Beyond the Cusp

August 13, 2018

Peace is an Israeli Leadership Obsession

Filed under: Israel — qwertster @ 2:00 AM


The last few days have been excessively rough on the civilians in southern Israel. By most accounts, Hamas had launched well over two-hundred rockets, mortars and incendiary devices across the border targeting these beleaguered people. Every six hours or so Hamas announced that some part of their myriad of leadership councils, political wing or whatever had accepted a ceasefire. In response to each peace announcement, in Pavlovian fashion, the Israeli leadership breathed a sigh of satisfaction and called the military to stand down. Hamas kept this rouse of throwing up their arms and declaring peace followed by another series of rockets and incendiary balloons and such. Immediately after each barrage there was another claim of peace from Hamas through Egypt and the Israeli leadership called the military to stand down once more. The peace did finally emerge and appear to take place, for the time being until it doesn’t again.


What makes this Pavlovian response to anyone claiming peace for the Israeli leadership to immediately jump up and congratulate one another at reaching an agreement and telling the IDF to stand down so darn aggravating is that Hamas has used their seemingly trained response in order to get out of paying any price for shooting at Israeli civilians and also for shooting IDF troops who do as any troops do when told that a ceasefire has been reached, they take off their helmets and climb out of their position and stretch their legs and walk around. This also unfortunately makes some become viable targets. This has taught many an older soldier to warn the youth that they need to constrain their walking to places behind both cover and concealment for everybody’s health. So, by screaming peace, peace but giving no peace, Hamas had completed the final day of their assaults upon Israeli civilians without paying the price of an Israeli response. But the Hamas offensive has done more than that in that it has split the country into two very separate camps. There are those who believe that the government restraint was a saintly act and those whose desire after suffering these past months of constant threat to life and limb and with many, correction, most of the farmers anywhere near the Gaza border facing the complete loss of their crops and in some cases their equipment and in the worst cases, they suffered loss of lives and injuries. In Sderot alone, there were a number of injuries over the past months but the even more telling has been the numbers taken with shock including a number of pregnant women who either had contraction and birthing pains which subsided while less fortunate mothers went into full labor prematurely and were rushed to hospitals where they gave birth, in a few cases dangerously early. These are the injuries which are immeasurable in this the immediate frame of time. These are the injuries which last for a long time. Mothers and fathers who worry the premature delivery may have harmful effects upon their child or children. Should their worst fears be recognized, then the injury has now spread to the entire family who will love a challenged sibling all the more and provide all care necessary and provide them with an extra shelter of love, affections and protections. These are the potential real prices paid by Israelis.


What do we have to say about the price that Gazans have to pay from these encounters? We will not leave them out from our sympathies, though they will be tempered by the actions of the Gazans themselves. The Gazans are not required to run for cover and often do so four, five, six, a dozen times and more each night for weeks. Israel warns them of exactly what will be targeted and when and then strikes with precision hitting most often just the immediate target and nothing more. About one fifth of the new damage to Gaza each series are caused by their misfiring missiles which strike their own structures (see tracking data below). Of course, they immediately send out a news release such as for the one below demanding the world condemn Israel for striking a hospital and a refugee camp. Within a day or day and a half, the truth is revealed through finding which Iron Dome radar system tracked the actual rockets striking their targets. This time there was a tracing of the four rockets fired with one striking the hospital, one the refugee camp, one struck out in the Mediterranean and one struck close to Ashkelon. The problem is the claims by Hamas that Israel struck an operating hospital was headline banner news and the reality which came the next day barely resulted in a blip, let alone corrections and headlines that once again Hamas had fooled overanxious editors always so very eager to file anti-Israel articles and slow if not seldom in correcting their facts. The reality is not that the Israeli authorities do not counter the Hamas exceptionalist fake news stories which the Western media run with as if it were the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it is that their response to such with cold, hard facts is meaningless and often has been posted as Israel claims Hamas was wrong and Israelis now claim. Never mind that Israel is showing you the exact route the four simultaneously launched rockets from a four rocket launch MLRV system which are often fitted to the bed of a Toyota pickup truck. This is a known and recognizable Hamas mobile launch platform heavily used for its maneuverability and ease of hiding by placing a tarp over the launchers while reloading making it look similar to any other such vehicle with a load of produce, firewood or any other item covered over in the bed.





The citizens of southern Israel were insisting on their government to take whatever steps were required to prevent Hamas doing the same series of attacks next year and the year after until the Israelis finally do act. The problem that the government sees is such an exercise with sending troops into Gaza would run into the tens or hundreds of millions and more importantly result in dozens of IDF soldiers dead and some couple hundred presumably innocent Gazan civilian deaths as well. This is where many people across all of Israel are upset, not just the people along the Gaza border. A growing number of people desire to have the entirety of Gaza removed, simply wiped away and the land reincorporated into Israel and the building of homes, farms and five-star hotels along the beachfront and Gaza to be transformed into the economic powerhouse area which is possible if your aim is not to murder every Jews on the planet starting with Israel, as is the hope expressed in the Hamas Charter. That is the core of the problem right there. Israel can never make peace with Hamas because Hamas does not have the words peace or ceasefire in their vocabulary when speaking to any non-Muslim nation. Peace in only permitted for those regions which are ruled by Islam, in particular, by Hamas. They will agree to a hudna which they will break as soon as they feel they are adequately armed to cause Israeli some new form of misery. In the past, it had been rockets but the Iron Dome made their rockets no longer acceptable in the price to performance ratio. That made Hamas have to come up with a new form of attack which the Iron Dome does not protect Israel against, and they found just that by attaching incendiary devices to kites and balloons which fell throughout the southern lands setting huge fires to wheat fields, flower crops, forests, wildlife preserves and quite a few civilian structures. Equally telling was their selected targets for their rockets, all were launched and landed nearest civilian neighborhoods with virtually none striking IDF bases. That is what Hamas aims to produce, dead Israeli civilians.


It does not stop there as they do everything possible to allow their civilians to be killed as by doing so they can cast Israel as terrible savages. They go so far as to take off the green bandanna from a dead terrorist’s head, remove all his weapons, ammunition and grenades, they literally strip them of anything which would imply they were a Hamas terrorist and then claim to the media and the world this was another killed civilian. This is possible with terrorists as they dress similarly to the general public with a few noticeable differences which make them obvious to any observer. As with the story depicted above, the mainstream media run with another Gazan murdered by the IDF when in reality it was a terrorist armed heavily just moments before he was stripped of every vestige of his military identity. When the names are officially tallied it always corrects many of such problems and a closer match for the IDF numbers. Israel even warns neighborhoods that buildings within their camp or neighborhood is going to be struck by IDF bombs or tank fire or striking force soldiers and they list an approximate time. When the IDF do attack, they bomb an empty warehouse, empty rocket manufactory, or an unused training field. Hamas hopes that they keep their attacks measured enough that any Israeli response is measured, and this was attained this time around, as Israel did not invade Gaza and go house to house. This had become the last hope and prayer of the farmers and residents of Southern Israel. The residents desired an IDF raid to assure that all Hamas and Islamic Jihad offensive capabilities were destroyed specifically and completely. These residents were left to await the next round of violence and crops destroyed and homes ravaged by fire or rockets very possibly starting again as early as this fall but almost guaranteed next spring or summer. This would be a travesty just as was the willingness of the Israeli government to cede Gaza to the Palestinian Authority who lost it in a popular overthrow of that government with near eighty percent of Gazans supporting either Hamas or Islamic Jihad. With such high level of support for Hamas, the entirety of the Gaza population could be treated as fellow conspirators.


Meanwhile, in Israel there will be questions demanding to know why Israel did not commit booting Hamas, Islamic Jihad and even their supporters from Gaza. The leadership from the Prime Minister through the Defense Minister, Security Cabinet and on down the line in the coalition and opposition will all agree that Israel cannot do anything which may aggravate President Trump and the Americans. We completely agree but we interpret this as meaning that nothing Israel does in her defense and in ending the Hamas tyranny of terror would, in any way, aggravate President Trump or the supporters of the Jewish State in America. But the Israeli government often includes others such as France, Britain, the European Union and even the United Nations. Such fearful leaders do not make for great leadership. At the Synagogue we were talking before services, and the United States came up a lot in the discussion. It was pointed out that our government had let us down and took the political measure and decided that doing nothing, or as close to nothing as possible, was the politically expedient path the entire way. They had likely decided that except in a mass breach of the border, nothing was to be conducted using manpower on the ground risking the lives of the soldiers. They also probably looked at their election numbers and decided that their votes from Tel Aviv far outweigh those in Sderot and the Gaza border communities. What they may not have figured is how many of the Zionist community and even mainstream people including middle of the road Israelis there are. This refusal to act could actually have profound consequences if elections come while such is fresh in everyone’s attention.


The one misgiving some Israelis will lament is how so many in Israel believe that you must vote for the political party to which you belong. If they have upset you, then your only recourse is to not vote thus denying your party of your vote. But what if another party offers somebody who you think would be a perfect Prime Minster, why not support them. Well, how can I vote against my party? Some treat this as if it were the law. So, the first and most obvious requirement for a leader who can replace Netanyahu is that they must be capable of swaying voters to vote outside their party. This would be possible if one party had such a leader and their list for Knesset Ministers was impressive enough to tempt people to either change their party or vote outside their party. Fortunately, it is easier to get Zionist and right wing people to vote their conscience and party be damned. So, the first requirement is to have a strong leader in the top spot. Likud will put forth Netanyahu claiming he is the man with the most experience. This is entirely true as he has been the longest serving Prime Minister of Israel. Yisrael Beiteinu will most likely have Avigdor Liberman once more at the top of their list. If it is starting to sound like we are in a rut, you have a good point thus far. There will be Zionist Union headed by Avi Gabbay with Tzipi Livni second on their list, Joint List which includes Hadash, the United Arab List, Balad, and Ta’al with someone chosen to lead which currently is Ayman Odeh, Yesh Atid lead by Yair Lapid who is a man possessed with being Prime Minister, Kulanu which is currently led by Moshe Kahlon, Shas being led by Aryeh Deri who many never got past his conviction for corruption, Meretz with their new leader Tamar Zandberg who very well might bring enough excitement for them to fain a few seats but with little chance of leading any coalition, United Torah Judaism being led by Yaakov Litzman and finally HaBayit HaYehudi or Jewish Home which would be led by Naftali Bennett as everything appears currently though there were some polls which depicted Ayelet Shaked bringing the party greater support though she claims she will not replace Bennett as long as he wants to lead the party. This is likely to mean that when elections are held everything might simply remain exactly as they are now.


Part II Tomorrow


Beyond the Cusp


1 Comment »

  1. Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.


    Comment by OyiaBrown — August 17, 2018 @ 7:45 AM | Reply

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s


Blog at