Why Netanyahu Blinked

By Steven Plaut, Daily Mailer, FrontPage

The Hamas terrorists fired over 1,500 rockets into civilian areas of
Israel just before and during the recent “Pillar of Defense” military
operation, rockets that killed at least five Israelis, wounded many
others and did loads of damage. Southern Israel underwent the
regional equivalent (and the moral equivalent) to the Londoners of the
1940s who endured the German Blitz.

Israel had learned in its 2006 war with the Hezb’Allah Islamofascist
terrorists in Lebanon that bombing from the air does not achieve very
much against entrenched terrorist infrastructure. Nevertheless, that
was essentially the same failed military strategy used against the
Hamas savages by the Netanyahu government in the “Pillar of Defense”
campaign. Air attacks with conventional weapons not only failed in
Lebanon, they also failed to end the aggressions by Germany and Japan
in World War II, and they generally failed elsewhere.

Air bombings without ground incursions were tried for well over a
decade by Israel against the Gaza terrorists and failed. In part,
this was because of the insane Israeli practice of warning the
terrorists which buildings were about to be attacked so that the
denizens of those buildings could escape. While Israel was not
officially admitting sending similar sly messages in the “Pillar of
Defense” operations, I would not rule out the possibility that such
messages were sent, no doubt in order to “reduce the death count.”
As had become clear in the “Cast Lead” military operation back in
2008, terrorists can only be eliminated with ground troop operations.

The pursuit of air war against the genocidal terrorists pales into
mere silliness when compared with the incomprehensible agreement by
Netanyahu to a ceasefire, this before the terrorists and their
infrastructure were eliminated, before most of the rockets were
destroyed, and in fact only a few hours after a Tel Aviv bus was
attacked by a Hamas bomb. Even worse was the fact that Netanyahu
reportedly agreed to halt targeted assassinations against terrorist
leaders and partially lift the blockade of the Gaza Strip as
conditions for the ceasefire.

Targeted assassinations are the most effective tool in the Israeli
arsenal (and of course are also used effectively by the US against
al-Qaeda). They, and not Israel’s “security wall,” are entirely
responsible for the end to suicide bombings of Israeli buses and cafes
in recent years. And the blockade of Gaza is motivated by the need to
make it more difficult for the savages to import Iranian missiles and
other weapons. True, there is also a political dimension to the
blockade, much as there is for the American embargo of trade with
Cuba, while the “human costs” of the one are no more serious than
those of the other.

Meanwhile, by agreeing to the ceasefire even while the wounded and
wreckage of the Tel Aviv bus bombing were still being gathered up,
Israel sent the signal that it was capitulating to Hamas demands. The
ceasefire allowed the terrorists to claim that their “victory” against
the children and women riding in that Tel Aviv bus had resulted in the
Israeli concessions. The Hamas handed out celebratory candies in
Nazi-like ghoulishness.

Hillary Clinton’s glowering and threatening presence no doubt
contributed to Netanyahu’s decision to wimp out and call off the
ground invasion, even though tens of thousands of reserve troops had
already been mobilized in Israel. (Rumors in Israel also hold that
Obama was coercing the ceasefire by threatening to withhold crucial
military spare parts.)

But just what did Netanyahu have to show for it all? The ceasefire
will prove to be like all previous “ceasefires” with the Gaza savages,
where the Hamas and its clones continue to fire rockets at the Jews
but the Jews turn the other cheek. Rockets landed in Israel almost
every day during the years before the “Pillar of Defense” operation.
They were ignored by the media, which does not consider attempted
murder of Jews to be newsworthy. Israel’s stance was that as long as
these did not cause “too many” civilian deaths and damages, they were
“tolerable.”

The Hamas, as expected, issued its usual “reports” about civilian
deaths caused by the Israeli operations and these were gobbled up by
the Western media, by and large hostile to Israel. I am convinced
that if the current staff at the BBC were reporting about the Battle
of the Bulge, they would feature press releases by the German
authorities that claim that only babies and women were being targeted
by the Americans in their aggression against the German homeland in
that battle. In the “Cast Lead” operation in 2008, the same media
were filled with reports of hundreds of civilian deaths, while later
proofs that almost all those “civilians” were in fact armed terrorists
were lucky if they made it to page 37 at the bottom in small fonts.

The Israelis living in Israel’s Negev south had borne the brunt of the
Hamas rocket aggressions, but these were also the most vocal in
denouncing the ceasefire that Netanyahu had signed. In essence they
were chanting, “All We are Saying is Give War a Chance.” Countless
previous “ceasefires” had simply left them abandoned by the Israeli
government as sitting-duck targets for Hamas weapons.

Without elimination of the terrorist infrastructure, nothing of
significance had been achieved. A snap poll by Israel’s Channel Two
TV station confirmed the impression. The poll found that 70 percent of
the Israeli public opposed signing a cease-fire with Hamas, 24 percent
were in favor and 6 percent were undecided. Naftali Bennett, the
rising star within the Israeli Right, credited with energizing the
opposition to Netanyahu from that end of the spectrum, not only
denounced the ceasefire but openly called for tearing the Gaza Strip
in half and then conducting anti-terror search-and-destroy operations.

And then there was the media’s use of the term “militants,” the code
word used by anti-Semites to refer to the Gazan genocidal terrorists
and fascists. Calling them “militants” is equivalent to asserting
that they are no more murderous or evil than marchers in protests
against AIDS and killing of whales, and in fact have legitimate
grievances. The BBC, in particular, took care never to refer to a
terrorist act of violence without appending the “militant”
terminology, even when Hamas terrorists dragged the bodies of
still-living “collaborators” through the streets of Gaza with their
legs tied to the backs of motorcycles. I personally am of the opinion
that any journalist characterizing terrorists as “militants” or
“activists” should be regarded as directly participating in aggression
against Israel and treated as an enemy combatant. During the military
operations Israel repeatedly bombed the “Media Tower” in Gaza, which
held the communications offices of terrorist organizations, but also
housed the crews of reporters for the BBC and other British media.
Israel claimed it bombed the building because of the former
terrorists, but I prefer to think it was because of the latter
terrorists.

Ultimately, stability and tranquility will be created only when it is
understood that the real cause of terrorist violence in the Middle
East these days is not Israeli “occupation” but rather the REMOVAL of
Israeli “occupation.” Terrorism will continue as long as the world
is dangling out “hopes” to the Palestinians that they will eventually
get their own state, a state they know will serve no other purpose but
to escalate the war of Arab aggression against Israel.

The most important lesson of recent years, and it is by now understood
by everyone except university leftists and anti-Israel journalists, is
that nothing will really put an end to the terror and rockets from
Gaza other than some good old-fashioned R&D – Reoccupation and
Denazification. Everything else is a delusion. Israel must re-occupy
the Gaza Strip, subject it to martial law, and carry out a
decades-long program of Denazification.