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Obama Does Not Accept War For What It Is: Eliot A. Cohen, Washington Post, July 31, 2014— Abraham Lincoln hated war as much as Barack Obama does.
Will President Obama Continue Shielding the Barbarians at Our Gates?: Isi Leibler, Candidly Speaking, Aug. 4, 2014: The US is Israel’s most important ally. It has provided us with arms and only last week Congress granted us additional funds to further develop the Iron Dome.
The Lesson We Can Learn From Gaza is Not to Allow a Palestinian State: Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 4, 2014 — Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu faced a challenge Sunday from his No. 2 in Likud, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who warned him that Hamas’s attack on Israel proved the danger of creating a Palestinian state.
Restoring Military Supremacy: David M. Weinberg, Israel Hayom, July 27, 2013— U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seems oblivious to Israel's strategic need to finish the fight against Hamas with a resounding, unequivocal triumph.
[Pat Condell Speaking About Hamas: in 2012! Video]: Youtube, 2012
Neighborhood Bully: Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan.com, 1983
Qatar, and Other American “Allies”, are Among the Villains in Gaza: Alan M. Dershowitz, Jewish Press, Aug. 1, 2014
No to Economic Aid to Gaza: Efraim Inbar, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 3, 2014
Pillay’s Dastardly ‘Doublethink’: Ruthie Blum, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 3, 2014
OBAMA DOES NOT ACCEPT WAR FOR WHAT IT IS Eliot A. Cohen Washington Post, July 31, 2014
Abraham Lincoln hated war as much as Barack Obama does. He saw so much more of it firsthand, lost friends in it and waged it on an immensely vaster scale than Obama has. And yet, almost exactly 150 years ago (Aug. 17, 1864, to be precise), he wrote this to the squat, stolid general besieging the town of Petersburg, south of Richmond: “I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwillingness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I willing. Hold on with a bull-dog gripe, and chew & choke, as much as possible.” And so Ulysses S. Grant persevered. Therein lies the difference between Lincoln and Obama, which explains much of the wreckage that is U.S. foreign policy in Gaza and elsewhere today. Lincoln accepted war for what it is; Obama does not. The Gaza war is a humanitarian tragedy for Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. It is also a barbaric conflict, as leaders of Hamas hide their fighters behind children while baiting their enemy to kill innocents. But first and foremost, it is a war, a mortal contest of wills between two governments and two societies.
By 1864, Lincoln, Grant and Grant’s no-less-grim lieutenants William Tecumseh Sherman and Philip Sheridan had concluded that their conflict had shifted to what historians call “the hard war.” They knew not only that they would have to destroy the armies of the Confederacy but also that they would have to break the will of the people of the South to wage war. That is precisely what they did — in the siege of Petersburg, the devastation of the Shenandoah Valley, the march through Georgia and North Carolina, a close blockade and cavalry raids deep into the South. And the gentle, humane and often grief-stricken president pushed them hard to do it. When, earlier in August, Grant ordered Sheridan to drive the Confederates from the Shenandoah — which he burned out thoroughly as he went — Lincoln commented, “I repeat to you it will neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day, and hour, and force it.”
The Israelis, having left Gaza only to be showered by rockets and harried by border raiders, have concluded that they are waging that kind of war. In a rare spirit of unity, they seem determined to break Hamas in Gaza. A more sensible U.S. administration would understand that and stand with our tough little ally, rather than attempt to stop its destruction of this Islamist partner of Iran and enemy not only of Israel but of Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well. The problem is not the reported antipathy between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is that the Obama administration simply cannot accept that war is war. This explains, among other things, the debacle of our Libya policy, in which the administration studiously insisted that its bombing to help overthrow Moammar Gaddafi was not a war and left in its wake chaos that roils to the present day. It explains the administration’s declarations that drone strikes in Pakistan and the assassination of Osama bin Laden had brought al-Qaeda to the edge of strategic defeat — even as the ideology of the group and similar ones has metastasized and Islamist movements have extended their sway in the Middle East and Africa.
It explains our hand-wringing over the slaughter of some 200,000 people in Syria as if it were a massive Ebola outbreak, when what is going on is, in fact, a war pitting Iran and its allies in Syria and Lebanon against an increasingly Islamized foe. It explains the long, disgraceful appeasement of Vladimir Putin and the administration’s continuing reluctance to say, simply, that Russia is waging war against a sovereign neighbor. The president famously said in 2011 that “the tide of war is receding” in Iraq and Afghanistan, when in fact all that was happening was that we were (temporarily, perhaps) withdrawing from our wars, which entered new and more violent phases among the people we were leaving behind. The most curious thing about this president is that he was elected in the midst of three open wars — the struggle against al-Qaeda and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan — and several more covert conflicts, including Iran’s long and bloody effort to drive the United States from the Middle East, and yet he could not conceive of himself as a war president. He cannot give the speeches that explain these wars, that call for sacrifice, that bring his domestic opponents along to confront a foreign foe, that rally foreign friends and strike fear in the hearts of common enemies. And he appears to have little capacity for empathy with an ally whose population must seek shelter when sirens wail.
War is war. We may wish that it could be waged like an 18th-century duel, with exquisite protocols and rules, and scrupulously circumscribed uses of violence, but it stubbornly remains what it became in the 19th and 20th centuries: a ferocious struggle among nations. That does not mean discarding the constraints of decency and civilization, but it is a dark truth to be faced. Lincoln understood it; if only the man who holds the presidency 150 years later did.
WILL PRESIDENT OBAMA CONTINUE SHIELDING THE BARBARIANS AT OUR GATES?
Isi Leibler
Candidly Speaking, Aug 4, 2014
The US is Israel’s most important ally. It has provided us with arms and only last week Congress granted us additional funds to further develop the Iron Dome. It has also used its political clout to deflect hostile resolutions and sanctions at the international level. But we should be under no illusions. The US- Israel relationship is under great strain. Notwithstanding cryptic statements by both the Israeli and US governments denying the veracity of extracts of a toxic telephone conversation between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barak Obama, Israeli TV Channel One’s highly respected Foreign News Editor, Oren Nahari, adamantly stands by his story, stressing that his source was a reliable senior US official and not the PM’s department.
The president is alleged to have harshly demanded that Netanyahu accept an immediate unilateral cease-fire and informed him that the US was committed to ending the blockade of Gaza. Netanyahu pointed out that the U.S. Administration was undermining the cease-fire by substituting Egyptian mediation with Qatar and Turkey, reminding Obama that the Moslem Brotherhood-aligned Qatar finances and provides arms to Hamas and other terrorist groups including ISIS. He could have also pointed out that Turkey’s demagogic Prime Minister has been stoking hysterical anti-Israeli sentiment and vile anti-Semitism, even demanding that his own Jewish community condemn Israel. President Obama allegedly responded by telling Netanyahu that he was not in a position to advise America who should act as mediators. Lending credence to this exchange was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi who, a few days later, told CNN that the US must cooperate with the Qataris “who have told me over and over again that Hamas is a humanitarian organization”. It is mind-boggling that a Democratic congressional leader can describe as “humanitarian”, a genocidal organization with similar objectives to Al Qaeda, whose charter explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. There were also tense exchanges between the PM’s Department and Secretary of State John Kerry, now notorious for his inappropriate comments and contradictory statements. There have been efforts by both parties to calm the waters.
US officials have reiterated their commitment to Israel and re-endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself. President Obama has now, belatedly, followed the lead of the Europeans and includes the demilitarization of Gaza as an issue to be negotiated in conjunction with the lifting of the blockade after cessation of hostilities.
But there is no disputing that President Obama has consciously or otherwise shielded Hamas. This is not a conflict in which the US should act as a mediator or even hint at moral equivalency. This conflict was thrust upon us by a terrorist group promoting a culture of death and martyrdom reflected in the oft quoted Hamas slogan: “Jews wish for life and we wish for a martyr’s death”. We are not confronting an entity seeking independence. It is a conflict between good and evil. We would have expected our ally to allocate the blame for the casualties to the death merchants of Hamas who target Israeli civilians and propagate casualties amongst their own people who they employ as human shields and then gleefully present to the world as victims of Israeli tyranny.
Instead, President Obama has led the pack in hypocritically supporting our right to defend ourselves whilst blaming us for disproportionate response when we retaliate against the source of the rocket fire whose command posts and missile launching sites are deliberately embedded in UN buildings, schools, hospitals and mosques. The gory scenes of Palestinian casualties highlighted by the global media should have been presented in the context of Hamas responsibility for deliberately orchestrating this nightmare. Instead President Obama’s behavior has merely encouraged Hamas to continue their barbaric strategy in the belief that the US will rescue them from the jaws of defeat and reward them for their commitment to terrorism. In this context, the clearly synchronized outbursts from the White House, State Department and even the Pentagon, just prior to the announcement of the stillborn 72 hour cease-fire, condemning Israel for civilian casualties, including the shelling of a UNRWA School in Gaza as “indefensible” and “totally unacceptable”, was clearly designed to garner the support of Qatar and Turkey.
The US is aware of the extraordinary lengths, unmatched in any military conflict, which Israel employs to minimize civilian casualties. But innocent civilians die in a war– and obviously more so in a situation in which women and children are employed as human shields and who are deliberately housed in locations together with missiles launchers and command posts. When under fire from terrorists – even if they operate out of schools – Israeli soldiers must return fire or be killed. Beyond that, accidents are inevitable. Just recall the thousands of innocent French civilians who were killed by the allies during the invasion in 1944.
To appreciate the double standards and hypocrisy employed against us, the US should take note of the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians killed by allied forces in the course of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the carnage in Serbia incurred by NATO’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Belgrade to force Milosevic to step down. The tragic casualties among Palestinian innocents sadden us all. But it is revolting when the US President expresses more outrage over the deaths of 1500 Palestinians, a large proportion of whom are bloody terrorists, than the butchered 180,000 Syrians in the ongoing civil war.
It is utterly unacceptable to condemn a long standing ally. How can the US justify their focus on the loss of innocent lives without regard to the context and avoid directing the blame to Hamas who exult in both killing Israelis and the killing of their own people whose suffering they openly exploit to discredit Israel and divert attention from their terrorist activities? It brings to mind Golda Meir’s oft quoted quip that peace will only be achieved when our adversaries love their children more than they hate us. Israel must stand firm. The public shock over the discovery of the myriad of terror tunnels and the extent of the missile range capability – which now covers the entire country – has united the people in a manner reminiscent of the Six Day War. Close to 90% are adamant that Israel must not stop until Gaza is demilitarized or Hamas completely smashed, despite the terrible toll in casualties. Even the dovish Labor Party opposition is demanding this of Netanyahu.
Although it is not reflected in the extraordinary tsunami of global anti-Semitism and the double standards formally adopted by Western countries, there is a clear consensus that this war was imposed on us and there is a greater appreciation of the terrorist nature of Hamas and its contempt for human life. There is also the radical reversal in the approach of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and most of the Arab League who endorsed the Egyptian ceasefire proposal and whose fear and loathing of the Islamic fundamentalist extremists far exceeds their traditional hatred of Israel. The Egyptians and other moderate Arab states maintain that since his initial Cairo speech in 2009, President Obama has emerged as a supporter of the Moslem Brotherhood – the creator of Hamas – and which they regard, justifiably, as an Islamic fundamentalist terror organization. They consider the undermining of the Egyptian ceasefire proposals and turning towards Qatar and Turkey – supporters of the Moslem Brotherhood and Hamas – as another example of the US betraying its allies and engaging with its enemies. This was reflected in Kerry’s initial Qatar/Turkey sponsored ceasefire proposal, unanimously rejected by the Israeli Cabinet, which could have been written by Hamas.
As of now, Israel has largely achieved its principal objectives of destroying the tunnels and substantially neutralizing the missile capability. But Hamas remains intact and unless demilitarization is imposed we face inveterate Jihadists who will not relent from their openly expressed objective of destroying us or at least eroding our morale by ongoing terror attacks. The prime responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens. This is a time for Israel to stand firm and take whatever steps are necessary to defang Hamas and demilitarize Gaza. The responsibility for the fallout on innocent Palestinians rests exclusively on Hamas.
The brazen Hamas breach of the 72-hour ceasefire has led to a temporary global backlash against Hamas. Having neutralized those tunnels which the IDF was able to detect, the ground forces are being redeployed. However PM Netanyahu has made it clear that the operation is not over.
The cabinet must speedily decide on one of two options. It can expand the ground campaign and conquer Gaza, which the majority of the nation would probably initially endorse but which would likely entail massive casualties and provoke concerted international pressure that would probably force us to withdraw unilaterally or face sanctions. It would appear that without ruling out this option, Prime Minister Netanyahu – at least in the short-term – intends to continue degrading the rocket launchers and attacking Hamas from the air, thereby limiting Israeli casualties and providing greater leverage to achieve demilitarization.
The outcome rests largely with the US. If it rewards Hamas for its aggression by seeking to “lift the blockade” or provide them with funds without demilitarization, it will be betraying us. The US will thus have destroyed whatever little global credibility they retain and will be seen as abandoning its long standing ally and groveling to those who support fanatical Islamic terrorism. Will the US support Israel’s just cause against genocidal terrorism or act as a shield to protect the barbarians at our gates, effectively paving the way for a far more brutal war in the near future?
THE LESSON WE CAN LEARN FROM GAZA
IS NOT TO ALLOW A PALESTINIAN STATE
Jerusalem Post, Aug. 4, 2014
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu faced a challenge Sunday from his No. 2 in Likud, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who warned him that Hamas’s attack on Israel proved the danger of creating a Palestinian state. Sa’ar, who is considered a future candidate for prime minister, spoke at a conference marking the nine-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip at Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center. “After withdrawing from Lebanon brought Hezbollah to power and withdrawing from Gaza brought Hamas to power, the lesson must be not to form a terrorist state in the heart of our land,” Sa’ar said. “A Palestinian state would endanger Israel’s future.”
Sa’ar praised the uprooted residents of Gaza’s Gush Katif bloc of Jewish communities, saying that following Operation Protective Edge it was clear that they had protected the entire country. He mocked then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s promise that withdrawing from the Gaza Strip would harm attempts to terrorize Israel. “Where there are no settlements, there is no IDF, and where there is no IDF, there is terrorism,” Sa’ar said. “Terrorism was not defeated by withdrawing. It was strengthened by the withdrawal.”
Sa’ar stressed that he was supporting Netanyahu. He expressed hope that the prime minister would make the decisions necessary to achieve the goals of Protective Edge, such as demilitarizing the Gaza Strip. “Demilitarizing Gaza is a correct goal that we need to pursue with determination,” he said. “But it will be difficult to achieve this as long as the Hamas remains in charge of the Gaza Strip.”
Sa’ar urged Netanyahu to insist that the maritime blockade on Gaza remain in force as long as Hamas remains in power there. He warned that any cement provided while Gaza remains under Hamas control would be used to rebuild the terrorist infrastructure and harm Israel’s civilians and soldiers. He read from speeches defending the disengagement plan from Gaza by current Justice Minister Tzipi Livni. He mocked her for pushing for the withdrawal by saying that it would win Israel praise from the international community. “The Arab enemy that was happy about evacuating Jews from Gush Katif now wants to eliminate Jews from the communities around Gaza and end Jewish settlement in the state as a whole,” he said.
RESTORING MILITARY SUPREMACY David M. Weinberg
Israel Hayom, July 27, 2014
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry seems oblivious to Israel's strategic need to finish the fight against Hamas with a resounding, unequivocal triumph. By attempting to bring about an immediate cease-fire that simply restores the status quo ante (based on the irrelevant and unacceptable 2012 cease-fire conditions), he is acting to weaken Israel. Kerry doesn't understand that what is at stake here is not just the lives of Palestinians and Israelis in Gaza and the Negev, but a reasonable regional balance of power where Israel stands a chance at deterring its many enemies. More astute observers of the region know that Israel's security has long been based on several pillars: it military supremacy, its alliance with the United States, its internal cohesion and steadfastness, and peace with its neighbors where possible. Over recent years, however, each of these four security pillars has taken a hit. Implacable nonstate enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida have weaponized heavily and embedded themselves in civilian populations on Israel's borders — making it difficult and painful for Israel to strike at these groups. Iran is supplying these groups with money, weapons and military training, while building a nuclear bomb.
The Obama administration has distanced America from Israel. The strength of Israel's social fabric has come into question following two decades of materialistic bingeing and very divisive diplomatic experimentation.
The country's peace diplomacy has fallen flat too, with the Oslo Accords in tatters, and peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan threatened by Islamic earthquakes. As a result, we know that Israel's enemies have viewed Israel as weak and vulnerable. Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza must be viewed in this broader context. Israel is acting not only to end the immediate and acute rocket and tunnel threat to Israel — which alone is more than enough to justify our current military offensive — but acting to restore a measure of overall deterrence against all or enemies; to regain the aura of military supremacy, in their eyes.
Israel must prove that it is not deterred by Islamic terrorist militias that embed themselves in civilian populations and think themselves thereby invulnerable. Israel is showing that it can and will take the fight into their streets and underground hideouts, and uproot and destroy their bases of operations — despite the cost in life to our soldiers and to noncombatants unfortunately trapped (purposefully so, by Hamas) in the crossfire, and despite international condemnation. If Israel can't do this, and do so while maintaining a high degree of internal cohesion and social solidarity, then Israel's long-term security prospects are bleak. Iran and all its regional subsidiaries are watching closely.
Consider, for example, our northern border. We know for sure that Hezbollah has dug its vast missile armories deep into the Lebanese mountainsides, underneath civilian towns. It is also very possible that Hezbollah has dug dozens of terror attack tunnels under the Israel-Lebanon border, reaching deep into the kibbutzim and towns of the Galilee. It is only a question of time until Israel has to take military action to "mow that grass," to degrade and denude Hezbollah's terror infrastructure and weaponry.
Wining this war against Hamas, then, is step one in restoring Israel's security and its broader deterrent abilities. It is part of Israel's response to the gains made by radical Islamists in Arab civil wars raging across the region. It is part of a re-assertion of the basic building blocks in Israel's strategic posture. It is critical for Israel in grand strategic perspective. Israel must not allow Kerry's shortsightedness to throw us off track.
[Pat Condell Speaking About Hamas: in 2012! Video]: Youtube, 2012
Neighborhood Bully: Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan.com, 1983 —Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
Qatar, and Other American “Allies”, are Among the Villains in Gaza: Alan M. Dershowitz, Jewish Press, Aug. 1, 2014 —American allies, especially Qatar and Turkey, have been providing material support to Hamas, which the United States has listed as a foreign terrorist organization.
No to Economic Aid to Gaza: Efraim Inbar, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 3, 2014 —The developing international consensus to offer Gaza an economic package in order to convince Hamas to agree to a cease-fire is immoral and a strategic folly. It is also unlikely to be effective.
Pillay’s Dastardly ‘Doublethink’: Ruthie Blum, Jerusalem Post, Aug. 3, 2014 —On Thursday, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused Israel of “deliberate defiance” of its obligations under international law.
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