'I Occupied Your House in Gaza'

This editorial cartoon appeared in 1956 in a Swiss newspaper. Then Egyptian leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the dog in one panel, here represent "fedayun" cross-border Sinai terror attacks into Israel. Israeli David Ben Gurion, pre-state Zionist leader and Israel's first and longest-serving Prime Minister turns a repeated blind eye, until he - finally - retaliates after repeated provocations. Note the peanut gallery representing Arab and international opinion. My how things haven't changed a whit. Note my lack of surprise.

Such an image appearing in a Swiss media outlet? Now that's a surprise.
(Image H-T: Sina)
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Yes, it's all over the intertubes. I'm posting it anyway; it needs to be read, and re-read because it's about the clearest, simplest thing out there at the moment about the conflict between Israel and Hamas - from one who's taking part in it:

An Open Letter to A citizen Of Gaza
I Am the Soldier Who Slept In Your
By: Yishai G (reserve soldier)

Hello,

While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you that someone was in your home while you were away.

I am that someone.

I spent long hours imagining how you would react when you walked into your home. How you would feel when you understood that IDF soldiers had slept on your mattresses and used your blankets to keep warm.

I knew that it would make you angry and sad and that you would feel this violation of the most intimate areas of your life by those defined as your enemies, with stinging humiliation. I am convinced that you hate me with unbridled hatred, and you do not have even the tiniest desire to hear what I have to say. At the same time, it is important for me to say the following in the hope that there is even the minutest chance that you will hear me.

Read the rest.

'It'll Take Awhile:' A Bitter, Poignant Requiem For Gaza

Author and colleague Judy Lash Balint, in a recent, and bitterly poignant post writes:

"At the Jerusalem think tank where I work, one of the offices has been dark for almost two months. Noam (not his real name), the bright, articulate, British-born researcher in his mid-thirties, was called up for routine reserve duty back in early December. We all missed
his dry wit and pithy insights as he spent almost a month brushing up on his army training. Noam returned to the office full of amusing stories about life in a tent in the desert with his old buddies, and promptly went about picking up the threads of the work
he'd left a few weeks earlier.

"Less than ten days later, the Gaza war broke out and Noam and his platoon were among the first of the more than 6,500 reservists who received emergency call-up orders, known here as Tsav Shmoneh. That made sense, Noam, said, since they were the most up-to-date in their training...

Read the rest and weep for all that was done by Israel to no avail, and for all who suffered in the name of an evanescent "peace."

'Scuse my dust...

'Bout time for some changes around here... many of the old links down the side will return, as I shake some of the dust off of the blog. Stay tuned.

Israel, Hamas, Don Corleone & Blanche Dubois

In an incendiary op-ed, Jonathan Mark of the New York Jewish Week says Israel not only lost the battle with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, it abjectly surrendered, and on someone else's timetable to boot:

"This war was supposed to re-establish Israel's deterrence. That was supposed to be the lesson. Instead, the lesson is that Israel quits before the rockets do.

"Israel has established in Gaza exactly what it established in the Hezbollah war: That Israel can go three weeks and only three weeks, and then Israel looks at its watch (or at the European Union's watch) and goes home, job incomplete."

Read the rest for the Godfather and A Streetcar Named Desire references.

And as they say, "in related news:"

Gaza Doctor: Hamas Exaggerated Gaza Death Toll - 600 Killed, Mostly Fighters, Not 1,300 - Yossi Bar (Maariv-Hebrew)
The Italian newspaper Corriere della Serra Thursday quoted a doctor at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City saying that, despite Hamas and UN claims, most of those killed in Gaza were young men who were members of terror groups.
"The number of deaths was between 500-600...most were young men between 17 and 23 who were recruited into the ranks of Hamas, which sent them to be slaughtered," he said.
Journalist Lorenzo Cremonesi confirmed that only 600 people were killed, and not 1,300 as was widely reported, based on hospital visits and discussions with families of the victims.
"It was strange that the non-governmental organizations, including Western ones, repeated the number without checking, but the truth will come to light in the end," said the doctor.
"It's like what happened in Jenin in 2002," he said. "At the beginning they spoke of 500 dead; afterwards it was clear there were only 54 dead, at least 45 of them fighters."

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Hamas Shot from Civilian Neighborhoods - Rod Nordland (Newsweek)
Israel blames Hamas for using housing areas, hospitals, schools and mosques to launch attacks into Israel or against its soldiers, provoking defensive counter-fire that it says is responsible for most of the civilian casualties.
Every one of the residents interviewed in eastern Jabaliya insisted that there had been no provocation from the area, no resistance fighters, and no rocket launchings.
"There aren't any tunnels around here, we are not resistance," said Najah Abd Rabo. Yet not more than 20 feet away from Najah, there was just such a tunnel, which Israeli troops had unearthed. Right in the middle of the road, it had a convincingly camouflaged roof that matched the rest of the road.
Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist Palestinian People's Party, said that Hamas fighters were firing from positions all around Al Quds Hospital in the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood of Gaza City.

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Hamas Confirms Executing Fatah Collaborators - Khaled Abu Toameh (Jerusalem Post)
PA Minister of Social Welfare Mahmoud Habbash accused Hamas on Wednesday of confiscating 63 trucks loaded with humanitarian aid while they were on their way to UNRWA in Gaza.
He also said 19 Palestinians were murdered in cold blood by Hamas during and after Israel's Gaza operation, while more than 60 others were shot in the legs.

'Our Neighbor and Why We Have to Kill Him'

Read this story, all of it. And then maybe understand what we're up against:

Our neighbor lives in the house in which our grandfather used to live. He claims he bought the first part of the house from a Turki, and later the second part from a British bank, but that doesn’t make the sale any less illegal: my family lived in that house for hundreds of years and we don’t accept the documents of sale. Now he’s living there. He is the son of monkeys and pigs.

The problem is that he’s not just brazen, he’s also strong, although he is a tiny guy.

The whole neighborhood hates him. He’s a thief and possessed by the devil. But he seems to be able to beat everyone. We tried to force him out of the house together, but it didn’t work. He has bulletproof windows, and the roof is made of inflammable material.

All we think about is him. Our own home is in ruins because all our efforts, all our money and ideas and energy are devoted solely to destroying our neighbor’s house. We’re utterly convinced that we will be perfectly happy just as soon as we’ve killed him and his house is a heap of smoking rubble. We live for one thing only: our neighbor’s demise. It’s a noble ambition for which we’re all willing to die.

Must reading.

(H-T: Treppenwitz)

'The Children's Brigade' (original music video)

Sandy Cash is a stunningly talented singer and songwriter, and a veteran mainstay of Israel's English-speaking folk music scene (and a very active scene it is, too).

Detroit-born and raised, she's also an old jamming friend, and it's wonderful to hear her clear and powerful voice after too many years.

This is the first time I can remember her tackling as horrific an issue as Palestinian child abuse - otherwise known as inculcating tots through teens to love and seek death, ideally via a suicide bombing or attack against Israelis. She writes:

"Palestinian society is raising its children on a steady diet of hate, and teaching them that the total destruction of Israel is imminent. This song is a lesson in the most intractable challenge of the 'peace process.'"

"The Children's Brigade"

This is a video that deserves to be forwarded far and wide.

The Apology That Will Never Come

"We Have Love And It Will Win/Gush Katif and Samaria." (Photo: Dave Bender)

The sticker in the photo above was put out by opponents of Israel's Disengagement from the Gaza Strip and parts of Samaria in the summer of 2005. Jewish residents of the aforementioned areas tried to "market" their opposition to the traumatic national step not with anger and rancor, but via a message of faith, trust, hope and love. So much for that in a world ruled by money, guns and realpolitic.

By the way, go on and guess where and when I shot that photo. Go on, I'll wait...

It's the door of an shrapnel-riddled civilian apartment building in a poverty-stricken area of Israel's northern coastal city of Nahariya, just south of Lebanon.

The holes in the wall are from an exploded Katyusha rocket that Hizbullah fired at the town. A dozen feet away from the building is a synagogue that also sustained damage in the barrage - one of some 4,000 that hit the city in the summer of 2006.

I'm reminded of that photo by what Nadav Shragai, writing in Haaretz. He gives vent to what I, and I am certain many others, are feeling more and more deeply these last few weeks: 
Now, after the war and just before the election whirlwind sucks in our politicians once again, it would be appropriate for many of them to go out of their way and visit the mobile-home sites where those uprooted from Gush Katif live. This way they can tell them one small thing: I'm sorry.  

Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Shaul Mofaz and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israel Defense Forces and the police should do this - they, their agents and everyone else who initiated, implemented and aided in using force to uproot 10,000 people from their homes in Gush Katif and Northern Samaria, maliciously and without any real purpose.

Everyone who saw some good in the evil of the disengagement and evil in the good of Gush Katif has turned light into darkness and darkness into light. At the very least, they are obligated to make this small apology. 
Read the rest.

And I add my own mea culpa for placing my trust in all the military, academic and media "experts" I've interviewed over the years, leading up to and following the expulsion in the summer of '05 that confused black with white. Truth with lies, and honor, love, valor and elemental human decency, with squalid greed, fear and baseless hatred.

And you, dear reader?

The Gaza Riviera and What Might Have Been

Sderot billboard: "Who's next in the lottery?" sits above "Eli's steakiya," and across the street from the beleaguered town's City Hall - also the target of hundreds of Kassam rocket strikes. The red words between the Coke caps: "Lucky corner." Eh... maybe not so much. (Photo: Dave Bender)

David Suissa is an LA PR maven, who also happens to be pretty credible teacher and commentator on the Jewish mysticism front.

Here's a sad "parallel history" musing, about what might have been the future of the Gaza Strip, had the Palestinians taken the high road after Israel's pullout in 2005:

"...the other day, as my mind was numb from yet another report from the Gaza war zone, I saw something that made me go off on a wild dream. It started with the sight of two Israeli soldiers as they drove into Gaza in an armored personnel carrier, and as I watched the soldiers, I recalled how much Israelis love to go to the beach.

"As if I was hallucinating, I then imagined the same two soldiers in their beach clothes, in a convertible roadster, with a surf board sticking out and the music blasting, and instead of going to war, they were going to meet their buddies for a day of partying on the beach.

"They were going to the jetsetters' newest fun spot: the Gaza Riviera.

"By now, my mind was losing control. Images started flooding in. I saw this fabulous strip of hotels and casinos right by a sparkling ocean. I imagined thousands of proud Palestinians working with smiles on their faces to serve the thousands of tourists from around the world who were coming to their little strip of ocean paradise.

"Behind this paradise, I saw a bustling economy, where the highest quality produce was grown and exported; where entrepreneurs built software companies, banks and advertising agencies; where a university attracted students from around the world; where local culture and the arts thrived; and where you could take the Orient Express train to Beirut, Cairo and, yes, even Tel Aviv."

But that would have assumed they ever stop missing a chance to miss a chance.

This, by the way, is no idle wishful thinking. The average Israeli is "game" in more ways than one (sorry) to work and fork over millions of dollars into Palestinian coffers, both for goodwill, and for a "normative" life.

Not that I personally supported the venture - financially or ideologically - but the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government did. So the PA opened and ran the Oasis Casino in Jericho (yes, THAT Jericho, where the dice were to have been tumblin' down, instead of walls) - until, of course, the bloodlust for dead Jews got the better of them:

"The Oasis Casino, which sometimes had a daily turnover of close to a million dollars, was built in Jericho after the signing of the Oslo Accords, over ten years ago. In 1999, it made a profit of $54 million from the close to 2,900 people who visited the casino daily - 99% of them Israelis.

"The casino shut down in late 2000, a month after the PA started the Oslo War, after its roof was used for terrorist gunfire attacks at Israeli targets. The building was heavily damaged by Israeli retaliatory fire, and though it was later refurbished, it has never re-opened.

Here's a WaPo travel article on the place.

Gaza: The Downside of Firing Mortars at Israel (Shocking 'Darwin's Surprise' Video)

The downside of firing mortars at Israel? That'd be when they stop going up:

Cast Lead 'Leathernecks'

Shahar Golan has an edge, interesting blog, and great post about a cadre of Israeli tv hard news reporters, who apparently all went to the same leather good shop on their last visit to Turkey ("GREAT prices... ask for Hakim and tell him I sent you"):

http://frgdr.com/blog/2008/12/29/tonight-evening-news-cast-lead-leather/

H-T: Harry, who also does Jerusalemite.