RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israeli-jets-appear-to-have-struck-iraq-for-the-first-time-since-1981-11564700841

Two airstrikes on Shiite militia targets took place in Iraq last month. No country or organization has taken responsibility, but there are strong reasons to think they were carried out by Israel. If so, these would be the Jewish state’s first air raids on Iraq since the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

The first of the raids, on July 19, targeted a militia base near the town of Amerli in Salah al-Din province, north of Baghdad. The second, three days later, struck Camp Ashraf, a former U.S. military base in Iraq’s Diyala Province. Both the Ashraf and Amerli bases are now controlled by the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia cum political party, in apparent cooperation with Iran.

According to Arabic media reports, the second raid was of considerably larger dimensions than the first. Al-Ain, the Emirati news website that broke the news of the Camp Ashraf action, reported about 40 dead Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel and Iraqi Shiite militiamen.

The Saudi Sharq al Awsat newspaper last week attributed the attacks to Israel. Officials in Jerusalem have remained silent, but their country is the only serious candidate. The only other main enemies of the Shiite militias in Iraq are Islamic State and the U.S. and its coalition. The former lacks the capacity to mount air raids. The latter are engaged in high-stakes diplomacy intended to force an Iranian climbdown on the nuclear issue while avoiding a further deterioration in the relationship; open conflict is the last thing the U.S. and its allies want right now. That leaves Israel.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14638/palestinians-gaza-hospital

One would expect Palestinian leaders to have welcomed a new hospital that would serve the two million residents of the Gaza Strip. These leaders, however, have no problem sacrificing the lives of Palestinian patients on the altar of their hatred of the peace plan.

The Palestinian Authority leadership is right about one thing: one party in this conflict is indeed using the dispute for its own ends – but it is not the Trump administration. The only party that deserves blame is Abbas and his associates. They are rejecting a desperately needed medical facility solely in order to be able to continue to lay the blame for the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip at the doorstep of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority is probably the only government worldwide that views establishing a modern hospital as a “conspiracy.” It now remains to be seen whether the international community will cave in to Abbas’s campaign and ditch the hospital project, or decide actually to help the Palestinian people, whose leaders know only how to help themselves.

It hardly counts as news that Palestinian Authority leaders are obsessed with US President Donald J. Trump and his administration. Yet, these leaders have actually reached a new depth of obsession: they are now seeking to prevent the establishment of a new hospital for their people in the Gaza Strip.

The new field hospital, consisting of 16 departments, is slated to be built near the Erez border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The hospital was approved by Israel as part of ceasefire understandings reached during the past few weeks with the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip under the auspices of the United Nations, Qatar and Egypt.

The 43,000-square foot hospital will rely on the infrastructure, expertise and resources of an international NGO named Friendship and is meant to ensure a significant improvement in medical services to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Bizarrely, while Israel has approved the project, Palestinian Authority officials are trying to foil it. Palestinian Authority Minister of Health Mai Kaila, during a meeting in her West Bank office in Ramallah, reportedly told the UN Deputy Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace Process Jimmy McGoldrick on July 31 that the field hospital was part of a plan to separate the West Bank from the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinian Authority government considers the plan to build a hospital a “part of the Deal of the Century.”

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-From-Wrong-Sex-lies-and-videotape-597452

Nothing better illustrates the perils of prematurely debating a criminal case in the context of social politics than the recent arrest of a bunch of Israeli teenagers in Cyprus.

On Monday evening, after nearly two weeks in police custody, the remaining seven suspects in what was originally believed to be the gang rape of a 19-year-old British tourist in Ayia Napa landed at Ben-Gurion Airport. The other five were released a few days earlier.

Upon their arrival in Israel, the boys – aged 15 to 18 – were greeted by tearful family members and cheering friends.

The kids’ parents, who had believed in their sons’ innocence all along, felt vindicated. For days on end, the Israeli media and punditry had been portraying the teenagers as predators who had preyed upon a young woman whose only mistake was to trust in the three with whom she had consensual physical relations.

Before all the facts of the case were known or revealed, the accused were convicted in the court of public opinion. According to initial reports, the victim recounted meeting two Israelis – one who spoke no English, and the other who served as a translator for their flirtation – and admitted to going to bed with both of them, as a well as with a third friend of theirs. She claimed that things went awry when she set up a date with them one night, and they showed up with a slew of additional guys in tow. It was then, she said, that they all took turns raping her.

HER STORY sounded plausible for a number of reasons.

First of all, she acknowledged having had consensual sex with at least three people whom she barely knew, giving credibility to her claims of subsequent violent gang rape.

Please allow me to begin with excerpts from an article in Israel National News on 7/31/19 about President Trump’s adviser’s current visit to the Middle East…  

“…President Donald Trump’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman on Wednesday for talks on a controversial US plan for Israeli-PA peace. The two discussed ‘efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’…adding Kushner was ‘visiting Jordan on a tour that includes a number of countries in the region’…

Abdullah stressed ‘the need to achieve a just and lasting peace to ensure the establishment of an independent Palestinian state…with east Jerusalem as its capital, living in peace and security alongside Israel’…said any plan should be based on the internationally backed “two-state solution”and in accordance with the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative [italics GAH]. The [Arab] initiative called on Israel to withdraw from all land it liberated in1967, in exchange for normalization between all Arab states and Israel. Kushner was accompanied by Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt…” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/266764 

Note the part of the statement above in italics where Abdullah states that any agreement must be based on the 2002 Arab peace initiative. 

What he left out is that initiative also calls for Israel to be inundated by millions of allegedly “returning” Arab refugees, raised on decades of murderous hate. Note that more Jews fled “Arab”/Muslim lands than Arabs who fled in the opposite direction due to a war that over half dozen Arab states launched immediately upon Israel’s rebirth in May 1948. To this day, children are taught, by both Hamas and the PA’s Abbas folks, how to murder Jews in their summer camps, schools, television programs, and elsewhere. The Internet has plenty of references regarding this.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/united-nations-singles-out-israel-for-violating-womens-rights/

The United Nations economic and social council recently singled out Israel for violating women’s rights by a vote of 40–2 with nine abstentions and three countries absent.

The resolution criticized Israel for posing a “major obstacle” for Palestinian women “with regard to their advancement, self-reliance, and integration in the development of their society,” UN Watch reported.

The Council then resolved Israel should address these issues by complying with the 1994 agreement signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): fully opening Palestinian access to border crossings in the Gaza Strip, as well as restoring and replacing “civilian property, vital infrastructure, agricultural lands and government institutions that have been damaged or destroyed due to its military operations,” according to a UN press release.

Iran, Saudia Arabia, Yemen and Pakistan were among the 54-nation committee which proposed the resolution — all countries that have seen their fair share of criticism for human-rights abuses.

“It amazes me how the U.N. condones votes like these. It is a total mockery of human rights to allow Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Yemen to name Israel as the world’s only violator of women’s rights,” wrote Nikki Haley, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, on Twitter.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14634/arab-israeli-conflict-reasons

The cause of the problem is NOT the land. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, several Arab nations were created by fiat. The Arab world accepted this without any problem, as these were Muslim-majority countries. Rejecting the state of Israel was related to the fact that it is a Jewish rather than a Muslim country.

In this manner, despite the clear discrimination against non-Muslim minorities in most of the Arab and Muslim world (denying equal rights in church construction, for example), many in the Arab world point the finger only at Israel when they talk about discrimination.

The European Union is currently funding a study into Palestinians textbooks, brought about by the findings of the non-governmental organization IMPACT-se, which found in May that “the new Palestinian school [material] for the 2018–19 academic year… was ‘more radical than those previously published.'” … Meanwhile, no one is being educated for peace.

When we add onto all that the sad reality that Palestinian politicians are using the conflict to get billions of dollars in donations, we can understand why this conflict has so far not been solved.

We must salute Jared Kushner’s attempt to bring a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. That said, the Palestinians’ unsurprising rejection of the peace offer requires some scrutiny, especially the true causes of the perennial failure to achieve lasting peace.

Without understanding them, every attempt to solve this conflict, every attempt to make true peace in the Middle East, will always fail.

As an insider with a background as both a Muslim and an Arab, please allow me share with you some insight into the problem.

1. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about borders. It is about the existence of the state of Israel.

In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan — Resolution 181 — gave the Palestinians and Arabs control over most of the Holy Land. The rejection of the plan by the Arab nations, and their declaration of war against Israel rather than their acceptance of peace, was the first clear indication that the Arabs’ desire was never to provide a state for the Palestinian people, but rather has been from the beginning to erase Israel from the map. This destructive intent is memorialized in the Hamas Charter, which unashamedly asks for the eradication of the State of Israel. This intent is also aligned with the Iranian leaders’ continuous entreaties to destroy Israel. An evaluation of relevant social media commentary in the Arab world demonstrates a genuine desire by many — if not most — of the Arab population to see the destruction of Israel and the killing not just of all Israeli Jews but of all Jews:

 https://bit.ly/2LRLGdi

The pro-Palestinian Saudi talk has diminished, increasingly replaced by an adversarial Saudi walk.

The shift in the Saudi attitude has been reflected by a reduction of foreign aid to the Palestinians, partially due to the rift between the PA and Hamas, and in protest of PA corruption; a tighter control of monetary transfers by Palestinians residing in the kingdom; and the increase in the number of Palestinians arrested in – and denied access to – Saudi Arabia.

The transformation of the Saudi attitude toward the Palestinians has been triggered by Palestinian ties with entities which challenge and threaten the House of Saud. For example, the anti-Saudi Muslim Brotherhood (the largest Sunni Islamic terror organization), Iran’s Ayatollahs (the leading mortal enemy of the House of Saud), the anti-Saudi Erdogan’s Turkey (which supports the Muslim Brotherhood and opposes Saudi Arabia in Syria, Iraq, Qatar and Somalia), Hamas Palestinian terrorists (supported by Iran’s Ayatollahs and Turkey), Hezbollah terrorists (supported by the Ayatollahs), Qatar (which maintains close ties with Iran and Turkey, as well as with the USA), etc. 

Saudi homeland security concerns triggered the September 12, 2018 policy, which stopped the issuance of visas for the Haj (the major annual pilgrimage) and Umrah (a secondary pilgrimage) to Palestinians from Jordan, Lebanon and East Jerusalem, who possess only temporary travel documents. 

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/indispensable-netanyahu/

The Israeli prime minister’s diplomatic role has overriding importance for American and world security

After 13 years in office, Benjamin Netanyahu has served long enough to have rankled every Israeli I know. He faces a difficult election on September 17, after failing to form a coalition government following a national election earlier this year. As an American, I avoid taking a view on Israeli politics, but this is a special situation in which Netanyahu’s diplomatic role has overriding importance for American and world security. I have argued since 2009 that the United States has a narrow but important set of common interests with Russia in the Middle East. Thanks in large part to Netanyahu, security cooperation seems effective.

No other world leader could have convened, as Netanyahu did June 25, a meeting of Russia’s national security adviser Nicolai Petrushev and American NSA John Bolton. Speaking in Jerusalem, Petrushev declared, “We pay special attention to ensuring Israel’s security,” calling it “a special interest of ours because here in Israel live a little less than about two million of our countrymen.” He added, “Israel supports us in several channels, including at the UN.”

The Israeli prime minister is the only head of government who has the confidence of President Trump as well as President Putin. Few observers of the region grasp the scope of that accomplishment. Netanyahu did not create a working relationship with Russia by schmoozing its president, but by combining audacious grit and a willingness to compromise. In consequence, it appears possible for the United States and Israel to contain Iran’s imperial ambitions in the Levant without a shooting war. Russia has quietly but firmly discouraged Iran from crossing lines that would provoke actual hostilities, while allowing Israel to conduct hundreds of attacks against Iranian assets in Syria.