You'll have to indulge me. Of course, you can stop reading
me. Otherwise, you'll be reading a lot about Gaza. This is
fair warning. Of course, you've been reading about Gaza elsewhere, in venues that fail
to see the obvious. For example, that Hamas wanted a war with
Israel...or that Hamas was more deranged than I ever thought.
Actually, Israel has come off better in the press than I had thought
possible. And even better among the Arabs and Muslims in the world
than I would have ever imagined. Yes, five hundred protestors in
Paris; a thousand in London; a suicide bomber killed a score of his
fellow Iraqi in a protest against the Israeli action against Hamas.
Very clever, this.
In any event, one of the commentators I truly trust has a more grim view
of the world's response to the Israeli retaliation in Gaza than I
do.
What makes Martin Kramer's period blog, "Sandbox," so compelling is his
mastery of the history of the conflict. Of course, he's one of the
great scholars of the conflict. So no surprise.
He examines the two Bushes and Israel. The first, we all know about
it. Jews irritated him. They did not irritate the son who, I
believe, recognized first principles. And the first is that it is
very difficult to make peace between two parties when one of them clearly
does not want peace. In other words, one of the parties -in this
case, Hamas- does not want peace at all. This cannot be
clearer. Here is Kramer's latest contribution to the
discussion. I've alluded to his writings several times in the
past.