Daniel in Brookline

Every three months we try to develop an additional capability. The [terrorists] are behaving in a certain way? How do we need to grapple with that? But I can't go into details. This war is so complex. They are always trying to figure out what we're doing; they adapt to it. I would love to be able to tell the people of Israel what we are doing new to protect them. They'd be proud to hear it. But the moment I make something public, the other side will adapt. So telling the public actually harms my efforts to protect the public.

You say that they "cloak" themselves in civilians. What do you mean?

You see their cynicism in that they put their laboratories in a building where every other apartment is full of civilians. They choose not to place the laboratory [away from civilians]. They "cloak" themselves in the most appalling sense of the word - to protect themselves because they know we act with the highest morality. They surround themselves with women and children.

The terrorists are capable of putting their own children in the car when they set off to fire a Kassam at the State of Israel. They can take their own children to terror training bases. Cynicism is firing missiles from the yard of a house, a meter from the house, where it's obvious that if we hit back, we hit the house.

We are always grappling with these dilemmas. All the time. Understand? I am very proud that we are moral people. This just underlines how complicated all of this is.

If they are making themselves ever harder to hit, the chances of hitting only them...

Are becoming ever more complicated.

So, are we relaxing our limitations in determining when to fire? When we see his son in the car with him, that's it, we don't fire? Or do we say, "His son's always with him." And he's firing at us every day.

The question is very appropriate and no, we're not relaxing our limitations.

Instead, we're improving our accuracy?

Our answer is to create a situation where you hit within a meter, a meter and a half. If we know that [the terrorist] is holding his son's hand, we do not fire. Even if the terrorist is in the midst of firing a Kassam, and the Kassam is aimed to kill. We do not fire. You should know that. And that's a fearsome thing.

So we open the door to him to keep firing at us?

Yes. And that is the kind of dilemma we live with every day and I'm very pleased you asked me about it.

I'm very proud of what we do. I think it is unprecedented. I'm proud of our morals. I'm proud of our operational capabilities.

Maybe in the end we'll kill more people because we weren't ruthless enough at the start, because we encouraged them to become bolder? Maybe we're too moral, for our own good and theirs?

That's a very interesting philosophical question, with practical consequences. And yet I'll tell you something...

(Shkedy pauses here for a full 20 seconds.) Ultimately our strength is not solely our military power. That's part of our strength. The strength of the Jewish people in the State of Israel and the Land of Israel is first and foremost our profound moral strength. Everything stems from that.

If we were to lower our standards, not to find a solution that meets the highest ethical standards, that would be a mistake with far more, immense significance for us as a nation and a state and as people than the operational error.

That's the great strength that I believe in. That's how I educate the people [in the IAF], and that's what the air force does. And, still, I'm aware that this is war, with live fire, and things will happen that I don't want to happen. Because to protect your child and my child, that can happen.

Tie a blue ribbon for Gilad and Eliyahu
By Bradley Burston

There's an inexplicable calm regarding Gilad Shalit.

Must be the way the world works.

When the missile hit his tank, Gilad Shalit was guarding our pre-1967 war border.

The border that Hamas has been talking about for months. The one to which, should we withdraw, they would make peace with us for generations.

Or until Sunday morning, whichever came first.

When the missile hit his tank, two of his crewmates, Hanan Barak and Pavel Slutzker, were killed in the blast. A third was seriously injured.

And there was Gilad, this kid, bleeding, alone, dragged off into the Gaza Strip by men who would probably rather kill him than look at him.

There's this heartbreaking photograph of a kid not 20 years old. The wide, unspoiled smile, doubtless unchanged from when he was small.

There is this lovely family, their guard let down because they believed him to be serving in the north, far from danger. A father who, in the depth of his dread, can say to the kidnappers, "We believe that those who are holding him also have families and children, and that they know what we are feeling."

The world can't give a fallen fig.

When the missile hit, there was this kid, stationed at a quiet IDF position, not in the territories, nowhere near Palestinians.

And here is this kidnapping of a soldier in an army which has withdrawn from the internationally recognized whole of the once-occupied Gaza Strip.

The world cares not at all.

Perhaps we should care more. Perhaps it's time people made a small statement in as many places as possible.

Now there is another kid being held, by the celebrants of horrible death, under threat of horrible death: Eliyahu Asheri, even younger than Gilad.

Tie a blue ribbon on a tree for Gilad, and for Eliyahu. So that people will ask what it's for, and you can tell them.

So that they won't be left alone, nor their family.

Ignore the voices - you can hear them already - saying that Gilad had it coming, as a member of a military that attacks Palestinians - the Palestinians that fire Qassams into homes, schools and medical clinics, the Palestinians that fire Qassams every single day, sometimes as many as seven times a day.

Ignore the voices - you know what they're going to spit at you, saying that Eliyahu had it coming, just because his parents decided to raise him on the wrong side of the Green Line.

The world doesn't give a fallen fig.

The world has washed its hands of the Palestinians. The world has washed its hands of Hamas. The world is tired of our troubles as well.

There's a sense that this is a kidnapping that even Hamas would rather not think about.

The answer may well lie somewhere between the Twin Towers and Faluja. Mass murder in the name of God, beheadings in the name of God, bombing after bombing after bombing after bombing in the name of God, gets to us after a while. Our ability to care, our very ability to notice, has been compromised by a reign of terror of such enormity, of such horror, of such duration, that the threshold of our emotional attention has become all but unreachable.

But just this once ...

We should tie a blue ribbon for Gilad, and for Eliyahu. For the sake of their families. For our own sake. For the sake of the world.

So that people will ask what it's for. And so they'll find out.

Insurgents Support Our Troops!
Eleven Sunni "insurgent" organizations have reportedly told the Iraqi government that they will lay down their arms in exchange for a series of concessions, the key one being that American forces cease all offensive operations against them and set a timetable for withdrawal within two years. The insurgents' position is actually more moderate than the liberal Democrats'; the Democrats wanted to pull out within 18 months, not 24, without getting anything in return--not even an empty promise to lay down arms. So the insurgents must really support the troops!

I'm sure there must be a flaw in that logic, but I haven't yet figured out what it is.

We're not among those who, assuming the moral equivalence of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, condemn a "cycle of violence" in which both sides participate. Pound for pound, over all these years each Israeli raid was unmistakably defensive or preventative.

To the extent Arafat's "moderate" successor, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has in the past grim hours won the cooperation of his Hamas foes, Israel's instant shift to war footing can be credited. Remember: Just days ago Hamas, emboldened by its new parliamentary power, was storming Abbas' government offices.

These are not reliable people, as shown by Hamas' kidnapping of 19-year-old Gilad Shalit, an Israeli corporal, offering him (alive or dead) in exchange for imprisoned Palestinian women and children. That appeal is less innocent than it might seem: Hamas regularly send women and children on suicide missions.

So Israel's lightning response should be seen as a massive exercise in self-preservation and an act of moral clarity. The kidnapping (and possible murder) of Shalit constituted an act of war, committed by an outfit born in terror and dedicated to the death of Israel.

Israel was also right to rattle Syrian President Bashir Assad's windows. Syria makes no secret of its long support for Hamas; indeed, Assad may know something about the corporal's whereabouts. Assad recently was forced by a popular uprising to stop his long subversion of Lebanon.

While the European Union and the U.S. fret as Israel and the Palestinians march toward the brink, we're grateful that somebody, at long last, put the big-time worry into a weakened Assad. That's a step toward peace.

Israel is undertaking several moves designed to increase pressure on Hamas to free Cpl. Gilad Shalit and return him safely to his family, including some very unexpected moves. It appears that Israel is in the process of a major round-up of the Hamas leadership. Hamas officials say that more than 30 "lawmakers" have been arrested in the West Bank (we can only hope the numbers are that high). Three Hamas "parliamentarians" -- Mohammed Abu Tir, Wael al-Husseini and Ahmed a-Tun -- are confirmed to have been arrested in East Jerusalem. Earlier, the IDF surrounded a Ramallah hotel where the Hamas Deputy PM Nasser al-Shaer was holed up, and then arrested him. Not long ago, Palestinian Labor Minister Mohammad Barghouti was arrested at a roadblock north of Ramallah. The entire Hamas leadership in the West Bank is being taken into custory -- Israeli reports say that this is unprecedented in its scope. It's like you can't even be a terrorist anymore! The heads of Hamas, including many ministers and most Hamas parliament members have been taken into custody... As a result, the leadership has gone underground... At the same time, the IDF is attacking Hamas infrastructures in Gaza, where dozens more are expected to be arrested.

No casualties have been reported since the offensive began early Wednesday.

Murtha says U.S. poses top threat to world peace
MIAMI — American presence in Iraq is more dangerous to world peace than nuclear threats from North Korea or Iran, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said to an audience of more than 200 in North Miami Saturday afternoon.

Murtha was the guest speaker at a town hall meeting organized by Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, D-Miami, at Florida International University's Biscayne Bay Campus. Meek's mother, former Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Miami, was also on the panel.

War veterans, local mayors, university students and faculty were in the Mary Ann Wolfe Theatre to listen to the three panelists discuss the war in Iraq for an hour.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Democratic leaders see America as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes this Marine madder than someone calling American troops occupiers rather than liberators.

I am afraid the Palestinians have lived so long in a state of rage and paranoia that peace would give them a nervous breakdown.

Imagine what would happen in the highly unlikely possibility that their leadership said let's forget Israel and concentrate on building a successful society of our own. Very few people would know what to do. Their entire culture has been constructed around blaming the other.

Witness the pure insanity of yesterday's incursion north of Gaza. According to Haaretz, Mahmoud Abbas has washed his hands of the whole affair and told the Hamas leadership they will have to deal with their own lunatics who have decided this was the time to kidnap an Israeli soldier (for the sake of what?). The Hamas leaders' response, according to the same article, is to go into hiding, fearing for their lives (they should). What the Palestinians need more than anything is an influx of about 100,000 psychotherapists.

A fresh barrage of criticism is erupting over the decision of The New York Times to disclose last night another classified surveillance program aimed at gathering information about terrorist plots.

"The president is concerned that, once again, the New York Times has chosen to expose a classified program that is protecting the American people," a White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said last night. "We know that terrorists look for any clue about the weapons we're using to fight them and now, with this exposure, they have more information and it increases the challenge for our law enforcement and intelligence officials."

The Times report, which appears in today's editions and was posted last evening on the paper's Web site, details the federal government's use of subpoenas to gather large troves of data from a Belgium-based consortium that handles international bank transfers, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, known as Swift.
. . .
The newspaper said the surveillance effort helped lead to the capture in Thailand in 2003 of a top Al Qaeda op erative, Riduan Isamuddin, who also went by the name Hambali.

The Times reported that it decided to report publicly on the program despite requests by administration officials that the newspaper not publish the story. The officials argued that the disclosure could reduce the effort's effectiveness, the newspaper said.

The executive editor of the Times, Bill Keller, said the newspaper was not persuaded. "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration," Mr. Keller said. "We remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Because the war on terror is fought in a peacetime atmosphere, treason can be presented as dissent, and you can get away with it. Case in point is the energetic pursuit, and publication, of U.S. intelligence gathering techniques, by the American media
. . .
Again, the threat to civil liberties, relative to the lack of a real terrorist threat, was used to justify what was basically treason in time of war. But the war on terror is not a normal war. There's no country to declare war on, so there's no formal declaration of war. Every war has it's dissenters and opposition politicians criticizing how the war is fought. The unique nature of the war on terror, with much of the action being on the domestic front, has us searching for terrorists among our own population. This leads to opposition groups depicting success against the terrorists (no attacks) as the absence of a real threat. This leads to implications that the government is using the war on terror to establish government intelligence gathering programs that threaten civil liberties.
. . .
These traitors will continue to get away with it. Unless their activities are shown to assist terrorists in a particularly direct and obvious way, scary stories about potential perils will continue to protect those attacking the counter-terrorism effort. By blurring the line between legitimate dissent and active assistance to the enemy, political opportunism has sunk to new lows.

BILL KELLER ISN'T VERY BRIGHT, or else he thinks you aren't. How else to explain this passage in his apologia for the Times' publication of classified information about the terrorist financial surveillance program:

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.)

I realize that the Times' circulation is falling at an alarming rate, but it hasn't yet reached such a pass that its stories are only noticed when Rush Limbaugh mentions them.

A deeper error is Keller's characterization of freedom of the press as an institutional privilege, an error that is a manifestation of the hubris that has marked the NYT of late. Keller writes: "It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. . . . The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly."

The founders gave freedom of the press to the people, they didn't give freedom to the press. Keller positions himself as some sort of Constitutional High Priest, when in fact the "freedom of the press" the Framers described was also called "freedom in the use of the press." It's the freedom to publish, a freedom that belongs to everyone in equal portions, not a special privilege for the media industry. (A bit more on this topic can be found here.)

Characterizing the freedom this way, of course, makes much of Keller's piece look like, well, just what it is -- arrogant and self-justificatory posturing. To quote Keller: "Forgive me, I know this is pretty elementary stuff — but it's the kind of elementary context that sometimes gets lost in the heat of strong disagreements."

Or institutional self-importance. As Hugh Hewitt observes, at the conclusion to a much lengthier critique: "He doesn't have any defense other than his position as editor of a once great newspaper."

And the Constitution does not permit titles of nobility.

Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with the Times - from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, Governor Tom Kean and Congressman Lee Hamilton, met in person or placed calls to the very highest levels of the Times urging the paper not to publish the story. Members of Congress, senior U.S. Government officials and well-respected legal authorities from both sides of the aisle also asked the paper not to publish or supported the legality and validity of the program.

Indeed, I invited you to my office for the explicit purpose of talking you out of publishing this story. And there was nothing "half-hearted" about that effort.

I don't think that the newspapers are treasonous, or doing this solely in an effort to thwart President Bush (i.e. I don't think that a Democratic president would be getting a free ride right now). That doesn't mean that the impacts of what they are doing doesn't damage the country, put lives at risk, or negatively impact President Bush's effectiveness.

I think, in simple terms, that they have forgotten that they are citizens...

I think that they're offended at the notion that citizenship might involve obligations to do something other than what you want to do anyway.

A Campus for 'Scholars, Not Fighters' on a Settlement Site

Khalil Hamra/Associated Press
A poster of Yasir Arafat has a place of honor on a
cafeteria wall on the new campus of Al Aksa University.

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: June 21, 2006

GAZA, June 16 — A Palestinian college is growing from the rubble of an uprooted Israeli settlement.

Nearly a year ago, the Israelis pulled all their 9,000 settlers and military forces out of the Gaza Strip and then took bulldozers and backhoes to what used to be homes, schools, shops and clinics, leaving a few gutted synagogues, a few hundred greenhouses and tons of rubble.

Throughout most of the former settlements, Palestinians have thoroughly mined the debris for metal, wiring, fixtures and almost anything usable or sellable. But despite promises at the time, not an ounce of rubble has been removed or reprocessed, leaving a post-apocalyptic landscape baking in the unforgiving sun.

Except at the site of Neve Dekalim. On nearly 41 acres surrounding what used to be the largest school in what used to be called the Gush Katif bloc, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, decreed a campus. He granted it to Al Aksa University, affiliated with his Fatah party, which lost elections this year to Hamas.

With seed money of $1.5 million from the sheik of Sharjah, one of the United Arab Emirates, the university hired its own security guards, built its own wall and started clearing and rebuilding.

The first students appeared in March, as construction went on around them, and now some 2,000 men drawn from cramped branches of the overcrowded university all over southern Gaza are taking their exams here. A new classroom building is going up to house 4,000 women, who are taught separately in this conservative society.

Mahmoud al-Shami, the deputy dean of student affairs, said he hoped that the women could be part of the campus by September for at least two days a week as building continued.

Mr. Shami showed off his office, with its satellite Internet connections, new desk, fixtures and fittings. "Now we're focusing on creating scholars, not fighters," he said.

A group of students wandered on the repaved walkways, chatting excitedly after finishing a linguistics exam. Almutaz Abu Sittah, 19, tall and handsome, was proud of the campus but dour about the future.

"There's little optimism," he said. "The world is besieging us. And there's no real government, and no real state to govern."

Does he feel freer? "We've grown up," he said, "with vengeance in our hearts."

"a very sick child"
Copyright © 2006 Diane Covert

"nail in neck"
Copyright © 2006 Diane Covert

I was in college then, riding the bus to campus.

When he exploded, his watch blasted into my neck.

Civilized people everywhere must condemn terrorism. We must speak in one voice. There is no excuse for terrorism - ever.

Al Gore refuses to endorse Joe Lieberman — his former running mate — in Lieberman's re-election fight. (Nod to Ezra Klein). I guess Lieberman would have been good enough to run the government if something bad happened to Gore. But he's not obviously the best qualified to be the junior senator from Connecticut, even though he had the same job when Gore tapped him in 2000.

I've considered the suggestion that the Democrats will re-nominate either John Kerry or Al Gore somewhat ludicrous. It seems clear to me that the Democrats have seen all they want to of Kerry, and, while most Democrats have nothing against Gore, he had his chance in 2000 and has been mostly invisible since then.

A CNN poll out today confirms that both Gore and Kerry would be weak candidates; 48% say they would "definitely vote against" Gore, and 47% would "definitely vote against" Kerry. What's striking is that 47% say they would "definitely vote against" Hillary Clinton. Which means that, notwithstanding Clinton's assiduous image-burnishing over the past several years, her negatives are as high as ever...

Which leaves the Democrats in need of a candidate. It's unfortunate, from their perspective, that Kerry, Gore and Clinton are soaking up all of the current media oxygen. They badly need new candidates to emerge, but in the present environment, it won't be easy.

On the war, Democrats are fighting among themselves or, worse, running away from it altogether. Last week the party's most prominent politician, Hillary Clinton, rejected both the president's strategy of continuing with "his open-ended commitment" in Iraq and some Democrats' strategy of setting "a date certain" for withdrawal. She was booed by some in her liberal audience who chanted, "Bring the troops home now!" But her real sin was not that she failed to endorse that option, but that she failed to endorse any option.

During last week's congressional debate over the war in Iraq, critics of the Bush administration's policy made three arguments: that President Bush more or less lied when claiming Saddam Hussein was a threat to the U.S., there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that no progress is being made in the war there.

All three assumptions rest on shaky ground, so it is remarkable how much critics have seized on them with such fervor and certainty--the very vices of which they accuse the war's supporters. Indeed, one wonders how Democrats would react if real evidence of weapons of mass destruction, say the discovery of chemical weapon shells, surfaced. Would they step back and re-evaluate their assumptions, or would they accuse the Bush administration of planting the evidence as part of a Karl Rove-inspired pre-election dirty trick? Far from politics ending at the water's edge, today's partisan battles seem to take on added ferocity when they concern foreign policy.

Terrorism is an information war disguised as a military operation. The press plays a symbiotic role, and isn't willing to address that.

Yesterday morning (Tuesday), 13 June 2006, the IDF carried out an aerial attack in the northern Gaza Strip against a vehicle loaded with rockets and carrying a Islamic Jihad terrorist cell en route to launch long-range Katyusha (Grad) rockets against Israel. Thirty-eight rockets have been launched at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours; over 100 rockets have been launched at Israel since Friday, 9 June 2006.

According to Palestinians reports three terrorists who operated in the cell were killed, as well as eight civilians. After the attack the terror cell was seen removing the rockets from the vehicle.

"I state clearly that we are saddened by the deaths of these innocent Palestinians but hold absolutely no responsibility for them. The responsibility lies entirely on the shoulders of the Palestinians," said the Chief of Staff [Lt. Gen.] Dan Halutz last night, who added that "the incident must be evaluated in its context, which is that Palestinians attempted to launch Grad rockets against Israel, and we acted with determination to prevent their firing."

This is the fourth time in the past two months in which terrorist cells attempt to launch Grad rockets at Israel. On Knesset election day (March 28) a rocket fell south of Ashkelon; about a month later another attempt was thwarted. On the third attempt, which occurred on May 15, the rocket hit an Israeli community north of the Gaza Strip, and damaged civilian infrastructure.

These rockets are capable of causing much more serious damage than the Qassam rockets, because they can reach a range of 15 to 20 kilometers and carry much more explosives.

An expert at a local chapter of a human rights group disputes the Israeli claims. Okay. Let's concede for the sake of argument that the question of whether it was an errant Israeli shell remains unresolved. But the obvious question not being asked is this: Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel -- and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families on the Muslim Sabbath?
...
But there is an even larger question not asked. Whether the rocket bases are near civilian beaches or in remote areas, why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place -- about 1,000 in the past year?

To get Israel to remove its settlers, end the occupation and let the Palestinians achieve dignity and independence? But Israel did exactly that in Gaza last year. It completely evacuated Gaza, dismantled all its military installations, removed its soldiers, destroyed all Israeli settlements and expelled all 7,000 Israeli settlers. Israel then declared the line that separates Israel from Gaza to be an international frontier. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory ever.

And what have the Palestinians done with this independence, this judenrein territory under the Palestinians' control? They have used their freedom to launch rockets at civilians in nearby Israeli towns.

Why? Because the Palestinians prefer victimhood to statehood.

On Monday, the Human Rights Watch, while sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, conceded for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF's exonerating findings.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Hundreds of Palestinian security men loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas went on a rampage against the Hamas-led government Monday, riddling the parliament building and Cabinet offices with bullets before setting them ablaze in retaliation for an attack by Hamas gunmen in the Gaza Strip.
...
In Monday's unrest, hundreds of members of the Preventive Security force shot out the windows of the parliament building before storming the two-building Cabinet complex, where they smashed furniture, destroyed computers and tore up documents. No casualties were reported.

Shooting wildly in the air, the mob then set fire to one of the Cabinet buildings, gutting the fourth floor. When a fire engine approached the scene, one gunman lay on the road, preventing it from reaching the building.

"Every time they touch one of ours in Gaza, we will get 10 of theirs in the West Bank," said one member of the Preventive Security force. Dozens of gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a pro-Fatah militia, joined the mob.

The crowd also set fire to the parliament building and a Hamas office. Both blazes were quickly contained. Abbas' presidential guard later arrived to guard the burnt-out parliament and Cabinet buildings.

Late Monday, Fatah gunmen briefly abducted a Hamas lawmaker, Khalil Rabei, after attacking his office and setting it on fire. Rabei said he was kicked and threatened before he was released.