The Forward on Israel: Surrender Now and Beat the Rush

The Forward, which has never found an Anti-Israeli position it didn't embrace and whose politics are indistinguishable from those of Peace Now, has an editorial titled 'Thunder in Gaza' that sums up the feeble arguments of the media and the remaining adherents of Oslo, who continue to cry Peace, Peace, even as a Hamas government with the backing of a soon to be nuclear armed Iran, conducts an open war against Israel.

"It's hard not to notice the huge imbalance between Israel's large-scale actions in Gaza in the past two weeks — bombing bridges, government offices and a university...rounding up elected officials — and the ostensible goal of the operation, rescuing a single hostage."

Gush, that just sounds so awfull doesn't it. Bombing government offices and a university. Rounding up elected officials. Of course the buildings bombed were empty. The government offices belonged to terrorist organizations and the elected officials were heads of terrorist organizations. The US bombed quite a number of government offices and rounded up elected officials too in Baghdad. But rhetoric can paint things different colors, can't it.

The real argument here though is proportionality, one of the more absurd positions of the left. I suppose if Israel was to make a proportional response, it would launch a quick assault, grab a Palestinian and cut his throat, grab another Palestinian and threaten to kill him if Shalit isn't returned. That would be both perfectly proportional and symmetrical, yet that's not what the Forward would want certainly.

More to the point it would also be futile. The real imbalance between the two sides is a moral one. Israel's imbalanced response is an indictator of morality, of caring enough about a soldier to direct a large force to rescue him. The Palestinian imbalance comes about because Palestinians don't care about the lives of their own people. Palestinians would never commit thousands of men to a rescue attempt, only to a murder attempt.

The failure of left wingers like the Forward editors to recognize this imbalance and to condemn its physical manifestation, the rescue effort by Israel, is another demonstration of the moral blindness of the left. It is equivalent to praising the morality of people who will kidnap and murder while condemning the morality of those who would leverage great effort to save lives.



"The actions have won Israel growing condemnation and cast the Palestinians, the initial aggressors in the affair, into the role of victims. The result is a slow but steady erosion in international sympathy for Israel, a critical asset in a protracted diplomatic standoff."

Once again the left rolls out the old chesnut, warning that sympathy for Israel is eroding. Of course for something to erode it would have to exist in the first place. The reality is that there are people who have sympathy for Israel and there are those who don't and never will and the ranks of the latter include the media and most diplomats. The Palestinians will always fall into the role of victims, no matter what Israel does, because the entrenched opposition to Israel is not a factor of Israel's policies but a fundamental belief in the righteousness of terrorists and the evils of their victims that cannot be shaken.



"Still, few can view without wincing the sight of tanks and jets thundering into one of the world's poorest districts, knocking out the main power plant and key bridges, cutting off movement and turning thousands of civilians into virtual hostages."

By 'Virtual Hostages' of course the Forward means something other than real hostages like Gilad Shalit who has a gun pointed at him and is in the hands of terrorists who want to kill him. By 'Virtual Hostages' the Forward means being slightly inconvenienced when after electing a terrorist government bent on war with Israel and kidnapping and murdering Israelis, the Israeli Army comes looking for its missing soldier, carefully avoids bombing anything with people inside and sends truckloads of food to you and provides you with electricity to boot. Free of charge. 'Virtual Hostage' sounds like a pretty damned good deal.

And by 'few' the Forward editors of course mean themselves and other good liberals whose reaction to invasions is determined purely by the economic status of the people there. Presumabely if Israel invaded Switzerland or Brunei, the good editors wouldn't wince at seeing the capitalists get theirs? Or maybe if the Israelis had 'thundered' in hillbilly trucks or cardboard tanks, it would be more acceptable.

Never mind that the Palestinans are the Number 1 UN recepients of aid, that billions is dumped on them annually and that whatever poverty there is, is purely a function of a choice they made; to reject peace and co-existance in favor of terrorism and an Islamic cult of death. If a serial killer loses his job and has to go live in a run-down tenement, isn't that his choice. In the same way the Palestinians choose to destroy everything that is given to them, including the Israeli greenhouses the World Bank spent millions to buy for them. They've chosen to focus all their energies on their one goal of killing Jews. If they redirected all that energy into making a life for themselves, they wouldn't need all that UN aid in the first place.



"If that is what Israel does as a first step in this hostage standoff, what is its plan for the next one? Does anyone in Jerusalem think that such activities will reduce the inclination of the Palestinian population to countenance attacks on Israel?."

Actually yes it will. There are two ways to end hostilities, diplomacy and force. While the Forward continues to insist on a diplomatic solution, Israel has tried diplomacy and sizeable concessions for over a decade. This is the result, terrorism repeated over and over again. A spiraling body count and the mainstreaming of terrorists and terrorism.

The Palestinians elected a Hamas government and poll showing that they support the kidnappings and murders of Israelis. Will rolling over for them yet again somehow reduce their inclination to support future attacks?

The left's premise on peace with the Palestinians has always been fundamentally wrong. The conflict with the Arab world doesn't exist because Israel victimized the Arabs but because religiously and culturally the Arabs cannot countenance the existance of Israel and must do everything possible to wipe it out, at great cost to themselves.

The Palestinians aren't supporting attacks because they feel mistreated by Israel policies. They feel mistreated by Israel's very existance. Tolerating terrorism does not encourage reconcilliation, it just makes Israel a softer target. The failure to understand this lies at the heart of the left's failure.



"In the meantime, the very idea of a leadership taking office and using the tools Israel has established for the purpose of destroying Israel is ludicrous."

It's not 'ludricious', it's inevitable. While the left supported Oslo and negotiations, that is precisely what Arafat was doing. That's precisely what Hamas is doing. While the liberals shrieked that the only solution is a diplomatic solution and that we have to talk to the terrorists and help them set up a government, that is exactly what they did. And have been doing.

Only truly blind, deaf and dumb liberal activists can try to pretend it's ludricious when it's the policy of the last decade that they've supported and continue to support even in this very same editorial to the bitter end. Watch.



"Israel, for its part, must not let its short-term operational goals blind it to its long-term interests. Israelis must separate from Palestinians if the Jewish state is to survive. The events of the past week are a reminder that fencing off Israel from Palestine will not succeed unless there is a viable, reasonably governed Palestine on the other side of the fence. Israel will not do itself any favors if its current operations leave its neighbor even less governable, and less inclined to coexistence, than it was before."

How would that even be possible, you have to wonder? Less inclined to co-existance? What next, will the Palestinians elect Satan or a party of cannibals? How much less inclined can they be after electing a party whose platform is the destruction of Israel?

The defenders of Oslo have truly come down to the old joke about the Jew facing the firing squad and warning his friend to accept the blindfold and not make trouble. How much more can we anger them precisely and how will making them less governable be a bad thing, when their government of choice's agenda is to kill us.

The Forward's clueless hectoring is what's 'ludricious.' What further pretense is that co-existance is possible with the so-called Palestinian state. What delusion of fantasy is it based on now after a decade of terrorism.

Their policies have become so absurd that in one breath the editors call for fencing off Israel to survive and in the other to work for a friendly Palestine. If we had the latter we wouldn't need the former. The Forward then warns that fencing isn't enough without the friendly Palestine. Out of this schizophrenia the piece pretends to have a coherent policy.

The reality is the Forward supports fencing off Israel only because it means withdrawal from the West Bank. The reality is that its editors have learned nothing from a decade of terrorism and continue dripping their poison into their reader's ears counselling still more appeasement, distortion truth and sincerely trotting out the most absurd and insane premises, long shopworn by now, hoping no one will notice.

But it's past time people did.