Hamas in Freefall and Seeking Relief

 

Hamas has once more put out feeler presumably seeking to make amends with the Palestinian Authority. Their petition has an obvious outreach and a hidden attempt at subversion. Hamas leaders publicized their agreement to an Egyptian initiative to create a new peace agreement and arrange a meeting in Cairo between Hamas and Fatah leaders. This is irregular in that it was Hamas who complained about obstacles causing the collapse of the last attempt at reconciliation. What are the odds we give this attempt? Honestly, with the reasons given by Hamas and the set of principles and steps they would wish to precede any reengagement, probably ziltch. Hamas is in need of financial assistance and as the Palestinian Authority cut them off from funding, they are almost desperate. Thus, the initial Hamas demand is for the Palestinian Authority to remove all punitive measures against Gaza. Hamas also has made clear that they agree that the attacks against Israel must continue until the “aggressors” are defeated, emphasized that all means are legitimate until the “occupation” is eliminated and praised the “lone-wolf intifada” and promised that the violent Gaza riots would continue. Hamas did also echo that Jerusalem is a “red-line” which cannot be crossed and has blamed Israel with the United States for “plotting to harm UNRWA in order to eliminate the problem of the refugees.” These were their appeasement proposals for the Palestinian Authority, and one that will be generously accepted.

 

So what is the problem that will come between these two terrorist groups? Well, Hamas has demanded that in order to produce a reformation of the Palestine Liberation Organization, that there be held elections for the “Palestinian National Council.” Just so the world will know the truth, the reason that the Palestinian Arabs have not been permitted to hold elections since 2005 has been a punishment imposed by Mahmoud Abbas. He was quite upset that in 2005 the Palestinian Arabs were first permitted to vote for representatives from all Arab groups as demanded by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W. Bush, as they thought such freedom would spell a defeat for the terrorist groups and a victory for reconciliation and peace talks with Israel. Israel had told the United States that they were probably playing a very dangerous game which would likely backfire, Mahmoud Abbas told them that they were leaving the door open for Hamas to take control, and the leadership in the United States claimed that they knew best and no such result would be coming because all peoples are basically the same and desire peace over conflict. Well, Hamas won control over the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian legislature, and would have replaced Mahmoud Abbas as President had he also been up for election, but he reserved his right to finish his term before facing elections. Well, the Palestinian Authority quickly imposed a quasi-control and Abbas took the bulk of power into his own hands all but dismissing the Palestinian National Council from having any input. This may have been in part what led to the Hamas coup in Gaza in 2007 where they simply pried control from the Palestinian Authority President and placed themselves in charge of Gaza.

 

One last point of history is necessary and it concerns President Abbas whose term ended in 2009 and there were to be elections held. Those elections had to be postponed due to difficulties. When the clock ran out on that postponement and two or three more, Mahmoud Abbas simply cancelled the elections and assigned himself another term, which ran through 2015. When elections came around for the Palestinian National Council in 2015 along with presumably elections for President, there were difficulties, which made such impossible at that time. Then they were again put off and in the end Mahmoud Abbas basically all but dissolved the Palestinian National Council and left himself as the sole power over the Palestinian Authority as well as his being the leader of the Fatah Party and in charge of the PLO. Mahmoud Abbas has concentrated all leadership in himself despite the reality that if there were any honest and open election, his best bet would be to be well out of town before the tallies were counted. Abbas has exactly no possibility of winning any honest and open election and the probability is any election would result in Hamas taking complete control of the Palestinian area, both in the Shomron (West Bank) and in Gaza leaving absolutely no room for anything President Trump could offer in his still to be released “Deal of the Century.”

 

What would happen should Hamas win a Palestinian honest and above board election monitored by the European Union, United Nations and the United States? That can be determined by revealing the current actions by Hamas and their declarations about their hopes for the future. Recently, Hamas decided that they are going to prevent further importation of fruit from Israel. Their reasoning is that as Israel has decided on closure of the Kerem Shalom crossing for non-humanitarian cases. Hamas would like everyone to take their reasoning without question that the move by Israel is out of spite and a punishment of Hamas and Gaza over the riots. They got the “due to the riots” part correct but the real reason for the closure has been in order to repair and rebuilding of the Kerem Shalom crossing, its conveyor belts which transport goods, the gas and fuel pipelines and the structures which have been grossly damaged by the rioting. The Kerem Shalom crossing has been firebombed and the pipelines broken open and set alight and much of the structures have suffered damage (see image below). Hamas used their own personnel in order to intentionally damage these support systems knowing the cost to Israel would be massive and that such repairs would take time, potentially months, and once they end their rioting and attacks on Israel, after waiting a few weeks they would be able to complain and blame Israel for lack of provisions and denying them gas and fuel and the world would have already forgotten, if they ever knew, that Hamas was responsible for the damage which shut down the crossing and the other required structures which are a necessity for the provisions to be delivered. And Hamas is attempting to now take control of the Shomron which would place them within direct targeting of Tel Aviv and surrounding region which is the heart of Israel.

 

Gas Pipes Set Ablaze at the Kerem Shalom Gaza Crossing to Israel 

 

 

Rioters Ignite Provisions, Trailers, Electrical Infrastructure, Conveyor Belt used to Transferred Goods into Gaza

 

The closure is not a complete closure, simply closing the crossing to elective use by people and nonessential goods. As the government described the closure, the closure will not apply to humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, approved individuals such as medical needs and other emergency needs considered on an individual basis by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. This fact could easily be excluded from many mainstream media reports, as it is just a tiny detail. After all, it does not suit the profile that Israel is closing the crossing and that will endanger everyone in Gaza. Never mind that needful crossings will be evaluated on an individual basis, that makes Israel appear too humane. This will also be given as why there is about to be a shortage of fruits and vegetables in Gaza within the next week and continuing for as long as the Hamas government continues to prevent further importation of fruit from Israel, which will be the real reason, imagine that. But expect Hamas and other Arab notables to decry Israeli inhumanity causing the lack of fruit and vegetables in Gaza, it could never be that Hamas refuses to accept or even permit importation of these goods from Israel. This is the same game plan as back in May when Hamas refused medical aid from Israel while whining to the world how they were lacking basic medical provisions and Israel was refusing to permit their supplies from reaching Gaza. This is the same old sorry game played by Hamas, Palestinian Authority and everyone who has a desire to besmirch Israel.

 

Hamas has started a new program for the children, a summer camp. This is a wonderful training field for making young terrorists in training. Imagine the wonder and fun which these youths will be involved in at this new camp. This project began in early May continuing through these latest clashes in the Gaza Strip. Thus far, this camp has included about one-hundred-eighty Palestinian Arab youths with a number of whom having joined the group from Judea and Samaria (Shomron). The trainers of this military camp not only teach them how to use weapons, but also teach them methods of self-defense. There are individuals provided dressed in mock and real IDF uniforms upon which the youths get to practice their tactics and one-on-one encounter moves while shouting “Allah Akbar.” They will set-up scenarios such as a market or an alley in Jerusalem and others and teach them how they are to kill an Israeli soldier. One of the camp instructors was quoted stating, “These courses are meant to be a preparation, so that our youngsters will learn from a young age how to confront an Israeli and fight for Palestine’s goals and for the liberation of Jerusalem, until the day comes, when we will be able to retrieve our homeland from the Zionists.” In these courses the youth are taught use of an M-16 rifle by shooting at targets resembling Israeli soldiers as well as other skills, which are being taught even to elementary school children in grades four and five. The instructor was further quoted claiming, “None of the parents of these students has any objection to the children’s learning the use of firearms and firing and this program is fully executed.” This is all part of the Hamas program along with Islamic Jihad with Iranian support and funds in order to perpetuate the violence against Israel and the resistance to any prospective for peace.

 

They are raising their children in a swamp of hatred for the Jews, and not just Israelis. This can be seen in Hamas in Their Own Words, an article quoting Hamas leaders by the ADL. The thing to remember while reading these quotes is that Israel has completely removed every last Israeli, IDF soldier and everything else from Gaza and relinquished all claims to the area of Gaza giving over to the Arabs, initially to the Palestinian Authority who subsequently lost it to a Hamas coup. Despite these steps by Israel, Hamas still perpetuates that Gaza is occupied by Israel. Gaza is not occupied by Israel, though one could claim that Gaza is occupied by Hamas as they stole the land in a war of violence against the Palestinian Authority who was presumably the governance to which Gaza was passed over. Hamas is a recognized terrorist group by the majority of the world governments and organizations. Hamas operates at the behest of Iran who is able to command them to attack Israel at their pleasure. The current violence is strongly believed by BTC to have been ordered by Iran, as Iran believes they have sufficient deniability such that Israel would be condemned if they responded against Iran over Hamas terrorism. There is one more item we wish to propose more as a question for our readership than for our commentary. Why are there Palestinian Arab refugee camps within the regions ruled by the Palestinian Authority and within Gaza where Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the governing authorities? This leaves Palestinian Arabs living within barbed wire fencing and not permitted to work or often even to visit family and friends who reside within walking distances from the camps. There must be a reason why these Palestinian Arabs are kept in camps while everyday other Palestinian Arabs walk past these camps free to work, live and be free while these other Palestinian Arabs are kept incarcerated simply because they once resided on the wrong side of the Green Line. So, these refugee camps are full of Palestinian Arab refugees while Palestinian Arabs reside all around and Palestinian Arabs rule the region but UNRWA tends to the people within the camps in areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority and in Gaza ruled by Hamas. We just want to know why they keep their own brothers and sisters incarcerated. Is their hatred of Israel so deep that they are willing to treat their own people as prisoners without the rights of those just outside the fences? If such is true, then that is one of the saddest and most inhumane means of treating their own people and they claim that Israel is unhelpful when it comes to the Palestinian Arab refugees.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

The World is What We Make It!

 

Our world is at a threshold and a divergence and at this time nobody appears to be driving. Islam desires to tame the developed world and slam it forward to the seventh century which will result in starvation for the majority of the world. Meanwhile the developed world is humming along ignoring every warning sign concentrating on more glitter, better slogans, merchandising, and every distraction they can find to avoid addressing anything real. The world now has a good idea of what the future holds if the United States withdraws within the hard shell of her borders and decides isolationism is preferable to dealing with the problems in Europe and especially in the quicksand of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). President Obama claimed the world was messed up because of the meddling of the United States. He saw the United States as the source of the problems as the United States was everywhere where there were problems. Perhaps that was because the United States was attempting to deliver the solutions, not causing them. If what President elect Trump stated during the campaign, we can expect him to keep things close to the vest, which means, unless it becomes unbearable, we can expect the United States to expend all their resources to repair and jumpstart their economy. One hope is that a President Trump Administration chooses as their economic advisors people who are intelligent enough and of the correct preference so as to not start a trade war with tariffs as threatened in speeches and they keep the promise to avoid at all cost anything resembling in the slightest of means Keynesian economics, which was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes during the 1930s in an attempt to understand the Great Depression. President Obama used it with his repeated stimulus programs as had President Bush before him and further was behind their Quantitative Easing (QE) where they electronically invented funds they pumped into the economy to prop-up the stock markets. The thing that makes for hope is that President elect Donald Trump promised change and drastic change at that and with that there is hope that the United States will redirect itself in a more hopeful direction.

 

The problem is the world may not want to wait until January 20, 2017 to start and seek a new direction and move forward on that path. There are leaders in Europe who have made humane decisions without considering the consequences of those actions. They took in refugees in numbers without any vetting or other considerations and then attempted to cover-up the resulting waves of violence and sexual assaults including a massive wave across German cities at train and other transportation and assembly points on New Year’s Eve. France, England, Sweden and other European countries have had similar problems and similarly covered them up even when it was general knowledge that native girls were all subject to being abused regularly by the new immigrants. This is the divergence and unless it is spoken of and identified it cannot be opposed and steps taken to ameliorate the situation. There need be alternatives to the leadership who when presented with their mistakes decided to double down. They were looking at a demographic challenge of an aging population and negative population growth and rather than alarm the public and challenge the people and alter their habits through tax incentives to have children, something lacking in most European nations as they practice take all the funds and then dole it back to the public sparingly for little items such as housing, transportations, food etc. The Europeans have spent a long history attempting to perfect socialist engineering and government programmed social engineering. They have failed but refuse to admit their errors because their lives, the elites, have it pretty good deciding how the little people live and they keep the little people diverted, fat and happy, as the saying goes. The problem is their social engineering forgot to plan for a future which had been guaranteed by that other controlling factor of European history, religion.

 

 

The governments refused to share the people and insisted on total control without sharing and they targeted religion for extinction. They succeeded and religion died, and with it the future of Christian Europe. Now Europe will face a different future, the one it had fought for fourteen-hundred years and now are handing their continent over on a pewter platter, they cannot afford silver. Their leaders have surrendered and hardly appear to care as long as they get to age without a care and remaining fat and comfortable. One can only imagine what guarantee of a retirement resort and other guarantees from the coming masters of the new Europe, the Mullahs’ Europe. The people of Europe have been conditioned to being a kept people and they can only hope that they are not challenged to convert or die as the Quran demands the Islamic conquering armies to demand soon after conquest, and that is what is coming under the current European leadership with a few choice exceptions. The lucky nations know who they are and have choice leaders they should treasure and support as they may have saved some of European culture. The best way to support these leaders is take in any fleeing European Christians and start having children. If Europe is to survive, it needs to reverse the population decline when it is all said and done. Perhaps there is a core of Europe which can survive and even a chance that the whole of Europe can revive its culture but first the people, particularly the youth, need to choose life, particularly new life, children, many children and the first step to reaching this new utopia is revamping governance and returning the means to choose the life they desire to the people and allow them to keep their hard earned money and not dole it out as government chooses.

 

The next decade will show what direction the world is heading towards. The choices are stark as they are troubling with only a slightly better than even chance that Western civilization, as we currently know it, will survive. Currently the world is hurtling towards another great conflagration and the possibility that it will result in nuclear attacks is far too high for comfort. The genie might be put back in the bottle but recent events simply make that a difficult path which is strewn with obstacles. Still, principles and a strong base of belief in the freedoms and core beliefs upon which western civilization was and need be based must become a central part of life and return as the basis. This does not mean that everybody must return to being church or synagogue goers but the moral basis and the need for a future which must include children is and must be a necessity. The choice belongs to the youth more than the elitist leaders who have had their time and now need support families even if such takes from them their control of society, the control they may have misused with great danger for their peoples. There is always hope, always.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Is the Future of Zionism Healthy Without Knowledge of History?

The results from a MarketWatch poll conducted for the Zionist Council of Israel contained indications of promise and problems for the future of Zionism. The promise of the future health of Zionism was most evident in the answer to the simple question of whether they consider themselves to be Zionists. Of the three-hundred Israeli Jewish teens between the ages of 15 to 18 years of age 82.9% responded they considered themselves as Zionist while 15.8% defined themselves as non-Zionist. Somewhat less promising was that just under 30% did not know significance of the date November 29, 1947, the date of the United Nations vote proposing the establishment of the partition of the remainder of the British Mandate which directly led to the founding of the nation of Israel and the first refusal of the Arabs to the offer of their own country between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Some of the other results are just as mixed.

Over half, a full 53.5% did not know what the Oslo Accords were, specifically 70.8% of Haredi and 48.2% of secular teens. Their lack of knowledge that the Oslo Accords were simply an agreement between the Israelis and the PLO that established the Palestinian authority, returned arch terrorist Yasser Arafat back into the West Bank and granted him legitimacy, and was an initial step which was supposed to provide a path to reaching a final status establishing a Palestinian State side by side with Israel with both populations living in peace and security. The ensuing failure of the Accords has been a large impetus for the propaganda battles which have been much of the Arab Israeli difficulties since then. The apparent lack of knowledge by the youth and future leaders of Zionism of this important event and the results it has spawned is a gap in their education which must be corrected as such ignorance could prove dangerous. The one truth all sides can agree over is that the Oslo Accords have been one of the epic failures in all of history.

One of the most promising results was that 82.9% of respondents knew the words of the national anthem, Hatikvah, perfectly. It is interesting and understandable that the percentage who knew the words to Hatikvah and described themselves to be Zionists were exactly the same. It begs the question if the respondents in affirmation of these two questions were an exact correlation or if there was any divergence no matter how minor. There was almost a unanimous affirmative reply to the question of whether the youths had visited Jerusalem, something pretty much expected considering the attractions of Jerusalem and the small size of Israel. Almost 85% affirmed that they would enlist in the Israel Defense Forces or another form of national service even if it were not mandatory. This high percentage response may suggest an inspirational solution to the share the burden dilemma facing the new Knesset of simply making the IDF and national service voluntary while also increasing the salaries to represent a professional military. Slightly less of the youth expected to live in Israel long term answering they expected to be residing in Israel in fifteen years.

The overall results of the poll reveal great promise for the future of Israel and Zionism. The one troubling answer was obviously the lack of general familiarity with the history of Zionism and Israel indicated by the higher than preferred knowledge of the date of the United Nations vote which allowed for the establishing of the Jewish State and an even greater ignorance concerning the Oslo Accords. Both of these shortcomings are easily solvable with adjustments being initiated in the education system assuring that there is a stronger emphasis on the History of Israel, Zionism, and Jewish history. All in all, the results are promising. I would be interested to see a similar poll taken on the subject of religious observance and likely intended observance going on in their lives. If such a poll would produce similarly significant results towards being religious Jews as the results on Zionism, Israel would have a healthy and promising future as these youths realize their dreams and take the task of leading Israel into the future.

Beyond the Cusp