Robert K. Vincent, THE TRUTH PROVIDER 

Writing in the Wall Street Journal on June 17, Bret Stephens, in his column entitled, “The Pace of Obama’s Disasters”, made a strange comment in passing in his otherwise excellent appraisal of the Obama administration’s foreign policy failures, which read as follows:

“…Yet when it comes to leadership, we have our very own Clement Attlee at the top, eager to subtract the burdens of international responsibility so he can get on with the only thing that really animates him, which is building social democracy at home.”[Emphasis added.]

This is a common sentiment among many commentators today: Obama ‘doesn’t care about foreign policy’.  However, a closer look at his presidency would reveal quite the opposite.  Obama cares more about foreign policy than anything else, so long as it relates to Israel. This focus of his on Israel, moreover, is hardly benign; here too, it is quite the opposite. Indeed, this writer would submit that Obama’s intention to weaken our ally, Israel, is thecentral feature of his presidency. Read more…

By Elan Journo, BREITBART

Even as a proposed truce fails, and Israel’s military is set to “intensify” retaliation against the barrage of Hamas rockets, the admonitions have started. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed “serious doubt” that Israel’s military strikes comply with international norms of war. But it is the laws of war themselves that must be questioned. 

The international laws of war are widely esteemed as necessary to civilize warfare by limiting the humanitarian impact of armed conflict. They mandate, for example, the avoidance of harm to noncombatants and the “proportional” use of retaliatory force.   Read more…

Erbil to form joint operation room with US 

Kurd Press

Iraqi northern region of Kurdistan is planned to establish a joint operation room with the US and reports of the room will soon be released, a Kurdish official said.

Peshmerga Ministry Media Chief Halgurd Hekmat said the possibility of forming the room has been discussed and due reports will be released soon.

Denying the possibility of any US-Peshmerga forces’ joint operation in Mosul, Hekmat said it is too early to talks about Mosul’s release as the attempt depends on US stance and Kurdistan Region’s agreements and its leaders’ accords with Baghdad leaders.

The US forces will be in Erbil for coordination not for war, he said, continuing that due to Iraq crisis there are US military advisors in Kurdistan Region and “their presence is reassuring for us.”

By Frances Martel, BREITBART

In a sign that the Kurdish ethnic minority in the Middle East is increasingly closer to establishing a sovereign state, the Turkish government, a longtime opponent of the Kurdish independence movement, passed a law this week allowing peace talks with Kurdish rebels in the nation.

According to Al Jazeera, Turkish President Abdullah Gul approved legislation that would allow the Turkish government to meet and engage in peace talks with Kurdish leaders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an organization Turkey has labeled as a terrorist group for years and banned from operating in the nation. Its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, has engaged in minimal talks with the government since 2012, the outlet reports, but the new law is the first official legislation that would allow an opening for such discussions. Read more…

By Lauri B Regan, AMERICAN THINKER

Sitting in my office almost forty floors above ground level in midtown Manhattan last week, I was astounded to be drawn away from my work by chants of “Free free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”  Even up in the clouds, the demonstrators’ voices were clear and loud, almost as if they were just outside my window.

Based on the level of violent protests taking place across the globe, the pro-Palestinians in New York seemed comparably tame – yet no less offensive.  For if there is any question that chants of “from the river to the sea” are wishful thinking for the annihilation of the Jewish State of Israel, the calls for “Death to Israel” were anything but vague.

Domestically, pro-Palestinians are using Israel’s defensive military incursion into Gaza as an excuse to let loose on the Jews.  In San Francisco, 300 anti-Israel protestors surrounded and threatened 30 peaceful pro-Israel demonstrators.  In addition to the usual chants, they screamed, “Long live the intifada, we support the intifada,” calling for violent uprising against Israelis.

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by Gabriel Scheinmann and Raphael Cohen, The Jewish Policy Center
The National Interest
July 17, 2014

“Over time, by achieving modest gains, at an acceptable cost, and with wide international support, Israel can hope to exhaust Hamas.”

In the provocative documentary The Gatekeepers, Avraham Shalom, former director of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, articulated the common critique of Israeli security policy: “there was no strategy, just tactics.” He is not alone. For the Obama administration and much of the Israeli political left, the absence of a two-state solution constitutes a lack of strategic foresight. As Secretary of State John Kerry derisively warned, “the alternative to getting back to the talks is the potential of chaos. . . .I mean does Israel want a third Intifada?” Likewise, outspoken Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman bemoaned, “every minister in the government has a strategy, but the Israeli government has no strategy.” For him, as well as many on the Israeli right, a true strategy consists of Israel “go[ing] all the way” and “eradicat[ing] the Hamas regime in Gaza.” Superficially, the fact that Operation Protective Edge is Israel’s fourth in nine years against Hamas reinforces the “tactics, but no strategy” assessment. Read more…

By Mordechai Kedar, INN

Every organization, like every group, has goals and objectives, and every group organizes its objectives according to its own priorities, with these objectives and their order of importance serving to reflect the group’s culture. Different groups have different objectives and different priorities, and it is the interaction between groups that exposes the objectives of each of them as well as their individual priorities and cultures.

Disputes between groups occur when their goals are diametrically opposed.

For example, the Jewish people living in Israel see the Land of Israel as their land and their primary goal is to survive there forever, while the so-called (Pan) Arab Nation has chosen destroying Israel as one of its goals, but not as the chief one. The reason that Israel still survives in the Middle East is that its destruction –for the time being – is not the main thrust of the Arab Nation, which has not united in an attempt to destroy her.

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by Daniel Greenfield, FPM

By Herb  Keinon, JPOST

The US public’s support for Israel is at near-record levels, according to a Pew Research Center poll, despite the current violence and images of the destruction in the Gaza Strip playing out nightly on television screens across America.

Furthermore, the poll – carried out from July 8 to July 14 – indicates that support for Israel among blacks and Hispanics – demographic groups to which Israeli advocacy groups are increasingly reaching out – is more than double what it is for the Palestinians.

White evangelicals are – with the possible exception of Jews, who were not a demographic studied in this survey – the most sympathetic for Israel, while those unaffiliated with any church are the least supportive.
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By Ted Belman

The latest news report:

Israel on Wednesday accepted a UN proposal for a five-hour unilateral humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow for relief aid into Gaza.

IDF sources said the lull in the fighting would go into effect on Thursday at 10 a.m

There is no need for a “humanitarian pause.” It is really to facilitate mediation efforts to get a cease fire.

Israel called up another 8,000 reservists to bolster the 40,000 already called up. Netanyahu repeated that Israel would  “use as much force as necessary to restore the quiet.”

Obama says that they are doing as much as possible to restore the 2012 ceasefire. What this means is that Hamas will have to be bribed with some kind of accomplishment to get their approval.

Israel must reject any concession to Hamas but will be hard pressed to do so seeing as she has been asking for help in restoring calm. As for Netanyahu’s desire for the international community to work toward the demilitarization of Gaza. its a pipe dream.

Why isn’t anyone in the international community demanding the the terrorist Hamas be destroyed? Why isn’t Netanyahu?

It seems to me that if Israel was really going to attack Iran when talks fail, that she would want to finish off the threat from Hamas first. The fact that she doesn’t suggests no intention to attack Iran.

 Patrick Goodenough  7-16-14 CNSNEWS

By Gabriel Scheinmann, TOWER

If Washington stopped trying to win over the Sunni Arab world, it could create a strong web of alliances with groups that are about to rise in prominence and strength.

In the Middle East, the Arabs are king, sometimes quite literally. The term “Middle East” is a geographic label, broadly describing an area from the Moroccan shores to the Hindu Kush, but it is often referred to—erroneously—as the “Arab World” because of its politically dominant inhabitants. The advent of Islam was an Arab phenomenon and its holiest sites lie in the doyen of Arab puritanism—Saudi Arabia. Arabic is the region’s lingua franca. All but five modern Middle Eastern states have Sunni Arab majorities, Sunni Islam being the dominant religious sect among the Arabs. A Middle Eastern minority is thus, by definition, one that is neither Sunni, nor Arab.
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By Prof Ron Breiman, ISRAEL HAYOM

Israel must not become a paper tiger. Had Tuesday’s short-lived unilateral cease-fire lasted, Israel would have not won; nor would it have restored deterrence. It would ended the flare-up in the south with a draw that would have allowed the terrorists to regroup and resume hostilities later. Such a denouement to a conflict between a regional superpower and a terrorist organization would have redefined the balance of power in this conflict. This would have not been the first time Israel and a terrorist organization are on a level playing field. Recall Israel’s humiliating surrender in 1993, when the Jewish state and Yasser Arafat’s terrorist organization were ostensibly at par with one another as they signed Oslo I accord.
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Hamas doesn’t particularly care about having a Palestinian State. It wants to destroy the Jewish State and is willing to die in the process.
It wants to die in such a way that Israel will die, too.

By David P. Goldman (Spengler), PJ MEDIA

It’s like the old joke: Why do Jewish men die before their wives? Because they want to. Civilizations for the most part die because they no longer want to live. That is the nub of my 2011 book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam Is Dying, Too). They cease to believe in their own future and distract themselves from the prospect of extinction as best they can. Hellenistic Greece was the first universal demographic disaster; it gave us prototypes of the steam engine and the computer (via Hero of Alexandria) as well as the modern literary forms. But even wealthy men exposed their daughters and the population imploded. When Aristotle taught that men naturally seek the good, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence had already turned against him. Most men seek nothingness. Soon the last surviving remnants of the classical world will disappear. In another generation, more people will speak Hebrew than Greek.
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INSS raises many alternatives and issues but they don’t recommend invading. For them its anything but.

Both resolutions came about as a result of Israel’s predicament. She had to take what she could get bad as it was. INSS seems to be saying have a short lull in the campaign to try and negotiate an international effort that will in fact disarm Hamas. But the problem with this is that the US doesn’t want to get rid of Hamas or even to disarm them. In fact all over the ME, the US is trying to work with Islamists. Ted Belman

INSS Insight No. 574, July 16, 2014
Oded Eran

An end to Operation Protective Edge with resolutions and understandings similar to the above-mentioned Security Council resolutions would constitute a political and security failure for Israel. They will not weaken Hamas, which in any case will portray the situation at the end of the fighting as a success, nor will they prevent Hamas’ rearmament; furthermore, a large proportion of the rockets launched against Israel are now self-produced. Only a radical change in the behavior of the various actors in the Gaza theater is likely to bring about a change in the situation, and the chances of such a change are not good.

Given the history of its military campaigns in recent years, Israel likely launched Operation Protective Edge bereft of a political exit strategy, a set of political goals, or any preliminary decision about what constitutes a required minimal political outcome. Consequently, Israel stands to emerge from the current round of hostilities with no significant achievement save new internal debates and frustrations that will continue until the next round. The enemy will buy itself another lull that it can use to recharge its batteries, restock its inventories, and rearm in advance of the next conflict.
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I thought something was being discussed because the invasion didn’t start already. On no conditions should Hamas get anything. Israel must invade. Ted Belman

By JPOST.COM STAFF,YASSER OKBI/ MAARIV HASHAVUA

Channel 2 reports Hamas seeks long-term truce; Its terms are the release of Schalit deal prisoners who were re-arrested, the opening of Gaza border crossings, and an end to Israeli naval blockade of Gaza.

One day after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire accepted by Israel, but rejected by Hamas, fell through, the terrorist organization proposed a 10-year end to hostilities in return for its conditions being met by Israel, Channel 2 reported Wednesday.

Hamas’s conditions were the release of re-arrested Palestinian prisoners who were let go in the Schalit deal, the opening of Gaza-Israel border crossings in order to allow citizens and goods to pass through, and international supervision of the Gazan seaport in place of the current Israeli blockade.
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Clear and concise, the steps towards achieving quiet in Gaza.

MK Moshe Feiglin, INN

Ultimatum – One warning from the Prime Minister of Israel to the enemy population, in which he announces that Israel is about to attack military targets in their area and urges those who are not involved and do not wish to be harmed to leave immediately. Sinai is not far from Gaza and they can leave. This will be the limit of Israel’s humanitarian efforts. Hamas may unconditionally surrender and prevent the attack.

Attack – Attack the entire ‘target bank’ throughout Gaza with the IDF’s maximum force (and not a tiny fraction of it) with all the conventional means at its disposal. All the military and infrastructural targets will be attacked with no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage’. It is enough that we are hitting exact targets and that we gave them advance warning.  Read more…

By Ted Belman

I received an email for as associate who has intimate knowledge of the ME:

ALMONITOR is one of several publications that present the Middle East ,generally through Arab eyes. I’m attaching 3 articles to give you the flavor of Hamas thinking. Basically, Hamas does not feel defeated regardless of the reports to the contrary in various Israeli publications which cite military and government officials.

Israel is not only trying to counter Hamas is also trying to reestablish a deterrence posture which will preclude Hezbollah and any other entity from future attacks against Israel. 

1.Why did Hamas ignore the cease-fire?  Shlomi Eldar 7-15-14;

2.Hamas: no cease-fire until siege of Gaza lifted  Adnan Abu Amer 7-14-14;

3. Palestinians struggle to compete with Israeli PR machine  Daoud Kuttab 7-14-14\

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WEDNESDAY, JULY 16TH   

By Joshua Levitt, ALGEMEINER

Data published by Al Jazeera on Monday shows that in its ongoing operation in Gaza Israel killed mainly combatant-age males, not women or children, according to CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, contradicting media reports that tried to paint Israel’s Operation Protective Edge as indiscriminately killing civilians.

In a study published on Monday, CAMERA said that a close read of the data“shows that, as in past hostilities, the fatalities are disproportionately [compared to the overall population] among young males, which corresponds with the characteristics of combatants. Males over 40 years old are also disproportionately represented. Some of the fatalities in those over 40 years of age likely represent senior members of terrorist organizations.”
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By HERB KEINON, JPOST
07/16/2014 03:18

Israel expects many Hamas facilities will be destroyed by Operation Protective Edge, but then wants the international community to become involved in taking measures – as yet undefined – to prevent them from being rebuilt.

In the early hours of the day, however, when it appeared – at least in theory – as if the Egyptian- brokered cease-fire might lead to an end to Hamas’s rockets and Operation Protective Edge, diplomatic officials said that the security cabinet agreed to the Egyptian proposal in order to “give an opportunity for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.”

The idea of a demilitarized Gaza Strip is an idea that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his spokesmen began talking about last week, and that he has raised in his numerous conversations over the last few days with leaders from around the world.
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