Well, OK, the Yeshiva University newspaper is not the Times of London, but it still testifies that blogging is becoming more mainstream when a blogger merits an interview.

What major news outlets have completely missed is not the fact that Israel invaded. The story they have missed is that Hamas knowingly provoked Israel's incursion because this was to be their offensive. It had been planned and prepared for months. It was their strategy, their tactics, their battlefield, prepared according to their doctrine, to be fought at the time of their choosing.Read the whole thing.
I first put on the uniform of the Israel Defense Forces over 35 years ago. I have been involved in four wars and countless training exercises preparing for war. I have watched Israel's doctrine change and adapt to almost every new eventuality and the one thing I can say with absolute clarity and certainty is that Israel never goes to war in the winter time of its own accord. Never. When Israel can choose, its offensives take place in the spring and summer. It is as if there is a line drawn across the calendar that says from mid autumn and until well into the spring Israeli doctrine precludes offensive action.
The reason is quite simple, the cloud cover and rain of winter time can neutralize Israel's advantage in air and armor. Even with the most advanced avionics, aircraft have a tough time taking out targets which they cannot see because of cloud cover. Rain can turn the terrain of southern Israel into a soupy mud that can bog down Israel's tanks and armored personnel carriers making them sitting ducks for anti tank rockets and missiles. Israel has never gone to war in the winter of its own choosing, which is precisely why Hamas chose the dead of winter for its offensive.
The villages of the Gaza strip were criss crossed with tunnels dug underneath the houses. Not weapons smuggling tunnels, mind you, these were kidnapping tunnels. They were communication tunnels through which Hamas militants could go unseen from house to house and carry out combat in a civilian environment disappearing from one house, as it came under fire, to pop up in another. Those tunnels were not dug after Israel invaded as a response to that invasion. No one in Hamas said "Quick let's dig these tunnels because the Israelis are coming!"
This was their battlefield and they prepared it according to a doctrine that said they would launch rockets from civilian areas in order to draw Israeli troops into those areas. They would turn whole villages into booby trapped battlefields while the villagers were still in them. Their hope was to kill two to three hundred Israeli soldiers and kidnap and take prisoner as many as fifty.
At the same time, because they were fighting in civilian areas, their plan was to maximize civilian casualties amongst their own people. In this way, any action Israel took against Hamas fighters would become a war crime. Photos of innocent Palestinians killed in an Israeli onslaught would arouse public sympathy and that sympathy in turn could be translated into political pressure to effectuate a cease fire advantageous to Hamas. In that way, they could at one and the same time, wear the mantle of victimhood and victor. ...
Hamas' plan was to fire from civilian houses, draw infantry into those houses which were booby trapped, and then kill and wound soldiers inside. There were kidnapping teams standing by in the tunnels to pop up from under a false floor and drag the wounded soldiers or the bodies of the dead into those tunnels which criss crossed the whole village. Once inside the tunnels, the dead and wounded Israeli soldiers could be whisked off and taken prisoner. I held the map the reporter referred to of the village and studied it with an intelligence officer. The entire village is laid out as a battlefield... with the villagers still in it, sometimes unaware that their own houses or the houses of neighbors have been rigged. This plan was duplicated throughout Gaza.
A Texan, a Frenchman and an Israeli are on a plane flying over the Pacific Ocean when the engines stop functioning. The plane crash lands on a Pacific Island and the 3 are immediately captured by a tribe of cannibals and taken to their village. The Chief tells the 3 captives that these cannibals are civilized and they have a custom on their island that before they eat anyone, they grant that person his or her last wishes?no matter what they are.
He asks the Texan, "What is your last wish?"
The Texan replies: "I want a 2 inch thick steak with all the trimmings, Cajun fries and a case of Bud." The Chief motions to some of his tribesmen who immediately run into the jungle and come back with the steak, the fries and the beer. The Texan eats his meal and he is thrown in the pot.
The Frenchman is asked: "What is your last wish?"
He replies: "I'd like a case of Dom Perignon and I'd also like a big plate of escargots cooked in the French manner." The Chief motions to his tribesmen who immediately rush off into the jungle and bring back everything the Frenchman asked for. He eats and drinks his fill, and he is then thrown in the pot.
The Chief turns to the Israeli and asks, "And what is your wish?"
The Israeli looks the Chief squarely in the eyes and replies: "I want you to kick me in the behind as hard as you can." The Chief is bewildered and asks the Israeli again, only to receive the same reply. "I want you to kick me in the behind as hard as you can." The Chief shrugs his shoulders, asks the Israeli to turn around, and kicks him as hard as he can. With that the Israeli pulls out a gun and kills the Chief and all of the other cannibals.
The Texan and the Frenchman get out of the pot, look at the Israeli and say: "If you had that gun why didn't you do anything sooner?"
The Israeli replies: "What? And risk being condemned by the UN, EU and the State Department for 'overreacting' to insufficient provocation?"
People ought to have noticed by now that any number of humanitarian catastrophes lie just over the horizon and are perfectly predictable - the catastrophes that will follow ineluctably from any future wars in Gaza or Lebanon, or from an attack that Israel, out of fear of the Iranian nuclear program, could conceivably launch on Iran.There is more wisdom in this one interview than in a thousand NYT op-eds.Now, if the rest of the world really wants to worry and be upset over humanitarian disasters, there would be every reason to start worrying right now over the prospect of those future wars. A humanitarian logic ought to lead us to ask, how can those wars be stopped, pre-emptively, so to speak - instead of merely deploring them, after the fact. I know that a lot of people would say that, well, Israel ought to dismantle its West Bank settlements and do a thousand other things to allow their enemies to calm down. Me, I've never had any patience for West Bank settlements, and I can picture a lot of ways that Israel could improve.
Still, it would be disingenuous not to notice another obvious reality. An Iran without a nuclear program would be in no danger of Israeli attack. Here is an impending war that rests on a single variable. Why not alter the variable? Equally obvious: Israel is not going to launch a war against any of the groups on its own borders that remain at peace. Why not do everything possible to disarm those groups? Protests, moral pressures, diplomatic pressures, not to mention grand international alliances, not to mention human rights reports! There are a lot of things that could be done. But it may be that, around the world, some of the people who weep over the sufferings caused by war would rather see still further wars than undertake even the simplest and most obvious steps to avoid the wars.
The United States and Israel must change policy toward Hamas and engage the Palestinian militant group if progress is to be made on peace in the Middle East, a group of former peace negotiators said on Thursday.To put it bluntly, these people are idiots.Writing in Britain's Times newspaper, 14 former foreign ministers and peace negotiators said the three-year policy under which Hamas has been ostracized by the international community had backfired and needed to be changed.
"There can be no meaningful peace process that involves negotiating with the representatives of one part of the Palestinians while simultaneously trying to destroy the other," wrote the signatories, who include Britain's Paddy Ashdown, a former negotiator in Bosnia, and Michael Ancram, who helped broker peace with the IRA in Northern Ireland.
Hamas, a militant group whose founding charter calls for Israel's destruction, won a Palestinian parliamentary election in January 2006, defeating long-time rival Fatah.
But the group was immediately cut off by Israel, the United States and the European Union, which regard it as a terrorist organization. Peace negotiations have, however, continued with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who heads Fatah.
The letter's signatories said Israel's recent war against Hamas in Gaza had "demonstrated that the policy of isolating Hamas cannot bring about stability."
"Bringing Hamas into the process does not amount to condoning terrorism or attacks on civilians," the letter will say, according to excerpts provided in advance.
"It can strengthen pragmatic elements and their ability to strike the hard compromises needed for peace."
Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)
M*- Apparently upgraded 120mm mortars
MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims
* - Fatal non-rocket attack
K=Katyushas from Lebanon
Mortars are severely undercounted since they simply don't make the news any more.
Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
4Q 8M | 3M 1Q | 1Q(1G) | 1M | 2Q | ||
8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
2Q | (crossings closed election day) 1Q | 3M | 3Q | 2M | ||
15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 |
1Q | 2Q | 1Q | 4Q 1M 1QS | 1Q 10M | 1Q 2M 1K 1KS | |
22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 |
1Q | 2Q | 2Q | 3Q | 1Q | 10Q (2G) | |
Zionist Max Nordau wrote of the psychopathic nature of the ideal Jewish puppet. He stated that the leaders will be psychopaths [M. Nordau, Entartung, C. Duncker, Berlin, (1892-1893); English translation: Degeneration, D. Appleton, New York, (1895); and Der Sinn der Geschichte, C. Duncker, Berlin, (1909); English translation: The Interpretation of History, Willey Book Co., New York, (1910); and The Drones Must Die, G.W. Dillingham Co., New York, (1897); and with M. A. Lewenz, Morals and the Evolution of Man, Lewenz, Funk and Wagnalls Company, New York, (1922). Similar prescriptions appear in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.]Now, most of the world knows that anyone quoting the Protocols is a crackpot to begin with, but what about his other quotes from Max Nordau, who was a prominent early Zionist?
The day after the United Nations created the state of Israel, the country's first president, Chaim Weizmann, found time to work on his memoir, "Trial and Error." In it, he issued a warning to the Israeli leaders of today: "I am certain that the world will judge the Jewish state by what it will do with the Arabs." It was Nov. 30, 1947.Guess which half? Arabs, according to Cohen, obviously have the right to live anywhere they want in the world. Jews, not so much.
Weizmann was an astonishingly accomplished man -- chemist, diplomat, statesman -- but maybe his most uncanny talent was that of seer. Peering into the future, he glimpsed the ugly turn Israeli politics has recently taken and how it is now acceptable to talk in repulsive ways about the country's 1.3 million Arabs. "There must not be one law for the Jew and another for the Arabs," he wrote.
Weizmann's admonition may not be known to Avigdor Lieberman, an immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Moldova and now one of Israel's most important political leaders. Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party placed third in the recent election, meaning he will almost certainly be part of the next government. Lieberman is often called a "nationalist." Maybe so, but he is also an anti-Arab demagogue.
The Arabs of Lieberman's antipathy are not Israel's traditional enemies -- either in Gaza, the West Bank or elsewhere in the Middle East. He focuses instead on the Arabs of Israel proper, about 20 percent of the population. They are his fellow citizens, some of them of dubious loyalty, it is true, and most of them with genuine grievances, it is also true. In essence, Lieberman wants to swap them for Jewish settlers now living provocatively in the occupied West Bank. It's half a good idea.
The issue of Israel's Arabs is complicated. They are not Jews, yet they are expected to be loyal to a Jewish state. They are Arabs, yet they are expected to stand by while their fellow Arabs are pounded -- as in Gaza -- by Israeli guns.Some of whom are fired by - Israeli Arabs.
Pakistan and India were created in a similar manner -- a population swap of many millions of people. This was the way things were once done.Who can imagine the untold thousands of people who would have been butchered in Pakistan/India had there not been that population swap? It is never an ideal solution, but it is conceivable that it is better than the alternative - conceivable to anyone who is honest with themselves, and not grandiose moralizers.
Israel, too, engaged some in ethnic cleansing -- or why else all those Palestinian refugees? But the attempt was both chaotic and, as we can see, not wholly successful.How's that for proof? Take competing claims by both sides about what happened in 1948, disregard the analyses of many distinguished historians, embrace the ones of people like Ilan Pappe, and throw in the existence of refugees as proof of ethnic cleansing! And then say that the existence of one million Arabs in israel today is not a counterproof of the slanderous assertion of ethnic cleansing - rather, it is proof that the genocidal Zionists were not competent to finish the job! Brilliant!
More important, the concept was anathema to important members of the Zionist establishment such as Weizmann.And does he have a Weizmann quote to back this up? Did Weizmann advocate the return of all the refugees? Of course he didn't - but Cohen pretends otherwise.
It is clear that the world has grown weary of Israel.Note that the world is not weary of the Arab Israel conflict, it is not tired about the self-defeating decisions made by Arab leaders to keep Palestinian Arabs stateless - in Cohen's world, everyone is only tired of Jews wanting to live in their own state in peace. Is this observation or projection?
AS Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India's leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest, and some empathy.The article is clearly about that wistfulness, and while it showed both comparisons and contrasts between India's situation and Israel's, the main point was how ordinary Indians viscerally feel about striking back directly at terror.Unsurprisingly, India's Government has joined the rest of the world in calling for an end to the military action, but its criticism of Israel has been muted. As Israel demonstrates anew its determination to end attacks on its civilians by militants based in Hamas-controlled territory, many in India, still smarting from the horrors of the Mumbai attacks in November, have been asking: Why can't we do the same?
For many Indians, the temptation to identify with Israel was strengthened by the terrorists' seizure of Mumbai's Chabad House Jewish centre and the painful awareness that India and Israel share many of the same enemies. India, with its 150-million strong Muslim population, has long been a strong supporter of the Palestinian cause and remains staunchly committed to an independent Palestinian state. But the Mumbai attacks confirmed what has become apparent in recent years: the forces of global Islamist terror have added Indians to their target list of reviled "Jews and crusaders".
...When Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, killing those who launched rockets against it and dismantling many of the sites from which the rockets flew, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. India understands, though, that the collateral damage would be too high, the price in civilian lives unacceptable, and the risks of the conflict spiralling out of control too acute to contemplate such an option. So Indians place their trust in international diplomacy and watch with ill-disguised wistfulness as Israel does what they could never permit themselves to do.
But his point was lost on a vocal portion of his audience, who immediately castigated him for even considering that Israel had a reason to react to years of suffering under thousands of rockets aimed at her citizens. So Tharoor was forced to replace a later column with an abject apology:
Many of you have read my article as endorsing Israel's military campaign in Gaza and deplored the article's apparent indifference to the humanitarian tragedy that followed.It should be noted that by January 8th, the three-week war was well over the halfway mark, as were the number of casualties.I regret the misunderstanding of the intent and thrust of the piece, which was not written as a commentary on the conflict in Gaza. When I wrote the article I was thinking only about india/pakistan - the assault on Gaza had just begun when I put my fingers to the keyboard. (Though the Australian carried it on the 19th, and that was the link forwarded to you, the first paper to use the syndicated column was Beirut's Daily Star on the 8th). Obviously I had no sense at the time of writing of the scale of the israeli action that was to follow and the toll that would be taken in civilian lives. But in any case the article says India cannot, should not and would not do what Israel has done.
Using the Israel parallel - at a time when my email inbox was brimming with messages of the "why can't we do the same as Israel?" variety - was just a way of bringing greater attention onto India's dilemma and its anguish, while arguing that there is no "Gaza option" for India.Even as he admits that his article was accurate - he was getting emails from the wistful Indians he was writing about - the criticisms were clearly so strident that he was forced to apologize for doing nothing wrong.Of course I should have realized that using an unfolding event as a peg would make my argument hostage to the way that situation evolved. Inevitably, some readers would judge the article in the light of what has happened in the two weeks after I wrote it. Had Israel taken out a few rocket sites and withdrawn in 3 or 4 days, as I had expected, perhaps the analogy would have seemed less offensive. But the article was always meant to be more about India's options than about Israel's actions.
Anyway, I am chagrined and chastened...
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