Thursday, July 17, 2014

Nathan Thrall, "How the West Chose War in Gaza": The New York Times Continues to Wage Op-ed War Against Israel

In a guest New York Times op-ed entitled "How the West Chose War in Gaza" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/18/opinion/gaza-and-israel-the-road-to-war-paved-by-the-west.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0), Nathan Thrall would have us believe that Israel, with the help of Egypt and the West, brought the current war with Hamas upon itself. Thrall begins:

"AS Hamas fires rockets at Israeli cities and Israel follows up its extensive airstrikes with a ground operation in the Gaza Strip, the most immediate cause of this latest war has been ignored: Israel and much of the international community placed a prohibitive set of obstacles in the way of the Palestinian 'national consensus' government that was formed in early June.

That government was created largely because of Hamas’s desperation and isolation. The group’s alliance with Syria and Iran was in shambles. Its affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt became a liability after a July 2013 coup replaced an ally, President Mohamed Morsi, with a bitter adversary, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Hamas’s coffers dried up as General Sisi closed the tunnels that had brought to Gaza the goods and tax revenues on which it depended."

No mention by Thrall of the Hamas charter, which calls for the murder of all Jews, not just Israelis.

No mention by Thrall of past suicide bombings in Israel perpetrated by Hamas operatives (425 terrorist attacks between September 2000 and March 2004, which killed 377 and wounded 2,076).

No mention by Thrall, after an initial fleeting reference in his first paragraph, of the thousands of rockets fired into Israeli population centers from Gaza by Hamas and Islamic Jihad over the course of more than a decade.

Bear in mind, Hamas, after losing the support of the Muslim Brotherhood when Sisi came to power in Egypt, and after losing the support of Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei by siding with the opposition in Syria, is bereft of backing, and Israel now needs to come to its aid in order to pay Hamas's 43,000 civil servants. You see, when a terrorist organization is facing collapse, you need to help it back on its feet. Yeah, right.

Those rockets fired into Israel which Thrall so studiously ignores? See the following table provided by the IDF (http://www.idfblog.com/facts-figures/rocket-attacks-toward-israel/):



Rocket fire? Mere mosquito bites, right? Who cares if they are now being indiscriminately aimed at Beersheva, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem? But can you imagine the response in the US if debris from exploding rockets was falling on the heads of the inhabitants of Philadelphia, New York and Washington? Americans would not put up with this for an instant.

Thrall declares:

"It is unsustainable for Gaza to remain cut off from the world and administered by employees working without pay. A more generous cease-fire, though politically difficult for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would be more durable."

Of course, Thrall is aping President Obama, who three days ago also declared that the situation in Gaza in "unsustainable" (http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-even-after-truce-status-quo-unsustainable/). Regrettably, it never occurred to Thrall or Obama that it is "unsustainable" for Gaza to be ruled by a terrorist organization calling for the murder of all Jews, and that a cease-fire should begin with a renunciation by Hamas of its offensive racist charter.

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