Wall Street Journal,
Sept. 17, 2014

American bombs aren’t yet falling on Syria, but on Tuesday Chuck Hagel suggested they soon will. “This plan includes targeted actions against ISIL safe havens in Syria, including its command and control, logistics capabilities and infrastructure,” the Secretary of Defense told the Senate. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, added that the attacks “will be persistent and sustainable.” Let’s hope so, because no campaign to destroy the Islamic State can succeed without waging a campaign on both sides of an Iraqi-Syrian border that the terrorist group long ago erased in the name of its caliphate. The Islamic State’s capital is in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which it has held for over a year. It has recently scored major military victories against Bashar Assad’s regime and moderate rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), particularly in the embattled city of Aleppo.
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By Michael Ordman, JPOST

Israel’s enemies like to conceal the fact that the Jewish State is one of the smallest of nations – dwarfed by its massive Arab neighbors.  Israel’s tiny geographic size contrasts with the immense benefit it brings to the world. And from recent news articles it is noticeable that many of Israel’s greatest and potential successes started very small indeed.

By Richard Baehr, ISRAEL HAYOM

In American politics these days, if you identify yourself as a Democrat or a ?Republican, or a liberal or a conservative, or perhaps as someone on the Left or on ?the Right, a whole range of policy views are now attached to these descriptors. ?Along the continuum from Democrat to liberal to leftist, the support for Israel ?declines. Similarly, support for Israel grows as one moves from generic Republican ?to conservative or on the Right. ?

Among members of Congress, the great majority of Democrats and Republicans in ?the U.S. House and the Senate are considered supporters of the U.S.-Israel ?relationship by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Typically, the definition of support has ?meant voting for the foreign aid bill, in which military aid to Israel is a significant ?though declining slice of the total bill, and signing onto various resolutions that ?express the sentiment of the House or Senate on some issue impacting Israel. In ?general, AIPAC has felt it most important to count a large number of members as ?supporters, and hence has expected far less from them in terms of real support if ?the going gets tougher.
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Mahmoud Al-Zahar says terror group won’t renew attacks after September 26 deadline for talks, unless Israel fires first; criticizes political leader Mashaal for relocating to Qatar rather than Beirut

BY ELHANAN MILLER, TOI September 18, 2014,

The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is open-ended and will not be terminated by Hamas next week, at the one-month deadline for the start of long-term ceasefire talks, a senior Hamas official in Gaza said on Thursday.

“The ceasefire continues and is not one month long,” Mahmoud al-Zahar, a Hamas hardliner and former foreign minister in the government of Ismail Haniyeh, told Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar. “But if the occupation attacks, we will retaliate.”

Israeli and Palestinian delegations are expected to return to Cairo in the coming days to negotiate the details of a ceasefire signed on August 26 to end Operation Protective Edge. Hamas’s deputy political bureau chief Moussa Abu Marzouk told the Al-Quds daily that his movement is still waiting for an Egyptian invitation which should arrive by Thursday “at the latest.” Read more…

Promoting democracy is a euphemism for denying Israel the right to be a Jewish state. It is so upsetting that such liberal left wing causes have many sources of finance including countries in the EU and philanthropies in America. At the same time right wing NGO’s are always short for funds, including Women in Green, Regevim, David Bedein’s Center for Near East Policy Research  and Martin Sherman’s Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. Check them out. Ted Belman

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen | Sep. 18, 2014 | 9:43 AM |  2

Two unfortunate lessons for the global BDS movement: White rule in South Africa didn’t end because of boycotts, and Israel isn’t like the old South Africa.

By David Rosenberg, HAARETZ | Sep. 18, 2014 | 2:00 PM

A mural calling for a boycott Israeli goods in the al-Azzeh refugee camp near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, September 17, 2014. Photo by AFP

When the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement talks about Israel, the word “apartheid” is never far away.

Associating the Jewish state with a racist regime inspires supporters, for whom white-ruled South Africa is the epitome of evil. It’s better than calling Israelis “Nazis,” which remains a distant second-favorite adjective for Israel, but is too controversial. Accusing the Jews of acting like their worst oppressors doesn’t sit well with many and opens up BDS supporters to charges of anti-Semitism. Read more…

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69 Percent of Americans Support Using U.S. Troops to Prevent Iran From Getting Nukes

By Daniel Wiser, FREE BEACON

A majority of Americans continue to say they want the United States to assume an active role in global affairs after more than a decade of wars in the Middle East, according to a new survey released this week.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they would back the deployment of U.S. troops to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Large majorities also favored actions that do not typically involve ground troops, such as air strikes or drone strikes against suspected terrorists, as well as sending U.S. forces to prevent genocide or provide humanitarian relief.

The survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 58 percent of Americans “think it will be best for the future of the country if we take an active part in world affairs.” That number has remained high throughout 40 years of polling by the Chicago Council, though it has dipped since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read more…

An interview with Jonathan Schanzer, vice-president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an expert on terrorist financing.

JPOST

Turkey is the eastern flank of NATO. Qatar is an oil-rich Gulf State which houses a major American air base and is the headquarters of the United States Air Force’s Central Command.

Qatar and Turkey both gave sanctuary to the Muslim Brotherhood after it was ousted from Egypt, and both currently support the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Hamas’s overseas command center is based in Turkey, and the US has been unable to persuade Turkey to stop Islamic State (IS) from selling oil on the Turkish black market.

Paradoxically, Qatar and Turkey are considered by the American administration as strong allies in the war against Islamic extremism.

Until the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Iran was the largest supporter of Hamas. When the Muslim Brotherhood fell to General Abdel Fattah Sisi in a coup, Hamas turned to Qatar and Turkey as its major benefactors.
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Read this article carefully. It was a press release by AP. I excised the bullshit. It says “up to 800″and “in the coming months”.  The donor conference hasn’t even taken place yet. Nor has negotiations in Cairo over opening up the borders and demilitarization started. Israel agreed to this in part to induce Hamas to maintain the ceasefire. Even so there are many caveats. This deal was agreed to by the PA, Israel and the UN. Hamas was not involved. Ted Belman

Associated Press

A deal reached on war-battered Gaza’s reconstruction is set to be implemented in the coming months, with the amount of building materials entering the territory expected to quadruple, a UN official said Wednesday, in the first details of the agreement to emerge.

James Rawley, a UN Mideast envoy, said that under a mechanism agreed to by the Palestinians, Israel and the UN, up to 800 truckloads of construction materials will enter Gaza per day – a jump from the 200 or so trucks that enter now, he said.

“This facilitates recovery and reconstruction of Gaza and we’re hoping that this step in the right direction will set the stage for an even more meaningful opening of the crossings,” Rawley, the deputy UN envoy for the Mideast peace process, told The Associated Press.

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The Israel Project

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani used the occasion of a state visit to Berlin to assure German Chancellor Angela Merkel that Doha “has never and will never support terror organizations,” after months of growing international consternation regarding Doha’s alleged role in diplomatically and militarily supporting a range of Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State (IS) and Hamas. 

The outlet noted that German Development Minister Gerd Muller had just last month accused Qatar of being the country that “arms [and] finances IS troops,” triggering a not insignificant diplomatic incident that ended with Germany’s foreign ministry apologizing for “misunderstandings.” The apology triggered a wave of skepticism and criticism from German media outlets and politicians. Read more…

Preface by Michael Diamond, Toronto.
I cannot know whether Obama is willfully hurting the US through his actions, or is doing so simply because he has a worldview which defies logic and ignores facts.

Take the latest utterances- a well crafted speech about ISIS and the need to confront it, with conditions, which includes a comment that ISIS is not Islamic.

So let me get this straight.  This man, elected as the leader of the most powerful country in the world by alot of people who he clearly took for a ride (and still does in a lot of cases) does not think that an organization that calls itself Islamic, and identifies as being Islamic, is in fact Islamic.  That is bizarre thinking, even before you examine Islam more closely.
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I grew up in Canada in the forties and fifties and well remember the discrimination and totally supported the fight against it. But I had no quarrel with the anti-discrimination law which allowed landlords to discriminate when renting apartments in four plexes or less. In a way they considered it personal space rather than public space as in a whole apartment building. This legislation follows the same principle but expands the definition of personal space to small communities. I am all for it and more. A family such as this one should not be forced upon Jewish communities. It would be too off putting for the members of the community. There is no need for them to live in such communities. Let them live in Arab communities. I am against discrimination based on the color of one’s skin but not against discrimination based on the life style or religion of the applicants. Why force a secular or Muslim person on an orthodox community? I am against discrimination in the workplace but in favour of discrimination when choosing ones neighbours. Its not like those discriminated against have no where to live.  Ted Belman

The law allows acceptance committees ‘to bar residents who do not suit the lifestyle and social fabric of the community,’ in communities with fewer than 400 families.

By Eric Shawn, FOX NEWS

The largest gathering of the Iranian resistance starts Friday with the annual convention of the Council of Resistance of Iran. The sponsors expect 100,000 people to assemble in a massive hall outside Paris for hours of speeches, demonstrations and protests aimed at toppling the Iranian government.

“I am confident that the mullahs’ religious dictatorship ruling Iran will not last in the 21st century and will be overthrown,” predicts the group’s leader, Maryam Rajavi. “It really begs logic to expect this religious dictatorship, the founder of terrorism and fundamentalism in the whole of the region and is seeking nuclear weapons, to take international policy hostage, to continue and endure.”

In an exclusive Fox News interview, her first for American television, Rajavi methodically laid out what she sees as Tehran’s intentions: to spread radical fundamentalism, obtain a nuclear weapon and do whatever it can to eliminate opponents, including continued executions of her supporters to silence the opposition.
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Institute for Contemporary Affairs 
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

By Pinhas Inbari, JCPA

Vol. 14, No. 27    August 14, 2014

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I hear otherwise from a well placed reliable source. Gaza will not be rebuilt. Money is hard to come by and no one wants to waste it on rebuilding Gaza.

Israel’s policy is to sustain the status quo. There is no need to do anything that would upset any body in the international community. The PA is trying desperately to get back on the front page but is being upstaged by ISIS. Time is on our side. The PA is falling apart. Palestinians and Gazans are leaving for Europe and elsewhere.

Israel alone will attack Iran and use an airstrip in Saudi Arabia coming and going. There is close cooperation between them.

There is talk of building them an offshore seaport or allowing them to use Ashdod. It is thought that such a port will result in many more Arabs leaving.

The fact that Hamas worked quickly to arrest the group who fired the rocket, is testimony that they don’t want a to break the cease fire. Ted Belman

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

By Daniel Pipes, National Review Online

Is a united and independent Kurdistan a prospect we should welcome, or a dangerous idea that would create more problems in the Middle East than it would solve?

The future flag of an independent state?

 Philip Jenkins, a distinguished professor of history at Baylor University, sees the prospect of a grand Kurdistan, with Iraqi, Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian components, as “actively terrifying.” I’d like to assure him that it also has the potential to be benign.

Professor Jenkins expresses his fears in an article entitled “The Case Against a Unified Kurdistan,” which happens to be a direct reply to a recent NRO article of mine, “Hello, Kurdistan.”
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