Sunday, March 09, 2008
Really Really Really Hard
Israel's RRH Doctrine Revisited
http://www.jewishpress.com/displayContent_new.cfm?contentid=30483&mode=a&contentname=Israel%27s_RRH_Doctrine_Revisited&recnum=5&fromsect=5
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By:Steven Plaut Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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Back in the fall of 2005 I wrote, in an Internet article responding to
one of the early rounds of rocket attacks on Sderot from Gaza following
Israel's 'disengagement' from the area:
"The PLO and its affiliates now have all the freedom they need to
upgrade their rockets. The new, improved Kassam rockets will be able to hit
Ashkelon from Gaza. Sharon's Gaza capitulation will turn the Negev town of
Sderot into Israel's Stalingrad."
This past week that prediction became fact. Ashkelon became the next
victim of the Sharon-Olmert strategy of defeating the terrorists by waiting for
them to run out of ammunition. The Olmert government is suddenly upset that
Ashkelon was hit by Hamas GRUD rockets and is meowing that this really is
intolerable and crosses all the red lines.
Translation: firing thousands of rockets into Sderot and turning it
into the Israeli Guernica is tolerable and was never crossing red lines because
who cares about those backward, religious Moroccan blue-collar workers in
Sderot?
Olmert's people are saying that if the blitz on Ashkelon does not end,
Israel will hit back really, really hard. Of course Israel has been making
empty threats to hit back really, really, hard for more than two decades. It
did send some troops into Gaza in response to the latest atrocities, but it was
much too little, much too late. Only a comedian would consider it to be hitting
back really, really hard.
I.ve long suspected that it is the Israeli grand strategy to defeat
the Palestinians by forcing them to laugh themselves to death. That seems to be
the only possible way to understand the latest resuscitation of the RRH
Doctrine, which has dominated Israeli policy toward the Palestinians and the
Arab states since the early 1990's.
The RRH Doctrine was invented in the early days of Oslo. Israeli
governments would make deals to hand over most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip
to the PLO, while reassuring Israelis that there was no reason for worry - if
the Palestinians misbehaved, Israel would hit back at them. Really, Really
Hard.
The Boy Who Cried Wolf was a far more credible strategist.
Even if, perchance, anyone ever took the RRH threats seriously, by the
mid-1990's RRH was little more than a long-running standup shtick. Yitzhak
Rabin and Shimon Peres had threatened it during the early days of Oslo. Later,
after each successive act of terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would
loudly invoke RRH, but did little, if anything, to retaliate.
After Netanyahu came Ehud Barak, who also threatened RRH regularly.
But his only implementation of it consisted of chopper attacks on empty
Palestinian buildings - and only after the PLO was given advance notification
so that all humans and terrorists could be evacuated.
RRH was also used by a series of Israeli prime ministers to threaten
Hizbullah in Lebanon and their Syrian puppet masters. After each Hizbullah
attack on Israeli towns or forces, Israel threatened the most serious RRH. But
in the end, the only action taken was a panicked, unilateral withdrawal from
southern Lebanon, which left Hizbullah sitting smack on Israel's border with
thousands of its rockets aimed at northern Israel.
Almost as old as the RRH Doctrine is the
Who-Could-Have-Ever-Predicted-THAT Syndrome. Since Oslo, every new Israeli
concession has resulted in escalated Palestinian violence. And each time the
Israeli chattering classes would sigh and ask, "Who could have possibly
foreseen this?"
Israel's media and intellectual elite could not foresee any failures
stemming from the Oslo capitulations and appeasements because the media and
universities are by and large occupied territories of Israel.s radical left.
The answer to the rhetorical question "Who could have foreseen the failures of
Oslo?" is "Anyone not blinded by ideology."
Predicting that cowardice in the face of rocket attacks on Sderot
would lead to similar attacks on Ashkelon hardly required the prophetic skills
of a Jeremiah.
A few weeks after the handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, I
wrote my first article predicting the complete failure of the Rabin-Peres Oslo
initiative. I said the PLO would simply use any territory turned over to it by
Israel to build a terror infrastructure and launch attacks on Israel. I wrote
of future rocket attacks and sniper fire against Israeli towns from the
Palestinian-controlled areas years before they actually began in earnest. And I
was hardly alone in 20/20 foresight.
Let.s give the Arabs some credit. Israel has made so many threats of
RRH since the Oslo "peace process" began that a Palestinian leader would have
to be learning disabled to take any of them seriously. If I consider them a
joke, why should Abu Mazen and the Hamas leaders take any of them seriously?
The fast incursion that killed a few dozen terrorists in Gaza this
week will hardly make a difference.
The Palestinians know what we all know: Olmert is afraid to take the
only action that, in the end, can end the shooting of Kassam rockets into
Israeli homes: R&D = Reoccupation and Denazification.
2. Latest from Olemrt's Peace Partners:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125508
PA Daily: Mass Murderer is a Martyr
3 Adar Bet 5768, 10 March 08 08:34by Gil Ronen(IsraelNN.com) Mahmoud
Abbas's official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper has honored the
terrorist who gunned down eight high school students at point blank range
with the status of shahid, or holy Islamic martyr.
The official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida prominently placed a picture of
the point-blank child killer on the front page, with the caption, "The
Shahid Alaa Abu Dheim." In a page one article on the massacre at the
Mercaz HaRav Kook yeshiva, his crime was again defined as an act of
martyrdom (shahada).
Watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) said that in publishing the
article, "the PA is sending its people a straightforward message of
support for the terror murders and the murderer." According to the PA's
interpretation of Islam, PMW explained, a human being can achieve no
higher status than that of shahid.
Will it cost them?
Besides its effect in inciting and encouraging terror, the honoring of
terrorists by the PA has significant financial ramifications, PMW
explained. Last week the US Administration sent a request to Congress to
allocate $150 million to the Palestinian Authority. However, in response
to earlier PMW reports on the widespread PA practice of honoring terror,
Congress made it illegal for the US to give money to entities that
"advocate" terror, as follows:
"[The Secretary of State] shall terminate assistance to any individual,
entity... which she has determined to be involved in or advocating
terrorist activity." Congress further legislated that "none of the [U.S.]
... assistance under the West Bank and Gaza Program may be made available
for the purpose of recognizing or otherwise honoring individuals who
commit, or have committed acts of terrorism" (2008 Foreign Operations
Bill).
PMW stated Sunday: "Since a society's honoring of terrorists is one of the
greatest terror promotions, and as the budget for the PA newspaper comes
from the PA's general budget, the incessant honoring of this and all
recent terrorists by Abbas's PA as Holy Islamic Shahids should render the
Palestinian Authority ineligible to receive any American money under the
terms of US law.
Shahid status
To strengthen its case, PMW gave examples of statements made by five
Palestinian religious leaders in the past few years, all teaching of the
supreme status of the shahids:
"Shahada [Islamic Martyrdom] is an honor, only those who Allah desires,
attain the privilege" (Sheikh Yusuf Abu Sneina, Al Aqsa Mosque, Friday
Sermon, PA Radio, Dec. 28, 2001).
"When the Shahid meets his Maker, all his sins are forgiven from the first
gush of blood, and he is exempted from the torments of the grave. He sees
his place in Paradise. He is shielded from the Great Shock and marries 72
dark eyed [maidens]. He is a heavenly advocate for 70 members of his
family. On his head is placed a crown of honor, one stone of which is
worth more than all there is in this world" (Dr. Isma'il al-Raduan, Friday
Sermon, PA TV, Aug 17, 2001).
"The believer was created to know his Lord to fulfill Islam... to be a
Shahid or intend to be a Shahid. If the believer does not hope for Shahada
he will die as in the Jahiliya [pre-Islam]... We must yearn for Shahada
and request it from Allah. If we truthfully request it from Allah, he will
grant us its rewards even if we die in bed" (Sheikh Ahmad Abdul Razak, PA
TV Friday Sermon, March 22, 2002).
"We are not like you, because we do not desire life. If you threaten to
kill President Arafat, we will pray to Allah: 'Grant the President Shahada
for you.' Yes, we do not pray - like other preachers pray - for longevity
for the rulers; here in Palestine we pray: 'Lord, grant the President
Shahada for you'" (Sheikh Ibrahim Mudyris, PA TV Friday Sermon, April 30,
2004
"When a man sees one of his brothers being killed for Allah, a person with
no head, no legs, his body completely burned. Intestines outside, fingers
are gone... The most difficult thing which we fear is what the Shahids
wish for most of all. They ask Allah: 'Oh God, bring us back [to earth] to
be killed by the Apache, so the planes will blow us up, that our heads
will be cut off...'
We shouldn't forget that Allah, praise him, in blessing the blood of the
Shahid, He forgives him from the first gush of blood. And he sees his
place in Paradise. He is shielded from the Great Shock and marries 72
Dark-Eyed Maidens (virgins)" (Sheikh Imad Hamato, PA TV religious program,
Nov. 3, 2006).
3. Poor Moonbette:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3517056,00.html
