Israel Gets Support While Pounding Hamas

Surprising Support for Israel -Daniel Pipes, PhD

The current Hamas assault on Israel has lured the predictable coven of Palestinian nationalists, Islamists, Leftists, and antisemites from the woodwork to bash the Jewish state. But, more surprisingly, Israel is getting support, or at least restraint and fairness, from unexpected sources:

• United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: "Today we face the risk of an all out escalation in Israel and Gaza with the threat of a ground offensive still palpable and preventable only if Hamas stops rocket firing."
• The Lebanese Internal Security Forces detained two persons for having fired rockets into Israel.
• Egyptian security forces seized 20 rockets on their to being smuggled into Gaza.
• Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh demanded that Israel "stop its escalation immediately," but balanced this with calls for "the restoration of complete calm and avoidance of targeting civilians" and "the return to direct negotiations."

The media too is displaying an unwonted fairness to Israel.

• The BBC published an article, "Are #GazaUnderAttack images accurate?" about pictures claiming to show the effects of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza and found that "Some of the images are of the current situation in Gaza, but a #BBCtrending analysis has found that some date as far back as 2009 and others are from conflicts in Syria and Iraq."
• CNN's Jake Tapper asked former PLO legal advisor Diana Buttu about a tape of Hamas spokesmen encouraging civilians in Gaza to protect homes of Hamas' leaders with their bodies. When Buttu retorted by calling this a racist accusation, Tapper replied, "It's not racist, we have video … That's not racist, it's a fact."

In large part the coolness toward Hamas results from the belated realization that Islamists pose a greater threat than Zionists. But media sobriety suggests that, in part, it also follows from a weariness of Hamas' vile tactics and revulsion against its hideous goal of destroying Israel.

As Hamas' goal in this war is political, this lesser support is of supreme importance to it.
[National Review Online]


Egyptians Hope Israel Destroys Hamas - Khaled Abu Toameh
 
Over the past week there are voices coming out of Egypt and some Arab countries -- voices that publicly support the Israeli military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi's decision not to intervene in the current crisis did not come as a surprise. In fact, Sisi and many Egyptians seem to be delighted that Hamas is being badly hurt. They regard Hamas as the "armed branch of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization." Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah are certainly not going to shed a tear if Hamas is crushed and removed from power in the Gaza Strip.
(Gatestone Institute)


Why Gaza Doesn’t Have Bomb Shelters -Jonathan Tobin

One of the key talking points by apologists for Hamas in the current conflict is that it isn’t fair that Israelis under fire have bomb shelters while Palestinians in Gaza don’t have any. Among other factors, the lack of shelters accounts in part for the differences in casualty figures between the two peoples. But somehow none of the talking heads on TV ever ask why there are no bomb shelters in Gaza.

Gaza’s tyrants have plenty of money and material to build shelters. And they have built plenty of them. They’re just not for the people of Gaza.
[Commentary]


Is Hamas Trying to Get Gazans Killed? - Jeffrey Goldberg
 
Compared with violent death rates in other parts of the Middle East, the number of dead in Gaza is small. (More than 170,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war to date.) But it is large enough to suggest Hamas is trying to get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible.
  
Dead Palestinians represent a crucial propaganda victory for the nihilists of Hamas. It is perverse, but true. It is also the best possible explanation for Hamas's behavior, because Hamas has no other plausible strategic goal here. There is no doubt that Hamas could protect Palestinian lives by ceasing its current campaign to end Israeli lives. The decision is Hamas'.
  
What Hamas wants most is not a state in a part of Palestine. What it wants is the elimination of Israel. It will not achieve the latter, and it is actively thwarting the former.
(Bloomberg)
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Anti-Israel Protesters Attack Paris Synagogue - Marcy Oster
Dozens of young men protesting Israel's actions in Gaza briefly besieged a Paris synagogue and clashed with security. At least three Jews were taken to hospital as a result of the clashes that erupted on Sunday between the protesters and young Jewish men who guarded the Synagogue de la Roquette in Paris.
  
The police blocked the entrance to the synagogue while close to 200 congregants were inside and as the protesters chanted anti-Semitic slogans and hurled objects at the synagogue and its guards.
[Click HERE for striking video]

The attack came on the heels of several anti-Semitic incidents that coincided with Israel's offensive in Gaza, which began on July 8. In one attack in Belleville north of the French capital, a firebomb was hurled at a synagogue, causing minor damage. In another attack, a man sprayed pepper spray on the face of a 17-year-old Jewish girl.
(JTA)
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