Bookworm Room

Tweet Israel finally said “enough is enough” and counterattacked Gaza.  I think John Podhoretz nails everything that needs to be said on the subject in the short-term, and I’m impressed enough with his depth and brevity to reproduce his entire paragraph right here: Israel launched a massive air campaign against the infrastructure of Hamas terror [...]

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Tweet I’ve been reading two things that seem to twine together.  The first is the ongoing news out of Gaza, about Hamas continuously firing missiles into Israel (as well as into their own population).  Noah Pollak wrote a very good commentary in response to a question about why Hamas, through its outpost in Gaza, keeps [...]

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Tweet Sometimes, the bizarre nature of the Middle East defies description (all emphasis mine): Nine Palestinians were killed and dozens hurt in battles in Gaza City between forces of the rival Hamas and Fatah movements on Saturday, prompting Israel to open its border to fleeing Fatah members. The fighting, which lasted most of the day, [...]

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Tweet Did you know that a rocket could break a truce?  I didn’t.  Being neither a scientist nor a weapons expert, nor a member of the MSM, I kind of thought that, absent human intervention, rockets would just lie around inert.  It’s just always seemed to me that, for a rocket to fly through the [...]

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Tweet Richard Baehr initially supported Ariel Sharon’s decision to withdraw Israel from the Gaza Strip.  He now believes that the withdrawal was a terrible mistake, and carefully explains why.  As for me, I don’t think it was a mistake then.  I think it collapsed for a reason that could not be foreseen.  Let me explain. [...]

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Tweet Hamas never enters into truces with an eye to peace.  It enters into truces with an eye to getting its troops rested and rearmed before the next offensive.  Israel, equipped with knowledge of both core Islamic doctrine (hudna) and Hamas’ own past behavior, nevertheless keeps giving its opponent a breather, rather than keeping the [...]

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Tweet I’m beginning to think that incrementalism is one of the most dangerous things out there, whether it’s the way Obama leaks out the truth about his big lies or the way in which the jihadists keep asking for little things from us — no pigs, no dogs, no occupied territories.  As to that latter [...]

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Tweet The New York Times again gave a forum to Jimmy Carter. This time Carter defends his immoral, illegal decision to consort with terrorists, something that would be objectionable if the ordinary private citizen were to do it, but that rises to outrageous levels of indecency when a former President does the same thing. Carter’s [...]

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Tweet Congress isn’t actually doing anything beyond complaining about how upset it is, but I was very pleased nevertheless to see that two representatives have sponsored a bipartisan resolution specifically mentioning Carter in connection with Hamas and reiterating that Hamas is a dangerous terrorist organization that should be isolated, not courted.  To date, it has [...]

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Tweet Hamas is an official terrorist organization. That minor detail, however, doesn’t seem to deter President Jimmy Carter, a man who has never met a sleazy Islamic or communist terrorist he doesn’t admire and trust: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said in remarks to air on Sunday that his upcoming visit to the Middle East [...]

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Tweet In today’s Guardian, there is a glowing review of Ron Paul, particularly with regard to Paul’s stance on American support for Israel: If that weren’t enough, when the House of Representatives was recently passing another denunciation of Palestinian violence, Paul refused to support it. He abhorred all attacks on civilians, he said – but [...]

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Tweet We now know that the Gazans instant collapse into existential despair the last time Israel reduced their electricity flow was a carefully choreographed dance that served two purposes: it enabled Hamas to knock down the wall Egypt had built (a wall about which no one in the West ever complained) and it gave photo [...]

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Tweet I respect Condi Rice for the most part, but have thought her naive for believing (or, at least, appearing to believe) that the Palestinians want peace with Israel, as opposed to Israel in pieces.  David Brooks, however, thinks that there is a method to her madness, and that Iran’s follies may result in a [...]

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Tweet My blog, lately, has hosted a really interesting discussion about both Israel’s legal rights in the disputed territories and the Palestinians’ lack of legal rights. Those two statements (Israel’s rights vs. Palestinian non-rights) are not mirror-like redundancies. It’s entirely possible to argue (although I wouldn’t), that while Israel has no right to the disputed [...]

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Tweet Israel, which has been the victim of endless and destructive rocket attacks originating in Gaza, successfully stopped one before it happened. Taking facts directly from the BBC, this is how I would have reported the Israeli Army’s successful action: Israel destroys several rocket launchers in Gaza The Israeli Army reports that it surveillance into [...]

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Tweet It’s rare that, on the same day, two articles come out that neatly bookend a single subject.  Today, though, that happened, with the first article being a Mona Charen piece about Israel, which discusses its overall humanism (despite a few bad apples) and which points out the difference the wall has made in Israel.  [...]

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