Bookworm Room

Israel stopped a contingent of Hamas supporters who tried to run a blockade bringing money and supplies into Gaza.  Cynthia McKinney figures prominently in their number:
The Israeli navy intercepted a ship carrying foreign peace activists – including a San Rafael woman – trying to break a blockade of Gaza on Tuesday and forced it to [...]

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Using your own people as weapons is not a new tactic.  During WWII, the Soviet Union was effective against the Germans, not because it had good weapons, but because it had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder.  When the Germans advanced on Russia, the Soviets threw unarmed men in front of the Germans, causing [...]

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Here’s a sickening AP story blaming Israel for the “trauma” inflicted on Gazan children.  The story’s only acknowledgment that Hamas itself placed the children in the line of fire is the following paragraph, one that is carefully crafted to make it seem as if it was Israel’s fault that the poor Hamas fighters had to [...]

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It’s been an incoherent day, one that never gave me the opportunity for contemplation and writing.  Instead, I’ve been bopping here and there, and dealing with one thing and another.  Nevertheless, I have been tracking the news, so I thought I’d just write up a mish-mash of thoughts about current issues and events.
Gaza
The top issue/event, [...]

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Vacation is over and I’m back to my work schedule, which means no more morning blogging (not that I was very inspired in the morning during vacation).  Still, I had to share this gem with you.
I spoke with a liberal friend yesterday, who is lukewarm about Israel, and he told me that Israel absolutely cannot [...]

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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 in Gaza [...]

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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 fighting [...]

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A local Marin woman hitched a ride with a peace group to stay with some Palestinians, and came back filled with useful information.  Anna Rogers found “shocking . . . how much Arab land has been taken over and how crazily restrictive it is for the Palestinians.”  That’s an interesting thing to say, of course, [...]

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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.
What I [...]

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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 bit [...]

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One of the common tropes on the Left is that the insanely land-hungry Jews have crowded the Gazans onto an impossibly small strip of land as part of their plan to commit genocide against the Palestinian people.  As with so many of the attacks against Israel, this is false, and Soccer Dad explains why.

Sphere: Related [...]

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Starting with a recent poll taken of Palestinians — one that showed that, despite the Gaza withdrawal, they fully support increased killings in Israel — Richard Baehr has written an exceptionally good article examining the Palestinians.  For me to analyze it or try to summarize it would be a waste of your time, when you [...]

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For a year, Gaza has rained over 2,000 rockets onto Israeli soil, aiming specifically for civilian communities.  There was, of course, nary a peep from the UN.  Now that Israel has struck back, targeting specifically militants who happen to hide amongst civilian populations, the UN Rights Council springs into action:
The U.N. Human Rights Council has [...]

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My father, who was a veteran of World War II and the Israeli War of Independence, was still alive during the first Gulf War. I vividly remember his comment that it was idiotic how much the press made of how nice Americans were and how our troops were so good that they didn’t want [...]

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