Bharat Rakshak

Yogi_G wrote:Duhh....Jihadi logic at its best..

Hamas nearing victory in Gaza

asprinzl wrote:We have to understand that Islamist forces have no second thoughts about killing. They never tire off killing or trying to kill. For them there is only one solution to the "Kaffir" problem. That is the military solution.

The seem to be a major problem in the west especially in the democratic/secular west, Israel and even in India. In these places with progression of time people are having less and less stomach for killing. I mean killing even the most depraved monsters. People give up too easily in the face of resistance. Thus even the most decorated soldier gives up his hand and cry "there is no military solution to this problem" while the Jihadi in his war against the Kaffir finds only the military solution and is willing to wage war even if that takes a thousand years. While the westerners, Israelis and the Indians give up after a decade or two and cry "there is no military solution".

Look at India. With a billion people, there should be almost endless supply of manpower to wage war against the Jihadi especially in kashmir. But how often have we heard from generals to politicians to bureauc-Rats to journalists who keep weeping that there is no military solution. Hypotetically if every day for one soldier dies for every jihadi killed- in the long run the Jihadi factory would run out of manpower long before India runs out. What is seriously lacking is the will to endure and will to kill that is equal to the fervor of the Jihadi to endure and kill. Otherwise, there was, is and forever will be military solution to any conflict.

And the outcry coming from the international watch dogs and other assorted groups of rich and spoilt brats who dont want to find a job but depend on public and other types of fundings or grants to be professional protestors.....ignore them long enough and as much as they may shout and scream....they would eventually get tired once money runs out, give up and go away silently if nobody paid them attention. Yet it is these same small fringe groups with disporpotionately loud mouths are the ones everyone wants to pay attention. These groups dont have significant constituencies. They usually want to exagerate their influence and power by their noise making. Politicians get intimidated by these nonsense.

I believe there is only one solution to get rid of those who want to kill you. That is to kill them before they kill you. They may keep sending soldiers to kill you. As you keep killing them sooner or later they would have to give up and cry "uncle". Trick is you must have the stomach to endure and persevere longer than them. Right now America does not have such a stomach. Nor Britain nor the French nor the Israelis nor the Indians. Everyone wants to get off early Friday and party till Sunday. While the Jihadi is willing to forgo the partying until his goal is reached. This is a battle of wills and the secularists are fast giving up by telling each other mind boggling scary stories of bad consequences while the Islamists are telling each other to keep fighting because victory is within sight because Allah wills it.

MacArthur once said, "Only those who are fit to live are brave enough to die". This seems to be the case of the Jihadis. If you are not brave enough to kill then you don't deserve to live. That is the only constant parameter in the entire history of mankind from the dawn of the caveman to present time. Every other happy happy philosophy and other feel good mumbo jumbos are just that of those wimppies. I am not saying that everyone should become a bullheaded violent moron but if your tribe wants to survive in a hostile environment they better be ready to kill before being killed.
Avram

Purush wrote:The dhimmification of Oirope sems to be right on schedule...

From Denmarkistan..
Schools caught up in Palestinian conflict

Barbed-wire fences and security guards are a regular part of many Jewish childrens' school day

A number of school administrators have come forth in recent days to confirm that they recommend Jewish children should not enrol at their schools.

According to school administrators, law enforcement officials and social workers, the on-going conflict in Gaza has led to heightened tensions between Jews and Arabs - particularly Palestinians - here in Denmark.

And although few headmasters of schools have faced the situation, most of those at schools with a high percentage of children of Arab descent say they try to prevent Jewish parents from enrolling their children there.

On Monday, headmaster Olav Nielsen of Humlehave School in Odense publicly admitted he would refuse Jewish parents' wish to place their child at his school.

The comments were made following an incident last week in which two Israeli citizen's were shot and wounded at a city shopping centre. Police believe the incident was a reaction to the Gaza conflict.

Other headmasters have now come forth to support Nielsen's position, adding that they are putting the child's safety first.

At Caroline Skole in Copenhagen's Østerbro district, video cameras watch over the playground and entrances of the school, which is surrounded by a 2.5 metre-high barbed-wire fence.

One parent whose child goes to the Jewish school said thinking about the extra security can be disturbing at times, but she felt it was necessary.

Rabbi Bent Lexner called the headmasters' concern 'theoretical. In reality, Jewish parents would never try to enrol their child in those schools.'

ramana wrote:First learn to type properly. No SMS type short cuts.
Thanks,

ramana

kidoman wrote:Can someone please tell me what are these bombs Israel has been using frequently during the recent Gaza invasion.??
They will burst and scatter over a wide area.
The scences of this kind of bombs exploding were all over the news .


These are not cluster bombs..right?

LRB • 29 January 2009 • Henry Siegman

Gaza: The Lies of War
Henry Siegman

Western governments and most of the Western media have accepted a number of Israeli claims justifying the military assault on Gaza: that Hamas consistently violated the six-month truce that Israel observed and then refused to extend it; that Israel therefore had no choice but to destroy Hamas’s capacity to launch missiles into Israeli towns; that Hamas is a terrorist organisation, part of a global jihadi network; and that Israel has acted not only in its own defence but on behalf of an international struggle by Western democracies against this network.

I am not aware of a single major American newspaper, radio station or TV channel whose coverage of the assault on Gaza questions this version of events. Criticism of Israel’s actions, if any (and there has been none from the Bush administration), has focused instead on whether the IDF’s carnage is proportional to the threat it sought to counter, and whether it is taking adequate measures to prevent civilian casualties.

Middle East peacemaking has been smothered in deceptive euphemisms, so let me state bluntly that each of these claims is a lie. Israel, not Hamas, violated the truce: Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel; in return, Israel was to ease its throttlehold on Gaza. In fact, during the truce, it tightened it further. This was confirmed not only by every neutral international observer and NGO on the scene but by Brigadier General (Res.) Shmuel Zakai, a former commander of the IDF’s Gaza Division. In an interview in Ha’aretz on 22 December, he accused Israel’s government of having made a ‘central error’ during the tahdiyeh, the six-month period of relative truce, by failing ‘to take advantage of the calm to improve, rather than markedly worsen, the economic plight of the Palestinians of the Strip . . . When you create a tahdiyeh, and the economic pressure on the Strip continues,’ General Zakai said, ‘it is obvious that Hamas will try to reach an improved tahdiyeh, and that their way to achieve this is resumed Qassam fire . . . You cannot just land blows, leave the Palestinians in Gaza in the economic distress they’re in, and expect that Hamas will just sit around and do nothing.’

The truce, which began in June last year and was due for renewal in December, required both parties to refrain from violent action against the other. Hamas had to cease its rocket assaults and prevent the firing of rockets by other groups such as Islamic Jihad (even Israel’s intelligence agencies acknowledged this had been implemented with surprising effectiveness), and Israel had to put a stop to its targeted assassinations and military incursions. This understanding was seriously violated on 4 November, when the IDF entered Gaza and killed six members of Hamas. Hamas responded by launching Qassam rockets and Grad missiles. Even so, it offered to extend the truce, but only on condition that Israel ended its blockade. Israel refused. It could have met its obligation to protect its citizens by agreeing to ease the blockade, but it didn’t even try. It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population.

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Hamas declared an end to suicide bombings and rocket fire when it decided to join the Palestinian political process, and largely stuck to it for more than a year. Bush publicly welcomed that decision, citing it as an example of the success of his campaign for democracy in the Middle East. (He had no other success to point to.) When Hamas unexpectedly won the election, Israel and the US immediately sought to delegitimise the result and embraced Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, who until then had been dismissed by Israel’s leaders as a ‘plucked chicken’. They armed and trained his security forces to overthrow Hamas; and when Hamas – brutally, to be sure – pre-empted this violent attempt to reverse the result of the first honest democratic election in the modern Middle East, Israel and the Bush administration imposed the blockade.

Israel seeks to counter these indisputable facts by maintaining that in withdrawing Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005, Ariel Sharon gave Hamas the chance to set out on the path to statehood, a chance it refused to take; instead, it transformed Gaza into a launching-pad for firing missiles at Israel’s civilian population. The charge is a lie twice over. First, for all its failings, Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years, and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority. It eliminated the violent gangs and warlords who terrorised Gaza under Fatah’s rule. Non-observant Muslims, Christians and other minorities have more religious freedom under Hamas rule than they would have in Saudi Arabia, for example, or under many other Arab regimes.

The greater lie is that Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza was intended as a prelude to further withdrawals and a peace agreement. This is how Sharon’s senior adviser Dov Weisglass, who was also his chief negotiator with the Americans, described the withdrawal from Gaza, in an interview with Ha’aretz in August 2004:

What I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements [i.e. the major settlement blocks on the West Bank] would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns . . . The significance [of the agreement with the US] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with [President Bush’s] authority and permission . . . and the ratification of both houses of Congress.

Do the Israelis and Americans think that Palestinians don’t read the Israeli papers, or that when they saw what was happening on the West Bank they couldn’t figure out for themselves what Sharon was up to?

Israel’s government would like the world to believe that Hamas launched its Qassam rockets because that is what terrorists do and Hamas is a generic terrorist group. In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland. In the late 1930s and 1940s, parties within the Zionist movement resorted to terrorist activities for strategic reasons. According to Benny Morris, it was the Irgun that first targeted civilians. He writes in Righteous Victims that an upsurge of Arab terrorism in 1937 ‘triggered a wave of Irgun bombings against Arab crowds and buses, introducing a new dimension to the conflict’. He also documents atrocities committed during the 1948-49 war by the IDF, admitting in a 2004 interview, published in Ha’aretz, that material released by Israel’s Ministry of Defence showed that ‘there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought . . . In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them, and destroy the villages themselves.’ In a number of Palestinian villages and towns the IDF carried out organised executions of civilians. Asked by Ha’aretz whether he condemned the ethnic cleansing, Morris replied that he did not:

A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.

In other words, when Jews target and kill innocent civilians to advance their national struggle, they are patriots. When their adversaries do so, they are terrorists.

It is too easy to describe Hamas simply as a ‘terror organisation’. It is a religious nationalist movement that resorts to terrorism, as the Zionist movement did during its struggle for statehood, in the mistaken belief that it is the only way to end an oppressive occupation and bring about a Palestinian state. While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today any more than the same declaration in the PLO charter determined Fatah’s actions.
These are not the conclusions of an apologist for Hamas but the opinions of the former head of Mossad and Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy. The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’, Halevy wrote recently in Yedioth Ahronoth, by recognising that ‘its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future.’ It is now ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state within the temporary borders of 1967. Halevy noted that while Hamas has not said how ‘temporary’ those borders would be, ‘they know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their co-operation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: they will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.’ In an earlier article, Halevy also pointed out the absurdity of linking Hamas to al-Qaida.

In the eyes of al-Qaida, the members of Hamas are perceived as heretics due to their stated desire to participate, even indirectly, in processes of any understandings or agreements with Israel. [The Hamas political bureau chief, Khaled] Mashal’s declaration diametrically contradicts al-Qaida’s approach, and provides Israel with an opportunity, perhaps a historic one, to leverage it for the better.

Why then are Israel’s leaders so determined to destroy Hamas? Because they believe that its leadership, unlike that of Fatah, cannot be intimidated into accepting a peace accord that establishes a Palestinian ‘state’ made up of territorially disconnected entities over which Israel would be able to retain permanent control. Control of the West Bank has been the unwavering objective of Israel’s military, intelligence and political elites since the end of the Six-Day War.[*] They believe that Hamas would not permit such a cantonisation of Palestinian territory, no matter how long the occupation continues. They may be wrong about Abbas and his superannuated cohorts, but they are entirely right about Hamas.

Middle East observers wonder whether Israel’s assault on Hamas will succeed in destroying the organisation or expelling it from Gaza. This is an irrelevant question. If Israel plans to keep control over any future Palestinian entity, it will never find a Palestinian partner, and even if it succeeds in dismantling Hamas, the movement will in time be replaced by a far more radical Palestinian opposition.

If Barack Obama picks a seasoned Middle East envoy who clings to the idea that outsiders should not present their own proposals for a just and sustainable peace agreement, much less press the parties to accept it, but instead leave them to work out their differences, he will assure a future Palestinian resistance far more extreme than Hamas – one likely to be allied with al-Qaida. For the US, Europe and most of the rest of the world, this would be the worst possible outcome. Perhaps some Israelis, including the settler leadership, believe it would serve their purposes, since it would provide the government with a compelling pretext to hold on to all of Palestine. But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

Anthony Cordesman, one of the most reliable military analysts of the Middle East, and a friend of Israel, argued in a 9 January report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the tactical advantages of continuing the operation in Gaza were outweighed by the strategic cost – and were probably no greater than any gains Israel may have made early in the war in selective strikes on key Hamas facilities. ‘Has Israel somehow blundered into a steadily escalating war without a clear strategic goal, or at least one it can credibly achieve?’ he asks. ‘Will Israel end in empowering an enemy in political terms that it defeated in tactical terms? Will Israel’s actions seriously damage the US position in the region, any hope of peace, as well as moderate Arab regimes and voices in the process? To be blunt, the answer so far seems to be yes.’ Cordesman concludes that ‘any leader can take a tough stand and claim that tactical gains are a meaningful victory. If this is all that Olmert, Livni and Barak have for an answer, then they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.’
15 January
Note
[*] See my piece in the LRB, 16 August 2007.

SwamyG wrote:So if one voices an opinion against Israel or its actions, s/he becomes a leftist, eh? Great.

Conflict in the Middle East: Indias tightrope walk
By P R Kumaraswamy

India expressed its willingness to recognise the complex Middle East realities by refusing to join the anti-Israeli chorus.

Pin-pricks! That was how a colleague described the barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip that were pounding Israel. While having no qualms about depicting the Israeli response as ‘disproportionate and brutal’, the academic carefully skirted any reference to the Qassam rockets which precipitated the recent round of violence. Those who are unfamiliar with the Middle East realities might be wondering why Israel was using such a massive force against unarmed Palestinians especially when it was at the receiving end of international criticism and condemnations.

These ‘pin-pricks’ did not cause much human casualties. Not that their launchers did not want to kill but they did. Effective early warning systems and organised safety mechanism saved scores of lives in Israel.

But why dismiss the Qassam rockets as pin-pricks? Admitting that rockets were launched against Israeli civilians would weaken the case against Israel. Such a one-sided understanding of the Middle East is not unusual to mainstream Indian intellectuals. They choose to ignore the relative quiet of the West Bank. How come over two million residents of the West Bank remain mute spectators? Are they all collaborators?

India’s response to the latest battle was curious, to say the least. There were political pressures. President of the Indian Union Muslim League Panakkad Muhammedali Shihab Thangal demanded the resignation of his party’s representative E Ahamed from the Union cabinet. For his part, the Minister of State for External Affairs maintained that he would follow “the government’s view” which he felt strongly condemned Israel for its action.

This intellectual one-sidedness is in contrast to the tightrope walk done by the Indian government. This time around it had been more nuanced than the second Lebanon war that broke out 2006. In its first statement issued within hours after the hostilities began, the Indian government ‘condemned’ the Hezbollah whose abduction of two Israeli soldiers precipitated the crisis. This balance quickly disappeared thanks to domestic pressures from the Left and widespread support within the Arab street for the Islamic militants.

In its first statement, the Indian government admitted that it was “aware of the immediate cross-border provocations resulting from rocket attacks particularly against targets in southern Israel.” In later pronouncements, however, it accused Israel of using “disproportionate force” and “indiscriminate force” which were “unwarranted and condemnable”. Since the conflict erupted on December 27, the Indian government came out with as many as five official statements on the Gaza crisis.

In a statement issued following Israel’s ground offensive, it demanded “an immediate end to military action by all concerned,” an indirect reference to Hamas. A few days later it described the Israeli offer of a three-hour cease fire as ineffective because “nearly three-fourths of the Gaza population” was without electricity and food. Welcoming the peace initiatives of Egypt and France, it hoped for an early end to the plight of the people of Gaza Strip and an early resumption of the peace process.

Through these statements, India expressed its willingness to recognise the complex Middle East realities than in the past. One could fathom a few possible explanations for the Indian refusal to join the anti-Israeli chorus.
The crisis over the Gaza Strip highlighted the internal schism within the Palestinian society. The West Bank was relatively quiet and tranquil when the Gaza Strip was literally on fire. Obviously, the Fatah and Hamas are not in sync over the Gaza crisis. This naturally calls for a measure of caution and balance. Going overboard may garner media headlines but is disastrous as a national policy.

As far as India is concerned there is only one Palestinian Authority, the one that is headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. Without saying it in so many words, it has not recognised the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Due to security concerns in August 2003, more than a year before Arafat’s death, the office of the Indian mission representative was shifted from the Gaza city to Ramallah. Thus, New Delhi cannot ignore the implications of Abbas’ not so subtle criticisms of Hamas for the current round of violence.

Furthermore, the Left is weaker than in the post. Their withdrawal of support to UPA government has considerably undermined their influence. Ever since the formation of the UPA government, the Left had been demanding a ‘course correction’ in India’s Israel policy. Recognising that the termination of relations was impossible, the Left parties had been calling for an end to military-security ties with the Jewish State. Much to their consternation and disappointment, the UPA enhanced the level of security ties with Israel. The launching of an Israeli spy satellite in January 2008 was a case in point.

Echoing the calls by Hamas leaders for the Palestinians to rise against Israel, some Indian media pundits talked of the third Palestinian intifada. In their eagerness to condemn Israel, they conveniently ignored the situation in the West Bank. How to square up the violence in Gaza Strip with total indifference of the West Bank Palestinians? Were the latter merely collaborators or have fundamental differences with Hamas over Palestinian destiny? Why get into uncomfortable intricacies. So is the Indian government’s nuanced approach.

(The writer teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.)

Compare that to the situation of the folks in the war zone in SL. Heck, the lot of the Palestinian in war zone is many times better off than that of 400 million Indians in peace time. So what gives?
Avram

SwamyG wrote:So if one voices an opinion against Israel or its actions, s/he becomes a leftist, eh? Great.

asprinzl wrote:I find it strange that there is more sympathy for the Palestinians here than for fellow Hindu Tamils in Sri Lanka who have and continue to suffer more brutal violence in the hands of the SL military. what gives?

Gerard wrote:The One-State Solution

This successful assimilation can be a model for Isratine.

Div wrote:

kidoman wrote:Can someone please tell me what are these bombs Israel has been using frequently during the recent Gaza invasion.??
They will burst and scatter over a wide area.
The scences of this kind of bombs exploding were all over the news .


These are not cluster bombs..right?

If fired by artillery, they could just be air burst rounds.

Was there any publication to the terorist investigation (the one captured alive)
and if so any indication that Israeli/Jewish targets were chosen in advance?

By the way whats the status on gaza.Hope you guys clean up the jihadi scum from that part of the world.Majority of Indian people are with you in your struggle notwithstanding what our govt. says

I can understand, how, in an emotional frenzy (26/11) we might feel that vast amounts of killing are going to solve the problem, but I don't get how sane people, especially those who consider themselves "strategists" could honestly suggest this.

India itself is not wiping out people.

Why would an Indian suggest this is a good solution?