As Israel’s security cabinet steers the battle against Hamas, Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid are proving solidly supportive of Netanyahu — because they want to see Abbas rehabilitated

Shaul Mofaz, head of Kadima, also says Gaza demilitarization is vital

Janathan Tobin, COMMENTARY, says.“The only way to end the conflict is to demilitarize Gaza. The only way to do that is to eliminate Hamas.”

BY HAVIV RETTIG GUR, TOI

I started a new Poll in the right column.  What do you think?

By David Horoqwitz, TOI  July 29/14 4:23 PM

The PM is clear-eyed about the danger Hamas poses to Israel. So why, despite considerable pressure, is he manifestly disinclined to order a full-scale ground offensive?

[..] Indeed, it has been clear since the days before this conflict began that Netanyahu has not wanted to launch a full-scale war against Hamas. He repeatedly offered “quiet for quiet” when the rocket fire first escalated, immediately accepted the Egyptian ceasefire proposal two weeks ago, agreed to a series of “humanitarian time-outs” which were then breached by Hamas over recent days, and waved away what he called the “background noise” from those, like Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who have been loudly urging him to smash Hamas and deriding him for his hesitancy.

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By Ted Belman

By my count, Israel is losing the war. The major indicator of this is that Israel is begging for a ceasefire which gives them something while Hamas is refusing a ceasefire other than on her terms.

Israeli leadership is vacillating on what to do  while Hamas leadership is determined.

Hamas remains on the offensive and is taking the fight to Israel. This is evident in the fact that the majority of soldier deaths over this weekend were on Israeli soil.

Hamas remains determined even though they have lost over 500 of their fighters while Israel is wobbling with the loss of 10% of that number.Israel had no choice but to invade in order to stop the rocket fire..  As an after thought Israel has focused on the tunnels and the need to demolish them. Read more…

The military is advancing into more densely populated areas, with close air support, says IDF Radio. Two soldiers lightly hurt so far.

By Gil Ronen, INN,  7/30/2014, 8:32 AM

Senior IDF commanders contradict Netanyahu’s claims, say military warned leadership of full extent of tunnel’s threats way before current operation began; urge clearer orders for Gaza operation.

Yoav Zitun, Israel News

The IDF is demanding Israel’s political leadership reach a decision regarding the next steps of the ground offensive in Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile a senior IDF commander told Ynet that the army had warned the government about the full extent of the threat posed by Gaza tunnels, contradicting claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

IDF soldiers looking into a terror tunnel in Gaza (Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)

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Steven Stotsky, TIME

The terrorist group casts Israel’s military as indiscriminate and civilian deaths as disproportionate, but Hamas-affiliated fatality figures should be viewed with suspicion

An informational battle of competing messages directed at international audiences parallels the military fighting between Israel and Hamas. Accompanying a barrage of wrenching images are Palestinian fatality statistics alleging disproportionate numbers of non-combatants. These figures are crucial because they form the basis of accusations that Israel uses excessive and indiscriminate force.

Fatality figures provided by Hamas and other groups should be viewed with suspicion. Not only do Israeli figures cast doubt on claims that the vast majority of fatalities are non-combatants, but a careful review of Palestinian sources also raises doubts.
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WIZBANG

The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens has an excellent, clarifying piece explaining why if you support the so-called Palestinians that you are pretty much a moron, and an immoral moron at that. And he is dead on, too.

In his July 28 piece, “Palestine Makes You Dumb,” Stephens made the salient point that in a war set in an urban area, civilians die. Period. It happened in WWII, it happened in Iraq, it’s happening in Gaza. It is what happens when an enemy hides its facilities among a civilian population.

That latter part is key. Civilians are not dying because Israel is mean and evil. Civilians are dying because Hamas operates among the civilian populace.

Stephens goes on with another extremely important point. He points out that this body count we keep getting of dead Palestinian civilians is most likely completely bogus. Why? Because the media is using the numbers supplied them by… Hamas! The one group that has a vested interest in making sure there is a large civilian death rate–whether there really is one or not–is the one “reporting” those statistics. And the western media is lapping it up.

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ZOA PRESS RELEASE

European Union Wants Ceasefire With Hamas Disarmament,

Obama Wants Immediate Ceasefire Without Hamas Disarmament 

Abbas’ P.A. Follows Obama & Backs Pro-Hamas Ceasefire

New York, July 29, 2014: The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has pointed to the astonishing fact that, while the European Union (EU) has called for an Israeli/Hamas ceasefire that encompassed Hamas disarmament, President Barack Obama disagrees; instead, he seeks an immediate ceasefire in which Hamas is not disarmed. Also, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA), which had kept a low profile on the issue, has now come out with a hardened, pro-Hamas position that echoes President Obama’s position on disarming Hamas only within the framework of a peace settlement.
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US president markedly unfriendly, interrupted prime minister as he attempted to push unfavorable truce on Israel.

By Ari Soffer, INN
First Publish: 7/29/2014, 9:56 PM / Last Update: 7/29/2014, 10:50 PM

Arutz Sheva

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has asked for fresh US help in trying to broker a ceasefire in Gaza, top US diplomat John Kerry said Tuesday.

“Last night we talked, and the prime minister talked to me about an idea and a possibility of a ceasefire. He raised it with me, as he has consistently,” Kerry said.

Netanyahu had said he “would embrace a ceasefire that permits Israel to protect itself against the tunnels and obviously not be disadvantaged for the great sacrifice they have made thus far.”

You could just scream. Netanyahu sure doesn’t want to go to the next stage let alone to bring Hamas to its knees.

Don’t settle for the tunnels.Even if you don’t say that you want to destroy Hamas, keep going. Keep going until Hamas agrees to demilitarize or until you have destroyed everything.

By Rabbi YY jacobson, YESHIVA NET

Over the last few days, As Israeli troops entered Gaza to search for the Hamas tunnels and rocket launching sites, 32 Israeli soldiers have been killed. Many civilians in Gaza lost their lives too.

I am afraid Israel may be repeating a mistake it has made thrice before.

On July 26, 2006, nine Israeli soldiers died and 27 others were injured as they were searching homes for Hezbollah fighters in the hardest day of fighting in southern Lebanon since the war began two weeks earlier. The Israeli press reported at the time that officers in the Israeli army brigades charged that the IDF employed insufficient force before the soldiers were deployed. Once civilians had been told to leave the town, the officers said, the army should have regarded Bint Jbail as a battlefield and destroyed from the air any home where Hezbollah guerrillas were suspected of hiding, instead of sending the soldiers into the line of fire.
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By Prof Efraim Inbar, ISRAEL HAYOM

By Chloe Valdary — Jul 28, 2014

The student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is prominent on many college campuses, preaching a mantra of “Freeing Palestine.” It masquerades as though it were a civil rights group when it is not. Indeed, as an African-American, I am highly insulted that my people’s legacy is being pilfered for such a repugnant agenda. It is thus high time to expose its agenda and lay bare some of the fallacies they peddle.

• If you seek to promulgate the legacy of early Islamic colonialists who raped and pillaged the Middle East, subjugated the indigenous peoples living in the region, and foisted upon them a life of persecution and degradation—you do not get to claim the title of “Freedom Fighter.”

• If you support a racist doctrine of Arab supremacism and wish (as a corollary of that doctrine) to destroy the Jewish state, you do not get to claim that the prejudices you peddle are forms of legitimate “resistance.”
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Republicans and Democrats rally in Washington to support IDF campaign in the Gaza Strip

TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF

Members of Congress are falling over one another to show their support for Israel.

While much of the rest of the world watches the Gaza war in horror and scrambles for a ceasefire, US lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration to take no action that puts pressure on Israel to halt its military operations, which began July 8 to stem rocket fire on Israeli civilians and counter a vast network of tunnels used to launch cross-border attacks. Read more…

By Thomas Sowell, Townhall

[..] According to the New York Times, Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping for a cease-fire to “open the door to Israeli and Palestinian negotiations for a long-term solution.” President Obama has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to have an “immediate, unconditional humanitarian cease-fire” — again, with the idea of pursuing some long-lasting agreement.

If this was the first outbreak of violence between the Palestinians and the Israelis, such hopes might make sense. But where have the U.N., Kerry and Obama been during all these decades of endlessly repeated Middle East carnage?

The Middle East must lead the world in cease-fires. If cease-fires were the road to peace, the Middle East would easily be the most peaceful place on the planet. Read more…

Rubio: Civilian deaths in Gaza ‘100 percent Hamas’ fault’

By Ted Belman

When Kerry turned his back on the Egyptian proposal and instead presented a proposal of his own in collaboration with Turkey and Qatar and then held the Paris conference to which others were invited but not Egypt, Israel, S. Arabia  or the PA, the excluded parties were livid.

They saw the Kerry initiative as an attempt to improve the standing of the MB at the expense of the PLO (PA).   They believe that the US has embraced the MB as a means to fight more extreme Islamists like al Qaeda and al Nusra.

They are right.

Apparently a deal had been worked out by Egypt, Israel and the PA to give Hamas all they wanted providing they disarm and let the PA govern. The deal didn’t get to see the light of day.

All this is contained in a MEMRI post.

MEMRI Special Dispatch No.5809 

by Rabbi Manis Friedman

In March of 2004, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon justified recent attacks against Hamas by declaring that “the Jewish nation has a right to defend itself…” Honestly, it was painful to hear, not because the statement was a justification of violence, but rather because the leader of a democratic, multi-ethnic State of Israel presumed those military actions required any justification at all. Actually, Israel did not have the “right” to take those measures, it had the obligation.

One of the most critical purposes of a government is to protect its citizens. If a government would, for whatever reason, lose the ability or the will to protect the governed, it would effectively forfeit the right to govern and any expectation of loyalty from own citizens. If the government can’t promise protection, it can’t expect allegiance. Read more…