The kidnapping of corporal Shalit may not be ambiguous to the author, Mr. Halkin, or the majority of Israel’s citizens. However, the Israel/ Palestinian conflict remains opaque for most of the western world, media included. And central to this confusion is the endless mantra everywhere repeated, that the violence in the Middle East is a never ending cycle, with Israel as the primary initiator.
This “cycle of violence” mantra gives further voice to that great invention of Arab and Cold War propaganda, the effective equalization of attacker and victim. For how can the stronger party be the victim, we are repeatedly persuaded - and the liberal humanitarians among us usually concur. Yet the might of the Israeli Defense Force does not target children, the elderly, the innocent - if it did, logically, it could decimate and expel all the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank in a matter of days: case closed. Yet it continually seeks focused and directed retribution for the daily attacks across all its borders.
Well meaning liberals appeal for meaningful negotiations - just exactly with whom must Israel negotiate? Hamas won the election, still claiming its right and intention to destroy Israel by any and all violent means and recovering all lands to the Mediterranean (including, please note, Israel pre-1967, which was never occupied territory).
Palestinian supporters disingenuously claims Hamas maintained a 15-month ceasefire. This would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Hamas is in control of the Gaza Strip, it is the controlling party of the government and fields the largest extra-military army in the area. Yet over 750 rockets were fired in the last 15 months at Israeli towns and farms. Daily suicide bombers from the military wing of Hamas have been sent from the West Bank - all this is well-documented. According to these apologists, verbal disclaimers by the political wing trump hundreds of attacks by or with the tacit approval of the military wing.
It is often felt that Israel’s military response is excessive. Would those selective humanists prefer Israel to focus on pizzerias, buses and weddings, rather than deserted bridges, roads, and electricity generators?
Ultimately it is the bloodlust of the Jihadist extremists, in their all-consuming passion to rid the Middle East of Israel, that victimizes and degrades the Palestinian population. Israel, situated on less than 1% of the territory occupied by Arab nations, stands as the only true and free democracy in the Middle East - an embarrassment to those nations and a feared beacon of hope to all those wishing for freedom and equal rights.
Democracies are more than just voting booths - if elections were held free of fear, free of religious and familial coercion, free of a militarized state populated by more terrorist armies and groups than the United Nations has dictatorships, I would bet that the parents and women who inhabit the tragic landscape of Gaza and the West Bank would have accepted Israel's offer of 97% of the West Bank and all of Gaza for peace; they would choose imperfect life rather than fanatical martyrdom.
Arafat was not, and Hamas is not now, in its current guise, the Palestinians' future - only the mothers are, only the children are.
End the Cycle of Retaliation
Marwan Bishara, International Herald Tribune
July 1-2, 2006
When the dust finally settles, Israel's offensive against the besieged Palestinian territories will have caused more destruction and death and left the Israeli government with the same strategic deadlock. Instead of lashing out against their neighbors, Israelis must end the vicious cycle of provocations and retaliations through meaningful negotiations.
The Israeli government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bases its campaign against Palestinian civilian infrastructure on three fallacies: that Israel does not initiate but retaliates to protect its citizens, in this case a kidnapped soldier; that its response is measured and not meant to harm the broader population; and that it does not negotiate with those its deems terrorists.
For one, Israel's offensive did not just start this week. The two-month-old Israeli government is responsible for the killing of 85 Palestinians, including many children, in attacks aimed at carrying out illegal extrajudicial assassinations. The Hamas government maintained a one-sided cease-fire for 15 months, but continued Israeli attacks made Palestinian retaliation only a question of time.
Since the beginning of the intifada in September 2000, repeated Israeli bombardments and targeted assassinations against Palestinians have aggravated the violence and resulted in harm to more, not fewer, Israelis. In fact, most major Palestinian suicide bombings since 2001 have come in retaliation to Israeli assassinations, many of which occurred when the Palestinians were mulling over or abiding by self-imposed restraint.
To give only three examples: On July 31, 2001, Israel's assassination of the two leading Hamas militants in Nablus ended a nearly two-month Hamas cease- fire, leading to the terrible Aug. 9 Hamas suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizzeria. On July 23, 2002, an Israeli air attack on a crowded apartment block in Gaza City killed a senior Hamas leader, Salah Shehada, and 15 civilians, 11 of them children, hours before a widely reported unilateral cease-fire declaration. A suicide bombing followed on Aug. 4. On June 10, 2003, Israel's attempted assassination of the senior Hamas political leader in Gaza, Abdel-Aziz Rantisi, which wounded him and killed four Palestinian civilians, lead to the bus bombing in Jerusalem on June 11 that killed 16 Israelis.
Although Israel's provocations don't justify suicide bombings, they demonstrate why the source of terrorism lies first and foremost in its military aggression and occupation. In this context, affected Palestinian civilians see themselves not as "collateral damage" but as victims of state terrorism.
As for the nature of Israel's "retaliation," one could hardly refer to Israel's destruction of the civic infrastructure of 1.3 million Palestinians as "measured." The Israeli Army began this week's Gaza offensive by bombing bridges, roads, electric and water supplies.
By its very nature the Israeli offensive is meant to punish, overwhelm and deter with disproportionate force regardless of the suffering of the general public. Cutting off basic services of a people is not only unjustified, it is collective punishment, which is illegal under the Geneva Conventions.
The asymmetry between Israeli and Palestinian fire-power mustn't be translated into asymmetry between the value of Israeli and Palestinian life. The Palestinians have captured one Israeli soldier, but Israel holds 9,000 Palestinian prisoners.
Regarding Israel's purported refusal to bargain with "terrorists," its dealings with Hezbollah paint a different picture. Among others, its bombardment of Beirut's electric generators and its all out offensive in 1996 leading to the Qana massacre, failed to deter the Lebanese resistance and eventually forced Israel to negotiate through a third party with those its deemed Islamist terrorists, and release hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners from its jails in exchange for the remains of dead Israeli soldiers.
Given that 39 years of attempts by Israel to tame or intimidate the Palestinians have instead lead to their radicalization, isn't it time for Israel to change course? In such a minuscule territory, Israelis will never be secure if the Palestinians are utterly insecure.
The ongoing saga has once again demonstrated the absurdity of unilateralism as a viable and secure solution. And yet the Olmert government is using the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier to undermine the historical agreement Hamas has just reached with President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party over a unity government, de facto recognition of Israel and negotiations with Israel.
Whether you like it or not, Hamas, like Hezbollah, is mostly a byproduct of an oppressive occupation, and not the other way round. That's why refraining from excessive use of force and concentrating all efforts on a negotiated end to the occupation is paramount for security and moderation. Otherwise, Israel will only succeed in increasing Hamas's popularity and pushing it back to clandestinity and war.
Monday, July 3, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Extremism: America's Problem (June 22, 2006)
America’s problem is, by common majority logic and reasoning, that of extremism. Not left or right, not Democratic or Republican, not religious or agnostic, but our extremists on both sides of every fence.
An elegant solution, curiously not previously suggested, is inspired by physics and the laws of magnetism. When one combines a negative pole with another negative pole, these cancel each other out with dramatic and explosive effect.
We should find a viable way to cull the extremes from our great American society, thereby moderating and balancing our communities most effectively for future generations.
Let’s find a way to synergistically join our extremists with their oft-referenced brethren in Iran. Those included could indeed be:
- all who feel they live in an intolerably fascist USA, where the Patriot Act has decimated our freedoms
- all those who support the Iranian regime, raise and give charity to those terrorist organizations within their fold and those who see Iran (and its compatriots in arms Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Il) as the guiding light of universal democracies
- those who find all solutions in increased multi-culturalism
- those who want Shariah law for our land and those, conversely, who feel threatened in our land by every manifestation of the Ten Commandments or God’s name in the public arena
- those conspiring militants, those confused about why and how the Twin Towers tumbled, those who have had sex with aliens, find transmitters in their teeth and feel Israel runs our country even when our government seems incapable of doing it for themselves
- those anti-smoking, anti-traditional marriage liberals who feel the hijab, clitoridectomy, and sexual slavery in the Middle East is an inspiring lesson in gender relations, respect, and freedom
- Rosie O’Donnell, Paris Hilton, Michael Moore, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the ACLU, Louis Farrakhan and assorted others who see the devil in our society as it is currently constituted, and would turn it inside out at the first chance they get.
I, for one, would gratefully donate a good portion of my assets to convincingly support a one-way voluntary repatriation of these unhappy souls to Iran and Ahmadinejad, their savior on this transitory earth. Either our donated class of extremists would irrevocably change the mullahs and their followers for the better (as any change could not be for the worse) or our Iranian brethren would adjust our donation for all time (a change that likewise could not possibly be disadvantageous). Thus a negative and a negative might likely cancel each other out, a boon for both Iran and America, fermenting newly found friendships everywhere.
Think of the accolades we would receive as the donor country from the United Nations, having transferred the best and the brightest from our shores to the favorite country of the UN’s Security Council and their epiphanous Human Rights Council. We will then have further confirmation of our unrivaled generosity and of being a peace-loving country that exported not its bombs, but its universally beloved.
An elegant solution, curiously not previously suggested, is inspired by physics and the laws of magnetism. When one combines a negative pole with another negative pole, these cancel each other out with dramatic and explosive effect.
We should find a viable way to cull the extremes from our great American society, thereby moderating and balancing our communities most effectively for future generations.
Let’s find a way to synergistically join our extremists with their oft-referenced brethren in Iran. Those included could indeed be:
- all who feel they live in an intolerably fascist USA, where the Patriot Act has decimated our freedoms
- all those who support the Iranian regime, raise and give charity to those terrorist organizations within their fold and those who see Iran (and its compatriots in arms Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong Il) as the guiding light of universal democracies
- those who find all solutions in increased multi-culturalism
- those who want Shariah law for our land and those, conversely, who feel threatened in our land by every manifestation of the Ten Commandments or God’s name in the public arena
- those conspiring militants, those confused about why and how the Twin Towers tumbled, those who have had sex with aliens, find transmitters in their teeth and feel Israel runs our country even when our government seems incapable of doing it for themselves
- those anti-smoking, anti-traditional marriage liberals who feel the hijab, clitoridectomy, and sexual slavery in the Middle East is an inspiring lesson in gender relations, respect, and freedom
- Rosie O’Donnell, Paris Hilton, Michael Moore, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the ACLU, Louis Farrakhan and assorted others who see the devil in our society as it is currently constituted, and would turn it inside out at the first chance they get.
I, for one, would gratefully donate a good portion of my assets to convincingly support a one-way voluntary repatriation of these unhappy souls to Iran and Ahmadinejad, their savior on this transitory earth. Either our donated class of extremists would irrevocably change the mullahs and their followers for the better (as any change could not be for the worse) or our Iranian brethren would adjust our donation for all time (a change that likewise could not possibly be disadvantageous). Thus a negative and a negative might likely cancel each other out, a boon for both Iran and America, fermenting newly found friendships everywhere.
Think of the accolades we would receive as the donor country from the United Nations, having transferred the best and the brightest from our shores to the favorite country of the UN’s Security Council and their epiphanous Human Rights Council. We will then have further confirmation of our unrivaled generosity and of being a peace-loving country that exported not its bombs, but its universally beloved.
Saturday, February 4, 2006
Publication of Muhammad Caricatures (Feb. 4, 2006)
This is not a case of preference or taste, as it should be. It is now an issue of hypocrisy, coercion and intolerance; not by Denmark or their press, but by the vocal Muslim world. However tasteful your cartoons may or may not be, your right to discourse is inalienable and your fight to support same is admirable.
You courageously and uniquely saved the Danish-Jewish community from the Nazi ravages. Your love of honesty and truth likewise remains a beacon to all nations, one unfortunately not replicated by most supposedly free Western nations.
The critics in the Muslim world are generally guilty of absolute discrimination against Christians, Jews, their own women and moderates everywhere. So it’s presumably not such a stretch for them to extend their own internal fascism to Denmark’s newspapers. They will only be encouraged to modify their intransigence if Europe refrains from reducing its own freedoms.
You courageously and uniquely saved the Danish-Jewish community from the Nazi ravages. Your love of honesty and truth likewise remains a beacon to all nations, one unfortunately not replicated by most supposedly free Western nations.
The critics in the Muslim world are generally guilty of absolute discrimination against Christians, Jews, their own women and moderates everywhere. So it’s presumably not such a stretch for them to extend their own internal fascism to Denmark’s newspapers. They will only be encouraged to modify their intransigence if Europe refrains from reducing its own freedoms.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
When Are We Going To Get Serious? (July 30, 2005)
To profile or not – absurdities abound
The Israelis have refined profiling to such an extent as to successfully foil 95% of attempted suicide bombings. When the Germans or the Egyptians search passengers I assure you that Middle Eastern males get prime billing. It has not gone unnoticed by both Arabs and Europeans alike, that modern day suicide bombings and terrorism is the almost exclusive preserve of male Muslims of Middle Eastern extraction. This reality is not our wish or desire but a sad fact of our increasingly tenuous global world.
Yet in America, the Land of the Free, the Brave and the ACLU, we have recreated our own Alice in Wonderland smoke & mirrors. We would rather search, at our airports and trains, 10 children, old women and 6.5 foot blue-eyed Swedes to every 1 Middle Easterner. Yet the Russians and the Saudis, the Turks and the Lebanese, no strangers to terrorism, would do the reverse.
Why do we allow the ACLU to define our arithmetic? For what suicidal absurdity do we allow political correctness to prevail over practical necessity? What is the fantasy that addles our brain so much so that we imagine we can regain total security in the face of this implacable onslaught with no loss of freedom and no inconvenience? How come the delicate sensibilities of those who would be profiled (rationally, understandably) outweigh our desire for survival and the longevity of our freedoms?
I now note at our New York subways, selective searches can be refused, allowing would-be bombers to vacate those premises with sensitivities intact, only to try another station or location until luck or chance allows their entry. Are we merely play acting? Don’t we realize that it is only a matter of time until the first radioactive “dirty bomb” or other WMD is tested on the naïve majority?
The ACLU confuses itself with Abraham, imagining that by offering ourselves as a sacrificial lamb we could appease those believers and their God in their crusade against us, the infidels, the unbelievers. But they are not Abraham, but Chamberlain.
Ultimately, we will have to choose between the ACLU and their acolytes and our very survival, between our perceived freedom for the next ten minutes and our freedom for our children and our children’s children.
The choice is ours, not theirs.
The Israelis have refined profiling to such an extent as to successfully foil 95% of attempted suicide bombings. When the Germans or the Egyptians search passengers I assure you that Middle Eastern males get prime billing. It has not gone unnoticed by both Arabs and Europeans alike, that modern day suicide bombings and terrorism is the almost exclusive preserve of male Muslims of Middle Eastern extraction. This reality is not our wish or desire but a sad fact of our increasingly tenuous global world.
Yet in America, the Land of the Free, the Brave and the ACLU, we have recreated our own Alice in Wonderland smoke & mirrors. We would rather search, at our airports and trains, 10 children, old women and 6.5 foot blue-eyed Swedes to every 1 Middle Easterner. Yet the Russians and the Saudis, the Turks and the Lebanese, no strangers to terrorism, would do the reverse.
Why do we allow the ACLU to define our arithmetic? For what suicidal absurdity do we allow political correctness to prevail over practical necessity? What is the fantasy that addles our brain so much so that we imagine we can regain total security in the face of this implacable onslaught with no loss of freedom and no inconvenience? How come the delicate sensibilities of those who would be profiled (rationally, understandably) outweigh our desire for survival and the longevity of our freedoms?
I now note at our New York subways, selective searches can be refused, allowing would-be bombers to vacate those premises with sensitivities intact, only to try another station or location until luck or chance allows their entry. Are we merely play acting? Don’t we realize that it is only a matter of time until the first radioactive “dirty bomb” or other WMD is tested on the naïve majority?
The ACLU confuses itself with Abraham, imagining that by offering ourselves as a sacrificial lamb we could appease those believers and their God in their crusade against us, the infidels, the unbelievers. But they are not Abraham, but Chamberlain.
Ultimately, we will have to choose between the ACLU and their acolytes and our very survival, between our perceived freedom for the next ten minutes and our freedom for our children and our children’s children.
The choice is ours, not theirs.
Saturday, July 16, 2005
Pussy-footing (July 16, 2005)
Re: July 15 interview by Ron Reagan & Monica Crowley of MSNBC with two American Muslim spokesmen
Best wishes.
I enjoyed your presentations, however, in this instance you “pussy-footed” around with deft but copious amounts of political correctness. You would not have been so delicate with Sharon or Barak. A great pity. Unless you treat all parties with the same skepticism you are merely going to be used as a propaganda platform.
a) Validly you questioned moderate Muslims’ fears to be “outed.” For your American guest to claim fearlessness and suggest the same goes in the Middle East is absurd as many political murders there attest.
b) For your guests to suggest that all the Arab governments decried London, New York, Madrid, etc. bombings is totally incorrect. Crowds in Gaza and elsewhere were celebrating after 9/11, all with full public visibility and support.
c) For your guests to claim that Jihad in the Arab world never supports killing the innocent is obnoxious considering the hundreds of old women and young children and babies and Arab Israelis alike blown apart in Israel by the suicide bombers. Why not call these lies for what they are?
I admire your general presentations. Please don’t pander to those who believe that deception of the infidel is a laudable goal in their Jihad of domination and destruction.
Best wishes.
I enjoyed your presentations, however, in this instance you “pussy-footed” around with deft but copious amounts of political correctness. You would not have been so delicate with Sharon or Barak. A great pity. Unless you treat all parties with the same skepticism you are merely going to be used as a propaganda platform.
a) Validly you questioned moderate Muslims’ fears to be “outed.” For your American guest to claim fearlessness and suggest the same goes in the Middle East is absurd as many political murders there attest.
b) For your guests to suggest that all the Arab governments decried London, New York, Madrid, etc. bombings is totally incorrect. Crowds in Gaza and elsewhere were celebrating after 9/11, all with full public visibility and support.
c) For your guests to claim that Jihad in the Arab world never supports killing the innocent is obnoxious considering the hundreds of old women and young children and babies and Arab Israelis alike blown apart in Israel by the suicide bombers. Why not call these lies for what they are?
I admire your general presentations. Please don’t pander to those who believe that deception of the infidel is a laudable goal in their Jihad of domination and destruction.
Thursday, July 7, 2005
London Bombings: A simple solution, and very politically incorrect (July 7, 2005)
England as well as the USA and other western democracies are all open societies. It is impossible to defend these free societies against this and other forms of terrorism. We can never check every train, bus, plane, restaurant, or public facility, worldwide, all the time.
Perhaps Bush had it right in the particular instance of “taking the war to the enemy.” Perhaps the Israelis were ‘spot-on’ in preemptive assassinations of terrorist leaderships. The fervor for suicide bombings amongst the cadres of the initiators would be considerably dampened (even eliminated) if these puppeteers of death were convinced of the fact that they would be next in line for elimination after the next terrorist event, wherever they may be hiding (usually amongst family, schools, or hospitals – their locations of choice).
I earnestly suggest we stop wasting time and money at our airports. I recommend we take a fraction of the tens of billions spent on amorphous homeland security and initiate a new project – call it “realistic cost-effective preemption.” We invite to participate ex-Marines and survivors of terrorist activities worldwide. There are many thousands of Lebanese, Russian and Jordanian citizens, Indians, Kuwaitis, Iranians, Kurds – the list is long – who for many reasons may harbor hate for the terrorist groups, may have lost family or friends. Let us train them and pay them to be the most effective anti-terrorist killing machines possible, and the most well-paid. (A million dollars each would not dent the budget). Then let us send out 10,000 of these largely Arabic-speaking and Middle East-looking agents and focus them like a laser on the top leadership of Al Qaeda and their myriad associations around the world, to preemptively decimate the core of these groups that so intend to destroy our society as we know it.
We have really a simple choice: do we wait for the first nuclear catastrophe in one of our capitols, or do we preempt (in a relatively inexpensive, focused, practical and entirely politically incorrect manner) those committed to our annihilation. Perhaps the writing is finally on the wall.
Perhaps Bush had it right in the particular instance of “taking the war to the enemy.” Perhaps the Israelis were ‘spot-on’ in preemptive assassinations of terrorist leaderships. The fervor for suicide bombings amongst the cadres of the initiators would be considerably dampened (even eliminated) if these puppeteers of death were convinced of the fact that they would be next in line for elimination after the next terrorist event, wherever they may be hiding (usually amongst family, schools, or hospitals – their locations of choice).
I earnestly suggest we stop wasting time and money at our airports. I recommend we take a fraction of the tens of billions spent on amorphous homeland security and initiate a new project – call it “realistic cost-effective preemption.” We invite to participate ex-Marines and survivors of terrorist activities worldwide. There are many thousands of Lebanese, Russian and Jordanian citizens, Indians, Kuwaitis, Iranians, Kurds – the list is long – who for many reasons may harbor hate for the terrorist groups, may have lost family or friends. Let us train them and pay them to be the most effective anti-terrorist killing machines possible, and the most well-paid. (A million dollars each would not dent the budget). Then let us send out 10,000 of these largely Arabic-speaking and Middle East-looking agents and focus them like a laser on the top leadership of Al Qaeda and their myriad associations around the world, to preemptively decimate the core of these groups that so intend to destroy our society as we know it.
We have really a simple choice: do we wait for the first nuclear catastrophe in one of our capitols, or do we preempt (in a relatively inexpensive, focused, practical and entirely politically incorrect manner) those committed to our annihilation. Perhaps the writing is finally on the wall.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Re: Sept. 20, 2004 Op-Ed by Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari
The abovementioned is a remarkable article, a rare acknowledgment— my compliments and sincerest congratulations.
Only when large swathes of the Middle East, when the majority of your brethren like you look fate and reality squarely in the eye, when truth becomes the essence of your vision rather than the misguided victim of the current agendas, only then can Arabs, Jews and Christians sit down, break bread and openly share disagreements whilst reasonably working towards common goals, acknowledging differences without motivating for mutual destruction.
Two points however. Firstly, are Jews cowards because they do not have a death wish? If so, I love this form of cowardice—as a Jew, I love life, for me & for you, for us all.
Secondly, I commend you for acknowledging that old canard, confirming as a forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. You have indeed both courage and truth and I have no doubt, that our commonalities are greater than our differences.
I look forward to a day when we can all, as different nations and different religions, enjoy and share the Middle East—there really is enough for us all to share, for our children and our children’s’ children.
Only when large swathes of the Middle East, when the majority of your brethren like you look fate and reality squarely in the eye, when truth becomes the essence of your vision rather than the misguided victim of the current agendas, only then can Arabs, Jews and Christians sit down, break bread and openly share disagreements whilst reasonably working towards common goals, acknowledging differences without motivating for mutual destruction.
Two points however. Firstly, are Jews cowards because they do not have a death wish? If so, I love this form of cowardice—as a Jew, I love life, for me & for you, for us all.
Secondly, I commend you for acknowledging that old canard, confirming as a forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. You have indeed both courage and truth and I have no doubt, that our commonalities are greater than our differences.
I look forward to a day when we can all, as different nations and different religions, enjoy and share the Middle East—there really is enough for us all to share, for our children and our children’s’ children.
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