How Congress Can Help Israel Against Hamas

by Malcolm Lowe • July 16, 2014 at 5:00 am

What the Congressional resolutions overlook is that Hamas has officially renounced its responsibility for governing Gaza, while the Palestinian unity government has already begun the process of taking over the administration of Gaza. Consequently, the Palestinian Authority – not Hamas – should be the primary addressee of Congressional resolutions. Congress has the power to impose that demand upon the PA as a condition of further financial support for the PA.

The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, evidently has on his payroll tens of thousands of idle Gazans who are available to root out and destroy those rockets and tunnels.

Malcolm Lowe poses the question of who should, and will, be responsible for clearing Gaza of thousands of rockets. (Image source: IDF)

Last Friday, July 11, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed Resolution 657 in support of Israel's right to defend itself against the rockets fired from the Gaza strip. A similar resolution has also been submitted to the US Senate. This reaffirmation of American support will be deeply appreciated in Israel. To make that support effective, however, a little more will be needed.

The House version "(1) reaffirms its support for Israel's right to defend its citizens and ensure the survival of the State of Israel; (2) condemns the unprovoked rocket fire at Israel; and (3) calls on Hamas to immediately cease all rocket and other attacks against Israel." The Senate version repeats those three demands in almost identical wording and adds a fourth: "Calls on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to dissolve the unity governing arrangement with Hamas and condemn the attacks on Israel."

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The Vatican in Danger

by Bassam Tawil • July 16, 2014 at 4:00 am

All the claims that the Jews are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque are false. For years it has been protected and guarded by Israel. If they wanted to, the Jews could let Hamas's missiles land in Jerusalem, possibly destroying the mosques on the Temple Mount, or they could destroy the mosques themselves and claim that Hamas' rockets had done it.

Not the Jews but Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in their efforts to destroy the holy city, prove that Jerusalem and its mosques are of no importance to them.

The terrorists who have no qualms about attacking Jerusalem with its Al-Aqsa mosque will have no qualms, when the time comes, about attacking Rome and Vatican City.

At left, a fire in Ashdod caused by a rocket launched from Gaza (Image source: IDF). At right, Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (Image source: Wikimedia Commons).

In the current exchange of fire between Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Israel, Hamas's barrages of rockets have not been limited to exclusively Jewish population centers, but have included the holy city of Jerusalem.

For years the leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel have been repeating the claim, ad nauseam, that Israel plans to destroy the Al-Aqsa and establish their Third Temple on the ruins.

After east Jerusalem was wrested from the Jordanians in 1967, Israel declared that united Jerusalem was its capital, despite the objections of the Arabs and Palestinians. Under Israeli rule, all faiths were allowed freedom of worship, which had not been possible for centuries under Byzantine, Arab, Turkish and British rule.

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