RUTHFULLY YOURS

To argue the Palestinian side, in the Gaza war, is to make the case for barbarism.

Of all the inane things that have been said about the war between Israel and Hamas, surely one dishonorable mention belongs to comments made over the weekend by Benjamin J. Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.

Interviewed by CNN’s Candy Crowley, Mr. Rhodes offered the now-standard administration line that Israel has a right to defend itself but needs to do more to avoid civilian casualties. Ms. Crowley interjected that, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jewish state was already doing everything it could to avoid such casualties.

“I think you can always do more,” Mr. Rhodes replied. “The U.S. military does that in Afghanistan.”

How inapt is this comparison? The list of Afghan civilians accidentally killed by U.S. or NATO strikes is not short. Little of the fighting in Afghanistan took place in the dense urban environments that make the current warfare in Gaza so difficult. The last time the U.S. fought a Gaza-style battle—in Fallujah in 2004—some 800 civilians perished and at least 9,000 homes were destroyed. This is not an indictment of U.S. conduct in Fallujah but an acknowledgment of the grim reality of city combat.

Oh, and by the way, American towns and cities were not being rocketed from above or tunneled under from below as the Fallujah campaign was under way.
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The Vatican failed in an attempt to cover up the contents of a prayer by a Muslim cleric at an interfaith “Prayer for Peace” service held in the Vatican garden on June 8. Departing from a pre-approved script, the imam recited verses 284-286 of Sura 2 from the Koran, the latter part of which calls on Allah to grant Muslims victory over non-Muslims.

Danish police raided a mosque in the Vibevej district of Copenhagen after a passerby allegedly saw weapons being carried into the complex.

“We now have hundreds of jihadists and thousands of sympathizers. This naïve Cabinet’s inaction is inviting an attack in the Netherlands.” — Geert Wilders, Dutch Freedom Party.

Conference attendees called on the Spanish government to sponsor an official study aimed at finding ways to bring European food standards into compliance with Islamic Sharia law.

Austria accused Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of stirring up trouble on June 19, when he urged thousands of cheering supporters in Vienna to reject “assimilation.”

Erdogan was rallying support for his candidacy ahead of Turkish presidential elections in August, and expatriate Turks have become a significant bloc of voters after changes to the electoral system now allow them to cast votes abroad.

Around 268,000 people of Turkish origin live in Austria, according to government figures, of whom nearly 115,000 are Turkish citizens.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz, who had expressly warned Erdogan not to undermine efforts to integrate Turks into Austrian society, criticized the latest comments:

“These show very clearly that the Turkish premier has brought the election campaign to our country and created unrest with this. We reject this. And I can only say that respect for a host country looks clearly different.”

In Graz, the second-largest city in Austria, police on June 5 arrested a 41-year-old Islamic preacher from Chechnya who is believed to be involved in efforts to send Austrians to war in the Middle East.

State prosecutor Hansjoerg Bacher said that the imam is thought to be behind the radicalization and recruitment of eight Chechens resident in Austria, four of whom have died in fighting in Syria.

In Bulgaria, the Kardjali District Court on June 16 rejected a property claim lodged by the office of the Chief Mufti, the spiritual leader of Bulgaria’s Muslims, to be awarded ownership of the building housing the Regional Historical Museum. The court found that there was no basis for the claim, and ordered the representatives of the Muslim community to pay 91,062 leva ($63,000) in costs to the state.

This case was the latest in a series of lawsuits by the Chief Mufti’s office, filed under the Religious Denominations Act, which allows applications by recognized religious denominations to be awarded property believed to be historically theirs.

The building was originally intended to serve as a Muslim religious school, and it was funded in part by donations from the local Muslim community in 1920s and 1930s. However, the building was never used as a madrassa. Instead, it was nationalized during Bulgaria’s communist era and became a museum.

Lawyers for the Kardjali district administration argued that the Chief Mufti’s office is not the heir to the local Muslim community because at the time there was no such registered legal entity.

In the southern Bulgarian town of Peshtera, residents are angry over the local mosque’s powerful loudspeakers, which are blasting the Islamic call to prayer, the adhan, several times a day.

According to Radio FOCUS, the town is a model of multicultural tolerance, but residents are increasingly irritated by the adhan; the “silent discontent may escalate to petitions and protests,” the radio said.

While the U.S. government was a-howling over Israel daring to criticize Kerry’s performance, did they ever consider that Kerry’s performance actually was that bad?

he United States is circling the wagons around their secretary of state whose ego was apparently wounded by a torrent of Israeli criticism over the weekend regarding his proposed ceasefire draft plan.

John Kerry’s defenders are helping him look more pathetic by taking such umbrage to a unified Israeli cabinet’s rejection of his ceasefire proposal. And a virtually unified Israeli public, including the leftist and far left Israeli media, who are being accurately represented by the Israeli government’s less than flattering evaluations.

One of the biggest complaints about Israel’s criticism was ascribed to the State Department’s spokesperson Jen Psaki. She said, and was quoted in a myriad of media reports for saying, that Israel’s conduct in disseminating what she claims was false information about the proposed ceasefire draft: “it’s simply not the way partners and allies treat each other.”

There was a textbook example of a journalist baiting a government official to snipe at another government’s leadership despite her best efforts not to seem to be sniping.

Keeping America superpower strong is the last thing he wants.

Watching Fox News on Friday morning, I saw my friend retired Navy Capt. Chuck Nash talking about what we need to do to help resolve the crisis in the Ukraine. What he said made a lot of sense, but it struck me that we all know that President Obama will do absolutely nothing he recommended.

There are so many crises like that around the world and here at home that could be solved entirely or at least ameliorated by the president. The long list of actions President Obama should take to resolve many crises around the world describes many that are — or at least were before Obama — in America’s interests and within America’s grasp. We can take it to the bank that Obama will do none of these things. It takes only a few examples to illustrate the point.

After about ten days of public outrage, Europe has reverted to its Cold War default position, the appeasement of neo-Soviet Russia. For all the harrumphing about new sanctions, François Hollande has said that the sale of two warships to Russia will proceed on schedule. Yesterday’s Washington Post op-ed by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for serious sanctions against Russia to demonstrate the world’s seriousness about stopping the Russian insurgents (and that’s what they are, not “separatists” but a Russian proxy force) from taking over his country. He wrote that the U.S. could help with shipments of natural gas to strengthen the Ukrainian economy against Russian blackmail. He wants the U.S. to organize a coalition of nations to stop Russian aggression. It won’t happen.

Obama could send military aid to Ukraine to reverse the gains the Russian-backed insurgents have made. But he won’t do that either.

We know that the Israelis keep declaring cease-fires in Gaza but the Hamas terrorist government there keeps violating them. Secretary of State Kerry, negotiating with whomever will talk to him (a shrinking cohort), wants to blame Israel for the continued killing. The Israelis are ignoring Kerry and Obama because their prescriptions for peace place all of the burdens and all of the risk on Israel, not the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who fire rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. All Obama was willing to do was to effectively blockade Israel by banning civilian flights to its principal airport for forty-eight hours. He takes no notice of Palestinian rockets, or their using concrete not to build schools but to construct tunnels into Israel to mount terrorist attacks.

Obama’s peace processors: Brotherhood love
The American administration has discovered new peace partners (the “neutral parties”) to help end the Gaza conflict: Turkey and Qatar. Egypt is not on the list (though it was thrown a bone by being nominated to host cease-fire talks). Egypt, of course, borders both Israel and Gaza, and made a serious cease-fire proposal a week back that Israel accepted and Hamas rejected, apparently on the advice of Turkey and Qatar.

Secretary of State John Kerry met with officials from Turkey and Qatar in Paris this week and the three countries seem to be on the same page in pushing cease-fire terms that could have been drafted by Hamas.

Today comes news of Turkish approval of a new flotilla, the so-called “Freedom Flotilla II” that will sail to Gaza to provide “humanitarian” assistance with support from the Turkish navy. The organizers of the flotilla are the IHH, the same group that sailed to the shores of Gaza in 2010 in the “Free Gaza Flotilla” armed with pipes, sticks and guns and ready to rumble with the Israel Defense Forces as part of their”humanitarian mission.”

If the new flotilla sails, Turkey may have to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and itself.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan burnished his credentials as a peacemaker this week blasting Israel for “barbarism worse than Hitler.” Erdogan also added: “Since [Israel’s creation] in 1948, we have been witnessing this attempt at systematic genocide every day and every month. But above all, we are witnessing this attempt at systematic genocide every Ramadan.”

In other words, Israel attempts systematic genocide every day for 66 years, but particularly during Ramadan. Erdogan’s comments seemed to echo the insights of Dean Wormer in “Animal House,” inventor of something called “double secret probation,” probably also in effect systematically every Ramadan.

Turkey’s government also saw fit to encourage wild mobs to congregate outside Israel’s embassy and consular facilities, in direct contravention of diplomatic rules, with members of Erdogan’s party leading the charge in some cases.

Ban on flights to Israel was just another attempt by US administration to force Israel to accept difficult conditions in Gaza.
Artificial sweet talk in public and stabs in the back behind the scenes – that’s how we should describe the attitude of US President Barack Obama’s administration towards us. From now on we can also call it “Obama’s wars on Israel.”

The first war was in the 2011 Arab Spring, when this American regime tried to portray the events as a sort of marvelous democratic uprising, compared to the obsolete Israeli democracy which is lagging behind. This is the way the Arab uprising was explicitly described by some members of Obama’s staff, all Jews of course.

Then came reality and hit Obama in the face, as the Arabs – all of them – collapsed: Syria died, Iraq died, Libya died, and an Arab democracy remained solely in the American hallucinations.

The second war was Secretary of State John Kerry’s desperate attempt in 2013 to reduce Israel’s size to the point of putting it in existential danger. He forced Israel and Mahmoud Abbas into futile but dangerous negotiations, which evoked destructive Islamic urges and deteriorated the security situation both in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel.

Encouraged by Kerry, the Palestinians’ imagination began going wild: They would receive Jerusalem, the return of the refugees, the Jordan Valley, lands, prisoners – and the result was arrogance, and therefore violence, defiance and self-destruction.

Of course those American diplomats rushed to blame Israel for all the world’s troubles, at their master’s order, but that war failed too. Israel insisted on its right to exist, and not to turn Judea and Samaria into Gaza.

Where is that Kerry today, the man wanted to hand Judea Samaria over to Arab sovereignty? Why everything that is happening in Gaza would have happened here, and that would have been the end of Israel. Fortunately, the Gaza war broke out now, because it illustrates what would have happened if, God forbid, we would have transferred more lands to the Arab terror.

Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are guesstimated to sneak into the United States through the Southern Border on foot or on wheels. Much less is known about the number of illegals who make their way through undiscovered tunnels dug underneath the border.

Unlike the limited baggage those crossing overland from Mexico can carry, the moles can smuggle through the tunnels not only tons of different illegal drugs, but also weapons, including WMD, conventional and unconventional explosives, GPRs, and shoulder-fired missiles, similar to the rockets Hamas is firing on Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Iranian and North Korean know-how assisted the construction of Hamas tunnels deep into Israel. Hezbollah and al Qaeda-affiliated groups have been active throughout Latin America in general and in Mexico in particular, and lately North Korean activity in the region has been noticed too. All these groups are known to cooperate with Mexico’s infamous drug cartels and transnational criminal groups.

Since all Islamists consider the U.S. as the Big Enchilada (“Big Satan”) that has to be conquered and that a vast tunnel network already exist under the southern border, how many members of Hezbolla and al Qaeda affiliates have already come through? What kind of conventional and unconventional weapons have they smuggled in? The discovery of well disguised tunnels is a difficult task even when such threat is acknowledged. David Masters, who oversees such DHS efforts stated earlier this year that “We can’t go check if every rock or boulder is a tunnel.”

Moreover, the Administration opposes any measure that will allow to identify and track illegal aliens, diminishing the probability of obtaining intelligence that would help destroy the tunnels and prevent drugs, weapons and terrorists who carry them from entering the country. Keep this in mind to better understand Obama’s growing pressure on Israel to stop the destruction of Hamas rockets filled tunnels that threaten the lives of all Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike. Still, it is disturbing that the president of what used to be the “leader of the free world” is actively engaged with the most radical leaders who are set on genocide and suppression of all freedoms.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/stop-the-surprise-it-is-war

Perhaps the most stunning aspect of the current Hamas battle against Israel is the exasperation expressed by Westerners. Incredulity by some that Hamas would use the people it was elected to represent as human shields, and by others, that Israel would persist when the deaths to Palestinians are so out of proportion with those to Israel is a prominent sentiment seen throughout the media. Each time it becomes apparent that double standards and false moral equivalences are being inappropriately applied, even more frustration is provoked. So many others, meanwhile, are simply weary from the very notion of violence.

Such responses indicate the degree to which Westerners are invested in seeing anything but the simple truth: Hamas, along with the rest of Palestinian leadership, declared WAR on Israel and Jews everywhere years ago and everything since is nothing more than battle maneuvers- EVERYTHING! Each day the West insists upon creating fantasies to disguise this truth it moves closer to bringing the same fate Israel experiences to its shores.

One need only digest the 1988 Hamas charter to understand. True, many attempts have been made to emasculate the power of the charter. Some write that it is an old document and no longer applicable to the aims of the organization. They point out that the charter was withdrawn from the Hamas website in favor of an election manifesto which itself omits a call for Israel’s destruction. Carter Center advisor Robert Pastor has written that reputed billionaire Hamas leader in hiding, Khaled Meshal, told him that the charter is “a piece of history and no longer relevant, but cannot be changed for internal reasons.” Peace negotiators try to assure us that, when in the room, Hamas representatives express different views.

These and other excuses fail to demonstrate that Hamas is anything other than what its charter describes. The US Constitution is also an old document and, to many, an aggravating obstacle to accomplishing many progressive goals. Nonetheless, until that Constitution is changed or eliminated, it will always be the best evidence of American principles, values, and intentions. Eliminating direct calls for the destruction of Israel and Jews from an election manifesto, essentially remaining silent on the subject, is insufficient to demonstrate any radical transformation of Hamas’ principles, values, and intentions. Further, it is unclear what “internal reasons” could possibly stand in the way of the suggested major overhaul of Hamas’ fundamental raison d’etre. If Islamists are known for anything, it is their ability while negotiating, to say anything with a straight face.

All of this is nothing more than Hamas’ use of tawriya or simple lying and deception. Much as the Islamic Republic of Iran has used taqiyya to fertilize our own willful blindness in order to advance its march to becoming a nuclear weapons state, Hamas will use whatever battle tactic it can to advance its mission. Both organizations are crystal clear that they are fighting a war that takes primacy over everything else. Still, Western politicians and intellectuals and a media amplifying their hopes to resolve an irresolvable conflict fail to see it.

“Military Colonist” is a term that has gone out of fashion in this brave new world of “No Human Being is Illegal” and “Every Refugee Deserves to be Resettled.”

The university history professor with an office full of fake Indian jewelery and a view of the parking lot will lecture on the military colonies of the Roman period, always careful to emphasize their eventual fate. And he may even get up to the 16th century. But he’ll stay away from the present.

But if you are going to take land or seize power, you will need military colonists to hold it. The military colonist may be an ex-soldier, but he’s more likely to be someone the empire, present or future, doesn’t particularly need or have a use for. The Czars used serfs. The present day military colonist who shows up at JFK or LAX may also be a peasant with even less value to his culture.

Mexico’s military colonists are not military. Often they aren’t even Mexican. But they have managed to take back California without firing a shot. Unless you count the occasional drive by shooting.

While the United States sent tens of thousands of soldiers to try and hold Iraq and Afghanistan only to fail; Mexico took California with a small army of underpaid handymen who claim entire cities and send back some 20 billion dollars a year. As conquests go, it’s not hard to see who did more with less.

In 2009, 417 Mexican migrants died trying to reach America, and 317 American soldiers died in Afghanistan. But Mexico has more to show for it than America does. Every Mexican who settles across the border is a net gain who sends back money and spreads political influence. Meanwhile America is spending trillions on a much smaller army in a country whose land no one actually wants.

In 2009, the year Obama approved a 30,000 man troop surge, 3,195 Afghans received permanent legal status in the United States.

In the decade since the US invaded Afghanistan, 24,710 Afghans successfully invaded the United States and received permanent legal status. That is an occupying force larger than US troop numbers were at any point in time in Afghanistan until the very end of the George W. Bush’s second term.

Madeleine Albright: ‘To Put It Mildly, the World Is a Mess’ By Katherine Connell

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright thinks that there have been two “huge game-changers” in world affairs recently: Putin’s actions toward Crimea and Ukraine and the unraveling of the Middle East.

In an interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, she described the unrest in the Middle East as a result of an Arab awakening and reaction to the artificiality of borders that were drawn in the region following World War I. As for Russia, “Putin is living in his own world,” she said. “He has made up a lot of lies,” and seeks to “reestablish himself as the identification of Russian nationalism” and to recreate “something akin to the Soviet Union.”

When asked for her thoughts on the conflict in Gaza, Albright said that while she was a believer in Israel’s moral authority and its need to ensure its security, she is “concerned about Israel . . . in terms of their image,” given the mounting Palestinian casualities. She lauded Secretary of State John Kerry “for all the effort” he has put in to attempting to broker negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, while acknowledging that it had not succeeded.

Schieffer noted that in the face of all this turmoil, President Obama has seemed to be otherwise occupied. “Every time you turn on a TV he’s en route to a fundraiser,” he said, asking if Albright agreed that that was a fair criticism.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” she said. “He has his advisers around him” and “has been on the phone,” she said.

While Albright disputed the idea that the U.S. is “stepping back” from world affairs, she said that what has changed is Americans’ attitude to engagement: “We don’t want to be the world’s policeman.”