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Democratic National Committee (DNC) fund raising under the chairmanship of Howard Dean shows a disappointing $16.7 million raised in the first quarter of 2005, compared with $34 million reported by the Republicans.
That tends to confirm dire predictions by old-line Democratic fund-raisers of a fall-off in money if Dean became chairman. He had promised to bring in heavy individual contributions, as he did in his 2004 campaign for president. But the DNC in the first quarter received only $13 million from individuals, compared to $31 million for the Republican National Committee (RNC).
Could it be that preaching that U.S. politics are “corrupt,” is bad for fundraising?
If you want some international intrigue and strategy with globally significant repercussions, it’s on, in Gaza.
Gaza is a large strip of land within the current southern boundary of Israel.
Last month I posted about the policy of Ariel Sharon, to force the evacuation of 9,000 Israelis living in the Gaza strip. These people have been living there for 20 years. They went there at the request of the Israeli government. They are enduring incredible hardships in order to be a bulwark of Israel against those who plainly say, that they wish to destroy Israel. As I posted in another article, titled Courage in Gaza, they don’t want to move. They want to stay.
The title of my post last month on this subject was, The Biggest Current Mystery on Earth: Forced Evacuation of Israeli Citizens by Their Own Government. No one can understand what Ariel Sharon is thinking.
Last Thursday I went to a meeting of a group in Los Angeles that is seeking to save Gush Katif, the Israeli cities in Gaza. With the slogan, “Let My People Stay,” this group is working to bring to public attention the facts about what is happening. Their excellent web site is here.
At that meeting it was pointed out that Gaza is home to cities that currently include 1.3 million Palestinians, and that, if Israel pulls out of Gaza, Gaza will almost certainly become “Hamastan”—that is, a nation owned and occupied by the terrorist forces of Hamas.
Can Ariel Sharon be so misguided as to pursue a policy that could lead to this result? That is one possible explanation. But there is another possible explanation as well.
From World Net Daily:
Israel: No more towns to Palestinian control
Halts West Bank handover amid repeated cease-fire violations
Posted: May 6, 2005
Israel announced yesterday it would not hand over any more West Bank towns to Palestinian security forces until their government acts against terror groups.
The move follows continued Palestinian violations of a cease-fire agreement signed in February.
...Israel has expressed disappointment at what it calls repeated violations of a cease-fire agreement announced in Egypt Feb. 8 by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
There have since been more than 200 rocket and mortar attacks against Jewish communities in Gaza, a suicide bombing and several attempted bombings attacks.
The alternate explanation is as follows. Sharon had no intention of pulling out unless all terrorist activity actually stopped—something he knew was unlikely. He anticipated continued terrorist attacks, with the intention of halting the pullout from Gaza when they had become a reality. This forces world opinion to confront the fact that it is the Palestinians who are breaking the cease-fire. It reverses Oslo. In the Oslo accords, Israel gave land in return for a promise of peace, which was broken. Here, Sharon may be saying, we will not give land except in return for the reality of peace.
Note that Gaza is not part of the West Bank; the West Bank is a land mass many times the size of Gaza, on Israel’s east side, and to the west of Jordan. (Map). It contains over 200,000 Israelis, vs. just 9,000 Israelis in Gaza. Gaza has great military and economic value to Israel, and the Israelis there passionately want to stay. Having halted withdrawal from the West Bank in response to terrorist attacks on Gaza, it appears unlikely that Sharon would yet withdraw from Gaza.
This alternate explanation is more than sheer speculation on my part. It makes more sense than a repetition of the errors of Oslo, about which Ariel Sharon himself said, as recently as last month, “First of all I understand that the Oslo agreements were the greatest disaster Israel ever had.” In fact, in that same article, Sharon stated explicitly that his strategy is that of the alternative I have suggested:
In a meeting with American Jewish leaders in Washington, DC yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon said several times that “We are in the pre-Road Map phase, we are not in the phase of the Road Map and there will be no compromise and the Road Map won’t start until there is full compliance by the Palestinian Authority (PA), until PA leader Mazen dismantles and disarms the terror group, ends all incitement, shows more cooperation between the Palestinian security force and the Israel security force, and starts educating the Arabs for peace.” Sharon added that “the PA security organizations are really security terror organizations,” and strongly proclaimed “the main reason for the problems between the Arabs and Israel is that the Arab world does not recognize the right of Israel to have a Jewish state in the homeland and cradle of the Jewish people.”
The only surprise would be, that he may have meant it.
Update 5-9-05, from commenter Moshe:
just a small correction: alot of us live here for 30 years already! (not 20) the state of israel is not even twice as old, which means that gush katif is no “new settlement” here. no one lived here before,they couldn’t. it was considered “cursed land”. the arabs were not able to grow anything in the sand dunes, and there were no birds or insects etc. only since we “came home” did the land respond – and it is now a garden of eden.
He’s not exaggerating. The history of Israel is dramatized in the international best-seller, Exodus.
One more quote from Victor Davis Hanson’s latest:
When we see Democrats speaking and living like normal folks — expressing worry that the United States must return to basic education and values to ensure its shaky preeminence in a cutthroat world, talking of one multiracial society united by a rare exceptional culture of the West rather than a salad bowl of competing races and tribes, and apprising the world that we are principled abroad in our support of democratic nations and quite dangerous when attacked — they will be competitive again.
Since they will not do that, they will keep losing — no matter how much the economy worries, the war frightens, and the elite media scares the American people.
A melting pot, not a salad bowl—that is key for the continued success of this country.
From VDH:
Until Democrats promote someone who barks out something like, “We can and will win in Iraq,” or, “Let the word go out: An attack on the United States originating from a rogue state is synonymous with its own destruction,” or some such unguarded and perhaps slightly over-the-top statement, I don’t think that the American people will entrust their safety to the party. John Kerry, to be frank, is no Harry Truman, and time is running out for Hillary Clinton to morph into Scoop Jackson.
