BUD vs NIKE:https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=yzMSzLkOkJA
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Daniel instigated a meeting which produced a letter pertaining to and sent by Squirrel Hill community leaders. Many of those who opposed Trump's visit joined in the interest of comity and civility. When Daniel authorizes me to send a copy of same I will do so. (See 1 below.)
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Don't rely on calm in Israel. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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The election results were split. The Blue wave turned into a big dribble and Trump is due a lot of credit and proved he is not a drag. There is much I could say but , by now, you have heard it all.
The Democrats have a choice. They can prove they can do what is best for the nation and seek to work with the Republicans or they can investigate til the cows come home. The choice is theirs.
Election results reveal Republicans still have issues with educated women. Trump should tack his sails a bit but has a more supportive Senate.
Pelosi talked about ridding politics of dark money is ludicrous. The Democrats were drowning in dark money from their California social media crowd and sought to drown Texas, the southeast with is and should have donated it to charity. She then talked about her party unifying for the good of the nation and I cannot see how that will occur with the likes of Schiff, Waters and such others running committees and finally she said The House would be run in an open manner. In less than 1 minute three lies. The woman has no shame.
Until the market understands what direction Democrats chose, I suspect any reaction will be modest. There are plenty of radical Democrats prepared to take committee positions who might misinterpret the meaning of their having won control of The House and see it is a mandate for vindictive activism.
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Dick
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1) Shin Bet Chief – The Quiet Is Deceptive, We've Thwarted 480 Terror Attacks
In a review before the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman said “there’s relative quiet, but it is deceptive.” Argaman revealed that in the past year his organization had foiled 480 attacks, arresting 219 Hamas squads and 590 lone terrorists in Judea and Samaria.
“The Palestinian sector has been very unstable in the past year,” Argaman told the committee members. “In the Gaza Strip we are between a potential campaign provider or ahead of a campaign on the one hand, and on the other, we attempt to stabilize the humanitarian situation of the residents of the Gaza Strip.”
The reality of the situation in Judea and Samaria is very complex, the Shin Bet chief said, noting that while the surface is relatively quiet, “it must be said that this quiet is deceiving and beneath the surface the area is bubbling a great deal. Hamas is trying with all its might to carry out terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria, directed from the Gaza Strip, Turkey and Lebanon.”
Argaman said that over the past year the scope of thwarting the attacks had been large: “This is a scope that can only indicate the extent of terrorism that is taking place under the surface,” he said. “Fortunately, a large part of the attacks do not succeed.”
He also mentioned that his service had “succeeded in thwarting cyber attacks – both terrorism and espionage against the State of Israel. These successes, considering the potential reality in Judea and Samaria, are the result of the very strenuous activity of the entire Israeli security establishment – the Shin Bet, the IDF, the Israel Police – which enables this reality and allows the citizens of Israel to continue their daily routines.”
Last week, political analyst Dana Weiss reported that Argaman had been sent to meet Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and other senior figures in the Palestinian Authority, to presented to them a series of significant economic projects Israel would support. Argaman suggested, among other things, the establishment of a joint industrial zone, and a partnership in the Gaza gas project, both of which would boost the PA’s economy.
Abbas was not impressed by the proposals and refused to consider either one.
1a)Israel's Next Northern War: Operational and Legal Challenges
By Gen Michael Hostage, USAF (ret.) and Professor Geoffrey Corn
Hezbollah has threatened Israel's northern border for decades. Today, however, the nature of this threat has become dire, and the risks of escalation real, as Iran continues supplying Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon with game-changing weapons to devastate the Israeli homeland.
When the next conflict erupts between Israel and Hezbollah, its scale and intensity will bear little resemblance to those of recent memory. Hezbollah today is highly competent, adaptable and lethal. Its forces have gained invaluable battlefield experience in Syria and amassed more weaponry than 95 percent of the world's conventional militaries, including at least 120,000 rockets and missiles. This is more than all of Europe's NATO memberscombined, and ten times as many as when it last went to war with Israel in 2006.
Especially troubling is Hezbollah's growing arsenal of powerful long-range precision missiles capable of striking targets throughout Israel. Unlike in recent conflicts, Israel's missile defenses will be incapable of shielding the nation from such a threat. From the outset of conflict, Hezbollah will be able to sustain a launch rate of more than 3,000 missiles per day – as many as Israel faced in the entire 34-day conflict in 2006.
Despite this quantum leap in its capabilities, Hezbollah is under no illusion about its ability to inflict military defeat on Israel. It will not seek victory in the valleys of Lebanon or the skies over Israel, but in the court of public opinion.
To do so, it will use combat operations to lay the groundwork for an information campaign delegitimizing Israel. Two tactics will be central to Hezbollah's efforts: first, deliberately attacking Israeli civilian population centers to compel an aggressive response by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF); second, illegally exploiting the presence of Lebanese civilians to shield itself from IDF attack.
Hezbollah will then manipulate the inevitable casualties by relying on widespread misperceptions about the true nature of combat operations and how international law (the law of armed conflict, or LOAC) regulates such operations. It will use the inevitable images of civilian suffering in Lebanon to portray Israel's lawful operations as immoral and illegal. By weaponizing information and the law, Hezbollah will seek to force Israel to halt its self-defense campaign before the IDF can achieve decisive victory.
This is the increasingly prevalent face of hybrid warfare, where law-abiding militaries confront non-state actors like Hezbollah who blend robust combat capabilities and unlawful tactics with sophisticated information operations. This difficult reality is highlighted in a new report by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America's (JINSA) Hybrid Warfare Task Force, which examines the significant operational and legal challenges Israel will confront when it is compelled to engage Hezbollah and potentially other regional adversaries including Iran.
A key finding is that Hezbollah's intentional emplacement of rockets, missiles and other vital military assets in villages and cities throughout Lebanon will increase risks to innocent civilians. To gain strategic advantage, Hezbollah will exploit the common – but erroneous – assumption that Israel, by virtue of attacking these sites, must be acting unlawfully, even when the unfortunate effects of these attacks are rendered unavoidable by Hezbollah's deliberate and illegal use of human shields.
This dilemma for Israel is further complicated by our expectation that the IDF will be compelled to undertake large-scale, aggressive operations to neutralize as much of Hezbollah's rocket threat as possible before it is ever employed.
This will include ground operations deep into Lebanon. In addition to their sheer scale, the nature of such operations in towns and villages will magnify the likelihood of collateral damage and civilian casualties. This will also make it much more difficult for the IDF to utilize the extensive and often innovative measures to mitigate risks to civilians that have been commonplace during more limited operations – for example, warnings and providing civilians time to evacuate before an attack.
Despite these challenges, our task force found an IDF fully committed to compliance with the LOAC, knowing full well Hezbollah seeks to exploit this very same commitment. We worry, however, that the nature of a major combined arms operation will contribute to the operational and legal misperceptions that are so adeptly exploited by enemies like Hezbollah, resulting in false condemnation of Israel from the international public, media and many states.
How this story plays out for Israel will have reverberating effects for other professional militaries, including our own. Unless the challenges of such operations become more widely understood, with more credible assessments of legality, morality and legitimacy, others will be incentivized to replicate Hezbollah's perverse tactics.
Ultimately, this requires a greater appreciation of the realities of combat against hybrid adversaries. It also requires a greater appreciation for how the LOAC strikes a rational balance between civilian protection and military effectiveness. Nowhere will these considerations be more apparent – and more consequential – than in Israel's next conflict with Hezbollah.
General Michael Hostage, USAF (ret.), is former Commander, U.S. Air Combat Command. Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Corn, USA (ret.), is The Presidential Research Professor of Law at South Texas College of Law Houston. Both are members of JINSA's Hybrid Warfare Task Force.
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