Terror Tunnels The Case for Israel's Just War Against Hamas (14 page)

The only way to shut down these terror tunnels is by Israeli boots on the ground, and with grave risks to the lives of Israeli soldiers. But Israel had little choice but to attack these tunnel entrances before they could be used as planned: to murder hundreds, if not thousands of Israeli civilians and to kidnap Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Despite these indisputable realities, Israel’s defamers insist that: 1) Gaza has been continuously occupied since its soldiers and settlers left in 2005; 2) Israel’s continued occupation is unlawful; and 3) this unlawful occupation justifies Hamas’s war crimes, including rocket and tunnel attacks on Israel’s civilians from behind Palestinian human shields.

If any of these claims were to be credited by the international community, a two-state solution would become impossible, because there is no way Israel would, or should, end its military occupation of the West Bank without maintaining some degree of military control over its security borders. No Israeli government—right, left or center—would make a deal with the Palestinian Authority that left its citizens and its airport vulnerable to rocket or tunnel attacks of the kind they have experienced from Gaza since leaving in 2005. Nor would, or should, the United States ever ask Israel to accept any deal that did not assure its security, especially in light of the instability in Syria, Iraq, and much of the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.

Those who refuse to credit Israel for unilaterally removing all of its settlers and all of its soldiers from Gaza because it retained some security control over its borders are discouraging Israel from taking further risks for peace.

The perfect is enemy of the good, and to demand a total end to any Israeli military control over its vulnerable and dangerous borders is to assure that a good, if imperfect, peace deal will never take place. That is the goal of Hamas. It is also the goal of some Israeli extremists.

Those who falsely argue that Israel continued to occupy Gaza after its soldiers left and before it imposed its necessary blockade are playing into the hands of the enemies of a compromise peace.

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Qatar and Other American “Allies” Are Among the Villains in Gaza

August 1, 2014

American allies, especially Qatar and Turkey, have been providing material support to Hamas, which the United States has listed as a foreign terrorist organization. This support includes financial, diplomatic, media, and even the provision of weapons that deliberately target Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian civilians who are used as human shields. It also includes harboring war criminals, especially leaders of Hamas, who direct their followers from the safety of Doha. Without the support of Qatar and Turkey, Hamas would never have started this bloody war that has caused so much human suffering.

Qatar, which is more of a family-owned gas station than a real country, regards itself as untouchable because of its oil wealth. Its residents—they are not really citizens because there are no genuine elections or freedom of speech or religion—are the richest in the world. It can buy anything it wants, including the 2022 World Cup, several American university campuses, some of the world’s greatest art, Al Jazeera television, and other luxuries. It can also buy terrorist groups such as Hamas. Indeed, after Iran, which is the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism, Qatar ranks near the top of this dishonor role of death.

Any individual who provides material support to a designated terrorist group such as Hamas commits a crime under the United States penal law and the laws of several European countries. If Hamas were ever to be convicted of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, as it may well be, any individual who was an accessory to such crimes would be guilty as well. It is entirely fair, therefore, to describe Qatar as a criminal regime, guilty of accessory to mass murder.

In some ways Turkey is even worse. Its erratic prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has incited anti-Semitism, provoked conflict with Israel, provided material support to Hamas, and undercut efforts to achieve a realistic end to the Gaza War. He has demanded that his Jewish subjects do his bidding, telling “our Jewish citizens’ leaders” that they must “adopt a firm stance and release a statement against the Israeli government.” He has suggested that if they fail to do so they will not be regarded as “good Turks,” thus raising the old canard of “dual loyalty.”

Erdogan also recently said of Israel that “they always curse Hitler, but they now even exceed him in barbarism.” And he responded to Americans who complain about the “comparisons with Hitler,” by saying, “You’re American, what’s Hitler got to do with you?” forgetting that Hitler’s forces killed thousands of American soldiers and civilians. He also conveniently forgets that Turkey, which remained immorally “neutral” in the war against Nazism, provided Hitler with the playbook for his genocide, by its own genocide against Armenians. As Hitler asked rhetorically when planning his genocide: “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” So Hitler matters to America, as it should to Turkey, which still mendaciously denies that it committed genocide against the Armenians. Recently, the New York Times reported that Qatar was trying to buy the Brookings Institution and other Washington Think Tanks.
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Yet it was Qatar and Turkey to which Secretary of State John Kerry turned in his efforts to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a cease-fire. This not only infuriated Israel, which considers these two countries as accessories to Hamas’s war crimes, but also Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, which also see Qatar and Turkey as allies of Hamas and enemies of moderate Arab states.

The time has come for the United States and the international community to reassess the status of Qatar and Turkey. These two countries have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. A nation that hosts Hamas leaders and finances their terrorism should not also host the World Cup. Nor should American universities send their faculty and students to a nation complicit in terrorism that has taken the lives of many Americans as well as Israelis.

Turkey’s role in NATO must also be reevaluated. Membership in this organization entails certain responsibilities, and Turkey has failed in these responsibilities. They have become untrustworthy partners in the quest for peace.

It is a truism that we, as a nation, must deal with devils, because men and women are not angels. I do not fault Secretary of State Kerry for trying to use Qatar and Turkey to pressure Hamas into accepting a deal, although the deal they ultimately came up with was a bad one, especially compared to the Egyptian proposal. My point is that Qatar’s wealth and Turkey’s size should not preclude us from telling it as it is: Qatar and Turkey are among the worst villains in the Gaza tragedy. Nor should we reward such villains, and such complicity in war crimes, by international gifts, such as the World Cup. Both Qatar and Turkey should be treated as pariahs unless and until they stop becoming state sponsors, supporters, and facilitators of terrorism.

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Hamas Uses Cease-Fire to Kidnap

August 1, 2014

When Hamas accepted the US-UN proposed cease-fire, many eyebrows were raised.

Why suddenly would Hamas accept this cease-fire, when it had turned down so many previous proposals?

Some speculated that perhaps Qatar, the financial godfather of the terrorist organization, had pressured Hamas into accepting it. Others speculated that Hamas was getting pressure from its own citizens to end the bloodshed.

It now seems that all these speculations failed to take into account the true nature of Hamas. We often forget that Hamas is a criminal organization—a group of terrorists working together with other terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad for the sole purpose of destroying the nation-state of the Jewish people and killing as many of its citizens as possible.

Criminals and terrorists don’t play by the rules of civilized society.

It now seems likely that Hamas and its co-conspirators agreed to the deal for the sole purpose of lulling Israel into accepting it so that they could catch Israel off guard and exploit the humanitarian cease-fire to achieve one of the most important goals of the war they started, namely to kidnap an Israeli soldier or civilian and hold that person hostage until their extortionate demands were met.

The reason some people actually believed that Hamas would play by the rules and maintain the cease-fire to which it agreed, is because the media, the UN, and some in the international community falsely equate Israel, a democratic country that abides by the rule of law, with Hamas, a terrorist organization comprised of criminals who commit double war crimes every time they fire rockets at Israeli civilians from behind Palestinian civilians and whenever they hide terrorist tunnels in civilian areas.

The conflict is seen not as one between good and evil, or between criminals and those who seek to enforce the law, but rather as between two parties with equal claims. This false symmetry only encourages Hamas to exploit this status by appearing to play by the rules while never intending to do so.

Israel has learned its harsh lesson.

It will never again agree to a cease-fire with Hamas that in any way depends on mutual trust. One hopes that the world too has learned a lesson. It should never try to pressure Israel into taking any action or inaction that relies on Hamas’s good faith.

Since it was the United States and United Nations that asked Israel to accept the cease-fire that led to the apparent kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, it is now their responsibility to demand the return of the soldier with no conditions.
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The United States has accepted this responsibility.

Secretary of State John Kerry issued the following statement: “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s attack, which led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers and the apparent abduction of another… Hamas, which has security control over the Gaza Strip, must immediately and unconditionally release the missing Israeli soldier, and I call on those with influence over Hamas to reinforce this message.”

The United Nations, on the other hand, has accepted no responsibility.

Its Security Council is unlikely to demand the unconditional and immediate return of the soldier or even condemn Hamas alone for violating the UN-brokered cease-fire. That is because Russia will almost certainly veto any unilateral condemnation of Hamas even if a majority could be mustered in support.

The best proof, if any were needed, that Hamas is a criminal organization, is that it regards the kidnapped soldier not as a prisoner of war but as a hostage. Responsible armed forces capture soldiers; criminal organizations kidnap them. Responsible armed forces allow the Red Cross to visit captured soldiers; criminal organizations keep them incommunicado and allow no Red Cross visitors.

Real armed forces release soldiers when the combat is over; criminal groups hold their kidnap victims until their ransom demands are met.

Finally, real armed forces protect the lives of captured enemy soldiers; criminal gangs often murder their kidnap victims, as Hamas members murdered the three Israeli children they kidnapped earlier this year.

The time has come, indeed it has long past, for the international community to regard Hamas as the terrorist gang that it is. It should be treated the way the world has treated pirates over the centuries. International warrants should be issued for the arrest of Hamas’s gang leaders.

They should be dealt with in the way police and armed forces deal with the mafia and other criminal gangs. Hamas deserves no place at the table of negotiation or in any Palestinian government, any more than La Cosa Nostra would deserve to be part of an Italian government or the Israeli-Russian mafia should be included in any Israeli government.

Hamas has done more harm to the Palestinian people than has Israel. If the Palestinian people won’t rescue themselves from this gang of cutthroats, the international community should do so.

That would be true humanitarianism.

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What Should Israel Do? What Would the United States Do?

August 5, 2014

Imagine you are the prime minister of Israel or the president of the United States, or the chief of staff of either army. Your soldiers are fighting a just war to try to prevent rockets from hitting your civilians or tunnels from being used to murder and kidnap your people. Your enemy, knowing that you wish to prevent casualties among their civilians, purposely shoots at your soldiers from civilian areas. Your soldiers, caught in the midst of an ongoing firefight, basically have two choices: one, fire back and try to stop the enemy from killing you while trying to avoid or minimize civilian casualties; or two, lay down your arms because you don’t want to endanger civilians, and accept the risk that your soldiers may be killed.

The United Nations and much of the rest of the world—sitting in the safety of peaceful areas—have condemned Israel for allowing its soldiers to try to stop the attacks on them while also trying to minimize civilian casualties. “You can do more,” the White House has insisted.

But what more could Israel do that would not endanger its own civilians and soldiers? Would President Obama like to be the one who has to call the parents of an American soldier and explain to them that their son was killed because he, the commander in chief, had ordered the soldier not to fire back at enemy mortars that were being fired at him from behind human shields?

Israel is doing precisely what every other Western democracy would do if confronted with the situation Israel now faces. Colonel Richard Kemp—a British expert on this kind of warfare—has said that Israel is doing it more carefully and with more concern for civilian life than any other country. The Israeli military devotes considerable resources to trying to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties, while Hamas devotes its resources to trying to maximize both Israeli and Palestinian civilian casualties.