WarSclerotic

Don’t rely on Abbas, Israel Hayom, Isi Leibler, August 11, 2014

(Please see also Abbas’s Fatah Claims Murdering 11,000 Israelis. — DM)

Of course we prefer Abbas, who makes soothing remarks about peace, rather than Khaled Mashaal or Mohammed Deif, who openly exhort their followers to murder us.

But we should not delude ourselves. 

[D]espite initially opposing the inclusion of the pro-Hamas Qatar and Turkey as mediators, Abbas soon joined the chorus defending Hamas and adopted all its demands against Israel. He failed to denounce Hamas for breaching the cease-fires and launching rockets against Israel. During the conflict, Abbas met with Mashaal in Qatar and issued a joint statement calling for an end to Israeli “aggression.” The PA accused Israel of initiating the war and engaging in genocide, and provided notice of its intention to initiate war crimes indictments against Israeli leadership at the International Court of Justice and the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Under such circumstances, Israel is caught between a rock and a hard place. Netanyahu has effectively agreed to ease Gaza border restrictions on condition that demilitarization and genuine supervision of border posts is introduced. But the solution cannot be based on handing over control of Gaza to the PA — a partner to Hamas.

*************

As of now, most Israelis, including long-standing opponents, endorse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership during Operation Protective Edge. From the outset he displayed determination, but avoided demagoguery or generating unrealistic expectations. He refused to be pressured into a full invasion of Gaza, which in addition to even greater casualties would probably have culminated in global sanctions, forcing us to withdraw and providing Hamas with “victory.”

But the jury is still out, and should Hamas continue launching missiles, Israel will not engage in a war of attrition and may still be forced to launch a full invasion of Gaza.

The Israel Defense Forces inflicted enormous damage on Hamas, demolishing the major attack tunnels and destroying two-thirds of its missile infrastructure. Indications are that the vast majority of Gaza inhabitants blame Hamas for the terrible devastation and casualties they endured. Alas, yet again Israel has been pulverized in the battle for public opinion. Despite a clear-cut case and highly articulate spokesmen, logic and reason were subsumed with the emotional impact of the global media sympathetic to Hamas by depicting — out of context and sometimes even totally fabricated — footage of heartbreaking and devastating war casualties and loss of innocent lives. The media mostly failed to point out that Hamas deliberately employed children as human shields and located their command posts and missile launching sites inside or adjacent to schools, mosques and U.N. centers. Israel was endlessly condemned for responding disproportionately to Hamas aggression, unleashing an outflow of hatred and a tsunami of global anti-Semitism reminiscent of the Middle Ages, when Jews were demonized as the source for all the natural disasters facing mankind.

Any objective assessment of IDF behavior would confirm that there has never been a military conflict in which such extraordinary efforts were taken to minimize civilian casualties. It would be a salutary exercise to compare Israel’s efforts to avoid collateral damage among innocent civilians to those of the U.S. while it bombed ISIS in Iraq.

There are already murmurings from hostile anti-Israeli human rights and left-wing groups to extend the demonization to demands that Israeli leaders be tried for war crimes. Many cowardly Western governments are likely to endorse or, at best, abstain from such a manifestly immoral initiative.

The initial Egyptian proposals, requiring a cessation of hostilities without preconditions, remain the only sane option currently available to Hamas and the ultimate outcome of the conflict will be determined by negotiations.

The curtailment of Hamas aggression could only be achieved if the U.S. and Western countries — backed by the Egyptians who revile Hamas as an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood — steadfastly supported the initial European demand for the disarmament of Hamas and monitoring of its future imports and funding to prevent the creation of new tunnels or replenishment of the missile stockpiles.

Indeed, if implemented, we could even visualize a major tilt in the political landscape in which the traditional hostility and hatred of Israel in significant sectors of the Arab world is superseded by alliances to confront the common threat of the radical Islamic movements.

But we should not hold our breaths that this scenario will eventuate. It is already being undermined by the repeated calls from the U.S. and the Europeans to give control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas, and encourage him to create a Palestinian state as soon as possible.

This places Israel in an impossible position. Despite the conflict, Abbas has failed to dismantle the PA merger with the genocidal Hamas. It would be catastrophic for Israel to ignore the principal lesson of this conflict by failing to appreciate the perils that we would confront were we to withdraw the IDF and accept a Palestinian state based on the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. The dire consequences could include terrorists operating from within our heartland, closure of Ben-Gurion International Airport and an extension of tunnels even into Tel Aviv.

The majority of Israelis has no wish to rule over Palestinians and yearn to disengage from them. But for a country that faces existential threats and cannot afford to lose a single war, Israel’s security needs are paramount. The Israeli government cannot, as of now, gamble on a Palestinian state without total demilitarization and defensible borders.

Of course we prefer Abbas, who makes soothing remarks about peace, rather than Khaled Mashaal or Mohammed Deif, who openly exhort their followers to murder us.

But we should not delude ourselves. Aside from a few statements, Abbas has never been a partner for peace. As a matter of strategy he has temporarily set aside “armed conflict” and substituted it with diplomacy, for which he has benefited considerably in the global arena. His tactic is to make no concessions while demanding unilateral concessions, in order to dismantle Israel in stages.

His end goal parallels that of Hamas. But instead of calling for our destruction, he concentrates on the “non-negotiable” right of return to Israel of descendants of Arab refugees, which would spell an end to Jewish sovereignty.

Incitement against Israel saturates the PA-controlled media, the mosques and schools where children from an early age are brainwashed with the culture of death in which martyrdom is sanctified as the greatest spiritual objective. This is reflected in state-sponsored salaries to terrorists in jail with generous pensions to families; city squares, institutions and even football clubs are named after killers of women and children; mass murderers released from Israel received as heroes with many proudly describing their monstrous acts on TV.

This toxic culture, initially inculcated among the people by Arafat and maintained by Abbas, has created such a climate of hatred that any Palestinian leader seeking an accommodation with Israel would be in danger of assassination.

Moreover, despite initially opposing the inclusion of the pro-Hamas Qatar and Turkey as mediators, Abbas soon joined the chorus defending Hamas and adopted all its demands against Israel. He failed to denounce Hamas for breaching the cease-fires and launching rockets against Israel. During the conflict, Abbas met with Mashaal in Qatar and issued a joint statement calling for an end to Israeli “aggression.” The PA accused Israel of initiating the war and engaging in genocide, and provided notice of its intention to initiate war crimes indictments against Israeli leadership at the International Court of Justice and the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

Under such circumstances, Israel is caught between a rock and a hard place. Netanyahu has effectively agreed to ease Gaza border restrictions on condition that demilitarization and genuine supervision of border posts is introduced. But the solution cannot be based on handing over control of Gaza to the PA — a partner to Hamas.

The Egyptians, U.S. and Europeans must supervise this procedure. After the abysmal failure of the U.N. to restrict Hezbollah in Lebanon, it would be inconceivable for Israel to accept the proposal for a U.N. peacekeeping force to take responsibility for monitoring imports and preventing the rearming of Hamas.

On the other hand, it would represent the harbinger of a new era if we could be convinced that a PA takeover would be paralleled by a scheme similar to the Syrian process of removing chemical weapons in which Egypt and a reliable international monitoring body ensured that imports to Gaza are monitored and that Hamas is ultimately demilitarized. Only under such conditions, Israel could achieve a genuine long-term “quiet” which could also extend to a positive relationship with Egypt and the moderate Arab states.

But as of now, Israel faces concerted pressure from the U.S. and the Europeans to make massive concessions to Abbas — without any meaningful provisions for security and compliance. There is a failure to recognize that Abbas and the PA represent a problem rather than the solution and that were it not for the corruption and incompetence of the PA, in the absence of an IDF presence, Hamas or extremists within Fatah would by now have taken control of the region.

Regrettably, the Obama administration — which could influence Western countries to pressure Hamas — repeatedly condemns its ally for the “indefensible” and “”totally unacceptable manner” in which it was defending itself. In contrast, U.S. President Barack Obama merely referred to Hamas launching thousands of rockets against Israeli civilians as “extraordinarily irresponsible.” He continues urging Netanyahu to have faith in Abbas despite his union with Hamas and support for their objectives. This week he told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman that he considered Netanyahu’s popularity and strength, which he contrasted to Abbas who is weak and held in low esteem by his people, as a principal factor inhibiting peace.

Hopefully, the ongoing favorable support from the American public and a bipartisan Congress may stem or even reverse this negative approach. It is now urgent for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to accelerate action and publicly vent its concerns about the U.S. government’s policies and launch a campaign, in conjunction with other supporters of Israel, to ensure that the U.S. now demonstrates its repeated undertakings that “it has Israel’s back.”

This could be a crucial turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict. If not defanged, Hamas could still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and oblige Israel to gird itself for the next round — and at a time to be determined by the barbarians at the gates.

Isis suicide bombing instructor blows up his own class by accident
By Christopher Hooton – 11 August 2014 via The Belfast Telegraph

Isis fighters take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria’s northern Raqqa province

(Apparently not all locals like ISIS.-LS)

An Isis commander at a terrorist training camp north of Baghdad accidentally detonated a belt packed with explosives during a demonstration in front of a group militants on Monday, killing himself and 21 nearby trainees.

The accident was a source of dark humour for locals, with suicide attacks in public spaces having become an almost daily occurrence in Iraq.

A bomber struck a falafel shop near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad last week, and when told of the bungled training demonstration by the New York Times, Raad Hashim, who works at a liquor store near the site of the bombing, burst out laughing.

“This is so funny,” he said. “It shows how stupid they are, those dogs and sons of dogs.”

On a more serious note, he added: “It also gives me pain, as I remember all the innocent people that were killed here.”

“This is God showing justice. This is God sending a message to the bad people and the criminals in the world, to tell them to stop the injustice and to bring peace. Evil will not win in the end. It’s always life that wins over death.

Another local told the newspaper: “I heard this today when my friend rang me in the afternoon to tell me about it. He was so happy as if he was getting married, which made me happy as well.

“I hope that their graves burn and all the rest of them burn as well. I was not happy with the number killed, though: I wanted more of them to die, as I remember my friend who was killed by a suicide bomber in 2007.”

A further 15 people were wounded in the explosion, according to police and army officials, which took place at a compound situated in the northeastern Salahuddin Province.

The instructor was not named, but was described to the NYT by an Iraqi Army officer as a prolific recruiter who was “able to kill the bad guys for once.”

Attacks on civilians have worsened since the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis), with US senior State Department official Brett McGurk noting that 50 suicide attacks took place in Iraq in November, compared with three in November 2012.

“The suicide bomber phenomenon, it is complete insanity,” he said at a congressional hearing last week.

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Abbas’s Fatah Claims Murdering 11,000 Israelis
By Ari Yashar First Publish: 8/11/2014, 9:02 AM Via Israel National News

(Abbas the Moderate.-LS)

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, which has been presented by many as “moderate,” sought to leave no doubts on Sunday about its terrorist nature as it declared having murdered “11,000 Israelis.”

Palestinian Media Watch translated the statement from Fatah’s official Facebook page, in which the fictitious claim of having killed 11,000 Israeli citizens was made. Fatah also claimed having “sacrificed 170,000 martyrs,” similarly inflating the number of killed Fatah terrorists.

Fatah likewise asserted that it was the “first Palestinian faction to reach the nuclear reactor in Dimona.” The curious claim refers to a terror attack in 1988, in which three working mothers were killed by three Fatah terrorists on a bus on their way to the Dimona plant.

Abbas’s faction claimed being the first terror group to attack Israel in the first (1988-1993) and second intifadas (2000-2005), in the second instance bragging of a 2000 attack in Gaza.

In that attack, Baha Al-Sa’id of the PA security forces infiltrated Kfar Darom and murdered two IDF soldiers. He was shot by one of them in the exchange and died of his wounds.

At the end of its list of terror “achievements,” Abbas’s party wrote that it “led the Palestinian attack on Israel in the UN,” referencing the diplomatic war it continues to wage against the Jewish state.

The very last “achievement” listed, after all the terror attacks and cases of murder, reads: “Fatah leads the peaceful popular resistance against Israel.”

While Abbas has often been touted as a “peace partner,” his Fatah party’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades military wing claimed a shooting attack on “a group of Zionists” near Bethlehem just this Sunday. It also claimed responsibility for a failed shooting attack last Sunday in Neve Tzuf, Samaria.

Abbas’s Fatah faction has called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel, and declared “open war” on Israel late last month.

The statements are in line with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) charter of 1968, which calls for “armed struggle” or “armed revolution,” declaring “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine,” and calling on local Arabs to “be prepared for the armed struggle.”

Following the charter, the PLO and Fatah were defined internationally as terror organizations, a status which was removed during the 1993 Oslo Accords process.

The American Left: Friends of Our Country’s Enemies, Front Page Magazine, Ron Radosh, April 11, 2014 (Reprinted from PJ Media, August 9th)

(Why? — DM)

If one looks around at the Left’s response to Hamas’ actions in Gaza and its attacks on Israel, and its view of Islamist fascism in countries like Iran, Syria and among the ISIS forces seeking to take over Iraq, it is clearer than ever that the Left has one function — to support the enemies of democracy. Operating in the United States, Britain and France, the Western Left takes the opportunity to speak freely in the democracies in which they live, to openly support and express their solidarity with democracy’s most fervent enemies.

Some would question why this Left, perhaps numerically small in terms of the entire population of the Western nations, is so important. Aren’t they really marginal? The answer is that in the United States, as well as in Great Britain, the positions of the far left have now become mainstream, and influence those in political power.

The American Left used to be patriotic. In its heyday, Eugene V. Debs never attacked America, and the socialist vision he advocated was in his eyes a way to realize the promise of America. As for the American Communist Party, in reality the tool of Stalin’s USSR, it pretended in the 1940s to be pro-American, and its chairman, Earl Browder, coined the slogan “Communism is 20^th century Americanism.” This pretense came to an end during the Cold War, when the Left supported the Soviet bloc and all of its policies, and argued that America was in the process of becoming a nascent fascist state.

The remnants of the ’60s New Left identified with America’s new enemies, especially North Vietnam, Communist Cuba, the PLO, and, in the ’80s, Sandinista Nicaragua. After 9/11, many of its adherents took the position that the United States had the terror attack coming to it, since the perpetrators had taken 3000 lives in protest against America’s imperial ambitions and control.

This led Michael Walzer, the social-democratic intellectual, to pen an article called “Can There Be a Decent Left?” Walzer courageously took on many of those on his side of the spectrum, hitting them for accepting the “blame America first” doctrine to explain foreign policy defeats; for not criticizing any peoples or nations in the Third World; for believing in what he called “rag-tag Marxism”; for failing to oppose dangerous jihadists and Islamist states; and for refusing to blame anyone else for the world’s wrong except the United States.

I wonder what Walzer would write today if he examined his article anew. If one looks around at the Left’s response to Hamas’ actions in Gaza and its attacks on Israel, and its view of Islamist fascism in countries like Iran, Syria and among the ISIS forces seeking to take over Iraq, it is clearer than ever that the Left has one function — to support the enemies of democracy. Operating in the United States, Britain and France, the Western Left takes the opportunity to speak freely in the democracies in which they live, to openly support and express their solidarity with democracy’s most fervent enemies.

Some would question why this Left, perhaps numerically small in terms of the entire population of the Western nations, is so important. Aren’t they really marginal? The answer is that in the United States, as well as in Great Britain, the positions of the far left have now become mainstream, and influence those in political power. So it is with the Democratic Party.

On these questions, the answer of the left-liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and the even further far left-wing base, makes the Democrats as an entire group unable to take any steps that endanger their electoral chances, unless the party’s leaders continually kowtow to the leftist base. They fear that if they took tough interventionist positions that would offend them, it might lead the Left to opt out of voting in the coming November elections, as well as not rallying behind whomever the Democrats pick as their candidate for the 2016 presidential race. There are, of course, some exceptions. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey is one Democrat who has continually called for tough measures against Iran, much to the consternation of others in his own party.

Obama, as the New York Times’ Peter Baker explains, has spent his entire time as president doing everything to end any military action by the U.S. in Iraq, not even leaving a residual force that could be used should it become necessary. And yet, the force of events has led him to intervene with air strikes against the ISIS (or ISIL) in the very country he thought he’d never have to use the American military in any capacity. Now he has to contend with the possibility that should ISIS manage to move to take over Irbil and move closer to Baghdad, he very well might have to consider extending the range of his current action.

The left-wing of the Democratic Party is not happy. Baker interviewed Phyllis Bennis, who works at the far-left Institute for Policy Studies (not, as Baker describes it,“a research organization for peace activists”). The NYT does not let its readers know that Bennis herself is a person who believes that Israel’s very creation was illegitimate, and who supports “the right of return” and has previously criticized moves taken by Israel against Hamas. As for the IPS, as one can find at Discover the Networks, during the Cold War it was a major group disseminating Soviet disinformation and working to push the United States to the far left.

It is not surprising to find that Bennis told Baker that Obama’s action “is a slippery slope if I ever saw one,” and that “whatever else we may have learned from the President’s ‘dumb war,’ it should be entirely clear that we cannot bomb Islamist extremists into submission or disappearance.” Bennis does not suggest what course she thinks the U.S. should take to deal with its dangerous enemies, perhaps because what worries her is not their goals, but America responding to the danger at all.

As for the Left’s position on the fight Israel is waging against Hamas, the Left sides with Hamas and views it as a victim of Israeli aggression and colonialism. One has to merely turn to the lead editorial in the current issue of The Nation, titled “Israel Must Stop Its Reign of Terror,” in which Katrina vanden Heuvel and her colleagues explain that it was a “brute incursion by Israel” into Gaza that started the current war and has resulted in a “bloodletting” in which Israel’s bombings “pummeled Gaza into a landscape of human despair.” The editorial accuses Israel of obliterating “entire families of twenty and thirty” and of leveling whole neighborhoods.

The Nation editorial then argues that “a flagrantly asymmetrical conflict between occupier and occupied” has been portrayed “as a fight between equals,” and hence the U.S., “a highly biased superpower,” is trying to pretend it is an honest broker. They even say that the U.S. has “lined up to affirm Israel’s ‘right to self-defense,’” a step they imply is unnecessary for Israel to take. They see some hope that John Kerry and the president have “expressed frustration with Israel’s shattering disregard for Palestinian lives.” They protest that after Kerry turned for help to Hamas’s sponsors, Qatar and Turkey, backing a peace proposal that would have met all of Hamas’ demands,  Israel’s response to Kerry was to not “even contemplate lifting the seven-year siege of Gaza.”

The Nation offers its own proposal for what America should do: demand an “international arms embargo on Israel,” as well as ending “Israel’s collective punishment on Gaza.” They note that these demands are supported by 64 Nobel laureates and “public figures” such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Noam Chomsky as well as “legal experts” Noura Erakat (daughter of the PLO’s lead negotiator) and Peter Weiss, whom you can read about here. These measures, they conclude, are a blueprint, “at once necessary and aspirational, to end the crisis.”

That editorial was written before the 72 hour cease-fire was violated by Hamas, before the warfare started up, and before Israel responded with a forceful series of new air strikes in Gaza. The Nation’s first online response to the recent resumption of the Gaza war is an editorial by Zoe Carpenter. She accuses the hawks — all the regular suspects — of “angling” to get us into a new war. She predicts they will soon “call for escalating a conflict in the Middle East.” In Iraq, as she sees it, rescuing the Yazidis from the mountain in which they took refuge is simply “a defensive rationale” for military strikes. Humanitarian aid to the suffering Yazidis in her eyes is but “a moral gloss for military action.” Obama’s limited action in Iraq, she fears, will lead to an escalation of the war.

So whether the enemy is Hamas in Gaza or ISIS in Iraq, the Left has one position: The United States must stay out, and stop using its armed forces to advance the hidden agenda of the imperialist United States or the colonialist Israeli regime, which itself is illegitimate. The Left’s voice is that of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Pretending to be anti-fascist, they portray actual contemporary fascists — the Islamists in the Middle East (especially Hamas) — as fighters for liberation against Israel’s oppression. Carpenter worries that Obama’s limited action will have “undesirable, cascading consequences.”

In his book Antisemitism and the American Far Left, historian Stephen H. Norwood ends his tome by noting that since the 1960s, the American far left has echoed both extremist Palestinian propaganda as well as the old  Communist anti-Zionist positions of the 1920s and ’30s, demonizing Zionism and “condemning Israel with increasing fervor…and calling for its destruction.” The Left think of themselves as secular democrats, while in reality they work to empower the forces of radical Islam that “would replace Israel with an Arab dictatorship unwilling to extend rights to minorities and women.”

That Left, he acknowledges, has “entered the mainstream.” We have seen it this past week, as CNN adopts the position of the far left. Appearing on the network, Lee Habeeb boldly pointed out “there is no moral equivalence between those who target civilians and use them as human shields and those who target the evil who do such a thing,” and that CNN has gone beyond that, in effect “becoming a public relations outfit for this evil.” I would also note that the network had hired Michael Oren as an analyst on the Middle East. They soon removed him from that position. When he now appears on CNN, which is not so often, they identify him as Israel’s former ambassador to the United States. In his place, the network has hired the opponent of Israel’s actions, Peter Beinart, the voice of left-leaning Jews who identify with or belong to J-Street.

One CNN reporter, Martin Savidge, even argued that the Hamas tunnels were legitimately used as a weapon of war by Hamas since it used them to hit soldiers, who are “legitimate targets.” He found Hamas’ argument that the tunnels are used to wage war and to not go after civilians “very compelling.” Any media outlet that treats Hamas propaganda as correct, and that views Hamas as an equal power deserving air time with supporters of Israel, or which adopts and echoes its positions,  has adopted the strategy of the Left — that of legitimizing very real and dangerous enemies and portraying them as representatives of the oppressed.

Rest assured that if the administration responds to reality and, let us say, decides to send military arms to the Kurds so they can have the ability to fight ISIS and not be defeated, the Left’s chorus will howl. Already, Obama has saidthat the airstrikes in Iraq are a “long-term”project and could go on for months. How will the Left respond to this news? I think we know the answer. If you don’t, check next week’s issue of The Nation.

Recent polls already have shown that most Democrats have already turned against Israel, and only 31 percent think Israel’s war with Hamas is justified.  Hence the Democrats fear not going along with the Left. Unless they appease the far left in their own ranks, previously mainstream Democrats will fear electoral defeat, and hence many will respond positively to far left appeals and protests. The Left’s marginality will not matter — what they think and call for has entered the mainstream.

Gaza – The Road Not Yet Traveled, Algemeiner, Irwin Cotler, August 10, 2014

The notion that truth is the first casualty of war has found expression in the ongoing fog of the current Israel-Hamas conflict – where truth is obscured or masked by oft-repeated clichés such as “cycle of violence,” false moral equivalences, or unconscionable allegations of Israeli “genocide.” If we want to prevent further tragedies in this conflict – let alone frame the basis for its resolution – then we have to go behind the daily headlines that cloud if not corrupt understanding, probe the real root causes of conflict, and finally travel the road not yet taken to its just resolution.

While the deliberate – and indiscriminate – bombardment of Israeli civilians, and the threat of abductions and mass killings from the terror tunnels, have been the trigger for this latest war, there is a longer and underlying proximate cause: the Hamas Terrorist War of Attrition against Israel since 2000.

Simply put, from 2000 to 2004, Hamas suicide bombers murdered over 1,000 Israelis – wounding some 3,000 – in a horrific and sustained terrorist assault that was defeated in part by the Israeli “Operation Defensive Shield” in 2002, and in part by the building of a security barrier, which dramatically reduced penetration by Hamas suicide bombers. In 2005, with the Hamas terrorist onslaught defeated, Israel moved to unilaterally disengage from Gaza. Accordingly, Israel withdrew all its soldiers and citizens, uprooted all its settlements and synagogues, but left behind 3,000 operating greenhouses and related agricultural assets, the whole as the basis for industrial and agricultural growth and development in Gaza.

How did Hamas respond? They destroyed the greenhouses, brutalized the Fatah opposition, effectively instituted a theocratic dictatorship in 2007, repressed its own people, and began the launching of more than 14,000 rockets and missiles targeting Israeli population centers. In effect, then, Hamas squandered the opportunity offered by Israel to live in peace, to utilize the industrial and agricultural assets, to engage in state-building; rather, Hamas preferred to divert resources for the building of a terrorist infrastructure that would punish its own people while threatening Israel.

In effect, then, this is the third Israel-Hamas war since the 2005 disengagement, with each prior truce or ceasefire only providing a basis and incipient trigger for the next war. In this latest conflagration, Hamas has repeatedly repudiated, yet again, a series of ceasefires arrangements and “humanitarian” pauses – while launching more than 3,000 rockets and missiles in the last month alone.

But while these unceasing terror attacks – and ongoing threats – have once again forced Israel to take action in self-defense and to target the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, this ongoing proximate trigger does not tell the whole story. Rather, it is a symptom, or proxy, for the root cause – the unwillingness of Hamas to recognize Israel’s existence within any boundaries. And more: the public call in the Hamas Charter – and in its declarations – for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews wherever they may be.

Let there be no mistake about it, Hamas is a unique – and evil – manifestation of genocidal Antisemitism. These are not words that I use lightly or easily, but there are no other words to describe the toxic convergence of the advocacy by Hamas of the most horrific of crimes – namely genocide – anchored in the most enduring of hatreds – namely antisemitism – with state-orchestrated terrorism as the instrumentality to pursue these goals.

UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon said that one must seek the “root cause” of the Israel-Hamas conflict so as to enable us to resolve it. However politically incorrect it may be to say so, this culture of hatred – this genocidal antisemitism –is the root cause and has fueled the ongoing Hamas terrorist war of attrition.

Accordingly, what is so necessary now is not another ceasefire or humanitarian pause, but a ceasefire that is enduring and comprehensive, that will put an end to the Hamas Terrorist War of Attrition that has targeted Israel’s population and engulfed its own, and that will be protective of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians, as President Obama and other leaders have called for. Such a ceasefire will hopefully be the basis for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, anchored in two states for two peoples living side by side in peace and security. This will require traveling on the road not yet taken – an agreed upon, and guaranteed, set of international, legal, diplomatic, political, security, economic, and humanitarian undertakings and initiatives as follows:

1. A comprehensive – and enduring – ceasefire framework not only to halt but to end hostilities must be put in place. For such a ceasefire to endure, the casus belli that triggered these latest hostilities – that has underpinned the Hamas War of Attrition – must be addressed and redressed. Simply put, Hamas must cease and desist from its policy and practice of targeting Israeli civilians and terrorizing Israeli civilian populations.
2. The ceasefire must be accompanied by massive humanitarian and medical relief, the delivery of some of which has thus far been hindered by Hamas itself, as with Hamas’ refusal to allow Gazans to avail themselves of an Israeli field hospital. Clearly, after the tragic death and destruction, there must be mandated and comprehensive international humanitarian assistance.
3. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist militias must be disarmed, as called for by EU Foreign Ministers, as a sine qua non for the cessation of hostilities.
4. The Hamas military infrastructure – and related military and terrorist assets – rockets, missiles, launchers, mortars, munitions, and the like must be dismantled.
5. There must be a complete closure – and destruction – of the Hamas terror tunnels – the standing instrument of terror and incipient mass murder. Indeed, captured Hamas battle plans reveal that Hamas was planning a mass terror attack during the Jewish New Year that would have threatened the lives of thousands. Even during the latest ceasefire, Hamas continued to threaten to deploy these terror tunnels.
6. An end must be put to the Hamas capacity to manufacture rockets and other military assets. Simply put, there must be a supervised monitoring of the importation of building materials – like cement and steel – that have been used for the manufacture of weapons and tunnels, rather than the building of hospitals, schools, and mosques for which they were intended.
7. The prohibition of the transfer or smuggling of weapons, like those advanced missiles from Iran, which both Hamas and Iran have boasted about, and with which Iran has threatened to re-supply Hamas in recent days. As senior Iranian official Mohsen Rezaei said this week “Palestinian resistance missiles are the blessing of Iran’s transfer of technology.”
8. A robust international stabilization and protection force – with the necessary mandate, mission, and numbers – should be deployed to ensure that the ceasefire is respected; that Hamas and other terrorist militias are disarmed; that the military terrorist infrastructure is dismantled; that the terror tunnels are closed and destroyed – the whole to protect against the targeting of Israeli civilians and the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields. Indeed, while Israel has been forced to use weapons to protect civilians, Hamas has been using its captive civilian population to protect its weapons.
9. This international protection force must also be empowered to secure a total interdiction of the transfer, import, or smuggling of weapons into Gaza – which is what triggered the blockade of Gaza in the first place after Hamas assumed power in 2007.
10. An international framework – one of the most important initiatives of the road not yet travelled – will be necessary to secure and maintain the demilitarization of Gaza, while supervising the entry of people and goods into Gaza.
11. The deployment of this international protection force – and the demilitarization of Gaza – can provide a basis for the reciprocal opening of border-crossings, the commensurate easing of the blockades, and the development of a Gaza sea port. Indeed, the movement of people, goods, commerce, trade, development, and evolving economic prosperity were precisely what was contemplated – and was clearly possible – when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. There was then no occupation, no blockade, no Israeli presence – only the potential for Gaza to freely develop and help usher in a nascent peace with Israel and self-determination for its people.
12. In particular, the dismantling of Hamas’ extensive military and terrorist infrastructure – which is embedded amongst Gaza’s civilian population – and the demilitarization of Gaza – can ultimately lead to a “Marshall Plan” for Gaza with the ultimate goal of securing economic growth, development, and a sustainable peace.
13. With order restored, an international governing authority – possibly led by the PA, but including European, American, Canadian, and Egyptian representation – should be the mandated trusteeship authority for Gaza. This can serve as a state-building authority that can be the basis for the emergence of a peaceful, rights-protecting, Rule of Law Gaza that can ultimately travel the road not yet taken to a peaceful and democratic Palestinian State.
14. The direct financing of Hamas which was put to military and terrorist purposes must end. The internationally mandated authority should ensure that banks in China, Turkey, and Qatar do not continue to finance Hamas, and that governments such as Qatar and Iran do not finance Hamas’ war crimes.
15. A crucial point oft ignored: Palestinian society in Gaza must be freed from the cynical and oppressive culture of hate and incitement. This not only constitutes a standing threat to Israel, but undermines the development of authentic Palestinian self-determination, as in the cruel deployment of Palestinian child labour in the terror tunnels. No peaceful solution will be possible if massive resources continue to be poured into state-controlled media, mosques, refugee camps, training camps, and educational systems that serve the sole purpose of demonizing Israel and the Jewish people, and inciting to war against them.

Indeed, Hamas’ militant rejectionism of Israel’s right to exist –its public call for Israel’s destruction and the killing of Jews wherever they may be – have threatened the safety and security not only of Israelis but of Palestinians too. Regrettably, the Gazan people’s desire – and right – to live in peace and security cannot be realized so long as Hamas continues to hold its own people hostage, and to pursue a strategy of terror and incitement. Indeed, this war in Gaza is not only one of self-defense for the Israeli people, but should lead to the  securing of the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people, who deserve better than to be held hostage by a terrorist regime.

These initiatives, undertakings, and objectives are the road not yet taken. Admittedly, all this may be difficult to secure. But the time has come – indeed it is long past time – to realize that if we want to protect the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, these initiatives and undertakings must become the road we travel now.