It is football season now so Americans can turn their attention to something important.
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Willful blindness? You decide! (See 1 below.)
The West is upset at beheadings but is more passive when it comes to rocket attacks.
The West feels threatened by ISIS but cannot accept the fact that Israel is both threatened and being attacked daily by Hamas rockets and now over 100 rockets have been launched from Syria onto Israel's Golan! There has been no reporting of the latter. Could it be shelling by radicals, within Syria, on each other that stray or is it an attempt to probe Israeli preparedness? Time will tell. (See 1a below.)
Moderate Gazans do not have it so good either! (See 1b below.)
A double standard at work? You decide.
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Israel has self-examined and when this report is revealed it will indicate Israel is wanting in necessary defense capability. (See 2 below.)
Some Gaza conclusions from my friend.
The war is still ongoing, of course and, as noted above, over 100 rockets have come from Syria hitting Israel's Golan. (See 2a below.)
But maybe not. (See 2b below.)
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has decided bigger buildings, from which Hamas is hiding weaponry, firing rockets and planning their attacks, need to come down so maybe they will get the message their war of attrition comes with a high and escalating cost.
Perhaps their leader has decided Hillary was right. As long as he is safe: "what difference does it matter.".
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Can one equate the market's ability to rise, in the face of what is going on both domestically and foreign, with passengers on the ship of The Titanic?
From my perspective the market's rise is based on the fact/belief/hope our economy is showing steady improvement, The Fed will navigate a successful stimulus withdrawal , the West will defeat ISIS, Iran will not be allowed to go nuclear and Putin will not invade Ukraine.
That is a tall order of wishful thinking so stay tuned because what goes up eventually recedes!
Ah, but when? Perhaps fairly soon.
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Liberal presidents are never to blame because it is always the fault of something and/or someone beyond their control.
In the case of Obama my friend believes it is because Republicans will not co-operate, Bush left him an impossible hand and he is hated because he is black.
This is the arguments I heard this weekend and I rebutted each one but I fear my responses did not score but I have not given up and I know my friend will remain receptive because he is not only my friend but also a decent and fair minded man.
Republicans have tried to co-operate, have been consistently rebuffed by a president who is incapable of compromise and Harry Reid, refuses to allow any bill to be voted on for fear it will hurt Democrat re-election chances.
As for Bush dealing a bad hand, actually the Iran War had been won by reason of The Surge and the economy was in decline because Dodd and his fellow traveling Senators demanded banks extend loans that could not be repaid. Bush actually warned of this but then did nothing because he was up against a Democrat Congress. Finally, The Fed overstayed their own policies and Wall Street continued to make money in ways that were immoral.
As for Obama being hated, why are conservatives in love with Ben Carson and Mia Love while conservative black candidates, like Col. West, are attacked and smeared by liberal Democrats ?
I did not write articles 1 and 3 below. I just found them supportive of my responses to my friend and what I have been expressing in these memos for years and years.
I am always happy to receive a rebuttal but it is difficult to overcome facts with subjective bias.
And then there are those pesky polls which my friend said always fall in a president's second term, ie. Reagan and the Contras, Clinton and his impeachment, GW and his Iraq War which was illegitimate based on the rationale for going to war and Obama because he is a hated black who was elected and then re-elected.
By this logic I assume Obama was re-elected so we would could have more reasons to hate him.
I, for one, am glad he is not able to run again because hatred is exhausting and I need to keep some in reserve for Hillary! (See 3 below.)
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Be careful! ;http://www.youtube.com/embed/F7pYHN9iC9I?rel=0
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Obama desperate to keep Republicans at bay because he is fighting for his legacy or to redeem it. Either way, in my book, he remains a loser and America the bigger loser. (See 4 below.)
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Only a fool trusts CAIR! Anyone who believes CAIR is not a dangerous threat is also a fool. (See 5 below.)
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What is going on with our involvement with Qatar's and Qatar's support of Hamas? Is Obama , through back channels, encouraging Qatar to continue its assistance to Hamas in the hope that Hamas' war of attrition will continue and force Israel to bend?
OK, call me a conspiratorialist! (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) Obama's Willful Blindness
In America, justice is supposed to be blind not our commander-in-chief. In Obama’s topsy-turvy America justice is not blind but our President is-and willfully so-when it comes to threats facing Americans. Will he remove his blinders? Only if he is forced to and by then it may be too late.
Charles Krauthammer, one of America’s smartest columnists, said it best regarding President Obama and the threats to America coming from ISIS:
“I don’t think the issue is the president was unaware or taken by surprise. I think this was willful blindness to the nature of the threat.”
“For the 5 and a half years he’s been in office, he’s tried to minimize the whole idea of the War on Terror,” the columnist explained. “He abolished the term. He gave a speech six months ago saying the War on Terror must end, it’s damaging our country — as if he can unilaterally declare an end to a war when the other guy hasn’t declared an end on his side.”
He has said the tide of war is receding,” Krauthammer continued. “But he did that by defining the threat and the enemy as al-Qaida central, as if the enemy is a club that lives in Pakistan or parts of Afghanistan and that’s it. So whenever you had an explosion of Islamic radicalism in Mali or Libya or elsewhere, it was considered something else, as he said, a jayvee team.”Even before Barack Obama became president he whitewashed threats from abroad -- especially those emerging from the Islamic world.
“This is a willful attempt to actually will away the war that we were looking at.”
As Obama spoke in 2008, Iran had been developing its nuclear weapons program and has throughout the years boasted of goal to destroy America and bring about an apocalypse that would give rise to the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. As recently as two years ago, his mouthpiece, White House spokesman Jay Carney, said Obama was in “no rush” to deal with Iran’s nuclear program and the result of this willful blindness may very well be an Islamist theocracy with a nuclear bomb arsenal.
He has continued to deny reality as President. During his annual pre-Super Bowl interview (please cancel these) he was asked about the prospects of Iran attacking America and responded, “We don’t see any evidence that they have those intentions or capabilities right now”. This was a mere two months after Iran was implicated by his own intelligence and Department of Justice officials as being behind assassination plots in Washington, D.C.
Hey, facts don’t matter to Barack Obama.
How do we know facts don’t matter to Barack Obama? Because he avoids them like a plague (or their equivalent in his eyes -- meeting with Republicans, and Democrats for that matter). Facts are his greatest enemy. Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen noted something very revealing in this most transparently un-transparent administration: Obama skips more than half of his daily intelligence briefings. Imagine a general just ordering his radar turned off, or a captain switching off his sonar -- or a commander-in-chief resting up for a high-dollar campaign event instead of acting to prevent a (Benghazi) massacre of Americans. All deliberate actions of willful blindness.
If Obama won’t care about facts, why not cut the budget for our intelligence agencies?
How else has he blithely dismissed threats from America?
There are myriad ways, but idly I can recall a sampler platter of them.
Terrorism is magically transformed into an act of workplace violence (Ft. Hood) or called man-made disasters. The words “Islam” or “Muslim” are never to be used in the context of violence, since that would be racist or xenophobic -- it is the hate that dare not speak its name. Instead, his fiction-filled Cairo speech was a paean to the wondrous history of Islam written by Ben Rhodes, a failed short-story writer promoted to Deputy National Security Deputy Adviser.
Obama’s proxies and flacks have followed the company line. Islam is the religion of peace -- a mantra among liberal politicians (Nancy Pelosi called Hamas a “humanitarian organization” for example). The Muslim Brotherhood is mostly secular attests James Clapper-our Director of National Intelligence. He has turned much of our Middle East foreign policy over to Al Jazeera-owning and terror –supporting Qatar and to the anti-Semitic and anti-American de facto dictator of Turkey (and Obama best friend forever) Recep Erdogan . What could go wrong?
Obama willfully dismissed ISIS as a threat, demoting them to JayVee status. Obama has dismissed threats from Al Qaeda repeatedly bragging that Al Qaeda was decimated and on the run on the path to defeat and then defeated -- a claim Obama has made over 30 times. In the real world, Al Qaeda and its offshoot, the JayVee ISIS, now occupy more territory and has far more wealth and power than it ever had before. It is on the run, alright, towards a city and shopping center near you. But rest assured, Obama tells us, they are defeated and the tide of war is receding. He barely reacts but recreates instead. The world is more tranquil than ever before because of Obama’s leadership.
Obama’s willful blindness is chronic. Or part of a con-man strategy by our Storyteller in Chief to convince Americans his presidency has been triumphant, his policies brilliant, that he has never done “stupid sh*t” and he has fundamentally transformed America. Only the latter is true and not in a good way.
Never has the thesaurus been used so often to lull America to sleep (see John F. Kennedy’s, Why England Slept, for a primer on what happens to a nation led by a loser).
He can refuse to secure our borders and ignore threats that open borders are an invitation for terrorists to come and make murder in America. He is willfully blind to the dangers inherent from his de facto open border policy and he and his proxies have tried to import and create millions of future Democrats and disparage critics as inhumane. He can do the same through excessive use of the “refugee” label to allow them to live in America (ask Minnesotans how that has worked for their large population of Somalis -- the Power Line website has been superbly covering this issue for years; the major media, willfully blind like their idol). Americans have already left for and come back from terrorist training camps in the Middle East. For younger people those “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essays can certainly be explosive – one hopes just in the metaphorical sense.
Barack Obama dismissed Russia as a “regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors -- not out of strength but out of weakness.” He mocked Mitt Romney’s 2012 debate statement that Russia was our geopolitical foe by stating that the “Cold War” is over and recently reiterated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine did not signify a new Cold War. Former KGB leader turned Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is just like a “bored kid in the back of a schoolroom”Obama reassures us. Does it seem as if Putin is just some “bored kid” leading a “regional power” from a position of weakness? Obama seems to be describing himself more than the marauding Vlad the Impaler. While Obama serenely reassures us all is well on planet Obama he slashed defense spending to feed Leviathan and to create millions of people dependent on Democrats.
Obama is America’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy President” determined not to let reality spoil his life in fantasy camp. Barack Obama is addicted to popular culture and maybe just cannot shake his TV and sports addiction to see the world around him as it is, not how he wants it to be; not as he commands it to be. Or maybe he just does not care what happens to Americans (his empathy deficit is as large as his fiscal deficit; who else golfs, fist bumps and laughs after announcing an American has been beheaded by an evil that dare not speak its name but the world’s biggest-and most successful narcissist?). To recognize danger -- to not be willfully blind -- would require Obama to work, and work is the nastiest four-letter word in Obama’s vocabulary (if Americans don’t realize by now that Obama has a severe work ethic problem, they are the ones who are willfully blind -- maybe that is why many millions of American still support him.)
Does he ever see enemies?
He has tried to sway Americans to ignore, as he has, radical Islam. Instead Obama whitewashed Islamic terror (see the Cairo speech, for just one example) for years.
He sees no enemies abroad; he reserves his harshest rhetoric for fellow Americans (he disdains millions of Americans (see What Obama Thinks of Americans). He has called Republicans “enemies” to be “punished” by Latino voters; at another speech, he called on people to vote for revenge. Republicans, not Muslims, are bomb-throwers, hostage-takers , obstructionists, traitors, and terrorists. If the Israelis had been smarter they would have depicted Hamas as “our Republicans” and then Obama would not have threatened to hold up Hellfire missiles to them during the missile onslaught from real terrorists.
Another possibility arises and it is a dire one. Could Obama’s policies be deliberate -- to weaken an America that he views as the world’s biggest problem, a colonizing, imperialistic and racist power that needs to be permanently stripped of its might? Then he has succeeded where none have ever gone before and fulfilled at least one campaign promise: he has fundamentally transformed America for many decades to come.
We are living in days of infamy.
In the wake of the horrifying filmed murder of journalist James Foley, the international community seems to be united behind efforts, however disjointed and perhaps insufficient, to stop ISIS. Yet at the same time, many of the same voices as well as much of the Western diplomatic corps seems intent on saving another terror group in Hamas which revolves as much around murder as does ISIS.
It must be conceded that a lot of the protests and the diplomatic efforts aimed at propping up Hamas are generated by sympathy for the people of Gaza. The residents of the strip ruled by the Islamist group have suffered terribly as a result of the war that Hamas launched this summer and still refuses to end as they reject and violate each cease-fire deal offered them.
But the agitation to “Free Gaza” being heard on the streets of Western cities and in the media isn’t focused on freeing Gaza from Hamas but in support of the group’s demands that the international blockade of the strip ends. While that might make it a little easier for humanitarian assistance to reach the Palestinians (though it is often forgotten that Israel has sent convoys with such aid across the border and evacuated the wounded from Gaza every day during the conflict), everyone knows the main impact of easing the restrictions on the strip would be to help Hamas replenish its arsenal and to rebuild its command centers, bunkers, and terror tunnels.
Thus, the American initiative to re-start the stalled cease-fire talks in Gaza by involving Hamas allies Turkey and Qatar can have only one possible outcome: a new deal that would allow the terror group to exact concessions from Israel and Egypt. Those pressuring Israel to cease defending its people against the incessant rocket fire on its cities from Gaza aren’t so much helping the Palestinian people as they are empowering Hamas to go on shooting and killing.
This is a key point for those expressing anger at Israeli counter-attacks on Hamas should remember. Hamas’s goal isn’t to force Israel to leave the West Bank or to negotiate a peace deal offering the Palestinians an independent state. Israel has already offered the Palestinians such deals a number of times only to have the more moderate Fatah and the Palestinian Authority turn them down.
Rather, as recent events have made clear, Hamas’s only strategy now is to kill as many Jews as possible.
What else can explain rocket and mortar fire aimed at Israeli civilians every day? The death of 4-year-old Daniel Tragerman—killed by a mortar hit on his parents’ car on Friday—and the hundreds of missiles that have continued to rain down on Israel this past week are sending a message to the world, if only it will listen.
This weekend, Hamas’s so-called political leader, Khaled Meshaal, informed the world from his Qatar hideout that members of his group were, in fact, responsible for the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers that set in motion hostilities this summer. This lust for murder was underlined by the group’s decision to follow up on the kidnapping by launching a war of attrition that has sent thousands of rockets down on Israel as well as the attacks launched from their terror tunnels.
These actions were not related to or motivated by specific Israeli policies or settlements but by a desire to fulfill Hamas’s genocidal covenant that calls for the destruction of Israel and the massacre and/or eviction of its Jewish population. Those are cold hard facts that those seeking to support “Free Gaza” on the streets and in the media should think about. Those facts should also lead the Obama administration and its European allies to think twice about concocting a diplomatic escape hatch for Hamas. Like ISIS, Hamas is all about terror and murder. As is generally recognized with ISIS, the only rational response to such a group is to eradicate them and to free Palestinians and Israelis from their reign of terror.
1b) What Happens to Palestinian Moderates
Shot in the streets with a pistol to the head after midday prayers.
One of the myths about the Middle East is that there would be peace if only Israel courted Palestinian moderates. This might be possible if any Palestinian who harbored such a thought wasn't summarily executed.
On Friday Hamas shot 18 fellow Palestinians on suspicion that they had collaborated with Israel. Here's how a Journal dispatch put it:
A Hamas militant grabs a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel, before being executed in Gaza City August 22, 2014. Reuters
"In one instance, about 20 militants dressed in black and with their faces covered brought six of the condemned men, their heads covered with cloth bags, to an alley near the Great Omari Mosque in Gaza City after midday prayers, witnesses said. A militant shot the men in the head one at a time with a pistol, after which he sprayed them with automatic rifle fire, the witnesses said. The bodies were loaded into government ambulances and taken away."
That followed three previous executions carried out a day earlier. The killings followed Israel's attack that killed three senior commanders of Hamas's military wing after Hamas broke another ceasefire by shooting more rockets into Israel. It's possible that one or more of those executed did provide information to Israel, but you can be sure that none of them received anything more than a summary trial after a brutal interrogation that would have made any man confess to something.
In any case Hamas considers the public demonstration to be more important than guilt or innocence. The public killings are intended to show anyone who dissents that they will suffer the same fate.
The practice goes back to the days of the British mandate when the mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini killed Palestinians open to a Jewish presence. During the anti-Israel uprisings in the 1980s, Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction that still rules the West Bank murdered some 800 Palestinians for alleged collaboration. The Palestinians will never have peace as long as they keep murdering anyone who wants it.
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2)Words won't down missiles
By Amir OrenThe failures of the Israel Defense Forces and the Defense Ministry in
dealing with the threat posed by tunnels the Palestinians are excavating
around the borders of the Gaza Strip - one of which served for abducting
Gilad Shalit - are discussed in a hush-hush report the state comptroller
submitted this week. The report is classified "Top Secret." The Knesset
State Control Committee will decide which parts may be published. One can
guess the document confirms media reports of the last two years about
carelessness and blitheness in the security establishment at the
decision-making professional levels.
What is true beneath the surface is also true above. The announced selection
of a system for intercepting rockets is admission of an ongoing mistake in
having refrained from this during the Katyusha and Qassam years.
In announcing the system, the prime minister and the defense minister
skirmished over authority and honor. The announcement was couched in
hopeful, forward-looking language. In fact, what it means is that for
another two and half years - at the very least - the inhabitants of Sderot
and Kiryat Shmona will be exposed to rockets.
If words had the power to destroy rockets, the steep-trajectory weapons of
Hezbollah and Hamas would have been long gone. We had "Magic Wand" for the
merest hint of the Qassam and "Iron Dome" and "Steel Curtain" - a wall of
words that is impenetrable, on condition the enemy understands Hebrew.
That's packaging, in the department of marketing and politics.
Inside, in the development department, the aspirations are more modest,
because even when the systems are positioned on the ground and the air force
has trained anti-aircraft battalions to operate them, the likelihood of
interception is estimated at a bit better than 80 percent. One out of nearly
every five rockets will still penetrate, a significant fact when rounds are
launched; and the danger will increase if the warheads are carrying chemical
or biological material.
The process of selecting the system involved three groups, coordinated by
the head of the Research and Development Directorate (MAFAT) of the IDF and
the Defense Ministry. The rocket, laser and operational research experts
sorted all the proposals for ground-to-ground missile interception and first
eliminated those intended for the localized protection of naval vessels,
military bases or strategic installations, and which would not protect
cities with an area of tens of square kilometers.
Two "test scenarios" were examined, a northern scenario and a southern one,
on the assumption that in two years' time, the rockets from Gaza are liable
to reach as far as Kiryat Gat and beyond Ashkelon.
In examining the operations of the systems, the timetables for development
and equipping and the influence of weather, it was determined that in the
laser versus missile competition, the missile wins, because a laser
interceptor protecting a smaller area will require more systems and will be
more expensive.
Yaakov Nagel, the head of the examining committee and the scientific deputy
to the head of MAFAT, presented a system that was subsequently approved by
the MAFAT chiefs, the director general of the Defense Ministry, Defense
Minister Amir Peretz and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It combines the systems
proposed by Rafael (as chief contractor) and Israel Aircraft Industries; it
will cost about $300 million, but in shekels, in the absence of American
aid, with the price of each missile between $30,000 and $40,000. It will
position about a dozens systems in the North and half a dozen in the South.
This is good business news for Rafael, but in a conversation with Haaretz
yesterday, former Rafael CEO Dr. Ze'ev Bonen tried to pour cold water on the
enthusiasm. "The active defense against rockets is limited in its nature,
and in the future as well it will not be possible to defend a front that is
kilometers-wide like in Sderot and Kiryat Shmona," warned Bonen. "The most
effective means of preventing firing is diplomatic. If a military means is
necessary, the most effective means is offensive, the occupation of the
launching strip. The system that will be developed will, years from now,
give good, not absolute, protection to the inner part of the country but not
to the front strip, which is the focus of the launches and which the enemy
seeks to exhaust so as to send its inhabitants fleeing."
Under the screen of words, the rockets will continue to fall, and the
tunnels will still be dug.
2a)Some Gaza Conclusions
By Yisrael Ne'eman
Israel's Protective Edge Operation in Gaza is apparently not over but we can draw a few conclusions.
There have been well over 5000 Israeli airstrikes resulting in some 2100 Palestinian deaths and 11,000 wounded. These figures are from the Gaza Health Ministry and in comparison with all other organizations are the highest. However these stats are the ones we will use for a bit of analysis. Statistically much less than one Palestinian (approx: 0.4%) has been killed per Israeli airstrike in addition to two wounded, meaning Israel is extremely careful not to cause civilian casualties. In addition over 26,000 artillery shells were fired (quite a few as smoke screens) bringing the amount of casualties per shell or bomb (both stats are added together) to at much less than half than the above statistics (0.2% killed and one wounded per strike). Israel continues to drop tens of thousands of leaflets urging Palestinians to remove themselves from harm's way while Hamas demanded that civilians remain near the homes of the Hamas leadership to in effect act as "human shields" as demanded by Hamas representative Sami Abu Zuhri on Al-Aksa TV on July 8, the first day of the conflict.
Reportedly, one third of casualties are women and children (most obviously non-combatants) but over half of Gaza's population are children (under the age of 18). Any accusations of "genocide" through the deliberate targeting of civilian populations by Israel are ludicrous. If that were the case Israel would destroy civilian targets, especially multi-story apartment blocks, with no warning killing dozens with each strike. Upon doing the math, the numbers would be astounding – 5,000 X 25 dead and 100 wounded per strike. Genocide means the population is reduced quickly and drastically. In 1967 Gaza had 270,000 residents. Today the Palestinians claim a population of 1.8 million. Gaza's population has increased over 6.6 times in the past 47 years, possibly the highest population growth in the world. This whole accusation is the "Big Lie" but if repeated often enough many will begin to believe it.
It is very difficult to confirm how many Hamas militants were killed with conflicting reports between Israel, Hamas, the UN and other groups offering statistics. Hamas claims only 20% are their fighters while Israel claims some 900 Hamas militants have died, or well over 40%. The UN speaks of some 30%. The discrepancy arises when calculating the "unknown" group – young men of military age but not identifiable as members of Hamas. In any case Hamas is hit hard but will continue the battle. There will always be replacements and lest we forget Jihadi ideals are not up for sale or given to defeat as they are diocentric with full faith in Allah's demands for implementation. Hamas has no qualms demanding that all Palestinian society sacrifice itself for the cause of Islam. Hamas ideals are no different than those of the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) but implementation is moderated as Ismail Haniya & Co. see themselves also as part of the Palestinian society and not necessarily at the physical vanguard of world Jihad. They also govern a civil society even if through Sharia Law.
On the Israeli side there are 68 dead (all soldiers except three civilians and a Thai worker) and hundreds wounded. Over four thousand Hamas rockets have been fired at Israel and so far the nine Iron Dome defensive systems (at $225 million each) are responsible for taking out hundreds of Palestinian rockets headed for Israeli population centers in Beersheva and the central Negev or the coastal cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Tel Aviv and the Dan region. Thirty two Hamas tunnels heading under the Gaza-Negev border were discovered and destroyed by Israel thereby preventing major terrorist attacks. In a Hamas raid from one tunnel five IDF soldiers were killed.
On the economic side the Israeli economy has lost at least NIS 4.5 billion ($1.3 billion), another NIS 1 billion ($300 million) is already gone in taxes and estimated war costs so far add up to more than NIS 8 billion ($2.3 billion). It is impossible to estimate the long term losses to tourism nation-wide, which are not confined to the south and center of the country.
The Gaza GDP was always limited (about $500 million) and today is totally smashed. Statistical estimates are almost impossible, whether before, during or after the conflict as accurate reporting of economic activity is difficult to estimate. Much of the Gaza economy survived on the import-export of civilian goods and weapons through the Rafiah tunnels under the border with Egypt. Cairo began closing these conduits already a year ago. On the other hand 1,500 trucks came through Israel carrying civilian supplies during the first month of fighting and despite the continued conflict hundreds more are arriving each day.
There is no doubt Israel is the military victor but such "victories" can prove pyrrhic, Israel must win on the political-diplomatic front, a much greater challenge. First of all, politically too many people separate Gaza's population from Hamas. The people of Gaza support Hamas (yes there is some opposition, but if discovered they are jailed or murdered), vote Hamas, and despise Fatah, the Palestinian Authority and its leader Mahmoud Abbas. Israel and the West must stop separating Hamas from the people they represent. Most Gazans oppose secular Palestinian nationalism and any long term compromise with Israel (permanent two-state solution). At best they will agree to a hudnaor Islamic cease-fire in the hope of one day re-igniting the conflict and gaining final victory.
Most Gazans favor Islamist Sharia Law, and by extension support the Hamas Covenant. It is unclear how committed the average Palestinian living in Gaza is to the demand for Jewish destruction world-wide or what his attitude is towards a global Jihad. One can expect only a minority to pro-actively demand and participate in the never ending battle against Israel and global Jihadi undertakings. However there is no true opposition to Hamas and support for secular democratic ideals is negligible. In any case public opinion polls are always suspect under conditions where freedoms are severely curtailed. A better question may be asked, "How many Gazans support ISIS or ISIL (the Islamic State), their ideals and methods of implementation?" We simply do not know.
Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) are forced into supporting Hamas publicly but they are petrified by the continued daring of their Islamist adversaries in the never ending attempts to overthrow the western leaning PA government. Just a few days ago it was announced that 93 Hamas operatives were arrested by Israel in the West Bank. There was no PA condemnation of Israel, but rather Pres. Mahmoud Abbas explained that his security forces were examining the evidence and if found to be reliable Hamas would face the "consequences."
So what should Israel do? Recapturing the Gaza Strip is out of the question even if there may be a major ground operation to crush Hamas. One can never totally capture Gaza, wiping out all of its terror cells, whether Hamas or otherwise. Should Israel consider remaining in Gaza these Jihadi groups will enjoy continuing support from the people. Lastly, such a wide range, in depth, long term operation will be extremely costly in casualties, material loss and international diplomatic credit. As we know there are a few right wingers demanding such action but only with the full knowledge that no one is listening, except for their electorate. Any tactical concessions on fishing limits, farming agricultural lands by the fence (often used for tunneling), financial transfers of funds with Israeli oversight or even a resupply of civilian commodities may be met with quiet on the border but only for a certain amount of time. As Jihadis, Hamas and their allies view war as the eternal option to be used at one time or another. Hamas will eventually concede a temporary setback whereby they will agree to a hudna or Islamic cease-fire (allowing for a re-start in the future) only should they lose the support of the people. For this to happen there must be a clearly marked way "out," a sort of game changer, or change of the rules.
One must not despair – we need to find answers and yes, they exist. No, this is not the same game all over again. Nowadays the moderate and mainly secular Arab regime interests are in facing down Islamic State threats and the desperate need to halt the Islamic Awakening. They must re-solidify secular Arab nationalism as the alternative to Islamic fundamentalism.
Many are speaking of "Demilitarization for Development" which in essence is a return to projects of the 1990s as advocated by Shimon Peres and a return to the Oslo Accords guidelines. The Israeli right wing will deny this but they should read the Accords carefully and review the Labor demands of the PA in the 1990s. This time however, such steps may be possible, especially demilitarization, if woven with Egyptian and international cooperation. The possibility of developing the Gaza economy exists, in particular the construction of industrial zones not far from the border with Israel. Such an undertaking must be done under an internationally supervised demilitarization regime. Once there is quiet Israel can allow for the development of port facilities and air links as there were in Dahaniya in the late 1990s.
The bottom line is that the Oslo principles are not dead but rather they need a different format. No longer are the 1990s simultaneous exchanges of "Land for Peace" (journalistic jargon) or "Sovereignty for Security" (the reality of the situation) acceptable. Israel must guarantee its own security with international cooperation. Only afterwards can there be development and sovereignty on the Palestinian side.
2b) Report: Israel Ready to Accept 'Open-Ended' Truce
by Ari Soffer
Israel is set to accept an indefinite ceasefire with Gazan terrorist groups, which will last for a minimum of one month, unnamed security sources told Walla! news.
Barring any last-minuted developments, the Egyptian-brokered deal will go into effect today, according to the source, ushering in an "open-ended" ceasefire between Israel and Gazan terrorists, primarily Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The reports seemingly corroborate this morning's claims by senior Islamic Jihad leaders that a truce would be reached "within hours". A Hamas spokesman rejected those claims, however.
According to the source, in the first stage of the ceasefire Egypt will open the Rafah Crossing with Gaza, in exchange for a cessation of rocket fire.
If the ceasefire holds, the second stage will see Israel extend the Gaza fishing zone - currently restricted to 0-3 miles from the coast for security reasons - first to six, and later 12 miles.
Israel will also open the Kerem Shalom Crossing, which has been shelled by terrorists on numerous occasions during Operation Protective Edge, and allow goods for trading to pass through, including food and, at a later stage, building materials.
The topic of building materials such as cement and metal entering Gaza is a sensitive one. The vast network of "terror tunnels" leading from Gaza into Israel in preparation for attacks on Israeli civilian and military targets were constructed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad using cement meant for building Gaza's civilian infrastructure.
However, the deal still relies on one unpredictable factor, according to another official: Hamas's Qatar-based "political leader" Khaled Mashaal. Mashaal has successfully sabotaged previous ceasefire deals, allegedly under orders from his Qatari hosts.
He will need to accept this deal in order for it to come into effect - and it is far from certain he will. After the massive damage incurred in Gaza due to the war with Israel initiated by the area's Hamas rulers, a ceasefire without major Israeli concessions will be viewed as a humiliating defeat, and a serious blow to Hamas's popular image.
Meanwhile, despite rumors of an impending ceasefire, terrorists continued to pound southern Israeli communities with rocket fire, shooting dozens of projectiles at civilian population centers.
Several rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system, and a number of others fell in open fields. No injuries or damage was reported.
The IDF continued its strikes on Gaza terrorist targets. Overnight two terrorists were killed in a series of strikes, which have continued into Monday morning.
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3) Nobody’s Fault
Liberals make excuses for Obama
By Noemie Emery
All of a sudden, people have noticed that we are in trouble, and many are saying it isn’t the president’s fault. All the bad news, from Iraq to Ukraine, from Libya and Syria to the Mexican border, just seems to have happened: Obama was standing there, golfing or shaking hands with donors, and, like a burst of bad weather, the winds blew, the skies opened, and things went to hell. Mysterious forces conspired against him, terrible setbacks occurred for no reason, and we were left with effects without a cause. His supporters commiserate with him and note his bad fortune at being in office at a time when events make his life difficult. Or they worry about the effect of all these misfortunes on his legacy. “Can Obama Weather the Current Geopolitical S—storm?” Mother Jones’s David Corn wondered recently. Judging from recent poll numbers—36 percent approve of his conduct of foreign relations—the answer appears to be “no.
The reasons offered for why bad things aren’t his doing fall into three different categories: (1) The system is broken, the country is polarized, and the Republicans have become too insane to deal with; (2) stuff happens, and no one at all can do much about it; and (3) people think that the president ought to be Superman and solve all their problems, which is really expecting too much. As Joshua Keating wrote on July 21 in Slate: “There’s a tendency to judge U.S. foreign policy on the condition of the world at any given moment rather than the success of actual actions taken,” as if the condition and the actions can have no conceivable link. “U.S. leverage is limited,” wrote Robert Kuttner in the Huffington Post a day earlier. “U.S. projections of . . . bravado or prudence have little to do with” how recent events have come out. Added to this is the fact that we lack the easy simplicities of the good old days when Hitler and Stalin were murdering millions. “Republican jingoists scapegoat President Obama for all the world’s ills and try to impose a simple story of weakness and strength on events of stupefying complexity,” Kuttner added, complaining that today’s wars lack the grandeur and moral simplicity of the Cold War, and of course World War II. “Who are the good guys and bad guys in Syria and Iraq?” Corn concurred: “Barack Obama is in charge . . . at a time when the world seems to be cracking up more than usual. . . . There are no simple fixes to these nuance-drenched problems. . . . None of these matters are easily resolved.”
“Obama isn’t stalled out because he can’t lead,” writes Norman Ornstein in the Atlantic. No, the Democrats’ woes stem from the fact that the Republican party today is a fanatical opposition, bent for no very good reasons on bringing the president down. On a less partisan note, Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post looks back on our last three two-term presidents, and sees three men who campaigned as uniters turned into dividers by circumstance, or for reasons beyond their control. “Being president is the most powerful job in the world, at which you will most certainly fail,” he warns office-seekers, citing the arcs carved by both Obama and Bush 43: high marks at the start, a long slow deflation, and then a collapse in year six. What was the cause? “The decline of the bully pulpit as a persuasion mechanism . . . the deep partisanship . . . not only in Congress, but also in the electorate . . . the splintering of the mainstream media . . . the need to be ever-present . . . the difficulty of trying to drive home your preferred message of the day.”
Next on the list is the “Green Lantern Syndrome,” or the tendency to see presidents as mythical comic-book heroes, able to fly, see around and through anything, and pick up tall buildings. Thus in the Nation Eric Alterman foams at the mouth as he lambastes Maureen Dowd for indulging the “now platitudinous Beltway belief that Obama should just fix everything, already” instead of standing by, fundraising and hanging around with movie and rock stars, as the country and world go to hell. In Republican years, the fish rots from the head, but with Obama it’s merely preposterously high expectations.
And how do these theories stand up to inspection? Not all that well. As to the idea that stuff simply happens, sometimes it does, sometimes it does not. At the end of World War II, for example, nothing on earth could have dislodged the Soviet Army from Eastern Europe once it was there, but the fact that Western Europe stayed out of the Communist orbit was entirely owing to men. It was the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and the formation of NATO that stopped the Communist advance in the middle of Europe, done by the will of Harry S. Truman with the ardent support of his next two successors, who held the line until the screws were tightened many years later by Ronald Reagan, and the Soviet empire collapsed from within.
Those years too were filled with “nuance-drenched problems,” and Truman, along with Dwight D. Eisenhower, Reagan, and John F. Kennedy, had to walk a very fine line between being weak enough to invite Russian aggression and aggressive enough to risk nuclear war. Replace Harry S. Truman with Henry A. Wallace (and make the three others a little less resolute) and the Cold War would have ended a whole lot less happily. Replace Barack Obama with John McCain, Mitt Romney, or Hillary Clinton, and Iraq would be now pretty much as it was when George W. Bush left it, with no jihadist state formed in the heart of the desert, ready and willing to bring the war home. When one thing goes wrong, it may be an accident, but when five do at once—Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and our border—the man at the helm may have something to do with it, and a foreign policy based largely on John Lennon lyrics may be the proximate cause.
As for partisanship, it’s true that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama ran as uniters and ended by further dividing the country, but this outcome was not foreordained. Clinton ran as a moderate, a “new kind of Democrat,” but at the start of his tenure behaved very much like an old one, picking his cabinet by bean-counting diversity standards, and allowing his wife to draft a huge, complex health care reform bill that was vastly unpopular. Knocked on his heels in the 1994 midterms, he triangulated his way back to the center, signed welfare reform, and seemed on his way to brokering a historic and bipartisan deal on reforming entitlements when he was impeached on perjury charges related to his affair with a college-age intern, which put the culture wars back on the boil and ended his term on a less pleasant note. Bush entered under a cloud, as the very close recount was always going to leave the losing side feeling cheated, and made a catastrophic mistake after September 11, when he did not convene a war cabinet with Democrats in it, which would have tied both parties into the war effort, given the Democrats a greater stake in its success (and part of the blame for any mistakes), and would have expanded the pool of people from whom he was taking advice. With this, the course of the war might have gone very differently, Bush might have changed course in 2004, and not 2006, when public opinion was turning against him, and the Democrats might not have been able to weasel so easily out of their prior support for the war.
But Clinton and Bush were models of outreach compared with Obama, who burst on the national scene in July 2004 with a magnificent paean to red-and-blue unity, but by August 2009, acting as president, was tearing the country apart. Using the fiscal crisis as the pretext he needed to enact a progressive agenda, he passed extensive big-spending bills with no consensus behind them. But it was his passage of health care reform in the face of fierce opposition, expressed in surprise GOP wins in two big statewide elections, that brought him the resistance he deserved, especially when he used a technical loophole to ram Obamacare through Congress after Scott Brown’s capture of the “Ted Kennedy seat” in ultra-blue Massachusetts made it impossible to pass it in the legitimate, normal, and time-honored way.
“Liberals really do not understand emotionally the extent to which the Tea Party was created by the Affordable Care Act and the feeling that its government was simply steamrolling it,” as Megan McArdle tells us, correctly—a fact that eludes Obama’s apologists in the media, who seem to regard Tea Party resistance as an inexplicable phenomenon with which Obama’s own actions had nothing to do. And as for the Green Lantern part, they might have a better case if Obama hadn’t campaigned as the Green Lantern, a creature possessed of magical powers who could not only lift us all up into new ways of being but cause the rise of the oceans to halt.
Obama’s campaign rallies were revival meetings at which people fainted. Allusions were made to biblical figures, Moses and Jesus being just two of them, and his acceptance speech at his nominating convention in Denver featured a grandiose stage with Greek columns, suggesting parallels to Zeus. He was no commonplace politician but an exceptional figure and man. “Many of the president’s supporters thought they were voting for the Green Lantern in 2008,” observed Sean Trende, reeling off a long list of speeches in which Obama had promised “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.” As Trende put it, “The notion that Obama could provide unique leadership, rise above the old political rules, end the partisan bickering . . . and transform the country was the central theme of his presidential campaign.”
But when the transformative figure fails to deliver even commonplace competence, the letdown is even more terrible. Which leads to the last of all the excuses: The job is now simply too big
When Republicans fail, it’s always their fault, but when things fall apart under Democrats, larger forces are always at work. In the first volume of his work, Reagan biographer Steven F. Hayward took a stroll with us down memory lane to the last time this happened, under one James Earl Carter: “The job of President is too difficult for any single person because of the complexity of the problems and the size of government,” pronounced the historian Barbara Tuchman. “As the country goes to the polls in the 47th national election, the Presidency as an institution is in serious trouble,” wrote the columnist Joseph Kraft. Political scientist Theodore Lowi said the presidency had become too big for even the likes of a Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Perhaps the burdens have become so great that, over time, no President will be judged adequate,” said U.S. News and World Report. And Newsweek added, “The Presidency has in some measure defeated the last five men who have held it—and has persuaded some of the people who served them that it is in danger of becoming a game nobody can win.”
There was much more of that, but as Hayward points out, this line of thought stopped being talked about halfway through Reagan’s first term. “There’s a . . . reason for that,” he noted. “The elite complaints . . . always abstract from the substantive views and actions of the occupant. The possibility that ‘maybe we have a crappy president’ ” refuses to enter their minds.
Especially it refuses to enter their minds when the president in question is not only the spokesman for their favorite political outlook, but the embodiment of all of their dreams. If liberals felt compelled to protect a peanut farmer from Georgia, what must they feel for an Ivy League-trained exotic from Hyde Park, a man of the world and messiah, a speaker and writer, but never a doer; themselves, in short, to the ultimate power; themselves as they dreamed they could be? And that is the problem: If he fails, then they fail, and that cannot happen. So the fault is in the stars, in the cards, in unfair expectations—anywhere but where it should be.
Noemie Emery, a Weekly Standard contributing editor, is author most recently of Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.
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4) Desperate Obama Makes Fundraising Pitch: Triple Match Donations for Senate
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is offering a one-day deal in hopes of boosting contributions in its fight to keep the Senate, by promising, in an e-mail pitch signed simply "Barack Obama," to triple-match any donations that come in on Monday.
"If the GOP gains just six seats, the same Republicans who just voted to sue me will control both Houses of Congress," the Obama-signed pitch says. "Republicans will control everything in Congress from Medicare to education. I don’t need to tell you how devastating the consequences would be."
But mobilizing voters doesn't come cheap, the e-mail says, and launching field offices and "recruiting new volunteers takes time and work, and it's not cheap."
Democrats are facing challenges from having an increasingly unpopular president in their party to fighting a lack of voter interest and redistricting efforts that benefitted the GOP.
According to the Federal Election Commission, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has already raised $103.5 million this election cycle, compared to the $76.5 million brought in by the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Democrats would need to win 17 seats to regain the GOP-controlled House and defend 21 seats in the Senate to maintain control there.
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5) Is CAIR Lying about a Rally for Hamas?
by Daniel Pipes
The Gatestone Institute
The Gatestone Institute
A "Stop the Bloodshed in Gaza" rally in downtown Miami on July 20 featured aggressive Islamist chants typical of anti-Israel events. In English, the demonstrators yelled "We are Hamas!" and "We are Jihad!" (as can be seen and heard here). In Hebrew, a Hamas partisan screamed at an Israel-supporter, "Son of a bitch" and "Go to Hell!" and made an obscene arm gesture. In Arabic, the crowd chanted the infamous "Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jew, Muhammad's army will return" (a reference to a massacre of Jews under the auspices of Islam's prophet in A.D. 629).
As I say, just a typical anti-Israel demonstration, and far from the worst. Typical – except that some of its sponsors desperately seek respectability.
In a July 23 report on the demonstration, investigative researcher Danielle Avel posted a scan of a glossy paper flier advertising the event, listing its seven sponsors:
American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Florida, Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Syrian American Council of South Florida (SAC), American Muslims for Emergency & Relief (AMER), and American Muslims Foundation.
The event's Facebook page lists a coalition of eight organizations, some of which overlap with those on the flier:
Join us & spread the word! In coordination with our coalition: Al-Awda Coalition, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)-FL, POWIR, Broward Green Party, CAIR, National Lawyers Guild (South Florida), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) - FAU, and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) - FIU.
Two groups in particular, CAIR and ICNA, caught Avel's eye because they aspire to invitations to the White House, appearances on network television and at leading universities, and other signs of public acceptance. What took place in Miami, she correctly noted, reveals their true extremism.
Six days later, on July 29, CAIR's Florida chapter responded with a denial:
CAIR-Florida was not part of, did not plan, did not sponsor, did not participate in, and had absolutely nothing to do with the July 20 rally. If any document lists CAIR-Florida as a sponsor of the event, that listing was included without CAIR-Florida's permission.
I doubt the veracity of this denial for several reasons.
- CAIR's mendacity is so widespread that I have an entire bibliography of my writings exposing the reasons not to trust it.
- The flier, of which I have a copy, twice states that Sofian Zakkout organized the rally. Zakkout is so close to CAIR, he's effectively a staff volunteer: he coordinates with it, isquoted by it, seeks help from it, and is listed as a contact by it. (For more on Zakkout, seeAvel's exposé.) A year earlier, he listed CAIR's Florida branch on another rally flier. It beggars the imagination that he would list CAIR without authorization.
- The Facebook page still lists CAIR as a sponsor, two weeks after CAIR's statement of denial.
- Perhaps CAIR seeks to conceal the truth through semantics. Both the national organization (on the Facebook page) and the Florida chapter (on the flier) are listed as sponsors. The July 29 statement only denies permission from the latter, not the former. It is more than credible that CAIR national gave its permission to be listed as a sponsor while CAIR's Florida chapter did not.
I do believe it sponsored the vile event in Miami; that its denial of that sponsorship is false; and that the despicable words at the Miami rally revealed the true face of CAIR.
CAIR must not be validated by invitations and appearances. It should be treated as a marginal and despised group like the Ku Klux Klan or the Nation of Islam.
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6) Weapons, Banking, Drugs And Slavery - Financing Terrorism Creatively,
By Mordechai Ben-Menachem
Qatar, the world’s terror paymaster, has just been granted one of the largest arms deals in history – eleven billion dollars. They have a population of two million, in total. Who, pray tell, is about to use all this hardware? If they draft every male between the ages of 18 to 30 they still have literally tons of hardware left over. Believe me, they are not about to draft all those males who are too busy having fun. No sane person has any doubt for whom this hardware is meant to serve – and they don’t live anywhere near Qatar, though they sport similar head-coverings. Different colored flags – rather blacker.
In the early 1980’s George Bush Sr. begged the Israeli government to go into Lebanon and rid the US of the world’s largest source of opium growers and trade. Israel did what he requested, and then the US government publicly condemned Israel for the Lebanon War – public diplomacy did not match reality on the ground. Hafez Assad – the present monster’s daddy monster – believed in drugs for profit. His son is not as bright and the business is not as successful. Hezbollah took it over from him.
Today, two prime US allies, Qatar and Turkey, are among the primary supporters of world-wide terrorism and crime organisations. Iran is the primary purveyor of terrorism; and also the world’s largest actor in world heroin and opiate trade while Iran’s partner and satrapy Hezbollah, is one of the world’s largest actors in the cocaine trade.
Drugs are Iran’s second largest earner of foreign currency and, even better, the sanctions don’t bother with it so they get to use all that money for whatever they like.
Drug trade and weapons purveying go hand-in-glove around the world.
Qatar contributes funding to essentially all Islamic Jihad organisations: Al Qaeda, Al Shabab, Boko Haram, Hamas, Islamic State, Al Nusra, … the list goes on.
But many of these also have additional sources of funding which are no less important.
Hamas, we now know, gets a large portion of its funds from the United States government via the United Nations, through contributions to United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNWRA).
Al Qaeda’s primary source of funding is kidnapping of westerners. In earlier times, Al Qaeda received most of it funding from wealthy donors – Bin Laden himself was quite wealthy, and he made a pile of money from shorting airplane stock before 9/11. However, much of the donor money dried up when the US Treasury started making trouble for them with large transactions. Today, international counterterrorism experts believe a significant portion of its finances come from ransoms paid to free Europeans. Most European countries are frankly too stupid to comprehend the direct link between paying a ransom, and the next kidnapping. Al Qaeda’s 2003 kidnap business brought in approximately $200,000 per hostage. More ‘modern’ terrorists can obtain as much as $10 million for each detainee. Al Qaeda’s central Pakistani command gets a large portion while the rest remains with the local franchisee. It really is a great business! “Kidnapping hostages is an easy spoil,” wrote Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, “which I may describe as a profitable trade and a precious treasure.”
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: The same thing occurs with the Mali terror group. France fights them and fully funds them, at the same time. “Kidnapping for ransom has become today’s most significant source of terrorist financing,” said David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, in a 2012 speech. “Each transaction encourages another transaction.”
Cohen gets it. Al-Wuhayshi gets it. Why don’t others? Europe finances its own downfall but it is so much easier to blame Israel (for something; it doesn’t much matter what).
Islamic State (ISIS) has its primary source of funding from petroleum sales. However, they have myriad additional sources. They now sell several hundred slaves a month. They take ‘taxes’ from their ‘residents’ (under the Sicilian Mafia – Casa Nostra – this used to be called a ‘protection racket’ but I am probably out-of-date in my terminology).
Boko Haram also sells many slaves. By the way, most of these slaves (Boko Haram, IS and Taliban) are women sold to the sex trades but there are also many young boys sold to the same trade. There is a very brisk trade in young boys throughout Muslim lands, as always has been – jockeys, whores, eunuchs etc.
There are also men slaves, but there is not much of a market for them. They are usually taken locally and used until they are simply used up, then discarded. Some ten to twenty thousand people “disappear” on Hajj every year – nobody knows what happens to them.
Mordechai Ben-Menachem is a former researcher/lecturer at Ben-Gurion University and an author of 30 book ranging from engineering to poetry. He is also an ordained clergyman and a former soldier. He currently lives in Jerusalem.
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