Displaying posts published in

January 2019

Pulling out of Judea and Samaria could pose ‘existential’ threat to Israel by David Jablinowitz,

https://worldisraelnews.com/pulling-out-of-judea-and-samaria-could-pose-existential-threat-to-israel

Research counters common view in the defense establishment supporting separating Israelis and Palestinians.

Even as anticipation grows of a U.S. plan for the Israelis and Palestinians formulated by the Trump administration, a new survey is raising alarm bells that an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria could pose an existential threat to the State of Israel.

The research was conducted by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen on behalf of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. Hacohen served in the IDF for 42 years, commanding troops in battle on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts.

He is perhaps best known, however, for commanding the army’s 2005 Gaza withdrawal and overseeing the forced removal of the some 8,000 Israelis living in the Strip.

His current research accentuates the change in the military theater over the years from conventional battlefields to confrontations involving civilian populations.

In the research, Hacohen lays out possible scenarios which he says could materialize if Israel were to withdraw from Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria. ‘A’ is exclusively administered by Palestinian Authority control and ‘B’ is under joint Palestinian-Israel control under the terms of the Oslo Accords signed in the 1990’s, though Israel bears ultimate security responsibility.

There is also an Area C, which is under full Israeli control.

The New Iron Curtain: Russian Missile Defense Challenges U.S. Air Power The S-400 antiaircraft system hasn’t been tested in battle, but its growing deployment threatens America’s aerial dominance. by Thomas Grove

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-missile-defense-draws-a-new-iron-curtain-against-u-s-military-11548255438?mod=hp_lead_pos5

HMEIMIM AIR BASE, Syria—North from Syria, along the borders of Eastern Europe and rounding the Arctic Circle to the east, Russia has built a ring of air defenses that threaten the reach of the U.S. military, forcing Washington to rethink its place as the world’s undisputed air power.

Russia’s S-400 antiaircraft missile system, a nettlesome and potentially deadly aerial shield, is changing the calculus of the U.S. and its allies in potential hot spots, beginning with its deployment in Syria.

Radar employed by the S-400, which Russia claims can detect the latest stealth aircraft, casts a net around western Syria that stretches from Turkey to the Mediterranean Sea to Israel.

While it hasn’t been tested in battle, S-400 radar tracking has shooed away aircraft of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria “as soon as they see on their electronic indicators that they are being watched,” Lt. Gen. Viktor Gumyonny, commander of Russia’s air-defense forces, told a TV interviewer.

Russia’s hybrid warfare tactics against the West, including election meddling and online disinformation campaigns, have drawn the most attention from lawmakers and the U.S. government. Proliferation of the S-400 system demonstrates how Russia is also investing heavily in traditional military firepower.
Airborne Defense
Russia has disclosed only some locations of its S-400 antiaircraft missile system.

How the Clinton machine flooded the FBI with Trump-Russia dirt … until agents bit By John Solomon

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/426464-how-the-clinton-machine-flooded-the-fbi-with-trump-russia-dirt-until

When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s what Hillary Clinton’s machine did in 2016, eventually getting the FBI to bite on an uncorroborated narrative that Donald Trump and Russia were trying to hijack the presidential election.

Between July and October 2016, Clinton-connected lawyers, emissaries and apologists made more than a half-dozen overtures to U.S. officials, each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents’ hands, according to internal documents and testimonies I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

In each situation, the overture was uninvited. And as the election drew closer, the point of contact moved higher up the FBI chain.

It was, as one of my own FBI sources called it, a “classic case of information saturation” designed to inject political opposition research into a counterintelligence machinery that should have suspected a political dirty trick was underway.

Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.

US Army Buys Israel’s Iron Dome for Tactical Missile Defense Shoshana Bryen and Stephen Bryen

http://www.atimes.com/article/us-army-buys-israels-iron-dome-for-tactical-missile-defense/
Iron Dome was developed by Israel, in partnership with US firm Raytheon, to deal with short-range rockets, mortars and artillery rounds.

f necessity is the mother of invention, Israel has come up with missile defense systems that meet its necessities and which others are now keen to deploy.

On Israel’s southeast, the Hamas arsenal includes mortars and rockets including the upgraded Qassam, Katyusha, GRAD and the new Iranian M-302, M-75 and Fajr-5. Two hundred rockets and mortars were fired on one day in July, and Israeli cities, including most recently parts of Tel Aviv, are within range.

Iranian-armed Hezbollah has more than 100,000 rockets and missilesin Southern Lebanon pointed at Israel, and increasingly, they are precision guided. Hezbollah also has an arsenal of Iranian-supplied drones.

In response, Israel has produced technologies long sought by the United States but generally not available to American troops. The “Not Invented Here” syndrome, with its accompanying desire to feed American defense contractors, has delayed serious American consideration of Israeli technology.

Until now.

Iron Dome was developed by Israel – with the American partnership of Raytheon for the Tamir interceptor missile that is part of the Iron Dome – and was introduced in March 2011 to deal with short-range rockets, mortars and artillery rounds. It has a sustained success intercept rate of more than 90%, achieved by its ability to select targets that are likely to hit populated areas or sensitive military or economic sites. Missiles on a trajectory to hit the sea or empty spaces are not targeted for interception.
Iron Dome impresses

Palestinians: The ‘Political Detainees’ No One Talks About by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13595/palestinian-political-detainees

The Rome-based International Federation for Rights and Development last week condemned the Palestinian Authority for its crackdown on political opponents and said the detainees were being subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture in Palestinian prisons.

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of “political detainees” who are being held in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank. According to some human rights organizations, the Palestinians held in PA prisons are often subjected to various forms of torture.

In a letter to Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, a number of Palestinian human rights organizations recently demanded that the international agency speak out against the politically motivated arrests by the PA in the West Bank. It is highly unlikely, however, that the human rights organizations will receive any reply from the UN, whose various agencies continue to be obsessed only with Israel.

The UN does not seem to care about human rights violations committed by the PA against its own people. These are the type of stories that evidently do not interest either the UN or the international media because they lack an anti-Israel angle. The only “abuses” they see are those that can be blamed on Israel.

What is happening in the PA-controlled territories and prisons in the West Bank is a tiny taste of what life for the Palestinians would be like under a totalitarian regime that does not tolerate any form of criticism. In both the PA-controlled territories and Gaza, Palestinians must resort to the desperate measure of closing their mouths to food because they cannot open their mouths to demand decent treatment.

The mother and wife of a Palestinian man being held without trial in a Palestinian Authority (PA) prison in the West Bank have gone on hunger strike as part of a campaign to secure his release. Four days after they began their hunger strike, the two women were rushed to hospital for medical treatment. The women say they will not end their hunger strike unless the PA releases Abdel Rahman Shaheen, who was detained in early January.

The mother of another Palestinian being held in PA prison, Murad Fattash, has also gone on a hunger strike to protest the continued incarceration of her son, who was also detained by the PA in early January.

Palestinians say that Shaheen and Fattash are among dozens of “political detainees” who are being held in PA prisons and detention centers in various parts of the West Bank.

Most of the detainees were taken into custody for criticizing the PA and its leaders and policies. They include engineers, lawyers, university lecturers and students, journalists and political activists affiliated with opposition groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the PLO’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Turkey: The Price of Dissent by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13546/turkey-dissent
A mufti who works for Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, recently insinuated that a massacre of the employees of the opposition news site OdaTV would be justified.

“This is how jihad is being taught at schools.” — Title of the OdaTV article that sparked threat of massacre.

“We are a news website that draws attention to the new [Islamic] organizations whose members are being staffed in state institutions… We remind that illegal structures are once again being formed within the state… Why do the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Justice, and the Directorate of Religious Affairs stay silent?” — Barış Pehlivan, the editor-in-chief of the threatened OdaTV.

“The point is not that these things are written in Islamic scripture, but that people still live by them.” — Bruce Bawer, author.

Although OdaTV has not denounced or criticized Islam, it does oppose the indoctrination of school children with violent jihad. Apparently even this was sufficient cause for the Turkish mufti to threaten the outlet’s journalists with death.

A mufti who works for Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, recently insinuated that a massacre of the employees of the opposition news site OdaTV — along the lines of the 2015 slaughter of the staff of the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo — would be justified.

Ahmet Altıok, mufti of the Siirt Province, made this veiled threat of mass murder in an interview with the İLKHA news agency. ILKHA has ties to Turkey’s Hizbullah (“party of Allah” in Arabic; not connected to Hezbollah in Lebanon), a Sunni terrorist organization responsible for many horrific murders in the country.

In his interview, Altıok said, in part:

“Be it Charlie Hebdo or Ka’b ibn al-Ashraf [an ancient Jewish poet assassinated for criticizing Mohammed] … people who continually ridiculed, mocked and insulted Muslims… will be once again convicted in the society’s conscience. I call on these gentlemen to apologize. For you know repentance before death is accepted.”

According to Barış Pehlivan, the editor-in-chief of OdaTV, Altıok’s warning was sparked by an article on the OdaTV website entitled “This is how jihad is being taught at schools.” Pehlivan said, however, that the article was “just an excuse”:

Syria’s UN envoy in veiled threat: We will attack Ben-Gurion Airport

http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/01/23/syrian-envoy-to-un-in-veiled-threat-we-will-attack-ben-gurion-airport/

If U.N. Security Council doesn’t adopt measures to stop Israel, “Syria would practice its legitimate right of self-defense and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv airport,” Bashar Jaafari warns.

Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari warned Tuesday that his country would attack Ben-Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv if the world body fails to stop Israeli strikes on his country, including on the international airport in Damascus.

Speaking before the U.N. Security Council after a series of IAF airstrikes on Sunday and Monday, Jaafari said Israel was only able to act freely in Syria because it had the backing of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in the Security Council.

If the Security Council didn’t adopt measures stop Israel, “Syria would practice its legitimate right of self-defense and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv airport,” Jaafari was quoted as saying by Syrian state media Sana.

Pompeo and Regime Change in Tehran Are we going revolutionary again? Michael Ledeen

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272620/pompeo-and-regime-change-tehran-michael-ledeen

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently made an astonishing statement to a small group of journalists, in which he appeared to call for revolution in Iran, and pledge American support for it. Adam Kredo reported it:

Pompeo, speaking to reporters in Riyadh, said that the Trump administration’s primary goal is to empower the Iranian people to rein in the ruling regime, which has spent a fortune on foreign wars and terror operations as its own people suffer from a collapsing economy.

While the administration has been careful to avoid characterizing its policy as regime change, it has become clear that it does supports efforts by the Iranian people to end Tehran’s expansionist march across the region, particularly in Syria and Yemen. The administration also has stated that it opposes the hardline regime and would offer its support to opposition elements in the country.

“Our effort is to make sure that the Iranian people get control of their capital, and it becomes a nation that is normal and is not conducting terror campaigns that are unrivaled any place else in the world, Pompeo said.

It may well be that the Trump Administration has always maintained it would support opposition elements in Iran, but although I have long favored such support for revolution against the regime, I haven’t seen much evidence of it. Although the president, the vice president, the national security adviser and the secretary of state have been unstinting in their criticism of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his henchmen, it has been difficult to spot concrete signs of their support for regime opponents, or for what would constitute a revolutionary change in Tehran.

Walls Work. Just Ask This Community College on the Southern Border. By Matt C. Pinsker

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/walls-work-just-ask-this-community-college-on-the-southern-border/

Laredo Community College solved its illegal-immigration problem with an eight-foot-tall, mile-long fence.

One day last August, I was on a ride-along with the Border Patrol when we received a signal from one of Uncle Sam’s motion detectors: Illegal aliens were advancing towards the Rio Grande. We arrived at the scene within minutes. Unfortunately, they were already gone.

From their tracks, it looked like three to four people. Not too far from where we stood, there were several roads and houses adjacent to the river’s edge. The aliens had likely either been picked up by a waiting vehicle or disappeared into a nearby house.

More likely than not, they are probably still in the U.S.

My days with the Border Patrol were arranged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office to which I had been assigned, and they served as an opportunity for me, as a new prosecutor, to get more familiar with the procedures, operations, duties, and responsibilities of the agency. The more I understood their job, the better I could do my job as a prosecutor.

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib Added to Oversight Committee Before Cohen Hearing By Bridget Johnson

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ocasio-cortez-tlaib-added-to-oversight-committee-before-cohen-hearing/

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) added a trio of progressive freshmen lawmakers to the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee, which plans on investigating the executive branch in a number of areas.

Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) are joining the panel as Pelosi pitched the addition of “outstanding members” on “critical committees, where their fresh vision and powerful voices will be critical.”

Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) noted that the committee is “the primary investigative body in Congress, and we will address the issues that affect the American people every day while we root out waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“The American people voted for accountability and transparency this past election, and I’m eager to work in a bipartisan manner on behalf of all of our constituents to deliver on these goals,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE