During Israel's incursion into Gaza to stop missile attacks on civilians, we heard a lot of reports that made it sound as if not one stone was being left upon another in Gaza. Indeed, one of the worst perpetrators was the New York Times. That's why I find this little tidbit in an article today to be fascinating.

Most of Gaza, especially the capital, Gaza City, remains largely intact. This is not Grozny after the Chechen war or Dresden after World War II. The hospitals are coping; shops are reopening; traffic is becoming a problem once again. Israel has tripled the amount of goods flowing in here since before the war.

In other words, Israel went to great lengths to avoid areas that were not being used by Hamas for military purposes. Israel did not engage in indiscriminate attacks upon the whole of Gaza. And only now, after shilling for the terrorists, does the new York Times bother to tell us that. Sure doesn't sound like Nazi-style genocide to me.

H/T Commentary's Contentions

Posted by: Greg at 11:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 189 words, total size 1 kb.

Israeli spokesman Mark Regev has this to say about calls for Israel to declare a unilateral ceasefire in Gaza.

"I don't believe that there's a logical expectation in the international community that Israel unilaterally cease fire while Hamas would continue to target cities, trying to kill our people."

How true. However, such calls are not based upon logic or common sense. They are based upon a malignant belief that Israel has no right to peace and security, that it lacks the right to self-defense that every other nation has – and that Arabs who would murder Jews are never to be held accountable for their murderous actions.

Posted by: Greg at 01:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 115 words, total size 1 kb.

Why should Israel let it through when it won’t get to the innocents for whom it is intended – but will instead be diverted by Hamas and sold at a profit?

Hamas on Monday raided some 100 aid trucks that Israel had allowed into Gaza, stole their contents and sold them to the highest bidders.

The IDF said that since terminal activity is coordinated with UNRWA and the Red Cross, Israel could do nothing to prevent such raids, Israel Radio reported.

Between 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., the army had ceased all military activity in Gaza and once again established a "humanitarian corridor" to help facilitate the transfer of the supplies.

Funny, the anti-Semites with UNRWA havenÂ’t offered a word of condemnation of this Hamas misdeed. After all, since those involved are not Jews, there is nothing to condemn.

Posted by: Greg at 11:12 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 147 words, total size 1 kb.

It certainly looks that way to me. After all, rather than make arrests disperse a crowd of anti-Semites seeking to create a new Kristallnacht, they instead chose to suppress the free speech of residents of an apartment who dared to display an Israeli flag in their window.

Yeah, that's right -- rather than actually take action against the criminals, the police instead kicked down the door of someone's home to silence the legal speech law-abiding supporters of Israel.

Today, 10.000 people demonstrated against Israel here in my hometown Duisburg (Germany) and to express their solidarity with Hamas. So, my girlfriend and me put two Israel flags out of the windows of our flat in the 3rd floor. During the demonstration which went through our street the police broke into our flat and removed the flag of Israel. The statement of the police was to de-escalate the situation, because many youth demonstrators were on the brink of breaking into our apartment house. Before this they threw snowballs, knifes and stones against our windows and the complete building. We both were standing on the other side of the street and were shocked by seeing a police officer standing in our bedroom and opening the window to get the flag. The picture illustrate this situation. The police acquiesced in the demands of the mob.

Have these people already forgotten the lessons of the Hitler era? Where is the world condemnation of this act? Heck -- where are the press reports? Seems to me that German authorities once again have sided with those who seek the death of Jews over Jews and their supporters. This video documents the assault on freedom to appease Jew-haters.

Of course, it isn't just Germany where we are seeing assaults on Jews and their institutions. In England there are calls for the beheading of Jews in response to Israel's defensive measures in Gaza. Pro-Hamas hatemongers (a redundant term, I know) have vandalized and attempted to burn multiple synagogues in Chicago. Pro-Hamas rallies worldwide have featured calls for the completion of the Holocaust.

When I was a child, I was taught that the world would never again permit such things, and that civilized people would not stand silent in the face of actions like those which led to the Holocaust.

How quickly that commitment has lost its force when the world is confronted with radical Islam and its fellow-travelers.

UPDATE: This report from one of Germany's most prestigious newspapers shows that this incident is worse than first reported -- and that it is causing quit a stir in Germany.

Police in the western German city of Duisburg have admitted they removed flags a student had hung in his apartment in support of Israel during a pro-Palestinian protest march in the city. Officers broke down his door and removed the flags. The city's police chief has issued an apology, but outrage is spreading.

* * *

P. said he was "shocked" by the incident. Afraid to return to his apartment, he first went to a friend's place nearby. Around two hours later he returned with his girlfriend and an acquaintance -- but he claims youths were still throwing things at the house.

He said he didn't return to the apartment until they had left. A police car passed by and P. asked the officers to come to his apartment. The officers warned that P. and his girlfriend should stay away from the window and that police would watch the house for a few hours.

"I was beside myself," P. said, "I was afraid." Two hours passed without any incident. Then P.'s acquaintance, also in the apartment, went out to the balcony for a smoke and claims he was immediately cursed as a "shit jew".

Two minutes later, the police returned to P.'s door -- and for the second time they did something unexpected. They ordered the acquaintance to leave the apartment.

So let's be clear -- not only did these cops violate the rights of the occupants of the apartment by suppressing their freedom of speech, they also made them virtual prisoners in their home, effectively placing them under house arrest and denying them the the free use of their home.

Here's a novel concept -- instead of going after the non-criminals, why don't cops start arresting the criminals and terrorists who practice the Religion of barbarism.

Posted by: Greg at 02:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 740 words, total size 6 kb.

This is what Hamas and its supporters believe is “humanitarian aid”.

As for the coverage: One of my contacts with The Israeli Army called me today and said “You gotta see this.” Hidden in one of the emergency aid shipments supposed to go into the Gaza strip during the 3 hour lull in fighting, were 38 pallets of camo uniforms, green military sweaters and black fatigues.

This is one of the emergency shipments intended to bring medical supplies and food to the people who need it so badly. Half the trucks bringing the stuff in are UN. Half the trucks are private. IÂ’m not certain which trucks were hauling the uniforms. They had been off loaded when I got there. The whole thing is under investigation.

Sounds like humanitarian aid to me – if by “humanitarian aid” you mean “military supplies”.

I’m really starting to think that we need to see a “Deuteronomy 7:1-2” type solution imposed with regard to the residents of Gaza.

“When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them and show no favor to them.”

After all, weÂ’ve seen what good negotiations and agreements with the Palestinians are. Perhaps it is time to utterly smite them.

Posted by: Greg at 12:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 273 words, total size 2 kb.

Why on earth the Washington Post would publish a piece by this disgrace is beyond me – his is the worst presidency (for either foreign or domestic policy) of my lifetime. And given Jimmy Carter’s clear history of anti-Semitism when it comes to dealing with Israel, I would think that rational folks would consider him effectively discredited on the matter.

His conclusion – the entire conflict is Israel’s fault for failing to give into all of Hamas’ demands.

Posted by: Greg at 01:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

That seems to be the proposal of former UN Ambassador John Bolton – return Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan because the two-state solution has failed.

nstead, we should look to a "three-state" approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty. Among many anomalies, today's conflict lies within the boundaries of three states nominally at peace. Having the two Arab states re-extend their prior political authority is an authentic way to extend the zone of peace and, more important, build on governments that are providing peace and stability in their own countries. "International observers" or the like cannot come close to what is necessary; we need real states with real security forces.

Of course, neither government wants to deal with the Terrorstinians that the Arab world spent the last six decades radicalizing with a visceral hatred of Israel (not that the residents of the region were not frighteningly anti-Semitic before there even was an Israel – anti-Zionist Arab leaders were even funded by the Third Reich before and during the Second World War). Thus, I don’t believe the three-state solution is viable.

Maybe Israel ought to expel every Palestinian from Gaza and the West Bank in precisely the same way that Arab states expelled their Jewish populations following the creation of Israel in 1948. Call it the one-state solution -- the least desirable option, to be sure, but could it really be any worse than the stated policy of Hamas?

Posted by: Greg at 03:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 260 words, total size 2 kb.

After doing a pretty good job of serving as a mouthpiece for Hamas for the last week, it is good to see the Washington Post start 2009 with some information about the current Israeli military action in Gaza that provides a bit of balance. Bet of all, Professor Robert Lieber of Georgetown points out some important details about the reasons for the Israeli attacks and how they have been conducted.

Let's break down his main points.

First, despite the tragic deaths of civilians, Israeli's airstrikes have been precisely aimed at Hamas fighters, installations and rocket launchers. Inevitably, the use of force causes injury and death to innocents, but from initial figures announced by U.N. personnel, it appears that more than 80 percent of those killed were Hamas security personnel or other militants -- a ratio that might compare favorably with the use of force by U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. In view of Hamas's practice of deliberately placing missile launchers and other weapons in the midst of densely populated areas, the precision is remarkable. It also reflects the fact that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seek to minimize civilian deaths, while Hamas deliberately targets civilians.

Indeed, one of the reasons that Israel has shown extreme forbearance is because of the concern abut civilian casualties. However, the decision of Hamas to unilaterally end the six month truce with Israel and to step up attacks on Israeli civilians led Israel to act -- while still seeking to minimize civilian deaths.

And then there is this important consideration.

ad_icon

Second, what we are witnessing is not a "cycle" of violence. The IDF airstrikes are a reaction to the unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks against the Jewish state. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 in the hope that the Palestinians would use the opportunity to prepare for an eventual agreement and a two-state solution in which they would live side by side in peace with Israel. Since then, there have been more than 3,500 such attacks aimed at areas of southern Israel, including over 200 launches since Dec. 19, after Hamas chose not to extend a six-month truce. The expanding range of these missiles now covers an area populated by as many as 700,000 Israelis.

That's right -- Gaza is as Judenrein (translation: clean of Jews) as Hitler's ideal Germany would have been (the only Jew in Gaza is kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad_Shalit). Israel forcibly removed the last recalcitrant Jewish residents of Gaza (which had had a continuous Jewish presence for the previous three millennia) and turned it over to the avowed enemies of Israel in 2005 in a vain and foolish attempt to implement a so-called "two-state solution" to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since that time, there have been regular attacks from Gaza. And while Leiber says that there have been 200 launches since December 19, I'd like to suggest that the number is higher -- I've received text-message updates in the last two days indicating that at nearly that many rockets have been fired into Israel in the last 48 hours.

Lieber also makes another point -- Hamas rejects any two-state solution to the current conflict. As long as it maintains a hold on power, there can be no peace. Israel has acted in good faith to bring an end to six decades of instability in the region -- some of us would argue recklessly and foolishly so -- while having never had an actual partner for peace willing to act to actually bring about peace. Only by completely undermining Hamas might Israel create a situation in which the two-state solution might work -- and then only if Fatah is prepared to finally step up and act as a government rather than a terrorist organization or criminal gang.

Maybe the outcome of this military action will, finally, be peace.

Posted by: Greg at 04:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 647 words, total size 4 kb.

One more sign that the US has acted as a liberator in Iraq rather than an occupier or colonizer.

The walls of the majestic Republican Palace in Baghdad's Green Zone have been stripped bare. The vaults that secured American cash and classified documents are gone, and the cement blast walls that protected the front entrance were taken down this week. The U.S. military dining facility inside what was once the American Embassy served its last meal New Year's Eve.

"This is the end of the world as we know it," said Sgt. 1st Class Patrick McDonald, 47, who co-authored a guide to historic sites in the Green Zone. "It's not like everyone is shredding documents and fleeing Saigon. But we are stepping away from a building."

Saddam Hussein had the palace compound's main building decorated with giant busts of himself to demonstrate his hold over Iraq. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the palace came to symbolize the American role in the country, first as the headquarters of the U.S. occupation authority and later the U.S. Embassy. American civilians and troops held "salsa night" dances around the pool behind the palace before retiring to trailers sheathed in sandbags.

When the clock struck midnight on Wednesday, the U.S. returned the palace to the Iraqi government and relinquished formal control over the Green Zone, a heavily fortified six-square-mile enclave on the Tigris River where key U.S. and Iraqi bureaucracies are situated.

This move is as it should be -- it was never teh goal of teh United States to stay in Iraq indefinitely. Since the invasion, it was always American policy to place control of all of Iraq in the hands of the Iraqis. This is simply one more step in the process -- one that has seen millions of Iraqis freed from the yoke of Saddamite tyranny.

Posted by: Greg at 03:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 315 words, total size 2 kb.