RUTHFULLY YOURS

The 3-mile-long tunnel from Gaza was designed for launching murder and kidnapping raids.

Americans are understandably concerned when they hear that the majority of Palestinian casualties in the fighting between Israel and Hamas have been civilians and when they see images of houses in Gaza reduced to rubble and women wailing. Given the lack of corresponding Israeli civilian casualties to date, this creates the impression of an unequal—and hence immoral—fight between Israel and Hamas.

Although American empathy for noncombatants is a critical component of who we are as a people, it should not blind us to reality: Israel’s military exists to protect its civilian population and seeks to avoid harming noncombatants, while its adversary cynically uses Palestinian civilians as human shields while deliberately targeting Israeli civilians.

I recently had the opportunity to see for myself the moral chasm between how the Israeli Defense Forces and Hamas treat civilians during military operations. In May I joined a dozen other retired U.S. generals and admirals on a trip to Israel with the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Just outside Hamas-ruled Gaza, we toured a tunnel discovered less than one kilometer from an Israeli kindergarten. Unlike tunnels that I had seen during the Iraq war that were designed for smuggling, this Hamas tunnel was designed for launching murder and kidnapping raids. The 3-mile-long tunnel was reinforced with concrete, lined with telephone wires, and included cabins unnecessary for infiltration operations but useful for holding hostages.

Israel, fearing just such tunnel-building, has long tried to limit imports of concrete to Gaza for anything but humanitarian projects, yet somehow thousands of tons of the material have been diverted for terror use rather than building hospitals or housing for Palestinians. Since the beginning of ground operations into Gaza, the IDF has uncovered approximately 30 similar tunnels leading into Israel, in addition to the more than two dozen discovered prior to Operation Protective Edge. Hamas operatives have been intercepted emerging from such tunnels in Israel carrying tranquilizers and handcuffs, apparently hoping to replicate the successful 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, for whom Israel exchanged 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in 2011.

The two big international headlines of the moment are the downing of the Malaysian jet over Ukraine and Israel’s incursion into Gaza. On the face of it, these two stories don’t have much in common, but they are in fact part of the same story. To know Israel it helps to know Ukraine, and to know Ukraine it helps to know Israel.

This weekend will mark the 70th anniversary of the day the Soviets re-took the city of Lviv (or Lvov, or Lemberg, according to taste) in western Ukraine, and ended a three-year German occupation. Before the Germans arrived, there were well over 100,000 Jews in the city and just shy of 50 synagogues. On July 26th 1944, when the Soviets returned, there were a couple of hundred Jews left.

Lviv had been, variously, Polish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Habsburg, Soviet — but always, across the centuries, Jewish. All gone.

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Same with any number of Ukrainian cities. Chernivtsi, or Czernowitz, was once known as “Jerusalem on the Prut.” There were 50,000 Jews out of a population of approximately 100,000, and they dominated the city’s commercial life. “There is not a shop that has not a Jewish name painted above its windows,” wrote Sir Sacheverell Sitwell in 1937, when it was part of the Kingdom of Roumania. “The entire commerce of the place is in the hands of the Jews. Yiddish is spoken here more than German.” Not anymore. Today, the city’s population is over a quarter of a million, but only 2,000 are Jews.

There are cities like Lviv or Chernivtsi all over the world, where within living memory the streets were full of Jews — people went to school with Jews, lived next door to Jews, accompanied their mothers as they shopped from Jews. And now there are no Jews. In his what-if? novel Fatherland, Robert Harris captures very well the silence that settles in such communities: no one ever asks, “Do you remember the such-and-such family across the street?” — or what happened to them. Just as, a few years hence, everyone in Sarcelles, France will agree not to ask whatever happened to a Jewish-owned pharmacy, set ablaze during a “pro-Palestinian” protest last weekend.

Israel is dedicated to the proposition that there should be one place on Earth where what happened to the Jews in Lviv and Chernivtsi and Baghdad and all over the map will not happen here

1. $1.6bn was raised by Israeli high tech companies during the first half of 2014, 81% higher than the first half of 2013. Israeli high tech companies raised $930mn during 2014’s 2nd quarter – the highest total since 2000, 30% higher than the 1st quarter and 109% higher than 2013’s 2nd quarter (Globes Business Daily, July 16, 2014).

2. Israel’s new investment Angels’ Law – introduced by the Minister of Economy, Naftali Bennett – is the world’s most daring, including a 100% deduction for tax purposes during the first year (Globes, July 17). The $86bn Los Angeles-headquartered Oaktree Capital Management acquired the Israel operations of France’s Veolia Environment for $341mn (Bloomberg, July 10). The $36bn San Diego-based Qualcomm acquired Israel’s Wilocity for $300mn, made its 5th Israeli acquisition following DesignArt ($130mn), iSkoot ($75mn), CSR’s camera division ($45mn) and EPOS for $30mn Globes, July 4). Germany’s Altana invested $135mn in Israel’s Landa Digital Printing (Globes, June 26, 2014). Santa Clara-based ServiceNow acquired Israel’s Neebula Systems for $100mn (Globes, July 10). NASDAQ’s best Initial Public Offering (IPO) during 2014’s 2nd quarter was Israel’s $630mn Kite Pharma which raised $78mn (Globes, June 30). The British York Investment Fund is investing up to $50mn in Israel’s InSightec (Globes, June 30). The Foxborough, MA-based Kraft Group and the Boston-based Canepa Advanced healthcare Fund led a $21mn round of private placement in Israel’s Dune Medical (Globes, June 27). Boston Scientific extended a $15mn loan – with a stock option – to Israel’s MValve (Globes, July 7).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjW_H1ydFas&list=PL8E1BA727A0E2DFC0

Published on Jul 23, 2014

Dictatorships attempt to silence UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer at the July 23, 2014 UNHRC emergency session on Gaza. Interruptions came from Iran, Syria, Egypt, the “State of Palestine,” Cuba and Venezuela. The U.S. and Canada defended Neuer’s right to speak.
Lear more: http://www.unwatch.org/isignup

Palestinian protest stops Haifa match
Punches and profanities were exchanged between the handful of youngsters and the Haifa players.fallen soldier
Palestinian protesters attack Maccabi Haifa players during match in Austria Photo: Courtesy
Maccabi Haifa’s pre-season match against French club Lille in Austria had to be abandoned in the 85th minute on Wednesday after pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the pitch and confronted the players.

Punches and profanities were exchanged between the handful of youngsters, who waved Palestinian and Turkish flags throughout the match, and the Haifa players, who were mainly stunned by the scenes.

The security stewards on hand were slow to react, but ultimately the situation calmed down, with several of the protesters being escorted out of the stadium and the Haifa players leaving the pitch unscathed.
Lille was leading 2-0 when the match was stopped.

Haifa only finally made its way back to the hotel with a police escort after more than an hour, with some of the protesters waiting for the team outside the stadium.

“Maccabi Haifa Football Club believes in co-existence, tolerance and is against violence,” a club statement read. “We denounce the violence that was used against us. This didn’t happen because of sport or football, it happened because we are a team which represents Israel.”

The General Assembly is a terrible place to hold the Iran nuclear talks.
Having failed to produce a deal after six months of bargaining in Vienna, the Iran nuclear talks now appear headed for a venue even less auspicious for the U.S. and its allies: the United Nations General Assembly, whose next session opens this September in New York. According to a senior U.S. administration official, speaking at a background press briefing as the latest round of nuclear talks wrapped up, July 18, in Vienna: “There is no question that the U.N. General Assembly will become a focal point or a fulcrum for these negotiations.”

There has been no explanation so far of the format in which the Iran nuclear talks might mesh with the General Assembly. But with the talks now extended by four months, through November 24, the same U.S. official added that the opening of the General Assembly will provide a handy nexus “because we have a lot of players there and an easy way to really get some business done.”

Easy for whom? The record suggests that Iran is both adept and aggressive in exploiting the U.N., where, for a country under sanctions, it enjoys remarkable room to maneuver. At last September’s General Assembly opening, Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, became the star of the show, courted by the Obama administration while he denounced the U.S. for “violence and extreme actions.”

The U.N., for its part, has been much better at accommodating Iran than at containing it. Iran’s misogynistic, repressive, terror-sponsoring regime holds a slew of elected U.N. posts, including seats on the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women and the governing boards of UNICEF and the U.N.’s flagship agency, the U.N. Development Program.

Meanwhile, the entire U.N. Security Council, replete with all the players and amenities of the U.N.’s New York headquarters, has failed to stop Iran’s rogue nuclear program. Four rounds of binding Security Council sanctions resolutions, passed in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2010, have not done the job. There has not been another sanctions resolution on Iran since 2010.

Failure at the U.N. is why six world powers ended up cutting an interim nuclear deal directly with Iran last November in Geneva, in which all parties agreed to seek a “long-term comprehensive solution.” That led to the past half-year of haggling directly with Iran in Vienna. This negotiating group, led by the European Union and known as the P5+1, includes all five permanent members of the Security Council (the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China), plus Germany.

Nearly 70 years ago, the lieutenant general began his advance toward the German border.
Nearly 70 years ago, on Aug. 1, 1944, Lieutenant General George S. Patton took command of the American Third Army in France. For the next 30 days they rolled straight toward the German border.

Patton almost did not get a chance at his summer of glory. After brilliant service in North Africa and Sicily, fellow officers — and his German enemies — considered him the most gifted American field general of his generation. But near the conclusion of his illustrious Sicilian campaign, the volatile Patton slapped two sick GIs in field hospitals, raving that they were shirkers. In truth, both were ill and at least one was suffering from malaria.

Public outrage eventually followed the shameful incidents. As a result, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was forced to put Patton on ice for eleven key months.

Tragically, Patton’s irreplaceable talents would be lost to the Allies in the soon-to-be-stagnant Italian campaign. He also played no real role in the planning of the Normandy campaign. Instead, his former subordinate, the more stable but far less gifted Omar Bradley, assumed direct command under Eisenhower of American armies in France.

In early 1944, a mythical Patton army was used as a deception to fool the Germans into thinking that “Army Group Patton” might still make another major landing at Calais. The Germans apparently found it incomprehensible that the Americans would bench their most audacious general at the very moment when his audacity was most needed.

When Patton’s Third Army finally became operational seven weeks after D-Day, it was supposed to play only a secondary role — guarding the southern flank of the armies of General Bradley and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery while securing the Atlantic ports.

Despite having the longest route to the German border, Patton headed east. The Third Army took off in a type of American blitzkrieg not seen since Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s rapid marches through Georgia and the Carolinas during the Civil War.

Throughout August 1944, Patton won back over the press. He was foul-mouthed, loud, and uncouth, and he led from the front in flamboyant style with a polished helmet and ivory-handled pistols.

Although the war with Hamas is, naturally, dominating the news both within Israel and about Israel, another item has emerged that should not go unnoticed.

First, though, it will help to recap.

Things started to go wild around here back on June 12, when it turned out that three Israeli teenage boys had been abducted by Hamas terrorists in Judea (part of what is called the West Bank). The Israeli security forces launched a massive manhunt and began cracking down on Hamas throughout the West Bank. On June 30, the bodies of the three boys were found, and it turned out they had been shot dead shortly after the abduction.

A couple of days later, on July 2, another body was found in a forest near Jerusalem. This time it was the body of a Palestinian teenage boy named Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who, in the early morning hours of that day, had apparently been kidnapped and murdered by Jewish Israelis in a revenge attack.

It was six days later, on July 8, that the current Israel-Hamas war, which Israel calls Operation Protective Edge, erupted.

Naturally, countless mainstream media stories seized on the Abu Khdeir murder as part of an alleged “cycle” of violence that led to the war, implying an equivalency between the murders of the three Israeli boys and that of the Palestinian one. The picture conveyed was of two equally violent, irrational communities, Jews and Palestinians, spiraling downward into war.

Of course, the murders of the Israeli boys and of the Palestinian boy are morally equivalent in both being despicably evil. But apart from that, the MSM typically missed, glossed over, or downplayed some major, diametrical asymmetries connected to these crimes.

‘The Evidence Is Still Coming in’: McDaniel Seeking Poll Book Access in Mississippi Ben Ledbetter

While incumbent Thad Cochran will be the likely candidate to face Democrat and former Rep. Travis Childers this fall, state senator and Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate primary candidate Chris McDaniel is not throwing in the towel – and checking for voting irregularities across the state.

McDaniel’s ultimate goal is to get a new election by showing that people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary also voted in the June 24 Republican runoff.

“This affects every voter in Mississippi,” said Mitchell Tyner, a member of McDaniel’s legal team, at a July 16 press conference from his Jackson office. “The evidence is still coming in.”

Tyner said he has filed 20 writs of mandamus, which would give him access to a county’s poll book with no redacted information. Tyner said he had enough evidence to make a formal challenge and that crossover voting would be part of it. He filed the motion for reconsideration, hearing, and clarification before the state’s highest court on Friday. Friday’s motion included evidence of the costs a candidate would have if he or she were to gain access to the election records if the court’s ruling was allowed to stand.

That examination process took a hit when the state Supreme Court ruled on July 17 that Harrison County Circuit Clerk Gayle Powell does not have to provide unredacted copies of the poll books from the June 24 runoff, according to The Sun Herald.

A perilous success: Hamas’ score on Israel’s exits

Congrats, Hamas: You’ve finally done something comprehensible during this bizarre and goalless war you’ve started with Israel.

Tuesday’s rocket attack on an area near Israel’s only international airport — the success of which marks the first serious failure of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield — has thrown Israel off-kilter for the first time since the war began.

Carriers panicked by the shootdown of the Malaysia Airlines jet over Ukraine began canceling flights to Israel left and right even before the Federal Aviation Administration grounded all US-Israeli plane travel for 24 hours.

Any effort to restrict travel has an especially powerful resonance in Israel.

In the 15 years leading up to the nation’s founding, Britain sought to do exactly that to Jewish immigration and trade, and part of Israel’s creation story involves the bravery of blockade-running ships (like the fabled Exodus) bringing pre- and post-Holocaust refugees into what was then called Palestine.

Flash forward 20 years. The 1967 Six-Day War, which transformed the map of the region thanks to Israel’s surprising and overwhelming victory, came about because Egypt blockaded the Straits of Tiran — international waters over which Egypt had no authority — in an effort to choke Israel’s tiny economy and bring the country to its knees.

These historical facts are written into Israel’s DNA, and so the impact of the forced closure of Israel’s main point of entry and departure is outsized.

Remember that Israel, with hostile nations and terrorist groups to its south and north and northwest, has no friendly borders, save perhaps for three relatively placid crossings eastward into Jordan.

For all practical purposes, Israelis must get on a plane to get anywhere.