The New Romantics: "Being Fair" to Terrorist Groups
It is now fashionable to be anti-Semitic again, so long as you disguise it as anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. Here, the Romantics can join hands, not only with the Islamists but with the anti-Semitic new Nazis in Europe, where, over the last several years, hatred of Jews has re-emerged as a major political force.David Horovitz: US livid with Israel? Hamas can’t believe its luck
What sort of pink-tinted spectacles do you need to march while chanting, "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas"? Or to march alongside the black flags of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that terrorize millions and threaten to slaughter thousands as those who hold them dream of glory and triumph? Throughout Europe, it is not just the new Romantics that bow down to the myth of Islam as the path to peace. Governments, church leaders, do-gooders of every stripe accommodate every demand made by Muslim minorities. "Shari'a Law? No problem." "Islamic banking? Why not?" "Muslim prayer groups obstructing our roads and pavements? They have every right."
This all illustrates a different sort of acquiescence: infatuation probably born out of fear rather than out of revolutionary zeal and hatred of the abominable West. Both are dangerous, but there is still time for democratic publics everywhere to turn back the tide of submission to Islam. Given its history and predilections, the Romantics will cling to the coat-tails of Hamas, Hizbullah, the Islamic State, and the Muslim Brotherhood until they triumph. When that happens, the Gays for Palestine, B'tselem, the Marxists, the Presbyterians, the Socialist Workers Party, EAPPI, the Quakers and everyone else will smile as they are led to the gallows, knowing they have wrought a great change in the world but destroyed democracy, love and liberty, and personal freedom in their tragic journey to romantic fulfilment.
After the abandonment of Israel by the UK, with its promise to limit arms sales to Israel if Hamas restarts its attacks on our civilians, we now learn that the US is already restricting arms sales to Israel, having halted a planned supply of the Hellfire precision missiles that enable Israel to strike at the rocket launchers set up by Hamas in the heart of Gaza’s residential areas.Israeli official confirms US nixed arms shipment; pols argue over who’s to blame
While we seek to ascertain just how grave the crisis now is between Israel and its most important ally — is the case of the non-delivered Hellfires a procedural delay or the beginning of an embargo? is the relationship between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations ruptured or just very heavily strained? — nobody is going to believe the prime minister the next time he claims, as he did two weeks ago, that US support throughout this campaign has been “terrific.”
It becomes ever harder to understand what the US administration thinks it is doing in the Middle East. Its influence is waning across the region. It appears insufficiently robust — to put it mildly — when dealing with the region’s most dangerous regimes, notably Iran. Its ill-judged lack of enthusiasm for Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi — apparently blamed by Washington for ending an elected Muslim Brotherhood presidency, even though president Mohammed Morsi would likely have ensured no further elections — is pushing Egypt ever closer to Russia. And now ties with the region’s only democracy are fraying.
A senior Israeli official confirmed to Israeli media that the US had suspended a shipment of Hellfire missiles to Israel amid worsening ties over fighting in Gaza.WSJ Hypes False Story About Israeli End-Around The White House To Grab Munitions
The decision to hold off on the transfer was most likely on grounds of increased diplomatic tension, the official said, corroborating a Wall Street Journal report earlier in the day that claimed the White House and State Department had been angered by a transfer of arms to Israel and had ordered greater oversight into future sales.
The report claimed that US-Israeli tensions are at a record high, with US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said to hold a “particularly combative phone call on Wednesday” and officials on both sides resorting to name-calling.
The accounts sparked an internal debate between Israeli politicians.
Dominating the front page of Thursday's Wall Street Journal is a story called "Israel Outflanks White House in Pressing Gaza Strategy" which contends among other things that Israel has been doing an end-around the White House by securing munitions directly from the Pentagon. Buried in the twenty-first paragraph of the piece as an end run around is actually standard operating procedure.
On Thursday's Morning Joe, NBC's Pentagon Reporter Jim Miklaszewski agreed that the end around story was not true:
When this issue arose people at the Pentagon were discussing it openly because at the time it was considered a pro forma exchange. These weapons, primarily munitions actually are forward located in a stockpile in Israel that are under the control of the U.S. government so that in an emergency, if the Israeli government needs munitions in a hurry, it's there.
(…) I don't know that it happened that way but officials here [the Pentagon] at the time, described it as a prearranged pro forma exchange between the U.S. and Israel in terms of providing them ammunition. And I can tell you when we asked questions about it here at the time, there was nobody that was attempting to side step the issue, doing the tap dance. They said, oh, yeah, we did it, blah, blah, and here it is. So I can't tell you if, in fact, there was anybody here at the Pentagon that was trying to undercut the State Department or the White House. And quite frankly, with the iron hand in which the White House rules this building, they don't sneeze here without waiting for the White House to say gezuntheit. That is not far from the truth. For a minute I can't believe personally that people here at the Pentagon were trying to purposely hide this transfer of munitions or undercut the White House.