IDF on Gaza border grts ready to GO IN ! – YouTube.
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Archive for July 8, 2014
IDF on Gaza border gets ready to GO IN ! – YouTube
July 8, 2014The Myth of Israeli Collective Punishment
July 8, 2014The Myth of Israeli Collective Punishment, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, July 8, 2014
Western liberals romanticize Third Worlders by assigning to them rights without responsibilities. The Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank are assumed to have the right to elect political representatives, but not the responsibility to be held accountable for what those representatives go on to do in their name.
They have political powers, but not political responsibilities.
That’s not just dishonest, it’s an admission that they believe that the Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank are not ready for statehood.
The most enduring critique of Israel’s struggle against Islamic terrorism is the recurring accusation of “collective punishment.” Every time Israelis are murdered, the Jewish State is accused of punishing Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza for the actions of a few individuals.
Israel is fighting an enemy that insists on having all the advantages of a state and statelessness with none of the disadvantages. The PLO/Hamas unity government is a state when it wants something from the United Nations or the United States, but it’s not a state when it comes to taking responsibility. The Muslims who live in Gaza and the West Bank are considered citizens when it comes to having political rights, but not when it comes to taking responsibility for the consequences of their political decisions.
Their votes are to be taken seriously, but once those votes lead to war they are no longer responsible.
The Palestinian Authority is a state when it comes to its territorial claims, but not a state when it insists on open borders with Israel while claiming that any Israeli border security is a violation of its rights.
Terrorists routinely operate in such legal twilight zones, but the Palestinian Authority is unique in that it has all the structure of a state with none of the responsibilities of statehood. If Israel treats it as a state in response to acts of war, it is accused of collective punishment, even though the Palestinian Authority is the product of a collective political will and attacking it is not a collective punishment, but simply war.
When the Palestinian Authority unity government of Hamas and the PLO wants to go to the UN, it is said to represent the political will of a populace. But when Hamas attacks Israel, suddenly it’s not a collective act, but an individual crime. If Israel targets Hamas leaders, then it’s attacking political representatives. But if Israel blockades an area run by terrorists who claim to be a state, it’s accused of engaging in collective punishment. The terrorists claim political immunity as leaders of a collective and immunity from collective attack as individuals, rather than leaders and citizens of a political entity.
Critics of Israel not only want to have it both ways, they want to have it every single possible way that advantages the terrorists and disadvantages Israel, so that in every possible scenario Israel is wrong.
The paradox deepens when it comes to Israel.
The PLO and Hamas political leadership of the PA aren’t held responsible for their terrorist attacks, but Israel is held responsible for the individual actions of its civilians. Meanwhile the entire BDS movement is one big collective punishment against Israelis of all religions and ethnic backgrounds implemented by activists who claim to be against collective punishment.
But collective punishment has always been acceptable when it comes to Israelis.
When Israeli teens are killed by Hamas terrorists, instead of it being a case of a statelet engaging in random terror as a collective punishment, it’s put down to some populist impulse as a result of the “occupation.” But when Israel strikes Hamas, it’s suddenly collective punishment if any members of the civilian population that support the terrorist group and willingly act as its human shields are killed. And it’s collective punishment if Israel further shuts off access to territory ruled by Hamas.
Collective punishment, like everything else about the conflict, only works one way. Anything that Israel does to the PLO and Hamas can be considered collective punishment. Anything that they do to Israel, including randomly firing rockets at schools and houses, isn’t.
If Israel were indeed the sole authority in Gaza and the West Bank, it would be expected to function as a police force, rather than a military force. But Israel is in a state of armed conflict with the statelet of the Palestinian Authority. This armed conflict has been going on for around two decades.
The Palestinian Authority’s leadership is open about this conflict, even though Abbas, its leader, has learned to be more discreet than his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian Authority promotes terrorism and the political subgroups that run it engage in it.
The international community however pretends that it’s still 1985 instead of 2014. It expects Israel to act as if it had total control over the West Bank and Gaza and its cities weren’t being barraged by rockets. And if it responds to acts of war with war, then it’s guilty of collective punishment.
When half-a-million Israelis have to flee to bomb shelters, that’s not an individual crime. It’s a war.
All the peace process accomplished was to give the PLO and Hamas the power and infrastructure to wage full scale war without the obligation to follow any of the rules of war and without giving their victims the right to fight back by treating them as an enemy state.
Israel has been dealing with this as a military conflict. Its enemies have the support of the civilian population that they hide behind. Despite having the appurtenances of a state, they also have immunity from suffering the consequences of the wars that they start.
The only way that Israel can stop dealing with this as a military conflict is if it restores control over Gaza and the West Bank and evicts all other authorities, including the PLO and Hamas. At that point it will exercise police powers over a civilian population, rather than military powers against an enemy statelet.
Otherwise its military actions against that statelet are not collective punishment, but on the low scale of the norms of warfare, which at their very least involve bombing enemy installations and cutting off the enemy’s freedom of movement.
Israel cannot be expected to treat the Palestinian Authority as a political entity, but not a military entity, when rockets are falling on its cities. Either the PA is both or neither. If it’s both, then it is indisputably at war with Israel. If it’s neither, then Israel ought to restore control over a lawless Gaza and West Bank.
The underlying problem isn’t collective punishment, but collective immaturity.
Western liberals romanticize Third Worlders by assigning to them rights without responsibilities. The Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank are assumed to have the right to elect political representatives, but not the responsibility to be held accountable for what those representatives go on to do in their name.
They have political powers, but not political responsibilities.
That’s not just dishonest, it’s an admission that they believe that the Muslims of Gaza and the West Bank are not ready for statehood.
Five Points on ‘The Situation’
July 8, 2014’Hard to admit, but 20 years of Israeli blindness has contributed to the current situation.
By: Meir Halevi SiegelPublished: July 8th, 2014
via The Jewish Press » » Five Points on ‘The Situation’.
Photo Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90
I. Palestinian duplicity did not begin the day that Yasser Arafat immigrated to Gaza City from Tunis in 1994, but the Chairman’s arrival on the scene in Israel set into motion a trend that Israel has proved unable to reverse over the ensuing two decades.
The original Oslo accord called for the nascent Palestinian Authority to create a “lightly armed” police force, in order to maintain public order but lacking the ability to pose a threat to Israelis or to Israeli police. The sides agreed that the PA police could hold 13,000 light weapons.
But that number had been exceed nearly four-fold by the time Rabin was assassinated just 16 months after Arafat’s celebrated arrival in Gaza. International observers at the time said weapons far in excess of the “light weapons” agreed upon had been smuggled into the PA.
The first time PA “police” opened fire with their brand-new, American-supplied weapons was several weeks after Arafat’s arrival. Arafat and other Palestinian spokespeople made clear that whatever peaceful process there was would be temporary.
And yet, Israel was undeterred. Senior officials such as then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres and then-Justice Minister Yossi Beilin prosecuted the Oslo process with full diligence, ignoring bus bombings and other clear signs along the way that the Palestinians were using the process to create the conditions for war, not peace. Palestinian terror was eventually met with Israeli withdrawals, and thousands of Israelis and Palestinians were maimed or killed when the storm finally hit, on September 29, 2000.
This history is relevant as Israel moves to prosecute yet another round of fighting with Hamas in Gaza. During the years Israel governed the Gaza Strip, local residents and terror operatives felt free to dig tunnels under the Egyptian border, and to smuggle weapons into the Strip from Egypt. Here, too, the process continued unabated, and the results of that police are clear. Once again, Israelis will pay the price of that police from their bomb shelters and protected rooms as the air force tries to convince Hamas to “play nice” by holding their fire.
II. Upon leaving the south Lebanon security zone in May, 2000, Prime Minister Ehud Barak warned that any attack against the international border would be treated as an act of war. At the same time, Foreign Minister David Levy warned Hezbollah not to “play with fire” by attacking Israeli civilians or troops.
But when Hezbollah responded to the Israeli pullout by kidnapping three IDF soldiers, Adi Avitan, Omer Soued and Binyamin Avraham less than six months later, Israel’s response was… non-existent.
Similarly, when Ariel Sharon evicted 1,600 Jewish families from their homes in Gush Katif five years later, he warned that the first rocket from the Judenrein Strip would be met with the “fires of hell.”
But again, it turned out that the fires of Sharon’s hell weren’t all that hot: On August 25, 2005 – less than two weeks after Sharon’s troops “disengaged” from Gaza, Arab “freedom fighters fired two Qassam rockets at Sderot. Two weeks later, on September 12, several hours after the last IDF troops left the Strip, Palestinians celebrated by burning down the synagogues in former Jewish communities and firing rockets at Sderot and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.
Like his predecessor, however, Sharon granted a free pass to Palestinians, sending a clear message that the “fires of hell” had actually turned into something closer to a grudging acceptance of the reality of rocket fire on the Israeli home front.
In both cases, the terror groups involved understood that despite exhortations to the contrary, Israel would, indeed, resolve itself to living with the attacks on its civilian population. As the saying goes: There is no second chance to make a first impression.
III. If Israel has not managed to eliminate Hamas in previous rounds of fighting, which were no less painful for Israeli and Palestinian civilians, there is no reason to expect the political establishment to give the IDF a green light to do so now. Were the political will there, the army could complete a Hamasectomy in Gaza in short order. The unhappy truth, however, is that Israel is in a painful dance with Hamas: Of course, the current situation is untenable, but it is worth remembering that Hamas is far from the worst enemy Israel could find on the Gaza doorstep.
As Alex Fishman, military correspondent for Yedioth Aharonoth, wrote Sunday, knocking Hamas out of Gaza could cause a vacuum there, one that could be filled with Islamic radicals that would make Israel long for the good old days of Hamas.ISIS is just one example.
IV. If Avigdor Liberman makes the leap from foreign minister to prime minister at the next election, Israel will experience the largest round of international condemnation since Operation Cast Lead in 2008. Washington will mumble its usual line about “expecting the elected leaders to show commitment to the peace process” but will privately – or not so privately – shun Liberman. So, too, the Arab world, which will use the election of the “extreme” Liberman as evidence of the “Nazi” nature of Israeli society, and Israeli leftists will moan that the recent election of right-wing extremists in Europe has hit Israel as well.
As “proof,” they will quote Liberman’s suggestions to re-draw the Israel-Palestinian border as part of a final peace deal that would re-apportion a large majority of the Palestinian Arabs in the Land of Israel as citizens of the Palestinian state (his plan does not call for uprooting anybody from their homes, with the exception of some Jews. Presumably, the latter point is “okay”). They will cite election success to Israel’s “racism” and “fascist” nature.
On that day, the refutation to those libels will be nothing more than photographs from this week’s riots in Omer, Nazareth, Tamra and other Arab-majority towns around the country.
Ultimately, Yisrael Beteinu will campaign on one essential point: Israeli citizenship comes with rights and responsibilities. Arab citizens of this country should feel free to forego the former if they are unwilling to exercise the latter. But Liberman will argue strongly that the former will be unavailable without a strong commitment to the latter.
V. In June, 2000, following Israel’s pullout from the south Lebanon security zone, I predicted that Israel would eventually pull its civilians and military forces out of the Gaza Strip. I feared two things: One, that Israel was losing the mettle to complete the dirty task of eliminating an enemy and demanding unconditional surrender.
Second, even at that early stage, I worried that Israel had ignored our enemies drive to build offensive weapons arsenals for so long that the Home Front cost of such an operation would make a drive towards absolute victory nary impossible.
But it is my last point from that time that bears repeating today: I predicted that Israel would eventually leave the Gaza Strip, but also that Palestinians would eventually force Israel to return. The fact of an un-occupied Gaza is a disaster for Palestinians, for it requires them to take responsibility for building a civil society, an economy, etc.
Frightening words that bear repeating today.
Passivity turned the tables
July 8, 2014Passivity turned the tables, Israel Hayom, Nadav Shragai, July 8, 2014
(Israeli passivity toward Hamas et al seems to have ended. That’s good. Will passivity soon return? — DM)
The Arabs of the State of Israel are running wild, residents of the country’s south are sitting in bomb shelters — and what remains above all else is the policy of passivity. Wrong. Misleading. Misplaced. We are confused: Opinions, even marginal ones, and words, even difficult ones — we can accept. Violence — however mild — must not be accepted. Passivity conveys weakness and helplessness. It is the opposite of deterrence. Passivity allows Hamas and its derivatives to continue firing rockets and missiles over Sderot, Ashkelon, Ofakim and Beersheba. Passivity asks for quiet at any price, while laying the foundation for the next escalation. Passivity may not quite be the policy of Peace Now, but it is certainly the policy of “Quiet Now.”
Passivity breeds passivity. Today, we are paying the price of past passivity, and tomorrow, we will pay the price of today’s passivity. If we do not come to our senses, the price will only go up.
What a passive country. We were passive about the “price-tag” attacks and the attempted arson of mosques — and we ended up with a young Arab burned to death. We were passive about 100 attempts to kidnap Jews — and we ended up with the abduction and murder of three teenaged boys. We have been passive about Arab violence for years, as well as the attacks of Jews throughout the streets of Jerusalem (on the Temple Mount, on Mount Scopus, on the Mount of Olives, in the City of David, in the Old City), and here we are, facing a sort of Jerusalemite intifada and the de facto division of the city. We were passive about the sovereign and governmental vacuum in east Jerusalem, and today we are faced with anarchy — from both sides.
And now, we continue to be passive. The Arabs of the State of Israel are running wild, residents of the country’s south are sitting in bomb shelters — and what remains above all else is the policy of passivity. Wrong. Misleading. Misplaced. We are confused: Opinions, even marginal ones, and words, even difficult ones — we can accept. Violence — however mild — must not be accepted. Passivity conveys weakness and helplessness. It is the opposite of deterrence. Passivity allows Hamas and its derivatives to continue firing rockets and missiles over Sderot, Ashkelon, Ofakim and Beersheba. Passivity asks for quiet at any price, while laying the foundation for the next escalation. Passivity may not quite be the policy of Peace Now, but it is certainly the policy of “Quiet Now.”
We continue to accept the present at the expense of the future, paying a price that will only keep on growing. In the south, passivity continues to allow terror and hate to systematically accrue power in Hamastan to our south, and to create more and more long-range missiles, which at the end of the day will fall on Tel Aviv and its neighbors. Passivity allows the enemy to continue building “Underground Gaza” — the underground tunnel system where murderers hide, where death lurks in the form of lethal weapons. Passivity also weakens the Israeli homefront, planting the seeds of depression and demoralization.
Now, we are also accepting the hatred and the violence of the residents of the Triangle region and the evil and the hatred of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. We are accepting the ongoing disruption of daily life in the south. The hundreds suffering from panic and anxiety, the world’s hypocritical indifference and weakness, and our great friend the United States that has lost its way.
Did we elect a passive government? Have the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police turned into the state’s forces of passivity? There are many tools to use in the political and military toolbox before the invasion of Gaza. The toolbox includes, among other options, sanctions against the Palestinian population, which is dependant upon us for its electricity, water, gas, food and money.
Passivity, you should know, is what turned the tables here. It gradually changed the homefront to a front that arms itself against all odds, when it is the IDF that should be fighting on the front, to ensure that our homefront does not become a battlefield. That is their job. That is what they were created for. That is what they were trained for.
Passivity breeds passivity. Today, we are paying the price of past passivity, and tomorrow, we will pay the price of today’s passivity. If we do not come to our senses, the price will only go up.
Hamas decides to go for broke
July 8, 2014Hamas decides to go for broke | The Times of Israel.
Struggling to maintain the banner of ‘resistance’, the Gazan terror group is firing at Israel in the hope Ramallah and Cairo will hear its plea for help
July 8, 2014, 4:02 pm
Palestinian militants of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, carry the body of militant Mohammed Obied during his funeral in the town of Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip on June 30, 2014 (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
Hamas’s decision to end a 20-month-long ceasefire with Israel last week was a result of the movement’s gradual decline over the past year, accelerated by the unity deal with Fatah which has left it teetering on the verge of collapse.
Isolated by Israel, shunned by Egypt and battered by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, Hamas has decided to go for broke. True, it had used its massive missile arsenal with relative restraint as of Tuesday afternoon, but it nevertheless hopes that a new round of violence can reshuffle the deck and leave it with a better hand.
The Islamic movement’s distress calls — directed mostly at Ramallah — have intensified over the past week. With 44,000 Hamas civil servants out of work and without salaries as Ramadan began, Hamas foreign ministry official Ghazi Hamad convened a press conference on July 3 to warn that “the Gaza Strip is in grave danger and the unity government doesn’t care what’s happening here.”
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah never called to ask about the situation in Gaza as it faced Israeli air strikes, Hamad charged, nor did the PA government allocate any budgets for the four ministries run from Gaza.
Politicians, Hamad was quoted by London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi as saying, must find urgent solutions for a situation which is growing increasingly untenable. “The reconciliation is in danger,” he said.
But Hamas’s call was not heeded.
On Tuesday afternoon, as operation Protective Edge was in full force, Hamas deputy political bureau chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said he was hoping that the conflagration in Gaza would inspire West Bankers to launch a third intifada.
“Today, we are all called upon for a popular intifada, an intifada for prisoner Jerusalem. Today, more than ever before, we are demanded to express our rejection of the occupation … we are sick of talk of resolutions and peace,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Attempting to capitalize on the murder of Palestinian teenager Muhammed Abu Khdeir last week, allegedly by Jewish terrorists, Hamas political bureau member Izzat al-Rishq wrote that “such battles and intifadas are always sparked by the blood of heroic youth, and then adopted by the people.”
Meanwhile, on the Egyptian front, Hamas’s pleas have also fallen on deaf ears. The Rafah border crossing has remained largely shut for months, and Egypt continues to operate against smuggling tunnels unabated.
In a speech Monday marking the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War according to the Muslim calendar, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi made no reference to Gaza; a fact that spoke volumes for the new regime’s attitude toward the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is classified as illegal under Egyptian law.
“No previous Egyptian president from the military has ever dared to ignore Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, neither before the Camp David [peace accords with Israel] nor after it,” claimed a TV report in Al-Jazeera, a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.
Israel, for its part, remains reluctant to provide Hamas with the satisfaction of a new intifada. It is bracing itself for a gradual escalation to match that of Hamas, but nothing more, for now. Nuclear talks with Iran reach their deadline in 12 days, and Israel would not want to see the world distracted from what it defines as its greatest existential threat — a nuclear Iran.
IDF chief Gantz asks for call-up of 40,000 reserves amid Operation Protective Edge
July 8, 2014( Finally! Israel gets serious… – JW )
07/08/2014 15:43
IDF chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz requested the call-up of 40,000 reserves in order to replace conscripted forces in the West Bank, and enable their deployment to the Gaza border.
The Prime Minister’s Office would not confirm reports that the security cabinet approved the request which was made hours after Operation Protective Edge was launched in an effort to quell rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
The IDF had previously called up 1,500 reserves on Monday.
Operation Defensive Shield, which has seen the IAF strike some 100 terror targets in the Gaza Strip, came after more than 250 rockets were fired into southern Israel in recent weeks.
The rocket fire continued on Tuesday, with at least 30 rockets fired into Israel, including some which targeted Beersheba and Ashdod.
Following high level security deliberations Tuesday morning Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided to expand the military operation in Gaza, including beginning preparations for a ground operation.
No time limit was put on the operation but senior diplomatic officials said it could be “for a long time.”
The objective of the operation, according to the officials, is to return quiet to the South, but the equation that “quiet would be met with quiet” was no longer the operative principle.
During the day Netanyahu expected to talk to a number of world leaders to explain Israel’s position and another security cabinet meeting will be held later in the afternoon if necessary.
Khamenei: US and Israel playing ‘good cop, bad cop’
July 8, 2014Israel Hayom | Khamenei: US and Israel playing ‘good cop, bad cop’.
“I say out loud: The reason they [Israelis] are not attacking is because it is too costly. The enemy has no other option at its disposal but make threats and impose sanctions,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
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Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
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Photo credit: AP
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Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the United States and Israel were playing “good cop, bad cop” to intimidate his country into making concessions in the nuclear negotiations being held between Iran and world powers.
“They make it seem like Israel wants to attack, but America is stopping it: the good cop, bad cop trick,” Khamenei told senior statesmen at an iftar (fast-breaking supper during the holy month of Ramadan) function. “But I say out-loud: the reason they are not attacking is because it is too costly. The enemy has no other option at its disposal but make threats and impose sanctions.”
Israel has threatened to preemptively attack Iranian nuclear sites, and been skeptical about the current diplomatic drive by world powers to persuade Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for relief in economic sanctions imposed over the years.
Israel believes Iran seeks to use its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons.
In a boost to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has been accused of being too soft toward the West, Khamenei said: “All should know that I support his government and use everything in my power to help it. I have trust in our negotiating team and am sure they will not give in on the rights of this nation.”
Five Hamas chiefs killed as IDF Gaza operation gets underway. Nine Israelis injured by Palestinian rockets
July 8, 2014DEBKAfile Special Report July 8, 2014, 3:31 PM (IDT)
Israeli air strikes singled out Hamas chiefs Tuesday, July 8, at the onset of the IDF’s Operational Solid Rock. Hamas Naval Commando chief Mahmoud Shaaban, 24, and three passengers were killed when their car was hit from the air. Another airborne raid bombed the Rafah home of Abdul Rahman Juda which served as a command and control center. Thirty Palestinians were injured. Magen David Adom has treated nine people for minor injuries and anxiety attacks from emergency call centers in the southern and central Israeli regions under rocket attack.
The high-density rocket barrage from Gaza – 50 by Tuesday mid-afternoon – has seriously disrupted normal life for millions of Israelis in the rocket-blasted regions – especially within a 40km radius from Gaza. Ashdod port has stopped working, major transport routes like the Ashkelon-Sderot railway halted, end-of-term exams in colleges postponed, children sent home from summer camps and social events called off.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to broaden its Gaza operation.
debkafile reported earlier Tuesday: Israeli finally launched its military operation Solid Rock against Hamas Monday night, July 7, after the Palestinians directed a steady stream of 100 rockets from Gaza to expanded targets as far as Rehovot, 50 km away. Most of the 50 IDF strikes were conducted from the air and two from the sea. Ten destroyed Hamas infrastructure facilities plus 4 private buildings which, according to the Palestinians, included the homes of the Hamas commander and a Democratic Front operative in Khan Younes, after Israel gave them advance warning. Hamas reported 17 injured – but kept on shooting rockets through the night and early Tuesday, threatening to further expand the range of their rocket fire.
The government and the IDF have billed the operation as a long-term, staged offensive to destroy Hamas’ logistical and strategic infrastructure, to be escalated stage by stage as needed, up to a limited ground incursion, which would require additional reserve call-ups, as well targeted assassinations. This progression will be adjusted to the enemy’s response and how quickly “quiet is restored to the South.”
The population has been forewarned that the contest may be protracted and asked to refrain from public events within a 40km radius from Gaza.
Iron Dome batteries are in place.
Israel’s security cabinet and the IDF command are counting on the prospect of losing its infrastructure deterring Hamas and persuading it to halt its rocket war on Israel.
But Hamas has its own game book and is unlikely to play by the rules dictated by Israel.
Both sides have therefore entered a dark corridor in which the two adversaries will try and outdo each other in damage. Israel began by limiting itself to air strikes. Hamas hit back with a mighty barrage of 100 missiles and expanding its range of targets.
The rules of Operation Solid Rock now require Israel to scale its response up to the next stage, in response to which Hamas will no doubt go for Tel Aviv. No one seems to know how this tit-for-tat duel will end.
The inherent weakness of the thinking behind Israeli military operation is that it requires the IDF to catch up with and undo the damage caused by Israel’s passivity after the three boys, Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, were kidnapped and murdered on July 12. The IDF’s campaign against its facilities on the West Bank left Hamas more confident than ever. In the space of a month, the Palestinian Islamists have maneuvered Israel into launching not one but two major operations – Brother’s Keeper to find the kidnapped boys and their abductors (who are still at large) and now Solid Rock – and they still hold the initiative against Israel, as well as the whip hand in the Palestinian movement.
They certainly owe their advantage in part to the atrocious murder by a handful of Israelis of the Palestinian boy Muhammad Abu Khdeir from Shuafat, Jerusalem. This was a gift which Hamas had never dreamed of. The Islamists have been able to assert control over and calibrate Palestinian fury across the board, in Gaza, the West Bank and the Israeli Arab community – a second front against Israel.
With all these cards stacked against Solid Rock, the IDF will have its work cut out to repair the damage and bring its operation to a successful conclusion.
On the diplomatic front, Israel suffered another letdown when Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi disappointed the hopes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had vested in him to intercede powerfully with Hamas for a ceasefire. El-Sisi decided that the Israeli-Hamas conflict was a minor episode in regional terms and no real threat to Egypt’s national interests and dropped his role as peace broker.
This was a bitter disappointment to Jerusalem. It left Israel facing the Palestinian aggressor alone, but for the Europeans. They are willing to assume this role, but they are seeking the restoration of the short-lived Palestinian reconciliation and a unity government, which is the direct opposite of Netanyahu’s most fervent objective.
Escalation
July 8, 2014Escalation | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.
Ira Shrkansky
hings have escalated in the south to the point where the IDF is now pursuing an “operation.” The Hebrew, צוק איתן, touches more buttons than the official English translation, “Protective edge.” Alternative translations that might touch different buttons, are “Strong rock” “Impregnable rock,” or “Impregnable fortress.”
In IDF parlance, a named operation is less than a war, but more than a limited response to a limited attack.
Yesterday saw more than 80 missiles fired toward Israel. As usual, the vast majority landed on empty land. IDF responses–more than 50 and still counting–are better targeted and more destructive.
One attack on a building that included both Hamas facilities and family housing came only after a telephone call from an Israeli officer, urging an immediate departure from the site.
That says something about IDF intelligence, accessing the cell phone of innocent civilians living alongside a military target.
Let’s see how much credit the humanists of the world bestow on Israel.
Predictions are that this will continue for a while. Hamas is threatening destruction throughout Israel. The IDF has issued a limited call up of reserves, and the unit responsible for civil defense has cancelled all large gatherings and kids’ summer camps within 40 km of Gaza. It has opened civil defense shelters, and urged people close to Gaza not to venture more than a 15 second run from protection. Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and Sapir College in Sderot have canceled classes and exams scheduled for the next few days. Hospitals are moving patients to more secure locations.
Israeli homes built since the first Gulf War have “strong rooms” in each apartment, with protective walls and ceilings, fortified doors and steel shutters that can be lowered in front of the window. Most buildings built between the 1960’s and the 1990s have a common shelter the basement.
Over the normal course of events, those shelters become store rooms for old furniture, and now is one of the times when civil defense officials are calling on us to clean out the junk and equip them with fresh drinking water.
This will also lessen the media attention devoted to what had been in the headlines.
Police and judicial authorities are moving through their routines against the Jewish barbarians who kidnapped, beat, and burned an Arab youth who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
People should take another look at the video that went viral, seeming to show a young man beaten to near death by personnel of Israel’s Border Police. A day and a half later the same young man, a Palestinian American visiting for the summer, appeared on TV walking normally and with some bruises on his face. He claimed innocence. He was only watching a demonstration until attacked by police.
The police story is that he had wrapped his face and head in a kaffiyeh like accomplished stone throwers and fire bombers, and was mixing it up with the others.
He may have been roughed up when taken into custody, but nothing like what was portrayed in the video. Most likely that was fabricated by Palestinians seeing another way to make Israel look bad by dressing up as Border Policemen and pretending to beat savagely a friend portrayed as their victim.
Remember the earlier video showing two Palestinians being shot to death, but managing to fall to the ground with their arms extended in a way to assure that they wouldn’t be hurt while on camera.
Also pushed into the background is the story of the Netanyahu family furniture. Beginning to get scandal headlines was Bibi or Sara ordering of new furniture for the official residence, at public expense, having it delivered to their private residence on the coast, and moving some old stuff from the coast to the official residence in Jerusalem.
All that broke before the kidnapping of three yeshiva students, and it will take some journalistic digging to get it back in the headlines.
There are either fewer commotions by the Arabs of Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel, or they have been moved off the front page by Gaza. Yet we went to bed Monday night under the sound of helicopters, and the next shift was up there when we woke Tuesday morning.
The Israel police are moving against Arabs of Israel, arresting those filmed throwing stones and fire bombs in East Jerusalem and Arab towns in the Galilee and Negev. The police are also arresting Jews led to rock throwing and other vandalism by calls to “kill Arabs.”
Also suffering will be the dramatic announcement of Avigdor Lieberman that he is undoing the alliance between his party, Israel our Home, and Likud. It has become not much more than a “so what?” in comparison with the noise from the South.
We’ve been in this theater several times, perhaps once every two or three years. Performances are as predictable as disaster alerts, rain, wind, destruction, and cleanup during hurricane season along the US East Coast.
Analysts are saying that this uptick comes as a Hamas act of desperation, seeking to attain some stature in the face of Egypt’s onslaught against its Muslim Brotherhood parent, the failure to gain traction from a unity agreement with Fatah, a lack of shekels to pay its bloated bureaucracy and security units, the chaos that has taken the place of international Muslim unity, and uppity rivals in Gaza who demand even more extreme actions against Israel.
Note the use of shekels in the previous paragraph. Palestine operates on Israeli currency.
While there are some urging the government to destroy Hamas, that isn’t in the cards. Given the ascendance of aggressive Islam, and countless young people aspiring to die as martyrs, the most to be done is enough damage to buy some months or years of relative quiet.
Barack Obama and John Kerry are already saying that Israel has a right to defend itself, but urging all sides to be calm and seek peace.
What comes next will depend on the language not made public adopted by the inner cabinet along with the heads of the IDF and other security services, the responses of Hamas and other missile firers to each day’s IDF activity, the onset of international pressure against what is sure to be called Israeli overreaction, and the efforts of Israeli moderates and leftists to press for limitations in destruction and carnage.
Every Palestinian with a smartphone will be supplying stuff to the professional journalists seeking their own opportunities in Gaza. One can hope that items of great drama will have a larger ingredient of reality than fabrication.
With 50 strikes, the IDF launches Operation Solid Rock after Hamas’ 100-rocket blitz. Hamas keeps going
July 8, 2014DEBKAfile Special Report July 8, 2014, 8:42 AM (IDT)
Israel forces poised to strike in Operation Solid Rock
Israeli finally launched its military operation Solid Rock against Hamas Monday night, July 7, after the Palestinians directed a steady stream of 100 rockets from Gaza to expanded targets as far as Rehovot, 50 km away. Most of the 50 IDF strikes were conducted from the air and two from the sea. Ten destroyed Hamas infrastructure facilities plus 4 private buildings which, according to the Palestinians, included the homes of the Hamas commander and a Democratic Front operative in Khan Younes, after Israel gave them advance warning. Hamas reported 17 injured – but kept on shooting rockets through the night and early Tuesday, threatening to further expand the range of their rocket fire.
The government and the IDF have billed the operation as a long-term, staged offensive to destroy Hamas’ logistical and strategic infrastructure, to be escalated stage by stage as needed, up to a limited ground incursion, which would require additional reserve call-ups, as well targeted assassinations. This progression will be adjusted to the enemy’s response and how quickly “quiet is restored to the South.”
The population has been forewarned that the contest may be protracted and asked to refrain from public events within a 40km radius from Gaza.
Iron Dome batteries are in place.
Israel’s security cabinet and the IDF command are counting on the prospect of losing its infrastructure deterring Hamas and persuading it to halt its rocket war on Israel.
But Hamas has its own game book and is unlikely to play by the rules dictated by Israel.
Both sides have therefore entered a dark corridor in which the two adversaries will try and outdo each other in damage. Israel began by limiting itself to air strikes. Hamas hit back with a mighty barrage of 100 missiles and expanding its range of targets.
The rules of Operation Solid Rock now require Israel to scale its response up to the next stage, in response to which Hamas will no doubt go for Tel Aviv. No one seems to know how this tit-for-tat duel will end.
The inherent weakness of the thinking behind Israeli military operation is that it requires the IDF to catch up with and undo the damage caused by Israel’s passivity after the three boys, Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, were kidnapped and murdered on July 12. The IDF’s campaign against its facilities on the West Bank left Hamas more confident than ever. In the space of a month, the Palestinian Islamists have maneuvered Israel into launching not one but two major operations – Brother’s Keeper to find the kidnapped boys and their abductors (who are still at large) and now Solid Rock – and they still hold the initiative against Israel, as well as the whip hand in the Palestinian movement.
They certainly owe their advantage in part to the atrocious murder by a handful of Israelis of the Palestinian boy Muhammad Abu Khdeir from Shuafat, Jerusalem. This was a gift which Hamas had never dreamed of. The Islamists have been able to assert control over and calibrate Palestinian fury across the board, in Gaza, the West Bank and the Israeli Arab community – a second front against Israel.
With all these cards stacked against Solid Rock, the IDF will have its work cut out to repair the damage and bring its operation to a successful conclusion.
On the diplomatic front, Israel suffered another letdown when Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi disappointed the hopes Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had vested in him to intercede powerfully with Hamas for a ceasefire. El-Sisi decided that the Israeli-Hamas conflict was a minor episode in regional terms and no real threat to Egypt’s national interests and dropped his role as peace broker.
This was a bitter disappointment to Jerusalem. It left Israel facing the Palestinian aggressor alone, but for the Europeans. They are willing to assume this role, but they are seeking the restoration of the short-lived Palestinian reconciliation and a unity government, which is the direct opposite of Netanyahu’s most fervent objective.
WarSclerotic 
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