WarSclerotic

Israel’s War on Hamas: The Next Stage, Front Page Magazine, Arnold Steinberg, August 6, 2014

Bill Buckley regretted his column indicting Israel’s invasion of Jenin, because that Israeli “massacre” of Palestinians  in 2002 never occurred.  Indeed, to limit Palestinian casualties, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) had lost many soldiers going door to door.  Even Bill was seduced by the mainstream media, which relied on graphic footage, some doctored, and on bogus numbers.

Absent Iron Dome (which, incidentally, like many Israeli military achievements will tutor our Pentagon with real-time validation), we would see horrible images of mass Israeli casualties.  Do we need to quantify the deaths and injuries that would have occurred in Israel without the intercepts? Even such horror would not satiate the European street thugs, not all Muslims, who yearn for another Kristallnacht.  That’s because, contrary to leftist mythology, the dispute involving tiny Israel is not a real estate squabble to be resolved by Donald Trump, so “land for peace” doesn’t work.

In 1999, I sat down with Ariel Sharon to discuss running a campaign in Israel the following year against a national referendum to give the Golan Heights back to Syria. It was an ill-advised Bill Clinton plan, endorsed by then-Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak, that had to be scuttled.  Clearly, it was painful for Sharon, who became prime minister in 2001, to uproot nearly ten thousand Israeli settlers and leave Gaza.  But he did, against his political base and against  Bibi Netanyahu.  In return, Gaza, which could have become a model for the “two-state solution,” became a terrorist base for launching thousands of rockets.

In Gaza, the deaths and injuries are  substantial, though numbers are not independently verified. Also, many “civilian casualties” were Hamas.  And some casualties resulted, as in the past, from Hamas rockets falling short and landing in Gaza, or from hundreds of Hamas improvised explosive devices (IEDs).   The U.S. should blame Hamas entirely, not mainly or partially.

We know the IDF alerted the innocent to leave, and Hamas urged them to stay. Why then would the U.N. and the world not condemn Hamas, thus rendering its barbarianism obsolete, and saving lives now, and later?

History.  The U.N. withdrew its Sinai buffer peace force in 1967, a withdrawal helping precipitate the Six-Day War.  For decades, UN facilities and refugee centers have stored weapons for staging attacks on Israel.  With its 50+ nations with a Muslim majority, the U.N. is obsessed with Israel as the world’s villain. Remember, Arabs routinely kill fellow Arabs, including Palestinians (Syria, right now), and the world is silent. The U.N. didn’t care when Jordan killed thousands of Palestinians.  Indeed, no demonstrations occurred in Paris or London over Jordan’s “occupation” of “Palestine.”

We were told each Gaza “truce” must be acceptable both to the Hamas “political wing” and the Hamas “military wing.”  The former luxuriates in 5-star hotels in Qatar and denies responsibility for the  latter, ensconced in fortified bunkers under a hospital while urging children to congregate near rocket launchers.  We should insist Qatar delegitimize these corrupt Hamas politicians and Israel (or someone) should kill these evil, but cowardly, Hamas “generals.”

The U.S. seeking a cease-fire was a lose-lose situation.  If it didn’t get it, the U.S. would look impotent (which American impotence is the case, now, in most of the world).  If a ceasefire succeeded but undercut Israel’s strategy  — either by giving Hamas an opportunity to regroup, or laying the basis for concessions to Hamas, the interest of both Israel and the U.S. was ill-served.  Now, Israel destroyed the tunnels, so it left Gaza — on its terms.

The Obama policy destabilizes the region.  Just as the clueless, Jew-hating Jimmy Carter replaced the imperfect, but-reform-minded Iranian Shah with the Ayatollah, ushering in the Islamist revolution, Barack Obama undercut another imperfect ally, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, in effect replacing him with the “elected” Mohamed Morsi.  Fortunately, the Egyptian military trumped the Arab Spring and, with popular support, and despite Obama, overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, whose regime was inexplicably being rearmed by Obama — though  Morsi had repudiated Egypt’s peaceful relationship with Israel and allowed more rocket smuggling into Gaza.

Imagine – the current Egyptian government  today opposes Hamas and secures the Gaza-Sinai border against Hamas rearming.  Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia tacitly approves the destruction of Hamas. Jordan and other Arab nations have remained on the sidelines. Meanwhile, Kerry continued to undercut the moderate Arab world, which finally realizes Hamas is its enemy.

Despite – or maybe, because of – the Obama/Kerry machinations, Israel realized it had to act…now.

Israel could not wait for Syria to stabilize and Hezbollah to threaten from the north, for ISIS to triumph through enough of Iraq to threaten Israel via Jordan, for Iran to complete its nuclear armament and delivery system, certainly not for all this simultaneously with what Israel uncovered: a plan for Hamas terrorists to emerge from an intricate tunnel system to kill, maim and kidnap.

In other words, Israel cannot risk fighting multiple wars on all fronts. That’s why, regardless of what happens now, Israel will persist in various ways to take down Hamas.

How Hamas Deliberately Created a Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza, Commentary Magazine, Evelyn Gordon, August 6, 2014

Now, the organization is gleefully watching the world blame Israel for the humanitarian crisis Hamas itself created. And that gives it every incentive to repeat these tactics in the future.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. What has gone curiously unmentioned by all the great humanitarians from the UN and “human rights” groups, however, is the degree to which this crisis was deliberately fomented by Hamas: Aside from starting the war to begin with, Hamas has done its level best to deprive Gazans of everything from food to medical care to housing, despite Israel’s best efforts to provide them.

Take, for instance, the widely reported shortages of medicines and various other essentials. Many of these products are imported, and since Egypt has largely closed its border, Gaza has only one conduit for these vital imports: the Kerem Shalom crossing into Israel. Thus if Gaza’s Hamas government had any concern whatsoever for its citizens, ensuring that this crossing was kept open and could function at maximum efficiency would be a top priority.

Instead, Hamas and other terrorist groups subjected Kerem Shalom to relentless rocket and mortar fire throughout the 29-day conflict, thereby ensuring that the job of getting cargo through was constantly interrupted as crossing workers raced for cover. Hamas also launched at least three tunnel attacks near Kerem Shalom, each of which shut the crossing down for hours.

Despite this, Israeli staffers risked their lives to keep the crossing open and managed to send through 1,491 truckloads of food, 220 truckloads of other humanitarian supplies, and 106 truckloads of medical supplies. But the numbers would certainly have been higher had the nonstop attacks not kept disrupting operations. On August 1, for instance, a shipment comprising 91 truckloads of aid had to be aborted on when Hamas violated a humanitarian cease-fire by launching a massive attack near Kerem Shalom.

Then there’s the shortage of medical care, as Gaza’s hospitals were reportedly overwhelmed by the influx of Palestinian casualties. To relieve this pressure, Israel allowed some Palestinians into Israel for treatment and also set up a field hospital on the Gaza border. But throughout the war, the field hospital stood almost empty–which Israel says is because Hamas deliberately kept Palestinians from using it.

Many pundits dismiss this claim, insisting there were simply no Palestinians who wanted to go there. That, however, is highly implausible. Gazans routinely seek treatment in Israel because it offers better medical care than Gaza does; as one Gazan said in 2012, “It is obvious that people come to Israel for medical treatment, regardless of the political conflict.” Even Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh sends his family to Israel for treatment; over the past two years, Israel has treated both his granddaughter and his sister’s husband. So while some Palestinians undoubtedly objected to accepting help from the enemy, it’s hard to believe there weren’t also Palestinians who simply wanted the best possible care for their loved ones, and would gladly have accepted it from Israel had they not feared retaliation from a group with no qualms about shooting dissenters.

It’s also worth noting that “humanitarian” organizations in Gaza actively contributed to this particular problem. UNRWA and the Red Cross did refer a few patients to the Israeli field hospital. But you have to wonder why they opted to refer most patients to Gaza’s Shifa Hospital and then make videos about how difficult conditions there were instead of easing the burden on Shifa by referring more patients to the Israeli hospital.

Then, of course, there’s the dire electricity shortage–also courtesy in part of Hamas, which destroyed two power lines carrying electricity from Israel to Gaza and subsequently prevented their repair by shelling the area nonstop.

Finally, there’s the massive destruction of houses in Gaza, which has left thousands of families homeless. That, too, was largely courtesy of Hamas: It booby-trapped houses and other civilian buildings, like a UNRWA clinic, on a massive scale and also used such buildings to store rockets and explosives.

Sometimes, it blew up these buildings itself in an effort to kill Israeli soldiers. Other times, the buildings blew up when relatively light Israeli ammunition like mortar shells–which aren’t powerful enough to destroy a building on their own–caused the booby traps or stored rockets to detonate. As Prof. Gregory Rose aptly noted, Hamas effectively turned all of Gaza into one big suicide bomb. In one neighborhood, for instance, 19 out of 28 houses were either booby-trapped, storing rockets, or concealing a tunnel entrance, thereby ensuring their destruction.

Now, the organization is gleefully watching the world blame Israel for the humanitarian crisis Hamas itself created. And that gives it every incentive to repeat these tactics in the future.