Category Archives: Israel

What Distinguishes Israelis From Their Neighbors

Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinian Authority

Personally, I’ve already heard from Israeli friends and family who’re disgusted at the suspected revenge murder of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khder, 16—revenge for the murder of three Israeli teens, last month. Now, contrary to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ weak response to the abductions and murders that sparked this last savage act, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned the father of the east Jerusalem teenager, to say the following:

In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said he had spoken with the teenager’s father, Hussein Abu Khder, to offer his condolences and express his outrage over the “abhorrent” murder a day after the security forces confirmed arresting six Jewish extremists on suspicion of involvement.
“I would like to express my outrage and that of the citizens of Israel over the reprehensible murder of your son,” Netanyahu told him.
“We acted immediately to apprehend the murderers. We will bring them to trial and they will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law,” he said.
“We denounce all brutal behaviour. The murder of your son is abhorrent and cannot be countenanced by any human being.”
The family, who live in Shuafat in east Jerusalem, contacted police just before dawn on Wednesday to say they believed their son had been kidnapped.
His body was discovered shortly afterwards in a forest in west Jerusalem, with initial post-mortem results indicating he was burned alive.

On the matter of the murder of Abu Khder, I venture that Netanyahu speaks for a majority of the Israeli people.

Dead Men Walking

Israel, Justice, Terrorism

The Shin Bet security service already knows the names of the terrorists who kidnapped and killed three Israeli teenagers. They are said to be Marwan Qwasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha from Hebron. DEBKAFile reports that Qwasmeh and Abu Aisha have “both done time in Israeli and Palestinian jails for terrorist actions.”

The IDF has blown up the houses of Qawasmeh and Abu-Eisha. Their victims, Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Sha’ar and Naftali Frenkel, can rest in peace. Although the “two terrorists remain at large,” it is safe to say that their days on earth are numbered.

Also to be dispatched, in a manner, “are The Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District Operations Department Commander … as a result of the police’s mishandling of a call from the abducted yeshiva boys that was mistakenly classified as a prank call, as will the Commander of the District’s Control Outpost (Mashlat) and Operations Branch Commander, IDF Radio reported Monday. Also to be dismissed are the policeman who was in charge of the shift at the police’s ‘100’ hotline and the senior policewoman who received the information about the call and classified it as a prank.” (Via Arutz Sheva.)

If only the IDF could do something about our domestic terrorists (Lois Lerner and her bandits, Holder, etc).

Is Israel Weak For Negotiating To Free Prisoners Of War?

Family, Israel, Military, Pop-Culture, Terrorism, War

While the specter of the parents of returning POW Bowe Bergdahl babbling, sobbing and conveying encoded, incoherent messages to their son on national TV was inappropriate and undignified (although not atypical of the pornography of public grief in this country)—the fact that the soldier’s government has worked to get him released from Taliban captivity is entirely appropriate. It’s a good thing that, as Reuters reports, “Army Sergeant Bergdahl, held for nearly five years in Afghanistan, was freed in a deal with the Taliban brokered by the Qatari government. Five Taliban militants, described by Senator John McCain as the ‘hardest of the hard core,’ were released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and flown to Qatar.”

But not if you ask the usual suspects.

Nothing much has changed since, in 2004, the neoconservatives at National Review had “grumbled about Israel’s ‘lopsided prisoner exchanges’ over the years. One ‘sofa samurai,’ … noted the startling disparity of exchanging 5,500 Egyptian soldiers, following the Sinai campaign of 1956, ‘for the lives of the four Israeli soldiers captured in the fighting,’ and over 8,000 Egyptians, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in exchange for 240 Israeli soldiers.”

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon released 430 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for three dead Israelis and one live one, people worried, and for good reason. Many of the prisoners were said to be very dangerous men. The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin would probably have supported the Sharon swap. According to Dr. Ganor, Rabin said categorically that when military action to free hostages is not possible, ‘real negotiations should be held.’…

… President Bush sat bone idle, never lifting a bloodstained finger to haggle for his countrymen beheaded … Abandoning hostages as the Bush administration did as a matter of ‘principle’ is … not an option, at least not an ethical one. President Bush bears the mark of Cain for looking on as Americans continue to be butchered. …” (“AFTER THEIR HEADS ROLL, AMERICA’S DEAD REMAIN FACELESS”)

“Bergdahl was flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for medical treatment,” reports Reuters. “After receiving care he would be transferred to another facility in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. defense officials said, without giving a date for his return to the United States.”

MORE.

Memorial-Day Message (2014)

Foreign Policy, Government, History, Homeland Security, Israel, Liberty, Military

Robert Glisson, a veteran and a longtime reader, was once asked to write an op-ed for Barely A Blog about the “Patriot Guard Riders.” The op-ed, entitled “For The Love of A Brother-In-Arms, And ‘Big Brother’ Be Damned,” was prefaced with this comment: “I do not identify with the military mission, but who can fault the humanity of the effort?”

It is the habit on the Memorial Day weekend to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. And it is the annual custom on Barely A Blog to extend sympathies to the Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But I cannot honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars and assorted informal attacks. My heart hurts for you, but my worshipping at Moloch’s feet will not make you feel better, deep down.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

I can legitimately claim to know of flesh-and-blood heroes who fought so that I could emerge from the bomb shelter (in the wars of 67 and 73) and proceed with my kid life. I always stood in their honor and wept when the sirens wailed once a year. Wherever he is, every Israeli stops on that day and stands still in remembrance. We would have been overrun by Arabs if not for those brave men who defended the homeland, and not some far-away imperial project.

But can we Americans, in 2014, make such a claim? Can we truly claim that someone killed an Iraqi, Afghani, Yemeni or Libyan so that we can … do what? Remind me?

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

How fast the so-called small government types forget that the military is government. As explained in “Your Government’s Jihadi Protection Program”:

“When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small. Conservative can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.”

“Classical Liberalism And State Schemes” further suggests how the military, as an arm of the state, can become antithetical to the liberty of its own citizens and the world’s citizens:

We have a solemn [negative] duty not to violate the rights of foreigners everywhere to life, liberty, and property. But we have no duty to uphold their rights. Why? Because (supposedly) upholding the negative rights of the world’s citizens involves compromising the negative liberties of Americans—their lives, liberties, and livelihoods. The classical liberal government’s duty is to its own citizens, first.
“philanthropic” wars are transfer programs—the quintessential big-government projects, if you will. The warfare state, like the welfare state, is thus inimical to the classical liberal creed. Therefore, government’s duties in the classical liberal tradition are negative, not positive; to protect freedoms, not to plan projects. As I’ve written, “In a free society, the ‘vision thing’ is left to private individuals; civil servants are kept on a tight leash, because free people understand that a ‘visionary’ bureaucrat is a voracious one and that the grander the government (‘great purposes’ in Bush Babble), the poorer and less free the people.”