WarSclerotic

In face of truce bids, Hamas’ Deif gives Gaza war fresh impetus, maes it a religious jihad.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis July 30, 2014, 12:12 PM (IDT) Tags:  Gaza operation,  IDF,  Hamas,  ceasefire,  Muhammad Deif,
Israeli Air Force bombards Gaza
Israeli Air Force bombards Gaza
Despite the rush of diplomats and analysts declaring that a ceasefire in the Gaza fighting is imminent, the war refuses to end. Wednesday, July 30, the commander of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif gave the conflict fresh impetus by injecting a religious dimension that cannot be ignored.
The conflict was sparked essentially by the June 12 abduction and murder of the Israeli teens Gilad She-ar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach. Forty-nine days later the crisis is evolving into the longest and toughest of Israel’s wars, with the exception of its War of Independence.
As fierce as the fighting is on the battlefield, and as arduous the diplomatic wrangling, the emerging and largely overlooked jihadist element is the most troubling.
The wars raging in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq have demonstrated that armies bigger than the IDF – like the US military and a coalition of nearly all the NATO countries – were not able to end wars against Islamist fighters. This may be that, because of political machinations and self-interest, none of the statesmen and military commanders leading those wars ever sought a decisive end. They gave up on victory on the principle that “Modern wars have no winners.”
But Islamist religious and military leaders do not subscribe to this principle: The Afghan Taliban’s Omar Mullah, the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Hamas’ Deif all seek all-out victory over the enemy.
Deif did not leave this in doubt in the pre-recorded statement he released on June 30 from his hidden Gaza bunker.
“What the planes, artillery, and warships haven’t achieved, the defeated [Israeli] forces will not achieve in the field for, thanks be to Allah, they have become prey for the guns and ambushes of our jihad fighters,” promises Deif in the tape.
“IDF soldiers are facing soldiers who are eager for death and factions that are united,” Deif goes on. “The firm resolve of the Palestinian people will bring victory on the battlefield. The enemy is sending its soldiers to a certain holocaust.”
To Israel, this war has been primarily defensive as implied in its name, Operation Protective Edge. But for Hamas and perhaps a large portion of the Palestinian people, it is Mohammed Deif’s personal accounting with the Zionist enemy.
Israel has tried to have this dangerous terrorist mastermind killed several times – and failed, earning Deif the moniker “the man with nine lives.” On August 22, 2001, Deif and his deputy Adnan al-Awal escaped a targeted assassination attempt. On September 26, 2002, an IDF Apache helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles at Deif’s car as he returned home from a visit of condolence in the Sheikh Rawan district of Gaza. After hours of conflicting reports about the terrorist leader’s fate, Deif turned out to have cheated death once again, although he lost an eye and the use of one hand.
The IDF gave it another go in August 2003, bombing an apartment building where the Hamas military leadership, including al-Awal, Gaza prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, Deif and the movement’s spiritual leader Ahmad Yassin were meeting. Although intelligence had correctly pinpointed the conclave’s time and place, the men were on the building’s bottom floor and escaped with light injuries.
For some years, Deif has not shown his face in public. In a recorded communiqué some eleven years ago, he boasted: “God wanted to make the Jews mad, so He saved me. I believe that only what God wants is what will happen.”
The notorious Islamist sees the war as an opportunity to repolish his personality cult. It must therefore go on unabated wtihout the let-up of a ceasefire until all the truce brokers,  including US President Obama and Egyptian President Fattah El Sisi, force Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to cave in and meet his demands.
When UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited Jerusalem on July 28, Netanyahu warned him about the troubling similarities between Deif’s Hamas and extremist Islamist groups like the Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram.
Israel’s counter-terror offensive, Netanyahu explained, is part and parcel of the war on fundamentalist Islam. As self-appointed commander-in-chief, ensconced in his subterranean lair, Mohammed Deif couldn’t agree more.
And so the not-so-secret contacts between Washington, Cairo, Riyadh, Doha, Jerusalem and Ramallah are doomed to go nowhere, because they take place on one level, whereas a fanatical religious war is taking place on a completely separate one.
So long as the IDF does not breach Hamas’ main lines of defense to the east of Gaza City, and has not destroyed its underground command system and terror offshoots, Deif will cling to his belief that victory is his. And so long as that belief is not shaken, the war will go on.

Lapid says Hamas commander Mohammad Deif ‘a dead man’ | JPost | Israel News.

By JPOST.COM STAFF

07/30/2014 14:24

Finance minister said that Deif’s remarks claiming victory were reminiscent of Iraqi propaganda on the eve of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

One day after Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, was heard vowing that “victory will be ours,” Finance Minister Yair Lapid told reporters on Wednesday that Deif “is a dead man.”

“For years, Mohammed Deif has been hiding in the tunnels underneath Gaza, and that is where he will remain because he’s a dead man,” Lapid said.

Deif, one of the most wanted terrorists by Israel, which has tried to kill him at least four times but failed, was heard in a recording on Tuesday as saying that Hamas was “winning the war.”

Lapid said that Deif’s remarks were reminiscent of propaganda disseminated by the Iraqi government on the eve of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

“The Iraqi information minister continued to claim that they were defeating the United States, until one day he disappeared,” he said. “[Deif] knows that sooner or later, we are going to find him and kill him.”

“Hamas has been bruised and battered, and it is scared, and it is losing this campaign thanks to the heroism and determination of the IDF and its soldiers,” the finance minister said.

“The courage, heroism, and camaraderie shown by IDF soldiers is truly amazing. The Israeli public’s willingness to enlist, the warm embrace for the soldiers and the residents of the south, and the desire to contribute and to give at any given moment really warm the heart, and it gives all of us strength.”

One of the most-wanted terrorists by the IDF, Deif broke years of silence when he resurfaced on Tuesday to declare that, “There will be no ceasefire without [Israel’s] lifting of the siege” and stated, “Victory will be ours.”

Deif warned that Israel’s soldiers face fighters “craving to die,” referring to Hamas fighters looking to achieve martyrdom in the fight against Israel.

The highly reclusive Deif has survived five previous assassination attempts by Israel, most recently when the IDF targeted his home in Khan Younis.

The house was not occupied by Deif at the time, though two people were killed as a result of the explosion.

Deif, who is partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound, is the official head behind Hamas’s warfare and al-Qassam brigades. He is held responsible for many terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.

Questions | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

Ira Sharkanski

Lots of questions

Why Hamas attacked in the first place?

Why it continues to attack, especially from within the time frame of the cease fire that it requested?

Why has the US sided with the most radical of the Muslim governments?

Why has the Israeli government dithered about escalating beyond goals not likely to achieve lasting quiet?

There are no clear answers to any of these questions. The fog of war surrounds us, and we should not expect any of the players to be candid about their aims or capacities.

Hamas’ motives are the most intriguing, and the most important insofar as it is the major initiator and has been stubborn despite suffering great damage and losses of life.

Its leaders most likely knew from the outset that Israel would cause great destruction and casualties. Differentials in the fire power of the two sides are profound, but Hamas still has the capacity to hurt Israel, three weeks into its bombardment of Gaza. Moreover, Hamas’ vulnerability is as much a strength as a weakness. Its surplus of population with a high incidence of unemployment is an asset in international politics. The deaths of women and children aid its cause. Hamas’ pressure on civilians not to leave areas likely to be attacked, and even to assemble around Hamas’ military assets work to achieve international support on the blood of its excess population.

The strategy recalls Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. The Irish should deal with hunger by eating their surplus of children.

Swift was writing a parody, but Hamas is not kidding. They are using their kids as ammunition.

The best answer to What does Hamas want? is what it has been demanding all along: the opening of borders and the development of air and sea ports that will provide Hamas not only with international recognition but with the economic potential to strengthen its hold on the population of Gaza.

So far Hamas retains the military capacity to keep fighting, and waiting for international pressure to build on Israel to make those concessions, largely on the strength of dead children and screaming women.

Involved here is a profound cultural barrier between Israel and Gaza, suggested by Hamas exposing and even killing its own civilians,  perhaps by intention; perhaps by poorly constructed missiles that do not fly out of Gaza.

Israel, in contrast, distributes a video showing children singing in the yard of their kindergarten, then running to shelter in response to a siren, lying down and covering their heads, until the boom, most likely of Iron Dome destroying the incoming missile.

Most perplexing to westerners, but understandable in terms of Hamas’ aims, is their violation of the cease fire they requested for the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

This provided all that was desired by Israeli political and military figures who had been salivating at the prospect of expanding the operation until the destruction of Hamas.

From Hamas’ perspective, the violation of the cease fire was likely to bring the IDF further into Gaza, where Israeli troops would kill and destroy more, but also be exposed to prepared fortifications and the deadly tactics of Hamas fighters.

Hamas’ standing among Muslims adds to the puzzle and helps to understand its actions.

On the one hand, it has been targeted by Egypt, on the outs with Saudi Arabia, is not all that close to Iran and Hezbollah, and forced to rely on Qatar and Turkey, both of which are involved in serious animosity with the major Muslim players.

Hamas status and tactics built on sacrificing civilians put it in the league with the barbarism of ISIS, taints them with the colors of Islamic extremists, and is too much for Egyptian and Saudi elites.

In recent days Hamas has killed Gazans who dared express opposition to the continuation of the fighting.

The extremism of both ISIS and Hamas gains them support from anti-western Muslims, many of them living in western countries.

One also senses a cultural boundary between us and the Americans, or at least the President and his Secretary of State.

Their efforts to exploit the connections of Qatar and Turkey with Hamas, and to accommodate their demands, makes us wonder about which sandbox the Americans are choosing for their play.

The substantial US military base in Qatar, and desires to keep Turkey happy within NATO, may provide part of the explanation.

Wednesday morning we heard about an especially difficult conversation between Obama and Netanyahu. According to one report, the President demanded an immediate, one-sided, and unconditional cease fire. He endorsed Qatar and Turkey as appropriate mediators, and said that Israel could not choose its mediators.

The US defines Hamas as a terrorist organization, claims to avoid direct contact with it, but nonetheless views it as a player whose demands must be given considerable weight. Especially worrying have been comments of Ban-Ki Moon that officials of both Israel and Hamas may be held to account for war crimes.

We doubt that major international actors will do what is necessary to assure the de-militarization of Gaza, or to prevent the import of munitions to replace and improve the stockpiles used in this confrontation

Israelis also question their own government. Why the dithering? Why not earlier movement against the tunnels, known to have threatened Israeli civilians long before this operation? Why the gradual escalation rather than the immediate heavy bombardment of areas where Hamas leaders and activists might be found?

The best answers lie in Bibi’s caution and a concern for international support.

His style is to avoid risk. He’s known as a great speaker, but as a waffler whose speeches often exceed by far the actions he is willing to take.

From all the signs, he has wanted to accomplish enough damage to Hamas and Gaza to assure a reasonable delay until the next confrontation, at a minimum cost in Israeli casualties.

He sought to build support for whatever Israel had to do by means of absorbing some damage and then escalating only gradually in response to Hamas attacks and its rejections of cease fire proposals.

His moderation and measured increase in force have won him support from the Knesset opposition, and even from some further to the left.

He is being badgered by colleagues in his own party and government who want to destroy Hamas.

An unnamed general is quoted as saying that the IDF needs a clear decision, either to escalate or withdraw.

Europe’s moral failure | JPost | Israel News.

07/29/2014 23:09

In city after city, attempts to draw the line between criticism of Israeli policies and crude anti-Semitism have been utterly abandoned.

Europe’s moral failure Since July 8, when the IDF launched Operation Protective Edge to stop Hamas and other Islamist terrorists from attacking Israeli population centers, a wave of anti-Semitism has overtaken Europe.

In city after city, attempts to draw the line between criticism of Israeli policies and crude anti-Semitism have been utterly abandoned.

“Jews are pigs,” protesters in Berlin shouted.

In the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles – nicknamed “Little Jerusalem” for its large community of Sephardic Jews, dozens of youths, some of them masked, raided shops, wrecking a funeral home and destroying its front window as several protesters shouted: “F**** Israel!” Others raided a drugstore that caught fire. Young girls looted baby formula inside.

Speaking as he commemorated the anniversary of the Vel’ d’Hiv Roundup – a mass arrest of Jews in Paris on July 16 and 17, 1942 – French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned of “a new form of anti-Semitism.”

Nathan Norman Gelbart, head of Germany’s Keren Hayesod (United Jewish Appeal), reported that the German- Jewish community is frightened “because there are things that have not occurred since 1933.”

Esther Voet, director of the Center of Information and Documentation on Israel in the Netherlands, said that “we are very aware that it’s not about if something will happen in our country, but when.”

Benjamin Albalas, president of the Jewish community of Greece, said delegitimization of the State of Israel was “a first step toward the intimidation of the Jews’ right to live in their own home countries.”

Gelbart, Voet and Albalas all spoke during an emergency meeting held this week in the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee chaired by MK Yoel Razbozov (Yesh Atid).

A similar refrain was sounded in Washington last week during an annual meeting of Democratic senators and US Jewish groups. “The recurring theme, brought up both by the 24 senators who attended and the Jewish leaders, was a measure of the anxiety aroused by recent reports of attacks on European Jews,” JTA’s Ron Kampeas noted.

As anti-Semitism spirals out of control in Europe – ostensibly over the IDF’s military operation in the Gaza Strip, there has been a surprising amount of support in the US. A CNN/ ORC International poll found that a majority of Americans – 57 percent – believe that Israel’s military actions are justified.

At least part of the difference between American and European reactions has to do with endemic anti-Semitism among native Europeans that remained latent in the aftermath of the Holocaust, but that has re-surfaced in the past few decades. This is most evident in the rise of far-right parties in Hungary and Greece and far-left parties in Germany, Britain and France.

Another big factor is jihadist immigrants.

One of the responses to European anti-Semitism has been the sharp rise in immigration to Israel, particularly from France’s Jewish community, the largest in Europe at about 500,000. In the first three months of the year, 1,407 Jews left France, four times more than in the same period last year.

In any case, European leaders have a moral obligation to fight anti-Semitism. Mass immigration cannot be the only answer.

Unfortunately, in a United Nations Human Rights Council vote last week, leaders of the EU failed their moral duty. The council’s member countries were asked to support a one-sided resolution condemning “in the strongest terms the widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations.”

Nothing was said of Hamas’s strategy of using Gaza’s civilians as human shields, placing its rocket launchers in the midst of civilian populations, firing at IDF troops from hospitals and schools and denying Gazans access to bomb shelters to maximize civilian deaths.

Instead of taking a decisive and principled stand against Hamas’s aggression and supporting Israel’s right to defend itself, every EU country on the council chose to abstain.

The US was the only member state that voted against the resolution.

By abstaining, EU leaders remained silent in the face of the Human Rights Council drawing a moral equivalence between a terrorist organization motivated by a violent, reactionary interpretation of Islam and a liberal, democratic state. If European leaders are unable to make this distinction, why should we expect more of Europe’s masses?

Israel’s dilemma: Topple Hamas, or again come to terms with it | The Times of Israel.

As Palestinians prepare to negotiate ceasefire in Cairo, Jerusalem still hasn’t decided whether to oust Hamas or seek a new set of understandings

Members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, stage an anti-Israel parade as part of the celebrations marking the first anniversary of an Israeli army operation in Gaza, November 14, 2013 (photo credit: Wissam Nassar/Flash90)

As a PLO delegation including Hamas and Islamic Jihad members prepares to leave for Cairo to discuss a ceasefire with Israel, the Israeli cabinet evidently has still not decided whether it wants to topple Hamas or leave it in power, weakened, in the Gaza Strip, The Times of Israel has learned.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is disinclined to go all the way with Hamas, but key ministers in his cabinet such as Economy Minister Naftali Bennett are urging him to redefine the goals of Protective Edge — from destroying the tunnels to destroying Hamas.

PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo announced Tuesday afternoon that all Palestinian factions have agreed to a 24-hour humanitarian ceasefire, and were “positively considering” a UN proposal to extend it to 72 hours. But Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri denied that such an agreement was ever reached.

Israel has destroyed the majority of Hamas terror tunnels from Gaza and some two-thirds of its rocket arsenal, significantly hampering the movement’s missile-launching capabilities. But the cabinet has still not made up its mind whether to expand the ground operation and topple Hamas, or whether to reach new understandings on a status quo with the Islamic organization, which had closely adhered to a ceasefire agreement with Israel reached in November 2012.

Through Operation Protective Edge, the IDF believes it has conveyed two important messages to the non-state actors fighting Israel. The first is that thanks to Israel’s missile defense technology — some of which is still being developed — rocket launches have proven ineffective as a weapon of war against Israel; few of the over 2,600 projectiles launched at Israel have landed in urban areas.

The second message is directed at Lebanon’s Hezbollah no less than at Hamas: the organizations’ doctrine of fighting Israel from within residential areas with impunity has been disproved. Following lengthy legal deliberations, the IDF has decided that all civilian structures from which military activity is launched are a legitimate target for attack.

All military operations in Protective Edge have been carried out with the tight legal accompaniment of the IDF’s international law specialists. Thus, no house in Gaza has been bombed without prior notification at least twice: through pamphlets, personal telephone calls, and finally warning fire. Residential buildings abandoned by their inhabitants and then reoccupied by them have been spared.

The Palestinian delegates are headed for an Egypt that is much changed since the understandings last reached under its brokerage in 2012. With Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi gone, Israel is now enjoying an unprecedented flowering in relations with Egypt on both the military and diplomatic levels.

Egypt’s systematic destruction of over 1,600 smuggling tunnels from Gaza to Sinai, continuing even at present, has significantly weakened Hamas’s financial condition.

As talks get underway in Cairo, Israel will have to quickly decide whether it wants to gradually weaken Hamas by empowering PA President Abbas in Gaza (and in the West Bank), or whether it wishes to oust Hamas through military force. That latter option will surely prove costly to Israel in human life and financial resources, and may leave the IDF in full control of the Gaza Strip for an undetermined period.

Hamas has fired over 2,670 rockets at Israeli civilians since July 8.

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Our world: Israel, Hamas and Obama’s foreign policy | JPost | Israel News.

( “Americans are the ones who need to be most alarmed by what Obama’s actions on behalf of Hamas reveal about the general direction of American Middle East policy under his leadership.” – JW )

By CAROLINE B. GLICK

07/29/2014 22:52

Americans need to be alarmed by what Obama’s actions on behalf of Hamas reveal about the general direction of American Middle East policy under his leadership.

When US President Barack Obama phoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night, in the middle of a security cabinet meeting, he ended any remaining doubt regarding his policy toward Israel and Hamas.

Obama called Netanyahu while the premier was conferring with his senior ministers about how to proceed in Gaza. Some ministers counseled that Israel should continue to limit our forces to specific pinpoint operations aimed at destroying the tunnels of death that Hamas has dug throughout Gaza and into Israeli territory.

Others argued that the only way to truly destroy the tunnels, and keep them destroyed, is for Israel to retake control over the Gaza Strip.

No ministers were recommending that Israel end its operations in Gaza completely. The longer our soldiers fight, the more we learn about the vast dimensions of the Hamas’s terror arsenal, and about the Muslim Brotherhood group’s plans and strategy for using it to destabilize, demoralize and ultimately destroy Israeli society.

The IDF’s discovery of Hamas’s Rosh Hashana plot was the last straw for any Israeli leftists still harboring fantasies about picking up our marbles and going home. Hamas’s plan to use its tunnels to send hundreds of terrorists into multiple Israeli border communities simultaneously and carry out a massacre of unprecedented scope, replete with the abduction of hostages to Gaza, was the rude awakening the Left had avoided since it pushed for Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.

In other words, in their discussion Sunday night, Netanyahu and his ministers were without illusions about the gravity of the situation and the imperative of winning – however defined.

But then the telephone rang. And Obama told Netanyahu that Israel must lose. He wants an unconditional “humanitarian” cease-fire that will lead to a permanent one.

And he wants it now.

And by the way, the eventual terms of that cease-fire must include opening Hamas-controlled Gaza’s borders with Egypt and Israel and ending Israel’s maritime blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the cease-fire must allow Hamas to rebuild its arsenal of death and destruction quickly, with US political and financial support.

Until Obama made the call, there was lingering doubt among some Israelis regarding his intentions. Some thought that US Secretary of State John Kerry might have been acting of his own accord last Friday night when he tried to force Israel to accept Hamas’s cease-fire terms.

But then Obama made his phone call. And all doubts were dispelled.

Kerry is just a loyal steward of Obama’s foreign policy.

Obama is siding with Hamas, and its Muslim Brotherhood patrons in Qatar and Turkey, against Israel, and its Sunni Arab supporters – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

It is Obama who demands that Hamas have open borders so it can resupply, and receive billions of dollars – starting with an immediate cash injection of $47 million from US taxpayers – so it can pay North Korea for more missiles and import building materials to reconstruct its tunnels.

The fact that the US’s current preference for genocidal, Jew-hating jihadists over the only liberal, pro-American, stable US ally in the Middle East is a White House position, rather than that of a rogue Secretary of State was actually exposed even before Obama’s phone call.

Sunday CNN’s Candy Crowley interviewed Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. She asked him what the administration thinks Israel can do to prevent civilians from being killed in Gaza beyond what it is already doing. Rhodes replied, “I think you can always do more.”

In other words, Rhodes said that no matter what precautions Israel takes to try to minimize Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, the administration will never be satisfied. The White House will never acknowledge that Israel is in the right, or that it is fighting a moral war against a barbaric foe. And since the administration will never be satisfied, Israel can expect to be condemned by various UN bodies, including the Security Council, because no matter what it does to try to earn the support of the administration, it will never receive such support.

The discovery that the Obama administration is entirely in Hamas’s corner hit all of Israel hard. But it hit the Left the hardest. Few on the Right, which recognized Obama’s hostility from the outset of his presidency, were surprised.

As for political leaders, the government cannot risk giving the administration justification for its anti-Israel policies, so senior ministers have all said nothing.

Consequently, the harshest criticisms of the administration’s pro-Hamas position were heard from quarters where rarely a peep of criticism for Obama has been heard.

The Israeli Left went ballistic.

Haaretz, the far-left broadsheet that has seldom taken issue with even the harshest rejections of Israel’s rights, went bananas after its reporter Barak Ravid received the details of Kerry’s cease-fire agreement. As Ravid put it, Kerry’s document, “might as well have been penned by Khaled Mashaal. It was everything Hamas could have hoped for.”

Ravid continued, “What Kerry’s draft spells for the internal Palestinian political arena is even direr: It crowns Hamas and issues Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a death warrant.”

And that is really the crux of the issue. The crowd at Haaretz is far more wedded to the PLO and Mahmoud Abbas than it is to the government of Israel. And the administration’s support for Hamas exposed the PLO as an irrelevance.

As the paper’s Amos Harel wrote the next day, Kerry’s pro-Hamas behavior convinced the Egyptians and other actors that the administration is “continuing its secret love affairs with the Muslim Brotherhood in the region.”

The Left understands that the administration’s behavior has destroyed it.

Leftists can no longer say that Israeli territorial withdrawals will win it international support.

They can no longer say that Israel will receive US support if it places the security of Palestinian civilians above the security of its own civilians and military forces.

They can no longer say that the PLO is the answer.

The Israeli Left has been Obama’s ace in the hole since he first ran for office, fresh from the pews in Jeremiah Wright’s anti-Semitic church. They were the grease in the wheels that legitimized the administration’s anti-Israel pressure group J Street. They were the ones who could be counted on to tell the US media and the American Jews that Netanyahu is to blame for Obama’s hostility.

Yet, rather than backtrack, and try to save the Israeli Left, the administration doubled down on Monday, releasing a series of statements condemning the Israeli media’s condemnations of Kerry’s pro-Hamas position.

By Monday afternoon, the administration went so far as to say that by criticizing Kerry, Israel’s media were endangering their country’s alliance with the US.

In other words, through his actions, Obama demonstrated that his “love affairs with the Muslim Brotherhood in the region,” are so central to his foreign policy calculations that he is willing to destroy the Israeli Left in order to strengthen the Brotherhood.

And this leads us to the larger point about Obama’s foreign policy, which his Sunday night telephone call to Netanyahu revealed. As rattled as Israelis are over Obama’s decision to support Hamas against Israel, Netanyahu made clear in his remarks Monday night that Israel has no choice but to keep fighting until we defeat this barbaric enemy.

Netanyahu didn’t mention Obama, but it was obvious that he was respectfully refusing to hand Israel’s head on a platter to Hamas’s friend in the White House.

And while it is hard for Israel to ignore Obama, it is impossible for Americans to ignore him. He runs their foreign policy.

Americans are the ones who need to be most alarmed by what Obama’s actions on behalf of Hamas reveal about the general direction of American Middle East policy under his leadership.

For the past five years, Americans from all quarters have concluded that the manifold failures of Obama’s Middle East policies – from Iraq to Iran, Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and beyond – owe to a combination of Obama’s personal disinterest in foreign affairs and his presumed preference for withdrawal and isolationism over engagement.

Obama himself has often encouraged this perception with his endless golf games and his talk about fighting “the war at home.”

Obama’s open, public engagement in Hamas’s war against Israel shows that the popular assessment is wrong.

Obama is as involved in the Middle East as all of his immediate predecessors were. He is personally leading US policy on every front. Kerry is not an independent actor.

The problem is that in every war, in every conflict and in every contest of wills that has occurred in the Middle East since Obama took office, he has sided with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, against America’s allies.

Under Obama, America has switched sides.

The writer is the author of The Israeli Solution: A One- State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

Israelis support Netanyahu and Gaza war, despite rising deaths on both sides – The Washington Post.

In a survey this week by the University of Haifa, 85 percent of Jewish Israelis said they are “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Gil Cohen Magen/AFP/Getty Images)

 By William Booth and Ruth Eglash July 29 at 11:29 PM

 JERUSALEM — The airwaves are filled with images of death and destruction in the Gaza Strip. President Obama is pressing for an immediate cease-fire. More than 50 Israeli soldiers have been killed.But at home, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is riding a massive wave of popularity.

Domestic support for the Israeli leader’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, which has left more than 1,200 Palestinians dead, has only grown over the past three weeks, as the Israeli public and political class rally behind an aggressive, definitive campaign against Hamas and its rockets and tunnels. The deep support among Israelis, from left to right, for the military’s Gaza offensive and Netanyahu’s leadership is almost unprecedented, political analysts say.

A poll this week for Israel’s Channel 10 news, conducted by the Sarid Institute, found that 87 percent of Jewish Israelis support continuing the Gaza operation. A survey by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 95 percent of Israeli Jews think the operation in Gaza is just, and 4 of 5 oppose a unilateral withdrawal. Just 4 percent said the Israeli military has used excessive force.

And in another survey this week, by the University of Haifa, 85 percent of Jewish Israelis said they are “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with Netanyahu’s leadership.

That strong domestic support, along with a lack of pressure to end the hostilities, suggests that the war could drag on even as international mediators scramble to negotiate a truce amenable to both Israel and Hamas, the militant movement that rules Gaza.

“Israel has never been this hard-line, maybe not since the 1967 war” against Egypt and other Arab states, said Amotz Asa-El, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank in Jerusalem. “A sweeping majority of Israelis want a protracted, systemic, thorough uprooting of Hamas and its military capabilities.”

Politics in the Jewish state can be boisterous and fractured, but these days Netanyahu’s rivals on both ends of the political spectrum are supporting him, despite the international condemnation being heaped on Israel for civilian deaths in Gaza. Gaza Health Ministry officials said 128 Palestinians were killed Tuesday and early Wednesday, when Israel carried out some of the most intense bombardments since the operation began July 8.

“Netanyahu has always been the leader of the right wing,” Asa-El said. “But now he is leading the consensus.”

Netanyahu has brushed off pressure from the international community and from Obama, who told the Israeli prime minister on Sunday that he wanted to see a quick cease-fire to stem civilian deaths.

Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry have been careful to temper their impatience with the surging civilian deaths in Gaza by stressing that Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas rocket fire and tunnel incursions. Israelis, though, slammed Kerry’s cease-fire proposal, delivered Friday night, which they saw as too soft on Hamas — a group considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel and the European Union.

“There is a national consensus on this effort and this operation, especially eradicating the tunnels” that Hamas has built to try to infiltrate Israel, said Isaac Herzog, leader of the left-leaning Labor Party, the main opposition party in the Israeli parliament.

“I speak often with Netanyahu; he has taken a restrained and reasonable position, bearing in mind the pressure on him,” said Herzog, who faulted the premier only for not reaching out to the moderate Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “Had I been prime minister, I would have also hit Hamas as hard as possible.”

Analysts say the current Gaza offensive is more popular than past major military campaigns — in 2008-2009 and in 2012 — because more Israelis are now under the threat of more powerful rocket fire from Gaza. During this round of hostilities, rockets have reached father into Israel than ever before, putting more than 5 million Israelis at risk, according to the military.

But the Israeli military’s discovery of more than 30 tunnels, built and used by Palestinian militants to enter Israel and attack soldiers, has particularly shocked the Israeli public and galvanized support for the war. In 2006, Hamas used a tunnel to kidnap an Israeli soldier, whom they held captive until they traded him for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011.

This time, Israelis have been deeply disturbed by images of handcuffs and tranquilizers confiscated in the tunnels, and by grainy military videos showing Gaza militants popping out of holes in Israeli soil and running toward nearby kibbutz farms. Israel cited the tunnels as the reason for launching a ground operation in Gaza.

“I am usually a peaceful person. I am not into fighting or killing on any side. But the threat of the tunnels is very worrying,” said Sigal Ariely, a mother of three and a resident of the southern city of Ashkelon, where sirens warning of incoming rockets sound regularly. Of the tunnels, she said, “I think we have to continue to demolish them in Gaza, and only then we will be safe again.”

Demonstrations by Jewish Israelis against the Gaza war have been muted and sparsely attended. One on Saturday night in Tel Aviv drew about 3,000 people, according to local media reports. Even some of the veteran activists in what is known as Israel’s “peace camp” have declined to speak out against the prime minister or the war.

In an interview, Tzipi Livni, the Israeli justice minister, a former peace negotiator and one of the most dovish members of the Netan­yahu coalition government, said: “Hamas is a terrorist organization and is not willing to stop. They are fighting not for the establishment of a Palestinian state but because they are a terror organization.”

Most of the little criticism being aimed at Netanyahu has come from right-wing members of his party and coalition government. They want him to order the Israeli army to push deeper into Gaza and obliterate Hamas — not just restore peace and quiet to the Israeli south, the government’s stated objective.

Monday night, Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon and the chief of staff of the Israel military warned the country that the Gaza fight would continue.

“We will not finish the mission, we will not finish the operation, without neutralizing the tunnels,” Netanyahu said.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, a former special-forces commander and advocate for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, said Netanyahu needs to unleash the army to “destroy Hamas.” He said the military must be given clear orders to achieve the complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.

“No rockets, no tunnels,” Bennett said in a statement. “Hit Hamas without mercy. Day and night. On weekdays and holidays. Without respite and without rest. Until they are defeated.”

Rockets found in UNRWA school, for third time | The Times of Israel.

UN agency spokesperson condemns discovery, says munitions expert hasn’t yet reached Gaza facility

By Ilan Ben Zion July 30, 2014, 1:28 am

Palestinians at an UNRWA school after fleeing their homes following an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 18, 2014. (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

A UN aid agency for Palestinian refugees said Tuesday that a stockpile of Hamas rockets was found in one of UNRWA’s Gaza schools — for the third time since the onset of Operation Protective Edge.

The incident, however, was not publicized by UNRWA on its website or official Twitter feed, or that of its spokesperson.

In its press release, UNRWA’s spokesperson said that the discovery was made during a routine inspection of the school, “which was closed for the summer and not being used as a shelter.”

“All the relevant parties have been notified,” UNRWA said, without elaborating which parties. Hamas, the terror group that controls the Gaza Strip, has launched over 2,000 of rockets at Israel in the past month.

“We condemn the group or groups who endangered civilians by placing these munitions in our school,” said UNRWA Spokesperson, Chris Gunness. “This is yet another flagrant violation of the neutrality of our premises. We call on all the warring parties to respect the inviolability of UN property.”

Despite announcing the discovery, UNRWA could not send a UN munitions expert to disarm and remove the weapons “because of fighting in the vicinity,” it said in a statement. “But we hope to do as soon as the security conditions allow.”

It was not clear from the statement where the school was, how many rockets Hamas or one of the other Palestinian terror groups stored at the UN facility, or where the weapons are now.

Tuesday’s incident was the third instance in which Palestinian armaments were found in UN facilities in the Gaza Strip. On July 22, the UN agency found rockets stockpiled in another school which “is situated between two other UNRWA schools that currently each accommodate 1,500 internally displaced persons.”

A week before that, UNRWA found some 20 rockets in a school under its auspices, also during a standard inspection. A spokesperson for UNRWA said the organization gave the rockets to “local authorities,” which answer to the Hamas-backed unity government led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “According to longstanding UN practice in UN humanitarian operations worldwide, incidents involving unexploded ordnance that could endanger beneficiaries and staff are referred to the local authorities,” Gunness told The Times of Israel.

In Jerusalem, officials charged that the weaponry was returned to Hamas. “The rockets were passed on to the government authorities in Gaza, which is Hamas. In other words, UNRWA handed to Hamas rockets that could well be shot at Israel,” a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel.

Raphael Ahren contributed to this report.