IDF fires shells into Lebanon following Hezbollah bomb blast - Gil Ronen, Cynthia Blank

by Gil Ronen, Cynthia Blank

Hezbollah bomb explodes near Israeli forces operating on Har Dov in northern Israel; none injured.

IDF artillery fires on Lebanon

Olivier Fitoussi/Flash 90

An explosive device detonated on Monday near IDF forces taking part in an exercise on Har Dov in northern Israel. According to reports, none were injured in the attack.

Lebanese terror group Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack and said its hoped-for target was a senior IDF officer.

IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Moti Almoz said the explosive device was "relatively large" and it blew up two heavy pieces of army equipment as it opened an axis road near Har Dov.

Army forces responded by activating a "smoke screen" and firing artillery rounds on Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. 

Israeli authorities have warned residents of northern Israel to remain in their homes.

According to Lebanese media reports, the IDF has been firing artillery rounds into southern Lebanon since Sunday and continued the fire on Monday, with a total of 20 shells.

Iran's PressTV claimed that Sunday was the fourth consecutive day in which the IDF has been shelling the Har Dov / Shebaa Farms area near the border with Syria, out of concern that Hezbollah forces might take advantage of the stormy weather and the poor visibility to launch a revenge strike, following the killing of terrorist Samir Kuntar.

Israeli news source Maariv Online cited residents of the Israeli Golan Heights who have also reported hearing the artillery fire on Sunday and over the weekend.

A military source told Maariv Online that the shelling was meant to keep shepherds away from the border, but the news outlet cited an anonymous local commander as saying that the real reason was concern that Hezbollah is using the foggy weather conditions to lay explosive charges along the border.

Kuntar was killed in a missile attack on the southern Syrian city of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, on December 20, 2015.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah said after the strike that his organization reserves "the right to respond to this assassination at the time and place of our choosing."

“We have no doubt or question that Israel is the one which assassinated Samir Kuntar, its planes fired precise missiles on an apartment (he was in),” Nasrallah added.

Senior Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine also said that Israel will be "held accountable" for Kuntar’s death.

"If the Israelis think by killing Samir Kuntar they have closed an account then they are very mistaken because they know and will come to know that they have instead opened several more," Safieddine added.


Gil Ronen, Cynthia Blank

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205925#.VorMq1Kzdds

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

New Year's Wish: A Worthwhile Palestinian Partner for Peace - Jagdish N. Singh

by Jagdish N. Singh

• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has never been a man of peace. Even now, he continues calling for Jewish blood. Israel, however, has offered peace deal after peace deal – never even to receive even so much as a single counter-offer.
• Sometimes, Abbas harps on Israel's settlement policy as the sole reason for the absence of peace in the region. But before 1967 there were no settlements -- and still no peace. What, then, was the PLO thinking of liberating? If you look at any current map of "Palestine" from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, it blankets the entire country of Israel.
• "For how long will this protracted Israeli occupation of our land last? After 67 years, how long?" -- Mahmoud Abbas, saying recently that the "occupation" has existed since Israel's creation in 1948.
  

One wonders if or when the U.S. administration and the Europeans might ever be serious about promoting real peace and prosperity in the disputed Palestinian territories. Sadly, the White House, in pinning all its hopes on Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, has just been trying to hook its cart to someone not only with a shelf-life that officially expired years ago, but who is also too corrupt to be of any help to his people.

In backing Abbas, whose four-year term in office ended in 2009, both the White House and Europe have tragically undermined a productive future for the Palestinian people -- in the same way that strengthening the Castros' dictatorship in Cuba has dealt a death blow to a productive future for the people of Cuba. As with Iran, these are rulers that do not need to be need strengthened, they need to be removed.

Instead, at a White House meeting with Abbas in March 2014, U.S. President Barack Obama commended him as "somebody who has consistently renounced violence, has consistently sought a diplomatic and peaceful solution that allows for two states, side by side, in peace and security -- a state that allows for the dignity and sovereignty of the Palestinian people and a state that allows for Israelis to feel secure and at peace with their neighbors."

That would have been superb if any of it were true. Obama seems to have acquired the bad habit of either hoping that if he says something, his mere voice magically makes it true ("You can keep your doctor;" "Al-Qaeda is on the run," and the Iran deal will "prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon"), or, bluntly, of lying: saying something that is not true all the while knowing that it is not true.

In an interaction with Israel's President, Reuven Rivlin, ahead of the White House Hanukkah party recently, Obama said there was "the need for leaders like President Abbas to unequivocally condemn violence which has been taking place, the need to end incitement, also the need for Israelis and Palestinians to find mechanisms in which to dialogue and arrive at peace." Now that was true: there is the need. There is just no one on the Palestinian side to do it.

The current crop of Palestinian leaders appears to think that cozying up to racist, Jew-hating European elites, and to unelected, untransparent and unaccountable organizations such as the UN and the EU, might, in contravention of piles of international agreements, hand the Palestinians statehood, free of diplomatic cost, free of obligations, and free of any responsibility to treat either its people or its neighbors in a civilized way.

Abbas, like his former boss, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat, has never been a man of peace. Even now, he continues calling for Jewish blood.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on PA television, September 16, 2015.

Israel, however, ever since its creation in 1948, has offered peace deal after peace deal – never to receive even so much as a single counter-offer -- apart from war. Israel has, since its creation, been a tireless advocate for peace with Palestinians. All Israel asked in return were defensible borders, as agreed to by all parties in UN Security Council Resolution 242; no "right of return," so that Israel will not become the twenty-second Arab state (and a radicalized one, at that), and an agreement to the end of conflict to prevent war from being reignited every few weeks, as sometimes appears to have become a Palestinian habit. Israel also insists, as it must, on an undivided Jerusalem -- both to ensure freedom for all faiths, and -- as it learned the hard way -- that Jerusalem will not become another Palmyra of devastation or the headquarters of an Islamist State. Israelis no doubt remember all too well that when east Jerusalem was under the control of Jordan, before 1967, its Arab inhabitants took 38,000 ancient headstones from the Jews' sacred Mount of Olives cemetery to use as flooring for their latrines.

In keeping with the policy of his predecessors, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu said in the UN General Assembly this year: "I am prepared to immediately resume direct peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority without any preconditions whatsoever."

In addition, it is only thanks to round-the-clock protection from Israel's security forces that the Abbas is literally able to exist. Hamas, as he is well aware, would have killed him long ago.

While Netanyahu had always worked with the existing security, economic and civil cooperation of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian leadership, regrettably, seems never to have tried to bring its people either peace or development. In August 2005, Israel forcibly removed more than 8,500 Jewish residents from the Gaza Strip -- with no conditions for the Palestinians – to let the Palestinians make this exquisite section of seaside land into another Côte d'Azure or Singapore. The Israelis even left their greenhouses there to give the Palestinians an economic head start. Within hours, every last greenhouse was looted or destroyed.

Then the Gazans, in free and fair elections, voted in Hamas -- which the U.S. designated a terrorist group -- to run their government. In just a few weeks, Hamas was throwing Palestinian Authority officials off the highest floors of Gaza's buildings and expelling whoever had not yet fled. Abbas, to this day, cannot visit his own house in the Gaza Strip.

As a notable postscript, reliable accounts indicate that if the Palestinians on the West Bank were to hold free and fair elections to replace Abbas tomorrow, they, too, would elect Hamas.

In addition, in conformity with the Jew-hating members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, (OIC), the Palestinian leadership indulges in daily incitement promoting violence to eliminate Israel. This scenario has not changed since Arafat and the late Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, concluded the Oslo accords in 1993; it may even have intensified.

Notwithstanding its occasional diplomatic postures, the Palestinian leadership has proceeded with its practice of hatred and violence against Israelis and Jews. Successive Palestinian leaderships have ideologically followed the policies of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and friend of Adolf Hitler, who "created the permanent problem of Palestinian violence."

The Palestinian leadership keeps insisting -- possibly in the belief that history can be shaped to whatever is said the loudest (especially if accompanied by a sword) -- that there is no historical connection between the Jews and the land of Israel/Palestine. They market this misrepresentation even in the teeth of massive historical and archaeological evidence which proves the opposite. This year, they defrauded an all-too-willing UNESCO into renaming the clearly Jewish sites -- Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs -- Muslim sites. Obviously there never were any Muslim "patriarchs," let alone a Muslim woman named Rachel. So this treacherous act was a cultural theft in broad daylight, and committed with the full complicity of that club of dictators and anti-Semitic racists, which should, in a decent word, be closed down.

Never mind that for nearly four millennia there has been a land that is named Judea. Never mind that the Temple Mount is sacred not only to Muslims, but also to Jews, as the site of their two ancient Jewish Temples, the last of which was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE. Palestinian leaders insist that Muslims alone have a right to be there. (Jews are already not allowed to pray there: it might be advisable to take that as a warning.) Jews can be no more than dhimmi, a tolerated but subordinate religious minority, under the paid protection of Muslims -- never a sovereign people equal to a Muslim Palestinian state, or its Jews to Muslim nationals.

The Palestinian Authority, in conformity to Muslim anti-Semitism, still refers to Jews as "apes and pigs" intent upon destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, despite all evidence to the contrary. PLO Executive Committee member Mahmoud Ismail has declared that the presence of "settlers"(meaning "Jews" -- in the view of many Palestinians, all of Israel is one big "settlement" and all Jews are "settlers") is "illegal," and every measure taken against them is "legitimate and legal," and a "national duty."

The Palestinian Authority has done much to start, and nothing to stop, the recent violence against Jews that the ISIS-inspired Palestinian youths have been indulging in throughout Israel. And members of Abbas's Fatah party have openly been "part of the incitement campaign."

Fatah has also been distributing leaflets honoring terrorists; photographs include pictures of Abbas as well as Arafat. Rockets have been fired at Israel by Fatah's military wing, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Abbas himself has deliberately fueled the flames of terror against Jews.

He has recently been trying falsely to claim -- again in an echo of the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini -- that the al-Aqsa Mosque was threatened by the Jews.

Far from condemning calls by Hamas for a "Day of Rage, Abbas chose to refer to it as a "popular uprising." Abbas also regularly lionizes terrorists and continues to hand them awards.

In 2013, he posthumously celebrated Abu Jihad, head of the PLO's military wing, accused of planning attacks that killed 125 Israelis. Abbas described Abu Jihad as "the model of a true fighter and devoted leader." In 2010, Abbas gave a military funeral to one of the key planners of the PLO's terrorist attack that murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. And so on.

Sometimes, Abbas harps on Israel's settlement policy as the sole reason for the absence of peace in the region. But before 1967 there were no settlements -- and still no peace. What, then, was the Palestine Liberation Organization "liberating"? If you look at any current map of "Palestine" from the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, it blankets every inch of Israel -- "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea," as the Palestinians openly admit. Both the Hamas Charter and the PLO Charter (which has never, contrary to rumor, been amended) call for the destruction of all of the State of Israel.

The reality is that Abbas, like Arafat, seems never to have been serious about honoring his agreements -- probably now more than ever, when the whole world can see that Iran is being generously rewarded for repeatedly violating the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

One could easily discern Abbas's real designs in what he said at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva last year: "For how long will this protracted Israeli occupation of our land last? After 67 years, how long?" He is saying that for him, the "occupation" has existed since the day of Israel's creation – not since 1967. For Abbas, the timeline starts in 1948, when Israel was founded, not after the 1967 Six Day War, which led to Israel assuming control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Abbas is not what some political leaders may wish him to be: "among the last of Arafat's generation of leaders who led the Palestinians from brutal terrorism to recognition of the state of Israel".

Palestinians have long been in a bad way, denied of all fruits of development in modern times. Despite that, the rulers of both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the extreme Islamist Hamas, ruling the Gaza Strip since 2006, are too preoccupied with their own comforts and luxuries to think of the masses. Abbas is estimated to be worth $100 million. In 1997, a Palestinian administrative report found "$326 million of the Palestinian autonomy government's $800 million annual budget had been squandered through corruption or mismanagement." Abbas and his cronies have squandered the money of Arab refugees.

In the Gaza Strip, the situation is even worse. Hamas has planned to pay salaries to their tens of thousands of employees by distributing among them 1000 dunams (247 acres) of land -- part of which once housed the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

The land was supposed to provide a solution to the severe housing crisis in the Palestinian-controlled area. Hamas seized total control over the Gaza Strip in 2007, and has transformed it into a base for various Islamist groups to launch terror attacks against Israel and Egypt.

At the same time, the Jewish state is flourishing in almost all fields of life, including advanced science and technology, medicine and renewable energy sources. It is hard not to think how beneficial it would be for the Palestinians if they had a leader who actually cared about them, one who could even co-exist with the Jewish state and take advantage of its advances.

Jagdish N. Singh is a senior Indian journalist based in New Delhi.

Source: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7164/palestinian-partner-for-peace

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

Why the White House Wanted Congress To Think It Was Being Spied on by the NSA - Lee Smith

by Lee Smith

The ‘Wall Street Journal’ recently published a scoop about the NSA snooping on Israel, but it makes no sense

On Tuesday The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama Administration tasked the National Security Agency to spy on Israel. An even more explosive revelation in the Journal story is that in its “targeting of Israeli leaders and officials,” the NSA “also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups.”

According to the Journal, “stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.”

The Journal article explains that the administration dialed back its electronic surveillance of world leaders after Edward Snowden’s 2013 exposure of some of the NSA’s spying operations. “In closed-door debate,” writes the Journal, “the Obama Administration weighed which allied leaders belonged on a so-called protected list, shielding them from NSA snooping. French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders made the list…” Netanyahu was kept off the protected list partly because American policymakers were concerned that the Israelis were preparing to strike Iran.  Knowing that Israel is about to target Iran in a major strike, for instance, and perhaps touch off a war that would affect other regional partners, as well as US troops stationed in the Middle East, would obviously be vital information to have—even if a given White House agreed that the operation was a good idea. However, the Journal explains, “by 2013, U.S. intelligence agencies determined Mr. Netanyahu wasn’t going to strike Iran.”

So, why was the White House still spying on Israel? The answer is that the administration wanted to know if Israel had uncovered secrets that Obama staffers were concealing from many if not all of its allies: First, the fact that the White House had entered negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program; and later, after the talks became public, the details of the negotiations. The administration would argue, perhaps rightly, that the secrecy of negotiations and the details of the talks were matters of national security. Others would contend that the real purpose of keeping the talks secret was to silence its critics.

According to the Journal, the White House believed that spying on the Israeli prime minister and other officials, “could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign” against the Iran Deal. However, the Journal relates, officials “also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. “We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ” a senior U.S. official said. “We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ”

This story makes no sense. For starters, according to multiple sources in Congress and the intelligence community, the NSA never sent the White House any “intercepts” about how the Israeli government was coordinating its talking points with American-Jewish groups or suborning lawmakers, the latter of which would obviously be a very serious violation of criminal law.

Even the appearance of collecting against Americans is a very delicate issue, and has been since the Nixon years, when the question of domestic spying by US intelligence agencies nearly destroyed the NSA and the CIA. As a result, protocol at the NSA is very clear—it can listen to what Netanyahu says, but has to ignore the US side of the conversation. Legally, as the Journal story notes, intercepts recording communications between “foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress” are supposed to be destroyed. If Israeli officials were really coordinating “talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal” and bribing US lawmakers to win their votes, the information would have gone to the FBI and Department of Justice, not the White House.

But of course, Israeli officials were neither “coordinating” nor were they bribing, because here’s the main point, which nearly everyone in Washington, especially in the pro-Israel community, understands: Even if Bibi and the rest of the government of Israel were craven enough, and wealthy enough, and delusional enough, to try to buy off all of Washington, they all know—and have known for decades—that the NSA is listening to their communications. If Ambassador Ron Dermer, say, were to dictate “talking points” or try to bribe lawmakers, especially those already opposed to the Iran deal, he would be knowingly setting up Americans, including Israel’s friends and allies, for criminal prosecution. The premise is absurd, including the idea that government officials in Jerusalem plan communications and lobbying strategies for American Jewish groups (although that would explain why they’ve been so tone-deaf recently).

In fact, according to multiple sources reached recently, no one in the American intelligence community was spying on U.S. citizens or our elected representatives, and forwarding their names to the White House; the White House just wanted them to believe this was happening. Why? The Journal story only coheres if these purported intercepts are understood as part of the White House’s aggressive campaign to spook possible opponents of the Iran deal.

Recall, if you can, how high the stakes were. In July on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, the president hinted broadly at anti-Semitic conceits to scare off Democrats inclined to go against the deal. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer got the full “dual loyalist” treatment when he came out against the agreement. Obama told New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez that his opposition to the deal came not out of conviction but because he was beholden to “donors and others.” The New York Times gave the administration an assist when it charged that Republican congressmen and senators opposed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are more loyal to the prime minister of Israel than the president of the United States: a Times editorial described the “vicious battle” as “the unseemly spectacle of lawmakers siding with a foreign leader against their own commander in chief.”

The poisonous environment that the administration created in order to sell the Iran deal spooked plenty of people on Capitol Hill. After all, the president accused Senators of dual loyalty, and the administration got the paper of record to drag them through the mud. In this atmosphere, would a fantasy in which the NSA was listening in on their calls and sending reports back to the White House be the weirdest thing for a Congressman to believe? No. Indeed, these were precisely the fears that the White House wanted to stoke.

What’s not clear is why this story came out now, nearly half a year after the deal was signed in July. The article is heavily reported and researched, and obviously took a long time to put together. Maybe members of Congress aren’t the only ones being gaslighted by the White House these days.

Lee Smith is a senior editor at the Weekly Standard and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is also the author of the recently published The Consequences of Syria.

Source: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/196300/why-the-white-house-wanted-congress-to-think-it-was-being-spied-on-by-the-nsa

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

As the Mideast Descends into Chaos, Israel Must Have Defensible Borders - The Jerusalem Center (JCPA)

by The Jerusalem Center (JCPA)

A look at Israel's borders in the context of today's chaotic state of the Middle East

The Jerusalem Center (JCPA)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxx9JZL9tx8&feature=youtu.be

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

Clinton's Bosnia Adventure Goes South - John Smith

by John Smith

You won’t read about it in the mainstream media, but Hillary’s husband managed to create a European safe haven for Salafist terrorists while enforcing ethnic cleansing.

Since the Gulf War, no one would ever accuse the beltway gang of being astute strategic thinkers.  While the Democrats have not cornered the market in this regard, there’s no doubt the leftist DC establishment have become experts at developing policies that result in abject failures.  These misadventures go down the memory hole in the offices of the NYT and the WaPo, except if a Republican is President.  But not so with foreign news outlets.  France 24 has highlighted Bill Clinton’s arrogance and ignorance in one of history’s classic leftist military interventions.

In the early 90s, US media crews showed us every detail of the Bosnian battlefields, burning farmhouses, and battered marketplaces, in order to paint a picture of a complex ethnic war that was tearing the country apart.  CNN and its go-to-war promoter, Christiane Amanpour, were particularly effective at laying a guilt trip on the American public and politicians in urging intervention.

In reality, the ethnic and religious angle was emphasized because the Clinton administration just could not bring itself to declare that the war was largely a fight of national identity to gain freedom from tyrannical, socialist dictators by the name of Slobodan Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb ally, Radovan Karadzic.  It was not advisable to openly go against ideological soul mates of the communist persuasion.

The Dayton Accords were ironed out in 1995 to stop the war and promote the peace, but there there was a major flaw in the plan crafted by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher and chief negotiator Richard Holbrooke.  The agreement presupposed that the final battle lines and unit boundaries were indicative of the pre-war ethnic population distribution in the country.  Of course, US and NATO soldiers now had to figure out how to step in amongst three sets of belligerents composed of Bosnian Croat Roman Catholics, Bosnian Serb Orthodox Christians, and Bosniak Muslims.  One Herculean task was to assist the return of refugees to their traditional homes, which, in many cases were behind enemy lines.  It was forecast at the time that it would take until, well, about now, to safely return displaced people to their original lands.  So, how did this work out after 20 years?

According to France 24, it hasn’t worked at all.  In their push to get a deal – any deal – to stop the war (sound familiar?), Clinton and his advisers had failed to differentiate military occupation of land due to combat operations and the origin and movement of ethnic refugees.  In other words, the accords forced ethnic segregation where previously there had been ethnic integration.

France 24 notes that where ethnic groups had settled after the cease-fire, had resulted in de facto ethnic home territories.  These entailed arbitrary boundaries stipulated by the accords and over a generation had promoted segregation rather than a return of refugees and ultimately a return to a pre-war status quo.  To expect a multi-national force composed of US and Western European forces, combined with Turks and US paid Russian units, to follow the script was the height of folly.

On another front, the Clinton administration agreed to an arms embargo, but then tacitly allowed weapons to be smuggled in from the Middle East to help the Bosniak Muslims.  Clinton then went along with regional isolation protocols to prevent outside help from reaching all the belligerents. Mysteriously, he turned a blind eye to the infiltration of about 200 Mujahadeen fighters into Bosnia.  Either deliberately or unwittingly, former President Clinton had sown the seeds for a new Islamo-fascist threat; this time in Southeastern Europe.

At the time, even European media criticized the decision while the US military command downplayed the significance of this infiltration.  Twenty years later, France 24 confirms the disastrous consequences of this ploy.  The Muslims in Bosnia were considered to be very secular with a soft adherence to the tenets of Islam.  This has been replaced by the hardline Salafist approach such that Bosniak Muslims provide the majority of European recruits to the Islamic State.  France 24 reports that,

Around 300 Bosnians are fighting alongside jihadists in Syria today. Many of them are believed to have been radicalised when Salafist preachers emerged in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war.  Today the tiny Balkan nation is facing an increasingly alarming security situation as the jihadists threaten to return home, calling for terror strikes in Bosnia, and elsewhere in Europe.

Hillary Clinton’s presidential run has already been plagued by scandals from when she was Secretary of State, yet the MSM still shields her from scrutiny.  While dodging sniper fire in Bosnia, she apparently didn’t realize that her husband’s military expedition, much like Obama’s precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, had formed a country that can now function as a safe haven for Islamic jihadists.  It is likely this failure will not penetrate the MSM wall around Hillary, nor will it likely impress the hacks of the GOPe machine.  This perhaps leaves only Trump or Cruz to bring this forgotten national security disaster to the fore.  Let’s hope they do so.


John Smith is the pen name of a former American intelligence officer.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/clintons_bosnia_adventure_goes_south.html

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

Trumping Hillary - Clarice Feldman

by Clarice Feldman

Perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea for Hillary to try to reprise the tired, ridiculous War on Women campaign theme.

You must concede this about Donald Trump: He does keep his enemies and opponents rocking back on their heels. He does it, as the Wall street Journal’s sage James Taranto, observes, by following the very Saul Alinsky tactics that so impressed Hillary as a Wellesley undergrad.
 
This week he made clear that if Hillary was going to charge him with being part of the “war on women” (the successor, I take it, to her historic “vast right wing conspiracy”), he was going to attack her as an enabler and defender of a serial sexual predator -- her husband. 

Now, he is accusing Mr. Clinton’s defender in chief of being a moralistic hypocrite, applying to her rivals (including Trump) standards from which she excuses her husband. The current kerfuffle is only incidentally about Mr. Clinton at all.
It’s a textbook example of Saul Alinsky’s fourth tactical rule: “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” (That is as true of feminism as of Christianity.)
And Trump is perfectly situated to level this attack, for precisely the reasons some Chozicks imagine otherwise. He himself is a voluptuary, not a moralist, which immunizes him through pure logic against any accusation of hypocrisy. As a practical matter, his tabloid lifestyle inoculates him against inquisitions into his private life of the sort that snared Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston during the Clinton impeachment. It all reminds us of a now-quaint anecdote in Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”:
“During a conflict with a major corporation I was confronted with a threat of public exposure of a photograph of a motel “Mr. & Mrs.” registration and photographs of my girl and myself. I said, “Go ahead and give it to the press. I think she’s beautiful and I have never claimed to be celibate. Go ahead!” That ended the threat.’

Others, knowing that the public memory is short and millennial voters deficient in history have reminded readers of how sordid and extensive Bill Clinton’s known abuse of women has been.

Taranto is right as he so often is: The Trump charge is an effective one. Even the notoriously leftwing writer, the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus, agrees the charge is warranted:

"Trump has smeared women because of their looks. Clinton has preyed on them, and in a workplace setting where he was by far the superior. That is uncomfortable for Clinton supporters but it is unavoidably true."

Don Surber observes that Hillary, too, slandered women and adds, “Bill Clinton's return to the center stage reminds people that for a quarter-century, the media has covered up for this lecher, which further makes the case for Trump's attacks on the media.”

 At Breitbart, John Nolte twisted the knife:

Hillary Clinton and the DC Media were sure they had found the secret weapon to waltz the Lying Benghazi Bungler directly into the Oval Office: a replay of the phony War on Women issue.
It didn’t matter who won the nomination in 2016. Mitt Romney was no sexist, so the DC Media fabricated a Todd Akin to beat him to death with.
Then Donald Trump came along, a candidate who not only understands that the rules set by the DC Media are rigged to elect Democrats, but someone competent enough to serially-beat them at their own game.
On this day, Bill Cosby is finally facing justice for the longstanding allegations against him, and thanks only to Trump, so are Bill and Hillary Clinton after 20 years of being shielded by the corrupt media.

When CNN’s Savannah Guthrie tried downplaying Bill’s abuse by calling the Lewinsky scandal “alleged”, Trump made her retract that description -- after all, both parties did admit to the misconduct under oath. It was not just alleged -- the sexual relationship in the Oval Office with a young subordinate is fact. The  media aren’t dealing with the usual Republican patsies any more.

In salty language, my online friend “Ignatz Ratzkywatzky” characterized the state of play.

Memorandum has the headline "Donald Trump doesn't understand what ‘sexism’ is" from some dumb cluck at CNN.
I don't have to even read it to know that real sexism is saying certain trigger words like "HIStory". And it's refusing to admit women are paid 1% of what men are, though every reputable study that controls for factors like education, pregnancy, time in the work force etc demonstrates women make slightly more than men. And most importantly, it's not supporting a woman's right to choose to kill her baby even though ~half of those dead babies are little women.
And of course he goes on to explain that sexism is not arranging trysts with sad, lonely subordinate girls in your employ. Nor is it raping women or pouncing on them after their husband has committed suicide. Nor is it shaming and embarrassing your wife by screwing hundreds of women while married to her. And it's not even shaming and embarrassing the women who have the courage to speak out against your serial adulterer and abuser husband.
Guys like this assbite aren't afraid Trump doesn't know what real sexism is. They're afraid he and we all know what it is and for once are willing to talk about it, rather than their stupid fables.

How bad is it starting to look for Hillary? Even the New York Times concedes, that next to West Virginia, Trump’s strongest support may be in New York State. 

He fares best in a broad swath of the country stretching from the Gulf Coast, up the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, to upstate New York.
Mr. Trump’s best state is West Virginia, followed by New York. Eight of Mr. Trump’s 10 best congressional districts are in New York, including several on Long Island. North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana and South Carolina follow.

If Trump is the nominee and the Republicans win New York, the electoral college vote tally for Hillary looks exceedingly difficult. As Michael Walsh reports, if Trump takes New York, he can easily win. 

Perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea for Hillary to try to reprise the tired, ridiculous War on Women campaign theme or for her party to dump on the blue collar white base that they rode to victory so many times.


Clarice Feldman

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/trumping_hillary.html

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

Minister: Let security guards carry guns after work hours - Itsik Saban, Mati Tuchfeld, Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff

by Itsik Saban, Mati Tuchfeld, Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, speaking at scene of Friday's shooting, says lone-wolf terrorism requires security forces, civilians to change mode of operation • MKs demand steps to confiscate the "enormous number" of illegal guns in Arab sector.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the scene of Friday's shooting in Tel Aviv, Saturday | Photo credit: Flash90

The availability of guns in Israel is once again the subject of debate. On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation was slated to approve an amendment, authored by Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, to the current law, that would allow security guards to carry their work weapons after work hours. 

On Saturday evening, the day after two people were shot to death in an attack on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, Erdan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the scene of the attack. Both spoke publicly. 

After thanking the police for their efforts, Erdan expressed his thanks to the public for its alertness and mentioned that he was seeking to expand the policy on carrying guns. 

"The Israel Police arrived and acted just like they were supposed to. Israel's police protect the citizens 24 hours a day. However, civilians also help a great deal. Therefore, I am expanding the policy on carrying guns. Tomorrow [Sunday], another bill on that matter will be presented that would allow security guards to carry their work weapons when they are off the job." 

Erdan added that in the coming weeks the regulations for issuing gun ownership permits would be relaxed. "This step is part of a series of steps we're taking, along with massive backup [in the form of] opening new police stations in Arab communities, something that hasn't happened for many years." 

Earlier, Erdan expressed his condolences for the families of Alon Bakal and Shimon Ruimi, who were killed Friday and his wishes for a speedy recovery to the wounded. 

Erdan addressed the current wave of terrorism, saying that "over the past few months everyone is dealing with a new kind of terror wave. A kind we didn't know in the past and that is characterized, as you all understand, by not having a clearly identifiable guiding group or hand. This requires the security forces and all of us to make a lot of changes in the way we operate." 

As Erdan works to make it easier for citizens to carry guns legally, many Knesset members are demanding that the authorities take more steps to confiscate illegal weapons in circulation. 

In response to Friday's attack, Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman attacked the government, saying that its policy was "one big failure." 

"It's not just the attack in Tel Aviv and the rest of the events in recent weeks, but rather an ongoing failure, a policy of buying quiet from Hamas and the rest of the organizations with money and benefits," Lieberman said. 

Likud officials responded to Lieberman's statement, saying "this is an irresponsible babbler whose understanding of the war on terrorism is summed up by automatic fire of empty slogans." 

Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid said that "there is an enormous number of illegal weapons floating around the Arab sector, and it's time to start addressing that." 

MK Moti Yogev (Habayit Hayehudi) touched on the same issue, calling on "the Public Security Minister and the Israel Police to implement an intelligence operation and an operation to collect illegal guns in the Arab sector." 

Opposition Leader MK Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union), said that "lone-wolf terrorism breaks down the citizens' sense of personal safety. ... Military strikes must be as harsh and painful as possible, and should be accompanied by civilian security operations. At the same time, we must create a serious, regional process that will lead to a quick separation from our neighbors." 

MK Ahmad Tibi (Joint Arab List) said that "[the shooter's] family must not be blamed, nor the residents of [the terrorist's hometown] Arara. It's a horrible act. The Arab public has nothing to do with it."

Itsik Saban, Mati Tuchfeld, Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=30861

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

Egypt reinstates ambassador in Israel - Raphael Poch

by Raphael Poch

After a three year hiatus, Sisi undoes Morsi's protest over operation Pillar of Defense.

For the first time in over three years, Egypt will be stationing an ambassador to Israel in Tel Aviv.

Ambassador Hazem Khairat landed in Israel last week and will take the position to the head the Egyptian Embassy in Tel Aviv.

Former president Muhammad Morsi removed the previous Egyptian ambassador in protest of Israel's November 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza. Morsi was later deposed and replaced by President Abbad Al Fatah a-Sisi, who has much closer relations with Israel.

Additionally, Egypt has recently been attempting to stifle smugglers as well as terrorists escaping from Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula, escalating tensions between Egypt and the Hamas controlled strip.  

Egypt’s preventative actions have included the recent bombardment of the Rafiah area of the Sinai Peninsula, as well as the flooding of smuggling tunnels used to transfer weapons, goods and drugs in and out of the strip.

During the cabinet meeting on Sunday morning Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomed the new Ambassador.

"This past weekend a new Egyptian ambassador arrived to Israel, Hazem Khairat. I welcome his arrival; I welcome the re-stationing of an Egyptian ambassador in Israel, which will enable us to further strengthen relations with this important and key Arab country."


Raphael Poch

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205861#.VolA81Kzdds

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

There is no 'State of Tel Aviv' - MK Ofir Akunis

by MK Ofir Akunis

To our enemies, Tel Aviv should meet the same fate as Judea and Samaria. It's all one big "territory" from which we should be eliminated.

There is no "State of Tel Aviv." There is the State of Israel -- and the first Hebrew city is an inseparable part of it. 

How sad that we tend to remember that, and stress it, only after it is struck by a terrorist attack. Only when a loathsome murderer starts shooting there and murders two beautiful young people who were just starting their lives, who like many of their Tel Avivian neighbors came there from cities in the periphery: Shimon Ruimi from Ofakim and Alon Bakal from Carmiel. 

It's easy to portray the Tel Aviv "detachment." Some call it a "bubble." The fact that the two people murdered came from the south and the north of the country tells us all: This is Israel. This is our story. 

I grew up in Tel Aviv and on the family stories that Arab gangs would shoot at the family home in the Shapira neighborhood from orchards in Abu Kabir and Salameh, south of the city, before the state was even founded. We experienced the bombing at the Savoy Hotel and later the mega-attack on the bus at the northern entrance to the city, an incident that led to the first curfew since World War I. 

It was Tel Aviv that was the first city in Israel to come under fire by long-range missiles, in the Persian Gulf War, when we were instructed to sit in sealed rooms. This is the city that three years later was shocked by the intensity of the No. 5 bus bombing near Dizengoff Square. The Simta Bar, the scene of Friday's shooting, is only a few yards away. 

It was during Purim festivities in Tel Aviv that a suicide bomber slaughtered costumed, laughing families at a crosswalk in the middle of town. Yes, on Dizengoff Street again. Tel Aviv saw the terrible terrorist bombings at the Dolphinarium, at Mike's Place on the waterfront, and at the Rosh Ha'ir shawarma stand, and the entrance to the old central bus station at the beginning of the wave of terrorism at the beginning of the last decade. Tel Aviv, too, came under rocket fire from the Gaza Strip during Operations Pillar of Defense and Protective Edge, when residents headed down to the shelters. 

Because Tel Aviv is Israel, and Israel is Tel Aviv. There is no artificial distinction and there shouldn't be one -- because what our brutal enemies prove to us time after time is that their fight against us isn't territorial. It isn't about one "territory" or another. It isn't about "the territories" or about "the occupation." It isn't a struggle over "the settlements" or about the 1967 borders. 

In our enemies' bloodthirsty eyes, Tel Aviv should meet the same fate as Samaria. Rishon Lezion should be treated the same as Hebron, Raanana the same as Jerusalem. They're all one big "territory" from which we need to be eliminated. The way they see it, Israel is actually one big "settlement" that should be demolished and cleared to make way for an Arab state that will be founded on its ruins. 

In our enemies' eyes, there are no secular Tel Avivians or ultra-Orthodox from Jerusalem. There is no periphery and no center, no Right or Left. Israel is a single enemy. 

That is how we should treat the waves of terrorism that have afflicted us since the first days of the Zionist movement, over 100 years ago -- as a single people, united. We are not two peoples or a bunch of tribes. 

We can argue, sometimes get really angry with one another. Sadly, the dialogue on social media is growing crude and violent. All these things are a luxury. There is one fight in which we should come together against the entire world and particularly against the terrorist organizations that are growing stronger around us -- the fight for our very existence! 

Less than 48 hours after the murder in the middle of the city, Tel Aviv will go back to being the city that never sleeps. Just as the settlements in Judea and Samaria will continue to flourish. We will continue to build in Jerusalem, our capital for the last 3,000 years, just like we will continue to plant, pave and strengthen Sderot in the south and Kiryat Shmona in the north, along with the rest of the country. 

Will we always have a sword pointed at our throats? I don't know about "always." Regrettably, our enemies are forcing us to wield one, strongly, for a long time to come.

MK Ofir Akunis

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=14845

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

Channel 20 demands right to broadcast 'fair and balanced' news - Gil Ronen

by Gil Ronen

About 19 thousand people 'liked' a post that points out media bias in reporting on terrorism, asks for right to broadcast news.

Channel 20 talent Erel Segal protests censorship.

Channel 20 screenshot

 

Cable Channel 20, the Jewish Heritage Channel, is asking the public to show its support for allowing it to broadcast "balanced, fair news", which is "for the nation of Israel and not against it." It has received more than 19,000 "likes" in 19 hours.

The channel is associated with a nationalistic spirit that is quite different from the leftist slant that typifies Channels 2 and 10, which are the only commercial channels that are licensed to broadcast news. Public Channel 11, which also broadcasts news, is also considered left-leaning. Channel 20 may only carry discussions of the news, but may not report news.

None of these channels have house analysts who are associated with right wing views, whereas all of them have analysts and reporters who are associated with the radical left.

On its Facebook page, [in Hebrew] the channel showed screenshots from Channel 2 that it sees as proof of the its bias. In one screenshot, the captions described the victims of the arson at the Arab village of Duma as having been "murdered." In the other, the victims of the Tel Aviv terror attack were described as having been "killed."

In the first, the perpetrators were described as "murderers." In the second, the perpetrator was referred to "the shooter."

"We are sick of this," explained Channel 20. "We have been sick of this for two decades."

Itay Nevo, a senior journalist in Channel 1, urged his Facebook followers not to support Channel 20, citing as a reason the fact that it recently published a post attacking President Reuven Rivlin. Channel 20 will deserve support, Nevo elaborated, when the people there "understand what journalism is, and what humanistic, democratic and non-propagandist values are."

Channel 20 blasted Rivlin in mid-December for participating in the Haaretz-New Israel Fund conference in the US, alongside an activist from Breaking the Silence. It accused Rivlin of "losing all shame" and said that Rivlin "is busy representing himself and not the Nation of Israel."

"As a private citizen," it added, "Rivlin has the right to do as he pleases, but as president he has no right to spit in the face of IDF soldiers."


Gil Ronen

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/205860#.VokkBlKzdds

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