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The rock and the hardest of places

Friday, 29th February 2008

While Britain prattles on about Prince Harry and Andrew Lansley, there is a serious escalation of violence from Gaza into southern Israel. On Wednesday Roni Yehiah, a 47-year-old father of four, was killed by a rocket attack on a college in Sderot and four others injured. Yesterday as the rockets continued to rain down on Sderot, Grad missiles were fired at Ashkelon — according to Haaretz, having been smuggled through Sinai from Iran. In strikes aimed at killing terrorists, Israel killed 20 Palestinians including five children. Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post reports that in an interview Mahmoud Abbas gave to a Jordanian newspaper, this statesmanlike man of peace (cf George W Bush) said he did not rule out returning to the path of armed ‘resistance’ against Israel. But an unnamed Israel official said

these comments were aimed at Abbas's domestic audience and that Abbas should be judged by his deeds - a willingness to negotiate peace - rather than by statements "meant for internal consumption.

So that’s all right then. Once again, Israel hands Abbas his get-out-of-jail-free card and thus perpetuates the grotesque fiction peddled by the western world that Israel's mortal enemy is actually its partner in a 'peace process'.

In an interview with Al-Dustur, Abbas also took pride that he had been the first to fire a bullet on Israel in 1965 and that his organization, Fatah, had trained Hizbullah. ‘At this present juncture, I am opposed to armed struggle because we cannot succeed in it, but maybe in the future things will be different’, he said.

This is the person the world expects Israel to offer territory to so that he can better continue his armed struggle against it if he should so decide -- a decision the world will support because he is a statesman committed to peace.

Meanwhile, a 17-year-old Arab girl from Jerusalem is under arrest for allegedly offering to carry out a suicide bombing in the city.

The would-be bomber, a resident of the east Jerusalem neighborhood of A-Tur who was apprehended three weeks ago in a joint Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency)-police operation, suggested to Islamic Jihad operatives in the West Bank that they use her to carry out a terror attack due to her hatred of Jews and ‘personal family problems,’ Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

Who cares? Who outside Israel even notices?

So yet again Israel is between the sharpest of rocks and the most unforgiving of hard places. If it goes into Gaza, it will sustain a loss of its soldiers’ lives that it will find unbearable, and when it comes out again Hamas will merely regroup. The world’s media has so far failed to report the vast majority of the thousands of rocket attacks on the southern Negev, since Jews targeted for murder don’t surface on their radar; doubtless the fate of the five Palestinian children killed unintentionally in Israel’s attempt to defend its people from the rocket bombardment will get the full outraged works. Clearly Israel has to do something to stop the rockets. Ha’aretz is calling for action that is both daring and level-headed. One does hope that the mere soldiery of Israel will match up to the exacting standards of a paper that has done so much to sap the morale and fighting spirit of Israel over the years. But one also has to wonder why in heaven’s name Israel has never provided a missile defence shield for the southern Negev.

Already the ineffable Condoleezza Rice is warning it to exercise restraint. What restraint would America exercise, one wonders, if it were being bombarded by dozens of rockets every day by the proxies of Iran? Rice on one side, Ha’aretz on the other, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in the north, can't go in, can't stay out, the western media sharpening their verbal knives for the bloodsport of Sticking it to the Scapegoat.

And meanwhile, as ever, all roads lead back to Iran.

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Roy

February 29th, 2008 7:56am

As is mentioned, why don't they form a missile defence shield, and perhaps give the aggressor a good peppering back. Let dear Condoleezza have a tit for tat report. We had ten today and gave ten back. Whats fairer than that. Better than sending in troops with the inevitable casualties. Give them some of their own medicine.

stanley Jerusalem

February 29th, 2008 12:01pm

What would any other country in the world do to those lobbing rockets at them 24/7/365 - [this year 366] Oh sorry, we ain't allowed to. Our name is Israel [ see UN special rules for Israel]

Ben-Tsiyon

February 29th, 2008 3:08pm

The problem is that Israel needs a change of government. The current bunch of weak-knees need to be replaced. Come on, 'am yisrael', bring back the Hawks !

David Lindsay

February 29th, 2008 5:37pm

Quite right. It's shocking how the British media bang on about British matters instead of giving saturation coverage to Israel and the Palestinians. Have you tried the Guardian, especially Comment Is Free? You'd love it over there.

Adam B.

February 29th, 2008 6:34pm

David Lindsay, I think Melanie's point was that the Prince Harry story is not of worldwide significance. Have you tried Little Green Footballs? You'd love it over there.

field

February 29th, 2008 8:27pm

Roy - You don't realise the sort of enemy they are up against. If Israel retaliated like that Hamas woudl make only the most rudimentary air shelter preparations in the hope that there woudl be a huge massacre - school or hospital would suit them.

Tony Rawlings

March 1st, 2008 7:00am

"Jews targeted for murder don’t surface on their radar" A bit like the indigenous population in this country then, crime against whites don't count.

David Lindsay

March 1st, 2008 11:46am

Nor is this, Adam. Nor is this.

Jesus Ben Joseph

March 1st, 2008 4:19pm

field - Your absurd statement just shows you up as the ignorant bigot that you clearly are.

Austin Barry

March 1st, 2008 8:34pm

I'm still somewhat surprised that Israel in its reluctant, calibrated response to what in any other country would be considered an act of war and invite a full-scale, no-apologies response, seems to be overly concerned with world opinion. Well, world opinion, at least in the guise of weak onanistic blocs like the EU should be disregarded: it has a death wish and Israel patently does not.

David Lindsay

March 2nd, 2008 1:27am

Hasn't she, Austin Barry? The single most common name for newborn baby boys inside the pre-1967 borders is now Muhammad. Israel is now a land of Muslim Arabs (including a Government Minister, and complete with their own Williams-esque Sharia jurisdiction), Christian Arabs (including a Supreme Court judge), Druze Arabs, linguistically and culturally Arab Jews, Russian Christians who insist on taking their IDF oaths on the New Testament alone, Russian Nazis, ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists, and an ageing remnant of the more-or-less secular Ashkenazi backbone of Zionism. Those who could provide that backbone will do anything for Israel, except actually live there. The European and American conservative movements, which used to be much more ambivalent and much of whose core support still is, have bought into this particular piece of decidely unconservative coercive utopianism just as it seems to be coming to an end entirely voluntarily and with a whimper rather than a bang.

Austin Barry

March 2nd, 2008 12:57pm

Mr Lindsay, good point, demography is destiny, but Israel is still 76% Jewish and 16% Muslim. So there's still some way to go on the cultural yield curve.

David Lindsay

March 2nd, 2008 10:54pm

Yes, but (and I know that this is a big question) who is a Jew? Israel classifies not only the the linguistically and culturally Arab Jews, and the ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionists, as Jewish, but also the Russian Christians who insist on taking their IDF oaths on the New Testament alone, and even the Russian Nazis. That is how they were ever let in. And that is why they cannot be thrown out.

And why only concentrate on the Muslim Arabs? What about the Christian Arabs and the Druze Arabs?

Again I say that the European and American Ashkenazi Zionists will do anything for Israel. Except live there, and thus keep the Zionist project alive. When it quietly dies, they will have only themselves to blame.