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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++More Gaza commentary. (See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)
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Is Amazon whorish? Certainly Bezos wants to curry favor with politicians and he showed us how it is done. (See 2 below.)
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Peter Morici is a friend and fellow memo reader and this is what he thinks regarding growth:
https://www.washingtontimes.
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Trump nominates women to fill Kavanaugh's position. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)IDF threatens to step up Gaza attacks, but won’t call up reservists for now
Army says Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired over 400 rockets, mortar shells at Israel, with some 20,000 more in their arsenals; military bombs ‘key assets’ in Strip
A man stands inside a house that was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the southern
Israeli city of Ashkelon, on November 13, 2018 (Nati Shohat/Flash90)
The Israeli military threatened on Tuesday to escalate its bombing raids in Gaza, which the army said have already destroyed more than 150 military targets in the coastal enclave, after Palestinian terrorists in the Strip fired some 400 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli cities and towns along the border since Monday afternoon, killing at least one person and wounding dozens more.
“There is ample room for additional targets,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson. “We have signaled to Hamas over the course of this night that we have the intelligence and ability to strike a variety of military targets that belong to Hamas.”
Spokespeople for the armed wing of Hamas, the terror group that rules the Strip, threatened to start shooting rockets deeper into Israeli territory if fighting continued, calling recent barrages on the city of Ashkelon a “warning.”
“Approximately one million Zionists will be within the range of our missiles if the Zionist enemy’s decision is to continue its aggression,” a Hamas spokesman said.
Another spokesman said Tuesday morning that if Israel continues its bombardments of Gaza, the cities of “Ashdod and Beersheba are next in line,” while a spokesperson for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group threatened to attack Tel Aviv.
On Tuesday, Israel also stopped cooperating with the Egyptian intelligence officials and United Nations Special Envoy to the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov, who have been working to broker a ceasefire between the two sides, in a clear signal that Jerusalem was prepared to continue pummeling the Strip if the rocket and mortar attacks persisted.
Israel’s security cabinet convened in the morning at the Defense Ministry’s Tel Aviv headquarters. The discussion was expected to last several hours, at the end of which the ministers would decide how to proceed.
The IDF’s threats to Hamas came as rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip entered their second day, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis in the south to stay close to bomb shelters and while most schools, businesses and government offices remained closed.
The massive barrage of rocket and mortar shells, which began Monday afternoon and persisted throughout the night and into Tuesday morning, appeared to be the largest-ever attack in a 24-hour period from the Gaza Strip, with more than twice the number of projectiles fired than on any single day of the bloody 2014 war.
In response to the “relentless rocket fire” from Gaza, the Israeli military launched a series of ground, air and naval strikes at over 150 targets in the Strip connected to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, including “key strategic assets,” according to Conricus.
Among those assets were the Hamas-controlled Al-Aqsa television station, which Israel says was used to direct and encourage terrorist activities, and Hamas’s internal security headquarters.
As rocket attacks continued throughout the day on Monday night and Tuesday, the Israeli army sent reinforcements to the south in the form of additional infantry troops, tanks and Iron Dome batteries.
The military had yet to call up significant numbers of reservists as of Tuesday morning, but IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis told the Radio Darom station that it may yet do so if the need arises. Small numbers of reserve personnel, mostly from aerial defense units, have been brought into army service, Conricus told reporters by phone.
According to the IDF, more than 400 rockets and mortars have been lobbed at southern Israel since Monday afternoon, which began shortly after 4:30 p.m. when Palestinian terrorists fired a Kornet anti-tank guided missile at a bus near the border, severely injuring an Israeli soldier.
The anti-tank missile attack occurred less than a day after an IDF special operations officer was killed in an operation in Gaza gone awry that also killed seven Palestinian gunmen. Following the clashes, Hamas said “the blood of our righteous martyrs will not be wasted.”
Most of the projectiles launched from the Strip have been targeting the “Gaza envelope,” the Israeli communities located within a few kilometers of the coastal enclave, the army said.
Conricus warned that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad — the two largest terror groups in Gaza — have “in excess of 20,000 rockets and mortar shells of different calibers and ranges” in their arsenals in Gaza, almost twice the number that Israel assessed they had in the 2014 war, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge.
“Unfortunately they are not near the end of their capabilities,” he said.
According to the military, over 100 of the incoming projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system. Most of the rest landed in open fields outside of Israeli communities. Dozens exploded inside cities and towns throughout southern Israel, several of them directly hitting homes and apartment buildings in Ashkelon, Netivot and Sderot.
One man was killed in one of those direct hits in Ashkelon. He was later identified as a 48-year-old Palestinian man from Hebron, Mahmoud Abu Asbah, who was living in Israel with a legal work permit.
According to medical officials, 27 other people in were injured in attacks, including the soldier hit in the anti-tank missile attack and two women wounded in direct hits on apartment buildings in Ashkelon. A man in his 40s was also moderately wounded by shrapnel, medics said.
“The Iron Dome so far has been phenomenal, but even the Iron Dome is not hermetic and we cannot expect it to intercept everything, especially when it’s dealing with this amount of rockets,” Conricus said.
In Gaza, six Palestinians — at least three of them later claimed by terrorist groups as members — were reportedly killed in the IDF’s raids on Monday and Tuesday, apparently in airstrikes on rocket-launching cells.
“It is unfortunate that of the dozens of rockets fired at Ashhkelon one was able to get through our defenses and hit a building in a populated area,” he added, when asked about the rocket attack that killed the Palestinian man.
No Hamas members have yet to be identified among the dead in Gaza.
According to Conricus, that is because Hamas leadership and fighters have mostly stayed underground throughout the fighting, launching their rockets with timers and other remote-controlled devices in order to avoid being hit by Israeli airstrikes.
“It’s not a secret — they’re in hiding,” he said. “They fire rockets from within the Gaza civilian population at our civilian population, and they do so while hiding beneath their civilian population.”
Conricus said the IDF was using a variety of measures to avoid Palestinian civilian casualties, including phone calls to buildings about to be destroyed and the so-called “knock on the roof” technique in which non-explosive ordnance is dropped on a building as a warning before an actual missile strike takes place.
“Hamas is forcing its violence and bringing its destruction on the Gaza Strip with its actions,” Conricus said. “This is in spite of long term efforts that Israel and the IDF have done to stabilize and improve the situation [in Gaza].”
In recent weeks, Egyptian and UN mediators had appeared to be making progress in brokering informal understandings aimed at quieting the situation.
Last week, Israel allowed Qatar to deliver $15 million to Gaza to allow cash-strapped Hamas to pay the salaries of thousands of government workers. At the same time, Hamas has lowered the intensity of the border protests in recent weeks.
The fighting on Monday and Tuesday cast doubt over understandings previously brokered by Egypt and UN officials to reduce tensions. Just a day earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had defended those understandings, saying he was doing everything possible to avoid another “unnecessary war.”
The United Nations on Monday said it was working with Egypt to broker a halt in the violence. “Rockets must STOP, restraint must be shown by all!” the UN Mideast envoy’s office tweeted.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, urged Israel and the Palestinians “to exercise maximum restraint,” according to a statement.
In light of the barrage from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military ordered residents of communities near the Gaza Strip to remain near bomb shelters until further notice. That included residents of the towns of Netivot and Ofakim, which are not typically as affected by Gaza rockets as communities closer to the border.
Residents of the cities of Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod were also told to stay within close proximity of bomb shelters and protected spaces.
A run-off election scheduled for Tuesday in the Hof Ashkelon region was postponed.
The military also canceled school for Tuesday in the Gaza border region and in the central Negev and Lachish regions, including in Israel’s fourth largest city Beersheba.
In addition, businesses were ordered closed in the Gaza region, along with government offices, unless they are considered essential or had close access to bomb shelters, the army said. No large gatherings were allowed in southern Israel on Monday night and Tuesday, it said.
In Gaza, Hamas set up multiple checkpoints in a show of force. It also restricted movement through crossings with Israel, preventing foreign journalists, local businessmen and some aid workers from leaving the territory.
Hamas also canceled a weekly beach protest in northwestern Gaza along the border with Israel. The organizers cited “the ongoing security situation.”
1a)
Analysis: Hamas’s emboldened risk-taking is fueling this escalation
Written by Yaakov Lappin
The flare-up came after a deadly Israeli special forces operation in the Gaza Strip on
Sunday that led Hamas to vow revenge MAHMUD HAMS (AFP)
If Israel fails to restore deterrence in Gaza, it could embolden its more powerful adversaries in the north
An increasingly emboldened appetite for risk-taking and a belief that Israel is too busy elsewhere to want to seize their territorial base has led Hamas and other terror organizations in the Gaza Strip to initiate a mass rocket assault on southern Israel.
Gaza's armed factions feel they can tolerate Israel’s counter-strikes, and that the benefits they can achieve by initiating this escalation outweigh the costs. Israel has set out to disavow Hamas of this concept, and this is the purpose of the current Israeli air campaign in Gaza.
The first stage of Israel’s response involves the demolition of a growing number of strategic Hamas assets. These targets are high-value assets for Hamas, and are also symbolic of its rule in Gaza.
They include the central Hamas military intelligence headquarters, the Al-Aqsa television station building, and other high-profile targets being struck alongside standard Hamas infrastructure, like weapons factories, tunnels, and command centers.
Although such targets may seem unimpressive to many, they represent areas of heavy investment and planning by Hamas, and it will take the organization’s military wing a long time to rebuild them.
Still, this level of attack may not be sufficient to influence Hamas’s cost-benefit analysis.
Israeli firefighters work at the scene where a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit in
Sderot, Israel, Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov
Hamas and its shrewd new leader, Yahya Sinwar, learned in recent months that Israel is reluctant to commit itself to an irreversible, large-scale military conflict in Gaza and that the Israeli leadership and defense establishment would prefer to focus on, and prioritize, the far more threatening northern arenas.
They have also learned that when they back up with violence their demand for "protection money" – funds to prevent the collapse of Gaza’s economy and civilian government – regional actors and the international community scurry to meet their demands driven by fear of a disastrous meltdown of the Islamist-ruled enclave.
The main question going forward is whether Hamas’s calculations thus far have rested on the wrong assumptions.
Israel’s other enemies, Hezbollah, Iran, and allied terrorist forces, are closely watching Gazan factions terrorize a regional power and will be looking to see what costs Hamas pays for these actions.
If Israel fails to restore a basic level of deterrence in Gaza, the lessons drawn by Israel’s more powerful adversaries could, in turn, embolden their own appetite to take risks against Israel.
Hamas senior commanders are hiding in, or under, heavily populated residential areas, where they fled to as soon as the security situation escalated. It is a familiar pattern, and one that enables Hamas’s senior military command level to feel that it can bombard southern Israeli civilians with relative impunity, using Gaza’s own long-suffering civilians as human shields.
But the IAF is operating on a low flame at this time, and could step up its strikes in a major way if directed to do so by the government. The deployment of back-up ground forces to the Gaza border is a clear Israeli threat to move beyond air power, and launch a land offensive, should the escalation continue. This is a threat that Hamas has yet to decide if it wishes to try and test.
Ultimately, this flare up is still at the stage of signal sending.
Hamas is not only striking a new aggressive pose against Israel, it is also banking on a boost to its credibility in the Palestinian arena, through its willingness to clash head on with Israel, while it accuses the Palestinian Authority (PA), its hated domestic foe, of collaborating with Israel.
Such messaging may not interest ordinary Gazans, however, many of whom are looking at the safer, more stable, and more financially secure lives of their fellow Palestinians in the West Bank with envy.
The combined rocket and mortar arsenal of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) exceeds 20,000 projectiles, and these factions are prepared on the ground to engage in persistent asymmetrical urban warfare if Israel enters the Strip with ground forces.
This means the Gazan factions feel their aggressive posturing is sufficient to deter Israel, fueling their willingness to revenge tactical incidents, like Sunday night’s deadly fire exchange between Israeli special forces and Hamas, by taking it out on Israel’s southern civilians.
Israel, for its part, has dramatically improved the readiness and capabilities of its ground forces. But Israel has advertised its lack of appetite to engage in a full-scale war in Gaza, and its fear of finding itself in control of two million Gazans. Hamas has assessed that it can therefore get away with these actions.
Now, it is up to Israel to drive home the message that the longer this continues, the more Hamas will lose. The IDF’s actions so far amount to just an initial attempt to influence Hamas’s decision-making, before Israel feels the need to escalate further.
These events represent a collapse of the concept that it is possible to stabilize Gaza with money, fuel, electricity, and basic goods.
The escalation comes only days after initial signs suggested that Gaza and Israel were heading for calmer days. Israel permitted Qatar to inject Gaza with $15 million – money for Hamas’s civilian government officials – and Egypt was working intensively to try and bridge gaps between Hamas and its bitter internal foe, the PA.
The PA views Gaza as a breakaway rebel province that was hijacked by Hamas. The PA has been seeking to choke Gaza until Hamas submits to its demands to allow it to retake the territory.
In the past, Hamas had signaled that it would prefer to avoid a new war, but if faced with economic collapse, it would launch one anyway. Now, it is signaling that it is willing to risk war even if Gaza receives injections of cash.
Caught in in this complex web are southern Israeli civilians and Gazan civilians, who are bearing the brunt of Hamas’s cynical, violent, and dangerous calculations. Israel’s first goal will be to change Hamas’s logic for a long time to come.
Yaakov Lappin is an associate researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and a correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly and the Jewish News Service.
1b)
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2)
2)
The Amazon Deal is Shameful.
I opposed Georgia trying to woo Amazon and I am delighted Amazon went elsewhere. Last night, Georgia's officials released their deal and it would have been a $2 billion monstrosity of taxpayer largess and way too cute ideas like renaming a street after Alexa.
New York and Virginia were, instead, the losers who will burden their taxpayers with Amazon. The incentives include giving Amazon the right of notice about freedom of information act requests so Amazon can intervene in Virginia. In New York, the company will get a helipad.
The free market depends on a level, fair playing field. It does not work when governments redistribute taxpayer money to lure companies into states. Deals like this not only distort market forces, but they also keep states from overall reforming their business laws and regulatory structures by letting one company receive not just exceptions, but also taxpayer dollars.
Whether left, right, or center, we should all oppose these sorts of deals. Amazon is one of many. Too many states, from Georgia to New York, put existing local businesses at competitive disadvantages while...
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3)
After some speculation, President Trump has officially named current regulatory czar Neomi Rao to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to the Washington Free Beacon:
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3)
Trump Officially Names Kavanaugh's Replacement
By TTN StaffAfter some speculation, President Trump has officially named current regulatory czar Neomi Rao to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
According to the Washington Free Beacon:
Sources have noted that Rao will go before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December and will have a confirmation vote with the full Senate in January if everything goes according to plan.President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he has nominated current administration "Regulatory Czar" Neomi Rao to fill Brett Kavanaugh's former seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump's announcement came during the White House's celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of light (Rao, who is Indian-American, was present at the event.) According to reportsfrom the event, Trump said that he had intended to make the announcement on Wednesday, but "seemed delighted to do it in person."
Trump first interviewed Rao for the position in late October, according to Axios. As the Washington Free Beacon reported last week, the Department of Justice actively began vetting her last Friday.
Rao, 45, is currently the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the organ of the executive branch responsible for overseeing all major regulations made by the other departments. From that position, Rao told the Free Beacon in an interview in May, she cut some $8 billion worth of regulations in 2017 alone.
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