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My overview of the Gaza fiasco in FrontPage this morning:
Shortly after attacking an Arab Christian family, Palestinians have turned to raiding abandoned synagogues in Gaza -- in a move remniniscent of their Nazi soulmates from long ago. Yet the PA's pledge to continue jihad activity, pullout or no, has been met with silence from Foggy Bottom.“This is an historic moment for both sides, and the commitment of both sides to a successful disengagement process has been impressive,” said Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice on September 12 about the Gaza withdrawal.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad were pleased as well. In a gesture reminiscent of Mehmet the Conquerer ordering the shehada, the Islamic confession of faith, to be proclaimed in the great Hagia Sophia cathedral in Constantinople after the Muslim conquest of 1453, Hamas leaders gathered in the synagogue in Kfar Darom for Islamic prayer. (Other synagogues were torched, and festooned with the black flag of jihad, all over Gaza.) Ahmad Jabari, a senior Hamas leader, declared: “The withdrawal proves that the resistance is the only legitimate weapon. We will strike at any hand that reaches for our weapons. The jihad and the resistance are the only ways to liberate our homeland, not negotiations and agreements.”
Gaza Victory News, an enormous popular CD of victory songs circulated by Hamas in Gaza, boasts that “our people achieved victory by Jihad.”
Despite his declared differences with Hamas, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas seems to agree with the terrorist group on this point. “We must remember,” he told a throng of supporters at the international airport in southern Gaza, “that our achievements are the result of the sacrifices of the martyrs” — that is, the suicide bombers who have blown up countless Israeli civilians. “The martyrs have paved the road for us. The sacrifices of the martyrs, the wounded and the detainees, made the occupation leave Gaza and evacuate the settlements. This step will be followed by further withdrawals from the West Bank and Jerusalem.”
But anyway, now we will have peace, right? Well, not exactly: Palestinian National Security Adviser Jibril Rajoub: “The PA and its Arab neighbors are ready to deal with extremists and anyone who wants to create chaos once there is hope of ending the occupation.” In other words, we will rein in the terrorists only after terrorism has helped us attain our goals. Rajoub elaborated on those goals: “What we need now is a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the seaport and the airport, free passage for Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank and freedom of movement between Gaza and Egypt.” Oh, and he wants money: “The international community, for its part, should channel large sums into rehabilitating and developing Gaza.”But the international community has good reason to hesitate after publishing giant Mortimer Zuckerman, former World Bank president and White House Middle East envoy James Wolfensohn, and other philanthropists gave $14 million to buy the hugely successful greenhouses that the Israelis had operated in Gaza. “Despite my skepticism,” Zuckerman explained, “I thought to myself, ‘This is perhaps the only illustration or symbol of what could be the benefits of a co-operational, rather than a confrontational attitude.’” Unfortunately, the co-operational attitude was somewhat lacking on the other side: on September 13, in a self-defeating expression of contempt and hatred for the departed Israelis, a large crowd overwhelmed Palestinian Authority guards and looted the greenhouses, carrying off everything they could.
The greenhouse incident illustrates in microcosm the dynamic of the entire Gaza withdrawal: open-handedness and good will on the part of the Israelis, the U.S., and private citizens, only to be met with jihadist intransigence and hatred from the Palestinian Arabs. Said former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Israel gave and gave and gave some more. And Palestinians got more and more and more. And what did we get in return? The answer is: Nothing, nothing and nothing.”
And maybe worse than nothing. Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei hailed the Gaza withdrawal, declaring: “The only way to confront the ‘Zionist’ enemy is the continuation and fortification of resistance and Jihad….With the cooperation of Jihadi groups, success is also possible in other parts of the occupied territories.” Will Iran bankroll that jihad, working through its surrogate terrorist group Hizballah in Lebanon?
But the State Department doesn’t appear concerned. On August 25, Palestinian Authority officials signed an agreement with the U.S. Government, under which they would receive fifty million dollars to improve the infrastructure of Palestinian territories. But gratitude was not overflowing in the PA. A week later, Imam Yusuf Abu Sneina of the Al-Aqsa Mosque declared in a sermon on official PA radio: “Anyone who watches closely the nature of our world today, can see that the heretical countries — first and foremost, the USA — have succeeded greatly in tearing our Islamic world apart by disintegrating and splitting up more than one Islamic state, intending to weaken it, disperse [its citizens] and plunder its resources… It is terrorism, and there’s no choice but to fight it….Is the USA going to fulfill its ambitions and aggressive plans? And, for how long shall the submission and surrender to the plans of the enemies of the [Islamic] nation?” He did not, however, call for return of the fifty million dollars.
Despite the continued proliferation of aggressively anti-American jihadist rhetoric, the U.S. plans to double aid to the Palestinians — from $275 million to $550 million. Yet the evidence continues to mount — the statements by Abbas lauding the suicide bombers, the torching of the synagogues, the avowals that the Gaza withdrawal is only the beginning — that the impressive commitment to a successful disengagement process lauded by Secretary Rice in fact seems present only on one side. The longer it takes for Americans and Israelis to awaken to the implications of that, the more difficult it will be for them to defend themselves from the violence that is sure to come from those who today are celebrating in Gaza.
Posted by Robert at September 14, 2005 8:13 AM
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Good morning to all. After reading Robert's column on FrontPage today, you can also see what our friend Ali Sina at FFI has to say about letters he's receiving from Muslims here:
http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/sina50913.htm
Keep punching!
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at September 14, 2005 8:32 AM
DC:
Thanks for the reminder to monitor Faithfreedom, the antidote to Mohideen Ibrahimsha's personality disordered posts here.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at September 14, 2005 8:53 AM
The State Department is manned by useful fools that can't seem to grasp reality or see beyond the end of their noses.
Posted by: epg at September 14, 2005 11:07 AM
Mr. Spencer.
One of your best entries.
"You aint gettin olda, yo gettin betta..."
Posted by: dgene at September 14, 2005 11:43 AM
Now that Israel has withdrawn from Gaza.
In all fairness, I expect Great Britain to request her 13 colonies be returned and for Texas and California to quickly be annexed back to Mexico while the rest of America is returned to the native Indians.
Posted by: Bar at September 14, 2005 11:43 AM
What does it say for a people when even the apologists for them consider them so subhuman that leaving behind religious houses of worship behind from a land that was cleansed of their enemy is called “baiting”.
To have those who are excuse makers for them even admit that these people are so inherently foul, so incapable of basic decency, so utterly despicable, that they cannot be asked to control their evil impulses for even five minutes after being handed the most effusively generous of gifts, reveals how unattainable making peace with them really is.
When I read that even those who are willing to defend the indefensible resort to blaming the benevolent party for leaving behind the expectation of minimal human decency for the wicked, well, we see just how sinister of a foe is placed before us.
I have never been more pursuaded, therefore, that Israel must utterly wreck New Judenrein Gaza, leave it without a single molecule of the filthy ingrates who continuosly bite the hand which feeds them, and ship them all, every last one of them, off to where they belong: islamic lands where the inhumanity and depravity they revel in is accepted practice of behavior.
Ironically, it is those who would blame Israel for having the audacity to hope for the minutest shred of decency in return for their generosity who have hardened my already hard opinion on this.
at September 14, 2005 11:49 AM
From D.C.'s link...
Every time I Read a Muslim Letter I Want to Puke.
It is not an insult to say Muslims are not humans. Every ex-Muslim including yours truly confesses that we discovered our humanity only after we got rid of the lies of Islam and learned to see all mankind without hate and prejudice. It was then that we stopped seeing people as Muslims and Kaafirs but as people. This was like removing our blinders. It was like lifting a huge load off of our chests. For the first time we saw mankind as one family. Our hearts was light and free from envy or hate. Suddenly we saw others, not as enemies, but as brothers and sisters. Suddenly we saw they do not hate us as we used to think, that all these hatred was originated from our own hearts and stems from the nefarious teachings of Islam.
Ali Sina tells it like no other!
at September 14, 2005 12:27 PM
C'mon Madzionist:
You of all people should know that no matter what Israel does, the usual suspects will find fault with them. Had Israelis demolished everything they would have been condemned for wanton destruction. Instead, a small contingent of @ssholes is blaming them for "baiting". But I doubt most of the world is favourably impressed or sympathizes with these cretins.
Posted by: waterdragon52 at September 14, 2005 1:10 PM
JPost(re:Synagogues &U.S. state dept.)
Sep. 13, 2005 4:35 | Updated Sep. 13, 2005 19:33
Editorial: Hold Palestinians accountable
"Israelis awoke yesterday to the news that the gates to Gaza had been ceremoniously shut, and that the Palestinians' joyous burning of Gush Katif's synagogues, which the cabinet had voted not to destroy, had begun. We were also informed that the US State Department had criticized the cabinet decision not to destroy the synagogues because it "put the Palestinian Authority into a situation where it may be criticized for whatever it does."
It is never exactly clear when a State Department spokesman says something like this whether he or she is ad-libbing or whether a particular pearl has been cleared at the cabinet level. Either way, however, such statements are instructive because they either reflect a conscious, high-level decision or are considered so uncontroversial that a low-level official can say them without fear of contradiction.
In this case, the uncontroversial notion is evidently that the problem is not Palestinian savagery but Israel's refusal to spare the world images of it. Regardless of how Israeli decision makers expected the Palestinians to behave, Israel's decision not to destroy the synagogues gave the Palestinians the opportunity to exceed rock-bottom expectations.
Would the Palestinian Authority be "criticized" if it had decided to spare a single former synagogue from the raging mobs, perhaps for use as a library, or for some international aid agency? Is the idea of sparing a former place of worship of another religion so foreign that it cannot even be asked for, let alone expected?
The unwritten script here is that nothing more can be expected from the Palestinians because, after all, they are enraged by 38 years of Israeli presence in Gaza. This ignores both the questions of why Israel was there in the first place, and why Israel was targeted for destruction before it set foot in Gaza. But it also papers over the real source of Muslim rage: the reigning intolerant interpretation of Islam.
Despite attempts to explain it away as a benign form of striving, the Arab-Islamic notion of jihad remains essentially unchanged since Ibn Khaldun described it in 1406: "holy war is a religious duty ... to convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or force." Only Islam, he added, "is under obligation to gain power over other nations."
This has been reflected in a "what's mine is mine, what's yours is mine" approach that we see dominates Palestinian thinking. It goes without saying that no Jew, building, or grave must remain in Gaza, as much as it does that Israel must treat its own million-strong Arab minority with utmost respect.
Yet if there is ever going to be peace between Arabs and Israelis, not to mention an end to the wider jihad against America, such attitudes must be broken. Far from criticizing Israel from having the temerity to hope that Palestinians might spare a synagogue, the US should be vocally rejecting the rampant intolerance in the Muslim world for non-Muslim power, freedom, and rights.
President George W. Bush has rightly played the democracy card in the Arab world generally and concerning Palestinians in particular. To his unending credit, he has sometimes done so much more boldly than Israel, leading to the irony that Natan Sharansky's ideas have been more influential in Washington than Jerusalem.
What the US has not done is confronted Arab rejectionism of Israel and rampant anti-Semitism with equal moral clarity. Bush has not said, in so many words, that the source of the conflict is not just the Arab democracy deficit, or even the lack of a Palestinian state, but the still reigning idea among Arab governments, masses, and elites that Israel has no right to exist.
The State Department's revealing reaction to the synagogue decision and its consequences shows that attempts to triangulate around the real sources of the conflict remain entrenched in the foreign policy establishment, even in Washington.
Israel's withdrawal was not yet a day old when the first post-disengagement Palestinian mortar landed in Sderot. If Washington is not quick to hold the Palestinian Authority responsible for such attacks, and demand effective action, disengagement will have been for naught and terrorism will escalate again. Now is not the time for evenhandedness, but for holding the Palestinians accountable for their actions."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1126491576175&apage=2
at September 14, 2005 2:07 PM
Waterdragon,
If in any way I inferred surprise that Israel is blamed by the world's dhimmis regardless of what they do, than I failed to communicate my message properly.
In fact, what I was doing is pointing out how even the apologists for the moslems have been forced to resort to blaming Israel for giving the islamic filth the opportunity to act like the vermin that they are. This is a pretty strong indictment of how low the moslems masquerading as "Palestinian" rank when this is being pointed out by their own advocates.
Again, this only served to strngthen my resolve to expel them from all land west of the Jordan, so I hope that clarifies my stance a bit, Waterdragon.
Posted by: Madzionist at September 14, 2005 2:57 PM
Celebration, mohammed style:
"A speech by an Abbas aide calling for an end to armed chaos was marred by Fatah gunmen parading across the stage and firing assault rifles in the air. This prompted Hamas activists to walk out from what had been billed as a show of Palestinian unity.
The rally ended in disorder when devoutly Muslim refugees dominating the crowd of several thousand stoned the stage in protest at a rap music band's failure to stick to nationalist songs. The performers fled, gunmen firing over their heads."
Seems these idiots have forgotten an important lesson; first and foremost, you must control the news media. Whoever filed this report is no-doubt going to get an "education" soon as the mobsters find him.
Posted by: Infidel33 at September 14, 2005 4:06 PM
resc,
Its Bush and Condi, the two stooges. One trying to please his long-time saudi kissin' cousins, and the other in well over her head. Rumsfeld is no idiot. When he talked on Charlie Rose about the people we are fighting wanting to re-establish the caliphate and rule the world, well, that is something you don't hear from Bush or Condi. I suspect he knows it isn't just limited to the so-called "insurgents" we are fighting in Iraq, either. Of course, Rumsfeld must obey his CIC and, for the most part, talk the party line, but he is no dummy.
Posted by: Infidel33 at September 14, 2005 7:59 PM
I think the Israelis deliberately left the synagogues there because they knew these savage animals would burn them down and they needed the world to see the kind of people they've been deling with all these years. Gaza will very soon descend into chaos, anarchy and political in-fighting because once the focus of anti-Israeli and anti-Western hate is taken away, you'll find the Muslim brethren hate each other a lot more than anyone else. Just look at what the Sunnis are doing to the Shias!
Posted by: londongirl at September 15, 2005 8:22 AM
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