WarSclerotic

Israel Hayom | Faster than a speeding bullet, Iron Dome is undisputed star.

Israel Hayom | Peace Now, espresso later.

Israel Hayom | A heavy hand with Hamas.

The Jewish state was created to overcome powerlessness and provide a haven for Jews — not to have them cringing in shelters. There had previously been considerable criticism of the government for its failure to adequately respond to the ongoing toll inflicted on over a million Israeli citizens obliged to endure thousands of missiles launched against them at the whim of a loathsome neighboring terrorist state. We had tired of hearing successive Israeli leaders repeatedly expressing empty threats and chanting the mantra “this is intolerable and unacceptable and must stop.”

Hamas is no longer a terrorist faction. It is in every respect an independent state the majority of whose citizens enthusiastically support the terrorist initiatives and missile launches initiated by its evil leaders committed to our annihilation.

The situation deteriorated with the advent to power in Egypt of the Muslim Brotherhood, the creators of Hamas. Since then, the Egyptian authorities stood by as Hamas accumulated vast quantities of sophisticated missiles and other lethal weapons including guided antitank missiles and shoulder mounted antiaircraft weapons from Iran, Libya, Sudan and other states.

That explains why despite awareness that Operation Pillar of Defense may escalate into full-scale war, all sections of Israeli society fervently support the Israel Defense Forces operation. It is also gratifying that Jews throughout the world are actively demonstrating solidarity with Israel.

Hamas was emboldened into testing our resolve, believing that Israel would be fearful of confronting the new Egyptian regime and also encouraged by the active support from the Turkish government and the recent visit to the Gaza Strip of the emir of Qatar who contributed $400 million to their coffers.

Israel was indeed sensitive to these issues as well as the effect of a military conflict diverting attention from Iran — especially now as it proceeds with its uranium enrichment. There was also concern at the civil war in Syria and the dramatic rise of Islamic extremism throughout the region. To top it off, there were inhibitions because of the U.S. presidential elections.

Nevertheless, Hamas miscalculated. By intensifying the bombardment of the south, it obliged the State of Israel to respond harshly or forfeit any modicum of deterrence.

The initial outcome was good. The IDF had clearly learned from the lessons of previous wars; intelligence was impeccable; action was systematic and rational with, to date, minimal civilian casualties.

It must be stressed that the targeted killings of terrorist leaders are not acts of revenge or a display of showmanship. They are logical military actions that can be rationally justified in moral terms. The killing of Jabari, regarded as the Palestinian counterpart of bin Laden, is a prime example. Unlike U.S. drone attacks on al-Qaida and the Taliban, the IDF succeeded in avoiding collateral casualties.

The global response from most Western countries which followed U.S. President Barack Obama’s lead condemning the rocket attacks and endorsing Israel’s right to self-defense, was until now satisfactory, despite the usual calls for restraint and for Israel to act in a “proportionate” manner.

But these are early days. Initially, we are unlikely to face problems at the U.N. Security Council. However, the General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Council, controlled by Islamic and other anti-Israeli coalitions, have consistently viewed Israel as the aggressor and never the victim. Neither of these bodies has even once condemned the Hamas missile attacks and there is little doubt that they and nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International will blame Israel exclusively for reigniting the armed conflict.

In addition, while the IDF is taking extraordinary precautions to minimize civilian casualties, there will invariably, as in any military conflict, be mishaps — especially in the Gaza Strip where Hamas ruthlessly employs human shields by locating armaments and launching missiles in civilian residential areas. In addition, our enemies have already circulated bogus images of Palestinian civilian casualties, highlighting infants allegedly killed by Israel. As in the past, these gruesome images will be exploited to pressure Israel to back down.

And while the Iron Dome anti-rocket shield has been highly successful in largely protecting the major Israeli cities, there have already been tragic casualties and regrettably more are likely if hostilities continue to escalate and impact on the home front.

Clearly, the IDF would prefer to limit the conflict to pinpointed aerial strikes. However, if Hamas continues raining rockets against Israeli civilians, Israel will be forced into a ground offensive in which greater casualties are inevitable.

The main challenge for the government is to devise an end strategy to achieve long term deterrence as well as a strategy to be implemented instantly should Hamas become sufficiently re-emboldened to recommence missile launches.

Israel has no desire to return to the era of the tit-for-tat war of attrition whereby we respond to missile launches by bombing rocket launching sites and empty buildings.

Although some of our allies are already urging us not to respond “disproportionately”, such a concept has absolutely no relevance to the threat facing Israel. While still seeking to minimize civilian casualties, we must create genuine deterrence in order to avoid future full-scale conflicts of ever increasing magnitude. In fact, a disproportionate response to aggression is fully consistent with international law in which the prime obligation of the state is to protect its civilians. Those seeking to deny us this basic right are maliciously hypocritical.

The issue of Israel continuing to provide Hamas-controlled Gaza with services is another bizarre anomaly. It is one thing to be sensitive to the humanitarian needs of civilian noncombatants, but to continue providing electricity and other utilities to a neighboring state raining missiles against us is utterly perverse. If the lights went out automatically every time a rocket was dispatched, the inconvenienced Gaza residents might even influence their leaders to hesitate before launching missiles.

An intensive government campaign must be implemented to counter the impact of successive years of the world having become conditioned to regarding Israel under missile attacks as a normative way of life. We must highlight the fact that such attacks against civilians are unequivocally war crimes. Would the U.S. respond “proportionately” if 50 million Americans were under missile attack from Mexico or Canada for a decade? Or if France faced such bombardment from Belgium or Luxemburg? No other state in the world would tolerate this and we must demonstrate that a policy of “restraint”, far from reflecting strength, displays weakness and emboldens our evil neighbors to intensify their attacks.

We must recognize that in future conflicts, the terrorists will continue accumulating more effective and lethal weapons to employ against us. We must therefore endeavor to resist calls for a cease-fire until such time as Hamas, in conjunction with the Egyptians, undertake to cease their aggression. There must be a clear understanding that any breach would result in harsh “disproportionate” Israeli responses including the targeted killings of those responsible for initiating attacks. In the absence of such an agreement an enforced cease fire will be perceived as a major victory for Hamas and our citizens will simply return to the life of terror they endured since the first Qassams were launched a decade ago

Iranian arms ship carries fresh, improved Fajar supplies for Gaza.

( If true, our subs are in for some fun! – JW )

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 19, 2012, 1:37 PM (GMT+02:00)

Iran’s Khark helicopter carrier posted in the Red Sea

An Iranian 150-ton freighter departed Bandar Abbas port Sunday, Nov. 18, with a cargo of 220 short-range missiles and 50 improved long-range Fajar-5 rockets for the Gaza Strip, debkafile’s intelligence sources report. The ship turned toward the Bab al-Mandeb Straits and the Red Sea.
The new Fajar-5s have a 200-kilo warhead, which packs a bigger punch than the 175 kilos of explosives delivered by the rockets in current use with the Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip.  To extend their range to cover the 85 kilometers from Gaza to Tel Aviv, Hamas removed a part of their payloads to make them lighter.

Tehran is sending the fresh supply of disassembled rockets to replenish the stocks its allies, the Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami, depleted in their round-the-clock attacks on Israel since Nov. 10. .
To throw Israeli surveillance off the trail, the ship started its voyage called Vali-e Asr owned by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, and was quickly renamed Cargo Star and hoisted the flag of Tuvalu. This South Pacific island nation, which lies between Hawaii and Australia, has a tiny population of 11,000, most of them Polynesians. Iran provides most of its revenue since earlier this year when Prime Minister Willy Telavi agreed to register Iran’s entire tanker fleet of 22 vessels to Tuvalu, to help Tehran dodge the US-EU oil embargo.

Our intelligence sources have learned that four big Sudanese shipping boats sailed out of Port Sudan early Monday and are waiting to rendezvous with the Cargo Star and offload its missile cargo in mid-sea.

The Sudanese will then be told by Tehran whether put into Port Sudan with the missiles, or turn north and sail up the Red Sea to the Straits of Tiran to link up with Egyptian fishing boats which regularly ply this waterway in the service of Palestinian-Iranian smuggling networks. They would unload the missile cargo in a quiet inlet on the Sinai coast. From there, it would be carried to the smuggling tunnels running from Sinai under the border into the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian teams assisted by Iranian and Hizballah technicians in the Gaza Strip would then assemble the new rockets and make them operational.

Through most of the voyage, two Iranian warships, the Khark heliicopter carrier and Shahid Naqdi destroyer, which are posted permanently in the Red Sea, escorted the arms ship until the cargo changed hands.
debkafile’s Iranian sources also disclose that the Jihad Islami leader Ramadan Abdullah Shelah was sharply remanded by Tehran for meeting Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi in Cairo Sunday to discuss terms for halting Israel’s counter-missile operation in Gaza now in its sixth day.

Iran bankrolls these Palestinian extremists and has no intention of letting Shelah bow to Cairo’s wishes which run counter to Tehran’s plans and interests.

While Egypt’s new Islamist leaders are intent on carving out for themselves a responsible role in the region by restoring order, solving crises and restraining radicals, radical Iran has its own fish to fry and is bent on escalating war tensions in the Middle East.

Israel Hayom | A people’s army.

Dr. Haim Shine

America, Israel, Gaza, the World | Via Meadia.

As Israeli airstrikes and naval shells bombarded Gaza this weekend, the world asked the question that perennially frustrates, confuses and enrages so many people across the planet: Why aren’t the Americans hating on Israel more?

As in Operation Cast Lead, the last big conflict between Israel and Hamas, and as during the operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, much of the world screams in outrage while America yawns. If anything, many of Israel’s military operations are more popular and less controversial in the United States than they are in Israel itself. This time around, President Barack Obama and his administration have issued one statement after another in support of Israel’s right to self defense, and both houses of Congress have passed resolutions in support of Jerusalem’s response.

Commentators around the world grasp at straws in seeking to explain what’s going on. Islamophobia and racism, say some. Americans just don’t care about Arab deaths and they are so blinded by their fear of Islam that they can’t see the simple realities of the conflict on the ground. Others allege that a sinister Jewish lobby controls the media and the political system through vast power of Jewish money; the poor ignorant Americans are the helpless pawns of clever Jews. Still others suggest that it is fanatical fundamentalists with their carry on flight bags packed for the Rapture who are behind American blindness to Israel’s crimes.

America is a big country with a lot of things going on, but the real force driving American support for Israeli actions in Gaza isn’t Islamophobia, Jewish conspiracies or foam-flecked religious nuts. It’s something much simpler: many though not all Americans look at war through a distinctive cultural lens. Readers of Special Providence know that I’ve written about four schools of American thinking about world affairs; from the perspective of the most widespread of them, the Jacksonians, what Israel is doing in Gaza makes perfect sense. Not only are many Jacksonians completely untroubled by Israel’s response to the rocket attacks in Gaza, many genuinely don’t understand why the rest of the world is so steamed about Israel—and so angry with the United States.

Americans as a people have never much believed in fighting by “the rules.” The Minutemen who fought the British regulars at Lexington and Concord in 1776 thought that there was nothing stupider in the world than to stand in even ranks and brightly colored uniforms waiting to shoot and be shot like gentlemen. They hid behind stone walls and trees, wearing clothes that blended in with their surroundings, and took potshots at the British wherever they could. George Washington saved the Revolution by a surprise attack on British forces the night before Christmas; far from being ashamed of an attack no European general of the day would have countenanced, Americans turned a painting of the attack (“Washington Crossing the Delaware”) into a patriotic icon. In America, war is not a sport.

Theoreticians of “just war” say that in order for war to be justifiable, two tests must be met. You have to have a legitimate cause for war (self defense, for example, rather than grabbing land from a weaker neighbor) and you must fight the war in the right way. You must fight fair (that is, fight a just war), and you must fight nice.

One of the criteria for jus in bello (fighting nice as opposed to jus ad bellum which is about whether it is just ) is proportionality. If the other guy comes at you with a stick, you can’t pull a knife. If he’s got a knife, you can’t pull a gun. If he burned your barn, you can’t nuke his capital. Your use of force must be proportionate to the cause and to the danger.

Israel’s fiercer critics attack it for fighting unjust wars against the Palestinians. For some, Zionism itself is an illegitimate idea and a state that has no right to exist has no right to defend itself. Anything it does to defend itself is a crime. This is how Hamas and many others think and it is why people in this camp are able to work themselves up into such a froth of indignation and rage when Israel responds to their fire.

For others, Israel may have a right to exist, but its occupation of the West Bank and other crimes against the Palestinians have deprived it of a just grounds for war when Palestinians attack it. People in this camp attack any use of force by Israel as lacking jus ad bellum, basically because they think Israel has forfeited its jus by its occupation and settlement policy. This is where a lot of the non-Muslim European left comes out and it is why they are so quick to attack Israel for a war which, after all, was triggered by rockets from Gaza landing in Israel.

But more moderate critics of Israel (including many Israelis) focus on jus in bello, and in particular they look at the question of proportionality. When the Palestinians flick a handful of fairly crude rockets at random across Israel, these critics say, Israel has a right to a kind of pinprick response: tit for tat. But it isn’t entitled to bring the full power of its industrial grade air force and its mighty ground forces into an operation designed to crush Hamas at the cost of hundreds of civilian casualties. You can’t fight slingshots with tanks.

For many people around the world, this seems patently obvious: Israel has a right to respond to attacks from Hamas but it doesn’t have an unlimited right to respond to limited attacks with unlimited force. Israeli blindness to this obvious moral principle strikes many observers as evidence of hardheartedness and national moral decline, and colors their perceptions of many other Israeli policies.

The whole jus in bello argument sails right over the heads of most Americans.  The proportionality concept never went over that big here. Many Americans are instinctive Clausewitzians; Clausewitz argued that efforts to make war less cruel end up making it worse, and a lot of Americans agree. [UPDATED NOTE: Many Americans consider the classic concept of proportionality — that the violence used must be proportional to the end sought — as meaningless when responding to attacks on the lives of citizens because the protection of citizens from armed and planned attacks is of enough importance to justify any steps taken to ensure that the attacks end.]

From this perspective, the kind of tit-for-tat limited warfare that the advocates of just and proportionate warfare would require is a recipe for unending war: for decades of random air strikes, bombs and other raids. An endless war of limited intensity is worse, many Americans instinctively feel, than a time-limited war of unlimited ferocity. A crushing blow that brings an end to the war—like General Sherman’s march of destruction through the Confederacy in 1864-65—is ultimately kinder even to the vanquished than an endless state of desultory war.

The European just war tradition springs in part from the reality that historically in Europe war was an affair of kings and rulers that hurt the little people without doing anything for them. Peasants really didn’t care whether the Duke of Burgundy or the Count of Anjou was recognized as the rightful overlord of their village, and moralists and theologians worked to limit the violence that the dukes and the counts and their henchmen wreaked on the poor peasants caught up in a quarrel that wasn’t theirs.

With no feudal past in this country, Americans have tended to see wars as wars of peoples rather than wars of elites and in a war of peoples the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate targets tends to collapse. The German civilian (male or female) making weapons for Hitler’s Wehrmacht was as much a part of the enemy’s warmaking potential as the soldier at the front. Furthermore, in a war of peoples in which civilians are implicated in the conflict, the health and morale of the civilian population is a legitimate target of war. This justified the blockades against the Confederacy and against Germany and German occupied Europe during the world wars, and it also justified the mass terror bombing raids of World War Two in which the destruction of enemy morale was one of the stated aims.

This is the same logic by which someone like Osama bin Laden could justify his attacks on civilians at the World Trade Center, and it is the fundamental logic behind Hamas’ indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilian targets. Americans don’t like it when their enemies use this kind of logic, but it is a type of warfare they understand and they have fought and won enough of these wars in the past to be ready if necessary to do it again.

From this perspective, in which war is an elemental struggle between peoples rather than a kind of knightly duel between courtly elites, the concept of proportionality seems much less compelling. Certainly if some kind of terrorist organization were to set up missile factories across the frontier in Canada and Mexico and start attacking targets in the United States, the American people would demand that their President use all necessary force without stint or limit until the resistance had been completely, utterly and pitilessly crushed. Those Americans who share this view of war might feel sorrow at the loss of innocent life, of the children and non-combatants killed when overwhelming American power was used to take the terrorists out, but they would feel no moral guilt. The guilt would be on the shoulders of those who started the whole thing by launching the missiles.

Thus when television cameras show the bodies of children killed in an Israeli air raid, Jacksonian Americans are sorry about the loss of life, but it inspires them to hate and loathe Hamas more, rather than to be mad at Israel. They blame the irresponsible dolts who started the war for all the consequences of the war and they admire Israel’s strength and its resolve for dealing with the appalling blood lust of the unhinged loons who start a war they can’t win, and then cower behind the corpses of the children their foolishness has killed. The whole situation strengthens the widespread American belief that Palestinian hate rather than Israeli intransigence is the fundamental reason for the Middle East impasse, and the television pictures that drive much of the world away from Israel often have the effect of strengthening the bonds between Americans and the Jewish state.

This automatic Jacksonian response to the Middle East situation overlooks some important complexities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and in the past America’s Jacksonian instincts have gotten us into trouble. But anyone trying to analyze the politics of the Middle East struggle as they unfold in American debates needs to be aware of the power of these ideas about war in American life.

In any case, when Israel brings the big guns and fast planes against Gaza’s popguns and low tech missiles, a great many Americans see nothing but common sense at work. These Americans aren’t mad about ‘disproportionate’ Israeli violence in Gaza because they don’t really accept the concept of proportionality in war. They think that if you have jus ad bellum, and rocket strikes from Gaza are definitely that, you get something close to a blank check when it comes to jus in bello.

If anything, rather than weakening American sympathy for Israel, Israel’s response in Gaza (and the global criticism that surrounds it) is likely to strengthen the bonds of respect and esteem that many Americans feel for Israelis. Far from seeing Israel’s use of overwhelming force against limited provocation as harsh or immoral, many Americans see it as courageous and wise. It strengthens the sense that in a wacky world where a lot of foreigners are hard to understand, the Israelis are honest, competent and reliable friends — good people to have on your side in a tight spot.

A decisive conclusion is necessary – JPost – Opinion – Op-Eds.

Gaza, Libya and 9/11: Wishful thinkin… JPost – Opinion – Op-Eds.

Arab paper: Leave Israel alone, deal with Syria – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Asharq Alawsat editor claims Syria, Iran instigated escalation between Israel, Gaza to aid Assad regime

Roi Kais

While the Arab world condemns Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and Operation Pillars of Defense steals the headlines on the Arab channels, a civil war continues to run wild in Syria between the rebels and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime – a war that has been going on for a year and eight months.

In a report given by the opposition on Sunday night to the SkyNews channel in Arabic, the violence and warfare continue in a few of the country’s cities, killing 51 in the last 24 hours and almost 200 since the weekend.

Against this backdrop, editor-in-chief of the most-read newspaper in the Arab world, “al-Sharq al-Awsat”, Tariq Alhomayed tried to turn his readers’ attention to another tragedy in the Arab world; revealing what he believes brought upon the escalation in southern Israel – the Iranians and Assad.

In an editorial entitled, “The solution to Gaza…return to Syria,” Alhomayed wrote that, ” Unfortunately, wars in our region have become like a race, so each war is to cover another one. In other words, these wars are nothing more than a move to escape forward.

Therefore what is happening in Gaza is escaping forward, particularly in the hope of saving al-Assad or at least ensuring that the cost of toppling him will be greater for everybody. The greatest architect of such wars is Iran”.

According to Alhomayed, the Iranians tried heating up the fronts on the Israeli borders via their agents. When unsuccessful on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, they chose the Gaza Strip. “When the Golan front did not move quickly enough for al-Assad and Iran, they resorted to the Gaza front, because this can be inflamed far quicker, whilst it is also easier for Israel in this regard. For Israel, Gaza is like a punching bag that can be used for training and muscle flexing, whilst success in Gaza would strike several “files” in one go “.

Regarding Syria he wrote: “Now, the best solution to get out of this war – or air strikes – in Gaza is to return to Syria, and strongly, for whoever is responsible for the launch of the home-made rockets in Gaza did this whilst being well aware that there is no equivalence. The whole purpose of this was to save al-Assad, whose days are numbered; indeed his ouster is just around the corner”.

Syria condemns Israel’s barbarianism

The Syrian human rights watch center reported on Sunday that Assad’s forces attacked a few neighborhoods and areas in southern Damascus, including: al-Hajar, al-Aswad, al-Hajira and al-Baweda. Bloodshed occurred on Saturday, when the opposition reported on 140 dead, including three women and six children.

The reports said that 63 were killed in Damascus and its suburbs, 30 killed in Aleppo, 21 in the Dir al-Zur district, 11 in Idlib, seven in Harasta, four in Homs, two in Daraa and two in Hama. The Syrian human rights watch center reported that amongst those killed on Saturday were 56 civilians and 48 military and regime soldiers.

Last week, Syria managed to take advantage of the crisis in the Gaza Strip and to condemn what he called, “the crimes of the Israeli barbarians against the Palestinian nation and government in the Gaza Strip”. Syria called upon the international community to put pressure on Israel in order to stop its attacks.

On Thursday, the Syrian, state-run newspaper, “Al-Tishreen” took advantage of the developments in the Gaza Strip in order to divert attention away from the Syrian civil war.

The caption read: “Gaza is under fire by the occupiers – nine Palestinians killed and tens are wounded during intensive attacks”. The headline read: “Syria condemns the barbaric Israeli crimes: We will forever remain loyal to our national commitments”.

Iron Dome Frustrates Hamas – Defense/Security – News – Israel National News.

Iron Dome in action (file)

Israel news photo: Flash 90

The Iron Dome anti-missile system continues to frustrate Hamas, blowing up three more missiles aimed at Ashkelon on Monday. A fourth Grad missile evaded the Iron Dome but exploded in a school yard, causing damage but no injuries.

The Iron Dome has been a key in efforts by Israel’s civilians to survive the massive missile attacks that resumed from Gaza last week.  The only fatalities occurred when the Iron Dome malfunctioned in Kiryat Malachi, allowing the incoming missile to kill three people after it blasted through the roof of a four-story apartment building.

Hamas’ frustration is highlighted by its inability, so far, to inflict large-scale damage, especially on metropolitan, Israel’s industrial and financial heart.

The number of rocket and missile attacks dropped on Monday following a barrage of more than 10 attacks on Sunday, including three on Tel Aviv.

The expensive Iron Done system intercepted half of the missiles.

Israel’s ability to thwart Hamas attacks while destroying a large number of terrorists and weapons sites has thrown back the terrorist organization into a  more defensive stance. Three days ago, its conditions for a ceasefire were that Israel agree to remove the maritime blockade designed to prevent smuggling of terrorists and weapons into Gaza. It also demanded that Israel promise to stop all aerial attacks on terrorists.

As Israel took the upper hand, it laid down its own condition — a halt to all attacks and the total cessation of weapons smuggling.

Less than 4 percent of rockets and missiles have exploded  on buildings, and there has been a 40 percent decline in attacks since Sunday.

The Iron Done so far has downed more than 313 missiles, while the Israeli Air Force has staged more than 1,350 strikes on the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza.