A Shaky Cease-Fire In Gaza

Israel's unilateral Gaza cease-fire has thrown the ball firmly back in the Hamas court, with a warning that Israel will reserve the right to return fire, if Hamas continues to fire rockets into the South.

The Israeli cabinet voted for an Egyptian-backed 10-day cease-fire deal, ending the three week long Operation Cast Lead, after a cabinet meeting in Tel Aviv this evening. 

But the Jerusalem Post reports IDF forces will remain in Gaza until it's clear Hamas has ended its rocket fire into Israel. 

Hamas leaders have repeatedly warned they will not respect any cease-fire as long as Israel remains inside Gaza. Asked about Hamas continuing its rocket attacks, the Israeli prime minister warned "he wouldn't advise them to try it". 

Prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said the aims of the Gaza operation had been "met in full" and the cease-fire would start from 2am Sunday (local time).

Israel's operation had been at least a year in the planning and training, with the objectives of taking out Iran-supplied Hamas rockets launched from Gaza and ending Iranian weapons smuggling through the Egyptian border tunnels, before the start of Obama's US presidency. 

EU leaders, including prime minister Brown, had offered help to end arms smuggling into Gaza. The cease-fire was agreed by the Israeli cabinet after talks with Egyptian intelligence chiefs, according to the Israelis. 

Meanwhile, Iran's proxy war against Israel was confirmed at an Arab summit, where Hamas leader, Khaled Mashaal, rejected Israel's conditions for a truce and called on all Arab countries to cut ties with the Jewish state, backed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian president Bashar Assad. More moderate Egypt and Saudi Arabia boycotted the summit.

With Hamas launching a rocket attack on Israeli civilians during the cabinet meeting and in the hours afterwards, the signs are it won't be long before any fragile peace is shattered. 

Picture: The Israeli cabinet meets at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv, Saturday night.

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Al Beeb Bias, A Hasbara From Israel

The BBC is continuing its bombardment of the UK media with Iran-backed Hamas propaganda, as Israel strikes back with a series of YouTube videos to explain their side of the conflict.

The Orange Party is becoming heartily sick of the blatant pro-Hamas bias from the BBC, most notably the highly skewed reports from middle east editor Jeremy Bowen and his band of Hamas apologists disguised as "journalists".

David Vance over at Biased BBC is clearly exasperated, writing today: "Been a busy morning for the BBC in the promotion of the Hamas cause...The BBC really are unhinged". Guido and David T over at Harry's Place are at their wits end.

Yesterday the BBC could hardly contain itself with reports of an IDF attack on a "UN school". Melanie Philips writing in the Spectator summed up the BBC's glee: "At last an Israeli massacre! The BBC straightaway parroted the Hamas/UN line – that hapless Gazan ‘refugees’ had taken shelter from the bombs in the school, only to be struck by Israeli missiles."

Of course the truth was somewhat different. According to the Jerusalem Post, this was an IDF attack on a Hamas rocket squad based in the Jabalya school. Using civilians as human shields again, the grounds were being used to fire at nearby troops. According to the IDF, the dead included members of the Hamas rocket cell. Booby-trapped bombs in the school triggered secondary explosions, killing Palestinians.

The BBC already sank to new lows in bias with yesterday's fanatical report from Gaza’s Shifa hospital by a Gazan BBC producer, Rushdi abu Alouf in collusion with Bowen, giving a platform to blatant incitement against Israel. 

With a bunch of Hamas heavies behind him, the reporter relied heavily on an interview with a Norwegian doctor Dr Mads Gilbert - a political activist hostile to Israel and a long-standing activist in the Palestinian ‘solidarity’ movement, who even supported the 9/11 attacks.

As Philips puts it: "Whether it is cynical, malicious or just plain incompetent, the BBC’s coverage of Gaza is a national disgrace."

The BBC should wake up to the fact that there are two sides to every conflict and it is innocent men, women and children who suffer on all sides. What about the hundreds of thousands of civilians who have been killed by US and UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan? One person's 'freedom fighter' is always another person's 'terrorist'. 

In an effort to redress the balance and counter the pro-Hamas propaganda, Israel is fighting back with a 'hasbara' - to explain the sheer terror faced by Israeli civilians as Iran's backed Hamas rockets rain down on them.

Distance is only a matter of time - What if a rocket launched from Beit Hanun in the Gaza Strip hit somewhere in the heart of Tel Aviv?

 

Residents in the city of Sderot have 15 seconds to find cover from the time the Red Alert siren sounds until a Kassam rocket hits

.

What would you do if you were attacked by rocket fire in London, Paris or Berlin?

Picture: Trails of smoke are seen after the launch of rockets from the central Gaza Strip towards Israel January 6, 2009. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen.

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West Duped by Iran's Proxy War In Gaza

Misguided 'peace' envoys from Europe's sucker liberalism, egged on by the BBC, are bent on duping world opinion as Iran's powerful fascist religious extremists wage their war by proxy in Gaza. 

The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) is racing against time to isolate and destroy cowardly Hamas thugs hiding in densely populated northern Gaza, before pro-Arab and pseudo liberal international pressure imposes a half-cocked cease fire and hands victory to Iran-backed wannabe Hitlers.

The IDF knows too well the carefully planned operation to halt missile attacks on Israeli citizens will be short-lived. 

Already French president Sarkozy is strutting around the Middle East stage with nothing better to do than stick his nose into the conflict. UK prime minister Brown is happy to jump on any bandwaggon of whipped up and misplaced international condemnation in his desperate bid to win votes, capture the media and cling onto power. 

In a meticulously planed operation to limit civilian casualties, the IDF has succeeded in its first goal to slice though the Gaza strip and isolate Islamist fanatics, effectively cutting off Gaza City, from the rest of the south.

After a year of training in urban fighting, the IDF is now poised is enter the urban and densely-populated built-up areas and root out Hamas thugs hiding behind the human shields in schools, hospital and mosques. 

While US Middle East envoy Blair and US president-elect Obama remain conspicuous by their silence, the US is firmly supporting Israel and putting the blame squarely on Damascus based-Hamas. But Israel will not take a chance on any change in US policy.

Any  cease-fire is pointless without a halt to Hamas rocket fire. Israel will  sign up to an absolute cease-fire but not a half-cocked peace deal which would still allow Hamas to launch  rockets into Israel and to smuggle weapons into Gaza through its tunnel network. 

The Orange Party believes any cease-fire must recognise Israel's right to respond to any aggression over its international border and monitor the closure of Hamas' weapons-smuggling tunnels. 

The Orange Party is on record standing shoulder to shoulder with those who oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but is not naive enough to believe that all wars are immoral. 

Few of the voices slamming Israel are those of true pacifists. Already we are being forced to witnesses the sickening sight of celebrity glitterati joining tens of thousands of mostly Muslim protesters in rallies held worldwide against  Israeli so-called "genocide." 

Rich celebrity rebels with a cause should heed the truism of philosopher Edmund Burke that: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." 

Iran is waging a war by proxy using Damascus-based Hamas to do its dirty work and, as was pointed out here earlier, it is Hamas which has betrayed Palestine and the Palestinian cause. 

Israel is being confronted  by a political movement that brings together fascism with religious extremism and genocide, and that demands Jewish self-defence and international condemnation. The only message to the Palestinians should be: stop the violence.

Harrowing images from the fighting in Gaza are ultimately deceptive and displayed daily on 'al Beeb' TV. Using the misleading description of "militants", the reports show up a fundamental misunderstanding of Middle East politics. 

News feeds too come thick and fast from Arab Al Zareera TV, used with relish by the now discredited Channel 4 News, tarred forever with blatant anti-Jewish bias after allowing the disgusting spectacle of Iran's Jew-hating Iranian despot Ahmadinejad airtime during a Christmas Christian celebration. 

The BBC's bias and  thorough lack of understanding of the nature of the conflict is already causing complaints to the BBC Trust over its pro-Arab anti-Jewish coverage. 

The spin supersedes the truth and such post-modern skewed liberal moral outrage is alarmingly widespread. Such a carefree smugness and self-congratulatory superficial enlightenment is manna from heaven for the religious fanatics and their declared intent to wipe out the state of Israel.

Hamas, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, is a proxy for the real enemy in Iran. Israel's current operation against Hamas is a unique chance to deal a strategic blow to Iranian expansionism fuelled by previous confusing and mixed messages from president-elect Obama. 

The Orange Party is in no doubt that what is being played out is another shot of the Iranian revolution to install fundamental Islam across the Arab world and wipe out the state of Israel. It is that apparent unstoppable expansionism which now must be curbed. 

Iranian influence has already spread to Saudi Arabia's heavily Shiite and oil-rich eastern province and to Lebanon through Hezbollah. Even the Sunni sheikdoms of the Gulf now defer to Iran.

Iran has co-opted Hamas, a Sunni organisation closely linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, transforming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a jihad against the Jewish state. Once fortified with nuclear weapons, Iranian power in the Middle East would be complete. 

Moderate Arab leaders have been circumspect in their condemnation knowing full well that the blame for the end of the tenuous Israel-Hamas cease-fire rests with Hamas. 

Those leaders understand what many western leaders fail to grasp. The Middle East conflict is no longer just about creating a Palestinian state but about preventing the region's takeover by radical Islam. 

Above all, the goal is to ensure that Hamas is unable to proclaim victory and thereby enhance Iranian prestige in the Arab world. 

Israel's 2006 war against Hezbollah was squandered through Israeli incompetence and international pressure. Hezbollah manipulated the western media by inflating the number of civilian casualties. The winner was Iran. Israel will not make that same mistake twice. 

Yet the question remains whether the international community has learned its Lebanon lesson, or will once again allow the jihadists to win. 

The international community must not be duped again. If Hamas is successful in manipulating world opinion with a premature cease-fire, its leaders will proclaim victory and continue to stockpile long-range missiles for the next round of attacks against Israeli civilians. And the next time may be too late to halt another Iran backed triumph. 

Picture: An Israeli woman walks under the damaged roof of a temporarily closed food market minutes after a rocket fired from Gaza hit Sderot.

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