Israel, Hamas and the Laws of Armed Conflict in Gaza - by Lt. Gen. John Toolan, USMC (ret.)

...Israel will survive misperceptions and ill-informed reporting, though at the cost of increased and unnecessary pressure from the outside world to terminate lawful operations in self-defense. But sadly the same prospects for survival will not apply for Arab civilians unless perspectives on the radical differences in how Israel and its adversaries operate become dramatically more objective.

Lt. Gen. John Toolan, USMC (ret.)..
realcleardefense.com..
14 August '18..

For months now, recurring clashes between Israel and Hamas in Gaza have featured a mix of old and new. Always seeking innovative ways to target Israel, Hamas has debuted new tactics like indiscriminate airborne incendiaries and interspersing terror cells in crowds of civilians attempting to infiltrate Israel. But the purpose of such tactics follows a dangerous, underappreciated pattern of terrorist groups intentionally trying to delegitimize Israel’s lawful self-defense.

In the case of Gaza, Hamas attacks Israel and violates the laws of armed conflict by forcing the deaths of civilians to trigger heated condemnations of Israel.

From the outset of ongoing fighting in March, Hamas’s attacks on Israel’s border were ostensibly peaceful protests declared to be the “Great March of Return.” These demonstrations, organized under the pretext of Palestinians exercising their “right” to return to ancestral homes in Israel, in reality involved Hamas encouraging thousands of Gazans to storm and potentially break through Israel’s border fence en masse. Hamas implanted its military operatives within the onrushing crowds, effectively using civilians as human shields.

These “peaceful” demonstrations are a win-win for Hamas. However infinitesimal the odds, successfully overrunning the border could be portrayed as advancing the terrorist group’s goal – stated in its founding covenant – ultimately to eliminate Israel.

Hamas enjoys far more success, however, when the attacks fail.

(Continue to Full Article)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Sovereignty and the need for a decisive response - by Maj. Gen. (ret.) Gershon Hacohen

Although the kites are portrayed as harmless, their scope amplifies their impact. Does a country have the right to safeguard its assets and its sovereignty only in life-threatening situations?

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Gershon Hacohen..
Israel Hayom..
19 June '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/needed-a-clear-military-response/

The enemy that has been setting our fields ablaze with incendiary kites has created a clear challenge for Israeli policymakers. The cumulative damage inflicted by the kites has turned the Gaza-Israel border area into barren land and has challenged the notion that the Israeli government can provide security for its citizens.

The kibbutzim in the area are right in demanding that the government put an end to this. Yes, the Israel Defense Forces' rules of engagement are decided by the chief of general staff, and should not be formulated by a public debate. That said, in pleading with the government, the kibbutzim are true to their historical pioneering role. This further underscores the fact that the struggle we are facing is a struggle over sovereignty, especially in that area. Nothing is stronger than civilians who refuse to give up and stay on their land.

In 1951, Israel forfeited an area it had sovereignty over, the El Hama area east of the Sea of Galilee. This happened after an IDF force that had been patrolling the area was ambushed, killing seven. Had there been a civilian presence there, this decision may very well have been met with widespread protest by Israelis who would have demanded a more forceful response.

Hamas has been creative and adept at waging this campaign against Israel on the border. On the one hand, it seeks to avoid a full-fledged war, as this would not serve its interests, but on the other hand, it feels compelled to keep the struggle alive. The "kite terrorism" fits perfectly with its strategic rationale.

The kites are a form of attrition that overwhelms the troops and first responders. Moreover, by sending teens to do its bidding, Hamas has forced Israel to deal with a PR challenge and a legal headache.

The question of the hour for many citizens of Israel: Why don’t we defend ourselves? - by Vic Rosenthal

The legal and diplomatic decks are stacked against us today, partly because of our own actions. We need to get over it and defend ourselves.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
18 June '18..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2018/06/why-dont-we-defend-ourselves/

Great swaths of land in the Negev desert near the Gaza strip, agricultural land and nature preserves formerly the habitats of numerous endangered plant and animal species, have been reduced to ash and smoke by Palestinian fire-kites and balloon-borne incendiary devices during the past few weeks. The entire area is blackened with the smoke from fires that are being set faster than Israeli firefighters can put them out.

Our powerful army dithers, ever pursuing its apparent goal of fighting wars without hurting anyone. Today I understand that a car belonging to one of the leaders of the bombing campaign was destroyed by an “airstrike,” probably a drone-launched missile. The car was parked and empty. That’ll teach him.

Israeli officials are afraid of the legal consequences of taking effective action against those who are launching the kites and balloons. They are afraid that they will be dragged into the International Criminal Court (even though Israel did not sign the treaty creating it and does not consider itself bound by its decisions), if the army kills any of the “civilians” that are burning our country. Those under the age of 18 are counted as “children,” and as you know one of the themes of anti-IDF propaganda is the false claim that we deliberately target children.

Purposely burning agricultural land is a war crime. Attacking from heavily populated civilian areas and employing child soldiers are war crimes. Hamas and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) don’t care, of course. Their whole strategic plan is to take advantage of the fact that Israel considers herself bound by the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and other treaties, while they permit themselves to do anything that will kill Jews.

They don’t do it by themselves. They have help.

Israel is always required to fight an n+1 front war, with n representing the enemies that are shooting at us, Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah, and the rest. The additional one is the international diplomatic and legal system, led by our “friends” in the European Union.

In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, the depravity of Hamas begins to make sense - by David M. Weinberg

It is unmitigatedly maddening to see Western leaders – with the notable exception of American and Australian government leaders – succumb with equanimity to Hamas’ obvious criminal stuntsmanship on the Gaza border. What is Western support for “Israel’s right to exist within secure and recognized borders” worth if those borders cannot be defended?

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
18 May '18..
Link: https://www.davidmweinberg.com/2018/05/18/gaza-prejudice-and-perfidy/

In a prophetic piece of punditry, penned in 2014 but ordained for this week, Charles Krauthammer wrote:

"To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world's treatment of Israel, fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog – eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel's legitimacy and right to self-defense.

"In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, the depravity of Hamas begins to make sense. The whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire; to produce dead Palestinians for international television."

And thus, it has been incredibly painful to hear global condemnations of Israel this week.

It is unmitigatedly maddening to see Western leaders – with the notable exception of American and Australian government leaders – succumb with equanimity to Hamas' obvious criminal stuntsmanship on the Gaza border.

By acquiescing in Hamas' exploitation of its own people's blood in service of Palestinian rejectionism, they distance the day that peace might be possible.

It is infuriating that democratic leaders profess to be concerned for Palestinian rights, yet ignore Hamas' murderous intentions against Israel. They disregard its genocidal and anti-Semitic agenda, and its record of Islamist oppression and human rights abuse. They overlook its fulsome backing by Iran. They take no heed of its path of kidnappings, rockets, and terror attack tunnels; and now, of its gruesome border-breaching battles, with paid Palestinians as calculated cannon fodder.

The NY Times’ Roger Cohen Laments Israeli Self-Defense - by Jerold Auerbach

...To be sure, Cohen is not alone at the Times, which has had a problem with Zionism ever since Adolph Ochs purchased the newspaper in 1896, several months after Herzl published The Jewish State. The very idea of Jewish statehood, to say nothing of its reality half a century later, provoked unrelenting consternation at the Times, which was determined to resist any intimation that it was a “Jewish” newspaper. It buried the Holocaust in its inside pages, declined to support the admission of desperate Jewish refugees to the United States, and warned that support for Zionism would ignite allegations of divided loyalty.

Jerold Auerbach..
Algemeiner.com..
22 April '18..

Among the court Jews, Roger Cohen of The New York Times leads the coterie identifiable as “ashamed Jews.” He laments Israel’s defense of its borders and by extension its citizens as the despicable and reckless exercise of power, periodically wringing his hands and twisting his mind in the attempt to find appropriate words of condemnation.

Back in December, he deplored President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Echoing left-wing historian Tom Segev, who assailed the “strong nationalism and strong religion” that has supposedly transformed the Jewish state into a “colonialist power,” Cohen labeled Israel an “ethno-religious Jewish state.”

One month later he reported on his visit to Hebron, where he ostensibly encountered “the biological metaphors of classic racism” driven by “a fanatical settler movement.” This in King David’s first capital, where the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people are buried. His mentor, predictably, was a founder of the left-wing anti-settlement group Breaking the Silence. Seemingly oblivious to the place of Hebron in Jewish history, Cohen lacerated Hebron’s Jews without any indication that he conversed with a single one of them.

Cohen’s most recent lamentation, published April 20, focused on Israel’s alleged “insanity,” evidenced by its “stomach turning” reliance on “a disproportionate military response” to Gazans, mobilized by Hamas, who have been attempting to breach Israel’s border.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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Just who exactly has the right to tell Israel how to defend its borders? - by David M. Weinberg

Nobody in the world has the right to criticize Israel’s defensive actions on the Gaza border, even if Israel had used significant force against the Hamas mobs – which it didn’t. Having been so wrong in their Pollyannaish hopes for the Oslo Accords, for the Arab Spring, and for the JCPOA – and so feckless during the Holocaust – the nations of the world have no moral right to tell Israel what to do, how to conduct its politics, where to erect its security fences, how to conduct its campaigns, where draw its borders or how to defend them, or what ancestral lands to trade away, if at all, to the Palestinians.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
13 April '18..
Link: https://www.davidmweinberg.com/2018/04/13/defiance/

Just who exactly has the right to tell Israel how to defend its borders?

Might it be the French government, which this week condemned the IDF for employing what it called “indiscriminate fire” against Hamas terrorists who are seeking to breach the Gaza border?

This is the same French that have never known how to defend their own borders, against Nazi invasion nor against Islamist infiltration; the same French, two of whose local embassy personnel were last month arrested for smuggling dozens of weapons from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

Might it be the European Union, which this week snorted that the deaths of Palestinian protesters along the Gaza border “raise serious questions about proportionate use of force” by Israel?

Proportionate?! This is the same EU that continues to intervene massively and disproportionately on behalf of the Palestinians in their struggle with Israel – through gargantuan sums of aid money that partially goes to pay terrorists and fund hostile NGOs, by building illegal settlements in Area C for Palestinian squatters, and by supporting anti-Israel resolution after resolution in international forums including coda that denies Jewish history in Jerusalem.

The EU is lecturing Israel about proportionality? Do EU governments demand proportionate response from their police SWAT forces when they hunt down homegrown terrorists and airport bombers in Paris, Brussels and Marseille?

And besides, the demand for “proportionality” in military conflict seems to be a nonsensical special law cynically applied only to Israel – as if Israel was in a sportsmanlike joust with Hamas or Hezbollah.

This is also the same EU that supported the maliciously-biased UN investigations of the IDF (Goldstone and more) after Israel was forced to war against Hamas three times over the past decade because of Hamas rocket and terrorist attacks.

Or perhaps it is the dictatorial and anti-Semitic Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has a “right” to criticize Israel? Erdogan this week once again accused Israel of war crimes.

This is the same Erdogan who has jailed tens of thousands of Turkish academics, judges, journalists, human rights activists and officers who have dared to criticize his regime; the same Erdogan who openly harbors a hard-core Hamas operational terrorist headquarters in his capital city.

(Excellent) Israel, the West and how ideology empowers the jihad - by Vic Rosenthal

...Islam was always expansionist and confrontational. What has changed is us. In the past, the West didn’t hesitate to employ its vast military superiority when confronting a less-capable adversary. This was understood by everyone. The forces of jihad were deterred from attacking us. But now, like Israel, the West finds itself concerned that using our power would abrogate the essential human rights of its adversaries – defined as People of Color – while ‘white’ nations have no rights. We are allowed to protect individuals, but not nations or cultures. Defined as the ‘racist oppressor’, we have no right to object to their racism, while they are permitted to ‘resist oppression’ with violence. As a result, the jihad continues to press forward on multiple fronts and the West retreats, paralyzed by its ideology and unable to use its power.

Vic Rosenthal..
Abu Yehuda..
02 May '16..
Link: http://abuyehuda.com/2016/05/how-western-ideology-empowers-the-jihad/

The US military made news recently when it adopted the Israeli tactic of ‘roof knocking’ – detonating a small explosion above a building that is about to be bombed in order to give civilians that may be present a warning to evacuate – in its operations against the Islamic State.

Israel used the roof-knock technique to reduce civilian casualties in several recent wars, beginning with Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008-9.

One of the tactics that the radical Islamist enemies of the West have adopted as part of the paradigm of asymmetric warfare that they are waging is to use their own civilian populations as human shields. Hamas launches its rockets from school courtyards, and Hezbollah has constructed a massive, dispersed rocket-launching facility embedded in the Shiite villages of southern Lebanon. If Israel has to neutralize this, it’s likely that many Lebanese will be killed.

The human shield tactic is effective because Western military and political leaders are highly sensitive to the charge of unnecessarily hurting civilians in warfare.

There are both practical and ideological reasons for this. In Israel’s case there are possible economic and diplomatic consequences when it is accused of disproportionate response, including cutoff of essential supplies in wartime. But that isn’t true of the US. Nobody will boycott the US or force it to give Texas back to Mexico, and it manufactures its own munitions.

Western populations empathize strongly with “innocent victims.” The effect is even stronger when those who empathize are not threatened; so Europeans (or American presidents) who don’t have to face Hamas and Hezbollah rockets can be highly critical of Israel’s attempts to defend herself.

There are two important things to note: 1) this is a relatively recent development, historically speaking; and 2) this practical/moral/political pressure in the West to behave in a particular way actually enables its enemies to effectively wage asymmetric war against it.

The change in Western sensibility occurred sometime after WWII. Not only were both sides relatively insensitive to collateral damage, the Allies even pursued a policy of strategic bombing of non-military targets both to reduce the enemy’s economic capability but also to sap his “will to resist.” Dresden, Hamburg and other German cities were targets of firebombing that killed tens of thousands.

But one raid on Tokyo stands out, even compared to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On March 9-10, 1945, 1,665 tons of napalm-loaded bombs were dropped on the city, creating a massive conflagration that reduced about 16 square miles and 100,000 people to ashes.

It is hard to imagine any Western nation in almost any circumstance today even contemplating such an operation.

What changed?

The answer is “a lot of things,” some of them obvious and others more subtle.

Israeli Self-Defense Is Not Debatable - by Jonathan Tobin

...Whatever the political context of the general’s statements, the real issue that the Jewish state must focus on is not restraint — about which there is no real debate inside the country — but why Palestinians and their cheerleaders are so eager to delegitimize Israeli self-defense. The goal of the “stabbing intifada” like that of every other offensive undertaken by the Palestinians is to chip away at Israeli morale and its foreign support. Palestinians continue to view the murder of all Jews as heroic and to believe that Israel has no right to exist within any borders. It is those beliefs that motivate the terrorists and force Israeli soldiers into having to make split-second life and death decisions to defend themselves and civilians. They deserve support for their efforts, not sniping from domestic or foreign critics.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
22 February '16..

After another week in which Palestinian terrorist attacks took the lives of more Israelis, you’d think these atrocities would dominate the news coming out of the Jewish state. But instead Israelis and their government are embroiled in a nasty fight concerning criticism of the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot stirred up a political hornet’s nest when he gave a speech to a group of high school students and explained the importance of restraint when soldiers deal with potential terrorists.

When there is a 13-year-old girl holding scissors or a knife, and there is a barrier between her and the soldiers, I wouldn’t want a soldier to open fire and empty a magazine into a girl like that, even if she commits a very serious act. We don’t operate on the basis of [Talmudic] adages like ‘If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’

We don’t kill anyone with a pair of scissors. A soldier can switch off the safety and shoot if he or his comrades are in danger. If our rules of engagement were in any way unethical, it would jeopardize all of the IDF.

On its face, this was an unexceptional statement. Such restraint or “purity of arms” is part of the tradition of the Israeli army and soldiers have been instructed to behave in this manner since the IDF’s origins in the pre-state Haganah organization.

However, the problem was context. The statement was taken by many Israelis to be a criticism of the actions of some soldiers during the current “stabbing intifada.” Indeed, the mention of a girl with scissors seemed to invoke a particular case in which two Arab teens stabbed a 70-year-old Arab man (whom they mistook for a Jew). During the course of the attack, an off-duty policeman and a civilian shot the pair of assailants, leaving one dead and the other merely wounded. As it happened, neither “emptied their magazine” into the girls. But the comments were similar enough to the incident to cause an outcry among some Israelis who have been critical of statements from the general that appear to position him as opposing some of the government’s positions as well as absolving, at least in part, the Palestinian Authority for its role in fomenting the violence.

Columnist Ruthie Blum in Israel Hayom laid out the indictment of Eisenkot. She believes he is doing real harm to Israel’s position abroad by making statements that can be interpreted as implying that the IDF is overreacting to terrorists or that the violence is the natural result of the dilemma faced by the Palestinians.

But, predictably, Israel’s opposition leapt to the general’s defense and bashed Prime Minister Netanyahu for not offering Eisenkot some cover rather than let him face critics on his own. Within days, both Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon sought to defuse the dispute and issued statements praising Eisenkot and the rules of engagement used by the IDF. If, as Blum pointed out, the general’s politics lean left, then, like so many of his predecessors, it’s likely that he will find his way to the Knesset after he retires from the army. As such, this kerfuffle is business as usual in a country where politics finds its way into everything. But even if we file this controversy away as just another day in the life of a country where anything, no matter how innocuous, can be fodder for a political firestorm, there is a more important lesson to be gleaned from the exchange that many in Israel don’t seem to understand.

Though Israelis are assailed by an unrelenting campaign of murder in which Palestinians educated to believe that any Jew is fair game for violence, the international community has not exactly rallied to its defense. Though the Palestinians have created the current stalemate by repeatedly refusing to make peace even when offered independence and control of almost all of the West Bank and a share of Jerusalem, much of the world continues to blame the Jews for everything that happens. Palestinian violence is rationalized and excused rather than unreservedly condemned, which is why some Israelis find Eisenkot’s comments so infuriating.

Gordon - The alternative to Jewish power

Evelyn Gordon..
JPost..
05 June '12..

Last week, the Israel Festival featured one of the most gripping productions I’ve ever seen. “Defiant Requiem” tells the story of the Terezin concentration camp, where in the midst of death, Jewish inmates clung to their humanity through an outpouring of artistic endeavor, including a full choral production of Verdi’s “Requiem.”

So weak they could barely stand, so hungry they could barely concentrate, 150 inmates nevertheless rehearsed night after night, learning an extremely complex musical score by rote (since they only had one copy), and performed it to such a standard that the Nazis favored a visiting Red Cross delegation with a command performance. And after conductor Rafael Schachter’s first choir was deported to Auschwitz, he trained a second. And then a third. It was an incredible testament to the human spirit.

But there’s a flip side to this story, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted in an eloquent taped introduction: All their dedication and creative passion, their awe-inspiring retention of their humanity in the face of the greatest dehumanization machine in history, still wasn’t enough to save these Jews’ lives. Most of Terezin’s inmates died, either there or in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

For to save life, spirit alone doesn’t suffice: You also need power, in its rawest, ugliest form. When Schachter’s choir sang the Requiem’s plea for deliverance from eternal death, it was salvation from the eternal death of Terezin for which they prayed. But it took an army and a brutal war to answer that prayer.

This is a truth most Israelis understand deep in their bones. But it’s one a growing number of American Jews seem increasingly uncomfortable with. And this has been a crucial factor in making many of them increasingly uncomfortable with Israel as well.

IMRA - Observation: Realistically Thinking About Post Shalit Deal - Blood and Revenge

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
16 October '11

If there are terror attacks after the Shalit deal is completed those who pushed for the deal won’t have remorse. They will either say that terror is inevitable regardless of the deal or that the only way to end terror is to give the Arabs what they want (or both). Some might even criticize the security services for failing to thwart the attacks. And if the attack takes place beyond the Green Line then the victims will be to blame for being there in the first place.

And If there are kidnappings then unless the parents of the hostages scream for the heads of the terrorists rather than for PM Netanyahu to release another thousand, there is every reason in the world to expect, once again, a full press by the media for Israel to once again open the prison gates.

Is it possible to actually change any of this?

Are we locked into a perpetual spiral of concessions?

How can Israel respond differently to a post-Shalit terror attack that will give the nation the feeling that we are not in some terrible free fall?

How can the next kidnapping be handled so that we are not demoralized?

Blood and revenge.

Yes. It sounds primitive.

But it is the lingua franca of the neighborhood.

And, In truth. Not just the neighborhood.

Blood isn’t shelling empty buildings in an ever growing target bank.

Then again, blood can very much be the mysterious disappearance and or death of terrorist commanders and leaders.

A lot of blood.

After all, literally within walking distance there are hundreds – if not thousands – of legitimate candidates.

Blood certainly doesn’t necessarily require an official press release from the IDF Spokesperson’s Office.

As for kidnapping, we should be prepared to actively seek out the whereabouts of the victim by bringing in the terrorist leadership associated with the kidnappers. Of course, if these leaders resist while being taken into custody their deaths will be on their own heads.

As for “revenge”, there is today one clear and indisputable form of “revenge”: Jewish settlement construction.

Blood and revenge.

Certainly preferable to surrender.

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Ettinger - Israel, flex some muscles

Yoram Ettinger
Israel Hayom
28 August '11

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=399

Israel's battle against Palestinian terrorism and conventional military threats must not be inhibited by its ties with the U.S. and Egypt.

In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's nuclear reactor. In 1982, he launched a comprehensive war on the Palestinian Liberation Organization's terrorist headquarters in Lebanon. Both operations were executed irrespective of bullying and pressure from the U.S. and notwithstanding the fragile 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Begin realized that failing to eradicate these threats would imperil Israel's survival, erode its power of deterrence and thus undermine Israel's deterrence-driven peace with Egypt and its strategic cooperation with the U.S.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty did not collapse. Once again, Arab leaders did not rush to rescue the PLO, demonstrating that the Palestinian issue was not a crown jewel of Arab policymaking. Moreover, Egypt – just like all other Arab countries – would not sacrifice its own national interests on the altar of the Palestinian issue.

While the U.S. Administration condemned Israel for the large scale military operations, and imposed a brief military embargo, these operations resulted in the 1981 and 1983 strategic Memoranda of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which enhanced joint national security projects, upgrading Israel's long-term strategic posture.

From 1983 to 1992, during his two terms as prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir was severely criticized by U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush for crushing Palestinian terrorism during the First Intifada and expanding Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem. At the same time, however, U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation was bolstered at an unprecedented level while he was in power. Washington recognized that U.S.-Israel cooperation never revolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict. Mutually-beneficial U.S.-Israel ties were based upon shared values, common threats such as Islamic terrorism, ballistic missiles and rogue regimes, and joint interests such as research and development and job creation in the high-tech market and in the defense industries.

In August 1948, U.S. Ambassador to Israel James McDonald recorded Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's response to the American demand (accompanied by a regional military embargo) to end the "occupation" of Arab land or agree to a land swap, to accept the internationalization of Jerusalem and to allow the return of the Arab refugees: "Speaking with solemn emphasis, [Ben Gurion] added that as much as Israel desired friendship with the U.S. and full cooperation with it and the U.N., there were limits beyond which it could go. Israel cannot yield to anything which, in its judgment, would threaten its independence or its security. The very fact that Israel is a small state makes more necessary the scrupulous defense of its own interests; otherwise it would be lost … Ben Gurion warned President [Harry S.] Truman and the State Department that they would be gravely mistaken if they assumed that the threat or even the use of U.N. sanctions would force Israel to yield on issues considered vital to its independence and security. [He] left no doubt that he was determined to resist, at whatever cost, 'unjust and impossible demands.' On these he could not compromise ["My Mission," 1951, pp. 49-50]."

Ben Gurion's defiance transformed Washington's image of the Jewish state from a strategic liability to a potential strategic asset.

In 1973, Prime Minister Golda Meir put Israel's ties with the U.S. above its own national security concerns, rejecting advice to pre-empt the impending Egyptian-Syrian offensive so that Israel would not be perceived as the aggressor. Irrespective of Israel's military victory during the battle, the trauma of the 3,000 Israeli fatalities and the fact that the nation was very nearly eliminated still haunts Israelis and embolden their enemies.

In 2011, Israel benefits from a robust economy and military, as well as growing Western awareness of the threat of Islamic terrorism and the violence and volatility on the Arab street. Israel, therefore, should not refrain from flexing its decisive military muscles in the face of military threats, lest it reaffirm the image of a restrained and indecisive Israel which could further fan the flames of anti-Israel, anti-Western terrorism.

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The Right to Self-Defense

nashim.beyarok@ womeningreen.org.il
26 Sh'vat 5771
31 January '11

Three years ago, the soldiers David Rubin HY"D and Achikam Amichai HY"D were murdered by Arabs while hiking in Nachal Telem in the Har Hebron region. Their friends swore to honor their memories by continuing to hike everywhere in the Land of Israel.

For three years now, there have been weekly ‘David and Achikam hikes’ throughout Judea and Samaria, among springs and caves, streams and breathtaking views.

The hikes are organized by responsible and cautious guides, who have led thousands of hikers from all parts of the country: Ashdod, Rishon Letzion, Bat Yam, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Netanya, and more.

Last Friday, the 23rd of Shvat 5771 (Jan. 28, 2011), the group hiked to Biblical Tel Gedor in Gush Etzion. On the way back, Arabs from a nearby village saw them and began shooting guns and throwing stones. The size of the group – in the dozens – and its make-up – which included people in their ‘70s, made a quick evacuation difficult and while descending the Tel, defensive measures were required.

When army and police forces arrived, they arrested the hikers who were carrying weapons. Those hikers were imprisoned and charged with homicide before it was even established that any Arab had been killed, before a dead body was even produced, and before even one Arab was interrogated.

On Wednesday, the 28th of Shvat, February 2nd, there will be a court hearing in Jerusalem’s Russian Compound. We are asking the public to be there at 9:30 a.m. to demand that the Jewish State allow Jews the right to defend themselves and to demand that those detained be freed immediately.

Why is it that when Jews are murdered, our government officials decry the terrorists, but that when Jews save themselves from being murdered, the victims are treated as murderers? When David and Achikam were murdered, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said “[they] fought bravely”. Why is it that now the victims of last week's hike are being treated as killers?

Do Jews in present-day Israel have the right to remain alive by defending themselves against murderous attackers without being charged with homicide?

Human Rights in Yesha- Honenu- Matteh Yehudi Leumi (Mi"L)- Vaad Mityashvei Shomron- Vaad Mityashvei Binyamin- Judea Action Committee- Chomesh Techilla- Manhigut Yehudit- Matte Tsafon- Nachala- Hamateh Lehatsalat Ha'Am veHaarets- Erets Israel Shelanu-Halamish- Neemanei Erets-Virashtem Ota- Women for Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green)

For details Yehudit Katsover 050-7161818 Nadia Matar 050-5500834

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Only Israel - by Yedida Freilich

SassVideo
01 July '10

Very powerful and compelling musical statement, by Yedida, of where we are holding at this time.



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Israel's Right to Exist Bubble

Yoel Meltzer
American Thinker
20 June '10

Of all the implications following the Gaza "peace flotilla" episode, perhaps the most important for Israel is that the existence of a growing challenge to Israel's very right to exist has finally been fully exposed. Whether it was the provocation by the flotilla itself, or the subsequent challenge to Israel by the Rachel Corrie ship, or the anti-Semitic remarks by veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas, the feeling is that Israel's right to exist is no longer a given amongst the international community. Therefore, it should have come as no surprise when in the aftermath of the incident, Israeli leaders repeatedly stressed that Israel has the right to exist and therefore the right to defend itself. This mounting challenge, which has been downplayed for quite some time, can no longer be denied.

The truth is that the writing has been on the wall for several years already. During the heyday of Oslo, the acceptance by the world of our right to exist was something that Israel desperately strove for, and in many ways, it even guided our policies. Time and again we were told of the importance of Israel's "acceptance" by various Arab countries, while concomitantly constant demands were made of Yasser Arafat to publicly express his acceptance of Israel's right to exist. The fact that his gestures were only in English for the international audience -- while in Arabic he continued with his denial and hatred of Israel -- should have caused more than just the "extreme right" in Israel to question his authenticity. However, the show was allowed to go on.

Eventually Israel removed all of its soldiers from Lebanon, but instead of receiving the hoped-for acceptance of its right to exist, rockets eventually reached Haifa. Continuing right along, Israel removed all of its citizens from Gaza, and once again thousands of rockets, rather than the elusive acceptance of its right to exist, was all that Israel could show for its undertaking. Then, after subjecting some of its southern residents to years of rocket attacks, Israel finally reentered Gaza to clamp down on Hamas and stop the rockets. The result, of course, was more international condemnations and the heavily biased Goldstone Report. Finally, there is the ongoing explicit threat by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel off the the map. In light of the above, it should be clear that any future Israeli withdrawal from all or parts of Judea and Samaria would be just as futile in changing the trend.

Thus, the challenge to Israel's right to exist is certainly not new.

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When Armageddon lives next door

Obama is denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America's, life that is on the line.


Benny Morris
L.A. Times
16 April '10

I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the "Zionist regime," by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable him to bring this about.

The Jews of Europe (and Poles, Russians, Czechs, the French, etc.) should likewise have taken personally Adolf Hitler's threats and his serial defiance of the international community from 1933 to 1939. But he was allowed, by the major powers and the League of Nations, to flex his muscles, rearm, remilitarize the Rhineland and then gobble up neighboring countries. Had he been stopped before the invasion of Poland and the start of World War II, the lives of many millions, Jews and Gentiles, would have been saved. But he wasn't.

And it doesn't look like Ahmadinejad will be either. Not by the United States and the international community, at any rate. President Obama, when not obsessing over the fate of the ever- aggrieved Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, proposes to halt Ahmadinejad's nuclear program by means of international sanctions. But here's the paradox: The wider Obama casts his net to mobilize as many of the world's key players as he can, the weaker the sanctions and the more remote their implementation. China, it appears, will only agree to a U.N. Security Council resolution if the sanctions are diluted to the point of meaninglessness (and maybe not even then). The same appears to apply to the Russians. Meanwhile, Iran advances toward the bomb. Most of the world's intelligence agencies believe that it is only one to three years away.

Perhaps Obama hopes to unilaterally implement far more biting American (and, perhaps, European) sanctions. But if China and Russia (and some European Union members) don't play ball, the sanctions will remain ineffective. And Iran will continue on its deadly course.

At the end of 2007, the U.S. intelligence community, driven by wishful thinking, expediency and incompetence, announced that the Iranians had in 2003 halted the weaponization part of their nuclear program. Last week, Obama explicitly contradicted that assessment. At least the American administration now publicly acknowledges where it is the Iranians are headed, while not yet acknowledging what it is they are after -- primarily Israel's destruction.

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