J Street, the pro-Palestinian lobbying group, this week criticized the Hamas regime for building terror tunnels in Gaza. J Street’s solution to the problem? Give more money to Gaza!
It’s been three years since J Street last put out a press release mentioning the tunnels, and even then it was only in the context of celebrating the fact that Israel had ceased its military operations against Hamas in Gaza.
So if you get your news from J Street, you would assume there hasn’t been any tunnel-building going on in Gaza since 2014. But lo and behold, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) this week complained that it found a Hamas terror tunnel running under two of its schools in Gaza. UNRWA, whose schools are notorious for their anti-Israel hate curricula, has never shown much concern when tunnels were built to murder Israelis. But dig a tunnel under UNRWA’s own schools – well, that’s cause for outrage.
The UNRWA announcement gave J Street an easy way to seem as if it is getting “tough” on Hamas. J Street has nothing to lose by criticizing Hamas. Israel already gave all of Gaza to Hamas. There’s no danger that criticizing Hamas will impede Israel FROM handing over territory to Hamas, because there’s no territory left in Gaza for J Street to demand that Israel hand over.
By contrast, notice that J Street almost never criticizes the Palestinian Authority – not for its incitement to violence, not for paying salaries to terrorists, not even for its human rights violations against fellow Palestinians. That’s because focusing attention on the PA’s terrorism and totalitarianism would impede J Street’s mission of planting a PA state in Israel’s back yard. And J Street is obsessed with creating that state, regardless of what kind of state it will be.
Would “Palestine” be a terrorist regime? Would it be totalitarian? Who cares? Israel will be stuck dealing with those consequences, while the J Streeters return to the comfort of their lives in Beverly Hills, Scarsdale, and Potomac and find some new cause with which to entertain themselves.
Incredibly, even J Street’s “condemnation” of Hamas this week came with some strings attached – very big strings. After its pro forma criticism of the tunnels, J Street’s press release got to the real issue –what it calls “Gaza’s humanitarian crisis.”
That’s the real problem, in J Street’s view:
“The humanitarian crisis and overall status quo in Gaza is totally untenable and continues to deteriorate.”
Every few weeks, the Jewish ‘peace’ camp and ITS allies in the media circulate alarmist reports about how Gaza “is on the edge of collapse” or “just about to explode.”
For some reason, though, the only collapses that ever seem to take place in Gaza are when terror tunnels cave in, and the only explosions are when Hamas bomb-makers have work accidents. There has not been a single report of any Gazans dying of starvation, malnutrition, or any of the other afflictions one would expect based on all the claims about imminent disaster there.
What is J Street’s “solution” to this “crisis”? Give more American taxpayers’ money to Gaza, of course: “We urge the U.S. government and the international community to work with Israeli and Palestinian authorities to find ways to improve the situation on the ground…”
Hamas has proven time and again that it knows how to turn “humanitarian” assistance into weapons of terror. The tunnels are built from concrete that was imported to Gaza after the Obama administration pressured Israel to allow it in, in order to build houses.
Additional “humanitarian” aid will simply relieve Hamas of the burden of caring for its own population, thus freeing up funds for Hamas to build more tunnels, bombs, and rockets.
J Street’s “condemnation,” then, is not merely worthless – it’s dangerous. Because if J Street’s advice is followed, Hamas will have even more funds and materials to build the very terror tunnels J Street claims to oppose.