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Any attempt by the U.S, Europe or the UN to limit Israeli military freedom of action should be prevented!

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IF ISRAEL HAD ZIONIST LEADERSHIP, THE TERRORISTS WOULD HAVE BEEN DEFEATED LONG AGO

THE PRESENT WAR WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN NECESSARY

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The Necessity of Israel
Charles Krauthammer
Townhall.com

January 02, 2009

Late Saturday, thousands of Gazans received Arabic-language cell-phone
messages from the Israeli military, urging them to leave homes where
militants might have stashed weapons. -- Associated Press, Dec. 27
WASHINGTON -- Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The
Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but
excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of
surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of
approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting
rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis -- 6,464 launched from Gaza inthe last three years -- deliberately places its weapons in and near the
homes of its own people.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of
Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of
its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that
may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage -- or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb -- will kill
large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame
Israel. For Hamas the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.

The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous. And deeply
perverse, such as the Hamas TV children's program in which an adorable
live-action Palestinian Mickey Mouse is beaten to death by an Israeli (then
replaced by his more militant cousin, Nahoul the Bee, who vows to continue
on Mickey's path to martyrdom).

At war today in Gaza, one combatant is committed to causing the most
civilian pain and suffering on both sides. The other combatant is committed
to saving as many lives as possible -- also on both sides. It's a recurring
theme. Israel gave similar warnings to Southern Lebanese villagers before
attacking Hezbollah in the Lebanon war of 2006. The Israelis did this
knowing it would lose for them the element of surprise and cost the lives of
their own soldiers.

That is the asymmetry of means between Hamas and Israel. But there is equal clarity regarding the asymmetry of ends. Israel has but a single objective in Gaza -- peace: the calm, open, normal relations it offered Gaza when it withdrew in 2005. Doing something never done by the Turkish, British, Egyptian and Jordanian rulers of Palestine, the Israelis gave the
Palestinians their first sovereign territory ever in Gaza.

 

[Freeman Note: This move was very ill advised for many reasons, yet the esteemed author of this article supported it at the time. The Freeman Center DID NOT.]

What ensued? This is not ancient history. Did the Palestinians begin
building the state that is supposedly their great national aim? No. No
roads, no industry, no courts, no civil society at all. The flourishing
greenhouses that Israel left behind for the Palestinians were destroyed and
abandoned. Instead, Gaza's Iranian-sponsored rulers have devoted all their
resources to turning it into a terror base -- importing weapons, training
terrorists, building tunnels with which to kidnap Israelis on the other
side. And of course firing rockets unceasingly.

The grievance? It cannot be occupation, military control or settlers. They
were all removed in September 2005. There's only one grievance and Hamas is open about it. Israel's very existence.

Nor does Hamas conceal its strategy. Provoke conflict. Wait for the
inevitable civilian casualties. Bring down the world's opprobrium on Israel.
Force it into an untenable cease-fire -- exactly as happened in Lebanon.
Then, as in Lebanon, rearm, rebuild and mobilize for the next round.
Perpetual war. Since its raison d'etre is the eradication of Israel, there
are only two possible outcomes: the defeat of Hamas or the extinction of
Israel.

Israel's only response is to try to do what it failed to do after the Gaza
withdrawal. The unpardonable strategic error of its architect, Ariel Sharon,
was not the withdrawal itself but the failure to immediately establish a
deterrence regime under which no violence would be tolerated after the
removal of any and all Israeli presence -- the ostensible justification for
previous Palestinian attacks. Instead, Israel allowed unceasing rocket fire,
implicitly acquiescing to a state of active war and indiscriminate terror.
Hamas' rejection of an extension of its often-violated six-month cease-fire
(during which the rockets never stopped, just were less frequent) gave
Israel a rare opportunity to establish the norm it should have insisted upon
three years ago: no rockets, no mortar fire, no kidnapping, no acts of war.
As the U.S. government has officially stated: a sustainable and enduring
cease-fire.

If this fighting ends with anything less than that, Israel will have lost
again. It can ill afford to lose any more wars.


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