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Monday, September 8, 2014

ARE PRESIDENT OBAMA AND HIS INTERNATIONAL ALLIES PROPERLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE PROLIFERATION OF WESTERN WEAPONRY AND TRAINING THROUGHOUT THE MUSLIM WORLD?

IF THE WEST IS WORKING WITH ALAWI SYRIA, SHIA IRAQ, AND SHIA IRAN ON THE ONE HAND AND WITH SUNNI TURKEY, SUNNI SAUDIA ARABIA, AND SUNNI EGYPT ON THE OTHER HAND; THEN IN IN BOTH CASES -- SHIA AND SUNNI -- THE WEST IS SPREADING WESTERN WEAPONRY AND TRAINING INTO THE TURKISH, ARAB, EGYPTIAN, AND PERSIAN WORLDS; AND THESE WEAPONS MAY COME BACK TO HAUNT US, AND TO ONE DEGREE OR ANOTHER, ALREADY HAVE DONE SO.

No doubt there are those, who will say, "It's all in the game... on the one hand, these nations we are working with are all our enemies; and on the other hand, they are all our clients... and if we don't do the providing, then the Russians and the Chinese will (which they will do anyway, so, it comes down to who gets how many pieces of the respective pies)."

With all that oil and all those weapons contracts at stake, is it any wonder, that so many civilians are being butchered by so many parties in so many distinct and creative ways?

There are those, whose perspective on the diverse world of Islam is, "Kill 'em all and let G-d sort it out... even better, let 'em kill each other."  Is this the democratic model we expect the non-democratic world to welcome with warm hearts and with open minds?

Sooner or later, one way or another, what goes around comes around; so, we of Western persuasion would be naive to think that ordinance stops "over there";   we had darn well better do our best to bring immediate threats to an end quickly and with minimal further harm to civilians; and we had darn well better do our best to give the world of Islam reason to sing our praises, beyond the obvious praises of respect for Western military capabilities, to the rebuilding of lives, polities, and economies, which have been ripped apart.

Monday, August 11, 2014

PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS TO SHOW STRENGTH AND NOT WEAKNESS.

In an interview with the New York Times’ Thomas L. Friedman, the president said that Netanyahu was “too strong” and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas [Abu Mazen] was “too weak.”

According to Obama, in order for Netanyhau to come to the negotiating table and make concessions, the prime minister needs to feel more pressure from his cabinet and Israelis.

The president pointed to the fact that Netanyahu’s “poll numbers are a lot higher than mine,” which “were greatly boosted by the war in Gaza.”



WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO PRESIDENT OBAMA, HE HAS IMPLIED AN HIGHLY CYNICAL VIEW, THAT NETANYAHU WENT INTO GAZA PURELY FOR POLITICAL REASONS OF POPULARITY.  THE EQUALLY IMPLIED INVERSE TO THAT VIEW IS THAT OBAMA WANTS US TO INFER THAT HE COULD EASILY BOOST HIS OWN RATINGS BY GOING TO WAR, EVEN WRONGLY SO... AS IF THERE WERE ANY EQUIVALENCE OF A THREAT SCALE THAT PARALLELS AMERICA'S EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO ISRAEL'S IMMEDIATE EXISTENTIAL THREAT.

PERHAPS THE REAL LESSON TO BE LEARNED FROM ISRAELI P.M. NETANYAHU IS THAT IN THE CONTEXTS OF SYRIA, IRAQ, IRAN PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN, AND OF OTHER JIHADIST HOT SPOTS, SUCH AS THOSE IN AFRICA, PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS TO SHOW STRENGTH AND NOT WEAKNESS... THIS BECAUSE OF THE NEED TO SHOW STRENGTH AND NOT FOR THE SAKE OF POLITICAL POPULARITY (WHICH IN THE U.S.A. IS AN OPEN QUESTION, AS THE NATION IS DIVIDED AMONG ITSELF AND IS GEOGRAPHICALLY DISTANT FROM EVEN IT'S REAL THREATS).

ISRAEL IS THE PROVERBIAL "CANARY IN THE COAL MINE" IN THE WORLD WAR AGAINST JIHADISM.  HAVE WE IN THE U.S.A. FORGOTTEN NINE-ELEVEN ALREADY?  WE ARE BUT A MONTH AWAY FROM THE "BAR MITZVAH" YEAR SINCE NINE-ELEVEN.  WE DARE NOT CHOOSE TO BE BLIND TO THE REAL THREAT OF I.S.I.S. (OR I.S.I.L.), AS I.S.I.S. BEHEADS SYRIA AND IRAQ, ENSLAVES THEIR WOMEN AND CHILDREN, AND CRUELLY (AND CRUDELY) CUTS OUT THE CLITORISES OF THEIR HUMILIATED, SUBJUGATED FEMALE CAPTIVES.

IF EVER WAS A TIME TO ENGAGE THE DRAFT, NOW IS THAT TIME.  AND IF THAT DRAFT INITIALLY SERVES PRIMARILY DOMESTIC PURPOSES, THEN THAT IN ITSELF WOULD YET BE A GOOD START.  WE FAIL TO BE BRAVE IN THIS RESPECT AT OUR OWN AMERICAN PERIL.

IT IS NOT A BRAVE CHOICE TO CONTINUE A POLICY OF WEAKNESS, NOR A BRAVE CHOICE FOR THIS NATION TO STUFF ITSELF SILLY ON MCNUGGETS, EVEN AS THE WORLD AT LARGE GOES TO PIECES.  NOR DARE WE FORGET THE PRESSING ISSUES OF THE UKRAINE, OF THE ASIAN SEAS, AND OF EVER MINDFUL TIBET.

PERHAPS IT IS A PRESIDENTIAL CALCULATION, THAT THE SHOCK OF I.S.I.S. MUST NEEDS BE THE CATALYST TO IGNITE IRAQ INTO THE TYPE OF UNITY IT MUST MANIFEST IN ORDER FOR GOOD TO COME TO IRAQ FOR THE LONG RUN.  PERHAPS SUCH A SUCCESS IN IRAQ MAY THEN SERVE VALUE AS MODEL FOR SYRIA AND FOR AFGHANISTAN.  IF THIS IS THE PRESIDENTIAL CALCULATION, THEN WE CAN ONLY PRAY THAT IT IS THE CORRECT CALCULATION AND THAT THE EFFECTS OF THAT CALCULATED POLICY WILL NOT BE FALL TERRIBLY SHORT OF GOAL.


Wednesday, August 6, 2014

HAMAS SHOULD BE CONDEMNED AS A GENOCIDAL ORGANIZATION.


HAMAS IS NOT MERELY A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.

It is long overdue, that the world should condemn Hamas for what it is -- a genocidal organization. Hamas is not merely a terrorist organization. Hamas is a genocidal organization publicly devoted to the annihilation of Jews and Israel. Fundamental to the Hamas Charter, this genocidal motivation was reaffirmed by Khaled Meshaal within the past ten days on the Charlie Rose Show.

To call Hamas "militant" or "a resistance force" or even a "terrorist organization" gives a credibility to Hamas that pretends to a gray area --  even a negotiable area -- with respect to it's purpose. If a single Jew is murdered by Hamas, it is an act of genocide; to fail to call it "genocide" is a serious moral, ethical, and legal omission.  Relevant authorities and venues should be called upon to condemn and to prosecute Hamas for genocide.

The idea, that somehow recent events in Israel and Gaza represent a sporting engagement in which the capability of Israel to defend itself is regarded as being "disproportionately" superior to the capabilities of Hamas, belies the reality that, were the shoe on the other foot, Hamas would annihilate Israel altogether. The imperative of Israel is survival and self-defense; the imperative of Hamas is genocide. The only "disproportionality" that is relevant is Hamas's genocidal imperative towards Israel. 

Additionally, the world is long overdue to ask:

(1) Why is it, that twenty of twenty-two Arab States continue to maintain an official status of war with Israel subsequent to the 1948 Israeli War of Independence? (Surely the world sees through the red herring, that "Palestinian" statehood is a necessary precondition!)

(2) Who comprise the apparently inexhaustible supply of men disguised under those Hamas hoods?

(3) Is Gaza a training ground for the military and intelligence operations of the Arab and Persian worlds? 

(4) Is Hamas a means by which the entire Arab world and Iran as engage in the steady continuation of a state of war with Israel?

The world has been lulled into believing an illusion -- that if and only if Hamas is brought to heel, then the heretofore elusive Arab-Israel peace may finally be realized. The reality is that Hamas and Fatah and Hezbollah are just a few of the toes of the "Goliath" that Israel faces every day, until such time as a "David" arises in Israel to smite the "Goliath".

The way for Israel to face the "Goliath" is to first ask, that the world make use of the appropriate existing legal venues to charge Hamas with war crimes and with genocide.  Charges of war crimes and genocide should also be brought by the world against Fatah and Hezbollah and even more pressingly against ISIS and Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram.

If venues do not exist to try such non-State or would-be-State entities as these, then the world must create the venues (and the world should do so speedily, especially as regards the situations in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Nigeria). In this way the forces of genocide may be sorted out from the socially reasonable demographics in both the Arab world and in the larger Muslim world.  Failure to address such forces of genocide encourages, aids, and abets genocidal agendas.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

07 AV 5773: TISHA B'AV OCCURS IN TWO DAYS, COMPLETING MORE THAN SIX-YEARS SINCE I STARTED THIS BLOG. ISRAEL IS YET AGAIN NECESSARILY AT WAR AGAIN IN GAZA.



ORIGINAL DEDICATION OF THIS BLOG:  "The Three Weeks" commences today 17 Tammuz 5767.  May "The Three Weeks" be marked by the birth of Mashiach.  In the mundane sense of  "mashiach" this Blog is dedicated to peace in Israel and the World -- may peace begin this year -- may we see Peace and Rest in Sderot, and the safe return home of Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev, Guy Hever, Ron Arad, Yehuda Katz, Tzvi Feldman, and Zachary Baumel."

TODAY 07 AV 5773:  Miraculously, Gilad Shalit is safely home alive after his five-year captivity by Hamas (only HaShem knows, what may have befallen him during his captivity).  Ehud Goldwasser, Eldad Regev, Guy Hever, Ron Arad, Yehuda Katz, Tzvi Feldman, and Zachary Baumel are either missing or known to be dead.  As to the present conflict in Gaza, there is no peace in sight; at best there may be a ceasefire -- may there soon be a just ceasefire!

ARE THE HAMAS TUNNELS IN GAZA A TACTIC IN A LARGER STRATEGY OF TUNNELING WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE 'WEST BANK', THE LEBANON, THE GOLAN, AND WITHIN ISRAEL ITSELF? WHAT WOULD 'COLONEL HOGAN' AND HIS 'HEROES' HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS?


IS THE APPEARANCE OF RELATIVE QUIET ON ISRAEL'S NORTHERN FRONT, ON THE GOLAN, AND IN THE 'WEST BANK' MERELY A TACTIC IN THE LARGER WAR AGAINST ISRAEL BEING WAGED BY THE ARABS AND BY THE IRAN OF THE MULLAHS?

These are questions that Israel must ask and answer in a timely way, even as Israel necessarily roots out the missiles and the tunnels of Hamas in Gaza.

Israel is always on alert on all fronts -- most especially so, when engaged in war on any singular front.  Even so, at a cost to our attention on other fronts, the singular front at hand occupies our attention and our focus in a variety of ways: militarily, politically, socially, and in the media.

Would it be naive of Israel to accept the popular world view?  The popular world view is that: (a) the present status quo of Lebanon is a de facto peace with Israel since the 2006 Lebanon-Israeli War; (2) the present status quo of the 'West Bank' is a de facto peace with "Palestine" under the leadership of Abu Abbas; and (3) the present status quo of Gaza is one of inevitable stabilization, which is expected to ensue the present active conflict.

There is a legend that the Bar Kochba Revolt against the Romans was betrayed by a 'Jewish' insider, who revealed to the Romans a secret tunnel into Jerusalem.  This same betrayer is said to have assassinated Bar Kochba by tossing a poisonous snake upon him.  So, too, words may be poisonous; therefore, with no actionable knowledge and with a mindfulness of Yiryath Shemayim (Fear and Awe of Heaven), I write these words here now, barely two-days before Tisha B'Av, when we commemorate the ancient destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem... for I have only time, a fallible memory, and obvious-headline media available in the USA from which windows of perspective I may perceive and write about events.

Tunneling in and out of cities is an ancient, legendary, long-standing tradition in the Middle East.  It should be no surprise that the Arabs are tunnel devotees.  In Gaza we have already seen that the more easily obvious tunnels have proven to be only one-level of a multi-level strategy of tunneling; these more obvious tunnels serve dual-use -- first as effective tunnels and then also as distractions away from deeper, more permanent tunnels; Israel has discovered these more permanent tunnels only by accident during this present military engagement.  Are there tunnels within and without the very real prisons in Israel, also waiting to be discovered?

Speaking of discoveries and legends... there is a legendary American television show called "Hogan's Heroes", which showed 168 episodes from 1965 to 1971.  "Hogan's Heroes" has a deserved infinite afterlife in re-runs. The setting of the show is a Nazi-run POW Camp imprisoning American soldiers.   Colonel Hogan and his Heroes, who are American Airmen, prove to be undercover Allied Operatives, who have been assigned by the Allies to be captured by the Nazis in order that they may use their POW Camp as a base of operations against the Nazis.  The key feature of "Hogan's Heroes" is their tunneling within and without the Camp.  Hogan and his Heroes never fail to make fools of such buffoons as Colonel Klink (the Camp Commander), Sergeant Schultz ("I know nothing, nothing...") and the entire Third Reich.

Israel is not Nazi Germany and the Arabs are not American POW's in a Nazi-run POW camp.  So, when the propaganda of Arab and pro-Arab incessantly pounds the ears of the world with the Big Lie that "Jews and Israelis are Nazis", it should be kept in mind that there may be an element of deliberate, sardonic humor in this propaganda, which Israel should not take lightly.  There is great danger in this definitional perversion of the meaning, origin, and identity of Nazis and of Nazism, and of the definitional equation of Jews and Israel with Nazis and Nazism.  As each generation of the Shoah (Holocaust) fades into history, the reality of the Nazis fades away, too; and with each airing of Hogan's Heroes (a wonderful situation comedy from which so much may be learned and from which oppressed peoples may take great humor and great courage) the less critical younger generations may get the mistaken notion that Hitler's Nazis were and are merely a fraternity of fools and buffoons, not to be taken seriously -- and hence, Jews and Israel are merely a fraternity of fools and buffoons, also not to be taken seriously.  Never mind, that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah are all the real, true spawn of the Nazis, of those who joined with the Nazis, and of the philosophies of Nazism and Jihadism!

Simultaneously, the media is being used to label Israel as the devil infant of the USA.  How ironic is that!  And what pernicious tactic is that, too, for if or when that tactic is successful, it will be be successful, when America gets clay feet and chooses to attempt to free itself from the label "Great Satan" by betraying Israel.

The USA, which bailed out Europe, Britain, and much of the world from the impositions of evil by the Axis Powers, is now regarded by much of the world to be a Nazi nation itself -- this, even as Europe, which fell on it's back and on it's stomach before the Nazis, now morphs into Eurabia!  Mockery of Israel and of the USA, which has achieved unprecedented levels since WW2, must not be tolerated.  So, too, the deleterious forces within both America and Israel must not be tolerated, as their criminal and fifth-column realization would undermine the spiritual, material, and democratic best qualities of American and Israeli society.

The world view is that a "Two-State Solution" is but three-steps of a waltz-away from becoming reality; that as soon as Gaza is brought to heel, a "State of Palestine" under Abu Abbas may be realized... contingent upon requirements that Israel must accept 1967 borders, that Israel must accept treaty demands requiring Israel to step back from it's security imperatives in the Jordan Valley, that Israel must allow Gaza to completely open wide it's air, land, and sea access; and Israel must accept the division of Jerusalem in order that a "Capital of Palestine" may be established there.

Having focused the eyes of the world on the 'plight' of the 'Palestinians' and on the artificial fabrication of a separation of the 'Palestinian Issue' from that of the larger Arab-Israel Conflict, an illusion has been created, that the 'Palestinians' live in subjugated status by Israel, that 'Palestine' is a prison camp maintained by Israel with support of the USA, that a great 'injustice' has been 'perpetrated' upon the 'People of Palestine' by Israel and by the USA, and that this great 'injustice' must be 'righted'.

The eyes of the world have been diverted from the fact of sustained war against Israel by all of Arabia, the overt symbol of which is the very real and official status of war maintained against Israel since 1948 by twenty of twenty-two Arab nations.  The only two States at 'peace' with Israel are Egypt and Jordan; these two States are well paid for this 'peace' by the USA; and this 'peace' has required Israel to surrender Sinai and the Lebanon and much of Golan for the privilege.  Israel is being set up by the world for total containment at best and for total destruction at worst.

The present apparent unity of the Arab world against Hamas must be taken with a grain of salt.  The appearance of imminent 'peace' and the negotiations towards 'peace' must be regarded as the carrot leading the donkey; and, don't forget that there is always a stick whacking the donkey's tuchus (buttox), when the donkey eases off or grows tired of straining for the carrot.  It is said that Mashiach will enter Jerusalem riding on a donkey; it is a matter of life and death, that Israel not be the donkey.

The impunity in Gaza must needs be totally crushed -- the tunnels, the weapons and the missile resources, if not Hamas altogether.  But, that is not enough!

The plausible should be investigated!  It should be assumed as a matter of logic that activity including tunneling, hiding of missiles, and hiding of weapons is secretly, quietly, and discreetly taking place in the 'West Bank', in the Golan, in the Lebanon, in the prison camps, in the mosques, and in Jerusalem itself including Al-Quds.  The present and immediate threat from Gaza must not be regarded as the end game, lest Israel leave itself wide open from within and from without on all fronts.  It just wouldn't be good Shesh-Besh (backgammon), for the Arabs to leave the game at Gaza....

Monday, July 21, 2014

THERE ARE FOUR PRESENT QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE RAISED WITH RESPECT TO MEDIA COVERAGE OF ISRAEL, HAMAS, AND GAZA --


ESPECIALLY AS BOTH HAMAS AND FATAH ARE IGNORING NO OPPORTUNITY TO CRY THAT ISRAEL IS "MASSACRING" GAZA AND THAT ISRAEL IS PERPETRATING A "CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY": 

 (1) Is anyone asking, "What percentage of the death toll of Gazans is caused directly or indirectly by Hamas enforcement (including acts of murder) to maintain a civilian population (a) as cover for their ordinance and (b) as inevitable sympathetic martyrs? 

(2) Is anyone asking, "What percentage of the Gaza population remains there voluntarily, because they support Hamas (and who therefore are actually combatants), even though they may appear to be non-combatants?" 

(3) Is anyone asking, "Why is it, that Hamas has not established a population relocation program in order to evacuate non-combatants from the combat zone?" 

(4) Is Israel asking, "Why is it, that all of a sudden the Israeli Military is being spoken of in the media (at least in the BBC and in NPR) as a "conscript" military?"