politicians in Washington.
When we lose the right to peacefully assemble and comfortably speak out, all other rights become meaningless.
It is now easier for Ahmadinejad to lecture us at Columbia University than Israel’s ex-Prime Minister Netanyahu. Every major Arab newspaper spews unchallenged a regular litany of toxic anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish, anti-West cartoons (including those of blood libels); yet innocuous cartoons in usually ignored little Denmark provoke lethal riots throughout the Middle East. Saudis lecture us on human rights whilst their women have none. Creative British politicians see Jihadist terrorism as anti-Islamic. We only talk of disenfranchised militants – never murderers, thugs or terrorists. The absurdity is appalling and the irony weighs heavily all around.
These millions of appeasers would do well to consider Ben Franklin’s dictum “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
The issue is free and unencumbered speech, everywhere our lives take us, not some invisible, ineffectual and largely esoteric wiretapping.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120303586375870157.html
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
"PHILANDERING PHILI" (Feb. 20, 2008)
(RE: Wall Street Journal's “Philly’s War on the Boy Scouts” by Kevin Ferris Feb. 16, 2008)
I want to join a Mosque. Preferably a local Wahhabist Mosque. Our constitution as defined by left-wing liberals guarantees me nothing less - no discrimination, no exclusion from these hallowed halls of Jihadist purity.
I am a gay female Bush-supporting Zionist Jew, and I want to join the local Mosque. I too want the ACLU, hapless Harry Reid and civil rights demon Louis Farrakhan to guarantee my rights and my safety. It's bound to be both a life-changing and educational experience. As Obama deftly says - let's all join together, in change, and conjure up a brand new America.
The Philadelphia City Council is evicting the Boy Scouts from a building the Scouts built and paid for 80 years ago and from whence tens of thousands of Boy Scouts have cleaned parks, run food drives, fed the needy and developed positive life skills. All because the Boy Scouts prefer not to enlist openly homosexual troop leaders and scouts. Why take aim at al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah or the Columbine murderers? Why focus on the international plague of female slavery and prostitution, on honor killings in our own backyard when we have the Boy Scouts?
Obviously it's impossible for gay troops and scouts to start their very own chapter. Impossible for girls to initiate their separate scout group. No reason for Boy Scout parents to be afforded any comfortability with their own private social and religious views.
Mosques are public charitable institutions supported by government tax-free status. They should welcome me, gay, female, and Jewish – especially as the Phili City Council will surely support my application for cultural diversity, for religious non-discrimination, for freedom of anyone to join any Boy Scouts, any golf club and certainly any religious institution.
I wait, with bated breath, for invitations from these brave institutions and maybe I'll also get consideration from the Black Music Awards for my latest rap song:
"I wanna bee
the first Jewessee
our first gay hippie
in our Mosque of Phili”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120312309480173061.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200805/CUL20080529b.html
I want to join a Mosque. Preferably a local Wahhabist Mosque. Our constitution as defined by left-wing liberals guarantees me nothing less - no discrimination, no exclusion from these hallowed halls of Jihadist purity.
I am a gay female Bush-supporting Zionist Jew, and I want to join the local Mosque. I too want the ACLU, hapless Harry Reid and civil rights demon Louis Farrakhan to guarantee my rights and my safety. It's bound to be both a life-changing and educational experience. As Obama deftly says - let's all join together, in change, and conjure up a brand new America.
The Philadelphia City Council is evicting the Boy Scouts from a building the Scouts built and paid for 80 years ago and from whence tens of thousands of Boy Scouts have cleaned parks, run food drives, fed the needy and developed positive life skills. All because the Boy Scouts prefer not to enlist openly homosexual troop leaders and scouts. Why take aim at al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah or the Columbine murderers? Why focus on the international plague of female slavery and prostitution, on honor killings in our own backyard when we have the Boy Scouts?
Obviously it's impossible for gay troops and scouts to start their very own chapter. Impossible for girls to initiate their separate scout group. No reason for Boy Scout parents to be afforded any comfortability with their own private social and religious views.
Mosques are public charitable institutions supported by government tax-free status. They should welcome me, gay, female, and Jewish – especially as the Phili City Council will surely support my application for cultural diversity, for religious non-discrimination, for freedom of anyone to join any Boy Scouts, any golf club and certainly any religious institution.
I wait, with bated breath, for invitations from these brave institutions and maybe I'll also get consideration from the Black Music Awards for my latest rap song:
"I wanna bee
the first Jewessee
our first gay hippie
in our Mosque of Phili”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120312309480173061.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200805/CUL20080529b.html
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
America in Reverse (Feb. 13, 2008)
We Americans have a great passion – curative 20/20 hindsight. We too have an all consuming deficiency – that being courageous preventative vision.
We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and allotted hundreds of thousands of security and other personnel to find a few Jihadists, unearth a few unsophisticated plots. That’s cost-ineffectiveness at its most extreme, a formula with which al-Qaeda can always out leverage us, out wait us. No matter how wealthy America is, we just cannot afford, indefinitely, to allocate such monetary treasure and such human resources to plug all the holes, secure all the borders and protect all our vulnerable facilities as long as we intend to remain an open, free and democratic society.
We have conversely, apart from our military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, spent very little on preemptive planning and implementation. Whether it be via focused taxes on gasoline (preferably with concomitant reductions in personal taxes) or Flex Fuel Vehicles (at $100 per conversion) to accommodate ethanol and methanol, we continue to blunder ahead, subsidizing terrorist regimes and Jihadist organizations by transferring hundreds of billions of oil dollars every year to the Middle East (not to ignore Chavez and Putin, et al.). We donate our gold to the Islamists and they give us petroleum. They don’t build hospitals, universities and science research institutes. Instead they build Hamas, Hezbollah, bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, intercontinental missiles, WMDs and suicide bombers.
We are clearly missing the obvious points, the elephant in our parlor.
Based on the inevitable cost-ineffectiveness of Homeland Security and on the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever witnessed, we are engaged in a losing battle, in our demise towards insolvency and “too little too late.”
If we mandate and legislate for Flex Fuel Vehicles, if we thereby open up competition to all sources of energy, if we tax our gasoline habits and strengthen our energy alternatives, then and only then will gasoline usage reduce, then prices at the pump will drop, then the great wealth transfer will slow and the terrorists and Jihadists will finally have a deficit budget instead of Washington.
Then and only then will we be cost-effective, will we outlast and outspend our enemies and their countless madrassas. Then and only then will we be building a solid inheritance for our children.
Our current self-indulgent policies of accommodation, our fantasies of immediate gratification and our appeasement politics might very well result in the nuclear loss of some of our cities or the debasement of our wealth or both. Unless we spend more wisely, more preemptively, more courageously, we risk the future of America, the greatest experiment in freedom and democracy the world has ever known.
We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars and allotted hundreds of thousands of security and other personnel to find a few Jihadists, unearth a few unsophisticated plots. That’s cost-ineffectiveness at its most extreme, a formula with which al-Qaeda can always out leverage us, out wait us. No matter how wealthy America is, we just cannot afford, indefinitely, to allocate such monetary treasure and such human resources to plug all the holes, secure all the borders and protect all our vulnerable facilities as long as we intend to remain an open, free and democratic society.
We have conversely, apart from our military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, spent very little on preemptive planning and implementation. Whether it be via focused taxes on gasoline (preferably with concomitant reductions in personal taxes) or Flex Fuel Vehicles (at $100 per conversion) to accommodate ethanol and methanol, we continue to blunder ahead, subsidizing terrorist regimes and Jihadist organizations by transferring hundreds of billions of oil dollars every year to the Middle East (not to ignore Chavez and Putin, et al.). We donate our gold to the Islamists and they give us petroleum. They don’t build hospitals, universities and science research institutes. Instead they build Hamas, Hezbollah, bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, intercontinental missiles, WMDs and suicide bombers.
We are clearly missing the obvious points, the elephant in our parlor.
Based on the inevitable cost-ineffectiveness of Homeland Security and on the greatest transfer of wealth the world has ever witnessed, we are engaged in a losing battle, in our demise towards insolvency and “too little too late.”
If we mandate and legislate for Flex Fuel Vehicles, if we thereby open up competition to all sources of energy, if we tax our gasoline habits and strengthen our energy alternatives, then and only then will gasoline usage reduce, then prices at the pump will drop, then the great wealth transfer will slow and the terrorists and Jihadists will finally have a deficit budget instead of Washington.
Then and only then will we be cost-effective, will we outlast and outspend our enemies and their countless madrassas. Then and only then will we be building a solid inheritance for our children.
Our current self-indulgent policies of accommodation, our fantasies of immediate gratification and our appeasement politics might very well result in the nuclear loss of some of our cities or the debasement of our wealth or both. Unless we spend more wisely, more preemptively, more courageously, we risk the future of America, the greatest experiment in freedom and democracy the world has ever known.
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