Hamas Fires 45 Rockets at Jewish Communities, IDF Responds Hitting Multiple Targets

After weeks of build up by Hamas in using “protestors” to breach Israel’s security fence,  some missile barrages, and flaming kites to terrorize Israeli citizens, the radical Islamic terror organization shot 45 rockets at Israel over night. Seven rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome.  While there have not be serious physical injuries, many civilians are living in fear and inside bunkers.

Rockets were aimed at schools and other civilian locations.



The IDF responded, hitting multiple targets throughout the Gaza strip.

The real question is whether this is the beginning of something larger or a one-off volley meant to apply pressure on Israel.  Ultimately Hamas keep applying pressure, after all they promised to liberate “Palestine.” Any moment of laxity will enable those in the Palestinian populace that already question Hamas’ degenerative rule to gain a real foothold.

 

Why don’t we defend ourselves?

Originally Posted in Abu Yehuda.

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 the past week, two Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria have been partly demolished, because homes have been found to be built on “private Palestinian land.” This means that – regardless of whether the land was considered state land when the homes were built – a Palestinian claim, sometimes not even by an individual owner, that the land was at one time used for agricultural purposes by Palestinians, has been accepted by Israel’s Supreme Court. The remedy is invariably that any structure that encroaches on such land will be demolished in toto.

Recently, the Knesset passed a law (the “Regulation Law”) that allows the state to financially compensate the Palestinian “owners” when the land was not considered private at the time the structures were built, instead of bulldozing the buildings (this can be tricky, since there usually are no records that might prove ownership in the sense familiar to those living in normal countries). This law didn’t apply in these cases, because the Supreme Court had ordered the demolitions some months ago, before the law was passed. The Court has now frozen the law awaiting its decision on various petitions against it.



Naturally, our European friends and home-grown champions of Palestinian rights were scandalized by this law. “It’s legalized land theft,” they say. This is quite an exaggeration, since the law calls for the Palestinians to be paid above-market value for the land, which they are not using and may not have used for decades (if ever). Eminent domain proceedings in the US, in which an owner can be evicted from property where he is living or using for business, are far harsher. But my guess is that despite this, when the Supreme Court rules on the petitions filed against it, they will overthrow the law.

Now you may wonder who files these petitions, the ones against the Regulation Law and the ones claiming that Israeli structures have been built on “private Palestinian land.” The answer is that there is a whole industry in Israel of “human rights” non-governmental organizations that employs a battery of expensive and dedicated lawyers to fight the State of Israel. Thanks to Israel’s extraordinary system in which any citizen may petition the Supreme Court on almost any matter, regardless of whether he or she is affected by it, left-wing groups like Peace Now, Yesh Din, and others can and do involve themselves in these matters.

But who supports the organizations, pays their staffs and their lawyers? Probably no more than a few percent of Israelis support what most see as their extremist ideology. And yet left-wing NGOs are everywhere, filming and trying to provoke IDF soldiers doing their duty, finding Palestinians who will testify that their grandfathers worked the land on such-and-such a hill where today an Israeli settlement stands, and filing petition after petition in the Israeli courts, particularly the Supreme Court.

The money does not come from Israel. It doesn’t even come from the Palestinians, whose leaders are happy to skim millions from the aid they get from the US and Europe, primarily to live well or put into their Swiss bank accounts. It comes, unsurprisingly, mostly from European governments, where millions of Euros are funneled into organizations like Peace Now, Yesh Din, B’tselem, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, and many others. Somewhat less important donors include the American New Israel Fund and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

These foreign-funded NGOs are active in the Israeli and international legal arenas, as well as the international propaganda campaign to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel. Some explicitly support BDS, despite the official positions of their donors. For example, several of them recently sent a letter to the American Secretary of State calling for an arms embargo against Israel because of its actions to defend its border.

Today the NGO Monitor organization, which keeps track of anti-Israel NGOs and their funding, released a report showing that the European Union has given large grants (hundreds of thousands of Euros) to several NGOs to press war crimes accusations against IDF officers and soldiers and other Israeli officials in foreign courts. This sort of thing may in part explain the timidity of the IDF to take effective action against the arsonists of Gaza.

While our Arab and Iranian enemies have had little success in damaging our Jewish state with wars and terrorism, our European ones have succeeded with their Euros to roll back settlement activities in Judea/Samaria, resulting in the expulsion of Jews from their homes. They have fought tooth and nail against our government’s efforts to deport illegal migrants, whom it rightly considers a demographic and social threat. They have hamstrung the IDF’s response to arson terrorism from Gaza, and turned the main concern of the IDF from defeating our enemies to avoiding legal entanglements.

The message this sends to the terrorists of Hamas, the PLO, and the PIJ is simple: you have a green light – the Jews are too weak to fight back.

There are solutions to these problems. Two years ago, the Knesset passed a relatively weak transparency law requiring some NGOs to report contributions from foreign governments. It needs to be strengthened – in fact, there is no reason for Israel to permit foreign governments to intervene in our domestic affairs at all. Opponents will tell you, precisely inverting the truth, that limiting the influence of foreign-funded NGOs is “anti-democratic,” as if democracy requires subverting the will of Israeli voters! But there is only one reason that such legislation is opposed in the Knesset, and that is because some members are themselves treasonously sucking at the European teat. That has to stop.

The Supreme Court has far too much power and zero accountability. No other democratic country has such a situation. The balance of power between the branches of government must be restored.



The other necessary change is a change of attitude. The more Israel refrains from self-defense because of fear of the legal consequences, the more she will be threatened with such consequences. The cycle must be broken, both because it prevents us from acting and because it broadcasts weakness to our enemies. The arson kites need to be met with deadly force, not endless debate. Jewish residents of the territories should have at least equal rights as Arabs, and not be evicted from their homes as a result of legal catch-22s. Illegal migrants should be deported (see here and here).

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. Nobody else will.

The IDF & Gaza: Soldiers or Sociologists?

Has the IDF brass forgotten that they are soldiers, charged with providing military solutions to physical threats to the nation’s security; not sociologists, tasked with diagnosing the societal ailments of its enemies?

…the IDF General Staff has been insisting there is only one thing Israel can do about Gaza. According to our generals, Israel needs to shower Hamas with stuff. Food, medicine, water, electricity, medical supplies, concrete, cold hard cash, whatever Hamas needs, Israel should just hand it over in the name of humanitarian assistance. Every single time reporters ask the generals what Israel can do to end Hamas’s jihadist campaign, they give the same answer. Let’s shower them with stuff. – Caroline B. Glick, Who Leads Israel? June 1, 2018.

Israel’s security establishment continues to look for solutions to the situation in the Gaza Strip, as security sources on Monday warned about an approaching complete economic collapse in the Gaza Strip…Those sources pointed out that preventing a humanitarian disaster in Gaza is an urgent matter of national security for Israel. – David Isaacs, Israeli Defense Establishment Warns of Complete Economic Collapse in Gaza, Jewish Press, June 11, 2018.

 

We are still faced with the absolutely crucial problem of making the intellectual and imaginative effort not to project our ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures… [People] assume that the light of their own parochial common sense is enough. And they frame policies based on illusions. Yet how profound is this difference between political psychologies and between the motivations of different political traditions, and how deep-set and persistent these attitudes are. Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century, 1999.  

Earlier this week, the Israeli security cabinet convened to discuss the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. Thankfully, the meeting, which took place against the backdrop of the ongoing violence on the border with Gaza, did not produce any operational decision or any undertaking on the part of Israel to attempt to alleviate the situation in Gaza.

A recipe to enrich Hamas

However, the very fact that a security cabinet meeting took place at all to discuss how improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza could somehow contribute towards easing the security situation, is in itself disturbing and disappointing.

For the connotation that this clearly conveys is that (a) the violence is a result of the dire socio-economic conditions in Gaza, rather than obdurate Arab refusal to accept any semblance of Jewish political independence in any portion of the Biblical Land of Israel, regardless of its geographical contours; and (b) Israel bears responsibility for these dire conditions and hence, for the violence that they allegedly precipitate. Thus, according to this “logic”, it is incumbent on Israel to find ways to alleviate the socio-economic distress in Gaza as a form of “enlightened self-interest” to reduce the threats to its security.

This, of course, is an utter distortion of reality and, as I have been at pains to argue in my last two columns (see here and here), reflects a total inversion of causality. For it is demonstrably incontrovertible that the privation in Gaza is the result of, not the reason for, the incandescent hatred of the Jewish state. Indeed, any enhancement of the humanitarian effort will inevitably empower, enrich and entrench Hamas, which, invariably, will either physically expropriate much of any influx of goods, or impose taxation on them—and replenish its coffers to finance its nefarious activities.

Beyond the IDF’s professional purview

Arguably, one of the most disconcerting elements of the security cabinet meeting was that it seems to have been convened under pressure from senior IDF officers, who consider that a collapse of civilian infrastructures in Gaza was imminent, and such collapse would precipitate a severe security predicament for Israel.

This, in many ways, is an inappropriate overreach by the IDF, well beyond its professional purview.

For, although the IDF has admirably shouldered numerous domestic social tasks, which are usually beyond the range of duties other armed forces take upon themselves—such as providing educational frameworks for disadvantaged youth—it is nevertheless not a social welfare organization—especially when such welfare concerns hostile aliens rather than Israeli citizens.

Indeed, as the national defense force, its overriding responsibility is to deter external enemies from attacking Israel, or if such deterrence fails, to defeat them—preferably by preempting such attacks, or by decisively repulsing them.

But, it is one thing to deter one’s enemy from attacking because they fear the consequences of the response that attack will precipitate. It is quite another to cajole them into delaying attack, by offering benefits—especially if the delay is exploited by them to rearm, redeploy and regroup, only to initiate future aggression with enhanced capabilities at some later time of their choosing.

Tactical genius, strategic myopia

As someone who served for several years in operational capacities in the Israel security establishment, I have great respect for the ingenuity, dedication and sacrifice of the men and women who serve in it.

Moreover, the IDF and Israel’s other security services have shown extraordinary prowess in their ability to obtain detailed operational intelligence on the country’s adversaries, and to deal swiftly with specific targets.

Accordingly, it is no easy task for me to level criticism at those for whom I have a sense of genuine regard and natural comradeship. However, it is becoming increasing apparent that the Israeli security establishment is seemingly incapable of translating its indisputable and undisputed technical/tactical genius into clear and coherent strategic wisdom.

Of course, while it is true that national power is more than mere military might, the IDF is increasingly straying into realms which are outside its field of professional expertise and should be beyond its legitimate intervention.

Thus, as I lamented in my last column, in recent years—perhaps due to the professors and political credos they are exposed to during their academic studies—it appears that many in the senior echelons of Israel’s security establishment have forgotten that they are soldiers, charged with providing military solutions to physical threats to the nation’s security and not sociologists, tasked with diagnosing the societal ailments of its sworn enemies.

Both inappropriate and invalid

Indeed, not only are the IDF forays into the realm of sociology formally inappropriate, they are also substantively invalid.

After all, the grim state of affairs is not the result of any scarcity of international funding or Israeli largesse. In past years, Gaza has had an abundance of both –and has squandered them both, because—as a collective—its communal aspiration is not greater prosperity and material well-being for its individual inhabitants, but the physical annihilation of what is perceived as an enemy collective—the Jewish nation-state.

No amount of humanitarian aid can address this aspiration. Quite the reverse! Increasing it will only increase the drive to fulfil it.

It is beyond distressing that the senior echelons of the IDF seem oblivious of this. For it is a blatant violation of Robert Conquest’s caveat (see introductory excerpt) not to project our ideas of common sense or natural motivation onto the products of totally different cultures.”

Indeed, it is to ignore “how profound is th[e] difference between political psychologies and between the motivations of different political traditions, and how deep-set and persistent these attitudes are.”

Of course, if one surveys the history of the last half-century, there does appear to be one way—and only one way—to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But it is hardly one that the IDF is likely to endorse.

For, alas, it entails…reinstating the “Occupation”.

Occupation as a humanitarian remedy??

After all, under Israeli occupation, societal conditions in the “West Bank”/Gaza soared beyond all recognition—only to plunge once it ended.

Last week, I urged readers to familiarize with themselves with an article, “What Occupation?”, by Prof. Efraim Karsh, formerly of King’s College, London, now director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. It provides staggering statistics on the meteoric socio-economic development of the Palestinian-Arabs under Israeli administration.

It should be compulsory reading, not only for Israeli politicians, but for the senior echelons of the IDF. The following is a brutally condensed summary:

Karsh writes: “At the inception of the occupation, conditions in the territories were quite dire. Life expectancy was low; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife; and the level of education was very poor. Prior to the 1967 war, fewer than 60 percent of all male adults had been employed, with unemployment among refugees running as high as 83 percent.”

He points out: “Within a brief period after the war, Israeli occupation had led to dramatic improvements in general well-being, placing the population of the territories ahead of most of their Arab neighbors.”

The improvement in employment was dramatic: “the number of Palestinians working in Israel rose from zero in 1967 to … 109,000 by 1986, accounting for 35 percent of the employed population of the West Bank and 45 percent in Gaza. Close to 2,000 industrial plants, employing almost half of the work force, were established in the territories under Israeli rule.”

Astonishingly: “During the 1970’s, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world—ahead of such “wonders” as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea…with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from $165 to $1,715 (compared with Jordan’s $1,050, Egypt’s $600…).

Occupation as a humanitarian remedy?? (cont.)

Under Israeli “Occupation”, the Palestinians-Arabs made vast progress in social welfare: “… mortality rates in the West Bank and Gaza fell by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 1990, while life expectancy rose from 48 years in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000

No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians’ standard of living: “By 1986, 92.8 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared to 20.5 percent in 1967; 85 percent had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16 percent in 1967…. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14 percent of adults over age 15, compared with 69 percent in Morocco, 61 percent in Egypt, 45 percent in Tunisia, and 44 percent in Syria.”

Karsh is not alone in assessing the contribution of Israeli administration to Palestinian development and welfare. In his Rivers of Eden, (Oxford University Press), Daniel Hillel, a scholar largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, noted that in agriculture the pattern was similar: “The Israeli occupation changed local agriculture profoundly. It introduced modern technology, including mechanization, precision tillage, pest control… It also introduced efficient methods of irrigation…especially drip irrigation. Consequently, output increased greatly, and farming was transformed from a subsistence enterprise to a commercial industry.

Sadly, after 1993, when Israel relinquished control of Gaza to Arafat and his cronies, the socio-economic conditions deteriorated precipitously—until today we seem be perennially on the cusp of a humanitarian catastrophe.

Carpe diem: Humanitarian crisis as an opportunity

Clearly then, as the last quarter-century shows, the Palestinian-Arabs have unequivocally demonstrated that they have failed the test of history, utterly unable to establish a viable self-governing entity. Moreover, since the IDF would certainly balk at the prospect of re-instating the “Occupation”—especially if it is indeterminate and open-ended, while we wait for Palestinian-Arabs to morph into something they have not been for the last century and show no sign of doing so in any foreseeable future, there is only one other alternative to alleviate the humanitarian crisis.

This is to fund the permanent relocation/rehabilitation of non-belligerent Palestinian-Arab individuals to third party countries, “outside the circle of violence” and free of the clutches of the cruel corrupt cliques who have led them into disaster after disaster for decades.

In this regard, the current humanitarian crisis is an opportunity—and should be recognized as such.

The time has come for Israel to seize the moment. Carpe diem!

After North Korea Comes Iran

Prime Minister Netanyahu said the following after President Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

“I commend US President Donald Trump on the historic summit in Singapore. This is an important step in the effort to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons.

President Trump has also taken a strong stand against Iran’s efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons and against its aggression in the Middle East. This is already affecting the Iranian economy. President Trump’s policy is an important development for Israel, the region and the entire world.”

The outcome of the summit in Singapore has already drawn a warning from Iran to North Korea.

“We don’t know what type of person the North Korean leader is negotiating with. It is not clear that he would not cancel the agreement before returning home,” Iranian government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht was quoted as saying by IRNA new agency.

Nobakht questioned Trump’s credibility. “This man does not represent the American people, and they will surely distance themselves from him at the next elections,” he said.



As it stands, Trump has returned home and the deal appears to still be standing.  In fact Trump has said he wants a new “real” deal with Iran.

“I hope that, at the appropriate time, after the sanctions kick in — and they are brutal what we’ve put on Iran — I hope that they’re going to come back and negotiate a real deal because I’d love to be able to do that but right now it’s too soon to do that,” Trump said.

The real game behind this summit was two-fold.  The first was to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, which both China and the USA have a serious interest to do and the second and perhaps real reason why Trump and his team took this unprecedented step to meet with the North Korean dictator was to disconnect it from Iran.  This isolates the Islamist regime in Tehran.

Trump does not believe he can get anything out of the Ayatollah’s who are driven by Shiite messianic ideology.  Kim Jong Un, while a brutal dictator does not appear to have an issue with Western cultural entertainment.  Can we say Dennis Rodman?

However, the Ayatollahs, firmly believe their purpose is to bring the Mahdi and destroy the world.  No amount of basketball and hotels will change this.  Meaning, there is no real ability to create a personal connection between them and the Trump team.

So what is next?

Trump will continue to isolate the regime in Tehran and make it clear he intends to back Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf allies.  He will also attempt to turn Russia against Iran by guaranteeing Putin that he will keep control of Western Syria in return for Putin backing Iran’s abandonment of Syria and allotting the Syrian Kurds their own state or let’s call it proto-state.

Why would Putin go for this?

He historically does not like or trust Iran and it may well be that Trump will also relax US opposition to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its growing control southeast Ukraine, otherwise known as the Donbass.

The USA will continue to isolate Iran militarily and economically. Will the regime in Tehran fold?  Probably not, but unlike North Korea, there is enough people in Iran that are educated and will eventually make it clear to their leaders that times up.

The “Humanitarian” Hoax

The privation in Gaza is not the cause of the enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is the enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of the privation in Gaza.

No cliché has dominated the discourse on the Gaza situation more than the perception of Palestinian violence as a corollary of the Strip’s dire economic conditionProf. Efraim Karsh, It’s Not Gaza’s Economy, Stupid, June 3, 2018.

Many experts claim that an easing of economic conditions in Gaza…is the way to achieve political stability in a Gaza Strip ruled by Hamas. This is a fallacious argument. Prof. Hillel Frisch, Economic Benefits Will Not Bring Stability to Gaza , June 6, 2018.

It is refreshing to see what appears to be an emerging challenge to the mindless Pavlovian response, propagated by most of the Israeli media, to the horrific hatred and violence on display along the border with Gaza.

Soldiers turned sociologists?

Sadly, and perhaps, most disturbingly, it is none other than the IDF and the security establishment that appear to be one of its principal advocates.

Reflecting this hopelessly unfounded perspective was a recent report, headlined, “Israeli military recommends easing humanitarian situation in Gaza”, which cited a senior military source advising that “Israel should ease the humanitarian situation in Gaza and reach a long term ‘arrangement’ with Hamas”.  A day later, this was followed by a similar report,” Army calls to lift some economic restrictions on Gaza, boost chances of quiet”, citing “A top official in the IDF’s Southern Command [who stated that ] Israel must take steps to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which would likely bring quiet to the Gaza region.”

The latter item provoked a brusque response from an exasperated talk-backer: “Sometimes I wonder if there are any sane people left in the top people. All Gaza wants [is] Jews dead and off the land and yet the army wants to give them the tools to do it…!

Indeed, in recent years—perhaps due to the professors and political credos they are exposed to during their academic studies—it appears that many in the senior echelons of Israel’s security establishment have forgotten that they are soldiers, charged with providing military solutions to physical threats to the nation’s security and not sociologists, tasked with diagnosing the societal ailments of its sworn enemies.

Misleading malicious mantra

Perturbingly, the recommendations to reach an agreement with Hamas to alleviate the humanitarian conditions blithely ignore that Gazans did everything in their power to exacerbate them—repeatedly vandalizing and setting fire to the Kerem Shalom crossing, which provides vital gas and fuel and humanitarian supplies to the Strip. Indeed, during the ongoing events on the border, Hamas explicitly refused to accept humanitarian supplies donated by Israel, including medical equipment such as fluids, bandages, equipment for treating children and disinfectants.

Accordingly, to attribute the incandescent hostility toward Israel in Gaza to the dire humanitarian situation plays directly into the hands of Israel’s detractors. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere it is, in effect, to be complicit with the enemy—endorsing its mendacious and malevolent narrative.

For it necessarily implies that, if only Israel would somehow initiate/facilitate an improvement in Gaza’s living conditions, the violence would subside. This not only reinforces the false claims that Palestinian terrorism is driven by Israeli-induced economic privation, but also that Israel bears the responsibility for such terror, which is, therefore, no more than an understandable reaction to hardship and despair, externally imposed by a cruel, alien “oppressor”.

This, of course, is not only to distort—but to invert—the realities on the ground.

Conventional wisdom and the inversion of causality

Last week I wrote: “… the penury in Gaza is not the cause of Arab enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is Arab enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of penury in Gaza.”

Accordingly, I was gratified to see my diagnosis echoed this week, by Prof. Efraim Karsh, who categorically affirmed this inversion of causality that afflicts conventional wisdom “…it is not Gaza’s economic malaise that has precipitated Palestinian violence; rather, it is the endemic violence that has caused the Strip’s humanitarian crisis.

Karsh,  formerly of King’s College London, now director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) is, to my mind, one of the most astute scholars of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

In the past, he has torn to shreds the defamatory accusations regarding Israel’s alleged mistreatment of the Palestinian-Arabs during its pre-Oslo administration of Judea-Samaria. Indeed, he has meticulously shown how the socio-economic conditions of the Palestinian-Arabs soared beyond recognition during that period, outstripping those in many “unoccupied” countries in the Muslim/Arab world—only to disastrously deteriorate once control was relinquished to Arafat and his cronies. Elsewhere, he has excoriated the frightful follies and foreseeable failures of the ill-fated and ill-conceived Oslo Accords—and I would urge readers to familiarize themselves with his incisive insights on these matters.



“No causal relationship between economic hardship & mass violence”

In his piece this week, Karsh recalls that: “At the time of the September 1993 signing of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles, conditions in the territories were far better than in most Arab states…But within six months of Arafat’s arrival in Gaza (in July 1994), the standard of living in the Strip fell by 25%, and more than half of the area’s residents claimed to have been happier under Israel.”

Significantly, he notes: “…. at the time Arafat launched his war of terrorism in September 2000, Palestinian income per capita was nearly double Syria’s, more than four times Yemen’s, and 10% higher than Jordan’s – one of the better-off Arab states. Only the oil rich Gulf states and Lebanon were more affluent.”

With regard to Gaza, Karsh underscores: “…countless nations and groups in today’s world endure far harsher socioeconomic or political conditions than the Palestinians, yet none have embraced violence and terrorism against their neighbors with such alacrity and on such a massive scale.”

He aptly points out “…, there is no causal relationship between economic hardship and mass violence. On the contrary, in the modern world it is not the poor and the oppressed who have carried out the worst acts of terrorism and violence but, rather, the militant vanguards from among the better educated and more moneyed circles of society.”

So, as Karsh reiterates: “…it is not socioeconomic despair but the total rejection of Israel’s right to exist…which underlies the relentless anti-Israel violence emanating from these territories and its attendant economic stagnation and decline.”

Couldn’t put it better myself!

Right diagnosis, wrong remedy?

But it is not just that economic aid to redress Gaza’s humanitarian predicament would be ineffective. Worse, it would be counterproductive. For as Karsh’s BESA colleague, Prof. Hillel Frisch points out: “Economic largesse at this point would only augment Hamas’s resources, as it taxes incoming goods and aid. That money will be funneled back to its hard core through campaigns such as the March of Return.

Accordingly, given the fact that Hamas would undoubtedly expropriate much of any incoming aid for its own nefarious needs, it stands to reason that persisting with such aid will only sustain its ability to continue its offensive action against Israel—thus sustaining the conflict and prolonging the suffering of the population.

This, of course, raises the trenchant question of what should be done.

It is here that I diverge from both Karsh and Frisch in my reading of what is called for to redress the problem. For while I largely concur with their diagnosis of the malaise, I have grave reservations as to their respective prescriptions of how to remedy it.

For in essence, both invoke comparisons with the defeat of Germany and/or Japan in World War II and the ability of the victorious Allies to remold formerly aggressive totalitarian countries into peaceable democracies.

Right diagnosis, wrong remedy? (cont.)

Thus, Frisch refers to “the total defeat of Nazi Germany, and its subsequent occupation and division by the winning coalition, [which] meant that the US and its allies could mold West Germany to their liking through denazification and democratic rule”.

In similar vein, Karsh writes: “Just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated a comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation, so, too, it is only when the local population sweeps its oppressive rulers from power, eradicates the endemic violence from political and social life, and teaches the virtues of coexistence with Israel that Gaza can look forward to a better future.”

Regrettably, both these learned scholars overlook one crucial element when it comes to dealing with—i.e. defeating—a recalcitrant adversary in the Muslim world today, which largely undermines the validity of any analogy with the fortunate outcomes and the defeat of tyranny in World War II. Indeed, it is one the US overlooked when it embarked on its “War on Terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11.

Indeed, quite apart from the fact that to implement both Frisch’s and Karsh’s proposal, Israel would presumably have to retake and hold Gaza for an indeterminate period of time—to enable it to remold Gazan society and implement the required “comprehensive sociopolitical and educational transformation”, there are important differences in the geo-political structure of the situation prevailing in post-WWII Japan and Germany, on the one hand, and those facing Israel today vis-a-vis the Palestinian-Arabs, on the other.

These would gravely undermine the ability of any attempt to remold or transform Palestinian-Arab society in general, and Gazan society in particular.

Unlike Germany and Japan…

For unlike any prospective self-governing Palestinian entity, which sees itself unequivocally bound culturally, ethnically and religiously to the larger Islamic world, Germany was not surrounded by a swathe of kindred Teutonic nations—nor Japan by kindred Nipponic nations—which, driven by a radical Teutonic/Nipponic ideology, strove continually to undermine the stability and legitimacy of any peaceable regime that foreign powers might install.

This, however, was the case in both Iraq and Afghanistan—and is certainly likely to be the case for any self-governing Palestinian entity ,whether in Judea- Samaria or in Gaza.

Unlike defeated Berlin (and Tokyo), Baghdad (and Kabul) along with their environs, were continually assailed by Islamic insurgents, financed, armed and equipped from surrounding Muslim countries, to undermine any arrangement or undercut any resolution the victorious powers wished to implement and imperiling any government, not to their liking.

Clearly, this is very likely to be the case in the Israeli/Palestinian situation, with regional Muslim-majority countries constituting a virtually unending source of post-victory instability and incitement. Accordingly, because any attempted remolding or “sociopolitical and educational transformation” is likely to be impeded—even up-ended—by external sources of incitement and agitation, the only way Israel can ensure that Gaza (or Judea-Samaria) will not be taken over by some inimical radical regime is to govern these areas by itself.

But the only way Israel can govern these territories itself, without the need to rule over a recalcitrant alien ethnic group, is to remove that ethnic group from those territories.

What could be simpler or more self-evident??

The real humanitarian solution to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis

Clearly then, persisting with the current format of humanitarian effort will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis. Accordingly, this effort must be restructured and redirected.

Indeed, the only durable humanitarian solution that can ensure Israeli security and relieve Israel from the burden of “ruling over another people”, is to generously finance the relocation/rehabilitation of the non-belligerent Gazan population to third party countries, and allow them to build more prosperous and more secure lives, outside the “circle of violence”, to which they will inevitably be subject, if they remain where they are—no matter what the level of humanitarian aid.

All we need now is leadership with sufficient political will, intellectual daring, and ideological commitment to undertake what must be undertaken.

Why would that be a problem??

Hamas Breaks Ceasefire, Israel Responds Destroying Military Targets in Gaza

Hamas broke their own ceasefire last night by firing more than five rockets and mortars into Israel.  These landed in populated civilian areas sending residents fleeing into their bunkers.  The IDF attacked back immediately destroying multile military targets in Gaza.



Is War Coming to Israel’s South?

There is no doubt that Iran is pulling the strings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in order to open up a third front against Israel.  The Gaza front has little to do with conquering territory.  Rather it is being activated with the sole purpose of draining Israel’s resources and attention away from the North, mainly from Iranian movements in and around the Golan. The war being waged against Israel, is designed to exact a psychological toll on Israel’s populace while buying time for Iran to find a hole in Israel’s defenses.

The first round of warfare clearly went to Israel, but unless Russia agrees to the total removal of Iran and Hezbollah from Syria and not just near the Golan, the noose will continue to tighten around the Jewish State.




Gaza – A “simple” solution

Denying—or delaying—the inevitable does not make it any less inevitable, only more costly

 

To remain at peace when you should be going to war may be often very dangerous….Let us attack and subdue…that we may ourselves live safely for the future. – Thucydides (c. 460–395 BCE)

No government, if it regards war as inevitable, even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy .– Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)


If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

 

This week, Gaza was once again simmering on the brink of largescale military conflict, the fourth in just under a decade.

Yet, even as the specter of recurring tragedy looms ever closer, the discourse (even—indeed especially—in Israel) on how to avoid “another round of violence” remained mired in a rehashed potpourri of previously disproven formulae—which ranged from the patently puerile to the positively preposterous; and from the blatantly inane to the borderline insane.

They are all doomed to fail—just as they did in the past. Indeed, even if the current efforts to sustain the current fragile calm succeed, it is only a matter of time until the inherent volatility reasserts itself and erupts once again. And again. And again.

 

Misunderstanding Palestinian pathology

Last week, I referred to a 2016 article in “Commentary”, by Prof. Michael Mandelbaum, of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, entitled, The Peace Process is an Obstacle to Peace. In it, the author attributes the failure of the effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to“…an inadequate understanding of the pathology it attempted to cure…[Accordingly], it did not solve the problem it was intended to fix, and it sometimes made it substantially worse.”

This is precisely the syndrome that we are witnessing right now.

None of the prescribed remedies address effectively the underlying causes of the malaise, which are being mistakenly imputed, by misinterpreting its symptoms.

Worse! What we are seeing is more than a mere misdiagnosis. It is nothing less than an utter reversal of causality; a complete inversion of cause and effect.

This is particularly disturbing when it comes from within much of the Israeli leadership. For although, overall, there is little disagreement that Hamas, and its even more radical Islamist offshoots, are responsible for the current outburst of violence, the dominant theme advanced for restoring and maintaining calm is through the improvement of the humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

This is a grave error! For, it is—demonstrably—both untrue factually and detrimental strategically.

Indeed, to base any policy initiative on such a tenet would, to paraphrase Mandelbaum, reflect a hopelessly “inadequate understanding of Palestinian pathology”. Accordingly, it would “not solve the problem it was intended to fix”, but, in all likelihood, will make “it substantially worse.”



Complicit with the enemy

To attribute the hostility toward Israel to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza plays directly into the hands of Israel’s detractors. Indeed, it is, in effect, to be complicit with the enemy—endorsing its mendacious and malevolent narrative.

After all, it necessarily implies that if only Israel would somehow initiate/facilitate an improvement in Gaza’s living conditions, the violence would subside. This not only reinforces the false claims that Palestinian terrorism is driven by Israeli-induced economic privation, but also that Israel bears the responsibility for such terror, which is, therefore, no more than an understandable reaction to hardship and despair, externally imposed by an alien power.

But this, as mentioned previously, is a malicious inversion of causality.

For, the penury in Gaza is not the cause of Arab enmity towards the Jewish state. Quite the opposite! It is Arab enmity towards the Jewish state that is the cause of penury in Gaza.

The current conditions in Gaza are the result of neither a lack of international humanitarian aid, nor of Israeli largesse. Gaza has enjoyed an abundance of both, only to   squander them on efforts to harm Israel by diverting massive resources to the construction of a vast military infrastructure with which to assault the Jewish state.

Indeed, for anyone with even a smidgeon of familiarity with Israeli society and its basic impulses, must know that, had there been any genuine desire for peaceful coexistence with its Jewish neighbors, Gaza would have flourished.  Israeli enterprise and expertise, which transformed Israel from a struggling agricultural-based country to a super-charged post-industrial powerhouse in a few decades, would have flooded into the enclave, providing opportunity and employment for its impoverished residents.

 

Gaza: “Cutting its nose to spite its face”

So, in effect, the only thing that the Gazans need to do to extricate themselves from their current predicament is…nothing! All they need to do is stop what they are doing now—attacking Israel. Indeed, the only thing that needs to happen for Gaza to thrive is for them to convincingly foreswear hostility and embrace peaceful coexistence with Israel.

But of course, that will not happen! For that is not in the nature of the Gazan populace, who overwhelmingly (70%) endorse a return to armed intifada and who prefer “armed resistance” by a factor of two to one over “nonviolent resistance” or “negotiations”.

Nothing could symbolize the Gazan’s willingness to “cut one’s nose to spite one’s face” better than the destruction of the hi-tech greenhouses left behind by the Jewish farmers in the 2005 Disengagement. Rather than operate them for their own benefit, a frenzied mob trampled them into mangled ruin the moment the IDF left the area.

It should therefore be clear that the  priorities of the Gazan people, as a collective, are not to improve their socio-economic lot, but to inflict harm on the Jewish state, whose sovereign existence they obdurately refuse to accept—except as a temporary tactic to allow them to enhance their offensive capabilities to pursue a later endeavor to destroy it.

In this equation of enmity, resolving the conflict has nothing to do with what the Jewish state does (or does not do). It has everything to do with what the Palestinian-Arabs are—and what they are not!

 

Greatly enhanced military capabilities

Of course, the Gazans have shown considerable initiative, innovation and ingenuity—none of which has been directed towards developing socio-economic realities in the enclave.

If one surveys the enhancement of Gaza’s military capabilities since Israel withdrew in 2005, it is impressive indeed. In fact, had such progress been envisaged before the pullout, it is doubtful whether it would have been undertaken at all!

After all, back then, the most formidable weapon the terror organizations had at their disposal was a primitive rocket with a 5 kg explosive charge and 5 km range. Today, not only do they have an arsenal of missiles with a range of 100 km (possibly more) and a warhead of 100 kg (possibly more), but in December 2016, Hamas Political Bureau Member, Fathi Hammad, proudly informed Al Aksa TV: “If you look into the missile or weapon industries of developed countries, you will find that Gaza has become the leading manufacturer of missiles among Arab countries…

To this must be added the huge investment in the maze of underground terror tunnels (the last one discovered reaching almost a kilometer into pre-1967 Israel), the development of naval forces and of drone capabilities.

Significantly, after each round of fighting, despite the heavy damage inflicted by the IDF, the Gazan-based terror groups have ypically emerged with vastly enhanced military capabilities and political standing.

 

Soon drones with biological/chemical payload??

They have shown that they can transform everyday children’s playthings, such as kites, into instruments of extensive destruction, and forced Israel to develop hugely expensive defenses (such as Iron-Dome interceptors) to deal will risibly cheap weapons of attack (such as mortar shells).

Indeed, it is hardly beyond the limits of plausibility that Israel might soon have to face incoming missiles with multiple warheads, which disperse just before being intercepted, greatly challenging its missile defense capabilities. Or the development of some kind of anti-aircraft capabilities that could restrict—or at least hamper—Israel’s present unlimited freedom of action over the skies of Gaza.

Or worse, will Israel have to contend with the specter of a swarm of drones, armed with biological or chemical payloads, directed at nearby Israeli communities—rendering the billion dollar anti-tunnel barrier entirely moot? For those who might dismiss this as implausible scaremongering – see here, here, and here.

Israel’s decade long policy of ceasing fire whenever the other side ceases fire has allowed Hamas, and its terror affiliates, to launch repeated rounds of aggression, determining not only when they are launched and when they end, but also largely controlling the cost incurred for such aggression –ensuring it remains within the range of the “acceptable”.

This is clearly a recipe of unending and escalating violence—and must be abandoned before it culminates in unintended, but inevitable, tragedy.

Over 180 cases of attempted murder

Earlier this week, over 180 rockets and mortar shells were launched at Israeli civilian targets in a 24 hours period.

Each one of those projectiles was intended to take the lives of innocent Israeli civilians. As such, each launch was a clear case of attempted murder—and Israel should relate to them with commensurate severity. Poor aim on the part of the would-be murderers can—and should—not be a mitigating factor. The fact that, fortunately, no Israeli lives were lost is hardly the point here. Indeed, in the case of a shell landing in a kindergarten, terrible tragedy was averted only by happenstance—and a few minutes.

Persisting with the same policy as in the past will produce precisely the same results it produced in the past: Continued attempts at mass murder!

After all, there is not a shred of evidence that the Palestinian-Arabs will morph into anything that they have not been for over a hundred years, nor that they are likely to do so within any foreseeable time horizon. Indeed, as time progresses, such an outcome seems increasingly remote.

Accordingly, any policy paradigm based on the assumption that, somehow, they can be coaxed or coerced into doing just that, is hopelessly fanciful and fraught with grave perils.

Gaza: The “simple” solution

To formulate an effective policy regarding Gaza, we need to understand the pathology of what we are attempting to address. The source of the conflict is the physical presence of a large, implacably hostile Arab population on Israel’s southern border. Simple logic therefore dictates that to remove the source of conflict, that hostile population must be removed.

Israel will not be able to indefinitely endure recurring bouts of fighting—whenever the enemy on the other side feels sufficiently bold to launch an attack or sufficiently desperate not to be able to refrain from one.

Accordingly, the solution for Gaza is not, and cannot be, its reconstruction, but its deconstruction and the generously funded humanitarian relocation and rehabilitation of the non-belligerent Gazans to third party countries, outside the “circle of violence”.

To achieve this, the IDF cannot content itself with periodic punitive sorties, followed by a limited interbellum, in which the enemy regroups, rearms and redeploys, ready for the next round. It must conquer the entire Gaza Strip, apprehend (otherwise dispose of) the current Gazan leadership, dismantle the current mechanism of governance and begin a vigorous program of incentivized emigration of the non-belligerent population.

This is the “simple” solution for Gaza—and the only durable one. Of course, to say that it is “simple” does not imply that it is “easy”. Indeed, the great difficulty it entails is rooted in its brutal simplicity of “Them or Us”.

Clearly, the fact that it is relatively easy to propose such a harsh policy prescription in the air-conditioned comfort of my study does not make it any less imperative or less inevitable.

After all, denying or delaying the inevitable does not make it any less inevitable, only more costly when it inevitably comes about.




BIBI NETANYAHU: “It is Iran that is Responsible”

As calm began to return to the Gaza belt communities, Prime Minister Netanyahu touched on the IDF’s response the attacks by Hamas.

“Since yesterday the IDF has strongly retaliated against the firing from the Gaza Strip and has hit dozens of terrorist targets in the severest blow we have landed on them in years,” the Prime Minister Netanyahu stated at a ceremony for the victims of the Atalena.

“The Hamas regime, Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist organizations, inspired by Iran, that are responsible for the escalation. I will not detail our plans because I do not want the enemy to know what to expect. But one thing is clear: When they test us, they pay immediately. And if they continue testing us, they will pay dearly.”

“I salute the fighters of the IDF and the security forces and I commend the resilience of the residents of the south.”

As of tonight, the IDF’s strategy of hitting hard and early to prevent a cascading conflict appears to be working as Hamas has stopped firing rockets. Given the fluid situation anything is possible, but it appears that Hamas is rethinking its offensive.



BOMBS AWAY: Israel Strikes Back at Hamas Overnight

With the increased mortar and rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip into Israeli population centers, Israel attacked back over night hitting more than 25 target in the Gaza Strip.



Hamas now claims it is requesting a ceasefire, however rockets were still being fired this morning into Israel.  The IDF’s strategy is to pound hard early on in order to end the offensive before it devolves into something larger. With Hamas claiming there is a ceasefire, it looks like the strategy is working.

Why Did Hamas Attack?

The mortar fire yesterday which sparked this round of hostilities between Hamas and Israel came at then of multiple weeks of riots and attempted infiltrations from Gaza into Israel.  Hamas was willing to use crowds to undertake terror operations against Israel, which included burning kites, which flew into Israel causing massive damage to crops.  Although this sort of thing had been taking a toll, it was not proving the necessary success Gazans needed to keep the game going.  The mortar attacks were part of the show, but now seemed to have been a miscalculation on the part of Hamas.

With most politicians unifying for a serious assault on Hamas if they don’t stop attacking, the ball has been squarley placed back in their court.  Then again, the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad have already vacated their above ground homes, running to safety in bunkers. They will have to decide whether its better to risk a real war, with no one in the White House to hold Israel back or calm the situation back down.  The choice is theirs.




NETANYAHU TO HAMAS: “The IDF will respond with great force to these attacks.”

While speaking at the 9th Annual Galilee Conference, Prime Minister Netanyahu referred to the attacks on Israel by Hamas as well as the Syria situation.  The attacks saw countless mortars fired at Israel, with one landing next to a kindergarden.




Netanyahu said the following on the situation:

“Israel views with utmost gravity the attacks against it and its communities by Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip.

The IDF will respond with great force to these attacks. Israel will exact a heavy price from anyone who tries to attack it, and we view Hamas as responsible for preventing such attacks against us.

Regarding Syria, I have made clear our red lines many times, and we will enforce them without compromise. We will not allow Iran to establish a military presence in Syria and operate against us from there, and also not to transfer dangerous weapons from Syria to Lebanon, or to produce them in Lebanon.

I would like to reiterate: We are acting against an Iranian military presence anywhere on Syrian territory. An Iranian departure from southern Syria alone will not suffice. The long-range missiles that Iran is working to station in Syria will endanger us even beyond the range of several kilometers from southern Syria; therefore, Iran needs to leave Syria altogether. We are not party to understandings to the effect that we have agreed to less than this.

In any case, we will always act according to our security interests, with or without understandings. We will defend ourselves by ourselves, unified, united, and determined to ensure our security and our future.”



Meanwhile, Israel’s Airforce has struck targets in central Gaza in response to the mortar fire.