Sunday, June 15, 2014

International Community Should Intervene to Stop Israeli Collective
Punishment against Palestinians, says Government

RAMALLAH, June 15, 2014 (WAFA – PLO news agency) – Spokesperson for the Consensus Government, Ehab Bessaiso, condemned in a statement Sunday, the Israeli military occupation’s attacks against unarmed civilians in the West Bank and Gaza.

He condemned the latest air strikes on the Gaza Strip, which led to the injury of several citizens, including a woman in Rafah, and the arrest campaign waged by the Israeli occupation against Palestinian citizens in the West Bank, which included more than 100 citizens, among them Legislative Council members.
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DEBKAfile Special Report June 15, 2014, 9:44 AM (IDT)

Five days after their disappearance, heavy IDF Special Forces units are tightening the siege on the Palestinian terrorist organization, which snatched Naftali Frenkel, 16, Gil-Ad Sha’ar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19, Thursday night. Early Sunday, June 15, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon ordered a curfew clamped down on the Hebron district and the shutdown of southern West Bank exits in the direction of the Gaza Strip. Detentions continue of dozens of Palestinians suspected of direct complicity in the abduction or possessing relevant information.

Special army units and the Shin Bet continue to scour Hebron and the towns and villages to the south for leads to the whereabouts of the boys and their captors: They are focusing on Dura, where the burnt car was found, Yata, Halhoul, the Al Fawar refugee camp and the caves riddling the surrounding hills.
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BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT, BRILLIANT.

by Angelo M. Codevilla
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2002, pp. 41-50

“For them, war would consist of fighting as little as possible.”
— Charles de Gaulle, on Franco-British policy between September 1939 and June 1940.[1]

By spring 2002, the Bush administration’s pretense that it was making war had worn thin. The Bush team had declared that September 11 had “changed everything,” that “those who are not with us are against us,” and that its “war on terrorism” would dispense with latter-day American reticence about foreign engagements and warfare.

Nevertheless, the Bush team fought a classic phony war, because its chief priority was to change as little as possible the visions, objectives, assumptions, and modus operandi of late-twentieth-century American elites. This calls for something of a postmortem on the “war” that never was.
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The rot goes deeper than Obama and the Democratic Party

By Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO

I’ve just written Faithless Execution, a book positing that there is such a solid legal case of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the president that the time is ripe to build a political case for his impeachment. I have argued, moreover, that the president’s policy of appeasing and empowering Islamic supremacists has been a national-security catastrophe, catalyzing a jihadist resurgence across the Middle East.

It is pretty safe to say I am no fan of Barack Obama’s. But it is just as safe to say that for Beltway Republicans to blame Obama alone for the implosion of Iraq — which is now being overrun by the same Sunni jihadists those Republicans have championed in Syria and Libya — is shameful.
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By Jonathan Spyer, MIDDLE EAST FORUM

[..] The ISIS offensive into Iraq was well-planned, and its execution shows the extent to which ISIS sees its activities in Iraq and Syria as part of a single conflict.

The movement withdrew forces from outlying parts of Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo provinces in January.

At the time, this was presented by Syrian rebels as a defeat they had inflicted on ISIS, but eyewitnesses confirmed that hardly any fighting took place.

The offensive operations against the Kurdish YPG militia in the Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) area also tailed off.

The reason is now clear: ISIS was withdrawing forces and consolidating the western border of its “Islamic state,” in order to focus on expanding the eastern border deep inside Iraq.
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By BEN HARTMAN, JPOST.COM STAFF

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu confirmed the three yeshiva students who disappeared Thursday night were indeed kidnapped by a terrorist organization in his first on-camera statement Saturday evening.

“I can’t share everything we know, but can say: Our boys were kidnapped by a terrorist organization, no doubt,” said the prime minister.

Netanyahu said that Israel was doing everything in its power to the boys home, and reiterated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for their well-being.

“We see Abbas and the PA as responsible for all attacks that come from their territory, either Gaza or the West Bank,” he said. “The claim that they are not responsible because it was in Area C is baseless. The responsible party is the one who controls the area from whence the terrorists came.”
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By Vic Rosenthal

IDF soldiers search for 3 missing Jewish teenagers near Gush Etzion in Judea

The kidnapping of three Jewish teenagers in Judea Thursday brings home a fact that might not stand out in abstract discussions about the significance of the Palestinian Unity Government, or the various 2-state, 1-state, or any-number-state plans.

This is the fact that the Palestinian Arabs — they want to be a nation, so call them the Palestinian Nation — is the deadly enemy of the Jewish state and individual Jews.
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By James Lewis, AMERICAN THINKER

The Children’s Crusade that has invaded our southern borders has an amazing number of well-fed gangster types, grabbing their crotches and giving the finger to the news cameras. These adult-sized gangsters are not children, and they don’t act like children. They are doing sex, dope, and almost certainly work in criminal collusion with the biggest Mexican drug cartel, Sinaloa. They certainly look more like drug smugglers and mules for the youngsters who have apparently been abandoned by their real parents and by governments south of the border, to go wandering north under conditions that simply invite abuse.

Would you send your own kids in wild mobs to a strange land? Do Hispanics love and protect their children less than we do? No. This is another Obama agit-prop stunt, like the Tahrir Square “spontaneous demonstration” that brought Muslim Bro Mohammed Morsi to power in Egypt. Bill Ayers was involved in those demonstrations at Egypt’s borders with Gaza, where he agitated for the barriers to come down and let Hamas into Egypt. Then the Egyptians came to their senses, and overthrew Morsi for El Sisi, a man in the mold of Anwar Sadat.
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A first-hand account of how corruption and self-interest at the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority have prevented ordinary Palestinians from achieving economic prosperity with devastating consequences.

By Asron MeneNberg, MOSAIC

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By Tabitha Korol

Re: The Death of Klinghoffer

To the Staff of the Metropolitan Opera:

During World War II, a violinist dressed in military uniform went to play for the servicemen in a United States Army hospital in Italy.  As he entered a ward designated for young men who had recently lost limbs, he was shocked to see that one patient was attempting to applaud with his only hand.  As the musician’s face lit up with compassion and sensitivity, he raised his violin and played.  His name was Jascha Heifetz, a Lithuanian-born Jewish American whose 65-year career began at age four.  He made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 16, and became world renowned for the perfection to which other violinists still aspire.

Seated next to Heifetz at the hospital piano was pianist Milton Kaye.  Fifty years later, Kaye recalled that memorable concert when he heard “the greatest violinist of the ages.” The following year, pianist Seymour Lipkin beheld that same magnificence when he accompanied Heifetz on another GI tour, stating that the violinist always played his best, no matter the circumstances.  Heifetz had been so moved when he entertained the paraplegics, that despite his grueling schedule, he continued to add more such concerts to his tours, and Kaye remembers those days as “the greatest privilege” of his musical life.  Read more…

By Kathleen Caulderwood, IBT

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is now the richest terror group in the world, after stealing $429 million from the central bank in Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, which ISIS has occupied since earlier this week. While it will certainly give their finances a boost, the group has been making millions in other ways for some time to fund a vast array of activities.

“A terrorist organization is in many ways like a business firm, but with different motives,” said Victor Asal, Associate Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York – Albany. He collects organizational data on terrorist groups in order to analyze factors that affect their behavior.

“ISIS is most likely getting funding from outside sources and private funding from individuals in the Gulf region,” he said.

A report from the Council on Foreign Relations says that many believe supporters in Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia provide “the bulk of past funding.” Read more…

The election campaign contained no end of bizarre machinations and obsessions on the part of the prime minister. Now they may open the door to earth-shaking changes in his government.

By Yossi Verter, HAARETZ 

The evening of Tuesday, May 27, was dramatic. Midnight was the deadline for presidential candidates to register. The panic in the prime minister’s residence was palpable. The last card – containing the image of the Jewish-American writer Elie Wiesel – was pulled from the shameful deck and quickly put back. Mickey Levy, the deputy finance minister, was celebrating his son’s marriage in Jerusalem with members of his party, Yesh Atid, and other politicians. Finance Minister Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, accompanied by his wife, spoke with candidate Reuven Rivlin.
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Reuters

BEIRUT – The capture of Iraqi cities Mosul and Tikrit by al Qaeda-influenced jihadis has not only redrawn the map of a country corroded by sectarian hatred.

ISIS on the road to Tikrit, just north of Baghdad (Photo: AFP)

It could also redesign Middle Eastern national boundaries set nearly a century ago after the fall of the Ottoman empire, and lead to a forging of new regional alliances.

As well-armed forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) raised their black flags over Mosul this week, routing an Iraqi army that fled rather than fight, the future of Iraq as a unitary state hung in the balance.

As they pressed south towards Baghdad, the rest of the region, the United States and other powers woke up to the prospect that this Jihadi comeback could establish a dangerous base in the heart of the Middle East – an Afghanistan on the Mediterranean.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST
The current leadership seems totally incapable of recognizing the Palestinians for what they are, and what they declare themselves to be – an implacable enemy.

‘What happened yesterday, when four senior ministers gave public addresses one after the other with each proposing a different political solution, was a grotesque performance.”

– Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday evening session at the 14th Herzliya Conference, “Israeli Leaders Debate Peace,” June 9.

I was thinking of headlining this column “Depressing, disturbing, disarray,” a title that I believe Liberman, would warmly endorse – given his censure of the abysmal appearances of four government ministers (and the head of the Opposition) at this year’s Herzliya Conference, earlier this week.
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Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
“Israel Hayom”, June 13, 2014, http://bit.ly/1l8qPyO

Policy makers and public opinion molders, who call for Israel’s separation from Judea and Samaria (J&S), are aware that prior separations – from 40% of J&S in 1994, from Hebron in 1997 and from Gaza in 2005 – yielded land-for-terror and not land-for-peace.

They are aware that Prime Minister Ben Gurion did not separate from – but annexed – Western Jerusalem and additional parts of the Land of Israel during the 1948/9 war. Ben Gurion did not believe in land-for-peace, expanding Israel’s sovereignty (including significant construction) by 40%, in defiance of brutal US and European pressure.  They know that Prime Minister Eshkol did not engage in land-for-peace, but reunited Jerusalem – the most sensitive territorial issue – annexing Eastern Jerusalem and expanding construction there.  They are mindful of Prime Minister Begin’s application of Israel’s law to the Golan Heights (and expanding construction).

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Czech President Milos Zeman Gives amazing speech

By Daniel Greenfield FPM

Milos Zeman, the President of the Czech Republic courageously condemned the culture of Islamic anti-Semitism behind the Brussels attack as well as commenting in an informed fashion on the larger trend of Islamic Supremacist violence.

“The only holiday of independence which I can never leave out is the celebration of the independence of the Jewish State of Israel,” Zeman said.

“There are other nations with whom we share the same values, whether it’s free elections or a free market economy, but no one is threatening to delete those states from the map. No one shoots at their border towns and no one wants to see the citizens of those nations driven out of their country.”

“There is a term called political correctness and I consider it to be a euphemism for political cowardice. So I refuse to be cowardly.” Read more…

Even after the U.S. spent billions training Iraq’s armed forces, the one million-member army and police remain riven by sectarian discontents, corruption and a lack of professionalism.

HAARETZ

Now you know why there is so much unanimity around the world in support of the Arab cause. INTIMIDATION.

It reminds me of what happenned in 201 when Canada offered to take in 20,000 refugees.  The Arabs rioted and burned and John Manley, Canada’s FM in effigy. Also they threatened Canada with terrorism. That signalled the end of that initiative. Ted Belman

AFP YNET NEWS

SYDNEY – Australia could face trade sanctions by Arab nations over its decision to stop using the term “occupied” when referring to East Jerusalem, the head of the Palestinian delegation to Canberra warned Friday.

Izzat Abdulhadi said Australia’s new stance on East Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in a move never recognized by the international community, was a “substantial policy shift.”

“We think that it’s very provocative and un-useful, and it’s not appropriate,” Abdulhadi told AFP.

His comments came after 18 diplomats from countries including Indonesia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia protested to Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra on Thursday.
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Israel’s Civil Administration to go ahead with only 381 of intended 1,800 homes in West Bank settlements; Israeli officials: Technical problems, not EU pressure, led us to delay plans.