Blame Israel for everything

It never takes long for the world to blame Israel for whatever is wrong in the world. This time, of course, it is Gaza. Clearly Israel is responsible for the situation (actually, bizarrely, the critics of the world are right, but not in the way they had intended. If Israel had not negotiated with the PLO and given them control, or withdrawn from Gush Katif, or armed Fatah, Hamas would never have come to power and the situation in Gaza would be very different today - but even Olmert hasn't realised that yet). Abbas was probably the first to accuse Israel without even blaming them for anything when he said that "‘Hamas is drunk with power, acting like Israel!"

Jeopundit found an article in the Guardian that is more explicit in blaming both Israel and the USA for what is going on now.

But cudos to him for also finding an article on the Wall Street Journal which presents a much more (in my opinion) honest assesment. It includes the following information, showing why the world has encouraged the use of terror amongst the Palestinian leadership and rank and file:

In 1972 Palestinian terrorists murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. Yet only two years later Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N.'s General Assembly--the first non-government official so honored. In 1970 Arafat attempted to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein and tried to do the same a few years later in Lebanon. Yet in 1980, the European Community, in its Venice Declaration, recognized Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization as a legitimate negotiating partner.

In 1973, the National Security Agency recorded Arafat's telephoned instructions to PLO terrorists to murder Cleo Noel, the U.S. ambassador in Sudan, and his deputy George Curtis Moore. Yet in 1993, Arafat was welcomed in the White House for the signing of the Oslo Accords with Israel. That same year, the British National Criminal Intelligence Service reported that the PLO made its money from "extortion, payoffs, illegal arms-dealing, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud." Yet over the next several years, the Palestinian Authority would become the largest single recipient of foreign aid on a per capita basis.

In 1996, after he had formally renounced terrorism in the Oslo Accords, Arafat told a rally in Gaza that "we are committed to all martyrs who died for the cause of Jerusalem starting with Ahmed Musa until the last martyr Yihye Ayyash"--Musa being the first PLO terrorist to be killed in 1965, and Ayyash, who was killed in 1996, being the Hamas mastermind of a series of suicide bombings in which scores of Israeli civilians were killed. Yet the Clinton Administration continued to pretend that Arafat was an ally in the fight against Hamas. In 2000, Arafat rejected an Israeli offer of statehood midwifed by President Clinton and instead initiated the bloody intifada that left 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians dead.

In 2005, only months after Arafat's death, Israel dismantled its settlements and withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip. Palestinians have used the opportunity to intensify their rocket fire at civilian targets within Israel. Last month, Israeli security services arrested two Gazan women, one of them pregnant, who were planning to enter Israel on medical pretexts in order to carry out suicide attacks. Yet the same month, the World Bank issued a report faulting Israel for restricting Palestinian freedom of movement.

Now it appears Hamas has taken control of the Gaza Strip's main road and its border with Egypt, as well as the offices of the so-called Preventive Security Services, traditionally a Fatah stronghold. "They are executing them one by one," a witness told the Associated Press of Hamas's reprisals against the Preventive Security personnel.

We need as many prayers as we can get to work our way out of this hole that we have dug ourselves.

Usually people stop digging at some point, but Olmert would not be one of those kinds of people. The headline today says it all:

PM: New situation an opportunity

Bless!!!