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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....