Here’s some good news for terrorists: You can start a war, be defeated by those you intended to destroy, and America will still reimburse your losses.
On October 12, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States has committed more than $400 million to help Gaza rebuild after Hamas provoked a devastating war with Israel in July.
U.S. Department of the Treasury
The war opened on July 7, with the militant group Hamas apparently confident that it could defeat the awesome power of an unleashed Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
In June, three Israeli teenagers had been kidnapped and murdered. Israeli authorities suspected the culprits were members of Hamas, the terrorist organization that’s long called for Israel’s destruction.
In a desperate search for the missing teens, Israeli forces killed 10 Palestinians, injured 130 and arrested 500 to 600 others.
Hamas, in turn, began launching rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it has controlled since June, 2007. By July 7, 100 rockets had been fired at Israel.
Israeli planes retaliated by attacking 50 targets in Gaza.
On July 8, during a 24-hour period, Hamas fired more than 140 rockets into Israel from Gaza. Saboteurs also tried to infiltrate Israel from the sea, but were intercepted.
A Hamas rocket streaks toward Israel
That same day–July 8, 2014–Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, a full-scale military attack on Gaza.
Hamas then announced that it considered “all Israelis”–including women, children, the elderly and disabled–to be legitimate targets.
On July 8, Hamas–acting as though it were laying down peace terms to an already defeated Israel–issued the following demands:
- End all attacks on Gaza;
- Release Palestinians arrested during the crackdown on the West Bank;
- Lift the blockade on Gaza; and
- Return to the cease-fire conditions of 2012.
Only then would Hamas be open to a ceasefire agreement.
Egypt offered a cease-fire proposal. Israel quickly accepted it, temporarily stopping hostilities on July 15. But Hamas claimed that it had not been consulted and rejected the agreement.
Palestinians continued to blithely launch hundreds of rockets at Israel–but went into ecstasies of grief before television cameras when one of their own was killed by Israeli return fire.
A Hamas funeral
The effectiveness of Israel’s response has brought that nation under repeated verbal attacks by Hamas-sympathetic nations.
The charge: Israel is being too effective at defending itself, killing more Palestinians than Hamas is able to kill Israelis.
Reuven Berko, a former soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently addressed this charge in a guest column in the online newsletter, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
A major reason for so many civilian deaths among Palestinians, writes Berko, is that Hamas turns them into human shields by hiding its missiles in heavily-populated centers.
On July 17, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Far East (UNRWA) discovered approximately 20 rockets hidden in a vacant UN school in the Gaza Strip.
“UNRWA strongly condemns the group or groups responsible for placing the weapons in one of its installations,” said the agency in an announcement. “This is a flagrant violation of the inviolability of its premises under international law.”
UNRWA claimed that “this incident…is the first of its kind in Gaza.” But Israel counters that this is just one of many proven instances of Hamas hiding its fighters and munitions among a heavily civilian population.
Click here: UNRWA Strongly Condemns Placement of Rockets in School | UNRWA
At the heart of Berko’s editorial is the subject of “proportionality.”
Writes Berko: “Israel is held to an impossible moral double standard.
“Israelis, proportionality advocates seem to believe, should be killed by Hamas rockets instead of following Home Front Command instructions and running to shelters, to say nothing of Israel’s blatant unfairness in protecting its civilians with the Iron Dome aerial defense system….
“Anyone who demands that Israel agree to a life of terror governed by a continuous barrage of rockets and mortar shells on the heads of its women and children in the name of restraint and ‘proportionality’ would never agree to risk the safety of their own families in a similar situation.”
Berko points out that during World War 11, the Allies didn’t hesitate to retaliate for the Nazi blitz of London. In February, 1945, British and American planes firebombed Dresden, killing about 25,000 people.
Nor did America feel guilty about dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, killing about 250,000 civilians.
Summing up his argument, Berko writes: “The ridiculous demand for proportionality contradicts every basic principle of warfare.
“According to American strategist Thomas Schelling, you have to strike your enemy hard enough to make it not worthwhile for him to continue….
“In the Western world, killing someone in self-defense is considered justifiable homicide.”
And now the United States is underwriting–to the tune of $400 million–the losses Hamas incurred in its effort to destroy America’s chief ally in the Middle East.
Apparently, the United States is willing to deplete its treasury for any reason–including financing the losses of its sworn enemies.
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PLAGUE AS PROPHECY
In Bureaucracy, History, Social commentary on October 16, 2014 at 12:32 am“It was virulent beyond anything in anyone’s memory, and the most terrifying effect of this mysterious virulence was not only that it killed so many people but that it turned them against one another.”
So opens “The Black Death,” the third chapter of Otto Friedrich’s brilliant 1986 book, The End of the World: A History.
The narrative examines “the monumental, often inexplicable catastrophes that have at various times swept over humankind–moments when, for numerous people, the world did come to an end.”
Among the catastrophes vividly depicted by Friedrich:
As America comes face-to-face with the terrors of Ebola, the pages Friedrich devotes to the original plague may turn out to be as much prophecy as history.
Bubonic plague originated in Central Asia, killing 25 million people. Upon reaching Constantinople in 1347, it spread to Naples and Venice. Trade ships from these ports spread the plague to southern France and Italy.
It reached Paris in June, 1348, and London several months later. By 1350, all Europe was ravaged by the plague.
Within four years it destroyed a quarter to half of the population of Europe.
The plague was caused by the bacillus Pasteurella pestis, which lives in rats and other rodents. The fleas living in these animals transmitted the plague to people by biting them. Within five days, the victims had died.
By the time the plague had run its course, it had killed 75 to 200 million people.
The signs of infection became unmistakable: Growths in the thighs, about the size of apples, then dark blotches and bruises on the thighs, arms and other parts of the body.
As a result of these dark blotches, the plague quickly became known as the Black Death.
“O happy posterity,” wrote the Italian poet Petrarch, “who will look upon our testimony as a fable. Will posterity believe that there was a time when, with no deluge from heaven, no worldwide conflagration, no wars or other visible devastation…but almost the whole earth was depopulated?”
The plague destroyed not only the lives of its victims but the fragile bonds that hold society together.
“As the number of deaths increased in Messina,” wrote the Franciscan monk Michael, “many desired to confess their sins to the priests and to draw up their last will and testament. But priests and lawyers refused to enter the houses of the deceased….
“Soon men hated each other so much that, if a son was attacked by the disease, his father would not tend him. If, in spite of all, he dared to approach him, he was immediately infected….
“Soon the corpses were lying forsaken in the houses. No priest, no son, no father and no relation dared to enter, but they paid hired servants with high wages to bury the dead. Soon there was a shortage of servants and finally none at all.”
Bones of plague victims stacked by a monk at the Sedlec Ossuary.
No one knew what caused it. Many–especially members of the Catholic clergy–believed the plague was God’s judgment on a sinful world.
Philip VI, the king of France, fearing this might be true, issued a proclamation against blasphemy. For a first offense, a blasphemer’s lip would be cut off; for a second, the other lip. And for a third offense, the tongue.
Medical professors at the University of Paris believed that a disturbance in the skies had caused the sun to overheat the oceans near India. As a result, the waters were giving off toxic vapors.
Guy de Chauliac, the physician to Pope Clement VI, believed that the plague had been caused by a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, in the sign of Aquarius. This, he believed, had corrupted the earth’s atmosphere.
Just as no one knew what had caused the plague, no one knew how to protect oneself against it.
Among the remedies prescribed: Bleeding, purging, bathing in vinegar to purify the body and the burning of odiferous wood to purify the air.
Others trusted to faith, praying for deliverance. Some went on pilgrimages or subjected themselves to self-flagellation to expiate their sins. The Brotherhood of the Flagellants appeared in Dresden, Hamburg and Magdeburg, then spread throughout Europe.
For others, debauchery seemed to be the road to salvation–or at least temporary happiness while they waited for the plague to claim them.
“People behaved as if their days were numbered,” wrote Giovanni Boccaccio, “and treated their belongings and their own persons with equal abandon. Hence most houses had become common property and any passing stranger could make himself at home.”
Yet none of the prescribed medical cures brought relief. And no amount of religious devotion brought salvation.
As Friedrich notes: “One of the most baffling and terrifying aspects of the plague [was] its indiscriminate slaughter of the devout as well as the sinful. If this was God’s anger, how could it be understood, much less appeased?”
The plague ravaged France, Germany, England, Spain, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Russia. After devastating London in 1665 and Marseille in 1720, the disease mysteriously disappeared.
Some believe the common black rat was destroyed by the larger brown rat, which lived outdoors, away from people. Others believe a milder, mutant form of the disease caused its victims to build up immunities.
No one knows for certain.
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