Doc's Talk: One Million Ceasefires

Sunday, August 03, 2014

One Million Ceasefires

Sultan Knish

If you like cease-fires, then this is a great time to be alive. Those Israelis who weren't shot in the head by Hamas terrorists (whom Andrew Sullivan insists weren't real Hamas terrorist, trading in his obsession with Sarah Palin's rogue pregnancy for a new conspiracy theory) or killed by a Hamas rocket, encounter almost as many cease-fires in a given day as terrorist attacks.

A cease-fire comes along every few minutes and it can last anywhere from a minute to an hour to a few hours until Hamas once again begins firing rockets or swarming through tunnels to attack Israelis.

"War, what is it good for?" The Temptations sang. The obvious answer is that wars done right keep you from having to keep fighting.

But cease-fires with Hamas aren't good for that or anything else.

Hamas violates its own cease-fires. It declares cease-fires and then denies that it declared them. It seems to have almost as many positions on cease-fires as John Kerry does on Iraq.

Israel's unilateral cease-fires with Hamas are as worthless as its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza which allowed Hamas to take over the area. The cease-fires don't stop the fighting. They don't bring an end to the violence.

That's what war is for.

But John Kerry is almost as obsessed with cease-fires as he is with finding a toupee that stays put during intense windsurfing sessions. The complete uselessness of the cease-fires hasn't stopped the completely useless top diplomat from constantly proposing new ones.

Having noticed that the lifespan of one of these cease-fires is roughly that of a good idea inside his brain, Kerry defended his insistence on enrolling Israel in the Ceasefire-of-the-Minute club by claiming that enough worthless cease-fires could eventually be cashed in for one big real cease-fire.

Obama's economic policy was all about piling up huge amounts of debt on the theory that enough debt would eventually translate into wealth. The theory of a million worthless cease-fires adding up to peace is that same economic theory applied to the equally fraudulent realm of international diplomacy.

"The momentum generated by these short-term cease-fires is the best way to achieve a sustainable cease-fire," Kerry said.

So far the only momentum is coming from Hamas rockets falling on Israel every time there's a cease-fire. But maybe that's the momentum that John Kerry has in mind. If enough rockets fall on Israel, maybe the Jews will finally give up on trying to contain Hamas and settle on Qatar's terms.

In Hard Choices, a photo of deposed Egyptian leader Mohammed Morsi gazing lovingly into Hillary Clinton's eyes is captioned with the false claim that “Morsi helped me negotiate a cease-fire between Israel & Hamas that holds to this day.“

By "to this day" she probably meant the last day someone bought a copy of Hard Choices; piles of which are currently being used as doorstops at every Costco in the country. But even by that standard, the cease-fire that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt negotiated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza didn't hold up too well.

The rocket attacks on Israel never stopped. Obama, Kerry and Clinton just pretended that they did. Desperate to get someone in Washington D.C. to notice their homicidal mania, Gaza even fired off rockets during Obama's visit. The target was Sderot, the Israeli city that Obama had visited back in 2008 before he learned how to lower the oceans, amnesty the illegals and stab Israel in the back.

"The first job of any nation state is to protect its citizens," Obama told the residents of the city that has come to be known as the nation's bomb shelter. "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing."

But in 2013, Obama skipped Sderot. He paid no attention to the terrorists firing rockets at Sderot, even though they had dubbed him a "Roman Dog". Instead he visited the leader of the PLO who welcomed him with a mangled rendition of a Communist song about the glories of the Red Army and collective agriculture. Abbas may have assumed that it was one of the few things that the terrorist leader and the community organizer had in common.

Meanwhile everyone went on pretending that the cease-fire still held. Only the Israelis had trouble playing along because were still being shelled.

Kerry's spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who attempts to fix his messes by creating new messes of her own, explained that, ”Our focus is now is on short term cease-fires than can be built on each other.”

Any construction worker will tell you that putting one fragile and unstable object on top of another an infinite amount of times will not build anything livable, but the party of "You Didn't Build That" doesn't seem to know much about how to actually build things, whether it's economies or cease-fires.

Psaki's rhetoric is part of a larger shift in diplomatic expectations about the peace process.

Israel is expected to accept a million cease-fires, no matter how worthless, because a cease-fire is an innately good thing, regardless of whether it's actually good for anything. If war is always bad, then cease-fires are always good. It doesn't matter if winning a war actually leads to peace while cease-fires just lead to more war.

The devolution of peacenik idealism from a lasting peace to a cease-fire that lasts as long as it takes a bunch of men from Beit Hanoun to lug their rocket from the mosque to a UNRWA school is an adaptation to a new reality.

Unlike its PLO cousins, Hamas isn't willing to pinkie swear that it will stop killing Israelis if it gets a few pieces of land on a map. Hamas only offers the Hudna, the temporary cease-fire that Muslims offer to non-Muslims, just before they start killing them again anyway.

Arafat framed the peace deal to Muslims in terms of Mohammed's Hudna, a process that eventually led Mohammed to carry out the mass murder and rape of the local Jewish population during that golden age of coexistence between Muslims and the Jews and Christians they were ethnically cleansing that the New York Times keeps talking about when it blames Zionism for everything.

But the PLO was at least willing to run its Hudna through the Western framework of diplomacy and peace agreements. Hamas is no more honest than the PLO, but its dishonesty is expressed in purely Islamic terms. If it's going to agree to an agreement that it intends to break anyway, it's going to be a temporary Hudna cease-fire, which it can safely break under Islamic law, and not some infidel Western peace process.

The idealism of diplomats and activists is tagging along after the new Hamas reality. The peace process is dead. The temporary ceasefire in which Hamas is allowed to kill Israelis, but Israel isn't allowed to kill the terrorists killing its people is the new ideal. And Israel is expected to get on board.

The cease-fire is just the peace process stripped as naked as the fairy tale emperor. It works exactly the same way.

Terrorists attack Israel. Israel fights back. The photogs snap staged photos of Israeli atrocities, complete with painstakingly posed brand new teddy bears. The diplomats show up and demand that Israel make concessions to the terrorists in exchange for not being shot at. The concessions are made and the terrorists go on shooting anyway.

It's the same old story, without any of the empty talk of "Peace in Our Time." There's no promise of co-existence. No new Middle East. Just Lucy in a Burka holding out an exploding football.

Secretary of State John Kerry promises that enough cease-fires will add up to a sustainable cease-fire. But what is a sustainable cease-fire anyway? Unlike peace, sustainable cease-fires happen through a balance of power. Kerry's sustainable cease-fire however is supposed to be achieved by rewarding Hamas for breaking all the other cease-fires with a raft of new concessions.

Trying to obtain a sustainable cease-fire by rewarding terrorists who break cease-fires is like going trillions into debt to get rich. Not only won't it work, but it will have the exact opposite effect.

Kerry's sustainable cease-fire can't exist because he's paying the terrorists breaking it in Israeli currency. Psaki's giant pile of cease-fires, one of top of another, is just a game of diplomatic Jenga. Everyone from the UN Secretary General to Hillary Clinton keeps shouting for an immediate cease-fire. But what is the cease-fire supposed to accomplish when the problem is terrorism?

We didn't respond to Pearl Harbor with an unconditional cease-fire. We didn't address 9/11 with a cease-fire. As miserably defeatist as this administration has been, it still hasn't declared a cease-fire with Al Qaeda no matter how many civilians, including children, die in the process.

A cease-fire is even more pointless than a peace process. At least a peace process has a goal. A cease-fire is a temporary interruption in hostilities. It doesn't accomplish anything except to prolong and delay the inevitable. It's not an end to war. It's a war that drags on interminably without any final conclusion. Instead the rockets keep falling year after year in the war that never ends.

A million cease-fires solve nothing. Especially when Hamas continues to violate its own cease-fires, accepting them and then rejecting them and then attacking anyway.

We don't have a cease-fire with Al Qaeda. Instead Obama keeps promising to defeat Al Qaeda. Doesn't Israel deserve to win its own war on terror?

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The IDF’s Minorities in Numbers and Pictures

In honor of IDF Diversity Week, we present diversity through numbers and pictures. Each year, more and more Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin and immigrants from around the world take on the responsibility of defending Israel.

MUSLIMS:

Muslim Arab Israelis are not required to draft in the IDF, but there are many who volunteer. In 2013, there were over 200 Muslims serving in the IDF and over 300 in the reserves.

Bedouins:

Bedouins are nomadic Muslims who were in Israel when modern borders were set in place and are now considered Israeli citizens. They are not required to draft but a growing number choose to enlist. In 2012, there were over 1,400 Bedouin Muslim soldiers doing regular IDF service and almost 1,500 in the reserves.

Read more:http://www.idfblog.com/2014/02/27/truth-idf-numbers-pictures/#more-34027

Are you aware that in 2013, Middle class taxes go up-significantly?

In January of next year, the federal income tax rate for middle-class taxpayers is scheduled to rise from 25 percent to 28 percent, and the payroll tax is scheduled to rise from 13.3 percent to 15.3 percent… This drives the marginal tax rate based on the aforementioned three taxes to 48.12 percent. Add in state and local property, corporate, excise, and other state and local taxes, and the percentage of each additional dollar that is taxed hovers around 50 percent… When half of each additional dollar earned is taxed away, taxpayers experience a disincentive to start businesses or expand existing ones. This leads to fewer jobs being created.

Why is HAMAS Inside Tampa Schools?

Clare Lopez

Kelly Miliziano, who teaches history classes at Steinbrenner High School in the Tampa, Florida area apparently thinks it’s perfectly OK to invite a senior official of a HAMAS-affiliated organization into her classroom to discuss Islam with her students. According to local media reports, not only has this been going on for years, but in spite of the civil and criminal proceedings that could result from such reckless negligence, the Hillsborough County school superintendent, Mary Ellen Elia, and the chairman of the school board, Candy Olson, also expressed approval for students under their responsibility to be exposed repeatedly to guest speaker, Hassan Shibly, who is the Executive Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the Tampa area.
More...

Did You Know... Ignoring the Call to Islam will Bring Jihad

‘Conquest through Da’wa [proselytizing] that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da’wa.’
-- Yousef al-Qaradawi , Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader The Arabic word ‘Da’wa’ means the “call to Islam.” But do not think that Da’wa is the same thing as an invitation to an optional holiday event. The classical Islamic doctrine of jihad mandates that enemies must be given the opportunity to convert to Islam or pay the jizya tax before it is permissible to attack them.
Clare M. Lopez

Who is being discriminated-facts tell the truth

Religious bias

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,409 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed:

65.4 percent were anti-Jewish.
13.2 percent were anti-Islamic.
9.5 percent were anti-other religion, i.e., those not specified.
4.3 percent were anti-Catholic.
3.8 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
3.3 percent were anti-Protestant.
0.5 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.

On March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview

with PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here's what he said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism.

For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

In March 1977, Zahir Muhsein, a PLO executive, said:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism."

"For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

The Arab Apartheid

Ben-Dror Yemini
In 1948, the Arab countries refused to accept the UN partition proposal and they launched a war of annihilation against the State of Israel which had barely been established. All precedents in this matter showed that the party that starts the war - and with a declaration of annihilation, yet - pays a price for it. Between 550,000 and 710,000 Arabs fled because of the war and a larger number of 850,000 Jews were expelled or fled from Arab countries (the "Jewish nakba").
Population exchanges and expulsions were the norm at that time, occurring in dozens of other conflict points and affecting about 52 million people. In all the population exchange precedents that occurred during or at the end of an armed conflict, there was no return of refugees to the previous region, which had turned into a new national state.
Only the Arab states acted completely differently from the rest of the world. Instead of assimilating the refugees, they crushed them despite the fact that they were their coreligionists and members of the Arab nation - instituting a regime of apartheid. So the "nakba" was not caused by the actual dispossession, which had also been experienced by tens of millions of others. The "nakba" is the story of the apartheid, oppression, abuse and denial of rights suffered by the Arab refugees at the hands of the Arab countries. (Maariv)

International Law and Military Operations in Practice - Col. Richard Kemp

"Islamist fighting groups study the international laws of armed conflict carefully and they understand it well. They know that a British or Israeli commander and his men are bound by international law and the rules of engagement that flow from it. They then do their utmost to exploit what they view as one of their enemy's main weaknesses. Their very modus operandi is built on the correct assumption that Western armies will normally abide by the rules, while these insurgents employ a deliberate policy of operating consistently outside international law. "

Lost Historical Moments

What Rabin’s last Knesset speech really said:repudiation of a Palestinian state

Rabin ruled out a fully sovereign Palestinian state :

“We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority.”

Rabin ruled out a total withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and thus a return to the pre-June 1967 borders :

“The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines.”

Rabin ruled out withdrawing form the Jordan Valley:

“The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term.”

Rabin ruled out uprooting settlement blocs, like the Gush Katif bloc in Gaza (which was subsequently uprooted by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon):

“The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif.

AND

Rabin ruled out removing any settlement before coming to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians:

“I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth.”

Rabin insisted on Israel retaining full security control of the borders with Egypt and Jordan, contrary to Israel’s relinquishment of the Philadelphia Corridor on the border with Egypt:

“The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands.”

Correcting Oslo Myths-Part 2

3) Kuttab laments that the post-1993 Oslo process resulted in a Palestinian Authority "whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank ...."

Before free passage or other perquisites, PA leaders were obligated, among other things, to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, end anti-Israeli, antisemitic incitement in schools, mosques, and communications media, and resolve all outstanding issues through peaceful negotiations. They met none of these commitments, sometimes bolstering terrorism and greatly increasing incitement.

4) Kuttab complains that under Oslo the PA got "lightly armed police ---- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank."

Oslo agreements repeatedly were revised, regardless of Palestinian non-compliance, until the authorized number of police grew from 8,000 to 40,000. Though they were to be the only armed forces in the territories, Israeli estimates early in the second intifada put the number of gunmen - police, "security services," terrorists, and armed gangs - at 85,000. Their armament reportedly included not only heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, but also anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.

Sovereignty was to be negotiated in the envisioned 1998 "final status" talks - after a five-year period of confidence-building. Palestinian leadership chronically undermined the process. Palestinian terrorism made the 1993 - 1998 Oslo period more deadly for Israelis than the 15 years preceding it.

The United States doesn't have contiguity between the lower 48 states and Alaska and Hawaii; territorial contiguity between the West Bank and Gaza Strip - that is, through the 20 miles of Israeli territory between them - was never promised and would destroy Israeli contiguity.

5) "Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories, and tight Israeli control over borders."

The security barrier is not "deep in Palestinian territories," but rather encompasses less than 8 percent of Judea and Samaria, and is mostly a fence, rarely a wall; the land in question is not "our [Palestinian] territories" but disputed territory to which, according to the authors of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, Jews as well as Arabs have claims; and there are no international borders, only the 1949 armistice lines with Jordan. Under 242, borders remain to be negotiated. As for checkpoints - like the security barrier and "tight Israeli control" - Palestinian Arabs precipitated these measures themselves. No terrorism and there would be no fence or tight Israeli control and few checkpoints - like before the first intifada.

Correcting Some Oslo Myths

1) In Oslo "Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that ... Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified."

No, they didn't. The 1993 Declaration of Principles and subsequent Oslo agreements outlined a process by which final status negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be reached. The process required an end to anti-Israel terrorism and incitement and a commitment to peaceful negotiations. The PA, Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups, sabotaged the process from the start.

2) "The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation."
Wrong again. Resolution 242 (1967) does note "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." It also affirms the right of every state in the area "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." There were no "Palestinian territories." Jordan occupied the West Bank, Egypt controlled Gaza. Israel did not have "secure and recognized boundaries," so retention of some of those territories was possible under 242. Israel is not a "foreign" military occupier in the West Bank but, pending final negotiations, the lawful military administrator as a result of a successful war of self-defense.

Doc's Talk