Abrabanel: Musings on the Jewish condition

We don’t really go for rap, but this one is clever, and not too patriotic. Sometimes, Eretz Nehederet really gets it.

With a fresh ceasefire upon us, it’s time to seriously examine the sustainability factor. Is Hamas sufficiently hurt, it’s powers sufficiently curtailed, that Israel’s leadership can responsibly return to what it would much rather be doing with the next three weeks: campaigning for Knesset seats?

Short answer: It all depends on finding a solution to the weapons smuggling. And that means shutting down Hamas’ rabbit-warrens of tunnels criss-crossing the Gaza-Egypt border.

The best collated discussion of what this would involve comes from an unlikely source: Slate.

The New York Times offers an unusually candid report from Gaza dated yesterday in which an Islamic Jihad fighter expresses the supreme joy of terror.

The relevant quote is in the last paragraph, but the short article, by Taghreed El-Khodary, is worth quoting in full:

GAZA CITY — The emergency room in Shifa Hospital is often a place of gore and despair. On Thursday, it was also a lesson in the way ordinary people are squeezed between suicidal fighters and a military behemoth.

Dr. Awni al-Jaru, 37, a surgeon at the hospital, rushed in from his home here, dressed in his scrubs. But he came not to work. His head was bleeding, and his daughter’s jaw was broken.

He said Hamas militants next to his apartment building had fired mortar and rocket rounds. Israel fired back with force, and his apartment was hit. His wife, Albina, originally from Ukraine, and his 1-year-old son were killed.

“My son has been turned into pieces,” he cried. “My wife was cut in half. I had to leave her body at home.” Because Albina was a foreigner, she could have left Gaza with her children. But, Dr. Jaru lamented, she would not leave him behind.

A car arrived with more patients. One was a 21-year-old man with shrapnel in his left leg who demanded quick treatment. He turned out to be a militant with Islamic Jihad. He was smiling a big smile.

“Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting,” he told the doctors.

He was told that there were more serious cases than his, that he needed to wait. But he insisted. “We are fighting the Israelis,” he said. “When we fire we run, but they hit back so fast. We run into the houses to get away.” He continued smiling.

“Why are you so happy?” this reporter asked. “Look around you.”

A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.

“Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.

“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

That’s the only side in this fight that seems to be enjoying itself. They are hard at work inflicting their pain — much of it on the Palestinians themselves, of course.

We return to deliver some news reports that you may have missed on the fighting in Gaza:

“If something bad happens to Gilad Schalit, we’ll know who did it and we will take our revenge,” IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Avi Benayahu told a Tel Aviv radio station on Wednesday. Israel knows “Gilad Schalit is alive. We know who is holding him. At the end of the process, Hamas understands breaking the ceasefire was a terrible mistake at the strategic level,” he said.

Hamas is still itching for a victory, any victory, to take to its people. Reports the Jerusalem Post: According to the Deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, Moussa Abou Marzouk, the group would not talk about a permanent cease-fire so long as Israel continued its “occupation,” and would instead continue the “resistance.” He said that Hamas stands by its demand that Israel immediately halts its offensive, withdraws from the Gaza Strip, and opens all of the border crossings.

Dr. Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian volunteer who reports from Gaza to the international media about the civilian suffering in Gaza, is actually a former Norwegian communist who approved of the September 11 attacks. (After the jump, multiple links on this issue.)

We’ll try to update further as this war continues.

Late, but wonderful. An irreverent take on the whole Georgia-Russia mess:

Georgia Prez: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

So. The Georgians sorta instigated this nutty war but the Russians were apparently looking for any old excuse to swarm in and take charge. The U.S. is stepping up the rhetoric but lord know what we’ll actually do to stop the Russians from toppling the Georgian government. Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili is now waging a second war—a public relations war! He knows one of his better bets is to turn United States public opinion toward his beleaguered nation and against those terrible Russians, so he plays up how Western his country is all the time. They love America! Hot dogs! Johnny Cougar! In this clip, Saakashvili goes off on an incredible tangent about how Georgia once had amusement parks and Dolby Digital movie theaters (seriously!) but the Russians destroyed that, because they hate fun. How can anyone be against surround sound? Those filthy Russians!