Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Soccer Dad

Soccer Dad

The New York Times' Confused Attack On The Israeli Victims Of Hamas Terrorism

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 09:39 AM PDT

What is it about The New York Times and terrorists?


In June 2007, Ahmed Yousef--political adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, who became the prime minister the following year--wrote an editorial in the New York Times about What Hamas Wants.


A few days ago, The New York Times featured an op-ed by Ali Abunimah--described as an author, omitting the fact that Abunimah is the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, a partisan supporter of Hamas.


Abunimah tweeted his reaction to the terrorist attack:

Civilian deaths are always tragic. Israel must stop using civilian settlers as human shields for the land it is stealing

But when not giving a podium to terrorists and their supporters, The New York Times satisfies itself to do their work for them. In this case, they took Abunimah's lead and just blamed the victims:

Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders

The killing of four Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman, in the West Bank on Tuesday evening rattled Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the eve of peace talks in Washington and underscored the disruptive role that the issue of Jewish settlements could play in the already fragile negotiations.

In case anyone should miss the point, The New York Times stresses that these were no ordinary Israelis--no, they were settlers: Jews who by their very nature are being "disruptive". If only Israel would make one more concession and 'freeze' the settlements so that no building could be done on land that is likely destined to belong to Israel as part of a peace deal--if only Israel would do this, the attack would not have happened.


But wait! That's not their argument. After all, it is the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to be Israel's peace partners. They are the ones making the settlements into the issue. Hamas, on the other hand, has declared in their charter that they have no interest in peace with Israel at all, want to destroy Israel and replace it with another Muslim state.


Contrary to The New York Times, there are, in fact, two separate issues here


If The New York Times was being honest, they would recognize that the Hamas attack underscored the disruptive role that Islamic terrorism plays in the already fragile negotiations.


But being so friendly with the likes of Yousef and Abunimah apparently dampened their enthusiasm to take that approach.So they have to tiptoe around the issue of Hamas:

The military wing of Hamas, the Islamic group, claimed responsibility for the attack -- in which gunmen fired on a vehicle carrying two men and two women at a junction near the city of Hebron -- and described it on its Arabic Web site as a "heroic operation."

As far as The New York Times is concerned, Hamas is simply an "Islamic group"--an Islamic group that has a "military" wing, the kind that has "gunmen" (not soldiers). You know, gunmen who go around murdering civilians in cold blood.


But its the Jewish settlers who are disruptive.

According to The New York Times.


by Daled Amos

Where Are The Tapes Of Hamas Training Exercises For Killing Unarmed Civilians?

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 09:32 AM PDT

[T]he Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades take full responsibility for the heroic operation in Hebron.

Official statement by Hamas


I wonder what the point is.


I mean, we see videos of these exercises by both children and by adults: jumping through hoops of fire and other exotic training exercises.


But we never get to see the exercises where the fearless Hamas terrorists practice shooting unarmed men and women.


Why is that?


I suppose that since murdering unarmed people in cold blood is a specialty of Hamas, they probably do that training in secret. After all, no point in letting others know how much work goes into pulling a gun on an unarmed pregnant woman.


Who knows how much practice goes into shooting civilians, let alone perfecting the nerves of steel required to shoot from a distance before bravely getting close to finish the job.


I think I'd like to see those videos: those and the ones of these heroes getting rewarded by their leaders--the ones who during Operation Cast Lead hid in the basement of a hospital and left Gazans on their own without any bunkers.


by Daled Amos


Technorati Tag:  and .

30 days for being a nuisance

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:29 AM PDT

I didn't know that it was a crime to be a nuisance. But apparently it is.

Jersey Shore's Snooki Charged with Annoying People

Given the proliferation in recent years of celebrities and pseudo-celebrities, maybe this will solve the problem. Send them away for annoying people.

Right after I saw that, I saw that Meghan McCain just had a book published. Quick, we really need to get to started!

Go back to bed, hosni, you're delusional

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 04:20 AM PDT

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, (or a ghost writer) apparently has arisen from his sickbed to contribute an op-ed to the New York Times, A Peace Plan within our grasp. Among the elements of peace that Mubarak champion is:

First, we must safeguard the peace process from further outbreaks of violence. To that end Egypt stands ready to resume its efforts to resolve the many difficult issues surrounding Gaza: mediating a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas, which controls Gaza, bringing an end to Israel's blockade and fostering a reconciliation between Hamas and its rival Fatah, which controls the West Bank. All this is critical to achieving a two-state solution. The Palestinians cannot make peace with a house divided. If Gaza is excluded from the framework of peace, it will remain a source of conflict, undermining any final settlement.

(emphasis mine)

But Barry Rubin points out:

To show you are ready to accept a Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip and protect it from being overthrown is to ensure there is no basis for peace.

Note that Mubarak considers Hamas essential to peace but Israeli "settlements," including in Jerusalem "incompatible" with peace. Another example of the cbm imbalance.

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on the Times surely it's better than running an op-ed by a terror apologist like Ali Abuminah.

The "cbm" imbalance

Posted: 01 Sep 2010 03:41 AM PDT

The New York Times today reports Killing of Israeli Settlers Rattles Leaders.

First of all, they were not settlers, they were people. When terror attacks claim the lives of Jews living in Judea and Samaria, the Times can't keep its politics out of the reporting. I noticed this too, after the massacre of the Hatuel family. The Washington Post acknowledges the humanity of the victims, calling them Israelis.

I find this more than a little curious:

The Palestinian Authority also condemned the attacks, which occurred just before its president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. A Palestinian spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said the attack by Hamas, the authority's rival, underlined "the need to proceed quickly toward a just and lasting peace agreement," which he said would "put an end to these acts."

What is Rudeineh saying? Is that a "condemnation"?
Or is it simply another way of stating Ali Abuminah's disgusting tweet? Isn't he saying that unless agrees to Palestinian terms, Israel can expect a continuation of terror?

(Elder of Ziyon notes Fayyad's self serving "condemnation.")

The Times continues:

Even before the attack, settlements were looming as a potential deal-breaker in the peace process. Mr. Netanyahu has steadfastly refused to commit to extending a partial moratorium on construction in the West Bank, which expires Sept. 26, while Mr. Abbas has said it will be very hard to keep talking if construction resumes. Mr. Netanyahu has not struck any private deals with President Obama or anyone else on the moratorium, American and Israeli officials said.

Compare that with this sentence towards the end:

The stop-and-go Israeli-Palestinian peace process has often taken place in the shadow of bloody attacks.

So the peaceful building of Jewish communities (in places where the Palestinians, (admittedly) don't want them is considered a "dealbreaker." However terrorism only casts a "shadow" on the peace process?

This is the problem with cbm's. Actions that Israel is deemed obligated to take, take on the force of a commitment. Or, more precisely, the failure for Israel to do so, is regarded as an unforgivable breach in the peace process. Whereas when the Palestinians regularly fail in something basic to peace - like stopping terror or incitement - it's treated like a nuisance, sometimes barely worth mentioning.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Interesting but Nonsense, courtesy of the NY Times

Posted: 31 Aug 2010 10:20 PM PDT

The NY Times is out to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even though its editorial writers will then have to scrounge for new subject matter. No matter, it forges ahead with two ambitious recent offerings. The first of these two articles has the confident title "How to Handle Hamas":

If Hamas cannot be uprooted, it might be convinced to not disrupt peace talks with violence and tone down its rhetoric. In order for Hamas to want a lasting cease-fire, Israel and its allies must change the organization's decision-making calculus -- a process that will require both incentives and threats.

One way to go about this would be for Israel to allow the regular flow of goods into Gaza with international, rather than Israeli, monitors manning the crossing points. Israeli intelligence would still watch what goes in and out to ensure that the monitors did their job, but symbolically the switch would be important.

In exchange, Hamas would commit to a lasting cease-fire and agree to stop all attacks from the territory under its control. Hamas would also close the tunnels and end its smuggling.

Such a deal would allow Hamas to claim credit for improving the lives of Gazans, and it could use the resulting increase in the flow of goods to reward its supporters. For Israel, the regular rocket attacks would come to a complete halt and the threat of renewed attacks would diminish. A cease-fire would also free up Israel diplomatically. If the problem of Hamas receded, Israel could take more risks at the negotiating table with Abbas.

And exactly why would Hamas go along with this? It isn't as if this could be our secret strategy. Hamas not only undoubtedly reads the NY Times, its leaders also occasionally contribute to the Washington Post. What Hamas has said would entice it to offer a "lasting cease fire," if it is even being honest there, are the sorts of concessions that two-state-solution proponents envision as being made in exchange for permanent peace. The blockade (and the possibility of its cessation) is already a combination of incentive and threat. Hamas has a clear sense of its overarching goals and an advanced martyrdom ethic. The notion that it could be molded so easily with the ultimate end of defeating its long-term aims is condescending. They may be fascists, but they aren't children.

The Gray Lady also offers an odd bit of triangulation that attempts to enlist supporters of Israel in the anti-settler cause. Religious Zionists, we learn, threaten "Herzl's Zionist vision":

Herzl's view stemmed from the ideals of the Enlightenment and the tradition of democratic national liberation movements, dating back to the American and French Revolutions; religious settlers are steeped in blood-and-soil nationalism. Herzl never doubted that Israeli Arabs should have full and equal rights. For religious settlers, Arabs are an alien element in the organic unity of Jews and their land.

The consequences of these differences are huge. If the settlers achieve their manifest goal -- making Israel's hold on the territories permanent -- it will mean the de facto annexation of a huge Arab population and will force a decision about their status . . .

Israel would have to choose between remaining democratic but not Jewish, or remaining Jewish by becoming non-democratic. Israel's enemies have long maintained that Zionism is racism and that Israel is an apartheid state. If the settlers succeed, they will turn this lie into truth.

If the alternative is a land-for-peace deal, it isn't clear that settling parts of the West Bank hurt the prospects for one. And that is assuming that there are prospects for one under any circumstances. If your enemies want to shrink you to nothingness through endless war, it makes sense to grow--especially within your smallish traditional homeland.

And whether settlers are "steeped in blood-and-soil nationalism" (whatever that means) or not, Palestinians certainly support despots. I like actual democracy in my democratic vision. So what will Israel do if ceding the West Bank will never be anything other than what the Gaza withdrawal was: a bloodless military victory for Israel's enemies? Reviling settlers, or a cartoon labeled "settlers," doesn't solve the problem, or even grapple with it. Somehow it also doesn't begin to exhaust the possibilities for faintly inane opinionating.

Crossposted on Judeopundit
Posted by Soccer Dad at 10:04 PM

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