International law is not a suicide pact. Relentless Hamas rocket attacks upon Israel from Gaza now leave Prime Minister Netanyahu little choice but to respond. This is not, however, a symmetrical “cycle of violence.” Rather, it is a classic case of criminality and anti-criminality, of terrorism and counter-terrorism. Ritually, Hamas alleges that it is merely […]
http://www.melaniephillips.com/israel-defends-itself-against-hundreds-of-rocket-attacks.-tut-tut
So here we go again. In the four days from Saturday until yesterday, Islamic terrorists under the Hamas umbrella fired more than 120 rockets from Gaza at Israeli civilians, along with a number of mortar shells. Some hit civilian homes and factories; some civilians were lightly wounded and others treated for shock. Some million or so inhabitants of southern Israel have been under siege from such attacks for years, with air raid sirens giving people just a few seconds to find shelter. If there weren’t so many shelters, there would be more casualties.
None of this has caused the slightest concern in Britain or the west. The rocket attacks have barely been reported. But today, Israel finally took action. In a targeted drone strike on Gaza it killed Ahmed Jabari, the leader of Hamas’s military wing and second-in-command of the Iranian proxy al-Qassam Brigades, a man who was linked to hundreds of terror operations and human bomb attacks over several decades, and his second-in-command, Raed Al Attar.
If you look at the video footage of the strike, you can see the care the Israelis took to avoid other casualties, waiting until the terror commanders’ car had passed other traffic before striking it.
Rocket attacks on Israelis are not news; Israeli military action to defend Israel against such attacks is. Suddenly, media indifference has been transformed into media hyperactivity. And in the eyes of the British media and foreign office Israel is at fault; astoundingly, it is apparently Israel which is responsible for inflaming the situation, not the Palestinians. Never mind the 120 rockets in four days or the 50 further rockets this evening, including 17 Grads fired at the city of Beersheva; or that since the beginning of 2011, 1,100 rocket have been fired on Israeli targets, 797 since the beginning of this year; or that a staggering 5274 rockets have been fired from Gaza at southern Israel since 2006 (what’s that – you had absolutely no idea about the scale of these attacks? Of course not – the British media haven’t bothered to report them. Didn’t you know? Israeli victims don’t count – especially when not enough of them actually die to meet the British definition of ‘proportionality’).
Revisionist History: Haifa University honors an admirer of a WWII war criminal On November 4th in Toronto, Haifa University conferred an honorary doctorate degree in philosophy on Jason Kenney, Canada’s immigration minister. Pro-Israel people certainly have reason to be fans of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government and specifically of Mr. Kenney, who in March condemned […]
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2314/Douglas-MacGregor-on-David-Petraeus.aspx
Time magazine:
“Petraeus is a remarkable piece of fiction created and promoted by neocons in government, the media and academia,” argues Douglas Macgregor, a retired and outspoken Army colonel and innovator, known for Breaking the Phalanx, his book taking the Army to task for the way it organizes and uses its ground forces.
Macgregor elaborates:
“How does an officer with no personal experience of direct fire combat in Panama or Desert Storm become a division CDR in 2003, man who for 35 years shamelessly reinforced whatever dumb idea his superior advanced regardless of its impact on soldiers, let alone the nation, a man who served repeatedly as a sycophantic aide-de-camp, military assistant and executive officer to four stars get so far? How does the same man who balked at closing with and destroying the enemy in 2003 in front of Baghdad agree to sacrifice more than a thousand American lives and destroy thousands of others installing Iranian national power in Baghdad with a surge that many in and out of uniform warned against? Then, how does this same man repeat the self-defeating tactics one more time in Afghanistan? The answer is simple: Petraeus was always a useful fool in the Leninist sense for his political superiors — Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Gates. And that is precisely how history will judge him.”
As noted, Macgregor can be outspoken.
Macgregor on Afghanistan here.
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2312/Finally-the-Clinton-Legacy-via-Saudi-Arabia.aspx= Finally, the Clinton Legacy (via Saudi Arabia) Nov 14 Written by: Diana West Wednesday, November 14, 2012 8:28 AM Saudi Arabia’s Turki al Faisal addressing Bill Clinton at Clinton Global Initiative shindig, September 25, 2012: “Muslims will never forget your deliverance of Bosnia-Herzogovenia and Kosovo, and near-deliverance, within 100 meters, of Palestine from occupation.”
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/11/14/time-to-move-on-from-the-gop/
Today is a monumentally important day that is being treated as a fait accompli by the Beltway ruling class and its partners, the legacy media. This morning, the Congress is scheduled to select its leaders for the coming session. If all goes according to plan, Republicans will double down on stupid – ignoring the conservatives who gave them control of the House and reappointing the same leadership team that turned the triumph of 2010 into the disaster of 2012.
In the historic 2010 midterm elections, conservatives gave Republicans a chance to prove that they’d repented of their huge-spending nanny-state ways. It was not that conservatives were won over by a Republican establishment that, during the Bush years, had run up an astounding $5 trillion of debt while creating new entitlements and launching an ill-conceived experiment in sharia-democracy building. Instead, it was that we needed to stop Obama’s doubly expensive gallop to the left, to a post-American rejection of our liberty culture. In the short term, Republicans were the only game in town.
Over the long haul, however, there were two alternatives: Either (a) the Republican party would prove that it had become an effective vehicle for advocating and using its power to begin putting into effect the dramatic change necessary to reverse – not just halt, reverse – the debt abyss and the metastasis of the central government; or (b) the Republican party would prove that it was not up to this challenge, would substitute lame excuses (“We only control one-half of one-third of the government”) for steely spines, and would therefore demonstrate that conservatives would be better off abandoning the GOP and establishing a new vehicle.
We’ve now seen enough to draw a conclusion: the Republican party says what it believes must be said to entice conservative votes at election time, but it is not remotely serious about implementing limited government policies or dealing with the two central challenges of our age, existentially threatening deficit spending and Islamic supremacism.
Under the leadership of progressive-lite House Speaker John Boehner and his fellow professional Washington moderates in the GOP Senate leadership, congressional Republicans agreed to budgeting that internalized into its baselines Obama’s exorbitant stimulus spending. They signed off on a reckless extension of the government’s line of credit to an astounding $16.4 trillion, then cynically insulted our intelligence by attempting to obscure and deny their approval of it – and presently, they are laying the groundwork to raise this “debt ceiling” it to a mind-boggling $19 trillion, the next stop on the road to $22 trillion and beyond. As Mark Steyn observes, the federal government now borrows a staggering $188 billion per hour, adding $1 trillion to the debt every nine months. Contrary to what the GOP tells you, none of this could happen without the approval of the Republican-controlled House.
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3446/london-mega-mosque-qaeda “Muslims themselves oppose this mosque.” — Asghar Bukhari, Spokesperson, UK Muslim Public Affairs Committee A radical Islamic group has applied for a permit to build one of the largest mosques in the world, in London. The East London super-mosque, known as the Abbey Mills Riverine Center, would hold up to 10,000 worshippers. It would […]
To the editor:
I was surprised that the most recent New Yorker printed no letters of response to David Remnick’s misguided seven-page article on Netanyahu’s opponents in Israel (Sept.23, 2012) when it comes to his policy on Iran. First of all, this is all old hat. The vocal opposition to the Prime Minister’s policy—including some by former heads of the Mossad and Defense Establishment–has been going on publicly for more than eighteen months, so why was Remnick acting as if he had an insider’s scoop when he reported on it in his “Letter from Tel Aviv”? There are a few parts that are laughable, e.g., when he called Shimon Peres a “former army general.” I thought that everyone knew that Peres never even served as a soldier. As a young man, he was a close aide to Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben- Gurion, and both he and Ben Gurion wanted to keep it that way and out of harm’s way. The closest Peres came to military service was a photo op of him wearing an army uniform standing with Israel’s first Prime Minister. He has seen as much wartime action as his relative in America, actress Lauren Bacall. (Interestingly, their political views have always been equally simplistic.)
Remnick frequently refers to ideas expressed in the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. Hardly anyone in Israel takes Haaretz seriously any more, and it has very few readers.
Remnick spends much of his time on the opposition of the former Mossad head, Meir Dagan, as if his views must be correct since he was once a hardened fighter. This ignores much of Israel’s genuine politics: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mossad have been at such odds that they have had no formal ties for almost two years. Moreover, one often sees that political and military leaders everywhere become more pacific after they retire, or lose, their positions of power.
The decision about what to do about Iran should be left to those Jews whose lives are on the line. In the upcoming election, it seems highly probable that Netanyahu will once again gain their support.
Sincerely,
Stephen Karetzky
http://times247.com/
FBI probing possible Petraeus security breach
New York Magazine
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
News
FBI probing possible Petraeus security breach
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CC6Jv15j
Inhofe doubts Obama about Petraeus probe
Daily Caller
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
News
Inhofe doubts Obama about Petraeus probe
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe expressed doubt Tuesday evening that President Obama did not know about the investigation into now former CIA Director David Petraeus. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CC6SI4k7
Broadwell: ‘I had access to everything’
CBS Denver
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
News
Paula Broadwell’s comments during a speech at the University of Denver last month had some people wondering if she knew classified information. “I had access to everything,” she said on July 28 at the Aspen Institute. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CC6vVwDj
Times News
Holder, Mueller were mum on Petraeus for weeks
Waterman and Wong
Congressional legislators are calling on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to explain why their agencies kept information about former CIA Director David H. Petraeus‘ extramarital affair from the White House, Congress and the U.S. intelligence community as the scandal expanded and ensnared the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz2CC7J0weO
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/bruce-bawer/norwegian-kings-medal-to-go-to-radical-anti-semite/ Lately I catch myself saying more and more frequently, “You can’t make this stuff up.” In Norway there is a royal decoration called the King’s Medal of Merit. The medal is awarded from time to time to individuals who have served Norwegian society in an outstanding and exemplary way. In Norway there is also […]
