Golan Druze leader rips UN claim of ‘hardship of occupation’ - JTA

by JTA

Leader of Druze community in Golan slams UN accusations against Israel as 'total joke'.

Illustration

Miriam Alster/Flash 90

 

A leader of the Druze population of the Golan Heights disputed the assertion of a United Nations committee that accused Israel of imposing economic and social hardships on his community.

Dulan abu-Saleh, the mayor of Majdal Shams, the largest Druze town in the Golan, told Makor Rishon that the U.N. Economic and Social Council’s recent statement on the area was “a total joke,” the daily reported Friday.

Unlike other Druze populations in Israel serve in the Israel Defense Forces, the Golan’s Druze population of some 20,000 has been careful not to align itself publicly with the Jewish state, which annexed the Golan in 1981 after capturing it from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967.

The eruption in 2011 of a civil war in Syria changed that, causing a sharp increase in the number of Golan Druze who applied for Israeli citizenship, which has been available to them since 1981.

Abu-Saleh objected to the inclusion of his native area in the UN panel’s statement earlier this month, which said that “economic and social repercussions of the occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem and the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan.”

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, it’s laughable,” abu-Saleh said. Druze in the Golan “don’t serve in the IDF and so far are only receiving from the state.” Referencing the war in Syria, he said: “Why don’t they condemn the horrors in Syria, where dozens of children are killed daily? Golan residents have a good life.”

He also said: “Although we weren’t included in some major cabinet decisions on budgets, when we build and make up plans we never felt discrimination. On the contrary, we always found an attentive ear.”

Prior to the eruption in 2011 of a civil war in Syria, only 1,700 of the Golan’s Druze claimed Israeli citizenship offered to them. Hundreds have applied since then.

Very rarely engaging in hostilities, their communities have opened hundreds of restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts serving Israelis and tourists who visit the Golan’s many nature reserves. But the Druze community leaders always insisted they were Syrian citizens seeking to return to Syria from Israeli occupation.

Karim Batkhish, a resident of the town of Masa’ada, is quoted as saying: “The war in Syria is irrelevant to us. Some may say they support [Syrian President Bashar] Assad but it’s a lie to show Syria we’re with them. They’re lying, no one wants to see Syria here.”

Separately, the international nonprofit Human Rights Watch, which like the UN has faced accusations of displaying a bias against Israel, was criticized Thursday for saying in a report on child detention that Israeli “military courts do not provide for specialized juvenile justice.”

This statement is “completely false,” the watchdog group NGO Monitor said Thursday. “A special Juvenile Military Court was established in 2009, and according to the Israeli Ministry of Justice only ‘judges that have received relevant professional training, similar to the training offered to justices of the Youth Courts in Israel, are qualified to serve as juvenile judges.’“

The accusation appears in a report published by HJRW Thursday entitled “Extreme Measures: Abuses against Children Detained as National Security Threats.” It also cites a 2013 UN Committee on the Rights of the Child document which claims that, “Israel had ‘fully disregarded’ previous recommendations to comply with international law.”

But this allegation is also false, according to NGO Monitor. In February 2015, UNICEF published a report on its ongoing dialogue with the Israeli government, citing “positive developments in the administration of juvenile military justice.”

The report “clearly reflects the primacy of HRW’s political agenda over methodological rigor and due diligence,” NGO Monitor wrote.


JTA

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/215738

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Don't forget the calm in Gaza - Prof. Eyal Zisser

by Prof. Eyal Zisser

As Israel is gaining strength in the region and deepening and improving ties with its neighbors -- with Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and maybe even Saudi Arabia -- Hamas is left without effective support

Last week, as Israel marked two years since Operation Protective Edge, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal surprised everyone with a dramatic declaration, at least in Hamas terms, wherein he said his organization would be prepared to recognize Israel and even reach an agreement with it. 

We must treat Mashaal's submissive and moderate statement with due caution, because in the same breath, he determined that a condition for reaching such an agreement with Israel would include the return of Palestinian refugees to the homes that they left during the Independence War in 1948. Moreover, we must also remember that Hamas leaders have announced in the past their willingness to reach a "hudna," or a prolonged cease-fire with Israel without committing to a peace deal that would promise an end to Palestinian demands of Israel or an end to the historic conflict with it. 

But in the case of Mashaal's current declaration, the tone and the tune are just as important as the content. Indeed, the submissive, whining tone in which he spoke tells more than anything of the distress Hamas is facing and of Mashaal's desire to maintain calm between his organization and Israel.

It's important to note that at a time when in Israel the internal political argument over the government and military's management leading up to Operation Protective Edge is heating up, there is unprecedented calm along the Gaza border itself, certainly when considering the period since the disengagement in 2005. 

This calm is the direct result of Operation Protective Edge, and at the same time, of the regional reality that Israel and Hamas have found themselves in. As Israel is gaining strength in the region and deepening and improving ties with its neighbors -- with Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and maybe even Saudi Arabia -- Hamas is left without effective support and with a neighborhood that views it suspiciously and with hostility. Truthfully, over the last two years, Hamas has rehabilitated much of its military capabilities that were damaged during the 2014 campaign. This is why many believe that another conflict with Hamas, just as with Hezbollah, is only a matter of time.

But any attempt to compare Hamas to Hezbollah is mere flattery to Hamas, making it seem much greater and more powerful than it really is. Hamas does not have the depth of Hezbollah -- not the depth of support among the local population, not the geographic depth of Lebanon's territory and not the depth of political and military support from its direct neighbors, Syria and through it, Iran. 

This reality leaves Hamas exposed to Israel, and to a large extent, dependent on its good will. Moreover, this reality makes it possible for Israel to decide one day to simply wipe out the entity that is Hamas. Israel's problem in the Gaza Strip is not dealing with Hamas's military power, but dealing with the consequences of the chaos that would break out there if the Hamas regime were to collapse. 

The issue of Gaza has completely fallen off the international agenda, and with the normalization of relations between Israel and Turkey, it seems to have been buried for good. Hamas's capability to maintain its presence in the Gaza Strip, which has become a Middle Eastern anomaly in light of the defeat of Islamists in the region, is dependent on continued calm and on its effort to help Gaza's residents move forward. If it cannot do this, Hamas's rule will crumble, with or without another military campaign.

Prof. Eyal Zisser

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16829

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Turkey's Tradition of Murdering Christians - Robert Jones

by Robert Jones

In Turkey, it is "ordinary people" who murder or attack Christians, then the judiciary or political system somehow find a way of enabling the perpetrators to get away with the crimes. Most of these crimes are not covered by the international media and Turkey is never held responsible.

• Turkey's countless agreements with Western organizations do not seem to have reduced the hatred for Christians there.
• While Muslims are pretty much free to practice their religion and express their views on other religions anywhere in the world, Christians and other non-Muslims can be killed in Turkey and other Muslim-majority countries just for attempting peacefully to practice their religion or openly express their views.
• "Multiculturalism," which is passionately defended by many liberals in the West, could have worked wonders in multi-ethnic and multi-religious places such as Anatolia. But unfortunately, Islamic ideology allows only one culture, one religion, and one way of thinking under their rule: Islam. Ironically, this is the central fact these liberals do not want to see.

On 26 July, the northern French town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray witnessed a horrific Islamist attack: Two Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists killed an 85-year-old priest, Jacques Hamel, in his church during Mass. Two nuns and two churchgoers were taken hostage.

The terrorists, who had pledged allegiance to ISIS and, shouting "Allahu Akbar", slit the throat of the priest and captured the bloody episode on video, according to a nun who escaped the assault.

Such Islamist attacks might be new to EU member countries but not to Turkey. For decades, so many innocent, defenseless Christians in Turkey have been slaughtered by Muslim assailants.

Christians in Turkey are still attacked, murdered or threatened daily; the assailants usually get away with their crimes.

In Malatya, in 2007, during the Zirve Bible Publishing House massacre, three Christian employees were attacked, severely tortured, then had their hands and feet tied and their throats cut by five Muslims on April 18, 2007.

Nine years have passed, but there still has been no justice for the families of the three men who were murdered so savagely.

First, the five suspects who were still in detention were released from their high-security prison by a Turkish court, which ruled that their detention exceeded newly-adopted legal limits.

The trial is still ongoing. The prosecutor claims that the act "was not a terrorist act because the perpetrators did not have a hierarchic bond, their act was not continuous and the knives they used in the massacre did not technically suffice to make the act be regarded as a terrorist act."

If the court accepts this legal opinion of the prosecutor, it could pave the way for an acquittal. However, given the many "mysterious" rulings of the Turkish judiciary system to acquit criminals, these killers could also be acquitted by a "surprise" ruling any time.

Ironically, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in March that it is necessary to redefine terrorism to include those who support such acts, adding that they could be journalists, lawmakers or activists. There was no difference, he said, between "a terrorist holding a gun or a bomb and those who use their position and pen to serve the aims" of terrorists.

In a country where state authorities are outspokenly so "sensitive" about "terrorism" and "people holding guns," why are the murderers of Christians not in jail, and why is the prosecutor trying to portray the murders of Christians as "non-terroristic acts"?

Sadly, the three Christians in Malatya were neither the first nor the last Christians to be murdered in Turkey.

On February 5, 2006, Father Andrea Santoro, a 61-year-old Roman Catholic priest, was murdered in the Santa Maria Church in the province of Trabzon. He was shot while kneeling in prayer at his church. Witnesses heard the 16-year-old murderer shout "Allahu Akbar" ("Allah is the Greatest") during the murder.

After the murder, a 74-year-old priest, Father Pierre François René Brunissen, from Samsun, led the next church service in Santoro's church, which boasted barely a dozen members. Because no one volunteered to replace Santoro, Father Pierre was instructed to travel from Samsun to Trabzon each month to care for the city's small congregation.

"This is a terrible incident," Father Pierre said. "It is a sin to kill a person. After all of these incidents, I am worried about my life here."

In July, 2006, he was stabbed and wounded by a Muslim in Samsun. The perpetrator, 53, said that he stabbed the priest to oppose "his missionary activities."[1]

The attacks against the Christian culture in Anatolia continue in modern times -- even after Turkey joined the Council of Europe in 1949 and NATO in 1952.

Turkey's countless agreements with Western organizations do not seem to have reduced the hatred for Christians there. In March, 2007, as the Christian community of Mersin was preparing for the Easter, a young Muslim man with a kebab knife entered the church and attacked the priests, Roberto Ferrari and Henry Leylek.

Mersin, in southern Turkey, is home to Tarsus, the birthplace of Saint Paul, and to several churches dating from the earliest Christian era.

As the Christian roots of Anatolia weakened, so did its bonds with Western civilization. "The attack against the priest is an indicator that Ankara is not ready for Europe," a Roman Catholic Cardinal and theologian, Walter Kasper, told the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. "There is some amount of tolerance but there is not real freedom. Turkey has to change many things. This change is not about laws. A change of mentality is needed. But you cannot change mentality in one day."

Bishop Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, said: "We do not feel safe. I am very worried. Fanaticism is developing in some groups. Some people want to poison the atmosphere and catholic priests are targeted. Anti-missionary films are broadcast on TV channels."

At a commemorative ceremony for Father Santoro in February, Bishop Padovese said:

"Today, we are asking the question we asked four years ago: Why? We are also asking the same question for all other victims so unjustly murdered even though they were innocent. Why? What was it that they tried to destroy by murdering Father Andrea? Just a person or what that person represented? The aim of shooting Father Andrea was definitely to shoot a Catholic cleric. His being a Father became the reason of his martyrdom.
"The message of Christ on the cross is clear. 'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.' Had they known, they would not have done that. It is wrong to extinguish a life to uphold an idea. It is wrong to think that a person who disagrees with us is at fault and should be destroyed. This is the fundamentalism that crumbles a society. For it wrecks coexistence. This fundamentalism -- regardless of what religion or political view it belongs to -- might win a few battles but it is doomed to lose the war. This is what history teaches us. I hope that this city and this country will turn into a place where people can live as brothers and sisters and unite for the common good for all. Is the Allah of all of us not the same?"

No, unfortunately, the Allah of all of us is not the same.

Just four months later, in June, 2010, it was Padovese's turn to be murdered. This time the murderer was the Bishop's own driver for the previous four years. The driver first stabbed the bishop, then cut his throat, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" during the attack.

At the trial, the driver said that the bishop was "Masih ad-Dajjal" ("the false messiah"), then twice in the courtroom he loudly recited the adhan (Islamic call to worship).

Father Andrea Santoro (left), a 61-year-old Roman Catholic priest, and 63-year-old Bishop Luigi Padovese (right), Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, were two Christian priests murdered in Turkey in recent years.

In the territory where Christians once thrived, even converting to Christianity now creates serious problems.

"New Christians coming from Muslim families are often isolated and ostracized," writes Carnes. "Turgay Ucal, a pastor of an independent church in Istanbul, who converted from Islam to Christianity said: "Buddhism is okay, but not Christianity. There was a history."

And this history includes how indigenous Christians in Anatolia have been slaughtered by Muslims. [2]

The total population of Turkey is about 80 million; believers of non-Muslim faiths -- mostly Christians and Jews -- comprise 0.2%. Nevertheless, anti-Christian sentiment is still prevalent in much of the Turkish society. [3]

There seems to be a pattern: Murders of Christians are committed stealthily in Turkey: It is "ordinary people" who murder or attack Christians, then the judiciary or political system somehow finds a way of enabling the murderers or attackers to get away with what they have done. Sadly, most of these crimes are not covered by the international media, and Turkey is never held responsible.

Turkey, however, signed a Customs Union agreement with the European Union in 1995 and was officially recognized as a candidate for full membership in 1999. Negotiations for the accession of Turkey to the EU are still ongoing.

How come a nation that has murdered or attacked so many Christians throughout history, and which has not even apologized for these crimes, is considered even a suitable candidate for EU membership? Because of the threat of blackmail to flood Europe with Muslims? Turkey will flood Europe with them anyway. There is even a name for it: Hijrah, spreading Islam (jihad) by emigration. Exactly as Muslims have done inside Turkey.

And what kind of a culture and civilization have many Muslims built for the most part in the lands that they have conquered? When one observes the historical and current situation in Muslim-majority countries, what one mostly sees are murders, attacks and hatred: Hatred of non-Muslims, hatred of women, hatred of free thought and an extremely deep hatred of everything that is not Islamic. Many Muslims that have moved to the West have been trying to import political Islam to the free world, as well.

Muslim regimes including Turkey have not achieved civilized democratization that would enable all of their citizens -- Muslims and non-Muslims -- to live free and safe lives.

While Muslims are pretty much free to practice their religion and express their views on other religions or on atheism anywhere in the world, Christians and other non-Muslims can be killed in Turkey and other Muslim-majority countries just for attempting peacefully to practice their religion or openly express their views.

"Multiculturalism," which is passionately defended by many liberals in the West, could have worked wonders in multi-ethnic and multi-religious places such as Anatolia. But unfortunately, Islamic ideology allows only one culture, one religion, and one way of thinking under their rule: Islam. Ironically, this is the central fact these liberals do not want to see.

Much of the history of Islam shows that the nature of Islamic ideology is to invade or infiltrate, and then to dominate non-Muslims.

In general, Muslims have never shown the slightest interest in peaceful coexistence with non-Muslims. Even if most Muslims are not jihadis, most do not speak out against jihadist attacks. Many thus appear quietly to support jihadis. That there are also peaceful Muslim individuals who respect other faiths does not change this tragic fact.

That is why non-Muslims in the West have every right to fear one day being exposed to the same treatment at the hands of Muslims. The fear non-Muslims have of Islamic attacks is, based on recent evidence, both rational and justified.

Given how unspeakably non-Muslims are treated in majority Muslim countries, including Turkey, who can blame them for being concerned about the possible Islamization of their own free societies?

Why does Turkey, which seems to hate its own Christians, want to have visa-free access to Christian Europe, anyway?

Robert Jones, an expert on Turkey, is currently based in the UK.

---

[1] Christianity has a long history in Samsun – as in all other Anatolian towns. As Amisos, in Greek, it was one of the centers of the ancient Greek Pontos region, and helped spread the Christian influence in the region.
"After 1914 the Greek and Armenian populations were to dwindle considerably due to the organized death marches and other methods used by the Turks during the Greek and Armenian Genocides," according to "Pontos World."
Decades later, attacks against Christians are still commonplace. In December 2007, another Catholic priest, Adriano Franchini, 65, of Izmir was also stabbed and wounded during the Sunday church service by a 19-year-old Muslim.
Izmir, or Smyrna, was an ecclesiastical territory of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and one of the Seven Churches of Asia mentioned by Apostle John in the Book of Revelation.
During the Ottoman era, Smyrna hosted one of the largest populations of Greeks and Armenians. Today, there is only a tiny Christian minority in the city. The devastation of the Greek culture in the city peaked during what is commonly known as the "Catastrophe of Smyrna." The Turkish army destroyed the city in 1922, after the Great Fire of Smyrna. Turkish soldiers murdered many non-Muslim civilians, including dozens of priests and bishops, and forced countless Greek men to join labor battalions. Most Greeks fled their homes in the city to seek shelter in Greece and other states.
"The Great Fire of Smyrna," wrote the author Ioanna Zikakou, "was the peak of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, bringing an end to the 3,000-year Greek presence on Anatolia's Aegean shore and shifting the population ratio between Muslims and non-Muslims."
According to the journalist Tony Carnes:

"Few nations have as rich a Christian history as Turkey. This is where Paul founded some of the earliest churches, including the church at Ephesus. Seven churches in this region were addressed in the Book of Revelation. Those in the early monastic movement found the caves of Cappadocia a near-perfect place to live out lives of prayer.
"But Christianity came under Islamic rule in Turkey in 1453 and steadily declined for centuries; the last 100 years have been the worst. In 1900, the Christian population was 22 percent. Now most experts estimate that there are fewer than 200,000 Christians nationwide, comprising less than 0.3 percent of the population."

Today, in Islamized Anatolia, the members of the diminutive Christian minority are daily exposed to verbal or physical attacks. Kamil Kiroglu was born and raised in Turkey as a Muslim. At the age of 24, he became a Christian and served in the Turkish Church until 2009. After he became Christian, he was rejected by his family.
On January 8, 2006, Kiroglu was beaten unconscious by five young Muslim men.
"The attack followed church services," writes the scholar John L. Allen Jr. in his book, The Global War on Christians. "Kiroglu later reported that one of the young men, wielding a knife, had shouted, 'Deny Jesus or I will kill you now!' Another reportedly shouted, 'We do not want Christians in this country!' As the attackers left, they told a friend of Kiroglu's that they had left a gift for him. It turned out to be a three-foot-long curved knife, left behind as a further warning against Christian activity."

"Turkey may be an officially secular state, but sociologically it's an Islamic society. In general, the greatest threat facing Christians comes not from religiously zealous forms of Islam but from ultranationalists who see Christians as agents of the West, often accusing them of being in league with Kurdish separatists."

In 2009, Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Orthodox Christian Church's Patriarch, said in an interview with CBS that Turkey's Christians were second-class citizens and that he felt "crucified" at the hands of Turkish state authorities.
[2] "The annihilation of the non-Turk/non-Muslim peoples from Anatolia started on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul," wrote the columnist Raffi Bedrosyan.

"Within a few months, 1.5 million Armenians had been wiped out from their historic homeland of 4,000 years in what is now eastern Turkey, as well as from the northern, southern, central, and western parts of Turkey. About 250,000 Assyrians were also massacred in southeastern Turkey during the same period. Then, it was the Pontic Greeks' turn to be eliminated from northern Turkey on the Black Sea coast, sporadically from 1916 onward."

Orhan Picaklar, the pastor of the Samsun Agape Church, was kidnapped and threatened by Muslim locals in 2007. He said that people also tried to kidnap his 11-year-old son from his school. His church has been stoned countless times. Ahmet Guvener, the pastor of the Diyarbakir Protestant Church, said he received so many threats that he was awaiting death: "I will give a letter of attorney to a friend of mine. If I die, I want him to take care of my children."
[3] See the yearly reports of the Association of Protestant Churches about rights abuses against Christians in Turkey.

Robert Jones, an expert on Turkey, is currently based in the UK.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8577/turkey-christians-murders

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Has the IDF hit the Basij forces commander General Naghdi? - debkaFile

by debkaFile

Gen. Naghdi’s visit to Quneitra undoubtedly presaged some decisions in Tehran with regard to direct Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian action against Israel.

Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah sources are intimating that the “Syrian officer” injured on July 26 in Quneitra by Israel’s double Nimrod’ missile shot was none other than Revolutionary Guards Gen. Muhammad Resa Naghdi, head of the paramilitary Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed, also known as the Basij, which falls under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The victim was earlier described officially as a Syrian officer. 

If he was indeed hurt or killed by an Israeli rocket, Naghdi would become the highest-ranking IRGC general ever hit by the IDF.

On July 27, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that a top Iranian general recently visited the Israeli-Syrian border to tour Quneitra and the Golan demarcation lines between Syria and Israel - the first time the Tehran government had publicized a visit by a senior regime official to the area.

It may be presumed, debkafile’s intelligence sources say, that someone at the IDF lookout posts spotted and reported on Gen. Naghdi’s arrival with an entourage in Quneitra on July 26 and saw him inspecting through binoculars the IDF defense positions. He was then quickly identified.

Any decision to go after a high-ranking Iranian would not have been left to local IDF commanders or even OC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, but passed straight to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkot – especially in this case.

General Naghdi is not just another Iranian general. He heads the more than a million-strong Basij militia, which is a pillar of the ayatollahs regime in Tehran, and the backbone of the Iranian internal security forces which maintain the regime’s total control in every corner of the Islamic Republic.

Gen. Naghdi’s visit to Quneitra undoubtedly presaged some decisions in Tehran with regard to direct Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian action against Israel.

The IDF is holding its silence on reports of his injury, declining as usual to comment on reports by foreign publications.

The Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah agencies accuse Israel of the attack because the say it was executed by two Nimrod anti-tank long-range missiles, manufactured by the Israeli Aerospace Industry, for use by the IDF against armored vehicles, ships, bunkers and troop concentrations..

The missile has a semi-active laser guidance system, and is able to operate day and night. Its flight path can be below the clouds, while its operators far behind use a laser to guide it to target.

The launcher platform, with four missiles, can be installed on a Jeep, weapon-bearing vehicle, Abir, or armored vehicles. In addition, it is possible to send it from CH-53 ‘Yasur’ helicopter.

Israel has acted in the past against the establishment of an Iranian and/or Hizballah military presence on its Golan doorstep. On Jan. 19, 2015, an IDF air strike killed the Iranian Brig. Gen, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi and six Hizballah officers while they were on a tour of inspection near Quneitra.
Thursday, July 28, debkafile ran an exclusive report on rising Israel-Russia tensions centering on southern Syria and the Golan.
For four days since July 25, the Syrian army has been continuously firing artillery batteries - moved close to Israel’s defense lines on the Golan border - in a manner that comes dangerously close to provoking an Israeli response. This carefully orchestrated Syrian campaign goes on around the clock.

It is the first time in the six years of the Syrian war that Bashar Assad has ventured to come near to provoking Israel. But now he appears to be emboldened by his Russian ally.  

The IDF is holding its fire for the moment. But Israeli military and government leaders know that the time is near for the IDF to be forced to hit back, especially since it is becoming evident that the Syrian army’s steps are backed by Russia.

debkafile’s military sources provide details of the Syrian steps:

• The Syrian army’s 90^th and 121nd battalions have been firing their artillery batteries non-stop across a 10km band along the Golan border from Hamadia, north of Quneitra, up to a point facing the Israeli village of Eyn Zivan. (See attacked map).
  This means that the Syrian army has seized the center of buffer zone between Israel and Syria and made it a firing zone.
• This artillery fire fans out across a radius that comes a few meters short of the Israeli border and the IDF troops stationed there. It then recedes to a distance of 500 to 600 meters and sweeps across the outposts and bases of the Syrian rebel forces believed to be in touch with Israel or in receipt of Israeli medical aid.
• The new Syrian attack appears to hold a message for Jerusalem: For six years, you supported the rebels against the Assad regime in southern Syria. That’s now over. If you continue, you will come face to face with Syrian fire.
• Damascus is also cautioning those rebels:  For years, you fought us with Israel at your backs. But no longer. Watch us bring you under direct artillery fire, while the IDF sits on its hands.
• On July 26, Russian media published an article revealing that Russia had delivered to the Syrian Air Force, advanced SU-24M2 front-line bombers, which is designed for attack on frontlines of battle. Israeli officials were unpleasantly taken aback by the news. Up until now, the Russians and Syrians refrained from deploying air strength in South Syria near the Israeli border. Now the Syrian air force has the means to do so.
• debkafile military sources report that the SU-24M2, following recent upgrades and modifications in Russian factories, is now capable of dropping smart bombs – ballistic bombs with a guidance system on their tails that enable them to hit targets with precision.This guidance system does not rely on US GPS satellites but rather the equivalent Russian GLONASS system which is linked to a network of 21 Russian satellites and partially encrypted for military usages.
  In addition, the SU-24M2 is equipped with a system that projects the information the pilot needs (flight details and battle details) on the plane’s windshield (head-up display) and on the pilot’s visor.
• The Russians delivered to the Syrians two of these sophisticated airplanes this week, out of 10 that they will supply soon.

The IDF has concluded that it is only a matter of time before these planes appear in Southern Syria and so generate a new and highly combustible situation on Israel’s northern and northeastern borders.

The Russians are colluding with Damascus to inform Israel that it will no longer be allowed by either to continue backing the rebel forces in southern Syria or sustain the buffer zone which they man.

Israel may pay dear if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot decide to continue to abstain from hitting back at the Syrian fire which is aimed every few hours at the vicinity of IDF posts or the impending arrival of Russian bombers. The price in store would be the weakening of the IDF’s hold on the Golan border.


debkaFile

Source: http://www.debka.com/article/25572/Has-the-IDF-hit-the-Basij-forces-commander-General-Naghdi-

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Hillary's Hate - Matthew Vadum

by Matthew Vadum

The Saul Alinsky devotee crystallizes who will be anointed -- and who will be damned.

PHILADELPHIA -- The legendary congenital liar Hillary Clinton accepted her party's nomination for the presidency last night mercifully bringing the boisterous, chaotic freakshow that was the 2016 Democratic National Convention to an end.

A day of rain finally broke the oppressive heat wave enveloping the Wells Fargo Center complex which was surrounded by miles of temporary black metal walls, layers of police, and Secret Service checkpoints manned by TSA employees. Inside the convention hall, Democrats railed against border walls, the supposed systemic racism of police and the justice system, and having to show any kind of identification to vote.

Chelsea Clinton introduced her mother on the stage. It was an unremarkable speech not worth detailing here. Next followed a slick video about Hillary that was narrated by actor Morgan Freeman. The final words Freeman says are "How many ways will she light up the world? This is the woman."

Hillary's speech itself was interspersed not so much by boos but by anti-war chants and heckles by the legions of disgruntled Bernie Sanders fans. Her supporters came to her aid most of the time drowning out the dissenters by chanting "Hillary" and "U-S-A."

The speech was like fingernails on a chalkboard. It was a poorly written address made worse by Clinton's stilted and at times strident delivery. Dressed in a white pantsuit, the former secretary of state over-pronounced her words as if she were a special education teacher or a singer in the Swedish band Abba. It had a slight air of condescension about it. And her cadence was weird, to say the least.

She is afflicted by her own special psychopathology. It is a mixture of sociopathy, incompetence, hubris, and contempt. She is our better so we'd better get with her. As David Horowitz tweeted during the speech, Clinton's problem is that "most Americans know exactly what to make of her. This speech is so empty."

ABC News footage seemed to show Bill Clinton dozing off momentarily during the long oration.

But Hillary gave the audience members what they wanted. It was a stroll through a liberal-progressive fantasy land, a place where money materializes out of thin air.

She promised to make government bigger and bigger and bigger. A communist at heart, she promised to suck up to the hardcore socialists in her party. She promised to empty the prisons. She promised to create worse-than-useless green jobs with big taxpayer subsidies. She promised to flood the country with aliens, illegal or otherwise, and hard-to-assimilate Muslims. With her grating voice, she attacked Republican nominee Donald Trump shrilly and relentlessly.

She stole some of Trump's policy points, promising to stand up to China and support U.S. steel workers. She vowed to expand Social Security.

"We're gonna make sure the economy works for everyone, not just those at the top," she said.

"In my first 100 days, we will work with both parties to pass the biggest investment in new, good paying jobs since World War II. Jobs in manufacturing, clean energy, technology and innovation, small business, and infrastructure."

She said she would work with Bernie Sanders "to make college tuition free for the middle class and debt-free for all." She promised to "liberate millions of people who already have student debt."

She promised to soak the super rich and Wall Street.

She vowed to defeat America's "determined enemies" including Islamic State.

"We will strike their sanctuaries from the air, and support local forces taking them out on the ground," she said, adding she would augment intelligence efforts to prevent attacks.

"We will disrupt their efforts online to reach and radicalize young people in our country."

Hillary praised President Obama for making what she called the "courageous decision" to dispatch Osama bin Laden, years after her husband as president wimped out of killing bin Laden. Bill Clinton admits he could have killed bin Laden in 1998.

Her speech was a painful reminder that she doesn't have political skills. She got where she was by marrying Bill and covering up his infidelities and crimes. Like in the Tammy Wynette song she once ridiculed, she stood by her man. From a marketing point of view, the fact that she is female is her only selling point. When she got involved as Bill's so-called co-president, catastrophe followed in her wake. The HillaryCare debacle in the 1990s cost Democrats the House of Representatives, leaving her party without a majority for the first time in 40 years.

Hillary's speech, like her policy platform and record in public office, was an atrocity. There wasn't much of a narrative to her oration. There was no build up, no arc. It was a series of boasts and gripes and whines and outbursts as she pretended to love America.

"What a remarkable week it's been," she said to applause. "We heard the man from Hope, Bill Clinton and the man of hope, Barack Obama. America is stronger because of President Obama's leadership, and I'm better because of his friendship."

That was the high point.

There were sophomoric jabs at her opponent: "Donald Trump spoke for 70-odd minutes and I do mean odd," she said.

She berated Trump, calling him a "little" man "moved by fear and pride" who could end up launching a war. "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

She promised to "stand up against mean and divisive rhetoric wherever it comes from," whatever that means.

She thanked Bernie Sanders, who this week jettisoned his affiliation with the Democratic Party the moment it ceased to be useful. The Sanders campaign, like Clinton's was historic. The small-c communist carnival barker from Vermont performed the seemingly impossible by pushing the party even further to the left.

It can be argued that the Democratic Party is now the Progressive Party of 1948, the party of FDR's third-term Vice President, leftist Henry Wallace, which garnered a mere 2.4 percent of the popular vote. If in the wake of the convention Democrats were any more left-wing the "Internationale" would become their official song.

"Bernie, your campaign inspired millions of Americans, particularly the young people who threw their hearts and souls into our primary," she said. "You've put economic and social justice issues front and center where they belong."

Clinton promised to make the Sanders-supporting socialist hordes love her:

"I want you to know, I've heard you. Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy, and passion. That's the only way we can turn our progressive platform into real change for America. We wrote it together -- now let's go out there and make it happen together."

Clinton continued. "America is once again at a moment of reckoning. Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart. Bonds of trust and respect are fraying," she said, leaving out the fact that the Obama administration in which she served is the direct source of the nation's social unease.

The Saul Alinsky devotee accused her general election opponent of doing precisely what she and President Obama have been doing to America for years.

Republican nominee Donald Trump "wants to divide us ... he's betting that the perils of today's world will blind us to its unlimited promise," she said.

Trump has taken the Republican Party "a long way from 'Morning in America' to 'Midnight in America," she said. "He wants us to fear the future and fear each other."

She promised good paying jobs for everyone, open borders and a massive amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, and official coddling of Muslims.

She rhetorically laid waste to the economic freedoms that define America. "There's too much inequality. Too little social mobility. Too much paralysis in Washington. Too many threats at home and abroad."

She mentioned her sole accomplishment as secretary of state: the fact that she visited 112 countries at taxpayer expense. During her tenure at Foggy Bottom she had a reverse Midas touch. Whatever she wrapped her hands around turned into a catastrophe from the so-called reset with Russia, to the butchery of Americans she allowed in Benghazi, to her pro-Islamofascist Arab Spring that set the Muslim world on fire.

"Our democracy isn't working the way it should," she said. We need to get money out of politics, she said, and if necessary put forward a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision.

She spoke of "the right to affordable health care," and said "Wall Street can never, ever be allowed to wreck Main Street again." She didn't mention that she is leased, if not owned, by Goldman Sachs.

Rep. Xavier Becerra of California demanded Trump release his college transcripts to prove he's as smart as he claims to be.

Of course, Hillary flunked the District of Columbia bar exam in 1973. She then re-took the easier Arkansas bar exam. And as a lawyer she was kicked off Watergate committee staff in Congress for ethical breaches.

Retired General John Allen was interrupted multiple times by antiwar delegates chanting  "no more war."

He managed to get out some sentences without being drowned out. "We will defeat evil," he said. "America will defeat ISIS." The crowd roared, chanting "U-S-A," apparently to preempt the embarrassing antiwar chanting.

As they had done Wednesday, speakers repeated the CNN-New York Times lie that Trump encouraged Russia to hack Clinton's emails. It was a strange smear given that there are no emails left to hack. Clinton has acknowledged destroying more than 30,000 emails and all her illicit email servers are now presumably offline.

What Trump actually told reporters at a presser in Florida was, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Plenty of Hollywood celebrities took the podium. Among them were actor Ted Danson and his wife Mary Steenburgen, along with Chloe Grace Moretz. Musical performers included Carole King, Sheila E + Family, and Katy Perry.

Leftist tolerance was on display outside the Wells Fargo Center.

Wearing pro-Hillary Clinton paraphernalia James O'Keefe III, whose undercover videos killed the lawless radical group ACORN, was assaulted when he waded into a group of Sanders supporters, Gateway Pundit reported. O'Keefe was thrown to the ground, apparently because he said nice things about Clinton. It does not appear his attackers knew he was an aggressive conservative journalist regarded as a villain by the Left.

Imagine how tense Americans will become and how aggressive the Left will become if Hillary Clinton becomes president.

It will be easiest for fans of horror movies.

Matthew Vadum, senior vice president at the investigative think tank Capital Research Center, is an award-winning investigative reporter and author of the book, "Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts Are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers."

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263681/hillarys-hate-matthew-vadum

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Is Putin Poking Hillary? - Jeannie DeAngelis

by Jeannie DeAngelis

If the Russians really are in possession of Hillary's emails, that means Vladimir Putin may be preparing to give Hillary Clinton the poke in the eye she deserves.

By accusing Vladimir Putin of (believe it or not) rigging Russia's 2012 election, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton gave new meaning to the theory of psychological projection.

The potential problem for Hillary is that Putin is not as naïve as most Democrat voters, and when affronted, the Russian president usually finds a way to exact vengeance, or at least deliver what Peter Rutland, an expert on Russia at Wesleyan University, calls a Putin "poke in the eye."  

Putin eye-poking was on full display when Obama, the doyen of gay rights, acted the complete fool after finding out that, in Russia, White House LGBTQ restroom users would face jail time for public displays of "non-traditional sexual relationships."  Obama expressed his displeasure with the Russian law by recruiting three openly gay athletes to join the U.S. delegation headed to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Putin, a man who doesn't suffer fools gladly, responded to Obama's insult by selecting Olympic figure skater Irina Rodnina to participate in Sochi's opening ceremonies.  Obama flouted Russia's tough stance on homosexuality, and Putin poked Obama in the eye by choosing a woman to light the Olympic flame who once tweeted a picture of Obama and his wife Michelle ogling a banana.

Get the picture?

Now rumor has it that Russian hackers may have gained access to the unsecured server full of confidential emails Hillary Clinton stored in a bathroom closet of  the Chappaqua home national-security-risk Bill (when not nodding off) shares with a mistress the Secret Service nicknamed "The Energizer Bunny."

If the Russians really are in possession of Hillary's emails, that means Vladimir Putin may be preparing to give Hillary Clinton the poke in the eye she deserves. 

It also means the Russian president knows whether or not Hillary actually mastered the "destroyer of the universe" yoga pose, has specifics concerning the recipe for Chelsea's $10K gluten-free wedding cake, and is aware of the particulars surrounding how the DNC mocked and subverted the political aspirations of a popular Jewish socialist.

Notwithstanding Hillary's tall tales about her successes as secretary of state, Eugene Rumer, a former national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, begs to differ.  According to Rumer, "I think there is good and credible evidence that there is no love lost in Moscow for Mrs. Clinton."

It all started in 2011, when, after two terms as prime minister and after serving as Russia's president from 2000 to 2008, Putin hoped to win the presidency again.  Prior to the March 2012 election, Secretary of State Clinton suggested that the Russian leader had "rigged" the system and sided with thousands of anti-Putin demonstrators, journalists, and political activists, all of whom believed that the process was flawed.  Furious, Putin accused Clinton of attempting to undermine his candidacy and of inciting street protesters.

Lest we forget, Saul Alinsky-trained community organizers Obama and Clinton have already proven to be well schooled in the tactics of how to advance an agenda via agitation on the street.

Wary of the "unacceptable" practice of "foreign money being pumped into election processes," the Siberian Swimmer was wise to be suspicious of Obama and members of his "flexible" administration.

Putin asserted that by calling the elections "dishonest and unfair," Hillary's tone had sent a signal to groups opposed to his re-election. Putin alleged that the opposition recognized Hillary's signal, and, in response to her attempt to impose negative influence, dutifully "launched active work with the U.S. State Department's support."

Granted, Vladimir Putin is no choir boy.  However, rather than "reset relations" with Russia, which was supposedly the goal, Secretary Clinton's accusation that Russia's  parliamentary election was "neither free nor fair" resulted only in provoking the bear.

Fast-forward five years.  America is currently in the throes of a contentious election of our own, and from where we currently sit, Putin's suspicions that Hillary is trying to usher in Russian "regime change" don't seem all that far-fetched.

Recently, the Obama international election machine did a similar thing in Israel, when the President's operatives, funded by the State Department, attempted to disrupt Bibi Netanyahu's 2015 bid to remain prime minister.

According to The Washington Times, in a bipartisan staff report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that during the Israeli election, anti-Netanyahu group OneVoice received $465K in State Department grant monies to "build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama's campaign." 

Lo and behold, that same Senate subcommittee also found that State Department officials deleted emails containing information pertaining to Obama's surreptitious campaign to oust Netanyahu.

So, within the last few years, two foreign leaders charged the U.S. State Department with being directly involved in two parliamentary elections.

In response to the original accusation Putin made in 2011, Hillary responded in the following way: "We value our relationship with Russia.  At the same time ... we expressed concerns that we thought were well-founded about the conduct of the elections." 

Hillary, the bastion of election transparency and fairness, argued that "Russian voters deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation" – something Bernie supporters, thus far, are being denied here at home.

"Regardless of where you live," said the woman who, together with Debbie Wasserman Schultz, frustrated the will of 12 million voters, "citizenship requires holding your government accountable."

Sorry, but Hillary Clinton expressing apprehension over voters' voices not being heard or condemning conduct during an election or lamenting the lack of government accountability is like Angela Merkel questioning François  Hollande's decision to continue to accept Syrian refugees.

For all intents and purposes, by accusing Putin of dirty doings, Hillary, the self-appointed successor to the American presidency, projected onto him the dark impulse that astute voters recognize as the force that drives Hillary Clinton's insatiable appetite for power.

Either way, much like Barack Obama, Hillary miscalculated when she poked a Russkiy bear.  That's why, in the end, if Russia exacts revenge by releasing Hillary's 30,000 missing emails, a Putin poke may be the very thing that saves America.
 

Jeannie DeAngelis hosts a blog at www.jeannie-ology.com.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/07/is_putin_poking_hillary.html

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Repairs and improvements at the DNC - Prof. Abraham Ben Zvi

by Prof. Abraham Ben Zvi

Obama chose the Philadelphia stage as a platform to get even with the real estate baron who is threatening to erase his legacy from the country's collective memory.

At first glance, the Democratic National Convention did not differ from the accepted tradition at such gatherings. Indeed, after the faltering opening, which was overshadowed by the exposure of the attempts by the Democratic establishment (working as a satellite of Hillary Clinton) to obstruct and attack the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, things calmed down. The latter's decision to quell the flames and endorse Clinton, even after it became clear that she had used tactics straight out of former President Richard Nixon's playbook against him, brought comparative quiet to the convention hall. 

The Philadelphia convention turned into an honor guard in which marched a gallery of past and present political leaders, decorated retired military officials, and of course, celebrities. They all sang the praises of the Democratic nominee and her astounding sensitivity to the troubles of the weaker socioeconomic sectors. All this, while glossing over her close ties to the business and finance elite of New York. At the same time, the speakers excoriated the positions, temperament, and style of their opponent, Donald Trump, and ridiculed his plan to restore America to greatness. 

The attempt to turn the party convention into a synthetic, cloying PR clip about Clinton is a regular feature of party conferences of this type, but this time we could discern a slight variation. First, the attempts by the speakers -- mostly President Barack Obama himself -- to deny or minimize the question of Clinton's trustworthiness, which was the Democratic elephant in the room, were artificial and absurd. Obama, for example, did "address" that Achilles heel, but only in the context of the dynamic of making decisions, in which the people involved (including him) cannot always guarantee their success, and not in the specific context of the nominee's manipulative, twisted path in public life, which goes back to the distant Arkansas days. 

Second, while it's true that in both the near and distant past the sitting president has taken an active role in his party's convention, when we're talking about the leader of a nation who is about to leave office, he could be expected to appear as a statesman who represents the values of the entire nation, and not as a regular politician who stops at nothing to slander his enemy. But despite that deeply rooted tradition, Obama chose the Philadelphia stage as a platform to get even with the real estate baron who is threatening to erase his legacy from the country's collective memory. In referring to Trump as a combative, divisive demagogue, Obama cast off any signs of presidential conduct and turned into a businessman. 

And what about Clinton herself? The essence of her acceptance speech was intended to function as self-criticism and present the public with an improved, more attractive calling card. And she was indeed articulate and full of optimism about her ability to heal the schisms in American society, which is being forced to confront Islamic terrorism, economic troubles and serious violence in its own backyard. In the best political tradition, the Philadelphia convention, which -- except for its first day -- was conducted as a well-oiled Hollywood production, checked the recent anti-Clinton tide in the polls. The last poll roundup, which came out at the end of the convention, reflected that and indicated that Clinton and Trump were polling even. A new Reuters poll that asked respondents about the four remaining candidates, including Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, showed exactly the same result. However, another poll by the news agency that focused on Trump and Clinton only gave Clinton a 6% lead over her opponent.

All that remains is to wait and see if the new momentum will carry Clinton to victory, despite the promise of her opponent to take off the gloves, or whether the question about her trustworthiness, which was swept under the rug in Philadelphia, will continue to hamper her until Nov. 8.

Prof. Abraham Ben Zvi

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16827

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