Archive for the ‘Israeli security’ category

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War

May 15, 2016

Obama’s Animus toward Israel May Lead to War, American ThinkerVictor Sharpe and Robert Vincent, May 15, 2016

Will the looming conclusion of the Obama presidency lead him to engineer an all-out war by Iran’s terror surrogates, Hamas and Hezbollah, against the embattled Jewish state?  Will that war conveniently occur in December 2016, as Obama serves out the final days of his presidency?

Is it conceivable that the pro-Muslim president of the United States will use such a conflict to predictably and mendaciously blame Israel as a means to permanently fracture the U.S.-Israeli alliance in a manner that would be difficult for any successor to repair?  As extreme as this may sound, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true democracy and ally in the Middle East.

As should be obvious by now, Obama believes that Islam has suffered from British and European Christian colonization and oppression.  After being thoroughly prepared to be receptive to this message by his stridently anti-Western mother and maternal grandparents, such was the indoctrination Obama received from Khaled al-Mansour – a Muslim high-level adviser to Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and anti-Jewish hate-monger – during his formative years.

It was al-Mansour who helped Obama gain admittance to the Harvard Law School.  Edward Said, an outspoken anti-Israel professor of Obama’s at Columbia University, and Rashid Khalidi, a former press agent for Yasser Arafat’s PLO, served as Obama’s mentor in the former case and friend in the latter.

These figures, whose entire professional adult lives had been essentially dedicated to eliminating Israel, focused on influencing Obama to support the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians – along with their thugocracy known as the Palestinian Authority.  These overwhelmingly Muslim terrorists amount to little more than cannon fodder in the ongoing Islamist quest to effectively perpetrate yet another Holocaust.

Thus, while Obama weakens America and disparages Western values and the tenets of Judeo-Christian civilization, he always chooses to suppress the reality of Islamic triumphalism and its appalling and inhumane history of slavery, hatred of non-Muslims, brutal Muslim conquests, and slaughter dating back to its 7th-century origins in Arabia.

This is why no one should be surprised that he would bow to a Saudi king and venerate the Islamic call of the muezzin.

Given his background, it is no wonder that Obama fell for the monumental lie that the Jewish state is also a modern colonizer, just as the European powers were.  After all, Obama’s other confidants included, as the principled and worthy Victor David Hanson recently pointed out, “the obscene Reverend Wright and reprobates like Bill Ayers and Father Michael Pfleger.”

But unlike the European colonizers who had no ancestral roots in the Middle Eastern territories they occupied, Israel is the biblical and post-biblical homeland of the Jewish people, and as the native people of its ancestral homeland, the Jews predate the Muslim invasion of Israel by millennia, as is clearly evident in the Bible, which could not have been written when and where it was otherwise.

Even though sovereignty was lost to them after the Roman destruction of the Jewish state, Jews have always lived in their native land in whatever numbers they could sustain under a succession of alien occupiers.

Despite these clearly established historical facts, modern reborn Israel and her democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, have been treated with unprecedented contempt by Obama and his sycophants.

This was evident early on with Obama’s support of and friendship to the Islamist Erdoğan in Turkey, who has reduced once secular Turkey to a growing totalitarian Islamic state that has openly supported terrorism against Israel, as demonstrated by the Gaza flotilla incident of 2010.

Erdoğan’s perfidy – which has included all but open support for ISIS – has in no way dampened Obama’s preferential treatment of this dictator, in contrast to his appalling treatment of Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Routinely, the State Department promotes the hypocrisy of the Obama administration by ignoring the aggression and terror of the Palestinian Authority, led by the Holocaust-denying Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad thugs who rule over the Gaza Strip.

In deplorable contrast, the State Department routinely attacks Israel for building homes in Jerusalem for young couples, or chiding Israel to exercise “restraint” when Israel is forced to defend itself from relentless Palestinian brutality and murder of Israeli civilians.  Was France or Belgium similarly asked to exercise “restraint” in the face of recent Muslim terrorist attacks in those countries?

This spitefulness was exhibited when the U.S., at the behest of a high-level individual in the Obama administration (wonder who!), denied visas to Israelis during Israel’s defensive Gaza war in 2014 against Hamas aggression.

Even as the barrage of thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli villages and towns from Gaza continued, this outrage was compounded when President Obama banned the much needed resupply of armaments to Israel at the height of the Hamas terror blitz and temporarily banned U.S. airlines from flying to Israel on the flimsiest of pretexts (23 international carriers – including British Airways – continued flights to Israel in spite of this ban).

Obama has also treated America’s other traditional allies with insolent disdain and cozied up to the worst enemy of freedom and liberty – namely, the Islamo-Nazi regime of Iran.

Iran’s ongoing implicit threats of nuclear warfare – against the U.S. as well as Israel – including its aggressive development of potentially nuclear-armed ICBMs, which can eventually reach the U.S., does not faze this incumbent in the White House.

The fact that this supposed nuclear “agreement” with Iran was reached, even as his very own State Department admits that Iran has yet to actually sign the agreement and even as Iranian mobs continue to chant “Death to America” to the approving nods of the Iranian mullahs, also fits into Barack Hussein Obama’s distorted world view – a deliberate policy of lies, deception, and dissimilitude.

This was admitted to by one of his closest advisers, Ben Rhodes, who recently disclosed that the Obama administration had deliberately deceived Congress and the American public about the Iran deal – as if this was something to be proud of.

Perhaps one of the most blatant examples of Obama’s anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israeli ideology was his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and his reluctance to sell arms to President El-Sisi, who overthrew the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi and his vicious anti-Christian regime after it had been in power for only two years and had wrought havoc on that country.

Obama’s support for Morsi should have come as no surprise, given the endless flow of Muslim Brotherhood activists visiting Obama’s White House and the filling of senior positions within the administration, as documented by former CIA analyst Clare Lopez.

Even today, El-Sisi fights al-Qaeda terrorism in the Sinai and the Hamas terrorists in Gaza without any apparent support or approval from Obama.

These examples of the president’s bias, his pro-Islamic sympathies, and his agenda point to a seminal hatred of not only America itself, but most pointedly of the Jewish state – this hatred may override all other practical considerations in the remaining few months of his term in office.

His parting shot at Israel may well be to force her expulsion from the United Nations and turn the Jewish state into another Taiwan.

As suggested at the beginning of this article, he might well encourage both Iranian terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezb’allah in Lebanon, to attack Israel with a massive missile bombardment sometime this coming December.

Hamas, for its own part, has thousands of lethal rockets and mortars and is feverishly building tunnels into Israeli territory in the hope of sending its terrorist hordes into Israeli villages and towns and slaughtering as many civilians as possible.  Hezb’allah, on the other hand, is estimated to have more than 150 thousand missiles and rockets aimed at all of Israel, hidden in Lebanese schools, hospitals, and apartments.

Even as the deliberate use of civilians as human shields is explicitly spelled out by the Geneva Conventions as a crime against humanity, and though Israel would have no choice but to inflict substantial civilian casualties in her own defense, this circumstance would naturally be used as a pretext by the U.N. to punish Israel in an unprecedented manner.

They would do so knowing that for the first time, an American president would likely stand by and approve whatever the U.N. anti-Israel “lynch mob” might concoct in order to further isolate and delegitimize the Jewish state.  This might include severe economic sanctions or embargoes or might even involve expulsion of Israel from the U.N. entirely.

It should be emphasized here that once the American national election is over, there will be nothing to stop Obama from doing this.  Obama’s entire foreign policy has revolved around undermining Israel.  Such an action on his part in the closing weeks of his administration can be seen as not only possible, but likely, given the pattern of his behavior toward Israel for the whole of his presidency.

This latter punishment would suit Israel’s enemies very well, even though it would change nothing on the ground.  An Israel reduced to a Taiwan-like status – i.e., a de facto sovereign state not officially recognized as such by the U.N. – would obviate the need for Gulf Arabs (who are covertly making common cause with Israel against Iran) to establish any formal diplomatic relations with her.

The “Zionist entity,” as their official propaganda impudently puts it, would remain just that.  This might even, in rhetorical terms, satisfy the requirement of Iran’s mullahs to “wipe Israel from the map.”  What is more, once Israel is expelled from the U.N., it would be very difficult for any future U.S. president, no matter how pro-Israel, to successfully support Israel’s re-admittance into the U.N.

As is the case with Taiwan, the U.S. may maintain a commitment to supplying Israel with arms and supporting her efforts at self-defense, but in practical terms, that may be the extent of the relationship, even in the best-case scenario surrounding Israel’s expulsion from the U.N. under Obama during his final days in office.

While such a turn of events may sound far-fetched to even some of those most critical of Obama, it is entirely possible in view of Obama’s past acts of blatant hatred toward America’s one and only true ally and democracy in the Middle East.

 

Iran’s Plans to Control a Palestinian State

May 9, 2016

Iran’s Plans to Control a Palestinian State, Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, May 9, 2016

(Please see also, Op-Ed: Trump’s “peace through strength”  for  USA also applies to Israel. — DM)

♦ The Iran nuclear deal, marking its first anniversary, does not appear to have had a calming effect on the Middle East.

♦ Iran funnels money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad because they share its desire to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. The Iranian leaders want to see Hamas killing Jews every day, with no break. Ironically, Hamas has become too “moderate” for the Iranian leadership because it is not doing enough to drive Jews out of the region.

♦ More Palestinian terror group leaders may soon perform the “pilgrimage” to their masters in Tehran. If this keeps up, the Iranians themselves will puppeteer any Palestinian state that is created in the region.

The Iran nuclear deal, marking its first anniversary, does not appear to have had a calming effect on the Middle East. The Iranians seem to be deepening their intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general and in internal Palestinian affairs in particular.

This intervention is an extension of Iran’s ongoing efforts to expand its influence in Arab and Islamic countries, including Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon and some Gulf states. The nuclear deal between Tehran and the world powers has not stopped the Iranians from proceeding with their global plan to export their “Islamic Revolution.” On the contrary, the general sense among Arabs and Muslims is that in the wake of the nuclear deal, Iran has accelerated its efforts to spread its influence.

Iran’s direct and indirect presence in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon has garnered some international attention, yet its actions in the Palestinian arena are still ignored by the world.

That Iran provides financial and military aid to Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad has never been a secret. In fact, both the Iranians and the Palestinian radical groups have been boasting about their relations.

Iran funnels money to these groups because they share its desire to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Like Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Islamic Jihad agreed to play the role of Tehran’s proxies and enablers in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

1162 (1)Iran used to funnel money to Hamas and Islamic Jihad because they share its desire to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Relations between Iran and Hamas foundered a few years back, when Hamas leaders refused to support the Iranian-backed Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. Pictured above: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal (left) confers with Iranian “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei, in 2010. (Image source: Office of the Supreme Leader)

But puppets must remain puppets. Iran gets nasty when its dummies do not play according to its rules. This is precisely what happened with Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Relations between Iran and Hamas foundered a few years back over the crisis in Syria. Defying their masters in Tehran, Hamas leaders refused to declare support for the Iranian-backed Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. Things between Iran and Hamas have been pretty bad ever since.

First, the Assad government closed down Hamas offices in Damascus. Second, Assad expelled the Hamas leadership from Syria. Third, Iran suspended financial and military aid to Hamas, further aggravating the financial crisis that the Gaza-based Islamist movement had already been facing.

Islamic Jihad got it next. Iranian mullahs woke up one morning to realize that Islamic Jihad leaders have been a bit unfaithful. Some of the Islamic Jihad leaders were caught flirting with Iran’s Sunni rivals in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Even worse, the Iranians discovered that Islamic Jihad was still working closely with their erstwhile allies in the Gaza Strip, Hamas.

Iran had had high hopes for Islamic Jihad replacing Hamas as Tehran’s darling, and major proxy in the Palestinian arena. But here were Islamic Jihad leaders and activists working with their cohorts in Hamas, in apparent disregard of Papa Iran.

The mullahs did not lose much time. Outraged by Islamic Jihad’s apparent disloyalty, Iran launched its own terror group inside the Gaza Strip: Al-Sabireen (The Patient Ones). This group, which currently consists of several hundred disgruntled ex-Hamas and ex-Islamic Jihad members, was meant to replace Islamic Jihad the same way Islamic Jihad was supposed to replace Hamas in the Gaza Strip — in accordance with Iran’s scheme.

Lo and behold: it is hard to get things right with Iran. Al-Sabireen has also failed to please its masters in Tehran and is not “delivering.” Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip say that Iran has realized that the investment in Al-Sabireen has not been worthwhile because the group has not been able to do anything “dramatic” in the past two years. By “dramatic,” the sources mean that Al-Sabireen has neither emerged as a serious challenger to Islamic Jihad or Hamas, and has not succeeded in killing enough Israelis.

So Iran has gone running back to its former bedfellow, Islamic Jihad.

For now, Iran is not prepared fully to bring Hamas back under its wings. Hamas, for the Iranians, is a “treacherous” movement, thanks to its periodic temporary ceasefires with Israel. The Iranian leaders want to see Hamas killing Jews every day, with no break. Ironically, Hamas has become too “moderate” for the Iranian leadership because it is not doing enough to drive Jews out of the region.

That leaves Iran with the Islamic Jihad.

In a surprise move, the Iranians this week hosted Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah and senior officials from his organization, in a renewed bid to revive Islamic Jihad’s role as the major puppet of Tehran in the Gaza Strip. Islamic Jihad officials said that the visit has resulted in the resumption of Iranian financial aid to their cash-strapped organization. As a result of the rift between Islamic Jihad and Iran, the Iranians are said to have cut off nearly 90% of their financial aid to the Palestinian terror organization.

Some Palestinians, such as political analyst Hamadeh Fara’neh, see the rapprochement between Iran and Islamic Jihad as a response to the warming of relations between Hamas and Turkey. The Iranians, he argues, are unhappy with recent reports that suggested that Turkey was acting as a mediator between Hamas and Israel.

Other Palestinians believe that Iran’s real goal is to unite Islamic Jihad and Al-Sabireen so that they would become a real and realistic alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Whatever Iran’s intentions may be, one thing is clear: The Iranians are taking advantage of the nuclear deal to move forward with their efforts to increase their influence over some Arab and Islamic countries. Iran is also showing that it remains very keen on playing a role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one that emboldens radical groups that are bent on the destruction of Israel and that share the same values as the Islamic State terror group.

Iran’s latest courtship of Islamic Jihad is yet another attempt by the mullahs to deepen their infiltration of the Palestinian arena by supporting and arming any terror group that strives to smash Israel. For now, it seems that Hamas’s scheme is working, largely thanks to the apathy of the international community, where many believe that Iran has been declawed by the nuclear deal.

But more Palestinian terror group leaders may soon perform the “pilgrimage” to their masters in Tehran. If this keeps up, the Iranians themselves will puppeteer any Palestinian state that is created in the region. Their ultimate task, after all, is to use this state as a launching pad to destroy Israel. And the Iranians are prepared to fund and arm any Palestinian group that is willing to help achieve this goal.

Obama’s Double Standard Toward Netanyahu

April 26, 2016

Obama’s Double Standard Toward Netanyahu, The Gatestone InstituteAlan M. Dershowitz, April 26, 2016

As President Obama winds up his farewell tour of Europe, it is appropriate to consider the broader implications of the brouhaha he created in Great Britain. At a joint press conference with Britain Prime Minister, David Cameron, President Obama defended his intrusion into British politics in taking sides on the controversial and divisive Brexit debate. In an op-ed, Obama came down squarely on the side of Britain remaining in the European Union — a decision I tend to agree with on its merits. But he was much criticized by the British media and British politicians for intruding into a debate about the future of Europe and Britain’s role in it.

Obama defended his actions by suggesting that in a democracy, friends should be able to speak their minds, even when they are visiting another country:

“If one of our best friends is in an organization that enhances their influence and enhances their power and enhances their economy, then I want them to stay in. Or at least I want to be able to tell them ‘I think this makes you guys bigger players.'”

Nor did he stop at merely giving the British voters unsolicited advice, he also issued a not so veiled threat. He said that “the UK is going to be in the back of the queue” on trade agreements if they exit the EU.

1562UK Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama take a question at a press conference, on whether it is appropriate for Obama to say whether or not the UK should remain in the European Union, April 22, 2015.

President Obama must either have a short memory or must adhere to Emerson’s dictum that “foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Recall how outraged the same President Obama was when the Prime Minister of a friendly country, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke his mind about the Iran Deal.

There are, of course, differences: first, Israel has a far greater stake in the Iran Deal than the United States has in whatever decision the British voters make about Brexit: and second, Benjamin Netanyahu was representing the nearly unanimous view of his countrymen, whereas there is little evidence of whether Americans favor or oppose Brexit in large numbers.

Another difference, of course, is that Obama was invited to speak by Cameron, whereas, Netanyahu was essentially disinvited by Obama. But under our tripartite system of government — which is different than Britain’s Unitary Parliamentary system — that fact is monumentally irrelevant. Netanyahu was invited by a co-equal branch of the government, namely Congress, which has equal authority over foreign policy with the president and equal authority to invite a friendly leader. Moreover, not only are the British voters divided over Brexit, but Britain’s Conservative Party itself is deeply divided. Indeed, the leading political figure in opposition to Britain remaining in the European Union is a potential successor to Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party. So these differences certainly don’t explain the inconsistency between Obama’s interference in British affairs and his criticism of Netanyahu for accepting an invitation from Congress to express his country’s views on an issue directly affecting its national security.

So which is it, Mr. President? Should friends speak their minds about controversial issues when visiting another country, or should they keep their views to themselves? Or is your answer that friends should speak their minds only when they agree with other friends, but not when they disagree? Such a view would skew the market place of ideas beyond recognition. If friends should speak about such issues, it is even more important to do so when they disagree.

A wit once observed that “hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.” It is also the currency of diplomacy and politics. That doesn’t make it right.

The President owes the American people, and Benjamin Netanyahu, an explanation for his apparent hypocrisy and inconsistency. Let there be one rule that covers all friends — not one for those with whom you agree and another for those with whom you disagree. For me the better rule is open dialogue among friends on all issues of mutual importance. Under this rule, which President Obama now seems to accept, he should have welcomed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s advocacy before Congress, instead of condemning it. He owes Prime Minister Netanyahu an apology, and so do those Democratic members of Congress who rudely stayed away from Netanyahu’s informative address to Congress.

New Palestinian pact-for-terror

April 25, 2016

New Palestinian pact-for-terror, DEBKAfile, April 25, 2016

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Israel embarked on a P. R. campaign to play down the extent of the threat which surfaced in one day in the discovery of Hamas tunnel near Kibbutz Sufa, and the suicide bombing of Jerusalem bus No. 12 on April 18, with 20 people injured. The police initially claimed for example that the explosion was due to a technical problem with the engine. But the two developments actually represented a sharp and serious escalation of the Palestinian wave of terror against Israel.

Neither of the operations was carried out by “lone wolves” but rather by large terror networks. The secret tunnel discovered in the Gaza border area was built by the Hamas military wing, the Izaddin al-Qassam brigades, while the suicide bombing in Jerusalem was carried out by the Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria, specifically its operatives in the Bethlehem area.

Each of these terror networks poses a different challenge to Israel.

In Gaza, the Hamas political leadership is no longer in contact with the heads of its military wing. Neither the top commanders nor the regional commanders of the brigades obey any Hamas political body. They only heed three sources:

1. The Hamas military command framework headed by Mohammad Deif and Marwan Issa.

2. Iranian or Hizballah intelligence services, which maintain contacts with them and often provide funds or weapons.

3. The ISIS affiliate in the Sinai, with which the Hamas military wing maintains operational ties.

There is an equally serious problem in Judea and Samaria. Over the past few weeks, the Hamas terror networks have started to make contact with sleeper cells from Fatah’s Tanzim paramilitary force that have the knowledge, ability, means and experience for major terrorist attacks against Israel, such as the Jerusalem bus bombing.

This dormant wing of Mohammad Abbas’s Fatah has began to show signs of life and willingness to return to the path of terror.

These contacts began immediately after publication of a letter from jailed Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti to members of the force that called on them to start coordinating their operations against Israel with Hamas. Nobody has bothered to explain how a senior terrorist jailed in a high-security Israeli prison succeeded in smuggling such a letter out.

The link between part of the Tanzim and the Hamas terror networks is no less dangerous than the tunnel discovered near Kibbutz Sufa, and it presages an escalation of terror operations in the future.

The only way to prevent a major deterioration of the security situation is to strike targets of the Izzadin al-Qassam brigades. There is no need to launch a total war against Hamas or to occupy Gaza.

But instead of responding as needed, Israel’s government and security establishment have released pictures of digging equipment that has finally succeeded in locating a single Hamas infiltration tunnel out of the many that exist, and claimed that those responsible for the Jerusalem bombing have yet to be identified. At the same time, senior officials and IDF officers continue to assert that Hamas is not seeking escalation.

Unfortunately, this can only mean a resurgence of the wave of terror.

Shame on the US at the UN

April 19, 2016

Shame on the US at the UN, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, April 19, 2016

At an open debate on the Middle East at the United Nations Security Council in New York on Monday — as a bus was being blown up in Jerusalem — Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon told his Palestinian counterpart, Riyad Mansour, that he ought to be ashamed for not denouncing terrorism and incitement.

Danon had brought Natan and Renana Meir to the session to personify the devastation that Palestinian Authority incitement to violence against Jews continues to wreak. Natan is the widower of Dafna Meir, a 38-year-old nurse who was murdered three months ago by a Palestinian teenager at the entrance to her home in Otniel, a settlement south of Hebron. Renana is Natan’s 17-year-old daughter, who not only witnessed her mother being stabbed to death, but tried to help fend off the assailant.

The 15-year-old terrorist later told Israeli interrogators that he had been inspired to commit his heinous act from broadcasts on PA television and social media.

Mansour did not condemn any of it, of course. Instead, he berated Israel for imprisoning and killing Palestinian children. No surprise there, which is why Danon — who should be lauded for standing alone in the hornets’ nest of hypocrisy and deceit that the Security Council occupies — was wasting his breath. As Natan Meir said later in a small press conference after the event, it hurt him to hear a diplomat referring to jailed Palestinian kids as victims, when one of those “kids” had slaughtered his wife in cold blood.

Danon already knows that the PA is a lost cause in every possible respect. So his finger-pointing at Mansour was a gesture aimed elsewhere — but hopefully not at the United States, which is just as deserving of a tongue-lashing as the PA that it morally equates with Israel.

Indeed, “disgraceful” doesn’t begin to describe the statement made by David Pressman, the U.S.’s “alternative representative to the U.N. for special political affairs,” at the session in question. Condemning terrorism and settlements in the same sentence, Pressman talked about America’s “steadfast” efforts to “advance dialogue and progress,” which, he said, “will be borne from hard choices made by both leaders to advance the cause of peace over parochial politics.”

Thus, he continued: “We remain very concerned by the wave of terrorism, violence and the utter lack of progress the parties have made toward a two-state solution. It is important that both sides demonstrate, with concrete policies and actions, a genuine commitment to achieving a two-state solution to reduce tensions and restore hope in the possibility of peace. What we have seen on the ground, and what families like the Meir family present here today have experienced first-hand, is absolutely unconscionable.”

Yes, said Pressman, “acts of terrorism have taken too many lives, including Americans. The victims have included soldiers and civilians, pregnant women and mothers, Israelis and Palestinians. … Terrorism is terrorism. It is wrong. It is bloody. And it must stop. Anyone that aspires to achieve a viable and independent Palestinian state must understand that engaging in incitement to violence only serves to undermine this goal. Only a political outcome, not violence, will allow this goal to be realized.”

And here came the clincher: “We remain deeply concerned about the shooting of a Palestinian assailant on March 24 in Hebron by a member of the Israeli security forces, and are following the legal proceedings against the accused perpetrator closely. We note that just today charges of manslaughter were brought against the soldier. … In cases where anyone from any side acts outside the law, they must be held accountable.”

In other words, while Israel always holds each and every soldier accountable for the slightest whiff of wrongdoing, and the PA encourages, glorifies and funds terrorists as a matter of course and principle, “both sides” share responsibility for the violence that is causing the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

But Pressman didn’t stop there. No, he completed his comparison by reprimanding Israel for “settlement activity” that the U.S. “strongly opposes.” Such actions as “land expropriations, settlement expansions, and legalizations of outposts,” he said, “are wrong and fundamentally undermine the prospects for a two-state solution.”

Shame on him and the entire Obama administration for not realizing that the only kind of construction the U.S. should be linking to the jihad that the Palestinians are waging against Israel is that of terror tunnels, rocket launchers and lies.

IDF’s drill secures Netanyahu-Putin summit

April 18, 2016

IDF’s drill secures Netanyahu-Putin summit, DEBKAfile, April 18, 2016

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The IDF launched an unannounced military-air exercise in northen Israel Monday April 18. It will also be held in the Jordan valley, strategically located south of the Golan Heights and the Sea of Galilee. Despite the official explanation that the drills are part of the IDF’s training schedule for 2016, it is difficult not to see it as a follow-up to the Cabinet meeting on the Golan the previous day, including Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s declaration that “Israel will never withdraw from the Golan.”

Just as the Cabinet meeting was an “emergency” one, the exercise is not part of standard training, as an IDF statement claimed, but rather part of the overall picture of the war in Syria on the other side of the northeastern border.

The drill is mainly intended to prevent a possible attack by ISIS, Syrian, Iranian or Hizballah forces aimed at torpedoing Netanyahu’s discussions in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, April 21.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the IDF exercise shows only half of the military picture in the area.
On the other side of the border, in the triangular pocket where the Israeli, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, heavy fighting has been underway for several days between Syrian rebels and forces of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades and the al-Muthanna organization, which have both sworn allegiance to ISIS. The battles are taking place across from Israel’s Hamat Gader, south of the Sea of Galilee, which is the reason why the exercise is also being held in the Jordan Valley.

On the other side of the border, in the triangular pocket where the Israeli, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, heavy fighting has been underway for several days between Syrian rebels and forces of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades and the al-Muthanna organization, which have both sworn allegiance to ISIS. The battles are taking place across from Israel’s Hamat Gader, south of the Sea of Galilee, which is the reason why the exercise is also being held in the Jordan Valley.

On the other side of the border, in the triangular pocket where the Israeli, Syrian and Jordanian borders meet, heavy fighting has been underway for several days between Syrian rebels and forces of the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades and the al-Muthanna organization, which have both sworn allegiance to ISIS. The battles are taking place across from Israel’s Hamat Gader, south of the Sea of Galilee, which is the reason why the exercise is also being held in the Jordan Valley.

On Sunday, the leader and commander of Al-Muthanna was killed during the fighting. The goal of the rebel attack is to capture the Syrian villages in the territory held by ISIS, which threatens the Galilee and the Golan communities of Tel Katzir, Shaar Hagolan and Masada. Sources in Kuwait reported last week that Jordanian special forces and Israeli drones marked in the colors of the Jordanian air force are participating in the battles. The developments on the ground indicate that the goal of the attacking forces is to uproot ISIS from the Israeli and Jordanian border areas.

DEBKAfile’s sources provided the following exclusive details on April 17:   

The Israeli cabinet holds its weekly session Sunday April 17, on the Golan. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow on Thursday, April 21 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and to launch the most important battle of his political career, and one of Israel’s most decisive contests of the last 10 years: the battle over the future of the Golan Heights.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources and its sources in Moscow report exclusively that Israel’s top political leaders and military commanders were stunned and shocked last weekend when they found out that US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to support the return of the Golan to Syria. The two presidents gave their top diplomats, Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the green light to include such a clause in a proposal being drafted at the Geneva conference on ending the Syrian civil war.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a security and defense tour in the Golan Heights, near the Northern Israeli border with Syria. April 11, 2016. Photo by Kobi Gideon/GPO *** Local Caption *** ??? ?????? ?????? ?????? ????? ?????? ?????. ????? ?????? ?????? ????? ?? ????? ??????? ???? ????? ?????? ?????? ?????

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu seen during a security and defense tour in the Golan Heights, near the Northern Israeli border with Syria. April 11, 2016. Photo by Kobi Gideon/GPO

Israel captured the Golan from the Syrian army 49 years ago, during the Six-Day War in 1967 after the Syrian army invaded Israel.

In 1981, during the tenure of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel passed a law defining the Golan as a territory under Israeli sovereignty. However, it did not state that the area belongs to Israel.

While Israel was preparing for a diplomatic battle over the future of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Obama and Putin decided to deal a diplomatic blow to Israel and Netanyahu’s government on an unexpected issue, the Golan.

It is part of an endeavor by the two powers to use their diplomatic and military cooperation regarding Syria to impose agreements on neighboring countries, such as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

For example, Washington and Moscow are trying to impose an agreement regarding the granting of independence to Syrian Kurds, despite Ankara’s adamant opposition. The two presidents are also pressuring Riyadh and Amman to accept the continuation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule, at least for the immediate future.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that just like the other diplomatic or military steps initiated by Obama and Putin in Syria, such as those for Assad’s eventual removal from power, the two powers see a resolution of the Golan issue as a gradual process that may take a long time, perhaps even years. But as far as they are concerned, Israel will have to withdraw from the Golan at the end of that process.

It should be noted that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not traveling to Washington to discuss the Golan issue with Obama. The frequent trips by the prime minister, senior officials and top IDF brass to Moscow in recent months show where the winds are blowing in the Middle East.

However, Moscow is not Washington, and Israel has no lobby in the Russian capital defending its interests.

It should be made very clear that the frequent trips by senior Israeli officials to Moscow have not created an Israeli policy that can influence Putin or other senior members of the Russian leadership. Putin has made occasional concessions to Israel on matters of minimal strategic importance, but on diplomatic and military steps regarding Syria and Iran he has shown little consideration of Jerusalem’s stance.

It should also be noted that there has been no basis for the enthusiasm over the Russian intervention in Syria shown by Netanyahu, Israeli ministers and senior IDF officers.

All of the calls by a number of Russia experts, mainly those of ll of the calls by a number of Russia experts, mainly those of DEBKAfile, for extreme caution in ties with Putin have fallen on deaf ears among the political leadership in Jerusalem and the IDF command in Tel Aviv.

Amid these developments, three regional actors are very pleased by Washington and Moscow’s agreement to demand Israeli withdrawal from the Golan: Syrian President Assad, the Iranian leadership in Tehran and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Now, they do not need to risk a military confrontation with Israel over the Golan because Obama and Putin have essentially agreed to do the dirty work for them.

More Palestinian Empty Threats

March 21, 2016

More Palestinian Empty Threats, Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, March 21, 2016

♦ For Abbas, security coordination with Israel is indeed “sacred”: it keeps him in power and stops Hamas from taking over the West Bank.

♦ Abbas cannot tell his people that security coordination with Israel is keeping him on the throne. That is a topic for Israeli ears only.

♦ So what are the threats to end security cooperation about? Money. Here is Abbas’s take-home to the world: “Send more money or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel.”

♦ Halting security coordination with Israel would spell both his end and that of the PA in the West Bank. The international community is simply hearing a new version of the old bid for yet more political concessions and yet more cash.

The Palestinian Authority’s endless threats to suspend security coordination with Israel are a carefully crafted bluff designed to extort more funds from Western donors, scare the Israeli public and provide a cover for its refusal to talk peace with Israel.

Many Palestinians say these threats are also intended for “internal consumption” — namely to appease Hamas and other radical factions and to refute charges that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is betraying its people by “collaborating” with Israel.

Hamas has conditioned “reconciliation” with President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank on Fatah ending all forms of security coordination with Israel. Hamas claims that the security coordination is directed mostly against its members and supporters in the West Bank.

Over the past several years, PA security forces have rounded up hundreds of Hamas men in an attempt to prevent the Islamist movement from establishing bases of power in the West Bank.

Hardly a week has passed during the past few months in which a senior Palestinian Authority official does not threaten to cut off security ties with Israel. Some officials in Ramallah have even claimed that the PA has already taken a decision to suspend not only security coordination with Israel, but also political and economic relations as well.

PA officials are saying that their threats, which until now have been so much dust in the wind, will be realized next month.

“April is going to be the turning point,” declared Jamal Muheissen, member of the Fatah Central Committee. “This is a month that will witness changes with regards to several issues that can no longer be delayed or marginalized. April will witness the complete and public suspension of security coordination [with Israel]. This will be the first step taken by the Palestinian leadership.”

This sounds curiously familiar: nearly a year has passed since leaders from the Palestinian Authority and Fatah first announced their decision to halt all forms of security coordination between the PA and Israel.

Meeting in Ramallah last month, the leaders once again reaffirmed their decision. This time, it is allegedly Israel’s “failure to honor all signed agreements with the Palestinians” that prompts them to suspend security coordination.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was reportedly informed of this intention earlier this month while visiting Ramallah.

But Biden is not the only Western leader to be privy to this threat. Palestinian sources say that foreign dignitaries and leaders who visit Ramallah have become accustomed to hearing Abbas and other Palestinian leaders announce their “intention” to suspend all relations with Israel, including security coordination.

Moreover, the PA recently leaked to the Palestinian media that it has officially notified Israel of its decision to “limit” all relations with it. According to the unconfirmed report, President Mahmoud Abbas dispatched three senior officials — General Intelligence Chief Majed Faraj, Preventive Security Chief Ziad Hab Al-Reeh and PA Minister for Civilian Affairs, Hussein Al-Sheikh — to a meeting with Israeli officials to brief them about the reported decision.

The Palestinian street, however, takes a different view of these threats. The reports, they say, call to mind President Abbas’s incessant threats to resign.

These Palestinians consider the threats a smokescreen to conceal the continued security coordination with Israel which, they say, seems even to have increased in recent months. They say that President Abbas can probably fool Western leaders with these threats, but not his people, who have become used to hearing empty threats from their leaders.

A senior Fatah official in Ramallah summed up the Palestinian Authority’s dilemma: “We are facing a complicated crisis. If we carry out the threat [to suspend security coordination with Israel], we will suffer; similarly, if we don’t we will suffer.”

The situation, however, is not all about money: it is also about power. President Abbas and his security chiefs know perfectly well that the security coordination benefits them first and foremost. They are well aware that without Israel’s help, Hamas would spread in the West Bank like a cancer, ultimately overthrowing the PA and replacing it with another Islamist regime like the one in the Gaza Strip.

It is helpful to remember Abbas’s moment of lucidity, when in 2014, in front of a visiting Israeli group, he declared that security coordination with Israel was “sacred.” He added: “We will continue with it even if we differ on political matters.”

For a change, Abbas was being honest. And he is right. For Abbas, security coordination is indeed “sacred”: it is keeping him in power and stopping Hamas from taking over the West Bank. Hence the security coordination — in Abbas’s words — is very important for the Palestinian Authority – perhaps more than thwarting Hamas terror attacks against Israel.

Abbas has a problem. He cannot tell his people that security coordination with Israel is what is keeping him on the throne. The sacredness of security coordination is a topic for Israeli ears only.

So what are the threats about? Money.

Here is Abbas’s take-home to the world: “Send more money or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel.” And now there is a little added value, messaged mostly to the U.S. and EU: Convene an international conference for “solving” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel.

1410 (1)Abbas to the world: “Send more money or we will cut off security cooperation with Israel.”
Left: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with French President François Hollande. Right: Abbas with top European Union officials Federica Mogherini and Jean-Claude Juncker.

Whatever else he is, Abbas is not suicidal. Halting security coordination with Israel would spell both his end and the end of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. What the international community is hearing, then, is nothing more than a new version of the old bid for yet more political concessions and yet more cash.

U.S. Media Ignore Tel Aviv Shooter’s Plan to Attack Israeli Kindergartens

March 14, 2016

U.S. Media Ignore Tel Aviv Shooter’s Plan to Attack Israeli Kindergartens, Investigative Project on Terrorism, March 14, 2016

The terrorist who shot and killed three Israelis in Tel Aviv on New Year’s Day hoped to slaughter Israeli kindergarten students, Israel Police reported Sunday.

Nashat Milhem indiscriminately fired a submachine gun killing two Israelis outside of a bar on a popular Tel Aviv street before running off. An hour later, the terrorist also killed a Bedouin taxi driver. After a week-long manhunt, Israeli forces killed Milhem following an exchange of fire near his home in northern Israel.

Two days after the attack, police uncovered Milhem’s plans to “carry out an attack on Tel Aviv kindergarten students.” However, the terrorist “felt he was being chased” and “focused on survival,” instead of going through with the plot to murder Israeli pre-schoolers.

Milhem’s attack was among those lauded in a Hamas video which aired Friday after the terrorist group hacked into Israel’s Channel 2 feed. “The year started in Tel Aviv and we have already returned to Dizengoff,” Hamas threatened, referencing the famous street in Tel Aviv where the terrorist attack took place.

“Terror will never end,” the video said, telling Israelis to “get out of our country.”

While the Washington Post chose to write about Hamas’ hacking attack, no mainstream U.S. media outlet, including the New York Times, saw fit to report on a terrorist’s plan to massacre Israeli schoolchildren.

The Times and Washington Post reported extensively on follow-up plots after November’s terrorist attacks in Paris. However, a heinous terrorist plot targeting Israeli kindergarten students following a New Year’s Day shooting spree apparently does not rise to the level of meriting a new story for American readers.

These types of glaring omissions are consistent with the misleading reporting associated with the initial Jan. 1 Tel Aviv shooting attack.

In a Jan. 5 article, the Times indicated officials remained unsure whether the shooting attack was a terrorist attack or criminal in nature.

But by Jan. 2 – a day after the attack – a growing consensus among Israeli security officials considered the shooting a terrorist attack.

Nevertheless, a week after the shooting spree, the Post argued that “the motive for the Tel Aviv attack also remains unclear…”

Imagine the headlines if the roles were reversed, and an Israeli was found plotting an attack on Palestinian youngsters. The coverage would last for days. Story lines would include detailed examinations of public reaction and what the incident means about the wellbeing of Israeli society. Why, then, is Milhem’s shocking plan failing to attract a word of coverage?

New Iron Dome version can destroy tunnels

March 11, 2016

New Iron Dome version can destroy tunnels, DEBKAfile, March 11, 2016

Anti_tunnel_missile_NEWIran keeps its ballistic missiles in underground bunkers

Israel has started testing a secret new weapon for defeating the tunnel systems which the Palestinian Hamas and Hizballah are busy digging for surprise attacks against Israel. Western sources reported Friday, March 11, that the new weapon, dubbed the “Underground Iron Dome,” can detect a tunnel, then send in a moving missile to blow it up.

US intelligence sources disclosed only that new weapon is equipped with seismic sensors to detect underground vibrations and map their location before destroying them.

Western experts have been talking for years about a secret Israeli weapon capable of destroying Iran’s Fordo nuclear facility, which is buried deep inside a mountain not far from the Shiite shrine city of Qom. They suggested that this hypothetical weapon could be slipped through the Fordo facility’s vents, thread its way through the underground chambers and take down the illicit enrichment facility.

It was discussed again three years ago, when the Israeli Air Force on Aug. 23 2013 blew up the Popular Palestinian Front-General Command underground facility at Al-Naama on the South Lebanese coast, 15 km south of Beirut.

The PPF-GC leader Ahmed Jibril was then taking his orders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.

How this operation turned out was never revealed. But Western military sources saw it as a strong Israeli message to Tehran that its underground nuclear facilities were now vulnerable to attack. The secret JIbril command center was constructed in the 1970s by East German military engineers as one of most heavily fortified military sites in the Middle East.

As for the new weapon, the Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood said that the US had allocated $40 million for completing in 2016 the establishment of “anti-tunnel capabilities to detect, map and neutralize underground tunnels that threaten the US or Israel.”

According to the spokesman, the main part of the development work (on the secret weapon) would be conducted in Israel in 2016. The US would receive prototypes and access to the test sites and hold the rights to any intellectual property.

The Israeli firms working on the anti-tunnel weapon are Elbit Systems and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which developed the Iron Dome.

Sherwood denied claims from Israeli defense quarters that the US had earmarked $120 for developing the system, or that another $80 million would be available – half in 2017 and half in 2018.

DEBKAfile’s military sources emphasize that the timeline implicit in those estimates doesn’t necessarily represent the tempo of he Underground Iron Dome’s development.

According to past experience, unfinished Israeli weapons have more than once been rushed to the battlefield to meet an emergency war situation. The Iron Dome is one example. This has the advantage of testing innovative systems in real operational conditions, with the result that improvements and adjustments can be introduced much faster than planned.

Our sources add: Both Palestinian Hamas and the pro-Iranian Hizballah are working overtime on tunnels for sneaking terrorists and commando fighters into Israel to attack IDF posts and civilian locations. During Israel’s last counter-terror operation in the Gaza Strip, Hamas staged a deadly tunnel attack on the Israel side of the border and is planning repeats. Hizballah is training commando units for underground surprise incursions to capture parts of Galilee in northern Israel.

The Israeli government has spent more than $250 million since 2004 on efforts to thwart tunnel construction under the Gaza border.

IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Gadi Eisenkot hinted at these efforts in February. “We are doing a lot, but many of [the things we do] are hidden from the public,” he told a conference at Herzliya’s Interdisciplinary Center. “We have dozens, if not a hundred, engineering vehicles on the Gaza border.”

The Fourth Strategy

March 11, 2016

The Fourth Strategy,  Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, March 11, 2016

mideast-lebanon-bulga_horo

Originally published by the Jerusalem Post

This week we learned that Lebanon is no more. It has been replaced by Hezbollah’s Iranian colony in Lebanon.

Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and canceled its $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese military. The Gulf Cooperation Council followed suit. Rather than support the move by his sponsors and allies, Saad Hariri, the head of the anti-Hezbollah March 14 movement, flew to Syria to meet with Hezbollah leaders.

Saudi Arabia’s decision to end its support for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia is making peace with Hezbollah.

It means that the Saudis are no longer willing to maintain the fiction that with enough support, the LAF will one day challenge Hezbollah’s effective control of Lebanon.

Hezbollah and its bosses in Tehran don’t seem too upset about the Sunnis’ decision to acknowledge that Hezbollah is a terrorist group. And they are right not to care. In essence, the Saudi move is simply an admission that they have won. Lebanon is theirs.

Hezbollah’s isn’t the dominant force in Lebanon because it has better weapons than the LAF.

Unlike the LAF, Hezbollah has no air force. It has no armored divisions.

Hezbollah is able to dominate Lebanon because unlike the LAF and the March 14 movement, Hezbollah is willing to destroy Lebanon if doing so advances its strategic goals.

This has all been fairly clear for more than a decade. But it took the war in Syria to force the truth above the surface.

And now that it is clear to everyone that Lebanon has ceased to exist and that the country we once knew is now an Iranian colony, the time has come for Israel to reckon with the lessons of its own misadventures in our neighbor to the north.

Since the mid-1990s, Israel has implemented three strategies in Lebanon and in Syria. All of them originated on the Left. All of them failed.

The first strategy was appeasement.

From the mid-1990s until the Syrian war began five years ago, Israel’s strategic framework for understanding Syria was appeasement. Initially, the notion was that Syria was our enemy because we control the Golan Heights. If we surrendered the Golan to Syria, we would have peace in exchange.

In the years leading up to the Syrian war, our leaders embraced the idea that Syria was the weakest link in the Iranian axis. If we gave the Golan Heights to Syria, they said, then the Assad regime would withdraw from the Iranian axis.

As it turned out, these positions had no basis in reality. Appeasement failed.

Then there was unconditional surrender – or disengagement. Then-prime minister Ehud Barak implemented this strategy when he removed IDF units from the security zone in south Lebanon in May 2000.

From the mid-1990s on, Yossi Beilin was the chief advocate of unconditional surrender in Lebanon. The logic of surrender was similar to that of appeasement – of which he was also a principal architect and advocate.

The surrender strategy in Lebanon was based on the idea that Hezbollah fought the IDF in south Lebanon because the IDF was in south Lebanon. If the IDF were to leave south Lebanon, Hezbollah was have no reason to fight us anymore.

So if we were gone, Beilin argued, Hezbollah would stop fighting, ditch terrorism and Iran, and become a normal Lebanese political party.

The war with Hezbollah in 2006 destroyed the credibility of the surrender strategy. But the Left didn’t despair. They simply replaced surrender with the strategy of internationalization.

The internationalization strategy forms the basis of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 that set the cease-fire terms at the end of the war with Hezbollah. IDF soldiers, who left Lebanon without victory, were replaced by UN forces from UNIFIL. UNIFIL forces were supposed to block Hezbollah’s reassertion of control over south Lebanon by facilitating the LAF’s takeover of the border with Israel. While UNIFIL was protecting the LAF on the ground, the LAF itself would be empowered by a massive infusion of US and Saudi aid.

Saudi Arabia’s belated recognition that Hezbollah dominates the LAF, and controls Lebanon, makes clear that like appeasement and disengagement, internationalization is an utter failure.

To a certain degree, Israel’s serial strategic blundering did have one ameliorative effect. Through them, Hezbollah has become so powerful that it now poses a threat to the great powers. So Russia in Syria now needs to curb it. So, too, it is so powerful that Iran is loath to waste it on a war with Israel that it will lose when it is fighting to win the war in Syria.

For now then, Hezbollah is not an immediate threat. This is the case despite Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah’s recent threat to bomb Haifa’s chemical depots and cause a fireball with the cataclysmic effect of a nuclear bomb.

But that doesn’t mean that the lessons of our repeated strategic mistakes in Syria and Lebanon shouldn’t be applied today. They should be applied, but toward another, more immediate foe – the Palestinians, toward whom Israel has applied the same failed policies, one after another, with similarly destructive outcomes.

After the first intifada ground to a halt in 1991, Israel adopted the Left’s first strategy. The so-called peace process with the PLO, which began in 1993, was an attempt to implement a strategy of appeasement. We would gradually give the PLO Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem.

In return, the PLO would stop supporting terrorism and live at peace with Israel.

The failure of the appeasement strategy led to the second intifada. The second intifada caused Israel to adopt the Left’s second strategy – unconditional surrender.

Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza failed just as spectacularly as its 2000 disengagement from Lebanon. Not only did it lead to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. It led to the further radicalization of the PLO and Palestinian society as a whole. The latter became convinced that terrorism worked. The former became convinced that the only way to garner public support was by being just as anti-Israel as Hamas.

Today, the center-left parties – the Zionist Union and Yesh Atid – cling to the failed strategy of disengagement. The far Left, together with the Arab political parties, have already moved on to the internationalization strategy. In the Palestinian context, the goal of the internationalization strategy is the collapse of Israeli sovereignty.

This strategy was in evidence this week with Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer’s outrageous claim Wednesday that in killing the terrorists who were in the midst of murdering innocents in Petah Tikva and Tel Aviv, civilians and security forces carried out summary executions.

Oppenheimer, whose group is funded by foreign governments, did not make the claim because he wished to build his support base at home. He demonized his fellow citizens to advance his paymasters’ goal of delegitimizing Israeli sovereignty by among other things, criminalizing Israel’s right to self-defense.

The goal of this delegitimization campaign is to make it impossible for Israel to function as a coherent nation-state and for it instead to become a powerless ward of Europe and the US.

In the face of both the rise in Palestinian terrorism and of efforts by Oppenheimer and his comrades to use Palestinian terrorism as a means to cause the collapse of Israeli sovereignty, the government is at a loss. Its paralysis doesn’t owe to a lack of will. Rather it is the consequence of the government’s difficulty in contending with the coalition of powerful domestic and foreign actors that together make it all but impossible for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his ministers to abandon the Left’s failed strategies and embark on a new strategic course.

Perhaps the most poignant and infuriating expression of the government’s distress is its constant demand that PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas condemn Palestinian terrorism.

On seemingly a daily basis our leaders voice the demand that the man who heads a regime that indoctrinates its youth – including its young children – to murder Jews condemn his own actions.

Beyond being irrational, the demand is both defeatist and self-defeating. By demanding action from Abbas, we legitimize him and empower him. But so long as Israel refuses to abandon the appeasement strategy, and continues to accept that there is a peace process that can be resuscitated, the government will be unable to stop treating Abbas as legitimate and moderate.

So, too, so long as the Knesset fails to take serious, concerted action against the nonprofit groups funded by hostile foreign governments and foundations, the government will be unable to take effective action against the radical Left and its partners from the Joint (Arab) List that openly support both Palestinian terrorists and Hezbollah.

Just as Oppenheimer’s remarks weren’t directed toward the domestic audience, but to his European sponsors, so the Arab Knesset members who this week announced their opposition to Saudi Arabia’s decision to label Hezbollah a terrorist group, were directing their remarks toward their supporters – and Hezbollah’s sponsors – in Qatar.

While adopting in turn every failed strategy the Left could invent and recycle, for the past generation, Israel has avoided implementing the only strategy that has ever worked. That is the strategy of sovereignty – or, more broadly, of governing territories necessary for our defense.

From 1982 through 2000, Israel restrained Hezbollah and prevented it from taking over Lebanon by maintaining security control over the security zone in Lebanon. For 28 years, Israel prevented the Palestinians from becoming a terrorist society dedicated to the destruction of the people of Israel, by exerting security and civil authority over Judea, Samaria and Gaza through its military government and its civil administration.

And it worked. By fighting our enemies rather than empowering them, we weakened them.

The image of the first intifada that convinced us to legitimize the PLO was the teenager with a slingshot.

The image of the second intifada that convinced us to run away from Gaza was a bombedout bus.

So far, the image of the third intifada is a girl wielding scissors attempting to stab Jews. And we still haven’t figured out our response to her, although the Left would like us to run away or collapse.

It is time to let this image guide us though.

The girl with the scissors is not empowered. She is both dangerous and pathetic. She is both an enemy and a victim. You cannot destroy her. You can only punish her and then raise her up. In other words, you need to govern her.

Governing enemies is unpleasant. It brings no instant gratification. Instead it promises only thankless, Sisyphean efforts. In other words, governing your enemies is the price you pay to be free.