Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 16, 2009

Why "moderate" PalArabs are unhappy with Hamas

Al-Arabiya (Arabic only) talks about how West Bank Palestinian Arabs are criticizing Hamas:

After the atmosphere of national unity that prevailed during the first days of the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, the voices of officials of the Palestinian Authority are now publicly criticizing Hamas policy, especially in terms of abuse with the political initiatives to stop the war. A minister of prisoner affairs, Ashraf El Ajrami, says that Hamas and Israel aim to keep the catastrophic situation in Gaza as it is, to abort the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

In turn, the President of the Fatah parliamentary bloc, Azzam al-Ahmad said he had contacted the Vice-President of the political bureau of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzouk, two days ago and asked him to agree to begin dialogue according to the Egyptian initiative, "but they refused."

Al-Ahmed said: "I think that Hamas is now aiming from behind to take the hard-line position to recognize it as a fait accompli leadership in the Gaza Strip, regardless of the number of victims who fall."

Palestinian writer and political analyst Samih Shabib mentions a "high level of media criticism in the Palestinian movement over Hamas' handling of the war in Gaza." The analyst, who is close to the Fatah movement, added, "I think that when the war began, Hamas presented itself as capable of causing surprises, and promised to create these surprises, but since then Hamas did not achieve the promised surprises, and Hamas' credibility was damaged."

He continued, "Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh two days ago talked about an outright victory, while we notice the ground is a large Israeli incursion in Gaza, on the outskirts of cities to the extent that the citizen is aware of the inequality between the resistance and the Israeli army."

He added, "that in my every day that passes, Hamas loses more credibility, loss of lives of more than 5 thousand between the martyrs and wounded, in addition to the billions of dollars lost a result of the demolition of buildings."

The editor of newspaper al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Hafez al-Barghouti, said, mocking the statements from Hamas officials that "from some of the requirements of the Hamas movement for a the cease-fire it would seem that our forces are moving in the Tel Aviv district and not in their own home."

For his part, Pharaohs Hamada wrote in al-Ayyam that "Hamas has succeeded in absorbing a first strike and attacks, despite the exposure of the destruction and loss of the extensive stockpiles of arms and the death of some leaders of field", he said, "but Hamas this time, unfortunately (.. .) failed, and failed to strike painful blows quality or about the Israeli enemy, despite all the threats and warnings by the leaders of Hamas martyrs and the surprises waiting for the occupation forces in the invasion. "

These opinions, by "moderate" Palestinian Arab opinion makers and leaders, are striking. Not because they are unhappy with Hamas, which we have known for a while, but because of their source of unhappiness.

These leaders are not only saying that Hamas is (partially) responsible for the suffering of Gazans, but they seem more upset that Hamas promised to strike hard at Israel - and has failed.

Hezbollah promised to hurt Israel and managed to kill dozens of people with Katyushas, forcing the entire north of the country to flee. This was Hezbollah's "victory," not merely survival. They managed to take at least a partial offensive and hurt Israel.

Palestinian Arab anger is apparently at least as much as Hamas' failure to launch a "quality" attack on Israel as it is on Hamas bringing death and destruction on Gazans.

This is critically important to understand. Just as a huge majority of Palestinian Arabs rejoiced over the Mercaz Harav massacre of schoolchildren, their ambivalence towards Hamas will turn to love if Hamas manages to hit a school or apartment building in Israel that causes dozens or more casualties.

Once we see this we can understand Hamas' single-minded war strategy - try not to be killed by Israel but put all of your resources into anything that would cause Israelis pain, whether it would be another soldier kidnapping or a successful Grad attack at a populated area, killing many. A single deadly attack will make the so-called moderate Palestinian Arabs into unqualified supporters of the terrorists.

Right now, Hamas is perceived as losing because it hasn't managed to pull off that attack, not because of a thousand dead Gazans. To Palestinian Arabs - to Israel's "peace partners" - a few dead Jews would be worth the price of hundreds of civilians.

This also partially explains Hamas' reluctance for a cease fire and the concomitant increase of rockets today. Hamas is banking on getting "lucky" enough to rocket a school bus or an old-age home. And such an attack will enable Hamas to crown itself as the undisputed leader of Palestinian Arabs.

Because, deep down, even the PalArab "doves" want to see such attacks succeed as well.

Ma'an reports on the funeral of Hamas "interior minister" Said Siam:

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, many of them Hamas supporters, attended a mass funeral procession in Gaza on Friday for de facto Interior Minister Said Siyam, who was assassinated in an Israeli airstrike on Thursday.

If Gaza is as ravaged as the news reports and "human rights" activists want us to believe, and if Gazans all believe that Israel is targeting civilians; if Israel's goal (as that moderate Mahmoud Abbas has said) is to "eliminate the Palestinian people from Gaza".... then why would so many people put their lives in their own hands and gather in such a large crowd, with the knowledge that surely Israel will drop megaton bombs on them? Imagine how many of these people could have been killed by a single bomb of the type that killed their hero (crater pictured on left).

Could it be that they really know that Israel is more moral than they are, and are willing to bet their own lives on it?

(By the way, his Ma'an obituary includes the fact that Siam used to get his paycheck from the UN:

Siyam worked as a math and science teacher at local United Nations-run schools. He joined Hamas in the 1980s, one of its earliest members. Siyam quickly assumed leadership of the local teacher's union.

(Meaning that he was a UNRWA teacher and a terrorist simultaneously.)

Morning links (updated)

This piece by prominent Israeli writer and leftist A. B. Yehoshua slamming Ha'aretz' Gideon Levy is a must-read.

Sultan Knish has the excellent "Why We Choose Us."

An entire unit of Hamas trained by Iran has been destroyed.

A picture of "starving Palestinians."

No one is crying over Said Siam.

UPDATE: Natan Sharansky explains things as well as anyone has.

Muslims pray to destroy Jews, Christians

Islam Online decided to open up a message board where its readers can compose their own prayers to Allah to support the people of Gaza. While some prayers ask for no more suffering and similar requests, others are a bit more...violent. In English, too!

Victory or Martydom
By Noureddine - New Zealand on 2009-01-16 04:14 (GMT)

In the name of Allah the most Gracious the most Merciful. Oh Allah bestow your blessings on our brothers and sisters in gaza and bless them with patience and help then against their aggressors. Oh Allah you don't like transgression and injustice destroy the transgressors children of pigs and monkeys. Oh Allah save your sincere slaves and destroy the arab leaders our shame and burden. Oh Allah bless me with shahada in your sake. Ameen Ameen ya rab elaalameen.

READ AL MUNTAQIIM EXCESSIVELY INSHALLAH ALLAH WILL TAKE REVENGE SOON
By SADIQA on 2009-01-16 01:45 (GMT)

ya ALLAH DESTROY YOUR ENEMEIS AND ENEMIES OF PEACE AND ISLAM AN CHRISTAINS AND REST OF THE WORLD. DESTROY THESE ISRAELIS PLEASE ONCE AND FOR ALL AND THEIR SUPPORTERS IN WESTERN COUNTRIES AS WELL. AND MAKE THEM BURN IN HELL FOR GOOD. EVERY MSULIM SHOULD TAKE UP ARMS AGSINT THEM NO MATTER HOW SMAL IT IS . AND READ AYAH KURSI 313 TIMES WITH STRONG CONVICTION INSHALLAH ALLH WILL GIVE US VICTORY ARAB RULERS SHOULD RISE UP , AND HAVE FAITH IN GOD AND SUPPORT THE OPPRESSED BECAUSE IT COULD BE THIER TURN NEXT . THEY SHOULD SUPPORT GAZA NO MATTER HOW SMALL THEIR ARMIES REMEMBER THAT ALWAYS THE WEAK HAVE GAINED VCITORY OVER THE STRONG IN HISTORY AND IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. WE HAVE THE QURAN AND SUNNAH AND LOT OF DUAS WHICH COULD HELP SAVE OUR LIVES AND THOSE OF OUR LOVED ONES TOO. LIKE BISMAILLAHILLAZZI LAYAZZURUU MAISMIHI SHAYYUN FIL ARZI WALA FISSAMAI WAHAUWAS SAMIUL ALEEM , 3 TIMES DAILY ON OURSLEVES AND OUR FAMILIES. THE JEWS DNT HAVE FAITH ON THEIR SIDE. THEY ARE DECEIVED BY THERI ORTHODOX RABBIS WHO TEACH TALMUDC HATRED AND KABBALA . BUT WE HAVE THE QURAN SO USE IT AT THIS TIME. ALSO READ SURAH FEEL EXCEESSIVELY DURING WAR AND VICTORY WILL BE OURS INSHALLAH . MAKE TAWEEZ OF MANZIL, OR WIRD AL LATIF DUAS AND DO WHAT WE HAVE TO DO. IF WE STOP NOW ALL OF US WILL BE MASSACRED OR MADE SLAVES OF THESE PEOPLE .

Dua
By Seema on 2009-01-16 01:16 (GMT)

Ya Allah let the whole community of Christian and Jews, punish them the way that all whole world will see it and learn lesson not to torture our brothers and sisters.

Yemen's Jews supposedly condemn Israel

News Yemen quotes the official Saba news agency:

Yemeni Jews condemn the Israeli crimes in the Gaza Strip and agree that such crimes being committed by the Zionist entity put Jews in risk. They fear reactions from their Muslim neighbors because of brutal genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza.

Whenever Israel commits genocide in Palestine, the Jewish community is exposed to harassment by Muslims. Israeli aggression against Gaza people and killing of the Yemeni Jewish Moshe Yaish Nahari are two incidents evoked shedding lights on Jewish minority in Yemen.

I should mention that Nahari was murdered by a Muslim in Yemen two weeks before Operation Cast Lead.

"Harassments against us are increasing whenever Israel commits massacres against Palestinians. Killing of the Jewish Moshe Nahari is a personal criminal act and we hope we will get justice," said one of Yemeni Jews.

"Israeli killings of Palestinian people force us to stay at our houses fearing of harassments by persons do not understand that Yemeni Jews have nothing to do with what is happing in Palestine," said Rabi of Raida Jews, Yahya Yaish.

"What is happening in Palestine does not satisfy Allah and His Messengers. What is happening is a crime against Palestine and against all religions," added Yaish.

Does this sound like something a Jew would say of his own free will?

While Suleiman Yacoob, Yemen Jewish, says what Israel is doing does not satisfy any person and that Allah prohibits killing human being. "The Yemeni Jews are against genocides in Palestine and the harassments we face are just personal," he affirmed.

Saeed bin Israel, another Jewish citizen, says "Jews face several harassments from some Muslims, namely young people. These harassments happen in markets, streets and while in their work.

But Suleiman Yaqoob affirms that Jewish sect has strong and humanitarian relations with Muslims "we share all occasions, wedding parities and Qat sessions."

Over returning Jewish citizen to justice because of harassments he faces, Yaqoob says "we prefer being patients and avoiding any harm as much as we can." He notes that political leadership gives Jewish citizen more care and concern.

Does they sound like a proud, equal members of the Yemen community or more like ....dhimmis?

And notice the Arab mentality - it is only natural for Arabs to "harass" Jews because of what Israel does. One cannot expect them to act as if they had morals. So the harassment that they inevitably will do is Israel's fault!

Hamas said to have killed informant

Palestine Press reports that Hamas immediately found someone to blame for Israel's successful killing of Hamas leader Said Siam and executed him on the spot.

According to the report, Siam drove to his house and kept the engine running while he ran inside. That was when the IAF got him.

Hamas claims that they extracted a confession from the informant, said to be an insider, and then shot him immediately.

The PalArab self-death count therefore goes up...

The list of Hamas war crimes

The Jerusalem Post has an interview with an international law scholar, who said "The fighting tactics and ideology of Hamas are a 'case study par excellence' of a systematic violation of international humanitarian law."

He lists six war crimes that Hamas is doing regularly and systematically:

"First, the deliberate targeting of civilians is in and of itself a war crime," he noted, referring to the Hamas rockets fired at southern towns for eight years.

"A second war crime is when Hamas attacks [from within] civilian areas and civilian structures, whether it be an apartment building, a mosque or a hospital, in order to be immune from a response from Israel," he went on. "Civilians are protected persons, and civilian areas are protected areas. Any use of a civilian infrastructure to launch bombs is itself a war crime."

That Hamas bears legal responsibility for the harm to civilians in areas from which it fires is enshrined throughout international law, he said: "In the general principles of customs binding on nations, in the specific international law of armed conflict [also called] international humanitarian law, in the Fourth Geneva Convention, in decisions of the International Court of Justice and the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda - it's all set out there."

Third, he explained, "the misuse and abuse of humanitarian symbols for purposes of launching attacks is called the perfidy principle. For example, using an ambulance to transport fighters or weapons or disguising oneself as a doctor in a hospital, or using a UN logo or flag, are war crimes."

The fourth violation, "of which little has been made, is the prohibition in the Fourth Geneva Convention and international jurisprudence against the direct and public incitement to genocide. The Hamas covenant itself is a standing incitement to genocide. [Similarly,] just before this fighting started, I saw Hamas leaders on television referring to Israel and Jews as the sons of apes and pigs."

The fifth crime relates to the scope of the attack on civilians, which upgrades the violation to a crime against humanity. According to Cotler, "when you deliberately hit civilians not infrequently but in a systematic, widespread attack, that's defined in the treaty of the International Criminal Court and international humanitarian law as a crime against humanity."

The final war crime for which Hamas is responsible is the recruitment of children into armed conflict.

Beyond these six, I think we can add:

* Combatants must wear uniforms and carry their weapons openly during military operations and during preparation for them.

* Wearing the uniforms of the enemy while engaged in combat is also a clear violation of the rules of war.

* Phosphorus payloads in rockets. (It can be used for smoke and illumination, but it cannot be aimed at civilians.)

* Violating rules for treatment of prisoners of war (not allowing Red Cross to visit, for example.)

* Immediate execution of supposed "collaborators" and others without a trial.

These are just during this operation, one additional one is that Hamas regularly tortured prisoners, sometimes to death.

Any others?

Fact: Palestinian Arabs lie.

Avid Editor in the comments alerts me to a ridiculously biased BBC report quoting those ever-present "eyewitnesses" to the IDF supposedly clinically executing civilians. The most patently absurd claim in the article was perhaps this one:

On Monday morning, he said the family heard an announcement over a loudspeaker.
"The Israeli army was saying: 'This is the Israeli Defence Forces, we are asking all the people to leave their homes and go to the school. Ladies first, then men.'
"We decided to send the women first, two by two," he said.
First to step outside was the wife of his cousin, Rawhiya al-Najar, 48.
"The army was about 15 metres (50 feet) away from the house or less. They shot her in the head," he said.
The woman's daughter was shot in the thigh but crawled back inside the house, he said.

So the IDF, able to destroy the entire building in five seconds, in the middle of battling Hamas terrorists, decided instead to kill the women and children first, in single file?

Apparently, the Palestinian Arabs have discovered that any claims they make can get headlines if they call B'Tselem. B'Tselem, of course, decides that it should act as morally as possible, by maliciously spreading unverifiable and absurdly over-the-top lies:

B'tselem said it had been unable to corroborate the testimony it had received, but felt it should be made public.

So, let's look at the trustworthiness of Palestinian Arab civilians when making such claims in just the past year:

September, 2008: "Eyewitnesses" reported seeing a settler shoot a boy at point blank range 20 times. It turns out he had been killed by a grenade, and no Israelis were involved.

July, 2008: A Hamas work accident levels a house and kills 7. "Eyewitnesses" said it was an Israeli airstrike.

June, 2008: "Eyewitnesses" say that Zionist settlers release wild pigs to destroy their crops.

February, 2008: "Eyewitnesses" reported that an explosion in the Bureij camp that killed 8 was caused by Israeli airstrikes, but it was an work accident.

Honest Reporting has many more examples of "eyewitnesses" who are found to have made up the entire story.

In all of these cases (besides the wild pigs) the false claims were loudly parroted by the media, and any corrections - if they occurred at all - would be days later.

And just last week we saw a Gazan family start screaming how they "have no food" as soon as they saw a reporter, who saw plenty of food right there with them.

One would think that after years of lie after lie after lie from "eyewitnesses," verified to be false often by Palestinian Arab sources themselves, that they would start to catch on to the fact that PalArabs know the game and play reporters as patsies.

Journalists, of course, have a vested interest in a "good story," especially with a human component. The idea that people would lie to their faces is distasteful and it implies that they cannot tell the difference between truth and lies, so they are reluctant to correct mistakes.

NGOs have a much greater vested interest in furthering their agendas, regardless of facts, as we see from B'tselem here (at least they admit that the stories aren't verified - many other "human rights" organizations have no problem making up the lies themselves.)

What could it take for the media to wake up and start looking at Palestinian Arab claims with the same skepticism that they would give Western politicians?

Morning news roundup

Terrorist lie of the day - The Palestinian Resistance Committees claim to have tunneled into Israel and blown up a tank, killing soldiers. Uh-huh.

What's in a name? - Anti-semitic graffiti was scrawled on a church in England, including profanity. The reason? The church is called the Zion Baptist Church! So, naturally, out of all the explicit anti-semitism that has been seen in the UK since the Gaza op started, this is the first one the Muslim community condemned.

UNRWA terrorists? Shocking! - Fox News has a report on the many terrorist connections that UNRWA has had over the years, as well as their utterly inadequate methods to stop terrorists from being employed there. (Pretty much, they ask their employees nicely not to do anything naughty. And they check them against a list of Al Qaeda members.)

Arab unity - An emergency summit of the Arab League in Qatar over Gaza does not look likely, as they could not get a quorum of countries to attend.

Photo-photo-photo-photo-photo...op - Apparently, an IDF soldier accidentally left a used, single-use rocket launcher behind in Gaza. This huge victory for terrorists is commemorated with no fewer than twenty pictures taken by saraya.ps and shown on the Islamic Jihad news site PalToday.

"Free Gaza" turns around, starts lying campaign

Last time the Free Gaza freaks tried to reach Gaza in their worldwide publicity tour, they claimed that they were surrounded by a half-dozen Zionist warships who opened fire at them and then deliberately rammed their boat three times. None of those claims were ever verified by any of the journalists on board and no video was ever produced that corroborated the stories. Their public statements started backing off from the claims of being shot at with machine guns but they never admitted lying.

This time, they took repeated Israeli warnings that they will be stopped by "any means possible" as a threat to kill them. From their website:

The Israeli navy today threatened to kill unarmed civilians aboard a mercy ship on its way to deliver medical supplies and doctors to besieged Gaza.

As before, we can be sure that there will be no audio of these supposed threats ever released by the 17 journalists on board the boat, and that this lie will be quickly spread through the moonbat media outlets.

One more lie: in a recent newsletter, they said:

Once we set sail, we do not plan on turning back. We will stay at sea, insisting on access to Gaza, until we succeed or Israel gravely attacks or arrests us.

Fun Gaza fact

In the 2006 elections that swept Hamas into office, a higher percentage of women voted for Hamas than men, 44% to 42%.

Housewives preferred Hamas 47% to 42%.

Hamas: the party of Palestinian Arab soccer moms.

ICRC president inflates Gaza's population density

We've long ago dismissed the old canard that "Gaza is the most crowded place on Earth."

Well, the ICRC president evidently just went really overboard. From Ma'an:

Kellenberger also said that the ICRC has “no evidence” of the use of white phosphorus, a chemical weapon that causes severe burning used in populated areas. On Tuesday a Red Cross official in Geneva told the Associated Press that it is “pretty clear” that Israel had used the weapon in Gaza, but said there was no evidence that this use violated international law.

Answering a question about the alleged use of white phosphorus, Kellenberger highlighted that Gaza is approximately three times more densely populated than Manhattan, making it more difficult to use certain weapons without harming civilians.

Whoa! Three times the density of Manhattan???

Let's do the math - again.

Population

Area (km2)

Density

Pop/km2

Gaza

1,500,202

360

4,167

Manhattan

1,537,195

58.8

26,143

If Gaza had three times Manhattan's population density - 78,428 people per square kilometer - it would contain over 28 million people!

Let's say that Kellenberger only meant Gaza City, not the larger Gaza Strip. Guess what? Even Gaza City only has a population density of 6,834 per square kilometer, about a quarter of Manhattan's.

Free Gaza Movement allows dozens to die!

The FG moonbats have fixed their generator and started sailing again towards Gaza, where the Israeli navy will probably stop them sometime tomorrow.

According to their press release, they are bringing in "essential parts for ventilators, which will allow the only burn center in the Gaza Strip, at Shifa Hospital, to double its capacity."

Let's assume that the Free Gaza hypocrites really did uniquely identify a pressing need for Shifa Hospital, that the Red Cross and WHO and UNRWA are somehow not aware of or are ignoring.

Let's further assume that the doubling of Shifa's capacity will save tens of lives, especially since we must also assume that certain Norwegian and Arab doctors are accurate in stating categorically that Israel is burning Gazans with white phosphorus munitions, something that the Red Cross says is not happening.

If all these things are true, then the Free Gaza terror-supporters are purposefully putting Gazans in danger, because instead of coordinating with any number of NGOs, or Jordan, or Tunisia, or Brazil or Greece or Qatar or Egypt to bring these much-needed parts into Gaza as quickly as possible, they have consciously decided to deprive Gazans of these ventilators in order to have a showdown at sea with the Israeli navy instead.

How many Gazans will be permanently disfigured or will die because of this decision by the Free Gaza to delay the delivery of these "essential" parts?

Of course, all this is true only if you assume that the Free Gaza movement is telling the truth.

Defeating Hamas

Jeffrey Goldberg writes a very interesting op-ed in the New York Times today, proving the utter inability of Hamas to ever moderate: (h/t Daily Alert and EBoZ)

In the summer of 2006, Nizar Rayyan, a member of the Hamas ruling elite and an unblushing executioner, who was killed two weeks ago, told this journalist, "First we must deal with the Muslims who speak of a peace process and then we will deal with you." As the Gaza war moves to a cease-fire, a crucial question will inevitably arise: Should Israel (and by extension, the U.S.) try to engage Hamas? But the question is unmoored from certain political and theological realities.

Advocates of negotiation suggest that the hostility toward Jews expressed by Hamas is somehow mutable. But in years of listening, I haven't heard much to suggest that its anti-Semitism is insincere. Like Hizbullah, Hamas believes that God is opposed to a Jewish state in Palestine. I asked Rayyan: Could you agree to anything more than a tactical cease-fire with Israel? I felt slightly ridiculous asking: A man who believes that God every now and again transforms Jews into pigs and apes might not be the most obvious candidate for peace talks at Camp David. Rayyan answered that a long-term cease-fire would be unnecessary, because it will not take long for the forces of Islam to eradicate Israel.

The article is quite good until the conclusion:

There is a fixed idea among some Israeli leaders that Hamas can be bombed into moderation. This is a false and dangerous notion. It is true that Hamas can be deterred militarily for a time, but tanks cannot defeat deeply felt belief.

The reverse is also true: Hamas cannot be cajoled into moderation. Neither position credits Hamas with sincerity, or seriousness.

Goldberg, who is quite knowledgeable on facts, allows his biases to cloud his analysis.

He is engaging in a straw-man argument when he says that some Israelis think that militarily defeating Hamas will somehow moderate the group. No one thinks that Hamas members will suddenly accept Israel; their very existence is founded on the idea of destroying Israel. Goldberg simply doesn't see the true argument for bombing Hamas:

Defeating militarily Hamas would make them irrelevant in the Arab world.

People in general naturally gravitate towards the perceived "winner" in any confrontation. And Arabs tend to associate military might with winning (as opposed to, for example, human rights records or economic power.)

In 2001, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the Arab world as a whole embraced Al Qaeda. Al Jazeera put his heroic silhouette on its backdrop of news stories, Arabs throughout the world cheered the attacks, and Arab pride was at the highest it had been since Saladin. Arabs and Muslims voluntarily went to Afghanistan to fight the weak, shamed Westerners.

Today, al-Qaeda is more of an embarrassment. Sure, there are still many Arabs who are ideologically aligned with Al Qaeda's goals, but they have been muted in the mainstream Arab world, and publicly looked down upon. No one volunteers to fight with the mujahadeen nowadays. The reason is because a much more powerful force came in and turned the impression of Al Qaeda from a seemingly invincible and brilliant force into a small group of people who spend more time hiding in caves than attacking the hated West.

As much as the Arab world continues to hate the United States and its allies, they respect and fear them much more now than they did in 2001. Al Qaeda no longer represents the ideal for average Arabs that it did then.

In the Arab world, raw power is the path to respect.

Goldgerg's argument would imply that Al Qaeda is winning because its leaders have not moderated.

Hamas is the same as Al Qaeda. The ideology, methods and goals are identical. And the path to victory is the same as well - a combination of raw power and the resultant "peer pressure" that makes the Arab world turn against them.

Hamas will never be pragmatic, but ordinary Arabs are. They know that aligning with the winning side is smarter than the alternative. Pragmatism as an Arab philosophy is not as attractive as the idea of an ascendant Islamic ummah taking on and defeating the world, but it is a good bit better than being looked upon as a defeated, shamed people. The very name "Hamas" needs to evoke embarrassment when heard by Arabs.

That is how to win.

IDF stops Iranian ship (for real this time)

From JPost:

The Navy intercepted an Iranian ship loaded with medicine, food and clothing destined for Gaza, the IDF said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the boat docked in Port Said, Egypt, but the Egyptians refused to allow it to unload its cargo. Nevertheless, at midnight Tuesday, the boat left Port Said and tried to go to Gaza.

A Navy Sa'ar 4.5 class ship intercepted the Iranian boat and transmitted a clear message on Channel 16 - the international communication line for ships - that it would not allow it to enter the waters around Gaza.

On Wednesday morning, when it was 30 miles off the Gaza coast, the Iranian boat again tried to move towards the Strip, and the Navy again intercepted it, the army said. It then returned to el-Arish, in Egypt, and two Egyptian boats prevented it from docking there.

Since that time, the boat has been sitting 30 miles off the coast of Gaza and has been closely tracked by the Israeli navy.

Israel has been coordinating all activity regarding the Iranian boat with the Egyptians.