We had no video from the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in Cambridge, yet Obama felt comfortable degrading law enforcement in public. Now we’ve seen video, after video, after video, after video of the attacks by Hamas (terrorist) supporters who were not trying to bring supplies to Gaza, rather create an international incident that would put Israel on the defense and get all the bobble-heads at the United Nations in a stir for the next few months.

And Obama stays silent.

Points of fact:

1. Israel suggested the flotilla bring the supplies to an Israeli port for inspection and they would be quickly delivered to Gaza. The supporters of terrorists refused.
2. Israel knew they were heading to Gaza and demanded to inspect the cargo. The supporters of terrorists refused.
3. Israeli defense forces tried to board the vessels to inspect and were repelled with flash bangs, chains, sling shots, wooden bats and steel pipes.
4. Once the IDF rappelled in from helicopters, they were immediately attacked. (They seem to have defended themselves with pistols, but some pistols were taken from them by the supporters of terrorists and used against them. I’m willing to bet some of the dead were shot by the supporters of terrorists themselves.)
5. The supplies were going to be delivered – at least some of them – but Hamas has refused the shipment.
6. Gaza seems to be doing pretty good when it comes to supplies already. Where is the desperate need?

Don’t like my sourced link in number 6 since most of the news you hear concerning conditions in Gaza are terrible? How about a report from a Danish journalist who traveled into Gaza this week [translation]?

When I yesterday morning drove through Gaza City, I was immediately surprised that there are almost as many traffic jams as there always has been. Is there not a shortage of fuel? Apparently not. Gasoline is not even rationed.

Many shops were closed yesterday, Hamas has declared a general strike in protest against Israel’s brutal and deadly attack on the Turkish flotilla with pro-Palestinian activists on board. So it was difficult to estimate how many products were on the shelves. Therefore I went over to the Shati refugee camp, also known as Beach Camp. Here is one of Gaza’s many vegetable markets that sell much more than just fruits and vegetables.

I will not say whether, in better times has been a larger product range than there was yesterday. But there was certainly no shortage of vegetables, fruits or any other ordinary, basic foods. Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, watermelons, potatoes – mountains of these items in the many stalls.

I must admit I was a little surprised. Because when I call down here to my Palestinian friends, they tell me about all the problems and deficiencies, so I expected that the crisis was a little more clear.

And the first woman we interviewed in the market confirms this strange, contradictory, negative mindset:

“We have nothing,” she said. We need everything! Food, drinks … everything! ”

It disturbed her not at least that she stood between the mountains of vegetables, fruit, eggs, poultry and fish, while she spun this doomsday scenario.

What is the truth concerning conditions in Gaza?

Terrorist are really good at getting their subjects to comply with orders. Hamas is no different, they control the people, economy and government in Gaza. It’s called propaganda … look it up.

FoxNews video courtesy Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpO80NQYnI8

At least Vice President Joe Biden had his head screwed on correctly this morning. From Ben Smith at Politico.

“[The Israelis have] said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people,’” Biden said.

The leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas said Monday that its fighters had stopped firing rockets at Israel for now. He also reached out in a limited way to the Obama administration and others in the West, saying the movement was seeking a state only in the areas Israel won in 1967.

His reasons are pretty simple, it may sound good, but in reality nothing has changed.

This is worth listening too because sometimes we in America view this conflict in, well, from an American perspective. Too often we fail to realize the role religion plays in this, and in a country where religion plays an ever smaller role, especially among the intellectual elite, it’s understandable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_E32IztB0I

As for the Hamas proposal, Hot Air has a very good rundown.

Hamas wants an extremist makeover.  Khaled Meshal, who just won another four-year term as Hamas’ head terrorist, gave his first interview to an American media outlet in a year, and tells the New York Times that Hamas has changed.  Not enough to actuallychange, of course, but just trust them when they say they’re no longer annihilationist:

Peres understands, Hamas is what Hamas is until it demonstrates otherwise, and a temporary halt in rockets is not enough to change Israel’s mind, nor should it. Religious people have no clock, they have eternity.

That would be a precondition.

For those interested, here is some language taken directly from the Hamas charter from August of 1988, from the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). Reference link one, two.

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. …

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

Atlas Shrugs provides us with this…

Hamas boobytraps civilian homes, boobytrap dolls, fire missiles from schools, use mosques as arsenals, and fire machine guns into a party of Gazan revelers playing music and Obambi is going to talk to these blood hungry neanderthals? Strap yourself in folks …… this lefty maroon is going to get our asses kicked. Big time.

When Obambi was silent on Israel’s self defense I thought it was a low, lefty way to play it. He waited. He waited until he erroneously thought Israel had fired on a school. Only then did the snake slither out with a statement about “the loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel being a source of deep concern” for him .[note Gaza first] The thing is, it was Hamas that bombed that school – and Hamas only targets civilian Jews. Jews out their own lives at risk to avoid civilian casualties. Did Obambi address that?

She’s reacting to this article in the UK Guardian.

Obama camp ‘prepared to talk to Hamas’
Incoming administration will abandon Bush’s isolation of Islamist group to initiate low-level diplomacy, say transition sources

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s ­doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush ­presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 ­Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

The Guardian has spoken to three ­people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start ­contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s. Israel did not become aware of the contacts until much later.

…

“This is going to be an administration that is committed to negotiating with ­critical parties on critical issues,” the source said.

You have to ask the question. Why bother sitting down – and starting even low-level negotiations – with a group that has so clearly laid out their position?

Allah over at Hot Air has more, and notes the clear distinction between Obama’s statements in April 2008 and the report – from three different sources – that low level talks will be initiated.

Gateway Pundit is thrilled too.

You can not negotiate with evil, and you’re not going to get evil to sit down for an anger management session with Dr. Phil either.

So, is there a mole in France 2 that has ties to the terrorist organization Hamas? Maybe a sympathizer? Ya gotta ask the question. I guess this is my first example of Europe’s drive by media.

From Haaretz.com, with a hat tip to Powerline.

The footage aired on Channel 2 on Tuesday afternoon showed dozens of dead bodies, including Hamas gunmen and citizens, which the channel said were killed by an IAF bombing raid on January 1st. It later came to light that the channel had instead aired footage of the devastation caused after a truck full of explosives blew up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp.

Yup, the guys – terrorists – blew themselves up while moving through a refugee camp. Just their style.

Just think how much crap environmental organizations give the military when they want to move ordinance around the United States.

Update: Atlas Shrugs picked up on the story today.

David Hornik at Pajamas Media has a detailed report.

In an interview published Tuesday in the London-based Al-Hayat, Dr. Ahmad Yousef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said senior Hamas figures had held a secret meeting with advisers to Barack Obama in Gaza before the U.S. elections.

Throughout his campaign Obama’s official line was that he would “only talk with Hamas if it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and agrees to abide by past agreements.” …

According to Yousef in the Al-Hayat interview, the Obama-Hamas talks were already ongoing during the U.S. election campaign: “We were in contact with a number of Obama’s aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to reveal this information as it may influence the elections or become manipulated by McCain’s campaign.”

Yousef also claimed he personally had friendly relations with some of Obama’s advisers and that “Haniyeh will draft a congratulatory letter to Obama for his victory.”

Well isn’t that nice.

So, a couple of good questions for the next Obama news conference…

1. Were discussions going on between Obama advisers and Hamas leaders prior to and leading up to the election on Nov. 4? If not, are you calling Yousef a liar?
2. If conversations did take place, what were the logistics of the discussions? Were they in person? Over the Internet via e-mail?
3. If discussions did take place, who were the Obama advisers involved?
4. Is there a difference between your (Obama’s) public statements – requiring Hamas to renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and agree to abide by past agreements prior to talks – and your under-the-table actions led by advisers?

Hinderaker sums it all up.

It would have been nice to know about the cordial relationship between Obama’s advisers and Hamas during the campaign. But, of course, it was an article of faith in the mainstream media that Obama’s many unsavory and radical associations were somehow irrelevant to any expectation as to how he would govern as President.