By land or by sea

Hamas finds ways to get the weapons it needs
Jan. 27, 2009

Apparently tunnels aren’t enough. An Iranian freighter believed to be carrying weaponry for Hamas is currently docked in the Red Sea outside the Suez Canal and is being monitored by Israel. Egypt refused to permit it to cross the waterway to the Mediterranean.

The US Navy recently boarded an Iranian vessel that was carrying artillery shells and other weaponry, according to a report received at the Defense Ministry.

Israeli officials are concerned that Iran is trying to supply Hamas with new Grad-model Katyusha rockets and the Fajr missiles, both stronger and longer range than the homemade Kassam rockets.

The London Times reported that the US Navy in the Gulf of Aden has been instructed to track Iranian arms shipments to Gaza. Last week, the article claimed, troops from the USS San Antonio boarded a former Russian cargo vessel that was flying a Cypriot flag and was reportedly carrying weaponry destined for Hamas.

Israeli officials expect Egypt to take similar steps to uncover and destroy the smuggling tunnels on the border. Israel is sharing intelligence and tunnel-detection technology with its neighbor.

Germany is also on standby to deploy to Egypt four border police experts and equipment to detect the smuggling tunnels, according to a senior government in Berlin.

Palestine, a left-wing cause?

Jan. 27, 2009

For many leftists in Western countries, the Palestinian cause is adopted as one of their own. It automatically goes on the left's agenda. The funny thing though is that the left-wing agenda, for the most part, would be punishable by death in Palestine and other Muslim states.

Denis Maceoin, writing in the Jerusalem Post, draws some interesting parallels in his column, Marching for Hamas:

In a bizarre reversal of all their commitment to human rights and the struggle of men and women for independence and self-determination, the European Left has chosen again and again to side with the bullies and to condemn a small nation struggling to survive in a hostile neighborhood. It is all self-contradictory: The Left supports gay rights, yet attacks the only country in the Middle East where gay rights are enshrined in law. Hamas makes death the punishment for being gay, but “we are all Hamas now.” Iran hangs gays, but it is praised as an agent of anti-imperialism, and allowed to get on with its job of stoning women and executing dissidents and members of religious minorities. If UK Premier Gordon Brown swore to wipe France from the face of the earth, he would become a pariah among nations. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threatens to do that to Israel and is invited to speak to the UN General Assembly.

Israel guarantees civil liberties to all its citizens, Jew or Arab alike, but it is dubbed “an apartheid state”; Hamas, ever the bully, kills its opponents and denies the rest the most basic rights, but we march on behalf of Hamas. The Left prefers the bully because the bully represents a finger in the face of the establishment? Almost no one on the Left has any understanding of militant Islam. Their politics is a politics of gesture, where wearing a keffiyeh is cool but understanding its symbolism is too much effort even for intellectuals.

Israeli general: Palestinians have never recognized our state

Former chief of staff, Lt.-Gen. Moshe “Bogey” Ya'alon, spoke at the Jerusalem Conference yesterday, noted that no Palestinian leader has ever recognized Israel's right to exist.

“We suffer from inertia in our way of thought. We pretend that there is a Palestinian entity which has recognized Israel. But from the dawn of Zionism there has not been an Arab movement that was willing to recognize Israel as the sovereign state of the Jewish nation. Mahmoud Abbas said it well before Annapolis: ‘Why should Judaism, this religion, have a state?’ But we didn't want to listen. We blur this in the political and public debate.”

“We pretend that the problem began in the Six Day War. But did the Arabs recognize us before the Six Day War? We wanted peace in exchange for territories, but we received terror for territories. And when we exited Gaza unilaterally, we received rockets for territory... After the Disengagement we went to Annapolis anyways. We didn't change the concept. Isn't this confusion?”

“We pretend that the conflict is the Middle East is a territorial one but it is a clash of civilizations. We retreat from Lebanon and we think that this will cancel the Hizballah's reason for existing but the exact opposite happens.”

“We must stop talking about territories for peace, about the division of Jerusalem, and let the Arabs in Judea and Samaria have autonomy. Just by talking about retreats we give jihadist Islam a boost.”

“We need leadership that doesn't say 'we are tired of fighting wars.' The nation is not tired and the army is not tired. If the leadership is tired it should be changed. As for another statement, that the state of Israel is finished if we do not return to the 1967 borders: time works in favor of whoever makes good use of it.”

Hamas' idea of a ceasefire: Bomb Israeli patrol, kill soldier

Jan. 27, 2009

A day after claiming it was seeking a year-long cease-fire, Hamas bombed an Israeli patrol, on the Israeli side of the border, killing one soldier and wounding three.

The powerful bomb was detonated under the soldiers' vehicle and was a flagrant violation of the cease-fire. Previous violations were the now acceptable mortars, many of which were launched at Israel last week, and various shootings at Israeli soldiers as they were on their way out of the Strip last week.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak called the incident "severe" and promised an Israeli response. The army said Hamas fired a rocket into the sea on Sunday to test the range of rockets still in its arsenal.