From Professor Steve Plaut of Haifa University.
1. There is so much to say about events over the past few days, but I will try to keep mine very short. The web is full of relevant materials.
a. As usual, the press and the Israeli political establishment are ignoring what actually produced the massive rocket attacks on the Israeli south, namely the pusillanimous decision to expel the Jews from the Gaza Strip and to turn the area over to the Hamas. The result of that cowardice was entirely predictable and was predicted in these quarters. The Israeli politicians at the time whined that there was no choice but to act as they did, the same whine they chant every time they do something catastrophically stupid entirely by choice. The only lesson learned by the Olmert people is that the same arrangements that produced the hundreds of rockets on the Israeli south this week must be repeated in the West Bank.
b. Air strikes are dramatic and produce a nice warm fuzzy feeling in Israelis watching the film clips of buildings and bunkers exploding, and this time were far better planned than in the 2006 war against the Hezbollah. However, they cannot produce real change nor solve the problem. This was proved in Lebanon in 2006.
c. There is only one solution that can work = R&D = Re-Occupation and Denazification. Everything else is a delusion.
d. Those who think the Israeli government is serious about fighting terror this time need to explain why Israel is still warning the Hamas about which buildings will be bombed before they ARE bombed so that the people there can be gotten out. Also needed is an explanation for why Israel is still transferring supplies and funds to the Hamas in Gaza in the middle of the battle, including of course sugar from which Qassam rocket fuel is produced, and why Israel has not turned off the electricity so that the press propagandists cannot serve Hamas.
e. It is of great value that the Hamas CONTINUE to fire rockets at Israel. Otherwise, the Olmert government would call a halt to the Israeli attack against the Hamas, and return to goodwill measures, "signaling," and new appeasements.
f. A law should be passed making it illegal for an Israeli politician to use the word "signaling." Any such pol should have his mouth washed out with turpentine.
g. It is clear to all that Israel should never have agreed to any "ceasefire" with the Hamas, especially not to one that left Gilad Shalit in Hamas captivity. There is a serious danger that Olmert and his people will now agree to a new ceasefire in which Shalit remains captive.
h. While it has not yet happened, there is a non-trivial danger that the Hezbollah will open up rocket fire at northern Israel any time now. The same person who moved the Hezbollah up to the Israeli border with its thousands of rockets, Ehud Barak, the man who essentially shot 4000 rockets at Northern Israel in 2006, is now pretending to be a tough fighter leading the battle against the Hamas.
i. Anyone who thinks the Israeli Left is merely stupid and not treasonous is being proven wrong every minute this week.
j. While we all know that the overseas Left is not just anti-Zionist but also anti-Semitic, it is also increasingly Nazified, as it cheers on the Hamas attacks on Jewish children and denounces Israel as a Nazi country when it defends Jewish children. Not a single one of the anti-Israel protesters on British and American campuses had been protesting when the Hamas was "only" shooting rockets into Sderot every day.
k. The international Left would denounce a Jewish partisan in 1944 who shot an SS officer and would use it as proof that all of World War II is about Jewish mistreatment of innocent Germans. Haaretz would agree.
l. Israeli Arabs are massively expressing their contempt for Israel's existence and their open identification with and support for the Hamas, cheering every rocket that lands on Sderot or Netivot. Every Israeli university has seen pro-Hamas protests by Arab students carrying flags of "Palestine," in some cases where Jewish leftist students and professors join them. At the University of Haifa law school lecturer Ilan Saban was one of several leftist faculty members who demonstrated with the pro-Hamas horde.
m. Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua have articles in the Italian press today protesting Israel's bombing Gaza. David Grossman has a long piece in Haaretz today demanding an immediate end to Israel shooting back. None of these writers ever found the time to publish articles anywhere calling on the Hamas to stop firing hundreds of rockets at Jewish civilians.
n. For those who missed the humor, the name of the operation, "Cast Lead" or in Hebrew Oferet Yitzuka, comes from a children's Hannuka song about Daddy bring home a little Hannuka menorah made of cast lead. It is a song well know to all Israelis, even the most secular, and its choice symbolizes the unification of Israel behind the savages.
o. I have been convinced so often and so incorrectly over the years that the Israeli Left and the Israeli academic world will be jolted into rationality by events. One of the most convincing times was when my own university was being targeted by Hezbollah rockets in 2006. Sure THIS will wake up the moonbats, I believed. I was wrong every single time. Every single time the Left lay low for a few days and then emerged all the more convinced that appeasement and capitulation must be the only Israeli policy. There is no doubt that this time things will be the same. Haaretz is already cover-to-cover denunciation of Israel's operations and calls for immediate ceasefire and "negotiations" with the Hamas. Any day now hundreds of Israeli academics will be calling for Israel to meet the Hamas' demands.
2. http://thejewishpress.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-sedition-at-ben-gurion-university.html
Ben Gurion University's Neve Gordon (political science department
chairman) has uncovered the reason for Israel's "aggression" and "war crimes":
'The assault on Gaza is also being carried out to help Kadima and Labour defeat Likud and its leader Binyamin Netanyahu, who is currently ahead in the polls....Yet, the government is actively misleading the public, since Israel could have put an end to the rockets a long time ago. Indeed, there was relative quiet during the six-months truce with Hamas, a quiet that was broken most often as a reaction to Israeli violence: that is, following the extra-judicial execution of a militant or the imposition of a total blockade which prevented basic goods, like food stuff and medicine, from entering the Gaza Strip. Rather than continuing the truce, the Israeli government has once again chosen to adopt strategies of violence that are tragically akin to the ones deployed by Hamas; only, the Israeli ones are much more lethal. If the Israeli government really cared about its citizens and the country's long term ability to sustain itself in the Middle East, it would abandon the use of violence and talk with its enemies.'
Full article:
Neve Gordon
Monday December 29 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/29/israelandthepalestnians-middleeast
3. Some quotes: * "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing"
-- Barack Obama, in July, while visiting Israel as a U.S. presidential candidate
* British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on December 27: "I call on Gazan militants to cease all rocket attacks on Israel immediately. These attacks are designed to cause random destruction and to undermine the prospects of peace talks led by President Abbas. I understand the Israeli government's sense of obligation to its population"
4. Auld Lang Zion 2009
Should auld accomplice be forgot,
And never brought to trial?
Should auld Osloids, friend, be forgot,
In days of auld lang Zion?
For betraying auld lang Zion, my dear,
For debasing auld lang Zion.
Should their accomplice be forgot,
In days of auld lang Zion?
We yids hae run aboot the world,
Under fire the whole time.
We've wandered mony a weary foot,
To reach auld lang Zion.
Save auld land Zion, my dear,
Save auld land Zion,
Indict those Oslo blaggards, dear,
For the sake of auld lang Zion!!!
5. Man the Torpedoes!
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129107
6. Keep it up: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129100
7. Treason Chic in the middle of war:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3645241,00.html
Today Ahmed Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) , tomorrow the political science department at Ben Gurion University? http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/129043
8.
A Palestinian girl whose family members were killed yesterday in Gaza:
"I say Hamas is the cause of all wars."
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
A Palestinian girl whose family members was killed yesterday in Gaza after an Israeli air attack was interviewed today on Palestinian TV and placed the blame for the war on Hamas:
[Girl] "We were sleeping 7 girls in the room. We were asleep and didn't know what was happening. In the morning all the bricks were on top of my head, and the heads of all my sisters. My 4 year old sister next to me was dead."
[Interviewer] "How many were you?"
[Girl] "Seven.In the other room were my mother, my father, my yonger brother and another sister, who is 13 days old. I say, Hamas is the cause, in the first place, of all wars."
[Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas) Dec. 29, 2008]
9. http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
29 Dec 2008
National Post
Hamas's suicide mission
10. Important new items from Isracampus.org.il:
Yehiam Sorek, who teaches history at Beit Berl College, finds a murdering war criminal and enemy of mankind - Bar Kochva! http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/other%20-%20Beit%20Berl%20College%20-%20Yehiam%20Sorek%20-%20Bar%20Kochva.htm
Tel Aviv University - Shlomo Sand's Revisionist Pseudo-History of the Jewish People http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Seth%20Frantzman%20-%20Shlomo%20Sand.htm
More anti-Semitism and Neo-Nazism on the "ALEF LIST," which operates under the auspices of the university of Haifa. To complain, go to http://www.isracampus.org.il/How%20to%20Complain.htm
11.
Anti-IDF Protests in Cities, Universities
Tevet 2, 5769, 29 December 08 05:56
by by Maayana Miskin
(IsraelNN.com) Violent protests against IDF operations in Gaza continued in Jerusalem, Haifa and elsewhere in Israel on Monday. University students joined the fray with protests and counter-protests in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Jerusalem: Rocks, Arson, Graves Vandalized
In Jerusalem, riots continued for the third day in a row in Arab neighborhoods of the city. Twenty policemen were lightly wounded in confrontations with rioters armed with stones. Approximately 60 rioters were arrested.
In the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nebi Samuel, Arab residents protested the .Cast Lead. operation in Gaza with arson attacks. Arsonists set fire to a local forest at three different points. Firefighters succeeded in extinguishing the blaze. Two suspected arsonists were later arrested.
Riots were reported in Shuafat, Har Adar and the Old City in Jerusalem as well, and in the village of Kalandia north of the capital, and Rachel's Tomb (Kever Rachel) south of the city, in Bethlehem. On the Mount of Olives (Har Zeitim), overlooking the Old City, Arab rioters smashed headstones on Jewish graves in the local cemetery.
Haifa U.: 'Barak Murders' vs. 'Death to Terrorists'
At Haifa University, hundreds of Arabs and a handful of extreme-left Jewish students and professors faced off against supporters of the .Cast Lead. operation on campus. Arab students held signs saying .Barak murders. and .State terror,. while those supporting the IDF called out .Death to terrorists. and called for Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh to be killed.
Police kept the sides apart, but minor disturbances were reported as protesters broke free to argue and occasionally throw objects at each other. Some students serving in the IDF reserves argued with their leftist professors, who were protesting against the Gaza operation.
Senior university administrators said both the pro- and anti-IDF demonstrations had been approved. S tudents must be allowed to exercise their freedom of speech, they said.
The Haifa student union published a statement in support of the IDF and the .Cast Lead. operation.
Hebrew U.: 'With Blood and Fire We Will Liberate You, Palestine'
Next to the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, hundreds of Arab students held Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) flags and yelled, .Gaza, Gaza, do not despair,. .Allah is great,. and .With blood and fire we will liberate you, Palestine..
Jewish students from the Zionist .Im Tirtzu. (If You Will It) student group held a counter protest. The students held Israeli flags, sang the national anthem HaTikva, and shouted .We love the IDF. and .See you in the reserves..
Tel Aviv: Three Arrested
Protests and counter-protests took place near the Tel Aviv University campus in Ramat Aviv. A scuffle broke out between protesters, and three were arrested.
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