Middle East

Attack Israel, Collect $400 Million

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The USA promises a new financial aid package for Gaza, which means Hamas:

Obama described the situation in Gaza as “unsustainable”, saying a better approach was needed and calling for a “new conceptual framework” for Israel’s blockade. A White House statement said the new funds “represent a down payment on the United States’ commitment to Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve a better life and expanded opportunities, and the chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank”.
 
The money will go towards infrastructure projects in both Gaza and the West Bank, including $10m for the construction of new UN schools. It did not explain how the schools will be built while Israel maintains its embargo on construction materials entering Gaza, claiming they could be diverted to make weapons and build underground bunkers.
 
Earlier this week the UK government promised an extra £19m in aid. Israel today announced extra items it would allow into Gaza, including crisps, canned fruit, packaged hummus and shaving foam.
 
“They will send the first course. We are waiting for the main course,” the Palestinian economy minister, Hassan Abu Libdeh, was quoted in the Israeli media as saying. “We are waiting for this unjust siege to end.”

When you subsidize something you get more of it. This new subsidy package effectively rewards Israel’s enemies for their recent 4GW attack. Further attacks are now even more likely than they would be otherwise (i.e., our initial weak response could only embolden the Iranian-Syrian-Turkish-Palestinian axis, an actual cash payoff will embolden them further).

The Turkish government is no doubt anticipating its own fat envelope, courtesy of US taxpayers.

Note also the Palestinian economy minister’s attitude of entitlement. Keeping the Palestinians on welfare helps to maintain their hostility to Israel. If they had to work for a living they might be forced to be more accommodating. (Martin Kramer makes a related argument.)

Helen Thomas the Harbinger

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Today, Helen Thomas’s racist comments forced her retirement. This is not a victory. It is a harbinger.

Within five years at most, those very same comments will be accepted wisdom by the leftmost 1/3 of the American political spectrum and they will routinely voice such views in the public discourse without shame or remorse. No one will lose their job because they advocate the destruction of Israel.

The evolution has already begun. Scan the comments on the story at Huffington Post. Clearly many on the left already don’t find those sentiments shocking or beyond the pale.

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Where the Carpet Ends

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The worldwide attacks on Israel, in the wake of the Gaza event, are frightening in their venom and irrationality, and I fear that these responses mark a significant turning toward the abandonment of civilization’s ramparts and the appeasement of terrorist and rogue-state barbarism. Daniel Henninger of the WSJ has a roundup here. He notes that:

For starters, denouncing Israel for something like this is convenient for leaders who have failed repeatedly to do anything about more important and difficult problems such as Iran, North Korea or sovereign debt. Also, lesser nations learn by example: The Obama administration’s unrestrained criticism of the Israeli government in March over East Jerusalem settlements lowered the threshold for teeing off on Israel.

…and expresses particular concern about the comments made by Catherine Ashton, EU “high representative for foreign affairs,” who demanded “an immediate, sustained, and unconditional opening” of the Gaza blockade. Henninger notes that:

Until High Representative Ashton’s demand to end the blockade, the EU had been party to a clear, explicit policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian impasse. Since 2002, a group known as the Quartet—consisting of the EU, Russia, the U.S. and the U.N., with Tony Blair as its current special envoy—has said that no one could deal with Hamas, the occupier of Gaza, until Hamas fulfilled three conditions: Recognize Israel’s right to exist. Renounce violence. Accept agreements already made by previous Palestinian negotiators.

Hamas hasn’t met any of those conditions. After Ms. Ashton’s outburst, it knows it doesn’t have to.

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“Peace Activists”

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…armed with knives, bats, and metal pipes. Read Pamela Geller’s coverage of the Gaza “peace flotilla” incident.

Also see video at Maggie’s Farm, where Bruce Kesler comments:

The convoy was not humanitarian in intent or action. It was a blatant political propaganda ploy, intentionally belligerent in leadership, word and deed, to provoke in order to pressure Israel to commit suicide, opening Gaza’s borders to the type of infusion of deadly weapons and missiles for Hamas to attack Israel that flows unimpeded into Lebanon.

Any who defend the convoy or its passengers are actually furthering avoidable death and war.

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Israel Does Not Understand 4GW

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Israel and HAMAS flotilla
The story du jour.

Having previously failed to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza that denies HAMAS war material and economic aid, a coalition of Islamists, Palestinian nationalists and Western Leftists used ships of Turkish registry. The IDF took the bait and blundered into an ambush where the commandos were promptly swarmed by the “peace activists”, overpowered (!) and then had to bloodily shoot their way out of a debacle.

RealClearPolitics has a better video.

Taking stock of this bit of guerrilla theater gone lethal, let’s see what the supporters of HAMAS terrorism gained:

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