Friday, May 21, 2021
From Ian:
Caroline Glick: How will we know who won the war?
Caroline Glick: How will we know who won the war?
In a press briefing on Tuesday, President Joe Biden's spokeswoman Jen Psaki indicated that the administration is just as unhappy with the Abraham Accords as the Iranians and Palestinians are. In response to a reporter's question about the Trump administration's peace efforts, Psaki pretended that the Abraham Accords don't exist.Vivian Bercovici: Israel’s Unqualified Victory
"Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival," she said derisively, "we don't think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East."
This asinine statement put paid the notion that Biden will ever opt for an alliance with the Abraham Accords member nations over the Iran/Hamas axis. Just as the administration refuses to even utter the term "Abraham Accords," so it insists on ignoring their political significance for the states of the region and their military capacity to contain Iran.
Despite the massive pressure that has been exerted against Abraham Accords member states to disavow their ties with Israel since Hamas opened its offensive last week, so far they have not wavered. The UAE, Bahrain and Morocco have put out mild statements on the Hamas war. Morocco sent humanitarian aid to Gaza. There have been no anti-Israel demonstrations in the streets of any of the Abraham Accords member states.
Sudan's leader, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan discussed the issue in an interview with France 24 in Arabic earlier this week. The interview was translated by MEMRI.
In his words, "The normalization [of relations between Sudan and Israel] has nothing to do with the Palestinians' right to establish their own state. The normalization is reconciliation with the international community, and with Israel as part of the international community."
Making clear that Sudan would not be bullied into ending its relations with Israel, Al-Burhan added that the decision to maintain relations with Israel is a sovereign Sudanese decision. It is "the prerogative of the state institutions," said.
Since it is clear that Israel made clear from the outset that it had no interest in conquering Gaza, Hamas will declare victory no matter how much damage it sustained from Israeli airstrikes. So too, after the Biden administration placed the threat of condemning Israel at the UN Security Council on the table in the first days of the conflict, it was clear that Israel wouldn't dare defy Biden for long once he publicly demanded a ceasefire. So Israel stood down without ever stating outright what it would view as a victory in this confrontation.
Despite the deliberate lack of clarity, Israel may well emerge the victor. Two parameters will determine who has won this round of war. First, if the Supreme Court sides with the law and respects the property rights of the Jewish land owners in Sheikh Jarrah, their ruling will deliver a stinging defeat to the Iranian/Hamas axis and their American and European supporters who insist that Jews have no property rights in the neighborhood because they are Jews.
Second, if the Abraham Accords survive the war and ties between Israel and its Arab partners expand and deepen, then Hamas and its partners will be the losing side. As for Mansour Abbas, time will tell if he is a friend or an enemy. But in the meantime, his political survival is a national interest.
Should this cease-fire hold, Israel can be assured that Hamas’ military capability is diminished in the short term. The country can take enormous solace in the fact that a ground war—which everyone dreaded—was avoided. And Israeli intelligence regarding “The Metro”—the underground military infrastructure in Gaza—seems to have been pretty darn good.John Podhoretz: As Pogromists Activate, Chuck Schumer Cowers
Netanyahu avoided a conflict with President Joe Biden, acceding to his clear demands in recent days to negotiate and agree to a cease-fire arrangement. And, as noted by the highly astute British-Palestinian, Ghanem Nusseibeh, Biden was able to take credit for brokering this ceasefire (actually negotiated by Egypt) by finally ending his unofficial boycott of President al-Sisi.
For its part, Hamas has demonstrated a serious ability to manage sustained and serious attacks on Israel, and they have enhanced their profile among radical Palestinians and their supporters, which may well be a majority. Recent polls among West Bank Palestinians indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas would win handily. This is why Abbas “postponed” the elections that were planned to take place this spring, attributing the move to the fictitious Israeli intention to storm and occupy al Aqsa.
Which brings us full circle.
Al Aqsa is not “occupied.” The property dispute involving a Jewish landlord who has held title to certain land in Sheikh Jarrah since 1875—on which Palestinian tenants have resided for more than 50 years, without title—remains unresolved.
And life will ease back into what passes for normal in these parts, until the next flare-up.
In the city Schumer represents, in the state he represents, Jews are being attacked for being Jews and demonstrators are supporting a terrorist group that is firing rockets at Jews. Where is this vaunted shomer, this supposed guardian of his people? Spiritually cowering under his desk, terrified of a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in his 2022 election. His only significant action since hostilities began was supporting a bipartisan ceasefire statement. At the beginning of the week. The statement did say Israel has the right to defend itself. How nice. And how about my kids walking on the streets of Manhattan, Chuck? Who’s defending them, if only rhetorically? Hey, Chuck: How about your kids?Commentary Magazine Podcast: The Violence Against Jews and the Democrats’ Complicity
I am focusing on Chuck Schumer because he is the second or third most important Democratic elected official in America, and his silence speaks volumes about his party’s heartbreaking and disgusting refusal to confront the increasingly unmasked and open anti-Semitism spewing from the mouths and tweets of AOC and her fellow Squad members and other terrorist apologists in the House—not to mention Bernie Sanders, who shames the memories of his forbears with his humanitarian concern for every other minority group on earth save the very people whose blood courses through his ice-cold veins.
There is murder in the air. Do not mistake it for anything else. And do not mistake cravenness, and cowardice, and rancid ambition for anything else, either.
Street violence targeting American Jews is on the rise across America. It is being provoked and condoned by progressives within the Democratic establishment, and the party is doing nothing about it.Douglas Murray: Why do parts of Britain erupt whenever Israel defends itself?
This has been an observable rule throughout each of the interventions in Gaza, however long or short-lived they have been. It was observable during the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Each time the eruption on British streets is worse than the time before.Israel’s Allies Bristle at Claim that Iron Dome Perpetuates Conflict
This exchange, for instance, has only lasted a couple of weeks so far and looks like coming to an end fairly soon. It has not involved a land invasion of Gaza. It has involved rocket barrages fired at Israel from Gaza, responded to by Israeli precision bombing against the launch sites and other targets that Hamas and co have built in among the Palestinian civilian population. So by the standards of previous exchanges this has been minimal. Yet here are just a few of the things that have happened in the UK as a result.
- Large scale protests outside the Israeli embassy in London involving openly anti-Semitic messages, attended by leading politicians of the opposition Labour party. Nine police officers injured by members of the crowd throwing missiles at the British police.
- Convoys of cars of pro-Palestinian activists drive through Jewish-populated areas of London, broadcasting out calls to 'Fuck the Jews. Rape their daughters'.
- While her colleagues are being injured by the mob, a police officer in London promises protestors that she is on their side and says she is ´praying day and night´ to Allah. Eventually joining the crowds, raises her fist and chants 'Free Palestine'.
- Elsewhere on Britain's streets, Muslims call for Jihad.
I could go on. This is just a taster of how Britain — still technically meant to be under Covid restrictions — loses control when a comparatively minor exchange occurs thousands of miles away. Naturally politicians of the mainstream on all sides condemn the outright racism, bigotry, and intimidation. But they have no strategy — how could they? — for dealing with the growing number of people in Britain who find Israeli self-defence so appalling that it makes them call for violence, and commit violence, on the streets of Britain.
Israel can look after her own affairs. But with each conflict Israel gets dragged into the question arises: can Britain look after hers?
Amidst Hamas’s continued rocket attacks on Israel and the Jewish State’s ongoing response, the Washington Post has published what some lawmakers and foreign-policy experts claim is a misguided “analysis” of the consequences of Iron Dome missile-defense system.
Iron Dome, which was declared operational in 2011, has a simple charge: to protect Israeli citizens from barrages aimed mostly at population centers from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. With a success rate hovering somewhere around 90 percent, it can only be considered an unqualified success by that metric.
However, the Post piece — authored by Israeli professor Yagil Levy — submits that it also has the unintended effect of perpetuating tension and violence in the region.
Levy argues that “by intercepting almost all incoming rockets, Iron Dome released the Israeli leadership from political pressure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
While he acknowledges that Iron Dome benefits Gazan civilians as well as the Israelis by sparing them the “potentially devastating outcomes of an Israeli ground offensive,” he also believes that the “reduced pressure to resolve the conflict with Gaza also means Iron Dome gives Israelis a false sense of security, based on technological success — which isn’t guaranteed forever — rather than political solutions.”
Levy is not the first to express doubts about Iron Dome in spite of the lives it saves on both sides. In 2012, the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg passed along an anonymous critic’s concern that it would convince Israeli leaders that “the solution to Gaza will not be to simply build bigger and better walls — both on the ground and in the sky” and incentivize them “to put off hard political decisions.”
Lawrence, May 20 - A spiritual leader used his sermon this week to stress the Jewish value of always giving someone the benefit of the doubt in the face of awkward or compromising reports, specifically if that someone has cut a generous check to said spiritual leader, the institutions run by that spiritual leader, or to interests of his family and friends.
