RUTHFULLY YOURS

Amidst news the Israelis have turned down secretary of State Kerry’s latest, apparently Qatar-inspired, ceasefire, not to mention the other day’s nauseatingly familiar anti-Israel fusillade from the mega-Orwellian UN Human Rights Council, comes word that Hamas had been planning a gigantic attack on Israel this September via its dozens of tunnels.

From the Gatestone Institute [1]:

Hamas had apparently been preparing a murderous assault on Israeli civilian targets for the coming Jewish New Year Holiday, Rosh Hashanah, which begins on September 24, according anonymous sources in the Israeli security services, as reported today [2] by the Israeli daily Maariv.

The Hamas plan consisted of what was to be a surprise attack in which 200 fighters would be dispatched through each of dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel, and seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians.

Assuming this to be true–and Hamas has already used the tunnels for a similar attack last week–questions arise. Why didn’t Israeli and U.S. intelligence know about the extent and dangers of these tunnels earlier — if they didn’t? And if they did, why didn’t they do something about it?

Well, we don’t know. But at least the Israelis are doing something about it now, even with resistance from the Americans.

Meanwhile, another culprit waits in the wings, perhaps the greatest enabler of all of Hamas terror — the United Nations. I strongly suspect the UN has not just been consistently biased and hateful toward Israel, it has also — at the very least — looked the other way as mass murder and kidnappings (sedatives and handcuffs have been found in the tunnels) were being planned against Israel’s citizens.

We already know that Hamas hid missiles in at least two UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools in Gaza. Ban Ki-moon claimed to be shocked, but I predict he will be really shocked if a full investigation were made because there is far worse.

The Washington Post reports that the presiding judge in the military commission prosecution of the 9/11 plotters has severed from the still unscheduled trial one of the five defendants, Ramzi Binalshibh. That means that, if ultimately tried at all, Binalshibh would be tried separately, who knows when.

As related in the report, the ruling seems very strange. The judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, is said to have explained, as the Post puts it, that “the court needs to resolve whether Binalshibh has the mental capacity to participate in the trial.” This is difficult to square with the report’s simultaneous assertion that “neither the government nor Binalshibh’s lawyer argue that he is mentally incompetent.” To be sure, there have been questions for years about the terrorist’s mental state; but one of his civilian lawyers insisted to the Post that Binalshibh wanted to go to trial with his co-defendants. He did not wish to be severed.

There is also said to be a conflict-of-interest issue to sort out, but that claim, too, does not fare well under scrutiny.

Earlier this year the FBI began probing a defense leak of a manifesto written by Binalshibh’s more notorious co-defendant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The manifesto was among the many documents covered by a court non-disclosure order. As I detailed in a National Review column, the Bureau ended up interviewing a contract “security officer” responsible for giving Binalshibh’s defense team access to sensitive discovery materials. The security officer’s employer alerted the defendant’s lawyers about the investigation, causing them to complain to the court.

Theoretically, if a defense attorney is alerted to the fact (or at least, the likelihood) that the government is investigating him for possible wrongdoing, that could create a conflict of interest with his client. The lawyer could have a motive to curry favor with prosecutors in order to persuade them not to charge him; that, the thinking goes, could induce him to represent his client less zealously. It is difficult, however, to see that happening here. Not only is the potential conflict highly speculative; the Post reports that the FBI closed its investigation more than two months ago without filing charges.

At this point, the commission judge is considering a variety of pretrial motions filed by all five defendants. That process is expected to last until at least the end of the year. Based on what we know at the moment (and admittedly, there are always things we don’t know – things known only to the litigants in a trial), there seems to be no reason why any potential conflict-of-interest question could not easily be resolved in the next five months – in time for Binalshibh to be tried jointly with his co-defendants. Indeed, I’m betting that the judge has at least a few issues more difficult than that one to deal with.

Republicans need to drive home the obvious: Hillary Clinton owns ALL of Barack Obama’s failures.

In June, before the stunning, gaffe-generating disaster of Hillary Clinton’s book tour, Senator Claire McCaskill (D., Missouri) said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state is the “piñata that everyone loves to hit” because she is the “dominant candidate” for president in 2016.

The 2016 Real Clear Politics’ general election match-up polls support McCaskill’s argument. Hillary Clinton leads every Republican presidential hopeful by an average of 10 percentage points.

However McCaskill’s reference to Clinton as the “dominant candidate” reveals what an attractive target for Republicans Clinton, a dominant national figure for more than two decades, presents.

Republicans need to position Clinton as the de facto “incumbent presidential candidate” and hold her accountable for the unpopular, failed policies of President Obama as if they were her very own.

This tactic was successfully employed against Republicans by Obama and the Democrats during the last two presidential elections.

In 2008 Obama’s general election campaign waged war against the policies of President George W. Bush even though Arizona Senator John McCain, not Bush, was on the ticket.

The Democrats didn’t even need to update that playbook in 2012. Obama re-used the Bush card against the hapless Mitt Romney – an easy call when 68 percent of voters still blamed Bush for the continuing economic stagnation that was then in its sixth year.

Two years from now the GOP can win if Republicans have forged a strong campaign message against the record and policies of an Obama/Clinton ticket. In strictly practical terms, this ticket is easier to believe than either the Bush/McCain or Bush/Romney combo, for Clinton actually served a full term in the Obama White House, and neither McCain nor Romney served in the Bush administration.

Slandered, despised, insulted, degraded, Israel is nonetheless winning its war against Hamas. The number of rocket attacks launched by the terror group each day has been halved. The IDF is uprooting the underground tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle weapons, contraband, and terrorists in and out of the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday evening, Israel’s Channel Two newscast carried footage of Hamas terrorists surrendering to the IDF. The jihadists carried white flags. They stripped to their shorts, proving they were not wearing suicide belts. These are facts Hamas does not want you to know, images Hamas does not want you to see.

And you probably won’t see them. Since the evening of July 17, when Israel launched its ground offensive, Western media has been filled with Hamas propaganda. In the United States, the debate over the conflict is invariably couched in terms favorable to Hamas: Are civilian casualties too high? Is it safe to fly into Ben-Gurion airport? Has the IDF targeted schools and hospitals? One MSNBC anchor calls Israel, which abandoned Gaza in 2005, the “occupying authority.” Another praises a “gutsy” Israeli, who refuses to serve in her nation’s military.

On CNN, the Islamist Turkish prime minister says Israel has “surpassed what Hitler did.” A CNN reporter calls Israelis “scum”; an NBC reporter tweets a scurrilous article calling U.S. Jews who join the IDF “America’s Israeli jihadists”; and a writer for Gawker says it’s time to send the Jews back to Germany. Reporters once embedded with military forces. Now the talking points of a military force — the talking points of Hamas — are embedded in the U.S. media.

And yet the immediate danger to the success of this necessary war does not come from the electronic intifada. It does not come from resurgent anti-Semitism, or the United Nations Human Rights Council, or the failure of so many Western elites to recognize the causes of this war, their inability to distinguish between a democratic country struggling to protect its people and a terror state using children as hostages. Hate, law-fare, decadence — they are all challenges for Israel. But Israel can endure them for now. Israel is used to it.

What Israel should not endure is the premature conclusion of hostilities. Disarming Hamas — seizing its rocket caches, collapsing its tunnels, killing and capturing its forces — is vital to Israeli security. And an artificial ceasefire imposed by outside powers, a ceasefire written in terms favorable to Hamas, would undermine the security gains Israel has made to date. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have given no sign that they recognize this fact. Or maybe they understand it all too well: The Obama administration’s top priority is imposing a ceasefire at exactly the moment when Israel’s military success is becoming clear.

No, Israel is not murdering Palestinians.
The Hamas charter proudly proclaims that the organization exists for the single purpose of destroying Israel, claiming all territory therein for Palestinians as part of the global Islamic-supremacist movement. Manifestly, Palestinians knew this when they voted to be led by this notorious Muslim Brotherhood franchise, which has ruled Gaza for nearly a decade.

They also knew that Hamas operatives wage war through barbaric jihadist methods: intentionally targeting civilians for mass-murder attacks; refraining from wearing uniforms or otherwise distinguishing themselves as military combatants; blending in among the non-combatant population, and using civilian infrastructure — schools, hospitals, mosques, homes, etc. — as the launch-pad for rocket attacks, the storage depot for their arsenal, and the safe-haven for jihadist training and plotting.

These tactics are gross violations of the centuries-old laws and customs of war, long codified in modern international law. Yet, as Palestinians are well aware, the mass-murderers they’ve elected are not interested in abiding by the enemy-West’s rules of civilized warfare. Hamas uses its atrocious tactics to make retaliatory attacks difficult and to exploit for propaganda purposes the carnage that inevitably results from its willful deployment of children and other non-combatants as human shields.

Here, I use the term “non-combatant” advisedly. Many Palestinians are not “civilians” in the ordinary sense of that word. Though not themselves violent jihadists, such Palestinians are more than willing to provide material support to the jihad — financial contributions, helping hide terrorists and store weapons, and so on. This goes a long way toward explaining how the terrorist organization could win a popular election: As the many streets and schools in Gaza named after terrorist commanders and suicide bombers attest, a high percentage of the populace is invested in the jihad.

Furthermore, Hamas places a high priority on the training of children for jihadist operations. Youngsters, already marinating in the Jew hatred that gushes from government-controlled schools and media, attend summer camps where terrorist tactics are taught. Article Seven of the Hamas charter instructs that the end times will be marked by a final battle in which rocks and trees will help Muslims kill all remaining Jews. The story, like tales of Allah turning Jews into apes and pigs, comes straight from Islamic scripture and is a leitmotif of Palestinian media. Not surprisingly, many Palestinians are already participating in violent jihad by their teen years.

Once again, we are living through the hallucinatory, sickening
experience of seeing Israel’s morally-elevated defence against
murderous fanatics provoke a global explosion, of Israel-bashing and
naked anti-Jewish hatred, especially in demonstrations across Europe.

For sure, the current war in Gaza has engendered more sympathy than
previous such Israeli military campaigns. More and more people
understand that Israel alone is fighting a murderous Islamic
aggression which threatens themselves, too. People are less inclined
to blame Israel or believe media reports that are often not far off
inflammatory incitement against Israel and the Jewish people.

Many in the intelligentsia frame this conflict as if Israelis are the
war criminals and genocidal Hamas the victims. They uncritically
swallow the Hamas death count, even though it orders all casualties to
be described as “civilians” whereas untold numbers are armed killers.

The Hamas strategy is to maximise civilian deaths and give the widest
circulation to horrific pictures of mutilated children in order to
turn Western opinion against Israel.

Libya seeks ceasefire as south Tripoli a militia ‘war zone’ By Patrick Markey and Aziz El Yaakoubi

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Black plumes of smoke marked shell blasts and bulldozed earthen barricades mapped out the frontlines around Tripoli’s largest airport, now at the heart of a standoff between the country’s powerful militias.

With barrages of Grad rockets, anti-aircraft guns and artillery fired at their rival enclaves just kilometers apart, brigades of former rebels have turned parts of southern Tripoli in a battleground for nearly a fortnight.

The clash over Tripoli International Airport is the latest eruption in a deepening rivalry among bands of ex-fighters who once battled side by side against Muammar Gaddafi, but have since turned against each other in the scramble for control.

Since the 2011 fall of Tripoli, fighters from the western town of Zintan and allies have controlled the area including the international airport, while rivals loyal to the port city of Misrata had entrenched themselves in other parts of the capital.

Heavily armed, they have refused to hand over their guns and sided with competing political forces trying to shape the future of Libya in the messy transition since Gaddafi’s four-decade rule over the North African state.

Libya’s government on Friday urged the two broad factions to sit down for talks, and negotiators were trying to broker a ceasefire between the groups which have become de facto powerbrokers in post-Gaddafi Libya.

“We call the people of Zintan and Misrata to urgent talks with the government to resolve this crisis and work out an initiative to settle this at once,” Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni’s office said.

Deep divisions, however, were clear along Tripoli’s empty airport road, where burning grasslands smoked from recent shelling. Sporadic artillery and anti-aircraft fire could be heard booming out from the airport toward southern Tripoli.

Outside on the highway, Zintani fighters were dug in to defend the airport they say they are officially sanctioned to protect as part of Libya’s armed forces. Young fighters in Toyota trucks mounted with canons guarded the road.

“They are strong and we are strong,” said Mohammed, a Zintan fighter inside the airport terminal, which has been damaged by shelling. “When we fought Gaddafi’s army, they did not resist more than two hours. Now we are fighting for ten days and no one has won.”

Inside the main terminal, debris was scattered across the floor of the passenger area, where a hole has opened in the ceiling from a shell hit. An empty wheelchair sat among rubble in the check-in area packed with travelers just weeks before.

According to a report in le Figaro the UN is disturbed by a fatwa from the Caliphate ordering excision (genital mutilation) for all women. Don’t expect the world’s cameras to take positions inside the clinics—or above dirty blankets spread on the ground—to witness the mutilation of a potential 4 million victims. Unless and until Western media, civil rights organizations, thinkers and governments understand that this fatwa will spread like the jihad conquest of the Middle Ages and put the knife to the cherished sexual freedom of the free world, there will be no peace worthy of the name. Not in the Middle East, not in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo.
From the general to the particular: there was no cluster of journalists in front of the Pitzman restaurant Thursday morning. No visible police presence either. On the surface, everything was back to normal. I stopped by to verify the information heard that morning on Radio J, one of the best Jewish radio stations broadcasting from Paris. Yes, that’s how it happened. About 40 men apparently split off from the “good-natured” demonstration that dispersed at les Invalides on Wednesday and headed for the restaurant. Warned by someone who saw them running down the rue de Rivoli, the personnel lowered the metal shutter that protects the front door. The windows are bullet-proof. I asked how much time they had to batten the hatches. “Two minutes.”
The restaurant was filled. Diners could hear the raucous cries for Jewish blood as the assailants hammered the shutter with iron bars and baseball bats and tried to pry it open. One of the owners slipped out the back and came out through the synagogue where he was able to rescue two Jews trembling in fear.
Think of it: if or when these Jews make Aliyah and the young men don the uniform of the Israeli Defense Forces, they will become the heartless monsters portrayed in the soap opera that has been running successfully for 14 years. They will not cower, they will not wait for French riot police. They will defend themselves. And the media, and this and that human rights league, and the UN, and the pro-Hamas proto-caliphaters will deplore their use of “disproportionate force.” Supplications will mount to the high heavens. Ceasefire! Immediate ceasefire. Humanitarian ceasefire.
The crash of an Air Algérie plane on its way from Ouagadougou to Algiers and points north with 54 French citizens on board was a coincidence, unrelated to the FAA ban on flights to and from Israel. There is no reason to believe that the passengers tragically killed on that flight would have gone to Tel Aviv instead. That would be ridiculous. So there is no reason to believe that the city of Paris decided to repair the botched paving on the rue des Rosiers this very week, when the heart of the old Jewish quarter is the target of those “good-natured pro-Palestinian demonstrators.”

In the elections series at Family Security Matters (http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/) we have now concluded full coverage of the congressional elections in 42 states and the facts are incontrovertible:

The strongest support for Israel comes from the GOP even in states with small Jewish populations…..stay tuned….rsk

It’s a chicken-or-the-egg question. Which came first: The Obama administration’s public contempt toward our allies in Jerusalem, or liberal Democratic animosity toward Israel?

Either way, when Barack Obama steps down as president in January 2017, the Democratic Party he leaves behind will be one whose sympathies no longer embrace the Jewish state.
It’s an extraordinary legacy. And it’s underscored by the more or less constant snubs President Obama has directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Of course, world leaders not getting along is nothing new. As Churchill’s wartime liaison to de Gaulle said of Britain’s French ally, “The greatest cross I have had to bear is the Cross of Lorraine.”

But the case of Obama and Netanyahu is much more than a clash of personalities. It’s a conflict between two competing world views. And if a poll released this month by the Pew Research Center is any clue, this conflict has now become embedded in American party politics.

Pew asked a basic question: “In the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, who do you sympathize with more?”

In the coming days, Israel will likely need a massive re-supply of military goods of all kinds. It is then when Obama’s real intentions will be exposed for Israel to see.

President Obama is the master of Double-Speak, saying one thing and meaning the exact opposite. Remember how Obama promised, “You can keep your doctor if you like him,” and how it turns out that you can’t keep him because Obamacare won’t pay him?

Given Obama’s track record of betrayal of Israel, his hollow recital of “Israel has the right to defend herself,” might actually have a doublespeak meaning as well – that “Israel has the right to defend herself”, but without any American military resupply.

Israel could now be on collision course with the most anti-Israel president America has ever seen.

On October 6, 1973, Yom Kippur, Israel was shocked by the massive and effective surprise attacks by Egyptian and Syrian armies after America forced it to refrain from attacking the Egyptian army massing on its borders. On October 8th, Israel was losing the war. On October 8-9th, Israel went on to nuclear alert. Kissinger learned of the Israel nuclear alert on the morning of October 9. That day, President Nixon ordered the commencement of Operation Nickel Grass, a massive American military airlift to replace all of Israel’s military material losses. In a couple of weeks, Nixon’s military air-bridge shipped 22,325 tons of military supplies to Israel and saved Israel from might have been her destruction.

In Mid-June 2014, Hamas kidnapped and murdered three Israel teens. Israel launched an operation to sweep up the Hamas operatives in Judea and Samaria and exact punishment for Hamas’ crimes. On July 6, after Israel defeated Hamas in their quiet battle to take over Judea and Samaria, Hamas began to launch barrages of various range missiles into Israel from Gaza and employ its tunnels to murder and attempt to kidnap Israelis inside of Israel.

Hamas declared, “All Israelis” had become “legitimate targets.” Hamas refused any reasonable ceasefire, and Israel was forced to attack Gaza proper in a land operation. Instead of President Obama declaring the immediate creation of a military re-supply of America’s ally Israel, Obama ordered his FAA to shut-down Israel’s entire economy by grounding all flights to Ben Gurion Airport. The FAA banned not only passenger planes, but supply planes as well.