Charles Krauthammer:
There is only one foreign policy of Hamas and it's brother Muslim fanatics: kill Jews.
Why was there an Israel–Gaza war in the first place? Resistance to the occupation, say Hamas and many in the international media.
What occupation? Seven years ago, in front of the world, Israel pulled out of Gaza. It dismantled every settlement, withdrew every soldier, evacuated every Jew, leaving nothing and no one behind. Except for the greenhouses in which the settlers had grown fruit and flowers for export. These were left intact to help Gaza’s economy — only to be trashed when the Palestinians took over.
Israel then declared its border with Gaza to be an international frontier, meaning that it renounced any claim to the territory and considered it an independent entity. In effect, Israel had created the first Palestinian state ever, something never granted by fellow Muslims — neither the Ottoman Turks nor the Egyptians who brutally occupied Gaza for two decades before being driven out by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Israel wanted nothing more than to live in peace with this independent Palestinian entity. After all, the world had incessantly demanded that Israel give up land for peace.
It gave the land. It got no peace.
The Gaza Palestinians did not reciprocate. They voted in Hamas, who then took over in a military putsch and turned their newly freed Palestine into an armed camp from which to war against Israel. It has been war ever since.
Interrupted by the occasional truce, to be sure. But for Hamas a truce —hudna — is simply a tactic for building strength for the next round. It is never meant to be enduring, never meant to offer peace.
But why, given that there is no occupation of Gaza anymore? Because Hamas considers all of Israel occupied, illegitimate, a cancer, a crime against humanity, to quote the leaders of Iran, Hamas’s chief patron and arms supplier. Hamas’s objective, openly declared, is to “liberate” — i.e., destroy — Tel Aviv and the rest of pre-1967 Israel. Indeed, it is Hamas’s raison d’être.
Hamas first killed Jews with campaigns of suicide bombings. After Israel built a nearly impenetrable fence, it went to rockets fired indiscriminately at civilians in populated areas.
There is only one foreign policy of Hamas and it's brother Muslim fanatics: kill Jews.
Let's count ourselves lucky the liberals aren't firing rockets at us yet.
ReplyDeleteJoey
If you follow the money, you would see it's the red states sucking off the blue states teat.
ReplyDelete-KW
Absolutely. That's because the blue states are much, much wealthier. Rich folks are the flamingest liberals I've ever met. The Northeast and West Coast are filled with Democrats who make a lot more money than I do.
ReplyDeleteMoney from all over the country gets sucked into Washington and then distributed back down to states, municipalities, and individuals. It's a much better deal for poorer states than it is for richer ones. Poorer states get out more than they put in and richer ones put in more than they get out.
We could put an end to all of this redistribution of wealth across state lines, but the liberals won't have it.
Get with the program, KW. Vote conservative. Smaller government and less federal involvement are the way to go.
Joey
That being said, I don't understand the relevance of your comment vis-a-vis my comment, Torch's comment, or the original post. What does that have to do with anything?
ReplyDeleteJoey
@KW: When I said "give and give" and "take and take" I didn't mean money. I meant the give and take of compromise. Compromising with a liberal almost always means caving on core principles in return for small concessions. And in a few years the liberals will want to renegotiate the deal so they get the rest of what they want. They are incremenetalists and they nearly always win.
ReplyDeleteThe Torch
The Torch,
ReplyDeleteA Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop! More often than not history runs over you. Don't play in traffic and you won't get hurt.
Hoo
[Don't play in traffic and you won't get hurt.]
ReplyDeleteSpoken like a true thug.
That election loss must still hurt. Please accept my heartfelt sympathies, Dr. Egnor.
ReplyDeleteHoo
You must be a union man, Dr Hoo. One of those fat boys who gang up on hot dog vendors.
ReplyDeleteSo scary!
You have a vivid imagination, Dr. Boggs. I can't imagine how scary it must be to be a conservative!
ReplyDeleteHoo
I have no doubt your imagination is limited, Dr Hoo. It's obvious from the variance in your comments.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in part, Dr. Boggs. I am not in the habit of imagining things that are not there. In my view that is counterproductive. You obviously disagree, but we need a diversity of viewpoints here. It would be boring if everyone acted rationally.
ReplyDeleteHoo
"It would be boring if everyone acted rationally."
ReplyDeleteIs that the motto you learned in diversity camp?
Good boy!
Your imagination knows no bounds, Dr. Boggs. I have never been to a diversity camp and have no idea what you are talking about.
ReplyDeleteI can only guess that it might be some bizarre ritual in the third tier of the US system of higher education, but I am not familiar with it. Tell us more about this thing.
Hoo
Diversity? Why, it's one of the most sacred tenets of Progressivism. It's so important that - and I love this - Progressives favor Diversity Training, an oxymoron if ever was one. Read Executive Order 13583, signed by Barack Obama. Because diversity is too important to have a difference of opinion about!
ReplyDeleteAnd what do community colleges have to do with any of this?
Egnor proves that it's possible to be brilliant in one domain and clueless as shit in another. Time to make some corrections:
ReplyDelete1) Israel never offered the Palestinians a viable, contiguous, fully sovereign state. It offered a shitty Bantustan entity. None of the "offers" proposed the internationally recognized 1967 borders. They proposed Israel keeping the major settlement blocs (actually ~10% of the West Bank), which incorporate the critical water resources, some of the best land in the West Bank, and which cut off contiguity between many of the major Palestinian population centers, as well as with East Jerusalem. Also, that Palestinian "state" would not be allowed to have an army/military of its own, Israel would maintain disproportionate control over the airspace and would reserve the right to conduct military drills and enter the territory at any time of its choosing for matters of "self-defense and terrorism", and would ultimately control the borders. Israel would also maintain a military presence in the Jordan Valley (~25-30% of the West Bank) for periods ranging from 6-21 years based on the different proposals. That is not a "generous offer" of statehood. That is a shitty Bantustan proposal.
2) The Palestinians already made significant concessions to Israel, and also had proposals of their own which Israel didn't accept, while Israel continued with its settlement expansion throughout the "peace process", in violation of all international law and the Geneva Conventions. The PLO recognized the state of Israel in 1988 and again in 1993, recognizing its right to exist on 78% of the land, accepting a truncated state the WB, Gaza and East Jerusalem (A MERE 22% of the land). Israel and the US consistently reject the int'l consensus on how to resolve this conflict, rejecting Palestine's UN bid in 2011, and voting against the entire international community on supporting a settlement "on the June 1967 borders with a just resolution of the refugee question". The Palestinians even went further: at Taba, they made proposals of their own as well which Israel didn't accept either; it was Israel who ended the Taba negotiations when they were close to a settlement, and Sharon refused to resume them even though Arafat accepted the terms put forth. At Camp David a year before, the offer to the Palestinians was another shitty Bantustan proposal which Israel's own Foreign Minister Ben Ami said "he would have rejected if he were Palestinian". In 2008, the Palestinians went even further: they offered Israel "the biggest Jerusalem in Jewish history", allowing Israel to annex all but one of the illegal settlement in East Jerusalem (recognized as occupied Palestinian territory), proposed Israel keeping 2% of the West Bank in a 1:1 land swap which would have allowed Israel to keep more than 60% of the illegal settlers in place. They also accepted a markedly truncated, symbolic number of refugees returning (100,000 over 10 years), acknowledging that they will not seek to change the demographic nature of Israel. They also accepted a demilitarized state. The Olmert "offer" was a vague, informal conversation when Olmert was already politically finished and leaving office. It still did not address a number of key issues, and Olmert refused to give a copy of the map, and Abbas had to sketch a silly map on a napkin from memory. It was a complete farce. Even Barak and Livni told the Palestinians and Condoleeza Rice that Olmert was finished and not to take anything he said seriously. ALL OF THE CONCESSIONS (WHEN LOOKING AT WHAT EACH SIDE IS LEGALLY ENTITLED TO UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW) WERE MADE (OR EXPECTED TO BE MADE) BY THE PALESTINIANS. (more to continue)
(continued from previous comment)
ReplyDelete3) Regarding Hamas, as bad as they are, Hamas has said repeatedly that they'll accept a settlement on the June 1967 borders, and even explicitly say this in their amended charter in which they also denounce all forms of racism and say hat they are not against Jews or Judaism, they are against the occupation. That's far more forthcoming that the Likud charter, which says "everything west of the Jordan is ours" and "there will never be a Palestinian state". And Israel is actually acting on this. The current PM Bennett explicitly rejects Palestinian statehood as well.
4) Israel is STILL the occupying power in Gaza: it controls the land, sea, and airspace, it controls who and what can go in and out, it has the population registry. All they did was transfer a few thousand illegal settlers from Gaza to the WB because there was little use in investing so much of its security and resources into a tiny sliver of land with a mostly Arab Muslim population, while hermetically sealing this open-air prison (the blockade is also illegal under international law).
5) Regarding "human shields", there is no certifiable proof that Hamas is using people as shields. Keeping weapons underneath a building or underground is not "human shielding". The IDF HQ is in the middle of Tel Aviv, next to a shopping mall. If Hamas were to hit it and kill people shopping in the mall, would anyone accept the argument that Israel was using human shields by placing its military site adjacent to civilian infrastructure? Conversely, there is documented proof of Israeli soldiers using Palestinians (including children) as human shields.
6) Look at what happens on the ground: do you think Israel really intended to leave the WB? There are 700,000+ illegal settlers, nearly 4-5x increase since Oslo. Israel never intended to leave; it used the "peace process" as cover while it continued with its expansionism, demolition of Palestinian homes, building and population of settlements (a war crime) throughout.
IF YOU KEEP TAKING OTHER PEOPLE'S LAND, YOU WILL NOT HAVE PEACE. THE ANIMOSITY OF THE PALESTINIANS TOWARDS ISRAELIS HAS A ROOT CAUSE; IT'S NOT INTRINSIC ANTI-SEMITISM, IT'S NOT ARAB NAZISM (DESPITE YOUR EFFORTS IN OTHER POSTS TO OVER-EMBELISH THE MUFTI OF JERUSALEM'S ROLE IN NAZI GERMANY WHILE IGNORING THE ATTEMPTS BY ZIONIST JEWISH GROUPS TO SEEK ALLIANCES AND AGREEMENTS WITH NAZIS IN WW2 AS WELL). IT'S ABOUT THE MASS DISPOSSESSION OF A PEOPLE LIVING ON THEIR LAND FOR GENERATIONS, WITH THE LAUGHABLE CLAIM OF WHAT HAPPENED THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO AS AN EXCUSE, IGNORING PALESTINIAN INDIGENEITY TO THE LAND AS WELL. I ASK EGNOR, IF A NATIVE AMERICAN KNOCKED ON THE DOOR OF YOU AND YOUR LOVING FAMILY AND SAID "MY ANCESTORS LIVED HERE MANY MANY YEARS AGO, SO GET OUT", WOULD HE LEAVE? I DOUBT THAT VERY MUCH. WOULD YOU ACCEPT THE USURPATION OF YOUR HOME? I DOUBT THAT. WOULD YOU NOT HARBOR RESENTMENT TOWARDS THE PERSON THAT DISPOSSESSED YOU AND YOUR FAMILY?
IT IS TIME TO TREAT PALESTINIANS AS HUMAN BEINGS AND EQUALS. ONCE WE DO THAT, WE CAN GET MUCH FARTHER INTO ADDRESSING ROOT CAUSES AND MOVE CLOSER TO A JUST RESOLUTION TO THE CONFLICT. HATRED BEGETS HATRED.