WarSclerotic

Thwarted, for now, Iran’s bid to target all of Israel from Gaza

By David Horovitz March 10, 2014, 5:04 pm

​ (Bibi should tell the world that a defeat for Hamas is a defeat for Iran, thus making the regime in Tehran look weak in the eyes of her enemies.-LS)

The Iranian weapons shipment intercepted by the Israel Navy in the high seas off Sudan last Wednesday, and placed carefully on display at Eilat port on Monday, would not have drastically changed the balance of power between Israel and the Gaza Strip had it reached its intended destination. But it would have been a game changer of sorts, nonetheless.

The intended recipients of the 40 M-302 missiles and other weaponry on board the Klos-C were not Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas, whose relations with Iran have been deteriorating steadily, but the rival Islamic Jihad, a force that is thoroughly loyal to Iran, which has been funding and training its operatives.

Had the shipment reached its destination, Islamic Jihad would have gained possession of weaponry more sophisticated than the dozens of rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, many of them produced in Gaza, which Hamas is stockpiling for the inevitable next round of conflict.

This would have boosted Islamic Jihad’s prestige in Gaza, and doubtless emboldened it in its ongoing challenges to Hamas. Far more significantly, however, it would have given the Iranians a push-button capacity to wreak havoc all across Israel at a moment of their choosing.

Some of the M-302 missiles on the Klos-C can reach from Gaza to beyond Tel Aviv, all the way to Haifa, Israeli officials said, carrying highly destructive 150 kilogram warheads. And while Hamas, since violently seizing control of Gaza in 2007, must carefully weigh any escalated confrontation with Israel against its need to retain control of the Strip, Islamic Jihad has no such concerns: If Iran were to give the order to fire salvos of the missiles it supplied into Israel, Islamic Jihad would not hesitate.

Across Israel’s northern border, Hezbollah — by far the world’s most heavily armed terrorist organization — holds tens of thousands of rockets capable of reaching anywhere in Israel. It has considerations of its own about drawing Lebanon into renewed conflict, but is ultimately loyal to the Iranian regime that created it. The Klos-C shipment would thus have given Iran the capacity to batter Israel with rocket fire simultaneously from north and south as and when it deemed necessary.

In Washington last week, arguing against President Barack Obama’s willingness to allow Iran a continued uranium enrichment capability, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the complete dismantling of Iran’s rogue military nuclear program. Otherwise, he warned, Iran would inexorably become a nuclear weapons threshold state, capable of swiftly breaking out to the bomb when the world’s attention was focused elsewhere.

Employing its proxy terror groups — Hezbollah in the north, and/or Islamic Jihad in the south — is just one of the means by which Iran could distract that attention, and cause widespread harm to the Israeli home front.

The identification, tracking and ultimately interception of the Klos-C shipment marks an impressive example of Israeli intelligence-gathering and operational skill. As Netanyahu and his colleagues were detailing the mission, explaining the capabilities of the intercepted weaponry, and pointing the accusatory finger at Iran on Monday afternoon, however, multiple concerns remained.

For one thing, certain sections of the international community may remain willfully disinclined to believe that those newly charming Iranians could have been responsible for dispatching the shipment, and resistant, still, to the wider dangers posed by the regime in Tehran. Netanyahu spoke in Eilat of a “hypocritical” international community that “prefers to ignore” Iran’s ongoing aggression — a stance he branded “morally unacceptable.” He didn’t mention EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton by name, but was presumably thinking of her in particular. Ashton has been visiting Iran in the last few days, and gave no sign of having acceded to Netanyahu’s request at the weekend that she confront her hosts about the intercepted weapons shipment.

More practically, there is the fear that this was not the first shipment sent along its convoluted path toward Gaza, and that it is unlikely to be the last.

And finally, as Netanyahu highlighted in Eilat on Monday afternoon, there is the danger that, if the Iranians do outsmart and outflank the international community, their future covert shipments, headed to any port in the world, could carry weaponry of an entirely more devastating capacity.

Let’s not lose sight of Iran, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, July 25, 2014

(I occasionally wonder whether the current activities of Hamas, et al, in Gaza are intended as distractions from the  existential treat presented to Israel by Iranian nukes. — DM)

This week, Iran received an extension from the P5+1 countries (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) to reach an agreement that would curb its nuclear program. The original deadline was July 20. Now the Islamic Republic has until Nov. 24 to continue pulling the wool over the eyes of West, while its centrifuges spin unhindered.

On Thursday evening, Reuven Rivlin was sworn in as Israel’s 10th president. Due to incessant rocket fire into Israel and the war going on in Gaza, the event was held without the customary fanfare. A somber, modest ceremony took place at the Knesset, in the presence of the upper echelons of Israeli society from across the political spectrum.

Conspicuously absent from the proceedings were the Arab members of Knesset. As they have shown in word and deed, the sympathies of these particular democratically elected officials do not lie with the country of their citizenship. And their boycott of the changing of the guard of the presidency was a statement of their identification with the enemies of their state.

Someone else who expressed solidarity with the terrorists in Gaza this week was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On Wednesday, the chief mullah, whose government funds and arms the terrorists in Gaza, called on the Palestinians to remain steadfast in their fight to destroy Israel.

“The only way to deal with this savage regime is to continue resistance and armed struggle,” he said in an address to students in Tehran. “We believe that the West Bank should also be armed like Gaza and those who are interested in Palestine’s destiny should act in this regard.”

It wasn’t mere lip service: On Thursday, the Bazaaris’ Basij (a militia connected to the Revolutionary Guards) opened a bank account precisely for this purpose, inviting donations for the cause of supplying West Bank terrorists with weapons.

Khamenei has good reason to be optimistic well beyond the violent Palestinian protests at the Qalandiya checkpoint Thursday night. Such incidents are small fry compared to the global goings-on that are working in his favor.

This week, Iran received an extension from the P5+1 countries (the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) to reach an agreement that would curb its nuclear program. The original deadline was July 20. Now the Islamic Republic has until Nov. 24 to continue pulling the wool over the eyes of West, while its centrifuges spin unhindered.

In addition, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a Palestinian-drafted resolution against Israel, strongly condemning “the failure of Israel, the occupying power, to end its prolonged occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including east Jerusalem; and condemns in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations carried out in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 13 June 2014 that may amount to international crimes.”

This came on the heels of Tuesday evening’s ban on the bulk of international flights to and from Israel, following the landing of a rocket not far from Ben-Gurion Airport.

Meanwhile, as part of the easing on sanctions against Iran, Boeing has sealed a deal to provide the Islamic Republic’s national carrier, Iran Air, with goods and services related to flight “safety.” These include airplane parts, manuals, drawings, service bulletins, navigation charts and data.

In addition, India — among other of Israel’s allies that supported the anti-Israel U.S. Human Rights Council resolution — paid a final installment of $550 million in oil revenues to Iran on Thursday.

In the background is the reconciliation between Hamas (predominantly Sunni) and Hezbollah (mostly Shiite) that has been taking place to “confront the Zionist enemy.” Though the two terrorist organizations had a major split over the conflict in Syria — with Hamas opposing the regime of President Bashar Assad, and Hezbollah loyal to it — Israel’s launching of Operation Protective Edge this month has brought the two together again.

What both groups have always had in common is backing by Iran, which views them as its proxies in the war to annihilate Israel and dominate the West. For Iran, having Hamas blitzing Israel from the South, and Hezbollah waiting in the wings to enter the fray from the north, couldn’t be better. When you add the solidarity of Israeli Arab politicians with the radical elements of the Palestinian Authority and Gaza, the Iranian leadership (including misnamed “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani) is satisfied with the unfolding of its envisioned scenario.

In his inauguration speech, Rivlin said he wished to “deliver a clear message to our enemies: You cannot and will not defeat us. We are determined to protect the pillars of our polity, as well as the character of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, even in time of war against terror. … Terror will not cause us to withdraw; it will not weaken our spirit.”

The newly instated president was referring to Gaza. But what he and the rest of the West must not lose sight of for even a nanosecond, regardless of the results of the current war, is Iran.

Two Egyptian officers killed in Sinai attack | Reuters.

(Reuters) – Two high-ranking Egyptian police and army officers were shot dead by unknown assailants on Friday in the Sinai region near the border with Israel, army and security sources said.

Both had the rank of brigadier general and were shot dead in the city of Sheikh Zuwaid, the sources told Reuters.

Security forces are struggling to quell an Islamist insurgency that has killed scores of soldiers and policemen in the peninsula, which borders Israel and the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

The attacks surged after the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last year and the militants extended their reach to the Egyptian mainland with a series of bombings.

Separately, Egyptian militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis said in a statement that three of their fighters had been killed in their car in Sinai region.

The militant group said they had been killed by an Israeli drone but an Egyptian Defense Ministry source denied the incident. The Israeli military declined to comment.

An earlier statement from the armed forces spokesman said that the Egyptian army killed three militants in their car during a raid on Wednesday.

“There has been no violation of Egyptian airspace by any kind of aircraft, whether israeli or others,” the source said.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis made the announcement on Friday morning on a website on which it regularly posts its statements.

“A number of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis Jihadists were martyred as their car was hit by an Israeli drone on Wednesday evening,” the group said in the statement, listing three.

The militants’ statement did not elaborate on how they knew they had been targeted by a drone, which often attack from high altitude and use advanced munitions that make them almost invisible and inaudible.

Among the objectives of Sinai jihadis is undermining the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, under which the Sinai was demilitarized. Israel says its air force does not operate over Egypt.

The United States designated the group as a terrorist organization in April, saying it had launched rockets at Israel’s southern city of Eilat and attacked Israeli border guards. It has also targeted Egyptian and foreign tourists and Israel, the department said.

The Sinai-based group, formed in the wake of the 2011 uprisings in Egypt, has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks, including an assassination attempt on Egypt’s interior minister last year.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem and Oliver Holmes and Asma Alsharif; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Report: Hamas Morale Collapsing, Terrorists Flee IDF.

The source added that in recent days, a recognizable wave of demoralization has washed over Hamas’s combat battalions. “They simply escape, leaving behind weapons and suicide bomb vests that were laid out for battle. This morning we stormed a position, and they just weren’t there. I don’t see a determined enemy. We have encountered stronger pockets of fighting in the past. But now, I would not give them a high grade for fighting spirit.”

Using further eyewitness reports, the article describes how Hamas has integrated the tunnel network into the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, constructing entrances in homes and even mosques. “I have not entered one civilian home that did not have weapons, suicide belts, or booby traps in it,” the source told the Post, stressing the lengths to which the IDF goes to protect innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, regardless.

The reports of a collapse in Hamas fighters’ morale lends credence to other reports that Hamas leaders were considering a temporary truce suggested by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The organization has insisted in the past on making a ceasefire conditional on the removal of the international blockade of Gaza, which exists to prevent Hamas from importing weapons and materials to build its terror network even further than it has.

Israel Can Win, Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti, July 25, 2014

If Obama doesn’t save Hamas

Who wants a ceasefire? Obama and Kerry. They need the diplomatic victory after the failure of their misguided and poorly executed bid to reconcile the irreconcilable. The president’s approval rating on foreign policy is abysmal. A ceasefire might help the American people forget, just for a moment, that their president has failed to influence events in Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, let alone advance American interests overseas. Since he became president, Israel is the one country in the world in whose affairs President Obama has seemed at all interested in intervening. It is the one country whose politics and actions Obama has had no trouble judging harshly. Next to golf, it’s his favorite pastime.

Slandered, despised, insulted, degraded, Israel is nonetheless winning its war against Hamas. The number of rocket attacks launched by the terror group each day has been halved. The IDF is uprooting the underground tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle weapons, contraband, and terrorists in and out of the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday evening, Israel’s Channel Two newscast carried footage of Hamas terrorists surrendering to the IDF. The jihadists carried white flags. They stripped to their shorts, proving they were not wearing suicide belts. These are facts Hamas does not want you to know, images Hamas does not want you to see.

And you probably won’t see them. Since the evening of July 17, when Israel launched its ground offensive, Western media has been filled with Hamas propaganda. In the United States, the debate over the conflict is invariably couched in terms favorable to Hamas: Are civilian casualties too high? Is it safe to fly into Ben-Gurion airport? Has the IDF targeted schools and hospitals? One MSNBC anchor calls Israel, which abandoned Gaza in 2005, the “occupying authority.” Another praises a “gutsy” Israeli, who refuses to serve in his nation’s military.

On CNN, the Islamist Turkish prime minister says Israel has “surpassed what Hitler did.” A CNN reporter calls Israelis “scum”; a NBC reporter tweets a scurrilous article calling U.S. Jews who join the IDF “America’s Israeli jihadists”; and a writer for Gawker says it’s time to send the Jews back to Germany. Reporters once embedded with military forces. Now the talking points of a military force—the talking points of Hamas—are embedded in the U.S. media.

And yet the immediate danger to the success of this necessary war does not come from the electronic intifada. It does not come from resurgent anti-Semitism, or the United Nations Human Rights Council, or the failure of so many Western elites to recognize the causes of this war, their inability to distinguish between a democratic country struggling to protect its people and a terror state using children as hostages. Hate, law-fare, decadence—they are all challenges for Israel. But Israel can endure them for now. Israel is used to it.

What Israel should not endure is the premature conclusion of hostilities. Disarming Hamas—seizing its rocket caches, collapsing its tunnels, killing and capturing its forces—is vital to Israeli security. And an artificial ceasefire imposed by outside powers, a ceasefire written in terms favorable to Hamas, would undermine the security gains Israel has made to date. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have given no sign that they recognize this fact. Or maybe they understand it all too well: The Obama administration’s top priority is imposing a ceasefire at exactly the moment when Israel’s military success is becoming clear.

Secretary Kerry arrived in Cairo earlier this week. No one wanted him there. Egypt’s ruler, General Sisi, has no interest in saving Hamas through international diplomacy: The Muslim Brotherhood is his mortal enemy. Kerry then went from Cairo to Jerusalem, where he met with U.N. Secretary Ban Ki-moon, who flew to the meeting on a plane chartered by Qatar, Hamas’ primary source of cash. Kerry also met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is too gracious to tell the secretary to go back to Boston. (Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has said publicly what the Israeli government will not: Kerry is an unwelcome guest.) Next up was Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who honored Kerry’s presence by endorsing Hamas’s call for a “Day of Rage” in the West Bank. Kerry “will soon decide if Hamas and Israel are willing to agree on a Gaza ceasefire,” Reuters says.

Kerry will decide? Who died and made him king?

There is no ceasefire in Gaza because a ceasefire is in no one’s interest. Israel’s objective is clear: degrade Hamas’ capability to fire rockets at Israeli civilians and attack Israeli communities from underground. As for Hamas, its interest is irrational, macabre, and deranged, but no less obvious: Promote itself as the leader of the worldwide struggle against Zionism and Judaism, while ensuring collateral damage that will foment outrage at Israel. That is why Hamas stores weapons in schools, why its military headquarters is in the basement of a hospital. Hamas is not interested in minimizing pain. Hamas wants to maximize it.

Who wants a ceasefire? Obama and Kerry. They need the diplomatic victory after the failure of their misguided and poorly executed bid to reconcile the irreconcilable. The president’s approval rating on foreign policy is abysmal. A ceasefire might help the American people forget, just for a moment, that their president has failed to influence events in Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq, let alone advance American interests overseas. Since he became president, Israel is the one country in the world in whose affairs President Obama has seemed at all interested in intervening. It is the one country whose politics and actions Obama has had no trouble judging harshly. Next to golf, it’s his favorite pastime.

Who wants a ceasefire? Qatar. The sheikhs who bankroll the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, and Hamas would see their status rise. A ceasefire would lend credence to the theory that the traditional Sunni powers—Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia—have been eclipsed both by Shiite Iran and by Brotherhood-friendly Sunnis in the Gulf and Turkey. Having lost Egypt and possibly Gaza, the Brotherhood finds itself on the precipice. A Qatari-backed ceasefire that does not include disarmament of Hamas would pull the movement back from the abyss.

“One of the results, one would hope, of a cease-fire would be some form of demilitarization, so that again, this doesn’t continue, doesn’t repeat itself,” said Tony Blinken, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, to NPR. One wouldhope so. Indeed, actual demilitarization—not hoped for, not partial—is exactly what the IDF is doing now, block by block, tunnel by tunnel. Why is the administration trying to stop it? Is a ceasefire that leaves Hamas with its arsenal really more desirable to them than another week of war?

This is not the time for President Obama and John Kerry to play to type, to promote bad agreements for self-satisfaction, for political gain. If they won’t stand behind Israel, they should at least get out of the way. And let the IDF finish the job.

Hamas Mega-Attack Planned through Gaza Terror Tunnels, Gatestone Institute, Lawrence A. Franklin, July 25, 2014

IDF Excavation of the tunnels has resulted in the seizure of tons of Hamas supplies as well as the discovery of plans for future operations.

Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today by the Israeli daily Maariv.

The Hamas plan consisted of what was to be a surprise attack in which 200 fighters would be dispatched through each of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel, and seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.

Israeli soldiers already frustrated a surprise assault by Hamas through one tunnel from Gaza into the Eshkol district of Israel on July 19. The Hamas fighters escaped back into the tunnel, but the clash cost the lives of two Israel Defense Force [IDF] troops.

An IDF paratrooper officer emerges from a Hamas cross-border tunnel that his unit discovered, July 20, 2014. (Image source: IDF)

Israel has reportedly discovered at least 30 tunnels, and has destroyed several of them by employing bulldozers. IDF excavation of the tunnels has resulted in the seizure of tons of Hamas supplies, as well as the discovery of plans for future operations. Clearly, the network of tunnels — using hundreds of tons of concrete that might otherwise have been used by the Palestinians for building homes, shopping malls, parks, schools, hospitals and libraries — indicates that Hamas had been preparing for an ongoing conflict for at least a year. According to the reports, each tunnel has arteries, veins, offshoots, and offshoots of the offshoots in intricate and complex arrangements. As one Israeli spokesman said, “There are two Gazas, one above ground and one below ground: an underground terrorist city.”

Cleric Underlines Necessity for Arming West Bank, FARs News Agency, July 25, 2014

(As always, please consider the source. FARs is [at least] a “semi-official” news agency with ties to the [Iranian] government.” Iran is, of course, the nation of peace loving Islamists to which  the U.S. and other “world powers” have decided to grant legitimacy through the P5+1 nukes for peace scam.– DM)

He condemned the Zionist regime for its recent aggression of Gaza, and said, “The only remedy is armed resistance, the resistance which has turned Tel Aviv to a ghost town and has made the Zionists’ day a dark, black night.”

**********

Egyptian militants say Israeli drone kills three terrorists in Sinai | JPost | Israel News.

( YAY !  These are the dirt-bags who have been rocketing me here in Eilat.  Egyptian denial is to be expected. – JW )

By REUTERS

07/25/2014 16:46

An Egyptian Defense Ministry source denies the incident, however, saying there has been no violation of Egyptian airspace of any kind.

CAIRO – Three fighters from the Egyptian militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis were killed when their car was hit by an Israeli drone in the Sinai region, the group said on Friday.

An Egyptian Defense Ministry source denied the incident, however.

“There has been no violation of Egyptian airspace by any kind of aircraft, whether Israeli or others,” the source said.

Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis made the announcement on Friday morning on a website on which it regularly posts its statements.

“A number of Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis Jihadists were martyred as their car was hit by an Israeli drone on Wednesday evening,” the group said in the statement, listing three.

The United States designated the group as a terrorist organization in April, saying it had launched rockets at Israel’s southern city of Eilat and attacked Israeli border guards. It has also targeted Egyptian and foreign tourists and Israel, the department said.

The Sinai-based group, formed in the wake of the 2011 uprisings in Egypt, has claimed responsibility for several high-profile attacks, including an assassination attempt on Egypt’s interior minister last year.

Bill Whittle on Israel, Hamas, and Envy

July 24, 2014
Moonbattery Blog

Even from the liberal point of view — assuming it isn’t just a pose — no one can deny that Israel is on the side of good and Hamas terrorists on the side of evil. Yet the reprobates presiding over our government are not alone in siding with Hamas. What has happened to this country that we would tolerate a government so morally vile, and that some of us would even share its allegiances?

Maybe we let envy creep in to contaminate our souls, the way it has Palestinians’ souls, compelling them to devote their nation to hatred and destruction. Envy is poison to anything healthy, but it is the ultimate source of nourishment for all things related to moonbattery.

Report: FAA Backed Down After Israeli Threat to Ramp Up

By: Shalom Bear
Published: July 24th, 2014

​(I guess two can play this game. Interesting term…’going disproportional’. We may be seeing more of it. – LS)

Israel threatened to go disproportional on Gaza, if the FAA ban on US flights to Israel wasn’t rescinded.

Israel reportedly told the United States that it understands the rules and the reasoning behind the FAA ban on US flights to Israel, according to Arad Nir of Israel Channel 2.

Israel reportedly told the US that this situation (of the FAA ban) can’t continue, so in order to resolve it, Israel will need to significantly and disproportionately ramp up its attack on Gaza, and put an immediate stop to all the rocket attacks, thus allowing US flight to Israel to resume.

Nir claims the message was understood and the FAA ban was rescinded.