Ignoring Israel?

With Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm, a belligerent blustering badass, Israel’s global perception – outside of her staunch allies – is of a bully, quick to anger and anxious to deploy military solutions under a “shoot first and ask questions later” approach. It has sometimes put Israel at odds with the Obama administration and generally aroused sympathies for the Palestinians that most of the planet believes should have their own separate and autonomous nation.  Other countries wonder why Iran can’t have nukes (which the Iranians claim they don’t want) when Israel can? They figure if Iran even tried to nuke Israel, it would cease to exist in minutes… so who cares? Israel’s attitude has lost that nation potential support around the world, and anti-Semitism appears to be steadily on the rise in so many European countries, even as the U.S. and the U.K. repeat their support for this Jewish state.  

But Israel is under direct attack. Netanyahu is not crying “wolf.” The threat has escalated and the rocket fire is very real. Israeli citizens are victims of wild Hamas hostility, and they are indeed lucky that the tiny Jewish nation has the Iron Dome – an anti-rocket missile shield that analyzes the trajectory of incoming rockets and destroys only those headed for real targets. The Hamas commander that Israeli fire took out recently – the genesis of the current battle over Gaza – had escalated the hostilities with new capacity generously supplied through covert Iranian operations. The new rockets have greater range than ever before… capable of reaching Jerusalem, a target Israelis did not expect because of the number of Islamic holy shrines in the city.

“The commander, Ahmed al-Jabari, had shifted Hamas’s low-grade militia into a disciplined force with sophisticated weapons like Fajr-5 rockets, which are named after the Persian word for dawn and have significantly increased the danger to Israel’s major cities. They have a range of about 45 miles and are fired by trained crews from underground launching pads…  Hamas had perhaps 100 of them until the Israeli attacks last week, which appear to have destroyed most of the stockpile. The rockets are assembled locally after being shipped from Iran to Sudan, trucked across the desert through Egypt, broken down into parts and moved through Sinai tunnels into Gaza, according to senior Israeli security officials. 

“The smuggling route involves salaried employees from Hamas along the way, Iranian technical experts traveling on forged passports and government approval in Sudan, Israeli officials said… Mr. Jabari’s strategy has been so effective and alarming for Israel that it is preparing for a possible next stage in the four-day-old battle: a ground war in which its troops would seek to destroy remaining rocket launching bases and crews and munitions factories.” New York Times, November 17^th.

Indeed, Hamas has been buying weapons – including raided munitions from Libya when the old regime fell – with blood money from all over the Middle East, but particularly from Iran. There is a belief that – with Iran goading Hamas to jab Israel in the back – even granting Palestine autonomy won’t stop the random violence. With Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi’s affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization, Hamas/Gaza-destined arms flow through Egypt, believe Israeli intelligence officials, with a blind eye… and Morsi has a very pro-Palestinian constituency to deal with. While Egypt’s frail economy could not tolerate direct military support of the Palestinians, popular sentiments move him to hostile speech against the Israeli efforts at self-defense.

How is the U.S. responding? President “Obama…said that the U.S. is seeking an end to violence in the region, according to Reuters. He said that he will know within [a few days] whether or not progress can be made in ending conflict between Israel and Gaza… The AP reports that Obama said peace in the region must begin with ‘no missiles being fired into Israel's territory… No country on earth would tolerate missiles raining down,’ Obama said, according to the AP. ‘If [peace] can be accomplished without a ramping up of military activity in Gaza, that's preferable. It's not just preferable for the people of Gaza. It's also preferable for Israelis, because if Israeli troops are in Gaza, they're much more at risk of incurring fatalities or being wounded.’” Huffington Post, November 19^th.

In the end, Israel may be its own worst enemy – alone and isolated in a hostile Middle East – unwilling to compromise, strong in its own defensive posture. Despite Netanyahu’s popularity, many Israelis see him as extreme and begging for trouble… but no one should dispute that what Hamas has been doing in Gaza, with strong support from Iran, is an intolerable source of rocket fire aimed at Israeli innocents – when aim is even possible – as well as military targets. Israel has an absolute right to defend itself.

Gaza, which arose from the ashes after the last Israeli war in 2008-9, was just beginning to show some economic fire of late. If Israel moves its forces into Gaza, despite the saber-rattling to the contrary, Gaza’s economy will drop back into the abyss. It is a lose-lose for all involved, but Hamas and its rocketeers just need to stop… and getting Palestine and Israel back to the bargaining table will go a long way to diffuse future tensions in the region. OK, Mr. Obama, get to work! When the dust settled, bring the Palestine issue to resolution.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time to stop the madness!