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Friday, January 2, 2009

Rather than put down innumerable individual headline links, here's a collection of commentary and news about what's going on. Haven't been following things so closely? Here are some good places to start:

Charles Krauthammer: The Necessity of Israel

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where militants might have stashed weapons. -- Associated Press, Dec. 27

WASHINGTON -- Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza in the last three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people...

Jonah Goldberg: The Squeegee Men of the New World Order (not exactly on Gaza, but on the general dumbing down of our view and acceptance of terrorism)

Michael Gerson: Israel's Proportionate Response

There is no question -- none -- that Israel's attack on Hamas in Gaza is justified. No nation can tolerate a portion of its people living in the conditions of the London Blitz -- listening for sirens, sleeping in bomb shelters and separated from death only by the randomness of a Qassam missile's flight. And no group aspiring to nationhood, such as Hamas, can be exempt from the rules of sovereignty, morality and civilization, which, at the very least, forbid routine murder attempts against your neighbors...

Via Dave, who continues his excellent ongoing coverage, here is a video from early December showing what life is like in the Gaza "concentration camp". You'll get the point upon seeing the well stocked food market right at the beginning:

Michel Gurfinkiel: Gaza: A Matter of Proportion - 'A noted French intellectual registers profound disappointment with President Nicolas Sarkozy's reaction to the Gaza situation.'

Andrew Bostom: Heeding David Littman: Confronting Hamas' Genocidal Jew-Hatred (Part 1) (Part 2)

Washington Post: Why Israel Is Bombing Gaza by Ephraim Sneh:

...Up until the Hamas takeover, 750 trucks would cross the border each day with imports and exports. As Israel's deputy defense minister at the time, I was in charge of this activity and promoted this trade with Gaza, since the border crossings were being controlled by Abbas's Presidential Guard, not by terrorists. The Hamas takeover is what in effect locked the gates of Gaza and forced its residents to suffer.

The rain of rockets on the citizens of Israel intensified. The cease-fire that lasted from June until Dec. 19 was used by Hamas to increase its military strength -- mainly to smuggle in Grad-type rockets from Iran, which have a range of 20 miles. In recent days, these missiles have struck cities such as Ashdod, Israel's main port, and Beersheva, the capital of Israel's south. No sovereign state would have resigned itself to having its cities -- cities such as Houston or Atlanta -- bombarded. No sovereign state would allow itself to be hit by even a single missile. That is the reason for the military campaign that Israel launched this week in a series of aerial strikes...

Alan Dershowitz: Israel's Policy Is Perfectly 'Proportionate'

...Until the world recognizes that Hamas is committing three war crimes -- targeting Israeli civilians, using Palestinian civilians as human shields, and seeking the destruction of a member state of the United Nations -- and that Israel is acting in self-defense and out of military necessity, the conflict will continue.

Andy McCarthy: The Sense of Proportion

Victor Davis Hanson: Surreal Gaza

I spent today reading accounts of Gaza -- NY Times, AP, Reuters, etc. There are no terrorists, just militants. Not much about past rocket attacks on Israel -- most everything on the crowded conditions of Gaza. Iranian aid is rarely elaborated on; stories about quiet Arab support for defanging Hamas are likewise rare; common is the buzz about protests in Europe. In reaction, I jotted down the following random thoughts...

Stephanie L. Freid: The Arab World Divided Over Gaza

Once upon a time, any military confrontation with Israel was a guaranteed way to unite the Arab world.

Not this time. As Operation Cast Lead wears on, it is becoming more glaringly apparent that a second campaign is concomitantly underway among regional neighbors -- and the enemy is not Israel...

AP: Egypt FM: Hamas must stop rockets in any truce

Egypt's foreign minister said Thursday that Hamas must ensure rocket fire stops in any truce deal to halt Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, criticizing the Palestinian militants for giving Israel an excuse to launch the bombardment...

Carol Gould: A Zionist on Iranian Television - 'Defending Israel and the Jews on Ahmadinejad's favorite channel...'

Martin Peretz: Hamas is a Taliban State - 'Why a cease-fire between Jerusalem and the regime in Gaza will never hold...'

Forbes: More Peace Processing Won't Cut It by Claudia Rosett - 'Israel's present could be the future for us all...'

National Review: Excessive Force? by James S. Robbins - 'Who says?...'

Telegraph UK: Peace in Gaza is in the hands of Hamas - 'For as long as Hamas refuses to contemplate the only possible answer to this conundrum -- a two-state solution -- there is little chance of peace...'

NY Daily News: Hamas terrorists have only themselves to blame for Israeli retaliation

Dallas Morning News: The blood on Hamas' hands

Miami Herald: Israel asserts right to defend itself - 'OUR OPINION: Daily rocket attacks by Hamas invited Israeli military response...'

New York Post: Hammering Hamashttp://www.nypost.com/seven/12292008/postopinion/editorials/hammering_hamas_146267.htm - '...To the critics, there is no Israeli right to self-defense. So, much better that Israel do precisely what is it now doing: Targeting the instruments of terror...'

National Review: Hamas Fantasy Rules - '...The Israelis are fighting to free themselves from an unscrupulous opponent, but over and above that, the great hope is that they eventually will be able also to free the Palestinians -- not only from leaders who are terrorizing them, but from the delusion that choosing such leaders can lead to anything but ruin.'

Ottawa Citizen: Israel finally says: Enough - '...It's sad and discouraging to think that we are in this mess because the national priority of Hamas, as always, is to hurt Jews rather than help Palestinians.'

Washington Post: Hard Truths About the Conflict by Robert J. Lieber

Jeff Robbins: The suffering that Hamas causes - 'LAST MONTH'S commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided the occasion to ask difficult questions about societies whose political leadership serially violates them. What, for instance, is to be done about places like Darfur or Zimbabwe, or any one of a multitude of places governed by leaders whose consciences appear untouched by the suffering they are causing? To the list of grotesque human rights violators must be added Hamas, whose disdain for the suffering its policies cause the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip is exceeded only by its open, and even proud, infliction of atrocities on Israeli civilians...'

IDF: Rocket that hit Beersheba school made in China

Palestinian arrested, charged for Denmark shooting - 'Danish police on Thursday arrested a 27-year-old man of Palestinian origin on suspicion of shooting and wounding two Israeli citizens at a shopping mall in central Denmark and charged him with attempted murder...'

Breath of the Beast: Can Public Broadcasting Really be THIS Contemptible? - 'Oh Yes, I think they can...'

Augean Stables: And this year's Darwin Award to an Entire People goes to... the Palestinians of Gaza

Augean Stables: Get me a Massacre: Up next -- the Kfar Qana of Operation Cast Lead - 'Whether by Israeli accident or Hamas engineering, expect a spectacular civilian massacre in the coming days, followed by an orgy of Pallywood photography, amplified by a compliant Western media, and even greater fury in the streets of the Muslim and Western world. It's in the Hamas playbook... and will be until the media gets sober. Here's the background, and the obscenity that will probably be played...'

Augean Stables: The Double Disgrace of Hamas: Victimizing their own People

Augean Stables: Astonishing Statistic: How does this operation rank in the history?

Michael Ross: Jews are news - '...There's been a plethora of documentaries about the conflict since it started but what would be refreshing is a documentary about how the news agencies and their stringers cover the actual events on the ground themselves. It would probably be the most interesting story to emerge from the region since it became the news industry it has since evolved into. Michael Moore where are you?'

- '...In an inverted moral universe where enemies of the Middle East's only democratic state regularly seek its destruction, the tactic of lawfare -- with its once-meaningful language of genocide, international human rights, and war crimes -- is now being used, by state and non-state actors alike, as an alternate, but equally dangerous, weapon in the unrelenting jihad against Israel.'

THE CRISIS IN GAZA: A Response to Rabbi Gopin, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, and the Jewish Left

Iranian reformist daily: Hamas hiding forces in nurseries and hospitals

Israel lets Palestinians with foreign passports flee Gaza

Haaretz: ANALYSIS / IDF sending Hamas a message: Now it's personal

Haaretz: On seventh day of Gaza op, IAF hits more than 20 Hamas targets

1 Comment

more war crimes by israel - i cant believe us British were stupid enough to give them Palenstine, and a nuclear bomb. Wecome to world war 3 or as the zionists would call it - end game. I wonder if they know that most ppl in the UK would fight AGAINST them, on behalf of those they mistreat.

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