Comments on a Few Past Events And Trying to Cover Current

 

By now, the world has reported upon the flare-up in Gaza resulting from an intelligence gathering operation by Israeli Special Forces who was found out and an intense firefight broke out. Six Hamas fighters and one high-ranking Hamas officer, Nur Barakeh, the deputy commander eastern battalion of Hamas’ Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades in Khan Yunis, were killed. An IDF officer identified only as Lt. Col. M. was killed and a second officer was injured and was evacuated to the Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva. The hospital said on Monday morning that the officer underwent an operation and is listed in moderate and stable condition. This was instantly a “Breaking News” update and addressed closer to an editorial condemning the Israelis for mounting an operation into Gaza. Some reports claimed that the Israeli forces were caught invading Hamas territory. Yes, Hamas Territory as if a terrorist group controlling an area where they are supported and lauded as a great ruling entity is sacred lands which need be treated as one would operate with an actual nation. Hamas took control of Gaza in a bloody coup ejecting the Palestinian Authority in 2007, and after the initial weeks of fighting, they cleared the region of any Palestinian Authority officials who Hamas believed would not operate under their control mostly by tossing these former officers from the Palestinian Authority governing body off rooftops and other equally appalling methods. Yet, all too often, reporters and news services report on the Gaza region as if they were an actual government just because they pick-up the garbage and almost run the utilities and other services. They ignore that Hamas along with the other main force within Gaza, Islamic Jihad, are almost universally regarded as terrorist organizations, both of which are currently backed by Iran. So, Israel is being condemned for not giving the honors which are presumably reserved for actual governments and real nations to an area under the control of terrorist forces who operate in a manner very similar to the same rules as the Islamic State. We do not recall anybody condemning anyone for their attacks on the Islamic State and the regions in which they claimed to be the government but there will be those who will claim that the Islamic State was different from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are right; the Islamic State was murdering mostly fellow Muslims and had no argument with Israel while Hamas and Islamic Jihad both claim their main desire is to murder every Jews on Earth.

 

Now for another piece of news where there was almost no reporting and what there was had no outright condemnation of there being any invasion of some national region or the ignoring of a national border. This was one of numerous such breaching of a border with the intent of destroying as much physical structures and anything of worth including fields of crops as well as murdering every last civilian they might meet. These infiltrations have been on top of aerial attacks as well as destructive attacks on the border fence and other demarcations. These acts of violence even included the destruction of infrastructure which provided fuel and electricity to their own territory from the neighboring nation and, as we know from past experience, in a few weeks there will be an outrage over the fact that the region who destroyed these infrastructures providing the utilities is not being provided these very same utilities by their neighboring country and the world will castigate their neighbor for not providing the utilities. The rioting and destructive behavior has been conducted with the full support, funding, and tactical support including incendiary devices and the kites and balloons to fly them into Israel setting fields, forests and wilderness reserves on fire. These rioters have repeatedly over the months destroyed the pipelines providing Gaza with natural gas and water as well as the electrical lines providing Gaza with two-thirds of their electricity. These you have probably heard about intermittently despite these acts of arson and terrorism have been continuous since the end of March 2018. These attacks have also included numerous interventions across the regions of destroyed fences and were only prevented from spreading terror further into Israel by IDF forces defending the border. Other times there have been infiltrations deeper into Israel either under the cover of the smoke caused by their burning thousands of tires during daylight hours and under darkness in the night. These infiltrations against Israel have not been considered newsworthy. Allow us to cover one from the recent past.

 

There was a Gazan who succeeded in infiltrating well into Israel on Thursday night, November 8, 2018, possibly Friday early morning, penetrating several hundreds of meters into Israel where he came upon a greenhouse filled with growing crops, farming equipment, stores of seeds, numerous sacks of fertilizer and other various farming necessities. We can consider this greenhouse to have been a typically well-stocked greenhouse which is fairly common throughout Israel. He did what any self-respecting Gazan terrorist would do when coming across such a structure which he believed must belong to what he considers and accursed Jew, what he has been taught that every Israeli represents, he set the greenhouse on fire. The greenhouse burned, as what he must have considered, gloriously with flames leaping high into the air completely engulfing the greenhouse destroying everything as is obvious in the picture below. One need wonder why this destruction of an Israeli’s greenhouse taking with it his seeds, fertilizer and equipment along with what was most of his farming provisions and parts required for maintenance of his greenhouse which keeps his farming operations functioning. Basically, this act destroyed his means for supporting his family, a small item which had managed to survive their air attacks of the incendiaries launched on balloons, kites and even some avian wildlife including a falcon which was found tangled in a tree dead thanks to the vicious and thoughtlessness of one of the rioting Gazans for the bird’s life. The IDF eventually caught the arsonist and he was turned over for questioning. He told his interrogators, boasting, that he had set the greenhouse on fire. The main objective of the interrogation is for finding out how he evaded detection such that this route can be closed to prevent any repeat. Fortunately, this infiltration did not result in any loss of life though it was expensive enough with the inferno which destroyed the greenhouse and all of its contents.

 

Greenhouse Set Alight by Gazan Terrorist

 

So, why is an Israeli infiltration seeking to find further information as to where Hamas was planning on operating and with hope of taking the Hamas officer named Nur Barakeh into custody but the operation went wrong resulting in a firefight and exchange of Hamas rockets and mortars and Israeli airstrikes during the confrontation becomes breaking news reporting about the Israeli incursion, invading Hamas territory while a Hamas terrorist infiltrates Israel destroying a greenhouse and not causing any loss of life probably largely due to lack of opportunity is ignored and all the Hamas attacks with incendiary devices are largely ignored except as an insertion into articles which mainly talk about Israel airstrikes with often a mention of Hamas rockets plus the rioting, some even admit that the Israeli airstrikes were a response to the rocket launchings. But any cursory reading of these articles, one would walk away thinking that Israel bombs areas of Gaza simply because somebody just felt like doing so and not due to attacks upon Israel. To get around the news reports, which more represent propaganda designed to make Israel out to be the monster and Hamas as the poor and under-armed weak and innocent victims of Israeli aggressions, one need read virtually everything and then make their best guess. This has been the main grist off the mills of the main news resources throughout the world and much of it is due to lazy reporting combined with an underlying form of light anti-Semitism. It is not overt in its origins but the end result when combined with some overt anti-Semitism is driving some reporting and much of the editorial writing. Israel, by editor-room insistence, must be cast as the colonializing monstrous force while the Arabs are simply victims and underdeveloped people of color fighting the good fight against the technological superpower. One would equate the reporting with an equivalence of the United States fighting one of the Native American tribes on a reservation. There are some very large problems when comparing Israel with the United States and Hamas with Native American tribes. There are no Native American tribes burning farmlands, greenhouses, forests or wildlife reserves nor are any Native American tribes launching rockets into United States territories and they are not teaching their children to murder Americans and the Native American tribes are not invaders from the seventh century. On the other side of the equation, Israel is not the size of the United States but far closer to the size of New Jersey and the IDF is most definitely not the United States military with active duty soldiers in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Merchant Marines and numerous other armed services. The IDF is not even the equal to any one of these services and in case of major war, Israel almost shuts down all businesses and most production as the reserves are called back into service thus having the effort use a large percentage of the entire Israeli population. Lastly, many Arabs are anything but people of color. Just look for pictures of Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, and decide for yourselves.

 

Israel is the homeland of the Jewish People whose DNA has been tested repeatedly and every time they have found that every group of modern Jews are interrelated with the sole exception being those whose families are the offspring of converts plus their maternal mitochondrial tests depict a Middle Eastern set of genealogy. This is rarely reported, though we do try quite often. Those people who would like to see our deed to the land, check out Genesis 13:14-17 for the original deed to the lands which were given to the Jewish People through Abraham. When the Israelites, early Jews who left Egypt with Moses and came to the lands promised Abraham after the years in the desert, they were instructed in the means for taking the land and how to treat the nations bordering their lands once they had conquered the lands is covered in Deuteronomy Chapter 20. There is a huge difference between their instructions on treating their neighboring nations and those they are to conquer. This was warfare back around 1500 B.C.E. to 1750 B.C.E. when the way tribes of people took lands for their inhabitation, they would eradicate the people inhabiting the desired lands. This was the modus operandi of most everyone in this period, and this was so there would not be any chance of a revolt in the future by those who were the progeny of the conquered peoples, thus the normal means was to leave none alive so as to insure your safe future. Eventually, Israel may find it necessary to “go Biblical” on Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the region of Gaza. The people of Gaza reportedly support and Hamas is assuring the children will grow up to become Hamas warriors. It is not that their support for the terrorists is at some low point, as some report, but is reportedly quite strong. The future will become more bleak as they continue to utilize both their education system and their recreational camps are all dedicated to blind support for the Jihad against Israel. This is another truth which is avoided if not simply refuted by many sources in the developed world because there is the need to vilify Israel, and this can only be done if Israel, despite there seldom being any fatalities from their airstrikes, must be shown to be bombing mostly innocent people who do not support Hamas and the terrorists. The links above put to lie such reports and Haaretz is not exactly an extremist news source and is more closely aligned with the left, often the far left.

 

We unfortunately are required to add our own “Breaking News” from Gaza. Going into yesterday evening Hamas decided to raise the level of the conflict of our ever-ongoing conflict. We have reports of a bus being struck by either a mortar or an RPG antitank missile. At the same time, the residents of much of southern Israel are sitting in their bomb shelters while barrages of well over one-hundred rockets have been fired into their region. This follows their firing of a dozen to a dozen and a half rockets over the day and early morning. At the least, one rocket did get past Israeli defenses striking a residential building in Ashkelon, a major Israeli city. This strike caused the death of one 40-year-old man as well as the injury of ten Israelis, amongst them a 40-year-old woman who was in critical condition and a 40-year-old man who suffered moderate injuries and reportedly a 60-year-old woman unconscious with blast injuries. The barrage came towards the onset of sunset and to coincide with rush hour traffic in order to maximize the terror and disorder. People heading home from work would find themselves out in an area with which they may not be familiar making finding the closest shelter problematic. An IDF soldier has been seriously wounded by shrapnel from one of the explosions along the border region. The question is becoming whether Hamas is going to escalate further and continue to attack forcing an Israeli response. If they are going to press the issue to such an extent, then there come a couple more questions. First, how large a response will Israel use and second, will Hamas end the escalation and let everything settle or take it to the point of provoking a full out war once again. Further, as is normal, while Israeli News is covering the attacks while not a word of the Hamas rocket and mortar and possible RPG attacks with the destruction of a bus and further damage, the American News have not mentioned anything, let alone placed such under breaking news. One can only wonder what the news will be like in the United States and especially in Europe once Israel responds, we can guess. Hamas is claiming that the over one-hundred rockets is their response for the firefight when an IDF Special Forces group was intercepted while on a clandestine mission where the resulting injuries, as reported above, were six soldiers and an area commander while the IDF had a high-ranking officer killed and one other officer seriously injured. We will attempt to continue to cover things over the night and morning up to posting time. Below is a video of some of the first rockets being intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome systems. Each interception is an interceptor missile which cost approximately $50,000 per interceptor, which is expensive but worth the cost if we potentially save lives, even a single life. Hamas, on the other hand, does all in their power to get their citizens killed as they use such deaths as a weapon blaming everything on Israel which much of the mainstream medias in the developed world simply eat-up without a single question. We never honestly cared that much for sleep anyways.

 

 

Below video shows when antitank missile (RPG) fired by Gazan terrorists striking a bus which drove Israeli soldiers fortunately moments after the soldiers departed from the bus, but which seriously injured the IDF soldier driving the bus when it was struck.

 

 

Israel has launched airstrikes in response and media in the United States are providing intermittent coverage between the Florida recount and its close resemblance to the Bush-Gore recount in the 2000 election as much of the recounts are being conducted in the exact same counties where observers are being prevented from direct observer watch, and the coverage of the Mueller Russia probes. France is now giving these events coverage, thus perhaps this might actually get coverage though France, where Prime Minister Netanyahu was visiting when everything hit the fan, so to speak. The Prime Minister left early and is returning to Israel. France is discussing whether there will be a war by morning; we hope their concern is unfounded. The running total of interception has climbed to sixty rockets which likely required ninety interceptors to be expended, that is a total of approaching half of a million dollars just for this evenings attacks.

 

This update from just after midnight Israeli time and over three-hundred missiles and other projectiles have been fired into Israel. These attacks have gone way beyond being a response to the Israeli intelligence gathering infiltration which went wrong and were caught. The ire is more that the IDF unit was able to extract back to Israel with only one fatality and the body returning with the soldiers. This has become exactly the same as when the second intifada started, presumably, because Ariel Sharon had the temerity to step up upon the Temple Mount. Of course, it later came out that the intifada had been planned as a response to peace efforts and as a way of definitively stating that there could be no peace which permitted the Jewish State of Israel to survive. It will likely come out once all is known that Hamas had been waiting for any event they could use to trigger these attacks. This many rockets fired at specific targets with the majority actually intercepted as their trajectories plotted such that they were going to strike heavily inhabited areas. Such a high percentage of the rockets being capable of such depict selective targeting performed beforehand and under careful supervision. Such a high performance means that they had used those specific firing angles and launch payloads and propellant exactly the same as previously fired rockets over time. This is the performance one gets from presumably unguided rockets where the performance had been tested and found to work at striking desired targets within Israel. This attack has been an event awaiting a reason to allow Hamas a reason for making such an attack and the infiltration served as well as any event to allow Hamas to play the injured party striking Israel with righteous indignation for a grievous harm. The infiltration and brief firefight was insufficient cause for this level of all-out attack at a level which may purport an oncoming offensive push into Israel. The initial response from Israel has been to strike reportedly seventy Hamas targets within Gaza in response including an intelligence center used by Hamas (building pictured below). Additionally, the production facility for Gaza television has been struck (film of strike below). There is planned to be an emergency session to be taken by Israel this coming morning where various responses are weighed ranging from allowing all to settle down and quiet return, assuming Hamas had ended their assault, to a complete sweep of Gaza from one end to the other arresting every known Hamas and Islamic Jihad member and their ardent supporters meaning total, all-out war. We have also seen reports Egyptian and United Nations personnel are working feverishly to bring calm back to the situation. As has been the history of such offensives, the attempts to restore calm come immediately after the Palestinian Arab onslaught and before the Israeli response has been launched and then come the claims that the Palestinian Arabs really just got carried away and did not mean to so viciously attack Israel and Israel need understand this. We have been to this dance way too many times but we are likely heading that direction once more.

 

Hamas Building Used as an Operated Intelligence Center

 

 

Early morning reports have mostly depicted support for Israel from some governments from around the world amongst them the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz who condemned the ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel, the United States State Department which condemned the Hamas terrorist group as hundreds of rockets were fired toward southern Israel amongst others while United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres continued the tired old refrain after Hamas had fired over three-hundred rockets into Israel and Israel had only just started to respond he clamored for maximum restraint according to Guterres’ spokesman, Farhan Haq who was quoted stating, “He urges all parties to exercise maximum restraint. The United Nations Special Coordinator, Nickolay Mladenov, is working closely with Egypt and all concerned parties to restore calm.” Reports of ongoing violence has been silent leaving us praying that this is over, but the ominous signs from last night portend that the rioting on the border will be escalated this coming morning.

 

Morning news in Israel stated that over four-hundred rockets and mortars plus at least one RPG, as reported above it striking a military bus, while Israel has struck one-hundred-fifty Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets and may strike more should the rocket offensive continue. We heard a reporter claim that the Israeli general public has grown accustom to the rocket attacks on the southern communities. We can attest that this is not the case as those we have met are anything but accustomed to these attacks and most are in favor of wiping all of Gaza and replacing it with homes, businesses and hotels along the beach transferring the terror regime with Israel reclaiming their lands and using it for the greater good. Meanwhile, we await the results of the Security Cabinet with anticipation that they will order actions which will remove the presence of these terrorist groups which openly states their intent to kill every Israeli. Hamas has announced that they demand what has, unfortunately, become the normative ending, first Israel cease all strikes, then after another two or three salvos which include tens, if not hundreds, of additional rockets over the ensuing hours, they will finally stop. About the Security Cabinet, they will meet and be briefed by the IDF Command, then they will recess while the Ministers to hold consultations, presumably, and then they will decide that any major operation would not improve the situation and announce they have authorized a serious set of reprisals but falling short of any military intervention with troops entering Gaza. What this means in reality is that they see no upside politically with elections coming within one year. What they fear is with a limited incursion by troops, this runs the risk of Hamas taking hostages or other complications. We all know that complications are the bane of politicians as such requires additional actions. The people of Israel want this menace removed, nothing less, or at least the majority desire this be concluded once and for all. Whatever the Security Cabinet decides, we will all see it on the news and the final conclusions in much of the world will be that it was all Israel’s fault. Israel has struck buildings where warnings of these strikes were given to Gazans which led to the normal conclusions, numerous destroyed buildings, no Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists were killed and the world media will show all the destroyed buildings and the world will cry for the terrorists and not shed a single tear for the dead and injured Israelis. We have all witnessed this dance before and we fear it will continue until Israel finally does what any normal country would do; completely annihilate those responsible, clear the entire region from which these terrorists have received support, and use the land for our benefit and for those Arabs who pass a security clearance for being free of connections to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist entities, they will be permitted to remain as long as they live under Israeli law and do not prove to be jihadists. In the meantime, we can expect that every individual killed in the Israeli strikes will be initially claimed to be an innocent civilian and by the time the names are released and the vast majority are found to be terrorists, the world will have moved on and those killed will continue to be considered innocents except in Israel where we cannot afford to look away and continue as normal as we are the ones these people have sworn to murder, every last one of us.

 

The latest before we needed to post was that Israel was going to start their de-escalation. Unfortunately, there has been no mention from the terrorists that they are willing to do likewise. Time will determine what will be the immediate future. We are afraid that we are once again going to have Israel basically stand down while Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the rest of the terror forces are continue to fire rockets. We are expecting a few more hours of rocket barrages probably continuing through midday and perhaps into the afternoon while Israel responds doing next to nothing. How being nice and sweet by allowing the terrorists to fire more projectiles with explosive and incendiary warheads while the Israeli government shackles the IDF demanding they simply intercept what they are able and otherwise live and let live. The problem is the terrorists are using the live and let die as their motto and they intend for the Israelis to die. They have repeatedly stated their intent to kill as many Israelis as possible. Meanwhile, Israeli leadership actually acts as if their being humane and simply playing defense while the terrorists in Gaza continue to attempt to murder as many Israelis as they are capable. Hamas and Islamic Jihad act as if every Israeli killed is one of those accursed Jews which they have a special and deeply seated hate. Should Israelis from the almost one-quarter of citizens who are not Jews plus the numerous foreign workers who are almost entirely other than Jewish be killed, the terrorists simply think of them as Jews by proxy. The terrorists see every Israeli as being a Jew, and this includes those who are Muslims, that is how deep their hatred lies. Should Israel simply stand down for the time being while the Gazan terror forces continue to fire rockets through the day, that sends the wrong message. They are reinforcing the belief that Israel is too impotent to respond definitively, and that will simply permit them to continue to attack Israel under a feeling that they will remain safe as Israel does everything possible to avoid killing innocents, even if doing this means they will also not kill the terrorists which allows them to feel completely safe in striking Israel. This is what the Israeli people, not just those in the south, but throughout Israel, are starting to demand that these threats be addressed and destroyed completely. This includes Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezballah along with any others who threaten us. Many of us have difficulty watching us bend to the world and not act as any other nation would under similar threats. The United States and NATO went across the world to destroy the Islamic State but Israel must suffer the Gazan terrorists and not act as other nations would act. This double standard is reaching the end of it use-by date. Israelis demand that all Israelis be given neighborhoods in which they can reside in peace and security and not live sometimes weeks at a time in shelters and at the end find that the situation has not been addressed and completely destroyed as would happen in any other nation.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Media Surrenders in Information War

There are articles, editorials and debates mostly under the title of “Israel Losing the Information War.” Their erudite discussions use numerous examples of Israeli politicians, ambassadors and spokespersons making statements and usually picking a particularly bland statements and claim that they are losing because their presentations do not resonate well. They claim that Israel has not made proper use of social media. They continue with a litany of nitpicking hypercritical arguments. What they refuse to cover is the real center of the problem, the media itself.

 

One needs to sit in a less comfortable chair and really listen to the coverage of the continuing conflict between the Arab world and Israel to detect the slant being utilized to present the Arab side as superior and preferential to that of the Israelis. The most pernicious effrontery is the choice of wording which effects the listeners’ opinion and acceptance of information being conveyed. When listing commentary concerning the Arab side, recently the Hamas side, the choice of wording is active while when talking about the Israeli side the wording is usually passive. The easiest example is when giving casualty reports. When listing Palestinian casualties they will invoke words such as murdered or killed yet while reporting Israeli casualties they will tend to simply report them as deaths or have died. Which is more emotionally charged, someone who was killed or someone who died? Another problem which has to do with casualty reporting has been the virtual exclusive utilization of the Hamas provided numbers despite historic proof that such numbers are unreliable and often exaggerated. In the current conflict the verified reports of fatalities in Gaza places the percentages of combatant casualties to civilian casualties has been closest to 1:1 yet the reports consistently claim that 90% of the casualties have been civilians. The former ratio was released by a Red Cross official who had been granted access to IDF reports and lists of names of those terrorists killed during Operation Protective Edge while the vast majority of news reports use the Hamas released numbers despite, as one commenter stated in a moment of brutal clarity when reporting, I wish I had recorded that news report as I have not been able to find any record of it, that the numbers being reported are probably exaggerated as news reporters have understood since the start of the conflict. Perhaps I should join Facebook.

 

The best and most well-known example of inflated and simply false beyond belief numbers and the perfidy of media coverage was the so-called Jenin Massacre. When during the Israeli retaking of control over a large swath of the Judea and Samaria (West Bank) there was a particularly fierce firefight between Fatah aligned terrorist fighters and the IDF. When the media covered the fighting then in the aftermath they insisted on using the reported numbers given by the Fatah spokespersons who claimed to have direct numbers from the actual area. The numbers kept increasing even after the fighting had concluded. Numbers which originally were just a few hundred soon cleared a thousand and soon climbed into multiple thousands with the final claims pushing over ten-thousand murdered Palestinians of which over 90% were presumably civilians. The IDF attempted to refute the numbers listing their and Fatah terrorists fatalities combined to be around one-hundred dead at the most with the IDF having lost twenty-three and fifty-two wounded and the various numbers of Palestinian deaths was between fifty-two and fifty-five with Human Rights Watch claiming a near even numbers of combatants and civilians while the IDF numbers showed only five confirmed civilian deaths and the remainder as active combatants. Fortunately for the Palestinians of Judea and Samaria Fatah had not used human shields in an intentional attempt to maximize civilian casualties while minimizing the loss of Fatah combatants and other military equipment and arms, something Hamas has made maximum use of in the current conflict which is the main reason for the higher than usual numbers of civilian casualties as compared to the majority of previous IDF wars.

 

Another reason behind slanted news has been the ease of completely accepting any press releases from Hamas and their spokespeople and the reliance on commentary from solely those sympathetic with the Palestinian side or hostile to the Israeli side. The newscasters when holding interviews with Israeli politicians or IDF spokespeople take on an adversarial and belligerent role challenging and belittling their every comment calling their veracity into question at every opportunity and then impugning their entire presentation in summary after closing the interview usually by sniping that that was a representative from the IDF or the Israeli parliament the Knesset as if such makes their information of dubious origins. There have been a fair number of such interviews where the interviewing reporter ended the exchange without thanking the Israeli representative for their time as if they resented having to hold the interview. On the other side these reporters universally thank the representatives who support Hamas such as CAIR, MSA and other Islamic supportive groups for their time and make comments after such interviews stating that we have just heard a refreshing take on the conflict going on between Hamas and Israel. Then there are the ways that information provided by both sides are reported and commented upon. The Hamas press releases and social media statements are read as straight facts without any conditional comments that might raise doubts to their validity while when quoting Israeli press releases they often make commentary calling into question the veracity of those statements often presenting them as such was the report according to IDF spokespersons. Such an accounting leaves any report as being probably a biased and lacking factual weight leaving the watcher in doubt as to if the facts presented are believable.

 

Add the media’s relentless presentation of the casualty numbers as if having more casualties makes one side the more honorable side more deserving of sympathy and somehow makes their grievances and positions more valid than the other side. Had such been the style of reporting during World War II then the Russian efforts would have carried the most weight followed by the Japanese and then the Germans with the French efforts being the most dubious followed by the United States and then Britain. Since when did suffering the higher numbers of casualties come to infer a more valid viewpoint and argument. Further, since when must one side take precautions not to cause more casualties on their enemies during a conflict than their enemy has caused amongst their side. Is not the entire effort of war to impart more casualties on the other side than your side suffers? Israelis are not being killed in similar numbers because Israel expends large amounts of resources and financial commitments to protect their people than Hamas has in Gaza. Take a little challenge here and remember as you make these calculations that Hamas has a multi-billion dollar construction of underground tunnels and command and control headquarters and storage areas which could also double as a bomb shelter with the capacity of holding close to the entire population of Gaza but only permits their Hamas combatants and leadership to take refuge underground while forcing their civilians to remain in areas where Israel has warned they intend to attack by dropping leaflets over the area. The challenge is to count by twenty-thousands where each announced interception of a Hamas rocket sent into Israel equals twenty-thousand dollars. This challenge discounts the hundreds of millions of dollars the development of the Iron Dome system cost and will only take into consideration the cost to produce the individual intercepting missile and also discounts the percentage, small as it may be, of missiles which did not intercept a rocket. That will give one a running total of the Israeli investment to protect their civilians as these Hamas rockets are not being aimed at the IDF, they are aimed at Israeli communities including her major cities. They are aimed at Jews, Christians, Muslims and those of other religions who all live with freedom to worship as they please in Israel. It is aimed at European, Arab, Asian and African Jews (there are Jews in Israel from every continent including the Ethiopian Jews rescued over the past decade, the Bnei Menashe Tribe from India, the 850,000 Jewish refugees from the Arab and Muslim worlds and their descendants which now make up half of the Israeli population, a large number of Russian Jews who were received at great effort and expense from the former Soviet Union, and currently there are increasing numbers coming from the Ukraine and France as well as numerous other places where Jews are feeling more and more threatened every day. Israel is a collection of Jews from over the entirety of the planet Earth and of every nationality imaginable. They live together with a large population of Christian and Muslim Arabs as well as other minorities including sizeable Kurdish and Baha’i communities all of whom share the bounties of Israel and have equal rights to vote, live, work, own land and businesses and are equal in every way. These are the peoples who make up the communities of Israel and are all facing the rockets from Hamas. Unbelievably, but true, at the very beginning of the current conflict both the wife of Mahmoud Abbas and the mother-in-law of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were receiving treatment in Israeli hospitals. Both are well and recovering nicely. I am willing to bet those two little facts were pretty much ignored by the mainstream media, I wonder why? Perhaps they painted too sympathetic a picture of Israeli society and the realities that are actually true? Could not be, the media is always completely honest, right?

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Time to End the Palestinian Frauds Perpetrated on Israel

Hamas made a few complaints and claims to coincide with their launching of three rockets from the Gaza City neighborhood of Shejaiya towards Be’er Sheva in southern Israel breaking the ceasefire which was supposed to end tonight at midnight after being extended at the end of negotiations yesterday evening. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri accused Israel of stalling the negotiations and refusing to permit an agreement to be reached despite Hamas and the other Palestinian negotiators being ready to reach an agreement along the terms which are well known by Israel. Their implication is that Israel has presumably accepted these terms that Hamas and the Palestinians are ready to sign and thus reach an agreement. The problem is the terms that they refer to are the demands which Hamas has stood on from the beginning which includes Israel pulling away from controlling or even inspecting any imports into Gaza. These terms which Hamas claims are reasonable would have them granted completely open borders, an unsupervised port and international airport through which they would be permitted completely open and unregulated import. Needless to report, the Hamas claims against Israel have been reported on the news wires word for word and the majority of the news reports we have heard made no comments when reporting these claims. Meanwhile, they are reporting on the rockets which Hamas launched breaking the ceasefire as “Israel says that rockets have been fired from Gaza.” Somehow the news reports quoting the Hamas claim with certainty that Israel is “stalling” the peace negotiations but Israel “says” that rockets have been fired? One would think that rockets being launched into a nation by a neighboring governance, even if they are a recognized terrorist group, would be a far more objective statement than claims that the other side is solely responsible for the lack of progress in negotiations. This should not come as any surprise as throughout the coverage of the Hamas, Islamic Jihad conflict with Israel the Hamas and Palestinian side has been granted slanted coverage which reports their statements and claims as fact while using more passive and less certainty implying that Israeli statements must be independently verified while Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Palestinian Authority are trusted sources who are not to be doubted or questioned in any way.

 

The negotiations which Israel is supposedly stalling over according to Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri are the exact terms which Hamas demanded they would not deviate from and that Israel must grant them every demand or face a war of attrition which Hamas is ready to continue without end until Israel accedes to their demands. The stalling is Israel refusing to surrender completely to Hamas demands to permit them and Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist in Gaza to import weaponry to their wildest of desires including the eleven-billion dollars of top of the line weaponry including Apache Helicopters, modern anti-tank missiles and other top of the line modern weaponry from their supporters in Qatar. Then there is always the possibility that Turkey, with their access to NATO weaponry, could also join in arming Hamas as Turkey and Israel have been on less than the best terms since the events surrounding the Mavi Marmara and the attempt to break the Israeli legal blockade of Gaza, a blockade that the United Nations evaluated and found to be legal. There has not been much coverage of the attempted coup against the Palestinian Authority by Hamas which was prevented by Israeli intelligence. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and the Shin Bet broke open the coup plans which came through Jordan from Hamas leadership in Turkey. There were ninety-three Hamas operatives arrested of which forty-six were taken by the Shin Bet for further questioning. They also collected fifty-four guns, six handguns and seven RPGs along with 600,000 Shekels (about $170,000). The coup was assisted by additional conspirators in Jordan and couriers who funneled funds amounting to over two-million Shekels into Judea and Samaria to assist with the purchases and other expenses incurred to realize their intents. The efforts were under the command of Riad Nasser out of Deir Kadis, was recruited by Saleh Alaruri who is in charge of the Hamas infrastructure in Judea and Samaria and is stationed in Turkey currently.

 

The coup plot was first to commit numerous horrific terror attacks causing complete havoc and a serious security situation in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) attempting to overwhelm the Palestinian security forces possibly causing IDF stepping in in attempts to restore order at which point the Hamas operatives were to strike and decapitate the Palestinian Authority and replace them with Hamas leadership followed by their claiming to have taken control over the Palestinian areas and the rest of Judea and Samaria. This would have led to Israel facing a two front war with Hamas. The real shocker is that despite the coup being averted and Mahmoud Abbas made aware that Hamas had likely intended to murder him as part of the conspiracy broken up by Israel, Abbas is going ahead with a meeting with Hamas exiled leader Khaled Meshaal in Qatar. This also should serve as a wakeup call for the Israelis as this confirms the suspicions of many leading Israeli security personnel as well as some from the political arena and in the media. This was very similar to the coup in Gaza where numerous top level Fatah and Palestinian Authority leaders were arrested by Hamas and thrown from the roof of many of the taller buildings in Gaza City and Khan Yunis in Gaza back in 2007, two years after the Israelis pulled every Israeli civilian and all of the IDF and other Israeli security forces from Gaza in an unilateral disengagement. The Hamas coup and takeover of Gaza was predicted by a number of Israeli leaders who were dismissed by the leaders of the Sharon coalition and other leftist Israeli Knesset Ministers and political and NGO leadership as being alarmist right wing fanatics whose only desire was to spread panic and distrust. Unfortunately for many Palestinians who were murdered by Hamas as part of their purging of Gaza two years later after a blood soaked coup which pitted Mahmoud Abbas’s United States trained Fatah and Palestinian Authority security forces against Hamas terrorist fighters, Hamas relative easy and deadly victory left the Fatah and Palestinian Authority security forces appear to be weak and completely ineffective. Now Israel knows for sure that Hamas is not even remotely satisfied with ruling Gaza and has designs on taking control of the West Bank as well. The unity government is a ruse and a farce not worth the paper it was written upon.

 

So, with Israel now facing Hamas making demands and refusing to compromise and steadfastly insisting that Israel simply surrender, granting Hamas whatever they desire, and adding that Hamas has designs on replacing Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority completely and then arm themselves to the hilt if they can get the world to force Israel to meet their demands, Israel is also facing a hostile international media which simply restates any commentary Hamas issues and then demands Israel explain why they are refusing to negotiate in good faith casting Hamas as having made reasonable demands. From the start of this most recent conflict it has appeared that United States President Obama has been supporting the Hamas demands for open and free access to the world without any inspections or restrictions on the goods they decide to import. Such access would consist of whatever weapons systems and forces they desire, bought with the billions of dollars they plan on receiving intended to provide funding to rebuild the destroyed housing, infrastructure, Mosques and hospitals. Hamas knows that as long as they refuse to compromise that in time the rest of the world will simply get so tired of the violence and realizing that Hamas does not care how long the violence continues and will never mitigate their demands simply because they are terrorists recognized as such by the United States, the European Union and others; then those same nations who recognize Hamas are terrorists will decide that since Hamas will not change, then Israel must be forced to simply meet the Hamas demands. The European Union and United States would eventually place embargos on Israel denying them trade of any kind, especially any military provisions, and starve Israel economically until they are forced to surrender. The problem is the Israeli government actually does care about their civilians and Hamas has proven how little they regard those unfortunate enough to live under their rule as their only use is to be placed in harm’s way in an attempt to paint Israelis as monsters by showing the world pictures of dead Palestinians that Hamas placed in places guaranteeing to maximize the number of innocents who will become casualties. For example, President Obama has already held up a resupply shipment of Hellfire Missiles to Israel and placed all other resupply military shipments under the auspices of the State Department and likely personally supervised by Secretary of State Kerry and why not Valerie Jarrett (Miss R2P, Right to Protect, which was used to provide the Libyan rebels with close air support in their efforts to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi) as well. There have been some who saw the use of Right to Protect in Libya as a trial run to set up its later use to protect the Palestinians and place United States troops in either the Palestinian areas or within Israel or both in order to force Israel to relent and give the Palestinians all of the areas they demand forcing Israel back within their pre Six Day War lands setting Israel up to be destroyed through following terrorism actions which Israel would be prevented from responding by the presence of the United States troops assigned to protect everything Palestinian. Additionally, Britain had threatened Israel to cancel a dozen military tenders which could eventually cripple the Merkava tanks, many of the Israeli radar systems and other vital military equipment which could potentially cripple the IDF. If Hamas continues to push their refusal to compromise and simply continue attempting to press Israel into a corner where the world led by the Western nations turn against Israel placing Israel in a no win situation, that would be where things would get very ugly very fast. Israelis and their leadership mean Never Again and will do whatever it takes as the Israelis realize that should Israel fall that the rest of Jewry will soon follow and that would signify the end of the Jewish People. Never Ever Again Period!

 

Beyond the Cusp