RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-714517

Operation Breaking Dawn, Israel’s 55-hour war against Islamic Jihad in Gaza that ended on Sunday night, not only aroused the wrath of the world’s usual antisemitic suspects; it also caused the small but vociferous domestic “peace camp” chorus to sing its tired refrain about the desperate need for a political solution to the conflict.

The tired “two-state” mantra is also reiterated by White House and State Department officials at every opportunity, other than when they are busily beseeching Iran to return to the nuclear deal. Naturally, US President Joe Biden repeated it during his visit last month to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

He went beyond his already foolish even-handedness, however, when touring the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. On his way to the medical center that treats Palestinian patients from East Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, his team removed the Israeli flag from his limousine and forbade Israeli reporters from covering the event. He then gave a little speech in which he likened the plight of the Palestinians to that of his Irish forebears.

“[W]e have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish-Catholics over the years, for 400 years,” he said, before quoting an Irish poem about hoping for a “tidal wave of justice.”

https://bit.ly/3p5Y7DV

The August 2022 Israeli war on Gaza-based Palestinian terrorists serves as a wake up call for Israeli and Western policy makers and public opinion molders, who are determined to observe/assess the volcanic and treacherous Middle East through the accommodating and relatively-peaceful Western lenses.

For example:

*The August 2022 war on Palestinian terrorism is a wake up call to the Israeli and Western “Palestine-Firsters.” Once again, Arab countries showered the Palestinians with an embracing-talk, but refrained from a supportive walk, militarily, financially or politically. Hence, the 2022 Arab walk was consistent with the Arab conduct during all previous military clashes between Israel and Palestinian terrorism: the First and Second Intifada of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, the 1982-85 war against the PLO in Lebanon, and the four wars against the Gaza-based Hamas terrorists in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

*During the last few days, I participated in several TV panel-discussions with experts from Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. All of them concurred with my perspective on the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue in Middle East affairs, displaying indifference or hostility toward the Palestinians. They echoed the Arab image of Palestinians as a role-model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism and ingratitude, as documented by the Palestinian intra-Arab track record.  

*In contrast to Western conventional wisdom, Arab policy makers are convinced that the proposed Palestinian state would be a pro-Iran, pro-Russia and pro-China rogue/terrorist entity, fueling domestic and regional turbulence, and intensifying the existing threats to the survival of every pro-US Arab regime.

https://www.jns.org/as-latest-round-of-fighting-ends-israels-gaza-strategy-comes-under-scrutiny/

 “Operation Breaking Dawn” is being described as one of Israel’s most successful Gaza operations in recent years. “All goals have been achieved, whoever tries to harm us will pay with his life,” Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Monday evening, addressing the nation. Yet some have questioned Israel’s current Gaza policy, which leads it into successive rounds of fighting with no end in sight. They say it’s time to develop a new strategy.

“How do we see the next 20 to 50 years? Are we really going to live with the reality where every six months to a year, half of Israeli society is always under fire?” asked Amir Avivi, CEO and founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), an Israeli NGO comprising thousands of former security officers.

“The idea is we will hit the terrorists hard and then gain a few years of quiet, but we see it’s not working,” he told JNS. “They build themselves back very, very fast. And with each operation they’re able to shoot more rockets with more explosives and more accuracy, while developing other capabilities. We need to ask ourselves: Is this the reality that the people of Israel deserve?”

While the current operation focused exclusively on the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group, it’s to Hamas and its growing strength that Avivi points as proof that Israel’s current strategy is a failure. “Hamas is projecting its power and ideology all over Israel and all over the region. It’s becoming the leading organization in the fight for Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. They are the heroes of the Palestinians and also of Arab Israelis in the north and the south. This has become a huge threat. It’s not just about Gaza anymore,” he said.

Avivi praised the latest operation on the tactical level, but not the strategic one.

“This is the paradox. When the army fights, there’s nothing like the IDF. It’s amazing. But when you look at the overall picture, the strategic picture, it’s terrible,” he said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18785/palestinians-americas-adversary

The statement in support of China is yet another example of the Palestinians’ betting on the wrong horse. Always on the side of the despotic regimes and countries, Palestinians appear to have learned nothing from their mistakes.

While Israel consistently stands by its US partners, Palestinians continue to ridicule and condemn the US, undermine its interests by aligning themselves with anti-US parties, and financing the families of Palestinians who murder Israeli and US citizens.

Palestinians expect US financial aid, but oppose the US on every foreign policy front. The Biden administration does not seem to have a problem funding the Iranian regime, the Chinese Communist Party, the illegitimate Venezuelan government or the Palestinian leadership while Palestinians are spitting in the face of the US and openly supporting all those who hate the US and the Americans. It sometimes seems as if the harder America’s adversaries spit, the harder the Americans rush to fund them.

Palestinians, who have sided against America with Nazi Germany, the Russians, Saddam Hussein, North Korea, Syria’s Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, and now China, are again exposing their anti-US sentiments. They will happily pad their bank accounts with American money, while continuing to act against the US and its policies in different parts of the world.

Many Arab countries have learned the lesson of Palestinian betrayal: that is why they long ago stopped funding the Palestinians. The Arab leaders refuse to throw their money at those who praise their enemies.

The US has actually been teaching those who wish to create a Palestinian state that being best buddies with America’s worst enemies is where the biggest profits lie.

Palestinian leaders have a tradition of backing tyrants and corrupt regimes around the world. When their choices prove disastrous, they run to the Americans begging for pity.

The Palestinian leaders do not run to their Arab brothers: they know that most Arab countries are sick and tired of Palestinian lies and backstabbing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-fighting-is-a-sign-of-israeli-failure-hamas-idf-weapons-military-terror-organizations-security-rockets-11659972663?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Another round of fighting in Gaza has ended with a brokered cease-fire after a limited yet deadly exchange of fire between a terror organization and the Israel Defense Forces. The fighting lasted three days, more than 1,000 rockets were fired at Israel—including toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—and millions of Israelis found cover and relative safety thanks to the phenomenal Iron Dome, which intercepted more than 96% of the lethal rockets aimed at Israeli civilians.

At least 20 operatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were killed in action by the IDF, and scores more were wounded. Most important, almost the entire chain of command of the Islamic Jihad was eliminated in separate pinpoint strikes, leaving that organization with significant staffing shortages for the foreseeable future. Sadly, several Gazan civilians were also killed, either inadvertently by the IDF or by malfunctioning Palestinian rockets fired by terrorists.

None of the above should be surprising or sound new to anyone who has been following Middle Eastern news for the past 15 years. Other rounds, like Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, lasted longer, caused more casualties and destruction in Israel and in Gaza, and ended in similar fashion.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18784/gaza-condemn-israel

Commenting on the killing of Zawahiri, UN Secretary General’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN was “committed to fighting against terrorism and strengthening international cooperation in countering that threat”.

Of course it was a different story when Israel acted against Jabari. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland was “deeply concerned” by “the targeted killing today of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader inside Gaza.”

Israel has not claimed its operation in Gaza — codenamed Breaking Dawn — is to deter. The government has made it clear that the strikes were to prevent an imminent threat to the Israeli population. It had hard intelligence that PIJ, led by Jabari, was planning attacks across the border from Gaza. Protecting its people from violent external attack is not only permitted under international law, it is the duty of every government. If deterrence of such attacks were possible, Israel would have taken action to deter.

PIJ is an Iranian proxy, directed and funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Its leader, Ziad Nakhaleh, has been in Tehran for the last few days, meeting with his IRGC paymasters and other government officials including Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

As PIJ and its fellow jihadists have indiscriminately fired an estimated 400 missiles (at time of writing) at targets from Sderot to Tel Aviv since Operation Breaking Dawn began, the IDF has continued to launch precision strikes from the air and the ground to halt the attacks on Israeli citizens. Just as Israel’s casus belli for attacking PIJ targets was lawful, it has taken the utmost care to ensure its continued strikes are also lawful, only attacking targets that are proportionate and necessary to the military objectives and giving warnings where civilian casualties could occur.

We can expect non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Human Rights Watch to pile on. Amnesty International, however, might be slightly more circumspect as they are at present gyrating from the widespread international reproach that greeted their just-published report condemning Ukraine’s defensive actions, in which they again showed the total incomprehension of war and the laws of war that they often demonstrate in their denunciations of Israel.

Slavering for the last two days at the prospect of IDF-inflicted mass casualties, much of the media immediately and without any evidence eagerly pointed the finger at Israel over the tragic killing of seven people, including four children, in Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip. They will undoubtedly try, but journalists and UN investigators will find it hard to refute the IDF’s confirmation that they did not strike the location and have conclusive video and radar evidence that the deaths were caused by a misfired PIJ rocket, launched as so often from within the civilian population. This would certainly fit, as approximately a quarter of all terrorist rockets fired so far during this campaign have landed inside Gaza, not in Israel.

A week ago US President Joe Biden ordered the elimination of Al Qaida boss Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul. A few days later Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid ordered the elimination of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commander Tayseer al-Jabari in Gaza. These were two of a kind: mass killers whose sole purpose was to inflict pain, death and destruction on ordinary decent people to bring about their vision of Islamic conquest.

https://www.jns.org/idf-footage-shows-beyond-doubt-that-misfired-islamic-jihad-rocket-killed-children-in-gaza/?utm_

The Israeli military says some 180 projectiles launched by PIJ fell short in Gaza, killing at least nine people • “All fire by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization is a double war crime: It is shooting at civilians, and using Gazan civilians as human shields,” says the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
A picture shows rockets being fired by Islamic Jihad toward Israel from the Gaza Strip, on August 5, 2022. Photo by Attia Muhammed/Flash90.
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(August 7, 2022 / JNS) The Israel Defense Forces on Saturday night released footage it claims shows a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket misfiring and causing an explosion in a residential area of Jabalya that reportedly killed numerous people, including four children.

The rocket was launched at 6:51 p.m. local time, according to the IDF, and was detected by the military’s ballistic missile defense center. PIJ is experiencing an average of 20% misfired rockets, according to the military.

As of Sunday evening, terrorists from Gaza had fired some 1,000 projectiles towards the Jewish state since the IDF launched “Operation Breaking Dawn” on Friday afternoon.

About 160 of these rockets fell short in Gaza, killing at least nine people, according to the IDF.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/avoiding-mention-of-iran-while-urging-israeli-restraint/?utm_source=

The facts of “Operation Breaking Dawn” don’t make the slightest difference to the moral-equivalence choir hot to return to the JCPOA.

When asked in a TV interview on Saturday afternoon about the response of his counterparts at the United Nations to “Operation Breaking Dawn” against Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in Gaza, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Gilad Erdan said that the bulk of the world’s focus right now is on the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Pacific. He did acknowledge that the Palestinian Authority’s representative at the international body, Permanent Observer Riyad Mansour, has been busy urging the Security Council to condemn Israel—as usual.

If Erdan was feeling even mildly relieved about his colleagues’ attention being elsewhere for a change, U.N. Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland ought to have put a damper on the sentiment. In an official statement on Friday, the useless envoy wrote, “I am deeply concerned by the ongoing escalation between Palestinian militants and Israel, including the targeted killing today of a Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader inside Gaza. This takes place amidst mounting tensions across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in recent weeks.”

The rest of the blather, which lacked all context, typically took Israel to task for the “at least 10 Palestinians … killed, [including] a five-year-old child … There can be no justification for any attacks against civilians. The continuing escalation is very dangerous. The launching of rockets must cease immediately, and I call on all sides to avoid further escalation.”