Waiting for the Grads

Sitting here in my apartment in Netanya I feel secure and safe. But, in reality a rocket could shoot thru the window and kill us dead in an instant.
Yesterday three people were killed in a bombardment of 70 rockets from Gaza, one in Ashkelon (20 km from Gaza), one in Nahal Oz nearby and one in Ashdod (37 km). The woman killed in Ashdod was driving, but when the alarm sounded she got out of her car and sheltered at a bus stop, but a rocket hit nearby and she was killed by shrapnel, and several others were wounded. In Nahal Oz a Druse IDF officer was killed while he was on duty.
Tonight (Tuesday) for the first time rockets hit Beersheva, one landing in a kindergarten playground at night, so no one was hurt. Beersheva is 46 km from Gaza and that is where my daughter, son-in-law and our three grandchildren live. They must now shelter or be ready to run for cover if the siren sounds. A rocket also hit the Beduin town of Rahat neaby. With this extension of the rocket range that means that now ca. 1 million Israelis are within the range of random rocket attacks. Isn’t this what the Operation in Gaza was intended to stop. we know it can’t be done by aerial attacks alone, so now there must be a ground operation to stop teh rockets.
Since Netanya is 100 km from Gaza we are currently beyond the range of their rockets, but we know that they have longer range ones but so far they haven’t used them, either because they have been destroyed in the Israeli bombing raids or because it takes too long to set them up and they fear detection by the Israeli satellites or drones. But, in principle it could happen.
We in the center of the country are far from Lebanon too, but the rockets fired from Lebanon in the 2006 Second Lebanon War managed to hit Hadera, only a few kms north of here. So we have been saved so far by the limited range of their rockets, not by their mercy. The fact is that Hizbollah have again amassed a supposed 40,000 rockets, some long range, and Hamas ca. 10,000, and what are they for? When the media reports that the people in Gaza are suffering from lack of supplies, etc. and Israel should supply them it makes me sick. If they spent their money on supplies for the people of Gaza rather than for rockets we wouldn’t be in this whole terrible mess. But, that’s the reality. We have to subsidize their purchases of rockets and other arms to use against us by supplying them with essential food and medical supplies (usually paid for by the UN or EU).
It is quite likely that unless Operation Cast Lead going on now in Gaza is successful, that in time they would have rockets to blanket the whole country. Then everyone would be terrorized, and the Zionist enterprise would be in jeopardy, i.e. Israelis would be terrorized and people would leave. This is of course without rockets from the West Bank and possible long range rockets from Iran until now. So far the PA under Pres. Abbas has managed to maintain control of the West Bank, with Israeli help, and Hamas is on the defensive there. Fortunately Abbas has come out against the use of rockets as indiscriminate weapons against civilian populations, which is in fact a war crime, although good leftists and liberals prefer to forget this (it’s justified because of the “occupation”).
It’s clear that the constant barrage of rockets and mortars from Hamas in Gaza was intended to get the Israeli Government and public used to it, with occasional casualties and structural damage, then in time they would gradually increase the range. They figured that Israel would not now (with a caretaker Govt. and elections soon) take the risk of a counter-attack. After 8 years and the end of the period of “calm” they were finally wrong. Just as with Hizbollah in the north they discovered that Israel can react devastatingly once it’s limit is reached. So for the moment Hamas also has to worry about a missile coming through the window.

Precedent

There is an interesting precedent for the situation between Israel and its two enemies, the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. Once the country of Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan and West Pakistan is what we now call Pakistan. The two unequal portions of Pakistan were joined by their Muslim religion and their hatred of Hindu India from 1947 until 1971. But, as often happens, two discrete parts of one country cannot remain joined in perpituity. Not only were East and West Pakistan separated by distance (1,500 miles), but more importantly they were separated by language (Urdu in the West and Bengali in the East) but also by political and economic interests. The people in East Pakistan felt that they were being dictated to and exploited by their more powerful Western colleagues. This lead to demonstrations, political ferment and ultimately civil war. The armed forces of East Pakistan were no match for the forces of the main army of West Pakistan, but what made the difference is that India intervened on the side of the East Pakistanis and without Indian help in defeating the Pakistan army and providing economic aid, Bangladesh would not then have come into existence.
What relevance does this situation have for the Israel-Palestine conflict. In some ways the situation is reversed. The distance between the two halves of the Palestinians is much less in this case (only ca. 50 miles) but in a physically separated “country” distance really does not make much difference. Nor in the case of the West Bank and Gaza does the language make any difference, they both speak Arabic. But, the political differences are profound, Fatah of the PA has taken the fundamental (and supposedly irreversible) step of negotiating with Israel in a peace process, while Hamas totally rejects any contacts with Israel. Their stated policy is to destroy Israel and replace it with Palestine.
The crucial point here is that while both sides in the Pakistan-Bangladesh conflict hated India and regarded it as an enemy, when it came to a clash between themselves Bangladesh was glad to accept the help of India. Not only that, India had no territorial claim to Bangladesh, and indeed did not want to become responsible for 120 million poverty stricken Muslims.
The precedent then is that in this case, Fatah, while hating Israel, might well be prepared to accept Israeli help in order to overtake Hamas and rejoin Gaza to the PA. Now it’s true that in the India case, the Eastern part of Pakistan wanted to be separate, while in the Palestinian case the West Bank wants to be rejoined with Gaza. While in the long run we cannot tell what will happen, nevertheless the use of a hated enemy, Israel, by one side, Fatah, to attain Palestinian national goals is not beyond the realm of possibility in the current situation.

Operation Cast lead

The world’s response to Israel’s counter-attack on Hamas in Gaza has been somewhat muted this time compared to past conflicts, for several reasons: (i) Hamas has few natural allies, mainly Hizbollah in Lebanon and Iran, most of the rest of the world including the Arab States, although they protest automatically on behalf of the Palestinians, would not shed a tear if Hamas were consigned to oblivion; (ii) Israel mounted a PR campaign in advance of the attack on Gaza that included taking all visitors (including Pres. elect Obama) to Sderot, having all Israeli Ambassadors contact the Governments they are assigned to and complaining about Hamas breaking the ceasefire and FM Tzipi Livni making a series of speeches that highlighted the problem, especially her “enough is enough” speech that caught world attention; (iii) even while the conflict is ongoing, Israel is allowing trucks (today 120) to enter Gaza thru the crossing points with food and medical aid, so that the claims that there is a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza are factually unfounded.
Every time the IAF attacks anywhere the cry immediately goes up that civilians are being killed, and most news media emphasize the civilian casualties and ignore the military ones. So when they say that 51 civilians have been killed, they forget to mention that 250 Hamas operatives have been killed too, and they are the significant ones. It is understood in any aerial operation like this that the civilian casualties will be high, and for two reasons in this case, because Hamas has sited its security centers within civilian areas, using the locals as a human shield against Israeli attack and also Gaza is so densely populated that it is almost impossible to carry out military operations there without causing some collateral damage. But, the civilian casualties do not arise from deliberate Israeli tactics, as every Israeli commentator emphasizes. Fortunately, the vast majority of western audiences believe this and it is borne out by the ratio of military to civilian casualties (although we don’t really know the extent of casualties since they mainly come from Hamas sources).
Also, the aim of the operation is to stop all rocket and mortar attacks by terrorists into Israel, but today ca. 50 rockets were fired into Israel, several Grad (longer range) missiles hit Ashkleon and one man was killed and ca. 15 injured. Ironically the man killed was an Israeli Arab working on a building site who did not make it into the shelter in time. This highlights the difference between the Israeli and Hamas attacks, the Israeli ones are targeted against military targets while the Hamas rockets are indiscriminate, intending to cause civilian casualties and they don’t distinguish between Jew and Arab. Around Gaza the Israeli population of ca. 250,000 are spending a lot of time in underground shelters, and there will be no schools open for the time being, all children will be kept in shelters with special tuition and TV programs. Most countries in the world would not stand for this kind of bombardment for one day let alone 8 years, Israel has in fact been incredibly restrained, and now is finally the time to act!
The main aim of this Operation is to stop all hostile acts from Gaza. In that case, since the very raison d’etre of Hamas is to destroy Israel, it seems there will have to be a ground war, since clearly the rockets are continuing. How this will be mounted and how things will play out remains to be seen. PA Pres. Abbas in Ramallah has publicly crtiticized Hamas and stated that this Israeli Operation would not have been necessary if they had renegotiated a ceasefire with Israel as he and Pres. Mubarak of Egypt wanted. The ideal outcome would be if Hamas is trounced sufficiently so that Abbas and Fatah can re-establish the PA in Gaza. Although they won’t like being aided by Israel, they would probably be grateful to have the opportunity to overcome the schism within the Palestinian people. But, that is wishful thinking, while on the other hand Israel has no intention to re-occupy Gaza for the long term and so any clear outcome of Operation Cast Lead is not foreseeable.

BBC bias

On Christmas Day I drove to the Hebrew University Hadassah campus in Jerusalem where I work part-time. While driving I listen to the BBC Foreign Service in English. I was struck by the fact that during that time, taken at random, incredibly I heard four programs about the Palestinians!
The first program was not surprisingly about Bethlehem, about the poor Palestinians there suffering from economic deprivation because the tourists aren’t coming. But, one enterprising restauranteur has come up with a novel way of advertising, he has written ads on the Israeli security Wall that divides Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and has also written his menu on the Wall across from his restaurant. So in this way he has reduced the terrible Wall put up by the Israelis to a practical use. Of course, there was no word about terrorism (or is it “militancy”), nothing about the intifada that caused the dip in tourism to Bethlehem since 2000, and nothing about the Israeli lives saved by the “Wall” keeping the terrorists (sorry “militants”) out of Jewish Jerusalem.
Then there was a program about Israeli and Palestinian youths brought together for a “peace” experience in Belgium. They interviewed the participants from Jerusalem and Hebron, and the response was pretty uniform, both the Arabs and Israelis said that the others were really nice people and they could live together, as long as they avoided certain topics. But, when they returned home after the meeting, things went pretty much back to what they were before on the ground, and e-mail communications between them degenerated into politcal name calling. This program was more balanced in that neither side was blamed for the circumstances (it’s the Governments’ fault).
One program amounted to pure pro-Palestinian propaganda, in which four Palestinians from different places and different economic levels were interviewed about being “exiles” (are there no other exiles in the world?) There were two Jordanians, one young man from a “refugee” camp in Jordan and another a former Minister in a Jordanian Government. The former said that he was glad that the camp was being improved and built-up, while the latter, while admitting that he could hardly complain about being Palestinian as he was a Jordanian citizen (as are all Palestinians in Jordan), and was economically successful, nevertheless he missed the original run-down camp where the refugees really remembered that they were Palestinians. One of the others was a successsful woman artist in the Gulf States, who was ideologically committed to recovering Palestine, and the fourth was an old lady who still kept the key to her house in Jaffa, and was upset that she was not receiving rent from the man who had rented it from her before 1948, but then she couldn’t remember where the key was. Of course, there was no mention of the war in 1948 that the Arabs initiated, nor of the many wars since then. My overall impression was that these people are living a “second life,” like a fantasy or cyber life, that has nothing to do with reality.
Finally, there was a discussion program with three writers, one South African half-black, one Scottish and one Palestinian. Of course, they asked the Palestinian about the best Arabic books published in 2008, and he told about a book that uses horses as a metaphor for the conflict with Israel. I wondered why they chose a Palestinian, whose native language is not English, out of all the world of authors.
Any one of these programs might be considered reasonable, and even two might be considered understandable, but four (!) programs including Palestinians within a 3 or so hour period (one and a half hours each way) is clearly excessive and beyond coincidence. During this period there were no programs about Jews, Israelis, Russians, French, Peruvians, Americans, Indians, etc. etc…What is this British liberal obsession with the Palestinians, they aren’t important in terms of actual contributions to the world, they are still mainly unsuccessful refugees after 60 years (maybe that’s unique), they aren’t even pleasant, but very militant and in fact very violent (although this was never mentioned). I don’t know how much this is costing someone, but clearly the programming of the BCC has been hijacked by pro-Palestinian elements. Don’t believe anything you hear on the BBC, it’s been co-opted!

Follow-up

History is replete with military campaigns that stopped short of an achievable goal of defeating the enemy. A few examples:
In 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor caught the US completely by surprise, there was no effective defense and if the US aircraft carriers had been in dock it is unlikely that the US would ever have recovered (since the carriers were the basis of the subsequent US victory at Midway). But, the Japanese military did not invade the Hawaiin Islands, nor did they attack the undefended American mainland. If they had followed up their successful air attack who knows how far they could have gone, and they could at least have prevented a US counter-attack.
In the first Gulf War, Kuwait had been recovered by the defeat of the Iraqi forces, and some of the Iraqi Army had retreated beyond Basra. At that point Pres. George Bush declared a halt to the US advance and let them survive. Saddam Hussein then used them to decimate the southern Shia and the northern Kurds, who had cooperated with the US forces to remove him from office. Who knows what would have happened if the US forces had then defeated the rest of Saddam’s already retreating Army and had joined forces with the Shia and the Kurds. Instead both of these groups were left by the Americans at Saddam’s mercy (the US even allowed the Iraqis to use helicopters against them). So consequently, the second Iraqi war would have been unecessary, and when the Americans came back to remove Saddam from power, they found the Shia and Kurds not surprisingly unwilling to cooperate, and the USA forces also had to overcome a refurbished and entrenched Iraqi Army all over again.
These blunders are a lesson for the IDF in Gaza. They have hit Hamas hard, thru the use of intelligence gathered over years, of the locations of all Hamas security and army camps as well as major facilities for storing and manufacturing Kassam missiles. These were all destroyed in two waves of fighters on Saturday. Never mind the media emphasis on civilian casualties, most of the casualties were in any case military men, but that is not the main point, the ability of Hamas to control the Gaza strip has been dealt a severe blow.
But, they have an estimated 20,000 armed men, trained by Iranian Guards. But, without command and control they would now be unable to mount an effective defense. It is clear that Hamas will never “surrender” to Israeli dictates, for example for a ceasefire, and so they will continue firing rockets and planning suicide attacks against Israel. In order to defeat them completely, the IDF must invade and destroy their armed resistance. Anything less will be considered a victory for them.
Effective follow-up need not be an invasion directly along the main roads into Gaza, that in any case have certainly been mined for such an eventuality. The IDF should first occupy the regions in front of the main cities in the north to take the areas from where rockets are fired at Israel and prevent further firings. Then the coastal strip should be occupied by paratroopers and a few tank columns that cross the strip east to west. Then the main towns and cities should be surrounded and then attacked one by one. Certainly this will be difficult and there will be Israeli casualties, but the alternative is to sit on the border and let Hamas re-organize itself and be a stronger enemy in future attacks. Now that the groundwork has been laid, the job must be finished, unlike in Lebanon in 2006, when the initial huge aerial attack was not followed up until too late and the IDF was caught disorganized and unprepared.
Finally, it is reported in the Jerusalem Post that officials in the PA Government in Ramallah have said that they would be prepared to take over control of the Gaza strip from Hamas if they were totally defeated. This is Israel doing Fatah’s dirty work, but the name of the game is to remove Hamas as a player in the field, and even though Pres. Abbas has come out publicly against the Israeli action and there are anti-Israel riots going on in the West Bank, nevertheless the Fatah loyalists in Gaza have been told to stay in their places ready to act once Israel’s war against Hamas is over. So that is an achieveable goal, destroy Hamas’ control of Gaza and allow the PA-Fatah forces to take over and replace them. Then the future might look brighter.

Enough is enough!

“We do not for one moment accept the existence of such a way of life here in which we must live entrenched in shelters in order to defend ourselves from our enemies.” PM Ehud Olmert in Sderot 9/12/08

“Hamas needs to understand that our aspiration to live in peace doesn’t mean that Israel is going to take this kind of situation any longer. Enough is enough!” FM Tzipi Livni, Cairo 25/12/08

“Don’t let Hamas, which is acting against the values of Islam, put you in danger. Stop them. Stop your enemies and ours….I will not hesitate to use Israel’s might to strike Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad. How? I will not go into details.” PM Ehud Olmert El Arabiya TV interview 25/12/08

During the so-called ceasefire (tardiyah) between July and Dec 18, 2008, Palestinians fired 325 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Southern Israel. After the ceasefire the rate of firings increased, with ca. 130 being fired in the last two days (Thurs, Fri). It was clear from their actions and words that the Hamas leadership in Gaza did not expect the Israeli Government to actually act on its warnings. Hamas had angered Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, by not attending a meeting he had arranged with the PA Fatah leadership from the West Bank, and also by ignoring his appeals to continue the ceasefire with Israel. As a consequence his meeting a few days ago with FM Tzipi Livni in Cairo was a signal to Israel and Hamas that he would not oppose a “limited” Israeli response to the continued attacks from Hamas in Gaza.
While it is true that few Israelis were killed in the rocket/mortar attacks from Gaza, nevertheless southern Israel was terrorized by this bombardment, and major Israeli cities, Ashkelon and Ashdod, were coming into the range of rocket attacks. Ironically yesterday two Palestinian girls were killed in Gaza when a rocket went astray and hit a nearby house, showing how potentially devastating such a rocket barrage can be.
The major justification given by Hamas for continuing the attacks on Israel was the “blockade” of Gaza by Israel and the closing of its borders to humanitarian aid, food and energy supplies. However, this is not true, since Israel has continued to supply these essentials into Gaza to avoid such a humanitarian catastrophe, as claimed by the UN. In fact, although life in Gaza has certainly not been pleasant, with 75% of its electrical needs being supplied by the Israeli and Egyptain grids, and with adequate supplies being sent in by Israel and smuggled (with Egyptian connivance) thru the tunnels between Egypt and Gaza, there is no actual shortage of food in Gaza. In fact, yesterday, on the orders of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, 120 truck loads of food and supplies were allowed to enter Gaza from Israel. So that while 70 rockets went from Gaza to Israel, 120 trucks of food went from Israel to Gaza. This is a ridiculous situation, and hence the final warnings from PM Olmert and FM Livni in the past two days have now been carried out.
Today (shabbat) planes of the IAF hit ca. 30 sites in the Gaza strip consisting mostly of police stations and Hamas security forces centers in many towns. It is estimated that there are ca. 150 dead and 450 injured. This is a grim warning to Hamas to stop the rockets launched on southern Israel. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this will stop the rocket barrage, as found in the second Lebanon War. In fact, further rocket attacks into Israel today are reported to have killed one Israeli in Netivot. Although Pres. Peres said that the IDF will not enter Gaza, in the final analysis this will be the only way to stop the bombardment.

The Bessarabian Sextet

On Wednesday night, despite the heavy rain, we went to a concert of the “Bessarabian Sextet” at the Shearim Hall in Netanya. It was great!
They played all kinds of Eastern European music. Bessarabia was the old name for part of what is now Moldova, that was originally a part of Romania. It was taken over by Russia in 1941 and became a part of the USSR until the fall of Communism in 1991 when it became independent. The Moldovans speak Romanian and Russian. The group played Klezmer and music from Romania, Hungary, Macedonia, Greece and Russia. The combination of an accordian and a clarinet with the violins and other strings and the fast complex rhythms of Hungary and Romania was wonderful.
The accordionist is named Emil Eibinder and his playing of the accordian was like nothing we had heard before, he played with virtuosity. He comes from Kishinev, famous for the pogrom of 1903 that resulted in mass emigration of Jews from the Russian Empire, where he studied music. He was tall and had a strong gaunt face, gold rimmed glasses and was dressed all in black with a grey homberg hat with a black band around it. When he played he was hypnotic, as if in a trance, with his long expressive fingers like spiders crawling over the keyboard. It was an amazing show. He came to Israel in 1990 and since then has been mainly in Jerusalem, where he organized musical groups and won the Ministry of Culture’s award for music performers in 2002. His current group consists mainly of players from the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the clarinetist Michael Gorodetsky was also excellent. All six of them come from Bessarabia. We bought some CDs but they lack the vibrancy one gets from the actual performance. The accordionist stamped his foot, especially at the end and it was incredibly climactic.
I had a vision of him playing his accordion around a campfire with gypsies at night during WWII. I don’t know why exactly I thought of this, but it must have been the Eastern European ambiance. We have such talented people here, I doubt that you could see such a special show of such a standard almost anywhere else. Wow, I hope they invite the group back again, I’d go in a hearbeat.

Deterrence?

Seventy rockets and numerous mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel today. This represents a minor escalation by Hamas and the other terrorist groups over their 8-a day average. Although no-one was killed there were some narrow escapes, a girl’s bed was hit, but she was not in it at the time. The main concern now is that Hamas has rockets capable of hitting Ahskelon and Ashdod, two major Israeli cities, as well as Sderot, and for the first time there was a rocket drill in Ashdod.
Tomorrow, Thursday, FM Tzipi Livni is invited to meet with Pres. Mubarak of Egypt in Sharm-al-Sheikh. Apparently he wants to tell her that while he is angry at Hamas for not agreeing to a continuation of the temporary ceasefire (tardiyah or calm) that ended a few days ago, and he is angry at them for jeopardizing a unity Govt. with Pres. Abbas of Fatah, he does not want Israel to mount a major campaign into Gaza. Who cares what he wants now. He has tried to get Hamas to continue the ceasefire, but frankly because Israel has been so weak in its responses to Hamas attacks, they are empowered to continue them and they expect no major Israeli response, their propaganda is that Israel is currently weak, with a caretaker Govt. of Olmert, who anyway is a wimp, and Defense Minister Barak, who is an equivocator who believes in restraint, so that they can get away with these escalations without fear.
Thursday the Cabinet met and gave the IDF approval to take counter actions to the barrage of rockets. Actually the IDF already has the authority to respond to attacks, but the problem is that they don’t want to attack while Livni is meeting with Mubarak, because that looks like thumbing their noses at him, and they won’t want to attack just after the meeting because that looks like he gave Israel the go-ahead. So there is always an excuse not to act.
Since Iran is the power behind Hamas in Gaza, and has trained all their gunmen, the Iranian al Quds force has probably given the orders for this escalation to take attention away from the Iranian nuclear program and to exploit the weakness of the Israel Govt. If the IDF does not respond in a strong way they will lose all credibility and it will merely invite more attacks, greater escalation and longer range rockets being fired at Israeli cities further away, such as Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airport. We have reached a watershed, either the IDF counter-attacks now or our defense deterrence will be lost forever.

Prenostalgia

Prenostalgia is defined as nostalgia for something that occured before you were born. How is it possible to be nostagic for something that you never actually experienced yourself? But, it is a common thing.
When I work in my studio I run my iPod thru some speakers and so I listen to music I choose. Usually I like classical music, but every now and then I grow nostalgic and play Frank Sinatra, or I become prenostalgic and play WWII music, of which I have a collection, the Andrew Sisters, the Ink Spots, Dick Haymes, Glen Miller, all wonderful stuff. Technically I was alive during this time, but I was a toddler.
I remember when our daughter Miriam was in her teens and she loved the 1960’s, she was only a child then, but she had a thing about it, I suppose it appealed to her natural rebelliousness. Now you would hardly know that, she grew up and matured. Now she is going thru the same thing with her own daughter.
Everyone seems to pick up nostalgia from their parents, so that I remember listening to the song “jeolousy” that my mother loved, and “besame mucho” and “Brazil” and the “jungle music” of Duke Ellington. It’s difficult to explain this prenostalgia. Maybe we hanker for an era before our own time that seems sophisticated and safe, although it certainly wasn’t. Our lives have improved, what with the advances of science and the defeat of the twin evils of fascism and communism. But, now we have the scourge of militant Islamism, with its suicide bombings and mass murders. In comparison to this grim reality for some the past seems like a comforting shelter

Portents

Today I saw something that would not only have been impossible, but would have been inconceivable, a mere 60 years ago, a Hanukkiah at the Brandenburg Gate! I don’t care whether or not the miracle of Hanukah was true or not, but it’s our Jewish symbol, and it was set up in a place that was the symbol of the Nazi regime and of German nationalism. Certainly we as Jews suffered a terrible price as a result of the hatred of the Germans and most Europeans, but now they are all peace-loving, and if not philo-Semitic at least not so anti-Semitic that they would prevent such public displays of Jewish existence right in their core. Even the Polish President visited the Synagogue in Warsaw and there was also a Hanukkiah near Red Square in Moscow. What has the world become? It’s not the coming of the Messiah yet, but the protents are there!
The case of Bernard Madoff, the NY banker behind the b$50 Ponzi scheme that defrauded many public figures and institutions, reminds me of the book “David Golder” by Irene Nemirovsky. Although Nemirovsky was Jewish, this book about a money-grubbing, immoral and fraudulent banker is thoroughly anti-Semitic, and in fact was used by the Nazis for propaganda. If the web had not shown an increase in anti-Semitic comments after the Madoff affair wouldn’t we have been surprised? Yet, so far it has not led to pogroms in Kishinev, riots in Vienna, demonstrations in Berlin, or even placards in New York. Now anti-Semitism is there, but not overt and not violent. How long that will be remains to be seen.
Meanwhile the Arabs in Gaza continue to laugh at us, as Muhammed said to Ahmed, “you owe me another 10 shekels, Barak said ‘we will not stand for these rocket attacks’ again, for the 20th time!” The use of Jewish power is the only thing that ensures our existence here, and for power to be effective it must be credible. Unfortunately we have lost all deterrent capability, and the world believes the Hamas PR campaign when they show empty warehouses and say they are starving, when there is ample food smuggled thru the tunnels from Egypt and when they burn candles when they have plenty of electricity (75% of their needs supplied by the grids of Israel and Egypt). People don’t realize that since western journalists cannot enter Gaza, all reporting from there is done by Palestinaian “stringers” who are controlled by Hamas, so you are reading the news Hamas wants you to read and the western press has no concern about printing it (they agree with it)!
These are all portents of things to come. Ultimately Israel must use its power not only because of the shelling of Israeli territory, but Jewish/Israeli morale requires it. If we can have Hanukkiahs in Berlin and Moscow, what are we patsies, who stand by while they launch hundreds of rockets at us.