Showboating over Gaza
Israel last Saturday permitted two boats of protesters to land on the shores of Gaza. This disappointed the more aggressive agitators in the party, as they hankered for a confrontation with the Israeli navy that never came. Yvonne Ridley, on board making a documentary for an Iranian state-funded broadcaster, must have been particularly frustrated.
Having thoroughly assessed the security risks, Israel granted the ships safe passage. The protesters came ashore with enough hot air to fill the 5,000 balloons they’d brought for the children of Gaza. They also delivered 200 hearing aids. Yet their silence regarding Hamas’s abuse of its own people, let alone Israeli civilians, has been deafening.
Ironically, while the protesters tub-thumped their way to Gaza, just three weeks earlier, scores of Palestinians were at the Israeli border, fleeing for their lives. Eleven Palestinians died and more than a hundred were injured in fierce fighting between Hamas and its Fatah rivals. Facing slaughter by Hamas forces, nearly 200 Fatah members fled to Israel for refuge. Bilal Hilles, one of the wounded, described his fear at the prospect of returning to Hamas rule. “It would be like a death sentence for me,” he told the Jerusalem Post.
Hamas’s enslavement of Gaza continues, as does the silent complicity of the protesters.
Observers should be wary. The portrayal of Israel as pantomime villain and as sole cause of conflict in the Middle East is jeopardising the search for real solutions to complex problems. Sections of liberal society risk sleepwalking into the service of those who represent the antithesis of liberal values, namely Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas.
In Gaza, Hamas has ruthlessly crushed its rivals, stifling criticism and ransacking its opponents. Hamas seized power in a bloody coup d’etat in June last year, during which its Fatah rivals were brutalised and murdered, a fact evocatively illustrated by the sight of a Palestinian Authority official being hurled from a fifth-floor window.
Hamas has used the recent internal violence in Gaza to extinguish the final flames of resistance to its rule. No opposition media remains after Hamas shut down the radio station of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Human Rights Watch recently reported on Hamas’s rule, citing “arbitrary arrests, tortured detainees, clamping down of freedom of expression and assembly”.
Yet the protesters’ anti-Israel dogma prevents an honest assessment of Hamas’s abuse of its population and its misuse of resources. Key facts are distorted and disregarded, particularly as regards humanitarian aid, food and fuel supply. Contrary to the most popular distortions, patients and companions are frequently allowed into Israel and the West Bank for medical treatment. In 2007, more than 130,000 Gazans were granted entry on those grounds, a trend that continues to this day.
In keeping with the orders of the Israeli supreme court, millions of litres of fuel are made available every week at the Nahal Oz fuel depot. Hamas has frequently attacked the depot with mortar bombs and rifle fire. Thousands of tonnes of food supplies, medical equipment and building materials are transported through the Sufa and Karni crossings weekly. Following the period of relative calm brokered by the Egyptians in June, the supply has increased considerably. This despite near daily violations in the form of rockets and mortars fired from Gaza into Israel. Where does the aid and the fuel go? Why has Hamas frequently attacked the crossings and fuel terminals? Why has Hamas forced staff at petrol stations and bakeries to go on strike? In their zeal to demonise Israel, the protesters are failing to ask these questions. Consequently, they are failing the Palestinians tyrannised by Hamas’s illegitimate rule.
The beneficiaries of this intellectual negligence are Hamas and their Iranian sponsors. Iran and its extremist friends are threatening moderates throughout the Arab world - in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Iraq, as well as among the Palestinians. Ironically, Arab Muslim commentators, who traditionally are no friends of Israel, seem more alarmed by the threat than their British counterparts.
It is time to realise that bashing Israel will not build Palestine. Showboating designed to vilify Israel will not steer the Palestinians through the choppy waters to statehood. Instead, the world must encourage the Palestinians to build their infrastructure and develop governing institutions. The extremists who sabotage this must be held to account. Ignoring the fragile dynamics within Palestinian society will merely push Palestinians further towards the Iranian orbit, towards isolation and away from their national aspirations.
The alarm bells about the extremist challenge have been ringing loudest within the Arab world itself. It is time they were heard here. Yet as the agitators and their fan clubs strive for ratings on Iranian TV, the pleas of progressives are falling on deaf ears.

In this unprecedented internet address, Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, addresses the Iranian people directly. The video, in English with Arabic and Farsi subtitles, expresses goodwill and friendship towards the Iranian people while emphasizign the serious problems with the government in Tehran.
For more information, see Jerusalem Online.

Check out this video for a rare look inside the Israel Air Force (IAF) and learn about its role in defending Israel from neighboring terrorists and nuclear threats.

The Hamas organization is staging a situation of crisis and distress, and harming the civilian population in the Gaza Strip in an attempt to divert pressure onto Israel.
Colonel Nir Press, Head of the Coordination and Liaison Administration: “The State of Israel has permitted the steady and continuous flow of fuel into the Gaza Strip in recent weeks.”

2,200,000 liters of diesel fuel are transferred through the Nahal Oz fuel terminal to the Gaza Strip power plant weekly. This power plant is capable of supplying 30% of the total electricity requirements of the Gaza Strip. The remaining power needs are supplied by Israel and Egypt. In addition, unlimited quantities of cooking gas, 800,000 liters of diesel fuel for transportation and 75,000 liters of gasoline are transferred weekly.

The gasoline and diesel fuel transferred by Israel is designated primarily for use by ambulances, water pumps, the sewage system, for the operation of generators at various institutions such as hospitals, schools and clinics, for agricultural use, transportation, school buses, food trucks, garbage collection, public transportation, shipping boats, food plants, bakeries, and so on.

Col. Press stated that it has become apparent in recent weeks that the Palestinians are staging an energy crisis while instigating a strike and protest rallies. The closed filling stations, the long lines of people and vehicles waiting many hours to fill their tanks, are all part of a planned Hamas media campaign being conducted at the expense of the civilian population – a crisis caused by their failure to draw available fuel supplies from the Nahal Oz Palestinian fuel depot.

Col. Press further stated that “In the last two weeks there were no restrictions on freely drawing fuel from the Palestinian depot at Nahal Oz and distributing it to filling stations, but this did not take place. In contrast, cooking gas and diesel fuel for the power station have been supplied on a regular basis. As of today, the Palestinian stock of fuel amounts to 188,000 liters of gasoline and over 800,000 liters of diesel fuel.”

The Hamas organization is intentionally harming the civilian population in the Gaza Strip by not allowing the supply of fuel for humanitarian purposes, and preventing the distribution of fuel to civilian filling stations. In the weeks preceding this development, a substantial share of the fuel supplies – almost half – was diverted for use by the Hamas terror organization and its operatives.

The murderous attack on 9 April 2008 at the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, in which two civilian workers at the terminal, Oleg Lipson and Lev Cherniak, were killed, constitutes additional testimony to the terror from the Gaza Strip directed at Israel, at the crossings which serve the Palestinians, and at Israeli civilians working for Palestinian welfare, while attempting to create a crisis and to harness Palestinian public opinion against Israel as part of this campaign.

The cynical use of the Palestinian population, as well as the stoppage of the supply of fuel for civilian and humanitarian use, could have been prevented by drawing the available fuel from the depot at the Palestinian terminal and directing it to humanitarian/civilian needs and to local filling stations, for the benefit of the residents of Gaza.

Check out this YouTube video showing some of Livni’s speech in Boston to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. She addresses many of the most important issues, like Israel’s commitment to peace and to combating terrorism.

The Israeli Lesson
February 5, 2008; Page A16
The news about yesterday’s suicide bombing in the Israeli town of Dimona is that it’s news. In 2002, at the height of the second intifada, 451 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks, including 14 suicide bombings. By contrast, yesterday’s attack, which killed one and injured 11, was the first of its kind in more than a year.

This didn’t happen by accident, or because Palestinian radicals have somehow become less hostile to Israel. Responsibility for yesterday’s attack was claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which is affiliated with President Mahmoud Abbas’s ostensibly moderate Fatah party. Islamist Hamas remains even more ardently dedicated to Israel’s destruction, a point it emphasizes with its rocket barrages at southern Israeli cities close to the Gaza Strip.

Instead, the difference has come because of Israel’s increasingly successful antiterrorist efforts. Key to that success has been the construction of its ostensibly “illegal” security fence, its equally “illegal” targeted assassinations of key terrorist leaders, its “disproportional” attacks on terrorist enclaves in Jenin and elsewhere, and other actions that saved innocent lives but which much of the international community deplored.

One of the most common arguments against Israel’s actions is that it would feed a “cycle of violence.” It’s fair to say that what happened is closer to the opposite. As Israel put pressure on terrorist leaders, they were forced to spend their time running for their lives rather than planning the next attack. As Israel set up physical obstacles to terrorism, the need for large-scale military incursions declined, allowing a semblance of normal life to return for Israelis as well as Palestinians. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Israel proved that terrorists can be defeated — a lesson that applies equally in Iraq.

See all of today’s editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on The Editorial Page.