"We Use Live Rounds When ... Necessary to Protect Our People"

Jon Snow grills Israel's Ambassador to the Court of St James Mark Regev:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cuv7dnMf2Tg

Colonel Richard Kemp, meanwhile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZeixviJbeo

"Ridiculous", Rant the Routed

Amid wailing and whimpering and gnashing of teeth and tugging of hair in the wake of Bibi Netanyahu's spectacularly successful visit Down Under, the routed forces of Bishop Browning's APAN (which sought to keep him out) limply regroup and rally, in response to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Dr Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel Public Affairs Council (AIJAC) and Jamie Hyams, a senior policy analyst at AIJAC. 

It will indeed be difficult to represent as "ridiculous" the eminently justified and sensible points made in the article.  Inter alia:

 'Israel captured the West Bank in a defensive war in 1967 and, when its offer to exchange land for peace was unequivocally rebuffed by the Arab League, began establishing settlements in the area.

This was partly for the need for security, given the hostile intentions and actions of its neighbours, and partly to allow some Jews to live in places that had Jewish communities going back hundreds if not thousands of years, until the Jordanians ethnically cleansed them in 1948.

Jordanian troops expelling Jews from their Jerusalem homes

 Jerusalem, which has always had a substantial Jewish population and been the centre of the Jewish world, was annexed.

 The United Nations passed the pivotal Security Council resolution 242, requiring Israel to withdraw from territory in return for peace, with the borders to be negotiated.

 Under the 1993 Oslo accords, the Palestinians finally accepted Israel's existence, and the Palestinian Authority was formed. Ninety-five per cent of West Bank Palestinians now live under the authority's rule. Travel between Israel and the West Bank was relatively unfettered, and many Palestinians worked in Israel, travelling home to the West Bank each night. In 2000, then authority president Yasser Arafat infamously refused the Camp David offer of a Palestinian state and launched the second intifada, characterised by widespread terrorism inside pre-1967 Israel, most notably suicide bombings. The terrorism killed more than 1000 Israelis and maimed thousands more.

Some Israeli child victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism

 It was in those circumstances that Israel set up the checkpoints to monitor the movement of terrorists, and the security barrier, which for most of its length is a fence, and is only a wall where Palestinian terrorists were in the habit of taking pot shots at Israeli civilians.... The barrier was erected to save lives by keeping terrorists out, and has been markedly successful. The Berlin Wall was to keep a captive population in. The checkpoints between Palestinian towns are now largely non-existent – they are just at the entries to Israel.

Despite the rebuff at Camp David, and the terrorism, Israel again offered the Palestinian Authority a state on increasingly generous terms in 2001 and 2008, only for the authority to again walk away. A unilateral total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, intended to allow the Palestinians there to rule themselves as a peaceful entity alongside Israel, instead resulted in a Hamas takeover, more than 10,000 rockets and mortars, terror tunnels and three wars.

 Since Benjamin Netanyahu resumed power in 2009, he has repeatedly offered to negotiate without preconditions, repeatedly confirmed his support for a two-state peace, and instituted goodwill measures including an unprecedented 10-month freeze on building in settlements and releasing Palestinian prisoners who have killed Israelis. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, however, has refused to negotiate in good faith. US Middle East envoy Martin Indyk has said that, in 2014, Netanyahu was sweating bullets to make peace, but Abbas just walked away.

The settlements, as even Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat has admitted, occupy less than 2 per cent of the West Bank. Furthermore, the vast majority of settlers live in blocs that it is generally accepted Israel will retain as part of land swaps in any peace deal. Israel has not established a new settlement since 1999, and the settlements have hardly expanded beyond their geographic boundaries since 2003, while population growth has not even kept pace with natural growth. Settlements did not prevent the previous Israeli offers of statehood, and they would not prevent a two-state outcome if the Israelis had a genuine peace partner....

 The Netanyahu government still supports a two-state peace, but its concerns about the present circumstances are understandable. If Hamas was to take over the West Bank as it did Gaza, the rockets would hit Israel's population and economic heartland, and its airport, and the country, would be shut down.

 Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority, Israel's supposed peace partner, demonises Israel internationally, incites its people against Israel with false claims of Israeli intentions to take over the Temple Mount, and rewards terrorists by lionising them and giving them and their families generous lifetime pensions.

[P]ressure must be brought to bear on the Palestinians to cease their destructive behaviour, to genuinely accept Israel's right to exist in peace and to negotiate in good faith, if they are genuine about wanting a two-state outcome.'

Hamas's Haniyeh: Truce is Battle Preparation Time (video)

Speaking on Friday at the funeral of seven Hamas operatives who died when a tunnel collapsed, Ismail Haniyeh hints at another conflict:

The Colonel & The Council (video)

See http://rt.com/news/270541-israel-un-human-rights/

In the wake of the recently issued outrageous Israel-demonising UN Report on last year's Gaza conflict which has made Israel contemplate leaving the UN Human Rights Council  (for recent relevant short reports see here and here) here's a man who's a true hero in more senses than one.  In this footage by the intrepid Hillel Neuer's UN Watch, Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of the British forces in Afghanistan, tells the UN Human Rights Council a few home truths about Hamas.

Transcript here
More here

Bibi below:

Bibi Netanyahu Interviewed On Aussie TV (video)

Shana Tova to all Jewish readers.  May you have a sweet year ...

Here's Bibi Netanyahu, interviewed on the ABC (Australia's answer to the BBC) yesterday.

I saw a few minutes of the interview but have as  not yet had a chance to view the video. (Hat tip: that amazing resource, reader Ian).

Two Video Greats

I've just been told about these, so for anyone who hasn't seen them, they're worth a look:

A lampoon from Lebanon:

A wonderful rap song from Ari Lesser:

Media Most Foul: David Singer demolishes Richard Falk's attempt to justify Israel's status as "a special case" for obloquy

In this, his latest article ("Israel – Media Imbalance Incites Jew-hatred"), Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer brings his own perspective  to the chorus of condemnation by Israel's friends over the way in which an irresponsible western media has stoked the flames of antisemitism in recent weeks.  He proceeds to focus on Richard Falk's "very disturbing" insistence that Israel constitutes "a special case" as a target for press and public opprobrium.

Writes David Singer:

The incessant media focus on Israel – compounded by misleading and factually incorrect reporting  – has materially contributed to inciting the growth of Jew-hatred world-wide. Organisations such as HonestReporting and CAMERA expose inaccurate reports appearing daily in the most widely read and supposedly reputable international newspapers, television stations, radio networks and on-line publications.

Corrections eventually made usually come too late to remedy the initial sensationalist reporting. Matti Friedman sums up this phenomenon:

“Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors in Nigeria and Ukraine, four sentences to the crazed génocidaires of ISIS, and the rest of the article—30 sentences—to Israel and Gaza.”

This pre-occupation with Israel at the expense of covering far more serious conflicts in the region prompted one concerned person to ask Professor Richard Falk – the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on "the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” – the following questions:

“Nowhere on the face of the earth will you find a country that has been unremittingly attacked in the language used to attack Israel, or at all – not truly genocidal nations like Sudan, Rwanda, Nigeria, Serbia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan and Turkey; not the world’s worst violators of human rights like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Somalia, Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba; not seizers and occupiers of land like Russia, Armenia, Turkey (Northern Cyprus), Morocco and Azerbaizhan. Where are the BDS movements, Prof. Falk? Where are the blogs? Where are the armies of blog crawlers? Where are the videos? Where are the links? What do you think it is that draws all these “critics” to Israel and nowhere else?”

Falk’s reply – designating Israel as a “special case” – is very disturbing.

“Israel is a special case for at least three reasons: – its legitimacy was established by UN and League initiatives without any effort to take into account the views of the population physically present in the country; – the US as the world’s self-appointed global leader has singled out Israel for the most massive financial assistance over a period of many years, and has lent controversial support to Israel to shield it from censure by the UN; –Israel itself claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East and otherwise posits itself as a shining example even extending to the boast that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. These three reasons explain and justify the attention given to Israel’s alleged wrongdoing. Beyond this, the fact that worse offenders are not scrutinized to the same extent as Israel is more an argument for according more attention to such offenders. It is not excuse for Israel’s behavior. Whether we like it or not the Israel-Palestine conflict has become the litmus test of international morality ever since the collapse of apartheid South Africa.”

Falk’s reasons for assigning only Israel and none of the other nominated states “special case” status are outrageous and can be dismissed on the following grounds:

1. The “League initiatives” to which Falk refers is the Mandate for Palestine unanimously endorsed by the League of Nations in 1922. Syria, Lebanon and Iraq – products of the same Mandates system – are currently humanitarian and politically dysfunctional disaster areas. Yet Falk does not regard them as “special cases”.

2. The views of “the population physically present” were taken into account  being both politically and violently expressed from the moment Britain assumed its role as Mandatory. Arab riots in 1920, 1929 and between 1936-1939 expressed opposition to the Jewish National Home. The 1922 decision on Transjordan, the 1937 Peel Commission, the 1939 White Paper restricting Jewish emigration to Palestine, and the 1947 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine all recommended changes to the Mandate’s stated policy to the detriment of the Jewish people.

3. Israel’s legitimacy was not established by the United Nations – but by the League of Nations, seven decades of State building and defeating six invading Arab armies in 1948.

4. Since when did financial aid received from another country qualify the recipient to be classed as a “special case” because other countries received lesser aid or no aid from the same donor country?

5. America has not always vetoed resolutions against Israel in the Security Council. America has also vetoed resolutions affecting countries including Panama, Nicaragua, Namibia and South Africa – but never have they been regarded as “special cases”

6. Israel is indeed the only democracy in the Middle East and its army is certainly one of the most moral armies in the world – yet Falk has long advocated support for the PLO and Hamas whose stated objectives are to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

Falk’s discredited assertion that Israel is a “special case” setting it apart from the world community for special treatment encourages

* the media to keep focusing disproportionately on Israel

* Arab and Islamic countries justifying their continuing non-recognition of Israel

* Jew-haters and self-hating Jews world-wide maintaining their campaigns denigrating and delegitimising Israel.

“Jews are always good for news” needs an urgent media rethink and policy overhaul – if increasing Jew-hatred world-wide is to be effectively silenced.

"O, Scoundrels, Let Me Deliver A Personal Message To You..." (video)

"We are preparing for you an army you cannot match ... to die for the sake of Allah"

With bloodcurdling ferocity a Hamas cleric promises Jihad against the Zionist Entity:

Meanwhile, regarding Australia ...

Hamas/ISIS: The Blind & The Unblinkered

From the lefty Frontline Club's website: http://www.frontlineclub.com/first-wednesday-16/

We are informed by BBC Watch:

'On September 3rd the Frontline Club – with which the BBC frequently collaborates – will be hosting an event titled “Reporting the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict – Emotion, Bias and Objectivity” which we are informed is already fully booked.

The topic of discussion is promoted as follows:

“The latest chapter in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has again highlighted the difficulties of covering this complex and deep-rooted conflict that provokes such a strong emotional response from the general public.

The BBC has faced accusation that it is not critical enough of Israel’s actions and that its reporting is one-sided, whereas Channel 4 News has been accused of crossing the line between journalism and campaigning. Is there a middle ground?

In the face of such devastation should we expect correspondents to offer an objective view devoid of emotion? If we encourage correspondents to show more emotion do we risk compromising the credibility and standard of journalism in this country?

Join us as we take a view of the coverage we have seen, talk to the journalists that have produced it and ask what we can learn.”

On the panel selected to provide answers to those questions are Jeremy ‘I see no human shields’ Bowen and Channel 4’s Jon Snow.

 The discussion would doubtless be enhanced were Bowen  (along with his colleague Orla Guerin) to take the trouble to brush up beforehand on the topic of Hamas’ use of human shields and that policy’s role in causing so many of the civilian casualties which he graphically reported during his recent stint in the Gaza strip....' 

But it is not only regarding the existence of human shields in Gaza that the BBC has turned a blind eye.  Beeboids (as the BiasedBBC website has long termed the Corporation's employees) have also chosen to ignore Hamas's similarities to Isis.

The incorrigibly biased Jon Donnison (pictured) might well practise an Orla Guerin-like scowl. For Al Beeb's erstwhile correspondent in Gaza, who's now their man in Australia but who was flown back to his old stomping ground during the present crisis, where he proved just as one-sided as before, has received many a thoroughly deserved, humiliating thrashing from BBCWatch's Hadar Sela.

That highly intelligent Israeli,with her thorough grounding in Israeli history and affairs, her sound knowledge of regional geopolitics, her gift for the written world, and her astuteness, has shown up Donnison's mediocrity, ignorance, and prejudice many times.

See, for example, here and here and here and here

And, not unnaturally, Donnison doesn't like the besting one bit: witness the recent spiteful trying-to-put-a-brave-face-on-things sour grapes tweet below:

Not that being shown up prevents Donnison from persisting in his offences against the BBC Charter and producers' guidelines or motivates his employer to rein him in.  Nor did his egregious bias prevent him from winning a Radio Academy Silver Sony Award for radio journalism of the year for his coverage of the 2012 Gaza/Israel War.

His bias is so overt and so pervasive that it is hardly surprising that some Israel supporters wonder whether this former reporter for BBC Radio Sheffield, who studied French and politics at the University of Edinburgh, was once a member of or influenced in some way by a Palestine Solidarity Campaign branch. 

And like the BBC's biased Jerusalem Bureau chief Paul Danaher, Donnison, who does nothing to conceal his disdain for the Israeli prime minister, on Twitter has pooh-pooed Netanyahu's analogy between Hamas and Isis, and mocked aspects of Netanyahu's postings.  Here's a taste:

Here's a man who could teach Danahar and Donnison much, the exiled Jordanian Palestinian leader Mudar Zahran, who's been visiting Bethlehem at some risk to himself.

This brave pro-Israel figure (if you're on Facebook and/or Twitter please consider following him, for he deserves a wide audience) is a practising Muslim who pulls no punches in condemning the evil that Islamic extremists do.

Moreover, CiF Watch, who reponded to this insolent peevish tweet by Donnison

by pointing out that the true disrespect is Donnison's anti-Israel bias, has many graphic examples that validate the Hamas/ISIS analogy:

Novelist Noah Beck shows that  

'Hamas and ISIS are birds of a feather, but the Western political class and media have very different approaches to them. Here, Hamas offers some friendly advice to ISIS on how to wrap the West around their little finger'

which is a follow-up to his previous piece here

As  distinguished American political scientist Michael Curtis has written:

'The clue to the intentions of Hamas is given in the Hamas Charter of 1988, a mixture of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel. Using the Avalon Project translation of the Charter or Covenant, one can discern the stated objectives of Hamas. Only a few selections, sometimes in oblique language, are necessary to understand this.

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine. The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say, "There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him."

The Hamas Charter gives an answer to all the well-meaning groups and individuals who call for a peace conference. It declares that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. Rejecting calls for an international conference to solve the “Palestinian” question, it declares that there is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad.

Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are all a waste of time and are vain endeavors.

The mass media will perhaps be surprised to learn from the Charter that Jews have taken control of the world media, news agencies, publishing houses, and broadcasting stations. Objective historians may be surprised that Jews have stirred revolutions in various parts of the world and were behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution, and most others. All this for “sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests.”

The Charter informs us of future developments. The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. The Islamic Resistance Movement must prevent this, and to leave the “circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason.”

The question arises: can members of Hamas, who believe that the “Jews are behind each and every catastrophe on the face of the earth,” be genuinely interested in any possible reconciliation with Israel when destruction of the Jewish state is at the core of their concern?'

 Nevertheless, despite the equally bloodthirsty approach of both Hamas and Isis, their priorities, according to this article by Iranian Ali Mamouri, differ with regard to the Zionist Entity:

 ....'Salafists believe that jihad must be performed under legitimate leadership.... Given that there is neither a legitimate leader nor a Salafist-approved declaration of jihad in Palestine, fighting there is forbidden.

In addition, for Salafists, if non-Muslims control Islamic countries and apostates exist in the Islamic world, the Islamic world must be cleansed of them before all else. In short, the purification of Islamic society takes priority over combat against non-Islamic societies. On this basis, Salafists see conflict with an allegedly illegitimate Hamas government as a first step toward confrontation with Israel. Should the opportunity for military action present itself in the Palestinian territories, Salafists would fight Hamas and other factions deemed in need of “cleansing” from the land and engage Israel afterward....

Salafists today see that their priority as fighting Shiites, “munafiqin” (dissemblers, or false Muslims) and apostates, whom they call the “close enemy.” During the current war in Gaza, a number of IS fighters have burned the Palestinian flag because they consider it a symbol of the decline of the Islamic world, which succumbed to national divisions through the creation of independent political states. In Salafist doctrine, the entire Islamic world must be united under a single state, an Islamic caliphate, which IS declared in late June.

Salafist groups active in Gaza have engaged in various rivalries with Hamas there, but they have not succeeded in establishing a foothold of any significance. Some groups have posted video clips acknowledging their support for IS following the group’s recent victories in Iraq and Syria. The main dispute between Hamas and Salafist groups rests on their disparate principles. Hamas is more realistic and pragmatic than the jihadist Salafists. The former has political priorities in liberating Palestinian land, whereas the latter has religious priorities in the establishment of a totalitarian Islamic caliphate and considers the Israeli issue secondary to this central goal.'

 But to quote from another fine piece by Michael Curtis:

'....Along with the Muslim Brotherhood, [ISIS and Hamas] are Islamic extremist groups, violent in their ruthless pursuit of objectives – ISIS to create a caliphate empire, and Hamas to eliminate the State of Israel.

The brutality of ISIS, now transformed into an Islamic state with a caliph, is apparent after its conquest of about a third of Syria, including the oil-rich eastern part, and much of north and central Iraq. Its ruthlessness and brutality are well-documented. That ruthlessness includes making decapitation an art form, executing dozens of Iraqi security forces, and cutting heads of Syrians.

It has imposed sharia law, banned music, separated boys and girls in school, and forced women to wear the niqab, or full veil....

Though the Obama administration has not proposed this, the present conflict provides the opportunity for the existing semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, set up in 2005, to be transformed into a Kurdish state, long overdue since promised by Britain and France in 1920.

 If the Western democracies appeared for too long to be unaware of the scale of the danger of Islamist ISIS, many, especially those in the mainstream media and the churches, seem equally oblivious to the real nature and danger of Hamas.  

They have not accepted that the real contemporary struggle is between an extreme and regressive Islamist group, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and interested in the killing of Jews and the creation of a caliphate state, and the existence and survival of democratic Israel....

There is now little doubt that much of the hostility against Israel has been transformed into prejudicial anti-Semitism. The level of violence and the number of attacks on individual Jews and Jewish institutions, synagogues, school, stores, Holocaust memorials, and cultural events has made those institutions resemble armed fortresses. A crowd mentality of hatred has made decent individuals afraid to speak out....

Western public opinion, the media, and the academic world should recognize the existing struggle between an Islamist threat that would end the tolerance and civil liberties in the societies its forces might control, and democratic countries, with all their faults and problems, trying to resist that threat.

The choice should not be difficult, even for the New York Times.  It certainly should not be suicide. '

 Read the entire article here

 As for Aussie Muslims who support ISIS, and the attitude to such goings-on by certain leftists, read Andrew Bolt here

David Singer Ponders A Question: What Will Happen When The Present Hostilities Cease?

Here's the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer, entitled "Palestine – Israel Takes Off The Gloves".

Writes David Singer:

Israel’s disastrous unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in August 2005 faces possible reversal with the Israeli army’s re-entry into Gaza in July 2014.

Israel’s decision to take the gloves off came after 1381 rockets had been indiscriminately fired from Gaza into Israeli population centres over a period of ten days with Hamas then rejecting a ceasefire proposed by Egypt – but accepted by Israel.

An attempted Hamas raid from the sea – caught on video  during this criminal rocket bombardment – had reached Israel's Zikim Beach, culminating in five Hamas terrorists being killed and one Israeli soldier wounded.

However Israel’s military spokesman described  the final tipping point – again captured on video –

 “Earlier today, the IDF identified around 13 Palestinians who had infiltrated Israel through a tunnel dug from Gaza. The tunnel began in the southern Gaza Strip and its exit was near Kibbutz Sufa in Israel. The terrorists were heavily armed with RPGs and assault rifles and were prepared to carry out a massacre. The IDF foiled their attack, saving countless Israeli lives.”

Until a cease fire is inevitably declared – Israel is now proceeding to destroy the network of tunnels running under Gaza – capturing or immobilizing the large number of rockets and armaments stored in Gaza - and killing any terrorists attacking them from the myriad number of terrorist groups operating in Gaza.

What will happen when the hostilities cease?

Israel cannot possibly return to the situation that has prevailed since Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza – that has seen 11,000 rockets and missiles indiscriminately fired into Israeli civilian areas and triggered two Israeli incursions into Gaza in 2008 and 2012.

Amid the current turmoil enveloping Gaza, one pertinent question from the 2005 disengagement remains unanswered:

Were the 8000 Jews “expelled” or were they “evacuated” from Gaza and Northern Samaria as a result of Israel’s 2005 withdrawal?

The answer has a vital bearing on determining who gets sovereignty of those areas.

The language used by Israel's government in 2004/2005 spoke of "evacuation" and “disengagement” – whilst an outraged opposition spoke of "expulsion".

"Evacuation" and “disengagement” indicate a temporary uprooting with the intention of returning when the emergency giving rise to the evacuation has subsided.

"Expulsion" on the other hand indicates a situation of permanent and irreversible departure.
Prime Minister Sharon addressing the nation said on 15 August 2005:

“The day has arrived. We are beginning the most difficult and painful step of all – evacuating our communities from the Gaza Strip and Northern Samaria.”

But he also said in the same breath:

“Gaza cannot be held onto forever. Over one million Palestinians live there, and they double their numbers with every generation. They live in incredibly cramped refugee camps, in poverty and squalor, in hotbeds of ever-increasing hatred, with no hope whatsoever on the horizon.

It is out of strength and not weakness that we are taking this step. We tried to reach agreements with the Palestinians which would move the two peoples towards the path of peace.  These were crushed against a wall of hatred and fanaticism.

The unilateral Disengagement Plan, which I announced approximately two years ago, is the Israeli answer to this reality.  This Plan is good for Israel in any future scenario. We are reducing the day-to-day friction and its victims on both sides. The IDF will redeploy on defensive lines behind the Security Fence. Those who continue to fight us will meet the full force of the IDF and the security forces.

Now the Palestinians bear the burden of proof. They must fight terror organizations, dismantle its infrastructure and show sincere intentions of peace in order to sit with us at the negotiating table.

The world awaits the Palestinian response – a hand offered in peace or continued terrorist fire. To a hand offered in peace, we will respond with an olive branch. But if they choose fire, we will respond with fire, more severe than ever.”

Sharon never expressly articulated whether Israel still maintained its claim to sovereignty in those areas from which it was withdrawing Jewish communities.

Based on the use of the words "evacuation" and “Disengagement Plan” – it would appear that Sharon was not ceding Israel’s claims to sovereignty in international law under the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

As I wrote in August 2005:

“One can envisage an Israeli return to Gaza and northern Samaria, should the Palestinians carry out their threats to continue the armed struggle all the way to Jerusalem. Israel's response could be disastrous for the Palestinians and wipe out whatever political or territorial gains they may make as a result of Israel's initial withdrawal…

By continuing to use the word "evacuation" to describe its actions, Israel seems to be making it very clear that if the Palestinians don't embark on the Road Map, and instead continue to use violence and incitement to achieve their goal of an independent state, the removal of the Jewish communities will be only temporary. Israel will return in force and claim sovereignty of such parts of the areas vacated as it deems in its national interest.”

Jews expelled from the West Bank in 1948 by six invading Arab armies returned there in 1967. Jews withdrawn from Gaza in 2005 may well seek to return there in 2014.

The current war of rockets and tunnels seems set to be replaced with an equally confrontational labyrinthine war of words.

Bibi On Fighting "The Rocketeers" & On "The Preeminent Terrorist Empire Of Our Time" (video)

On Fox News yesterday, Bibi Netanyahu talks about Operation Protective Edge with his customary eloquence:

On Hamas:

"[H]ere's the difference between us. We are using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles. That's basically the difference. They're embedding these rockets that they're firing wholesale into our cities, terrorist rocketing, trying to kill as many as they can. 

They're not succeeding because of two reasons. One is because we've developed this incredible missile defense system, which I think is a historic development in the history of defensive warfare ...

But the other reason we're succeeding, you have to understand some of the rockets do pierce through this shield. The reason we're succeeding is also because we're targeting the rocketeers. The rocketeers are firing from homes, these homes are actually command posts of the Hamas and Islamic jihad army. So, that's where they have their secure communications, weapon caches, rockets hidden, map rooms, so on. These are the command posts. 

Obviously, we're not going to give them immunity.... [W]e try to minimize ... civilian casualties. 

But with this kind of enemy, we'll take whatever necessary means that we need to take.... We're not indiscriminate. It's very tough. There will always going to be civilian casualties, which we regret, but we have to defend our people. And that's what we'll do." 

 On Iran:

"....Of course, they're developing nuclear weapons. They invested, not billions, you can start counting it in maybe in hundreds of billions of dollars for what, for creating medical isotopes for Iranian patients circling the Earth? What are they developing ICBMs for if not for nuclear warheads? What are they developing these -- building these enormous underground nuclear facilities if not for nuclear weapons? If they wanted to have just civilian nuclear energy, they could have it without centrifuges for enrichment, without plutonium and the heavy water. These are only use for nuclear weapons.

....I think we have to remember, this is the same Iran that is arming, financing, training Hamas and Islamic jihad. This is the preeminent terrorist empire of our time, not even a terrorist state. It's a terrorist empire...."

“The Dangerous Notion Is That There’s A Moral Equivalence Between The Actions Of Hamas, & Those Of The State of Israel" (includes videos)

"Kalb Yehud! [Jewish dog!] That, Allahu akbar, and "something about Gaza in Arabic" is what two young  men screamed as they jumped on and punched a former IDF soldier wearing an identifying T-shirt in a Jewish district of Melbourne last Thursday night, leaving him with cuts and a swollen face:

"I noticed them when it was too late.... One of them tried to pull me to the ground, I started fighting and punching back.  I grabbed one of them by the throat and screamed at them, cursing in Arabic as well. This shocked them, they ran off."

(Hat tip: reader Ian) 

"Jewish scumbag hail hitler let's finish what hitler left for us"

"Isreal[sic] the Jewish Terrorist State of the zionist bankers. It keeps forcefully evicting people from their homes and lands and expects there to be no retaliation? Then they accuse the aggressors to be the palestinian people? wake up up humans! This dirty jew rat bastard in new york is feeding you propeganda [sic] that he gets paid huge money to talk about. This is war crimes being excused because they are dirty JEWS. I will meet you in hell jew cocksucker"

Those are two intemperate comments left by obvious antisemites beneath the following video on YouTube in which Senator Charles (Chuck) Schumer (Democrat, New York), in an able and fair speech, talks of 

“The dangerous notion is that there’s a moral equivalence between the actions of Hamas, and those of the State of Israel.  It must be said, there’s no moral equivalence between the actions, and reactions, of Israel, and Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to the violence that has occurred there.”

The current "Operation Protective Edge" waged by Israel against Hamas in Gaza has of course garnered a predictable outbreak of outrage against the Jewish State, forcefully expressed, though of course not invariably in nakedly antisemitic terms, by the usual suspects.

Biased and/or inept reportage, which harps on the "asymmetrical" nature of the conflict and presents it as a "tit-for-tat" exercise, helps, unwittingly or not, to stir prejudice against Israel among the general public (the BBC, to its utter shame, has excelled at this; see here and here): after all, who can remain unmoved by the spectacle of suffering civilians and dead and injured children?

In the shrewd words of one pro-Israel commenter responding to criticism of Israel's current response to Hamas terror:

'Imagine this ...: A group of your neighbors have repeatedly and consistently declared their intent to murder you and your entire family (See the Hamas Charter, especially Article 7, for a sample of what they say).

 They regularly fire home-made rockets at your house. You build a shelter. The continue firing, threatening all the while to drink your blood  and elevating their hatred of you to a religious principle. They teach their kids that killing you is a sacred duty. They build luxury hotels for their leadership but no shelters for their children. Instead, turn their places of worship and schools and hospitals into arms depots and launch rockets from them. When you retreat they use the place you left as another launching pad.

 They encourage their women, elderly and children to be human shields for anyone trying to murder you and boast that they love death more than you love life.  Then they import much more sophisticated rockets from other people who regulalrly boast that they want you murdered and launch hundreds of those rockets at you and your family from within civilian areas (and accuse you of committing "aggression " and "war crimes" when you start to defend yourself) A disproportionate casualty count is completely misleading in a situation when one side wants only death for you - is willing to commit suicide to see you dead - and consistently encourages their children to be killed in the attempt to murder you.

 Now do you see the situation more clearly? ... The Israelis are not bombing indiscriminately. Unlike any other army in this region - and indeed the world - they call the people living in houses where arms tunnel entrances are located to warn them of an impending strike. The IDF also sends SMS's and drops leaflets and fires warning shots - Hamas tells people to ignore these warnings and encourages them to expose themselves to danger.

 If you had neighbors so determined to murder you and your family - exploiting pictures of those killed in the process in order to get others to hate you, too. Now, for the hard question: How do you respond to this scenario? Think carefully, knowing that the the your life and the lives of all you hold dear are at stake. See the problem?'

 The perceptive Daniel Pipes writes:

 'Why ... did Hamas just provoke a war with Israel? Out of nowhere, on June 11 it began launching rockets, shattering a calm in place since November 2012....  The battlefield outcome of Arab-Israeli wars in last 40 years have been predictable; everyone knows Israeli forces will prevail. It's more like cops and robbers than warfare. Ironically, this lopsidedness turns attention from winning and losing to morality and politics. Israel's enemies provoke it to kill civilians, whose deaths bring them multiple benefits.

The four conflicts since 2006 have restored Hamas' tarnished reputation for "resistance," built solidarity on the home front, stirred dissent among both Arabs and Jews in Israel, galvanized Palestinians and other Muslims to become suicide bombers, embarrassed non-Islamist Arab leaders, secured new United Nations resolutions bashing Israel, inspired Europeans to impose harsher sanctions on Israel, opened the international Left's spigot of vitriol against the Jewish state, and won additional aid from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The holy grail of political warfare is to win the sympathy of the global Left by presenting oneself as underdog and victim....

The tactics of this new warfare include presenting a convincingly emotional narrative, citing endorsements of famous personalities, appealing to the conscience, and drawing simple but powerful political cartoons (Israeli supporters tend to excel at this, both in the past and now). Palestinians get even more creative, developing the twin fraudulent techniques of "fauxtography" for still pictures and "Pallywood" for videos. Israelis used to be complacent about the need for what they call hasbara, or getting the message out, but recent years find them more focused on this.'

And those in the media and elsewhere who present Hamas's rocketry as of the homemade, pipsqueak kind are economical with the truth. The Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, pointed out last Wednesday that about three-quarters of the Israeli population are now within striking range of Hamas's rockets, thanks largely to shipments, since 2012, of long-range rockets from Iran.

"You remember that ship that we interdicted a few months ago in the Red Sea was carrying 40 long range rockets. Well, one of those types of rockets was actually fired yesterday into Israel. But in addition to the rockets being smuggled in—and the smuggling route went from Iran to Sudan and up through the Sinai into Gaza—in addition to that, Hamas has developed a domestic manufacturing capability for these long range rockets and part of Israel’s military operation is to not only go after the missile batteries but to go after these factories that are essentially making these weapons."

Moreover, it's reported:

"In addition to Hamas, the Iranian-funded Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has been firing many rockets into Tel Aviv and southern cities such as Be’er Sheva.

PIJ, which acts at Iran’s behest, is in possession of multiple Iranian-made rockets, including the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 missiles...."

 and that 

"If the fighting with Israel escalates, the organizations are likely to launch more of these missiles toward the Greater Tel Aviv area and northern cities (Hadera, Haifa), believing that to put an end to Israeli attacks, they will need to ramp up the pressure on Israel with strikes on major cities to create a balance of terror that will force Israel to end its operation."

To quote analyst Jonathan Spyer, author of The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict:

"....There is a tendency to see the Israeli-Palestinian arena as somehow set apart from the rest of the Mid-East neighborhood. But this is an illusion.

Firstly, in the most tangible way, the most potent elements of the Hamas assault on Israeli cities of recent days is made possible only by the movement's link with Iran....

Similarly, the Islamic Jihad movement, which has been rapidly gaining strength at Hamas's expense in Gaza in recent months, is a full proxy of Iran.

But in a deeper sense, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad are local manifestations of the particular, pathological Islamist political-religious-paramilitary style and ideology which has challenged order and made life a misery all across the region in recent decades, and with added strength in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring of 2011.

Take a look around the neighborhood. In Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, rival, equally implacable versions of political Islam are at each others' throats. In Syria, upwards of 160,000 people have died over the course of the last four years. In Lebanon, a Shia Islamist terror group, Hizballah, enjoys unrivalled dominance. In Iraq, a Sunni Islamist killing machine has conquered the west of the country and is poised to assault Baghdad.

So why then have Israel and its environs nevertheless managed to avoid the general collapse of these other countries? The reason is deterrence.

 There is a single, dominant military element west of the Jordan River. This element is the Israel Defense Forces.

But deterrence, alas, is a perishable substance, which must be periodically replenished. Hamas, facing difficult economic straits, with its tunnels sealed by Sisi's armed forces, with newer and yet more radical Islamist elements inspired by ISIS emerging from within, evidently decided that it was time for another round.

As of now, Israel is engaging in a far reaching operation designed to hit at Hamas' capabilities. But more profoundly, in the simple and brutal logic of the neighborhood, Israel is trying to remind Hamas of the cost of tangling with the Jewish state.

The objective of this is not to re-conquer Gaza, nor to impact on local politics, still less to impose suffering on the Palestinians for its own sake.

When one's neighbors are Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the modest objective of quiet can only be bought at the cost of periodic military actions intended to remind the enemy of the cost of aggression and thus reinforce deterrence.

Because of the strength of Israeli arms, the conflict between Israel and the PA territories don't resemble those roiling Iraq or Syria. The relative balance of forces, however, is a lesson which those who wish to turn the country into something resembling those hell-holes must periodically re-learn - through bitter experience."

"We Will Eradicate Hamas" (includes videos)

In the immediate aftermath of the finding of the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers who went missing on 12 June, Israel's deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon has stated:

“I was filled with deep sadness upon hearing of the murders of Naftali Frankel, Gil-Ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrach by Hamas terrorists.  All of Israel mourns with these brave families who will forever hold a special place in the collective hearts of our nation.

In their memories, we must ensure that this tragic end be turned into an opportunity to create a better and safer Israel.  Israelis have the willingness and the fortitude necessary to endure the hardships of a long-lasting operation aimed at eradicating Hamas.

We will not stop until Hamas is completely defeated.  The homes of the terrorists must be demolished and their arms caches destroyed.  Our mission will not be complete until all the terror organizations are deterred from attacking Israelis and understand once and for all that the people of Israel will not be threatened

I call on the international community to end all aid to the Palestinian Authority and its Hamas-backed government.  President Abbas cannot continue to claim to want peace with Israel, while at the same time partnering with Hamas as they kidnap and brutally murder teenagers.”

 Below are two CNN reports ensuing on the finding of the bodies:

Mark Regev on Bringing Back The Boys (video)

In this exclusive interview a few days ago, Bibi Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev talks of the Israeli government's certainty that Hamas is behind the kidnapping of the three missing Israeli teenagers, what needs to be done to bring the boys home, why Mahmoud Abbas's unity deal with Hamas is unconscionable, and what Israel expects from the international community.

Meanwhile, the British-based Islam Channel's Current Affairs show has presented a trio of talking heads to bash Israel's response to the current kidnapping crisis: three hardened anti-Israel warriors, namely freelance writer Ben White (his latest kick at the UK "Israel lobby" and Christian Zionists has just been posted, here), lawyer Toby Carman, and ex-MP Martin Linton (remember that "tentacles of Israel" speech of his a few years ago?).

The discussion, in the unlikely event that you should you care to watch it, follows some ten minutes of background footage.

 The studio anchor, John Rees, is described thus in his Wikipedia entry:

'Elected a member of the National Executive of the National Union of Students in the early 1980s, Rees is a former leading member of the Socialist Workers Party, and was for many years on its Central Committee. He was editor of the quarterly journal International Socialism for ten years and the organiser of the SWP's annual Marxism festival in 1982 and 1983 and again between 1992 and 2002.

A co-founder and a current national officer for the Stop the War Coalition, he has been a central organiser of all its marches including that of 15 February 2003. According to Rees: "Socialists should unconditionally stand with the oppressed against the oppressor, even if the people who run the oppressed country are undemocratic and persecute minorities, like Saddam Hussein." Rees is also vice president (Europe) of the Cairo Conference.

He was top of Respect – The Unity Coalition list in the West Midlands region for the 2004 European Election, and the Respect candidate for the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election. He also stood for Respect in the 2006 local elections in the Bethnal Green South ward of Tower Hamlets, East London where he came second to Labour. Rees was controversially not selected by the SWP Central Committee to be on the slate for re-election and did not stand independently at the January 2009 conference. Shortly after his partner Lindsey German [convenor of Stop The War Coalition] resigned from the SWP in 2010, Rees and 41 other members followed disenchanted with the party's direction, internal regime and approach to united fronts (18 others who had resigned in weeks prior also supported the resignations)....'

Yet another reminder of the distinctly curious alliance that exists these days between Islam and the hard Left.

Bibi On The Abduction Of The Three Teenage Seminarians (video) plus a Sizer post

Is that the gospel truth, vicar?

As the invaluable BBC Watch notes, after initially ignoring it,  the noisome Al Beeb got around, tardily, to reporting this monstrous abduction (see how Hamas supporters celebrate it) here.