The TBS of the TSS - A chronicle of irrational fanaticism
Time to remove kid-glovesSarah Honig: Hey diddle, Fatah and the fiddle
The aftermath of Operation Protective Edge leaves little room for niceties in the conduct of the public debate on Israel’s security and on the measures it should adopt to preserve its security. This is no time to call a spade as a manually operated device whose principle function is to create elevation differentials in the surface of the Earth.
We can no longer afford to recoil from the unpleasant necessity of calling a spade a spade.
The recent – and likely-to be-repeated – round of fighting in Gaza should have driven home to anyone with a smidgen of common sense and common decency that conceding territory to Arab control is both futile and fatal.
The revelations of the terrorist capabilities developed in the wake of the 2005 abandonment of Gaza – in terms of overhead missiles and underground tunnels – underscored just how dangerous, detrimental and dysfunctional it is to exchange Jewish land for some wisp of hope of peace with the Arabs. The truth is so glaringly apparent that this nefarious, nonsensical notion can no longer be excused or condoned by assuming well-intentioned naiveté.
It is imperative, therefore, to conduct an open public debate – however heated and blunt, even brutal – about the motives of obdurate adherents of this disproved dogma and the reasons for them clinging so doggedly to it.
In her authoritative clipped cadences, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni admonishes those of us who refuse to sweeten Ramallah figurehead Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah cohorts with “daring initiatives.” She sternly disapproves of Israelis who “are not willing to pay the price of a diplomatic arrangement.”Released: The "Official" List of Hamas Violations of Int'l Law
We might of course nitpick and wonder whether a diplomatic arrangement is in fact attainable. And if so, we might further press and inquire why such arrangement hadn’t already been attained.
We might point out that the moderation Livni ascribes to Abbas connotes goodwill and that a minimal supply thereof should have facilitated some arrangement long ago – long before the advent on our scene of Hamas’s religious bad-guys. Secular enemies, as per Livni’s idiosyncratic political lexicon, aren’t quite enemies – certainly not extremists or terrorists.
So why then the absence of peace? Are we to understand that she pins the blame on Israel’s supposed small-minded stinginess? *We could ask in what gospel it’s written that diplomatic arrangements (which are hardly irrevocable) must be purchased with hard territorial and strategic currency (which cannot thereafter be recovered). But since in her world Livni writes the rules, this question is unlikely to be answered.
In advance of the UN Human Rights Council investigation of Israeli "war crimes" in Gaza this summer, the Lawfare Project has compiled a detailed list of "Hamas's Violations of International Law."Caroline Glick: Why Rouhani loves NY
The New York-based Lawfare Project attempts to safeguard against the abuse of the law as a weapon of war. It turned its attentions this month to ensuring that international law is not turned against Israel, in the face of Hamas indiscriminate rocket and tunnel attacks against Israel.
It is well-known that Hamas used, in various ways, its civilian population as shields in the face of Israeli missile attacks, while firing rockets at Israeli population centers and tunneling into Israel for the purpose of facilitating terrorist attacks. However, the exact international laws that Hamas has violated are not widely understood, and the Lawfare Project has prepared an 11-page document to fill in this gap.
The document lists the specific rule violated by Hamas, and provides documentation of the violations. For instance, Rule 1 of Customary International Humanitarian Law is the Principle of Distinction between Civilians and Combatants. The Lawfare Project notes that the U.S. State Department has condemned Hamas rocket fire on Israeli civilians, and Hamas itself declared that all Israelis had become targets for its missile attacks.
Hamas has admitted violating the rule requiring advance warning of attacks, and the UN Relief and Works Agency said it found rockets hidden by Hamas in a school – in violation of Rule 22 (Precautions Against the Effects of Attacks).
The full Lawfare Project report can be seen here.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s trip to New York next week will be a welcome relief for the Iranian leader. Finally, he’ll be somewhere where he’s appreciated, even loved.
Ahead of his trip to America, the US media continued its practice of presenting Rouhani as a moderate, and a natural ally for the US. NBC News’ Anne Curry interviewed Rouhani in Tehran, focusing her attention on his dim view of Islamic State.
Rouhani told Curry, “From the viewpoint of the Islamic tenets and culture, killing an innocent people equals the killing of the whole humanity. And therefore, the killing and beheading of innocent people in fact is a matter of shame for them and it’s the matter of concern and sorrow for all the human and all the mankind.”
The US media and political establishment’s willingness to take Rouhani at his word when he says that he’s a moderate is one of the reasons that Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz was in such a desolate mood on Wednesday.
One of Steinitz’s chief concerns was the US’s insistence that Rouhani is a moderate.
In his words, “The only thing that has changed [since Rouhani replaced president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] is the tone. The only difference is that the world was unwilling to hear from Ahmadinejad and [his nuclear negotiator Saeed] Jalili, what it is willing to listen to from Rouhani and [Iranian Foreign Minister Javad] Zarif.”