HAMAS in the News

In the past, I have said that Hamas is evil. So far, I have seen nothing to dissuade me of that opinion. See the Human Rights Watch video that discloses a new underbelly of evil.

Celebrating Barbarism

Islam, at least the way Palestinian Arabs practice it, is a religion of Jew-hatred. After the horrible mass murder of Jewish seminary students, did the Palestinian Arabs mourn? No, they celebrated.

To his credit, Palestinian President Abbas condemned all attacks on civilians. But the Palestinian people celebrated.

Gaza Conflict Explained

What is the difference between the Israeli attacks on Gaza which killed innocent civilians and the HAMAS massacre of seminary students?

Simple.

Israel's intended targets were the terrorists themselves. After all, terrorists had been sending shrapnel-filled rockets onto civilian populations. If your neighborhood were the target of rockets, what would you expect your government to do?

HAMAS's intended targets were innocent seminary students.

The bad folks at the ironically named "Cross Cultural Understanding" web site calls HAMAS's mass murder of innocent students a "counter-attack." Evil.

Gaza Conflict

In the course of researching the horrible mass murders approved by HAMAS within a Jewish seminary, I ran across references to the killing of 120 including many civilians by the Israelis in a raid in North Gaza that I had not previously heard about. I will continue looking for credible reports on what that is about, but so far it sounds pretty terrible and has been underreported by the Western press. Updates to come when I have reliable information on this.

Update from from the AP reported March 2:

Early today, Israeli aircraft destroyed the office building in Gaza City used by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, witnesses said. Five people were lightly wounded in the raid.

At least two dozen Palestinian civilians, including a baby, were among those killed Saturday, and militants said 25 fighters died. Health officials said about 200 people were wounded, 14 of them critically.

The overall death toll was the highest in a single day since the current round of violence erupted in September 2000. The highest previous death toll was 38 on March 8, 2002.

The intense fighting pushed the Palestinian death toll to more than 80 since fighting flared Wednesday. About half of those were civilians.

While expressing regret for civilian casualties, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak blamed "Hamas and those firing rockets at Israel," his office said in a statement, pledging to continue the offensive to protect Israeli towns and cities.

On Friday, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai renewed a threat to invade Gaza to crush militant rocket squads that attack southern Israel daily.

Palestinian fighters kept up a steady stream of rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli targets, firing around 50 on Saturday alone in defiance of the Israeli assault. Six Israelis were injured by rockets that reached as far as Ashkelon, a coastal city 11 miles north of Gaza.

The Israeli military said one of its airstrikes on northern Gaza targeted a parked truck loaded with 160 rockets.

On Thursday, militants raised the stakes by firing Iranian-made rockets into Ashkelon, striking closer to Israel's heartland than ever before and putting more Israelis at risk. Palestinian rocket fire earlier in the week also killed an Israeli man.

Here is a follow up from AFP on March 4:

GAZA CITY (AFP) — Israeli warplanes early Tuesday carried out raids on the north of the Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinians and wounding two others, a Palestinian medical source said.

Israel had vowed on Monday to keep hitting Gaza even as troops pulled out of the Hamas-run territory after clashes that killed more than 120 Palestinians and dealt a major blow to Middle East peace talks.

A first raid against Gaza City killed one person while the second further north killed one and wounded two. The victims were not immediately identified.

A military spokesman in Tel Aviv told AFP that the Israeli air force had "attacked a group of terrorists who were preparing to fire rockets at Israel."

An Israeli military source said a rocket fired from the Beit Hanoun district north of Gaza City on Tuesday had smashed into a house in the southern Israeli town of Sderot, but nobody was hurt.

"We are not prepared to show any tolerance, period. And we will respond. Our reaction is not limited to a specific operation or day," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of his Kadima party in Jerusalem on Monday.

"The operation will not end before we achieve our goals and our first goal is a significant reduction of Qassam and Grad rocket fire against Israeli civilians," he said, referring to rockets used by Gaza militants.

It is tragic when civilians get killed in fighting between militants. It is hard to assess this situation though, knowing that Palestinian Islamic militants have been known to use innocent Muslim women and children as shields.

It is terrible when innocents lose their lives as "collateral damage." It does not appear that Israel is targeting innocents, but is instead targeting terrorists, killing innocents in the process. The level of civilians killed must be condemned.

It is evil, even Satanic, to deliberately target innocents as HAMAS did in the Jewish seminar, and then laud the action.

Further Update: As bad as the Israeli actions appear to be in terms of the loss of innocent life, it is as if HAMAS want to prove that HAMAS is worse.

Arab Initiative

Is the Arab initiative the answer to bring peace to the Middle East? Alon Ben-Meir, professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU, discusses it in an article in American Chronicle brought to my attention by Mahmoud El-Yousseph.

The Arab initiative would result in Israel withdrawing from the "occupied territories" and establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. Professor Ben-Meir says,

Third, since there are many extremist Arab groups, such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, that oppose the peace process, only the collective Arab political will can rein in by any means these groups. Moreover, without such a collective effort, it will be impossible to successfully combat terrorism unless the communities that support such terrorists groups are alienated from their leadership. Here too, only the Arab states working in concert can bring about the communal socio-economic and political change, in combination with force if necessary, to achieve that objective.

...

To be sure, the Arab states have decided to reintroduce the Initiative because of their heightened vulnerability emanating from the convergence of events resulting from the war in Iraq and its explosive regional potential. They see an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict as a precondition to effectively addressing many of the problems that have plagued the Middle East, stabilizing the region, and securing their regimes. But the Arab leaders, other than those from Egypt and Jordan, which are at peace with Israel, (assigned by the Arab League to pursue the Initiative with Israel), must not sit on their hands and wait. They too must reach out to Israel and demonstrate that their Initiative is genuine and are ready to engage the Israelis on any level while remaining true to the Initiative’s principles.

I remain skeptical that any such initiative could have a lasting effect. The problem lies in the roots of political Islam. How can Israel, the United States, or anyone else capitulate with a truce that, following the example of Muhammed, need last only 10 years and, it being a truce with non-believers, is not considered binding upon believers? In other words, Islam as believed by the radical elements (and perhaps by many who are not so radical) creates a situation that make long term trust of Islamic states very, very difficult if not impossible.

To make it work, to make it acceptable, the Arab states must find an extraordinary means to create a reason for trust. A daunting task to be sure.