Israel Matzav

Soapbox for a terrorist

Today's Washington Post shamelessly gives a soapbox to Hamas terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh. Haniyeh, whom western media loves to depict as a 'moderate' in the Hamas scheme of things, is anything but:

After reading many news reports like those I decided to do a Nexis search on "Ismail Haniyeh" to find evidence of his so-called moderation. Here's what I came up with.

On Sept. 11, 2001 Haniyeh was firmly in the "blame America" camp. As you may recall, Palestinians celebrated when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attaked. An AFP story from that day read:

"Washington must seriously revise its policies in the world," Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh also said here...

After a Hamas suicide bomber killed 19 people in an attack on a Passover Seder in Israel (known as "the Passover Massacre"), a March 28, 2002 LA Times story read:

"I think the Israeli people cannot take this indefinitely," senior Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday in Gaza. "Anyone reading the Israeli newspapers can see their suffering. They love life more than any other people, and they prefer not to die."

I suppose it takes a "pragmatist" like Haniyeh to view another culture's love of life as an oppourtunity to advance his own culture, which celebrates death instead.

On July 31, 2002, Hamas bombed a cafeteria at Hebrew University while students were eating lunch, killing 7 people, three of them Americans. Among the nearly 100 wounded were Arabs and other foreign nationals. The following day, the LA Times story included the following quote:

"If they are going to attack our children, then they will have to expect to drink from the same poison," Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday in Gaza City, where hundreds of Hamas supporters poured into the streets late in the day to celebrate the university bombing and vow more attacks.

Perhaps Haniyeh is viewed as a moderate because he has suggested the pre-1967 borders would be acceptable. Of course, he only means that it would be an acceptable intermediary step before the destruction of Israel.

Leading up to the recent elections, Haniyeh said in an interview with AFP that:

"Hamas supports the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital in the territories occupied [by Israel] in 1967 - as an interim solution. However, Hamas will continue to maintain its views regarding the boundaries of historical Palestine, and [in terms of] refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the occupation."

Clearly it's absurd to write that Haniyeh represents the "pragmatic wing" of Hamas, because the organization is a sick death cult that doesn't have a pragmatic wing. It's like saying Hermann Goering represented the "pragmatic wing" of the Nazi Party.

After that introduction, let's turn to Mr. Haniyeh and his soap box:

As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution.

Earth to Haniyeh:

1. Gaza is no longer 'occupied.' It was Judenrein from August of last year until you brought Gilad Shilat into it two weeks ago. You cannot hide behind the 'occupation' and blame it for all your troubles any more. It's not there.

2. You weren't 'besieged.' You were invaded. You were invaded in retaliation for invading Israel and for continuously shooting Kassams at Israeli civilians since last summer's surrender and expulsion of Jews. Why were you shooting Kassams? What were you hoping to accomplish? The only thing I can see that you were hoping to accomplish is to push the Jews out of Sderot and Ashkelon and the Kibbutzim that dot the pre-1967 side of the green line near the Gaza Strip. In other words, having reversed the results of the 1967 war, you now seek to reverse the results of the 1948 war. But if that's the case, you have to expect that your warlike actions are going to draw a warlike response. And that's what's happening now.

Furthermore, the invasion of Gaza and the kidnapping of our leaders and government officials are meant to undermine the recent accords reached between the government party and our brothers and sisters in Fatah and other factions, on achieving consensus for resolving the conflict. Yet Israeli collective punishment only strengthens our collective resolve to work together.

Given that your 'consensus' for resolving the conflict is a document that never mentions the State of Israel, a document that calls for continuing terrorism at least in the 'territories occupied in 1967,' a document that insists on the 'right' of 'refugees' to return to the State of Israel - which would vitiate its character as a Jewish state, and a document that is just another iteration of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's (PLO) 1974 phased plan that declared a willingness to accept the establishment of a national authority in any part of historic Palestine as a step toward "completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory," Israel has a right - and even a duty to its own citizenry - to do everything it can to undermine that consensus.

But the invasion of Gaza is not about undermining your 'consensus.' It's about stopping your terrorizing Israeli citizens with constant rocket fire, and it's about freeing a kidnapped Israeli soldier without encouraging you to carry out more kidnappings in the future. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner you can (if you choose) take the steps that will bring this invasion to an end. As to the Hamas 'leaders' 'kidnapped' by Israel, they, like you, may be terrorists, and they will either be charged with crimes or released.

As I inspect the ruins of our infrastructure -- the largess of donor nations and international efforts all turned to rubble once more by F-16s and American-made missiles -- my thoughts again turn to the minds of Americans. What do they think of this?

They think, doubtless, of the hostage soldier, taken in battle -- yet thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, remain in Israeli jails for resisting the illegal, ongoing occupation that is condemned by international law.

Dear Mr. Haniyeh,

Allow me to introduce you to some of the 'women and children' who are in Israeli jails - not for 'resisting occupation' by peaceful protest as you imply - but for murdering and helping to murder innocent women and children.

Allow me to introduce you to Ahlam Tamimi, who brought the bomb in a guitar case to a suicide bomber who blew himself up in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem in 2001. Sixteen people were killed in the attack, including five members of the same family. Perhaps you've never heard of Amana Muna, who is in jail for luring 16-year old Ofir Nahum to Ramallah via an internet chat room and having him murdered in cold blood. In fact, of 109 women and 313 'Palestinian' children under the age of 18 who are held in Israeli jails, “Sixty-four of the women and 91 of the youth have blood on their hands,” according to prison authority spokeswoman Orit Stelster.

As to the children, Palestinian children in Israeli jails are boys ranging in age from 13 to 18. Most of them were jailed for carrying knives at Israeli military checkpoints or throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli military jeeps in the West Bank. Most of us in Israel and in the US would not regard carrying knives or throwing Molotov cocktails as innocent teenage activity. Recently it was revealed that boys are deliberately trying to get arrested by Israeli forces by carrying knives or simple bombs. The youths are poor and living under great duress, some in cities such as Nablus that are under siege for extended periods. In other words, the kids would rather live in Israeli jails than among their fellow 'Palestinians' in the conditions that you have created for them.

I hope that Americans will give careful and well-informed thought to root causes and historical realities, in which case I think they will question why a supposedly "legitimate" state such as Israel has had to conduct decades of war against a subject refugee population without ever achieving its goals.

Israel could defeat you in three days if the world and its own humanitarian instincts would take the army's gloves off. It would take three days - not more - of full scale IDF bombing to bring you and your 'Palestinian people' to surrender. You'd probably be left with the infrastructure of the 18th century by then, but you'd surrender. In fact, it would have happened in 1967, had not our then Defense Minister (Moshe Dayan) been convinced that we could somehow live with you. Your own people were ready then to flee from Jerusalem and Hebron and completely abandon them. Dayan persuaded them not to. That is historical reality.

Israel's nearly complete control over the lives of Palestinians is never in doubt, as confirmed by the humanitarian and economic suffering of the Palestinians since the January elections. Israel's ongoing policies of expansion, military control and assassination mock any notion of sovereignty or bilateralism. Its "separation barrier," running across our land, is hardly a good-faith gesture toward future coexistence.

Israel left Gaza completely. Had you and your 'people' chosen to live in peace, you would have been left alone. But you chose to continue to try to murder Israeli civilians instead. As to the 'separation barrier,' your continuous and murderous suicide attacks over the last six years left us no choice. We finally decided that we are not willing to die for your freedom of movement. Some day, if you ever decide to live in peace with us - permanently - there won't be a need for barriers. Today there is a need.

By the way, why are you suddenly referring to us as "Israel" and not - as you usually do - as the "Zionist entity"? The Washington Post wouldn't take your article otherwise, huh?

Contrary to popular depictions of the crisis in the American media, the dispute is not only about Gaza and the West Bank; it is a wider national conflict that can be resolved only by addressing the full dimensions of Palestinian national rights in an integrated manner. This means statehood for the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in Arab East Jerusalem, and resolving the 1948 Palestinian refugee issue fairly, on the basis of international legitimacy and established law. Meaningful negotiations with a non-expansionist, law-abiding Israel can proceed only after this tremendous labor has begun.

In other words, we give you a state reichlet in Judea, Samaria and Gaza - with its 'capitol' in 'East Jerusalem' of course - and take your putative 'refugees' into what we have left, and then you will negotiate with us and our Arab majority state over what is left. You know what Ismail? We won the wars that you started in 1948 and 1967. You don't get to dictate 'peace terms' to us.

However, we do not want to live on international welfare and American handouts.

That's the biggest joke of all. What else are you going to live on? What do you produce other than terrorists and bombs? You've never been interested in creating an economy, you don't have one, and you won't have one until you decide that you want to build your own state rather than destroying ours.

Meanwhile, our right to defend ourselves from occupying soldiers and aggression is a matter of law, as settled in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Hey Ismail, have you ever actually read the Fourth Geneva Convention? Allow me to enlighten you:

The Geneva Convention says that the presence of "civilians shall not be used to render . . . areas immune from military operations. . . . in attempts to shield military objectives from attack." Do you know what that means? That means that Israel could flatten Gaza tomorrow morning and there would be no complaints under the Geneva Convention, because you have hidden terrorists among the civilian population.

If Israel is prepared to negotiate seriously and fairly, and resolve the core 1948 issues, rather than the secondary ones from 1967, a fair and permanent peace is possible. Based on a hudna (comprehensive cessation of hostilities for an agreed time), the Holy Land still has an opportunity to be a peaceful and stable economic powerhouse for all the Semitic people of the region. If Americans only knew the truth, possibility might become reality.

I'm glad you said this, Ismail, I really am. And now I'm glad that the Washington Post gave you this soapbox. Because now the American people understand that what you're offering is not 'peace' but a 'hudna,' a temporary truce that will give you time to regroup. And what you're after isn't just the 'territory conquered in 1967' as you call it, but the whole ball of wax. What you're after is to vitiate the existence of the State of Israel. And the American people will never willingly allow that.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:30 AM