U.S. Senate stands in support of Israel. Obama sends his own message to Israel.

I can see the irony and appearance of scattered thought by posting one article of Obama and Reagan and another with Obama and Carter. Each article is individually separate from the other and should be read in that way. No, I don’t suffer from dual personalities or political imbalance.

 

Both parties voiced their support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza. The Senate agreed on a non-binding resolution co-sponsored by Republican and Democrat leadership. 

Democrat, Senate Majority Leader  Harry Reid said before the vote “When we pass this resolution, the United States Senate will strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel’s inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza, as well as our support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process” 

 ”I ask any of my colleagues to imagine that happening here in the United States. Rockets and mortars coming from Toronto in Canada, into Buffalo New York. How would we as a country react?”

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also pointed out support on principles of the right to self defense, “The Israelis … are responding exactly the same way we would.”

The Spine offers a good summary and insight to exactly what the resolution means. 

The resolution made all the important points including one that envisions any operative cease-fire as meaning (not just implying) that Hamas should not be able to retain its weapons and also not be able to replenish them. This brings us back to the tunnels. Appropriate arrangements, by which I mean effective arrangements, are not a simple matter. But they are indispensable for war is not soon again to break in Gaza. Almost everybody in Europe seems to grasp this essential point. Well, not everybody: The Irish are feigning ignorance, as are the Greeks. But Denmark and Holland have already volunteered troops for this effort. I’d be surprised if Germany and France wouldn’t follow suit.

Still, however many foreign troops arrive in Gaza the real issue is the rules by which they operate. Security Council resolution 1701 ended the Lebanese conflict. But it did not even pretend to deal with the future. Southern Lebanon is again honey-combed with missiles and rockets on (or below) Hezbollah turf. This is Condi Rice’s one great big achievement. While the Security Council is considering rules for Gaza it might go back and clean up the Lebanon rules, too.

The House is expected to follow suit with similar support of a resolution. 

 

Meanwhile, President-elect has stirred up suspicion and confusion over some of his recent statements and reports coming from his administration. 

He stated that the civilian deaths are ”source of deep concern for me” and would have plenty to say about the conflict once he is president on 20 January. For the time being, he concluded, the U.S. was still under President Bush’s helm and would adhere to that. However, the “breaking of silence” from Obama has some trying to interoperate his statement. 

The Haaretz released this article, “Obama’s Warning to Israel,” and says in parts:

Israel’s governing “troika” met yesterday in order to find a way out of the conundrum Israel finds itself in, following the bombing of the school in Jabalya, where dozens of Palestinian civilians were killed. The character of the meeting had already been marked by the warning Israel received from U.S. president-elect, Barack Obama, who broke his silence on the fighting in Gaza and made it clear that he will have a great deal more to say after his inauguration. 

The announcement from the Bush White House that for the time being Israel could carry on its offensive was little consolation. Obama made it clear that starting on January 20 the rules of American involvement in the region will change, and his administration will be a lot more active in pushing the diplomatic process between Israel and the Arabs forward. 

Obama’s timing, after the strike on the school, signals the direction the U.S. will turn in its attitude to the region: It will support Israel, but will oppose any harming of Palestinian civilians. This means that Israel will find it difficult to close the crossings into the Gaza Strip at will. 

Senior officials in Jerusalem said yesterday that Israel has two to four days, at most, for this operation. The talks of the political leadership yesterday also revolved around the question of how Israel should end the operation. 

The reports coming from Obama’s administration mentioned earlier are, of course, the ones saying that the President-elect is prepared to meet and hold talks, in some capacity,  with Hamas. The Guardian reports:

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

 It adds a statement from an expert:

Bruce Hoffman, a counterterrorism expert at George town University’s school of foreign service, said it was unlikely that Obama would move to initiate contacts with Hamas unless the radical faction in Damascus was crippled by the conflict in Gaza. “This would really be dependent on Hamas’s military wing having suffered a real, almost decisive, drubbing.”

Perhaps a more even handed approach is the right thing to do. Perhaps it a disastrous and fundamentally wrong thing to do.

Both schools of thought make equally strong and supported arguments. But, that only means that one is wrong and the other right. Every decision has both alternatives. The key is to have the vision and wisdom to know the difference. So, it goes without saying that the majority see negotiating or holding talks with an Iranian sponsored terrorist organization that targets and kills civilians as morally wrong and politically weak. Furthermore, it undermines the interests of an ally while legitimizing and propping up an enemy of civilization and oppressor of the human spirit. 

Secondly, it doesn’t take a PhD with a university behind your name to figure out that these reports and statements are irresponsible and poorly timed. Especially when considering that Israel has greatly weakened Hamas and may remove them from power by resoundingly defeating them, weakening them politically, and bringing all they horrors and discomforts of war to Gaza. Those horrors and discomforts are directly related to Hamas triggering the events by attacking Israel and they are the cause for the suffering of the civilians that Obama is concerned about. (Please  Read Charles Krauthammer’s piece “Obscuring Gaza.”

We have an American ally fighting a group that has lobbed, literally, thousands of missiles into its civilian population. Israel is conducting itself as any sovereign nation would with the means to do so. It is not wise or prudent to entertain recognizing and negotiating with groups like Hamas on the grounds that it could possibly lead to a diplomatic breakthrough. This is foolishly naive and follows along the lines of blind Western thought that has plagued us for decades.

 Let Hamas itself make the case:

“…. Our position is the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine. This is the final and strategic solution for us. There is a Koranic message for us, that we will enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the entrance to the mosque means the entrance into all of Palestine. This is the message, no one can deny it. Anyone who denies it must check his faith and his Islam.” 

A-Zahar’s statements, as promulgated in the PA media, are restatements of views expressed in the foundational covenant of Hamas, the PA government’s ruling faction. Regarding Israel, the 1988 Hamas Covenant preamble says, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” While Article 28 of the Covenant widens the threat: “…Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Muslim people. ‘May the cowards never sleep.’”

Hugh Hewitt sums it very nicely here ”Will they be awake to the dangers? Or will it be Carter 2.o?”

If the newspaper’s information is credible, the work that the president-elect has done to reassure the country on his national security intentions via the retention of Defense Secretary Gates and the appointment of National Security Advisor General Jones will be undone.  Solid, serious appointees cannot overcome such a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the radical Islamist movement.  At least overtures to Iran could proceed with the hope of communicating with the pro-American population suffering under the rule of the mullahs.  There is zero evidence that Hamas can be reformed or that there is a large population beneath its iron rule that longs for its overthrow in Gaza.