Tag Archives: Gaza operation

Jul 31 2014

Hamas is in peril how will Obama save them?


Israeli Air Force takes out 40 mosques-cum-rocket stores, brings new drone into Gaza operation
Re-Post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 31, 2014, 1:42 PM (IDT)

A mosque in Gaza after Israeli bombardment

A mosque in Gaza after Israeli bombardment

The Israeli Air Force bombed 40 mosques in Gaza Tuesday night, July 30, in the most extensive operation against Hamas’ religious institutions-cum-military bases so far. In total, at least 50 mosques have been blown up along with their stockpiles of rockets and arms caches.

These concentrated air strikes on rocket arsenals are as integral to Operation Protective Edge as the ground work in destroying tunnels. They have been stepped up in advance of the preparations launched by the government on Wednesday for the possible termination of the IDF ground operation in the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of troops.

debkafile‘s sources say that the order to end the ground operation in Gaza would not mean that the war is over. There are no illusions about the Palestinian extremist groups laying down their arms. In practical terms, therefore, Israeli troops will regroup and spread out along the border as a barrier against future Hamas attempts to keep up its terror offensive by means of cross-border commando raids using undiscovered tunnels and firing rockets and mortars into Israel.

Israel’s war planners believe the IDF ranged outside the Gaza border is capable of repelling these assaults by means of tank and artillery fire and air force drones.
The confrontation with Hamas will thus morph into an ongoing war of attrition.
This past week has also seen the first deployment in action of the Air Force’s brand new Hermes 900 UAV, an unmanned aircraft also known as the Star. Never before used in wartime operations, the drone’s debut was rushed forward because of its useful properties: The aircraft can fly nonstop for 30 hours at an altitude of 30,000 feet, the while conducting surveillance, gathering intelligence and relaying communications to and from military personnel in the field.

Star carries 300 kg of attack weaponry. Its cockpit and operating systems are superior to previous models, enabling commander, operator and crew to work together seamlessly.

It has been functioning almost nonstop in the Gaza operation with great success.

Manufactured by Elbit Systems, the drone had until this week only flown test flights and was not scheduled to become operational until 2015. But Operation Protective Edge called for an upgraded version of the Air Force’s Hermes 450 – a UAV that flies similar missions — and so the 900 was fast-tracked into the fleet.

As it is relatively untested in battle, the Star is only being used for certain types of missions. When the current war ends, the air force will resume further study of its performance in emergency situations and diverse altitudes and weather conditions.

Jul 31 2014

Democ-rats now support Muslium Brotherhood and Hamas!


The Brotherhood (though oil money) is a major financial supporter of the progressives
Re-Posted from PowerLine Posted on July 30, 2014 by Paul Mirengoff

Democrats tilt towards Hamas, blame Republicans

Caroline Glick makes a persuasive case that under President Obama, America has switched sides in the Middle East. It has switched, that is, from Israel’s side to that of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

You could argue that Obama has switched sides twice. First, during the failed peace process, from Israel to the Palestinian Authority; now, in the Gaza war, from the PA to Hamas. After all, Obama undercut the PA by rejecting the ceasefire proposal (Egypt’s) that it favored and instead pushing Qatar’s pro-Hamas concept.

Deep down, though, I suspect that Obama has been partial to the Muslim Brotherhood, and therefore to Hamas, all along.

But it isn’t just Obama that has switched sides in the Middle East. Democrats have too, albeit not to the same extent.

This is clear from recent polling. Seth Mandel points to a Gallup Poll showing that, by a 47-31 percent margin, Democrats do not think Israel’s actions in Gaza are justified. In addition, according to a Pew survey, Democrats are about evenly divided over whether Israel or Hamas is more responsible for the current violence.

Republicans, meanwhile, overwhelmingly side with Israel in both polls.

What explains the fact that Democrats now see Israel as no better than Hamas in a war precipitated by Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israel and its refusal to accept a cease fire.

Pro-Israel liberals have come up with an odd but not unexpected excuse: it’s the Republicans’ fault.

This, as Mandel notes, was the thesis of the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg back in 2012. He argued that by criticizing President Obama for his policy towards Israel, Republicans make “supporting Israel distasteful to many Democrats.” Worse, they cause Democrats to “lump supporters of Israel in the same category they reserve for climate-change-denying anti-choice Obamacare haters.”

Lefty blogger Josh Marshall recently expressed a milder version of this theme. Israel, he argued, plays a “dangerous game” when it causes its alliance with the U.S. to be heavily identified with the Republican party.

As question-begging arguments go, this one belongs in the Hall of Fame. Why is there enough distance, when it comes to Israel, between Obama and Republicans that the GOP finds itself able to criticize Obama on this issue? Why has Israel’s alliance with the U.S. come to be closely identified with only the GOP? And how can Democrats even contemplate equating supporters of Israel with the conservative political activists they despise the most?

The obvious answer is that ideology drives contemporary Democrats to view Israel far less favorably than Republicans view Israel. The political fallout — criticism by Republicans of Obama’s Israel policy and the identification of the Israel-U.S. alliance with the GOP rather with both parties — is a symptom of the difference in the way the two parties view Israel, not its cause.

What accounts for the underlying ideological difference between the two parties when it comes to Israel? The answer, I think, is this: Israel is a U.S. ally with strong Western values and a willingness to use military force when necessary to protect itself.

Most Republicans are quite comfortable with these attributes. Indeed, we find them refreshing.

Many Democrats are uncomfortable with one or more of these attributes. Their ambivalence towards the U.S. and its values causes them view a hardcore U.S. ally skeptically (or worse). Their knee-jerk tendency to sympathize with what we used to call Third World nations engenders ambivalence (or worse) towards a bastion of Western values in the midst of the Third World. Their loathing of the use of force to further merely national interests makes them hostile to a strong nation that uses force effectively.

And it’s only going to get worse as old-time Democrats fade away.

Jul 30 2014

Libyan militants overrun Benghazi special forces base as chaos deepens


I think Hillary said, What difference does it make!”

Jul 30 2014

IDF Gaza Operation expanded — rightfuly ignoring Obama & Kerry


Three Israeli soldiers killed in action in Gaza and 27 injured. Cabinet orders operation expanded

Re-Post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 30, 2014, 9:30 PM (IDT)

IDF Gen. Sami Torjeman, commander of Gaza operation

IDF Gen. Sami Torjeman, commander of Gaza operation

Three Israeli soldiers were killed and 27 injured in the Gaza Strip Wednesday, July 30, on the 23rd day of Israel’s counter-terror operation Defensive Edge against Hamas. A bomb planted in the wall of a building in Khan Younes blew up as the soldiers went in to examine a tunnel shaft.

Maj. Gen. Sami Torjeman, OC Southern Command, told reporters that the soldiers had fought “stubbornly” and “seriously impaired” Hamas’ strength. Hundreds of enemy fighters have been killed, he reported, including scores of Hamas’ elite troops and some of the commanders hunkered down in their hideouts. Dozens too had been taken captive and were providing a stream of valuable intelligence. In all their direct engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Israeli units had come out the winners, the general reported.

It was inferred from Gen. Torjeman’s replies to questions that IDF special operation forces had gone into action in the Gaza Strip for the first time. He said that Israeli units had moved into new terrain in central and southern Gaza after standing in place for five days. They entered Khan Younes and Jebalya Tuesday night.
The general referred cautiously to the terror tunnels, which had been described officially as all taken care of earlier this week. He reported that four new tunnels had been discovered over and above those so far tracked and no more than “a few days” remained for the military to finish its “tunnel mission.”

He warned, however, that no reliable estimate could be made of the underground passages which the IDF has not yet discovered and which might be located in areas outside the battle zones.
Gen. Torjeman added that the vast scale of the tunnel-building project was beyond belief. With the amount of cement poured into those tunnels in the last four years, he said, the Palestinians could have built four modern hospitals, 20 schools or 100 kindergartens.

Asked about the misfortune at the Nahal Oz outpost, where five soldiers lost their lives Tuesday, the general commented, “I would expect a different outcome from an engagement with terrorists.” All the same, he stressed the infiltrators failed in their mission to attack civilians.

Asked why the army was not functioning on two levels: clearing up the tunnels while at the same time striking Hamas control centers in Gaza City, he replied: “The army acts according to the operational directives handed down by the political level.”
Gen. Torjeman’s first-hand account of the war fought under his command was the most lucid and convincing the public has seen in the entire offensive. At the same time, he offered no pointers to the next stage and where the conflict was heading. He was very clear about these decisions being up to the heads of government who are managing the war, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
As they led a security cabinet meeting Wednesday, those leaders were under heavy foreign pressure to terminate the conflict, especially by Western powers led by Washington. Former Israeli president Shimon Peres added his voice to Israel’s detractors when, during a visit to injured soldiers in hospital, he declared: “The war has exhausted itself.”

He spoke into the empty space left when talk in the last five days of an impending ceasefire ran up against the immovable wall of Hamas’ rejection. A Palestinian delegation has sat on its luggage for four days packed ready for a trip to Cairo to take up Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisis’s proposal for resolving the Gaza crisis.

His only pre-condition was that both sides, Israel and Hamas, observe a ceasefire first. But Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal demanded that in any ceasefire, Hamas be free to attack Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Cairo’s response was crisp: So don’t come.

After sitting most of the day, the Israeli security cabinet rejected any plan to end the war or interrupt it with a unilateral truce and instead approved is expansion. Its decision read:

“The IDF is directed to continue its powerful offensive against Hamas and other terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and complete the destruction of terror tunnels. This action has a significant impact on the field and smashes a strategic resource in which Hamas invested years.”
debkafile’s military sources: It remains to be seen what this decision means in practical terms. Are Israel’s armed forces instructed to expand the battle zones in earnest, or only marginally, just enough to put the squeeze on Hamas for an unconditional cessation of hostilities.

Jul 12 2014

Netanyahu has a plan: put the IDF in control of West Bank security


An interesting idea Hamas with political control and the IMF for security but I think it is unsellable and unworkable so there must be more to this.

Re-post from DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis July 12, 2014, 12:58 PM (IDT)

For five days, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon opted to confront Hamas rockets with Israel’s air force alone, without the IDF at large. They were not even willing to approve a small-scale raid by special forces for pinpointing a few key targets, as a pretext for helping Netanyahu deny widespread allegations that he is again running away from full-scale military action.

Early Saturday, July 12, saw a few hours respite from Palestinian rocket fire before the first sirens starting wailing again in the western Negev and central Israel.

The rockets fired during this week came in an ever widening arc. Israel air strikes wrought heavy surface damage to the Gaza Strip, but scarcely scratched its rocket capabilities.

Friday night, air strikes hit 60 Palestinian targets, mostly buried missile launchers and arms stores, one cached in the Nuseirat mosque, which was razed except for the minaret, and others in a school and three multistory buildings. Before they were bombed, civilians were warned to get out of harm’s way.

The IDF spokesman reported 10 “terrorists” killed, including rocket team leaders. The Palestinians report their total death toll had climbed to 121 and 900 injured.

Israel reported 750 Palestinian rockets launched in five days, with no fatalities, and 82 people injured, many of them suffering the effects of shock.
Five days after Operation Protective Edge was launched to terminate the Hams rocket offensive, it was beginning to be blunted by the fading prospect of ground action. The decision for the time being not to launch ground forces into the Gaza Strip to finish the job, by reaching the thousands of rockets concealed by Hamas and Jihad Islami underground was evident from the news leaking out of the security and policy cabinet meeting held in Tel Aviv on Friday, July 11, and the words of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz – “We stand ready for all possible action and await nothing more than a political decision.”

They reflected Netanyahu’s decision to hold off on a ground incursion, so long as Iron Dome batteries shoot rockets down before they hit population centers and cause fatalities, and Israelis remain remarkably obedient to the Home Command’s rules for keeping safe.

The prime minister exercised the same sort of restraint in meting out punishment to the same Hamas for abducting and murdering the three Israeli teenagers, Gil-Ad Shear, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrach, whose bodies were discovered in a Palestinian West Bank village on June 27.

In the space of weeks, therefore, the Palestinian Islamist organization has twice got away with barbaric acts of terror without having to endure the full might of Israel’s armed forces.

This is consistent with the policies Netanyahu has pursued for five years.

In his televised news conference Friday, the prime minister publicly admitted for the first time the presence of al Qaeda forces around Israel’s borders – to the east, in Iraq and Jordan; to the north, in Syria and Lebanon; and to the south in the Gaza Strip and Sinai.

Although, he seemed to lump Hamas in with the looming Islamist menace, Netanyahu’s answers to reporters’ questions turned abruptly at this point to the issue of Judea and Samaria, left open by the breakdown of the umpteenth round of Israel-Palestinian peace talks earlier this year.

He stressed that in the current circumstances, it was incumbent on Israel to retain its armed forces in the West Bank. If Hamas was permitted to move in, it would “create 20 new Gazas on the West Bank,” he warned.

It may therefore be determined that the Netanyahu government has sketched in the lines of the end-game for Operation Protective Edge: Israel will abstain from a ground incursion and crushing Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip, but will claim in return international-Palestinian and pan-Arab sanction for the IDF to be assigned responsibility for the security of the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria.

This plan was behind Netanyahu’s comment Friday that the round of conversations he held with world leaders were “good” after which he pledged that “no international pressure would prevent us from acting against a terrorist organization aspiring to destroy us,” and “We will continue to defend our home front, the citizens of Israel, with resolve and prudence.”
What the prime minister appeared to be driving at was this: Israel would eradicate a major portion of Hamas’ military resources in Gaza but leave it in power – enfeebled and surrounded by Iron Dome batteries. IDF security control of the West Bank would be internationally accepted as the regional protector for holding al Qaeda belligerency back from swarming out of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

Netanyahu’s plan provides Israel with an exit strategy from the Gaza operation, without requiring a ceasefire, which Hamas has anyway flatly refused to accept, except on ridiculously tall terms. But he will find his plan hard to sell outside Jerusalem.