http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2888 Israel’s collateral damage problem So far, the death toll is 47, most of them children. There is great anger in Egypt. This death toll is not from Israel’s air attacks on Hamas’ weapons facilities, rocket launching pads and offices. It is instead the toll from a horrific collision Saturday between a schoolbus filled with […]
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100189984/benjamin-netanyahu-talks-of-a-battle-between-the-modern-and-the-medieval-he-is-right-and-the-free-world-must-stand-with-israel/ Benjamin Netanyahu talks of a battle ‘between the modern and the medieval.’ He is right, and the free world must stand with Israel The Israeli prime minister’s speech before the United Nations in September is a must-read for anyone who cares about the defence of freedom in the Middle East, and the wider war […]
Hillary and Libya
The policy failure goes beyond the murder of her deputies in Benghazi.
David Petraeus told Congress Friday in closed hearings that the CIA believed from the start that the September 11 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were by terrorists. That leaves one VIP who’s still missing from Congressional scrutiny: Hillary Clinton.
GOP Congressman Peter King said Mr. Petraeus’s testimony differed from what the former CIA director told Congress immediately after the attacks. Mr. King also said Mr. Petraeus said that the CIA’s original talking points on the attacks were edited. The altered version became the basis for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s misleading and now infamous comments blaming the attacks on a YouTube video. Both that discrepancy and the issue of the altered talking points need further digging, especially if Ms. Rice is nominated to be the next Secretary of State.
But Mr. Petraeus wasn’t responsible for lax consulate security or the U.S. policy that led to the Libya debacle. That’s Mrs. Clinton’s bailiwick. Last month in interviews from deepest Peru, the Secretary of State said “I take responsibility” for Benghazi.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sept. 12 while speaking on the Libya attack.
Except she hasn’t. She was conveniently out of the country for this week’s House Foreign Affairs hearing, and Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry refuses to hold any hearings on Benghazi. His loyalty may get him a cabinet job, while Carl Levin’s Armed Services Committee also pretends nothing much happened in Libya.
The targets of the attacks and its first victims were diplomats. Chris Stevens died of smoke inhalation in the blaze, becoming the first American ambassador killed in the line of duty in over 30 years. A junior colleague also died. These men were Mrs. Clinton’s “responsibility.” Several hours after the assault on the consulate, members of the jihadist militia Ansar al-Shariah turned on the CIA compound about a mile away, killing two of Mr. Petraeus’s men.
In Congressional hearings last month, career State officials admitted that threat warnings from Benghazi were overlooked and requests for better security turned down. They said Foggy Bottom misjudged the ability of a weak Libyan state to protect them. It’s not clear how high up the chain these concerns went, but over to you, Mrs. Clinton.
For over a week after the attacks, the Administration blamed the YouTube video. Mrs. Clinton didn’t push this misleading narrative in public as enthusiastically as Ms. Rice. Still, she bought into it. The father of Tyrone Woods, a CIA contractor who was killed in Benghazi, told media outlets last month that Mrs. Clinton tried to comfort him by promising that the U.S.-based maker of the video would be “prosecuted and arrested”—though terrorists killed his son.
Beyond the Benghazi attacks is the larger issue of the Administration’s Libya policy, a failure that Mrs. Clinton should also answer for. At the start of the Libya uprising, Washington hid behind the U.N. Security Council to resist calls for intervention. Mrs. Clinton’s department then made the mistake of agreeing to a U.N. arms embargo on both the Gadhafi regime and the rebels. This blunder forced the rebels to look elsewhere for weapons and cash, particularly Gulf states like Qatar that favored Islamist militias.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2887 Several similarities between curret events and those of four years ago cannot be ignored. During the same period in 2008, Barack Obama had just been elected president of the U.S., Hamas rocket barrages from Gaza were about to precipitate Operation Cast Lead, and the Israeli elections were on the horizon. But there is one […]
Mohamed Morsi of Muslim Brotherhood Declared as Egypt’s …
www.nytimes.com/…/mohamed-morsi-of-muslim-brotherhood-decla…
Jun 24, 2012 – Mohamed Morsi, the candidate from the Muslim Brotherhood, was declared the winner of the Egyptian presidential election on Sunday.
Chávez Wins New Term in Venezuela, Holding Off Surge by …
www.nytimes.com/2012/10/…/venezuela-presidential-election.html?…
Oct 7, 2012 – CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez, long a fiery foe of Washington, won re-election on Sunday, facing down cancer and the …
Mugabe wins Court decision to delay bye-elections | Zimbabwe …
greatindaba.com/…/mugabe-wins-court-decision-to-delay-bye-electio…Cached
Mugabe wins Court decision to delay bye-elections. By VOA Thu, Aug 30, 2012. HARARE — A court in Zimbabwe has a granted President Robert Mugabe’s …
Putin Wins, but Opposition Keeps Pressing – The New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2012/…/russia-votes-in-presidential-election.html?…
Mar 4, 2012 – MOSCOW — Russian voters overwhelmingly granted Vladimir V. Putin a six-year term as president on Sunday, a widely expected outcome that …
KING ABDULLAH WINS REELECTION IN SAUDI ARABIA BY 120% OF THE VOTE IN AN ELECTION MONITORED BY JIMMY CARTER….JUST KIDDING FOLKS….
http://times247.com/
Morsi rips Israeli defense; Obama applauds him
Politico
Saturday, November 17, 2012
News
“President Obama called Egyptian President Morsi today to discuss the situation in Gaza,” the White House said in a statement. “The president commended Egypt’s efforts to de-escalate the situation.” Earlier in the week, Morsi condemned Israel for launching airstrikes in Gaza and recalled the Egyptian ambassador to Israel. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CZaNWnzE
Iran takes another big nuclear step
CNN News
Saturday, November 17, 2012
News
Iran has made a significant advancement in its nuclear program with the completion of its underground uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, according to a report released Friday by a United Nations watchdog group. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CZaHWWS8
Christian-Jewish coalition has Israel’s back
The Christian Post
Saturday, November 17, 2012
News
An interfaith group that brings Christians and Jews together for common goals, including the support of Israel, announced on Friday that it will increase its funding of emergency aid for families in southern Israel, where cities are taking rocket fire from Gaza. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CZaYA9Cn
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/bonanza_taliban_accidentally_reveals_names_on_their_mailing_list.html
We’ve probably all done it; sent an email out to the wrong people or one that included information you would rather have not been made public.
So we know how this Taliban PR flak feels today.
ABC News:
Somewhere out there, Mullah Omar must be shaking his head.
In a Dilbert-esque faux pax, a Taliban spokesperson sent out a routine email last week with one notable difference.He publicly CC’d the names of everyone on his mailing list.
The names were disclosed in an email by Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official Taliban spokesperson, on Saturday. The email was a press release he received from the account of Zabihullah Mujahid, another Taliban spokesperson. Ahmedi then forwarded Mujahid’s email to the full Taliban mailing list, but rather than using the BCC function, or blind carbon copy which keeps email addresses private, Ahmedi made the addresses public.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/11/islamic_terrorism_ignorance_is_not_bliss.html
With the growing focus on the scandalous personal behavior and questionable professional comportment of former CIA Director David Petraeus as related to the September 11 Benghazi attack, the investigation into what happened in this tragedy is becoming deeply mired in political muck. The politics of the moment has thus served to hinder America from taking advantage of yet another opportunity to learn why Muslims turn time and again to violence against American interests.
If our nation is ever going to successfully defend itself from terrorism committed by Muslims, we need to come to grips with the unpleasant reality that the doctrines of Islam animate this behavior. Why did 9/11 happen? Not because the hijackers were a group of mindless radicals; rather, they did what they did because they relied on the teachings of their holy books, which mandated them to commit violence against unbelievers. Why did Nidal Hasan shoot up his fellow servicemen at Fort Hood? Not because he was a disgruntled employee who wanted to take revenge on what he considered to be his noxious co-workers; rather, he fired at them as a self-proclaimed soldier of Allah based on his study and application of the Quran. Why did Benghazi happen? Not because of some perceived offense at a YouTube video (a notion that has been thoroughly discredited), but because, undoubtedly, the terrorists who tortured and murdered Ambassador Stevens and his compatriots simply followed the directive in Quran 9:5, which teaches Muslims to kill unbelievers wherever they find them.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
“Israel can retake Gaza once. Or it can retake Gaza every few years. It can have soldiers patrol Gaza or it can have rockets falling on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The options are as unfortunate as they are clear. The only hope for peace lies in driving out the terrorist militias who have turned Gaza and the West Bank into their own Somalia and Afghanistan and reclaiming the territories. Because after this fight is through, the next generation of rockets will go on being built and smuggled. And they will not fall in empty fields.”
Seven years ago the Israeli government decided to forcibly evict the Jewish residents of Gaza and withdraw all bases and forces from the area. The experts, some with the government and some with the media, assured everyone that it would be for the best and that withdrawal would actually improve the security situation in the country.
It was put about that resources and lives were being wasted protecting Israelis living in Gaza, while those Israelis insisted that their presence in Gaza was protecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The experts laughed at them. Now the experts are keeping an ear open for air raid sirens because as it turned out, those farmers and teachers, those men and women growing lettuce in greenhouses and building homes on hilltops, from which rockets are being launched, were the ones protecting Tel Aviv.
“They are now being asked to relinquish these accomplishments for the greater good,” the government press release said of their houses and farms, of their synagogues and greenhouses. And the greater good was served. The greenhouses were turned into Hamas training camps and the synagogues were burnt to the ground. Rockets fly into the air from the ruins of broken houses.
No longer will your sons have to die in Gaza, the experts said. A month later rockets were falling on Sderot. A year later Gilad Shalit had been kidnapped and Israeli soldiers were back again, dying in a Gaza that was now run by Hamas.
Among the bundle of promises from the Sharon government, was that the Gaza withdrawal was part of an oral agreement with the United States limiting further withdrawals and concessions. That agreement lasted for another few years until Obama took office and no one in his administration could ever remember such an agreement or accept its validity.
“The moment of truth has arrived,” Netanyahu said, on resigning from the Sharon government. “At the moment of truth, a man – especially a leader – must ask himself: ‘What are you doing, what do you stand for, what are you fighting for?'”
http://q4j-middle-east.com As I write this, Israel is once again being forced to up the ante in Gaza. Keep in mind that the Arabs there–Hamas and those who eagerly support it–call for the destruction of Jews and their nation and actively work to bring both about. So far, the West seems to be supporting Israel’s right […]
