Levitt Letter Extra News

By P. David Hornik
www.FrontPageMagazine.com

The hollowness of the “ceasefire” the Israeli cabinet declared on Saturday evening is all too easy to point out. No sooner was it declared than Hamas fired eight rockets at Israel. On Sunday it fired about 15 more before announcing at 2 p.m., along with Islamic Jihad, a ceasefire of its own conditional on Israel’s evacuating Gaza within a week. Four hours later two more rockets hit Israel. During last year’s “ceasefire” from June 19 to December 19, a total of over 500 rockets and mortars hit Israel from Gaza.

In announcing Israel’s latest ceasefire on Saturday night, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that “our targets, as defined when we launched the operation, have been fully achieved, and more so.” The proclaimed targets were to put an end to the rocket fire and to Hamas’s smuggling of weapons across the Gaza-Egypt border. The first, clearly, was not achieved; what about stopping the smuggling?

On Friday afternoon Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a remarkably hasty Memorandum of Understanding under which the United States is supposed to work together with the whole international community to halt the smuggling of Iranian weapons into Gaza. On Sunday European and Arab leaders converged at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh ostensibly to discuss the smuggling among other issues.

Since the early 1990s successive Israeli governments have been consumed with the idea that Israel need no longer defend its own borders because other parties will do so instead. The last few days, though, have seen a new milestone: now it is not just the likes of UNIFIL, the Lebanese army, or Egyptian border guards who are supposed to protect Israel, but the whole international community—the same community that races to slap ceasefires on it the minute it lifts a finger to defend itself and whose media, NGOs, governments, and institutions fiercely condemn it with words and imagery evoking classic anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile at Sharm el-Sheikh, French president Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that “Israel should state immediately and clearly that if rocket fire will stop, the Israeli army will leave Gaza. There is no other solution to achieve peace.” As for Egypt, its president Hosni Mubarak had already made clear on Saturday that “I demand from [Israel’s] leaders an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and I demand from them a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Strip.”

He said further that “Egypt will never accept any foreign presence of monitors on its land. I say this is a red line I have not and will not allow to be crossed.” His foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit added that Egypt had “no commitment toward this [U.S.-Israeli] memo [of understanding] whatsoever” and that “Israel is drunk with power and violence.” He also said the U.S. and Israel could “do what they wish with regard to the sea or any other country in Africa, but when it comes to Egyptian land, we are not bound by anything except the safety and national security of the Egyptian people and Egypt’s ability to protect its borders.”

The head of Israel’s General Security Service, Yuval Diskin, told the cabinet on Sunday that Hamas would resume the smuggling within a few months and would soon rebuild the tunnels that Israel destroyed during Operation Cast Lead—these having numbered in the hundreds although a large quantity still remain.

Regarding both goals of Operation Cast Lead, then—the rocket fire and the smuggling—the outlook was bleak.

And by Sunday night Israel was already complying with Hamas, Sarkozy, and Mubarak’s wishes—though without Sarkozy’s proviso of a stoppage of the shelling—and starting to withdraw from Gaza. It was doing so without having secured the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006 and held—presumably—in Gaza ever since without visits by the Red Cross or anyone else. Olmert and other top officials told a perturbed Israeli public that dealings were afoot on the matter of Shalit and it was best to keep these hushed; few if any were convinced.

Israel could resume the fighting if the provocations get intolerable. At this point, though, its abandonment of the campaign appears propelled mainly by (1) the international pressure that became monolithic with the U.S. failure on January 9 to veto UN Security Council Resolution 1860 and (2) fear of incurring the displeasure of the incoming Obama administration. It is true that this time Israel, particularly the Foreign Ministry and the army’s PR machine, made a determined effort to show the justice of Israel’s cause, emphasizing the long years of rocket fire on Israelis and Hamas’s abuse of the civilian population of Gaza for its military and propaganda purposes.

The international community, though—which is also indifferent to much larger-scale atrocities in Darfur or the Congo—has never cared about the shelling of Israeli towns and there was no reason for this to change. What does get this community riled up is TV images of Palestinian civilian casualties, and these were of course served up aplenty by the same terror-friendly media that worked so smoothly with Hezbollah in 2006. Israel’s moral arguments took a distant back seat to an oil-dependent world’s anxiety to get the embarrassing images off the TV screens as fast as possible.

Even if the Olmert government had relatively clear aims for the war, it had no clear idea of how to go about achieving them—let alone enough backbone to face the fact that the only effective force against the smuggling is a restored Israeli presence along the border with Egypt. Though all the assessments concur that Hamas suffered a considerable blow, fanatic movements with powerful state sponsors can recover surprisingly fast. The one lasting positive outcome may be the manifest improvement in Israel’s military performance compared to Lebanon in 2006—amounting, according to the more optimistic readings, to a restoration of deterrence.

The geopolitical implications, however, are grim, since even proficient armies usually cannot achieve their goals—or anything close to them—when the international community gives them a timeline of a few weeks at most. Could a tougher Israeli government have better withstood the pressure? With Israeli elections scheduled for February 10, and with the problem of Hamastan hardly solved, we may soon find out.

By Alex West
www.TheSun.co.uk

At least 40 al-Qaeda fanatics died horribly after being struck down with the disease that devastated Europe in the Middle Ages.

The killer bug, also known as the plague, swept through insurgents training at a forest camp in Algeria, North Africa. It came to light when security forces found a body by a roadside.

The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East. It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops.

Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. One security source said: “This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease. It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda.”

Black Death comes in various forms.

Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. Symptoms include boils in the groin, neck and armpits.

In Pneumonic Plague, airborn bacteria spread like flu. It can be in the body for more than a week — highly contagious but not revealing tell-tale symptoms.

The al-Qaeda epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers. The group, led by wanted terror boss Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee. The extremists supporting madman Osama bin Laden went to Bejaia and Jijel provinces — hoping the plague did not go with them.

A source said: “The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death.”

AQLIM boss Droudkal claims to command around 1,000 insurgents. Training camps are also based in Morocco, Tunisia and Nigeria. AQLIM bombed the UN headquarters in Algiers in 2007, killing 41. Attacks across Algeria last year killed at least 70 people.

In an interview last July, Droudkal boasted his cell was in constant contact with other al-Qaeda “brothers”.

By Aaron Klein
www.WorldNetDaily.com

JERUSALEM – Wars are won or lost based on which side achieves its goals. In the case of Israel’s three-week offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Jewish state made many impressive gains but largely failed to achieve its major objectives.

At the beginning of the conflict, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced two main goals for waging war on Hamas – to decisively smash the terrorist group’s ability to attack Israel; and to stop Hamas’s rocket attacks from Gaza aimed at nearby Jewish communities. Neither goal was met.

Olmert later announced a third goal – to change the situation on the ground so that Hamas will not be able to continue smuggling weapons into Gaza from neighboring Egypt. This goal is on the road to failure.

With regard to denting Hamas’s capabilities, during the past 23 days, Israeli air strikes targeted both symbolic Hamas institutions, such as government buildings, and the group’s military infrastructure, including rocket caches, police stations, explosives factories, and about 200 of an estimated 600 smuggling tunnels between Gaza and neighboring Egypt. Although the IDF will not confirm the percentage of Hamas’s military infrastructure wiped out, defense sources said Hamas lost about 30 percent of its rockets and a sizable portion of its explosives development program.

But the sources said Hamas’ estimated 6,000-man force trained in Hezbollah-like guerrilla tactics is still largely in place along with the majority of the group’s underground bunkers. In addition, 60 percent of its rocket arsenal and most of its weapons caches are well-stored. Crucially, many components of Hamas’s military wing are stored underground and remain safely tucked away.

The IDF only launched two portions of a planned, three-stage assault on Gaza. The first stage was Israel’s continuing aerial bombardment of Hamas targets, which the terror group admits dented its government infrastructure and which Israeli sources said resulted in some damage to the group’s military capabilities. The second stage began about two weeks ago, with some ground troops entering Gaza, taking up peripheral positions in central and northern Gaza and mounting some small offensives and special operations within Gaza City and select northern Gaza camps.

But defense sources say to deal a decisive blow to Hamas’s ability to attack Israel, the IDF must embark on an extensive, large-scale ground operation that would clean out central and northern Gaza of Hamas’s intact military wing. Now that a ceasefire has been announced, it seems Israel will not continue its offensive – meaning Hamas’s military infrastructure is largely still intact.

Still, Israel destroyed so many Hamas buildings (the Israel Air Force almost ran out of targets), the group’s ability to govern on the ground has been badly damaged, since it doesn’t have many government compounds from which to rule. Hamas’s government infrastructure, including office buildings, police headquarters, even financial institutions, was badly damaged. Hamas will find it difficult to immediately assume the kind of authority it boasted in Gaza starting in 2007, when Hamas seized control of the territory from the U.S.-backed Fatah party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel also scared into hiding some Hamas leaders with its eliminations of top Hamas members, including Siad Siam, the chief of Hamas’s executive force, a Hezbollah-like guerrilla militia heavily involved in terrorism. But Hamas leaders are quite used to living under assassination threat. When the IDF fully withdraws, Hamas’s military wing chiefs will come out from their shells. Some already have.

Olmert’s stated goal of destroying Hamas’s ability to rocket Israel fell short. This is obvious since Hamas fired an average of 33 rockets per day every day during the entire conflict, and reportedly shot at least 20 rockets and eight mortars since making its cease-fire declaration yesterday.

Hamas’s rocket arsenal is depleted by about half, and many of its rocket factories were taken out by the IDF. Crucial to bleeding Hamas dry is for Israel to find a way to halt the rampant weapons smuggling from Egypt to Gaza. Indeed, this was one of Olmert’s stated goals. But it will not be achieved.

Israel is negotiating an international monitoring mechanism it hopes will stop Hamas from smuggling weapons from neighboring Egypt into Gaza. But previous international monitors stationed along the Egypt-Gaza border fled their duty and repeatedly failed to stem Hamas’ weapons smuggling. The monitors were stationed at the border following Israel’s 2005 evacuation of the Gaza Strip.

Even if a beefed-up international force is established inside Gaza – and this is not the plan – it is not clear whether such a force would do its job. Currently, a 13,000-strong UNIFIL force in southern Lebanon has done little as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has rearmed in the area, many times in full view of the international troops, according to Israeli defense officials.

Meanwhile, Olmert today made some farcical claims, telling the Israeli media Hamas would find it difficult to continue smuggling weapons into Gaza and that the IDF controlled the northern Gaza Strip – the area from which most rockets are launched into the Jewish state. On the ground, the IDF does not control the entire northern Gaza, as clearly evidenced by Hamas’s continued ability to fire rockets from that zone.

Hamas of course has declared “victory,” which is overstating things. Hamas’s “victory” was by default since its only goal was to survive the IDF beating. It achieved this not due to its might but because the IDF will not be launching the third stage of its attack, which would have devastated Hamas.

One real Hamas victory, though, is the international legitimacy the group received during the past few weeks. According to WND’s Hamas sources, the group was in direct contact with Italy, France, the EU and U.N. representatives, many of whom, the sources said, expressed willingness to bring Hamas into the fold and out from isolation.

In the outcome of this war, a clear winner or loser cannot be determined. Both sides gained and lost. But if we are to judge based on which side achieved its objectives, Israel clearly did not win.

Hamas for now will probably scale back its rocket attacks against Israel, since it’s in the group’s best interests not to provoke any further IDF operations. But when the time is right and when its arsenal has been replenished, Hamas will resume its war to destroy the Jewish state.

By Joseph Klein
www.FrontPageMagazine.com

Israel once again is taking a risk for peace by planning to halt its Gaza offensive, even without any corresponding ceasefire commitment from Hamas. Israel is doing so on the basis of assurances presumably provided by the United States and Egypt to take effective measures to stop the arms smuggling into Gaza. Moreover, Israel is not withdrawing its troops right way. While the rocket attacks against the Israeli civilian population have considerably diminished since the start of Israel’s military campaign, Israel reserves the right to resume military action if the rocket launchings from Gaza do not stop completely.

Whether Israel is making a wise choice remains to be seen. Apparently Israel wanted to establish the facts on the ground as the basis for extracting its minimum conditions and not risk any softening of U.S. support with the change of administrations.

The cowardly Hamas leaders who reside comfortably in exile in Lebanon and Syria vow to fight on. They are the war criminals who sacrifice their own children to kill as many Jews as possible. Here are the words of the enemy Israel faces on its doorstep:

“The Palestinian woman bids her son farewell, and says to him: ‘Son, go and don’t be a coward. Go, and fight the Jews.’ He bids her farewell and carries out a martyrdom operation. What did this Palestinian woman say when she was asked for her opinion, after the martyrdom of her son? She said: ‘My son is my own flesh and blood. I love my son, but my love for Allah and His Messenger is greater than my love for my son’…Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, vanquish the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one.”**

Undoubtedly, with the help of United Nations officials and an obliging mainstream media that publishes sensational photographs of human suffering in Gaza without asking what lies behind it, Hamas will continue to manipulate public opinion by painting Israel as the ruthless aggressor who must leave Gaza immediately without any conditions. That would give Hamas the kind of propaganda victory which Hezbollah enjoyed after Israel simply took the UN’s terms for ending the 2006 Lebanon war. Israel must not make that mistake again by worrying about false public impressions of its military tactics.

Of course, the truth is that Israel’s air force has pinpointed its targets as much as feasible in order to avoid civilian casualties. Its ground troops have turned away from potential enemy targets when they believed that civilian lives would be unnecessarily jeopardized. However, Israel cannot allow its soldiers to be fired on at will by Hamas terrorists who violate the basic laws of war by using civilians as human shields. Nor can Israel allow its own civilians to remain as sitting ducks for Hamas rocket attacks. As General Patton once said, “To halt under fire and not fire back is suicide.”

The UN General Assembly President, Miguel d´Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, has accused Israel of being “in contempt of international law and the United Nations”. In one sense, he is right but for the wrong reasons. Israel does have contempt for the United Nations’ one-sided response to its conflict with the Palestinian terrorists and it correctly ignores the UN’s resolutions when they are in contempt of the UN Charter by denying a member state the right to defend itself.

The General Assembly President has questioned Israel’s claim of self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. He stated that if Israel’s right ever existed at all, it would last only “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security”. Of course, the Security Council took no such measures to ensure the end of rocket attacks and arms smuggling that triggered the conflict in the first place. Israel instead is expected to rely on diplomatic double-talk for its protection.

Oblivious to the fact that Israel unilaterally exited Gaza in 2005 to give peace a chance, which the ruling Hamas government has torpedoed altogether, Brockmann still brands Israel as the occupying power in Gaza. He has taken the side of the Hamas terrorists in demanding an immediate ceasefire and the complete re-opening of the border crossings with Gaza for all purposes without any pre-conditions. That would amount to national suicide for Israel since Hamas will be free to import more sophisticated arms for use against Israel and to send to Israel its homicidal bombers.

The realities on the ground have enabled Israel to reach the point of deciding to suspend combat, not the empty words from hypocrites like Brockmann who like to play the role of moralizer and peacemaker but are no more than shills for the terrorists.

It is time to place the spotlight of moral condemnation solely where it belongs – on Hamas and its fellow Islamic terrorist organizations. In her incisive interview with FrontPage Magazine published on January 16, 2009, terrorist expert and author Brigitte Gabriel explained how she is attempting to do just that. As she said, “Even the Nazis did not turn their own children into human bombs, and then rejoice at their deaths as well the deaths of their victims.” That is why her organization ACT! for America has launched a petition to the UN which calls for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon “to end the UN’s silence and initiate a thorough UN investigation” into Hamas’s abuse of children in Gaza.

Many more actions like this are necessary even though it is easy to get discouraged when one sees the tide of uninformed international opinion turn so decisively against Israel with the help of so many influential voices. While the effort to counter with the truth sometimes feels like plugging holes in a very leaky dike, it must be done again and again in order not to let evil prevail.