How did Israel gain the intelligence information it needed to discover and booby-trap Hezbollah’s tunnel and what does that mean for the future?

By Dr. Mordechai Kedar, INN

This week, for the first time, Israel made public its discovery of the tunnel constructed by Hezbollah and reaching into Israel’s sovereign territory. This brought to an end a long period during which a large number of Israelis living in communities adjacent to the Lebanese border reported hearing sounds of digging as well as feeling tremors in the walls of their homes.

Attack tunnels are intended to allow for significant numbers of armed infantry bearing weapons, artillery and supplies, to traverse them within a minimal time span, avoiding Israeli lookouts and thereby gaining the element of surprise. An underground passage grants attackers protection from Israeli bombs, while it also means that the war begins on the Israeli side of the border, in the midst of areas populated by civilians. That fact allows for sudden forays and kidnapping.
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By Max Singer, HUDSON INSTITUTE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The US is usually thought to be biased in favor of Israel, even after its recent acceptance of UNSC Resolution 2334. But for many years, the US has been a big part of the reason why the diplomatic world accepts a false narrative of the Arab-Israeli conflict that harms Israel and makes it harder to achieve peace. Washington should move to a truth-telling strategy to dismantle the structure of false views that slander Israel and stand in the way of peace.

The widely accepted false narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is built on the following premises:

• Israel stole and now occupies Palestinian territory;
• there are millions of “Palestinian refugees” who have a “right of return” to Israel;
• Israel and the Palestinians have equal or comparable claims to Jerusalem;
• the Palestinian community and its leadership are ready to accept a two-state solution that will end Palestinian efforts to eliminate the Jewish state.

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Trump vows support for Israeli defensive operations after identifying Iran as source of tunnels into Israel

By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

The Trump administration disclosed that Iran is behind the construction of several underground tunnels leading into Israel that Hezbollah militants and other terror forces have been using to conduct attacks, according to multiple U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon and communicated fears that Tehran is preparing to lead a “massive regional war.”

The public identification of Iran isn’t likely to surprise international observers, but signals aggressive moves by the Trump administration to tie Iran to the rise of terrorism not just in Israel, but across the Middle East, where Iranian-backed militants continue to strike U.S. interests and allies.
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I have watched a number of videos of her acting as State Department spokesperson. She is amazing. Here is an example of her work. I can’t imagine anyone better.

T. Belman. This is good news for Israel. The more the UN discredits itself in the eyes of the US, the more the US will fight them.

By Elad Benari, INN

Jason Greenblatt, the US Special Representative for International Negotiations, on Thursday criticized the UN after it failed to approve a US-drafted resolution condemning the Hamas terrorist organization.

“Absolutely shameful!! UN failed to condemn Hamas even after years of attacks via suicide bombings, kidnappings, missiles, and more against Israelis. The applause after the vote says it all. Hamas hurts Israelis, Palestinians and peace. When will the UN speak the truth???” tweeted Greenblatt.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo similarly criticized the global body for failing to condemn Hamas.
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Hezbollah’s reckless actions will “drag Lebanon’s puppet government [to ?war] and Lebanon will end up paying a heavy price,” Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee head Avi Dichter says • “It will find itself back in the 19th century,” he says.

By Gideon Allon, ISRAEL HAYOM

Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman MK Avi Dichter (Likud)

Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Avi Dichter (Likud) warned Wednesday that any offensive action by Hezbollah will see the IDF “crush” the Shiite terrorist group.

In a Facebook post following the discovery of Hezbollah terror tunnels snaking under the Israel-Lebanon border, Dichter wrote that “if Hezbollah digs tunnels as a means of transporting hundreds of thousands of terrorists into Israel, aiming to seize control over Israeli territory and wave the Hezbollah flag there, they will soon find that they will be crushed in Lebanon by Israel’s power.”

“They will also drag Lebanon’s puppet government [to war] and Lebanon will end up paying a heavy price. It will find itself back in the 19th century,” Dichter wrote.
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TV news cites Palestinian source familiar with investigation of deadly gun battle that led to escalation as saying operatives rented an apartment and handed out medical equipment

By TOI STAFF

An Israel Defense Forces special unit, which last month fought its way out of the Gaza Strip in a deadly gun battle after being discovered by Hamas security personnel, had been operating inside the Palestinian enclave for weeks, Hadashot television news reported on Wednesday.

The Israeli team rented an apartment and was posing under the cover of workers in a non-government medical equipment charity, “Bamasa,” which has two branches, one in Khan Younis and one in Gaza City, according to a Palestinian source familiar with the Hamas investigation into the incident cited by Hadashot.
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T. Belman. This is the first article by Baskin that I have published.  He is too much of a peacenik for me. But what interested me is the 1947 Plan of Partition with Economic Union. Since the Jordan option involves just that, I thought we migh learn something from the ideas it contains. Afteral Mudaar wants very much to have an economic union between Jordan and Israel

By Gershon Baskin, JPOST December 6, 2018

The UN Partition plan that formally created the basis for the two-state solution, (UN Resolution 181, 29 November 1947) was officially termed: Plan of Partition with Economic Union. In Article “D” of the resolution, detailed steps were proposed to implement the unification and harmonization of the economies of the Jewish and Arab communities living between the River and the Sea. Some of the specific details of that plan are quite interesting and still relevant. They are listed below with my comments between brackets:

2. The objectives of the Economic Union of Palestine shall be:

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By Salim Mansur, AMERICAN THINKER

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to sign the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration at an intergovernmental meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, on December 10, 2018.

Few Canadians are aware of what this UN Global Compact represents; even fewer have been consulted, and without any mandate except for a parliamentary majority, Justin Trudeau is committed in signing Canada into an agreement with far-reaching consequences — not only for Canadians.  Canada agreeing to abide by the agreement will also have consequences for Americans, as among migrants entering Canada might well be those intending to sneak into the United States across the world’s longest open border.
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T. Belman. It angers me when the world makes a federal case against the Khashoggi murderers but ignores the more numerous killings in both Turkey and Iran perpetrated by their governments and is totally silent about the persecution of Christians in some Islamic societies like Egypt and Pakistan.

Christian women in Egypt face an epidemic of kidnapping, rape, beatings and torture.

BY Lela Gilbert, JPOST

A Christian woman outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. (photo credit: ARIEL COHEN)

Egypt’s Christian community faces dangers that most other Egyptians needn’t fear. Threats of violence during church services, attacks on buses filled with innocent pilgrims and their children, and assaults on successful Christian businesses happen all too frequently.

But only occasionally do they appear in the Western media.

Meanwhile, mass kidnappings, such as the Boko Haram abductions in Nigeria, are widely reported. Even accounts of young Pakistani Christian girls’ abductions have been published from time to time.
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Congress passed a law, but a court says it’s unconstitutional. What is the remedy?

By Phyllis Chesler, FrontPage

On November 20, 2018, the United States District Court in Michigan ruled that the federal law which criminalized Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) more than twenty years ago is “unconstitutional”, and cannot be used to prosecute the doctors and mothers of the very young girls who were brought to be genitally mutilated in Livonia, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. (See United States of America v. Jumana Nagarwala, et al, 2018 WL 6064968.)
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By Yochanan Visser, ISRAEL TODAY

On Tuesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces launched operation ‘Northern Shield’ on the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon.

The operation is meant to destroy a number of Hezbollah attack tunnels which have been built in recent years as preparation for a future offensive against Israel which Hezbollah believes would end in the occupation of the northern Galilee.

IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said the tunnels had already penetrated Israeli territory but emphasized they were not yet “operationally ready” and therefore posed “no immediate threat to Israel”.
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Senior officer says terror group planned to capture part of Galilee panhandle; seismic sensors helped army find cross-border underground infrastructure

By JUDAH ARI GROSS, TOI

The Hezbollah attack tunnels crossing into Israeli territory from Lebanon that Israel has begun to uncover were to be used by the Iran-backed terror group for a surprise attack to kick off a future war, a senior IDF officer said Wednesday.

The army believes the tunnel uncovered Tuesday east of the Lebanese village of Kafr Kila was meant to let in Hezbollah fighters who would cut off the Israeli town of Metulla, which lies directly along the border with Lebanon, said the senior officer in the military’s Northern Command, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The idea was to cut off Metulla from the south, including by blocking the main entry road, Route 90.

The officer, citing military assessments, said Hezbollah planned to use the tunnels as part of a wider operation to conquer parts of the panhandle in Israel’s Galilee in a future conflict.
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THIS IS WHY ISRAEL AVOIDED A FIGHT IN GAZA

By Mati Tuchfeld, TOI

We have come full circle. Following the disappointment and general sense of bitterness at the lack of action taken in the Gaza Strip despite the barrage of rockets that pummeled Israel in recent weeks and reports that the people of Israel would understand the need to hold fire in the south – a move that earned scattered support among cabinet ministers – everything finally makes sense. After a long period of preparation, the IDF cannot allow the operation to neutralize Hezbollah’s cross-border attack tunnels to be disrupted due to the military being bogged down in a conflict down south.

But now the question surrounding Avigdor Lieberman’s decision to resign as defense minister has become more acute. This is also true of Education Minister Naftali Bennett and his fellow Habayit Hayehudi member and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s threat to do the same. Today these moves appear just a little more detached from reality and a little less responsible.
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By Daniel Siryoti, TOI

Despite the fiery declarations emanating from Hezbollah’s stronghold in southern Beirut, senior Arab pundits believe the terrorist organization will have to swallow the IDF’s activities along the border without responding in an escalatory manner. This, as long as Israel stays on its side of the border and doesn’t violate Lebanese sovereignty.

Explaining Northern Shield op, Netanyahu says ‘only a small piece of the big picture’ of Israeli efforts to counter the Lebanese terror group has been revealed thus far

By TOI STAFF

In this photo released by Hezbollah Central Military Media, Israeli military diggers work on the Lebanese-Israeli border next to a wall that was built by Israel facing the southern village of Kafr Kila, Lebanon on Dec. 4, 2018. (Hezbollah Military Media via AP)

Israeli security analysts believe that Tuesday’s launch of an IDF operation to tackle Hezbollah attack tunnels, swiftly followed by the exposure of a first such tunnel found extending into Israel, is a precursor to a larger Israeli operation to remove the threat posed by precision missiles being developed by the Lebanese terror group together with its Iranian sponsors.

On Tuesday, the IDF said it uncovered the “first of what are sure to be many” cross-border attack tunnels dug by Hezbollah, as part of its newly launched Operation Northern Shield. The tunnel was found south of the Israeli town of Metulla along the Lebanese border. The army said it was some 200 meters (650 feet) long, extending some 40 meters (120 feet) into Israeli territory. Read more…

Pompeo criticizes European capitulation to Iran, China, Russia

By Adan Kredo, FREE BEACON

BRUSSELS—Secretary of State Mike Pompeo brought the Trump administration’s voice to a gathering of European leaders, offering a stinging criticism of the European order’s capitulation to rogue nations such as Iran, China, and Russia.

Pompeo, addressing a gathering of NATO leaders on Tuesday, offered a sobering rebuke of the international treaty group, telling the crowd the Trump administration will not stand down in the face of rising threats from a host of rogue regimes.

Criticizing the rise of anti-Israel bias and complacency in the face of growing threats from countries such as Iran, Pompeo championed President Donald Trump’s foreign policy vision.

“This U.S. leadership allowed us to enjoy the greatest human flourishing in modern history. We won the Cold War. We won the peace. We reunited Germany,” Pompeo said. “This is the type of leadership that President Trump is boldly reasserting.”
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T. Belman. This is the family that I remember. But there is more. H.W insisted that Jerrusalem be put on the table in the Madrid Conference and insisted that the Palestinians be part of the Jordanian delegation. Shamir had tried to exclude them as a negotiating party. Although Bush promised that they would be part of the Jordanian delagation, they were in fact an independant delegation. HW was the Reagan VP. in that position he insisted that Arafat be rescued from Beirut and then as President was behind the first intifadah in the late eighties which gave rise to the Madrid Conference. Pres Clinton followed his lead in insisting that Rabin agree to the return of Arafat and his minions to Israel as part of the Oslo Accords. So H.W, representing the globalists, rescued Arafat with a view to him being returned to Israel.

George H.W. Bush will go down in Jewish History as the American president who forced Israel into a subservient position and endangered millions of Jews.

BY Ariel Natan Pasko, INN

“Go to hell.” That’s what George W. answered a reporter, when questioned about what he planned to tell the Israelis, as he was about to leave on his 1998 Middle East trip. Was he joking? Let’s remember, George W. previously had said in 1993, “heaven is open only to those who accept Jesus Christ,” while discussing his decision to become “born again,” as reported in the Houston Post at the time.

And let’s not forget his heavy campaigning in Michigan (home of the largest Arab-American community) before the 2000 election, his family’s oil interests, and deep ties with the Arab community in America and the Middle East. Then, there was George W’s open support for a Palestinian state during his presidency, the first American president to come out of the closet on the issue.
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