Op-Ed: Ceasefire? 18 Rules for Fighting a Gaza War Chelm-Style

Chelm had nothing on us.

Jack Engelhard

It is a settled matter that the IDF are tops in bravery and ethical warfare. Give them any job, and it’s done. But when politicians run the war, Chelm is likely to happen – Chelm being the town inhabited by those fabled “wise men” loved by tradition for their well-meaning but bumbling ways, like the following rules for conducting combat.

Hence…

18 Rules For Combat From The Wise Men ofChelm So That Your Enemies Will Die Laughing:

1. Advise your enemies to get ready for a surprise attack. Make sure to remind them where the surprise will take place and precisely what time it is to begin.

2. Shower the place with cautionary leaflets to make sure that every single enemy combatant finds safety. We do not want terrorist barbarians getting hurt.

3. Wait till the coast is clear before striking. Kill as many buildings as you can to prove that you really mean business.

4. Tipping off your enemies when a “surprise” attack is about to come, this alone could kill them as they die laughing at your stupidity.

5. Make sure to remind the world that no other nation is so respectful towards its foes. The world admires you and adores you for this. Look around.

6. Always be ready to give up more Jewish territory. Judea and Samaria, for instance. See how well this worked in Gaza after 10,000 Jews were evicted.

7. As bombs keep falling on your people, keep supplying your enemies with food and water and gas and electricity.  

8. You do not want to inconvenience the people who keep trying to kill you.

9. Tell your citizens who suffer daily from incoming rocket attacks that it’s okay. It’s no big deal. Go home and get used to running to shelters. Stop complaining. Don’t make trouble.

10. Tell your enemies that THIS TIME! you’ve had enough and then beg them for a ceasefire.

11. Talk big. Act small.

12. Prove how wise you are at the bargaining table by agreeing to your enemies’ every demand.

13. Pay no attention to people within your own country who demand that you fight to win. This is so foolish and so old-fashioned. A tie is good enough.

14. Insist that “quiet for quiet” is fine and dandy…even as rockets keep slamming into your country.

15. If a ceasefire is agreed upon (as it was again today) but rockets keep coming in, that’s okay. This is peace in the Land of Israel.

16. Tell the world that Gaza must be demilitarized. You will not stand for anything less. Then go home and forget every part of this.

17. If Israeli residents along the border with Gaza flee by the thousands, truce or no truce, that’s simply too bad. Nothing can be done.

18. Repeat this: In the Land that God gave you but that you handed over to your enemies, War and Peace are the same thing.

Above all, talk big. Act small.

Op-Ed: Hamas’ Love Letter to ISIS (with Ten Tips)

As Prime Minister Netanyahu said, Hamas and ISIS are two sides of the same ideological coin.

Dear Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS),

Our leadership felt bad about all of the tough press you’ve been getting lately and – given our talent for ruining Gaza while enjoying endless love from the media – we thought we’d share some pointers with you.

We’ve been at this Islamist terrorism thing for decades now, so we can offer some helpful tips for your war to establish a Caliphate – a goal we LOVE. After all, if you overrun Jordan, we could even become allied forces in the West Bank, from which we can jointly conquer Israel.

So, during one of our tunnel-side chats, our most seasoned jihadists compiled this list of best practices, in the hope that these suggestions can improve your performance:

1)      If the U.S. ever insists that you participate in elections when there are no democratic traditions or institutions in place, say YES (we won over half of the legislature in Gaza’s 2006 election).

2)      But if power-sharing arrangements eventually cramp your style, try a violent coup. We did that with our 2007 takeover of Gaza, and were recently planning a second putsch (in the West Bank) and mega-terror attacks until those pesky Israelis foiled our plot. But gaining and keeping power through violence and fear is KEY. In 2007, we even threw our political opponents off rooftops for good measure. When in doubt, use brutality to quell any inconvenient dissent. Actually, you’re doing just fine on this point – keep it up!

3)      If you’re lucky enough to have peace-loving idealists hoping for your success and giving you income-generating resources, destroy their gifts to solidify your poverty credentials. Looters ruined more than 3,000 greenhouses that Israel left us in 2005 and this strengthened our image as economic victims that much sooner. And we attacked Israel so many times (including our tunnel-assisted abduction of Gilad Shalit and sometimes 30 rocket attacks per day on Sderot) that Israel had to seal Gaza's borders to limit our weapons imports from Iran. But Israel’s silly desire to limit how we can kill Israelis did wonders for our victimhood because the media forgot all about the cause of the blockade and focused only on the hardship it causes us. It gets better: when Israel opens the blockade to send us humanitarian aid, we even bomb the crossing and NOBODY cares (or wonders if maybe we’re responsible for the blockade or Gazan misery generally). Pretty cool, right?

4)      We use clinics, schools, mosques and charities to gain legitimacy among our people and inculcate them with the values of jihadi terror. Oh wait, you do that too. Good job!

5)      But you should definitely use more human shields to protect yourselves from U.S. airstrikes. We LOVE human shields – they’re cheap and effective. Just remember to tell mourners how you fast-tracked the victims to heaven.

6)      You WANT dead babies. This is HUGE. The ever-shortening attention span fueled by social media is awesome because it relieves everyone of intellectual hassles like historical context, nuanced moral judgment, deeper analysis of cause and effect, etc. Just show that the people you’re trying to kill have caused baby deaths while defending themselves, and you win. It’s that simple.

7)      Another technique that we HIGHLY recommend is offending every rule of decency. That means:
a)      requesting cease-fires and then violating them,
b)      using hospitals and ambulances for military purposes,
c)      bombing your own people and then blaming your enemy (we killed nine Gazans and scared the media into faulting Israel; when an Italian journalist revealed the truth after he was safe from our threats, nobody cared),
d)      using child labor to build your terror tunnels (we killed about 160 in the process and nobody cared),
e)      teaching children to worship death and using child soldiers (props on your great work with kids, ISIS!),
f)       diverting humanitarian resources for terrorist use (we could have built at least seven skyscrapers with the concrete expropriated for our terror tunnels) while protesting your poverty even as your leadership lives well,
g)      intimidating and deceiving the press into promoting your narrative (if they don’t do so on their own, like when the BBC disseminated inaccurate photos of Gaza)
h)      using cease-fires to rearm (rather than rebuild) while executing your domestic critics and your tunnel-diggers.

8)      We also have some positive feedback for you, ISIS. You have impressively excelled at championing our core values! We're all for: hateful incitement against religious minorities, treating women as second-class citizens, giving homosexuals the death penalty, letting Islamic morality police govern economic activity, teaching war rather than human rights, attacking Christians (or just using their church to launch rockets), and endorsing honor killings. You’re awesome!

9)      We condemned the assassination of Osama Bin Laden as much as you aspire to surpass him. But PLEASE stop trying to involve the West (as you did with your threats against Norway, Spain, and especially the US – Obama just pressured Israel into letting us keep our military capabilities, so be nice!). The key here is to complete your domination of the Middle East by first eradicating its only democracy (Israel) and its moderate Arab states. You want to lull Europe and the U.S. into spineless passivity by reinforcing their naïve assumption that we’ll be appeased enough to stop at the Middle East.

We need Western “powers” to cower away from our region long enough for Iran to get nuclear weapons. Yes, we know that you, our fellow Sunnis, have a thing against Shiites, but the Iranian regime hates Western infidels as much as we do, so we can all work together in the service of Jihad. Indeed, Iran is our main sponsor (we get our best missiles from them!). And once Iran has nukes, THEN we can go after the EU and U.S.

But this game takes patience, guys – not that much because Iran (thanks to Obama’s “strategy”) could have nukes in two months. But until that happens (or you somehow help us to destroy Jordan and Israel beforehand), you really need to chill out on the rhetoric against the West.

10)  If you want to skyrocket your international popularity, you should attack Israel ASAP. You may hear some perfunctory condemnations but you’ll be secretly admired. Better still: compel Israel to defend itself militarily – that’s when you can literally surf a tidal wave of global support. We can’t emphasize enough the importance of having Israel as your opponent — anyone else really won’t do.

Why do you think we rarely attack Egypt (which also blockades Gaza)? Because they’d flatten Gaza and nobody would care. Remember Ansar Dine? Our fellow Islamists in Mali were thousands of miles from France, but nobody cared when the French started bombing them in 2013 without any threat against France's security. To guarantee world support for your Islamist ways, your enemy must be Israel. But DON’T use donkeys (as we do) to blow up Israelis because this will upset the animal-rights group PETA.

Destroying Western civilization is far easier than building it, but still requires a disciplined strategy, so we hope these pointers come in handy. Feel free to get in touch with any questions.

With love and support,
Hamas

Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.

Op-Ed: The Trouble with Islam (Or, How Islam Made ISIS)

Islam is an offshoot of Judaism but what a difference between the two!

Aristotle once said, "The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousand fold." Such is the nature of modern-day Islam, who’s bloody and barbaric atrocities are driving large swathes of our planet back into a new dark age. How did a monotheistic religion, part of the so-called 'Abrahamic' triad of faiths that are considered to have civilized mankind, go so crucially wrong?

The answer may lie in the fact that Islam, like Christianity, is an offshoot of Judaism. And like sequels, they tend to be a lot more expensive and a lot less successful. Judaism, the original monotheistic faith began with the patriarch Abraham almost 4000 years ago, coincidentally, in almost the same part of Iraq where Yazidi women are right now being herded away in Toyota pick-up trucks to become slaves and Jihadi wives.

Fast forward a few thousand years and we introduce Islam's founder, Mohammad, who learned much of the principles for his new faith from the Jewish tribes that lived in Arabia at that time. According to Islam, Mohammad is supposed to have then received a divine revelation - the Koran, from the angel Gabriel while secluded at the top of a mountain, Jabal an-Nour, near Mecca.

And it’s here that our deviation from Judaism begins. Anyone can question and doubt a revelation if the man on the receiving end was alone with nobody to confirm the authenticity of the miracle. Contrast this to Judaism, where a divine revelation also occurs – funnily enough, also on a mountain top. But even a cursory reading of the Biblical Exodus chapter shows that the revelation occurred in plain view of the entire nation of Israel - and not any single man. Strike one against Islam.

Stay with me:

The only way a divine revelation without multiple witnesses can be substantiated is if the witness is reputed to be completely truthful. In effect he must be a perfect human being. To make the story believable then, Islamic scholars take the logical next step: "Of course Mohammad's story is to believed," they must say, "since he never lied or did any wrong throughout his entire life." Again, let's contrast with the mother faith. The bible is replete with imperfect messiahs and leaders who stray from the course, starting with Adam down to every one of the Kings of Israel. Moses himself, despite being the greatest of all the Hebrew prophets, is chastised by God on a number of occasions, even being refused entry to the Promised Land due to his sins.

The result is that in Judaism, unlike Islam, leaders, prophets, even the greatest of men, are merely human - their frailties and sins written right into the spotlight of the biblical texts. Strike two.

Meanwhile, in Islam, Mohammad, who is the sole recipient of the divine message and now a perfect character witness, naturally becomes the ideal role model to his future followers who seek to emulate his life and deeds. This is where Islam takes the final and fatal twist away from its Jewish roots. In Judaism, the characters of even the greatest men are dissected to reveal even their smallest imperfections – a lesson in humility to its followers. This critical process is designed to warn Judaism's adherents away from the over-adulation of mere people and instead, keep firmly focused on their God - a God who we know surprisingly little about, except that he is of limitless love, mercy and forgiveness.

The central problem with Islam though, is that it has substituted the worship of an all-merciful and forgiving God with the worship of an all-powerful human man.

Bad perhaps, but can it be changed? Unfortunately the answer is no. Because the problem doesn’t end with the adulation of one man. Where the God of Judaism is infinite and in many respects remote to the problems of everyday life, the application of human judgment and common-sense to moral questions is demanded. In effect, in Judaism God takes a ‘back-seat’ and man makes the final call. This enables Judaism as a faith, but more importantly Jews as a society and a community to adapt to the times and remain innovative despite being one of the most ancient peoples.

But the opposite is true in Islam. Since the laws and customs of Islam and Sharia are based on the documented deeds of Mohammad, they are by nature clear, rigid and closed for all time to any interpretation or reform of the God-given word.

And so here we are today with groups such as Boko Haram, Hamas, Al Qaida and ISIS. With Mohammad’s happy progeny living frozen in time. Free to torture and behead their enemies. Free to kidnap and rape infidel women after murdering their husbands, fathers and brothers in front of their very eyes. Free to marry pre-pubescent girls, amputate limbs, stone adulterers to death and even kill their own children for the sake of honor.  In their minds they are performing the highest of good deeds by emulating the life of their supreme leader and role model – even if that life was lived over 1400 years ago in a very different age, where people lived by very different norms.

Islam can never change. And it’s more than one billion adherents remain trapped in a downward spiral of violence and misery where only the strong enjoy any temporary honor or wellbeing – and that at the expense of their own brethren and neighbors. It is my hope that Muslims eventually wake up to the futility of their totalitarian ideology; sorry, I cannot grace it with the title of religion. But my guess is it may take a few million deaths and immeasurable suffering before that happy day comes.
 

The most interesting and telling article I ever read.

Op-Ed: What is UNRWA Doing in Gaza?

How does it make sense? And American taxpayers would go through the roof and under the tunnels of Hamas Gaza if they had a clue where their taxes were going, while Arab oil-exporting countries contribute less than the cost of a shul Kiddush.

Here we go again.  Twelve years ago, I published an op-ed article in The Weekly Standard on almost these identical issues and questions, when the focus lay on the UNRWA and the “refugee camps” of Jenin.  How, I asked, can there be “refugee camps” in Jenin if Yasser Arafat and his PLO were busy claiming that Jenin is their “Palestine”?  

How can the “Palestinians” of “Palestine” be deemed to be “refugees” if they live in their claimed homeland?  And yet they are on the welfare rolls of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

How can that make sense?  Displaced Jews from North Africa, once they called Israel their home, were not “refugees” anymore but “olim chadashim” (new immigrants).  The same with Jews who have come to Israel, whether by volition from America and Canada or by compulsion from Ethiopia and Eastern Europe.  Yes, many begin in a Merkaz Klita (Absorption Center).  But not in a “refugee camp.”  

How can someone be a “refugee” in his own home? One is a refugee “from” a place, not when he is home — assuming the home is his.

Indeed, as a matter of international law, only someone who has been banished from his homeland can be called a “refugee” in the first place.  Not his child.  Not his cousin.  Like gravity — that is the law.

So twelve years ago, a United Nations commission — that aimed at investigating mythical “Jewish war crimes” when Israel defended herself from terror and uprooted terror cells in Jenin — was rejected by Israel and backed down from coming. Now the United Nations is back at it again, aiming to send another of its anti-Jewish witch-hunting gremlin panels to find new “Jewish war crimes.”  

There is virtually nothing else that the United Nations seems to do.  No war-crimes investigations in Syria (110,000 murdered, some by poison gas and chemicals) or in Iraq, where Christians are getting crucified by ISIL and Al Qaeda thugs and cutthroats, even as other Christians are being exiled from their homes of a thousand years on pain of death.  No war-crimes peeks around eastern Ukraine to figure out who murdered the passengers aboard a simple civilian airliner and then would not even allow Dutch officials to access the corpses of the slaughtered.  Rather, another farcical search for blood in matzah, four months since last Pesach and eight months before the next.

These things get so foolish that they defy reason.  In a celebrity-thirsty world that just lost Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, the U.N. came up with the insane notion of asking actor George Clooney’s fiancée to be one of the only three people in the whole entire world trusted to look for the bloody matzah, to find imaginary Jewish war crimes against humanity.  The woman is a brilliant attorney, not just “arm dressing,” and she hates Israel.  But there are so many brilliant attorneys throughout the world, and at least some of them hate Israel, too, while others can be paid to hate Israel very persuasively.  Yet the U.N. opted for George Clooney’s girl friend to be at center of the blood-in-the-matzah search.  Why?

Why?  Because the notion of searching for Israeli war crimes against humanity in a military theater from which a rogue polity of thugs and gangsters — aka Hamas in Gaza, “Palestine” — has been firing more than 3,000 rockets aimed solely at civilian population centers, from Sderot to Tel Aviv and Haifa, while protecting their own rockets and launchers with civilian human shields and hiding their rockets in United Nations schools accrues to such a farce that it would be comical if it did not actually impact us as Jews.  It would make a great off-Broadway play.  Something like “Rhinoceros” or a “Theater of the Absurd.”  Indeed, so absurd that Franz Kafka would have shied away from penning it.  It would give absurdity a bad name.

So they pick George Clooney’s brilliant lawyer girlfriend to be one of the big three.  It is hard not to like Clooney.  He was great in “E.R.,” a long-running American television drama at a hospital.  He was so much fun in the Coen Brothers’ “O Brother Where Art Thou?”  And always great in all those “Oceans” movies.  Even those of us who do not abide his left-wing politics love him in movies and on TV.  He’s too much fun to boycott, divest, or sanction. And, until he gets married, women dream of him.  So what could be finer than having George Clooney’s girl friend go with another Israel-hater or two and search for some blood-soaked matzah, thus placing Clooney on the side of the Blood Libel?

But the United Nations underestimated two factors: first, even if she does hate Israel, the girl friend really is smart.  Too smart to get suckered into playing the witch in the witch hunt, and casting Clooney into the midst of some kind of “Oceans 1948” where the rest of his stellar career is stained and punctured forever by association with a Blood Libel and “The Hunt for Red Matzah" — because that is what this U.N. hunt is about: accusing Jews of being the war criminals of humanity, the poisoners of the wells, the bakers of the blood-soaked matzahs, the perpetrators of the war crimes that Jews recoil from more than do any other people on earth.

Jews argue with each other.  Jews bewail the investments they wanted to make but were prevented by their spouses, and that now would have had them ensconced on “Easy Street.”  But Jews simply do not do windows or war crimes.

England bombed Dresden to shreds.  In three days, England sent in 722 heavy bombers and America 539 bombers.  They rained nearly 4,000 tons of incendiary bombs on that one city.  More than 25,000 were killed in three days.  The bombs were calculated to set off unimaginably devastating fires that would suck the oxygen out of the Dresden air, suffocating or incinerating men, women, and children.

One Dresden eyewitness account:
“It is not possible to describe! Explosion after explosion. It was beyond belief, worse than the blackest nightmare. So many people were horribly burnt and injured. It became more and more difficult to breathe. It was dark and all of us tried to leave this cellar with inconceivable panic. Dead and dying people were trampled upon, luggage was left or snatched up out of our hands by rescuers. The basket with our twins covered with wet cloths was snatched up out of my mother's hands and we were pushed upstairs by the people behind us. We saw the burning street, the falling ruins and the terrible firestorm.

"My mother covered us with wet blankets and coats she found in a water tub. We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from. I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them.”

America wiped out more than 100,000 Japanese civilians overnight in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  War crimes?  During the years, America has borne the rare shame of a My Lai in Vietnam, an Abu Ghraib in Iraq, an occasional soldier who goes haywire in Afghanistan or somewhere and kills a dozen innocents on an all-night personal rampage.  Yet, all Americans justifiably take great pride in America’s overall excellence of morality, distinguishing and punishing the few shameful outliers.

But to find even that outlier immorality amid the Israeli Defense Forces is virtually inconceivable.  The IDF is cooked differently.  Its moral purity is so striking that, because of the dramatic reality that Jewish soldiers — unique among warring armies — do not rape their enemies’ women, the world’s Jew-haters, including some Leftist Jewish crazies within Israel, even have penned masters theses arguing that the striking absence of rape proves some kind of Jewish racist anti-Arab repulsion.  That, somehow, the lack of rapes proves that Jews do not consider Arab women worthy of being raped.  The Search for Blood in the Matzah and poison in the wells.

So Clooney’s fiancée outsmarted the U.N. fools who thought she could be manipulated into becoming the Witch of the Witch Hunters, and it may well be assumed that Clooney’s own advisors, friends, and publicity people helped him realize how a brilliant woman was going to be manipulated simply because she and he are in love.  So she is out.

Yet, for Americans, perhaps our attention should focus on other questions, too: Why, in the first place, is the United Nations running “refugee camps” for people who claim to be living in their own land? How can a “refugee camp” under U.N. auspices exist in a world center for recruiting and training suicide bombers, murder-tunnel diggers, and rocket launchers? And why is the United States essentially bankrolling these camps when wealthy Arab oil sheikhdoms barely contribute?

According to U.N. records, the United States finances more than one-fourth of the cost of operating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In 2000, for example, the United States pledged $89,560,000 towards the $337,014,742 total that UNRWA raised from all nations and sources in the world. By comparison, Saudi Arabia pledged $2,500,000 — less than 1 percent of the UNRWA total and a minuscule fraction of the American contribution. Oil-rich Kuwait pledged $2 million. Syria pledged $37,209. Egypt pledged $10,000. Iraq and Libya apparently had difficult years or their tax advisers told them they did not need the deductions — they pledged nothing, although Iraq then was sending bounties of $25,000 each to the families of suicide bombers.

In 2013, the United States again pledged more than one-fourth of the cost of operating the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).  The pledge included $130,000,000 towards the UNRWA $550,000,000 core program and another $160,000,000 for additional UNRWA projects totaling a U.S. commitment of nearly $300 million in 2013.  

The European Commission was right behind:  $120,000,000 for the core program and another $96 million for the other projects, coming to over $200,000,000 from a continent that includes such financial powerhouses, with money to burn, like Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain (PIGS).

By comparison, Saudi Arabia pledged $2,037,981 --less than half of 1 percent of the UNRWA total core program and a minuscule fraction of the American contribution. Oil-rich Kuwait pledged its annual $2 million. Syria pledged $305,217 for the core program. Egypt pledged $15,000 — less than some people in America give at shul for Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur. Russia gave only $2 million.  Oil-rich anti-Israel Venezuela gave $11,745.  Moslem Pakistan gave $10,000.  Qatar — John Kerry’s friend of Palestine — gave $1 million.  Sultan Erdogan’s Turkey gave $1,275,000.   Iraq and Libya apparently had difficult years yet again; they pledged nothing. Oh, and “Palestine” pledged $6,841,219 for the UNRWA to care for the “refugees from Palestine” who live in places that include Gaza and “West Bank, Palestine.”

Do you see why Kafka would sue if this were described as Theater of the Absurd?  It does not even reach absurd.  It is more properly comparable to a different production, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” where inmates take over an insane asylum.  But at least there, a nurse stopped them.  Here, no Nurse Ratched.

The UNRWA is a subsidiary of the United Nations. Its commissioner-general, appointed by the U.N. Secretary General, is the only head of a United Nations body authorized to report directly to the General Assembly. The UNRWA was founded by Resolution 302(IV) of December 8, 1949, and to this day remains unique within the world body as a relief agency assigned to serve only one class of people.

All the world's other refugees are lumped all together in a separate agency, served by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). UNHCR now claims to serve the needs of more than 10.4 million refugees and over the years has served bonafide refugees in 120 countries ranging from the Balkans, Colombia, West Africa, and Chechnya to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Timor, and the Horn of Africa. Palestinian Arabs alone are under the aegis of their own internationally funded welfare program, UNRWA.  

Originally, 65 years ago, the UNRWA was responsible for serving “750,000 Palestinian refugees.”  Today, as the “refugees” have died out and disappeared, the UNRWA has grown faster than an American “federal entitlement program,” somehow now serving “5 million eligible Palestinian refugees.”  At this remarkable growth rate, the UNRWA will be serving 30 million or 40 million “eligible Palestinian refugees” in another 65 years.

Locally recruited "Palestinian refugees" make up 99 percent of UNRWA's staff in the 58 refugee camps that UNRWA operates in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the land of Judea and Samaria that the Arab world calls "the West Bank." The majority of UNRWA camps and nearly 60 percent of their residents are in the three Arab countries, the remainder in the areas administered by the  Palestinian Authority and by Hamas.

According to the UNRWA, it is the main provider of basic social services in all those camps.  66,000 “refugees from Palestine” living in Gaza, “Palestine” at the Nusseirat camp.  87,000 at the Beach (or Shati) camp.  34,000 at the Bureij camp.  21,000 at Deir al-Balah camp.  110,000 at Jabaliya. 72,000 at Khan Younis.  24,000 at Maghazi. And 104,000 at Rafah refugee camp.  All “Palestinian refugees” living in Gaza, the land they call the home to which they have returned —  “Palestine.”

Is this not objectively, dispassionately insane?  And Christian European countries with wobbly finances pay for this while the richest oil countries and Arab oil sheikdoms toss in some pushka (collection box) change?

Under the UNRWA's auspices, the number of refugees it serves has grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than 3.8 million in 2002 to 5 million today.  The people are not refugees, but the program has taken on a life of its own, funded more than 25 percent by American taxpayers who would go through the roof and under the tunnels of Hamas Gaza if they had a clue where their taxes were going, while several Arab and anti-American oil-exporting countries contribute less than the cost of a shul Kiddush. Thus, the overwhelming majority of its population are the children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren of those who first were placed in UNRWA camps in 1950.

Meanwhile, between 1947 and 1950, approximately 750,000 Jewish refugees were driven from Arab countries in the Middle East. There was no United Nations agency to serve their health, educational, and social needs. So they were absorbed directly into the Israeli polity, and their offspring bear no indicia of refugee status. Rather, they are the very builders and fabric of Israel.  They do quite well without being on United Nations welfare — and maybe that is part of the secret of success.

This makes no sense. In a time when U.N. fact-finding commissions are all the rage, here is a subject for American congressional fact-finders to consider investigating: Why are we Americans throwing away $300 million in tax dollars every year — billions in the past decade alone?  A question to ask lovingly of American Congressional representatives and of United States Senators who are Israel’s friends and who are capable of launching a full investigation of the UNRWA fraud:  O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Rabbi Dov Fischer is author of General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine (Steimatzky: 1985). His political commentaries have appeared on the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, National Review,  Los Angeles Times, and in other major American publications.  He formerly was Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review, is an adjunct professor of law at two prominent American law schools, and is Rav of Young Israel of Orange County, California.  

Islamic State Threatens to 'Drown Americans in Blood'

The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group threatens to attack Americans "in any place" if U.S. airstrikes in Iraq hit its people.

The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group that has seized large parts of Iraq threatened the United States on Monday it will attack Americans "in any place" if U.S. airstrikes in Iraq hit its people.

According to Reuters, the threat was made in a video published by the group.

The video, which shows a photograph of an American who was beheadedduring the U.S. occupation of Iraq and victims of snipers, featured a statement which said in English "we will drown all of you in blood".

U.S. President Barack Obama recently authorized "limited airstrikes"following threats of an impending genocide committed by IS against the local Yazidi people.

On Saturday, the U.S. military confirmed it conducted nine airstrikes near Arbil and Iraq's largest dam in an effort to help Kurdish forces retake it from the IS.

Obama said at a news conference on Monday that the Islamic State posed a threat to Iraq and the entire region.

Meanwhile, humanitarian aid continues to be delivered to thousands of Yazidis trapped in the Sinjar Mountains while fleeing IS's ultimatum to convert or die.

The ancient Yazidi community has been particularly targeted by the Islamic State, with reports of large-scale massacres and systematic rape drawing concerns of an impending genocide if rapid action is not taken.

Who is Hilary Clinton?

Op-Ed: Who Put the Cement into Hamas' Hands?

A bombshell revelation.

Much has been said and written about the terror tunnels that Hamas built in Gaza. But too little has been said about who it was that put the cement into Hamas’ hands, thus making the construction of the tunnels possible in the first place.
 
Until now.
 
In a bombshell revelation, Dennis Ross, the senior Mideast policy adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2011, has admitted that it was he who was assigned the task of pressuring Israel to ease up on its military blockade of Gaza, in the events after Israel's withdrawal from that region in 2005.
 
"I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built," Ross revealed in the Washington Post on August 10. "They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right."
 
Not that Hillary's State Department had been acting independently of the White House on the issue of cement. For example, Vice President Joe Biden told interviewer Charlie Rose, on Bloomberg TV in 2010: "We have put as much pressure and as much cajoling on Israel as we can to allow them to get building materials" and other forbidden items into Gaza. 
 
But now that Mrs. Clinton is attempting to distance herself from the president’s debacles in foreign affairs, Ross’s admission shows that it was she who sent her personal envoy to push for a policy that ultimately enabled Hamas to build the terror tunnels.

Israeli officials have long been justifiably concerned about the danger of dual-use items such as cement. On the one hand, cement could be used for innocent purposes such as home construction, in the hands of a peace-seeking, trustworthy government. But in the hands of untrustworthy elements -- such as the Hamas terrorist regime that rules Gaza -- it could also be used for other purposes. Such as terror tunnels.
 
President Obama recently remarked, in his much-discussed interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times: "Because Israel is so capable militarily, I don’t worry about Israel’s survival." Secretary Clinton evidently shared that dismissive attitude when she sent Ross on his mission to put cement into Hamas' hands. 
 
It seems Obama and Clinton forgot that Israel is the only country in the world that is threatened with annihilation by a nearby regime rushing to build nuclear weapons. Israel is the only country in the world that, in the space of just 65 years, has been forced to fight four major defensive wars and five smaller ones, in order to survive. Israel is the only country in the world whose next-door neighbors have built dozens of tunnels into Israel to perpetrate massacres of civilians.
 
Today, at least thirty-two terror tunnels later, we know that Clinton, Obama and Ross have been wrong, while Israel is right.
 
Hamas spent between $1-million and $10-million to build each of those tunnels, using as many as 350 truckloads of cement and other supplies per tunnel, according a report in to the Wall Street Journal, quoting Israeli military officials.

And it is "likely that there are additional tunnels" that the Israelis have yet to uncover, according to the Journal’s report.
 
Instead of lethal purposes, the materials used for each tunnel could have built 86 homes, or 19 medical clinics, or seven mosques, or six schools. But Hamas had other priorities.

And Secretary Clinton consciously turned a blind eye. Just as she turned a blind eye to other aggressive and anti-peace behavior by the Palestinians, such as the Palestinian Authority's sheltering of known terrorists, its payments to imprisoned terrorists, the anti-Israel and anti-America propaganda that fills the PA-controlled media, and the anti-Semitic hatred in the textbooks used in the PA's schools.
 
What are the real-life consequences of ignoring such Palestinian actions? An entire generation of young Palestinians have grown up incited to hatred of Jews and Israel, and glorifying terrorists as heroes and martyrs.
 
What are the real-life consequences of Mrs. Clinton putting cement into Hamas's hands? The tunnels into Israel were used to carry out the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and numerous other attacks in which Israelis were murdered. They were being prepared to carry out a mass coordinated attack on Israeli towns and kibbutzim, this year on Rosh Hashanah.
 
Imagine a scenario in which a surgeon decided that she wanted to employ a controversial and risky technique. She was warned repeatedly that it was too dangerous, but proceeded anyway and in the process nearly killed the patient. Surely that would be deemed malpractice. The surgeon probably would be barred from ever again practicing medicine.
 
Secretary of Stated Hillary Clinton committed diplomatic malpractice. Her own top aide has revealed that it was she who put the cement into Hamas' hands, even after Israel warned repeatedly that doing so was too dangerous. And Israel continues to suffer the consequences.
 
Lesson from Gaza war: Even as we condemn Hamas’ diversion of cement from the construction of housing to the construction of terror tunnels, let us not forget that it was Hillary Clinton who pushed through the policy that made those tunnels possible.

[Moshe Phillips and Benyamin Korn are members of the board of the Religious Zionists of America. This article is part of a series. To view previous installments, please visit http://www.phillyreligiouszionists.org/lessons-from-the-gaza-war/.]

Op-Ed: An Open Letter to the Jew-haters

Jew-haters confirm Goebbel's observation: When you tell a lie a thousand times you start believing it yourself.

Dear Anti-Semite,

I am always amazed by the line that Jew-haters make use of when faced with a pushback. “Isn’t it sad today when Jewish critics write about Israel the content of their concerns are dismissed, a priori, and answered by an endless spew of personal attacks on their character?” Problem with this complaint is that criticism is legitimate as long as it is truth-based, but when you center your venting on lies, distortions, out of context activities, quotes from other anti-Semites and other self-hating Jews as if they represent ultimate wisdom rather than a deep bias, then you are no longer a critic; you are a liar. You have confirmed Joseph Goebbels’s observation that “when you tell a lie a thousand times you start believing it yourself.”

On the False Accusation of Apartheid

How could you say, write and publish the big lie claiming that Israel is mirroring that South African racist regime? You should know better. You may know about South Africa, but you either do not know Israel, or you are blinded by your hostility. And of course, the same reasoning applies to those South Africans who refer to Israel as an apartheid state.

Once you make a genuine attempt to dig and ascertain, you'll learn that Israeli Arabs are represented in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, by their 
The fact that many people hate and condemn Israel does not make it right.
brothers. They speak their minds; some criticize the state, yell, and curse the "Zionists" while delivering their hostile message to the public over the official pulpit. It's their right, and they use it.

Does that bear a resemblance to the apartheid state of South Africa? Can Israeli Arabs even enjoy the same level of freedom in any of the Arab countries?

Israeli Arabs vote freely in the general elections, teach, study and rally at Israeli universities, represent their Jewish and Arab Israeli clients in courts, serve as judges on the Supreme Court; Israeli Arabs, doctors and nurses, provide medical services to Jews and Arabs in Israelihospitals; some serve as managers in Israeli companies, overseeing Jewish citizens. In short, they are involved in everyday life to the same degree as their Jewish counterparts.   

Does that bear a resemblance to the apartheid state of South Africa?

Palestinian children—one-thousand from Gaza and two-thousand from the West Bank, the so-called Palestinian territories, a.k.a. Israel's enemy territories—cross into Israel on a monthly basis for treatment in Israeli hospitals. They stay in the same rooms with Israeli Jewish children, receive identical treatment, and their accompanying adults stay overnight in special hostels, provided by thehospitals for these particular purposes. Most children from the Palestinian territories are badly brain-washed by the Palestinian propaganda upon their arrival; they are scared and anxious at first, but quickly learn that they are welcome and loved just like their Jewish roommates

Does that bear any resemblance to the apartheid state of South Africa?

Until recently, Israel has been flooded on a daily basis with thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa who crossed into the Jewish state from the Sinai to seek refuge and peace in a country that their Muslim tormentors labeled an Apartheid State. These refugees have found work in the major Israeli cities, but they also contributed to a notable upsurge in the crime statistics. The Israeli government has found it extremely difficult to deport them due to its Jewish heritage concerning the Holocaust, where Jewish refugees were denied entry to safer havens, including the US.

Why would these people risk their lives and sneak illegally into an “apartheid state? Why don’t they shorten their journey and stay in Sudan, Libya, Egypt or any of the other “non-apartheid” states?

One incredible fact that people may find amazing is rooted in the prospects of the so-called "Peace Process," leading to a Palestinian State. When trying to map the boundaries of a future Palestinian state, Israel has proposed some territorial swaps. Israel offered to retain key settlement blocks in Judea and Samaria in return for major Israeli Arab villages adjacent to the West Bank, which would be adjoined to the new Palestinian State. It could have been a fair exchange barring a biting refusal by the Israeli Arab residents of these villages, who would not go along with the idea. Although they were Palestinians, they rebuffed the thought of replacing their Israeli citizenship with a Palestinian one. What's more, Palestinians living around Jerusalem have been moving to Israeli Jerusalem, outside the boundaries of what they feared would become part of a Palestinian state. Don't they want to be citizens in their own country? Do they prefer an "Apartheid State" to the dream of independence? It seems that way.

The Palestinian economy is highly dependent on Israel. The Jewish state provides electricity, oil, medicine, banking services, food and other wares, to all of the Palestinian territories. There are extensive commercial ties between Israel and the Palestinian territories, without which the Palestinians would not be able to sustain their comfortable (relative to many neighboring Muslim states) livelihood. Still, Palestinian politics continues to deny Israel's right to exist; it continues to glorify terrorists, killers and suicide bombers; it keeps on brain-washing the young with its custom-made hate-dipped propaganda; it maintains its anti-Semitic cant over their government-controlled media; it rewrites history to justify its objectives, and it calls for genocide of all Jews in Israel and beyond.

And to top it off, It’s well established that the most prominent Apartheid states in this world are the Muslim states since in following the Qur'an they treat non-Muslims as inferior beings—as dhimmis; they treat women as second class in some cases or slaves in others. Calling Israel an apartheid state and counting the Arabs out of that sphere is like designating Osama Bin Laden a victim, the navy seals team six—cold-blooded criminals.

The fact that many people hate and condemn Israel does not make it right. Anti-Semitism was widespread prior to Israel’s existence. Many people blamed it on the Jews then, and some people (I guess you know who) blame it on Israel now.

Noam Chomsky, the celebrated intellectual whom you adore, is one of those self-hating Jews. The simple fact that he is a son of a rabbi affords him no immunity. He is a self-hating Jew just like the Jewish ultra-religious cult of Naturei-Karta rabbis that went to meet Ahmadinejad in Teheran, supporting his aspirations for wiping Israel off the map. Chomsky and you seem to share the same objective.

On the Gaza war

You say that nothing can justify bombing UN shelters, homes, hospitals and universities. Nothing can justify depriving people of electricity and water. But you have pointed your accusatory finger at the wrong party, the party, against which you possess a negative bias, prejudging it with no evidence to support your accusations other than blind hostility.

It has been well established. Hamas started the war; Hamas refused to cease the rocket fire (more than once; more than twice, more than plenty) on Israeli civilians when the Egyptian proposal was agreed upon by Israel; Hamas shot the rocket that destroyed their own power plant, depriving its own citizens of electricity and water, placing the blame for the damage on Israel. Hamas converted UN schools, mosques, hospitals, private homes, to military targets by digging offensive tunnel piers in the basements of these structures, storing and shooting rockets from these locations targeting Israeli civilians.

And in addition, it has been proven that the final claim concerning the UN school shooting did not happen the way it was initially reported. It had actually been staged by moving dead bodies from other locations into the UN school yard, calling news crews to film and report the consequent action at the school location. The whole truth has not yet been reported because Hamas intimidated and threatened foreign reporters while they were in Gaza. Foreign reporters are finally coming out of the closet and Hamas's deceptive activities, including their manual instructing and guiding fighter terrorists on the use of human shield, have started trickling out. But you refuse to see or hear it because truth would violate your anti-Israel conception.

I guess, either you expected Israel to do nothing while Hamas was shooting rockets at its civilian population, or stop applying the Iron Dome as some “friendly” UN personnel have suggested, so as to make the Israeli defensive action more proportionate. Is that what the US did in Iraq, Vietnam or WWII? Did the US try to warn the Germans and the Japanese, asking them to leave Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima before the bombs rained down and detonated?

You are taking an unacceptable conduct by a group of Israeli soldiers who had left a number of messages in a home they visited during the invasion of the strip—feces on the tiled floors and a plastic bottle filled with urine in wastepaper baskets—and make a sweeping statement, blaming the whole Jewish state and its military for the misconduct of a few. It’s clear that you have never experienced the consequential rage and negative energy that grabs hold of some soldiers during the heat of battle.

You have no idea how transformative it could be. I witnessed it during my military service in the 6-day war, and I realized that these particular individuals do not represent the majority of Israelis, nor do they represent the military leadership, the Israeli government or me. You can find examples of American soldiers urinating on enemy dead bodies, torture prisoners of war in Iraq, killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan, etc. Do they represent America? Do they represent you? You’d not take responsibility for these actions. But you are quick to pass judgment on the whole Jewish state when you sit in your comfortable air-conditioned home and watch the war on the al Jazeera channel.

Nevertheless, can you imagine what could have materialized had Hamas fighters invaded a Jewish home? In this case, they would have done what their leadership and their holy texts have been advocating. They would have represented their people and their government. Look around the Middle East. Cruelty and savagery rule the roost in the Arab world, and Hamas is no different.

Occupation and Blockade

You accept the claim that the blame for the war falls on Israel because of the occupation, and the blockade of Gaza. But you should learn from history. You should know that your ideas of peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians have been tried and eventually failed.

Do you even know that Israel's policies in the "West Bank" and Gaza brought about a huge immigration by Arabs to that territory, tripling its population from 950,000 to 3,000,000+ between 1967 and 1994 due to an Israeli "Marshal Plan", which brought about an exponential increase in the area residents' standard of living?

Do you know that in the years of 1967-1994 there were no roadblocks; there was free movement by Arabs, who traveled freely to Israel for work, shopping, and pleasure?

Do you know that it all ended following the Oslo accord and Arafat's return to the area, his taking control of a Palestinian autonomy and his initiation of a terror war?

Do you know that in consequence of Arafat's rule, corruption, and terror management, the "West Bank" GDP in 2003 was reduced by 90% comparing to its 1992 level?

Do you know that between 2005 and 2007 there were no Jews left in Gaza as they had all left in 2005; there was no occupation of Gaza, there was no blockade either. Do you know that in 2007, once Hamas took over Gaza  they started shooting rockets at Israeli towns with the clear objective of killing civilians? They blamed it on “The Occupation”—that is their name for Israel.

Gaza is not an open air prison since Gazans hold the keys to the so-called “prison” gates.
The question must be asked: What occupation? There were no Jews in Gaza. The answer: Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa, Netanya, Ben Gurion airport, Western Jerusalem, is what Hamas delineates as occupied land. Khaled Meshaal, the current Hamas leader, has said in his coded language, “We want to have peace in the region, but peace will not be achieved before the removal of the occupation.”

He then added, “We have agreed that peace can be achieved with the removal of the occupation and the end of aggression.” One needs to understand that the term “the occupation” is synonymous to “Israel,” and the term “aggression” is a code word for “Israel’s existence.” In other words, Meshaal‘s peace initiative has called for peace with Israel as long as Israel ceases to exist.

In summary. Had the Palestinians possessed peaceful intentions; had they wished for a peaceful coexistence with Israel, there would have been no need for blockade, nor for occupation. History can only reinforce that conclusion. Gaza is not an open air prison since Gazans hold the keys to the so-called “prison” gates.

It’s not a prison if you can open the gates with your own keys. It is a self-imposed segregation.

Conclusion

Hamas knows that they could not beat Israel in the battlefield; they know that they can only win the war by delegitimizing Israel. The more pictures of dead Palestinian bodies, the more damage to Palestinian infrastructure, the more suffering for the Palestinian population—the more it serves their cause.

And the one thing Hamas is striving for, the one thing that keeps them fighting, refusing to cease fire, the one thing that keeps them inviting added devastation of Gaza is those despicable self-hating Jews who write and publish articles condemning Israel, claiming that Israel gives a bad name to the Jews.

You self-hating Jews are the reason these terrorists keep their terror machines up and running; you are the reason they perceive victory in the face of defeat and devastation. You are the reason Hamas will never seek peace. You are the proof that Hamas wins the battle for world opinion; they are making strides in their effort to delegitimize Israel with your help.

And your help is the fuel that lights the fire behind their irrational terror engine.