===
The world continues to delude itself believing Palestinian leaders want peace, want their citizens to flourish.
They enjoy the status of being constantly pursued by Western leaders dispensing money that affords them economic isolation from the very people they profess they seek to help. Why are there Palestinian refugee camps after 67 years? These camps provide employment for UNWRA and a reason for the U.N to exist.
There are no such camps on Israel's side!
Arafat's wife lives in luxury in Paris or has the world forgotten?
Palestinians are pawns used by their own to keep the world off balance and our State Department perpetuates the myth that peace is obtainable. It simply provides employment for a lot of diplomats engaged in endless meetings who apparently love the sound of their voices and busy themselves in pursuit of an unachievable dream.
I daresay, were the world to ignore the Palestinian problem Palestinians would eventually take matters into their own hands, rid themselves of their two faced leaders and, thus, would be forced to solve the problems of their own making.
Is it not time to quit catering to animal behaviour of terrorists? (See 2 below.)
Click here: Simple ! Le conflit Israelo-arabe en dessin animé -
YouTube -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SS93A6GNws
===
Perhaps not, because we continue to fawn over Hillary! (See 3 below.)
===
Will Michelle Nunn go down in flames? Two candidates who have never held political office are squaring off against each other so that neutralizes the anti-incumbent issue.
Nunn's opponent has economic resources of his own he can count upon and a Nunn victory would help insure Harry Reid's continuance and that should bring out Republicans voters. On the other hand, Nunn's candidacy has to appeal to women, notwithstanding the fact that her appeal is based on nothing beyond the fact that she is her father's daughter and comes across a nice person.
Obama came across as a nice person and now the world is falling apart because he was unqualified. (See 4 below.)
===
Melanie Phillips remains my hero:
http://www.baba-mail.co.il/
===
Which provides a bigger laugh? Youdecide. for a laugh: https://www.facebook.com/
or
http://www.israelvideonetwork.
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) The Underground War on Israel
or
http://www.israelvideonetwork.
===
Dick
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1) The Underground War on Israel
Author: Lee Smith
Source: The Weekly Standard.
Source: The Weekly Standard.
During the first two weeks of the Gaza conflict, Hamas landed at least two significant punches. In firing missiles at Ben Gurion Airport, Hamas convinced the Federal Aviation Authority and European air carriers to temporarily suspend flights to Israel. The fact that relatively primitive rockets falling far short of their targets are nonetheless capable of at least briefly severing an advanced Western democracy with a leading tech economy from the rest of the world is a psychological blow. But perhaps the even greater concern for Israeli officials is the revelation of Hamas’s extensive tunnel network.
Pictured left – Israeli paratroopers enter a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, July 20, 2014.
Pictured left – Israeli paratroopers enter a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, July 20, 2014.
Until Operation Protective Edge, it was generally assumed that Gaza’s tunnel system was simply a feeding tube for a community of 1.8 million people. With both the Egyptian and Israeli borders closed, as well as Israel’s naval blockade, goods entered Gaza mainly through the tunnels from Egypt. So did weapons, including missiles made or designed by Iran, which, as the last two weeks have shown, are capable of reaching any site in Israel. The tunnel economy flourished under the former Egyptian president and Hamas sponsor Mohamed Morsi but has suffered under his successor, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has won praise from Jerusalem for shutting down as many tunnels as he can find.
However, there is another system in Gaza as well, a network of attack tunnels that end not in Egypt but in Israel, where over the last two weeks Hamas commandos have attempted several terrorist operations.
“Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that we are not under siege, we are imposing a siege,” says retired IDF officer Jonathan Halevi, now a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “What he meant was that [Hamas] can use tunnels as a strategic weapon. If you multiply tunnels, you can use them to send hundreds of fighters into Israel and create havoc, totally under cover. According to Hamas, the tunnels have changed the balance of power.”
Israeli officials have expressed amazement at the extent of the tunnel network. “Food, accommodations, storage, resupply,” one astonished official told reporters last week. “Beneath Gaza,” he explained, there’s “another terror city.” That is, Hamas’s tunnel network is evidence of a military doctrine, both a countermeasure to Israel’s clear air superiority and an offensive capability that threatens to take ground combat inside Israel itself, targeting villages, cities, and civilians as well as soldiers. Israel perhaps should not have been surprised to discover the size and seriousness of Hamas’s tunnel network because they’ve seen something similar before, in the aftermath of the 2006 war with Hezbollah. And indeed it was Iran’s long arm in Lebanon that helped build Hamas’s tunnels.
“The spiritual father of Hamas’s tunnel system is Imad Mughniyeh,” says Shimon Shapira, a Hezbollah expert and senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Mughniyeh, assassinated in 2008 in an operation believed to have been conducted by the Israelis, is credited with directing Hezbollah’s 2006 war. He was the head of the organization’s external operations unit and responsible for countless terrorist attacks. He also served as liaison to the top Iranian leadership as well as other Iranian allies and assets, including Hamas. “Mughniyeh sent instructors to Gaza and took Hamas members to Iran,” Shapira explains.
While Hamas and Hezbollah’s tunnel technology, equipment, and funding are mostly Iranian, the knowledge and the doctrine date back to the earliest days of the Cold War.
“The North Koreans are the leading tunnel experts in the world,” says North Korea expert Bruce Bechtol. They learned as a matter of necessity. “The U.S. Air Force basically exhausted its target list after the first eight months of the Korean War,” Bechtol explains. “All the North Korean cities were turned to rubble, so they got good at building large tunnels and bunkers, some of them 10 or 11 square miles. In effect, the North Koreans moved their cities underground for three years, with hundreds of thousands of people living down there.”
“There is no better protection than the earth,” says David Maxwell, associate director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University. But Pyongyang also has an offensive doctrine. “Defectors tell us that the North Koreans built 21 tunnels under the demilitarized zone, but only 4 have been discovered,” says Maxwell, a retired U.S. Army colonel who served in South Korea. “Our concern is that the North Koreans would infiltrate, sending thousands of men through the tunnels in an hour, maybe dressed in South Korean uniforms. You can’t imagine the kind of havoc that would wreak.”
Just last week Hamas tried the same tactic, sending commando units disguised as IDF troops through two tunnels. For a short time, they fooled real Israeli soldiers in an observation post.
It’s nothing new for the North Koreans to work with terrorist groups, as Bechtol explains. It started with the Polisario, the North African, and at one time Soviet-funded, terrorist group fighting the Moroccan government. “The North Koreans built them underground facilities, command and control, hospitals,” says Bechtol. “All of it was supported by Soviets, but that changed with the end of the Cold War, when the North Koreans offered their services on a cash and carry basis only.”
Their top customer is the Islamic Republic of Iran. The North Koreans, Bechtol says, have helped build some of the Iranians’ underground nuclear weapons facilities, as well as Hezbollah’s underground network. “They built it in 2003-04, coming into Lebanon disguised as houseboys serving the Iranians. Maybe nobody asked, hey, how come these houseboys are speaking Korean?”
The significance of the tunnels became clear in the 2006 war, as Bechtol explains. “It lowered Hezbollah’s casualty rate. The Israelis wondered why the air force was not inflicting more damage and it was because of those tunnels. It was the first time Hezbollah was ever truly protected.”
Last week a U.S. federal judge ruled that North Korea and Iran were liable for providing support to Hezbollah during the 2006 war. According to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, North Korea and Iran assisted “in building a massive network of underground military installations, tunnels, bunkers, depots and storage facilities in southern Lebanon.” Lamberth noted that one Hezbollah commander who received training in North Korea was Mustafa Badreddine, Mughniyeh’s cousin. And as with North Korea, Hezbollah’s heavily reinforced underground network has also given rise to an offensive doctrine—to invade northern Israel.
“Hassan Nasrallah says Hezbollah has a two-part operational plan,” says Shimon Shapira. “One is rocket fire on Tel Aviv and two is conquest of the Galilee. I wondered what he meant by that—how is Hezbollah going to invade the Galilee, take hostages, capture villages, and overrun military installations? But we’re learning from what is happening now. Nasrallah means Hezbollah is going to penetrate Israel through tunnels.”
The difference between Hamas’s underground network and Hezbollah’s, explain experts, is the topography. It’s easier to dig tunnels in the Gaza sand than in the rocky pastures and rich soil of the Galilee. The catch is that the latter are also harder to destroy since they are further fortified by nature.
Several Israeli journalists are reporting that “the fiasco of the tunnels,” as Yossi Melman calls it, might have been avoided. Either military and security officials were aware of the extent of Hamas’s network and didn’t do enough about it, or they ran up against bureaucratic roadblocks. Whether the IDF needs to detail a specific unit to monitor and uproot the tunnels that cross into Israel on its southern and northern borders, one fact is plain: For decades Israel’s traditional military doctrine has been to fight its enemies on the other side of the wire. However, its enemies’ new North Korean-inspired doctrine is to go under the wire. If Israel doesn’t deal with first Hamas’s tunnels and then Hezbollah’s, the next war it faces may well be inside Israel itself.
1a) Israel Can Win
BY:
We suggest, instead, grounding Kerry and sending over there President Obama’s Special Envoy to the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC). This 56-member body is the largest single bloc in the UN. It represents the countries with Muslim majorities. Mr. Obama introduced Amb. Rashad Hussain with great fanfare back in 2010. Amb. Hussain, the President glowingly told us, is aHafiz. That is, someone who has committed to memory the entire Koran. That effort apparently was enough for this administration to promote this man to ambassadorial rank.
There were distant bursts of machine gunfire and echoes of occasional small explosions. But aside from that - and the grisly sight of a shell-wrecked Egyptian troop carrier laden with still-burning corpses - Gaza itself was eerily still. There was nothing but silence, nothing but white flags hanging from the mud-brick shacks that served as Palestinian refugee homes. Not a single sight or sound of a single living Gazan.
In August, 2005, almost 32 years later, I was there when Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, finally withdrew Israel's troops from Gaza and evacuated Israeli settlers from the rich fruit and vegetable producing settlements they had established along the strip. The corrupt Palestinian Authority took over full control of Gaza. Even the network of miraculously flourishing greenhouses that Israeli settlers had built became Palestinian, something Israel hoped would help convince the Gaza leadership to keep peaceful borders with the Jewish state.
That didn't happen. The chain of greenhouses was soon looted and all but completely destroyed.
Fatah, Hamas, and half a dozen other Palestinian terrorist organizations began raiding Israeli targets again from Gaza to the point where the Israeli army had to return for three short stints to flush out terrorist nests.
Then as Gaza's economy began to worsen almost as quickly as the Palestinian Authority's corruption level grew higher, fed up Gazans finally voted the PA out - and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas into power.
Anyone who expected Hamas to do a better job for the Gazan population was soon sadly disappointed. A Sunni Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas remains fanatically resolved to destroy Israel and to murder millions of Jews in the process. It quickly began feeding on the mega millions of United Nations, American and other foreign aid shipped in for Gaza's refugee millions. For example, rather than use shipments of cement coming in from Israel and elsewhere to build homes and schools for Palestinians, Hamas used them for the network of terror attack tunnelsthey began boring into Israel.
Worse while Gaza's refugee masses plunge further into poverty, Hamas leaders grow personally wealthy. As Israeli analyst Doron Peskin recently put it in a carefullyreported story, "with multi-million land deals, luxury villas and black marketfuel from Egypt, Gaza's (Hamas) rulers made billions while the rest of the population struggles with a 39 percent poverty level and 40 percent unemployment." Much of the loot has found its way to accounts in Doha, the capital of the oil-rich Gulf state of Qatar and now, since it was booted out of Damascus, the extremely comfortable, lush villa laden headquarters of Gaza's senior Hamas leadership
Palestinian leadership has always been the worst enemy of the Palestinian people - especially in Gaza, one of the poorest and possibly the most densely crowded place in the world. Had its leadership been smarter and less personally greedy, it's possible that Palestinians would have had their state alongside Israel scores of years ago.
Please, Palestinians, realize that and stop allowing yourself to be used as human shields and as the unending bankroll for corrupt leaders.
1a) Israel Can Win
If Obama doesn't save Hamas
BY:
Slandered, despised, insulted, degraded, Israel is nonetheless winning its war against Hamas. The number of rocket attacks launched by the terror group each day has been halved. The IDF is uprooting the underground tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle weapons, contraband, and terrorists in and out of the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday evening, Israel’s Channel Two newscast carried footage of Hamas terrorists surrendering to the IDF. The jihadists carried white flags. They stripped to their shorts, proving they were not wearing suicide belts. These are facts Hamas does not want you to know, images Hamas does not want you to see.
And you probably won’t see them. Since the evening of July 17, when Israel launched its ground offensive, Western media has been filled with Hamas propaganda. In the United States, the debate over the conflict is invariably couched in terms favorable to Hamas: Are civilian casualties too high? Is it safe to fly into Ben-Gurion airport? Has the IDF targeted schools and hospitals? One MSNBC anchor calls Israel, which abandoned Gaza in 2005, the “occupying authority.” Another praises a “gutsy” Israeli, who refuses to serve in her nation’s military.
On CNN, the Islamist Turkish prime minister says Israel has “surpassed what Hitler did.” A CNN reporter calls Israelis “scum”; a NBC reporter tweets a scurrilous article calling U.S. Jews who join the IDF “America’s Israeli jihadists”; and a writer for Gawker says it’s time to send the Jews back to Germany. Reporters once embedded with military forces. Now the talking points of a military force—the talking points of Hamas—are embedded in the U.S. media.
And yet the immediate danger to the success of this necessary war does not come from the electronic intifada. It does not come from resurgent anti-Semitism, or the United Nations Human Rights Council, or the failure of so many Western elites to recognize the causes of this war, their inability to distinguish between a democratic country struggling to protect its people and a terror state using children as hostages. Hate, law-fare, decadence—they are all challenges for Israel. But Israel can endure them for now. Israel is used to it.
What Israel should not endure is the premature conclusion of hostilities. Disarming Hamas—seizing its rocket caches, collapsing its tunnels, killing and capturing its forces—is vital to Israeli security. And an artificial ceasefire imposed by outside powers, a ceasefire written in terms favorable to Hamas, would undermine the security gains Israel has made to date. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have given no sign that they recognize this fact. Or maybe they understand it all too well: The Obama administration’s top priority is imposing a ceasefire at exactly the moment when Israel’s military success is becoming clear.
Secretary Kerry arrived in Cairo earlier this week. No one wanted him there. Egypt’s ruler, General Sisi, has no interest in saving Hamas through international diplomacy: The Muslim Brotherhood is his mortal enemy. Kerry then went from Cairo to Jerusalem, where he met with U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon, who flew to the meeting on a plane chartered by Qatar, Hamas’ primary source of cash. Kerry also met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is too gracious to tell the secretary to go back to Boston. (Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has said publicly what the Israeli government will not: Kerry is an unwelcome guest.) Next up was Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who honored Kerry’s presence by endorsing Hamas’s call for a “Day of Rage” in the West Bank. Kerry “will soon decide if Hamas and Israel are willing to agree on a Gaza ceasefire,” Reuters says.
Kerry will decide? Who died and made him king?
There is no ceasefire in Gaza because a ceasefire is in no one’s interest. Israel’s objective is clear: degrade Hamas’ capability to fire rockets at Israeli civilians and attack Israeli communities from underground. As for Hamas, its interest is irrational, macabre, and deranged, but no less obvious: Promote itself as the leader of the worldwide struggle against Zionism and Judaism, while ensuring collateral damage that will foment outrage at Israel. That is why Hamas stores weapons in schools, why its military headquarters is in the basement of a hospital. Hamas is not interested in minimizing pain. Hamas wants to maximize it.
Who wants a ceasefire? Obama and Kerry. They need the diplomatic victory after the failure of their misguided and poorly executed bid to reconcile the irreconcilable. The president’s approval rating on foreign policy is abysmal. A ceasefire might help the American people forget, just for a moment, that their president has failed to influence events in Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, let alone advance American interests overseas. Since he became president, Israel is the one country in the world in whose affairs President Obama has seemed at all interested in intervening. It is the one country whose politics and actions Obama has had no trouble judging harshly. Next to golf, it’s his favorite pastime.
Who wants a ceasefire? Qatar. The sheikhs who bankroll the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, and Hamas would see their status rise. A ceasefire would lend credence to the theory that the traditional Sunni powers—Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—have been eclipsed both by Shiite Iran and by Brotherhood-friendly Sunnis in the Gulf and Turkey. Having lost Egypt and possibly Gaza, the Brotherhood finds itself on the precipice. A Qatari-backed ceasefire that does not include disarmament of Hamas would pull the movement back from the abyss.
“One of the results, one would hope, of a cease-fire would be some form of demilitarization, so that again, this doesn’t continue, doesn’t repeat itself,” said Tony Blinken, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, to NPR. One wouldhope so. Indeed, actual demilitarization—not hoped for, not partial—is exactly what the IDF is doing now, block by block, tunnel by tunnel. Why is the administration trying to stop it? Is a ceasefire that leaves Hamas with its arsenal really more desirable to them than another week of war?
This is not the time for President Obama and John Kerry to play to type, to promote bad agreements for self-satisfaction, for political gain. If they won’t stand behind Israel, they should at least get out of the way. And let the IDF finish the job.
1b) Ground Kerry, Send Amb. Hussain!
Secretary of State John Kerry was heard off-mic sarcastically putting down Israel’s push into Gaza. “Helluva pinpoint operation,” he said, deploring the number of Arab casualties in the latest war between Israel and Hamas. Mr. Kerry represents an administration that didn’t break off ties with the so-called Palestinian Authority (formerly the terrorist PLO). This outfit is run by Mahmoud Abbas, who was for years Yasser Arafat’s henchman. Abbas’ Fatah faction of the PLO maintains a tenuous hold on West Bank Arabs by the simple maneuver of never holding the scheduled elections. When the openly terrorist group, Hamas, won elections in Gaza, they kicked out Fatah. Hamas killed their Fatah brothers and broke into the home of the late Arafat and stole his Nobel Peace Prize. (We’re not making this up.) Since then, however, Hamas and Fatah have kissed and made up.
Messers Obama and Kerry continue to sluice billions of American taxpayer dollars to the PLO, which is now in bed with Hamas. One reason that the War on Terror has lasted, so far, 4,700 days (compared with just 1,365 for World War II) is that we were only paying for one side in WWII. That may be why we achieved Unconditional Surrender of our enemies.
President Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, has told us that this administration has brought greater Tranquility to the globe. He actually said that with a straight face.
So, Mr. Obama sends John Kerry winging off to the Mideast for another round of shuttle diplomacy. Meanwhile, the Obama administration wants to ban jet travel to Israel. Why?
Because, of course, the possibility that unarmed civilian jets might be hit with surface-to-air missiles fired by Hamas from Gaza (or perhaps even from the West Bank where they would be aided in concealing them by their coalition partners in Fatah.)
The ban is quickly lifted. But the ban on jet travel to Israel -- which relies so heavily on American tourism -- is in place long enough for the Obama administration to make its point: We have your back, but we also have your windpipe.
When he gets to Israel, Kerry will press for a cease-fire. He wants the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) not to complete the work of smashing Hamas’ rocket launching sites. He wants a cease-fire to look good on CNN. But that would let Hamas continue tunneling into Israel. Once complete, those tunnels will send suicide bombers to Israeli schools and shopping malls.
The State Department website boasts of Amb. Rashad’s successes.
As U.S. Special Envoy, he has traveled extensively around the world, meeting with government and civil society leaders as part of his work on a number of issues involving Muslim-majority countries in bilateral and multilateral settings. He has also been active in efforts to combat violent extremism and protect religious freedom, including initiatives to protect the rights of religious minorities in Muslim-majority countries.
Let’s give Secretary Kerry a much-needed rest. Sending Amb. Hussain would allow him to visit all the Tranquil areas of the Globe that we are witnessing. Just a few areas remain less than Tranquil. And these are mostly in those OIC countries’ backyards. Surely, anyone as skilled as Amb. Hussain could speak peace those who share his faith and get them to lay off blowing up Buddhist statues, torching and shooting up hotels in Hindu India, rocketing Jews in Jerusalem, and terrorizing Christians in Mosul, Iraq, Sudan, and Nigeria. Maybe he could induce co-religionists to “Coexist.”
If Amb. Hussain cannot arrange a cease-fire among his fellow adherents of the religion of peace, perhaps we ought to close down his office -- or John Kerry’s. It seems a shame to waste more money on peacemakers who cannot seem to make any peace.
1c) Gaza and Palestinian Leadership: The More It Changes, the More it Gets Worse
By Richard. Z. Chesnoff
Back in June, 1967, the second day of the Six Day War, I became the first foreign correspondent to enter Gaza City when Israeli troops took that forsaken piece of real estate from Egyptian control. Two news colleagues had been killed when their vehicles hit mines the day before. But being young and eager to make a news name for myself, I tramped across the border with a unit of Israeli reserve soldiers, then rode recklessly into Gaza City itself on the hood of a helpful lieutenant's jeep.
There were distant bursts of machine gunfire and echoes of occasional small explosions. But aside from that - and the grisly sight of a shell-wrecked Egyptian troop carrier laden with still-burning corpses - Gaza itself was eerily still. There was nothing but silence, nothing but white flags hanging from the mud-brick shacks that served as Palestinian refugee homes. Not a single sight or sound of a single living Gazan.
In August, 2005, almost 32 years later, I was there when Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon, finally withdrew Israel's troops from Gaza and evacuated Israeli settlers from the rich fruit and vegetable producing settlements they had established along the strip. The corrupt Palestinian Authority took over full control of Gaza. Even the network of miraculously flourishing greenhouses that Israeli settlers had built became Palestinian, something Israel hoped would help convince the Gaza leadership to keep peaceful borders with the Jewish state.
That didn't happen. The chain of greenhouses was soon looted and all but completely destroyed.
Fatah, Hamas, and half a dozen other Palestinian terrorist organizations began raiding Israeli targets again from Gaza to the point where the Israeli army had to return for three short stints to flush out terrorist nests.
Then as Gaza's economy began to worsen almost as quickly as the Palestinian Authority's corruption level grew higher, fed up Gazans finally voted the PA out - and the Islamist terrorist organization Hamas into power.
Anyone who expected Hamas to do a better job for the Gazan population was soon sadly disappointed. A Sunni Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas remains fanatically resolved to destroy Israel and to murder millions of Jews in the process. It quickly began feeding on the mega millions of United Nations, American and other foreign aid shipped in for Gaza's refugee millions. For example, rather than use shipments of cement coming in from Israel and elsewhere to build homes and schools for Palestinians, Hamas used them for the network of terror attack tunnelsthey began boring into Israel.
Worse while Gaza's refugee masses plunge further into poverty, Hamas leaders grow personally wealthy. As Israeli analyst Doron Peskin recently put it in a carefullyreported story, "with multi-million land deals, luxury villas and black marketfuel from Egypt, Gaza's (Hamas) rulers made billions while the rest of the population struggles with a 39 percent poverty level and 40 percent unemployment." Much of the loot has found its way to accounts in Doha, the capital of the oil-rich Gulf state of Qatar and now, since it was booted out of Damascus, the extremely comfortable, lush villa laden headquarters of Gaza's senior Hamas leadership
Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal, for example, is said to already maintain a network of mega-million dollar Qatari companies and bank accounts registered to his wife, daughter and son. A current "prestigious project in Doha", Peskin reports, "includes the construction of four towers of more than 27,000 quare meters... attached to a 10,000 square meter mall."
Palestinian leadership has always been the worst enemy of the Palestinian people - especially in Gaza, one of the poorest and possibly the most densely crowded place in the world. Had its leadership been smarter and less personally greedy, it's possible that Palestinians would have had their state alongside Israel scores of years ago.
Please, Palestinians, realize that and stop allowing yourself to be used as human shields and as the unending bankroll for corrupt leaders.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) Stop the Jew-Hatred and Build Palestine
Whichever side of the Arab-Israeli conflict one stands on, you cannot deny the courage and perseverance of the Palestinian people.
3)The Worrying Vacuity Of Hillary Clinton
2) Stop the Jew-Hatred and Build Palestine
by Tarek Fatah
The Toronto Sun
The Toronto Sun
Whichever side of the Arab-Israeli conflict one stands on, you cannot deny the courage and perseverance of the Palestinian people.
For generations, they have lived as stateless citizens, on one hand standing up to Israel, which controls their day-to-day lives, and on the other enduring their own leadership, which has betrayed them at every opportunity.
It is sad to see their century-long quest for statehood crippled by the evil of Hamas, which has turned the legitimate Palestinian national struggle into an Islamic Jihad against Jews.
Gaza could have become a showcase of Arab enlightenment and enterprise after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. It could have become a tourism haven and a crucible for learning and arts, science and technology.
Instead, Gaza has become a one-party Islamic dictatorship under Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.
Thousands of precious lives have been lost in this macabre display of hatred disguised as piety.
Its not just Israeli Jews that have been targeted for death. Palestinians opposed to Hamas have been massacred to consolidate its power.
On Nov. 12, 2007 Hamas gunmen fired on a rally organized by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party inside a Gaza stadium, at an event held to commemorate the late Yasser Arafat. Many were killed. To the horror of the world, Hamas gunmen butchered Fatah fighters, throwing wounded men from the roof of a 15-storey building to their deaths.
In the current clash between Israel and Hamas, another ceasefire will soon come into effect. The Americans and the United Nations will pour in millions of dollars to re-build bombed out infrastructure.
But who will tell the Palestinians to get off the path of self-destruction? Who will convince the Palestinian Islamists to stop dreaming of destroying Israel and start building the future of their own people?
Let me give it a try.
Palestinians must reflect on why, after struggling for 100 years, their dream of statehood remains unfulfilled? They need to ask themselves why tiny countries under occupation by larger foes have become independent nations, while Palestinian statehood remains out of reach.
Let us look at four examples.
East Timor: For 400 years it was colonized by Portugal and in 1975 occupied by Indonesia. The one million, mostly Catholic, Timorese fought a long, bitter guerrilla war under Fretilin (Revolutionary Front of Independent East Timor) for freedom from the huge country of Islamic Indonesia, with a 300 million population. In 2002, East Timor won independence as the last Indonesian soldier left.
Eritrea: Located in the Horn of Africa, Eritrea was annexed by its southern and larger neighbour, Ethiopia, in 1962. This triggered a 30-year guerrilla war that involved hijackings and assassinations, scarring an entire generation. However, in 1991 after a UN-supervised referendum, Eritrea gained its independence.
Then there were the independence struggles of two Islamic countries that fought for and found statehood—Bangladesh in 1971 and Kosovo in 2008.
In all four cases, these national liberation movements wanted their own freedom, not the destruction of the countries that occupied their land.
East Timor didn't want to destroy Indonesia. Kosovo had no interest in wiping Serbia off the map.
When Palestinians stop chanting for the death of Jews and Israel, and start working to secure their own state, they will achieve it.
Palestinians have demonstrated courage and perseverance. What they need now, is wisdom.
Tarek S. Fatah is a founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, a columnist at Toronto Sun, host of a Sunday afternoon talk show on Toronto's NewsTalk1010 AM Radio, and a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is the author of two award-winning books: Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State and The Jew is Not My Enemy: Unveiling the Myths that Fuel Muslim Anti-Semitism.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)The Worrying Vacuity Of Hillary Clinton
I’ve tried to avoid the Clinton book tour bullshit this past month or so. Not good for my blood pressure. When I checked in occasionally, it was to discover that nothing much has changed. The Clintons are still self-pitying money-grubbers – $12 million in speaking fees since she left the State Department? – and now their offspring, exploiting her nepotistic advantage with all the scrupulous ethics of her parents, is continuing the grift. If you ask of Clinton what she’s fighting for, what she believes in, if you want to get her to disagree with you on something, good luck. Any actual politics right now would tarnish the inevitability of a resume-led coronation. That the resume has little of any substance in her four years as secretary of state does not concern her. She was making “hard choices”, and if we cannot appreciate that, tant pis.
I’d like to find a reason to believe she’s a political force who stands for something in an era when there is a real appetite for serious change. She could, after all, decide to campaign vociferously in favor of the ACA this summer and fall (universal healthcare is, after all, one of her positions), but that might siphon money away from her foundation and candidacy. She could get out there and start framing a foreign policy vision. But, again, too risky. I see nothing that suggests a real passion for getting on with the fight – just the usual presumptions of a super-elite, super-rich and super-cocooned politician of the gilded age.
So I did watch the Daily Show interview last week, and was not surprised. As in most of her softball media appearances, she was both unctuous and vapid. But even I was aghast at the sheer emptiness and datedness of her one attempt to articulate a future for American foreign policy. She actually said that our main problem is that we haven’t been celebrating America enough, that we “have not been telling our story very well” and that if we just “get back to telling” that story about how America stands for freedom and opportunity, we can rebuild our diminished international stature. One obvious retort: wasn’t she, as secretary of state, you know, responsible for telling that tale – so isn’t she actually criticizing herself?
Next up: could she say something more vacuous and anodyne? Or something more out of tune with a post-Iraq, post-torture, post- Afghanistan world? Peter Beinart had the same reaction: “As a vision for America’s relations with the world,” he wrote, “this isn’t just unconvincing. It’s downright disturbing”:
It’s true that young people overseas don’t remember the Cold War. But even if they did, they still wouldn’t be inspired by America’s “great story about [promoting] human freedom, human rights, human opportunity.” That’s because in the developing world—where most of humanity lives—barely anyone believes that American foreign policy during the Cold War actually promoted those things. What they mostly remember is that in anticommunism’s name, from Pakistan to Guatemala to Iran to Congo, America funded dictators and fueled civil wars.
Larison piles on:
Changing the substance of policies is never seriously considered, because there is little or no recognition that these policies need correction or reversal. This takes for granted that opposition to U.S. policies is mostly the product of misunderstanding or miscommunication rather than an expression of genuinely divergent interests and grievances. I don’t know that Clinton is naive or oblivious enough to believe this (I doubt it), but it’s instructive that she thinks this is a good argument to make publicly. She is more or less saying that there is nothing wrong with U.S. foreign policy that can’t be fixed by better marketing and salesmanship, and that’s just profoundly wrong. It’s also what we should expect from someone as conventionally hawkish and “centrist” on foreign policy as Clinton is.
My fear is that she doesn’t actually mean any of this. She just needed to say something, and so came out with a stream of consciousness that is completely platitudinous and immune to Fox News attacks. It’s a defensive crouch that is always her first instinct. Think of the Terry Gross interview – and her discomfort in grappling with actual disagreement, from her own base that time. Her goal is always safety. And safety won’t cut it in a populist age.
So if she runs, my guess is she’ll wrap herself tightly in the maximalist concept of American exceptionalism and make this her appeal as a post-Obama presidency. See? she’ll say to the same voting groups she went for last time. I’m a real American, and I believe in America. And yay America!
Maybe this is merely a function that she isn’t running yet (and still may not). Why stir the pot if your goal at this point is merely selling books and raking in more corporate, Goldman Sacks dough? But when, I wonder, has she been otherwise? She remains scarred by the 1990s, understandably so. But the country has moved on in a way she seems to find hard to comprehend.
(Photo: Hillary Rodham Clinton, former United States Secretary of State, U.S. Senator, and First Lady of the United States, speaks during the presentation of the German translation of her book ‘Hard Choices’ (‘Entscheidungen’ in German) at the Staatsoper in the Schiller Theater on July 6, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. By Adam Berry/Getty Images.)
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Why David Perdue is the favorite against Michelle Nunn in Georgia
By Ben Highton
Our forecast for the outcome of the Georgia U.S. Senate election this year is more optimistic for the Republicans than those of many other analysts. Our most recent forecast gives them a 98 percent chance of winning. Here we explain why.
One rare feature of the race is that neither of the major party candidates has held elective office before. From 1980 through 2012 there were only two elections like this. In the 2010 Utah election, neither Republican Mike Lee nor Democrat Sam Granato had held previous elective office. The same was true of Elizabeth Dole and Erskine Bowles in the 2002 North Carolina election. In both elections the inexperienced Republican beat the inexperienced Democrat. That certainly sets no precedent for the Republican in Georgia this year, David Perdue, who faces Michelle Nunn. But, other factors suggest that Perdue – the cousin of former Georgia governor Sonny Perdue – has some significant advantages over Nunn, the daughter of former U.S. senator Sam Nunn.
As John Sides has explained here and here, our Election Lab forecasts are based on a model of Senate election outcomes from 1980 to 2012 combined with polling results from the current cycle. Two factors from the model combine to weigh heavily in the Republicans’ favor in Georgia. First, with a Democratic president the midterm penalty (about 3 percentage points, on average) favors the Republicans and Perdue. Second, in recent presidential elections Georgia has been about 6 percentage points more Republican than the country overall, which our model suggests will translate into about 2 percentage points of the Senate vote for Perdue (compared to a state whose presidential vote mirrored the national vote). Together, then, these two factors give Perdue a significant head start. Obama’s low approval ratings and sluggish economic growth also help Perdue.
Another factor to consider is campaign fundraising. Our model currently is based on relative party fundraising rather than candidate fundraising. That is, we sum up the money raised by all Democratic and Republican candidates running for a House or Senate seat, and then examine the balance between the candidates in each party. The logic is that early in the campaign, party fundraising is better at capturing how eager the supporters are on each side to open their wallets. Moreover, this helps us produce a measure of fundraising even before we know who the general election candidates will be. In our analysis of previous election cycles, we have found that early on this measure predicts outcomes better than candidate fundraising.
In Georgia this year, the Republican Senate candidates have out-raised Nunn by about 3 to 1. Based on our model this gives Perdue another boost of almost 4 percentage points compared to if the fundraising between the parties was even.
Of course, there was a hotly contested Republican primary and primary runoff on the Republican side while Nunn faced no other serious Democratic challengers. If the amount raised by all the Republican candidates combined is not a good indicator of overall Republican strength, then our model is overestimating Perdue’s chances.
Indeed, if we focus on only the funds raised by Perdue and Nunn, they are nearly even. In this case, Perdue’s advantage from our model would be limited to the 5 percentage points based on the midterm penalty and Republican tilt in Georgia. So based on the model, Perdue has an estimated advantage over Nunn of either 5 percentage points or 11 percentage points.
Our forecast also takes into account polling. In Georgia, as in many states, there have not been many polls and none since Tuesday’s Republican primary run-off. In fact, there have only been two public polls since May. In early June, Survey USA gave Perdue 53 percent of the two-candidate vote (that is, 53 percent among those with a preference for Perdue or Nunn). More recently, Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm, had Nunn at 54 percent of the two-candidate vote. Overall, our polling average currently gives the advantage to Nunn.
At this point in the election cycle our forecast gives the model more weight than the polls. That’s why our forecast is more pessimistic for Nunn than the other ones tracked by the Upshot. Currently we give the Nunn just a 2 percent chance of winning. If we were to exclude party fundraising and focus only on her fundraising relative to Perdue’s, her chances would rise to about 30 percent. Either way the advantage is to Perdue. The only question is how much
Of course, this raises the question whether it would make more sense to rely on candidate fundraising. We continue to feel, based on our analysis of past elections, that right now party fundraising gives a better sense of the race, and that it will continue to do so until after Labor Day. It’s important to give these candidates a chance to “recover” from the primary, especially after a competitive one. Will Perdue bring Kingston’s supporters on board? If he does, we can expect his fundraising to spike. Time will tell, and our forecast will adjust accordingly.
Going forward, as Election Day approaches our forecast will give growing weight to the polls, assuming that more are reported. If Nunn continues to poll well, then our forecast for her chances will, of course, improve. But given the hurdles she faces, a Nunn victory would qualify as a notable upset.
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