Re-Post From DEBKAfile DEBKAfile Special Guide August 15, 2014, 12:09 PM (IDT)

After a month of fighting and at the onset of another surreal ceasefire, debkafile offers some clues to those readers who, understandably, find themselves a bit baffled about the status of the war in Gaza and where Israel stands. Here’s a brief guide to the goings-on:

Is there a ceasefire?
Senior Fatah and Egyptian officials said late Wednesday, Aug. 14, that negotiators in Cairo had agreed to a five-day truce, extending the previous 72-hour ceasefire. But neither Hamas nor Israeli officials themselves have formally acknowledged this deal, nor do they seem inclined to do so. In short, no, there is no truce.

What’s with the split between Obama and Netanyahu?
The dispute between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is nothing new: it has been bubbling since Obama took office in 2009. As reports emerge that the White House blocked a transfer of Hellfire missiles to the IDF during Gaza operations, Obama is accusing Netanyahu of attempting to bypass his office by looking to allies in Congress for support. This, too, is old news, as Netanyahu’s predecessors also used the US legislature to circumvent the will of US presidents.

But the Netanyahu-Obama split has taken on a novel spin in that, only twice before, was Washington denied a say in an Israeli military campaign.

In 1956, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion teamed up with Britain and France for an attack on Egypt behind the US’ back. In 1981, it was Menachem Begin who defied Washington when he ordered the successful bombardment of an Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad.

So who are Israel’s allies for the Gaza operation?
Now it is Netanyahu’s turn to swim against the American tide. His actions have a more comprehensive impact than those of prime ministers’ past. Not only is he standing in opposition to the Obama administration’s ingrained policy of avoiding military force, he’s also working closely with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El Sisi to counter the US Mid East policy departure that hinges on Obama’s understanding with Iran. This new Israel-Saudi-Egypt alliance has pushed US off the regional center stage and sidelined its efforts to bring the Gaza conflict to an end.

Why doesn’t’ Washington go for Egypt and Saudi Arabia?
For the US, crossing Saudi Arabia and Egypt is tricky. But publicly lambasting Netanyahu and Israel is par for the course. Viewed through this lens, the press “leak” to the Wall Street Journal on the blocked missile supply makes perfect sense.

At the same time, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt share the same beef against the administration for working closely with Iran. Obama’s cohorts in Baghdad are colluding with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei under the guise of battling the extremist Islamic State (IS, formerly IS) slashing its way through Iraq. The two powers plan to resolve Iraq’s crisis to their own benefit. To this end, Obama has granted Iran its rubber stamp and the status of a regional superpower – even before it inks a deal on a nuclear accord, which

Saudi Arabia and Israel, in particular, fear will turn out to be inimical to their strategic interests and national security.

Egypt and Saudi Arabia hit back by sending Sisi to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin Tuesday August 12 in Sochi. They are inviting him to join the new alliance. It is too soon to say how far Netanyahu is willing to go in this direction.

Is Operation Protective Edge Over?
The answer is a resounding “no!” Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, would be content to end the war. They’ve been trying to do this from the operation’s second day, July 8, but are finding that an exit strategy keeps on slipping ever further from their grasp. The two Israeli leaders got themselves into a mess by taking it for granted that they could reap the success of a war against terrorists with a deal at the negotiating table, so falling into the same error as Obama.

Thanks to these early missteps, the fighting is sliding into an on-again, off-again war of attrition, with scattered occasional rocket fire from Gaza and Israeli reprisals. We haven’t yet seen the end of this war, and it will change form as time goes on.

Meanwhile, Thursday, 500 trucks loaded with food, medicines and other essentials rolled through the Kerem Shalom crossing into the Gaza Strip, continuing the supplies that never faltered in the course of the month-long IDF operation. This fits the general ambivalence of the Netanyahu government’s style of warfare.
Another round of talks has been scheduled to take place in Cairo next week.

When is a red alert the real thing?
This week saw three grades of rocket alert: Red Alert, False Alarm and No Alert. We propose this key to set minds at rest within the radius of Hamas rockets: The first signifies an authentic rocket attack in response to which everyone should take shelter; the second attests to wishful thinking that a ceasefire may actually hold and so you must pretend you didn’t hear the explosion; and the alarm system is silenced when the government is determined to convince everyone that peace is at hand. So now you know you were dreaming when your home is blasted.

I agree since it was obvious to me as well what was happening. Obama and his inner circle of radial women are being handled by the US branch of the Muslim Brotherhood who are Sunni. Since few if any of them had any real world experience that Handing was east to do and now we have what we have. Progressives always end up getting a lot of people killed — that’s as sure as death and taxes!

Hey with Maliki gone the Islamic States will dissolve according to Obama and Kerry so there is nothing more to worry about!

Hey why go after them now when their still localized; that wouldn’t be fair it would be like Israels and Hamas; so lets wait till their a world power, in a few more years, and then it would be a fair fight! Especially after we have downsized our military to match what they have!

Muslims are incapable of condemning Hamas or any other one of the many Jihads groups as they really think that they are not doing anything wrong; they are only following their faith!

As always Mark is right on!

The luck of Hamas

Re-Posted from POWERLINE from post on August 14, 2014 by Scott Johnson

David Horovitz is a middle-of-the-road editor running a middle-of-the-road Israeli news site, so I am not only struck by the despairing tone of his latest column, I am completely in sympathy with it. “After the abandonment of Israel by the UK, with its promise to limit arms sales to Israel if Hamas restarts its attacks on our civilians,” Horovitz writes, “we now learn that the US is already restricting arms sales to Israel, having halted a planned supply of the Hellfire precision missiles that enable Israel to strike at the rocket launchers set up by Hamas in the heart of Gaza’s residential areas.” Horovitz comments:

It becomes ever harder to understand what the US administration thinks it is doing in the Middle East. Its influence is waning across the region. It appears insufficiently robust — to put it mildly — when dealing with the region’s most dangerous regimes, notably Iran. Its ill-judged lack of enthusiasm for Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi — apparently blamed by Washington for ending an elected Muslim Brotherhood presidency, even though president Mohammed Morsi would likely have ensured no further elections — is pushing Egypt ever closer to Russia. And now ties with the region’s only democracy are fraying.

Some in the administration appear to labor under the delusion that if only Benjamin Netanyahu — described by some US officials in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal as “reckless and untrustworthy” — could be weakened and eased aside, Israelis might elect a leadership more inclined to follow its thinking and consider territorial compromise in the cause of a rejuvenated peace process with the Palestinians. The fact is, of course, that an Israel attempting to de-fang Hamas, concerned at the possibility of rising tensions in the West Bank, aware that Hezbollah in Lebanon is many times more powerful than Hamas is, and watching Iran working to outwit the West on its route to nuclear weapons, is as likely to veer left as Hamas is to voluntarily disarm. Far from being the most obdurate prime minister, Netanyahu is the most moderate that Israel can be expected to choose in the foreseeable future.

It is frankly astounding to the overwhelming majority of Israelis that Israel is being blamed for and pressured to end a war it manifestly sought to avoid — against a terrorist-government sworn to its destruction that repeatedly breaches the ceasefire efforts Israel consistently accepts. That the conflict is widely misrepresented, and that hostile governments are critical, is bad enough for Israel. Far, far graver is that key allies, to one degree or another, are turning upon it….

Horovitz’s sagging morael causes him to falter at the end of his column:

All it needs to do, Hamas can only conclude, is keep firing at Israel’s towns and villages, forcing Israel to respond, confident that this will bring still more criticism down on Israel as well as growing restrictions on Israel’s ability to defend itself. Wow, the Hamas leaders must be thinking, the free world is just so dumb.

Stupidity is of course the charitable explanation. Indeed, there is something to it, but there is a good deal more than stupidity to account for where are now. Stupidity combined with malice and misjudgment would only get us a little closer to the necessary understanding, but stupidity is at least a good start.

The Iraq War Officially Begins (Again): US Troops Prepare For Rollout As US Drones Strike ISIS Positions

Re-Posted from ZEROHEDGE Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/13/2014 22:11 -0400

U.S. military officials say an armed American MQ-1 Predator drone has attacked and destroyed a mortar position of Islamic militants in northern Iraq. As WaPo reports, the drone attack marks a departure for the U.S. military, which had said previously that drones were flying missions over Iraq only to collect intelligence. No boots hit the ground in the carrying out of this action…

As NBC reports,

An American MQ-1 drone strike took out a firing position that Islamic militants used to target Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, according to the U.S. military.

The military said in a statement that a U.S. drone struck and destroyed an ISIS mortar position at around 7:55 a.m. ET on Tuesday.

The mortar position was firing on Kurdish forces defending members of the Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority who were trying to evacuate the area, U.S. Central command added.

The MQ-1 Predator:

Update:

U.S. SAID TO LAND TROOPS ON MT. SINJAR IN IRAQ, ABC NEWS SAYS

More:

United States Marines, special forces and the USAID disaster assistance relief team briefly landed today on Mt. Sinjar in Iraq, a U.S. official told ABC News.

It was the first time ABC News has learned of any Americans landing on the mountain, where thousands of Yazidis are trapped and facing a humanitarian crisis.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced on Tuesday that the United States has sent a 130 member military assessment team to Erbil in the autonomous Iraqi province ofKurdistan to determine what further assistance the U.S. can provide to the Yazidis.

Lol: “briefly”…

It didn’t take long for Obama’s latest stern promise that no US troops would be on the ground to become… troops are now on the ground.

The good news, as US troops are about to fight ISIS mercenaries armed with US weapons, is that for now at least, no US troops have died in this most recent US intervention in Iraq – the latest in a series of US humanitarian liberation of the middle east country beginning in 1990.

But what happens when the first bodybags come home? What will the Nobel Peace Prize winning president’s spin be then?