Tag Archives: Hamas

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Hamas inviting disaster

Try putting yourself into the heart and mind of an Israeli citizen.

Imagine living in a country surrounded by people who at one time or another have sworn to eradicate your country from the face of the planet. Imagine that those neighboring countries are so close to each other — let alone to your neighborhood — that a supersonic jet can go from point to point in a matter of a few minutes.

Think also of how you might react if one of your neighbors, governed by a known terrorist group that retains your country’s destruction as its main objective, begins firing missiles into your community. The missiles are targeting civilians, children and their parents.

How in the world would you react if you had the means to respond aggressively? You would use whatever force you had at your disposal to put down the attacks.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israels-netanyahu-world-pressure-wont-stop-gaza-offensive-n153671

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered air strikes against Hamas targets in Gaza. Why? Because Hamas — the governing authority in the Palestinian Authority — has launched attacks on his country.

Netanyahu has made no apology for the ferocity of his country’s response.

I do not blame him one single bit.

Hamas needs to end its campaign to eliminate Israel. Same for Hezbollah, which operates in Lebanon, on Israel’s northern border. How about ISIS, which is waging a civil war in Syria, yet another neighboring country?

They’re all deadly serious about their intent to eradicate Israel.

Should the Israeli government do nothing when its people are being threatened with ordnance falling from the sky from multiple directions?

Not for an instant.

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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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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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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.

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U.S.-Iran breakthrough, or breakdown?

President Obama made a historic phone call today.

He telephoned Hasan Rouhani, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The two men chatted for about 15 minutes, after which President Obama informed the world that he believes a deal to derail any Iranian effort to build a nuclear weapon could be struck.

http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/27/20722870-obama-and-rouhani-make-history-with-phone-call-thawing-three-decade-freeze-between-us-and-iran?lite

Some folks are hailing the phone call as a thawing of a 34-year-old freeze between the two nations. The last phone call between U.S. and Iranian heads of state occurred in 1979 when Jimmy Carter was president of the United States. It all went to hell later that year when Iranian “students” stormed our embassy in Tehran and held Americans hostage for 444 days.

Rouhani is sounding as though he wants to normalize relations with the United States and rejoin the world community. He’s launched something of a charm offensive of late, talking to a U.S. news network and speaking calmly at the United Nations. I am not totally comfortable plunging ahead with such an effort. I hope Barack Obama retains a degree of skepticism and moves very carefully.

We need to remember that for decades Iran has declared virtual war against the “Great Satan,” meaning the United States. It has declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the planet. It has supplied arms and other know-how to international terrorist groups, such as al-Qaida. It arms the Syrian dictator in his war against rebels. It has cozied up to Hezbollah and Hamas, two sworn enemies of Israel. The incendiary statements of Rouhani’s immediate predecessor as president also should not be dismissed and tossed aside.

A single phone call shouldn’t signal a “thaw.” It well might mean that it’s time to turn the temperature up just a bit to begin the thawing of relations.

But just as the late President Ronald Reagan said of Soviet strongman Mikhail Gorbachev, “Trust, but verify,” it is good to seek multiple verifications of any statement that comes from an Iranian president that might signal a new era in relations between two longtime enemies.

Here’s hoping today’s phone call has opened the door to that new era.

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Kerry to get Nobel Peace Prize?

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have commenced peace talks in secret.

If the talks prove successful and the ancient enemies — the Israelis and the Palestinians — actually forge a working peace agreement, I have a candidate for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize: Secretary of State John Kerry.

http://news.yahoo.com/israelis-palestinians-kick-off-peace-talks-182226376.html

Kerry managed to persuade the two sides to restart talks that would seek a so-called “two-state solution” to the longstanding conflict. The Palestinians want an independent state next to Israel. The Israelis are now talking about that outcome being acceptable — under certain conditions. One of them would be that the Palestinians would stop shelling Israeli homes. The two sides have until October to seal the deal.

Meanwhile, Kerry and the Israelis will need to hammer out some solution to the continuing construction of settlements in territory that Israel captured during the Six-Day War in 1967. The Palestinians say the settlements are a barrier to a peace agreement; the Israelis say they are necessary to keep the Palestinians at bay.

I’m not an expert on Israeli-Palestinian relations, but I have seen up close just how precarious the situation is within Israel. I’ve visited cities — such as Sderot and Ashkelon — that have been shelled by Palestinians living in Gaza I understand the Israelis’ fear of continuing attacks on civilians. I’ve been able to peer into Gaza from just outside the region’s border with Israel.

Gaza is governed by Hamas, the infamous terrorist organization dedicated to Israel’s destruction. Whatever comes out of these peace talks, there must be some accounting for how to handle Hamas and to reel in the terrorists who continue to rein violence down on Israel.

Secretary Kerry has many decades of international experience under his belt. He knows the players on both sides personally. The civilized world, therefore, should be pulling for a successful resolution to these talks. Peace must come to the Holy Land.

If it does, John Kerry should start working on his Peace Prize acceptance speech.