WarSclerotic

Islamic State overruns Syrian artillery regiment in Hasakah, The Long War Journal, Bill Roggio, August 6, 2014

Islamic State fighters led by Chechen commander Omar al Shishani took control of a Syrian Army artillery base in the eastern province of Hasakah. The jihadist group seized a large amount of military hardware and munitions, according to a video tour of the base.

The Islamic State’s Hasakah Division released an eight-minute video on its YouTube account on Aug. 5 showing Islamic State fighters touring Regiment 121’s headquarters. The video [above] was tweeted by the Islamic State’s Al Bakara News Twitter account and other accounts related to the group.

In the video, the cameraman walks through Regiment 121’s base and documents the Islamic State’s spoils of war. The video shows numerous artillery pieces and crates of shells, trucks for hauling artillery and rounds, a tank, a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, and what appear to be BM-21 Grad rocket launchers with several rockets yet to be launched. The vehicles seem to be undamaged and operational, but the Islamic State fighters do not drive the vehicles or fire the weapons.

When the cameraman goes indoors, he shows crates filled with AK-47 assault rifles and accompanying magazines, RPGs and rounds, and what appear to be shoulder-fired anti-tank launchers.

Additionally, a video of Omar al Shishani [below], the Chechen commander who is a senior military leader in the Islamic State, was distributed on YouTube six days ago. Shishani is shown bantering with other jihadists as fires burn behind him.

Shishani leads what are essentially the Islamic State’s mobile shock troops. Shishani has appeared at key hotspots in both Iraq and Syria as his forces are considered to be some the best in theater.

Regiment 121 “is considered one of the most important [units] for the Syrian army in the region, and performs an important role of targeting the headquarters and emplacements of militants in Hasakah’s southern countryside, being deployed on high ground, which give it control by fire of large swaths of land,” according to Al Monitor.

The Islamic State considered Regiment 121 to be a threat to its recent gains in Hasakah and Deir al Zour provinces, and launched its offensive to take the base on July 24. The Islamic State claimed it killed more than 100 Syrian soldiers during the fighting, but the group did not display the bodies of any dead soldiers.

The Islamic State has maintained offensive operations in both Iraq and Syria for the past two months. While the jihadist group and its allies have taken control of much of northern and Western Iraq since the beginning of the year, it has also fought the Syrian Army and jihadist and other rebel groups to seize control of most of Deir al Zour and Hasakah provinces, and has advanced into Aleppo and Homs as well.

Omar al Shishani at Regiment 121:

Islamic State fighters led by Chechen commander Omar al Shishani took control of a Syrian Army artillery base in the eastern province of Hasakah. The jihadist group seized a large amount of military hardware and munitions, according to a video tour of the base.

The Islamic State’s Hasakah Division released an eight-minute video on its YouTube account on Aug. 5 showing Islamic State fighters touring Regiment 121’s headquarters. The video [above] was tweeted by the Islamic State’s Al Bakara News Twitter account and other accounts related to the group.

In the video, the cameraman walks through Regiment 121’s base and documents the Islamic State’s spoils of war. The video shows numerous artillery pieces and crates of shells, trucks for hauling artillery and rounds, a tank, a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, and what appear to be BM-21 Grad rocket launchers with several rockets yet to be launched. The vehicles seem to be undamaged and operational, but the Islamic State fighters do not drive the vehicles or fire the weapons.

When the cameraman goes indoors, he shows crates filled with AK-47 assault rifles and accompanying magazines, RPGs and rounds, and what appear to be shoulder-fired anti-tank launchers.

Additionally, a video of Omar al Shishani [below], the Chechen commander who is a senior military leader in the Islamic State, was distributed on YouTube six days ago. Shishani is shown bantering with other jihadists as fires burn behind him.

Shishani leads what are essentially the Islamic State’s mobile shock troops. Shishani has appeared at key hotspots in both Iraq and Syria as his forces are considered to be some the best in theater.

Regiment 121 “is considered one of the most important [units] for the Syrian army in the region, and performs an important role of targeting the headquarters and emplacements of militants in Hasakah’s southern countryside, being deployed on high ground, which give it control by fire of large swaths of land,” according to Al Monitor.

The Islamic State considered Regiment 121 to be a threat to its recent gains in Hasakah and Deir al Zour provinces, and launched its offensive to take the base on July 24. The Islamic State claimed it killed more than 100 Syrian soldiers during the fighting, but the group did not display the bodies of any dead soldiers.

The Islamic State has maintained offensive operations in both Iraq and Syria for the past two months. While the jihadist group and its allies have taken control of much of northern and Western Iraq since the beginning of the year, it has also fought the Syrian Army and jihadist and other rebel groups to seize control of most of Deir al Zour and Hasakah provinces, and has advanced into Aleppo and Homs as well.

Omar al Shishani at Regiment 121:

For Cairo deal, Israel calls for ban in Gaza on all but light arms, free hand against tunnels, rocket plants, DEBKAfile, August 6, 2014

Senior Israeli negotiator in Cairo, Shin Bet Director Yoram Cohen

DEBKAfile reports exclusively on the terms Israel handed in to the Cairo talks Wednesday Aug. 6 for a durable peace on the Gaza Strip. In the document Shin Bet Director Yoram Cohen, who leads the Israeli delegation, put before the Egyptian intermediaries, the first key condition is based on the Oslo 2 Accords, which restricted Palestinian brigades in the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria to bearing light firearms. The second condition would grant the Israeli military the freedom of action to strike a tunnel system designed for terrorist attacks and demolish plants manufacturing missiles.

Israel requires these two measures to be incorporated in any accords reached at the Cairo conference.

The 19-year old Oslo 2 accord, concluded in Washington on Sept. 28 1995, permitted Palestinian security forces to be equipped solely with light firearms take booty by Israel in the Galilee Peace operation against Palestinian forces in southern Lebanon.

The application of this provision to the Cairo accords, if signed, would outlaw Hamas’ possession of rockets of all types and heavy or sophisticated weaponry of any kind.

This provision has replaced Israel’s original demand for the full demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Its implementation would require Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip to get rid of all their heavy weapons, including heavy machine guns and mortars.

Other members of the Israeli delegation are Yitzhak Molcho, personal adviser to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Amos Gilead, political coordinator at the Defense Ministry.

They submitted five more terms for a Gaza deal:

1. An inspection mechanism, whose nature remains to be determined, will be set up to monitor the 1-3 km deep security belt Israel is carving out inside the Gaza Strip along the 75 kilometers of its security border fence. This mechanism will ascertain that no military activity takes place.
2.  Gaza will not be allowed to have either an airport or a deep water port, as Hamas is demanding.
3.  All reconstruction work in the Gaza Strip or repairing the war damage, whether by the international community or Israel, will be channeled through the Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas.
4.  All of Gaza’s border crossings will be manned and operated by Palestinian Authority security personnel. Egypt and Israel have submitted this demand with regard to both their border terminals.
5.  Gaza reconstruction work will take place under international supervision.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Cairo report that, after the senior Palestinian negotiator Assam Ahmed found acceptable Israel’s terms regarding Gaza armaments, a heated altercation erupted between the PA and Hamas delegations. Some Hamas envoys threatened to walk out if those terms were tabled and its own rejected. For now, they have refused to extend the three-day truce beyond Friday, Aug. 8.

The Israeli envoys figure that the negotiations may well stretch out over weeks, if not months.

PM: Terrorists watching whether world gives immunity for attacks from schools, homes, Jerusalem Post, Herb Keinon, August 6, 2014

Netanyahu addresses the world amid negotiations for a long-term truce; says Hamas engaged in ‘child sacrifice;’ praises Kerry for supporting Gaza demilitarization.

PM Binyamin Netanyahu speaks to foreign press about Operation Protective Edge Photo: GPO

Israel’s battle with Hamas in Gaza is a test for the civilized world whether it will grant immunity to terrorists because they attack from schools, homes and hospitals, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday night.

Netanyahu, speaking at a press conference for foreign journalists to combat criticism of Israel over the civilian deaths in Gaza, said that by waging its war from the heart of civilian areas, Hamas was “engaging in child sacrifice, and that is something for which it must be held accountable.”

The Prime Minister said that while “nearly everyone” says they support Israel’s right to defend itself,  there are those who would refuse to let Israel exercise that right.

“They would allow Hamas to attack with impunity, saying that since they are firing from schools,  mosques and hospitals that Israel should not take action against them,” he said. “That is obviously a mistake, a moral mistake, and an operational mistake.”

Such a policy, he said, would “validate and legitimize” Hamas’ use  of human shields, and “would hand an enormous victory to terrorists  everywhere,  with  a devastating effect on free societies fighting terrorists.”

“If this policy were to be adopted, he said, “more civilians would die around the world.”

“This is a testing period now,” Netanyahu said. “Can we accept a situation where the terrorist would be exonerated and their victims accused. He said that Hezbollah, Islamic State, Boko Haram and al-Qaida were all using similar tactics.

Asked by a CNN reporter whether he felt Israel responded proportionately and with adequate precision to the Hamas attacks, Netanyahu responded that in his mind disproportionality is “not acting to defend your people, and giving the terrorists a license to kill. I think that is disproportionate, and that it is wrong.”

Netanyahu pointed out that Hamas on Monday night accepted the exact same Egyptian proposal that Israel had accepted, and Hams rejected, on July 15. At that time the conflict had claimed 185 lives.

“That means that 90% of the fatalities could have been avoided had Hamas not rejected the cease-fire it accepts now,” he said.  Hamas must be held accountable for the tragic loss of life, it must be ostracized from the family of nations for the callous use of civilians, and must be prevented from rearming as part of Gaza’ general demilitarization.”

Regarding the demilitarization, Netanyahu praised US Secretary of State John Kerry for saying during a BBC interview that this needed to be one of the “underlying, longer-term issues” that needed to be discussed.

In that interview, Kerry articulated strong support for Israel.  “We fully support Israel’s right to defend itself and the fact that it was under attack by rockets, by tunnels, and it had to take action against Hamas,” he  said. “ Hamas has behaved in the most unbelievably shocking manner of engaging in this activity.”

Amid reports of growing tension with the Obama administration over the Gaza conflict, including a phone call Sunday between Netanyahu and  Kerry that ended abruptly due to a “communications issue,” Netanyahu stressed that Israel and the US worked closely though this operation.

The substance and tone of reports suggesting the opposed “are distorted,” he said. “They don’t capture the essence that binds our societies and governments together.”

He thanked the US for the support it has shown for Israel’s right to defend itself, as well as appropriating an additional $225 million for the Iron Dome.

Even as Israeli and Palestinian teams are negotiating indirectly in Cairo, Netanyahu said that Israel  was carefully watching implementation of the 72-hour cease-fire that went into effect Tuesday morning and was holding.

He said the IDF has increased its presence on the ground to react to any contingency, and that larger IDF forces would remain near the border communities  to “give better defense to the citizens of the region.”

During Hebrew comments he made at the start of the news conference that was otherwise conducted in English, Netanyahu praised the IDF, and —  in an allusion to criticism by some corners that the IDF  top brass put the brakes on a wider campaign inside Gaza – he came out against “anonymous statements” against the IDF.

Israel, meanwhile, was not responding to reports that Germany, France and Britain have proposed reactivating a European Union mission on the Gaza border crossings.

Reuters quoted a German diplomatic source as saying that Paris, London and Berlin, favored restoring EU operations at Rafah – the so-called EU Border Assistance Mission (EU BAM).

EU BAM began monitoring Gaza border crossings in 2005, and did so sporadically through 2006 and until June 2007, just days before Hamas took control of the region. Israel and Egypt sealed the border crossing with Gaza shortly thereafter.

 Israel agrees to extend Gaza cease-fire, Jerusalem Post, August 6, 2014

An Israeli official says Israel will extend truce under current terms; Hamas officials say they will not extend cease-fire unless significant progress made in negotiations; threaten to resume rocket fire.

An Israeli tank drives as it returns to Israel from the Gaza Strip Photo: REUTERS

Hamas officials said they would not agree to extend the cease-fire without “significant progress” in negotiations conducted in Cairo, Channel 10 reported.

A senior official with the Islamist group’s armed wing threatened earlier to quit the talks without progress towards achieving its demands to lift a Gaza blockade and free prisoners held by Israel.

Hamas also threatened on Wednesday night to resume rocket attacks on Israel when the current cease-fire comes to an end on Friday at 8 a.m., according to the Channel 10 report.

Israel has agreed to extend a ceasefire that ended a month of fighting in Gaza beyond a Friday deadline, an Israeli official said on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Israel accepted an unconditional 72-hour cease fire, and is willing to extend an unconditional cease-fire,” the official said.

The official did not say for how much longer Israel had agreed to extend the truce, only that: “Israel has expressed its readiness to extend the truce under its current terms,” referring to the deal brokered by Egypt that took effect on Tuesday.

Hamas officials said they would not agree to extend the cease-fire without “significant progress” in negotiations conducted in Cairo, Channel 10 reported.

A senior official with the Islamist group’s armed wing threatened earlier to quit the talks without progress towards achieving its demands to lift a Gaza blockade and free prisoners held by Israel.

Hamas also threatened on Wednesday night to resume rocket attacks on Israel when the current cease-fire comes to an end on Friday at 8 a.m., according to the Channel 10 report.

Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said “We haven’t received a reply to our demands. Our fingers are still on the trigger.”

Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, has said in televised remarks that should Hamas disrupt the calm, “we will not hesitate to continue to use our force wherever necessary and with whatever force necessary to ensure the security of Israeli citizens near and far.”

Israel withdrew ground forces from tiny, densely populated Gaza on Tuesday morning and started a 72-hour, Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas as a first step towards a long-term deal.

It showed signs of expecting the truce to last by lifting official emergency restrictions on civilians living in Israel’s south near Gaza, permitting more public activities and urging everyone to resume their routines.

Streets in towns in southern Israel, which had been under daily rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, were filled again with playing children. The military said that two rocket-warning sirens sounded in the south proved to be false alarms.

US envoy Frank Lowenstein was due in Cairo on Wednesday night to try to help Egyptian-mediated talks between Israel and the Palestinians find a lasting end to their conflict over the Gaza Strip, the US State Department said.

Lowenstein is the acting US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

“We, along with our partners, are working to find a way forward that brings an end to the violence and addresses the underlying causes of this crisis,” State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said in announcing the trip.

Christians and Jews are expendable; Islamists are protected, Dan Miller’s Blog, August 6, 2014

Why have Christians and Jews become insignificant and why have Islamists become a protected species?

Genocide of Jews and Christians? I don’t see any.

Islam and Genocide

As observed in an article titled World Ignores Christian Exodus from Islamic World published by The Gatestone Institute on August 6th,

There have been house-to-house searches in Mali for Christians who might be in hiding, and people tortured into revealing Christian relatives. At least one pastor was beheaded.

It is to the media’s shame that those who slaughter, behead, crucify and displace people for no other reason than that they are Christian rarely get media coverage, while Israel, which kills only in the context of trying to defend itself from rocket attacks and terrorism, and not out of religious bigotry, is constantly demonized. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Most Christians have since fled. A one-minute video in Arabic of their exodus appears here—women and children weeping as they flee their homes—a video that will not be shown by any Western mainstream media outlet, busy as they are depicting instead nonstop images of Palestinian women and children.

The Syrian Orthodox bishop of Mosul said that what is happening to the Christians of Mosul is nothing less than “genocide… not to mention the slaughters and rapes not being reported… Forcing more than a thousand Christian families out of Mosul, and turning Christian churches into Muslim mosques, is equivalent to genocide.” Of course, the word genocide means to kill or make extinct a people. [Emphasis added.]

Others were not as lucky to flee. According to Iraqi human rights activist Hena Edward, a great many older and disabled Iraqis, unable to pay the jizya or join the exodus, have opted to convert to Islam.

How often has the United States been terrorized in the name of Christianity or Judaism? How often in the name of Islam? How often, in recent centuries, have Europe or the rest of the world been terrorized in the name of Christianity or Judaism? How often in the name of Islam? Has Islamic terrorism become so common that it fits the dog bites man – don’t publish standard? Have deaths — wrongly attributed to Israel as she tries to defend herself against those who have sworn to destroy her rather than to the use of human shields by Hamas, et al, —  been so uncommon that they fit the man bites dog, put it on the front page standard? Or might it be something else?

Mr. Media

Are the media blind, indifferent to regional reality or do they have a “progressive” Islamist agenda?

The “legitimate media” either don’t understand or prefer to ignore distort regional reality, “progressively.” As noted in an article at Front Page Magazine by Robert Spencer titled The Media’s Silence to Hamas’ Genocidal Venom,

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported in July that “in light of the recent round of fighting in Gaza, the Hamas interior ministry has issued guidelines to Gaza Strip social media users for reporting events and discussing them with outsiders.” These guidelines included this unabashedly Orwellian instruction: “Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.” [Emphasis added.]

But the international media has been almost unanimously indifferent to how it is being played. Nor does it show much interest in the numerous reports of Hamas launching attacks against Israel from civilian areas, so as to provoke retaliatory strikes that can be used for propaganda purposes.

. . . .

In the midst of all this genocidal bloodlust, CNN hosted a debate on the Israel-Hamas conflict featuring not a supporter of Israel and a supporter of Hamas, but two venomous foes of Israel, Reza Aslan and Peter Beinart. With the slender space between the positions of Aslan and Beinart being the only spectrum of opinion allowed a mainstream hearing, it is a wonder that Israel enjoys the support that it does. Yet support for Israel among Americans remains high: like blades of grass poking through the concrete, some truths withstand even the most virulent propaganda barrage. [Emphasis added.]

Hamas’ tunnels for peace and prosperity

Israel has been destroying Hamas’ “tunnels for peace and prosperity,” built to help Hamas terrorize and destroy her. In the name of a lasting and progressive peace as envisioned by the “religion of peace death,” Hamas, et al, demand that negotiations in Cairo focus on many things, including the reconstruction of Gaza for which unfettered access to construction materials and whatever else they may want will be needed.

Here is one of the many crude Hamas tunnels now under Israeli control. If Israel vacates Gaza, will it and others first be destroyed, or left for Hamas’ future “humanitarian” use?

Why have the actions of Israel and Hamas, et al, been so progressively distorted?

The political winds have not shifted “in an ugly direction” against Islam and the “religion of peace death continues to be favored by most who have long favored it. Yet the “legitimate media” continue to support progressive Islamist notions of “peace,” and to recoil in horror when Israel does even less than she rightfully could — and should — do to continue to exist. The Obama administration has followed suit. At times it has led, at least from behind, and the media have followed, perhaps to curry favor, to avoid characterization as “racist” or both.

The Media’s Silence to Hamas’ Genocidal Venom, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, August 6, 2014

The Spanish government on Monday announced that it had “provisionally suspended” sales of weapons to Israel because of its supposed targeting of civilians in Gaza. This came a day after the Obama Administration declared that it was “appalled” by Israel’s “disgraceful” shelling of a UN school in Gaza. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called the shelling a “moral outrage” and a “criminal act.” The only problem with all this moral indignation is that it is wrongly placed on the victim rather than the perpetrator, and bears witness to the success of Hamas’s propaganda barrage.

These are just two of the most recent examples of the success of Hamas’s skillful manipulation of the mainstream media, and the eagerness of the media to be manipulated – an eagerness so great that amid the frenzy to demonize Israel in the court of world opinion, Hamas’s oft-reiterated genocidal bloodlust and brazen breaking of ceasefire agreements goes unreported and ignored.

The U.S. condemnation of the Israeli shelling of the UN school was a particular victory. Jeff Dunetz reported in Truth Revolt Monday that “evidence is emerging that the Israeli strike hit outside of the school and the bodies were moved into the courtyard to make it look like Israel hit the school.” This wouldn’t be remotely close to the first time that Palestinian jihadis have been caught faking Israeli “atrocities” – recently they even billed a still from a horror movie as a fresh Israeli killing of a Palestinian civilian.

Meanwhile, Hamas is cheerfully above-board about how it manipulates the mainstream media. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported in July that “in light of the recent round of fighting in Gaza, the Hamas interior ministry has issued guidelines to Gaza Strip social media users for reporting events and discussing them with outsiders.” These guidelines included this unabashedly Orwellian instruction: “Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”

But the international media has been almost unanimously indifferent to how it is being played. Nor does it show much interest in the numerous reports of Hamas launching attacks against Israel from civilian areas, so as to provoke retaliatory strikes that can be used for propaganda purposes. The Indian network NDTV reported Tuesday that they had witnessed Hamas constructing a rocket silo “under a tent right next to the hotel where our team was staying. Minutes later, we saw the rocket being fired, just before the 72-hour ceasefire came into effect.” NDTV noted that they were publishing their report “after our team left the Gaza strip – Hamas has not taken very kindly to any reporting of its rockets being fired.” The network, which is no friend of Israel, concluded: “But just as we reported the devastating consequences of Israel’s offensive on Gaza’s civilians, it is equally important to report on how Hamas places those very civilians at risk by firing rockets deep from the heart of civilian zones.”

Likewise generally unfit to print have been Hamas’s own avowals that it puts civilians in harm’s way because of their value for jihad propaganda. A newly-discovered Hamas manual that, according to the Jerusalem Post, has been characterized by the Israeli Defense Force as revealing “that Hamas knows or recognizes the IDF is committed to minimizing harm to civilians,” and explaining “how the civilian population can be used against IDF forces. Based on these two points, the IDF stated that Hamas’ callous and systematic use of the Gazan population as ‘human shields’ was intentional and preplanned.”

But there is no need to take the IDF’s word for it. An interviewer on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV asked the jihad terror group’s spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri in July: “Are people still going up to the rooftops?” After a reporter observed that Palestinians were going up onto the roof of a family home “in order to prevent the Zionist occupation’s warplanes from targeting it,” Abu Zuhri answered: “This attests to the character of our noble, Jihad-fighting people, who defend their rights and their homes with their bare chests and their blood. The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against the occupation. Also, this policy reflects the character of our brave, courageous people. We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy, in order to protect the Palestinian homes.”

And then there are the numerous calls from Hamas leaders and supporters for genocide of the Jews. On July 25, Al-Aqsa TV, broadcast a Friday sermon in which the imam addressed the Jews: “We will not leave a single one of you alive. Our doctrine in fighting you is that we will totally exterminate you. We will not leave a single one of you alive, because you are alien usurpers of the land and eternal mercenaries.”

Then in early August, Hamas rebroadcast on Al-Aqsa TV a speech by Muslim Brotherhood leader Tareq Al-Suwaidan, in which he said: “Every mother – especially the mothers in Palestine, but every mother in the [Islamic] Nation, not just Palestine – must nurse her children on hatred of the sons of Zion. We hate them and they are our enemies. We will plant this in their [our children’s] souls, so that a new generation will grow among us, which will erase them from the face of the earth.”

In the midst of all this genocidal bloodlust, CNN hosted a debate on the Israel-Hamas conflict featuring not a supporter of Israel and a supporter of Hamas, but two venomous foes of Israel, Reza Aslan and Peter Beinart. With the slender space between the positions of Aslan and Beinart being the only spectrum of opinion allowed a mainstream hearing, it is a wonder that Israel enjoys the support that it does. Yet support for Israel among Americans remains high: like blades of grass poking through the concrete, some truths withstand even the most virulent propaganda barrage.