Temple is a major university in the USA, home of the brave, land of the free-where Lady Liberty holds her light high inviting all who are in need to her shores. And yet, and yet, a Jewish student, Daniel Vessal, was physically and verbally attacked-for being Jewish, at this place of higher learning.
It isn’t that he was sucker-punched and verbally abused. It was that it was treated… lightly.
“Rather than falsely accusing Israel,” the letter continued, “one might have expected that as the executive head of the UN, you would have admitted responsibility of the UN for such abuse of its facilities, and instituted a thorough inquiry as to how and why UNRWA facilities were placed at the disposal of the Hamas terror organization, how and why the UN officials responsible for such facilities permitted this situation to occur, and why those rockets and other weapons that were discovered in such facilities were transferred to Hamas, for their continued use against Israel’s citizens.
“In permitting the storage of weapons, and in transferring such weapons into the hands of Hamas,” the letter asserted, “the UN has in fact permitted itself to become accessory to the commission of war crimes.”
The above passage has been added to the piece on this blog titled “United Nazis Workers Relief Agency (UNRWA)”, which appears to have been abused by Hamafia and Associates, and that to allowing its budget and facilities to abet the terrorist organization with its assaults against Israelis and, in essence by way of its tactic of putting noncombatants and civilian assets directly in the line of fire, Gazans as well.
For more than 66 years, the game against the Jews of Israel hasn’t changed much. From armies to rogue political movements to terrorist gangs, the genocidal, go-nowhere, nothing-to-offer character of the anti-Semitic aspect of the Middle East Conflict has not changed.
I’ve mentioned suzeraintyon this blog, which may be too much or too little but at least addresses Egyptian and Israeli security issues associated with the strip, its inhabitants, and its Hamas and other parasites. What I haven’t brought into the BackChannels conversation is the power inherent in genuine local rule.
The Hamas enterprise, which has been about getting rich, offing the Jews (wow, what a combination), and aggrandizing itself beyond all measure, has never been about modern representative, responsive, and responsible local governance.
When The Occupation of Gaza By Hamas comes to an end, however it may do that, the arm twisting, conflict with Israel, deep smuggling, and plundering of the local population in the name of Islam will come also to an end. In that, and perhaps only that, is there a new dawn for Gazans.
I repeat the three “R”s: Representative | Responsible | Responsive.
Bring those three into honest existence, and the entire of the middle east conflict, sixty-six years of not only of empty promises but of futile and wasteful ends, concludes.
Can approximately two million people rise to reclaim their lives in the place where they have settled?
Yesterday’s headlines are that Hamas has just rejected Egypt’s offer of a ceasefire with Israel and instead continues to fire rockets indiscriminately at Israeli towns and cities.
Less known is a crucial fact: the people of Gaza are solidly against these Hamas policies. Indeed, by a very large majority, they oppose Hamas rule altogether.
Hamas’s biggest weakness of all is its unpopularity among Palestinians in Gaza now. A poll taken in June, before the latest fighting began, showed that 70 percent of Gazans wanted a continuing cease-fire with Israel; 57 percent wanted a Fatah-Hamas unity government to renounce violence against Israel; 73 percent thought nonviolent resistance had a positive impact, and large majority thought Hamas had failed to deal with crime and corruption.
Then as Gaza’s economy began to worsen almost as quickly as the Palestinian Authority’s corruption level grew higher, fed up Gazans finally voted the PA out – and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas into power.
Anyone who expected Hamas to do a better job for the Gazan population was soon sadly disappointed. A Sunni Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas remains fanatically resolved to destroy Israel and to murder millions of Jews in the process.
I wonder if Gazans have the same question I do about Israel’s posture toward Hamas, a stance that seems invested in negotiating a peace with an entity that has long had all of its chips in for the annihilation of Israel and Jewry worldwide.
When Hitler finally committed murder and suicide in his Berlin bunker, Germany had been already overrun by the military machinery it inspired and brought to life to do exactly that. There were no questions about leaving the Nazis in power or negotiating anything less with them than unconditional surrender. Has Hamas, which has grown fat off the people of Gaza, given them nothing, and brought heartache to their doors — the angered weeping of war is the province of all mankind — any different?
“In this new video series, Washington Institute experts assess the current state of military operations in Iraq and evaluate Abadi’s ability to extricate his country from deadlock, defeat, and disintegration.”
From the looks and sound of the productions, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (TWI) has launched a DIY-AH (do-it-yourself-at-home) effort to promote its fellows’ analyses. May the TWI powers that be give them an upgrade in audio-visual recording technology.
What follows is an incomplete relay of the series, but in the way of the web, whether the viewer starts out with e-mail (as I did) or on TWI’s web page or YouTube, all routers lead back to some kind of primary media content.
Of course, if you heard it from me first — after I’ve heard it from them — in the older fashioned way of news, good!
“They are very good at using psychological operations to very quickly establish the sense that they control areas, putting up their flags on all key administrative buildings, cross-roads, wide visibility locations, and they’re very good at pursuing what they want in the mergers and acquisitions model of growth whereby they ruck into an area and immediately try to recruit the most like-minded insurgent group in the area to become part of ISIS.” (1:28 – 1:59).
“First, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq, without addressing the ISIS threat in Syria. Secondly, you can’t address the ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria without addressing the foreign fighter problem. And third, the U.S. really cannot “solve” the region’s problems, because they are rooted in issues of religious and political identity and legitimacy, and this is a problem that can only be worked out among Muslims themselves. ” (2:18 – 2:41)
My “big picture” thought, which might make sense of an $11 billion arms sale): what ISIS scours Qatar will devour.
One day.
However, there are many days between this day and that one, and the Ummah, bloodied from Afghanistan to Yemen, has been pushed by the ambitions and behaviors of its own subscription into a larger global conversation about rightful power, despotism, barbarism, and democracy.
Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, President of American Islamic Forum for Democracy states: “Sharia-compliant finance only empowers Muslim Sharia Law leaders whose real long term vision is to impose Sharia Law on the world and recreate an Islamic Empire. These leaders want to overpower capital free markets and create their version of an Islamic economy. Bankers and business leaders are being duped.”
It turns out that last night the representatives of the Palestinian Authority were putting forth a patently untrue story as to what Israeli and Hamas had agreed, when neither had. Unfortunately, all of the press (both Israeli and worldwide) reported the story as true.
. . . even if the obstacles erected by those who revolve in the Zionist orbit, aiming at obstructing the road before the Jihad fighters, have rendered the pursuance of Jihad impossible; nevertheless, the Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take.
Hear, oh Israel (and all others): with Hamas and what drives it — that deeply malignant narcissism that lends to each his own indulged and grandiose center of the universe — there is nothing to negotiate.
So Hamas does not negotiate in good faith, neither for peace and prosperity to be shared by Gazans nor for considerations having much to do, after all, with The All.
Why should Hamas or any other Jihad Joe group come equipped with an “off button”?
The enterprise clearly cons the public, makes a lot of money (which with “terror tunnels” and all would seem not to reach intended deserving recipients), and harms the principles not at all (although, perhaps, after all, Allah knows what they do — and, for now, has them getting away with it).
Citing as models Singapore, China, India, Turkey and Russia, Mr. Orban added: “We have to abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society, as well as the liberal way to look at the world.”
The Hungarian leader traced his extraordinary conclusion to the global financial crisis, which he said had exposed the weakness of Western societies and mandated “a race to invent a state that is most capable of making a nation successful.” He was particularly scathing about the United States, claiming that “the strength of American soft power is deteriorating, because liberal values today incorporate corruption, sex and violence.”
3. Call German Prime Minister Angela Merkel
to discuss a) Greek political and economic
conditions, as well as the need for Troika
policies to blunt the suffering caused by
austerity and to defuse the appeal of
extremism; and b) coordinating policies on
Hungary.
4. Instruct the Director of National Intelligence
to investigate allegations of Russian and
Iranian financial or other support of
European far-right parties and present a
classified assessment of whether the
Kremlin is attempting to use such parties to
undermine the European Union or thwart
further NATO expansion. Release an
unclassified version to Congress and the
public.
5. At the North Atlantic Council meeting at the
2014 NATO Summit, express concern
about the rise of neo-fascist parties in
Europe and its impact on security and good
governance in NATO member countries and
the strength of the Alliance. Instruct the U.S.
Ambassador to NATO and senior military
officials to raise these concerns—especially
with regard to Hungary and Greece—with
their European counterparts.
Off-the-cuff and fast blogging brought “canaries in the cave’ to mind, but in actuality the editorial board of The Washington Post and the downtown think-tank Human Rights First have voices far greater than metaphorical canaries in coal mines. However, as with the lesser birds, they are both sending a warning and should be heard loud and clear.
When referencing “the dictator Putin-Assad-Khamenei”, I had for a while to note the other axis of power that was Putin-Yanukovych. Yanukovych’s now long gone from Ukraine (online, we are all living dog years [more animals, egads]) but the principle remains: the despots know how to gang up on the democratic among souls, and in league, they are force with which to be reckoned.
I wonder if in Syria, Bashar the Butcher al-Assad didn’t give al-Nusra and the young ISIS a break in order to clear the field of the moderate and ensure his war would leave one despot, preferably himself, or another standing, which would suit defending the indefensible principle that is “political absolutism”.
Regarding Iranian and Russian sabotage, potential or real, of NATO, a review of Turkey’s position in relation to fascist Islamism and the Islamic State, which is using for its headquarters Turkey’s embassy in Mosul, Iraq, would seem also in order.
As ethical, apolitical, and professional members of the academic community, we find the open letter for the people in Gaza1 an outrageous diatribe lacking context and deliberate vilification of the sovereign state of Israel and, by extension, every Israeli. In publishing such invective, The Lancet has allowed itself to become a platform for distorted political activism, as has been previously noted by others.2,3 Because we are scientists and physicians who are accustomed to incorporating all data into the formation of educated opinions (even public commentary), we are obliged to redress the imbalance.