Still Crazy, After All These Years

Day 17 of Operation Protective Edge

Speaking ahead of special cabinet meeting, prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] says IDF has made substantial gains against Hamas terror infrastructure in Gaza and will continue the operation in full strength. (from the Jerusalem Post)

It’s been twelve days since the last Hamas rocket attack on Jerusalem. According to the Jerusalem Post the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) has lost thirty-two soldiers since beginning a ground incursion into Gaza. Less than an hour before I began this entry sirens sounded in the south as another barrage of Hamas rockets were launched at Ashdod, Israel’s fifth largest city 32 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.  Although the Israeli Iron Dome antimissile system has performed spectacularly well against Hamas rockets,  Hamas gained a temporary victory yesterday when the US FAA and several European airlines halted all flights into Tel Aviv after a rocket landed to no effect within a mile of Ben Gurion Airport .

Hamas continues to eagerly report Palestinian civilian casualties to the waiting world press, as it seems that the human shield business is a hazardous one. There was a time, not too long ago, when international opinion would have sized up Hamas’s behavior as murderous and insane but this is a brave new world.

Israel continues to cause the  renowned international diplomat, John Kerry of “poof” fame, to frown. The UN, UNRWA  and the U.S. continue to urge a ceasefire upon Israel knowing that, if the current military operation succeeds, a decade of terror-tunnel building, murderous insurgencies and weapons stockpiling will literally go up in smoke, a poor return on investment that will not go unnoticed in Qatar where, after  building really tall buildings and sponsoring big time golf tournaments, financing Hamas rockets  is job one. (Guess where Qatar buys weapons.)

When the current  madness ends, the dead on both sides are laid to rest and the wounded tended to, there are only two certainties. One, Hamas will claim a glorious victory. They will honor their “martyrs” (to ensure a fresh supply of same for the next round of insanity) though so many of those fallen heroes of Islam will have been defenseless women and children whom Israel prompted to evacuate their places near weapons caches and terror-tunnels by dropping leaflets (Leaflets and Human Shields), having remained in harm’s way to create compelling photos while their  leaders hid in bunkers.

And Israel will mourn its immeasurable loss.

Marcia has become friends with a woman in Jerusalem who, after serving in the IDF during the 1967 war, lost a son to natural causes years later. She shakes with grief when she hears the growing reports of Israeli casualties in yet another war against people who hate Jews and honor death, supported financially by those who oppose Israel more subtly, championing the “Palestinian cause” no matter what violence or desecration Israel might suffer. But the people of Israel live. Even as Operation Protective Edge continues, Israelis in Jerusalem honk their horns in traffic. Mothers push baby carriages on the streets.  The universities conduct classes and the buses run. We hear today from native Israelis of more unity of purpose and resolve to endure during this crisis than ever before. Maybe so.

If you read this blog you know this Israeli saying, “Ain li eretz acheret.” I have no other country. And while some may consider that a shame, it is an excellent country, the only place for a Jew I’ve heard said, promised to God’s people almost three thousand years ago.

It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand again the second time to recover the remnant of His people who are left, from Assyria and Egypt, from Pathros and Cush, from Elam and Shinar, from Hamath and the islands of the sea. He will set up a banner for the nations and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.             (Isaiah 11:10-12)

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Other Items of Interest:

Giuio Meotti Writes of European Antisemitism: Europe is just Fine with the Killing of 626 Jews. (Link)

American (and European) Funded Support for Terror in the Form of  UNRWA. “Last week, an Israeli television station aired footage of armed Arab terrorists in southern Gaza using an ambulance owned and operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). Palestinian gunmen used the UNRWA emergency vehicle as getaway transportation after murdering six Israeli soldiers in Gaza City on May 11.”  (Link)

Why has the American Press Chosen to Paint Israel as an Aggressor? “Something important is missing from the New York Times‘s coverage of the war in Gaza: photographs of terrorist attacks on Israel, and pictures of Hamas fighters, tunnels, weaponry, and use of human shields. It appears the Times is silently but happily complying with a Hamas demand that the only pictures from Gaza are of civilians and never of fighters. The most influential news organization in the world is thus manufacturing an utterly false portrait of the battle—precisely the portrait that Hamas finds most helpful: embattled, victimized Gaza civilians under attack by a cruel Israeli military” (Link) The Washington Post was similarly replete with slanted “photojournalism.”

Israel has warned Gaza it May Cut off Water and Electricity (Link)

Excellent editorial by Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post: Iran and Hamas’s Fail-Safe Strategy Toward Israel (Link)