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US Readies More Advisers for Iraq, Steps Up Air Strikes

August 13, 2014

US Sends More Advisers to Iraq, Steps Up Air Strikes

Tuesday, 12 Aug 2014 07:23 PM

via US Readies More Advisers for Iraq, Steps Up Air Strikes.

 

(AP)

Breaking:

The Obama administration has sent about 130 additional military personnel to Iraq, U.S Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Tuesday, as Washington seeks to help Iraq contain the threat posed by hardline militants from the Islamic State.

Hagel, speaking to troops in California, said the soldiers had arrived in the area around Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital, Arbil, earlier in the day on Tuesday.

A U.S. defense official, in a statement issued as Hagel was speaking, said the soldiers sent to northern Iraq would “assess the scope of the humanitarian mission and develop additional humanitarian assistance options beyond the current airdrop effort in support of displaced Iraqi civilians trapped on Sinjar Mountain by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”
Earlier Story:

Iraq’s new prime minister-designate won swift endorsements from uneasy mutual allies the United States and Iran on Tuesday as he called on political leaders to end crippling feuds that have let jihadists seize a third of the country.

Haider al-Abadi still faces opposition closer to home, where his Shi’ite party colleague Nuri al-Maliki has refused to step aside after eight years as premier that have alienated Iraq’s once dominant Sunni minority and irked Washington and Tehran.

However, Shi’ite militia and army commanders long loyal to Maliki signaled their backing for the change, as did many people on the streets of Baghdad, eager for an end to fears of a further descent into sectarian and ethnic bloodletting.

Sunni neighbors Turkey and Saudi Arabia also welcomed Abadi’s appointment.

A statement from Maliki’s office said he met senior security officials and army and police commanders to urge them “not to interfere in the political crisis”. At least 17 people were killed in two car bombings in Shi’ite areas of Baghdad – a kind of attack that has become increasingly routine in recent months.

As Western powers and international aid agencies considered further help for tens of thousands of people driven from their homes and under threat from the Sunni militants of the Islamic State near the Syrian border, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would consider requests for military and other assistance once Abadi forms a government to unite the country.

However, U.S. officials said the Obama administration was already considering sending more military advisers to Iraq. Speaking on condition of anonymity, several said a decision to send at least 70 extra military personnel was likely later on Tuesday, although a final decision had not yet been made.

Underscoring the convergence of interest in Iraq that marks the normally hostile relationship between Washington and Iran, senior Iranian officials congratulated Abadi on his nomination, three months after a parliamentary election left Maliki’s bloc as the biggest in the legislature. Like Western powers, Shi’ite Iran is alarmed by Sunni militants’ hold in Syria and Iraq.

“Iran supports the legal process that has taken its course with respect to choosing Iraq’s new prime minister,” the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the Supreme National Security Council was quoted as saying.

“Iran favors a cohesive, integrated and secure Iraq,” he said, adding an apparent appeal to Maliki to concede.

Abadi himself, long exiled in Britain, is seen as a far less polarizing, sectarian figure than Maliki, who is also from the Shi’ite Islamic Dawa party. Abadi appears to have the blessing of Iraq’s powerful Shi’ite clergy, a major force since U.S. troops toppled Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Iraqi state television said Abadi “called on all political powers who believe in the constitution and democracy to unite efforts and close ranks to respond to Iraq’s great challenges”.

One politician close to Abadi told Reuters that the prime minister-designate had begun contacting leaders of major groups to sound them out on forming a new cabinet. The president said on Monday he hoped he would succeed within the next month.

A statement from a major Shi’ite militia group, Asaib Ahl Haq, which has backed Maliki and reinforced the Iraqi army as it fell back from the north in June, called for an end to the legalistic arguments of the kind used by Maliki to justify his retaining power and urged “self-restraint by all sides”.

It said leaders should “give priority to the public interest over the private” and respect clerical guidance – a clear reference to indications that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani favors the removal of Maliki to address the national crisis.

While U.S. officials have been at pains not to appear to be imposing a new leadership on Iraq, three years after U.S. troops left the country, President Barack Obama was quick to welcome the appointment. Wrangling over a new government since Iraqis elected the new parliament in April has been exploited by the Islamic State to seize much of the north and west.

Obama has sent hundreds of U.S. military advisers and last week launched air strikes on the militants after they made dramatic gains against the Peshmerga forces of Iraq’s autonomous ethnic Kurdish region, an ally of the Baghdad authorities.

Kurdish president Masoud Barzani told U.S. Vice President Joe Biden that he would work with Abadi, the White House said.

U.S. officials have said the Kurds are also receiving direct military aid, and U.S. and British aircraft have dropped food and other supplies to terrified civilians, including from the Yazidi religious minority, who have taken refuge in remote mountains. The United Nations said on Tuesday that 20,000 to 30,000 Yazidis may still be sheltering on the arid Mount Sinjar.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the Yazidis’ plight on the mountain as dire. “I urge the international community to do even more to provide the protection they need,” he told reporters.

Kerry, who on Monday had warned Maliki not to resort to force to hold on to power, said on Tuesday that Abadi could win more U.S. military and economic assistance.

“We are prepared to consider additional political, economic and security options as Iraq’s government starts to build a new government,” he told a news conference in Australia, where he also reaffirmed that Washington would not send combat troops.

“The best thing for stability in Iraq is for an inclusive government to bring the disaffected parties to the table and work with them in order to make sure there is the kind of sharing of power and decision-making that people feel confident the government represents all of their interests,” Kerry added.

It remains unclear how much support Maliki, who remains acting premier, has to obstruct the formation of a new administration. One senior government official told Reuters that his fears of a military standoff in the capital had eased as police and troops had reduced their presence on the streets.

“Yesterday Baghdad was very tense,” he said. “But key military commanders have since contacted the president and said they would support him and not Maliki.”

In both Shi’ite and Sunni districts of the capital, many spoke of a sense of relief and cautious hope for change.

“I’m very happy Maliki will not be prime minister again. I hate him; he killed my sons and broke my heart,” said 68-year-old Um Aqeel as she walked in the Karrada shopping district.

Saying two of her sons had died in violence in the past year – one while serving as a soldier in the north in May – she said: “Maliki knows only the language of war and never believes in peace, just like Saddam. Yesterday when I heard he was out I felt justice has been done by God, and my two beloved sons who were killed because of him will rest in peace.”

But as Um Aqeel offered sweets to passers-by in the mainly Shi’ite area to share her satisfaction, one man, Murtadha al-Waeli, warned her angrily that she was wrong to celebrate.

“Soon you will all regret Maliki’s going,” he said. “It was he who built a strong army. Iraq will fall apart after Maliki, and we will lose the battle with the terrorists. Shi’ites will pay a high price for losing Maliki. Just wait and see.”

In the mainly Sunni district of Adhamiya, where many people have long resented what they saw as Maliki’s determination to keep Sunnis out of positions of influence, cafe owner Khalid Saad said he hoped Abadi would learn a lesson from the past by keeping his distance from Iran and leaving Sunnis in peace.

“Maliki treated us Sunni like aliens,” he said. “We hope Abadi will learn from Maliki’s fatal mistakes and pull the country back from its sea of troubles.

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Has ISIS reached the Gaza Strip?

August 13, 2014

By: Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency

Published: August 13th, 2014

via The Jewish Press » » Has ISIS reached the Gaza Strip?.

 

“I would rather die than accept Israeli blood.” A Gazan terrorist wrapped in an ISIS flag at his funeral.
 

According to a recent Gatestone Institute publication, the presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has begun to grow in the Gaza Strip, with both the PA and Israel convinced that followers of ISIS in Gaza have been responsible for some of the rocket attacks on Israel.

Last month, the Israel Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center reported that Salafist-jihadi operatives in the Gaza Strip uploaded a video clip to YouTube on July 8, documenting several instances of rockets being launched at Israel. The video clip, entitled “The Salafist-jihadi [movement[ in the Gaza Strip – lovers of the Islamic state [i.e. ISIS] launches rockets at the Jews.” The video showed at least 10 rockets being launched at Israel.

In addition, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm reported in late June that Egyptian security forces arrested 15 ISIS terrorists (known as ‘Daash’ in Arabic) who tried to infiltrate Sinai from the Gaza Strip. According to the report, the 15 who were arrested were instructed to begin the formation of an ISIS branch in Egypt among terrorist groups in the Sinai.

However, the Hamas Interior Ministry refuted the report, with Maan News Agency reporting that the ministry stated it was a lie and that “all tunnels between Gaza and Egypt have been closed completely after the Egyptian army destroyed them.” Iyad Al Bezem, a Hamas interior spokesman, stated that “there is no presence of the ISIS in the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas has dealt with expressions of ISIS support in the Strip strongly. Gatestone reports that ISIS followers organized a rally on June 12 to celebrate the military victories of the ISIS in Iraq, with Hamas policemen dispersing the Rafah rally in response. In addition, Hamas prevented local journalists from reporting the event “as part of its attempt to deny the existence of ISIS in the Gaza Strip.”

At the rally, dozens of Islamists were reported chanting, “Khaybar, Khaybar, Ya Yahud, Jaish Mohamed Saya’ud!” (O Jews, Mohamed’s army will return) in reference to the story of the 629 CE battle by the Prophet Mohamed against the Jews of Khaybar in northwestern Arabia, where many Jews were killed and Jewish women and children taken as slaves.

Additionally, at a funeral for two terrorists that Israel killed for firing rockets at Israeli communities, on Sunday, June 29, the black ISIS flags were seen flying, and the terrorists’ coffins were reportedly draped in ISIS flags according to a World Net Daily report.

The radical jihadi ISIS, which recently changed its name to The Islamic State, proclaimed itself an Islamic caliphate on June 29, claiming religious authority over all Muslims in the world, and having ushered in “a new era of international jihad.” The group has exterminated at least 500 people of Iraq’s Yazidi Kurdish ethnic minority, while burying some of its victims alive. Some 300 Yazidi women were kidnapped as slaves and around 150,000 Yazidi Kurds, who have been entrapped by ISIS on Iraq’s Sinjar mountains, are currently homeless and starving.

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Iraq crisis: ‘It is death valley. Up to 70 per cent of them are dead’

August 12, 2014

Iraq crisis: ‘It is death valley. Up to 70 per cent of them are dead’On board Iraqi army helicopter delivering aid to the trapped Yazidis, Jonathan Krohn sees a hellish sight

via Iraq crisis: ‘It is death valley. Up to 70 per cent of them are dead’ – Telegraph.

 

By Jonathan Krohn, aboard an Iraqi Army helicopter on Mount Sinjar

8:00AM BST 10 Aug 2014

Iraq crisis: live

Mount Sinjar stinks of death. The few Yazidis who have managed to escape its clutches can tell you why. “Dogs were eating the bodies of the dead,” said Haji Khedev Haydev, 65, who ran through the lines of Islamic State jihadists surrounding it.

On Sunday night, I became the first western journalist to reach the mountains where tens of thousands of Yazidis, a previously obscure Middle Eastern sect, have been taking refuge from the Islamic State forces that seized their largest town, Sinjar.

I was on board an Iraqi Army helicopter, and watched as hundreds of refugees ran towards it to receive one of the few deliveries of aid to make it to the mountain. The helicopter dropped water and food from its open gun bays to them as they waited below. General Ahmed Ithwany, who led the mission, told me: “It is death valley. Up to 70 per cent of them are dead.”

Two American aid flights have also made it to the mountain, where they have dropped off more than 36,000 meals and 7,000 gallons of drinking water to help the refugees, and last night two RAF C-130 transport planes were also on the way.

However, Iraqi officials said that much of the US aid had been “useless” because it was dropped from 15,000ft without parachutes and exploded on impact.

Handfuls of refugees have managed to escape on the helicopters but many are being left behind because the craft are unable to land on the rocky mountainside. There, they face thirst and starvation, as well as the crippling heat of midsummer.

Hundreds, if not more, have already died, including scores of children. A Yazidi Iraqi MP, Vian Dakhil, told reporters in Baghdad:

“We have one or two days left to help these people. After that they will start dying en masse.”

The Iraqi Army is running several aid missions every day, bringing supplies including water, flour, bread and shoes.

The helicopter flights aim to airlift out refugees on each flight, but the mountains are sometimes too rocky to land on, meaning they return empty.

Even when it can land, the single helicopter can take just over a dozen refugees at a time, and then only from the highest point of the mountain where it is out of range of jihadist missiles. Barely 100 have been rescued in this way.

 

Displaced Yazidi people rush towards an aid helicopter (RUDAW)
 

The flights have also dropped off at least 50 armed Peshmerga, Kurdish forces, on the mountain, according to Captain Ahmed Jabar.

Other refugees have made their way through Islamic State lines, evading the jihadists to reach safety, or travelling through

Kurdish-controlled sections of Syria to reach the town of Dohuk. So far the Yazidi refugees left behind have survived by hiding in old cave dwellings, drinking from natural springs and hunting small animals, but with families scattered across Mount Sinjar, a barren range stretching for around 35 miles near the border with Syria, there are fears aid will not reach them all unless the humanitarian relief operation is significantly stepped up .

Hundreds can now be seen making their way slowly across its expanse, carrying what few possessions they managed to flee with on their backs. Exhausted children lie listlessly in the arms of their parents, older ones trudging disconsolately alongside while the sun beats down overhead.

The small amount of relief the peshmerga militia can bring up into the mountain is not simply enough.

One pershmerga fighter, Faisal Elas Hasso, 40, said: “To be honest, there’s not enough for everyone,” he said. “It’s five people to one bottle.”

The refugees who made it out described desperate scenes as they awaited help from the outside world.

“There were about 200 of us, and about 20 of that number have died,” said Saydo Haji, 28. “We can live for two days, not more.”

Emad Edo, 27, who was rescued in an airlift on Friday at the mountain’s highest point explains how he had to leave his niece, who barely had enough strength to keep her eyes open, to her fate.

“She was about to die, so we left her there and she died,” he said.

Others shared similar stories. “Even the caves smell very bad,” Mr Edo added. According to several of the airlifted refugees, the Geliaji cave alone has become home to 50 dead bodies.

Saydo Kuti Naner, 35, who was one of 13 Yazidis who snuck through Islamic State lines on Thursday morning, said he travelled through Kurdish-controlled Syria to get to Kurdistan.

He left behind his mother and father, too old to make the rough trip, as well as 200 sheep. “We got lucky,” he said. “A girl was running [with us] and she got shot.” He added that this gave enough cover for the rest of them to get away.

Mikey Hassan said he, his two brothers and their families fled up into Mount Sinjar and then managed to escape to the Kurdish city of Dohuk after two days, by shooting their way past the jihadists. Mr Hassan said he and his family went for 17 hours with no food before getting their hands on some bread.

The Yazidis, an ethnically Kurdish community that has kept its religion alive for centuries in the face of persecution, are at particular threat from the Islamists, who regard them as ‘devil worshippers’, and drove them from their homes as the peshmerga fighters withdrew.

There have been repeated stories that the jihadists have seized hundreds of Yazidi women and are holding them in Mosul, either in schools or the prison. These cannot be confirmed, though they are widely believed and several Yazidi refugees said they had been unable to contact Yazidi women relatives who were living behind Islamic State lines.

Kamil Amin, of the Iraqi human rights ministry, said: “We think that the terrorists by now consider them slaves and they have vicious plans for them.”

Tens of thousands of Christians have also been forced to flee in the face of the advancing IS fighters, many cramming the roads east and north to Erbil and Dohuk. On Thursday alone, up to 100,000 Iraqi Christians fled their homes in the Plain of Ninevah around Mosul.

 

Refugees said the American air strikes on IS positions outside Erbil were too little, too late. They said they felt abandoned by everyone – the central government in Baghdad, the Americans and British, who invaded in 2003, and now the Kurds, who had promised to protect them.

“When the Americans withdrew from Iraq they didn’t protect the Christians,” said Jenan Yousef, an Assyrian Catholic who fled Qaraqosh, Iraq’s largest Christian town, in the early hours of

Thursday. “The Christians became the scapegoats. Everyone has been killing us.”

The situation in Sinjar has irreparably damaged the notion of home for the Yazidis. For a large portion of them, the unique culture of the area will never return, and they will therefore have nothing to go back for.

“We can’t go back to Sinjar mountain because Sinjar is surrounded by Arabs,” said Aydo Khudida Qasim, 34, who said that Sunni Arab villagers around Sinjar helped Islamic State take the area. Now he as well as many of his friends and relatives want to get out of Iraq

altogether. “We want to be refugees in other countries, not our own,” he said.

*Additional reporting by Richard Spencer, Erbil

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Fight Hamas to curb Islamic tsunami

August 11, 2014

Fight Hamas to curb Islamic tsunami

Op-ed: Israel must convince US that if it fails to combat murderous Islam, missiles exploding at Eshkol region today will explode in Boston’s farmers market in coming years.

Published: 08.11.14, 12:48 / Israel Opinion

via Fight Hamas to curb Islamic tsunami – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

 

With all due respect, and there is a lot of respect, the urgent problem at the moment is the rockets and mortar shells hitting the Gaza vicinity communities and the fear that the rocket fire towards the heart of the State of Israel will be resumed, but the more important problem requiring a solution is the fear of an Islamic tsunami reaching our shores.

Here, however, the “urgent” casts the important aside.

In the near future, we are expected to encounter a wave of Islamic attacks on the Western part of the world. The signs of this tsunami outbreak are already visible in Syria and Iraq, where ISIS members are slaughtering thousands of Muslim worshippers who don’t accept their faith. These murderers justify all means to an end and all victims. The first to be slaughtered by them are Muslims who don’t accept the radicals’ way.

This is the real danger to Western countries and definitely to Israel, the Jewish island in the Middle Eastern ocean.

According to the news flowing in from Iraq, the West appears to have missed its opportunity: The ISIS murderers are in the midst of a slaughter momentum and have managed to kill thousands, and some say even tens of thousands.

Hamas in Gaza is a small ISIS branch, and so it is the Israeli government and IDF’s duty to fight back in order to prevent these waves of murder from spreading.

The Islamic tsunami is already rubbing against the Israeli shore, and even if it takes time, there is no doubt that we must think about what should be done against it and make all the preparations to stay alive.

Israel will find it difficult to withstand such a war on its own. This has to be the entire Western world’s war, and Israel must use all its resources and abilities to convince that hedonist world to participate in the war.

The United States, which has always undertaken wars of this kind, is till hesitating. Israel must convince US President Barack Obama that if he fails to lift a finger in favor of the battle against the murderous Islam, the tunnel from Saja’iyya will reach below the Statue of Liberty in Manhattan, and the missiles exploding at the Eshkol region right now will explode in Boston’s farmers market.

This is the link between the need to succeed in dealing Hamas a serious blow in Gaza as we speak and the Islamic tsunami which will threaten our lives in the coming years.

 

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ISIS Threatening a New Jewish Holocaust

July 6, 2014

ISIS Threatening a New Jewish Holocaust”

The Real Zionist Holocaust is Predicted in the Hadiths!

The Hour [resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them.”

7.4.2014 Israel RevoltJeff Dunetz

via ISIS Threatening a New Jewish Holocaust | Truth Revolt.

 

SIS, the terrorist group controlling parts of Syria and Iraq, is using social media to promise another Holocaust against the Jews. The group’s supporter placed a post on Twitter quoting Muslim Hadith (traditionally a statements or action of Muhammad) that says in part, “The Real Zionist Holocaust is Predicted in the Hadiths! The Hour [resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them.”

An English translation of speech by ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was posted on the internet Tuesday. In the oration, al-Baghdadi launched into an anti-Semitic diatribe:

So listen, O ummah of Islam. Listen and comprehend. Stand up and rise. For the time has come for you to free yourself from the shackles of weakness, and stand in the face of tyranny, against the treacherous rulers – the agents of the crusaders and the atheists, and the guards of the Jews.

O ummah of Islam, indeed the world today has been divided into two camps and two trenches, with no third camp present: The camp of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy – the camp of the Muslims and the mujahidin everywhere, and the camp of the Jews, the crusaders, their allies, and with them the rest of the nations and religions of kufr, all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews.

A ISIS video posted on June 2 (above) encourages violence against Christians and Jews, writing, “Break the crosses and destroy the lin­eage of the grand­sons of mon­keys [Jews].”

Many Americans who argue against any U.S. action against ISIS claim that we have no stake against the terrorist group. However ISIS’s own propaganda demonstrates their violent intentions extend beyond Syria and Iraq and into Jewish and Christian communities across the world.

(H/T IPT)

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More rockets hit Israel clouding Egyptian-mediated ceasefire efforts

July 5, 2014

More rockets hit Israel clouding Egyptian-mediated ceasefire efforts

Hamas official says those who expect Islamist group to stop rocket fire should turn to PA to pay Gaza clerks’ salaries

By Avi Issacharoff and Times of Israel staff July 5, 2014, 1:45 pm

via More rockets hit Israel clouding Egyptian-mediated ceasefire efforts | The Times of Israel.

 

The aftermath of an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip, file photo (Photo credit: Abed Rahim Katib/Flash90)
 

A rocket and a mortar round hit southern Israel from Gaza early Saturday after terrorists fired 20 projectiles on Friday.

Both struck open ground in the Eshkol region. A soldier was lightly wounded in the mortar fire.

The persistent rocket fire came despite Egyptian efforts to broker a renewed truce between Israel and Hamas in and around Gaza following a flare-up of cross-border violence since the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers on June 12.

Former military intelligence chief, Amod Yadlin, now director of the Institute for National Security Studies, said Saturday that Hamas was weary of launching rockets at Beersheba or central Israel, which indicated that Israel has not lost its deterrent power.

“There is no doubt that we are facing another round [of violence] with Hamas. We will take action when Hamas crosses the line and the next round will be significant, and will involve ground and air campaign,” he said.

A Hamas official, who did not give his name to Palestinian news agency Sawa, said overnight Friday-Saturday that “those who expect Hamas to stop the rocket fire [on Israel], should to turn [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister] Rami Hamdallah.”

The official was alluding to the fact that the salaries of 40,000 Hamas clerks in Gaza were still unpaid, which was reportedly a key Hamas demand since agreeing to the unity government deal with the Palestinian Authority.

The salaries issue was a focus of tension between Hamas and Fatah after the reconciliation agreement was signed, and banks in the Gaza Strip were closed for six days after the Hamas worker’s salaries were not transferred.

The Palestinian Authority has reportedly refused to pay the salaries, pointing out that the agreement stipulated that a special committee would be set up to examine the issue and decide whether the employment of all 40,000 would continue.

Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV reported that the office of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh would resume operations if the salaries were not paid by next week.

Haniyeh resigned as prime minister in early June, ahead of the swearing in of the Palestinian unity government.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas official abroad, said Saturday that the Islamist group would not agree to a truce without the removal of the blockade on Gaza.

Before the last of the rocket fire at around 2:00am Saturday morning, the Israeli Air Force carried out a series of air strikes on militant targets in the Gaza Strip. The army said it hit three Hamas targets, but did not give further details. Palestinian officials did not report any casualties in the strikes.

The seemingly limited Israeli response to the continuing rocket salvos appeared to indicate that Jerusalem was waiting to see whether Hamas would curb the rocket-fire as reports proliferated of an impending ceasefire agreement.

While the Israeli government appeared interested in de-escalation, not all of its members seemed to agree that restoring calm was the best course of action.

“The idea that ‘quiet will be answered with quiet’ is a serious mistake,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said on a visit to Sderot on Friday, adding that he believed Israel must now strike Hamas hard.

“It cannot be that after the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers and two consecutive weeks of rockets fall, the approach of Israel will be ‘quiet is answered with quiet,’” he said. “There can not be an agreement with Hamas. Ignoring the problem or being afraid to deal with it will lead us to a situation in which thousands of missiles are fired at us, not hundreds.

“We cannot to accept a situation in which Hamas controls the pace of events and dictates when it flares up the region, and all we do is respond,” he added.

Sirens had wailed in Israel’s southern city of Sderot, the Eshkol Region, Sdot Negev and the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council, warning of incoming rocket fire from Gaza, from early in the morning Friday.

On Friday morning, Egyptian and Palestinian sources confirmed to The Times of Israel that a ceasefire was set to be declared between Israel and Hamas, but the exact timing has yet to be set. The truce was mediated by Egyptian intelligence officials, as has been the case in similar negotiations in the past.

According to the sources, the understanding that the Egyptians reached with Israel and Hamas is that “quiet will be met with quiet.”

“Neither side is interested in an escalation,” the sources told The Times of Israel.

The sources also reported that the Egyptians passed messages from Israel to the deputy head of Hamas’s political desk, Moussa Abu Marzouk, based in Cairo. Israeli sources said they were waiting for an answer from Hamas. “The ball is in Hamas’s court,” an official told the Ynet news site.

Commentators in Gaza attributed the escalation in rocket fire over the past 48 hours to the feeling in Hamas that Israel was looking to avoid a fight, and that a cease-fire was impending.

According to the commentators, Hamas is trying to achieve a public relations victory in the eyes of the Gaza public, to be seen as unafraid of an escalation. But, they said, Hamas is itself uninterested in a deterioration into a larger conflict.

Israel on Thursday reportedly issued a 48-hour ultimatum to Hamas in Gaza to halt the incessant fire or face a massive Israeli strike.

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ISIS-terror rooted in Islamic culture

June 30, 2014

ISIS-terreur geworteld in islamitische cultuur

Leon de Winter op 30 juni, 2014 – 10:14

via ISIS-terreur geworteld in islamitische cultuur | www.dagelijksestandaard.nl.

 

Bing translation from Dutch
Why fight thousands of young European Muslim men for the Foundation of a Caliphate, or a religious tyranny? For the ideologues that the problems of those young men want to see in socio-economic terms, is that a great puzzle.
In their progressive worldview are the problems of migrants and their children provided by the social context within which these groups must survive. But time and time again goes to show that the culture – either: to the agricultural and religious traditions that those migrants have taken away from the country of departure.
Why not all children of migrants from Islamic countries take part in the progress of Netherlands? Why hooks so many Moroccan and Turkish young men off and they end up in crime? What goes wrong with these children at a young age making them, like their parents, not the move on from the poverty and ignorance of life from before the migration to the new life in Europe with knowledge, understanding, prosperity?
Enmity
In many immigrant families, children with distaste and hatred towards their new environment brought up. They get from their parents and by the Arab media to hear that they are entitled to much more than what they possess. That children grow up with frustration and enmity.
On the internet is swarming with young Moroccan Dutch people who applaud ISIS, the terror movement to gruesome mass murders makes guilty. Young Moroccans who identify themselves with the fury of the ISIS–fighters.
They too are furious – why? They get too little training, too little cell phones? Or the following plays: their status as Muslim, says their culture, is elevated above that of non-Muslim Dutchman, and yet their subordinate social position and relatively frugal?
On the micro level we see here what happens on a macro level between Arab countries and Israel. The small country is in every way better developed than any Arabic country. More prosperity, more freedom, more science. And that is unacceptable for Arabs. According to their tradition is the Jew an inferior human being who has rejected the message of Mohammed the perfect man and therefore subject to the Muslim.
And precisely this despicable people has managed to each Arab country. The successful existence of Israel makes the message of islam – that is the final message of Allah – ridiculous. And because this message can be not ridiculous, says Israel must be destroyed, the believer, at all costs. It Was Golda Meir who once said: the Arabs hate us more than they love their own children?
Mechanisms
I have the impression that migrants have taken this kind of mental mechanisms to Netherlands. Fortunately, there are many who let not stifle personal opportunities by rigid beliefs, but when believers encounter the alleged superiority of the faith and the archaic gender roles and parenting methods constantly on the wicked and yet rich and powerful environment.
So these believers continually demands more space on for their god. Their minarets are visible and their wives should be apparent. And for their sons around the non-believer is part of the Dar al-Harb, the world of war, where they sanctioned by their culture to your heart’s content – because – Rob and steal, as may those gay assassins of ISIS.
The problems of their religious culture, which the Arab (and other Muslim) peoples in backwardness and ignorance keep hostage, are no longer limited to the areas where islam traditionally the predominant culture is. Migration has brought to Europe these problems. And it is worrying that migrants the crippling forces of the culture of the country of origin is not neutralize with the unprecedented opportunities that exist in Europe.
France, land of liberty, equality, fraternity, has immense problems with Islamic criminal and radicalized young men. It’s not about access to food, education, clothing, no, it comes to intangibles that define self-esteem of many angry young Muslims. They want a form of respect, and a related pattern of consumption, that society their not slavishly on the basis of their superior origin offers.
Their embittered aggrieved parents, their spiritual leaders, their hate spewing sends the same message: television channels, all the power in the world are not and its not like our holy book promises us, and so we must fights such as the infidels and Mohammed fought with the sword topics.
May it be said: the germ to radicalisation is in the general cultural values of these migrants? The Koran is built on three contrasts; male-female, believer–infidel, master-slave. In the West, these three getechnologiseerde and individualized contrasts as good as raised.
Infallible
The West is, just like Israel, a negation of what islam follower promises: reign of the true believer on Earth and eternal life in heaven. The negation is not other than temporary, thus the believer, because islam is infallible.
The young men who are now in the Middle East are experiencing the adventures of their lives and robbing and raping and beheading, legitimised may one day come back. They are not radicalized because they were pathetic or too little, no, they are radicalized opportunities because their cultural traditions have made impossible integration and offer young men the concept of the Holy struggle, an idea that many young men to fine brings excitement.
Israel and Jordan are in the same period. They have about the same population. No raw materials. They belong to the same historical world. Why one country came to fruition and it became an open democracy, and why was the other hardly a dictatorship that contributes to the progress of humanity?
Possessed
A famous rabbi was once asked to the Torah in one phrase to sum up. He replied: ‘ what you don’t want others do you shall rest; This is the whole Torah – now go home and study. ‘ This is the reason why Israel prospers, and not Jordan. This is the reason why the West knows prosperity and freedom, and the Arab world. It is tragic and dangerous that the ideology of ISIS, and of the possessed young men of colluding, that exactly the opposite values. It’s the culture, stupid.

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ISIL jihadist group claims Islamic world leadership

June 30, 2014

ISIL jihadist group claims Islamic world leadership

Spoesman says Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is ‘leader for Muslims everywhere’; announces establishment of caliphate

By AFP June 29, 2014, 11:24 pm

via ISIL jihadist group claims Islamic world leadership | The Times of Israel.

 

An image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) driving on a street at unknown location in the Salaheddin province. (photo credit: AFP PHOTO / HO / WELAYAT SALAHUDDIN)
 

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant jihadist group, which spearheaded a sweeping militant assault that
overran swathes of Iraq, is now claiming leadership of the world’s Muslims.

Known for its ruthless tactics and suicide bombers, ISIL has carried out frequent bombings and shootings in Iraq, and is also arguably the most capable force fighting President Bashar Assad inside Syria.

But it truly gained international attention this month, when its fighters and those from other militant groups swept through the northern city of Mosul, then overran major areas of five provinces north and west of Baghdad.

ISIL is led by the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and backed by thousands of Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq, some of them Westerners, and it appears to be surpassing al-Qaeda as the world’s most dangerous jihadist group.

In a sign of the group’s confidence, it has now expanded its claim of leadership to encompass all the world’s Muslims.

In an audio recording distributed online Friday, ISIL’s spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani declared Baghdadi “the caliph” and “leader for Muslims everywhere.”

“The Shura (council) of the Islamic State met and discussed this issue (of the caliphate)… The Islamic State decided to establish an Islamic caliphate and to designate a caliph for the state of the Muslims,” Adnani said.

He was referring to a system of rule last used to govern a state almost 100 years ago, before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Western governments fear ISIL could eventually emulate al-Qaeda and strike overseas, but their biggest worry for now is its sweeping gains in Iraq and the likely eventual return home of foreign fighters attracted by ISIL and Baghdadi.

Among them are men like Mehdi Nemmouche, a 29-year-old Frenchman who allegedly carried out a deadly shooting on a Jewish museum in Belgium after spending a year fighting with ISIL in Syria.
12,000 foreign fighters

The Soufan Group, a New York-based consultancy, estimates that 12,000 foreign fighters have traveled to Syria, including 3,000 from the West.

And ISIL appears to have the greatest appeal, with King’s College London professor Peter Neumann estimating around 80 percent of Western fighters in Syria have joined the group.

Unlike other groups fighting Assad, ISIL is seen working toward an ideal Islamic emirate. And compared with al-Qaeda’s franchise in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, it has lower entry barriers.

ISIL has also sought to appeal to non-Arabs, publishing English-language magazines, after having already released videos in English, or with English subtitles.

The jihadist group claims to have had fighters from the Britain, France, Germany and other European countries, as well as the United States, and from the Arab world and the Caucasus.

Much of the appeal also stems from Baghdadi himself — the ISIL leader is touted as a battlefield commander and tactician, a crucial distinction compared with Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“Baghdadi has done an amazing amount — he has captured cities, he has mobilized huge amounts of people, he is killing ruthlessly throughout Iraq and Syria,” said Richard Barrett, a former counter-terrorism chief at MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service.

“If you were a guy who wanted action, you would go with Baghdadi,” Barrett told AFP.

At the time Baghdadi took over what was then known as the Islamic State of Iraq, or ISI, in May 2010, his group appeared to be on the ropes, after the “surge” of US forces combined with the shifting allegiances of Sunni tribesmen to deal him a blow.

But the group has bounced back, expanding into Syria in 2013.

Baghdadi sought to merge with Al-Nusra, which rejected the deal, and the two groups have operated separately since.

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Iraq’s Lessons for the Jordan Valley

June 29, 2014

Iraq’s Lessons for the Jordan ValleyEvelyn Gordon

@EvelynCGordon 06.27.2014 – 12:20 PM

via Iraq’s Lessons for the Jordan Valley « Commentary Magazine.

If Israeli-Palestinian peace talks weren’t already dead, the Iraqi army’s collapse in the face of the radical Sunni group ISIS might well have killed them. After all, one of the key disagreements that emerged during the nine months of talks was over Israel’s military presence in the Jordan Valley, which Israel insisted on retaining and the Palestinians adamantly opposed.

The Obama administration’s proposed solution was to let Israeli troops remain for a few years and then replace them with U.S.-trained Palestinian forces, perhaps bolstered by international troops. But as Israeli officials bluntly told officials in Washington earlier this week, if U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers weren’t willing to fight ISIS to protect their own country, why should anyone think U.S.-trained Palestinian soldiers in the Jordan Valley would be willing to fight fellow Arabs to protect Israel? And with a well-armed, well-funded jihadist army having taken over large swathes of Syria and Iraq and now even threatening Jordan (ISIS seized the main Iraq-Jordan border crossing just this week), how can anyone confidently assert such fighting won’t be necessary?

U.S. officials responded by setting up a straw man: They passionately defended General John Allen, the man responsible for both security training in Iraq and drafting U.S. security proposals for Israeli-Palestinian talks, as if Israel’s main concern were Allen’s competence. But Allen’s competence is irrelevant. The real issue is that no matter how competent the trainer is, no amount of training can produce a functional army if soldiers lack the will to fight. U.S.-trained Iraqi Sunnis aren’t willing to fight ISIS to protect their Shi’ite-dominated government. U.S.-trained Palestinian Authority forces weren’t willing to fight Hamas to retain control of Gaza in 2007. And international troops have repeatedly proven unwilling to fight to protect anyone else’s country.

This isn’t exactly news. Prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, when Egypt demanded that UN peacekeepers leave Sinai so Egyptian troops could mass on Israel’s border unimpeded, the UN tamely complied. UN peacekeepers stationed in south Lebanon since 1978 have never lifted a finger to stop Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks. Nor is this problem unique to Israel. As the Washington Post reported in January, the UN has sent record numbers of peacekeepers to Africa in recent years, and African regional groups have contributed additional thousands, yet these troops “have failed to prevent fresh spasms of violence.” Indeed, they are frequently ordered explicitly not to fight unless they themselves are attacked–rendering them useless at protecting the people they’re ostensibly there to protect.

But even without such orders, how many soldiers really want to die in a far-off country in a quarrel that isn’t theirs? I can’t blame a Fijian for being unwilling to die to prevent rocket fire from Lebanon on Kiryat Shmona; why should he consider that worth his life? And for the same reason, it’s hard to imagine any non-Israeli force in the Jordan Valley thinking it’s worth their lives to stop, say, ISIS from marching on Tel Aviv. Only Israeli troops would consider that worth fighting and dying for. And that’s without even considering the fact that ISIS already has a Palestinian contingent, so any attempt to attack Israel through the territory of a Palestinian state could count on enthusiastic local support.

As even left-wing Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit admitted this week, it was one thing to propose leaving the Jordan Valley back when the eastern front appeared to pose no threat. But it’s quite another now, when ISIS poses a serious threat.

In a region as volatile as the Middle East is today, the idea that Israel should abandon defensible borders in exchange for “peace” with a state that could collapse as suddenly as Syria and Iraq both have is folly. And anyone who thinks U.S.-trained or international forces can replace defensible borders should take a long, hard look at the Iraqi army’s collapse.

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‘Amman may ask Israel, US to help it fight ISIL’

June 28, 2014

‘Amman may ask Israel, US to help it fight ISIL’

With the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi group already boasting of conquests in Jordan, Jerusalem may be drawn into the fray

By Yifa Yaakov June 28, 2014, 12:31 pm

via ‘Amman may ask Israel, US to help it fight ISIL’ | The Times of Israel.

 

Fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) marching in Raqqa, Syria (photo credit: AP/Militant Website, File)
 

Jordan may ask Israel and the United States to help it fight the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi group that threatens Syria and Iraq if it threatens Amman as well, according to senior Obama administration officials.

According to a Friday report by The Daily Beast, the officials told senators in a classified briefing earlier this week that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is eyeing Jordan as well as its war-torn neighbors, and that some of its jihadists have already tweeted out photos and messages saying they have seized a key Jordanian town.

The Daily Beast quoted one of the Senate staff members who attended the briefing as saying that if Jordan were to face a military onslaught from ISIL, it would “ask Israel and the United States for as much help as they can get.”

Another senator said the main “concern” voiced during the briefing was that “Jordan could not repel a full assault from ISIL on its own at this point.”

On Thursday, the US met with its top Sunni state allies in the Mideast to consider how to confront the region’s growing turmoil that has been spawned by a Sunni Muslim insurgency group.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant reaches beyond the two countries — Iraq and Syria — where it is currently based.

“The move of ISIL concerns every single country here,” Kerry said at the start of the meeting held at the US ambassador’s residence in Paris.

If Israel were to join regional efforts to fight ISIL, it would effectively be joining forces with the likes of Iran and Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose forces have been fighting together in Syria and Iraq to overpower the jihadi group.

 

An image allegedly showing Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border, June 9, 2014 . (photo credit: AFP/HO/ALBARAKA NEWS)
 

However, according to The Daily Beast, Israel has indicated behind the scenes that it would be willing to give military assistance to its ally Jordan, with which it signed a peace treaty in 1994.

“I think Israel and the United States would identify a substantial threat to Jordan as a threat to themselves and would offer all appropriate assets to the Jordanians,” the media outlet quoted Thomas Sanderson, the co-director for transnational threats at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as saying.

In Washington, Jordanian embassy spokeswoman Dana Daoud sounded more optimistic regarding her country’s ability to face the jihadi threat.

“We are in full control of our borders and our Jordanian Armed Forces are being very vigilant. We have taken all the precautionary measures. So far, we have not detected any abnormal movement. however, if anything threatens our security or gets near our borders it will face the full strength of our Jordanian Armed Forces,” Daoud reportedly said.

Meanwhile, Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat who serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and is a co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Jordan Caucus, told The Daily Beast that the Jordanian army was “more than a match” for ISIL.

“I don’t think there is any sense that the rank and file Jordanian forces will melt away the way the Iraqis did,” he said.

Since its formation in April 2013 out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, ISIL has become one of the main forces fighting against Assad in Syria and gaining military control of parts of Iraq. Emboldened by these victories, the burgeoning jihadi group may set its sights on Jordan next.

Mainstream Syrian rebels and the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front accuse the jihadists of ISIL of responsibility for a string of atrocities.

On Friday, a watchdog and jihadist sites said it had executed and crucified one of its own men for corruption in Syria.

Photographs posted on websites showed the body and bloodied head of a bearded man with a placard reading: “Guilty: Abu Adnan al-Anadali. Sentence: execution and three days of crucifixion. Motive: extorting money at checkpoints by accusing drivers of apostasy.”

For Israel, an ISIL assault on Jordan would mean it faces a jihadi threat on two fronts. On Friday, a senior Israeli military commander announced that almost the entire Syrian side of the Golan Heights is now under the control of rebel forces, including radical Islamist groups such as ISIL.

The Israeli officer said that the dramatic gains made by the rebel forces in the area appeared to explain why Syrian troops fired a missile on Sunday that killed a 15-year-old boy on the Israeli side of the border.

The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau on the Israeli-Syrian border. Israel captured the territory in the 1967 war, having been attacked from the Golan over the previous 20 years, and extended Israeli law to the area in 1981. Unsuccessful peace efforts over the years have seen Israel ready to trade most of the Golan for a permanent accord with Damascus, but the notion of Israeli-Syrian peace has all but disappeared as Syria collapsed into anarchy over the past three years of civil war.

Times of Israel staff, AP and AFP contributed to this report.

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