What Does H.A.M.A.S. Really Stands For?

Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Muslim group that is internationally recognized as a terrorist organization.  Hamas which has dominated the Gaza Strip since 2005 when Israeli settlements were voluntarily relinquished settlements to implement the Oslo Accords as part of the peace process.

Hamas is an acronym for Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah, Arabic for "Islamic Resistance Movement".  The acronym means "Enthusiasm".  But sometimes acronyms are given more meaning by actions. 

The modus operandi of Hamas is to indiscriminately lob crude missiles at their Israeli "enemy" (the one's who ceded the territory where they operate).  But these "brave" Muslim Brotherhood affiliates operate their rockets in the middle of civilian settlements, schools  or mosques.   The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) discovered 20 missiles in schools run by UNRWA and then handed them back to the "local authorities" to then be fired at Israel.  Then there is  the Shuja'iya neighborhood in Northern Gaza, Hamas used a mosque and two adjacent buildings connected by tunnels were extended to the Israeli border and used as a depot for Hamas rockets. 

Even though the Israeli Defense Forces give early warning to civilians to evacuate before the IDF attacks in Gaza, the inhabitants defiantly refuse to leave.  Some pro-Palestinian apologies reason "Where can they go?"  But Hamas spokemen urged the civilians not to heed the IDF warnings.  These human shields can then be pointed to as brutality by their enemy.  This is why Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu labels Hamas tactics as a double war crime.

Hamas knows that it can not win conventional warfare against the IDF, but if enough Palestinian civilians are killed during Operation Protective Edge, the International Press can decry the humanitarian loss along with an anti-semetic gloss.  

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meier anticipated this culture of death among militant Palestinians when she proclaimed: "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.  We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.".

Even though Hamas might sound like enthusiasm in Arabic, based upon their tactics and weltanschaaung, what Hamas really stands for is Hiding Among Mosques and Schools.

h/t: Steve Breen

Understanding What We Must Never Forget

In the last quarter century, there has been a progressive  effort from intellectual iconoclasts to revise history about the Holocaust to besmirch the Catholic Church and particularly Pope Venerable Pius XII.  The criticism stems from charge that the Vatican did not do enough to save Jews during the Second World War, especially considering that the Giuseppe Cardinal Pacelli had been both the nuncio to Germany as well as the Vatican Secretary of State before assume the Chair of St. Peter.  In fact, historian John Cornwell charged that Pope Pius XII was Hilter’s pope, and the Vatican’s inaction weakened the Catholic Church and sealed the fate for the Jewry in Europe.

Soviet Leader Josef Stalin dismissed Papal power in the world by sarcastically quipping “How many divisions did the Pope in Rome have?”  Thus there is the reality that a Vatican condemnation stronger than Pope Piux XI 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge (“On Burning Concern” originally released in German) condemning Nazi neopaganism and the “so called myth between blood and state”  would have only worsened the lot for Jews in the still publically obscured holocaust.  

This sensational charge of “Hitler’s Pope” flies in the face of contemporaneous praise of Pius XII as a righteous gentile by prominent Jewish leaders, as well as documentary evidence from the likes of historian Rabbi David Dalin that Pius XII ordered Vatican envoys to aid persecuted Jews in occupied Europe and the Catholic Church opened facilities in the Vatican and Rome to shelter thousands of Jews from the Nazis. 


In fact, it should be noted that there were prominent clergy who were aligned with Hitler–the grand mufti Hajj Amin al-Hussein.  At the Nuremburg trials of Nazi war criminals, there were allegations that the grand mufti  who advised and assisted the Nazis on carrying out Hitler’s Final Solution.  The Ba'athist party was a pan-Arab Socialist party which Ba'athist founder Michel Aflaq saw Nazi Germany as a model and were in power in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and the Assads in Syria.   It seems as if these slanderous charges against Pius XII were borne from anti-catholicism as well as exploiting a tragedy by obscuring those truly culpable. 

Holocaust historian Rafael Medoff has published “FDR and the Holocaust: A Breach of Faith” which examines the action (or lack there of), attitudes and apathy that FDR and the American government had during the Second World War as it relates to saving Jews from the Shoah.  Medoff charges that the FDR Administration failed to do relatively simple measures which would have saved many Jews, because FDR’s vision of America only encompassed having a small number of Jews.  Medoff wrote that: “In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society.”  Hence his Administration went out of its way to discourage and disqualify would be Jewish immigrants.  

Had FDR quietly permitted immigration quotas to be filled to the legal limit, it would have saved 190,000.   But the Administration opposed legislation which would have permitted the entry of 20,000 German Jewish childen, supposedly as it would set a precedent that would take away American jobs. 

Medoff also suggests that the US could have bombed concentration (extermination) camps like Auschwitz as the US Army Air Corps would not be diverted as they were  targeting sites that were only five miles away from that infamous death camp that were gassing 12,000 victims a day. 

This sort of nationalistic antipathy towards Jewish refugees is not surprising, considering the post-war antipathy towards Aliyah Alph and Aliyah Bet Jewish immigration as fictionally depicted in Leon Uris’ 1957 epic novel Exodus.  But Medoff’s evidence indicates that FDR was not the humanitarian and champion of the forgotten man myth that has developed, at least as applied to Jews in occupied Europe. 

Medoff’s  thesis needs to be scrutinized to validate its bona fides. Trying to corroborate the slanderous charges in Cornwall’s Hitler’s Pope” discredited it to fair minded historians, but  not before the damage was done in the mind of popular public opinion.  

Although Medoff is a prolific Holocaust scholar, but his interest is not simply in documenting what we should never forget.  Medoff has long postulated that the U.S. State Department has downplayed anti-Semitism in current diplomacy and feeds into a history of Foggy Bottom linguistic sleight of hand to achieve political objectives.  

Being informed by this critque may help pragmatic policy wonks understand the Benghazi bungling, blindness to Ba'-athist atrocities in Syria and ignoring the spontaneous 2009 Green Revolution in Iran.  It also gives context to the Janus treatment of Israel, where President Obama talks a good game about standing with our Israeli partner, but stabs Israel in the back on the Palestinian land issue  regarding the 1967 borders, existential threats from the Revolutionary government in Iran as well as quotidian provocations from the terrorist Gaza State.

h/t: The Daily Caller

Budgeting Time for Barack-etology

As March Madness begins in earnest today, President Obama took the time before his quick Spring Break trip to the Middle-East to fill out his NCAA March Madness Brackets.  

The Celebrity-in-Chief then taped an ESPN segment to explain his choices--

While the POTUS picks have been one in four during his tenure in the Oval, it calls for an even basic question--why is he wasting time on inconsequential items when he has a nation that he should be governing?

As sequestration comes into full effect, and the Obama Administration cancelled school tours of the White House and threatens the Easter Egg Roll (while still having costly golf outings with Tiger Woods and a St. Paddy's Day party), he vexes over college hoops.   As Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) call for US boots on the ground in Syria, additional missile interceptors are deployed on the West Coast for a North Korean nuclear ICBM threat and Iran is close to having nuclear weapons, our re-elected leader plays with Barack-etology? 

The law requires that the Executive Branch submits its Federal Budget by February 4th.  As it stands,  the Obama Administration won't have it done by April Fools Day. 

If it's any consolation,  Barack Budgets have gotten zero votes in  Congress. So it seems that he does better at his Bracketology than budgeting anyways. 

Perhaps we could profit from the POTUS picks and make up the sequestration shortfall.  But considering that he chose safe picks: Ohio State, Florida, Louisville and Indiana, it won't have much of a payout.  Unlike if someone chose in Paddy Pool chose Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the Conclave Championship --The Sweet Sistine. The man who became Pope Francis paid off at 33-1. 

We do not need  bread and circuses.  We need leadership from Washington.  A couple of weeks ago, President Obama went through the motions of a Capitol Hill charm offensive.  Then he cracks wise against Congress when setting foot on foreign soil. It make one wonder if he is serious about the responsibilities as the Leader of the Free World, or if he just seriously enjoys the spotlight and the trappings of the Oval Office.  

Palestine Pop Quiz

The United Nations recently voted 138-9 (with 41 abstentions) to elevate "Palestine" with non-member state status. Before delving into the meaning of according observer status it is worth taking a Palestine Pop Quiz.

Perhaps a primer on the disputed territory of the West Bank would be instructive--

Since "Palestine" is comprised of two separate exclaves, the separate areas (Gaza and the West Bank) with separate governments (Gaza's by the terrorist inspired Hamas and the West Bank by Fatah) . So its territory stability is dubious.  And both Gaza and the West Bank use the Israeli Shekel as its currency.

Compare these facts to the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States (1933):

The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.

Clearly, Palestine in lacking on several scores.  The permanent populate requirement is interesting since Palestinian leaders frequently demand that their residents become citizens in the state of Israel.  

The territorial item is tricky not just because of the two exclaves.  The signed Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (1995) proclaims that the Palestinian Legislative Council lacks jurisdiction over  "issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, specified military locations, Palestinian refugees, borders, foreign relations and Israelis".  Without control over borders, it should fail the territory test.

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Then there is the capability to enter into relations with other states.  While a couple of countries, like Argentina, Brazil and El Salvador recognize the State of Palestine and comprised of the West Bank. But international obligations contained in the Israeli Palestinian Agreement declare that: 

The [Palestinian Legislative] Council will not have powers and responsibilities in the sphere of foreign relations, which sphere includes the establishment abroad of embassies, consulates or other types of foreign missions and posts or permitting their establishment in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, the appointment of or admission of diplomatic and consular staff, and the exercise of diplomatic functions.   [Article 9, paragaph 5].

Moreover, Article 4 of the United Nations Charter mandates that "Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states".  How does that work with Palestinians who have routinely rejected a two state solution, engage in terrorism and vow to push Jews in Israel into the sea?

So if agreements and law mattered to the United Nations, Palestine should not qualify for non-member state status.

Some sophisticates like John Batchelor claim that the U.N. non-member state status is the equivalent of a Junior Membership in a Country Club.  Non-Member states do not have a vote in the U.N. General Assembly but can raise resolutions by itself and participate in international organizations.

Palestinians conflated this U.N. vote as international legitimization of its state status, albeit in unofficial status.  But the real reason for this move may have been Palestinian participation in international organizations.  Expect "Palestine" to accuse Israel of genicide, despite the terrible tactics which Palestinians use in their indiscriminate missile attacks on Israeli civilians.  Then there was the UNESCO proclamation that the Jewish Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb in the West Bank are actually Muslim holy sites.

The Israelis can rightly conclude that any agreements with Palestinians are worth the paper that they are printed on, as the international community will conveniently ignore limitations when it so chooses.  Moreover, it confirms that Palestinians have no interest in negotiated peace and seek to wipe Israel off the map.

Congress has passed a law which forbids funding any agency that gives full recognition to Palestinian statehood.  But knowing the way Attorney General Holder operates as well as the feckless foreign policy of the Obama Administration, adhering to the law is about as assured as the UN observing the Montevideo Convention.

h/t: DryBones
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