Archive for Hamas

Introducing Nahoul the Bee

Posted by: Ion | July 17th, 2007 · 12:26 AM

Nahoul the Bee has pledged to follow in the path of his cousin, Farfour the Martyr Mouse. Farfaour’s path was last seen when he was screwing up a real estate deal so badly, that he was bludgeoned to death. Hey, 40% Palestinian unemployment has to start somewhere.

Waning Olmert

Posted by: Ion | June 20th, 2007 · 10:20 AM

Few except President Bush would deny that Ehud Olmert has proven to be one of the most disastrously inept Prime Ministers of Israel in recent memory. In the face of the Lebanon debacle and now the Hamas takeover of Gaza, many polls have shown his favorability numbers falling beneath the margin of error.

This week Angus Reid is reporting Olmert’s reelection numbers are a staggeringly low 5%. With the fall of Kadima, the upcoming election, is beginning to look like a rematch of 1999:

Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud): 34%
Ehud Barak (Labor): 25%
Ehud Olmert (Kadima): 5%

(AngusReid)

While Bush was praising Olmert’s materially nonexistent “strength” in Washington, Olmert’s party coalition began to demonstrate signs of open fracture back home.

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Talk to the Gunship

Posted by: Ion | June 19th, 2007 · 2:51 AM

(photo: hotair)

In ruling out diplomacy with Hamas in Gaza, Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy Defense minister, has a choice quote about what’s to come:

“There’s no common ground [with Hamas],” says Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy Defense minister. Dialogue, he says, is almost certainly a nonstarter. “Listen to them, for God’s sake!” he says. “Gaza will be worse than Mogadishu. Our Apache [helicopter gunships] will talk to them.“
(MSNBC)

:)

Hamas vs. Fatah

Posted by: Ion | June 14th, 2007 · 10:47 PM

Six Days to Forever

Posted by: Ion | June 6th, 2007 · 9:17 AM

This week the forty year anniversary of the Six Day War is upon us. That is to say, the anniversary of the death of the Nasserite secular Arab nationalist dream. The implications of the occasion were well captured yesterday, in a sound piece by Jonathan Kay. However, toward the end of it, he gets round to the crucial consequence and leaves a bit on the table:

Forty years ago, it was easy to believe that Jews were simply better fighters than Arabs. But the problem wasn’t that Arabs don’t make good soldiers: It was that few of them were willing to die for corrupt, dysfunctional Arab autocracies. Now that Allah is their inspiration, things are very different. In the next 40 years, the descendants of Joshua Bin-Nun, King David and the Maccabees will face a far tougher foe.
(National Post)

That’s a bit of a confusion, even if he ends up in the right place. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s command to his troops after all wasn’t to die for his dictatorship, but to die for the pan-Arab dream. One might as well say the Hamas militant in contemporary times, is dying for Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. That’s perhaps only true as a spectator.

Yet the new Islamist fighter is dying for another dream of reunification, which not coincidentally, is just as farcical and anachronistic as the old Nasserite mantras. It is only more difficult for being more elemental, as the purposes are little removed: utopia in empire.

But as in 1967, enduring victory for Israel consists of demonstrating to her enemy, that dying for the cleric’s fatwa, is the same thing as dying for Nasser’s decree: pointless. Not an easy task to put it mildly. But it does have the enduring merit of being true.

Al Qaeda in Gaza

Posted by: Ion | May 18th, 2007 · 12:59 PM

It seems there’s increasing evidence that Al Qaeda has been utilizing the deteriorating Open Source Warfare environment of Hamas controlled Gaza to establish itself. Also, rather than resisting the imported group, Hamas seems to be collaborating with them in ways that should not have been unexpected. A new report suggests that Hamas may see Al Qaeda as an easy vehicle toward finally eradicating their hated rival the Fatah:

“Even external appearances show Al Qaeda’s growing influence as members of its affiliate movements in the Gaza Strip will often wear the same black head covering that was a trademark of the late Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” noted HaLevi.

“All the evidence indicates that rather than challenge Al Qaeda’s bid to expand its presence in the Gaza Strip, Hamas prefers to collaborate with these new militant groups,” he added.
(Arutz Sheva)

Walt’s Daughter Not Happy About Mickey Hamas

Posted by: Ion | May 9th, 2007 · 8:26 AM

Walt Disney’s surviving daughter isn’t pleased with Hamas’s conversion of Mickey Mouse into a fanatical jihadist lunatic. She tells the New York Daily News that it was an act of evil:

Diane Disney Miller said she was disgusted that a rip-off of her father’s iconic cartoon character was being used on a new Hamas TV show to encourage Palestinian children to take up arms against Israel and America.

“Of course I feel personal about Mickey Mouse, but it could be Barney as well,'’ Ms Miller, 73, told the New York Daily News.“It’s not just Mickey, it’s indoctrinating children like this, teaching them to be evil,'’ said Ms Miller, who owns a winery in northern California.”The world loves children and this is just going against the grain of humanity.'’
(The Australian)

If you somehow missed the much replayed video, it’s available here.

Soros vs Obama

Posted by: Ion | March 21st, 2007 · 1:33 PM

Barack Obama is distancing himself from a controversial essay by leftwing financier George Soros. In the piece, Soros reiterates his belief that a multi-tentacled cabal of Jewish interests exert control over US foreign policy, and are ultimately responsible for the lack of progress at peace between Israel and Hamas. Soros pointed the finger principally at AIPAC, which Obama recently spoke to, while stressing common cause.

For what it’s worth, Soros advocates Israeli capitulation to negotiation with Hamas, while Hamas still affirms its policy that all Jews should be killed. Advocating that the Israelis negotiate on fair terms with people who are functionally psychotic, is a totally unreasonable proposal:

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Hamas Continues Preparations for War

Posted by: Ion | March 6th, 2007 · 8:15 AM

The Shin Bet director says Iran has accelerated procurement and training for Hamas in Gaza during the present ceasefire:

Yuval Diskin, the director of Shin Bet, said the militant movement had dispatched fighters from the Gaza Strip to Iran for “months, maybe years” of instruction and that Iran had promised to train hundreds more.

Diskin said Hamas is taking advantage of a cease-fire reached with Israel in November to prepare for a future military confrontation. (ChiTrib)

Perhaps Ehud Olmert was persuaded afterall by the appeals of the European press, that he needed the restraint of “proportional response.” Hamas, strengthened by intransigence, can now be strengthened by arms to merit the full wrath of the IDF, no? Yeah, I’m looking at the flowers in the morgue.

I’ll tell you one thing, although I roundly mocked the doctrine of proportional response during the late unpleasantness, it would have been preferable to accepting a premature ceasefire with unmet objectives in both South Lebanon and Gaza, as Olmert did.