IJN editor in Israel: Aid diverted; Hamas leaders hiding

JERUSALEM — Here is news that does not seem to be getting out beyond the borders of Israel about Israel’s strike against Hamas terrorists in Gaza:

• Humanitarian aid.

Israel has been sending humanitarian assistance to Gaza ever since it imposed on embargo on the Hamas regime. Yet, Gaza always seems to be on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. You might think that the alternative explanations are (a) Israel is lying, and not really sending the aid; or (b) the Gazans are lying, doing better than they let on. Think again. There is a third explanation:

Hamas steals much of the aid — fuel, for example — and uses it in the manufacture of weapons for use against Israel.

The Israelis are not lying.

The Gazans are not lying.

A significant portion of the fuel meant to heat Palestinian homes is misappropriated by Hamas to make weapons.

Ditto for the food delivered by Israel. Much is diverted from civilian use to Hamas terrorists.

The “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza does, indeed, reflect a defeat of humanity — by the Hamas people in control of, and in neglect of, the people they were elected to serve.

• Civilian casualties.

There are civilian casualties in Gaza. But why?

Not just because of the well known fact that Hamas positions its fighters — and its weapons depots — in houses, in schools, in hospitals, in community centers, rendering any attack on them a simultaneous attack on civilians.

More than this:

Hamas prevents civilians from evacuating their residences.

Hamas prevents students from evacuating schools.

Hamas intentionally brings babies to battle zones.

The IDF has found in Gaza boobytrapped schools — i.e., schools rigged so that students could not escape.

The IDF has dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets on areas to be attacked, broadcast intended targets on television, even made thousands of telephone calls to houses used to store or manufacture weapons — all so people could flee, if only for a few hours or a day.

Still, civilians remain in these target areas and in many instances they are forced to.

• Respect for holy places.

Israel has long protected the holy places of religions other than Judaism, but Israel is not respecting certain holy places in Gaza.

Israel is bombing mosques. Why?

Certain mosques — the ones Israel has bombed — are staging areas for attacks on Israeli soldiers and storage depots for Kassam rockets, thousands of which have been fired from Gaza on civilian areas in the last eight years.

How does Israel know which mosques are disguised miliary facilities and which are not? Pardon the locution, but it’s not rocket science. Simply, Israel is fired upon from mosques.

For example, on Tuesday, Jan. 13, Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza were fired upon from a mosque. The soldiers fired back. Then, in a later search of the mosque, a large store of Kassam rockets and other weapons were found there.

Imagine that a large cache of rockets were stored in Temple Emanuel or St. John’s Cathedral, and the rockets in the temple were fired on the Federal Center, while the rockets in the cathedral were fired on Castle Rock. What would that say about Judaism and Christianity’s definition of religious freedom?

• The second war.

Supposedly, Israel is at war in Gaza. And Hamas in Gaza is fighting back, continuing to shoot missiles at Israeli cities, not just Sderot, but also Ashkelon, Ashdod and Beersheba.

This is just the second war Israel is engaged in. It’s the war that started Dec. 27, 2008. Here are two snippets from the first war, the war that never stops, the war that’s not reported:

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A Palestinian man tried to blow up a gas station in an industrial zone in the West Bank on Thursday, Jan. 8. The Palestinian doused with gasoline the gas station, the gas attendant and a car that pulled in to fill up. The would be terrorist tried to torch the station, but was shot dead first. Meanwhile, the gas attendant was burned, treated by Magen David Adom and then in Hadassah Hospital — he was an Arab. The driver of the car that was doused was not injured — he was a Jew.On the evening of Monday, Jan. 14, the back road to Gush Etzion was closed to civilian traffic due to Palestinian violence.

The rockets that fall, the houses that are destroyed, the people who are killed, the terrorists attacks that succeed — these are reported — as us the Israeli response, such as the current war in Gaza. Behind this war, and fueling it, and casting doubt on protestations of “peace” by everyone from the Palestinian Authority to the EU to the UN is the unreported war, the continuing terrorists incidents that are thwarted.

• United Israel.

Israel has right wing parties that would annex or rule the West Bank and Peace Now that would aid and abet Palestinian independence in every wary and every political opinion in between. However, at this juncture, Israel is more united than at any time since the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

Psalms by the religious are recited not only in the synagogue but over the airwaves; the Israeli election, normally a bitter and divisive affair, has gone into hibernation; “average” Israelis who vent their political opinions with passion and abandon, are quiet, hoping for victory over Hamas.

The solidarity is palpable, from the taxi driver to the grocery check-out person to the hotel bell hop, from all the people who, in normal times, represent the divisions in Israeli society: the rabbi, the secularist, the worker, the capitalist.

Israelis are well aware that large protests against their attack on Gaza have been held in Europe and the Arab world, not to mention in UN Resolution 1860, but Israelis are unmoved. Normally supersensitive to world opinion, they are now resolved to save their country; and if no one understands, so be it.

Discounts — or free entry — to amusement parks are offered to citizens of southern Israel. Countless thousands of students from southern Israel have transferred to schools elsewhere in Israel.

Morale is high. Confidence that the IDF is doing the job is high.

Confidence that Israel will become a safe country again is high.

Peace Now is against the continuation of the war; just before I left the US last week NPR gave Amos Oz much air time to project his views on why Operation Cast Lead was initially right but now is wrong — I am still waiting for my first radio commentator, TV commentator, newspaper columnist, “man in the street,” or politician from any party but Oz’s, to voice the same opinion. Israel is united.

• Israel is in the dark.

It is not only foreign reporters whom Israel is keeping out of Gaza. News reaching Israel about the operation is also very sparse. Here are the basics:

Israel has completed its major operations against Hamas in northern Gaza and has sent in reservist troops to control that area.

The active Israeli military has left northern Gaza and moved deeper into southern Gaza and into Gaza City to flush out and fight Hamas operatives. This is slow going. The defeat (usually the killing) of some 50 Hamas operatives a day is considered a success.

This yields a total of some 900 Hamas operatives killed in Operation Cast Lead so far, with some 2,500 wounded. Widespread estimates of a total of 20,000 Hamas operatives puts the war in perspective: While all of Hamas’ government buildings have been destroyed, about half of its arms smuggling tunnels have been destroyed, hundreds of weapons caches have been destroyed — the Hamas regime remains in power. It is badly bowed, but not beaten.

Still, the Hamas leadership in Gaza is virtually begging for a ceasefire, while the Hamas leadership in Damascus, under pressure from Iran, is opposed to a ceasefire.

The Hamas leadership in Gaza has gone underground, leading many to speculate that when the war is over their hiding will appear as cowardice and generate anger on the part of the Palestinians in Gaza. Anger at Hamas does not translate into sympathy for either Israel or the Fatah leadership in the West Bank.

Reports indicate that the military wing of Fatah is fighting right alongside Hamas in Gaza, revealing the supposed gap between the “radical” Hamas and the “moderate” Fatah to be fallacious, at least in part.

Defense Minister Barak is reported to favor a ceasefire, while Prime Minister Olmert and Foreign Minister Livni apparently want to sustain the war until Hamas is defeated. The number of missiles fired by Hamas onto Israeli cities has dropped by about half, from 80 to 40, since the war began. Olmert and Livni want to keep fighting until that number drops to zero.