The media fiddles while Israel burns - by Sean Durns

The press is failing to provide readers with coverage of a developing and dangerous situation in a country that is frequently the subject of disproportionate, and sometimes trivial, news coverage.

Sean Durns..
JNS.org/CAMERA..
09 September '20..

For weeks while communities in Israel burned, many major U.S. news outlets kept silent. Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, has been intermittently launching firebombs into the south of Israel for years. Yet Hamas’s terrorism by fire was largely ignored during the summer of 2020.

By repeatedly launching incendiary devices into Israel, Hamas and other Gaza-based terror groups have violated numerous ceasefires. The damage has been extensive.

According to an Aug. 28 press release by Jewish National Fund-USA, almost “600 fires caused by incendiary and explosive-laden balloons sent by terrorists in the Gaza Strip have plagued Israel’s Gaza Envelope region over the past 19 days as thousands of acres have been destroyed.” On Aug. 23 alone, more than 28 fires were started by devices launched from Gaza. Nor is it merely balloons; as the Times of Israel reported “rockets have also been fired on multiple occasions at Israeli cities and towns, including over a dozen projectiles” on Aug. 20.

JNF-USA has helped to combat the fires by investing in firetrucks and firewagons. The threat to many communities in Israel’s south has been so pervasive that JNF-USA has helped develop “new, often fortified playgrounds, schools, parks and other amenity-enhancing projects.” Keith Isaacson, the head of security for Israel’s Eshkol region, lamented: “You can see that the forests are suffering. The wildlife is suffering. Instead of green behind our houses, we have black.”

As Ynet news previously reported, in February 2020 explosives-laden balloons landed in a preschool in the southern Israeli Kibbutz Sa’ad. More recently, others have landed near playgrounds. On several occasions, terrorists have attached the balloons with Disney characters—a tactic meant to entice unsuspecting children.

Israel, meanwhile, has responded with targeted strikes aimed at the terror network and its infrastructure.

Terrorist groups targeting children with balloon bombs and causing massive ecological damage is certainly newsworthy. Yet many major Western news outlets have completely ignored the story.

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Why is the Media Mum on Israeli Special Needs Captives? - by Gidon Ben-Zvi

One of the media’s primary functions is to identify and report injustices being perpetrated around the world. This, in turn, keeps the pressure on serial human rights violators while ensuring that the victims are not forgotten. As such, news outlets should be shining a bright spotlight on Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.

Gidon Ben-Zvi..
Honest Reporting..
03 September '20..

September 7, 2020 marks the sixth anniversary of when Avera Mengistu was taken captive by the Hamas terrorist group. The then-32-year-old, who had immigrated to Israel with his family from Ethiopia, developed severe schizophrenia following the death of his older brother and crossed into the Gaza Strip on his own volition.

Since then, he has not had access to treatment for his mental illness and has not been afforded the privileges guaranteed by international law. Kidnapping an innocent civilian is an egregious human rights violation; yet, even with all the recent media coverage about the weeks-long confrontation between the IDF and Hamas, there has been little, if any, attention paid to Mengistu’s plight.

Civilian Hostages: The Media’s Selective Coverage

From a media standpoint, securing the release of hostages has over the past few years been big news. According to the White House, more than 50 Americans have been released from 22 countries during President Donald Trump’s tenure. Peter Bergen, a vice-president of the Washington, D.C.-based New America think tank who has written extensively on terrorism, has described the Trump Administration’s efforts to rescue hostages as “an area of significant foreign policy success.”

Meanwhile, the US Department of State recently announced that it would intensify its campaign to bring home three citizens being held in Iran.

Much of the public has been following these stories closely, with media organizations generally providing information about any relevant developments. However, when it comes to Mengistu, these same outlets focus almost exclusively on the recurring tit-for-tat military exchanges between Israel and Hamas without raising the latter’s gross disregard for international norms.

Hisham al-Sayed: Another Mentally Ill Civilian Hostage

Hamas is also holding hostage Hisham al-Sayed, an Israeli Bedouin from the southern town of Hura who entered Gaza in 2015. He also has a history of mental illness. To date, Hamas has refused to release any information about Mengistu or al-Sayed, nor has the terrorist organization granted permission to rights groups to visit them in order to determine their respective conditions.

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EUBAM - Europe’s failed (and forgotten) Gaza monitors - by Gerald M. Steinberg

Forgotten in this historical reckoning is the European Union’s role in this process, and the failure of the EU to provide the guarantees they had pledged to fulfill in 2005.

Gerald M. Steinberg..
JPost/Opinion..
20 August '20..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/europes-failed-and-forgotten-gaza-monitors-opinion-639383

The 15-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza has been accompanied by a wave of painful personal and political memoirs, amid a difficult debate on the wisdom of Ariel Sharon’s sudden policy shift.

The latest round of “balloon terrorism” from Gaza that is torching the fields and trees of southern Israel, and the periodic rocket attacks, sending thousands of Israelis into shelters in the middle of the night, are reminders that the hoped-for quiet was an illusion.

Instead of using the withdrawal as an opportunity for economic development to lift the people of Gaza out of poverty, the Palestinian leaders have diverted international aid into cross-border attack tunnels and rocket brigades.

Largely forgotten in this historical reckoning is the European Union’s role in this process, and the failure of the EU to provide the guarantees they had pledged to fulfill in 2005.

After Israel’s withdrawal, the EUBAM (European Union Border Assistance Mission) was deployed at the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt. The mission consisted of some 60 police and customs officials “to help bring peace to the area,” ostensibly by monitoring traffic in order to deter smuggling of weapons into Gaza.

According to the agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, EUBAM would monitor the performance of the PA in operating the crossing and had the authority to order the re-examination of persons and goods that passed through the crossing if PA examinations proved unsatisfactory.
From the beginning, this EU monitoring presence was a failure, and far from demonstrating Europe’s potential contribution to peace, it demonstrated the chasm between high-minded talk and the reality of conflict and terrorism on the ground.

Weapons smuggling continued, and on December 30, 2005, a few weeks after their initial deployment, EUBAM monitors fled Rafah to the safety of an Israeli military base when Palestinian police officers stormed the crossing, in what was described for media and diplomatic consumption as a “protest demonstration”.

Three months later, the monitors fled once again following a wave of foreigner kidnappings in Gaza.

Maybe Thirteen Years of Hamas Rule is Why Gazans are Committing Suicide - by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas, after 13 years of criminal negligence, rejects responsibility for the wellbeing of its people. Astoundingly, it continues to succeed in convincing the world that Israel is to blame for the misery of its own people. This convenient and toxic lie enables it to continue receiving money and weapons from its friends in Iran and Hezbollah to tighten its death grip on the Gaza Strip. For Hamas, jihad (holy war), not a decent life for its people, is what matters. Tragically, it seems that young Palestinians in Gaza are getting the message -- loud and clear.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
08 July '20..

The Palestinian terror group Hamas is making a serious effort to prevent journalists from reporting about a surge in suicide rates in the Gaza Strip. Hamas does not want the world to know that young men and women living under its rule in the Gaza Strip, have, as a result of economic hardship and oppression, been taking their own lives.

In the past week alone, four Palestinians from the Gaza Strip reportedly committed suicide in separate incidents -- by gunfire, pills, self-immolation, and jumping from a tall building. The suicides have embarrassed Hamas, whose leaders decided to take strict measures to stop the news from leaking to the media.

Thirteen years after its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, Hamas is still seeking to present a rosy picture of the situation there. Hamas wants to show the world that life for many Palestinians under its Islamic rule and repressive measures is wonderful.

The reality, however, is a bit different. Under Hamas control, the Gaza Strip has suffered from rising unemployment, elevated poverty rates, and a sharp contraction of the private sector.

Since 2017, the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank has reduced payments for electricity supplied by Israel to the Gaza Strip and cut salaries for its employees, exacerbating the local economic crisis. Since 2014, Egypt's crackdown on the Gaza Strip's extensive tunnel smuggling network has exacerbated fuel, construction material, and consumer goods shortages.

Last year, Palestinian activists took to the streets of the Gaza Strip to protest economic hardship and demand that Hamas provide solutions for soaring unemployment and poverty rates. The protests, held under the banner "We want to live!," were brutally suppressed by Hamas's security forces and militiamen. Hundreds of activists were detained by Hamas, which saw the economic protests as part of a "conspiracy" to "create instability and anarchy" and undermine its dictatorial regime in the Gaza Strip.

One of the organizers of the protests was Sleman Alajoury, a 24-year-old activist and unemployed university graduate from the northern Gaza Strip. Alajoury was detained several times by Hamas for his role in the widespread protests, described as the worst since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip after toppling the government of PA President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.

On July 4, one year after the protests were crushed by Hamas, Alajoury's body was discovered inside his home in the Sheikh Zayed suburb in the northern Gaza Strip. His friends and family members said that the young man had committed suicide with a single shot to the head.

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Hamas Hearts Human Rights Watch - by Bassam Tawil

A terrorist group that has failed its own people on an epic level is pretending that it is worried about where Arabs in Israel will live.

💓

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
15 May '20..

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is apparently very pleased with Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international organization headquartered in New York. Hamas is so pleased that this week it issued a statement praising HRW for its systematic and continuous bashing of Israel.

It is rather rare for a radical Islamic terrorist group to heap praise on a Western supposed human rights organization, particularly an American one.

Exceptions exist in all areas, however, and HRW, known for its anti-Israel bias and for peddling anti-Israel hate, stands as an especially blazing one.

What motivated Hamas to express its admiration for HRW? Another anti-Israel report, this time claiming that Arab citizens of Israel are facing a "housing shortage."

The HRW report focuses on only three Arab towns in Israel -- Jisr al-Zarqa, Qalansawa and Ein Mahel, with a total population of 50,000. It deliberately ignores the other two million or so Arab Israelis. Moreover, the report fails to mention that the housing crisis affects not only Arabs, but also Jews.

"We are on the brink of a socio-economic abyss," said Raul Srugo, President of the Israel Builders Association.

"As long as the government doesn't begin strategic planning for the next generation in Israel, we'll find ourselves in the biggest crisis since the state was founded. In 2030, there will be 12 million residents in Israel, and in 2050 there will be 17 million people here. Remember, this is a country where it takes 15 years to approve construction of a single [new] neighborhood."

HRW, however, does not seem inclined to allow a few crucial facts to spoil its efforts to delegitimize Israel by accusing it of "discrimination" against Arab Israelis.

The good news is that Israel has been working hard in recent years to solve the housing crisis -- for both Arabs and Jews.

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When a Pharmaceutical Magazine’s Gaza Story is Itself Medical Negligence - by Simon Plosker

Pharmafile.com and its associate magazine Pharmafocus, instead of blaming Israel for all of Gaza’s ills and a “death sentence” on Gazans for a coronoavirus outbreak that hasn’t and hopefully will not happen, should stick to the issues it has actual expertise in.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
07 April '20..

According to its mission statement, “Pharmafile.com is a leading portal for the pharmaceutical industry, providing industry professionals with pharma news, pharma events, pharma service company listings and pharma jobs.”

Pharmafile.com also has an associated trade magazine Pharmafocus. One wouldn’t expect a pharmaceutical magazine to stray into the realm of geopolitics. Unfortunately, this is exactly where it has gone with the prejudicially titled “Israeli blockade has made COVID-19 a “death sentence” in Gaza.”

Israeli blockade has made COVID-19 a “death sentence” in Gaza https://t.co/PPeNbPPJJF pic.twitter.com/iHqtobXq0x

— Pharmafocus (@Pharmafocus) April 6, 2020

Nobody should underplay the potential seriousness of the coronavirus threat to Gazans or anywhere else in the world. However, medical professionals and people in the pharmaceutical industry deserve factually-based evidence rather than hyperbole when it comes to assessing the threat.

In the first instance, blaming the “Israeli blockade” for a “death sentence” is obscene. At the time of writing, Gaza has 12 confirmed coronavirus cases and no deaths. Becoming infected with the virus, while potentially life-threatening, is in no way a death sentence according to global statistics. Thankfully, most of those with corona symptoms recover. It is also worth considering that the relatively young population of Gaza (a median age of around 17 years old) would indicate a potentially higher survival rate.

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Hamas praises itself on how humanitarian it is - by Elder of Ziyon

...at the same time they are threatening a new Holocaust against Jews, they are telling the world how moral they are. You could not make this up.

Elder of Ziyon..
03 April '20..

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar threatened to kill all of Israel's Jews if Gaza does not get enough ventilators.

“If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis," he said, as reported by Times of Israel and Arab media.

Israel has close to 9 million people, of whom about 6.9 million are Jewish. Sinwar's use of the word phrase "six million" is meant to apply only to Jews, as well as to evoke the Holocaust.

No "human rights" group seemed bothered by that.

But, at the same time, Hamas pretended to offer a deal if Israel released prisoners who are old and sick, women and those under 18. A Hamas press release said, "We can offer a partial concession on the issue of the captured Israeli soldiers, in exchange for the release of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian prisoners, the elderly, the sick, women and children."

The nature of this "partial concession" is not even hinted at. Maybe Israel can expect a fingernail or a 1 cm square piece of cloth from one of the uniforms of the dead.

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Israel, Coronavirus and 7 Reasons Why There’s No ‘Gaza Siege’ - by Honest Reporting

Ultimately, while restrictions on movement of people and materials exist in order to prevent terrorism, the Israeli/Egyptian blockade of Gaza should not be referred to as a “siege.” Hamas’ own survival depends on blaming the suffering of Gazans on Israel in order to divert from its own failures. Sadly, there are too many, including some media, who willingly buy into this narrative. Israel has no desire to see the people of Gaza suffering and does all it can to balance its own security needs with the humanitarian requirements of the Palestinians. Gaza is not under “siege.”

Honest Reporting..
30 March '20..

Particularly at a time when the coronavirus poses a significant risk of spreading to the Palestinian population of Gaza, the Hamas-controlled enclave is once again in the news. And with that, a new focus on the difficulties faced by Gaza’s under-resourced health system. Some media put the blame squarely on Israeli restrictions on Gaza that exist to mitigate Hamas terrorism against Israel. These restrictions are often referred to as a “blockade.” Some, however, go further by referring to a “Gaza siege.”

The word “siege” is deliberately emotive and consistently used by Israel’s detractors and sometimes by mainstream media. For example, The Economist:

The Media’s Gaza Siege Mentality

Language matters. Misleading Terminology is one of our 8 Categories of Media Bias. We note that language is too often used to promote an agenda. The media must exercise caution when consciously choosing to adopt (or avoid) certain terms, proper nouns, or foreign words.


The dictionary definition of a siege is:

the act or process of surrounding and attacking a fortified place in such a way as to isolate it from help and supplies, for the purpose of lessening the resistance of the defenders and thereby making capture possible.

Here are seven reasons why Gaza’s situation is far removed from the definition above.

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Where We Are: Gaza Balloons - A Bursting Terror Problem - by Dov Lipman

No children should ever have to be told that they cannot touch kites, balloons, balls and other toys for fear that they may explode. Even more so, no human beings should be allowed to target innocent children in this manner. And anyone who sides with Hamas in the Gaza Strip is supporting just that.

Dov Lipman..
Honest Reporting..
10 February '20..

What kind of parent tells their child that they cannot play with balloons, kites, balls, or toy airplanes?

Either horrible, mean parents or loving, caring parents who happen to live in Israel near the Gaza Strip.

Why would caring parents instruct their children not to go near balloons, kites, and other toys? Because beginning in 2018, Palestinian terrorists began sending Gaza balloons and kites laden with explosives to harm Israelis, spark wild fires, and weaken Jewish morale.

Hamas has even established special units tasked with producing and launching them.

The Simplicity of the Gaza Balloons

Literally thousands of hectares in southern Israel have been set ablaze by improvised incendiary devices from from Gaza. Many are made up of simple, commonly available balloons — made of rubber or latex, or even condoms — which are filled with helium. Then, burning rags or an explosive device are attached. Terror kites are made by simply tying several sticks together, covering them with a plastic sheet and attaching a mesh carrying fuel.

When the wind blows into Israel from Gaza, the balloons and kites are released. While most land in the vicinity of the Israel-Gaza border, one balloon landed in Beersheva, about 40 km from the Strip.



Some Gaza balloons have been designed to spark multiple fires by repeatedly drip fireballs as they float over Israel. Bomb disposal crews are frequently called to defuse explosives found attached to balloons and kites. In one incident, a rocket-propelled grenade warhead attached to balloons was found in a kibbutz field.

Between July and September 2018, Gaza balloons and kites sparked an average of 12 fires a day. The fires they triggered have caused terrible ecological damage to Israel – destroying over 6,000 acres of forests and farmland and killing massive amounts of wildlife. Experts say that the damage to the ecosystem will take a decade to repair.

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Strawberry Exports, Open-air Prisons and the Israeli Gaza Blockade? by Sheri Oz

And just in case you were wondering this too: the movement of people and goods that the world does not believe is happening — because, after all, Gaza is an open-air prison — is taking place while explosive-laden balloons are being sent across the border into Israel on the wings of off-shore winds. These balloons are the latest in the creative terrorist tools invented by the Arabs of Gaza. They are a colourful alternative to the missiles they still occasionally lob our way in spite of the supposed ceasefire.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
20 January '20..

We keep on hearing about the Gaza blockade, about how Israel has put the population of Gaza in an open-air prison and we do not let people out or products in. Well, someone in Israel apparently did not get that memo. Look what was reported in an article posted on 12 December 2019:

In the Gaza Strip, the season for growing and marketing strawberries began last month — and it is already setting new precedents. After recent weeks saw the first-ever shipment of Gazan strawberries to the Gulf countries, today (Tuesday) five tons of strawberries left the Gaza Strip for England — through Ben Gurion Airport, as arranged by the COGAT’s Gaza CLA.

COGAT is the Coordination of [Israeli] Government Activities [with the PA] in the Territories, and the CLA is Coordination and Liaison Administration for Gaza.

Next time someone says that the Israeli Gaza blockade is strangling the people there and preventing them from earning a decent living, show them this image.

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An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Let’s Tell the Truth About Hamas and Gaza - by Sean Durns

Terrorists, it seems, make for poor rulers — a truth that even anti-Israel organizations and the press should be able to understand.

Sean Durns..
Algemeiner..
09 January '20..

It turns out that genocidal Islamist terrorist groups are bad at governing. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. But apparently it is to The Washington Post. The newspaper’s January 2 dispatch decried living conditions in the Gaza Strip, but failed to place blame where it belongs: with Hamas, the US-designated terror group that rules the Strip.

Citing a 2012 UN report, the Post asserted that Gaza would “become unlivable by 2020” if “prevailing economic, environmental, and political trends continued.” It is, the Post said, “a bleak reality facing Gaza’s two million Palestinian residents as they approach a new year and new decade.”

Reporters Miriam Berger and Hazem Balousha highlighted some of the issues facing Gaza: a sea filled with sewage “pumped in because there’s not enough electricity and infrastructure to run Gaza’s war-torn sewage system”; the “hospitals, schools, and homes” that are “similarly running on empty, worn down by the lack of clean water, electricity, infrastructure, and jobs or money.”

“Barely anyone,” they write “has enough clean water to drink.” The Post quotes some Palestinians. The newspaper also uncritically cites the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), as well as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN itself. Contravening standard journalistic practices, no Israeli official is quoted.

Yet, many of the Post’s sources have a documented history of bias. And important facts and context are omitted in the article.

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Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for the Washington, DC office of CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.

Israel hardly needs another Oslo-like disaster, which confused painful realities with pastoral visions - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

The wedge between Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the recent Gaza conflagration is a clear sign that Israel is deepening divisions between the two terror groups. Nevertheless, the payoffs to Hamas enhance its firepower in possible future rounds, meaning that Israel has to reduce the payoffs as much as possible rather than as the center-left suggests, show largess towards Gaza.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,351..
21 November '19..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/hamas-tamed/

There are two possible solutions to the violence emanating from Gaza.

Either embark on a massive fourth round of conflict like the 2014 confrontation and hope that it will bring Hamas to non-belligerency, as the five wars between Israel and the Arab states did, or as arguably happened after Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 against the PA and Fatah; or adhere to the “taming Hamas” approach used by Netanyahu since “the Return processions” began at the end of March 2018, which minimizes the sticks and maximizes the “carrots” for keeping the peace.

Each of these two solutions have obvious drawbacks.

Initiating a massive round, including a ground offensive into Gaza, to exact a threshold of pain Hamas will not be able to tolerate, plays into the hands of Tehran’s regional strategy to use the Palestinian card to deflect the focus from its buildup in Syria, and entails other obvious costs in terms of lives and treasure.

The wider linkage to Iran and its prioritization, in Netanyahu’s strategic thinking, is what led him to adopt the taming paradigm of negotiating with Hamas to keep the peace on Israel’s southern border.

The costs of this strategy are equally obvious. Any carrots offered to Hamas (Blue and White under Benny Gantz will offer Hamas even more) might buy peace and ameliorate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but those same carrots will obviously be used to enhance the military capabilities of Hamas in the future. In other words, today’s carrots will be converted necessarily into sticks wielded by Hamas against Israel in the future.

Rest assured that as the welfare of Gaza’s population improves, Hamas will dig more and deeper tunnels and storage centers within Gaza itself, improve the firepower and payloads of its missiles and try to dig offensive tunnels into Israel – and this is all the more the case if it is provided with a deeper offshore port, the reopening of the airport and other projects that have been bandied by Blue and White and certain Likud leaders.

Self-defense for everyone but Israel - by Jonathan S. Tobin

Israel’s critics talk of a “cycle of violence” in which the Jewish state is blamed for military escalations. But the problem is Palestinian politics and Iran, not Netanyahu.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
13 November '19..

When Israeli forces launched a surprise attack against a senior commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) in Gaza, four likely reactions were expected to ensure.

One was that the terror group would respond to the taking down of this known killer by shooting rockets at Israel in retaliation. The second was that Hamas, the terror group that governs Gaza as an Islamist tyranny and that is responsible for maintaining the ceasefire with Israel, would soon join Islamic Jihad in war crimes by firing randomly at Israeli civilian targets. The third was that much of the world would blame Israel for its initiating another “cycle of violence” in which the Jewish state would be judged as equally if not more culpable as the terrorists. The fourth inevitable action was that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli and American critics would accuse him of ordering the operation in order to advance his political interests.

Within 24 hours of the death of PIJ’s Baha Abu al-Ata—a man whom Israel’s security services rightly described as a “ticking time bomb”—that is exactly what happened.

Palestinian terror groups fired hundreds of rockets at Israel. Air-raid warnings were sounded throughout southern Israel, causing tens of thousands of Israelis to scramble for bomb shelters. Schools were closed throughout the southern and central parts of the country.

Although its apologists like to describe Hamas as a reasonable player with which Israel should negotiate, its participation in the revenge attacks for Abu al-Ata was a given. That’s because the dynamic of Palestinian politics is such that it always rewards violence. Though it is still committed to Israel’s destruction, Hamas has largely observed the ceasefire that has maintained a relative quiet along the Gaza border in recent months, mainly because it’s worried about keeping the peace internally as the Gazan economy has faltered. Its leaders were probably happy that Israel had eliminated one of their rivals, whose activities posed a threat to Hamas rule. But it cannot not afford to stay out of the fighting for long, lest it be perceived as supporting peace as opposed to endless war against the Jews.

That’s why the calls for “mutual restraint” that are always being sounded by critics of Israel are so disingenuous, as well as undermine hope for peace.

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Question - Until when will Gaza remain a bone in Israel’s throat? - by Martin Sherman

One of the few areas in which Gazans have shown expertise and enterprise, ingenuity and innovativeness is in honing their production and procurement of weaponry, with which to assault the Jewish state.

Martin Sherman..
JNS.org..
08 November '19..

“Israel need not necessarily take control of the Gaza Strip, but it must take control of the situation.” — Jerusalem Post editorial, Nov. 3, 2019

“I would like Gaza to sink into the sea, but that won’t happen, and a solution must be found.” — Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Sept. 3, 1992


“ … beyond the furrow that marks the border, lies a surging sea of hatred and vengeance, yearning for the day that the tranquility blunts our alertness, for the day that we heed the ambassadors of conspiring hypocrisy, who call for us to lay down our arms.” — Moshe Dayan, at the funeral of Roi Rotberg, of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, killed by terrorist gunmen from Gaza, April 28, 1956

The Israel Defense Forces swept triumphantly into the Egyptian-ruled Gaza Strip in early June 1967 and pulled out ignominiously in mid-August 2005—erasing every vestige of Jewish presence there that had been lovingly and laboriously developed over the preceding four decades.

Gaza has been an almost constant source of consternation for Israel, well before it took over the Strip in 1967 (see opening excerpt). However, matters took a sharp turn for the worse, when, following the Oslo I Accords (1993) and the pursuant Gaza-Jericho Agreement (1994), facilitating PLO chairman Yasser Arafat’s entry into Gaza on July 1, 1994 to the cheers of jubilant crowds, whose expectant hopes of future prosperity and security were soon to be dashed.

Since then, in large part due to Israel first reducing and then totally withdrawing its presence on the ground, Gaza has evolved from being a terrorist nuisance to a threat of emerging strategic dimensions. Indeed, this week the Israel Broadcasting Corporation (Kan 11) ran an exposé on the ongoing global efforts by the external arm of Hamas to acquire advanced, high-quality weapon systems to intensify the battle against Israel.

Indeed, one of the few areas in which Gazans have shown considerable expertise and enterprise, ingenuity and innovativeness is in honing their production and procurement of weaponry, with which to assault the Jewish state—attaining military capabilities seemingly inconceivable when Israel embarked on its poorly conceived policy of transferring control of Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs.

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Two more Gazan Fell Shorts crash into Gaza. Who will be paying the price of Gazan terror this time? - by Arnold Roth

Who was injured in Gaza by the Gazan rocket? What damage was caused? We'll likely never know. Media coverage of Gaza from within Gaza is strictly controlled by Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that has ruled it since violently wresting control from Fatah in 2006. Unless the news can inflict harm on Israel, it will never be reported.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 October '19..

Remember our post about Fell Shorts from just a couple of weeks ago?

In "19-Sep-19 Gazan victims of a cognitive war: Who cares?", we wrote about the almost entirely unreported phenomenon of rockets fired from the rocket-infested, Hamas-occupied Gaza Strip in the general direction of Israel but which fall short, crashing onto the heads of homes of hapless Gazans.

It happened again in the early hours of this morning, Saturday.

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What should Israel’s goal in Gaza be? - by Daniel Pipes

Should Israel invade Gaza? Why Israel must map out a strategy to achieve its goals.

Daniel Pipes..
Washington Times..
23 September '19..

As Israeli frustration mounts about violence coming out of Gaza, the idea of a ground invasion, and once and for all to finish with Hamas aggression, becomes more appealing. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed this approach, saying that “There probably won’t be a choice but to topple the Hamas regime.” While sympathetic to this impulse, I worry that too much attention is paid to tactics and not enough to goals. The result could be harmful to America’s foremost Middle East ally.

Attitudes toward Gaza are in flux. Efraim Inbar, the strategist who heads the Jerusalem Institute for Security Studies, for years advocated “mowing the grass” as “Israel’s strategy for protracted intractable conflict.” By this, he advocated an occasional reminder to Hamas’ rulers and other Gazans of Israel’s overwhelming power. Implicit in this approach is an acceptance that, most of the time, Israel accepts aggression from Gaza, with its attendant damage to property and life. As recently as May 2019, he dismissed the Palestinian threat to Israel as a “strategic nuisance.”

But Mr. Inbar recently recognized the high costs of this passivity and now calls for a “restricted ground invasion” of the territory: Why? Because “a short-term ground operation will bring better results than Israel’s activity thus far [i.e., mowing the lawn]. We need to maneuver inside enemy territory, locate them, and destroy them, or tie the hands of its members.”

Others agree. For example, Ayelet Shaked, leader of the New Right party, calls for a widescale military operation in Gaza: “We must choose the time that is best for us, evacuate the Israeli citizens who live in towns along the Gaza envelope in order to give us maximum flexibility, and we must uproot the terror from within Gaza.”

To these analyses, I respond with Carl von Clausewitz’ simple but profound counsel: First decide on your policy, then your strategy, then your tactics. Or, in plain English: Start by figuring out what you wish to achieve through the use of force, then decide the broad outlines of your approach, then the specific means.

Seen in this light, debating whether to engage in a ground invasion and to overthrow Hamas is debating a tactic; this should not be the topic of conversation until the goal and the means to achieve it have been decided upon. To start by focusing on tactics risks losing sight of the purpose.

So, what should Israel’s goal in Gaza be?

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Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org, @DanielPipes), president of the Middle East Forum, taught “Strategy and Policy” at the U.S. Naval War College.