a comment on "Gaza Offensive Hits Aid Work Hard "- skynews - "website of the year"

by H. Gelbendorf

Our heart bleeds every time an innocent gets hurt. No matter if he is Palestinian or Israeli. This is the exact reason Israel went into this war.... The suffering of civilians by the terrorizing brutal forces of the Hamas. The blood is on the sarcastic hands of the Hamas!
Hamas is not a freedom organization that takes terror actions as means to an end...
It does not care about the Palestinians.
Hamas is an organization that was created to eliminate Israel from the face of earth.
The best and most powerful weapon that Hamas has is the public opinion weapon. It uses it time after time...
The way it works:
1. Through continues terror attacks on civilian population, Hamas brings Israel's restraint to the tipping point.
2. It uses public institutes, schools, religious centers, hospitals and etc. as launching pads, ammunition storage, etc.
3. Israel attacks, but the Hamas troops are hiding well in their shelters
4. Int' public opinion is forcing Israel to quit- while Hamas keeps attacking!

AN EXCELENT ARTICLE IN THE “BOSTON GLOBE” By Jeff Robins

ARTICLE IN THE “BOSTON GLOBE” By Jeff Robins
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.

This year alone, Hamas, which expressly calls for the obliteration of Israel, has launched approximately 3,000 rockets and mortar bombs into Israeli civilian centers, always for the purpose of killing and maiming Israelis if possible, and terrifying those who are not actually hit. In the last week or so, Hamas has fired some 200 rockets and bombs into Israeli communities.
Under these circumstances - circumstances which would have continued without end had the Israelis failed to act - it seems clear that the Israeli military response was not merely a necessary one. It was, regrettably, the only one left.
Israeli author Amos Oz, whose call for peace with the Palestinians is shared by a majority of Israelis, succinctly described the brutalization of Israeli civilians in terms that cannot fairly be disputed. In a recent piece entitled "Israel Must Defend Its Citizens," the longtime advocate for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis wrote: "The systematic bombing of the citizens in Israel's towns and cities is a war crime and a crime against humanity."
Oz is correct. But it isn't only Israelis whose fundamental human rights Hamas is violating. It is those of the Palestinian population about whose welfare Hamas professes to care.
In direct contravention of international law, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, utilizing homes, schools and community centers as launching pads, content in the knowledge that if innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the cross-fire, it will be Israel that is criticized. This amounts to a sort of Daily Double of human rights violations: the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields for the infliction of violence upon innocent Israelis.
It is Hamas that perfected the use of the suicide bomb, by which young Palestinians were induced to kill themselves so that Israelis could also be killed. It is somehow apt that Hamas should be forever associated with the suicide bomb, for in a larger sense Hamas has proved to be an instrument of the demise of Palestinians in Gaza.
Hamas's persistent call for the annihilation of Israel through jihad, its unequivocal rejection of any peace with Israel under any circumstances, its seizure of Gaza through a coup d'etat, its repression of women and freedom of expression, and its embrace of Iran have all disgusted the international community, which will have little to do with it. Hamas has likewise repelled numerous Arab governments, which might otherwise have been expected to dip into their ample reserves of petrodollars to provide much-needed aid and foreign investment to Gaza, but which have steered clear of it.
Thus Hamas leads the Gazan population on a kamikaze course. The suffering of Gazans cannot conceivably be a genuine concern of the leadership, given the perpetuation of that suffering for which Hamas is responsible. And the suffering of Israelis is its avowed goal.
Whether it was South Africa or Sudan, the international community has understood that the way to deal with truly egregious human rights violators is not to placate them, but to speak the truth about them, and to them. If the truth is spoken plainly enough, and forcefully enough, to a Hamas leadership whose cruelty and callousness have reached alarming levels, it may be that the Palestinians and Israelis alike may be spared further suffering of the kind to which they have been relegated in the past.
Jeff Robbins, an attorney, was a US delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration.

COMMENTS

As an Israeli academic... talkbacks

FINK RESPONSE
The view of an Israeli academic:
It is inevitable that Israel address the existential threat from the Iranian-backed terrorist state - "Hamastan" - pouring ballistic fire into Israel, digging tunnels across the border to smuggle in homicide bombers and kidnap soldiers - having delayed our action for three years and having acted indecisively now costs many more lives on both sides (but still far less than if the action were to be further postponed).
Even though the death statistics on the Israeli side are low, whole cities are paralyzed and rendered dis-functional as people duck for cover several times a day, families living in terror under the random roulette selecting whether or not it is their turn to get maimed and killed or have their property destroyed, each time sirens wail. If you were personally under such attack in your own city here in the UK, would you expect your government to consult Mr. Fisk's irrelevant historical digression or would you expect it to act vigorously?

The UNRA school – tens of Gazan civilians dead. The killers identity: Immad & Hassan Abu Askar, a Hamas mortar team. The weapon: Israeli Mortar.

By Dr. M. Nazarathy

Here are the facts, as uncovered by the Shin-Beit a few hours after the incident: The two terrorists named above, a Hamas mortars team from a well known Hamas family situated themselves on the roof of the school, which was packed with civilians taking refuge from the fighting, and fired their mortars at an Israeli paratroop force. The force returned fire, also by mortar (most likely unaware of the identity of the place they have been fired upon), and hit the Hamas team and inadvertently the civilians. The death of the two terrorists who hijacked the school and caused the civilians’ deaths was also confirmed.

120% Hamas responsibility. Just one of an endless number of incidents, endemic on a vast scale, in which the Hamas has been taking hostage, abusing and causing the death of the very civilians it is supposed to govern and protect. Shocking examples:

1. Hamas is stealing humanitarian aid, in particular intercepted the flour and medicine of yesterday’s convoy inserted through Israel’s border, diverting supplies (intended for the population for free) to its militant needs and reselling supply at high price to the desperate inhabitants.

2. Senior Hamas terrorists drag kids by their ears to shield themselves, as they transit through the alleys, in order not to be targeted by the Israeli helicopter gunships.

3. The civil rule of Hamas has virtually disappeared. There is absolutely nothing done by them to aid the population in its plight, all Hamas members including those who were responsible for civilian operations have gone underground. Hamas has completely abandoned its duty as the “government” (recall that two years ago Hamas staged a coup-de-etat, in the course of which it murdered 161 Fatah members and took over as Gaza’s “government”).

4. The only interaction with the population is to deploy them as human shields. Another example: Hamas set roadblocks preventing the population from fleeing South, so as to get the civiliansin the way of the fighting which is concentrated in the North.

5. While people are still afraid to go publicly against Hamas (where, on Hamas TV?), the level of frustration of against Hamas is on the rise. Palestinian sources claim that there is growing resentment against Hamas, which is perceived as having caused the destruction of Gaza on the altar of Iranian interests. While naturally resentment against Israel is very strong, alongside it, it is apparent that Hamas is losing its most important asset – the projection of its image as a social movement which represents the interests of its people.

6. An example from the first week of the war, during the air campaign, as aired on Hamas TV (footage available). An Israeli bomb struck a “mosquegrad” (a mosque used to store Grad missiles), and an 11 years old girl came out of a neighboring building, raffled but unscathed. The Hamas TV reporter asked her in Arabic “who is responsible?”. With a child’s candor she said: “Hamas is”. Needless to say the interview which barely started went off the air…

7. Hamas is striving to exaggerate and magnify the dimension of the humanitarian crisis in the hope that the world will pressure Israel into stopping its just fight. A grotesque example: it is uncovering the bodies of its dead terrorists and cladding them in civilian clothes and bringing them to hospitals in order to artificially increase the civilian dead count.

images from Gaza

Golda...

How an Israeli academic - professor of Electrical Engineering - sees things

By Dr. M. Nazarathy
1: Who remembers that the world hailed when Israel retreated from Gaza 3 years ago? Gaza was about to become the Singapore of the Mid East as the wealthy Arab states were preparing to pour heaps of money into it, but then Hamas took over (which we owe to Bush's insistence on "democracy") and threw it into an age Islamic extremism.

2: Israel said back then when it left Gaza: "We dismantled our settlements in Gaza - we are out - but if you shoot at us from the area we vacated, we shall hit back with all our might" but never made true on its promise - until now.

3: Hamas also poses a direct and immediate threat to the stability of the Egyptian regime, through its alliance with the "Moslem Brothers"
militant opposition and Iran. If you listen to Mubarak, beyond lip service comments on Israel's action, there is scathing criticism of how Hamas prompted the current crisis by violating the last six-month ceasefire pouring volleys of hundreds of rockets on Israeli civilians days before the action - which left Israel no choice but to act.

4: It is inevitable that Israel address this existential threat from the Iranian-backed terrorist state - "Hamastan" - pouring ballistic fire into Israel, digging tunnels across the border to smuggle in homicide bombers and kidnap soldiers - having delayed our action for three years and having acted indecisively now costs many more lives on both sides (but still far less than if the action were to be further postponed).
Why? Since Hamas increased the area coverage of its rockets by a factor of 16 under the cover of the last ceasefire, turning now the lives of
3/4 of a million Israelis into living hell.

5. Even though the death statistics on the Israeli side are low, whole cities are paralyzed and rendered dis-functional as people duck for cover several times a day, families living in terror under the random roulette selecting whether or not it is their turn to get maimed and killed or have their property destroyed, each time sirens wail. The world keeps counting the casualty scores, which luckily is lower on our side but this is no life for us. In particular, in the Israeli villages and towns bordering Gaza a whole generation of Israeli kids has grown disturbed, traumatized by years of repeated and continual exposure to the Hamas bombardments targeting them.

5. If left unchecked Hamas was projected to reach Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem with its ballistic terror as soon as the next wave advanced Iranian supplies made it in, as the siege of Gaza has been imperfect and increasingly more sophisticated rockets already got smuggled in, increasing the ballistic range and destructive power of the blast. That means that if Israel did not act now, it would have had to act within a year or so with tenfold might in order to address this existential threat to itself and to the stability of the whole Middle East.

6. I view it as the utmost responsibility of my government to protect my fellow citizens, and I have been personally appalled that action has not been taken sooner - but better late than later.

A viewpoint of an Israeli academic

By Dr. M. Nazarathy
Response posted to:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/04/israel-history-comment-peter-beaumont

A viewpoint of an Israeli academic.

With all due respect, I bet Mr. Beaumont has never experienced a real threat to his life, let alone from Arab or Islamic terrorism. As an Israeli - in Haifa, in the North - I have. Back in 2002 bombs exploded on the bus on the Moria Blvd. which my children used to board to go to the Reali school (fortunately they were not on that bus (the learned Mr.
Beaumont would say "what's the problem the statistical odds are low"
aren't they), and then the restaurants Maxim and Matza which we sometimes frequented were in turn blown to pieces, incurring about two dozen dead each.

Back then I wondered every day when my wife would go out shopping and my kids would go to school, if they were to return, but this is beyond the empathy of callous people. Operation Defensive Shield put an end to the homicide bombing terror. That Israeli action was deemed useless by Beaumont, but it might have saved our insignificant lives.

Three years ago we personally experienced ballistic terror during the Lebanon war, for a few weeks, when the other terrorist organization (Hizballa), the one based in Lebanon continually fired missiles at our city, so we know what the people in the south are now going through. Due to electro-optic detection there was early warning (in Haifa it was about 40 seconds), so we knew that the missiles were coming - it was horrible to run to the shelter in those forty seconds, and then lock the door and start counting down (as if waiting for a torpedo to hit or miss in a submarine, if you saw one of these movies), wondering if the incoming missile is destined to fall onto our head and wipe out our family or or not. Then you hear the boom, and the shelter (a concrete fortified room in our home, which would not sustain a direct hit, but might protect from an indirect hit - or so we hoped) vibrates from the landing of the missile if it is close by. But Beaumont would not blink under the circumstances, would he?

Now it is the turn of the south of our country, more than half a million of our fellow citizens, who are precisely under this kind of attack.
Realize that although statistically the chance of being hit is low,still hundreds of thousands of Israelis lives have become unbearable, and all these people, whole cities, are being psychologically wounded. In fact a whole generation of young Israeli children, living around Gaza have grown deranged psychologically, suffering from nightmares, fears, and attention deficit disorders, as they have grown with this existential threat since they were born.

Who remembers that the world hailed when Israel retreated from Gaza 3 years ago? Gaza was about to become the Singapore of the Mid East as the wealthy Arab states were preparing to pour heaps of money into it, but then Hamas took over (which we owe to Bush's insistence on "democracy") and threw it into a dark age of Islamic extremism.

Israel said back then when it pulled out Gaza: "We dismantled our settlements in Gaza - we are out - but if you shoot at us from the area we vacated, we shall hit back with all our might" but never made true on its promise - until now.

The Israelis have no choice. They have been under attack almost every single day since they pulled out of Gaza in 2005. Innocent people have been maimed and killed, terrorized, their lives disrupted, day after day, month after month, year after year women, children, civilians. The Israelis finally said – enough is enough, but prior to that they tried one last ceasefire, which as you know, lasted a few months, the number of rockets went down to single digit (that’s considered a “ceasefire” in this area) but about three weeks ago Hamas put an end to it and started sending 40-80 rockets a day into Israel.

We are appalled by people who say “well, the response is not proportional”. The fight against terrorism is not a game played by gallant rules. This is a government defending its citizens and I can tell you that if someone attacked the people of Britain would you not expect your government to send in the same number of troops as the number of those who attacked, but we’d send in all the resources necessary to protect us and our fellow citizens, and that is exactly what Israel is doing. In fact, what are you doing in Afghanistan 5000 Km, not 5km away? acting on an imaginary threat?

President elect Obama said it correctly after visiting the Israeli town of Shderot that if his two daughters were there and were being attacked he’d would use all the resources at his command to protect them. Would Beaumont expect the same for his daughters? Would he expect that the British government protect them?.

This is a clear case of terrorism, you saw that they attacked in Mombai, they attacked in Bally, Al-Qaeda struck New-York City twice. If the terrorists win in Gaza they will be emboldened to attack even harder everywhere else. And if they do in Britain - let's hope they don't - maybe Beaumont would display a spark of empathy.

Imagine

By Dr. M. Nazarathy


Before you judge us next time you see a bad image on TV, just imagine - vididly - that in your own city, every day there would be a lottery of 20-30 homes to be blown up, selected at random, and if you got selected you’d have 40 seconds to duck for cover. I bet you would not dismiss it, but your whole life would revolve around it, and you would demand from your own government in the strongest possible terms that the madness be stopped, that the government fullfill its elementary duty of protecting the citizens. Well, that's what we are up to.

You have no idea how much we hate war here in Israel. We have had too many of them, way too often, we are traumatized by them. These wars kill our beloved kids – almost everyone has a son or a relative who is a soldier, whose life is on the line. At wartime our civilian population is attacked with more vengeance than in the usual course of daily terrorism. At wartime the world public opinion gets uncomfortable with disturbing pictures of civilian casualties on the other side, and blames us for it, pressuring us to stop and not achieve our objectives. Hence, the decision to go to war is an unbearable burden on our leaders. Just yesterday, our PM, Olmert, justified himself to the mothers of Israel telling them that we tried everything else and were left with no choice but to put their sons lives at risk.

Every decent human being should accept that the only reason to go to war is to REMOVE A PRESENT OR IMMINENT DANGER, TO PREVENT A MUCH WORSE WAR. But isn’t it precisely the case here? We don’t have the hedonistic luxury some European leaders do, to agree to their calls for immediate ceasefire, just for the sake of getting a bit of quiet here and now. Not that haven’t tried it, we have practiced the tenuous art of restraint for three year, ignoring the suffering of our population, acting militarily on a small scale, negotiating temporary lulls to be repeatedly violated by Hamas (I think this restraint was a mistake, costing many more lives on both sides at this point).

Remember the last ceasefire? It lasted for six months, to be violated by Hamas some three weeks ago, which started this war, once they renewed shooting some 50-80 rockets a day – and then we restrained ourselves for another week, giving every chance to Egyptian and Turkish diplomacy before finally exercising our right of self-defense.

Most significantly, before the ceasefire the range of the missiles was just 10Km covering the town of Shderot and nearby Kibutzim, but during the ceasefire they increased their rockets capabilities reaching now to 40Km. To those who recall their geometry, that means that the area coverage increased by a factor of 4 squared = 16, now including new cities, a population of half a million in the range. Our fourth largest city, the biblical BeerSheeba has now joined the ballistic terror club.

They used the ceasefire to smuggle advanced arms and develop their missiles capabilities. Another ceasefire with their capabilities left intact, as your "diplomats" wish to force on us, and Hamas is bound to increase the range of the missiles to reach Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem and the Dimona nuclear reactor. It is strategic for our country to remove the threat now. Gaza is not the Folklands, Gaza is our back yard, which has become a gigantic Iranian base, a launching pad for rockets, the only state in the world directly controlled by a terrorist government. We are now straddled by two Iranian forward bases while Iran is developing its nuclear weapons, and if we did not respond to their aggression now, and we would just have absorbed 40-80 missiles a day, and let them further hone their offensive capabilities, the next aggression would inevitably be against Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, by means of long-range Gaza missiles, an all out-war.
When we pulled out of Gaza three years ago, we told you, we told the Palestinians that if they follow us with fire from the area pulled out from, we shall hit back with all our might. You nodded understandingly, agreed that we have the legitimacy of elementary self-defense, but you now pretend that you forgot. It is easy to be a bleeding heart for civilians on the other side when it is not your own head that is at risk, but what would you do if you were in our place?
In fact what are you doing in Afganistan, which is 5000 Km away, not 5 Km away? Are you not involved in a “disproportionate response” – the dumbest concept I have ever heard from Europeans. I recall well how you felt threatened by the mess in the Balkans, with Nato hitting hard in Kosovo, and inadvertently killing busloads of innocents, so don’t preach to us. In fact, there is no other air-force in the world, working so hard and smart to reduce the collateral damage. You have no idea – I shall tell you about the procedures and technologies another time. Percentage-wise you hit three or four times more innocents in Kosovo than we have in our air campaign. So don’t preach us.

A letter to Khaled Mish'al

by H. Gelbendorf
Comment to article published on the Guardian:
Mish’al, you are the leader of a terror organization. An organization that has made the destruction of Israel it’s primary goal.
It is not the well fare of the Palestinian people or the Arab nation that you and your fellow Hamas terrorists seek. It is the destruction of the only democratic nation in your region.
As part of the terror coalition, with your notorious allies such as Al-Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah and etc, you have made it clear that you will not cease your fire until you achieve the long term goal- the annihilation of the western culture.
As such you are using every possible tool in your arsenal… and this article is one of those tools as you understand the propaganda war, inside out… it is your strongest weapon.
Hamas has shot thousands of missiles directly into Israeli settlements, since Israel withdrawn its forces from Gaza 3 years ago. By shooting these missiles you had only one thing in mind- drive Israel’s restraint beyond the tipping point. And 10 days ago you managed to do so – and Israel attacked your forces in Gaza.
Why would you invite the Israeli military to attack you? Well it’s all part of your vicious and sarcastic plan… as I said before- we know- and the world should know too- it is not the well fare of your fellow Palestinians that you are seeking… The innocent Palestinians are another tool in your arsenal… maybe the most sarcastic and vicious tool of them all.
You are using the Palestinian people as human shield. Hiding in tunnels underneath their houses, storing weapons within their Masques, hiding within schools and hospitals…
You are inviting the Israelis to attack you, and in the process you are sacrificing the women and children of Palestine.
And from the moment that this war broke the game changed into a waiting game. You keep attacking Israeli citizens with your missiles, making sure that Israel will continue the operation, and trying to keep hanging there until the world will put enough pressure on Israel to stop killing the innocents…
You are hoping that a cease fire will be forced only on Israel, while you keep shooting your missiles, publicly humiliating Israel… but even if the cease fire will be forced on both sides, it wouldn’t be the first time that you will break an international agreement- as a terror organization you are not bound by them anyway- back to square one…
Mish’al,
The blood of the innocent Palestinian people is on your hands
The blood of the innocent Israeli people is on your hands
The world recognizes that!

Your plan will not succeed this time because this time even the Palestinian people are crying outloud against you and your terrorizing ways.
This time the Palestinians are willing to bare the sacrifices and eliminate the cancer called Hamas. Yes it is a painful and life risking treatment, but it is necessary in order to survive.

A quote from today’s Guardian article:
"As I ran I saw three of my children. All dead"
Hazem Balousha in Gaza City and Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Guardian, Published Tuesday 6 January 2009
"Hamas is responsible for this. They are starving us, now they are killing us," he said. "They asked the Israelis to enter but where is the resistance? They are hiding. All the leaders of Hamas are underground. It's just the civilians confronting the Israeli army. I don't like Hamas and I don't want them ruling Gaza."