We welcome your comments to this and any other CIJR publication. Please address your response to: Rob Coles, Publications Chairman, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, PO Box 175, Station H, Montreal QC H3G 2K7 – Tel: (514) 486-5544 – Fax:(514) 486-8284; E-mail: rob@isranet.wpsitie.com
Where is the Outrage Over the Bombardment of Civilians in Israel?: Arsen Ostrovsky, Telegraph, July 8, 2014— You see, as most people in the UK were waking up this morning, and those in Europe, United States and elsewhere around the world were going about their daily routines, here in Israel over one million people were running for cover from a hail of rockets being rained down by Palestinian Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
Hit Hamas Hard to Create a Different Strategic Balance Against Islamic Terrorism: Prof. Hillel Frisch, Besa Center, July 9, 2013— Israeli military strategy towards Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) has been vastly different from its strategy towards Gaza.
Why Did Hamas Provoke a War?: Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations, July 9, 2013— The current battles between Israel and Hamas were provoked by Hamas. Why?
America Is the Arsonist of the Middle East: Lee Smith, Tablet, July 8, 2013— Events are moving so quickly in the Middle East that it seems like whatever you are reading is already outdated.
Naftali Bennett Speaks At Israeli "Peace Conference" (Video): Youtube, July 9, 2014
New York Times Criticizes Israel for Trying to Save Lives in Gaza [CIJR noted this reprehensible NYT article in Wednesday’s “Media-ocrity of the Week”—Ed.]: Elder of Ziyon, July 9, 2014
Politicians on Right Call For Escalation in Gaza: Lahav Harkov, Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2014
What Reporters Need to Know During Operation Protective Edge: Elder of Ziyon, July 9, 2014
Five Points on ‘The Situation’: Meir Halevi Siegel, Jewish Press, July 8, 2014
WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE OVER THE BOMBARDMENT
Arsen Ostrovsky Telegraph, July 8, 2014
You see, as most people in the UK were waking up this morning, and those in Europe, United States and elsewhere around the world were going about their daily routines, here in Israel over one million people were running for cover from a hail of rockets being rained down by Palestinian Hamas terrorists in Gaza. In the last 24 hours alone, over 120 rockets have been fired on southern Israel. That’s approximately five rockets per hour. By the time I finish this article, odds are that count will have risen to 125 rockets. To put things in context: one million Israelis is roughly 13 per cent of the population. Thirteen per cent of the UK population equates to about 8.4 million people, or the entire population of London. A number of Israelis have already been injured, though thankfully without fatalities. The only reason more have not been hurt is because Israel has invested millions of dollars in bomb shelters and the Iron Dome defence system. Meanwhile, Hamas, whose very raison d'être is the destruction of Israel and which is recognised as a terrorist organisation both by the EU and UK, has invested millions of dollars in foreign aid into more rockets.
So, where is the outrage? Since the beginning of this year, Gaza terrorists have fired more than 450 rockets on Israel, with about half of them coming since mid-June, when two Hamas terrorists kidnapped and brutally murdered three Israeli teenagers. Why is it that a majority of the international community only notices when Israel undertakes its sovereign right, and obligation, to defend its citizens? Can you imagine if even one rocket was fired on London, Washington, Paris or Moscow? This is simply intolerable and no country can, or should, tolerate such attacks on its people. Where is the outrage from the United Nations, which does not hesitate for a moment to call a "special emergency session" on the "Question of Palestine" or pass the umpteenth resolution blindly condemning Israel? But 24 hours after the rocket attacks on Israel started, I am still waiting for even one syllable of condemnation from the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly or the Human Rights Council.
Where is the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who repeatedly slams Israel over settlement building, but is yet to say a word about the Palestinians firing over 120 rockets on Israeli civilians in one day? Even 10 Downing and the Foreign Office are yet to comment. Where are all those so-called enlightened liberals, who continue to call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the Jewish State, but are silent in the face of Palestinian terror against Jews? Where are all the human rights organisations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Oxfam, who do not waste a single opportunity to condemn Israel for human rights violations against the Palestinians? Are the human rights of Israelis not equally important? Or is Jewish blood really that cheap? Where is the outrage from the mainstream media? Instead, news organisations like the BBC, lead their stories about the rocket attacks headlines like ‘Israel launches new air strikes on Gaza Strip’ and not ‘Palestinian Terrorists in Gaza Rain Down Over 120 Rockets Against 1 million Israelis in 24 hours.’
Where is the outage that Iran, which the international community is currently negotiating with over their nuclear weapons program, and which has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, is the primary funder and supplier of arms to Hamas? Where is the outage that civilians across southern Israel are being instructed not to send their kids to school and stay in bomb shelters, or that 24 prematurely born babies and 34 newborns had to be moved last night to a protected area in Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, due to the rocket attacks from Gaza? What sort of inhumane way is that for children to live? Where is the outrage that the very same Hamas now responsible for the rocket fire against millions of Israelis, was only a month ago welcomed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, our so-called ‘partner for peace’ into his unity government, while the international community, including the EU, rushed to embrace it? As I conclude, another two rockets were just fired from Gaza. So again, I ask: where is the outrage?
HIT HAMAS HARD TO CREATE A DIFFERENT
STRATEGIC BALANCE AGAINST ISLAMIC TERRORISM
Prof. Hillel Frisch
Besa Center, July 9, 2014
Israeli military strategy towards Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) has been vastly different from its strategy towards Gaza. Israel assessed correctly in the second intifada that the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria was easy to penetrate because of its relatively low density of population, but difficult to contain because of its size and the length of the green line (over 300 kilometers long). Gaza, by contrast, was easy to contain but difficult to penetrate because of its small size and high density of population, especially its very large refugee camps. Israeli moves, consciously or unwittingly, expressed these differences. In 2002, Israel engaged in two massive offensives against Yasser Arafat’s PA, its security forces, Fatah and the other terrorist organizations. It temporarily took over the big Palestinian towns, and has been “mowing the grass” ever since through daily preventive arrests of terrorist operatives across the entire area. This policy, coupled with security cooperation with more pliant PA security services under Muhammad Abbas’ rule, has had a dramatic effect. Terrorism in Judea and Samaria has declined to levels that prevailed before the first intifada and have remained low ever since.
In Gaza, Israel took a different path. Because Gaza was difficult to penetrate, but presumably easy to contain, Israel decided to withdraw unilaterally. The results, as we all know, were much more problematic. Improved rocketry eroded the assumption that Gaza could be contained. Meanwhile, Israel has avoided a massive ground attack on Gaza on the assumption that it is not only difficult to penetrate Gaza, but that such a ground attack will have no lasting effects and might even make the situation worse. Proponents of the status-quo thesis argue that a massive attack on Gaza to destroy the military infrastructure of Hamas will lead to its “jihadization”; to a Gaza controlled by a variety of small Jihadist groups at Hamas’ expense. Unlike Hamas today, these groups will not be a stable “strategic address.” They neither will be deterred nor subject to pressure to desist from terrorist activity.
Is the status-quo thesis valid or is it now the time to engage in a full-scale offensive against Hamas and the other Islamist-jihadist groups in Gaza? The answer is the latter; it is time for a full scale offensive. Israel should take over Gaza temporarily – destroy the terrorist infrastructure as much as possible, to the point where Israel will then be able to minimize future damage to its cities by limited military actions against the Hamas infrastructure. In short, Israel should adopt the highly successful anti-terrorist strategy it employed Judea and Samaria over the past decade. This will not completely end terrorism from Gaza, nor will it fully alleviate the plight of Israeli communities adjacent to Gaza, but it will considerably reduce the threat to Israel’s major population centers.
Maintaining the status quo, by contrast, is increasingly dangerous. After two rounds of punishing limited offensives, one can surmise that the strategic address argument hardly works. More worrisomely, Hamas is aiming at linking Israeli moves against the Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria to the escalation in rocket strikes against Israel. Were Israel to implicitly accept this linkage – and it might be doing so already by curtailing its moves in the West Bank against Hamas to cajole the organization into agreeing to a lull – this would not only directly threaten the security of Israelis but also the longevity of Abbas’ PA. Were Israel to accept this linkage, Hamas could kidnap, kill and build-up its infrastructure in the West Bank under the threat that Israeli moves against Hamas will provoke massive rocket attacks. Hamas would essentially be calling the cards in the West Bank, undoing the achievements of the 2002 offensive. Hamas infrastructure would pose a direct threat to the PA; a complete change in the balance of power between Israel and Hamas. Yet, this is what the return to the “status-quo” threatens to bring. In politics, there is rarely a prolonged status-quo, certainly not in a conflict as bitter as between Israel and Hamas.
The future ramifications of agreeing to the linkage might even be more severe. With the rising power of the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’ organization and the threat it poses to Jordan’s security, it is absolutely vital to maintain an Israeli free hand against all terrorism in West Bank. Other arguments made in favor of the status-quo can also be questioned. A Hamas weakened by direct Israeli assault and threatened by other Jihadist groups, might be willing to be a more pliant strategic address just as was the PA after the 2002 ground offensive. A weakened Hamas will also facilitate Israeli intelligence penetration in Gaza. At present, Hamas counter-intelligence has partially succeeded uncovering informants. The smaller Jihadist groups do not possess these capabilities nor will they be likely to possess them in the more fluid situation that will prevail in Gaza after the assault…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Elliott Abrams
Council on Foreign Relations, July 9, 2014
The current battles between Israel and Hamas were provoked by Hamas. Why? When increased levels of rocket fire began about a week ago, Israeli prime minister Netanyahu responded with restraint. He sent clear messages to Hamas in public statements, and via Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt, that he wanted no war, and no incursion into Gaza; if the rocket attacks ended, this confrontation would be over. But Hamas chose to increase the pace of firing, guaranteeing an Israeli response. The question is why, and there are several answers.
First, consider Hamas’s situation a week ago. The economic situation in Gaza is dire, due both the reduced Iranian support and to the closure of the border with Egypt by the Egyptian Army. Gazans are unhappy with Hamas, due to the repression and corruption they see in its rule in Gaza, and to the economic situation. When Mohammed Morsi was elected president of Egypt two years ago, Hamas thought its situation would change: it is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and now Egypt had a Brotherhood president. But even in his year in office, Morsi could not deliver for Hamas; the Army blocked him. And then he was overthrown by a military coup, replaced now by a president who commanded that Army and is deeply hostile to Hamas and the Brotherhood. The sense of growing power and perhaps inevitable victory for the Brotherhood is gone now.
So Hamas needed a way out of its increasingly difficult situation. John Kerry’s peace negotiations might have delivered some shake-up in the overall Israeli-Palestinian situation, but they failed. Hamas then tried a political maneuver: a deal with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority to form a non-party government in Ramallah that held the promise of bringing Hamas into the PA and PLO after elections later this year. But that maneuver was getting Hamas little benefit and few Palestinians believed an election would actually happen. Meanwhile, most attention in the region was directed to ISIS, Iran, Iraq, and Syria; Hamas, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly, were no longer news.
Finally, the arrangement Hamas had reached with Israel—no rocket attacks out of Gaza, no Israeli attacks into Gaza—was becoming increasingly tough for Hamas to maintain. Teen-age boys and young men do not join Hamas in order to police Gaza’s borders and prevent Islamic Jihad from attacking Israel; they join in order to attack Israel. Hamas was risking the charge from other terrorists that it was an auxiliary police force for Israel, and risking that young men would drift away to those other terrorist groups. So, the Hamas leadership decided it had to shake things up.
This new battle with Israel has several benefits for Hamas. To say that Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt are passing messages from the Israelis about mutual restraint, and are urging Hamas to back off, is to say that these governments are now in daily contact with Hamas leaders. Statements from Hamas are now, once again, front page news; Hamas is no longer irrelevant. Hamas is now in its eyes and those, it hopes, of many Arabs, back in the front line of the struggle against Israel. It will also, it must believe, be seen as the heroic victim of Israeli attacks, worthy of solidarity and support—both political and financial. And this episode in its long struggle with Israel allows Hamas to show its capabilities: longer range missiles that attack Tel Aviv and further north, sea-based attacks by swimmers who enter Israel from the beaches, tunnels that would enable the kidnapping of more hostages to exchange or permit heavily armed men to reach Israeli communities and exact a high price in lives, and a high volume of rockets to overwhelm Israel’s high-tech defenses like Iron Dome. Finally, Hamas must believe that Israel desires to damage it and restore deterrence, but not to destroy Hamas and its rule in Gaza. Believing that chaos and anarchy or rule by Islamic Jihad would be even worse for Israel than rule by Hamas, the organization may believe that it will emerge from this round of warfare bloodied but still in place.
It is a very big gamble for Hamas, and the size of the gamble is the measure of Hamas’s desperation. For so far, Hamas has not done much damage to Israel. The swimmers were killed the minute they came out of the water. The tunnels have been discovered and bombed. The missiles are causing Israelis to flee to bomb shelters, but thank God (and Iron Dome) they have so far not caused much property damage and no loss of life. Meanwhile Israel targets Hamas’s missiles and especially its missile launchers, headquarters, arsenals and warehouses, and leaders. There is not much Hamas can call a victory except proving the range of its rockets. All this can change in an instant: a rocket can land in a hospital or school, in Gaza or in Israel—and much more likely in Israel, because the Hamas rockets are unguided. Significant loss of life in Israel would be viewed as a “victory” by Hamas, and enough of these “victories” could lead it to seek an end to this round and a return to calm. But Hamas wants more than calm: it has demands. It wants the men who were freed in exchange for Gilad Shalit, and recently re-arrested, to be freed again by Israel, and even has demands of Egypt—to open the border with Sinai far wider.
Hamas may have reached the conclusion that it must soon abandon those demands and agree to a truce, but be unwilling to stop until it can point to some “achievement” like hitting a major tower in downtown Tel Aviv or killing a large group of Israelis. But if there are no such “victories” and the Israeli assaults continue, that will change. This appears to be Israel’s assessment: keep increasing the pressure until Hamas, which started this war because it saw too many threats to its survival and dominance in Gaza, comes to see continued war as the key threat. Those who want the violence to end must realize that the larger is the Israeli effort now, the sooner Hamas will conclude this round must be ended.
AMERICA IS THE ARSONIST OF THE MIDDLE EAST
Lee Smith
Tablet, July 8, 2014
Events are moving so quickly in the Middle East that it seems like whatever you are reading is already outdated. Yesterday, after Hamas fired dozens of rockets into Israel over the weekend, Israeli Air Force planes targeted the Gaza-based group and killed at least seven members. Hamas’ actions follow the murder of a 16-year-old Arab Israeli, who was killed by soccer thugs in an alleged act of retribution for the abduction and murder of three Jewish Israeli teenagers, whose bodies were found last Monday. Netanyahu has repeatedly warned Hamas to cease its attacks. Hamas responded on Monday that it will continue its attacks until the blockade on Gaza is lifted. Both sides are likely to escalate.
So, how did we get here? Who is to blame? From one perspective, what we’re watching is the latest round in a nearly century-long cycle of Arab-Israeli violence, so it’s hardly surprising to see violence erupt once again. However, it’s also worth noting that it is precisely because peace is so rare in the Holy Land that the status quo needs to be given its space and left alone. Or you need to have a very good reason for disturbing it.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry thought he had one. “People in Israel aren’t waking up every day and wondering if tomorrow there’ll be peace, because there is a sense of security and a sense of accomplishment and a sense of prosperity,” Kerry said last May in Jerusalem. “But I think if you look over the horizon,” he continued, “one can see the challenges.” In other words, what lay over the immediate horizon was more violence and bloodshed, unless Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas got together under American leadership and changed their act. Kerry’s peace process started nearly a year ago now, July 29, with a nine-month deadline for an agreement. Over that period, Kerry met with Abbas at least 34 times and talked a lot more frequently with Netanyahu. His first aim was to convince the two sides that in spite of all the apparent difficulties, the negotiations were not a formal exercise but rather a serious attempt at peacemaking. “Every journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step,” President Barack Obama solemnly told negotiators for the two parties about the talks. “What’s important is seriousness.” To get Abbas to the table, the American team asked Netanyahu for a confidence-building measure—either freeze settlement construction or release Palestinian prisoners. He chose the latter.
What Netanyahu wanted in return was for Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The request was a non-starter: Netanyahu understands it’s virtually impossible for Abbas, or perhaps any Palestinian leader in the foreseeable future, to relinquish claims to all of Palestine. If Netanyahu was hoping to illustrate for the Obama Administration the core problems in Middle East peacemaking, Kerry and his team already understood that there would be no resolution of final claims. Their goal was a framework agreement that would lay out, as a Haaretz article explains, “a future point of departure”—and, not inconsequentially, send a message to the rest of the region that America was still a key player even after withdrawing all its troops from Iraq and declining to get involved in Syria’s bloody civil war. The negotiations produced their share of public squabbles over specific issues, like how long Israeli troops might stay in the Jordan Valley, which gave reporters something to write about.
Yet the most basic problem that Kerry faced was that neither side had any real faith in America’s own commitment to the negotiations. The Israelis distrusted Kerry’s envoy Martin Indyk, and Abbas felt like the Americans were trying to trick him, to pull a “Dennis Ross”—referring, explains Haaretz, “to the veteran American diplomat who was known for his practice of first striking a deal with the Israelis and then presenting it to the Palestinians as an American proposal.” As one senior U.S. official said about the administration’s handling of Abbas, “We weren’t sensitive enough toward him, and we didn’t understand how he felt. In retrospect, we should have behaved differently.” But it was the big picture that really rattled both Jerusalem and Ramallah. If the Americans had once resembled a big, shiny department store where U.S. regional partners could do all their shopping—weapons, money, political support, diplomatic cover, etc.—the current White House clearly seemed intent on rolling down the shutters. For instance, despite the massive American investment, in lives and money, in Iraq, Obama withdrew in 2011 and promised the same with Afghanistan.
All of the administration’s Middle East policies pointed to the same thing: America wants out of the Middle East. From the perspective of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the administration has unaccountably weakened its own negotiating position with Iran over the clerical regime’s nuclear weapons program. Why would you play nice with an adversary and relieve sanctions when the point is to crush your enemy and then show mercy? If the Iranians get the bomb, it’s a problem not only for Israel, but also Abbas, whose Iranian-backed rivals will be strengthened. For three years, the administration had no policy to address the Syrian conflict, which Obama called someone else’s civil war—i.e., not America’s problem. If the administration’s press surrogates, Washington insiders, and the Europeans think the American commander-in-chief pulled off a diplomatic masterstroke when he signed on to the Russian initiative to get Bashar al-Assad to relinquish his chemical weapons arsenal, this is simply not how it looks in the Middle East. From that perspective, Obama is a bluffer. And a guy who won’t back up his own words with actions is not likely to back up his allies with actions when the going gets tough—and even the most cockeyed optimist in the region knows that actually solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be tough…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
Naftali Bennett Speaks At Israeli "Peace Conference" (Video): Youtube, July 9, 2014—With translation from Hebrew.
New York Times Criticizes Israel for Trying to Save Lives in Gaza [CIJR noted this reprehensible NYT article in Wednesday’s “Media-ocrity of the Week”—Ed.]: Elder of Ziyon, July 9, 2014 —This is really sickening reporting by the New York Times…
Politicians on Right Call For Escalation in Gaza: Lahav Harkov, Jerusalem Post, July 9, 2014—Transportation Minister Israel Katz posted a photo of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Facebook on Wednesday with crosshairs around his head.
What Reporters Need to Know During Operation Protective Edge: Elder of Ziyon, July 9, 2014— As an observer of previous Israeli operations in Gaza, and as the person who has uncovered and publicized some huge journalistic errors during those times, I strongly caution reporters [but if they ignore this, then their readers should take note/editor] not to make the same mistakes that they have made in the past in their coverage.
Five Points on ‘The Situation’: Meir Halevi Siegel, Jewish Press, July 8, 2014 —As Alex Fishman, military correspondent for Yedioth Aharonoth, wrote Sunday, knocking Hamas out of Gaza could cause a vacuum there, one that could be filled with Islamic radicals that would make Israel long for the good old days of Hamas.
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