Thursday, January 29, 2009

Parroting Arab Propaganda

The Fairfield Sun published the article below January 22. The reporter apparently accurately quoted an anti-Israel propagandist, but nowhere was there any reference to the absurdity of the quotes.

We follow the full text by repeating some quotes along with comments about them.

Of particular interest is the repetition of a fraudulent quote falsely attributed to Moshe Yaalon.

The email address for letters to the Fairfield Sun is Fairfieldsun@hersamacorn.com.



Gaza violence sparks clash of opinions at home



Written by Chandler Niles Folsom

THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2009

Israelis pulled troops out of Gaza in time for President Barack Obama's inauguration Tuesday, following a cease fire that ended its 22-day military offensive against Hamas. The fighting took place in the 144-square mile area where about 1.5 million people live.

Israel launched its offensive against Gaza on Dec. 27, announcing it wanted to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that Palestinian fatalities have exceeded 1,000, with more than half of them civilians including women and children, and nearly 5,000 have been wounded.

Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, have been killed in the fighting, according to the Israeli Army.

At an Arab summit in Kuwait, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for a national unity government between his Fatah movement and Hamas - in control of Gaza since 2006 - followed by simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections.

On Jan. 9, the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution calling for both parties to observe an immediate cease-fire. The vote was 14-0 with the U.S. abstaining.

Within days, U.N. headquarters in Gaza was hit by Israeli military fire, halting the supply of food and medicine to residents. The facility stored oil tanks used by area hospitals. A U.N. run school was also hit by mortar fire, killing dozens.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon toured the devastated territory Jan. 13 and demanded an investigation.

International aid groups reported a humanitarian crisis as shortages of food, water and medicine in Gaza continued to take their toll on civilians. Fifty thousand Palestinians are now homeless in Gaza, according to recent reports.

According to a Jan. 9 Israeli survey, more than 91% of Israel's Jewish population backs the military actions, with less than 4 percent voicing opposition.

There have been widespread protests against Israel's operation across the Middle East as well as in European cities. On an audiotape released Jan. 14, Osama bin Laden called for jihad in response to Israel's actions in Gaza.

In our area, people from both the Jewish and Arab communities are voicing their opinions.

'The situation in Gaza can be described in a reversed Biblical term of David and Goliath, in which the defenseless civilian Palestinian community in Gaza are being massacred by the powerful and merciless well equipped Israeli army,' says Palestinian-American Khalil Sakakini, a Fairfield engineer.

Sakakini is also a member of the Arab American Anti- Discrimination Committee.

'Israel is a democracy that lives in a very challenging neighborhood,' says Laurie Gross, a member of Fairfield's Congregation Beth El. 'Since its creation as a modern state, Israel has been under attack from her Arab neighbors. If the Arabs put down their guns there would be peace. If Israel put down her guns there would be no Israel.'

Gross is also director of community relations and Israel advocacy with the Jewish Federation of Eastern Fairfield County.

Rocket launchings Was Israel's response to the Hamas rocket launchings an appropriate course of action?

'The use of Israeli Navy, Air Force and ground forces equipped with sophisticated American-made weapons against feeble home-made unguided rockets is totally disproportionate,' says Sakakini, adding that he does not think Hamas should have launched the rockets. 'By the same token, Israel should lift the embargo and stop the indiscriminate killing of the Palestinian community in Gaza.'

Gross views the situation differently.

'Israel, who has long supported a two-state solution with Jews and Arabs living side by side with peace and security, has endured more than eight years under continual attack,' she says. 'No country should sit back while its citizens are under daily attack.'

According to Gross, towns in the southern part of Israel have seen their populations traumatized by daily rocket attacks, and the majority of people living there suffer from stress and trauma, especially the children.

'During the day, school children, their parents and the elderly are all forced to run for bomb shelters on a regular basis,' says Gross. ' Add to this the fact that Hamas targets schools and hospitals, Israel has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens by whatever means is necessary.'

Sakakini says the same is happening to the Palestinian people.

'The whole infrastructure is being destroyed, including schools, places of worships, residential sections,' he says. 'Israel wants to impose a situation on the Palestinians in which Israel has a military domination.'

Sakakini says most of the people living in Gaza are members of families that were driven out of their towns and villages from what is today Israel by the Israeli army in 1948.

'These people lived under the Israeli occupation since 1967,' he says. 'Although the Israeli army and settlers left the strip in 2005, Israel still controls all accesses to the strip. Israel's army can enter the strip at will.'

Gross says the problem stems from Hamas calling for the destruction of the State of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish people, wherever they live.

'They are backed by Iran, who has vowed to wipe Israel off the map,' says Gross. 'Where is the outrage at the nauseating anti-Semitic teaching of tiny children in Gaza, instructing toddlers to die as martyrs while murdering Jews?'

Sakakini counters that the Israeli Defense Force's chief of staff stated that the Palestinians must be made to understand on a primal level that they are a defeated people.

'This can be seen in everyday life of the Palestinians in terms of restriction of movement of Palestinians and goods between Palestinian cities in the West Bank,' he says. 'Palestinians have to go through the humiliation of unnecessary check points. The Israeli occupation has caused an incalculable damage to the growth of the Palestinian economy and its infrastructure.'

Gross says that the Israeli government has made many concessions for peace, voluntarily removing 9,000 civilians from Gaza and the West Bank, in the hope of renewing the peace process and understands that the checkpoints create hardships for many Palestinians.

'Israel is not perfect in its treatment of Palestinians,' concedes Gross. 'But Israel is a country of laws... Despite making many overtures for peace, Israel continues to face non-stop terrorist attacks.'

Sakakini thinks that Israel propagandists convinced the media that Israel's war in Gaza is against the rocket launchers, but that the actual situation paints a different picture.

'Unfortunately the only peace that Israel wants... is a piece of land in which more illegal settlements are being built, roads that only Jewish settlers living in the West Bank settlements and the Israeli army can travel on, and the latest wall of shame that Israel is building on Palestinian land,' says Sakakini. 'This wall is separating farmers from their lands and homes, water resources and any natural growth of towns and cities.'

He believes the Bush Administration's policies in the region didn't help the situation.

'The Road Map that the Bush Administration pursued is nothing but a delaying tactic to help Israel enforce reality on the ground and thus give little to nothing to the Palestinians,' he says.

Gross thinks that Bush's call for elections in Gaza was premature and led to a disaster.

'Elections do not make a democracy,' she says. 'Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and a grateful friend to the United States, no matter who the administration is. All of the United States' administrations have recognized the shared values of Americans and Israelis, and for the most part have all been supportive.'

Biblical roots The Palestinian thinks that the situation between the two peoples can be described in terms of a family inheritance.

'The Zionist movement used the Bible to get the entitlement for the land.' he says. 'As we all know, Abraham became the father of the Arab tribes and Isaac became the father of the Hebrew tribes - thus, this land belongs to both the Arabs and the Jews. The issue is not Arabs against Jews - the issue is about inheritance.'

Will the warring family ever call a truce?

'If the Palestinians want peace and their own state, which, by the way, they could have had in 1947, they must be willing to renounce violence,' says Gross.

'As long as there are Palestinian people, there should be a Palestine,' says Sakakini. 'Israel can't eliminate the millions of Palestinians around the world.'

Can a two-state solution provide lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians?

'The vast majority of Jews and Israelis have supported the two-state solution,' says Gross, who has traveled to Israel 17 times. 'What they need, however, is a partner for peace, not a terrorist enemy that preaches its destruction.'

'I have been talking about a two-state solution with the Jewish American community in Texas, where I lived for 19 years, before the official negotiation even started between the PLO and Israel based on pre-1967 borders,' says Sakakini.

But despite their deeply rooted opinions, neither has given up hope.

'I have a great love for this country and look forward to the day when Arab and Jewish children can play together all day and never need to run for a bomb shelter,' concludes Gross.

'There is room for both the Palestinians and Israelis to co-exist as equals, not as one subordinating and occupying the other,' Sakakini offers. 'Any true negotiations must be based on compromises and concessions from both sides to achieve the more illusive peace.'


We now repeat some quotes and comment on them.



Quote: "Israel launched its offensive against Gaza on Dec. 27, announcing it wanted to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel.."

Comment: There's a good reason Israel made that announcement: it wanted to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel. (Unlike the misinformation that comes from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, when Israel makes a statement it's generally true.)




Quote: "The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported that Palestinian fatalities have exceeded 1,000, with more than half of them civilians including women and children, and nearly 5,000 have been wounded."

Comment: The number of civilian casualties was grossly exaggerated by Hamas.

As reported at :

"A continuing IDF investigation into the number of civilian Palestinian casualties during the Israeli offensive in Gaza indicated that only 250 of the fatalities were civilians.

"The military estimates that between 1,100 and 1,200 people were killed during the offensive. Some 700 of are believed to be militants and most are believed to be Hamas operatives."




Quote: "Within days, U.N. headquarters in Gaza was hit by Israeli military fire, halting the supply of food and medicine to residents. The facility stored oil tanks used by area hospitals. A U.N. run school was also hit by mortar fire, killing dozens."

Comment: Hamas combatants fired at Israeli troops either from or near those facilities; Israel returned fire. It's been an unfortunate fact of like that the United Nations has effectively sheltered and even employed terrorists.




Quote: "'The situation in Gaza can be described in a reversed Biblical term of David and Goliath, in which the defenseless civilian Palestinian community in Gaza are being massacred by the powerful and merciless well equipped Israeli army,' says Palestinian-American Khalil Sakakini, a Fairfield engineer."

Comment: The "defenseless" Arabs in Gaza have managed to launch more than 7,000 rockets and thousands of mortar rounds at Israeli cities and towns over the last few years.

There is no massacre; there is and has been a very restrained effort by Israel to end the reign of rockets launched from Gaza at Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beersheva.




Quote: "'The use of Israeli Navy, Air Force and ground forces equipped with sophisticated American-made weapons against feeble home-made unguided rockets is totally disproportionate,' says Sakakini, adding that he does not think Hamas should have launched the rockets. 'By the same token, Israel should lift the embargo and stop the indiscriminate killing of the Palestinian community in Gaza.'."

Comment: Far from being disproportionate, Israel's defensive measures have thus far been insufficient. Hamas and other terror groups continue to attack Israel and Israeli civilians within Israel, killing one soldier with a bomb after the so-called cease-fire and launching two Kassam rockets at Israel.

There is no "indiscriminate killing" by Israel; even during the recent operation, Israel went to great lengths to avoid harming civilians - the opposite of Hamas' strategy of targeting civilians.

To expect Israel to allow goods to pass freely from Israel into a hostile, Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip is absurd. The call by Sakakini is also incredibly hypocritical, given the Arab boycott of Israel.




Quote: "'The whole infrastructure is being destroyed, including schools, places of worships, residential sections,' he says. 'Israel wants to impose a situation on the Palestinians in which Israel has a military domination.."

Comment: Hamas and other Arab terror groups used schools, mosques, homes and hospitals to store weapons and ammunition, protect terrorists and launch attacks. At least one mosque was destroyed not by an Israeli bomb, but from the secondary explosions that occurred when the munitions stored in the mosque were hit by the bomb.




Quote: "Sakakini says most of the people living in Gaza are members of families that were driven out of their towns and villages from what is today Israel by the Israeli army in 1948."

Comment: Most of the Arabs who moved to Gaza did so either because of the violence of the war the Arabs started or because they were encouraged to do so by their Arab brethren.




Quote: "'These people lived under the Israeli occupation since 1967,' he says. 'Although the Israeli army and settlers left the strip in 2005, Israel still controls all accesses to the strip. Israel's army can enter the strip at will.."

Comment: Most of Gaza was given over to the Palestinian Authority back in 1994 and Israel left completely in 2005. The Arabs in Gaza have been living under their own (oppressive) government since 1994, not under any so-called occupation.

Israel, like other countries, controls its side of its border with Gaza, but does not control Gaza's border with Egypt.




Quote: "Sakakini counters that the Israeli Defense Force's chief of staff stated that the Palestinians must be made to understand on a primal level that they are a defeated people."

Comment: Sakakini is referring to a fictitious quote, conjured up by Arab propagandists. He is referring to Moshe Yaalon, who actually said something quite different, almost the opposite, that the Palestinian Arabs must be made to understand the Israelis are NOT a defeated people.

The bogus quote is discussed by CAMERA at .




Quote: "Sakakini thinks that Israel propagandists convinced the media that Israel's war in Gaza is against the rocket launchers, but that the actual situation paints a different picture."

Comment: The Israelis could distribute a Kassam that had been launched from Gaza to every family living in Sderot (the primary target) and still have plenty left over. No country can tolerate such attacks. Obviously Israel had to act; obviously, since rockets are still being launched at Sderot, Israel still has to act.




Quote: "'Unfortunately the only peace that Israel wants... is a piece of land in which more illegal settlements are being built, roads that only Jewish settlers living in the West Bank settlements and the Israeli army can travel on, and the latest wall of shame that Israel is building on Palestinian land,' says Sakakini. 'This wall is separating farmers from their lands and homes, water resources and any natural growth of towns and cities.."

Comment: Israel totally left Gaza, uprooting thousands of Israelis. Israel has handed over to the Palestinian Authority disputed territory in the West Bank in which approximately 95 percent of the Palestinian Arabs live. In return, Arabs launched a wave of terror attacks and the government was forced to build a fence by parents who were tired of having their children blown apart in shopping malls, discotheques and pizza parlors.




Quote: "'As long as there are Palestinian people, there should be a Palestine,' says Sakakini. 'Israel can't eliminate the millions of Palestinians around the world.'."

Comment: Only when the Palestine Arabs agree to establish it will another Palestinian Arab state (in addition to the existing one of Jordan) be established.




Quote: "'There is room for both the Palestinians and Israelis to co-exist as equals, not as one subordinating and occupying the other,' Sakakini offers. 'Any true negotiations must be based on compromises and concessions from both sides to achieve the more illusive peace.'."

Comment: This is actually true. Unfortunately, while Israel has already made tremendous compromises and concessions, the Palestinian Authority continues to cling to the same extreme demands they were making in 1993.

It does take two sides to make peace. As long as Israel continues to be the only side prepared to make peace, there will be conflict, including suffering and death.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Between the Lines: Abbas Again Confirms He's Not a Partner for Peace

It seems that every time Abu Mazen opens his mouth he demonstrates he really is just a bumbling version of Yasser Arafat in a suit.



Abbas: We will prove Israeli war crimes



Palestinian president vows to tell US envoy Mitchell that Israel is not serious about peace, says he will back efforts to prosecute Israel for war crimes 'that would make your skin crawl'
Reuters

[He might be able to get more bigots to falsely claim Israel committed war crimes, but it's extremely difficult to prove something false.]


Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed on Tuesday to take a tough stance in talks with Israel and said he would tell a US envoy that Israel's Gaza offensive proved it was not intent on peacemaking.

[I look forward to watching his nose grow.]


Abbas also said he would back international efforts to prosecute Israel for war crimes. "We will do all we can to prove Israel committed crimes that would make your skin crawl," Abbas said, referring to the Geneva Conventions. "We want the world to give us justice for once.

[The injustices of six decades of Arab war and terror can never be rectified.

The injustices of a decade of Kassam and Grad rockets launched from Gaza, not only by Hamas and Islamic Jihad but also by members of the Fatah terror group led by Abbas, directed at Israeli Sderot, Ashkelon and other Israeli cities and towns can never be rectified.]


"Israel does not want peace, otherwise it would not have done this. We need to understand this and tell it to those coming from Europe and America. Israel wants to waste time to strengthen facts on the ground with settlements and the wall."

[Translation: The only way Israel can prove to me it's interested in peace is to leave us alone while we slaughter Jews.]


Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday promised Israeli military personnel state protection, in anticipation of various efforts to prosecute soldiers abroad.

Israel said its aim was to stop rocket fire into Israel from the Gaza Strip, which has been outside Abbas' control and in the hands of his Islamist rivals Hamas since June 2007.

Hamas survived Israel's onslaught, accusing its rivals in the Arab world of being "collaborators" who bet on Israel destroying the group. Hamas accuses the US-backed Abbas and his Arab allies of getting nothing in peace talks with Israel.

[Abbas has been offered tremendous concessions; he's just been unwilling to accept them. (Of course, he's also unable to deliver, so even if he signed an agreement it would be meaningless.)

Actually, Abbas bet on both sides. On the one hand, he rooted for Israel to destroy Hamas; on the other hand, he constantly undermined Israel's efforts.

On the one hand, he took advantage of the fighting in Gaza to crack down on his Hamas rivals in the West Bank. On the other hand, terrorists from his Fatah faction joined Hamas in fighting Israel in Gaza and in launching Kassam and Grad rockets at Israeli cities.]


"We want a state in the 1967 borders, a fair solution to the refugee issue, removal of settlements. There will be no going beyond these points or bargaining," said Abbas, on the defensive in the Arab world before Hamas' rhetoric of "resistance."

[There were no 1967 borders.

A fair solution to the phony settlement issue simply involves the Palestinian Authority starting to move the decendents of refugees out of the camps and into real homes.

Removal of settlements is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.

As long as any Palestinian Arab repeats those assinine demands, it is clear they are not serious about peace.]


US peace envoy George Mitchell arrived in Egypt on Tuesday and is due to meet Abbas in Ramallah on Thursday, after new US President Barack Obama appointed him last week. Abbas said Palestinians are looking to Obama for progress: "He (Obama) has said good things. We are waiting to see if there is seriousness during this year about the peace process."

[Both Israel and the United States have always been serious about peace. The problem is the Palestinian Arabs have yet to be serious about peace.

Abbas, like so many others, either falsely accuses Israel of crimes for which the Palestinian Arabs are guilty or falsely attributes to Israel their own anti-peace attitudes.]

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

To: Citizen of the world

From: Pnina Karkokli, Or Yehuda

Before you attack us verbally, claiming that we are brutes and have no feelings; before you send another email or chat comment accusing the Israelis of being the problem; before you decide that we are the baddies and that everyone else is weak and helpless, I'd like to know if you are aware of the following:

When you were born, you left the hospital with flowers and gifts, newborns in Israel leave the hospital with gas masks and protective kits. While you learn how to draw and sing in kindergarten, children in Israel learn what to do when the air-raid siren goes off and where the nearest air-raid shelter is. When you celebrate your festivals and holidays, we are celebrating the fact that our enemies have not managed to destroy us throughout history.

At the age of 18 you enroll at university, we are drafted into the army and don't always reach the age of twenty. When you plan a vacation overseas and check out the beach and other attractions, we are checking out the security alerts at those very sites.

When you build a home in your country with a guest room and play room, we have to build a home with protected rooms.

When you go out for the evening, to a movie or restaurant, a hostess greets you at the entrance; we are greeted by a security guard who checks that no-one is trying to smuggle in a bomb and kill innocent civilians.

When you get on a bus in the morning on the way to work or to run errands, you are not anxious, looking around to see if any of the other passengers are suspicious. When you travel around your wonderful country, you are not worried that suddenly, out of nowhere, you might be ambushed.

Your 87-year old grandfather was a soldier in the last war that your country fought, I have already fought in four wars, and I am only 37.

But this is our reality and we have no problem with it. We never complain and we expect no pity. There were better times when we hoped to see peace, but when, in the twenty-first century, heads of state publicly declare that they would like to wipe the Jewish state off the map, I believe that we will have no choice but to continue living this reality for many more years.

So, when you sit in your wonderful, peaceful country and occasionally hear news from the Middle East, please just do me a favor:' don't even try to think that you genuinely know who is right and who is not. And if you still want to gain a better understanding, please feel free to come and live here for a while, and then we'll talk.

Yours,
Pnina Karkokli

Published in "Gal Geffen", local newspaper, on Jan, 15, 2009

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Double Standard at The Waterbury Observer, Part III

On May 1, 2008, I was an invited speaker at Hartford, Connecticut's annual Holocaust commemoration. I submitted the notes I used to the Waterbury Observer, a monthly newspaper.

The publisher, John Murray rejected it with the explanation:
"Hi Alan Thanks for sending me your notes from your speech May 1st for consideration in the Observer. I'm going to pass on publishing them because you have already strongly expressed these opinions in the Observer several times before and I'm not inclined to re-ignite the he said-she said-he said dialogue between Marilyn Aligata, Mr. Hajjar and yourself about Israel and the Palestinians. The Observer is not the forum to solve the dispute.

Thanks for thinking of the Observer.

peace, John."


Seven months later, the same John Murray published a hateful, error-filled anti-Israel screed.

Once again, a double standard is applied when it comes to Israel.

We urge letters be sent to both owlman@optonline.net and john@waterburyobserver.com to raise the probability it will be read … and then undoubtedly ignored.

The post containing my rejected commentary may be viewed by clicking here.

The post containing Hajjar's screed may be viewed by clicking here.

The following is my letter to The Observer in response. I do not yet know whether it will be published.



Dear Editor:

I was astounded to see the inflammatory, factually-challenged article by George Hajjar published in the January issue of The Waterbury Observer when John Murray had earlier refused to publish an article I had submitted, based on a speech I had given at Hartford's Holocaust Commemoration, on the grounds that "the Observer is not the forum to solve the dispute," referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that he was "not inclined to re-ignite the he said-she said-he said dialogue between Marilyn Aligata, Mr. Hajjar" and me.

One could write volumes analyzing all of George's factual errors and distortions. I will simply point out the absurdity of the central theme permeating George's screed and mentioning important context he totally ignored.

His theme is that Connecticut's junior senator is effectively guilty of treason by allegedly putting the interests of a foreign nation, Israel, above our own. George's prime evidence is Lieberman's support of the war in Iraq.

It's interesting that the same logic George uses to argue our junior senator favors Israel above America could be used in the same way to argue that another George, former President George Bush, also put Israel's interests above our own. Regardless of what one's opinion is about our former president, I don't know of anyone who has ever questioned his patriotism. On the other hand, critics of Israel have never shied away from applying double standards, just as The Observer applied a double standard in refusing to publish a commentary I submitted but then publishing George Hajjar's.

Waterbury's George, despite allegedly spending "several years in the Middle East studying and lecturing," appears unaware of the well-known fact that prior to the start of the war in Iraq, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was advising our president NOT to invade Iraq.

To argue, as George does, that Senator Joseph Lieberman was acting in the interest of Israel rather than America when he opposing the advice of the Israeli prime minister is patently absurd. One may reasonably question the judgement of both our former president and Senator Lieberman, but one certainly cannot reasonably question the patriotism of either.

But George's target wasn't really either Senator Lieberman or former President Bush; his real target was Israel.

Just as one can question the judgement of our own leaders, one can reasonably question the wisdom or efficacy of some of Israel's actions, On the other hand, one cannot reasonably do what George has done: question the free, democratic nature of Israel and it's desire for peace.

Consider, for just one example, the recent operation in Gaza.

Israel left most of Gaza way back in 1994, at the start of the Oslo Process. The process was referred to as "Gaza-Jericho First," the idea being that Israel would turn over Gaza (with which it had never wanted anything to do) and Jericho to the Palestinian Arabs and turn over more territory as they showed their willingness to live in peace.

Eleven years later, despairing of any hopes for peace five years after Yasser Arafat, on behalf of the Palestinian Arabs, had rejected the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state, Israel completely left Gaza. It even agreed to turn over control of the crossings between Egypt and Gaza to others. This was done under American pressure and turned out to be a disastrous move, as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and other Arab terror groups took advantage of the opportunity to transfer massive amounts of weaponry, including long range rockets, into Gaza.

One can question the wisdom of those Israeli moves, but one cannot reasonably question Israel's motivation. Israel simply wanted peace and it did not want to be involved in the lives of the Arabs living in Gaza.

Rather than take advantage of the de facto independent state handed over to them by Israel, the Palestinian Arabs turned Gaza into a large terrorist base, launching thousands of Kassam and Grad rockets at Israeli cities, while Israel was pressured by the rest of the world, including us, to act with a restraint one would demand of no other country in the world. Indeed, no nation in the world would tolerate the sort of rocket attacks Israel has endured with anything close to the restraint Israel has exhibited for nearly a decade.

Consider what just one family with which I'm very familiar has faced in just the last few weeks.

Arnold and Patriss celebrated the marriage of their daughter Karen a year and a half ago. They are my cousins and I helped celebrate Karen's wedding.

On December 30, Patriss was taking a walk with her sister when she heard a noise she described as "boom, boom." They immediately hit the ground and were later teased by Arnie, who said it must have been a car backfiring. He changed his tune when they heard the news and realized the "boom, boom" was from a Grad missile hitting nearby.

The next day, another Grad missile went through the roof of the school in which Karen teaches. Fortunately, the school was empty, with classes cancelled because of the rocket threats.

Three days later, Karen gave birth to a baby boy. Because of the rockets which were striking every day, she had actually left her home town and gave birth in a hospital in another city.

On January 7, Arnold heard a siren as he parked his car, ran for cover, and less than a minute later heard a rocket crash about 400 yards from his car.

On January 11, they had a bris for Karen's baby, but didn't invite nearly as many people as they had for her sister's baby a few months earlier, largely because they were constrained by the size of their bomb shelter.

On January 15, yet another Grad hit a car at a spot I've driven by many times, about a half mile from my cousins' home. It injured six people, seriously injuring a young child and mother.

My cousins consider the rockets raining on their city merely "an inconvenience," since they have almost a minute (45 seconds) to seek shelter after the sirens sound while the people in Sderot, which is much closer to the Gaza Strip, only have 15 seconds.

I disagree with my cousins. I consider having to always make sure you're within 45 seconds of a bomb shelter is intolerable. The situation faced by the people in Sderot for the last eight years is more than intolerable. It had to be rectified.

This is not to minimize the suffering of the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza, which is clearly even worse than that of the Israelis. There is, however, a very significant difference: As Israel's critics so frequently point out, Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian Arabs.

In other words, the Palestinian Arabs had and continue to have the choice between building a civil society and a terror campaign that hurts them even more than it hurts their targets. Unfortunately, thus far they have freely and knowingly chosen terror.

The Israelis have no such choice. As much as they want peace, as much as they are willing to compromise for peace, as much as they have already given up for peace, including turning over all of Gaza and most of the West Bank to the Palestinian Arabs, they cannot create peace as long as their Arab neighbors continue to reject peace at any price.

As it is said, if Israel's enemies had no guns, there would be no war, but if Israel had no guns, there would be no Israel.

As long as Israel continues, as it always has, to strive for peace, it deserves our support; indeed, to not support Israel in that quest would amount to a disgraceful repudiation of American values.

And as long as Israel's enemies reject peace in favor of war and terror, our support for Israel should be one-sided. While America should always be an honest broker, it should never give equal treatment to a free, democratic friend with whom we share most of our basic values and those whose values are alien to us and who are responsible for six decades of hostility, war and terror.

Ironically, strong American support for Israel is ultimately the best thing we can do to promote the welfare of the Palestinian Arabs, whose actions, like the words of George Hajjar, so often act against that welfare.

The Observer's publisher was correct in noting this paper is not the forum that will solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. I do hope that in the future The Observer does not continue to observe a double standard, using his observation to justify rejecting items which consider the efforts Israel has always made in pursuit of peace but still publishing inflammatory, error-filled anti-Israel screeds.

This double standard is not only unfair and certainly not helpful to the prospects for an Arab-Israeli peace, but also undermines the credibility of a newspaper which which has been a valuable resource for the community in many other areas.

Sincerely,
Alan Stein

George Mitchell, A Mideast Envoy With A Tendentious Legacy

Posted with the permission of www.mythsandfacts.com, a highly valuable resource.

The good news omitted in the analysis below is that the repetition of failed policies which ignore the need to eradicate Arab terrorism before any real peace process can start will probably fail so quickly and completely that the amount of harm done will not be too great.



Guest writer David Bedein

Jerusalem - Following President Obama's appointment of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell of Maine as his Middle East envoy, it may be instructive to remember the tendentiousness of George Mitchell's 2001 report titled "The Mitchell Report on the al-qsa Intifadah" (www.mideastweb.org/mitchell_report.htm).

This genesis of this report stemmed from President Bill Clinton's Oct. 2000 appointment of an international investigation commission to determine the causes of the Palestinian insurrection, which was deemed the Second Intifada - the Arabic term for "shaking off" - in this instance, shaking off Israel. To this commission, President Clinton named Sen. Mitchell, who is of Arab descent through his mother, as its chairman, along with a Jewish-American, former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman, to the panel, in addition to three prominent European diplomats.

The initial Israeli response to the publication of the Mitchell Commission report in May 2001 was a sigh of relief when the Mitchell Commission did not blame Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for instigating the riots in Sept. 2000 when he visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which some said had sparked the Arab rioting.

However, even with the Sharon Temple Mount accusation out of the way, the Mitchell Commission report accepted every Palestinian premise for the violence at the time.

The Mitchell Commission accepted as a given that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)-led riots were based on a movement for "independence and genuine self-determination," without giving any credence to the PLO goal, stated in all PLO publications, maps and media outlets, even during the current Oslo process, which consistently and clearly states that "liberation" of Palestine, all of Palestine - in stages - remained the goal.

For some reason, the Mitchell Commission characterized the rioters armed with Molotov cocktails as "unarmed Palestinian demonstrators," a term that they apparently borrowed from PLO information reports that were published at the time.

The Mitchell Commission took the position that Israel's security forces did not face a clear and present danger when faced with a mob trying to kill them with rocks and firebombs.

It made no mention that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has amassed 50,000 more weapons than they were supposed to have, in clear violation of the written Oslo accords.

The Mitchell Commission surprisingly accepted the notion that the PA security officials are simply "not in control" of their own tightly controlled security services.

The Mitchell Commission would not consider reliable intelligence reports that documented the PA had planned the uprising. It also failed to relate documentation showing the PA had spent past seven years preparing its media, school system and security services for a violent confrontation with Israel.

Indeed, in late May 2000, a senior official of Israeli intelligence conducted a press briefing where he revealed intelligence information that the PLO was planning riots for late Sept. 2000.

It said the notion the PA leadership had failed to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel as only an Israeli "view," ignoring consistent incitement that Arafat had conveyed to his own media for the previous seven years.

The Mitchell Commission also rejected Israel's characterization of the conflict, as "armed conflict short of war"; (How else would you describe an army that fires mortar rounds into Israeli cities?)

The Mitchell Commission also condemned the Israel Defense Force's killing of PLO combat officers during a time of war, without giving an alternative.

Instead of issuing a clear call to the PLO to stop sniper attacks on Israel's roads and highways, the Mitchell Commission simply "condemned the positioning of gunmen within or near civilian dwellings," leaving the observer to assume that PLO attacks from empty embankments would be acceptable.

The Mitchell Commission suggested that "the IDF should consider withdrawing to positions held before Sept. 28, 2000, ... to reduce the number of friction points," ignoring the fact that this would leave entry points to many Israeli cities without appropriate protection during a time of war.

The Mitchell Commission also demanded that Israel should transfer to the PA all tax revenues owed, and permit Palestinians who had been employed in Israel to return to their jobs, strangely recommending that Israel once again pay salaries of armed PLO personnel who were at war with Israel.

Meanwhile, the Mitchell Commission took a page out of Arab propaganda when it called on Israeli "security forces and settlers to refrain from the destruction of homes and roads, as well as trees and other agricultural property in Palestinian areas," and would not relate to the possibility that some of the trees and agricultural land had been razed may have been provided cover to PA security forces during combat.

The Mitchell Commission also accepted the notion that "settlers and settlements in their midst" remains a cause of the Palestinian uprising, because these Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria violate "the spirit of the Oslo process," even though not one word appears in the actual Oslo accords would require the dismemberment of a single Israeli settlement.

In conclusion, the Mitchell Commission drew a strange comparison between "settlement activities" and the Palestinian inability to resume negotiations, so long as "settlement activities" continue, providing an excuse for the PLO to continue its armed conflict.

In short, the Mitchell Commission Report drove a nail into the coffin of any credibility that George Mitchell could ever have to serve as a potential Middle East envoy.

Originally Published on January 23, 2009 by The Bulletin.

David Bedein can be reached at bedein@thebulletin.us.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Double Standard at The Waterbury Observer, Part II

On May 1, 2008, I was an invited speaker at Hartford, Connecticut's annual Holocaust commemoration. I submitted the notes I used to the Waterbury Observer, a monthly newspaper.

The publisher, John Murray <owlman@optonline.net> rejected it with the explanation:
"Hi Alan Thanks for sending me your notes from your speech May 1st for consideration in the Observer. I'm going to pass on publishing them because you have already strongly expressed these opinions in the Observer several times before and I'm not inclined to re-ignite the he said-she said-he said dialogue between Marilyn Aligata, Mr. Hajjar and yourself about Israel and the Palestinians. The Observer is not the forum to solve the dispute.

Thanks for thinking of the Observer.

peace, John."

Seven months later, the same John Murray published a hateful, error-filled anti-Israel screed which will be included in the following post to this blog.

Once again, a double standard is applied when it comes to Israel.

We urge letters be sent to both owlman@optonline.net and john@waterburyobserver.com to raise the probability it will be read … and then undoubtedly ignored.

My rejected commentary was in my previous post; this post contains the screed that was published just seven months later, in the January 2009 issue of The Waterbury Observer. It is posted without further comment because it would take years to describe all the distortions and factual errors.

A future post will contain my as-yet-unwritten response to Murray.



Lieberman has become a one issue Senator; Israeli policy and needs over our own



(Editor's Note The following opinion piece was written by Waterbury resident George Hajjar, Jr. Hajjar is a social worker and university lecturer, and spent several years in the Middle East studying and lecturing.)

During last year' s presidential election campaign, it was said that our top two concerns were the economy and the Middle East conflicts [Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab-Israeli conflicts]. Actually, before the collapse of our stock and real estate markets, the Middle East conflicts, particularly the Bush administration's failed Iraq and Afghanistan policies, were our number one concerns.

Along these lines, intellectuals like former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stated that the best way to reduce terrorism and security threats is to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Specifically, what they mean is that Israel must return just a fraction of the land, property and livelihoods that they took from the Palestinians through extreme violence and gross human rights violations over the past 60 years. If the Middle East conflicts headed by our engagement in Iraq are a major interest of ours, as buttressed our university students' great interest in Middle East studies, then why haven't these conflicts been resolved to our interest and that of the world?

There are many reasons why the Middle East conflicts have not been solved, but one reason reared its ugly head during the Obama vs. McCain presidential election in the form of Joe Lieberman. The Middle East conflicts have not been resolved due in part to Lieberman favoring hard-line Israeli interests and policy over our own interests and policies.

Lieberman is a biased and perhaps unethical politician when it comes to his Israel first favoritism and personal interests, even when they are at odds with our Middle East, international and constituent supported policies. Last we checked, Israel is a foreign state and Lieberman is supposed to be a Connecticut focused Senator.

To begin with, let's think back eighteen years, to 1990 when George H. W. Bush was considering invading Iraq. Expert military analysts and other specialists warned that if the U.S. engaged in a war in Iraq the U.S. could very well suffer 55,000 soldier deaths.

Despite this and our real fear and concern Lieberman was the first to come forward telling us everything would be okay, even though he knew full well what the experts were stating about the possible loss of American lives. Why did Lieberman take this position?

Simple, it was in Israel's interest that the US attack Iraq, as Israel has claimed for decades that Iraq was its worst and most hated enemy. Lieberman in no way had a crystal ball that told him few Americans would die in Iraq, yet he was more than willing to offer and risk our soldiers' lives for Israel's benefit. Secondly, let's be honest. There is an Israeli-Arab conflict going on and Lieberman certainly favors the Jewish state. The issue here is not that Lieberman is Jewish by faith, but rather that he supports Israel unequivocally, even though Israel is one of the international community's least law abiding, poorly behaved states in the world.

Israel is in violation of dozens of U.N resolutions, Articles of the Geneva Convention, The Hague Agreement, human rights laws and illegal use of cluster bombs and chemical weapons on civilians. The other problem is that Lieberman is supposed to be an Connecticut senator whose agenda and focus should mostly be domestic American issues.

While there are some Jewish Americans who protest Israeli crimes, these groups do not have adequate political power to make change in Israeli policy, and Lieberman is certainly not one of these individuals anyway. The days where US politicians are to be honest, unbiased international peace brokers are long gone with the likes of Lieberman, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, Rahm Emanual, Dennis Ross, Sandy Berger, Martin Indyk and other powerful Jewish American politicians who favor Israeli interests over our own.

For example Douglas Feith's education was in Russian studies and law. However, he managed to become our Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for United States President George W. Bush from July 2001 until he resigned from his position on August 8, 2005. An assistant of Feith's, Larry Franklin, was convicted, and sentenced to 12 years in Federal prison in 2005 for charges in an espionage for Israel scandal which also led to Feith's resignation. Franklin was convicted of giving classified information. to an Israeli diplomat and Steven Rosen, an employee of the Israeli AIPAC lobby.

In this role as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Feith had a great deal to do with steering U.S. Middle East policy to completely favor Israeli needs. Feith worked harder that anyone else pushing the U.S. into the now failed Iraq war.

Feith served on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a think tank that promotes a military and strategic alliance between the United States and Israel. Feith was one of 18 founding members of the organization One Jerusalem to oppose the U.S. sponsored Oslo peace agreement. He is also Director of Foundation for Jewish Studies. According to the long-running Washington newsletter, The Nelson Report, edited by Christopher Nelson, quoting an anonymous source, Feith was presenting at a 2003 interagency 'Principals' Meeting' debate on the Middle East, and ended with his remarks on behalf of the Pentagon. Then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, "Thanks Doug, but when we want the Israeli position we'll invite the ambassador."

Take the example of Richard Pearle, a U.S. government politician and lobbyist. He has been referred to as "the Prince of Darkness" and has been accused of being an Israel advocate at the expense the U.S. It has been reported that while he was working for our government, "An FBI summary of a 1970 wiretap recorded Perle discussing classified information with someone at the Israeli embassy," writes Paul Findley (They Dare To Speak Out, Chicago, Ill, Lawrence Hill Books 1989)." He came under fire in 1983 when newspapers reported he received substantial payments to represent the interests of an Israeli weapons company: Perle admitted that he received payment for these services after he had assumed his position in the Defense Department, but said he was between government jobs when he worked for the Israeli firm. According to former national security advisor, Brent Scrowcroft "I don't think Perle gives a shit about democracy. Fundamentally, it's all a means to an end." Former Secretary of State Colin Powell stated of Perle "We used to have major problems when Richard would wander off the farm and be caught doing things that were not consistent with the policies." These profiles go on and on for each and everyone of the above listed men.

Getting back to Lieberman's preference for Israeli policy and interests is his complete lack of criticism of Israeli settler, politician and soldier behavior.

These Israelis have been indicted for hideous human rights abuses against civilians, which Lieberman is well aware of, yet never has he been constructively critical of Israel ever. Israel's former chairman of the Commission on Human Rights and Abuse, the late Israel Shahak called Israel's treatment of the Palestinians "Hitlerian." Even Israel's Association for Civil Rights and its human rights organization, Bt'selem, consider Israel's treatment of Palestinian civilians as worse than apartheid. It is clear to the world now that Israel's murderous attack on Gaza had nothing to do with self defense.

Israeli has starved and attacked Gaza for decades and did so intensively for the past few years in order to make its pre-planned invasion easier. Israeli analysts themselves admit that Israeli politicians, who are up for election, wanted to raise their popularity in the polls, reverse their perceived defeat in Lebanon in 2006, exercise their military in live situations and get away with massacres between U.S. presidential terms. Don't expect Joe Lieberman to raise concern about any of this.

Lieberman hasn't even criticized Israel for spying on us, a practice that harms our homeland security, a committee post for which Lieberman is the chairman, and continues till this very day, despite the billions of US dollars we send Israel each year. By not criticizing Israel for this, more than anything else, proves Lieberman is an Israel first favortist.

Moreover is the issue of Lieberman's' total disrespect for the Democratic Party who has supported him generously for over two decades and made him a multi-millionaire to boot. After being defeated by Ned Lamont because of his selfish willingness to risk our soldiers' lives in Iraq, Lieberman took his Israel first interest on the road and became an independent and raised more money outside of the state of Connecticut than from within. Isn't Lieberman supposed to be a Connecticut senator? Lieberman even publicly called his colleagues in the house and senate cowards just because they wanted to eventually withdraw from Iraq and proceed with caution about attacking Iran. Israel was the only nation in the world that wanted more US involvement in Iraq and a US attack on Iran. Lieberman was right there with them. While top experts of the American Foreign Policy Project strongly urge us to take a different approach to Iran and Iraq, Lieberman and Israel want us to continue to attack both.

Lastly, Lieberman was so afraid that President Elect Obama's promise of change would include US policy on the Middle East that he supplied and supported the John McCain campaign with every underhanded trick possible in order to defeat Obama. For example, Lieberman approved of smear campaigns depicting Obama as a radical Muslim, a radical Christian, and even as Moses in order to discredit Obama. If Lieberman can question Obama's loyalty to the US as he did, then why can't we call into question his Israel first favoritism?

Lieberman traveled the globe campaigning with McCain on Ct. taxpayer's time, which reeks of ethics violations. Lieberman even teamed up with radical/weirdo Christian pastor John Hagee, simply because this nut supported taking more Palestinian land out from under their feet and because of his theological pandering to Israel, which again supports Lieberman's needs. John Hagee even went as far to state that God sent Hitler to attack the Jews of Europe because he wanted them to return to Palestine. Despite this despicable statement, Lieberman continued to cozy up to Hagee.

The U.S. and U.N. policy calls for a two state solution of the Israel Palestinian conflict, however Hagee wants the Palestinians expelled from their own homes in mass and replaced by Jews, which appears to be more to Lieberman's liking. The reasons Lieberman supported McCain was because McCain talked about continuing to attack Iraq, wanted to attack Iran, and Lieberman hoped to become our next Secretary of Defense where he could act out his favoritism for Israel while threatening to attack the rest of the Middle East. Lieberman should have been kicked out of the Democratic Caucus not only because of his disgraceful tactics on behalf of the McCain campaign, but because he is supposed to concentrate his work on Connecticut taxpayers and not favor unlawful Israeli policy and interests over our own.

Double Standard at The Waterbury Observer, Part I

On May 1, 2008, I was an invited speaker at Hartford, Connecticut's annual Holocaust commemoration. I submitted the notes I used to the Waterbury Observer, a monthly newspaper.

The publisher, John Murray <owlman@optonline.net> rejected it with the explanation:
"Hi Alan Thanks for sending me your notes from your speech May 1st for consideration in the Observer. I'm going to pass on publishing them because you have already strongly expressed these opinions in the Observer several times before and I'm not inclined to re-ignite the he said-she said-he said dialogue between Marilyn Aligata, Mr. Hajjar and yourself about Israel and the Palestinians. The Observer is not the forum to solve the dispute.

Thanks for thinking of the Observer.

peace, John."

Seven months later, the same John Murray published a hateful, error-filled anti-Israel screed which will be included in the following post to this blog.

Once again, a double standard is applied when it comes to Israel.

We urge letters be sent to both owlman@optonline.net and john@waterburyobserver.com to raise the probability it will be read … and then undoubtedly ignored.

The following is the commentary that was rejected.



The War Against Israel Is Attempted Genocide



Alan H. Stein, Ph.D.

President, PRIMER-Connecticut

It's one of the tragic coincidences of history that at the same time Jews were being burned in ovens Jews in Palestine were preparing the foundation for the reestablishment of Israel. We can only speculate how different history would be, how many millions might have been saved, had there been a Jewish state just a few years sooner.

And then the war ended. And survivors had to rebuild their lives.

Where to go? America. Palestine.

Under the terms of the League of Nations Mandate, Great Britain was obligated to facilitate Jewish immigration in Palestine. No such luck for us. But enough survivors made it, despite British efforts, and wanted to help build and defend Eretz Yisrael so they made up 40 to 50 percent of the security forces of the Yishuv.

And then, just a few years after the end of the war, just a few years after liberation, those survivors found themselves in another genocidal war, as six Arab armies invaded Israel on The Yom Ha'Atzma'ut, the very day David Ben-Gurion announced the reestablishment of Israel, the official independence of the modern state of Israel.

Survivors played important roles in that war, and in the wars that have followed, as well as the blossoming of that tiny, state into today's prosperous, but still besieged, Israel.

Exact figures are unavailable, but it's estimated about a third of the casualties of the War of Independence were survivors.

The combined Arab attack on Israel was, and continues to be, an attempted genocide, as they are not just trying to defeat an enemy to exact some economic or political gain, but to destroy the Jewish state because it is not Muslim - although Muslims have equal rights - and because it is not Arab - although Arabs have equal rights -- They are trying to destroy it because it is a Jewish state.

They also use Nazi propaganda techniques, the technique of the Big Lie, repeating the same lies again and again until the gullible believe them.

They are particular fond of falsely accusing Israel of crimes from which they themselves are guilty. They falsely accuse Israel of trying to destroy the Palestinian Arab people, a people who have come into existence only in reaction to the Zionist dream.

They use blasphemous language, like Judeo-Nazi, and simultaneously deny the Holocaust, try to complete Hitler's work, and accuse Israel of attempted genocide.

That it is effective, that people continue to fall prey to such lies, to distortion, to obvious hatred and maliciousness, is testament to the battle we still face.

The PLO, and Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority - or, at least, the portion of the Palestinian Authority governing the eastern portion of the disputed territories - are led by a man, a very intelligent man, a man whose doctoral thesis denied the Holocaust.

And this man, this Holocaust denier, is considered a moderate.

Sadly, in the spectrum of Palestinian Arab society, he is a moderate.

Speaking recently at Georgetown University, Arif Safieh, the PLO Ambassador to the United States -- what other terrorist organization has ambassadors to the United States? -- referred to the displacement of Arabs resulting from their drive to destroy Israel in 1948, which they call the "nakba," or catastrophe, as the greatest catastrophe in human history.

Safieh, a self-styled "pragmatist," whatever that means in the spectrum of Israel's enemies, tries to blame the self-inflicted problems of the Palestinian Arabs on the Holocaust.

Referring to the Palestinian Arabs, he said "They were the victims of the victims of Europe."

As if the Arabs paid the price, in the establshment of the modern state of Israel, for the guilt of Europeans for the Holocaust.

That, of course, is nonsense.

If anything, some Europeans are assuaging their guilt over the Holocaust by falsely accusing Israel of crimes which exist only in their own imaginations.

One effect of the Shoah was to temporarily make explicit anti- Semitism unfashionable in respectable circles. The existence of Israel, and the genocidal war against Israel, has provided a socially acceptable substitute, anti-Semitism disguised as anti- Zionism, with the pretense that anti-Zionism is not a form of anti- Semitism.

The height of absurdity was reached November 10, 1975, when the United Nations reached its personal nadir and passed the infamous "Zionism is Racism" resolution. The UN was actually just four letters off, since it is anti-Zionism which is effectively racism, although technically non-racism since Zionism has nothing to do with race, but anti-Zionism is certain bigotry and anti-Semitism.

I received an email just a few days ago, on April 20. It read:

"Your organization is so full of ****. Now I can understand why good people of Europe let the Nazis slaughter the Jews, just like the IDF is slaughtering the Arabs. It is propaganda devices like you which try to change facts and history."

[Note: **** refers just to what one suspects; I just don't feel comfortable writing it out.]


The email, of course, was not signed.

The battle changes, but the battle remains the same.

In Israel and the disputed territories, the battle is tangible, with Jews being murdered for the crime of being Jewish. And castigated by the world for the crime of defending themselves. But parents have the basic human right to be able to send their children to a kindergarten without having, as do the parents living in Sderot, that their children wlll be hit by a Kassam missile launched from nearby Gaza ... or should we call it Hamastan.?

Teenagers should be able to go pizzerias without their parents having to worry about anything other than whether they will stain their clothes with pizza sauce.

Sometimes, the physical battle reaches us in the diaspora, as when Iranian agents blew up the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1992, or a gunman went into the Jewish Federation in Seattle a couple of years ago to murder some Jews.

But for the most part, our battle in the diaspora is a battle of intangibles, a battle of words and ideas.

For that, we need to keep ourselves aware, as we battle lies with truth, as we battle hatred with hope.

We need to know the truth to battle the lies, which can be difficult because those who hate are very adept at making up new lies.

Just yesterday, my wife heard from a friend who had just returned from Ireland, where she was a guest at a home which had just hosted a Palestinian Arab who had talked about Israelis murdering a woman and child in their home in Gaza. They did not know what really happened, that terrorists were carrying explosives, planning to murder innocent Israeli civilians, when they were engaged by Israeli troops and it was the terrorists' explosives blowing up, in Gaza rather than as planned in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, that destroyed that family and home.

We need to be constantly aware to be able to counter lies with truth, in a battle to keep Israel's enemies from succeeding in completing Hitler's plan.

That's the cautionary side of the coin.

There's the other side.

Despite the threats, the terrorism, the lack of a single day of peace, the Israelis have built an amazing society we should be proud of.

They have built a thriving democracy, the only one in that neighborhood of the world. They have a crazy parliamentary system that in many ways is dysfunctional and in tremendous need of reform, but which has worked and in which the people's representatives and the parties have fought each other bitterly but been united when demanded by the interests of the nation.

They have brought in and settled more than three million immigrants. With problems, to be sure, but overall with an amazing record and amazing success. They are the only people who have ever brought Black Africans to freedom rather than servitude.

They have created an amazingly diverse culture, with Jews, and others, from all over the world, both assimilating and diversifying.

They have a technologically advanced society, with the highest concentration of startup companies in the world outside Silicon Valley. Many of the innovations considered essential to today's society were invented in Israel, although some, like text message, may not be on everyone's top ten list of favorite inventions.

They have developed tremendous resilience. The are able to live and be happy in the most trying of times. I cannot help but smile thinking of the family Bar Mitzvah I went to in Beersheva in the spring of 2002, near the height of Arafat's terror offensive. Never have I seen so much joy at a Bar Mitzvah - even as, during the party, one of the guests, a relative from the other side of the family who was part of a security agency, had to leave after receiving a phone call about a planned terror attack somewhere in Israel.

And just last summer, at a family wedding, we watched the bride and groom dance joyfully, and their young friends sharing their happiness, even as we thought of how at any moment they could be called up for the next round of the war in the north, or with Hamastan.

Today, 63 years after liberation, we remember those who were murdered, in the death camps and in the wars, and we celebrate the six decades of independence of modern Israel, linked but separate.

For those six decades, Israel has tried and tried and tried to get its neighbors to live in peace, so its children can live normal lives, so its teenagers don't have go into the army as soon as they finish high school.

And we, here, have to do what we can and must.

Please, remember and do.

Todah.

Shalom.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Anger at Israel's actions misguided II

Published as a letter in the Connecticut Post, January 20, 2009.



In his letter of Jan. 14, Robert Harbinson falsely accused Israel of the crimes of which its enemies are guilty.

As a liberal, Western-oriented democracy with equal legal rights for all its citizens, Israel is much further from being an apartheid state than any other in the Middle East.

In contrast, the goal of even the "moderate" Palestinian Arabs is far worse than apartheid. One of the first laws passed by the Palestinian Authority after it was established made it a capital crime to sell land to a Jew. The ethnic cleansing of any Jewish presence from his prospective Palestinian Arab state remains a prime demand of Palestinian Authority chair Mahmoud Abbas.

There is generally some blame on all sides in any conflict, but the blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict is far more asymmetric than most.

From its inception, Israel has striven to live together with its neighbors in peace, extending its "hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness" in its Declaration of Independence while those very neighbors chose to invade Israel with no fewer than six armies the same day. Had the Arab states accepted Israel's offer of peace and brotherhood rather than going to war, all the ensuing death, destruction and misery would have been avoided.

Israel continues to strive for peace, making tremendous sacrifices, but Hamas and even the supposedly moderate Fatah still call for the destruction of Israel in the charters which define their causes and their agendas. Until Israel's enemies change and finally make peace a goal, there will be conflict and suffering and all will pay a terrible price.

In the meantime, strong support for Israel is both in our national interest and a moral imperative.

Alan H. Stein
Waterbury

Stein is president of PRIMER -- Connecticut Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting.

Anger at Israel's actions misguided I

Published as a letter in the Connecticut Post, January 20, 2009.

Mark Trencher is vice president of PRIMER.



One can fully agree with letter writer Will Duchon on the overwhelming sadness of seeing children become the victims of war. In doing so, however, one must be astounded at the conclusion Duchon draws as to who is to be blamed.

No nation is as careful in its military actions as Israel is in preventing civilian casualties. But such losses become virtually impossible to prevent when the Arabs themselves seek the imposition of civilian casualties by placing their people within war zones and placing weapons storage depots in residential areas.

What Duchon demands of Israel is that this Western defender against Arab aggression forego responses to such attacks whenever there is a danger of civilian casualties. That would become a device to virtually disarm Israel and let Arab aggression go undeterred and unpunished.

Strangely, it is the Arabs who seek propaganda benefits from civilian loss and who justify their deliberate placing of children in jeopardy by claiming that they are enabling the children to become martyrs to the Muslim cause. Duchon's outrage is utterly misguided in holding Israel and the U.S. responsible for such tragedies and for not laying the blame where it belongs.

Mark Trencher
West Hartford

Monday, January 19, 2009

Hamas Guilty of War Crimes

This was sent to PP in an email from his cousin Arnie, whose family has dodged no fewer than four Grad rockets in the last few weeks.



One does not need to be a prophet to predict that as the images come out of Gaza there will be more and more cries that Israel is guilty of war crimes.

I was curious to see if the Geneva Convention dealt with a situation like the one Israel was facing, and while it is clear that when the rules were written the authors did not conceive that offensive military operations would be conducted from within civilian population centers, the first rule of Article 57 is applicable:

Part IV : Civilian population

Section I -- General protection against effects of hostilities

Chapter IV -- Precautionary measures

Article 57 -- Precautions in attack

1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects.


Hamas not only doesn't act in accordance with Rule 1, its entire strategy is based on acting in direct contradiction to it.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Letter to Bessy Reyna: Op Ed Piece Riddled with Inaccuracies, Illogic and Bias

The following letter was sent to the Hartford Courant by Rabbi Seth Riemer responding to Bessy Reyna's recent column. PRIMER's analysis of her column may be found at primerct.blogspot.com/2009/01/primer-comment-analysis-israel-does-own.html.




Dear Ms. Reyna,

Your January 16 op ed piece, "Israel Doesn't Own the Moral High Ground," although factual in some respects, is riddled with inaccuracies, illogic and bias. I will illustrate, point by point:

Former President Jimmy Carter is not known as a fair presenter of the facts of that conflict. To call it a "defensive tunnel" strongly suggests pro-Hamas bias on his (and your) part. To suggest that those tunnels are not used for arms smuggling again demonstrates bias. You repeat this pseudo-argument later, when you write: "The tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, which the Israelis allege are used to smuggle arms for Hamas...." Can you, as a serious journalist, deny that what you refer to as an allegation is a fact?

That is followed by this astonishing statement: "This rationale comes very close to what President Bush used in attacking Iraq: looking for the weapons of mass destruction that never materialized." Here you appear to be comparing non-existent weapons of mass destruction and fictitious imminent danger to U.S. interests, with...what? Non-existent Hamas kidnappings and attacks?

Non-existent Hamas threats of kidnapping and non-existent "further attacks"? You can't be serious, given that Hamas has both kidnapped and attacked, both threatened more kidnappings and threatened more attacks!

When you talk about "1.5 million Muslims and Christians living in the tiny Gaza strip," you unnecessarily inject the theme of religious hostility, which in the case of the Hamas-Israel conflict is one-sided. While Hamas attacks Israel because it is a Jewish state, Israel is not attacking them because they are Muslim and Christian. That rhetorical flourish on your part is implicitly anti-Semitic, I regret to have to point out, for you are carting out all the old arguments about Jews'=2 0nefarious intentions toward Christians and Muslims.

Why is Gaza "the largest prison in the world"? Israel pulled out of Gaza in order to give Gazans a chance at a free and productive life. Look what Hamas did with that golden opportunity.

Given that Hamas's intentions (stated in its charter) are to destroy Israel and murder Jews, the reference to Gazan malnutrition rings hollow. It is unfortunate and tragic, but who created the tragedy.?

You claim that U.S. actions and policies are "strengthening Hamas," but=2 0at the same time you indicate the need for U.S. impartiality with regard to the conflict. That is self-contradiction. If the goal is to weaken Hamas, then the U.S. should do what it can to weaken Hamas. You might reasonably argue that U.S. actions to weaken Hamas are misguided, but this is not the trend of your discourse, which refuses to address the issue of how to deal with Hamas's murderous and racist intransigence, which is the bottom-line issue in that conflict.

You state: "Why does the U.S. government continue to view Israel as the sole victim in this conflict?" That rhetorical question is completely false. The U.S. does not view Israel as the sole victim; even President Bush, by no means a liberal on foreign affairs, asserted the need for a Palestinian state as the only means of ending the historical victimization of both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

The moral equivalency of your next statement boggles the mind. You say: "While it is true that the Gazans elected Hamas, which denies Israel's right to exist, it is also true that Israel has inflicted an intolerable existence on the Gazans." What you're saying, in ess ence, is that a government devoted to the mass extermination of Jewish people is the same as a government that is on public record as supporting a two-state solution respectful of Palestinian national sovereignty. The rationale of moral equivalency is an immoral philosophical doctrine.

Perhaps, just perhaps, U.S. lawmakers take the position they do because they have come to it from a perspective of moral clarity, and not from the cynical motives you insinuate.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Seth Daniel Riemer

Saturday, January 17, 2009

U.S. Peace-Making in Mideast Has Never Worked

This is a repeat on this blog. It was originally posted about a month earlier, but was finally published by the Hartford Courant on January 17, under a title chosen by the editor, so I thought I'd repost it.

It may be viewed directly on the Courant at http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-stein0117.artjan17,0,1767425.story and comments posted there.



YOUR VIEW: ALAN H. STEIN

Conventional wisdom is that American mediation is necessary for Arabs and Israelis to make peace.

History demonstrates the opposite. The few important breakthroughs have been made either without or despite our involvement.

In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower's pressure forced Great Britain, France and Israel to end their Suez campaign. That action accelerated the decline of Great Britain, led France to distrust us, sowed the seeds of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, helped make the Soviet Union an important player in the Middle East, and led to Egypt, the beneficiary of our intervention, joining the Soviet orbit.

In his memoir, Eisenhower's own vice president at the time, Richard Nixon, wrote: 'In retrospect I believe that our actions were a serious mistake.' Eisenhower also apparently recognized his intervention was a mistake. In a biography of Max Fischer, the wealthy industrialist and adviser to presidents from the 1950s until his death in 2005, Peter Golden quotes Eisenhower telling Fischer: 'Looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressured Israel to evacuate the Sinai.'
The first real breakthrough in the Arab-Israeli conflict came with Anwar Sadat's historic trip to Jerusalem in 1977. Not only did this seminal event come without American assistance, it reportedly distressed President Jimmy Carter, who saw it as jeopardizing his grandiose dreams of orchestrating a comprehensive settlement.

Although Carter is often given credit for facilitating the resulting peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, his involvement in the negotiations probably delayed that agreement, as his presence generally encouraged Sadat to press for more and more Israeli concessions and resist any Egyptian concessions.

The Oslo breakthrough also came about without U.S. involvement. It resulted from Palestinian Arabs and Israelis meeting secretly.

Our subsequent American involvement was a key factor in the failure of the 'Oslo Process.'
I greeted news of the Oslo Process with cautious optimism. I was never under the misimpression that Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PLO were sincere in any desire for peace, but I hoped the combination of the enormous benefits and the change in behavior mandated by any agreements would lead to real changes in Palestinian attitudes.

Unfortunately, in America's eagerness to accelerate movement, we sidetracked those changes and benefits and helped doom an inherently difficult process.

One of the first actions required of the Palestinian Arabs before the Oslo Process really began was to be the changing of the Palestinian National Charter, deleting the provisions calling for the elimination of Israel.

President Bill Clinton prevailed upon the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, to participate in the famous ceremony on the White House lawn without waiting for that change in the PLO charter. That was a seminal mistake, setting the precedent for Yasser Arafat's weaseling out of almost all of the commitments he made.

To this date, despite a widely publicized charade in 1996, the PLO charter has never been amended. The Palestinian Authority ignored the conditions under which its 'police force' was supposed to operate, continued to facilitate rather than work against terrorism and, most important, incited its people rather than preparing them for peace.

As Dennis Ross, one of America's key mediators, has recognized, underestimating the importance of the Palestinian Authority's continued incitement against Israel was a fundamental error. Under pressure from the U.S., Israel overlooked violations by the Palestinian Authority. This ultimately doomed a process that otherwise might have led to peace.

In the final analysis, only the Arabs and Israelis can end their conflict. Peace will be achieved only when the Arabs, including the Palestinian Arabs, make it a priority. Despite our best intentions, American involvement generally results in Israel unilaterally making concessions that feed Arab intransigence, ultimately intensifying the conflict.

This leads to the best advice anyone can give President-elect Barack Obama on ending the Arab-Israeli conflict: Don't even try.

>> Alan H. Stein, Ph.D. is associate professor of mathematics at the University of Connecticut and president of the Connecticut chapter of Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting, www.primerct.org. The views expressed are his own. He may be contacted at alan.stein@alanstein.com. This was first published at primerct.blogspot.com.

Rockets Hurt Arabs More Than Israelis

This letter was published in the Waterbury Republican-American on January 17, 2009. The title was chosen by the editor.



This is in response to the Jan. 14 letter by Judith and Peter Haddad, 'Goals of Israelis, Palestinians need not be incompatible.'

The Israeli Declaration of Independence, issued at the time of Israel's reestablishment, states: 'We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.'

As the Haddads point out, Hamas was elected in Gaza. (Actually, it was elected by all the Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza.) The Hamas charter states: 'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.'

To be fair, it must be noted the Palestinian Arabs didn't really have a peace party as an alternative.

Hamas' electoral opposition was the 'moderate' Fatah led by Mahmoud Abbas.

The first goal listed in the Fatah constitution is the 'complete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence.'

The two movements also agree on methods, with Hamas' charter stating: 'Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.' Fatah's says, 'Armed public revolution is the inevitable method to liberating Palestine.'

The Haddads are right: The goals of the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs need not be incompatible, but they are. As long as Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian Arab terror groups continue with their methods and goals, bloodshed and death for Arabs and Israelis is unavoidable.

The Kassam and Grad rocket at tacks and mortar fire aimed at civilians in southern Israel are designed to terrorize and have made normal life unlivable there for eight years.

Yet the Palestinian Arabs, while responsible for the violence, actually suffer more from it than the Israelis.

It is thus in the true best interests of Palestinian Arabs as well as Israelis that Israel succeed in its cur rent effort to eliminate the rocket fire from Gaza.

America can best serve the true needs and interests of the Palestinian Arabs, as opposed to their unsupportable goals, by standing with Israel, today as it defends itself against Arab terror and always as it tries to persuade the Palestinian Arabs to change their goals to become compatible with peace and brotherhood.

Alan Stein
Waterbury

The writer is president of PRIMER Connecticut (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting; primerct.org).

Israel holds its fire: Statement by PM Ehud Olmert

This is the statement issued by Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declaring a unilateral cease-fire. By the time those of us on the East Coast of the United States wake up tomorrow morning, it will be early afternoon in Israel. One wonders what the likelihood is that Hamas will not by then have already forced Israel to resume operations.





Beginning at 2:00 a.m. (18 Jan), Israel will cease its actions against the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and will remain deployed in the Gaza Strip and its environs.

Citizens of Israel,

Exactly three weeks ago as the Sabbath ended, we sat here before you- my friend Ehud Barak, the Vice Prime Minister Tzipi Livni and myself- and detailed the considerations and goals which guided us in launching a military operation in the Gaza Strip. Today, we face you again and can say that the conditions have been created so that our targets, as defined when we launched the operation, have been fully achieved, and more so:

•Hamas was badly stricken, both in terms of its military capabilities and in the infrastructure of its regime.Its leaders are in hiding.Many of its members have been killed.The factories in which its missiles were manufactured have been destroyed.The smuggling routes, through dozens of tunnels, have been bombed. The Hamas's capabilities for conveying weapons within the Gaza Strip have been damaged.The scope of missile fire directed at the State of Israel has been reduced.The areas from which most of the missiles were launched are under the control of IDF forces. The estimate of all the security services is that the Hamas's capabilities have been struck a heavy blow which will harm its ability to rule and its military capabilities for some time.

•The IDF and the Israel Security Agency have succeeded in conducting an outstanding operation, utilizing all the elements of Israel's force- on land, at sea and in the air.The military operation was characterized by determination, sophistication, courage and an impressive ability in intelligence and operations, which led to significant and numerous achievements.The current campaign proved again Israel's force and strengthened its deterrence capability vis-a-vis those who threaten us.

•The reserves soldiers, who are the foundation for the IDF's strength, proved that the spirit of volunteerism and a willingness to sacrifice still very much exist.These forces were made ready in a thorough manner, equipped with all they needed and thus could demonstrate their professionalism and fierceness of spirit.

•During all the days of fighting, the Israeli home front demonstrated its strength, despite hundreds of rockets and mortar shells indiscriminately fired at a population which numbers one million residents; it was the home front that created an unshakable foundation which strengthened us and gave us the ability to continue fighting.Two years of preparation on the home front proved that we learned our lessons and were properly organized. The Government and the heads of the regional local authorities under attack demonstrated the patience, endurance and that same strong spirit which allowed the political echelon to make the right decisions, knowing that the home front could withstand the consequences of those decisions.

•As a decision-making body, the Government of Israel demonstrated unity with regard to goals, and acted professionally and in coordination to achieve those goals.The decisions were all made in a responsible and educated manner, following clarification and in-depth discussions.As an executive branch, the Government met the demands and needs of the population and the fighting forces.

•Alongside the successes, we must also remember the fallen and those who sacrificed their lives to achieve a better reality in the South.The campaign claimed the lives of three residents of the South and ten of our soldiers.Tonight our hearts are with their families.We send our wishes for a speedy recovery to the residents of the South and to the IDF soldiers injured during the operation.

•Today, and in large part due to the success of the military operation, the entire international community is ready to mobilize in order to achieve maximum stability, and knows that, for this to occur, the process of Hamas's strengthening must stop.To this end, we reached a number of understandings- the importance of which cannot be underestimated- which will ensure that the strengthening of Hamas will decrease. We formulated understandings with the Egyptian government with regard to a number of central issues, the realization of which will bring about a significant reduction in weapons smuggling from Iran and Syria to the Gaza Strip.

•On Friday we signed a memorandum of understanding with the American government, in the framework of which the United States will mobilize to take the necessary steps, together with the other members of the international community, to prevent weapons smuggling by terrorists in Gaza.I wish to thank and express my great appreciation to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice Prime Minister for her efforts to reach this agreement, for her contribution to the diplomatic steps and for the widespread diplomatic effort she made over the past several weeks, which were an important contribution to the international backing given to the Israeli effort against the terrorist organizations headed by Hamas.

•Today I received a letter from the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel and the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, in which all four expressed their profound commitment to assisting in any way in order to ensure that weapons will not succeed in reaching the murderous terrorist organizations in Gaza.

I have no doubt that were it not for the determined and successful military action, we would not have reached diplomatic understandings, which together create a full picture of impressive accomplishment.

Citizens of Israel,
The Government decided to launch the operation in Gaza only after long thought and great consideration, and only after all attempts through other means to stop the firing and other acts of terror by Hamas failed.Israel, which withdrew from the Gaza Strip to the last millimeter at the end of 2005- with no intention of returning- found itself under a barrage of missiles.Hamas violently took control of the Gaza Strip and began attacking the communities in the South more intensely.Hamas's methods are incomprehensible.It placed its military system in crowded residential neighborhoods, operated among a civilian population which served as a human shield and operated under the aegis of mosques, schools and hospitals, while making the Palestinian population a hostage to its terrorist activities, with the understanding that Israel- as a country with supreme values- would not act.The external Hamas leadership, which lives in comfort and quiet, continued to set extremist policies while ignoring the population's ongoing suffering and out of a conspicuous unwillingness to ease its situation.

Hamas in Gaza was built by Iran as a foundation for power, and is backed through funding, through training and through the provision of advanced weapons.Iran, which strives for regional hegemony, tried to replicate the methods used by Hizbullah in Lebanon in the Gaza Strip as well. Iran and Hamas mistook the restraint Israel exercised as weakness.They were mistaken.They were surprised.

The State of Israel has proven to them that restraint is an expression of strength which was exercised in a determined and sophisticated manner when that which we had avoided became unavoidable.

During the operation, the State of Israel demonstrated great sensitivity in exercising its force in order to avoid, as much as possible, harming the civilian population not involved in terror.In cases where there was any doubt that striking at terrorists would lead to harming an innocent civilian population- we abstained from acting.There are not many countries which would act thusly.

We have no disagreement with the residents of Gaza.We consider the Gaza Strip a part of the future Palestinian state with which we hope to live a life of good neighborliness, and we wish for the day when the vision of two states is realized.

During the operation, we made widespread and concerted efforts to see to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinian population. We allowed for the transfer of equipment, food and medicine to prevent a humanitarian crisis.In addition, I appointed Minister Isaac Herzog, the Minister of Social Welfare and Social Affairs, to head up this effort, and tonight the Cabinet instructed him to invest all his efforts in preparing a comprehensive plan so that in the next few days, we will be able to provide an appropriate and comprehensive answer to the civilian population's needs in the Gaza Strip.I wish to express my great appreciation to the international organizations which acted and continue to act tirelessly to assist us in providing the Palestinian population with appropriate living conditions. Israel will continue to cooperate with them, especially in the coming days and weeks on behalf of the Gazan population.

Citizens of Israel,
Today, before the Government meeting, I spoke with the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, who presented Egypt's initiative to me, along with his request for a ceasefire.I thanked the President for Egypt's commitment to finding a solution to this crisis and for the important role it plays in the Middle East. I presented the President's statement to the Cabinet, along with the totality of our achievements in the operation, as well as the completion of the goals.The Cabinet decided to accept my proposal to declare a ceasefire.

Beginning at 2:00 a.m., Israel will cease its actions against the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and will remain deployed in the Gaza Strip and its environs.

It must be remembered that Hamas is not part of the arrangements we came to.These are agreements involving many countries, and a terrorist organization like Hamas is not and need not be a part of them.If our enemies decide that the blows they have already suffered are not enough and they wish to continue fighting, Israel will be ready for that scenario and will feel free to continue responding with force.

Hamas was surprised a number of times during the past several weeks. It did not predict the State of Israel's determination or the seriousness of its intentions to bring about a change in the reality in the region. Hamas's leaders did not believe that the State of Israel would launch a military operation on such a scale on the eve of elections; it did not predict the force of the military attack and moreover- it did not predict the outcome.

Hamas still does not fully appreciate the difficult blow it received.If Hamas decides to continue its wild terrorist attacks, it may find itself surprised again by the State of Israel's determination. I do not suggest that it or any other terrorist organization test us.

This statement tonight would be incomplete if I did not mention the kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit. One hundred meters from here, there is a demonstration for his release, and I respect each and every one of the participants.The intensive efforts to secure Gilad's release began long before the operation, continued during it and will continue after as well. The Government of Israel is working on many levels to bring him home, and during the operation we carried out various actions to bring us closer to this goal. Due to the sensitivity of the matter, I will not go into detail.I will only say that Gilad is at the top of our agenda, and we do not need any prodding or reminding in this matter.I am hopeful tonight as well that we will soon see him in his family's embrace.

On a personal note:

For weeks I have been watching the people of Israel day and night as we make the unprecedented effort to fight for and realize our right of self-defense.I saw the brave soldiers, our dear and beloved sons; I saw their commanders and the spirit which buoyed them; I saw the residents of the South, their fierce sprit; and the leadership of the mayors who took care to provide for the needs of their residents; I also saw the actions of the Home Front Command, which quietly and efficiently coordinated the assistance campaign for the southern region; and I heard the bereaved families.

Dear families, the things you said, the pain you expressed, the fierce spirit you demonstrated- these are the foundation for the people of Israel's strength.On behalf of the entire nation, on behalf of the Government of Israel, I share your profound pain and thank you for the encouragement, the strength and the inspiration your strong stance has granted the entire nation.

I also wish to say something to the people of Gaza: even before the military operation began, and during it, I appealed to you.We do not hate you; we did not want and do not want to harm you. We wanted to defend our children, their parents, their families.We feel the pain of every Palestinian child and family member who fell victim to the cruel reality created by Hamas which transformed you into victims.

Your suffering is terrible.Your cries of pain touch each of our hearts.On behalf of the Government of Israel, I wish to convey my regret for the harming of uninvolved civilians, for the pain we caused them, for the suffering they and their families suffered as a result of the intolerable situation created by Hamas.

The understandings we reached with Egypt, the international backing of the United States and the European countries- all these do not ensure that the firing by Hamas will stop. If it completely stops- the IDF will consider withdrawing from Gaza at a time which it deems right. If not, the IDF will continue to act in defense of our residents.

This is the time to convey our appreciation and gratitude, first and foremost to you, Mr. Minister of Defense, for your work, for the tremendous effort you made, for your skill, professionalism and the understanding you demonstrated throughout he operation- thank you very much.I wish to thank the soldiers of the IDF, their commanders, the Head of the Southern Command Yoav Galant, and the Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi; to the Israel Security Agency, its fighters and its head, Yuval Diskin; to the Mossad and its hidden fighters, headed by Meir Dagan; to the Israel Police and the emergency services, Magan David Adom and the Fire Department.

Blessed is the nation with such an army and such security and rescue services.

I wish to express my hope that tonight the first step towards a different reality, one of security and quiet for the residents of Israel, will be taken.From the bottom of my heart, I thank the people of Israel, its fighters and their commanders for the fierceness of spirit and the social solidarity they demonstrated over these past weeks.

This is the secret of our strength- it is the foundation for our power and it is the hope of our future.

Thank you.