Maybe Mossad, with a little help, with a little help, with a little hel-l-l-p-p from our friends

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the leader of Shas, the party of the Sephardic and Mizrachi (eastern) Jews

I am unclear on what is or was going on in Gaza that led to this war.

One theory is that Hamas started a war they could not win out of despair. The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt meant that Hamas' supply of arms and goods to tax coming in through the Rafah tunnels from Egypt was cut off. ISIS had replaced them as the leading Salafist regime and had begun to establish the caliphate without them. Plus they were broke and becoming unpopular.

According to this theory they were suffering a crisis of relevance and decided that if they were going to go down they would at least go down swinging, that their world would end with a bang not a whimper. We can call this the pundit theory.

The alternate theory is based on the discovery of networks of tunnels into Israel and of intelligence that Hamas planned a huge attack by their guerrillas in fake IDF uniforms, and that the attack was planned for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, in September. According to this theory they were on the verge of a huge victory against Israel. We can call this the tunnel theory.

On this latter theory, which seems better supported by concrete evidence, the last thing Hamas would have wanted would be to in effect invite the IDF to invade by beginning sustained rocket barrages against Israeli civilians. Yet that is what they did.

If we assume the IDF had knowledge of the tunnels but not of their precise locations they would have needed control of both ends of the tunnels in order to prevent the planned attack. They would have needed to invade Gaza.

But how could they have justified such an invasion solely on the basis of intelligence? The American non-existent WMD's fiasco in Iraq would have been clear in their minds. No matter what the intelligence was, it is hard to see how the cabinet could have gone ahead with an invasion seemingly unprovoked. Even if they had been right. found the tunnels, and presented the evidence, the outrage both abroad and in Israel over an unprovoked invasion would have been overwhelming.

On this theory the only thing that could have thwarted the Hamas attack would have been a prolonged rocket barrage from Gaza against Israel followed by an Israeli ground invasion. Which is just what happened.

Again there are two theories. One is that the head of Shas, Ovadia Yosef, is right and that the G_d of Israel has intervened to save the Jews. Another is that the head of Shas, Ovadia Yosef, is right and that the G_d of Israel has intervened to save the Jews by making the Children of Israel clever and resourceful people.

The fact that the only thing that could have saved Israel from a devastating attack and defeat is exactly what happened suggests that Mossad has one or more moles at the highest levels of the Hamas leadership.

Consider too that by now Iron Dome must have been tested extensively and been known to be effective. Which means that, still hypothetically, if one had been contemplating the costs of a Hamas rocket war against Israel, one would have known in advance that the cost in lives on the Israeli side would have been small or nil. And when compared to the cost in lives of not acting, of a mass attack by Hamas guerrillas wearing IDF uniforms within Israel proper, it would have been an easy decision to make. We can call this the Mossad theory
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If this theory is correct then the current war is a pre-emptive one in the exact sense of the word, a war launched to prevent, to pre-empt, an attack by the other side.

The flaw in this theory is that it is just speculation and that it assumes facts not in evidence. It assumes that Hamas is rational, that it is unified, and that it is competent. On this theory, the effing moron theory, the Hamas leadership are effing morons and screwed up. As for the Israelis, everyone knows it is better to be lucky than to be smart. Maybe they just got lucky.

Right Here in San Francisco

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Hamas is so much fun....

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Oops, got the video and the commentary switched.  This one is just as much fun as the previous one.  I am starting to really like this guy....

Here he explains what we have tried to explain for years, that the Palestinians are children and grandchildren of Egyptians, Syrians, and Saudis who came to Palestine for jobs created by the nascent Zionist settlements in the 1920's, 30's and 40's.

So far from having been in Palestine from time immemorial and having been "invaded" by the Zionist settlers, they came after the Jews did, drawn by the economic opportunities created by the new Jewish settlements.  And here is their foreign minister admitting it on television.


After a lifetime of demanding that Israel give them land that is not theirs, here he is demanding that Egypt, a poor country, give them oil without the inconvenience of paying for it.

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Reuters Fauxtography

[I apologize for the gruesome image, but the photo itself has become a news event]

This picture is currently being circulated by the Palestinian group Al-Awda as evidence of Israeli troops having killed a little Arab girl in Gaza in the fighting over the weekend. 

The fact is that the picture was taken in 2006, not this past weekend.  The little girl's parents themselves said she was injured in an accident in Gaza, not in fighting between the IDF and Hamas.  She was treated gratis at an Israeli hospital.

Reuters, which ran the picture in 2006 with a caption claiming the girl was injured by the IDF, was forced to retract and apologize..  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1681556/posts

The Palestinians are not only bigots and aggressors, they are also liars.






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What's Inside Dawud Shehab?

 Yesterday's Wall Street Journal -

An Israeli aircraft struck a pair of Palestinian militants on Sunday, killing one man and wounding a second. On Saturday, nine militants and an Israeli civilian were killed in some of the worst violence in the area in months.

"When all of the jet fighters leave the skies of Gaza we will stop firing rockets," said Dawud Shehab, a senior member of Islamic Jihad. The latest round of violence was set off by a rocket attack last Wednesday by Islamic Jihad.

When the overall situation is reduced to a single incident one can see clearly what the problem is. Shehab and his organization started the exchange by firing rockets last Wednesday. And four days later he was indignant about the reprisals for it. 

Ordinarily can imagine the Palestinians having some sort of amnesia about their aggressions and their imagining the Israeli reprisal to have been unprovoked. But this was last Wednesday and Dawud Shehab knew exactly the sequence of events. So how could he with a straight face make such a demand and even be indignant about it? 

All the usual adjectives about such a person - fanatic, bigot, racist, terrorist - are all too general. Those address only why he would be a senior member of an organization like Islamic Jihad. But the question here is, what went wrong in Dawud Shehab's brain that he was unable to connect what he did on Wednesday with the consequences of it the next few days? If one could understand that, one would understand why there is no peace. 

I suspect the problem may be one of national identity. Most nations have long histories reaching back centuries. They are defined by shared history, shared traditions, shared language, shared religion, shared customs, shared literature, shared art, shared cuisine, by a sense of solidarity. The Palestinians have none of these. 

What defines a Palestinian? Their language is not distinguishable from Jordanians, Syrians, or Egyptians. Having persecuted and driven out the Christians among them, they have merely the ordinary Sunni Islam of the places they immigrated from - primarily Egypt and Syria. There having been no Palestinian people before the British Empire separated what few of them there were from centuries of Turkish and Egyptian rule, there are no Palestinian traditions and no history separate from reaction against Israel. There is no Palestinian literature, no national epic.  There is no distinctive Palestinian cuisine, no famous art works.

Tellingly, there are no Palestinian holidays whatever that have no reference to Israel. Land Day is a protest against Israel, not a celebration of anything Palestinian. There was no Palestinian history until the Zionist settlers arrived because there was no Palestinian people before that. When the Jews arrived, their economic activity attracted the parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents of the Palestinians from Egypt and Syria with the prospect of jobs in Palestine. 

There have never been Palestinian kings or kingdoms, no great victories, no heroes, no literature. Nothing defines the Palestinian national identity but their hostility to Israel. Palestinian personal and national identity is recently formed and has no content except hatred of Israel. That is pretty slim pickings to look inside yourself and your society and see so little, so very little. 

The arrival of the Zionist pioneers and their hiring of Arab immigrants from Egypt and Syria led to the formation of an amorphous proletariat, a fellaheen, of people who could define themselves only by what they were not. 

That is apparently what Dawud Shehab is saying. He is not saying that he has forgotten that he and his friends started shooting rockets at Sderot and Ashdod last Wednesday. He was saying that he was feeling empty because he had not restated his identity recently. While this seems a blanket condemnation of Dawud Shehab, one has to sympathize with him slightly. It would be horrifying to look within oneself and to see nothing. Or at least nothing but hatred. 

It also explains why there can never be peace until the Palestinians suffer so vast a catastrophe that they are able to construct some other identity from it. The Germans were able to forego their Aryan superman national identity only when American bombers and Red Army tanks crushed those pretensions out of them. Only when the Palestinians are forced by some vast catastrophe to absorb the reality of their situation will they be able to construct some other identity for themselves as individuals and as a people. 

My guess is that only an existential disaster will change them. Only when people like Dawud Shehab can look inside and see some sort of identity and self-image other than hatred of a neighboring people will there be peace. It won't be soon but it will one day come.