Gaza, Burmese Pythons, a Visit Behind Bars, Ski Masks

The Fighting in Gaza, Sad but True

In Gaza, the core of the problem is that Hamas is unwilling to halt its rocket attacks because its aim is not peace with Israel, nor for the Palestinians living in Gaza.  Hamas, when the current violence ends, will stop firing its rockets into Israel only if such a hiatus would give them a greater opportunity in the future to attack and destroy the State of Israel.  This is despite their knowledge that most Palestinians on the West Bank and even in Gaza, despite their animosity toward Israel, do not go so far as denying Israel the right to exist, which is Hamas’ position.

   

 

Actually, Hamas is not unhappy with Israel moving troops into Gaza to destroy their store of rockets. They welcome it because they believe the negative international reaction to Israel’s military action and the unavoidable civilian deaths which accompany it, do more harm to Israel than the rockets are doing. 

Israel has no choice but to go after the rockets and those firing them.  Hamas had its chance at a cease fire and said "No."  Israel's army would not be there if there were no rockets being fired toward their cities.  So Israel is hurt either way ... and Palestinian lives in Gaza, to Hamas, are expendable.  Sad, but true.

Jack Lippman 

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More eloquent than my words on this subject are those of Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post columnist and frequent commentator on Fox News.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I disagree with his opinions, but in his July 17 column, he is right on the mark in describing the situation in Gaza, including the absurdity of looking at the antagonists from a standpoint of "moral equivalency."  Here it is for those who have missed it.  You might want to "copy and paste" it onto an Email and forward it to your friends and relatives, or simply tell them to check it out on this blog.  It should be required reading.
JL

The Truth About Gaza
Charles Krauthammer

Israel accepts an Egyptian-proposed Gaza ceasefire; Hamas keeps firing. Hamas deliberately aims rockets at civilians; Israel painstakingly tries to avoid them, actually telephoning civilians in the area and dropping warning charges, so-called roof knocking.

“Here’s the difference between us,” explains the Israeli prime minister. “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.”

Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity. Yet we routinely hear this Israel–Gaza fighting described as a morally equivalent “cycle of violence.” This is absurd. What possible interest can Israel have in cross-border fighting? Everyone knows Hamas set off this mini-war. And everyone knows Hamas’s proudly self-declared raison d’être: the eradication of Israel and its Jews.

Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? There is not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli in Gaza. Does no one remember anything? It was less than ten years ago that worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling diehard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted it settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military, and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians.

There was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.

The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. No one seems to remember that simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel’s desire to leave the West Bank too and thus achieve an amicable two-state solution.

And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them — an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then, instead of building a state with its attendant political and economic institutions, they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.

Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques, and private homes to better expose their own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Why? The rockets can’t even inflict serious damage, being almost uniformly intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: “What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?”

It makes no sense. Unless you understand, as a Washington Post editorial explained, that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire.

This produces dead Palestinians for international television. Which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.

To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance, and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense.

In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.

It’s to the Israelis’ credit that amid all this madness they haven’t lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.

Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2014 The Washington Post Writers Group

 

                                  

Your Neighbor: The *Burmese Python
Here's a picture to illustrate how large the Burmese Pythons now inhabiting the Florida Everglades are!  Descendants of pets released there by uncaring owners, these snakes have no natural enemies in the Everglades and are thriving and reproducing prolifically there. They even take on alligators.  While sometimes a large Burmese Python can kill and swallow a small alligator, bigger alligators can hold their own against them as illustrated. Most recently, Palm Beach County (Florida) park employees have been instructed as to how to deal with these snakes, which are slowly finding their way into residential neighborhoods.  (It might be a good idea to secure you garage and patio doors.)

*Sooner or later in the name of political correctness, these creatures will probably become known as "Myanmarese Pythons" but until that happens, we will still call them "Burmese."

 

Burmese Pythons are big, powerful reptiles

The Alligator sometimes wins

The Python sometimes wins

  
And may experience extreme gastric distress from overeating


JL

                                                                  

                                           


Visiting Hours on Your TV Screen

If you have difficulty sleeping and turn your TV on during the early morning hours, after the late night interview shows and news commentaries are finished, you will encounter a kind of program not usually seen during prime time.  You are taken inside of prisons all over the country and exposed to the way life is there.  CNN, during weekends, features “Death Row Stories” and “Forensic Files.”  MSNBC features “Lockup” and “Inmates and Outlaws” during the early hours.  Scattered elsewhere on your screen are such programs as “Jail” and “Women in Prison.”  

All of this has culminated in the Netflix blockbuster, “Orange is the New Black,” a continuing saga of life in a woman’s prison where some of the characters’ jumpsuit prison clothing is orange, hence the title.  The mostly lesbian sex in this program is quite graphic.  Winner of several awards for excellence in a TV production, it is among the favorites to win an Emmy this year.

The gang from "Orange is the New Black" in their jail duds

 

That this kind of programming succeeds on television might reflect the fact that the United States, as reported in an article in The Economist, has a prison population of roughly 2.4 million according to the Prison Policy Initiative, a criminal justice research and advocacy group. 

Are there enough Americans who know, or know of, someone who is incarcerated to be drawn to this kind of programming?  Are enough viewers fascinated by life behind bars that sponsors will support these programs with advertising dollars?  Or are things so bad in the country today from an income and career standpoint that some viewers are drawn to these programs because seeing imprisoned people, far worse off than they are, makes them less dissatisfied with their lot.

JL

 
                                                           
 

A Plan to Increase World Peace

One thing which the pro-Russian separatists in the Ukraine, the army of ISIS (or ISIL if you prefer) in Iraq and Hamas infiltrators into Israel have in common is that they often wear black ski masks during their operations.  Thugs and terrorists throughout the world seem to do this.  Domestically, criminals engaged in robberies often wear them too.  Watch TV tonight for the pictures taken at the latest convenience store heist.   If there were to be a worldwide ban on the manufacture of black ski masks, would that not reduce violence in the world?  In Nigeria, the Boko Haram terrorists do not wear ski masks, but hide their features with a scarf across their face.  They probably cannot afford masks.

JL
                                                               
                                                          

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