Interestingly Charles Krauthammer starts his column about Israel’s 60th birthday (or here) on May 14th (well the English date anyway) by recalling an event that preceded the Lewis and Clark expedition that started May 14, 1804.

Before sending Lewis and Clark west, Thomas Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia to see Dr. Benjamin Rush. The eminent doctor prepared a series of scientific questions for the expedition to answer. Among them, writes Stephen Ambrose: “What Affinity between their (the Indians’) religious Ceremonies & those of the Jews?” Jefferson and Lewis, like many of their day and ours, were fascinated by the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and thought they might be out there on the Great Plains.

The point is to illustrate a rule …

They weren’t. They aren’t anywhere. Their disappearance into the mists of history since their exile from Israel in 722 B.C. is no mystery. It is the norm, the rule for every ancient people defeated, destroyed, scattered and exiled.

and its exception

With one exception, a miraculous story of redemption and return, after not a century or two, but 2,000 years. Remarkably, that miracle occurred in our time. This week marks its 60th anniversary: the return and restoration of the remaining two tribes of Israel — Judah and Benjamin, later known as the Jews — to their ancient homeland.

He also nicely demolishes the narrative of today’s “nuanced” foreign policy sophisticates.

During its early years, Israel was often spoken of in such romantic terms. Today, such talk is considered naive, anachronistic, even insensitive, nothing more than Zionist myth designed to hide the true story, i.e., the Palestinian narrative of dispossession.

(LGF has been cataloging the many nakba celebrations going on this week. For a term that didn’t come into wide usage until about a decade ago, it’s getting quite a workout.)

Finally Krauthammer shows how the new “history” of Israel’s founding is matched by tendentious reporting today:

Israel prevailed, another miracle. But at a very high cost — not just to the Palestinians displaced as a result of a war designed to extinguish Israel at birth, but also to the Israelis, whose war losses were staggering: 6,373 dead. One percent of the population. In American terms, it would take 35 Vietnam memorials to encompass such a monumental loss of life.You rarely hear about Israel’s terrible suffering in that 1948-49 war. You hear only the Palestinian side. Today, in the same vein, you hear that Israeli settlements and checkpoints and occupation are the continuing root causes of terrorism and instability in the region.

However, Krauthammer didn’t mention the dispossession of Jews from Arab countries that affected a similar number of people.

Finally though, Krauthammer gets to the point of it all.

One constantly hears about the disabling complexity of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Complex it is, but the root cause is not. Israel’s crime is not its policies but its insistence on living.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Get a load of this “objective” piece the AP released on the “nakba” celebrations. It’s graf after graf of opinion masquerading as fact.

Palestinians marked the 60th anniversary of their uprooting with rallies, sirens and black balloons Thursday - an annual ritual made even darker this year by crippling internal divisions and diminishing independence hopes.

The memorial provided a stark contrast to Israel’s all-out birthday bash, which included a high-profile visit by President Bush for the 60th independence day celebration.

Bush’s embrace of Israel at a time when the Palestinians were mourning was bound to further harm the tainted U.S. image in Palestinian areas and across the Arab world.

Thursday’s events commemorated the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who either fled or were driven out of their homes during the 1948 war over Israel’s creation. Palestinians call it their “nakba,” Arabic for catastrophe.

Break out the hankies, folks. And the yellow markers. In fact, I ought to start using yellow background for this kind of pseudo-news. They don’t even have the decency to label this “analysis” or even “feature,” ’cause it sure as hell isn’t news. And here’s the latest Palestinian appropriation of Israeli symbolism. I swear, these people have never had an original idea, ever.

In the West Bank city of Ramallah, thousands stood in silence in downtown Manara Square as a siren wailed, then listened to a taped Abbas speech.

On Israel’s Memorial Day, a siren sounds for two minutes in remembrance of Israel’s war dead.

Also in the article, the AP manages to minimize the rocket attack on Ashkelon.

Israel’s government, meanwhile, came under mounting pressure to try to oust Hamas, after a rocket fired from Gaza hit a medical clinic in an Israeli shopping mall and seriously wounded four people, including a 2-year-old girl.

While that part is factually accurate, it is misleading. Fifteen people were wounded, four seriously. By mentioning only the seriously wounded victims, the AP once again whitewashes a terrorist attack on Israel. Just as the AP will highlight any and all civilian casualties when the IDF goes into Gaza. It’s gotten so predictable I probably shouldn’t bother writing about it anymore.

Yeah. I’ll stop when they stop.

I’ve been reading reports in various Israeli newspapers and other sources about the upcoming Gaza operation. They all seem to have the same background: The IDF will go in, but not in great force. Pinpoint operations to take out the terror infrastructure. If that’s the case, the operation will fail. The IDF went in to do just that months ago, after the bombardment of Sderot and southern Israel increased to fifty-plus rockets per day. The result is what you see now: Hamas and its proxies fire rockets wherever, whenever they want. They lose a crew here or there, but the rockets just keep coming.

“You need to grit your teeth, but not for many more months,” Barak told the residents of Ashkelon during a tour of the scene together with Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i and OC Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Golan. “We won’t allow this to continue for much longer. I am not talking about years or many months. We will do what needs to be done.”

Throughout the day a number of rockets were fired into Israel, including a Grad-model Katyusha that hit a field outside Netivot without causing injuries. Two Hamas gunmen were killed when IAF aircraft bombed a terrorist observation post in Gaza City before dawn.

Calev Ben-David of the JPost had this analysis:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, speaking at the Facing Tomorrow conference Thursday night after returning straight from a visit to Ashkelon, made clear that from his viewpoint a military operation is only a matter of time. If Israel’s luck runs out, and a Hamas rocket attack results in multiple fatalities rather than the individual deaths of the past week, the government will politically have no choice but to mount that response sooner rather than later.

Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, still strongly committed to a negotiating process with the Palestinian Authority that would stop dead in its tracks in the event of such an operation, would clearly prefer to put off that option as long as possible.

And the news article quotes “senior defense officials”—the ones who have been talking about a major operation to other news sources as well:

The IDF plans to escalate its operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after US President George W. Bush leaves Israel on Friday, senior defense officials said Thursday.

If they’re not willing to go all-out, then nothing will change. Go back just a couple of months, when Grad rockets were raining down on Ashkelon. The IDF went in, killed a lot of Palestinian terrorists (and a fair number of civilians as well), the world freaked out, the IDF left, and what have you got? Nothing changed.

If Barak thinks that “pinpoint” strikes are going to accomplish anything, he’s mistaken. Unless he kills the Hamas leadership, the war continues. It has ever only stopped when Israel has them on the run 24/7.

“You are mistaken if you thought that targeting buildings, ministries and police stations is going to stop our work,” Haniyeh said, directing his comments at Israel. “We will work under trees, in tents and in the streets.”

Expect world condemnation the moment Israel moves. Say, you know, a thought occurred to me: Two Israeli civilians were killed by terrorist rocket fire in the last week. When Palestinians are killed during IDF operations, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon is pretty quick to condemn the violence “on both sides” and urge Israel to stop firing in civilian areas. So this is right up his alley, right? He should have issued a statement condemning the deliberate targeting of civilians right? Right? Right?

Wrong.

Not a word. Not a single, solitary word. But watch how much he says when the IDF crosses into Gaza.

I hope they do it right this time. And while they’re at it, send a Hellfire up Meshaal’s ass. If they could find Mugniyeh, they can find Meshaal.