The US votes: throw Israel under the bus

Democrats and Republicans in America are still taking about recent US elections (November 4, 2014).  As a result of those mid-term elections, Democrats are reeling. Republicans are smiling.

Republicans now control both the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. The key word here is, ‘control’.

Republican control of Congress doesn’t bode well for the current (Democratic) President. A US President usually has trouble governing when the Party that opposes him has such power.

Therefore, it isn’t a surprise that talk opposing the President’s policies should pop up as soon as elections results were clear. What might surprise some is that much of that talk has used the word, ‘impeachment’.  

It’s been only ten days since that election. But we’ve already seen at least ten news stories about ‘impeachment’.

That’s what happens to losers. They get thrown under the proverbial bus—sometimes, by their erstwhile friends.

It’s too early to tell if that ‘bus’ will run over the US president. But those of us who live in Israel know what it’s like to get thrown under a bus by a so-called friend. We know because there’s been another ‘election’. This ‘election’ was about Israel, not the US Congress.

This so-called ‘election’ wasn’t advertised. There were no ballot boxes. There were no announcements. But the results of this ‘election’ are as real as those US elections.

Israel lost. It’s now been thrown under the bus.

This ‘election’ is the choice that the current White House has  made to support terror over democracy.

We are reminded of this ‘election’ by a comment Jonathan S. Tobin has just made about Hamas (“Wealthy Terrorists Don’t Need Foreign Aid”, Commentary, November 13, 2014). It seems that Hamas is the world’s second richest terrorist organization, second only to ISIS (what we call, ‘The Islamic State’) (“Forbes Israel: ISIS is World's Richest Terrorist Organisation in History”, International Business Times, November 12, 2014).

ISIS has perhaps $2 billion in assets. Hamas has $1 billion. By contrast, the Taliban rank fifth. They have a paltry $400 million. Al Qaeda seems downright poor. It has only $150 million.

Remember AL Qaeda and the Taliban? America went to war against them. American spilt its blood fighting them.

They’re pikers compared to Hamas.

Now, the wealth spread between Hamas and Al Qaeda/Taliban is going to get even bigger—much bigger.  You see, the international community has just committed to donate $5.4 billion to Hamas (Tobin, ibid).

The last time the world gave money to Hamas was to rebuild Gaza after the November 2012 war that Hamas had started with Israel. Hamas used much of that money to rearm and to build massive terror tunnels for the next war with Israel, which just ended in August, 2014.

Now, Hamas will receive even more money to 'rebuild'.  It’s going to get $5.4 billion.

Hamas has already announced that it isn’t done with its tunnels--which, you may note, have only one use: to cross into Israel in order to kill and kidnap Jews. Hamas needs money to rebuild what Israel has just destroyed.

Hamas will receive $5.4 billion.

According to this report (International Business Times, ibid), terror groups fund their operations from theft, drugs and extortion. ISIS’s main source of revenue comes from oil stolen from captured oil-fields in Iraq and Syria. It earns perhaps $3 million a day from this oil.

Hamas earns its revenue from ‘Gaza’. The report says that “the group's takeover of Gaza in 2007 was the point when it entered ‘the big league’” (ibid).

This means that Hamas doesn’t run Gaza as a state, community or civil municipality for the benefit of its population. It runs Gaza as a criminal enterprise. It uses the proceeds of that enterprise to wage terror war against Israel. Now, it will have another $5.4 billion.

Read the Hamas Charter. The Hamas raison d’etra is not to help Gazans. Its Charter states that its purpose is to destroy the Jewish state. It declares that there is no political solution to the ‘Palestinian question’. The only solution is Jihad—holy war against the Jews in Israel.

In writing about the $5.4 billion commitment to Gaza, Tobin observes that “the most curious thing about this exercise in international philanthropy was that no one thought to ask Hamas to pay for at least some of the damage they caused by igniting a bloody war” (ibid).

He needn’t have been so curious. The nations have already answered that question: they have already voted to support terror over democracy. We saw that in the 50-day war just past—when the greatest leader (Barack Obama) of the greatest nation (America) openly sided with Hamas against Israel.  

Last week, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a New York audience that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilians casualties” in Gaza (see Jonathan Tobin, “Dempsey debunks US attacks on Israel”, Commentary, November 7, 2014). This is an extraordinary statement, given how the US behaved during that war.

During this war, the US cast its vote for terror. It led a stampede against Israel. It accused Israel of killing ‘too many’ civilians. It told the world that Israel was killing civilians in an 'overly disproportionate' manner (ibid).

Those American anti-Israel accusations didn’t go unnoticed.

The UN noticed. It called for a war crimes investigation of Israel.

Meanwhile, the criminal, brutal and cynical Hamas ruthlessly used civilians as human shields (a war crime). Hamas did this publicly. It boasted about doing it. Yet the US was at the front of the ‘Israel is killing Gazans’ attack.

That didn’t go unnoticed.

Hamas and Fatah saw how its crimes were ignored. Now, as a result of that US support, they bring their war to destroy the Jewish state right into the heart of Jerusalem, the nation’s capital. They bring their war directly to the heart of Zion, the Temple Mount.


The US continues to support them against Israel.

The US has voted. Like the rest of the world, it will throw Israel under the bus.