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Contents:
The Cease-Fire In Gaza That Lasted 20 Minutes
They issued an official announcement stating: "Israel thanks Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy for their efforts to advance a solution for halting terrorist actions from Gaza and the smuggling of war materiel into Gaza from Egypt. Israel views as positive the dialogue between Egyptian and Israeli officials in order to advance these issues." As of 4 p.m. local time yesterday, the news headlines on all Israeli radio, TV and news sites proclaimed, "Israel had accepted the cease-fire." However, 20 minutes later at 4:20 p.m., during the televised funeral of Israeli soldier Staff Sgt. Alexander Mashvitzky, 21, of Beersheba, who was killed during fighting in the Gaza Strip, air-raid sirens warned BM-21 Grad rockets were headed toward Beersheba. Everyone ran for cover at the Beersheba military cemetery, despite its lack of air-raid shelters. Two explosions rocked the city, throwing a dozen people into shock, effectively ending the cease-fire. In all, Palestinian militants fired on Israel 22 times yesterday. At 5 p.m., the Israeli army dropped leaflets on the Rafah, Gaza border with Egypt, warning residents to leave, which was followed two hours later by a heavy bombardment of the town by the Israeli Air Force. Eli Yishai: We Should Flatten Gaza — So That They Don't Mess With Us Again Following the attack on Beersheba, after Israel had agreed to a cease-fire, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai called for Israel to "flatten Gaza" to prevent further rocket attacks on southern Israel. "Today, we have enormous strength, something we haven't had for decades. Fraternity, unity of faith, mutual responsibility, which is something that I don't remember seeing for many years," Mr. Yishai said. "That is very important. It radiates strength to the other side, and they understand that we're strong." Mr. Yishai said he believed the operation's objective ought to be the eradication of Hamas' regime in Gaza — not simply a demand that the Hamas stop firing. "… This is an opportunity to crush thousands of terrorists' houses who won't be able to recover. I hope that this operation reaches its conclusion with great achievements and with the crushing of terrorism and Hamas," Mr. Yishai said. "I'm of the opinion that we need to flatten them, to destroy thousands of houses and tunnels and industries. Gaza can be destroyed so that they understand that they shouldn't mess with us any more."
FIRST GAZA, THEN THE WORLD
Some of Israel's most blatant critics have written that for every Israeli killed, about a hundred Palestinians were killed. A half-truth is worse than a lie, but this is not even a half truth. This is deception. Because months and years of rockets fired at a civilian population are not a matter for bloody accounts. It is a nuisance that no country, neither Syria nor Sweden, would tolerate. It is a provocation that requires a tough response. And if we are already going for bloody accounts, we should do the overall math. We can suffice with just the accounting in the Arab-Muslim world. So, since the establishment of the State of Israel, close to 12 million Arabs and Muslims have been butchered, most of them by Arabs and Muslims. Israel's "contribution," since its establishment, is 60,000, and that includes all the wars and the two Intifadas. In other words, half a percent. And more importantly, the confrontation is not between Hamas with its rockets and Israel. The confrontation is between Hamas, as one of the entities that compose radical Islam, and the free world. Its declared goal is to establish a world Islamic caliphate as part of an anti Semitic ideology that also calls for the annihilation of the Jews. Explanations will follow. And since political Islam has already annihilated millions without any announcement, we should take it seriously when there is an announcement about annihilation. Is Hamas part of the global Jihad? Section 7 of the organization's manifesto explains that it is not a local movement, nor even a national movement. The heading is "The global nature of the Islamic resistance movement." And later, "Because the Muslims are spread throughout the entire world, the movement is global." Is this a movement that calls for the annihilation of the Jews? That is what is written in a continuation of the same section. "The messenger (Mohammed) said, "The Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them, until the Jew hides behind the stones and the trees, and then the stones and the trees will say, 'Oh, Muslim, Abd Allah, there is a Jew who is hiding, come and kill him." And this is in addition to blaming the Jews for all the wars in the world, for world domination, etc. The problem is not with quotes from the sources. After all, even Judaism has Rabbi Shimon, who said, "The best gentile is a dead one." But that did not become the foundation for any movements. Certainly not for a government party. To the contrary. There are innumerable interpretations explaining the circumstances of that statement and its lack of relevance. Not so with Hamas. The old imperative has become a practical instruction. And the Hamas leaders leave no room for doubt. Sheikh Muhsin Abu Ita stated on the Al Aktza channel that "The annihilation of the Jews is a wonderful blessing." Dr. Ahmed Bahar, acting chairman of the Palestinian parliament stated that "the Jews are cancer, and they and the Americans should be destroyed to the last person." According to the Palestinian constitution, this man, Bahar, will become the head of the Palestinian Authority if Abu Mazen ceases to function. Dr. Yunis Al Astal, a member of the Palestinian parliament, one of the senior Hamas officials, who served as dean of the faculty are of Shariyah and chairman of the Islamic Law Department at Islamic University, stated that the annihilation order is a matter for our time and not for the future. The book by Dr. Matthias Kuntzel, "Jihad and Jew-Hatred," elaborates on the annihilation ideology of radical Islam, including among Hamas. We have not yet succeeded in imparting this awareness to the world. It is still not too late. There is no logic in madness The most symbolic event this week actually occurred in Iraq. A Shi'ite suicide bomber carried out his attack during a Sunni demonstration of identification with Hamas. A bit confusing, no? After all, this Shi'ite terrorist was supposed to be serving Iranian interests. Iran, as we know, is the country that aids Hamas. And even the battle cries of the demonstrators contained the common denominator of the Shi'ites and the Sunnis: burning Israeli flags and calling for its extermination. So why commit suicide there, of all places? Who was he working for? What exactly was he trying to achieve? Against whom was he protesting? Don't look for answers, because we are dealing with madness. And any attempt to find some logic is doomed to failure. Slaughter for the sake of slaughter This week, Samuel Huntington -the prophet of the Clash of Civilizations -died. He was wrong. There is primarily another war, of political Islam against Muslims. And, in effect, it is not a war. It is one-sided slaughter in which the radicals slaughter others, and the others have no idea of how they might have sinned. Women and children who were butchered in villages in Afghanistan and Algeria by the Taliban or the Islamic Front were not collaborating with the West. It was slaughter for the sake of slaughter. Just like the hundreds of Indians in Mumbai, among whom were 40 Muslims (far more than the Westerners or Jews) who were massacred by other Muslims. Exactly like hundreds of Muslims who are slaughtered by other Muslims in innumerable suicide attacks in Pakistan,. But there is a small addition. In the case of Muslims, 95% of the protest from Pakistan through Um el Fahum to Londonistan, is in favor of the radical Muslims. Muslims in favor of those who are massacring them. Like the demonstrators in Iraq. The fact that they came to demonstrate for Hamas and against Israel did not help them. They, too, were worthy of slaughter. We have already said that there is no logic. We reiterate it. Israel is defeating itself This week, on Monday evening, when the prevarication mills began working at full steam on the bitter fate of the refugees in the Gaza Strip, who once again were forced to experience violence, the Cinematheque in Tel Aviv screened the film, The Forgotten Refugees, by director Michael Greenspan. The film has already been shown in many places around the world, including in the U.S. Congress, but not on any channel in Israel. The film deals with the Jewish communities in Muslim countries -a million people at the end of the second world war -who were forced to leave or deported with an enormous amount of property expropriated. They became refugees, primarily in Israel. The Nakba occurred because the Arabs rejected the UN proposal, and because they declared a war of annihilation on Israel. The Nakba of the Jews in Islamic countries, in contrast, occurred without a reason. The Jews of Morocco or Yemen or Iraq or Egypt did not declare any war. But despite that, in many cases, in Iraq and in Libya, they were slaughtered. There is no "progressive" academic who does not inflate the Dir Yassin episode. But the slaughter of Jews by Arabs is never mentioned. Most of them arrived with absolutely nothing. They lived in immigrant camps. But they were not perpetuated as an open wound, as refugees, like the Palestinians. Israel, for reasons that are hard to understand, has never played the card of the Jewish refugees. The story of the forgotten refugees could have been the unequivocal Israeli response to the issue of the Palestinian refugees. After all, the right of the Jewish refugees to reparations is far greater than the right of the Palestinians. The former suffered and were deported, despite the fact that they started no war and declared no annihilation. The latter did. So the Jews, and only the Jews, have the right to reparations. Those who do not succeeded in executing their plots of annihilation have no right to reparations. There is no historical precedence for an aggressor who turns himself into a victim. Such an absurdity has never existed, nor will it. Even in this matter, Israel has defeated itself in the propaganda battle. And here, too, it is not too late to rectify the error
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