Folks, if you’d like to help me out with this week’s podcast, record yourselves saying two phrases:

“I told you so.”

And:

“We told you so!”

Think Hamas. Think disengagement. Think how right we were, and how wrong the world was, about Hamas moderating. Then record the two sentences in .wav or .mp3 or any other audio format that Audacity will read, and email it to me. My first name at my last name dot com.

I’m hoping for a rousing chorus of “We TOLD you so!” in the end.

Thanks!

It was a series of circumstances that conspired to become three or four hours of downtime. So you must all check in twice as often when you read this post to make up for the stats I lost.

It was an Apache glitch on the server, caused by a SQL glitch in my database, which caused the server to accuse my blog of being a CPU hog (which it isn’t) and make it look like I haven’t paid my bill (which I have).

I may have to, oh, I dunno, sue the server for defamation or something. Can you sue a computer?

Anyway, I went to synagogue tonight, because our new rabbi is here while our departing rabbi is on vacation for the next week or two, and I didn’t have time to stay on the phone and tell the nice people at Bluehost that their server was lying about me. But they fixed it mighty quick when I finally got the chance to call. And the nice gentleman on the line said, “On a Friday night, you really should call first. We don’t have a lot of staff.” I explained that I would have called, if it had not been a Friday night. I think I confused him.

But again. Fixed now.

Ehud Olmert did something right. He appointed Ehud Barak Defense Minister to replace Amir Peretz. And before any of you remind me of Barak’s Camp David failures, well, he’s not going to be running the peace this time. He’s going to be running the war. As the most-decorated soldier in Israel, I think that’s something he is eminently qualified to do.

The government unanimously approved the appointment of newly elected Labor Party Chairman Ehud Barak as Israel’s next defense minister on Friday.

Former Defense Minister Amir Peretz handed in his resignation and will no longer be part of the government as of Monday evening.

Olmert decided on the appointment in his meeting with Barak Friday morning.

During the meeting, Olmert said he wished to rush the appointment in light of the tense security situation and the collapse of the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip.

Barak responded to Olmert’s request, and is expected to enter his new role upon being sworn into Knesset on Monday.

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who was also a candidate for the position, expressed satisfaction with Olmert’s decision.

The thing that bothers me the most is the Olmert has managed to very deftly unite the other political parties behind him, and is keeping his job as Prime Minister in spite of the horrific events of last summer. Appointing Barak Defense Minister has just cemented his deal with Labor.

One would think that Olmert would put Israel’s well-being before his own political career. Yeah, one would think.

Hamas is stopping people from leaving Gaza. No surprise there. So are the Egyptians. Ditto.

By the time the Islamic militant group Hamas declared victory in Gaza Thursday, thousands of Palestinians had already fled the coastal strip.

Recent figures collected by European monitors at Rafah, the crossing into Egypt, show that some 14,000 Palestinians have left Gaza in the past year, driven by a combination of political insecurity and economic strain.

“Today, there is no way to get out of Gaza. All passages are closed,” says Shlomo Dror, Israel’s spokesman for the coordinator for government activities in the territories.

“The real people controlling Rafah are Hamas, because they’re just outside the checkpoint and they’re controlling who can come and go,” he says.

Palestinian officials had asked to close Rafah over the weekend when they saw they could not protect European monitors there, Mr. Dror says.

“We’re not in charge there and we can’t do anything about it. The only way we can help the Palestinians is to take over the area, which we don’t want to do,” he adds.

Dror says that Hamas militants have set up a checkpoint on the Palestinian side of the Erez Crossing into Israel, about 330 feet beyond the one Palestinian Authority police usually run, and are stopping cars to arrest anyone who’s a member of Fatah. “It’s enough for people not to even try to come to the checkpoint,” he says.

And the Egyptians, the great champions of Palestinian rights—so long as they are chastizing Israel for them—don’t want their Palestinian brethren coming to their country. Not even to save themselves from Hamas.

Egypt sent police to beef up security on the border with Gaza. Authorities deployed armored vehicles and water cannons to prevent any potential mass flight of Palestinians out of Gaza, while searching for tunnels under the border through which infiltrators could pass.

Please note that when offered it, Egypt did not want to take Gaza back. Nor will they today, even though that’s the most logical move. No, the decades of manipulation by Yasser Arafat, with the complicity of the world, nattering on about the “inalienable rights” of the Palestinian people—that’s what has brought about this day. Not Israeli occupation. The failure of the Arabs to take care of their own is the cause of the breakdown of law in Gaza. The deliberate victimization, and the cult of victimology of the Palestinians is the reason 1.4 million Gazans live in abject poverty—with the exception of the few thousand who are in with the kleptocrats and the thugs who have controlled Gaza for decades.

And yet, in spite of the evidence that is growing before the world’s eyes, Israel will still be blamed by most of the world. The Palestinians will never be held responsible for voting in the terrorists who have just eliminated any last vestige of democracy in Gaza. The Palestinians, the world said, was tired of Fatah’s corruption. That’s why they voted for Hamas.

In America, we have a saying about situations like this: You made your bed. Now lie in it.

Hamas has shown us for more than a year what a government of terrorists would look like. Now we have even more clear a picture:

Hamas, officials said, made a strategic decision to conquer the entire Gaza Strip and to wipe out the entire Fatah senior brass.

Hamas operatives man roadblocks throughout Gaza with laptops that contain lists of Fatah officials, supporters and families. Anyone found on the list is either executed or severely beaten.

Hamas’s brutality was demonstrated on Wednesday when it raided the Shati refugee camp in central Gaza and rounded up female members of the Baker clan, known Fatah supporters. The women surrendered, were ordered outside their homes, and Hamas gunmen executed three of them, aged 13, 19 and 75.

On the other hand, some IDF officials think this means they can take off the gloves:

From a military perspective, some defense officials actually said there was reason to be thankful for Hamas’s takeover of the Strip. Before the recent round of intra-Palestinian violence, Israel had to distinguish between Fatah and Hamas gunmen in Gaza and make sure that that the former, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s loyalists, were not targeted. Now, according to this view, there is no longer any need to draw such distinctions, since all gunmen are Hamas and therefore fair game.

“The bank of targets has grown tremendously with Hamas’s takeover,” explained one official involved in monitoring events in Gaza and planning policy. “Hamas is a clear and defined enemy, and that means that when we decide to respond it will be easier than before, since all their buildings are now targets, as is anyone walking around with a weapon.”

We shall see. Hamas will hide its weapons among civilians, and call on human shields to gather round to protect its fighters. They’ve done so in the past, and it worked. Any way you look at this, it’s bad news for Israel, the region, and the world.

Hamas makes no secret of the fact that it now receives most of its financial and military support from Iran. The Iranian government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hamas leadership in June last year, in which it agreed to fund the militant group to the tune of £400 million.

[...] In addition to financial support, Iran provides training to members of the military wing of Hamas by sending them to camps in Lebanon and Iran run by the elite Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards.

Past Iranian attempts to supply the Palestinians with military hardware have been less successful, with the Israeli navy intercepting a ship laden with explosives destined for Gaza in early 2002. But earlier this year, the Iranians sought to establish new supply lines to Gaza.

On February 24, Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’s supreme leader, travelled to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where he met senior Quds Force officials and Sudanese politicians who are broadly sympathetic to Hamas’s political objectives.

The main topic of conversation was setting up a supply route that would enable Iran to smuggle rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles, guns and explosives through the porous border between Gaza and Egypt.

And surprisingly, the Con Coughlin points out that the emperor has no clothes:

Pro-Palestinian campaigners frequently claim that the main reason Gaza is in crisis is that the economic blockade imposed by America and Israel following Hamas’s election victory has reduced the civilian population to penury. This was the essence of the argument advanced by Alvaro de Soto, until recently the UN’s special co-ordinator for the Middle East, who seems happy to blame anyone for the Palestinians’ plight except the Palestinians themselves.

Ordinary Palestinians, it is true, in both Gaza and the West Bank, are suffering hardship. But this is not because of a lack of funds entering the Palestinian territories: it is because successive Palestinian administrations have made no effort to distribute the resources available equably among the population.

Hamas, on the other hand, sees economic deprivation as a form of political oppression. The World Bank reported that donors contributed about £375 million to the Palestinian territories in 2006, twice the amount they received in 2005. But since taking power, Hamas ensures any funds are spent on Islamic causes and its 6,000-strong militia, leaving the majority to fend for themselves.

The bonus for Hamas is that, by forcing the majority of Palestinians to exist in dire poverty, it succeeds in attracting widespread sympathy from international do-gooders who do not understand the sadistic economic manipulation that is taking place.

Not that that will stop anyone from insisting they have to contribute money to Hamas to “ease conditions” in Gaza, which should now be called Gazastan.

This summer’s war is going to be a bad one.

This stupid:

In the wake of the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, the United States said Thursday that the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush will now work to prevent the violence from spilling over to the West Bank. The U.S. therefore aims to accelerate the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to allow Abbas to present some achievements.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also intends to tell Bush that Hamas’ coup d’etat must be contained in the Gaza Strip, and not allowed to occur in the West Bank as well, a government official told Haaretz on Thursday.

The American administration is also interested in improving living conditions in the West Bank to demonstrate to the Palestinians that they are better off under Fatah than Hamas.

Washington will urge Israel to reconsider loosening its military grip on the West Bank. Israel will also be requested to unfreeze unfreeze the Palestinian tax funds it has been withholding from the PA. The money and further funding will help boost Abbas’ new emergency government.

Every time Israel “loosens its military grip” on the West Bank, the Palestinians murder Israelis. Two women would-be suicide bombers were just caught by Israeli security services—even as the war was raging in Gaza—and Bush wants Israel to reduce checkpoints?

Twin bombings. Tel Aviv and Netanya.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said Wednesday that it thwarted a double suicide attack set for Tel Aviv and Netanya last month, orchestrated by Islamic Jihad and meant to be carried out by two Palestinian women, one of them pregnant.

One of the women, Fatma Zak, 39, a mother of eight in her ninth month of pregnancy, has been director of Islamic Jihad’s women labor department in Gaza City for the past four years. As part of her job, she was in direct contact with senior terrorists and served as a go-between for women interested in becoming suicide bombers.

The second suspect is Zak’s 30-year-old niece, Ruda Habib, a mother of four. Both were arrested by the Shin Bet at the Erez Crossing on May 20, moments before entering Israel.

The two women admitted the plot and confessed to being Islamic Jihad operatives. They said they had used Israel’s humanitarian policy to acquire entrance permits on a false medical pretext.

The women took advantage of Israel’s humanitarian gestures, using them as a pretext to get into Israel so they could mass-murder innocents—as well as the baby growing inside one of them. How depraved do you have to be before you murder your own unborn child while taking out Israeli women and children as well?

These are the people that the Bush Administration think should be allowed to move freely again. Because it works so well every time.

Here’s a better idea for Mahmoud Abbas, the coward who fled Rafah and didn’t have the balls to order his men to fight Hamas: Stick a fork in him. He’s done.

It wasn’t enough that Hamas captured American-made (and paid for) weapons when they pushed Fatah out of Gaza. The Bush Administration is going to continue to train and equip Fatah, even as effort after effort fails, and the weapons (and sometimes trained soldiers) fall into Hamas’ hands.

The United States will continue financing the Palestinian Authority’s presidential guard, which is loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, despite the force’s disappointing performance in the Gaza Strip, officials in Washington said.

According to a US State Department spokesperson, General Keith Dayton, who is responsible for training the Palestinian forces, will continue his work after a reassessment of the situation. The training will likely be transferred from Gaza to the West Bank, the spokesperson said.

Dayton heads the training program for Abbas’ security staff, which protects the Palestinian top brass as well as strategic sites in Gaza and various border crossings.

Although Dayton praised the performance of the forces just a few weeks ago, the troops failed to stand up to Hamas forces in the past few days as they seized control in Gaza.

Isn’t it grand to have an administration that never, ever, EVER admits a mistake? Because it’s not like American-trained terrorists don’t turn on Israel or anything. Oh. Wait. Yes, they do.