By Dr. Doron Matza, BESA May 15, 2021

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel must replace its containment policy vis-à-vis Hamas with a decisive strategy aimed at routing the Islamist terror group.

Ever since Hamas’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel has sought to make the best of a bad situation. Military re-conquest was out of the question given the IDF’s withdrawal from the Strip two years earlier and Israel’s reluctance to reassume control of Gaza’s million-and-a-half residents. In these circumstances, allowing Hamas to run the daily lives of the local population while constraining its military buildup as much as possible was seen as the least of all evils. Not least since Hamas’s control of the Strip created a rival political entity to the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, thus reducing the Palestinian capacity to strategically damage Israel.

Read more…

NEWSMAX  14 May 2021 03:51 PM

Israeli border police swing their batons at Muslim worshippers to prevent them from gathering for Friday prayers at the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

The Biden administration notified Congress this week that it will send millions of dollars in U.S. assistance to the Palestinians aimed at promoting peace with Israel even as violence between the two sides rages.

Read more…

The formula of ‘quiet for cash,’ on which Israeli military and intelligence officials based their situational assessments, is missing a vital component

By Zvi Bar’el, HAARETZ

The many senior Hamas leaders the IDF has killed demonstrates that Hamas isn’t some “ephemeral organization,” as many analysts have claimed. Some of these men held impressive positions — the Gaza City brigade commander, the head of Hamas’ cyber unit and missile development, the head of the projects and development department, the head of the engineering department, the commander of military intelligence’s technical department and the head of industrial equipment production. This is a budgeted, hierarchical and organized army, whose members have the relevant professional education and know-how to manage infrastructure for both survival and offensives.

Read more…

In the Middle East, Biden is finishing what Obama started. And his top advisers are all on board.

By Michael Doran and Tony Badran, TABLET

On Sunday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan phoned his Israeli counterpart and turned back the hands of time. According to the American readout of the conversation, Sullivan called “to express the United States’ serious concerns” about two things: the pending eviction, by court order, of a number of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, and the weekend’s violent clashes on the Temple Mount between Israeli police and Palestinian rioters. The Biden administration, in other words, publicly asserted an American national interest in preventing the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, regardless of the dictates of Israeli law—just as Hamas was sending rockets and incendiary devices into Israel with the same message. This conscious effort to put “daylight” between the United States and Israel marked a clear return to the approach of President Barack Obama.

Read more…

By Valerie Sobel, INN

We, the grassroots, extremist, rightwing, Trump-loving Jews, would like to extend our warmest gratitude to you in electing one Joe Biden. Especially at this time. You were so right all along, our Nazi President Trump––not your President, of course––kept much too much peace in the world. You were so right to seek Twitter peace above all other; peace in Israel is for the birds.

Today, after 1,000 rockets bombarded the tiny Jewish State, we are comforted by the thought that you no longer feel distraught by Trump’s daily tweets and unsavory TV appearances. Likewise, we are comforted in knowing that your brand of Tikkun Olam works so well for you, Israel be damned.

Read more…

IDF publishes unclear notice – causing Hamas to panic, escape into terror tunnels.

ARUTZ SHEVA

Just after midnight on Friday morning, Israel announced that “air and ground forces from the IDF are now attacking in Gaza. More details to follow.”

The military columnists in Israel understood that this meant the armored corps and artillery deployed near Gaza will attack, but the unclear notice led foreign reporters to report the beginning of a ground operation in Gaza.

Read more…

by Alan M. Dershowitz, GATESTONE INSTITUTE  •  May 14, 2021

• There is one sure-fire way of guaranteeing that Hamas will continue to employ terrorism against Israel…. That sure-fire way is to reward the terrorists who employ this tactic and to punish their intended victims who try to fight back.
• The real root cause of terrorism is that it is successful — terrorists have consistently benefited from their terrorist acts. Terrorism will persist as long as… the international community rewards it, as it has been doing for the past [many] years.
• Read more…

By  John B. Nevin, UNCOVERDC  –  May 13, 2021

Pennsylvania State Representative Seth Grove released ‘A Comprehensive Review of Pennsylvania’s Election Laws: How Pennsylvania Can Guarantee Rights and Integrity in Our Election System’ based on state election hearings held between January and April. The testimony from election officials and experts was intended to identify and fix any problems with the voting system and the 84-year-old laws that govern it.

Read more…

Series of stunning images from the AFP news agency highlights macabre dance that plays out in the skies as Israel tries to thwart massive rocket fire from Gaza

By TOI STAFF     Today, 6:19 am

Rockets (R) are seen in the night sky fired towards Israel from Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on May 14, 2021, while Iron Dome interceptors rise to meet them. (Photo by ANAS BABA / AFP)<
>
A stunning series of images captured early Friday depicts the intense, otherworldly battles being raged in the skies above Israel and Gaza between the rockets launched by terror groups and Israel’s Iron Dome interceptors.

One particular image, captured by Anas Baba of the French news agency AFP shows the rockets launched from Gaza, drawing straight angular golden lines in the night sky. Iron Dome interceptor rockets are seen rising up in swirling fury, ready to bring them down.

Read more…

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

• a time to be born, and a time to die;
• a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
•  a time to kill, and a time to heal;
• a time to break down, and a time to build up;
•  a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
• a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
•  a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
• a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
•  a time to seek, and a time to lose;
• a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
•  a time to tear, and a time to sew;
• a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
•  a time to love, and a time to hate;

• a time for war, and a time for peace.