WarSclerotic

On Twitter, Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei Admits to Being the Head of the Serpent Whose Tail is Hamas in Gaza, Algemeiner, July 21, 2014

The Twitter page of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, photographed sitting next to Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal. Photo: Screenshot / Twitter.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei admitted to providing support for Hamas in Gaza, in a series of hateful tweets against Israel on Sunday and Monday.

Iran’s military and financial support for Hamas was also touted openly in the Iranian press, which even named the Fajr 5 missiles and Abadil drones given to militants by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The hypocrisy of it all was called out on Monday by AIPAC, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which asked how the U.S. and world powers could remove further economic sanctions and extend talks with Iran, “at the very moment when Hamas is using arms supplied by Tehran to attack Israeli civilians.”

Khamenei’s social media outburst gave further credence to the accusations at a hearing held by U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce last week that “Iran’s nuclear program is just the tip of a revolutionary spear that extends across the world and threatens key U.S. interests,” with Tehran’s foreign policy being “subversive, sectarian, and set on goals that would come at the expense of U.S. interests in the region.”

Rather than “revolutionary spear,” this column seeks to use language the Iranian mullahs in Tehran will understand, with Khamenei’s Twitter rant showing that Iran’s Supreme Leader is the very head of the serpent whose tail is Hamas in Gaza.

Much has been written about Tehran’s role in financing and arming its allies and its role in the region’s shifting alliances. One Op-Ed at the weekend went further to now paint an internal proxy war within the Sunni axis in the Middle East, now split with Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, on one side against Qatar, Turkey and Hamas, along with other global supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, on the other.

But that analysis left out the alliance that has been most directly threatening to Israel; Iran-Syria-Lebanon-Gaza, with the first pair represented by the entrenched regimes and the second by Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which are classified internationally as terrorist groups.

Another question that wasn’t directly explored by pundits was that if Hamas is fighting Israel in some proxy war, would it really just be another way of saying, quite simply, this is Iran versus the U.S.?

And, more specifically, if Hamas takes orders from Tehran and receives its missiles from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was the flare-up in the past two weeks of Gaza’s sworn war against Israel just some sick and twisted smokescreen to divert the world’s attention from Sunday’s July 20th expiration of the six-month negotiation window set by the U.S. to reach an agreement with Tehran to slow Iran’s nuclear program?

In other words, should the blood of hundreds of Gazans, following Hamas orders to stand on the rooftops of their homes, rather than follow IDF instructions to vacate and seek shelter, be on the hands of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, or his benefactor, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

On Twitter, via @khamenei_ir, Khamenei showed the world his hatred for Jews, Israel, and the U.S., combining new tweets with some from his archive, which he even dated, with one self-referenced quote going back 20 years.

His Twitter account was also updated with a new background photo, showing Khamenei at a news conference with Meshaal, now living in exile, who was also accused by Israel media at the weekend for having embezzled perhaps billions of dollars from donations for humanitarian support into a property empire in Qatar.

On Sunday, Khamenei said on Twitter: “We back and assist any nations that confront the Zionist regime and we are not at all afraid of declaring it. 2/3/12 #GazaUnderAttack #Gaza”.

Tweet from Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei: “#Israel, sinister filthy rabid dog in the region, is a threat to the world. 11/2/13 Zionism is The Real Terrorism #Gaza.”

He said: “What’s #Israel? A fake regime & a false nation. They gathered some greedy ppl fr across the world on the pretext of a better life in #Palestine.”

He continued: “Usurper #Israel’s govt, over half a century since this cancer tumor was formed in the body of Islam, has always led its course by #terrorism.”

“Made in Iran” stamped on a bag of cement used to conceal rockets aboard an Irani ship destined for Gaza via Sudan. Photo: IDF.

While Khamenei tried to denounce Israel for terrorism, it was Chairman Royce last week who pointed the finger at the Islamic Republic for being the world’s largest terrorist organization.

Royce said,“It is Iran that provides the funding, weapons, and training to Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups.  Iranian leaders have admitted to providing the missile technology that Hamas used against Israel during the last Gaza conflict in November 2012. And just the other week, a U.N. panel of experts concluded that rockets and weapons concealed on the Klos-C – including long-range M-302 rockets – originated from Iran.”

The Klos-C ship was seized by Israel in March. Hidden under bags of Iranian cement, Israel found 40 M-302 missiles, 181 122-mm mortars, and 400,000 7.62 caliber bullets. The weapons were originally flown from Syria to Iran. From Iran, they were shipped by boat to Iraq. The shipment was intercepted as it was being moved by boat from Iraq to Sudan, from where the weapons would have been smuggled into Gaza.

“Indeed, with Iran’s long support of terrorist groups, militias and regimes, the region has been feeling the brunt of this ‘revolutionary spear’ for quite some time,” Royce said.

Or, in the words familiar to the Ayatollah’s mullahs, Iran’s Supreme Leader is the very head of the serpent whose tail is Hamas in Gaza.

(OK, so we’re supposed to believe this??-LS)

Iran has turned all of its enriched uranium closest to the level needed to make nuclear arms into more harmless forms, the UN nuclear agency says. The conversion of its stock of 20%-enriched uranium was part of a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme. The US said last week it would unblock $2.8bn in frozen Iranian funds in return for Iran’s compliance.
A four-month extension to talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions was agreed on Friday between Iran and world powers. The talks are aimed at persuading Iran to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. The six world powers involved in the talks – the US, France, China, Russia, Germany and the UK – suspect Iran seeks atomic weapons, which Iran denies.
The country insists that it is enriching uranium for use in nuclear power stations and for medical purposes.

Promising sign
Correspondents say Iran’s completion of eliminating its most worrying uranium stockpile is a promising sign that its leaders do not want to derail the diplomatic process. A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran is observing all of its other commitments as well. Iran had more than 200kg of 20%-enriched uranium when the preliminary agreement to convert it was reached last November. At 20%, enriched uranium can be converted quickly to arm a nuclear weapon and experts said 200kg was enough to make one nuclear warhead.

Negotiations between the six powers and Iran are set to resume in September, with the deadline for an agreement on 24 November. Despite the news, the BBC’s Bethany Bell says a long-term solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions still seems a long way off. The parties have been unable to reach agreement on imposing long-term restrictions over Iran’s uranium enrichment and plutonium production – processes that could yield material for nuclear warheads. In a joint statement after last week’s talks, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said: “There are still significant gaps on some core issues which will require more time and effort.” A deal could see the lifting of oil and trade sanctions on Iran.

Has Hamas ended the prospects for a two state solution?.

Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

This of course is part of Hamas’ grand strategy: by targeting Israeli civilians and international air travel from its own civilian areas, Hamas leaves Israel no choice but to take military actions that risk the lives of innocent Palestinians. There will be even more innocent Palestinian deaths now, as Hamas has raised the stakes considerably for Israel. Every country in the world would do everything in its power to keep open the airports, which are the lifelines to its economic viability. Hamas knows this and welcomes Israeli military action that produces more dead Palestinian civilians and hence more international criticism of Israel.

Even more importantly, Hamas’ actions in essentially closing down international air traffic into Israel, considerably reduces the prospect of any two-state solution. Israel will now be more reluctant than ever to give up military control over the West Bank, which is even closer to Ben Gurion Airport than is Gaza.

Were Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank—as distinguished from its civilian settlements deep in the West Bank—it would risk the possibility of a Hamas takeover. That is precisely what happened when Israel removed both its civilian settlements and its military presence in Gaza. Hamas took control, fired thousands of rockets at Israeli civilian targets and have now succeeded in stopping international air traffic into and out of Israel.

Israel could not accept the risk of a Hamas takeover of the West Bank and the resulting Hamas rocket attacks at the nearby Ben Gurion Airport. It may still be possible to create a two-state solution whereby Israel withdraws its civilian settlers from most of the West Bank and agrees to land swaps for areas that now contain large settlement blocks. But Israel will have to retain military control over its security borders, which extend to the Jordan River. It will also have to maintain a sufficient military presence to assure that what happened in Gaza does not happen in the West Bank. These military realities do not have to exist forever. Israel’s military presence could be reduced if the Palestinian Authority were to maintain effective control over the West Bank and prevent terrorists from using that area to send rockets and terrorists into Israel.

The new reality caused by Hamas’ shutting down of international air travel to and from Israel would plainly justify an Israeli demand that it maintain military control over the West Bank in any two-state deal. The Israeli public would never accept a deal that did not include a continued Israeli military presence in the West Bank. They have learned the tragic lesson of Gaza and they will not allow it to be repeated in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority, however, is unlikely to accept such a condition, though it should. This will simply make it far more difficult for an agreement to be reached.

It was precisely one of the goals of the Hamas rocket and tunnel assaults to scuttle any two-state agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The Hamas Charter categorically rejects the two-state solution, as does the military wing of Hamas. In this tragic respect, Hamas has already succeeded. By aiming its rockets in the direction of Ben Gurion Airport, Hamas may well have scuttled any realistic prospects for a two-state solution. It cannot be allowed to succeed.

The international community, which has a significant stake in protecting international air traffic from terrorist rocket attacks, must support Israel’s efforts to stop these attacks—permanently. If Hamas is allowed to shut down Israel’s major airport, every terrorist group in the world will begin to target airports throughout the world. The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over the Ukraine will be but one of many such tragedies, if Hamas is allowed to succeed. An attack on the safety on Israel’s airport is an attack on the safety of all international aviation. Israel is the canary in the mine. What Hamas has done to Israeli aviation is a warning to the world. In its efforts to prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Ben Gurion Airport, Israel is fighting for the entire civilized world against those who would shoot down civilian airliners. The world should support Israel in this noble fight.

For second time, rockets found at UN school in Gaza | The Times of Israel.

‘How many more schools will have to be abused by Hamas missile squads before the international community will intervene?’ Foreign Ministry fumes

By Raphael Ahren July 22, 2014, 9:31 pm

Palestinian girls at a UNRWA school in Gaza. (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90)

For the second time in less than a week, rockets have been found in a school in Gaza operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the body said.

After Delta Reroutes Flight Into Israel, 5 Other Airlines Suspend Flights To Tel Aviv On Missile Worries | Zero Hedge.

( This is the cover story.  Rockets fell closer to BG last week to no effect.  This is Obama/Kerry putting a HUGE (plausibly deniable) economic sanction on Israel for refusing to accede to Kerry’s ceasefire as formulated by Hamas’ only allies, Qatar and Turkey. – JW )

U.S. FLIGHTS TO ISRAEL HALTED BY FAA

About two hours ago, and in the aftermath of the public outcry regarding flights in conflict zones, first Delta then most other major international carriers announced they would suspend flights to Israel “until further notice” amid concerns that a rocket landed near Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv. The list of confirmed airlines that have halted such flights is shown below.

• US Airways also said it has canceled two flights to and from Tel Aviv from Philadelphia.
• United Airlines canceled two flights from Newark to Tel Aviv, according to FlightAware.com.
• American Airlines told NBC News that it is meeting to discuss the situation.
• Lufthansa said there are no changes to its Tel Aviv flight schedules for now.
• British Airways said it continued to operate as normal but is monitoring the situation.
• KLM said it was meeting to discuss the issue.

According to NBC, “the move comes amid heightened concerns over the safety of passenger aircraft flying over war zones. A Malaysian Air Lines jet with 298 aboard was brought down as it was flying over contested Ukrainian territory. The White House said the Federal Aviation Administration has not issued any notices about flights over the Middle East. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told NBC News there is no event to the best of his knowledge taking place now at Ben Gurion. He said he believes the Delta cancellation probably came after a rocket fell 3 miles from the airport earlier Tuesday.”

The flight redirection is shown most vividly in the following flight pattern of Delta flight 468 from New York to Tel Aviv (via Flightradar24) which was rerouted shortly before arrival and landed in Paris instead.

Meanwhile Israel says there is nothing to fear. From Bloomberg:

After US Air and Delta cancel flights scheduled to land in Israeli airport this evening, Transport Minister Israel Katz says Ben-Gurion safe for landings and take-offs, according to Aviation Authority. No concern for safety of planes or passengers.

For now, however, nobody is taking chances with another MH17 tragedy.

Islam’s war on Israel, Dan Miller’s Blog, July 22, 2014

Islam, the religion of death not peace, continues its winning streak. President Obama shows many signs of approval.

An article posted by Daniel Greenfield at Front Page Magazine and republished at Warsclerotic is titled “Israel’s War with the Muslim Brotherhood.” It makes a powerful case supporting this thesis:

Israel has become a flashpoint in the region because it is the only place where an armed non-Muslim minority has been able to make a stand against Muslim genocide.  Israel has been fighting the forces of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza since right after the Holocaust. Its soldiers are fighting so that the same forces that have been ethnically cleansing the Christians and Jews of the Middle East do not reach Israel. [Emphasis added.]

Mr. Greenfield’s entire article is well worth reading.

In my view, the greatest threat to Israel, the United States and the rest of the free, democratic and civilized world is the religion of peace death, of which the Muslim Brotherhood is a member and within which it has powerful allies. The Muslim Brotherhood also has Islamic clients such as Hamas, currently more generously supported by Iran due to the Brotherhood’s fall from grace in Egypt, which President Obama had tried to prevent.

Perhaps President Obama does not view the Islamic threat as Islamic. If and to the extent that He realizes the nature of the Islamic threat, He either does not mind or approves. He very rarely interrupts his fund raising, golf games, vacations, photo op efforts (or such other duties as He may think He has) to emit shrill noises complaining about any Islamic entity, and then only when politically convenient to do so — without noting that its actions are Islamic.

Recently, He offered obligatory pro-forma support for Israel’s right to defend against Hamas’ missiles and her terrorists who emerge from tunnels to kill or capture Israelis. However, He then admonished Israel to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza by showing more “restraint.” He thereby suggested that Israel is not already excising the maximum restraint reasonably possible. She is, in the face of Hamas’ successful efforts to put non-combatants in the line of fire to increase the numbers of photogenic “civilian” casualties and hence to garner popular and governmental approval and support.

Hamas does not want peace. It wants death, certainly for Israel and for enough of its own “martyrs” to show to the world and to claim that their sad deaths were due to Israel’s vile aggression. Israel should not have to submit that that sort of warfare, and neither should any other state or human.

Really?

US carriers suspend flights to Israel over rocket scare | The Times of Israel.

Delta diverts flight after debris from Gazan missile damages home near airport

Illustrative photo of a Delta flight (photo credit: AP/Michael Simon)

US airline Delta said Tuesday it was indefinitely suspending flights between the United States and Israel, citing security concerns.

United Airlines also announced it was suspending flights, but only until Thursday.

The moves came hours after shrapnel from a rocket damaged a home in the central Israeli town of Yehud, which abuts Israel’s main international airport.

In a statement, Delta said it had diverted a flight bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport to Paris on Tuesday after “reports of a rocket or associated debris near the airport in Tel Aviv.”

The announcement comes as the Israeli campaign entered its third week, and world powers pushed for a truce between the Jewish state and Hamas.

“Delta has suspended service until further notice to and from Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv and its New York-JFK hub,” the airline said in a statement.

“Delta, in coordination with the US Federal Aviation Administration, is doing so to ensure the safety and security of our customers and employees.”

The carrier said the diverted flight was a Boeing 747 with 273 passengers and 17 crew on board, adding it was “working to reaccommodate these customers.”

Delta said it would continue to monitor the situation in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration and others.

No country can force a cease-fire, Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, July 22, 2014

Israel has not entered a campaign with a world so divided and with Hamas so politically isolated since 2008. We are still a long way off from drawing conclusions, and it is not clear when a cease-fire will be reached, even a humanitarian one, but Israel already has one achievement under its belt and it is called Egypt. In a state of affairs such as this, Hamas can only draw a zero on its list of accomplishments, and Israel should be in no rush to open border crossings.

Those who are interested in a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas — and they are not in the majority, as displayed by Israel Hayom’s poll — are frustrated.

There is no country today that could really enforce a cease-fire. Moreover, both cease-fire initiatives, which were placed on the table more than a week ago, are the product of countries — Egypt, Turkey and Qatar — that trust one another about as much as Israel and Hamas trust one another, especially since the ousting of former Egyptian President and Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi in a military coup.

It wouldn’t hurt if someone were to mediate between the mediators. For example, between Cairo and Washington or between Ankara and Cairo. And yet, the effort to find a diplomatic solution is gaining momentum. Washington, which has almost willingly become irrelevant, called (that is, U.S. President Barack Obama called) on Monday for a truce. But even Washington cannot force a cease-fire now.

What happened to the days when former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would come to the neighborhood and get things done? The current secretary of state, John Kerry, was unknowingly recorded on Sunday in the Fox news studio saying to his aide: “We’ve got to get over there. … We ought to go tonight. I think it’s crazy to be sitting around.” Proof that times have changed.

It is no surprise that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who just recently joined a unity government with Hamas, has become the primary mediator. Except that Abbas is not a mediator — he is directly involved. The list of his meetings includes Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Turkish President Abdullah Gul, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal. It is the meeting with Mashaal that is the most important. It is with Mashaal that the rivalry is real.

Egypt is asking that Hamas pay a high price for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and it is not prepared to grant any favors. Turkey wants to strengthen its position as an influential party, but it is not able to move past its tensions and rivalries with Israel and Egypt. And Qatar, the trouble-making mediator that owns Al Jazeera, continues to destabilize Arab regimes and to promote conflict in order to ensure its existence and solidify its position with a filled and open wallet. Meanwhile, Iran is busy with its nuclear project and is prepared to let its relationship with Hamas deteriorate, not just for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s sake, but also for the sake of Iranian uranium.

Israel has not entered a campaign with a world so divided and with Hamas so politically isolated since 2008. We are still a long way off from drawing conclusions, and it is not clear when a cease-fire will be reached, even a humanitarian one, but Israel already has one achievement under its belt and it is called Egypt. In a state of affairs such as this, Hamas can only draw a zero on its list of accomplishments, and Israel should be in no rush to open border crossings.

Hot mic, cold shoulder, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, July 22, 2014

Washington is in a bit of a bind. On one hand, the White House and State ‎Department are hostile to the national camp in Israel, which they see as represented by ‎Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They feel much more comfortable with figures like ‎outgoing President Shimon Peres and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who parrot their own ‎delusions about the way to achieve peace.‎

On the other, even the doves in America are hard put to denounce such a clear-cut case of ‎a “war of no choice” as the one that Israel is being forced to engage in right now.‎

This is why Kerry and U.S. President Barack Obama keep making statements about Israel’s ‎right to defend itself out of one side of their mouths, while urging restraint out of the ‎other.‎

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is coming to Israel on Tuesday, following a visit to ‎Cairo to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and U.N. Secretary-General ‎Ban Ki-moon. The purpose of both trips is to try and secure a cease-fire in Gaza.‎

It’s been a while since Kerry has graced the region with his presence. This is just as well. ‎If it hadn’t been for the secretary of state’s flying back and forth between Jerusalem and ‎Ramallah for months on end to “assist” in the establishment of a Palestinian state, there ‎would not be a war going on in Gaza right now.‎

As is always the case when Israel engages in “two-state-solution” talks with the ‎Palestinian Authority, terrorism against the Jewish state ensues. Buoyed by what they ‎perceive as a crack in Israeli armor, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas up the ante on ‎demands already met — such as the release of massive numbers of terrorists held in Israeli ‎prisons — and then launch operations against the Israeli homefront.‎

The present war in Gaza, thus, has Kerry’s fingerprints all over it.‎

But Washington is in a bit of a bind. On one hand, the White House and State ‎Department are hostile to the national camp in Israel, which they see as represented by ‎Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They feel much more comfortable with figures like ‎outgoing President Shimon Peres and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who parrot their own ‎delusions about the way to achieve peace.‎

On the other, even the doves in America are hard put to denounce such a clear-cut case of ‎a “war of no choice” as the one that Israel is being forced to engage in right now.‎

This is why Kerry and U.S. President Barack Obama keep making statements about Israel’s ‎right to defend itself out of one side of their mouths, while urging restraint out of the ‎other.‎

It also explains the dripping sarcasm, caught on a hot mic at Fox News on Sunday, which ‎Kerry expressed about Israel’s assertion that it has been taking every step to avoid killing ‎innocent Gazans. Talking on his cellphone to his deputy chief of staff, Kerry said, “It is a ‎hell of a pinpoint operation. … We’ve got to get over there.”‎

Later, when asked by Fox about his tone, he said he had “reacted obviously in a way that, ‎you know, anybody does with respect to, you know, young children and civilians.” What ‎he did not explain was why his disdain on this score was not reserved for, you know, ‎Hamas, the organization wholly responsible for the deaths of “young children and ‎civilians” — you know, both in Israel and in Gaza.‎

This does not mean he is unaware that Hamas is to blame. It merely reflects his wish that ‎Netanyahu would not end up having the high moral high ground all the time. And what ‎can he say about the fact that Hamas has received two “humanitarian cease-fires” so far, ‎to enable the evacuation of the dead and wounded (you know, to places like the Israeli ‎field hospital at the Erez Crossing), both of which it violated by firing missiles into Israeli ‎cities?‎

It must have been comforting for him to meet with Ban the minute he arrived in Egypt on ‎Monday, on the heels of the secretary-general’s statement that placed the blame on Israel ‎for the civilian deaths incurred during Sunday’s strikes in the Shujaiyya section of Gaza ‎‎ — a hotbed of terrorist operations and infrastructure.‎

‎”I condemn this atrocious action,” he said. “Israel must exercise maximum restraint and ‎do far more to protect civilians.”‎

It is no surprise, then, that Kerry’s first order of business with Ban was to announce that ‎the U.S. will be sending $47 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza. Nor will it help to point ‎out that these millions, as all the billions that have been poured into Gaza over the years, ‎will promptly be spent on rebuilding the rocket launchers and terrorist tunnels that Israel ‎has been targeting and attempting to destroy during this war.‎

Nevertheless, a group is organizing in Israel to demonstrate across from the David Citadel ‎Hotel in Jerusalem, where Kerry will be staying in the coming days, to tell him to go ‎home.‎

What the protestors should keep in mind, however, is that Kerry’s hot mic moment, like ‎his general cold shoulder to Netanyahu, is in keeping with his administration’s overall ‎ideology in relation to the West and its enemies. Hamas is small fry compared to its ‎backers in Tehran; and Kerry behaves no differently towards the mullahs of the Islamic ‎republic than he does to their proxies in Gaza.‎

Sunday was the deadline spelled out in the Joint Plan of Action, signed in January, for ‎the nuclear talks between the P5+1 countries and Iran to culminate in a deal. Naturally, ‎the Iranians have been using the time to continue working on their nuclear weapons ‎capability. Yet now being given an extension until November 24.‎

“Diplomacy takes time,” Kerry said in a statement on Sunday. “[A]nd persistence is ‎needed to determine whether we can achieve our objectives peacefully. To turn our back ‎prematurely on diplomatic efforts when significant progress has been made would deny ‎ourselves the ability to achieve our objectives peacefully, and to maintain the international ‎unity that we have built. … [This extension] will give us a short amount of additional time ‎to continue working to conclude a comprehensive agreement, which we believe is ‎warranted by the progress we’ve made and the path forward we can envision.”‎

It is for this reason that Israel is in existential danger, no matter what Kerry says about ‎Israel or how the war in Gaza ends.‎

Israel’s War with the Muslim Brotherhood, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield , July 22, 2014

Israel has become a flashpoint in the region because it is the only place where an armed non-Muslim minority has been able to make a stand against Muslim genocide.  Israel has been fighting the forces of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza since right after the Holocaust. Its soldiers are fighting so that the same forces that have been ethnically cleansing the Christians and Jews of the Middle East do not reach Israel.

Despite the cries of furious hipsters waving cardboard signs stained with fake blood, there is no ethnic cleansing going on in Gaza. No more than there was when the US began bombing the Taliban.

The last act of ethnic cleansing took place in the summer of 2005 when the Israeli government gave in to international pressure by forcibly evicting all the Jews from the Gaza Strip. Even the graves were dug up.

The media, which had been up in arms when Israel had evicted 400 Hamas terrorists, had nothing but applause for the forced ethnic cleansing of thousands of Jewish families. The synagogues they left behind were also torched to the applause of the same media now filling the airwaves with fake outrage.

CNN described one synagogue as “very controversial because it is the Jewish synagogue.” The Los Angeles Times wrote of Muslims venting “their fury over the occupation by laying waste to the synagogues.” “Youths set fire to synagogues and other symbols of the hated occupation,” the London Times scribbled. The Age tried for the poetic with “Burning synagogue lights Gaza dawn”.

The Nazi Minister of Propaganda had written under similar circumstances, “I wish to return to my hotel and see a glow as red as blood. The synagogue is burning.” The mainstream media had erased any distinction between themselves and the Kristallnacht propaganda of Joseph Goebbels

The ethnic cleansing of Jews from Gaza made the Hamas takeover possible. The current conflict is rooted in that tragic act of appeasement.

And it wasn’t only the Jews who suffered.

Under Muslim Brotherhood rule, the Christian population of Gaza was cut in half. The Baptists nearly disappeared after a Christian bookstore was bombed twice and its manager was clubbed and shot.

What happened to the Christians of Gaza was the same thing that had been happening to Christians across the Middle East under Islamic rule. While the media is focusing on Gaza, ISIS has just finished ethnically cleansing the Christians of Mosul by demanding that the non-Muslim residents of this Iraqi city convert to Islam, pay Jizya or die.

ISIS is a cousin of Hamas. Both organizations are outgrowths of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its current leader came out of the Muslim Brotherhood and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man originally behind Al Qaeda in Iraq, was released from a Jordanian prison to win favor with the local Muslim Brotherhood.

When Zarqawi was finally killed, Hamas issued a statement mourninghim as “a martyr of the nation.” Protesters in Gaza demanded revenge for his death. The Islamic Action Front, the Brotherhood’s political arm in Jordan, openly expressed its admiration for the mass murderer.

ISIS, Hamas and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood have all driven out Christians in areas under the control of their Jihadists. Hamas’ attacks on Israel are motivated by that same xenophobic impulse.

Hamas is doing to Gaza what ISIS is doing to Mosul, slowly transforming it into a terrorist slum at war with the rest of the world, until it becomes a Qaeda, a base, the Muslim equivalent of a Liberation Theology base community.

Christians, Jews and other minorities cannot survive this process. Their only choices are to flee or fight.

When Israel pulls back after this latest round of fighting, Gaza will be as Muslim as ever. But under Hamas rule, it will not be very long until it is as empty of Christians as it already is of Jews.

And that is real ethnic cleansing.

Genocide isn’t the empty theater played out by Hamas and its media and social media allies. It isn’t terrorist groups launching rockets using human shields and then palming off scenes from Final Destination 4 as Israeli atrocities.

It’s the eradication of an entire minority population. It’s what happens when synagogues and churches vanish and are replaced by mosques.

The ultimate goal of Hamas is envisioned in Article Seven of its charter which looks forward to the genocide of the Jews when “The Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him!’”

Or as the Secretary General of the Muslim Brotherhood had already proclaimed long ago, “The Zionist question is but a Jewish question with all that the word entails.”

Unlike Israel’s surgical strikes at Hamas assets, this is genocide and it is the regional endgame of the Arab Muslim conquerors and colonists.

Hamas is not a persecuted minority lashing out as its oppressors. It is one outpost of a supremacist Sunni Muslim majoritarian organization that is terrorizing minorities across the region. Its mission is to continue the thousand year project of Islamic colonialism to destroy indigenous cultures and religions.

The Jews of Jerusalem, like the Christians of Mosul, happen to be in the way. Hamas’s charter makes its genocidal mission clear. But every Islamist group whose mission is to impose the absolute rule of Islam is equally committed to the ethnic cleansing of non-Muslim and even Muslim populations.

The real genocide in Gaza and throughout the Middle East is being committed by Muslims against non-Muslims with the complicity of Western media and governments. There were no UN resolutions when Jews were ethnically cleansed from Kfar Darom in Gaza and parts of Jerusalem in 1948 by Muslims.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s battalion attacked the village of Kfar Darom and forty-five Israeli militia members protected 400 men, women and children. The Brotherhood’s attacks were beaten back with determined resistance until its Jihadists were forced to retreat leaving behind seventy of their dead.

After the village came under attack from Egyptian armor and air power, it had to be abandoned for decades until Israel liberated the territory on which it had stood. Then the diplomats and reporters  who hadn’t cared about the tiny village before, suddenly declared that Kfar Darom was a settlement and the Jews who lived there were occupiers for resettling the land that Muslims had conquered in 1948.

When Kfar Darom was ethnically cleansed again in 2005, the media and the diplomats cheered. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar entered the Kfar Darom synagogue and laid claim to it in the name of Islam.

There were no resolutions or boycotts when the Jews were forced out of East Jerusalem in 1948 and the Jewish Quarter was blown up by a Muslim commander who said, “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter.” But when Israel liberated and reunited Jerusalem in 1967, the Jews moving into their own city and one of the oldest cities in the world were denounced as “settlers.”

The international principle that has been adopted universally is that when Muslims conquer a place, it belongs to them permanently, even if they only conquered it a few decades ago. Muslims always have superior rights to Christians, Jews or any other non-Muslim group in their own countries or any country.

This principle acknowledges that that the ethnic cleansing carried out by ISIS or Hamas is legitimate. It enshrines Muslim privilege up to and including the point of genocide. While the media wails over Gaza, Muslim campaigns of ethnic cleansing continue in Syria, Nigeria and Iraq and a dozen other places.

Israel has become a flashpoint in the region because it is the only place where an armed non-Muslim minority has been able to make a stand against Muslim genocide.  Israel has been fighting the forces of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza since right after the Holocaust. Its soldiers are fighting so that the same forces that have been ethnically cleansing the Christians and Jews of the Middle East do not reach Israel.