Israel’s foreign minister on Tuesday underlined the Jewish state’s gains from its withdrawal from Gaza, disclosing that he met with his counterparts from more than 10 Arab and other Muslim nations this week.

Silvan Shalom also told the U.N. General Assembly that Israel would seek a seat on the powerful Security Council for the first time. …

“The iron wall” that stood between Israel and most Islamic countries is coming down, Shalom said. “Relations are growing at a rate never seen before.”

No one can deny that the changes going on in the Middle East are surprisingly significant. After all, who would have thought that Hamas would consider anything but the total destruction of Israel?

Hamas could one day amend a charter calling for the destruction of Israel and hold negotiations with the Jewish state, a political leader of the Islamic militant group in the West Bank said.

“The charter is not the Koran,” Mohammed Ghazal told Reuters in an interview in Nablus on Tuesday.

“Historically, we believe all Palestine belongs to Palestinians, but we’re talking now about reality, about political solutions … The realities are different.”

Astounding news. Still, anyone who thinks that Israel will get a seat at the most powerful table in the anti-semitic UN has got to be on crack.

Meanwhile, with the murder of 52 innocents still fresh on the minds of UK citizens, a delegation of British Muslims has the chutzpah to ask Tony Blair to do away with Holocaust Memorial Day — because it is an affront to their sensibilities. Columnist Carol Gould responds:

However, now that the Muslim community of Great Britain has put its cards on the table and shown how little it cares about interfaith relations, it is little wonder even the most liberal of Anglo-Jewish leaders have recoiled in horror at the request for the abandonment of British Holocaust Day. Frankly, the idea that anyone would suggest the scrapping of this day of remembrance is repugnant and, simply stated, a hideous slur on the Jewish people. The Holocaust, born out of the repeated lies perpetrated by Hitler and Goebbels and reinforced by centuries of Blood Libels and slanders against Jews across the Christian world, is a defining moment in Jewish history. One and a half million babies and children were exterminated.

In 1963, Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip.

In 1963, Jordan occupied the West Bank and half of Jerusalem.

In 1963, Syria towered 3,000 feet over Israel, entrenched on the Golan Heights.

In 1963, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was born with only one objective: the total destruction of Israel and the eradication of all Jews.

By 1967, PLO terrorist attacks had escalated to 37 in just the first four months, Israeli children were sleeping in bomb shelters as Syria shelled farms and villages from the Golan Heights and Egyptian president Nasser declared:

We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand; we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.

It was Jewish blood that Nasser lusted after and he moved 100,000 troops and 1,000 tanks across the Sinai Peninsula to Israel’s southern border in June of 1967.

There was no doubt that an attack was coming; indeed, one Syrian general predicted a victory over Israel in four days “at most”.

Israel decided that it would be better to fight on Arab soil rather than their own. On 5 June Israel launched a pre-emptive air strike and destroyed 309 of Egypt’s 340 aircraft while they sat on the ground. Israeli ground forces then moved into the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip and engaged Egyptian ground forces.

Meanwhile, King Hussein of Jordan ordered his forces to attack the Israeli half of Jerusalem from the Jordanian-controlled half of the city. The Israeli’s responded and by that evening Jordan’s air force was decimated. By the next morning Israeli troops and nearly surrounded all of Jerusalem.

By the end of the second day Israel had destroyed nearly all of Syria’s aircraft and had nearly total control of the skies. Israeli ground forces took the Western Wall and Jews controlled the holiest site in Judaism for the first time in 2,000 years.

By the end of the third day Israel had pushed Jordanian forces out of the West Bank and Jordan agreed to a ceasefire. By the end of the fourth day Israeli forces reached the Suez Canal, controlled the entire Sinai Peninsula and stood poised to drive to Cairo. On the fifth day Israel assaulted entrenched Syrian forces and took the Golan Heights on day 6 .

During the six-day conflict Israel lost 700 troops and 46 of its 200 fighter planes. The Arabs lost 18,000 men as well as virtually all of their air force and much of their armed weaponry. As a result of the war, Israel tripled its territory from 8,000 square miles to 25,000, taking the Gaza strip and the entire Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria, and only because of international pressure did Israel not drive to Cairo, Damascus and Amman, the capital cities of Egypt, Syria and Jordan, respectively.

This land belonged to Israel by right of conquest, yet Israel did not expel the people that lived there.

In fact, in 1978 Israel agreed to return 91% of the territory won when it agreed to give the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt. The cost of doing so was immense:

• Israel lost early-warning stations on the Sinai mountaintops that protected against attacks from the east.
• Israel had to relocate more than 170 military installations, airfields and army bases.
• Israel ceded the Alma oil field, discovered and developed by Israel, which was supplying half the nation’s energy needs and had reserves estimated at $100 billion.
• Israel gave up settlements and productive farms that were created in the midst of a desert:

  Because Egypt insisted that Jewish civilians leave the Sinai, 7,000 Israelis were uprooted from their homes and businesses, which they had spent years building in the desert. This was a physically and emotionally wrenching experience, particularly for the residents of Yamit, who had to be forcibly removed by soldiers from their homes.

Fast forward to 2005 when more than 50,000 police and soldiers were deployed in Israel’s largest peacetime military operation in history. And they were deployed against their own citizens:

Israeli troops dragged settlers screaming and sobbing from homes and synagogues on Wednesday, beginning a forced evacuation of Gaza settlements after nearly four decades of occupation.

Thousands of unarmed soldiers marched door to door in six Jewish enclaves, ordering people out and in some cases breaking down doors when they refused. Police grabbed protesters off the streets and pushed them into waiting buses.

There are 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, providing a home to about 8500 people.

One woman wept and shouted “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” as four female soldiers, each grabbing a limb, carried her out of her home in Neve Dekalim, the largest Gaza enclave.

In one synagogue, radical youths who had slipped into the main settlement bloc sang the haunting melody some Jews sang on their way to Nazi gas chambers.

[Note: click here to listen to the song referenced, Ani Maamin.]

One woman protested by setting herself on fire at a Gaza Strip checkpoint, suffering burns over 60 percent of her body. A man took a soldier’s weapon at knife point and killed four Palestinian laborers. Emotions were running high.

Soldiers consoled weeping settlers:

In Neve Dekalim, a grizzled colonel, with tears in his eyes, shook hands with a young father, cradling the man’s tiny baby, as he explained it was time to go.

Another commander, identified only as Yitzhak, tearfully hugged another settler.

“It’s not easy. These are very special people. This is the salt of the earth,” Yitzhak said. “But we have a mission and we will carry it out, and I think these people understand that.”

There are stories of soldiers praying with the settlers before loading them onto buses. There are stories of soldiers helping grief-stricken families to pack. There are pictures of soldiers weeping as they carried out their orders.

There are pictures of soldiers consoling each other.

There are frequent references to the holocaust:

In Kerem Atzmona, considered one of the most religious and most resistant to the disengagement plan, residents used Nazi-era symbols to protest their removal — painting houses with swastikas and marching from their homes with their hands held high and yellow stars of David stitched to their shirts.

All across Gaza, the images are heartbreaking, even to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who ordered the evacuation:

“The pictures we see are heartbreaking, they are also breaking my heart,” he said. …

Sharon defended his decision to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank, saying he did it for the good of Israel. “I believe with all these difficulties, Israel will come out stronger,” he said.

Sharon’s feeling is based on the belief that Palestinians will be able to control the terrorists in their midst, hold free and democratic elections and install a transparent government. To do so, Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, will have to end the corruption that runs rampant through the Palestinian Authority and win the battle for power when groups like Hamas, who sees the pullout as a victory for the intifada, try to assume control. They are already vowing to fight on:

Hamas, the militant group, also said the evacuation of Jewish settlers from Gaza and the northern West Bank did not mean a complete liberation from Israeli rule, and it reserved the right to bear arms.

But we know who is cheering: Palestinians as they wave the Hamas flag, a symbol of terrorism and the slaughter of innocents since the second Intifada began nearly five years ago:

Hamas militants, who claim the pullout as a victory for the uprising, slapped up posters on Gaza City walls showing a masked gunmen striding across crumbling settlements.

Palestinian militants are portraying the pullout as a victory for their suicide bombings and rocket attacks. Some fear militants will resume bloodshed once Israel’s Gaza withdrawal is complete.

Palestinian terrorists are literally dancing in the streets. Others are setting up lawn chairs to watch joyfully as soldiers pull families from their homes.

In 1978, Israel gave up the Sinai in return for recognition by all the Arab governments. The land was handed over, but recognition of legitimacy has never really been fully expressed and supported by anyone except, arguably, Egypt.

In 2005, Israel is giving up the Gaza Strip, yet it does so without guarantees provided by signed agreements and international backers. Daniel Pipes believes that this is a case of Israel literally destroying itself:

Israel’s mistakes are not unique for a democracy ­ French appeasement of Germany in the 1930s or American incrementalism in Vietnam come to mind ­ but none other jeopardized the very existence of a people.

Indeed, Jonathan Tobin explains why this retreat will change nothing in the liberal press:

Israelis had their own good reasons to say good riddance to Gaza, but they should expect no credit for it on the pages of The New York Times, or on CNN or NPR. Years and years of concessions have only served to reinforce the idea that Israel was always in the wrong. And nothing – not giving up Gaza, or even the whole of the West Bank and Jerusalem – will change that.

Until the day when Israel and its friends begin speaking once again of inalienable Jewish rights to this land, the most we can expect is still more of the same.

As for me, I only hope that this does not become the picture that best describes the outcome of the Gaza evacuation: a Palestinian child celebrates with gun in hand:

For more on the Six Day War:

• What led to the Six Day War in 1967?
• Who Started the 6-Day War?
• Six-Day War

Bloggers covering the Gaza evacuation:

• Cox & Forkum: Evicted
• Gates of Vienna: See You Next Year in Jerusalem
• Michael J. Totten: Israel Withdraws from Gaza. Gaza Withdraws from Tel Aviv
• Vodka Pundit: Late Night Rambling
• The Spoons Experience: Forcibly Removing Gaza Settlers
• The Political Teen: Hamas Vows Violence After Withdrawal
• The Big Picture: The Israeli Pullout from Gaza
• Right Thinking from the Left Coast: Middle Eastern Violence
• One Arab World: How to destroy the base
• Shining Full Plate and Broadsword: An Abject Lesson
• Jeff Blogworthy: Hamas leader: Gaza withdrawal – “beginning of the end for Israel”
• Rantings of a Sandmonkey: Sharon’s strategy?
• Hidden Nook: Editor’s Note: Israeli Settlement Evacuations

Bloggers covering the latest UN scandal in which it paid for Palestinian propaganda:

• The Anchoress: The UN did what?
• E-nough!: UNDP: “We are emphatically neutral”
• Wizbang: UN Paying For Palestinian Propaganda
• Raging Right Wing Republican: UN Funds Palestinian Incitement Propaganda

The scheduled withdrawal of Israeli communities from the Gaza Strip is a defeat for Israel, and the armed conflict that led to that “defeat” will continue until Israel leaves all of the West Bank and Israel, a senior Hamas leader said in an interview with Cybercast News Service.

The Israeli army has been ordered to begin procedures to hand over additional West Bank cities to the Palestinian Authority next week, beginning with Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

The Palestinian Authority, of course, is famous protecting the Infatada that has targeted women and children and, just last week, even the sick and infirm as a woman who was receiving treatment “on humanitarian grounds” at the Israeli Beersheba hospital attempted to repay the kindness by blowing herself up inside of the hospital.

This is the same Palestinian Authority, of course, that has an official TV station that carries clerics who say nice things like “Jews are a virus resembling AIDS” and that Muslims “will rule America” as well as the rest of the world (once they rid it of Jews).

When putting one of the most holy sites in Christian lore in the hands of Muslim fanatics, one must remember how the two 2,000-year-old giant Buddha statues that were carved into the side of a mountain faired under their tender care. Remember those? You’ll have to, because you’ll never see them again.

One wonders how long before the manger gets bulldozed. Any guesses?

Support among Palestinians for suicide bombings has dropped sharply in the past six months, from 77 percent to 29 percent, according to a poll published Monday. …

The largest militant groups, Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, have said they would abide by the informal truce declared after a Feb. 8 Mideast summit. The smaller Islamic Jihad, however, carried out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that killed five Israelis in Tel Aviv late last month.

The poll also found that support for Hamas, which is competing in local elections in May and parliamentary elections in July, increased from 18 percent in December to 25 percent in March. Support for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement dropped from 40 percent in December to 36 percent. …

In the poll, 29 percent of respondents said they approved of last month’s bombing in Tel Aviv, compared to 77 percent who supported an August bus bombing that killed 16 Israelis in the town of Be’er Sheva.

. . . is The Plight of the Palestinian Bomber by Lifelike Pundits. Pithy, droll and acerbically accurate.

He had more Jewish blood on his hands than anybody since Hitler. He was a strategist of the murder of women, children and the aged. No normal nation would have dedicated this amount of endless broadcasts to a person responsible for the deaths of so many of their kin.

Exactly. Yet the press salivates over him and liberal moonbats considered him legitimate.

Arafat sleeps with the worms and his future is in God’s hands. He is worth neither my pity nor my anger.

It is time we move on and concentrate on our future. The press will better serve us by focusing on the next leader of the Palestinian people. Hopefully he will want peace and not just the extermination of Jews and the embezzlement of funds.

The Swiss deny that any of Arafat’s money is in their banks. Imagine that.

Fox news reports “Palestinian Official Says Arafat Has Died” but doesn’t have a story up, nor does Aljazeera.net.

CNN does and so does MSNBC.

Richard T at The Command Post should run out of coffee more often if it leads to posts like this.