Israel

The Vile Cynthia McKinney

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Traveling to Gaza in a stunt to aid Hamas, she complains because the Israeli navy damaged her boat. I would suggest that she got off lightly.

The activists, organized by the Free Gaza Group, said their 66-foot yacht called “SS Dignity” would defy an Israeli blockade of Gaza and ferry 16 activists and three tons of Cypriot-donated supplies. The supplies are intended to help treat the wounded from Israeli bombings against targets in Gaza, in retaliation for rocket fire aimed at civilians in southern Israeli towns.

She cared not at all when Hamas thugs were daily bombarding Israeli towns in an attempt to kill as many Jews as possible. Only when Israel defended itself was her sense of justice aroused.

Daily life near Gaza:

Moshe Turgeman spent a lot of time in Gaza before the intifada. Not only did he serve in the Israeli army there, but he used to get drinks and hang out in area frequently. “There are good people in Gaza ,” he tells me. Hearing this is rather remarkable because in August 2006, Moshe’s house took a direct hit from a Qassam rocket launched from Gaza . He managed to get his kids to safety but he was injured in the attack. I ask Moshe what life is like in Sderot today. “It’s not life,” he responds. His children are scared, he fears going outside and his disability has made it impossible to work. There were times, Moshe says, when he thought the warning siren was broken because it sounded non-stop for hours. “Forty-eight Qassams fell in a single day,” he says. “The scariest thing is that sometimes they fall without an alert—at any moment.” Moshe knows of what he speaks. One day he was ironing a shirt on the upper floor of his modest apartment. In an instant, a rocket fell meters from him and shrapnel nearly pierced his heart. He shows me the jagged hole in the window next to which he was standing during the attack. “It’s not life” he repeats.

The Commentary article from which the above quote is taken is worth reading in full.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

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For the past few days, Israel has been conducting military operations against terrorist targets inside Gaza. This is in response to Hamas launching repeated rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets.

Although very interesting, events are still unfolding so I don’t want to discuss the current chapter of Israeli-Hamas conflict right now. But I thought you might be interested to know that Egyptian border guards have reportedly opened fire on Palestinians that have broken through the border defenses between Gaza and Egypt. (Hat tip to Glenn.)

No deaths have been reported, which indicates to me that the Egyptians really aren’t trying that hard to reseal the border. But I note with a great deal of Schadenfreude that the Egyptians probably wish they had built something like the Israeli security fence. You know, the same barrier that was condemned by Egypt back when construction was beginning.

Will Egypt begin building a similar barrier along their 9 mile border with Gaza? To be frank, I really doubt the Egyptians have the kind of money it would take to construct something as effective. But I think they will start to do what they can to beef up what they have.

The world press wasn’t very sympathetic to Israel when they started to build their security barrier. What do you want to bet that they won’t bother to report any activity by Egypt to seal their own border with Gaza?

Good Times!

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Caroline Glick offers a grim preview of US policy towards Iran, Syria and Israel in the Age of Obama.

I used to think that Glick was shrill and alarmist. Unfortunately, she has been right about most of the big issues facing Israel since the late ’90s. We’ll know within a few months if she’s wrong now. I hope so, but I doubt it.

The Choice

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A vote for Obama on Tuesday is not just a vote for Obama himself, but rather a vote for the triumvirate Obama-Pelosi-Reid…a vote to transfer enormous power to the leadership of the Democratic Party.

I’m convinced that across multiple sets of issues, the country will be far better off with a victory for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Here are some of the key factors as I see them:

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Israelis Support John McCain

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…most of them do, anyhow. Polls show that 70% of Israelis would vote for McCain if they were eligible to vote in the U.S. election.

And some of them are. There are an estimated 40,000 Americans residing in Israel who are eligible to cast absentee ballots, and many of them will be voting in swing states. The chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel predicts a 75% vote for McCain, although other reports show a large number of undecideds.

From a Weekly Standard article via Soccer Dad:

We respect war heroes in Israel, especially those like McCain who were POWs,” notes Mitchell Barak, managing director of the Jerusalem-based Keevoon Research, Strategy & Communications. “We see Obama fantasizing about how he wants to sit down and talk to the terrorists, and he loses a lot of Israelis right there. He comes off as unrealistic and insensitive to the existential challenges facing the Jewish state, and as naïve.”

Naïve, indeed. It’s a theme that popped up frequently when I mentioned Obama’s name. Obama lacks experience. Obama doesn’t understand how to deal with terrorists in general, and radical Islamic terrorists in particular. Obama thinks a court of law is the right forum for dealing with terrorists. Obama thinks the U.N. is a dandy place to solve difficult problems. Obama would have happily lost the Iraq war. Obama would cede regional hegemony to the Iranians. And so on.

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