Dealing With a World of Rocket Diplomacy

...Now let the IDF deal robustly with the people behind the indiscriminate shooting of rockets against Israeli civilians. Without outside interference. So that everyone has a chance for a more peaceful future.

Ilya Meyer..
Times of Israel..
08 July '14..



Fatah to Israel: Prepare your body-bags.

Obama to Israel: Fatah is a partner for peace.

Obama’s words came on the same day as Fatah’s body-bag warning…

Let’s understand the background: Hamas, Jihad Islami and other terrorists in Gaza have been attacking Israeli civilians with rockets, sometimes at a rate of up to one per minute.

But that’s nothing new – since January this year Gaza terrorists from the Hamas unity government have fired more than 450 missiles at exclusively civilian targets in Israel. Of course, that figure doesn’t include the 12,000 missiles that the Gaza terrorists fired at Israeli civilians in the previous 9 years.

Read that again, slowly: one rocket every 60 seconds landing on a school, hospital, apartment building, road. And the world community speaks with one voice: NOT to demand that the terrorists stop their human rights violations, but to demand that Israel behave with restraint.

After more than a week of warnings and a gradual increase in its military response, Israel last night finally went on the offensive with Operation Protective Edge to try and stamp out the constant mortal threat to its citizens from Gaza’s unceasing barrage of rockets.

Mahmoud Abbas leads the Palestinian Arab Fatah government in the Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria. Fatah demands that Israel make a gift of Judea and Samaria to them so they can create a third Palestinian Arab state there (alongside Jordan and Gaza), but Fatah is too proud to negotiate over it. Fatah just demands. Fatah has now responded to Israel’s measured military actions in Gaza by warning all Israelis everywhere to “prepare body-bags” since “Jewish blood is going to flow in rivers” because Israel has the temerity to try and prevent the ongoing murder of its citizens.

But best of all, today, even as Fatah warns Israeli civilians to prepare large numbers of body-bags for the civilians that the Palestinian Arabs intend to murder, President Obama publishes an op-ed praising Abbas, Fatah and the prospects for peace. Eerily, on the same day that Abbas and his Fatah party warn Israelis to prepare mass body-bags, Obama writes “in President Abbas, Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel”.

Which begs the question: is Obama as out of touch with reality, as cold to human suffering, as Abbas is?

Or does Obama, like Abbas, believe that human suffering is terrible, but only if it does not involve Jews or Israelis?


Here’s a message for Obama: STOP trying to equate Israel’s defensive responses with the US-supported Palestinian Arab government’s offensive terror against Jewish civilians. There is no moral equivalency here. At all. Get real – or get out of office. Because right now you are a liability to your proud nation and to the people of the Middle East. All the people – Israelis, Iranians and Arabs; Jews, Muslims and Christians alike. Your naivety is embarrassing – and it is causing mayhem from Iraq to Israel, from Lebanon to Libya, from Syria to Somalia.

Resist the habit of a political lifetime and keep your restraining hands off Israel this one time. Because unlike you, we understand that Israel has to get the job done, once and for all. Otherwise Palestinian Arab violence will continue returning to haunt both Arabs and Israelis ad infinitum. You may be comfortable with that prospect, but we aren’t. For goodness sake, even the EU has expressed its complete support of Israel in the face of the Palestinian Arabs’ onslaught. EU ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen says the EU would like to “express its unreserved solidarity with citizens of Israel” and that the “indiscriminate shooting of rockets against civilians can never be a legitimate response, no matter what your grievances.”

Now let the IDF deal robustly with the people behind the indiscriminate shooting of rockets against Israeli civilians. Without outside interference.

So that everyone has a chance for a more peaceful future.

Here’s hoping someone at the White House has the time and ability to read these words.

Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/rocket-diplomacy/

Ilya Meyer is deputy chair of the West Sweden branch of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association. He blogs about Israel and Sweden’s relationship with Israel at ilyameyer.com

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