According to a report in le Figaro the UN is disturbed by a fatwa from the Caliphate ordering excision (genital mutilation) for all women. Don’t expect the world’s cameras to take positions inside the clinics—or above dirty blankets spread on the ground—to witness the mutilation of a potential 4 million victims. Unless and until Western media, civil rights organizations, thinkers and governments understand that this fatwa will spread like the jihad conquest of the Middle Ages and put the knife to the cherished sexual freedom of the free world, there will be no peace worthy of the name. Not in the Middle East, not in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo.
From the general to the particular: there was no cluster of journalists in front of the Pitzman restaurant Thursday morning. No visible police presence either. On the surface, everything was back to normal. I stopped by to verify the information heard that morning on Radio J, one of the best Jewish radio stations broadcasting from Paris. Yes, that’s how it happened. About 40 men apparently split off from the “good-natured” demonstration that dispersed at les Invalides on Wednesday and headed for the restaurant. Warned by someone who saw them running down the rue de Rivoli, the personnel lowered the metal shutter that protects the front door. The windows are bullet-proof. I asked how much time they had to batten the hatches. “Two minutes.”
The restaurant was filled. Diners could hear the raucous cries for Jewish blood as the assailants hammered the shutter with iron bars and baseball bats and tried to pry it open. One of the owners slipped out the back and came out through the synagogue where he was able to rescue two Jews trembling in fear.
Think of it: if or when these Jews make Aliyah and the young men don the uniform of the Israeli Defense Forces, they will become the heartless monsters portrayed in the soap opera that has been running successfully for 14 years. They will not cower, they will not wait for French riot police. They will defend themselves. And the media, and this and that human rights league, and the UN, and the pro-Hamas proto-caliphaters will deplore their use of “disproportionate force.” Supplications will mount to the high heavens. Ceasefire! Immediate ceasefire. Humanitarian ceasefire.
The crash of an Air Algérie plane on its way from Ouagadougou to Algiers and points north with 54 French citizens on board was a coincidence, unrelated to the FAA ban on flights to and from Israel. There is no reason to believe that the passengers tragically killed on that flight would have gone to Tel Aviv instead. That would be ridiculous. So there is no reason to believe that the city of Paris decided to repair the botched paving on the rue des Rosiers this very week, when the heart of the old Jewish quarter is the target of those “good-natured pro-Palestinian demonstrators.”
In the elections series at Family Security Matters (http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/) we have now concluded full coverage of the congressional elections in 42 states and the facts are incontrovertible:
The strongest support for Israel comes from the GOP even in states with small Jewish populations…..stay tuned….rsk
Its a chicken-or-the-egg question. Which came first: The Obama administrations public contempt toward our allies in Jerusalem, or liberal Democratic animosity toward Israel?
Either way, when Barack Obama steps down as president in January 2017, the Democratic Party he leaves behind will be one whose sympathies no longer embrace the Jewish state.
Its an extraordinary legacy. And its underscored by the more or less constant snubs President Obama has directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Of course, world leaders not getting along is nothing new. As Churchills wartime liaison to de Gaulle said of Britains French ally, The greatest cross I have had to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.
But the case of Obama and Netanyahu is much more than a clash of personalities. Its a conflict between two competing world views. And if a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center is any clue, this conflict has now become embedded in American party politics.
Pew asked a basic question: In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, who do you sympathize with more?
In the coming days, Israel will likely need a massive re-supply of military goods of all kinds. It is then when Obama’s real intentions will be exposed for Israel to see.
President Obama is the master of Double-Speak, saying one thing and meaning the exact opposite. Remember how Obama promised, “You can keep your doctor if you like him,” and how it turns out that you can’t keep him because Obamacare won’t pay him?
Given Obama’s track record of betrayal of Israel, his hollow recital of “Israel has the right to defend herself,” might actually have a doublespeak meaning as well – that “Israel has the right to defend herself”, but without any American military resupply.
Israel could now be on collision course with the most anti-Israel president America has ever seen.
On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, Israel was shocked by the massive and effective surprise attacks by Egyptian and Syrian armies after America forced it to refrain from attacking the Egyptian army massing on its borders. On October 8th, Israel was losing the war. On October 8-9th, Israel went on to nuclear alert. Kissinger learned of the Israel nuclear alert on the morning of October 9. That day, President Nixon ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, a massive American military airlift to replace all of Israel’s military material losses. In a couple of weeks, Nixon’s military air-bridge shipped 22,325 tons of military supplies to Israel and saved Israel from might have been her destruction.
In Mid-June 2014, Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israel teens. Israel launched an operation to sweep up the Hamas operatives in Judea and Samaria and exact punishment for Hamas’ crimes. On July 6, after Israel defeated Hamas in their quiet battle to take over Judea and Samaria, Hamas began to launch barrages of various range missiles into Israel from Gaza and employ its tunnels to murder and attempt to kidnap Israelis inside of Israel.
Hamas declared, “All Israelis” had become “legitimate targets.” Hamas refused any reasonable ceasefire, and Israel was forced to attack Gaza proper in a land operation. Instead of President Obama declaring the immediate creation of a military re-supply of America’s ally Israel, Obama ordered his FAA to shut-down Israel’s entire economy by grounding all flights to Ben Gurion Airport. The FAA banned not only passenger planes, but supply planes as well.
Apparently, there is no way to avoid the creation of a commission of inquiry once Operation Protective Edge is over. The commission will have to discuss what Israeli cabinet ministers are describing as a “resounding security failure.” Why didn’t Israel mark the threat posed by the Hamas tunnels as a strategic threat, as is now so obvious? Why didn’t it devote thought, effort, budgets and attention to this threat, just as it did to the rocket threat, which received an appropriate response in the form of the Iron Dome air-defense system?
The commission of inquiry will have to investigate three distinct tiers of questioning: Did the security forces have intelligence about the tunnels? If so, was it relayed to the political leadership? And if it was relayed, why didn’t the political leadership act accordingly? It should be remembered that had Hamas not rejected the Egyptian cease-fire initiative, Israel would not have discovered the scope of this threat, and Hamas would have continued digging and expanding its tunnel network, right until the moment it was deployed.
One senior Cabinet member I spoke with this week described that possibility to me: “Imagine,” he said, “that we are in the middle of a conflict with Hezbollah up north. Our top-notch infantry brigades are up there, in the north, when suddenly Hamas deploys its network of dozens of tunnels all at once. Some 2,000 Hamas commandos suddenly burst out of them and embark on a killing spree, slaughtering thousands of people in the cities and towns across Israel’s south, from Sderot through Ashkelon, Netivot and Ofakim, maybe even all the way to Beersheba. Who would stop them? The police? The air force? It would take weeks to clean up the mess, and at the end of the entire process, we would find death and destruction across southern Israel. I know,” the minister continued, “that it sounds like a figment of the imagination, but based on what we are discovering these days, the scenario is far more realistic than it is imaginary. In this region, the reality easily exceeds anything we can imagine.”
IDF Excavation of the tunnels has resulted in the seizure of tons of Hamas supplies as well as the discovery of plans for future operations.
Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today by the Israeli daily Maariv.
The Hamas plan consisted of what was to be a surprise attack in which 200 fighters would be dispatched through each of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel, and seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.
Israeli soldiers already frustrated a surprise assault by Hamas through one tunnel from Gaza into the Eshkol district of Israel on July 19. The Hamas fighters escaped back into the tunnel, but the clash cost the lives of two Israel Defense Force [IDF] troops.
