Tag Archives: Palestinian Authority

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No moral equivalency in this struggle

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A Democratic senator from New York tonight laid out with stunning clarity who are the bad guys in the latest eruption of violence in Israel.

Chuck Schumer said the bad guys are the Hamas terrorists. The Israelis who are defending their country against rocket attacks aimed at civilians are doing what they must to survive, Schumer said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” talk show.

I couldn’t possibly agree more with the senior senator from New York.

Yet we keep hearing from those who try to blame “both sides” of this conflict.

How can they say such things with a straight face?

Hamas is the terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction. The Palestinian Authority governs the Gaza Strip; Hamas is part of that governing authority. Hamas has been shelling Israel for several weeks now. They place their missile batteries among civilians. The Israelis must respond with its military might against the attacks. How, then, do the Israelis avoid inflicting some civilian casualties?

Schumer also noted that Israel has accepted two cease-fire deals brokered by Egypt. Hamas has rejected both of them.

The senator also spelled out that it’s Hamas that started this conflict and that Hamas has never backed away from its desire to see Israel eradicated.

The Israelis are doing what they must.

I believe Sen. Schumer has spelled out where our national allegiance must rest in this conflict. It belongs squarely with Israel.

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Hamas bears full responsibility for violence

The Hamas terrorists who are part of the Palestinian Authority government bear all the responsibility for the violence that has erupted in Gaza.

All of it. Every last ounce of it.

http://news.yahoo.com/scores-dead-first-major-ground-battle-gaza-202146112.html

It amazes me to the max that so many world observers actually are critical of Israel for its heavy response to the violence that Hamas instigated when it began launching rockets into Israeli neighborhoods — targeting civilians.

Now the Israelis have sent troops into Gaza, the most densely populated region in the world. Casualties have been great, particularly on the Palestinian side. Why is that? Because Hamas started this fight.

I listened on CNN this evening to James Woolsey, a former CIA director, who offered an important piece of wisdom to the question: Can there ever be peace in the Middle East between Palestinians and Israelis?

Woolsey said they’ve been living together for centuries. He noted that one-sixth of Israel’s population comprises Palestinian Arabs. He mentioned that they serve in local and national government; an Arab once held a cabinet position; another Arab sits on the Israelis supreme court. They are part of life in Israel.

Hamas, though, won’t accept that. Neither will other terrorist organizations that populate other countries that border Israel.

Woolsey’s answer to the question was this: As soon as Hamas recognizes that Arabs have lived peacefully in Israel for many years, that’s when we can find peace in the region.

A follow-up question ought to be: How do you persuade madmen to think rationally?

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Israel needs to strike back

How much clearer does Israel have to make it for the world to understand its predicament?

Terrorists in Gaza are launching missiles into Israeli cities and towns. They have injured Israeli citizens. Their targets are civilian neighborhoods, houses where families live with their children. Is the Israeli military supposed to let the attacks go without response? No.

http://news.msn.com/world/israel-says-its-downed-drone-along-southern-coast

Now it comes out that Israel shot down a drone launched from Gaza. It was downed near the city of Ashdod, just a few miles from the Israeli border with Gaza.

The United Nations is upset because of what some have called a “disproportionate response” from Israel to the attacks launched by Hamas, the terrorist organization that helps govern Gaza alongside the Palestinian Authority.

The response does not upset me in the least. Of course, I have the comfort of living thousands of miles away.

Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a hardliner’s hardliner — makes no apologies for the air attacks his military has launched against the Gaza militants.

It falls on Hamas to stop the provocation. Immediately. Hamas started this conflict. The terrorists who run the organization do not want the Israelis to finish it.

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Israel preps for needed response

Imagine this scenario playing out.

A terrorist cell in, say, Toronto starts firing rockets and mortars across Lake Ontario into Buffalo, N.Y. The president calls on the Canadian government to stop the attacks. The government in Ottawa refuses to do anything.

The president issues an ultimatum: Stop the missiles or else. The ordnance keeps falling on your city. The president is forced to act. He or she sends in troops to put down the violence being reined on our cities.

Justified or not? I’d say we would support such an action.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/09/world/meast/mideast-tensions/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

That’s what is happening in Israel, which has been fighting for decades against forces bent on the country’s destruction. The missiles are coming from Gaza, which is governed by the Palestinian Authority … which has made a pact with the evil terror group Hamas.

I must add here that Hamas has declared its intention to exterminate Israel.

Israel’s response has been to launch air strikes against military targets in Gaza. Hamas has responded with attacks on Tel Aviv, the commercial and financial capital of Israel.

The Israelis say they now plan to send ground troops into Gaza to put down the violence. The PA has done nothing to stop these attacks.

Are the Israelis justified in applying this muscular response? Absolutely.

Just five years ago, I was given the privilege of visiting some cities near Gaza that had been struck by earlier rocket attacks from terrorists. The damage was frightening in the extreme. The Israelis managed to put that uprising down.

They should be given the world’s blessing to do so again.

“We warned them. We asked them to stop it,” Israeli President Shimon Peres told CNN. “We waited one day, two days, three days and they continued, and they spread their fire on more areas in Israel.”

No country should be forced to exist with this kind of terror lurking so closely.

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Israel vents its anger at Hamas

Can there be any doubt — any at all — as to why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke off peace talks with the Palestinian Authority?

Three Israeli teenagers have been killed by terrorists linked to Hamas, the monstrous group that helps govern Gaza, which is part of the Palestinian Authority. Israel in return has launched air strikes against the terrorists. Hamas is continuing its violent campaign against Israel, all the while joining the PA in some form of “unity government” arrangement agreed to by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

It was that unity government arrangement that angered Netanyahu enough to break off the talks. The PA cannot “have it both ways,” he said of Abbas’s agreement with Hamas and his desire to seek peace with Israel.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/west-bank-kidnappings/israel-palestinian-tensions-near-breaking-point-over-dead-teens-n145096

I cannot proclaim to be an expert on this subject, but I have had the honor of seeing Israel up close. I’ve seen some of the damage that Hamas terrorists have inflicted on Israeli cities close to Gaza. I’ve gotten a pretty good feel for how close Israel is to its sworn enemies and I understand fully how Israel must be on constant vigil against terrorist attacks from Gaza, the West Bank, Golan and Lebanon.

Five weeks touring Israel in the spring of 2009 gave my traveling companions and me a deeper appreciation for what the Israelis face every single day.

And now we have this latest tragedy involving the three teens who were captured in the West Bank.

Hamas comprises a lot of very bad actors. Those are the individuals with whom Israel must co-exist. If they have to bomb them to keep them at bay, then so be it.

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Pope emerges as peace broker?

Can there be any doubt that Pope Francis I is the rock star everyone believes him to be?

The pope, in a stunning gesture to two sides in one of the world’s most contentious regions, invited them to the Vatican later this year in what has been called a “common prayer for peace.”

Who knows? A real deal that forges a permanent peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority could be next.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2014/05/25/look-vatican-middle-east-balancing-act/6axOcIrwLCjnbWMkQSpD4L/story.html

“All of us … are obliged to make ourselves instruments and artisans of peace, especially by our prayers,” the pope said after a public Mass in Bethlehem.

The pope is touring Israel, the West Bank and Jordan on a whirlwind tour of the Holy Land. He just might get more out of this trip than anyone in the world ever imagined.

At issue are peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that broke down when PA President Mahmoud Abbas brokered a unity government deal with Hamas, the reviled terrorist organization that vows to destroy Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended the talks, declaring that Abbas cannot seek peace while sidling next to such a notorious terrorist organization.

Now comes the Holy Father. He wants to bring both sides together for a meeting in the Vatican. Abbas and Israeli President Shimon Peres have been invited.

“The time has come to put an end to this situation which has become increasingly unacceptable,” the pope told Abbas, adding that he was “expressing my closeness to those who suffer most from this conflict.” And who might that be? Some observers believe he is referring to the Palestinians.

If ever there was a time to pray for a solution that has evaded presidents, kings, sultans, imams, rabbis and just about anyone else with a semblance of moral authority in the world, this could be it.

Let’s hope Pope Francis I can deliver some pastoral guidance that helps end a centuries-old conflict.

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Can His Holiness work a miracle in Holy Land?

Pope Francis’s tour of Israel and Jordan is getting some hearts fluttering.

It’s not just that the head of the Catholic Church is making his first trip to the Holy Land. It is that this man who’s been dubbed a “rock star” on the world stage might be able to move Israelis and Arabs closer to a peace deal.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/great-expectations-can-pope-francis-bring-peace-middle-east-n112921

The Holy Father will deliver a Mass in Bethlehem on the West Bank. Just a hunch, but he’ll pack the place with worshipers. His predecessor, Benedict XVI, delivered a Mass in Nazareth in 2009. I had the pleasure of touring the amphitheater built for that event. He drew an overflow crowd in a city that is now 80 percent Muslim. Yes, they came from all over Israel to hear it, but I think you get my point, which is that the pope represents something quite special to folks of all faiths.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have broken down. PA President Mahmoud Abbas struck a deal that gave Hamas — a notorious terrorist organization — a role in governing the Palestinian Authority, which Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu said correctly was a non-starter for Israel.

Hope is emerging that Francis might be able in private talks to persuade the two sides to resume talks. Indeed, there must be a path to peace and it well might take someone with Francis’s global stature to help the two sides find their way toward that path.

He’ll be there only for a brief time but, hey, miracles can occur in an instant.

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'Apartheid state'? Israel?

What in the name of all that is sensible was Secretary of State John Kerry thinking?

He was speaking in a closed-door event and then suggested Israel was in danger of becoming “an apartheid state” if it doesn’t work out a two-state peace treaty solution with the Palestinian Authority.

I heard it today and am shocked beyond belief at what he said. Should he resign, as some congressional and media critics have suggested? Not just yet. But he’d better have a clear explanation of what precisely he meant.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/04/28/kerry-under-fire-for-reported-apartheid-remarks-about-israel/?hpt=hp_t2

The term “apartheid” is as highly charged and offensive as they come. It was the long-standing racial separation policy used in South Africa to deny blacks any rights of full citizenship in a country in which they comprised the overwhelming majority. Only upon the release from prison of the late Nelson Mandela and the country’s first fully free and fair election in 1994 would bring an end to that heinous policy.

Now, to suggest Israel could become something similar if it doesn’t make peace with the Palestinians goes far beyond anything reasonable.

Kerry followed up his statement, recorded by The Daily Beast, with this: “… I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution.”

Kerry has made a Middle East peace agreement his No. 1 priority since becoming secretary of state in 2013. He has worked hard to bring Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiating table. Then this past week, the Palestinian Authority announced a unity government agreement with Hamas, the notorious terrorist group that wants to eradicate Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, understandably angry with the PA, suspended the talks.

The secretary of state has harmed the peace process further by using such inflammatory language. If there is a model of government diversity and democracy in the Middle East, it is Israel. The nation has a significant Muslim minority; its government has installed Muslims in key positions; it remains a bastion of freedom in a region governed by tyrants.

Yes, John Kerry should have chosen his words more carefully. If he cannot make it right — and soon — with Israel, then he should consider resigning.

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Abbas finally sees light on Holocaust

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said what most of the rest of the world already knows: The Holocaust committed against Jews in Europe was a dastardly act by the 20th century’s most despicable tyrant.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

http://news.msn.com/world/abbas-calls-holocaust-most-heinous-crime

Abbas made the statement the other day after spending a lifetime denying the Holocaust even occurred.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s angry with Abbas for agreeing to a “unity government” that includes the infamous Hamas terror organization, isn’t so sure Abbas’s statement is a sincere belief on his part. He thinks Abbas is trying to make nice because of the agreement with Hamas.

Whatever his motive, Abbas is right to acknowledge what he calls the “most heinous crime of modern history.”

It would be worth the Palestinian president’s time to tour the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, near Jerusalem. There he will see exhibits depicting in graphic detail what Adolf Hitler and his Nazi murderers did to an estimated 6 million European Jews before and during World War II. He will see evidence of the death camps, the testimonies of survivors, the videos of the corpses discovered by Allied troops who liberated Europe from the Nazis.

Abbas’s statement runs counter to what many Arab leaders have said about the Holocaust. They have denied it or have downplayed its significance to those who fled to Israel after World War II.

He now ought to sit down with other Arab leaders and persuade them of what he has come to understand about the Holocaust.

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Make peace or deal with Hamas?

Put yourself in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s shoes.

You govern a country of some 8,000 square miles surrounded by nations that at one time or another vowed to exterminate you and your constituents. Yes, you’ve made peace with a couple of those nations — Jordan and Egypt. The rest of the region remains iffy.

You’re in the middle of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and then you learn that the leader of that government has brokered a deal with one of the world’s most ferocious terrorist organizations, Hamas. That organization has orchestrated terrorist attacks on your country from the Gaza Strip, which the Palestinian Authority governs.

The PA now wants to form a “unity government” that includes Hamas.

Do they want peace with Israel or not? Netanyahu has called off peace talks because the PA has formed that arrangement with Hamas, which still vows to exterminate Israel.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-calls-peace-talks-after-palestinian-deal-n88726

Can you really blame the Israeli prime minister? I cannot.

Netanyahu is furious with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for agreeing to the Hamas deal.

Having seen some of the damage that Hamas has inflicted on southern Israel myself, I understand fully why Netanyahu has called off the peace talks. I was part of a group that toured Israel in the spring of 2009 and we saw damage done by rocket fire in Sderot and Ashkelon, near the border with Gaza, which had erupted in violence prior to our arrival in Israel.

It’s a blow to Secretary of State John Kerry, who persuaded the sides to talk to each other after they didn’t speak for five years. Kerry still believes a path to peace is still open, but it’s now been littered by the presence of Hamas in this arrangement with one of the principals in the talks.

“He can’t have it both ways,” Netanyahu said of Abbas. “He has to choose: Peace with Israel or a pact with Hamas.”

Netanyahu is right to be angry.