Posted on 05/18/2021 6:15:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Israel is Winning Battles, Hamas is Winning the War."
So ran the headline in the Jerusalem Post atop an analysis of the Gaza war, which began, "The IDF is registering great achievements in Operation Guardian of the Walls, but meanwhile the house appears to be collapsing from within."
Hard to disagree.
Consider this New York Times commentary about Israel's prime minister from the runner-up to the Democratic presidential nominee in the primaries of 2016 and 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders:
"Mr. Netanyahu has cultivated an increasingly intolerant and authoritarian type of racist nationalism ...(and) legitimized these forces ... by bringing them into the government. ... Racist mobs that attack Palestinians on the streets of Jerusalem now have representation in its Knesset."
Sanders' wing of the party is moving toward the Palestinian side of the conflict. "Israeli air strikes killing civilians in Gaza is an act of terrorism," says Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Tweets Michigan's Rep. Rashida Tlaib: "Israel targeting media sources is so the world can't see Israel's war crimes led by the apartheid-in-chief Netanyahu. It's so the world can't see the killing of babies, children and their parents. It's so the world can't see Palestinians being massacred."
Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan concurs: "We cannot just condemn rockets fired by Hamas and ignore Israel's state-sanctioned police violence against Palestinians -- including unlawful evictions, violent attacks on protestors & the murder of Palestinian children ... US aid should not be funding this violence."
While Israeli attacks are killing Hamas commanders and destroying the sites from which Hamas has fired 3,000 rockets, Israel is suffering serious and intangible losses.
Palestinians in Jerusalem and on the West Bank have risen in solidarity with Arabs and Muslims in Gaza. A dozen were slain last week.
Arab citizens of Israel are daily fighting Jews in cities like Jaffa, Acre, and Lod. Writes the Post: "With riots shaking all parts of Israel," the country "is being torn apart from within."
Beyond Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel, Lebanese and Jordanians are protesting on the border. In U.S. and European cities like Berlin, London, Paris, and Madrid, protesters numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands are marching in solidarity with the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel as a racist and an "apartheid" regime.
Saturday's morning attack that brought down Gaza's 12-story tower that housed the Associated Press and Al Jazeera caused a backlash in much of Western media against Israel, which claims the building contained a Hamas intelligence center and was a legitimate target.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden have come out in defense of Israel's right to attack sites from which rockets are being fired into Israel. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, however, has been more muted in backing Israel's attacks on Gaza.
The GOP seems more solidly behind Israel. More than three dozen Senate Republicans last week urged Biden to "unequivocally" support Israel's right to defend itself and to "immediately" end negotiations with Iran on sanctions relief, charging Tehran with supporting terrorist activity by Hamas against Israel.
In a letter to Biden, 44 Republican senators wrote:
"Over the past couple days, Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, who are funded by Iran, have launched a series of rocket attacks into Israel. They are targeting Israeli civilians and cities, including Israel's capital Jerusalem."
Where Israel goes from here, however, is currently unclear.
President Donald Trump's Abraham Accords, in which the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan established relations with Israel, appear now to be on hold.
For, on Sunday, a statement by the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation called for an immediate halt to what it described as Israel's barbaric attacks on Gaza and blamed "systematic crimes" against the Palestinians for the fighting which has lasted for a week.
The OIC statement came after a virtual meeting in which Saudi Arabia condemned Israel's violation of the sanctity of Muslim holy sites and evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.
Clearly, the principal winner from this conflict is Bibi Netanyahu, who was within days of being replaced as prime minister by an opposition coalition when fighting erupted. He is now seen by Israelis as a decisive war leader, defending the country from thousands of rockets and severely pushing the enemies firing those rockets.
As for the two-state solution to which the world has been committed for decades, that prospect seems further from reality than ever.
Having seen what Hamas is capable of and willing to do, what Israeli will be eager to enter a peace agreement with the Palestinians that would mean vacating much of the West Bank, sharing Jerusalem as the capital of both countries, and a Palestinian right of return to lands from which their families were driven in the 1948-1949 Israeli War of Independence, which Palestinians remember as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
A military truce may be at hand, but that is all it will be -- a truce before the next round of fighting.
Pat’s always been weak on supporting Israel (to put it kindly)
“Beyond Gaza, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israel, Lebanese and Jordanians are protesting on the border. In U.S. and European cities like Berlin, London, Paris, and Madrid, protesters numbering in the thousands and tens of thousands are marching in solidarity with the Palestinians and condemnation of Israel as a racist and an “apartheid” regime.”
...and yet Austria is flying Israel’s flag in solidarity of their situation.
Israel has had enough with the cease fire game; every time they’re winning after being attacked they’re forced into a cease fire only to be attacked again and again. This time Israel said it has had enough and will continue until Hamas and their allies are finally taken out. They may chat about a cease fire all the while they’re pounding Hamas into the ground.
Israel needs to break out the tactical nukes, and wipe the pali filth off the face of the earth.
Not a bad piece, overall. Israel is stuck...either do nothing and wait for the ovens, or do what is needed to protect their people. And it’s not their fault that the US elected a bunch of Jew-haters in the Democrat Party...they’re stuck with that also.
Pat has never understood Israel nor anything regarding the Middle East.
This is a classic Yasser Arafat propaganda battle with the MSM playing its usual roll of Fake News.
Israel is winning the battles; Hamas is winning the (PROPAGANDA) war.
The problem is the ultimate end-game of the one-state solution is that Palestinians will simply outbreed the Jews, if it hadn’t been for all the Russian Jews moving to Israel, it probably would have happened by now.
“He’s the neighborhood bully!”
Hamas is winning the media propagandists. Doubtful if most people use their dribblings for anything other than the bird cage.
Hamas is getting hammered & I am celebrating every commander, weapons depot & tunnel destroyed. Couldn’t happen to be better bunch of deluded, immoral fanatics who hid behind women, children & innocent Palestinians placing their munitions, tactical equipment & personnel in schools, hospitals, apartment buildings etc. Let them reap what they have sown. The Israeli have been humanitarians and given medical treatment & support to Palestinians. They welcome them as comrades & workers. Hamas has used the people of Palestine and mired them in generational conflict for Hamas’ purposes.
The (almost) eternal question here is “does Israel have a right to exist?” Omar and Tlaib (Buchanan?) can try to hide their end game but their answer is clear: no. Probably the same answer they are ultimately playing for regarding the U.S., except as part of a caliphate. Meanwhile, the same cast of characters since Joshua through all the wars of Samuel,I and II Kings, I and II Chronicles continue to afflict Israel from all sides, but the promise of God from Genesis 12 on is that he has given the land to Abraham and his seed, Isaac and Jacob forever.
Machmoud and Benny are losers.
One of the things that has changed over the last 30 years is that Islamic influence in Washington has grown as Israel’s has waned. We now have radical Muslims serving in Congress, while one more player in the old guard faded into history when Rep. Eliot Engel (D-Israel) lost in the Democratic primary last year to a younger urban malcontent.
Pat Buchanan is, and always will be, a crafty anti-Semite. He couches his words carefully, but his anti-Israel stance is unmistakable. The fatal flaw in an otherwise brilliant mind. Ron Paul is the same, an old anti-Semite.
Buchanan is a Jew hater.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.