Guilt-Ridden Israelis, Must Be Defensive About Defending Jews on Jewish Land Because They’re Disconnected From Heritage …

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Stop Apologizing for Defending Ourselves, by Isi Leibler

Excerpts:

What a tragic missed opportunity. Over the past month the global media focused on Ehud Olmert as he met heads of state in Washington, London, Paris, Cairo and Amman on his maiden Prime Ministerial visit. It was a perfect opportunity for our eloquent Prime Minister to depict the nightmarish life that Israeli citizens in Sderot and the Western Negev were undergoing as their schools, hospitals, homes and infrastructure faced daily missile barrages from their Palestinian neighbors.

This should have been the ideal setting for Olmert to proclaim to the world that, like any other state, Israel would no longer tolerate its citizens being targeted in this manner and that those facilitating the missile attacks against Israeli women and children would bear the responsibility for Palestinian civilians harmed in the course of our legitimate efforts to defend ourselves.

Alas, instead of this, the media concentrated almost exclusively on our Prime Minister’s futile efforts to persuade heads of state to endorse his realignment program.

It is a disgrace that until recently the government of Israel has been understating the Kassam rocket as a primitive missile with limited range and low accuracy. By doing so it was implicitly conditioning us to come to terms with these attacks.

The time is now overdue for the Israeli government to bite the bullet.

Ehud Olmert must belatedly tell the world that Israel will continue making every effort to minimize civilian casualties. But he must proclaim that if the terrorists continue callously disregarding the lives of their kinsmen by exploiting them as human shields, storing weapons in hospitals and schools, and operating from heavily populated areas,

they will be responsible for the escalation in civilian casualties.

It is bizarre to expect us to continue providing water and electricity to neighbors who proclaim that their objective is to destroy us and rain rockets on our civilians. As a preliminary step in this direction Prime Minister Olmert should inform the Palestinians that from now, every time a Kassam rocket or other missile is launched against Israeli citizens, we will turn off the electricity and water from Gaza for three hours. That will surely be more effective than bombing empty fields and buildings.

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Envoys Prepare Defense of Gaza Strikes

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Even as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed regret in Petra on Thursday for Palestinian civilian casualties over the last few days, the Foreign Ministry armed its representatives abroad with … talking points to deflect a wave of criticism over the recent IDF actions.

According to diplomatic officials, some of Israel’s ambassadors are complaining that in the face of “real time” televised images over the last few days of dead Palestinian civilians, especially children, Jerusalem’s expressions of sorrow over the deaths have simply lost their impact.

On Wednesday, following a missile strike in Khan Yunis that killed a pregnant women and her brother, much more detailed … talking points were sent to Israel’s emissaries aboard that included the following:

• … A dubious double standard: Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians is viewed with indulgent tolerance, while Israel is blamed for ‘brutal repression’ if, when defending itself, Palestinian civilians are inadvertently harmed. This double standard must be refuted as both immoral and illogical.
• “When some 1,700 Israeli families left the 25 vibrant communities they had built over the last three decades [in Gaza], it was expected that the Palestinians of Gaza would respond by starting to build their own lives in a territory newly devoid of any Israeli presence. Instead, in nearly a year since disengagement, Palestinian terrorists have escalated the conflict, firing more than 500 Kassam artillery rockets at the Israeli civilian population living adjacent to the Gaza Strip.”
• “When Palestinians willfully target Israeli civilians, whether by a suicide bomber or a Kassam rocket fired into the midst of a town, they are morally responsible for inviting Israel’s counter-terrorist strikes in response, including any Palestinian casualties that may result. … when Palestinian terrorists deliberately and cynically deploy their rocket launchers, weapons factories or arms warehouses among their own civilian population in order to shield themselves from Israeli action, they knowingly and purposely endanger their own civilians.”
• “Israel of course regrets the loss of innocent life and takes every precaution to avoid harming civilian bystanders when taking self-defensive action against Palestinian terrorists. … Aaccording to the Institute for Counter Terrorism of Herzliya, non-combatant Palestinian deaths average about 17 percent of all Palestinian deaths in the conflict, while non-combatant Israeli deaths average about 70%.”
• “Were there no terrorism, there would be no need for counter-terrorism. This difference is self-evident and cannot be overstated.”
• “… If the fruits of the present Palestinian self-government in the Gaza Strip are daily Kassam salvos, what vision does future Palestinian sovereignty promise?”
• The firing of Kassam rockets from the northern Gaza strip continued Thursday as three additional projectiles fell near Jewish communities in the western Negev.

The attacks came as an IAF investigation ordered by Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz concluded that a technical glitch was the cause of the botched missile strike in Khan Yunis. Army officials said the IAF had a senior Hamas member’s vehicle in its crosshairs but for reasons unknown, the missile strayed from its path and struck an adjacent house. The IAF is still investigating the precise technical problem that caused the missile to fly off course.

Shteinitz: Gov’t Believes Illusions

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Likud Knesset Member Yuval Shteinitz told Voice of Israel government radio Friday that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his supporters are living a life of illusions by pursuing Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas as a partner for peace negotiations.

The former head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee criticized the Prime Minister for hugging and kissing Abbas in Petra while the PA does not stop Kassam rocket attacks on Israel. He pointed out that terrorist groups aligned with Abbas’s Fatah party are behind half of terrorist attacks.