Israel’s neighborhood and why Netanyahu was right on the ceasefire
The brutal neighborhood in which Israel lives extends beyond Gaza, and so must the strategy....
The brutal neighborhood in which Israel lives extends beyond Gaza, and so must the strategy....
Netanyahu at press conference: Cease fire is both military and diplomatic achievement for Israel. Hamas hit hard, and achieved nothing.
— Herb Keinon (@HerbKeinon) August 27, 2014
. @netanyahu: We have great military and diplomatic achievements. Hamas was struck hard, didn't get 1 of conditions it wanted for ceasefire
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) August 27, 2014
Besides the budgetary limitations, news organizations often hesitate to send reporters into Gaza at all because of the constant danger, and not from Israeli airstrikes. In 2007, BBC reporter Alan Johnston was kidnapped by Palestinian militants and held for more than three months. Many other foreign journalists were kidnapped there and held for a day or two around that time. There have been no kidnappings recently, but the message was clear—foreigners are fair game. The message was heard and understood. For lack of an alternative, news organizations began to rely more and more on local stringers, giving the regime considerable leverage through intimidation. It’s expected that news organizations will deny all this—it’s part of the dance.
The President of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ambassador Baudelaire Ndong Ella (Gabon), today announced the appointment of Mary McGowan Davis as an additional member of the Commission of Inquiry charged with investigating human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military operations conducted since 13 June 2014. Justice McGowan Davis will join William Schabas and Doudou Diène whose appointments were announced by the Council President on 11 August. ... In carrying out its work, the Commission of Inquiry will aim to establish the facts and circumstances of human rights violations and crimes perpetrated in order to identify those responsible. The Council also requested that the Commission of Inquiry present a written report to the Human Rights Council at its twenty-eighth session in March 2015.The report will unofficially be called Goldstone II after the Goldstone report, headed by Judge Richard Goldstone of South Africa launched by the UNHRC after Israel's Operation Cast Lead in 2008-9 to stop rocket fire by Hamas from Gaza.
Army Radio quotes “the most senior and official” Israeli government source confirming that Israel has accepted the Egyptian proposal for an open-ended truce. The official says the terms do not include any response to Hamas demands, including those for a seaport, airport, prisoner releases, or transfer of funds to pay salaries. He adds that those issues will be discussed in a month, if the quiet proves itself. Hamas’s spokesman in Gaza, Sami Abu Zuhri, is hailing victory for several reasons, Army Radio reports — for example, because it imposed what he calls an “air blockade” on Israel, a reference to the suspension by many foreign airlines of flights to Ben Gurion Airport for two days last month. It also forced Israelis close to Gaza to flee their homes, he says. They can return now, he says, because Hamas has decided they can — not because Netanyahu has decided they can.
Israel has agreed to Egyptian proposal for ceasefire that will be unlimited in time.
— Israel Foreign Min. (@IsraelMFA) August 26, 2014
Needless to say, Hamas is claiming a great victory even though it got almost no concessions in the Egyptian proposal in the streets:
Fireworks and celebratory gunshots are heard in the Gaza Strip as its residents celebrate what Hamas spokesmen have hailed as a resistance “victory” against Israel, Al Jazeera reports.
The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them, and some of them my former colleagues....
Since the war started, one population group in Gaza has disappeared from the streets: people in uniform. Army green uniforms, blue-grey uniforms, black uniforms, they were all over the place. From one day to the next they are gone, the men and the few women (of the women police unit) with a weapon or a truncheon in their hands.
Hamas executed 18 suspected informants for Israel in Gaza on Friday, the Hamas-run Al Aqsa TV reported. This comes one day after an Israeli strike in the Gaza city of Rafah killed three senior leaders of the Qassam Brigades, the Hamas military wing.The Times of Israel adds:
The witness said masked gunmen lined up the seven men in a side street and opened fire on them. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for his own safety. Other witnesses told AFP that six of them were grabbed from among hundreds of worshipers leaving the city’s largest mosque, by men in the uniform of Hamas’s military wing. They were pushed to the ground. One of the masked men shouted: “This is the final moment of the Zionist enemy collaborators,” then the gunmen sprayed them with bullets.
.@FoxNews continues as rare major media outlet consistently giving >real< coverage of what's happening here + in Gaza pic.twitter.com/dzf1tvBknd
— Ron M. (@Jewtastic) August 22, 2014
Raed Attar, who oversaw Hamas forces in Rafah, planned major infiltrations and other attacks that killed Israeli civilians. He was directly involved in the 2006 kidnapping of SFC Gilad Shalit, as well as efforts to hold him captive in Gaza. In addition to planning attacks, Attar oversaw the construction of tunnels used to attack Israel through the Sinai Peninsula. As a senior Hamas operative, his major responsibility was to smuggle weapons into Gaza and oversee efforts to train and arm terrorists.
Hundreds of Palestinians turned out on Wednesday for the funeral of the wife and son of the Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who were killed overnight in an Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City. Hamas had urged Gazans to turn out in force for the funeral in Jabaliya refugee camp, after an attack which left at least one other Palestinian dead and injured a further 15 people. There were fears that there could be more bodies under the rubble. The fate of Deif, one of Hamas's most senior figures who has survived Israeli attempts on his life in the past, is still unknown.Hamas asserts Deif is alive, but that lack confirmation. Hamas is trying to say it fired rockets in response to the attempt, but in reality the attempt on Deif came after Hamas broke the truce:
Israel attempted to assassinate Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas' military wing, in Gaza City on Tuesday, Hamas officials said. Israel has not officially commented on the report. Deif's wife and young child were killed in an Israeli air strike, the Hamas officials said. Hamas has not issued a statement on whether Deif was killed, and Israeli sources speculated Wednesday that he likely survived. Hamas officials said the assassination attempt represented an Israeli violation of the cease-fire, but Israel says its air strikes came in response to rockets fired from Gaza while the truce was still in effect on Tuesday.Background on Deif, from Amos Harel at Haaretz, Who is Mohammed Deif?:
Israeli Home Front Command and civilian emergency services in preparations for escalation in Gaza fighting.
— Daniel Nisman (@DannyNis) August 19, 2014
Red Alert app is going crazy right now. Rockets all over central and southern Israel.
— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) August 19, 2014
Live blog latest: Israel going back to all out war, prepping for ground op, defense official says http://t.co/FxknCvVco5
— TOI ALERTS (@TOIAlerts) August 19, 2014
Moreover, the journalists who entered Gaza were fixated on the notion of peace and on the Israeli narrative. So when they were conducting interviewers, or when they went on location to report, they would focus on filming the places from where missiles were launched. Thus, they were collaborating with the occupation. These journalists were deported from the Gaza Strip. The security agencies would go and have a chat with these people. They would give them some time to change their message, one way or another. ... We suffered from this problem very much. Some of the journalists who entered the Gaza Strip were under security surveillance. Even under these difficult circumstances, we managed to reach them, and tell them that what they were doing was anything but professional journalism and that it was immoral.
My friend Alain Azria gave me a puzzled look when I told him, with some indignation and disbelief in my voice, that I had just heard talk of killing Jews at an unauthorized anti-Israel demonstration last month in Paris A young black man with a Parisian accent told a dozen friends loudly, but without shouting, “OK, guys. Let’s go hunt some Jews.”
White House and State Department officials who were leading U.S. efforts to rein in Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip were caught off guard last month when they learned that the Israeli military had been quietly securing supplies of ammunition from the Pentagon without their approval. Since then the Obama administration has tightened its control on arms transfers to Israel. But Israeli and U.S. officials say that the adroit bureaucratic maneuvering made it plain how little influence the White House and State Department have with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu —and that both sides know it.... Then the officials learned that, in addition to asking for tank shells and other munitions, Israel had submitted a request through military-to-military channels for a large number of Hellfire missiles, according to Israeli and American officials.
Following rocket attacks at Israel, the #IDF is targeting terror sites across #Gaza
— Peter Lerner (@LTCPeterLerner) August 13, 2014
Netanyahu and Ya'alon have instructed the IDF to respond in light of the renewed rocket fire (Isr. Ch. 2 News)
— CiF Watch (@CiFWatch) August 13, 2014
Palestinian delegation in Cairo now officially confirming agreement to extend the #Gaza ceasefire by 5 days (until Monday night)
— Anshel Pfeffer (@AnshelPfeffer) August 13, 2014
Now they tell us, after so much misleading coverage....
A protest in Holland, that was approved by the Dutch government and meant to be a peaceful demonstration against Israel's Gaza operation and against the arrest of an Islamist operative, turned into a terrifying rally of hundreds of ISIS supporters. The Dutch were shocked of the protest, and The Hague's mayor was called to resign after his staff were the ones to approve the protest without realizing the danger it poses. The Dutch were also shocked to see pictures posted by ISIS recently that show a Muslim Dutch national alongside severed heads of Syrian soldiers he murdered in cold blood. Analysts estimated that the extremist organization was using this protest rally to recruit youths to its religious war in European cities. Some 3,000 European youths of Muslim descent are believed to have joined ISIS for fighting in Syria and Iraq, some of which have already returned home after having trained with ISIS and murdered many.Jonathan Hoenig has been photographing and filming an anti-Israel rally in Chicago today. He tweeted out a flyer that was handed out:
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