A sniper in the Gaza Strip opened fire on an IDF force securing laborers doing work on the border fence on Wednesday, the IDF Spokesman's Office said.

As a result of Palestinian sniper fire, an IDF soldier was seriously injured an evacuated to hospital for treatment.

The soldier is from the Bedouin Reconnaissance Battalion, the IDF stated. His family has been notified.

In response to the fire, the IDF said that it carried out attacks on Hamas positions in Gaza, with both tank fire and an air strike. The incident occurred on the border between Israel and southern Gaza.

Farmers in the Eshkol Regional Council and Sdot Negev Regional Council were instructed to halt any work within a kilometer of the Gaza border fence. The police later said that as a result of a security incident in the Gaza border area, several roads were closed in the Eshkol Regional Council. It was not immediately clear if the road closures were connected to the exchange of fire or a separate event.

Hamas media reported that a Hamas field commander, Tayseer Asmairi, was killed by the IDF fire and several people were injured.

Hamas warned Israel that it was "playing with fire," calling the incident "a grave escalation." The Hamas statement added that "The occupation is fully responsible for all of the consequences of the escalation. The resistance has a right to defend itself and its people."

"This is a severe incident - the second within a week - in which quiet has been callously violated. The IDF will continue to respond to every attempt to harm Israeli soldiers and civilians. Hamas is responsible for safeguarding the quiet in the Strip," the military said in a statement.

The incident comes after a rocket was fired from Gaza into southern Israel on Friday, prompting the first IAF retaliatory strikes in the Strip since Operation Protective Edge ended in August.


1a)
Clock ticking fast towards next round of Gaza fighting 

Analysis: The worse Hamas' financial distress becomes – and the later international aid arrives – the more the organization will fire at Israel.
By Yossi Yehoshua


Four months after the end of Operation Protective Edge, one thing is already clear: The deterrence the political echelon and the IDF have been talking about so much is fading away.

Can anyone remember the calm we were promised for many years after the latest round of fighting or the declarations that Hamas "was hit so hard that it won't even try to raise its head" – just like Hezbollah after the Second Lebanon War?

Wednesday morning's sniper fire on an IDF force operating on the border fence inside Israel is no longer just a rocket fired by a rebel organization which Hamas has lost control over.

This time, it's an extremely serious incident, precisely because it's got Hamas' name written all over it. And if it were not for the excellent medical treatment the force gave the wounded soldier, the incident could have ended with a dead IDF soldier.
In the past few months, we have been witnessing a drizzle of rockets into Israel. On Friday, it reached the areas of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. No one could argue that the IDF strike which came in response to that incident was unnecessary: It targeted a concrete factory which produces the infrastructure for Hamas' offensive tunnels.

But Wednesday's incident completely contradicts the estimates voiced by Israeli sources that Hamas is not involved in the rocket fire executed by rebel organizations. Now there is no doubt: The attack was carried out by a Hamas sniper, and the organization claimed responsibility for it and warned Israel not to retaliate.

The assassination of Taysir al-Samiri, the commander of the al-Qassam Brigades' surveillance unit in the Khan Younis area, was random and was not pre-planned. It was in fact a strike in the standard IDF retaliation procedure against Gaza fire, which happened to hit a senior Hamas member who was present in the area.

According to claims heard in the IDF's headquarters, it was a "local initiative" and it is quite possible that the leaders of Hamas' military wing were not aware of it. Many officers are convinced that the public in Gaza is still licking its wounds over the destruction left behind by Operation Protective Edge.

We must admit, however, that this explanation is reminiscent of the days before the operation and of the alarming difficulties in understanding the enemy's operation patterns and intentions.

The drizzle of rockets and Wednesday's sniper incident point to a different trend: We will not be able to continue the instinctive procedure of dismissing Hamas' responsibility due to the fact that it carried out arrests among the rebel organizations. This is a misrepresentation of the situation.


Hamas is no longer deterred: It continues to test rockets by firing them into the sea, it is rehabilitating its military abilities, building posts near the fence and trying to rebuild the tunnel infrastructure (even if there is no information yet that it has resumed the digging).

Hamas is in distress, mainly financial distress. The worse it becomes – and the later international aid arrives – the more it will fire at Israel. This means that the clock is already ticking fast towards the next round of fighting.
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2)   Beating Bibi: Obama’s Last Campaign
By Rich Baehr         

Barack Obama has proven to be a determined man when it comes to achieving goals he really cares about. He may not get everything he wants when he wants it, but he has shown that there is often more than one way to advance his agenda, and he can be patient when the political environment is unfavorable. This has been true on both the domestic front and in foreign policy.

Obama has used federal agencies such as the EPA and NLRB to move aggressively to favor Obama interests (bashing coal producers, making it easier for workers to organize into unions) when Congress did not adopt climate change legislation or “card check” legislation. The Department of Health and Human Services has regularly changed the rules of Obamacare, seemingly making the rules up as they go along when it became clear that certain provisions were either very badly conceived or politically unpalatable to important Obama interest groups.

There has also been subterfuge to make it seem that the abuse of the separation of powers and routine bypassing of Congress has not really occurred. The president says he has issued far fewer executive orders than prior presidents, when in fact he has issued far more when you include his memoranda [1] – which serve the same purpose.

In foreign policy, the administration has pursued several policies with the same doggedness. One of these has been to damage the historically close ties between Israel and the United States. The alternative way to say this is that so long as Israel elects leaders who do not see things the way the administration does, it will be very much out of favor with the White House.

Over the first six years of the Obama administration, there is little that Israel under the leadership of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has ever done right according to the White House or the State Department. Conversely, almost nothing the Palestinians have done has been called out for similar criticism. Meanwhile, the administration has pursued a new relationship with Iran (much as it has with Cuba), signaling that traditional alliances and enmities were out the window with this administration. The obsession of Secretary of State Kerry with pushing the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations and the Iranian nuclear negotiations seems to be a mix of legacy-building for both Kerry and Obama, but also part of the shift away from the traditional alliance with Israel.

A goal of the White House seems to have been to break the bipartisan support for a strong U.S-Israel relationship in Congress by making it far easier for Democrats to go their own way. In essence, the White House has facilitated a transition within the party to better reflect the views of the Democratic Party’s base, now heavily made up of younger voters and minorities, among whom there is not nearly as much support for Israel as in the past. The Obama administration has set in place a longer-term process to separate Democrats in Congress from their historic role [2] as strong supporters of Israel.
Whether Obama is following his base on this issue or leading it is a different question. As the single most visible political figure in government, when a president is viewed as being engaged in a bitter feud with a foreign leader, as the press has dutifully reported is the case between Netanyahu and Obama, a strong message has been delivered. This message particularly gets to those who support the president in general, and on pretty much all specific issues. The president has also blessed and opened the White House’s door to J Street, an organization allegedly committed to both Israel and peace. In reality, the group is a “blocking back for the White House,” as its own leaders have admitted, for the regular Israel-bashing and pressure campaign that has been underway since both Obama and Netanyahu took office in 2009. If one looks for instances of J Street uttering a kind word about Netanyahu, you will find even fewer than those from the president himself.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has collapsed following the firing of two ministers from parties in his coalition that had broken with his government. New elections have been called for March 17. The Israeli election system is a parliamentary one, although one without legislative districts. Parties nominate slates and determine the order of their candidates. If a party wins 20 of 120 seats in the Knesset, based on their share of the overall vote among the parties who register at least 3.5% of the total vote, then the first 20 names on that party’s list will become Knesset members.
Thirteen parties hold seats in the current Knesset (the hurdle until this current election  had been only 2% of the total vote for representation [3] for a party), an indication of the fragmentation of the current system. After the Knesset elections are held, since no single party ever wins a majority on its own or even comes close, the country’s president picks the leader of a party that he thinks has the best chance of putting together a coalition of parties to get to at least 61 seats, a Knesset majority. That has been Netanyahu for two consecutive elections, though a third victory is not assured.

A recent poll shows right-wing parties winning 40 seats, left-wing and Arab parties winning 40 seats, and 40 seats up for “sale” (or persuasion), though many of these would be with religious parties generally more comfortable as part of a right-wing government.

One of the issues Bibi has to deal with is that many Israeli voters are concerned about deteriorating U.S.-Israei relations. Israel has few allies beyond America, Canada under Stephen Harper, and Australia most of the time. Among these three, of course American support has always mattered most, given the history of foreign aid, weapons supply, and the Americans’ Security Council veto. European behavior, on the other hand, has become  more viper-like every week [4]. Most Israelis are smart enough to understand that whatever Netanyahu’s faults, the problems in the relationship the last few years have been largely created by the Obama administration. Though there are some who are right-of-center on security issues who might think that someone other than Bibi might be better able to shepherd the country through the rocky last two years of the Obama administration, since any new president after Obama is unlikely to be so hostile.

When Bill Clinton was president, he allowed his campaign team, including pollster Stanley Greenberg, Bob Shrum, current J Street operative Jim Gerstein, and Jim Carville, to assist Labor party leader Ehud Barak and to help bring down Netanyahu’s government  in 1999. Greenberg is going back to Israel to help the Labor Party again [5]. Surely, this has the Obama seal of approval.
The Obama team may have overplayed its hand when it allowed a rumor to get out that sanctions against Israel over its settlement building had been discussed at the White House. Congressional Democrats pushed back hard against the idea, and the administration denied it had ever come up. A few weeks back, a reporter close to the White House had repeated various obscenities which top administration figures had used to describe [6] Netanyahu, including “chickens**t.”

This week, Secretary of State Kerry seems to be trying a different approach, by reassuring Israel that the U.S. will use its veto in the Security Council (if it has to, assuming the Palestinians collect nine votes) to prevent the Palestinian Authority from getting its resolution passed on a two-year deadline for statehood within the 1967 borders. Of course, Kerry has generally been milder in his public criticisms of Israel than the off-the-record amateurs at the White House. At the same time, Kerry has let slip that Israeli leaders from the left believe a debate and vote on a PA resolution at the UN now will only solidify support for Netanyahu and right-wing parties, so he is loathe [7] to give Bibi an assist.
In any case, the administration seems to be trying to deliver two messages: things could get far worse for Israel in the next two years (we won’t use our veto at the UN next time), or there could be more support if Israel is more forthcoming and accepts the American approach (offering concessions to the Palestinians and not opposing a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal). Of course, since Bibi Netanyahu is unlikely to become a J Street prime minister, the real goal of the administration, as was the case in the Clinton administration, is to bring him down.
Article printed from PJ Media: http://pjmedia.com
URLs in this post:
[3] total vote for representation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knesset

3) President Barack Obama unveiled a new U.S. policy toward Cuba on Wednesday as part of a deal that brought American Alan Gross home in exchange for three convicted Cuban spies. As he has done so often in the past, Obama tried to channel the perspective of America’s enemies and critics, as if his job were to act as a neutral mediator instead of defending U.S. interests and values. In the course of his address, Obama told American ten major lies, both of omission and commission.

Here they are, in order of appearance:
1. No mention of the Cuban missile crisis. “I was born in 1961 just over two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba….Over the next several decades, the relationship between our countries played out against the backdrop of the Cold War and America’s steadfast opposition to communism.” Cuba’s role in helping the Soviet Union project a direct threat to the U.S. mainland is carefully elided (though Obama, as he has done before, refers to his own birth as a kind of watershed.)
2. Suggesting that the president can establish a U.S. embassy on his own. “Going forward, the United States will reestablish an embassy in Havana and high ranking officials will visit Cuba.” An embassy needs to be funded by Congress, and needs an ambassador to be approved by the Senate. None of that is going to happen–nor should it, especially after the disastrous experiment in re-establishing an embassy in Syria, which Obama did in 2009, to no good effect whatsoever.
3. No mention of Cuba’s role in repressing democracy abroad. “Cuba has sent hundreds of healthcare workers to Africa to fight Ebola.” Yes, and Cuba has also sentexperts in repression to Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Cuban agents also allegedly beat and raped Venezuelan protestors earlier this year. For decades, Cuba assisted guerrilla armies abroad, fomenting bloody revolution in some countries and propping up communist regimes elsewhere. It continues to do so.
4. Suggesting that Cuba does not support terrorism. “At a time when we are focused on threats from al Qaeda to ISIL, a nation that meets our conditions and renounces the use of terrorism should not face this sanction.” Yet Cuba was caught, only last year, smuggling “missile equipment” to North Korea, the dictatorship that targeted America with a cyber-terror attack on the day Obama announced the new Cuba policy. Cuba continues to offer other kinds of support to terrorists.
5. False claim that the U.S. is to blame for lack of information in Cuba. “I believe in the free flow of information. Unfortunately, our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe.” This is perhaps the most offensive lie of all, since Gross was detained for trying to help Cubans access technology. The reason Cubans lack news and communication is because the regime censors them brutally, not because of the U.S. embargo.
6. False promise to consult Congress on Cuba, when his administration broke that promise. “As these changes unfold, I look forward to engaging Congress in an honest and serious debate about lifting the embargo.” And yet when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked White House official Tony Blinken whether the administration planned any major Cuba policy changes, Blinken (now Deputy Secretary of State) lied and said any change would come in consultation with Congress.
7. False claim that Cuba agreed to release political prisoners as part of a deal with the U.S. “In addition to the return of Alan Gross and the release of our intelligence agent, we welcome Cuba’s decision to release a substantial number of prisoners whose cases were directly raised with the Cuban government by my team.” As the Washington Post noted, these political prisoners were already set to be released as the result of negotiations four years ago with the Vatican and Spain.
8. False commitment to principle of changing policies that do not work. “I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result.” If that were really what Obama believed, we would not see the administration pursuing policies whose failure is already evident as a matter of historical record: high taxes, economic redistribution, socialized medicine, union-dominated schools, restrictive labor and environmental regulations, and so on.
9. Conflating the collapse of the Castro regime with the collapse of Cuba.“Moreover, it does not serve America’s interests or the Cuban people to try to push Cuba towards collapse.” A false “binary choice.” By failing to differentiate between the regime and the country, Obama signaled his intention to allow the Castros and their heirs to entrench their power–abandoning the cause of freedom and reform, just as he did with the mullahs in Iran during the 2009 uprising.
10. Falsely identifying the U.S. as a colonial power. “Others have seen us as a form of colonizer intent on controlling your future..…Let us leave behind the legacy of both colonization and communism, the tyranny of drug cartels, dictators and sham election.” America actually liberated Cuba from Spanish colonialism, and though the U.S. influenced the island heavily for decades afterward, Obama’s attempted moral equivalence between “colonization” and communist tyranny is a false one.
Obama borrowed a quote from the Cuban literary giant José Martí: “liberty is the right of every man to be honest.” Yet as my colleague Frances Martel has pointed out, Obamashortened that quote, leaving out the phrase ” and to think and to speak without hypocrisy.” Obama’s speech was both dishonest and hypocritical. It was an ominous introduction to a new policy that might have deserved a chance, were it not based on such evident disregard for American interests and Cuban freedom.
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4)  Leftists Believe in Free Speech... for Leftists
By Paul Austin Murphy

This piece won't concern itself with extreme cases such as shouting “fire” in a cinema or with explicit calls to violence. Nor with the case for complete freedom of speech in every domain. This is about political free speech.

More specifically, it's about those Leftists/progressives who claim that certain political views or expressions will lead -- usually tangentially or indirectly -- to X and Y (where X or Y are deemed negative or violent).

In terms of concrete detail, all sorts of groups and individuals have been silenced in recent months and years by Leftist/progressive groups and individuals.
For example:
In the end, then, all political views and expressions lead somewhere... tangentially or indirectly. It's also a truism to say that words affect things, people and events.
So we must be specific.

Good Reasons to End Free Speech

All the leaders and politicians who have ever cracked down on free speech have had highfalutin reasons to do so. It's not as if despots or ruling parties have done so just for the hell of it. In fact many have said that “freedom of speech requires responsibility” or that certain expressions can have “serious repercussions”; which is precisely what many Leftists/progressives today argue.
Okay: do Leftists apply that across the board -- politically -- or only selectively?

Accordingly, Leftists are very choosy about free speech. They're not usually talking about responsibility and consequences in the abstract. They're nearly always talking about right-wing responsibility and the repercussions of right-wing speech. Neat.

Clearly there are a whole multitude of reasons to clamp down on free speech. The question is:
Are they good reasons or are they simply means to silence political dissent?

Sure, Leftists have themselves have had their own free speech curtailed at certain times and in certain places. However, these comments don't depend on denying that fact. They're about the Left's own inconsistent and somewhat hypocritical position on the freedom of speech.

Consequences

Nearly all public speech has some negative and/or positive repercussions.
So if that's the progressive case, then for every right-winger silenced, I can cite another ten Leftists/progressives who should also be silenced. They too should be aware of their own responsibility and the repercussions of what they.

See how it works?

After all, left-wing views can lead to the Gulag, totalitarianism, to “stringing capitalists up - from the nearest lamppost - by their own intestines”, to “class liquidations” and, yes, to the complete denial of free speech.

Thus one good reason for denying free speech to at least some Leftists -- ironically enough -- is that certain forms of Leftism (e.g., forms propagated in our universities, by Unite Against Fascism, Hope Not Hate and other Communist and Trotskyist parties/groups, etc.) can lead to the end of free speech. So, in that sense, it can be argued that Trotskyist/communist free speech must be curtailed in order to save free speech. And, ironically enough, that's more or less what groups like Hope Not Hate and UAF say about their own “no platform” policy towards all right-wing groups outside the British Conservative Party. (Given the right time and the right amount of power, the Tories wouldn't be safe from such Leftists either.) In other words, what such groups say and do can also be applied to them!

And that's one reason why you can't really be selective when it comes to the freedom of speech. A selective defense of free speech isn't, in effect, a defense of free speech at all. It is more a case of:
“I'm in favour of free speech.... but...”
And that statement is a bit like the phrase that anti-racists always use against people they see as “closet racists”. Namely:
“I'm not a racist.... but....”

Free Speech for the Right People

The bottom is that Leftists agree with free speech for those they agree with. That is hardly a surprise, is it?

So when you press certain Leftists on this, they begin to sound like, well, seasoned politicians. In other words, they sound like they haven't got the honesty to answer a simple question. And you can only conclude from that reticence or dissimulation that they don't believe in free speech at all.... unless that speech lies firmly within the political bounds that they have themselves constructed.
Talk of “responsibility” and “repercussions” is often just fluff.
In the end, then, the position of the majority of Leftists is this:

i) Political expressions which don't abide by Leftist/socialist/progressive ideology or politics “show a lack of responsibility”, have “violent and anti-social consequences”, etc.

ii) Those political expressions which do abide by Leftist/socialist/progressive politics or ideology  “show responsibility”, don't have “violent and anti-social consequences”, etc.

Thus the Leftist position on free speech is transparent -- it's entirely determined by the politics and ideology of the Leftist concerned.

What Leftists do -- and the Guardian newspaper is an excellent example of this – is conflate the defense of the freedom of speech with demands that the state (or the authorities) allow politically-correct people to say politically-correct things. But that's not a defense of the freedom of speech, is it? It's a (Leftist/progressive) political con or gimmick masquerading as a defense of the freedom of speech.
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