What’s behind Netanyahu’s decision not to invade Gaza  

By Yochanan Visser, JPOST

[…]

Netanyahu later got support from experts and commentators who claimed that overthrowing the Hamas regime would aggravate the chaos in Gaza and that the current situation of two rival Palestinian governments in Gaza and Ramallah is ultimately better for Israel’s security.

If Israel were to try to overthrow the Hamas regime in Gaza, it would serve the anti-Israel agenda of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, according to this line of thinking.

Abbas demands Hamas hand over power in Gaza and has taken all sorts of boycott measures against Gaza to realize his dream of a united Palestinian front in Gaza, Judea and Samaria – which would also resuscitate the so-called Two-State Solution effectively abandoned by the Netanyahu government.
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November 16, 2018 | 12:24 pm | 2 Comments »

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Why Israel let Hamas win  

T. Belman. Glick gives no credence to what Bibi said about why. Bibi said that he knows things that nobody else knows that led him to his decision. But Liberman and Bennett must know the same things, I would think, yet they came to a different conclusion.

Israel may be contemplating a major war before the end of the Trump presidency and wants to plan for it.  Iran was behind the latest rocket attack from Gaza. Surely if Israel started to hit back in a serious way, Iran would get Hezbollah to weigh in. Perhaps Israel isn’t ready for that. Perhaps Israel would like to attack Iran with American assistance, once the war begins. Perhaps such a war would hurt Trump’s chances of getting reelected and he prefers to wait.

Winners don’t quit. Losers do.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

A general view of the Israeli city of Ashkelon, as an Iron Dome anti-missile fires near the Israeli

Israel’s security cabinet’s decision Tuesday afternoon to walk away from the war Hamas initiated Monday and to accept a “ceasefire” is frustrating and infuriating. Hamas shot nearly 500 projectiles into Israel in under 24 hours. It blew up a bus with a Kornet anti-tank missile. Sixty Israelis were wounded, several critically. One civilian was killed. Numerous homes were destroyed.
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November 16, 2018 | 10:44 am | 4 Comments »

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War, deterrence and capitulating to terror  

Israeli military doctrine considers deterrence preferable to war, but the state has not attained the necessary conditions for it to work, and has capitulated to terror instead.

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

Winning a war depends on two main factors. The first is real, tangible and measurable, and is attained by destroying or paralyzing the military capability of the enemy.  The second is virtual, emotional and psychological, and requires convincing the enemy that he has been defeated, so that his only choice is to completely abandon any desire to return to the fight.

The first factor is a necessary condition for the existence of the second, because as long as an enemy has military power and the ability to make use of it, he will not give up the desire to fight.  Once the first factor has been achieved, chances are good that the second, psychological one will follow, but that is not necessarily the case, because even an enemy that has been routed militarily can continue efforts to rebuild its strength and renew hostilities. Peace is possible only after both objectives of the war are achieved: Utter destruction of the enemy’s military power and a complete change in his mental state. The clearest example of this is Germany’s defeat at the end of WWII.
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November 16, 2018 | 10:21 am | Comments »

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INTO THE FRAY: Israel’s stark option: Arabs in Gaza or Jews in Negev  

The problem in Gaza is not operational. It is conceptual. The failed formula of self-rule for Gaza must be set aside.

By Dr Martin Sherman, INN

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised Katyusha rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single Katyusha rocket. Nor will there be any Katyushas. –Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, September 28, 1995  

“I am firmly convinced and truly believe that this disengagement… will be appreciated by those near and far, reduce animosity, break through boycotts and sieges and advance us along the path of peace with the Palestinians and our other neighbors…—Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, October 25, 2004.

If the Israel leadership persists with its perception of the Palestinian-Arabs in general, and the Gazan’s in particular, as potential partners in some future peace arrangement rather than perceiving them as they perceive themselves – as implacable enemies, whose enmity towards the Jewish state is not rooted in what it does but what it is—it will never be able to formulate a policy capable of effectively dealing [with]… the continuing, and continually intensifying, threat emanating from the Gaza Strip.
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November 16, 2018 | 10:10 am | 1 Comment »

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Choosing Dishonor  

By Vic Rosenthal

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war. – Winston Churchill, to Neville Chamberlain

As I write this, the recent “security incident” in Gaza seems to have receded to become, well, a “security incident” and not the opening volleys of a war.

It started when one of Israel’s special units had penetrated 3 km. into Gaza to carry out an “intelligence gathering mission,” which was intended to proceed quietly without contact with the enemy. Maybe the intention was to find out about tunnels, or the location of the Israelis (and bodies) held hostage by Hamas. Or something else. In any event, the force ran into a Hamas checkpoint and aroused suspicion. A firefight broke out and the Israeli commander, a 41-year old sgan aluf (referred to only as “Lt. Colonel M.”), was killed, and another officer “moderately” wounded. The force was extracted with assistance from the air force. Seven Hamas fighters were killed in the incident, one of whom was a battalion commander. The IDF made a point of saying that no Israelis (alive or dead) were in the hands of Hamas.
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November 16, 2018 | 8:39 am | 5 Comments »

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The distracted obsessions of progressive American Jews  

T. Belman. Jews in California hate Trump with a passion. Melanie has the courage to point this out.

They accuse President Trump of sowing social division, hatred and anti-Semitism. They can’t see that that they are themselves effectively enabling social division, hatred and anti-Semitism by their spurious equivalence, tunnel vision and outright double standards.

By Melanie, Phillips, jns

 Having spent the past week or so in Los Angeles, I have been struck once again by the deep anxiety in the American Jewish community over the intensifying demonization of Israel on campus and over self-styled progressive Jews.

I have also been exposed to the even more intense divisions within that community over President Donald Trump. One of the most bizarre conceits among those who hate him is that he’s an anti-Semite, or at the very least knowingly encourages antisemites.

A guest of the Hanukkah celebration at the White House last year told me he had the opportunity to observe the president up close.
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November 16, 2018 | 3:44 am | 3 Comments »

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Acting AG Whitaker: ‘Special Counsel is Required’ To Investigate Clinton Foundation  

By Michael W. Chapman, CNS NEWS

Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general of the United States and a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, said in a 2016 interview that there is enough evidence “in the public domain” to warrant the appointment of a “special prosecutor” to investigate the Clinton Foundation. He added that the Foundation was “clearly a pay-to-play situation” where if you gave money to the Foundation, you got “preferential treatment” at the State Department, which was headed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013.

Hillary Clinton’s emailing of classified documents through her private computer server was a “serious” problem, but the “real ballgame” is “where Clinton Foundation donors were given preferential treatment,” said Whitaker in an Aug. 25, 2016 interview with Breitbart News Daily.
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November 15, 2018 | 4:46 pm | 2 Comments »

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Israel Won’t Bounce Back From Double Whammy of Missile War and Budget Deficit  

While Iron Dome shows its holes, another war is being fought between Israel’s economists and the Finance Ministry

By David Rosenberg, HAARETZ

Missiles from Israel's Iron Dome air defense system destroy incoming rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, Ashkelon, Israel, November 13, 2018.
Missiles from Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system destroy incoming rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, Ashkelon, Israel, November 13, 2018.AFP

To people in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, and certainly in the Galilee, the mini-war with Hamas seems like someone else’s business. As of Tuesday afternoon, around 400 rockets had been fired from Gaza on the Negev, claiming two lives and injuring 85. But if not for the news alerts coming over their smartphones, the rest of Israel would be oblivious to the whole thing.

They shouldn’t be. As I’ve said before, the missile threat is growing rapidly, as just one day of fighting this week demonstrated.

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November 15, 2018 | 1:46 pm | 5 Comments »

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‘Peace’ is not a synonym for ‘surrender’. THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL ESSAY  

The U.S. needs to be persuaded to lead a coalition of armed nations ready to see evil clearly and fight it resolutely

By John Robson, NATIONAL POST,


Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lays a wreath at the Canadian National Vimy Memorial on Nov. 10, 2018, at Vimy Ridge, France.Adrian Wyld/CP

It’s not over yet. The guns may have fallen silent at 11:00 a century ago last Sunday, we may have lost everyone who fought in the “Great War” and nearly everyone who knew them. But its consequences linger on.

Including geopolitically. The Second World War was a continuation of the First World War by other means, made far more poisonous by the rise of Bolshevism and Naziism in a Russia and Germany broken by defeat in the Great War. And the Cold War that resulted still finds echoes in today’s renewed confrontation between Russia and the West.
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November 15, 2018 | 1:03 pm | Comments »

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UK’s May secures cabinet backing for Brexit deal as critics rage  

British PM must now earn support of EU leaders for agreement to exit bloc, before having to steer proposal through fractious parliament

By JILL LAWLESS, TOI

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London on November 14, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May delivers a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London on November 14, 2018. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Theresa May said that she won her Cabinet’s backing for a draft divorce deal with the European Union after a “long, detailed and impassioned” marathon meeting Wednesday.

The breakthrough came as pro-Brexit lawmakers raged against a draft agreement they said would make the UK subservient to the bloc indefinitely.
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November 15, 2018 | 12:42 pm | Comments »

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‘CONTINUOUS WAR’ IS THE MESSAGE OF THE IRANIAN MISSILE STRIKE  

The Iranian Kurds have a rich history, a high degree of political awareness and considerable potential in Iran.

BY MANSOUR PIROTI, JPOST

Missiles and a portrait of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a barrage of missiles into Iraqi Kurdistan on September 8, targeting the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I) headquarters and adjacent refugee camp, killing 16 people and wounding 40 more. The IRGC-linked Fars news agency released footage of strike and justified it as retaliation for an attack on a military post near Mariwan, west of Iran on July 21 – referring to a suspicious attack unlike those previously seen in Kurdish armed resistance against the Islamic Republic associated with the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), one of several armed Kurdish groups.
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November 15, 2018 | 12:19 pm | Comments »

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Greenblatt: Now is the time for peace  

US envoy says the softening of relations between Israel and some Arab countries shows that the time is ripe for a diplomatic breakthrough.

ARUTZ SHEVA

US special envoy for international negotiations Jason Greenblatt published an article this morning in Israel Hayom entitled “Now is the time to make peace and achieve prosperity in the Middle East.”

Greenblatt opened the article by asserting, “The fact that various countries in the Middle East have overlapping interests has still not been internalized. These interests, such as the need to restrain Iran’s negative activities, confront extremism and terrorism, and the challenges associated with water and transportation, create opportunities for cooperation for a more stable and prosperous region.”

However, he said, “One significant obstacle that stands in the way of maximizing the potential in the region in all these areas is the absence of formal and open relations between Israel and its neighbors.”
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November 15, 2018 | 10:58 am | 2 Comments »

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Foreign Office ‘allowed Pakistan mob to dictate Asia Bibi asylum case’  

Home Office urged not to grant asylum out of fears for the safety of consular staff

By Patrick Wintour, THE GUARDIAN

The Foreign Office has been accused of allowing government asylum policy to be dictated to by a Pakistan mob after it was confirmed it urged the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi political asylum in the UK out of fear for the safety of UK consular staff.

Asia Bibi, a Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy, is seeking asylum after threats to her life in Pakistan. The former UK foreign secretary Boris Johnsonwas among many MPs calling for her and her family to be granted sanctuary in Britain.
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November 15, 2018 | 8:48 am | 3 Comments »

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Globalist Soros Pours Money Into Manipulating U.S. Elections  

By Alex Newman, NEWAMERICAN

Billionaire globalist George Soros (shown) has been dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into manipulating American elections in recent years, leaked documents show. While many critics have focused on hisindirect links to a controversial voting-machine company, his electoral scheming goes much deeper, as a review of the documents by PJ Media shows. Rather than tampering with the outcome of particular elections, leaks from Soros’ Open Society apparatus show he has far greater ambitions. Basically, he is seeking to “fundamentally transform America,” as Obama put it, by changing and manipulating the American electorate into supporting globalism, statism, collectivism, and his legions of radical politicians and elected officials. Soros, a self-described atheist, has also been exposed seeking to corrupt Christianity with his radical anti-Christian views. But as awareness of the scheming spreads, the Soros brand is becoming increasingly toxic among Americans from all walks of life.
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November 15, 2018 | 8:22 am | 1 Comment »

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Ilhan Omar Shows Dems Aren’t Interested In Confronting Antisemitism  

By David Harsanyi, FEDERALIST November 14, 2018

Ilhan Omar, one of the first of two Muslim women to be elected to Congress, is a new kind of politician. She’s telegenic. Ideologically progressive. Widely celebrated by a media that’s obsessed with identity politics. She’s the kind of politician who can openly side with Hamas against Israel or spread “Protocols of Zion”-style conspiracies on Twitter, claiming that Jews possess the supernatural ability to hypnotize the world as they unfurl their “evil.”

It’s not surprising, then, that Omar also supports the “boycott, divestment and sanctions” movement (BDS). In a statement to the website Muslim Girl (later confirmed elsewhere), someone on Omar’s staff explains that, yes, “Ilhan believes in and supports the BDS movement, and has fought to make sure people’s right to support it isn’t criminalized. She does however, have reservations on the effectiveness of the movement in accomplishing a lasting solution.”
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November 15, 2018 | 6:55 am | Comments »

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Europe opting for submission to Islam  

By Alex Alexiev, AMERICAN THINKER

Two seemingly unrelated events in Europe over the past 20 days point to what cannot be described other than as the slow suicide of  European civilization. On November 9, Chancellor Merkel gave a speech in Berlin commemorating the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht (lately renamed  Pogromnacht). This 1938 event, which led to the willful destruction of 1400 synagogues, thousands of Jewish stores and the deportation of more than 30,000 Jews to the concentration camps, is widely considered the beginning of the Holocaust. For those familiar with Nazi history, though, the writing had been on the wall long before that.

What Hitler had in mind for the Jews is described in detail in his Mein Kampf and put in practice at the latest by the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935, which excluded Jews from German society, prohibited them from holding public office and marrying Germans and made them, in effect, stateless outcasts in their own country. As if to make sure that modern Holocaust doubters and anti-Semites, like labor leader Jeremy Corbin of the UK, have no place to hide, Hitler explained in detail his plans to annihilate the Jews to his military commanders in his Obersalzberg speech of August 22, 1939. “Who, after all,” said he, “speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians.”
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November 14, 2018 | 8:30 pm | 1 Comment »

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AP sources: Trump mulling a wide-ranging shakeup  

T. Belman. On top of all that, here is some more bad news for Trump:

1. Fox News to back CNN in its lawsuit against Trump.
2. KELLYANNE’S HUSBAND LAUNCHES ANTI-TRUMP GROUP FOR CONSERVATIVE ATTORNEYS
3. SINCE ELECTION DAY: Democrats Pick Off Over a Dozen GOP House Seats and 2 Senate Seats… And They’re Going for More
4. They’re Here!!! Caravan Migrants Reach US Border at San Diego, Climb Fence
5. Robinson was not granted a visa to come to America to speak to Republican law-makers this week.

AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is weighing an administration-wide shakeup as he looks to prepare his White House for divided government, but it is unclear who is going and who is staying.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was thought to be out as soon as this week, according to two people with knowledge of the issue, but she is now likely to remain in the post for a longer period because there is no obvious successor in place.

Trump has soured on Nielsen and White House chief of staff John Kelly, in part over frustration that his administration is not doing more to address what he has called a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the people. But the scope of the contemplated changes is far broader, as Trump gears up for a wave of Democratic oversight requests and to devote more effort to his own re-election campaign.
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November 14, 2018 | 8:10 pm | 1 Comment »

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Conquer Gaza Now  

 By Shmuel Sackett, ZEHUT

I am typing these words as Hamas rockets rain down on Israel. Millions of Jews are in danger. Schools in southern Israel have been cancelled and most businesses are closed as well. Unfortunately, this is nothing new. This is a rerun of a rerun of a rerun… You thought you were tired of watching Rocky 6? Try living Gaza 43.

A little background: I was born and raised in New York but my family was very Zionistic. Israel was always at the center of our lives. We followed the news very closely – especially during the 6 Day War and near tragic Yom Kippur War. We were eager to find out what was happening, which was not so easy in the 60’s and 70’s when news reports about Israel were limited. There was no cable television, no internet and no social media.
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November 14, 2018 | 7:42 pm | 4 Comments »

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