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• Ed from NY January 26, 2009 3:16 pm

  

  good article mark, i’ve got one too. meanwhile notice how no one who complained about israel gives a sh-t when hamas kills gaza arabs? i guess those arabs are worthless while the arabs killed by israel have sacred blood.

  Peres blasts ‘misrepresentation of facts’ on Gaza op
  Jan. 26, 2009
  Greer Fay Cashman , THE JERUSALEM POST

  Speaking on Monday at the opening session of the 13th plenary of the World Jewish Congress, President Shimon Peres sought to correct what he termed “misunderstandings” and the “misrepresentation of facts” about the disproportionate number of Palestinian casualties in Operation Cast Lead.

  During the period 2000-2009 there had been 5,792 Qassam rockets and 4,411 mortars launched from Gaza against Israel, the overwhelming majority in the last two years.

  “I don’t know of any other country that went through such an experience,” said Peres.

  Citing statistics of Israeli casualties of Palestinian terrorism, Peres said 842 civilians and 325 soldiers had been killed in recent years, making a total of 1,167 fatalities.

  “So where is the disproportion?” he queried, making the point that more than a thousand Israeli lives were lost in attacks from Gaza, in addition to others from attacks in the West Bank.

  Contrary to charges that Israel did not permit the transfer of food and fuel into Gaza, Peres said that 42,327 trucks transporting essential supplies had been allowed into Gaza.

  “The whole story of a siege is totally unfounded. There was never a shortage of fuel. There was never a shortage of food,” he said.

  As for the smuggling of weapons, Peres referenced an example of a stockpile discovered on September 12, 2005, that included 300,000 kg of dynamite, 20,000 weapons that included rockets, rifles, machine guns and pistols, and half a million kilograms of ammunition.

  Although he has “never given up on peace,” Peres sees no alternative to fighting terrorism.

  “When you fight terrorism you can’t have a victory characteristic of conventional war, because there is no uniform, no front, no army. The only way we have to stop terrorism is to hit terrorists hard.”

  While expressing the hope that Hamas had learned its lesson, Peres was well aware that it would take something more than Operation Cast Lead for the lesson to have long lasting effect.

  “Now they want a cease-fire for one-and-a-half years,” he said. “They want our agreement that after one-and-a-half years they can shoot again, and they want the right to bring in arms.”

  Declaring Hamas to be “the greatest Arab problem,” Peres asserted that many Arab people know that their problem is not Israel but Hamas. “The President of Egypt came to the conclusion that Hamas is a danger to Egypt and the Arab world,” he said, charging Hamas with bringing shame to the Arab people and to Islam.

  Peres welcomed the appointment of George Mitchell as the new US Middle East envoy, saying it was timely and that “there is no reason to postpone anything.”

  Quoting media reports that America will put pressure on Israel, Peres was faintly amused. Making peace, fighting terror, having a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel and finding solutions to the economic meltdown are all issues on which Israel and the US are in accord, he said.

  “What pressure can America place on us?” he asked. “Where is the contradiction?”

  Peres remained confident that a peace agreement with the Palestinians was still possible, saying, “The problems are bridgeable.”

  For all that, Peres made it clear that if Hamas resumes its attacks on Israel, there will be a severe, hard-hitting response. While Israel is willing to pay a price for peace, he said, “We are a moral country under attack. We fight to fulfill an historic mission.”

  To a question from a British delegate about Israel’s vilification in Parliament and demands for an international inquiry into Israel’s conduct during Operation Cast Lead, Peres retorted that there was no Geneva convention on terrorism, and asked if there was a Geneva convention that permits the firing of 90 missiles a day without discrimination.

  “Is there a convention that a nation under threat cannot defend itself?” he asked.

  Peres lambasted those who would judge Israel without knowing all the facts, and asked where they were when Israelis were being killed in bus explosions, saying, “Did they ever demonstrate? Did they say a word? Is our blood less meaningful?”

• Mark January 25, 2009 12:31 pm

  

  The Gaza Riviera by David Suissa

  Instead of building for the future, the Palestinians chose the option of
  killing and dying for the past.

  In the advertising business, clients pay us to dream. To dream means not to
  be too imbedded with reality, to be unshackled from any inconvenient fact
  that might interfere with the dreaming process, to be, like they say in
  self-help seminars, appropriately unreasonable.

  The price you pay for dreaming is to expose yourself to abuse and ridicule.
  In a tough world, you never want to be accused of being naïve. The
  expression, “Are you dreaming?” didn’t develop by accident.

  What you can gain by dreaming, though, is significant. Dreaming is only
  limited by your imagination, so it can lead you to wild and breakthrough
  ideas. At the very least, it can give you a new way of looking at old
  problems.

  Why am I telling you all this? Because the other day, as my mind was numb
  from yet another report from the Gaza war zone, I saw something that made me
  go off on a wild dream. It started with the sight of two Israeli soldiers as
  they drove into Gaza in an armored personnel carrier, and as I watched the
  soldiers, I recalled how much Israelis love to go to the beach.

  As if I was hallucinating, I then imagined the same two soldiers in their
  beach clothes, in a convertible roadster, with a surf board sticking out and
  the music blasting, and instead of going to war, they were going to meet
  their buddies for a day of partying on the beach.

  They were going to the jetsetters’ newest fun spot: the Gaza Riviera.

  By now, my mind was losing control. Images started flooding in. I saw this
  fabulous strip of hotels and casinos right by a sparkling ocean. I imagined
  thousands of proud Palestinians working with smiles on their faces to serve
  the thousands of tourists from around the world who were coming to their
  little strip of ocean paradise.

  Behind this paradise, I saw a bustling economy, where the highest quality
  produce was grown and exported; where entrepreneurs built software
  companies, banks and advertising agencies; where a university attracted
  students from around the world; where local culture and the arts thrived;
  and where you could take the Orient Express train to Beirut, Cairo and, yes,
  even Tel Aviv.

  And then I woke up.

  But as I rubbed my eyes and crashed back to the reality of Grad missiles and
  bombing raids, I realized what the really crazy part of my dream was: It
  could easily have happened. That’s right, the Palestinians could have built
  their own Riviera.

  Think back to that infamous summer of 2005, the year of the Gaza
  disengagement, when Israel finally said: OK, you don’t want us here, we’re
  leaving — take it, it’s all yours. Oh, and we’ll even throw in our
  state-of-the-art farms and greenhouses, in case you want to continue growing
  some of the finest produce in the world.

  Is there any doubt that had the Palestinians chosen the “Riviera” option,
  Israel would have welcomed it? That Israel would have responded to this show
  of good faith and optimism with corresponding gestures of cooperation and
  good will? That there would have been no need for “suffocating closures”?
  That, in fact, Israelis, known for their love of life and travel, would have
  been the first tourists to sample the delightful pleasures of this new Gaza?

  Yet tragically, instead of choosing the Riviera option — the option of
  building for the future – the Palestinians chose the option of killing and
  dying for the past.

  Instead of seizing the moment and showing Israel and the world what they
  could do with the land that they love, they showed the world that they still
  hate the Jews more than they love the land.

  Instead of using the hundreds of millions the world showered on them to
  build housing, infrastructure and industry, they built bomb factories and
  hundreds of tunnels to smuggle rockets they could fire into Israeli towns.

  Instead of making laws that would protect the freedoms and rights of their
  people and encourage investment and innovation, they imposed Sharia laws
  with such punishments as severing hands, crucifixion and hanging.

  Instead of teaching love of life to their children, as Mark Steyn has
  written, they “marinated them in a sick death cult in which martyrdom in the
  course of Jew-killing is the greatest goal to which a citizen can aspire.”

  Finally, instead of using their Jewish neighbors as allies and trading
  partners, they provoked them into a destructive war in the hope that the
  world would renew its hostility for Jews and the Zionist state would be
  further undermined.

  And to an extent, it worked. The world is once again blaming Israel for the
  Palestinians’ suffering and condemning it for the deaths of civilians used
  cowardly as human shields.

  And once again, Israel is losing the war of images.

  But while the images of destruction coming out of Gaza are indeed tragic,
  there is one missing image that also merits our sorrow. This is the image of
  what could have been — what the Palestinians could have done with their
  precious land after Israel left Gaza three and a half years ago.

  This is an image where the hero brands are Hilton and Sheraton, rather than
  Grads and Qassams; where captains of industry overshadow captains of terror
  gangs; where poets outshine bullies and guitars outshine guns; where the
  excitement of building for the future overcomes the aphrodisiac of permanent
  victimhood.

  Yes, it’s an image that requires one to dream in wild and unreasonable ways.

  But an hour’s drive up the coast from Gaza, you can see an image that was
  also once nothing but a dream, and that was built without any help from the
  United Nations or the international community.

  It’s an image of a thriving little Riviera called Tel Aviv, and for our
  Palestinian neighbors, it’s a poignant and concrete reminder of what might
  have been.