PM Considers Tougher Response as Gaza Rockets Target Beersheba

by Itamar Sharon and Times of Israel staff

Iron Dome intercepts one rocket, two fall in open areas, after warning sirens heard in Negev town for first time since 2012; Netanyahu consults with security chiefs

A volley of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip iintercepted by the Iron Dome system near the Israeli town of Beersheba, November 15, 2012. (photo credit: Uri Lenzl/Flash90)

Gaza terrorists continued to increase the range of their rocket attacks on Saturday, targeting Beersheba for the first time since November 2012.

Three rockets were fired at the city on Saturday evening, setting off warning sirens in the largest town in southern Israel. One was intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system, while two fell in open fields. There were no reports of casualties. 

The attack on Beersheba, which has a population of 200,000, marked a significant escalation in the Gaza rocket attacks, and could lead to a severe Israeli response.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held urgent consultations saturday evening with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, and the heads of the security services. He said Israel was hitting Hamas targets in response to the rocket fire, and would use additional force if necessary.

After ordering increased Israeli forces to the Gaza border on Thursday, Netanyahu had warned: “One possibility is that the fire will stop and the quiet continues. The other is that the fire continues and then the increased forces that are in the south will act forcefully. The safety of our citizens is first and foremost.”

Benjamin Netanyahu (right) talks with Moshe Ya’alon (center). (Photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The last time Beersheba was targeted was during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, which the IDF launched in order to curb persistent rocket fire from Gaza. Many Israeli cities including Ashkelon, Ashdod and even Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were targeted with rockets during that conflict. Over the course of eight days, some 1,500 airstrikes were carried out against terrorist installations and other targets. Six Israelis and 167 Palestinians were killed during the operation.

Shortly after the attack on Beersheba Saturday, five more rockets were fired towards the Hof Ashkelon and Eshkol regions. Three of them were intercepted by Iron Dome while two fell in open areas. The town of Ofakim was also targeted in an earlier salvo.

In all, over 20 rockets and mortar shells had been fired into Israel by nightfall on Saturday, causing no significant damage, though a soldier was lightly wounded by mortar fire.

Israeli aircraft targeted three Hamas terror targets in the southern Gaza Strip early Saturday evening, as well as a militant the army said was preparing to fire a rocket.

The previous IDF strikes had taken place on Friday evening, also restricted to three Hamas targets with no casualties. The seemingly limited Israeli response to the continuing rocket salvos appeared to indicate that Jerusalem was still waiting to see whether Hamas would curb the rocket-fire as reports proliferated of an impending ceasefire agreement.

However, with the attack on Beersheba, Israeli patience could now be wearing thin.

The persistent rocket fire came despite Egyptian efforts to broker a renewed truce between Israel and Hamas in and around Gaza following a flare-up of cross-border violence since the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers on June 12.

Former military intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, now director of the Institute for National Security Studies, had said early Saturday that Hamas was wary of launching rockets deeper into Israel, at Beersheba or the center of the country, which, he argued, indicated that Israel has not lost its deterrent power.

“There is no doubt that we are facing another round [of violence] with Hamas. We will take action when Hamas crosses the line and the next round will be significant, and will involve ground and air campaign,” he said.

A Hamas official, who did not give his name to Palestinian news agency Sawa, said overnight Friday-Saturday that “those who expect Hamas to stop the rocket fire [on Israel], should to turn [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister] Rami Hamdallah.”

The official was alluding to the fact that the salaries of 40,000 Hamas clerks in Gaza were still unpaid, which was reportedly a key Hamas demand since agreeing to a unity government deal in late April with the Palestinian Authority.

The salaries issue was a focus of tension between Hamas and Fatah after the reconciliation agreement was signed, and banks in the Gaza Strip were closed for six days after the Hamas worker’s salaries were not transferred.

The Palestinian Authority has reportedly refused to pay the salaries, pointing out that the agreement stipulated that a special committee would be set up to examine the issue and decide whether the employment of all 40,000 would continue.

Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV reported that the office of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh would resume operations if the salaries were not paid by next week.

Haniyeh resigned as prime minister in early June, just ahead of the swearing in of the Palestinian unity government.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official abroad, said Saturday that the Islamist group would not agree to a truce without the removal of the blockade on Gaza.

On Friday night the Israeli Air Force carried out a series of air strikes on militant targets in the Gaza Strip. The army said it hit three Hamas targets, but did not give further details. Palestinian officials did not report any casualties in the strikes.

While the Israeli government appeared interested in de-escalation, not all of its members seemed to agree that restoring calm was the best course of action.

“The idea that ‘quiet will be answered with quiet’ is a serious mistake,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on a visit to Sderot on Friday, adding that he believed Israel must now strike Hamas hard.

“It cannot be that after the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers and two consecutive weeks of rockets fall, the approach of Israel will be ‘quiet is answered with quiet,’” he said. “There can not be an agreement with Hamas. Ignoring the problem or being afraid to deal with it will lead us to a situation in which thousands of missiles are fired at us, not hundreds.

“We cannot to accept a situation in which Hamas controls the pace of events and dictates when it flares up the region, and all we do is respond,” he added.

Sirens had wailed in Israel’s southern city of Sderot, the Eshkol Region, Sdot Negev and the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, warning of incoming rocket fire from Gaza, from early in the morning Friday. In the course of Friday, more than 20 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza.

On Friday morning, Egyptian and Palestinian sources confirmed to The Times of Israel that a ceasefire was set to be declared between Israel and Hamas, but the exact timing has yet to be set. The truce was mediated by Egyptian intelligence officials, as has been the case in similar negotiations in the past.

According to the sources, the understanding that the Egyptians reached with Israel and Hamas is that “quiet will be met with quiet.”

“Neither side is interested in an escalation,” the sources told The Times of Israel.

The sources also reported that the Egyptians passed messages from Israel to the deputy head of Hamas’s political desk, Moussa Abu Marzouk, based in Cairo. Israeli sources said they were waiting for an answer from Hamas. “The ball is in Hamas’s court,” an official told the Ynet news site.

Commentators in Gaza attributed the escalation in rocket fire over the past 48 hours to the feeling in Hamas that Israel was looking to avoid a fight, and that a cease-fire was impending.

According to the commentators, Hamas is trying to achieve a public relations victory in the eyes of the Gaza public, to be seen as unafraid of an escalation. But, they said, Hamas is itself uninterested in a deterioration into a larger conflict.

Israel on Thursday reportedly issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Hamas in Gaza to halt the incessant fire or face a massive Israeli strike.

Avi Issacharoff contributed to this report.

Itamar Sharon and Times of Israel staff

Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com/pm-considers-tougher-response-as-gaza-rockets-target-beersheba/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Daniel Greenfield: The People Vs. Barack Obama

by Daniel Greenfield

[Ben Shapiro will be speaking at the Freedom Center's Wednesday Morning Club on  Tuesday, July 8, 2014. For more info, click here. To order Ben's new book, "The People Vs. Barack Obama," click here.]

As the first African-American Solicitor General, Thurgood Marshall told a black fraternity, “Neither race nor color nor frustration is an excuse for either lawlessness or anarchy.”

Some five decades later, lawlessness and anarchy have descended on America and on Washington D.C. under the banner of color and frustration. This is no laissez-faire lawlessness, but anarchy toward accountability. Like the rock throwers and Molotov cocktail throwers that Marshall was denouncing, Obama and his people have made their own law out of force while rejecting the rule of law.

Through force they have become the law while disregarding the law. There is a term for that sort of behavior and is it not anarchy. It is crime.

This is the state of affairs that Ben Shapiro describes as “a quasi criminal syndicate” and in his book, The People Vs. Barack Obama: The Criminal Case Against the Obama Administration, he discusses how to fight back against it.

“Consolidated government means consolidated power, consolidated power means consolidated corruption,” Shapiro writes. The old system of checks and balances has been undone. Obama Inc. is an integrated political machine whose appointees serve a common ideological goal and a common purpose. And they control the clockwork machinery of government from the top to the bottom.

There can be no plausible expectation that Attorney General Eric Holder will investigate Obama. Not when Holder is corrupt. As corrupt confederates in crime, Obama protects Holder and Holder protects Obama. Likewise, Obama Inc. is composed of such self-serving mutual pacts forming a system of power that makes up its own laws while refusing to be accountable to the law.

Shapiro’s statement that this amounts to a criminal syndicate is not just rhetoric, it is at the very heart of the legal argument that he makes in The People Vs. Barack Obama.

“The Obama administration has become a full-fledged criminal enterprise,” he writes. “Riddled up and down with executive branch appointees engaged in high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Listing many of the scandals and the violations of the law involved from the Justice Department to the State Department, from the EPA to the NSA, Shapiro argues that they amount to a criminal conspiracy fit for a criminal complaint and that they can be and should be prosecuted under RICO statutes.

“The crime of conspiracy has typically been defined at the state level as the agreement of two or more people to commit a crime. There is little question that some of the crimes of the Obama administration have been coordinated at the highest level, as the evidence will show,” Shapiro argues.

A pattern of criminal conduct can be established for Obama that would make it difficult for him to argue plausible deniability, as he has in virtually every scandal, pretending to be outraged by the scandal he only learned about this morning from the media before shifting gears and calling it a phony scandal.

“RICO provides that any person who is part of an organization that commits any two on a list of crimes can be prosecuted for racketeering,” Shapiro writes. This list becomes the framework around which The People Vs. Barack Obama is built.

Shapiro is of course well aware that Holder is no more likely to hit Obama or his minions with RICO violations than he is to resign in order to pursue his dream of becoming an Olympic skier, but he points out that RICO suits can be pursued as civil suits turning ordinary people into “citizen attorney generals.”

There are two fronts of RICO proposals in The People Vs. Barack Obama. Aside from individual suits, Shapiro proposes that Congress expand the jurisdiction of individuals to file RICO suits against the Executive Branch. Such a move would put Congress on a collision course with Obama’s imperial abuse of executive power, but it would free Congress from having to do the hard work of engaging in prolonged confrontations with Obama; something they have already shown they lack the stomach and spine to do.

Imagine if the family of murdered border patrol agent Brian Terry were to lodge a RICO suit against the Obama administration, Shapiro suggests.

Ben Shapiro argues that the process can begin with targeting lower level officials, much as the FBI begins at the bottom rungs of a criminal enterprise, using confessions and recovered information to begin building a bigger and bigger case against the mastermind of that criminal enterprise.

The pattern of conduct by Obama Inc is that of a criminal enterprise following its corrupt instincts.

“Fast and Furious,” he writes, “sprang from the bowels of the antigun hysteria of the administration… Obama’s quest to weaken America on the international stage found its apex in the death of four Americans… the Obama administration has made a game of revealing self-serving classified information.”

The pattern is that of ideological complicity in nakedly criminal conduct. Each criminal act stems from an ideological motivation and is covered up for ideological reasons. The first motive is ideology, but the final motive is power. Shapiro writes that Obama has made all law dependent on his whim. That has led us to the lawlessness and anarchy, not of the powerless, but of the powerful.

In The People Vs. Barack Obama, Shapiro makes a compelling case for a criminal case against Obama and his subordinates. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he lays out a road map for fighting back against Obama’s lawlessness and restoring the rule of law.

A majority of Americans agree that the country is headed down the wrong path. Many however have despaired of ever putting it on the right path again. In response to a culture of lawlessness inculcated at the very top, Shapiro highlights legally creative and legally aggressive solutions for preventing the left’s organized crime from turning America from a nation of laws into a nation of thugs.

Barack Obama has pitted his power and popularity against the rule of law. Both can be contested by citizens willing to fight for the truth.


Daniel Greenfield

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/the-people-vs-barack-obama/

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

ISIS Already in Gaza Strip

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas seems to be losing control of the dozens of terror cells in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas prevented local journalists from covering the ISIS rally in the Gaza Strip last month as part of its effort to deny the existence of ISIS in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas seems to be trying to cover the sun with one finger.
The Gaza Strip is no longer only a threat to Israel, but also to Egypt. The only way to confront this threat is through security cooperation between Israel and Egypt.

Despite denials by Hamas, there is growing evidence that the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] -- also known as "The Islamic State" -- has begun operating in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Authority [PA] and Israeli security sources are convinced that followers of ISIS in the Gaza Strip are responsible for some of the recent rocket attacks on Israel.

Hamas, they say, seems to be losing control over the dozens of terror cells belonging to ISIS and other jihadi groups.

Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, in Gaza. (Image source: ISIS YouTube video)

Eyad al-Bazam, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior, earlier this week denied reports ISIS terrorists had infiltrated into Egypt through tunnels along the border with the Gaza Strip. He described the reports as "lies and fabrications," adding that they are part of a campaign to "distort the image of the Gaza Strip," and that "There is no presence of ISIS in the Gaza Strip."

The denial came in response to a report in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm according to which Egyptian security forces arrested 15 ISIS terrorists who tried to enter Sinai from the Gaza Strip. According to the report, Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip facilitated the infiltration of the ISIS terrorists into Egypt so that they could carry out a terrorist attack against Egyptians.

The report said that the terrorists had been entrusted with establishing terror cells and branches of ISIS in Egypt.

Hamas is obviously nervous about the presence of ISIS terrorists in the Gaza Strip and sees them as a direct challenge to its rule. ISIS believes that Hamas is "too moderate" and is not doing enough to achieve the destruction of Israel.

Last month, Hamas sent its policemen and militias to disperse a rally organized by ISIS followers in the Gaza Strip to celebrate the recent "military victories" of the terrorist group in Iraq. Hamas prevented local journalists from covering the event as part of its attempt to deny the existence of ISIS in the Gaza Strip.

At the rally, attended by dozens of Islamists, the crowd chanted, "Khaybar, Khyabar, Ya Yahud, Jaish Mohamed Saya'ud!" ("O Jews, Mohamed's army will return.")

This is a battle cry that many Islamists like to chant to remind the Jews of the story of the battle fought in 629 CE by the Prophet Mohamed against the Jews of Khaybar, an oasis in northwestern Arabia. The battle resulted in the killing of many Jews, and their women and children were taken as slaves.

Earlier this year, masked militiamen in the Gaza Strip posted a video on YouTube in which they declared their allegiance to ISIS. The militiamen are believed to be members of a radical Islamist salafist group that has been operating in the Gaza Strip for the past few years.

Then, Hamas also denied that ISIS had any followers in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas seems to be trying to cover the sun with one finger.

At the funeral of two Islamists killed by the Israel Defense Forces last week in Gaza, funeral-goers carried flags and banners of ISIS.

Over the past decade, it has become clear that Hamas is not the only terrorist organization operating in the Gaza Strip, which has become a base for dozens of jihadi groups, some linked to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

The smuggling tunnels that used to link the Gaza Strip with Egypt (most have been destroyed by the Egyptian army over the past year) have facilitated the movement of thousands of Islamist terrorists in both directions.

The Gaza Strip is no longer a threat to Israel, but also to the national security of Egypt.

The only way to confront this threat is through security cooperation between Israel and Egypt, which have a common interest in preventing the Islamists from exporting their terrorism beyond the borders of the Gaza Strip.


Khaled Abu Toameh

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4392/isis-gaza

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Carnegie Middle East Center Official: Iran Facing Economic Collapse, Division

by MEMRI

In an interview with the Saudi daily 'Okaz on June 28, 2014, Saad Mehio, an editorial manager at the Carnegie Middle East Center, said that Iran is facing both economic collapse and division because of its involvement in Iraq and in Syria - the latter of which he refers to as "the Iranian Vietnam or Afghanistan." He expressed his view that "the Iranian regime's policy of defending itself by expanding its regional influence can no longer continue and develop, considering how costly it is for Tehran to maintain its regional influence in Syria, Lebanon, Palestinian and Iraq... The regimes in Iraq and Syria are becoming a financial burden for the Iranian economy, [and] if this continues, [Iran] will be forced to make considerable concessions in these arenas." He also assessed that "Iran, in its current economic circumstances, will top [the list of] regional countries facing potential division."

Mehio added that the crisis in Iraq is the result of the failures of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, who continues to stubbornly cling to his seat although most Iraqis, including Shi'ites, oppose his policies.

The interview was conducted by Saudi writer Khalid Tashkandi; the following day, June 29, Tashkandi published commentary on the interview titled "Iran The First [Country] To Be Divided". The following are excerpts from the commentary:   

Saad Mehio (image: twitter.com/SaadMehio)

"[Mehio says that] there are fears that Iraq will be divided and broken up into mini-states in the north, south, and center, because of the failure of Nouri Al-Maliki's government and its policy, which was expressed by sectarian discrimination and by the marginalization of segments of the population with the support of Iranian influence in Iraq. This is being said all the time, and it has become a refrain in conversations about Iraq. 

"However, according to serious assessments, the collapse of the entire Iranian regime is much closer, along with the division of Iran into a group of mini-states, led by ethnic minorities suffering harsh discrimination. This is what I was told by political analyst Saad Mehio, [an official at] the Carnegie Middle East Center, in a phone conversation regarding the Iraq crisis several days ago, segments of which were published in 'Okaz. 

"Mehio is a leading analyst of Arab political psychology, and his assessments [shed light on] future developments. One of his most salient points was that revolutions, wars, violence, and upheavals – especially in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine – were merely a result of the erosion of Iranian influence in the region, particularly after the opening of two military fronts, in Iraq and Syria. The latter [front] is costing Iran close to 25 billion annually, with no sign that the balance is tipping in favor of its ally, the Assad regime. This financial burden comes on top of the series of economic crises that have befallen Iran as a result of the economic sanctions leveled against it due to its nuclear program, the damage from which includes reduced petrodollar revenues. All this brings Iran to the brink of economic collapse, which would be followed by the fall of the entire Iranian regime.

"[Mehio] further said that Iran's political role in the Arab region is like that of a superpower, but its capabilities are like those of a third- or fourth-world nation. While it seeks to leverage its influence into a geostrategic position overlooking the Mediterranean Sea... this plan has yet to pay off...  [Iran] has had no economic gains from its attempts to expand its influence, which already are unwarranted. However, Iran wants to revive the historical political prestige that it enjoyed during the Persian Empire.

"Iran is sinking on the Syrian front – [a front] which has become 'the Iranian Vietnam.' It will sink even deeper if it insists on supporting the Al-Maliki government in Iraq. [Al-Maliki] has become an outcast in Iraq, even among Shi'ites, and especially among the [Musa] Al-Sadr and ['Ammar] Al-Hakim groups. [But] he cleaves to Iran's policy of spreading its influence. Influential Iranian hands within Iraq are refraining from removing Al-Maliki, who is considered the last bastion of Iranian influence in the region. Therefore, Iran faces a real conflict and the opening of another front in Iraq – but it will not be able to manage this front, neither militarily nor economically.

"No one knows how Iran is waging these battles and attempting to expand its influence outside its borders at a time when it is so unstable at home. Iranian Central Bank reports, as published in Iranian daily newspapers, mainly Sarmayeh, show that Iran's average [annual] inflation tops 30% and that its economy is shrinking. According to other reports, over one third of Iranians live below the poverty line – and this is in addition to the withering international economic sanctions leveled against it every month. Iran's oil exports this year have barely reached an average of 700,000 barrels per day, and it also has a shortage of basic commodities and increased unemployment because many factories are halting operations.

"It is clear that this Iranian policy will not last long, and that Iran's influence in the Arab region is dying. If Iran does not back down from this policy, it will necessarily collapse from within, on all levels – political, security, economic, and social. It will be among the first countries to be divided, especially considering the ethnic shifts in the region. Some minorities in Iran have historically suffered harsh discrimination, most notably the Azeris, of Azerbaijani-Turkish origin…"

MEMRI

Source: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8060.htm

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The World Kangaroo Court Convicts hastily Israel

by David M. Weinberg

Five minutes is all it took for the world to issue the strongest of condemnations following the murder on Wednesday of a 16-year old Palestinian boy from east Jerusalem. Five minutes. Then the fiercest of denunciations swiftly poured in.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry rushed to "condemn in the strongest possible terms the despicable and senseless abduction and murder" of Muhammad Hussein Abu Khdeir. "It is sickening to think of an innocent 17-year-old boy snatched off the streets and his life stolen from him and his family. There are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people." 

"Despicable" and "sickening." "Snatched off the streets." "There are no words."

Similarly, Quartet envoy Tony Blair called the murder "horrendous" and "heinous," and said that "the perpetrators must be found swiftly and brought to justice." Blair is so "very worried" about "the unrest in Jerusalem and the West Bank, including assaults on Palestinians, 'price-tag' attacks and settler violence that cannot be tolerated."

"Horrendous." "Heinous." "Very worried." "Cannot be tolerated."

For most of the world, Israel's guilty verdict had already come in. Guilty until proven innocent. Trigger-happy to convict Israel. All within five minutes.

Even if the Israel Police investigation were to determine that the Palestinian boy was killed by Arabs for reasons of "honor" or criminality, no-one would believe it at this point. The fix is in. Israel is engaging in revenge killing.

Needless to say, the murder is terrible, and is even graver if it was carried out by vigilante Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't need any prodding to term it a "reprehensible crime" or to comprehend the severity of the situation, and to insist that the police make investigating the murder the highest priority. 

But no such swift damnations were forthcoming for three long weeks during the abduction ordeal of Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach, and certainly not with the hyperbolic and demanding language cited above. The kidnapping saga hardly made the front pages in the world's leading newspapers. 

Even when their bodies of the three young Israeli boys were found, few of these "very worried" global actors got worked-up enough to use terms like appalling, despicable, heinous, and sickening. 

Instead, they issued the de rigeur condemnations of the killings, alongside expressions sympathy for the families, and softball calls on "both sides" to find the perpetrators and exercise "restraint." Nor did the Western world's exalted and stately spokespeople forget to praise the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas for distancing himself from the Hamas-inspired kidnapping. (Gee, thanks).

U.S. President Barack Obama couldn't find the internal moral conviction and outrage necessary to comment on and condemn the kidnapping, in his own voice, even once throughout our long 18-day nightmare. Even with President Shimon Peres standing beside him in Washington, Obama couldn't, wouldn't and didn't do it. Even when Peres asked him to do so. Not a peep from Obama. 

He didn't have the time. Five minutes, perhaps?

Until the boys were discovered dead. Then Obama mustered the courage to extend deepest and heartfelt condolences to the families, to comment "as a father" on their "indescribable pain," to "condemn this senseless act of terror against innocent youth in the strongest possible terms" -- and, of course, "to urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation." 

Johnny come lately, methinks. Obama's comments are simply too late, too aloof, too bland, too unaccusing, too evenhanded.

What is missing from the comments of Obama and his international colleagues is any true anger about the murders of the three Israeli boys, nor any reference to the political and moral implications of the terrorist act. 

Nobody has the guts to remark upon the death-glorifying political culture of the Palestinians that repeatedly chooses violence over negotiations. 

Nobody is prepared to recognize the distinction between singing Palestinian kid-killing terrorists, and Israeli soldiers conducting anti-terrorist operations in the West Bank who have to kill combatants and occasionally hit a bystander too.

Nobody has the guts to acknowledge that Palestinian society celebrates the kidnapping-murder of Israeli children, while the Israel Defense Forces does its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and Israeli society recoils with horror at the notion of revenge killings.

Why should Obama and company be willing to appreciate this? It's so much simpler (diplomatically) and easier (amorally) to demand "restraint from both sides."

The New York Times provided us this week with a classic example of such (im)moral obtuseness. It ran an ugly front-page article comparing Israeli kids victimized for being Israelis with Palestinian kids hurt while menacing soldiers. It profiled the noble Racheli Frenkel, mother of the murdered Naftali, alongside Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen, mother of the teenage boy, Muhammad, who was killed while confronting soldiers in Hebron that were searching for Naftali. 

The Times can deny all it wants that it intended moral equivalence, but any half-intelligent reader knows better. Of course the paper was plugging symmetry, and in doing so it presented readers with a distorted snapshot of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict!

Had the paper wanted to draw an accurate picture of the two societies, it could and should have profiled Rachel Frenkel alongside the mother of suspected kidnapper Amer Abu Aisheh, who told Israel's Channel 10 this week that "if (my son) truly did it, I'll be proud of him till my final day. I raised my children on the knees of the [Islamic] religion, and their goal is to bring the victory of Islam."

But that would suggest a moral distinction in Israel's favor, and doing so is not politically correct. Instead, the media seems almost hell-bent on presenting Israel as an unforgiving and violent society, not-all-that different from its Arab neighbors. It is thrilled to slavishly cover Abu Khdeir story. It gets the storyline back into the comfort zone; a zone where Jewish radicals (settlers) and the "occupation" are the root cause of conflict in the region.

I experienced this myself in recent days. On behalf of my hometown of Nof Ayalon (where the Frenkels and I live), I gave half a dozen interviews to foreign networks. But the network correspondents showed zero interest in the soft messages I offered of solidarity, faith, and perseverance. What they wanted to hear was calls for revenge. Over and over again I was prodded to demand fierce Israeli military action against the Palestinians. That would have fit the pat prism on the conflict these journalists purvey.

To us Israelis, the moral standards of our society are clear: We value life, not death, and seek conflict resolution, not annihilation of the enemy. Moreover, we acknowledge and seek to correct our imperfections. The contrasting viciousness of much of Palestinian society is also clear to us; laid bare once again these past few weeks. 

And the world? Alas, the gap is growing between Israelis and the world. Behind the hypocrisy and double standards, we can feel the chill. It doesn't have five minutes time to truly empathize with Israel, and can't wait five minutes before pushing the "Condemn Israel" button.

David M. Weinberg

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8975

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

One Year After Morsi, How Goes Egypt?

by Daniel Pipes


Egyptians took to the streets in numbers never seen anywhere, ever on June 30, 2013 to protest against their Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. Three days later, Defense Minister Abdul Fattah al-Sisi responded to this outpouring by overthrowing Morsi. How do things look now, exactly a year later?

Pretty awful. Looking at the two most urgent arenas, Islam and the economy, almost nothing offers a sign of hope.

In the debate over the proper role of Islam in the lives of Egyptians, the dividing lines have only increased, spawning violence, further extremism, and a sense that the country's split between Islamist and anti-Islamist factions will last for many years. Even the dividing lines among Islamists and among anti-Islamists are hardening. The inscrutable Sisi presides over this mess as the new Husni Mubarak, stolid and repressive, with his own views seemingly contradictory and elusive.

A street scene from January 2014. Egypt has seen steady violence since the coup d'état a year ago.

Egypt's economic decline continues apace. Income is down most everywhere one looks – direct foreign investment, remittances from workers abroad, tourism. Perhaps most symbolic is that until April 2012, the country sold natural gas to Israel; less than two years later, it buys natural gas from Israel (at more than four times the old selling price). Pervasive food and energy subsidies distort the economy, as do the ubiquitous military industries. Red tape remains stifling. The country unsustainably depends on subventions from rich Persian Gulf states to pay for imported foodstuffs.

Few tourists go to the beach at Sharm el Sheik or other Egyptian resorts.

At the one-year mark, Sisi has done little to inspire confidence. But we who wish Egypt well have little choice but to look to him to grow in his job and tend to the fissures and weaknesses that have so swollen under the military dictatorship that began in 1952. Should Sisi fail, one shudders to contemplate the possibly Syrian-like civil war and economic collapse that could follow. (July 3, 2014)


Daniel Pipes

Source: http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2014/07/one-year-after-morsi-how-goes-egypt

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Making Sense of 'Senseless' Terror

by Michael Widlanski

President Barack Obama thinks terror is "senseless," but the terrorists disagree. 

Terrorists think terror works, that it makes perfect sense.  As President Obama has droned on that terror has been defeated or that terror is "senseless," terrorism has risen to new heights across the world. 

"The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth," said a prepared statement released by President Obama about the kidnap-murder of three Israeli teenage students 16 to 19 years old. 

"I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation," Obama added, seeming to warn Israel about striking back at terror.  Obama did not mention the Hamas terror group that murdered the unarmed Israeli students, perhaps because the president is willing to do business with Hamas.

Obama administration officials have made such remarks about other acts of "senseless" terror committed throughout the world and in the United States, often demanding restraint from the victim of the terror, while patronizing the terrorist or the terrorists as misguided, demented, or "senseless."

There are common threads to the "senseless violence," if one is willing to look, especially if one examines the Islamist ideology that fuels the "senseless" attacks, be they committed by Boko Haram, ISIS, al-Qaeda, or Hamas.

President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton try hard not to look.  Their actions and statements prove it.

"What did we do to make them hate us so much?" cried then-Senator Kerry in the Senate chamber in September 2001 after the attacks on New York and Washington by Arab-Islamic terrorists of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization.

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden brag about beating bin Laden, but the al-Qaeda copycat groups, with their many names and initials, have multiplied.

When the "senseless violence" did not end with bin Laden's death, Obama, Clinton, and Ambassador Susan Rice pretended that someone had made "them hate us" by producing a video making fun of Muslims.  This was not true. 

It was an artful dodge, to hide the sad fact that many Western policy-makers – particularly of a certain progressive brand – do not even want to look at the problem.

Obama and his aides can scarcely say the words "terror" and "Islamic."  They call the murders in Fort Hood "workplace violence," and they call the almost catastrophic attack over Detroit on Christmas the act of "a lone gunman."

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see, who close their eyes, hiding under the covers, hoping that the nightmare will go away.  Few are as blind as Obama.

But the nightmare is real, and just like on the eve of 9-11, some top officials prefer to pretend there is no problem rather than combat the problem.

There is a common theme to the "senseless terror," be it a policeman beheaded in London; Christians beaten or banished in Iran or Pakistan; Jewish children murdered in Israel or France; a U.S. diplomat sodomized and assassinated in Libya; or schoolgirls abducted, raped, and sold into slavery in Nigeria. 

Arab-Islamic terrorists are pursuing goals that make sense to them, and they have no restraint regarding the tactics they will employ.

Terrorists want to chase Christians, Jews, Americans, and basically anyone not "Arab enough" or "Muslim enough" out of certain areas.  They try to force non-Muslims to adopt Islam or Islamic customs or Shiite Muslims to become Sunni Muslims, or Sunni Muslims to become Shiite Muslims.

"Be like us," they say – become part of our religion or tribe – "or else."
"Or else" means leaving or dying.  It's that simple. 

Of course, leaving is only a temporary solution.  The forces of "senseless violence" will not be satisfied with "cleansing" Nigeria of Christians or Israel of Jews or the Mid-East of Americans.  The violent Muslims want to move to America, France, and Britain and impose Islamic law – sharia.

Leaders of Egypt 's Muslim Brotherhood attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 – an attack that could have been prevented.  A member of the terror cell was discovered in an attack on a rabbi in New York in 1990, but authorities did not did not look too closely, ignoring proof of an Islamist conspiracy.  So the terror cell remained.

Al-Qaeda, which carried out the World Trade Center attack of 2001, is a child of the Muslim Brotherhood, its ideology, and its personnel.  Barack Obama invited the Brothers for a dialogue in Egypt in 2009, and they soon took over Egypt .

Since Obama went to Egypt in 2009, the situation in the Middle East has collapsed into a series of wars, as Obama, Kerry, and their mouthpieces regularly condemn "senseless violence" and "call on all parties to show restraint."

It is time for us to stop showing restraint and to open our eyes.


Dr.  Michael Widlanski is the author of Battle for Our Minds: Western Elites and the Terror Threat, published by Threshold/ Simon and Schuster.  He teaches at Bar-Ilan University , was strategic affairs advisor in Israel ’s Ministry of Public Security, and was the Schusterman visiting professor at University of California , Irvine for 2013-14.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/making_sense_of_senseless_terror.html

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Mordechai Kedar: Israeli Leaders are Partially Responsible for the Kidnapping

by Mordechai Kedar

The terrorists are not the only ones who bear guilt for the murders of Naftali, Eyal and Gil-ad.

An entire nation stood mourning at the open graves of Gil-ad, Eyal and Naftali, united in grief, aching and stunned at the youthful glow and purity, the loving hopes of parents shattered in an instant by bestial murderers who took advantage of the innocent boys' trust in them. The memory of the three will remain in our midst and the events of the past few weeks will accompany our nation in Israel and the Diaspora for a long, long time.

Accusing fingers are pointed at Hamas, and I believe that the Israeli government has proof of the movement's involvement, or that of its members, in the despicable crime. Except that I do not only accuse Hamas, just as I would not accuse a poisonous viper for biting a child whose father brought the snake home and freed him to roam about at will inside it. The snake is not guilty because it is in his nature to bite. The father is the guilty party, and everyone understands that.

In the case of the boys, the guilty party is also whoever brought the snake inside the house and allowed him freedom to move around undisturbed.

The problem began in the eighties, when the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories decided to encourage and fund "Almajama Alaslami" - The Islamic Center - despite warnings he received from Gaza that this was not a social welfare agency but a particularly violent sector of the Muslim Brotherhood. Towards the end of 1987, when the first Intifada broke out, the "Almajama" founders of Hamas encouraged the violence.

The guilt continues on to 1993 when President Bill Clinton pressured Israel to allow 415 leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, all of whom had been banished to Lebanon after the kidnapping-murder of Border Police soldier Nissim Toledano, to return. 

Just as guilty are the members of Israeli and world media who presented these terrorist leaders as unfortunates suffering from the inclement weather of Marj-a-Zohor, where they remained living in tents so as to appeal to the world's mercy.

But the greatest guilt lies on the shoulders of those of us who thought, in 1993, that if they would bring back the PLO and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat at its head to Israel, he would "take care of Hamas without the courts and without Betselem"  (a reference to Yitzchak Rabin's remark that Arafat would destroy Hamas without leftist NGO's turning to the Supreme Court to limit his activities as they do to the IDF, ed.).

That's how they sold us the Oslo Accords. They knew perfectly well that Arafat was lying through his teeth, but they ignored all warnings, helping him create a terrorist network in the heart of the Land of Israel. In all of history there has never been a Trojan horse as dangerous and as massive as this one. They allowed him to bring an army of terrorists in the expectation that he - our greatest enemy - would ensure our security. They hid the recording of Arafat's 1994 speech in Johannesburg, South Africa, in which he admitted publicly that the Oslo Accords are nothing but a temporary peace - a "Hudaybiyya peace" with heretics to which Muslims are allowed to agree, until such time as the chance to destroy the heretics arrives. 

We are guilty for building a system of security cooperation with a terrorist authority, that used it as an opportunity to learn about our intelligence capabilities. We gave them information about terrorists and they created a revolving door for them: play backgammon by day at the police station, plan and carry out terrorist operations at night.

We allowed the terrorist authority to run a school system whose books show "Falestin" without the State of Israel and did nothing about it.

We allowed Arafat to build a communications system - TV and radio - which he used to incite against us, talking openly about "victory".  He inflamed his listeners with the slogan "a million shaheeds will march on Jerusalem" and we did not react.

"Refraining from reacting is [a sign of] strength" they told us, without realizing that in the MIddle East, not reacting is interpreted as weakness and silence as fear. Our side did not want to see what really was going on and did not exact a price for Arafat's two-faced behavior. "He is only saying it for internal consumption" we were told by the knights of Oslo, whose eyes were on the Nobel Prize they would share with the terrorists.

Some of us became wealthy from economic cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, built casinos with them, sold them oil and founded "Peace Organizations" with them - the latter serving no use except as a pipeline for funding and oiling the terror machinery aimed at us. 

And then the "savior" arrived on the scene, Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's deputy and disciple, and they called him "the man of peace". They ignored his Holocaust denial, his books dripping with venom against Israel and Zionism, not comprehending that his only wish was to lull Israel into the sweet illusion that he wants to create a state that will recognize Israel as the home of the Jewish people, that he will reach a compromise on Jerusalem, will relinquish the demand for what is termed the "right of return".

They practically made a mantra of the claim that Abbas has "given up his home in Tsfat" in order to create the false illusion among their listeners that millions of Arabs will stand in line behind him to relinquish the homes they claim were theirs in the Land of Israel.

It gets worse. We never threatened Arafat or Abbas with dismantling the Authority unless it in its turn dismantles Hamas and other terrorist organizations and puts an end to their presence in the PA. Terrorist leaders never felt any threat to their position or status. They laughed at us all the way to the bank in which we made sure to deposit the tax and customs monies that we collected for them. They - the corrupt leaders who stole the donations they received from the world - were partners with the corrupt figures among us who signed meaningless agreements with them.

Did anyone hear us threatening the Authority with dismantlement if it goes to the UN to obtain unilateral international recognition in contravention of the Oslo Accords?

During the past few years, we observed how the PA allowed Hamas to take root and expand its presence in Judea and Samaria, and we did nothing. We saw how Hamas got 40% of the vote in the Beir Zeit University student union, and we remained silent.  We heard Hassan Yussef, the Hamas leader in Samaria, give a speech at that university while our supporters of academic freedom hemmed and hawed. We saw Hamas manage to put its representatives into municipal authorities in Judea and Samaria and let them get away with it. We saw their "social welfare" organizations sprouting like mushrooms after the rain, allowing it to occur and and to progress, although we know well that all these organizations do is gain the hearts of followers for the planned jihad against us. 

We allowed the Authority to pay enormous salaries to terrorists with blood on their hands while imprisoned, and did not put a stop to this "money for encouraging murders". We allowed the Hamas television stations to beam into Judea and Samaria and spread the message that "we are the boss here". We gave in to American pressure and allowed Hamas to run for the legislature in 2006 and watched it gain a majority of seats, turning into a "democratic" political entity despite its murderous ideology.

We went to bed with the PLO and woke up with Hamas lying beside us, doing nothing to dismantle the Authority whose political mask fell, revealing its terrorist face. 

Our judicial system has forced the government to take down roadblocks that once limited the ability of terrorists to move freely on the roads and kidnap youngsters.  

Do-gooder Israeli and international organizations emasculated the IDF's ability to function as it should and turned it into a scarecrow that no one fears. We reached the point where every soldier and officer needs a lawyer before he blows his nose, because he might disturb the unfortunate Palestinians.

There are those among us who agreed to the American idea of arming, funding and training a Palestinian army, expecting this force to protect us from Hamas and the Jihadists from the east. "In the era of missiles, we don't need the Jordan Valley", they said to us. "Better peace than territory", said the self-appointed "experts".

There are those among us who believe that international guarantees are worth more than potato  peels, and are prepared to endanger Israel just so that a few Europeans - who have lost their own countries to immigrants from all over the world -  might deign to smile at them.

There are those who, for personal business reasons, are willing to give up the land that the international community bequeathed us at the 1920 San Remo Conference. 

There are those who sold us and the world the hallucinatory concept of a "New Middle East" in which the wolf lies down with the lamb, Sunnis with Shiites, Kurds with Arabs, Jews and Muslims, and all of them sit around the campfire singing "Kumbaya" in perfect harmony - if only we would give the Palestinian Arabs a state in Israel's heartland, one with territorial contiguity from the outskirts of Beer Sheva to the suburbs of Afula, one which would protect us from Hamas terror, kidnapping of youngsters and missile barrages.

Over a thousand Israelis murdered on buses, in restaurants, hotels and streets during the Oslo years - killed by the PLO and Hamas interchangeably - have not yet convinced the Israeli governments from the left to the right of the political map to do the simple, logical and necessary act of declaring these agreements, as well as anything built upon them, null and void. There were those who invented the horrendous expression, "Victims of Peace". Since when does peace have victims? It would have been better to call them "victims of the illusion of peace sold to us by the 'New Middle East' dream merchants". 

We didn't even have the courage to get rid of the Jihadist media snake, Al Jazeera, the Hamas' protege. Since 1996, not a day passed without that station inciting against Israel, Jews and Zionism, as the representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella organization of Hamas, this under the aegis of "freedom of speech" even when broadcasting lies and falsehoods that had absolutely no connection with reality.

Our democratic knights-in-armor are filled with fear and trembling of the petro-dollar-rich and sinister Wahabee Emirates that spread death and destruction throughout the MIddle East, all the while spending billions to try to wrest Jerusalem away from the Jewish people.

And I wonder: how can it be that people who look so responsible and serious, who sound so wise and judicious, abandoned Israel's security to our enemies? Is there a historical precedent for a nation's handing over its land to its enemies? How is it possible that within the eternal capital of the Jewish people "security organizations" of Israel's enemies work openly for its destruction?

It was unbearable to see the greatest "Architect of Oslo" (referring to Israel's current president, Shimon Peres, ed.) stand at the funeral of Naftrali, Gil-ad and Eyal, eulogize them and not say the simple and most necessary sentence of all: "We, however, are guilty (the words of Joseph's brothers in the Bible, ed), we who opened the gates to our land to the terrorists, allowing them to build an entity based on hatred, incitement and lies, death and suffering. We who allowed the snake into our house, put our security in his hands and allowed him to kill three of our finest boys in cold blood".

There is no higher level of nobility than that of the families of the boys and those present at the funeral, who heard this 'architect' speak and remained quiet, despite the fact that this speaker did not admit his failure, did not apologize. History, however, will not be as kind to him.

At the open grave of Naftali, Gil-ad and Eyal all controversies between architects and accusers, between the trustworthy and the opportunists, between those responsible and the victims faded. All of the Jewish people faces challenges that will not differentiate between citizens of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, between the righteous and the wicked, the laggards and the studious, the soldier and the citizen. Realizing the mistakes of the past, we must look ahead at the changing reality in our neighborhood and respond strongly and without pity to each threat, those from within and without. In the Middle East, peace comes only to those who are not defeated.

The Jewish People have overcome troubles such as those we have just faced. We send our condolences to the dear Shaar, Frankel and Yifrach families, knowing that our way is just and just how deserving of our respect and admiration they are. May you be comforted from the Heavens among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem and know no more sorrow. Amen.. 

Written for Arutz Sheva, translated by Rochel Sylvetsky


Mordechai Kedar

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15269#.U7hIB7GsN-h

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.