WarSclerotic

Secret Service ‘Aware’ of Apparent ISIS Flag Photo in Front of the White House
Aug 14, 2014, 5:19 PM ET By CHRIS GOOD ABC News

(Are Obama’s chickens coming home to roost?-LS)

The Secret Service said it is “aware” of a photo that appeared to show an image of an ISIS flag in front of the White House.

If authentic, the photo showed a hand holding up an image of a flag for ISIS, (also known as ISIL or Islamic State)

(or as they would like to call it, the Islamic States of America.-LS)

displayed on a smartphone, on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House fence. That area, closed off to street traffic, is frequented by thousands of tourists every day.

It was tweeted from an apparently pro-ISIS Twitter handle @sunna_rev on Aug. 9.

“We have an intelligence division whose mission is to assess information that we receive every day for dangerousness or potential threat level,” Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan told ABC News. “We are aware of the image and will take the necessary and appropriate follow up steps.”

The Secret Service did not respond to an additional question about whether the tweet was believed to be authentic. The FBI has not yet responded to ABC News’ request for comment on the tweet, its suspected origin, or whether it signifies a serious threat to the U.S.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABC that use of Twitter is consistent with ISIS practices. The group has shown to be at the forefront of social-media use among terrorist and militant groups, the official said.

Another photo displayed a note handwritten in Arabic. It read, “Soldiers of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria will pass from here soon,” followed by a Koran verse that read, “and Allah is perfecting His Light even though the disbelievers hate (that).”

In the image, the note was dated June 20, 2014. It was unclear where the photo was taken, but two American flags appeared over an arched entryway.

“We are in your state / We are in your cities / We are in your streets,” the tweets read.

On Aug. 7, President Obama announced that the U.S. military would conducting airstrikes against ISIS targets in northern Iraq, where the group has seized territory and is battling Kurdish forces not far from Erbil, where the U.S. military has set up a joint operations command center. ISIS has swiftly risen to control large swaths of Iraq and Syria after seizing weapons and reportedly selling oil to finance its war against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime.

ISIS has issued threats against the U.S. homeland before. In a recent video series, Vice Media embedded with ISIS militants, and an ISIS militant told a Vice camera, “God willing, we will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.”

(Well….good luck with that.-LS)

ABC News’ Faisal Alkadiri contributed to this report.

Ukraine Says It Destroyed Part of Armed Convoy From Russia
Daryna Krasnolutska and Scott Rose Aug 15, 2014 10:14 AM CT Via Bloomberg

(Bush: I looked in his eyes and saw his soul. – LS)

Ukraine said its troops attacked and partially destroyed a column of armed vehicles that had crossed the border from Russian territory, while Russia said it was concerned about an attack on another convoy carrying aid.

Ukrainian government troops engaged the vehicles that had arrived overnight through a rebel-held section of the border, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the country’s military, told reporters in Kiev today. Ukrainian soldiers continue to come under shelling, including rounds fired from Russia, he said.

The government in Kiev has for months said that separatist rebels in its easternmost regions are receiving support from Russia, which backs them with artillery fire. Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the Ukrainian unrest.

(My bullshit alarm just went off. – LS)

The Foreign Ministry in Moscow said it was concerned about potential attempts to disrupt the humanitarian convoy and repeated a call for a cease-fire to allow for aid delivery.

The incursion last night isn’t seen by Ukraine as a new development or a possible start of an invasion by Russia, Defense Ministry spokesman Leonid Matyukhin said by phone earlier. The vehicles were painted white to camouflage the operation as a peacekeeping mission, he said.

The standoff is adding to unease over plans by Russia, which has about 275 trucks parked near its western border loaded with what it says is humanitarian aid for rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine. European Union governments warned Russia against using humanitarian missions as cover to bring troops into Ukraine, expressing frustration at the Kremlin’s refusal to heed calls to de-escalate the conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, under increasing international pressure for allegedly supporting separatists in Ukraine, pledged during a visit to Crimea yesterday that he would work to halt the conflict.

The conflict is coming to a head as Ukrainian government forces push to dislodge pro-Russian insurgents from their strongholds of Luhansk and Donetsk. The authorities in Kiev have been saying for months that the separatist rebels are receiving reinforcements from Russian territory.

Russia has only deployed forces to patrol its side of the frontier and its troops didn’t cross into Ukraine, the state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing the FSB security service’s border guard division. Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, declined to comment.

Iraq Is Not Our War Anymore. Let It Be Iran’s Problem.
By Christopher Dickey Date July 17, 2014 Via The Daily Beast

(Sounds good to me, but then, what do I know? Some of you may disagree, but you have to admit, it’s got a ring of truth to it.-LS)

It’s time the Iraqi Pottery Barn rule—‘You break it, you pay a trillion dollars for it’—is applied to someone else.

Back in the George W. Bush administration’s darkest days occupying Iraq, I ran into a guy who was about as close to Bush as you could get without being Bush himself. We were at one of those Davos cocktail parties where you can barely hear what you are saying yourself, much less what’s being said to you. But I wanted to press this guy on all that had gone wrong in Iraq, especially the fact that the mullahs of Iran were gaining so much power and influence on the American dime.

“All that blood and treasure and we might as well have handed Baghdad to Tehran on a platter,” I shouted.

The Bush clone looked at me—and I don’t know if this was just an off-the-cuff kiss-off, or a half-considered bon mot, or some perverse quasi-serious notion of his (not speaking for the president, of course)—but what he said was, “If you really want to fuck Iran, let ’em have Iraq.”

I was speechless and we were both kind of hoarse by then. We drifted our separate ways. But the idea stayed with me as one of those notions that is so logical, yet so outside the box, that nobody ever will take it seriously.

Well, now, maybe we should.

It’s time the Iraqi Pottery Barn rule—“You break it, you pay a trillion dollars for it”—applied to someone else. And Iran’s a very good candidate.

The people of the United States have done all that they should do, giving their lives, their taxes and their sacred honor to try to set straight the mess created on the basis of bad intelligence, bad judgment, and bald lies.

What’s striking about the nuclear negotiations now is their irrelevance.

The good news is that we did get rid of Saddam Hussein, one of the most evil men the world has seen. But when the people we put in power strung him up on the gallows his last words proved almost true. “Iraq without me is nothing,” he said.

For sure it was shattered. And by the time the last American troops pulled out in 2011, the Iraqi amphora might not have looked like new. There were plenty of seams showing. But it had been glued together into a recognizable form.

Then the Iranians and their Iraqi allies and dependents, notably Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, started playing games with it. That Sunni fragment that took so long to fit in place? Maliki no longer wanted to pay for the glue that kept it there. And the Kurds? They were always ready to drop off. Now that’s just what they’re doing.

Leaving aside the metaphors for a moment: the Sunnis’ worst nightmare was that Iran would take over their country, and Maliki showed them every way he could that they were right to be afraid—very, very afraid.

One of the supreme ironies in the tragedy playing out before us now is that the Iranians were supposed to be so much smarter than we were in dealing with the region. Ask ’em, they’ll tell you. Neighboring nations often hold each other in contempt, but the Persian view of Arabs— “lizard eaters,” as the saying goes—is beyond the Aryan Iranian pale.

Again and again we were told by sundry Middle East experts that the wise mullahs had every interest in maintaining a stable Iraq. And maybe the wise ones did. But they were not the ones who went into action.

As the whole region started to teeter on the brink of chaos after the Arab revolts against the old faces of oppression began in 2011, the mullahs who had barely weathered their own “spring” in 2009 sent their Mr. Fixit, Qassem Suleimani, and his redoubtable Quds Force to deal with the problem among their allies.

Suleimani brought in his old Hezbollah protégés from Lebanon to help shore up the teetering Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, so it wouldn’t have to negotiate with anybody. He counseled Maliki on how to deal with Sunni subversives in Iraq: arrest, force into exile or otherwise eliminate any Sunni in a position of real influence.

And the result? Syria is destroyed, and now Iraq is, too. Meanwhile Shiites who put their faith in Tehran are being slaughtered en masse. Way to go, Qassem!

The consequences of this devastation in the Fertile Crescent are almost incalculable for the people, for the land, and for the ancient history that is rooted there. But, much as we might mourn the losses, why should the United States be in the business of trying to hold it all together now?

Let’s see: There is a humanitarian argument, yes. There is probably an oil argument, as always in the Middle East. But the only argument that holds any real weight with the American people is that terrorists will make the newly self-declared caliphate in the ISIS-conquered lands a base of operations against the United States. You remember the old Bush-era slogan that helped get us into Iraq in the first place? “We’ve got to fight them over there (Iraq) so we don’t have to fight them here (meaning, say, Kansas).”

Think again. There’s a risk to the U.S., yes. But very little of the ISIS ethos has to do with hitting the Freedom Tower or the Capitol Dome. It’s all about slaughtering Shiites, like, you know, the Iranians.
Did I mention the nuclear negotiations with Iran? No. What’s striking about them now is their irrelevance.

All along, the atomic minuet with Tehran has been built on assumptions—ours and theirs—that are, as it turns out, erroneous.

The Iranians thought they needed a credible nuclear deterrent, even if it was virtual, to assure the survival of their regime. Thence comes all the back and forth about how much nuclear fuel enrichment capacity they have or not: it comes down to how many months they are away from a bomb, if they want to build one, when the final deal is signed and sealed. But up against the storm blowing toward them now from the caliphate, they’ll find their nuclear deterrence, real or virtual, is just about as useless as ours.

On the American side there’s developed a collective neurosis about impotence. The Senate and House are full of old farts and dysfunctional Tea Partiers warning that if the United States doesn’t flex its pumped-up muscles it will turn into the proverbial 98-pound weakling. Not so. This is, precisely, the moment to step back, cross our arms, and let somebody else do the crippling work trying to impose order in the lands of the Apocalypse.

So, yeah, when it comes to Iraq, go for it, Iran. You deserve it.

We’re training the Taliban to kill us — and take back Afghanistan
By Paul Sperry August 9, 2014 | 8:12pm Via New York Post

Former Taliban militants attend a ceremony during which they surrender arms under a US-backed Afghan government amnesty program, in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, 22 July 2014.
Photo: EPA

(It’s either them or the crooks in the Karzai regime. By the way, how’s that heroin crop doing these days?-LS)

The assassination of an American general by a Taliban terrorist posing as an Afghan soldier exposes the lunacy of the administration’s Afghanistan strategy.

Under pressure from President Obama, the military rushed to recruit local Afghans to stand up a national army and police ahead of his hasty year-end troop withdrawal. To process some 7,000 new recruits each month, corners were cut on background checks, allowing insurgents and terrorists to fill the ranks of the now-350,000-member security force.

At the same time, the Pentagon allowed the Afghan government to take over and empty US prisons of Taliban and other terrorists as part of a mass amnesty program. It also funded a terrorist “reintegration” program that pays Taliban fighters to surrender and join the government.

More shocking, the two programs feed a recruiting pipeline for Afghan security forces whom US troops are training to take over for them, further endangering them to insider attacks and jeopardizing our mission there.

US military intelligence now fear as much as 25% of Afghan security forces are Taliban or al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers, which means we may be arming and training an army of some 87,500 enemy infiltrators with easy access to US personnel and intelligence. The massive infiltration puts the entire Afghanistan exit strategy at risk. The compromised Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) takes over the country’s security on Jan. 1, 2015.

Thirteen years after toppling them, we’re training the Taliban to retake Afghanistan.

Tuesday’s shocking assassination of a two-star general by one of those Taliban infiltrators is a very bad omen.

Army Maj. Gen. Harold Greene was ambushed and shot in the back of the head by a uniformed Afghan soldier while visiting an officer training academy in Kabul, where security was managed by the Afghans. He was the most senior casualty suffered by the US during the War on Terror and the highest-ranking soldier to die in a combat zone since Vietnam.

The shooter was ID’d as 27-year-old Mohammad Rafiqullah, who joined the Afghan army more than two years ago, before the Pentagon launched a counterintelligence surge to weed out such insider attackers. From a second-story bathroom window, Rafiqullah aimed his US-issued M16 assault rifle at the delegation about 10 minutes into a briefing. In an open area, the general stepped forward and told a joke to the group. That’s when Rafiqullah opened fire in a barrage that lasted long enough for him to empty one magazine and change to another before dying in a shootout.

The rogue soldier was recruited to join the army from the Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold.

Military intelligence officials say he was not vetted by the US, which has relied largely on the Afghans to screen out enemy sympathizers.

In late 2012, after one in four US or NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan were murdered by Taliban sympathizers or operatives posing as Afghan security forces, the Pentagon subjected some, but not all recruits, to lie detector tests. But that special intel team has since been abandoned, and vetting duties have again fallen to Afghans, who allow cursory or no background checks at all for new recruits.

Afghans are also in charge of security of training centers like the one Greene visited. Though the general had a personal security detail, I’m told the facility was not properly screened for threats in advance of his arrival, which was broadcast to the Afghan soldiers there.

“Yes, they are that trusting of our security partners,” said a senior US Army intelligence official who wished to go unnamed. “And it got a two-star killed.”

Two other insider attacks on coalition forces took place at other military installations the same day.

Intelligence sources tell me that some of the rogue soldiers are coming from two unlikely sources.

One is the so-called Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, a $60 million program funded mostly by the US and run by the Afghans that pays insurgents hundreds of dollars to “demobilize.” Many of these supposedly reformed terrorists are then recruited into the Afghan security forces as soldiers or police.

Pentagon documents shows more than 8,025 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters have enrolled in the program so far.

At the same time, the Afghan army has been pushing for the release of jailed Taliban fighters and other terrorists who in turn are recruited into the local security forces.

Over the objections of US military intelligence, Kabul released 65 of these dangerous detainees in February, including some of whom were locked up for killing US and coalition troops. In March, the Afghan army expedited the release of an additional 55 detainees.

The government agreed not to release 41 detainees classified as “Enduring Security Threats” whose release could destabilize the country. But intelligence sources say Kabul is expected to free them as well by the end of the year.

The amnesty plan risks blowing back on US troops. It also threatens to return Afghanistan to the al Qaeda sanctuary it was before 9/11, especially since according to a recent unclassified Pentagon report, “Al Qaeda’s relationship with the local Afghan Taliban organizations remains intact and remains an area of concern.”

Paul Sperry is a Hoover Institution media fellow and author of “Infiltration.”

Islamic State On Verge of Annihilation As U.N. Prepares The Mother Of All Sternly Worded Letters…
By Michelle Nichols Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:29pm EDT Via Reuters and Weasel Zippers Blog

(“Watch your back, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, those sternly worded letters can leave a nasty paper cut.” – LS)

(Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council is set to try and weaken Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria on Friday by blacklisting six people and threatening sanctions against those who finance, recruit or supply weapons to the insurgents, diplomats said.

(You’re joking right?? – LS)

A British-drafted resolution, obtained by Reuters, targets the hardline Islamic State group – an al Qaeda splinter group that has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate – and al Qaeda’s Syrian wing Nusra Front.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 15-member council was expected to unanimously adopt the resolution.

The draft “deplores and condemns in the strongest terms the terrorist acts of ISIL and its violent extremist ideology, and its continued gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law.”

(That’ll scare them. I bet a letter of apology from ISIS is in the works as we speak.-LS)

A swift and brutal push by Islamic State, previously known as ISIL, to the borders of Iraq’s autonomous ethnic Kurdish region alarmed Baghdad and last week sparked the first U.S. airstrikes in Iraq since the withdrawal of American troops in 2011.

(Baghdad alarmed? Sparked airstrikes? What’s really bad is they interrupted Obama’s golf game far too many times, you know, red lines and all. Besides, will you stop changing your name. You’re beginning to upset me. In fact, I think I’ll write a letter.-LS)

Islamic State has long been blacklisted by the Security Council, while Nusra Front was added earlier this year. Both groups are designated under the U.N. al Qaeda sanctions regime.

(Next thing, they’ll be blacklisting them from vacation flights to the Cayman Islands.-LS)

The draft resolution names six new people to be placed under an international travel ban, asset freeze and arms embargo: Abdelrahman Mouhamad Zafir al Dabidi al Jahani, Hajjaj Bin Fahd Al Ajmi, Said Arif and Abdul Mohsen Abdallah Ibrahim al Charekh for ties to Nusra Front, Abou Mohamed al Adnani for links to Islamic State and Hamid Hamad Hamid al-Ali for ties to both.

It condemns the recruitment of foreign fighters, demands they all withdraw and “expresses its readiness to consider listing those recruiting for or participating in the activities” of Nusra Front and Islamic State, including through financing or facilitating travel of foreign fighters.

(You better listen ISIS. UN condemns and demands you change your ways else they’re going to mobilize the UN army…oh wait, there is none. Anyway, you’re making them mad has hell.-LS)

The resolution expresses concern that oilfields captured by both groups “are generating income which support their recruitment efforts and strengthen their operational capability to organize and carry out terrorist attacks.”

(Besides, don’t even think of going around and torching all those oil wells like our old friend Saddam. You remember him. He’s the guy who didn’t like Iran and had a history of attacking them as proof.-LS)

It condemns any direct or indirect trade with Islamic State or Nusra Front and warns such moves could lead to sanctions.

(Great idea, those sanctions. Look what they’ve done to Iran, bringing them to their knees and all.-LS)

The draft resolution would ask U.N. experts – charged with monitoring violations of the council’s al Qaeda sanctions regime – to report “within 90 days on the threat, including to the region, posed by (Islamic State and Nusra Front), their sources of arms, funding, recruitment and demographics, and recommendations for additional action to address the threat.”

(And if the UN experts don’t respond in 90 days, they get another 90 days, then…..-LS)

Britain initially aimed to adopt the text by the end of August, but accelerated its plan after a surge by Islamic State, which poses the biggest threat to Iraq, a major oil exporter, since Saddam Hussein was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

(There’s that oil thing again. Funny how it keeps popping up when they talk about threats.-LS)

The resolution is under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which gives the council authority to enforce decisions with economic sanctions or force. However, it does not mandate military force to tackle the insurgents.

(Of course! No military force. But in Israel’s case….now that’s a different story given all that collateral damage and such.-LS)

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Netanyahu says Israel will respond forcefully even to a ‘drizzle’ of rockets
By HERB KEINON, KHALED ABU TOAMEH
08/15/2014 00:00 Via The Jerusalem Post

(Zero tolerance is a must.-LS)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told leaders of communities near Gaza on Thursday – even as a five-day cease-fire took hold – that Israel would not tolerate a drizzle of mortar or rocket attacks.

Amid mounting public criticism, especially in the South, that Operation Protective Edge might well end without removing for a long period the rocket and mortar threats from the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu met in his office with the heads of the Hof Ashkelon, Sha’ar Hanegev and Sdot Negev regional councils.

“The IDF launched Operation Protective Edge after Hamas returned to drizzle rocket fire on the southern communities,” the prime minister said. “Our policy is clear and consistent – even to a drizzle we respond forcefully.

We launched this campaign to strengthen the security of all Israeli citizens in general, and yours in particular.”

Netanyahu pointed out that the IDF struck some 160 terrorist targets after Hamas renewed the fighting last weekend and fired mortar shells at the communities near the Gaza border.

Residents of the communities most affected by the rocket and mortar fire were not the only ones to criticize Netanyahu, as members of his cabinet voiced displeasure over the past few days at being kept in the dark regarding the indirect cease-fire negotiations in Cairo.

On Thursday, the prime minster convened the eight-member security cabinet to brief it on the talks in Egypt and what seems to be an emerging agreement that will be based on the accord reached after 2012’s Operation Pillar of Defense, which called for an end to the rocket fire, the opening of border crossings under Egyptian and Israeli supervisions, and the funneling of money into Gaza through Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to ensure that it does not go into Hamas’s coffers.

Israel’s negotiating team to the Cairo talks is expected to return there on Saturday night.

One Israeli official said that Israel has always expressed its interest in achieving the goals of Operation Protective Edge – restoring quiet and significantly reducing Hamas’s capabilities – through diplomatic means.

Israel was “realistic” about the cease-fire, especially considering that Hamas has violated 10 previous truces this time around, the official said.

“The troops are ready, and still around Gaza,” he said. “We know from past behavior that they [Hamas] might violate it.”

Meanwhile, Hamas said on Thursday that “some progress” has been achieved in Cairo toward a permanent cease-fire. Khalil al-Hayeh, a senior Hamas official who participated in the Egyptian-sponsored talks, said it would be possible to reach an agreement if Israel “stopped playing with words.”

“Our adversary is accustomed to playing with words and procrastination,” Hayeh said upon his return to the Gaza Strip. “But we won’t sign any agreement that does not meet the demands of our people.”

The Palestinian delegation to the Cairo talks held “strenuous” discussions over the past 13 days, he said.

He dismissed reports about differences among members of the delegation.

“Our delegation is unified behind the demands of the Palestinians,” Hayeh said. “We are determined to make the enemy pay the price.”

The Hamas official said the Palestinian delegation decided to give the talks another chance by agreeing to the extension of the 72-hour ceasefire that expired at midnight on Wednesday night.

“There is still a real chance to reach an agreement,” he added. “We will continue the dialogue.”

Hayeh referred to the airport that functioned in the southern Gaza Strip between 1998 and 2001, which Israel partially destroyed during the second intifada, saying it should be returned to operation. With regard to Hamas’s demand for a seaport, he said that previous agreements between Israel and the PA talked about the establishment of such a port.

He said that the Rafah border crossing was a Palestinian-Egyptian issue.

“We understood from the Egyptians that there will be an easing of restrictions at the terminal,” he added without elaborating.

While some of the Hamas negotiators returned to the Gaza Strip, others headed from Cairo to Qatar for consultations with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

The Islamic Jihad negotiators headed to Beirut for consultations with the group’s leader, Ramadan Shalah.

One of the Hamas officials who traveled to Qatar, Izzat al-Risheq, also talked about progress on some issues at the Cairo talks. However, he said that many other issues remain unresolved.

Risheq said that Hamas “foiled” attempts during the talks to confiscate the weapons of the Palestinian groups in Gaza, in a reference to Israel’s demand for the Strip’s demilitarization.

Ziad al-Nakhaleh, a senior member of Islamic Jihad who represented his group at the Cairo talks, said a permanent cease-fire agreement was imminent.

“We have made progress at the Cairo talks toward lifting the siege on the Gaza Strip,” he said. “We agreed that the border crossings would be opened.”

He said the two sides agreed that the issue of the airport and seaport would be discussed one month after the signing of a long-term ceasefire agreement. He, too, said that the Palestinians, backed by the Egyptians, rejected Israel’s demand to disarm the various groups in the Gaza Strip.

Why Israel must defend itself — and its reputation
BY Mindy Wiesenberg NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, December 7, 2012, 4:00 AM (I know, it’s old.)

(Yes, this is an old article, but it’s message is timeless and extremely relevant today.-LS)

The following open letter was sent last month by a British citizen named Mindy Wiesenberg to the U.K. foreign secretary, William Hague. Wiesenberg, a former teacher, has served as chairman of British Emunah, a charity raising funds for social welfare projects in Israel. She is currently on the charity’s executive council.

Dear Mr. Hague,

You have stated that if Israel tries to defend its population through a ground offensive in Gaza, “it risks losing the sympathy of the international community.”

Let me tell you something about the sympathy of the international community, Mr. Hague. My father was liberated from Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945, having lost his entire family, but gaining the sympathy of the international community at the time. After 6 million Jews had been annihilated at the hands of the Nazi regime, the international community had plenty of sympathy for the Jewish people. There is always plenty of sympathy for victims.

Israel doesn’t need the sympathy of the international community.

What it needs is to defend its citizens.

When, as a tiny country, it gained its independence in 1948, it had to absorb 800,000 Jews who were thrown out of Arab lands in the Middle East. It did so without fuss and with dignity, giving them shelter and a place of security in which their children could grow up to become productive citizens.

When Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria tried to destroy Israel in 1948 and again in 1967, they took in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs.

But did they give them dignity or shelter? No, they left them to rot in refugee camps to maintain a symbol of grievance against Israel and use them as a political tool against the Jewish State. What has arisen in those camps is a complicated situation, but it is what has led to Gaza today.

So don’t lecture Israel on international sympathy, Mr. Hague.

Not when Israel has just sent 120 truckloads of food into Gaza to feed the Palestinian people there, because their own leadership is more interested in using its population as human shields, launching rockets against Israel from within major civilian centers.

Don’t lecture Israel on international sympathy, Mr. Hague.

Not when Israel targets, with as much military precision as it can, only terrorists and their bases, trying its utmost to prevent civilian casualties.

Don’t lecture Israel on international sympathy, Mr. Hague.

Not when the Palestinian media deliberately use images of victims of the Syrian civil war and presents them as casualties in Gaza to gain international sympathy.

Go read your history books, Mr. Hague, go see that since the beginning of the 20th century all the Arabs wanted to do was destroy Israel. Go look at the country of Israel now since the Jews have established a state there. Go read what advances in science, medicine, biotechnology, agriculture and high tech Israel has developed, and dedicated that knowledge to making the world a better place for humanity.

Can you imagine any other country that after over 60 years of continuously being under attack could have achieved so much?

So Mr. Hague, don’t lecture Israel on international sympathy.

Israel will do whatever it takes to defend itself from outright attack on its citizens, whether it be from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or any other country or terrorist group that attacks it.

And if it loses the sympathy of the international community, so be it. We don’t need the international community’s sympathy. We don’t need another 6 million victims.

Yours sincerely,

Mindy Wiesenberg

Netanyahu indicates Israel won’t cooperate with UN probe
BY YIFA YAAKOV August 13, 2014, 8:11 pm Via The Times of Israel

(If anyone needs investigating, it’s the UN.-LS)

The UN Human Rights Council (HRC), which this week appointed a commission to investigate Israel’s conduct during the month-long Operation Protective Edge, lends legitimacy to such terror groups as the Islamic State and Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday.

Netanyahu said the commission should look elsewhere, not Israel, for war crimes, and intimated that Israel would not cooperate with its members, although he did not explicitly rule out such cooperation.

Most ministers oppose any dealings with the UN team, and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said earlier Wednesday that Israel should not cooperate with the probe.

Israel’s State Comptroller Yosef Shapira announced he would launch an investigation into the military and political leadership’s handling of Operation Protective Edge. Analysts have noted that the holding of a credible Israeli investigation into war crimes allegations could have weight in any international legal battle.

In a filmed statement uploaded to his official Facebook page, the prime minister blasted the UN rights agency for failing to probe Hamas’s attacks against Israeli civilians and its use of the people of Gaza as “human shields,” as well as Syrian President Bashar Assad’s “massacre” of Syrian civilians and what Islamic State fighters are doing to Iraqi Kurds.

“Instead, the UN has decided to come and investigate Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, a democracy that acts in a legitimate way to protect its citizens from murderous terrorism,” Netanyahu said.

“This commission’s report has already been written, the one leading it [Canadian Prof. William Schabas] has already decided that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, and that’s why there is nothing for them to do here,” he said.

“First, let them visit Damascus, Baghdad, Tripoli. Let them see the Islamic State, the Syrian army, let them see Hamas — that’s where they’ll find war crimes, not here.”

Netanyahu was referring to statements Schabas, a professor of International Law at London’s Middlesex University, has made in the past, calling for Netanyahu and former president Shimon Peres to stand trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.

The prime minister was also referencing comments made by Schabas in an interview with Channel 2 on Tuesday evening, in which he refused to outright condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization or reveal how the commission plans to investigate it.

“It would be inappropriate for me to say” if Hamas is a terrorist organization, Schabas said, stressing that the investigation into the Gaza conflict must be opened “in as neutral a manner as possible.”

Schabas also said past comments he had made concerning the Israeli leadership’s implication in crimes against humanity had been “exaggerated.”

“I said my favorite [Western leader to try at the International Criminal Court] was Netanyahu. I was echoing the Goldstone Report,” Schabas explained, referring to the UN fact-finding mission on the 2008 Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip — which, Finance Minister Yair Lapid quickly pointed out, was compiled when former prime minister Ehud Olmert, and not Netanyahu, was serving as premier.

On Wednesday afternoon, Netanyahu met with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, thanking him for his solidarity with Israel and for rejecting the “false moral symmetry” between Israel and Hamas.

“Hamas continues to do these horrible things that ISIS does: They persecute Christians, they persecute gays, they persecute women, they basically reject modernity and there are a terrorist tyranny that is imposed on their people. And where their people reject being used as human shields, you know what they do, Governor? They execute them,” Netanyahu told Cuomo during the Jerusalem meeting.

“This is the kind of moral divide that is evident today in the world, and on one side you have Israel and the United States representing democracies committing to human rights, committing to a real future for our people; and on the other side, you have the likes of ISIS and Hamas, Islamist tyrannies that have no inhibition and pursue their grisly creeds and their grisly deeds.”

Earlier Wednesday, a report by Channel 2 revealed that the majority of Israeli government ministers, 14 out of 22, oppose the probe ordered by the HRC into the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.

On Monday, Israel decried the appointment of the three members of the investigative UN committee to review the recent military operation in Gaza, saying the identity of the three proved that the results of the probe were a foregone conclusion.

But Schabas, who was appointed to lead the inquiry, defended his record to Israeli media Tuesday and said past statements he’s made that paint him as anti-Israel would have no bearing on his probe of the Gaza conflict.

Schabas told Army Radio in an interview on Tuesday that he is not anti-Israel, has visited Israel in the past to give university presentations and is a member of the editorial board of an Israeli legal journal.

The Canadian law professor indicated his panel would look at all aspects of wrongdoing regardless of which side was behind them, stressing that regardless of his personal opinions, he will be objective.

“What has to happen in a commission like this is that people like myself have to put anything they may have thought and said behind them and to approach their mandate in the most fair and objective and impartial manner possible. And that’s what I intend to do,” he told Channel 2.

But Israel’s Foreign Ministry was bitterly critical of the probe and the panel. “Already at the time that the decision to establish the committee was adopted, on July 23, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister announced that the Human Rights Council long ago became the Terrorists Rights Council and a ‘kangaroo court,’ and that the findings of its ‘investigations’ are predetermined,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“If further proof is needed, the appointment of the chairman of the committee, whose opinions and positions against Israel are well known, proves beyond any doubt that Israel cannot expect justice from such a body.”

The statement concluded that “the committee’s report has already been written and at the moment it has only been defined who will sign on it.”

The probe team has been tasked with reporting back to the council by March 2015.

Fresh Gaza hostilities likely Wednesday. IDF to expand counteraction for Hamas rockets
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 12, 2014, 11:18 PM (IDT)

(Looks like the Egyptians are using Israel to do the ‘heavy lifting’.-LS)

The seventh truce in the ongoing Israel-Hamas passage of arms is generally expected to end Wednesday night Aug. 13, with a fresh outbreak of hostilities triggered by resumed Hamas rocket fire. The indirect Egyptian-brokered talks between the parties in Cairo have never got off the ground. From the start, all three realized that the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians were unbridgeable and, moreover, that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were totally at odds on a common negotiating stance.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report exclusively that Egyptian intelligence mediators presented separate papers to the Israelis and Palestinians, knowing – as they acknowledged informally – that the two papers were miles apart.

A source close to the talks told DEBKAfile Tuesday night that the Israeli envoys had nothing to do all day in Cairo except to drink hot cups of strong tea in the hotel room assigned them by their Egyptian hosts.

In any case, the Egyptian mediators were in no hurry to push for results and, in fact, appeared fairly unconcerned by the prospect of hostilities resuming in a day or two.

This indifference was also noticeable at the joint news conference addressed by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and President Vladimir Putin at the Russian resort of Sochi, Tuesday, when neither made any reference to the Gaza conflict.

The Palestinian team is in no shape to hold practical negotiations on any sort of resolution in Gaza, because it is deeply divided two ways.
For one, Hamas rejects the PA-PLO group as not fit to represent its interests because they say PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas is locked onto the Egyptian side.

The rancor between the two Palestinian factions came to the fore Tuesday night, our sources disclose, when PA security forces began detaining Hamas activists on the West Bank for the first time since the current conflict broke out in July. The arrests took place in the Qalqilya and Tulkarm refugee camps.

And for the second, the Hamas team itself was split between the envoys from Gaza and the delegates from Qatar. The Gaza group want the Cairo talks to lead off by setting conditions for a prolonged ceasefire, during which their political and military demands would be negotiated.

The Qatar envoys insist on reversing this order: first agreed solutions for the long term and only then a deal for extending the ceasefire.
Our Washington sources report that the US tried interceding with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, and also with Israel and Egypt, to persuade them to accept another extension of the three-day truce. This effort fell on deaf ears because the Obama administration has not carved out a role or gained levers of influence in the Gaza conflict.

The one thing that can avert a fresh outbreak of violence Wednesday night is a declaration by Hamas’ military wing, Ezz e-Din al-Qassam, unconditionally halting further rocket fire and other aggressive activity.

Israel is not holding its breath for this to happen. Our military sources say that Israel’s government and military leaders are ready for the next stage of the confrontation with Hamas. This time, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon are preparing action a lot tougher than limited air strikes in response to Palestinian rocket fire of any intensity. They know that public patience has run out and will no longer tolerate a return to the situation that leaves Hamas holding the initiative to shoot rockets or not.

Not only the public, but the army too will no longer put off with half-measures and is ready to fight Hamas until it is no longer capable of harassing Israel with threats of violence.

Vatican Advocates Military Action In Iraq
by JOHN ROSSOMANDO 12 Aug 2014, 12:56 PM PDT via Breibart dot Com

(This is a first for me. Never seen the Vatican take such a strong position. Looks like the Pope has a bigger pair than Obama. I pray his plea doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Are there any other countries listening or, as Christians, must we turn the other cheek? -LS)

Military intervention in Iraq may be the only way to stop the genocide against the country’s Christian minority by the Islamic State (formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS), a senior Vatican diplomat says.

“At this moment, we hope the voice that is surging from different Christian and religious communities, from moderate Muslims, from people of good will around the world, may find the response of concrete humanitarian assistance that is provided for the Christians in northern Iraq as well as some political and even effective military protection,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations told Vatican Radio.

This marks the first time a Vatican official has supported military action of any kind in recent memory. Pope John Paul II condemned the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

At least 100,000 Christians have fled their villages in the Nineveh plains of northern Iraq, according to Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Sako. Last month, the Islamic State ordered Christians living in Mosul to pay the jizyah tax mandated by the Quran, convert to Islam, or face death.

Sako called the Islamic State’s onslaught a “Way of the Cross” for Iraq’s Christians who have been in the region since the beginnings of Christianity. They have been forced to flee on foot amid Iraq’s summer heat.

“They are using the sword to cut off hand[s] and also beheading other[s] so I don’t think this is the behavior of human beings, but wild animals do that,” an Iraqi Christian refugee told CBN News.

Islamic State terrorists have looted the Christians’ possessions – everything from dentures to wedding rings – leaving them destitute. Churches have been burned or converted into mosques. Ancient Christian manuscripts also have been burned, and Christian symbols have been desecrated.

“They are killing our people in the name of Allah and telling people that anyone who kills a Christian will go straight to heaven,” Archbishop Toma Dawod of the Syrian Orthodox Church told U.K.’s The Guardian newspaper following the fall of Qaraqosh, which had been Iraq’s largest Christian city, to the Islamic State.

Archbishop Tomasi also complained that a “certain indifference” to Christian suffering in Iraq existed in the international community.

“It is difficult to convince—because of false modesty, I would say—the Western powers to take a strong stance in defense of the Christians,” Tomasi said.

This stance was echoed by Sako, who complained that President Obama’s decision to bomb Islamic State artillery positions near the Kurdish region was inadequate and that humanitarian aid alone was insufficient.

“The position of the American President Obama to only give military assistance to protect Erbil is disappointing,” Sako wrote. “The Americans are not up to a rapid solution to give hope specifically as they are not going to attack ISIS in Mosul and in the Nineveh plain.
“There is no strategy to dry up the sources of manpower and the resources of these Islamic terrorists.”