The son of the founder of Hamas was interviewed on Fox, Mosab Hassan Yousef, was on Fox New being interviewed. His opinion was that Hamas was a terrorist organization. He finally got out, moving on. He said that even if Israel moved back to the '67 borders Hamas would continue as their objective is genocide of the Jews.
Middle East Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Photo A cease-fire proposal by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt met most of Israel’s demands; Hamas immediately rejected it. Credit Fady Fars/Middle East News Agency, via Associated Press
CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.
Not this time.
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.
“I have never seen a situation like it, where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummeling of Hamas,” he said. “The silence is deafening.”
Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.
But as commentators sympathetic to the Palestinians slammed the proposal as a ruse to embarrass Hamas, Egypt’s Arab allies praised it. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to “the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible.”
“There is clearly a convergence of interests of these various regimes with Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In the battle with Hamas, Mr. Elgindy said, the Egyptian fight against the forces of political Islam and the Israeli struggle against Palestinian militants were nearly identical. “Whose proxy war is it?” he asked.
The dynamic has inverted all expectations of the Arab Spring uprisings. As recently as 18 months ago, most analysts in Israel, Washington and the Palestinian territories expected the popular uprisings to make the Arab governments more responsive to their citizens, and therefore more sympathetic to the Palestinians and more hostile to Israel.
But instead of becoming more isolated, Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult, now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an ally in their common fight against political Islam.
Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again on Wednesday.
And the pro-government Egyptian news media has continued to rail against Hamas as a tool of a regional Islamist plot to destabilize Egypt and the region, just as it has since the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood one year ago. (Egyptian prosecutors have charged Hamas with instigating violence in Egypt, killing its soldiers and police officers, and even breaking Mr. Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders out of jail during the 2011 uprising.)
The diatribes against Hamas by at least one popular pro-government talk show host in Egypt were so extreme that the government of Israel broadcast some of them into Gaza.
“They use it to say, ‘See, your supposed friends are encouraging us to kill you!’ ” Maisam Abumorr, a Palestinian student in Gaza City, said in a telephone interview.
Some pro-government Egyptian talk shows broadcast in Gaza “are saying the Egyptian Army should help the Israeli Army get rid of Hamas,” she said.
At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.
“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”
Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finding themselves allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran, a rival regional power that has a history of funding and arming Hamas.
For Washington, the shift poses new obstacles to its efforts to end the fighting. Although Egyptian intelligence agencies continue to talk with Hamas, as they did under former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi, Cairo’s new animosity toward the group has called into question the effectiveness of that channel, especially after the response to Egypt’s first proposal.
As a result, Secretary of State John Kerry turned to the more Islamist-friendly states of Qatar and Turkey as alternative mediators — two states that grew in regional stature with the rising tide of political Islam after the Arab Spring, and that have suffered a degree of isolation as that tide has ebbed.
But that move has put Mr. Kerry in the incongruous position of appearing to some analysts as less hostile to Hamas — and thus less supportive of Israel — than Egypt or its Arab allies.
For Israeli hawks, the change in the Arab states has been relatively liberating.
“The reading here is that, aside from Hamas and Qatar, most of the Arab governments are either indifferent or willing to follow the leadership of Egypt,” said Martin Kramer, president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and an American-Israeli scholar of Islamist and Arab politics. “No one in the Arab world is going to the Americans and telling them, ‘Stop it now,’ ” as Saudi Arabia did, for example, in response to earlier Israeli crackdowns on the Palestinians, he said. “That gives the Israelis leeway.”
With the resurgence of the anti-Islamist, military-backed government in Cairo, Mr. Kramer said, the new Egyptian government and allies like Saudi Arabia appear to believe that “the Palestinian people are to bear the suffering in order to defeat Hamas, because Hamas cannot be allowed to triumph and cannot be allowed to emerge as the most powerful Palestinian player.”
Egyptian officials disputed that characterization, arguing that the new government was maintaining its support for the Palestinian people despite its deteriorating relations with Hamas, and that it had grown no closer to Israel than it was under Mr. Morsi or Mr. Mubarak.
“We have a historical responsibility toward the Palestinians, and that is not related to our stance on any specific faction,” said a senior Egyptian diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. “Hamas is not Gaza, and Gaza is not Palestine.”
Egyptian officials noted that the Egyptian military and the Red Crescent had delivered medical supplies and other aid to Gaza. Cairo continues to keep open lines of communication with Hamas, including allowing a senior Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouq, to reside in Cairo.
Other analysts, though, argued that Egypt and its Arab allies were trying to balance their own overriding dislike for Hamas against their citizens’ emotional support for the Palestinians, a balancing act that could grow more challenging as the Gaza carnage mounts.
“The pendulum of the Arab Spring has swung in Israel’s favor, just like it had earlier swung in the opposite direction,” said Mr. Elgindy, the former Palestinian adviser.
“But I am not sure the story is finished at this point.” Correction: July 30, 2014
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the college of which Martin Kramer is president. It is Shalem College, not Salem.
Merna Thomas and Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo, and Ben Hubbard from Gaza.
Dear Reader, this commenter with the nifty crossed swords and the pirate hat is really the old desert rat. . Why he seeks anonymity only he could know for sure, and even he may not know for sure.
He's rotating his names, like Israel rotates troops (real people), Rat, Farmer Rob, Jack and numerous other names, not to worry, he's got his cue cards all lined up to have his brilliant conversations with himself in due time...
In my neverending quest to ignore "The Turd With No Clean End," some good news on the "American" front:
Fewer Americans filed applications for unemployment insurance benefits over the past month than at any time in more than eight years, signaling employers are hanging on to workers as demand improves.
The four-week average of jobless claims, considered a less volatile measure than the weekly figure, dropped to 297,250, the lowest since April 2006, from 300,750 the prior week. Claims in the period ended July 26 climbed to 302,000, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, from a revised 279,000 the prior week that was the lowest since 2000.
AnonymousThu Jul 31, 09:53:00 AM EDT Will Israel last? As a democratic republic, perhaps, it can. As an apartheid theocracy, not a chance.
Well win tit great that Israel AINT a " apartheid theocracy"!!!
Now will nationalism in the arab and islamic world last? Now that is the question.
Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan and every islamic nation in-between are in fact, apartheid theocracies. Christians, B'hais, Jews, Atheists are all (IF allowed to live) relegated to ghettos and slums (real ones).
But back to Israel?
Have you noticed? The 20% of Arabs WHO LIVE as full fledged citizens of the Jewish State (with small exceptions) is NOT protesting..
THEY above all others understand and KNOW what and who the Hamas are...
And they are silent. As is the arab street. As is Egypt.
Hamas is killing it's own in Gaza and EVERYONE who is HONEST knows it....
NOTHING IS MORE SHAMEFUL THAT ATTACKING SLEEPING CHILDREN
Agreed. Hamas has done this 10,000 times over the last 10 years.
100 rockets a day are keeping 2/3 of Israel in bomb shelters.
Maybe if Hamas and the palestinians used the aid they received (including 900,000 TONS of concrete) to build a decent society instead of a rocket laden, rat tunnel infested terror camp things could be different.
israel accepted a cease fire BEFORE the ground invasion started (and 5 OTHER arab initiated ceasefires) but Hamas still is shooting rockets.
No one knows the true number of dead palesitnian KIDS by the very hand of Hamas.
What is KNOWN? a full 13% of all Hamas rockets HIT palestinians.
Not to say that Israel has not hit civilians, it has. And it is not done on purpose, what is hit on purpose? Ammo dumps, Hamas rockets and launching sites and of course command and control sites.
War is hell. Hamas started it by firing rockets at Israeli sleeping children.
Then the Hamas? Used it's rat tunnels to seek to kidnap, rape and capture MORE Israeli Children.
That crossed more red lines and of course, TIPPED HAMAS's hand!!!
Israel learned of the 5000 rat terror tunnels going from Hospitals, Mosques, UNRWA Schools, and Clinics (and civilian homes) and now has vowed to destroy them...
Hamas's stated position is the destruction of Israel and the killing of every Jew.
Deuce's position is that there will not be peace until the "criminal settler colony" is dismantled and replaced by Palestine with a majority Arab population. Deuce already has stated that there will be payback by the arabs against the Jews (and their kids)...
So if this is a war? And Hamas targets Israeli kids?
Why the selective outrage?
The only thing that was a game changer? israel spent billions on bomb shelters and antimissile technology.
What if israel just bombed Gaza like Hamas bombs Israel? Just let loose and shell all the civilians of Gaza with out any selection of specific targets?
Instead of 400 or so civilians out of 1200 deaths? you'd have Syria, with 700 a day being killed....
The US is not funding the Assad regime. It is not as great an isue, what Syria does, because of that.
Few of the people killed in Syria are killed munitions dropped by an F16, few are shot with M16s. That is the primary issue, the US funding of the evil that the Israeli NASI do.
AnonymousThu Jul 31, 09:57:00 AM EDT The Israeli NASI have been killing Palestinian children at the rate of 13 per month, for the entirety of the 21st century.
And in syria? they have been killing 15 THOUSAND a month!
15,000 a month verses 13 a month...
Heck, more than 13 a WEEKEND are killed in Chicago's South Side!
Car Crashes Kill 40,000 in U.S. Every Year.... that's 3333 a MONTH!!!!
"O"rdure is now trying to conflate the killing of children to maintain the state of Israel's apartheid system of physical and political control in Palestine ... to accidents on the highways of the United States.
The boy has not lost his moral compass, it look like he never had one. A man would know, naturally, which way "Right" is.
They use US medicines, eat US wheat, and are also supplied by the UN because of the prison conditions the Israeli have imposed upon Gaza.
If the US did not supply the NASI of Israel with weapons, it could cut back on the subsidies paid to the Palestinians and the UN. The US should impose an arms embargo and blockade upon both the geographic area and all the participants of the conflict. Israel, Palestine and Egypt. With US aid payments to those respective governments suspended until the end of the conflict to all three participants
Then, like a TRUE Socialist or Israeli "O"rdure then conflates commercial trade with Governmental aid, subsidies and grants.
Not realizing there is a difference between the free associations of individuals and the authoritative aspects of Government and the distance between the two.
Washington - The Obama administration condemned the deadly shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza on Wednesday, using tough, yet carefully worded language that reflects growing White House irritation with Israel and the mounting civilian casualties stemming from its ground and air war against Hamas.
The US frustrations were compounded by a flurry of Israeli media reports this week that appeared aimed at discrediting President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent days trying to negotiate an unsuccessful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
In unusually blunt language, a state department spokesperson on Wednesday repeatedly described one of the reports as "complete crap".
The developments injected fresh tension into the often fraught relationship between Obama and the Israeli government, while also highlighting the president's willingness to take a tougher line against the long-time US ally than some of his predecessors or lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
From a purely "political" standpoint: Israeli leadership had better quit "fucking with da man."
Obama's in deep trouble with his base over what they are increasingly seeing as Israeli genocide.
His stark drop in the polling is not from Republicans "voting twice;" it's from the young, non-white, female, liberals registering their disapproval of his support of the Zionists.
Israel mobilises 16,000 more reservists - US restocks Israeli ammo
THE US has confirmed that it restocked Israel’s supplies of ammunition hours after finally sharpening its tone to condemn an attack on a UN school in Gaza.
But while both the White House and the State Department condemned the shelling of the UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza in which at least 16 Palestinians were killed, neither would assign blame to staunch US ally Israel.
“Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility,” deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf acknowledged, in some of the toughest US comments since the start of 23 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip.
“Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said Israeli forces had hit the school, which had been sheltering about 3300 Gazans.
Despite heated exchanges with reporters, Ms Harf stressed that “We don’t know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts”.
National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also condemned “those responsible for hiding weapons in UN facilities in Gaza” and warned of rising fears that thousands of Palestinians who have been told by Israel to leave their homes increasingly had nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow coastal Strip.
US officials also warned that patience with “crazy” Israeli criticism of would-be-peacemaker John Kerry had snapped.
The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defence Department approving the sale three days later.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.
“This defence sale is consistent with those objectives.”
Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state.
The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion. The decision to provide ammunition to Israel could fuel controversy, coming just as Washington expresses growing concern about the deaths of more than 1300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.
The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defence Department approving the sale three days later.
As noted in the Libyan war, Nato wouldn't have been able to operate for more than a few weeks without the US replenishing their stockpiles of arms.
Renders rather humorous those who posit Israel could get along just fine without US aid.
They could, but it would take some time to change the ammo over.
Perhaps they should turn to the Chinese.
But, Obama won't be around much longer, the Pubs will control all of Congress and hopefully the White House in '16, the American people support Israel as usual, so maybe they should just stick with us.
As much as I despise Hillary, were the Pubs to take over both House and Senate and appear to be able to hold them in 2016, I would vote for her for president rather than any currently mentioned candidate in the GOP field with the possible exception of Rand Paul.
QuirkThu Jul 31, 11:26:00 AM EDT .The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defence Department approving the sale three days later. Renders rather humorous those who posit Israel could get along just fine without US aid.
Renders funny how the ONLY reliable ally in the middle east is ISRAEL.. After all America cannot rely on Turkey or Egypt, Arabia or Kuwait
I am not trying to be a smart ass. It is a serious question.
I guess if it came down to votes in the UN Israel would have our back just as the US has hers. But Israel in not in the SC so that help is limited. Fly over rights? I don't know if the US flies over Israel or not. I assume that if Egypt gave us a hard time we could always use Turkey and vise versa.
July 31, 2014 Time for Hamas's Hollywood Sympathizers to Snap out of It! By Dan Gordon
I love actors. Honestly -- that wasn't sarcasm. I started out as an actor before I began writing for a living. I shared my life with an actress who was/is a wonderful artist and woman. As they used to say about Jews And African Americans some of my best friends ... actors and writers, directors, musicians, artists of every type are the most empathetic people on earth. We have to be. It's not just a job, for the ones who are serious about it, it's our calling. When we say, "I feel your pain," we mean it. Because we must feel the pain of every character we portray or create. We feel the pain of that part of our own soul that corresponds to that of the character.
And no writer, actor or director ever plays, creates or directs a villain. Each character we create is the hero of his own story, and we find the humanity in each, no matter how villainous the character's actions may be.
That is even more so with the truly great artists like Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almadovar. Their work, collectively and individually, is an alter at which, I, as a screenwriter, playwright and novelist, worship often. They are my artistic Rabbis and teachers. They feel others' pain, no matter how villainous the character.
Bardem portrayed a chilling mass murderer in No Country For Old Men, and deservedly won the Academy Award for it. His portrayal was riveting, not because he portrayed the character's villiany, but because he somehow managed to convey his humanity, despite the fact that the character was a heartless serial killer who murdered, or not, depending on the outcome of the toss of a coin. That makes for great acting.
Unfortunately it can, and does, cloud both the moral and intellectual compass of many artists like the truly wonderful Bardem, Cruz, Almadovar et al.
They look at pictures of Palestinians, who truly are suffering in this war, which Hamas and it's terrorist army have perpetrated against Israel and our civilian population, and they "feel their pain" or as close as you can get to doing that in Madrid or Malibu.
Palestinian homes are being destroyed. Israel is the one shelling them, as they rightly state, by land, air and sea. Therefore Israel, a white European Colonial transplant persecuting a brown skinned indigenous people, are the villains in this reality show watched by millions on TV. Therefore Israel must be condemned, damned, censured and stopped by the international community!
They have signed a letter stating," Palestinian homes are being destroyed!"
That is indeed true. The reason for that, my brothers and sisters in Cinema, are the actions of Hamas, a murderous and cynical terrorist organization which seized power, not from Israel but from the Government of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas!
They lined up their fellow Palestinian brothers against walls and machine gunned them to death. If you have the stomach for it the videos are still on YouTube. They blindfolded and bound their Palestinian Brothers and pushed them off multiple storied buildings to horrific deaths.
That's Hamas. That's how they seized power.
Those were their crimes against their fellow Palestinians.
With the greatest respect, Javier, Penelope and Pedro, from one who admires your artistic achievements more than words can express, did you write any letters of outrage and condemnation then? Did you call on the international community to end the suffering then?
Well, but the deaths were only in the hundreds then, not over a thousand like now, and besides that was a Palestinian internal affair, one, which I'm sure, you felt uncomfortable in condemning.
But what Israel is doing is clear-cut.
It's genocide!
Is it really?
We're all visual artists at the end of the day, creating images for the screen. Look, then, at the picture below.
I can get you literally hundreds more just like it. I'd be happy to. Just ask. The picture is of the entrance to a terrorist tunnel that was uncovered in the tiny space between two Palestinian homes. The tunnel to which it connects goes underneath the internationally recognized borders of Israel, the borders you demand we return to put a pin in that thought for a moment). The tunnel, and scores of others like it, then comes up next to and in some cases inside Israeli civilian farming communities. One tunnel came up in the communal dining hall of a farming village where as many as eight hundred people would have been gathered for holiday meals in normal times. Terrorists armed with anti tank missiles, machine guns, hand grenades, thousands of rounds of ammunition, handcuffs and tranquilizers then come up out of those tunnels with the intent of murdering, maiming and kidnapping hundreds of Israeli men, women and children. That's not in theory. Hamas terrorists have tried to do that almost half a dozen times in the last few weeks.
Well, but you say, no such killings of hundreds of Israelis have taken place!
Meanwhile the poor Palestinian people are suffering from Israeli bombardment.
My dear friends, no such killings of hundreds of Israeli civilians have taken place because of Israeli bombardment.
They have not taken place because my brothers and sisters in arms watch the border diligently, and when necessary, lay down their lives to protect our men, women and children from the terrorists who entered those tunnels next to, and many times from within, those very Palestinian homes whose destruction you rightly bemoan, as by the way do I, and, oddly, most other Israelis.
Those Palestinian homes are being destroyed because Hamas is committing a war crime under the Geneva accords, which you cite, against their own people, by launching their rockets, hiding their terrorist tunnel entrances and missiles, rockets mortars and machine guns, inside those homes, thus turning their own people's dwellings into Military targets . Why in the name of all that is holy, don't you at least acknowledge, let alone condemn, that clear and cruel war crime, not just against Israeli civilians but Palestinian civilians?
In your letter you state, "they (the Palestinians) are being denied.. electricity and free movement to their hospitals, schools and fields while the international community does nothing."
My friends, Hamas has fired from, launched rockets from, put terrorist tunnel entrances in, and hidden weapons inside, not just people's homes, but inside their schools and mosques and hospitals. Hamas has hidden their rockets in UN operated schools! That's not a wicked Zionist lie, that's a UN finding, against which they have, albeit weakly, protested.
I personally have been in Gaza as an Israeli soldier and have had Palestinian farmers come up to me, personally, because I wear an officer's rank, and demand of me that we, the Israel Defense Forces, not stop until we have killed all the Hamas operatives. Those aren't my words. They were the words of Palestinian farmers in El Atatra, and the reason they made that demand of us was because Hamas had confiscated the fields that had once supported them and their family by growing sunflowers, and now used them as rocket launching sites aimed at Israeli civilians.
Why in the name of the humanity I know you treasure, are you not condemning that?
That was a rhetorical question.
I know why you're not condemning that.
It's because they look weak and we look strong. And one always roots for the underdog in the movies. Except this isn't a movie. There's no one to say "cut" when the terrorist comes up out of the tunnel or the rocket or mortar is hurtling toward you.
It's not even a reality show though I know many in the media try to milk the ratings by presenting it as such.
But we're not Honey Boo Boo or The Housewives of whatever.
We're a country that was attacked, that said calm would be answered with calm and was answered instead with thousands of rocket attacks aimed almost exclusively at Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians. Hamas is committing war crimes against both our peoples not only while the international community dies nothing, but while well-meaning, empathetic people like you enable them like a well-meaning friend turning a blind eye to a junkie's addiction. Except in this case the junkie is a terrorist organization as wicked as any on earth. Don't you see that your misguided enabling is killing both our peoples?
I know it takes more effort to understand something than to simply emotionally react with whatever the bumper sticker mentality if the day is. But honestly, both the Palestinian people and we deserve better of you.
But you may excuse Hamas's terrorist tactics because they don't have an air force or tanks and thus is the only way they can fight back against a wicked force of Zionists who have invaded" the Palestinian territories instead of returning to the 1967 borders."
Friends, there's no excuse for not getting the facts straight -- you can Google them. With regard to Gaza, which is, after all, where the war is, Israel unilaterally withdrew to the 1967 borders almost ten years ago!!
In that time Hamas had launched three wars against us. There was no air campaign against Hamas until they began firing hundreds of rockets a day against us.
Because of the Iron Dome anti-missile system we developed, the rockets caused no loss if life on our side and so when Egypt proposed a cease fire and the Palestinian President and the Arab League endorsed it...we accepted it. I know history is a bore but this was only two weeks ago!
That's when Hamas launched its first terrorist tunnel attack against our civilians. Had we not intercepted and killed and driven back the terrorist force, it would have resulted in the worst terrorist attack, the highest loss of civilian life, in Israel's history .
That's when we had no choice but to begin the ground operation … after Israel, Egypt, the Arab League and the President of the Palestine Authority all agreed to end the violence, stop the killing And destruction and try to create a cycle of peace. It Is Hamas that has brought about this awful cycle of death.
I wrote a movie called The Hurricane that Norman Jewison directed. It gave me an opportunity to complement what I thought was one if the best scenes he had ever directed. The scene is in Moonstruck between Cher And Nicholas Cage, in which an emotional Nick Cage prattled on about his endless love blah, blah, blah.
Cage is pitch perfect the sincere, emotive lover. But he's just spewing so much nonsense that Cher hauls off and slaps him so hard his grandchildren probably felt it. She then shouts the same two words that, with the greatest respect, we who are suffering from Hamas' dual war crimes, have every right to demand of you, and every other armchair enabler, snap out of it!
I love actors. Honestly -- that wasn't sarcasm. I started out as an actor before I began writing for a living. I shared my life with an actress who was/is a wonderful artist and woman. As they used to say about Jews And African Americans some of my best friends ... actors and writers, directors, musicians, artists of every type are the most empathetic people on earth. We have to be. It's not just a job, for the ones who are serious about it, it's our calling. When we say, "I feel your pain," we mean it. Because we must feel the pain of every character we portray or create. We feel the pain of that part of our own soul that corresponds to that of the character.
And I work with a black guy and I go to Mexican restaurants all the time.
Israel claims that it is acting in self-defense in Gaza, thereby portraying itself as the victim in the present conflict. President Barack Obama and both houses of the U.S. Congress have endorsed this justification for the use of force. But is it an accurate assessment?
Gaza is not an independent state like Lebanon or Jordan. Israel accepts this but instead sees Gaza as a “hostile entity,” a concept unknown to international law and one that Israel has not sought to explain.
But the status of Gaza is clear. It is an occupied territory — part of the occupied Palestinian territory. In 2005 Israel withdrew its settlers and the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza, but it continues to retain control of it, not only through intermittent incursions into and regular shelling of the territory but also by effectively controlling the land crossings into Gaza, its airspace and territorial waters and its population registry, which determines who may leave and enter.
Effective control is the test for occupation. The International Court of Justice recently confirmed this in a dispute between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The physical presence of Israel in Gaza is not necessary provided it retains effective control and authority over the territory by other means. Modern technology now permits effective control from outside the occupied territory, and this is what Israel has established.
That Gaza remains occupied is accepted by the United Nations and all states except, possibly, Israel. {...}
Military or belligerent occupation is a status recognized by international law. According to the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 — to which Israel is a party — a state is allowed to occupy a territory acquired in armed conflict pending a peace settlement. But the occupation must be temporary, and the occupying power is obliged to balance its security needs with the welfare of the occupied people. Collective punishment is strictly prohibited.
The occupation of Gaza is now in its 47th year, and Israel is largely responsible for the failure to reach an agreement on a peaceful settlement. Moreover, Israel is in breach of many of the humanitarian provisions contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention as a result of the siege it has imposed on Gaza since 2007. In short, Gaza is not only an occupied territory; it is also an illegally occupied territory.
The present operation in Gaza — Operation Protective Edge — must therefore not be seen as an act of self-defense by a state subjected to acts of aggression by a foreign state or nonstate actor. Instead, it should be seen as the action of an occupying power aimed at maintaining its occupation — the illegal occupation of Gaza. Israel is not the victim. It is the occupying power that is using force to maintain its illegal occupation.
The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination. History is replete with examples of occupying powers using force to maintain their occupations. Apartheid South Africa used force against the people of Namibia; Germany used force against the people of France and the Netherlands during World War II.
The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must thus be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
Before Israel’s physical withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian acts of violent resistance were directed at Israeli forces within the territory. This was during the second intifada. Since then, Palestinian militants have been obliged to take their resistance to the occupation and the illegal siege of Gaza to Israel itself. The alternative is to do nothing, a course no occupied people in history has ever taken.
It is unusual for an occupied people to take its resistance outside the occupied territory. But it is also unusual for an occupying power to maintain a brutal occupation from outside the territory. When the occupying power maintains its status through military force within the occupied territory because of these acts of resistance on its own territory, as Israel has done, it acts as the enforcer of an occupation — not as a state acting in self-defense.
A state seeking to enforce its occupation, like a state acting in self-defense, must comply with international humanitarian law. This includes respect for the principle of proportionality, respect for civilians and the drawing of a distinction between military and civilian targets, and the prohibition of collective punishment. Both Israel and Palestinian militants are obliged to act within the confines of these rules.
Sadly, Israel is in violation of all three of these basic tenets. Its action is a clear collective punishment of the people of Gaza. The numbers of the dead and wounded and the property damage inflicted on them are completely disproportionate to the few civilians killed and wounded and property damaged in Israel. It is also clear from its bombing of schools, hospitals and private homes that Israel makes little, if any, attempt to distinguish between civilian and military targets.
What is to be done? The United Nations is powerless to act in the face of the U.S. veto. This places a heavy burden on the European states to use their influence to stop the bloodshed.
It is also incumbent on the International Criminal Court to act. Palestine, recognized as a state by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, has accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Under pressure from the U.S. and Europe, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court refuses to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. History will surely judge unkindly both the prosecutor and the institution that she serves if nothing is done.
John Dugard is emeritus professor of international law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
deuce: The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
Your point advocates the total defeat and actual occupation of Gaza. I guess the best way to deal with Gaza is to conquer it, execute all Hamas terrorists and force the Palestinian people to live under REAL occupation.
That is your option SINCE the people of gaza consistently choose violence over self government.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/u-s-has-sold-ammunition-to-israel-since-start-of-gaza-conflict/ U.S. Has Sold Ammunition to Israel Since Start of Gaza Conflict
"In the last week the U.S. has provided Israel with tank rounds and illumination rounds for grenade launchers requested as part of a foreign military arms sale. The weapons came from a $1 billion stockpile of ammunition stored by the U.S. military in Israel for that country’s use if needed for an emergency. However, a U.S. defense official stressed the delivery of weapons from the existing stockpile in Israel was more a matter of convenience to rotate U.S. ammunition stocks than an emergency request from Israel. Since the 1990′s U.S. European Command has maintained a little -known stockpile inside Israel officially known as War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel (WRSA-I)..."
Mr. Obama approved the sale so everything is cool.
It's no longer the "stupid party." It's, now, the "full-on, batshit crazy party.)
Yesterday, the Republican House authorized Boehner to go ahead with his lawsuit against Obama for for taking the entirely legal action that they, themselves, voted overwhelmingly to try to force him to take.
Today, John Boehner declares that Obama should take action on the border "On His Own."
>>>>Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress. Article II imposes a duty on the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” When a law is unambiguous, the president cannot rewrite it to suit his own preferences. “The power of executing the laws,” as the Supreme Court emphasized in June in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, “does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.” If a law has defects, fixing them is Congress’s business.<<<<
What is "Occupation"Thu Jul 31, 05:15:00 PM EDT deuce: The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
Your point advocates the total defeat and actual occupation of Gaza. I guess the best way to deal with Gaza is to conquer it, execute all Hamas terrorists and force the Palestinian people to live under REAL occupation.
That is your option SINCE the people of gaza consistently choose violence over self government.
Let’s call it the “Warsaw Ghetto Convention” where an oppressed people trapped into a geographic area, has no choice but to take the law into their hands and resists their hated oppressor.
Ironically, The Zionists rebuke the world for not coming to their aid and stood aside as the Brown Shirts and then the Nazis turned segregation, economic oppression and then artillery to kill them.
Have a nice fucking day, with all due respect, and Dodo-Bob, do your own creative work. You are beginning to irritate me.
Got a reply from my old girl friend whose current husband is half Jewish and half Lutheran. A Marine. Asked her what he thought of the situation. His opinion is there is no solution unless Hamas is wiped out. Then there will be peace 'for a while'.
Let’s call it the “Warsaw Ghetto Convention” where an oppressed people trapped into a geographic area, has no choice but to take the law into their hands and resists their hated oppressor.
And yet the palestinians are not shelling the egyptians that CONTROL their border..
Deuce: Let’s call it the “Warsaw Ghetto Convention” where an oppressed people trapped into a geographic area, has no choice but to take the law into their hands and resists their hated oppressor.
Nice revisionism. Did the NAZIS provide thousands of tons a month in food and medical care? To call it the "warsaw ghetto convention" would only apply if the palestinians were in fact being actively starved and put to death.
No matter how you slice it, 300 kids killed (not murdered) in war, out of a population of 1.8 MILLION does not make a genocide. Nor does it make it the "warsaw ghetto".
Learn history, you sound hysterical.
You assess not one fathom of responsibility to Hamas, the elected government of Gaza.
You do not mention the rockets, unless you call the "bottle rockets"
How insulting.
But you have your opinion and we have ours. But no one who is HONEST disputes that Hamas PREPPED and PREPARED to have a war, dug 5000 tunnels and imported and made 30,000 rockets in prep for the war...
And Hamas STARTED it...
And Hamas USES civilians as shields, in fact hamas forces it's civilians to protect with their lives the missiles...
Is Hamas calling it quits? posted at 12:01 pm on July 31, 2014 by Noah Rothman
Over the course of the four-week-long conflict in the Gaza strip, Hamas, the governing authority in that territory, has rejected a variety of ceasefire proposals. Many of those were submitted by Arab negotiators, including Egypt and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. One ceasefire Hamas found favorable, submitted by United State Secretary of State John Kerry, was deemed so favorable to Hamas that Israel’s security cabinet rejected it unanimously.
On Thursday, a sign of hope emerged indicating that the conflict will soon come to a close. According to one unconfirmed report in the Arabic language Quds Press International News Agency, Hamas has consented to allow proxies to negotiate a long-term ceasefire agreement with Israel (translation of the text via Google):
Hamas and across the head of its political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, has given the green light to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate a long-term truce and discuss and amend the Egyptian initiative presented by President [Abdel Fattah] Sisi for both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, on the imposition of calm in the sector of the ceasefire by Israel and the resistance movements in the Gaza Strip.
There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of this latest report, the most glaring of which is the claim that Meshaal is amenable to a ceasefire negotiated by Egypt. While that Arab state enjoys a traditional role as a key negotiator in conflicts between Israel and the various Palestinian governing entities, Sisi has a cool relationship with Hamas.
As The New York Times reported Wednesday, the Arab states are leery of Hamas and view their rejection of a number of ceasefire proposals as irresponsible. The rejection of a ceasefire proposal submitted by Cairo, which The Times notes “met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group,” has sapped the region of much of its goodwill toward Hamas.
“King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to ‘the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible,’” The Times reported.
Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again on Wednesday.
Hamas is surely losing friends in the region, but they continue to be buoyed by the amount of support they have received in Western press outlets, on the streets of Europe, and in the United Nations. On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, accused both Hamas and Israel of crimes of war. That alone may lead Hamas to believe they can negotiate more favorable ceasefire terms down the road.
The Quds report is an interesting development, but there are many reasons to take it with a grain of salt. For now.
One tactic of the Apartheid South African regime was to consign black Africans to Bantustans, territories that were subordinate to Pretoria. In this way their citizenship could be revoked but they did not gain an actual new state. Gaza is very much like a Bantustan of Israel, surrounded by it and kept weak and disrupted.
But in this way the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced there from their original homes in what is now southern Israel can be denied citizenship in Israel while also being kept stateless with regard to their “Palestine” Bantustan.
As in Apartheid South Africa, resistance to the Apartheid policies of Israel is met with extreme violence. In Israel “law and order” is maintained “at all costs” just as in Apartheid South Africa. If it is necessary to shoot down 700 students and youth for refusing to go along with the dictates of old white men, then so be it. The minority government “has nothing to apologize for.” Just as the sabotage and bombings of Umkhonte we Sizwe were termed mere terrorism and the ANC was demonized as a stalking horse for Stalinist dictatorship, so resistance organizations welling up from the slummy conditions imposed on Gaza are demonized and their very resistance to being denied the rights of human beings is used to justify further repression.
No wonder that today’s South Africa is calling on Israel to cease its ground offensive into Gaza.
The latest death toll in Gaza, according to the Gazan health ministry, is 1,364, including 315 children. That number looks likely to soon surpass Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, when around 1,400 were killed.
3 Israeli teens were kidnapped and killed. In the rest of the cilized world, a normal police action would be taken to capture the criminals and bring them to trial. The motivation would be to get them off the street to benefit and protect the community.
In the twiested perversion of present-day Israel, the political leader gets involved and committs 80,000 troops to pummel and attack a trapped civilian population, repressed by Israel for 47 years.
The results are the deaths 315 children murdered by the IDF, but who cares, they are not Jewish children.
These 315 childern have been described as rats by two of Israel’s most ardent supporters on this site. Those children are now dead, not at the hands of the IDF. Nothing personal you see. The IDF prefers long range artillery and high impact explosives, staying way out of harms way from an irregular army, with bottle rockets.
The dead children will never be adults and will never be able to defend themselves from being called rats, but if we take the written words on this site from two of Israel’s loyal defenders, we as adults can decide who is the vermin and who is not.
These 315 childern have been described as rats by two of Israel’s most ardent supporters on this site. Those children are now dead, not at the hands of the IDF. Nothing personal you see. The IDF prefers long range artillery and high impact explosives, staying way out of harms way from an irregular army, with bottle rockets.
Please post where the dead kids were called "rats"
In the rest of the cilized world, a normal police action...
Hit to close to home Deuce?
The world, the entire world, would not permit a terrorist group .5 miles from it's border to collect and arm with 30,000 rockets and spend a BILLION dollars digging tunnels into their land for the express purpose to murder it's citizens..
The arab world for 66 years have not stopped trying to destroy Israel. It's citizens, under content rocket attack for the last 10 years, by BOTH Hezbollah and Hamas understand the blood lust of the arabs for Jew-blood.
That is why the arabs that surround israel have never stopped stabbing, shooting rockets, planting IEDS and even kidnapping them (and murder and corpse mutiliation)
The only thing I've said about the children in Gaza is they should all be put under the care and protection of Child Protective Services in some western country or in Israel. They'd have a chance for a childhood and to grow up 'normal'.
The kids, and some of the women too, in Gaza are the ones there for whom I have sympathy.
July 31, 2014 IDF Soldiers Killed in Booby-trapped UN Building By Karin McQuillan
Why are US taxpayers sending a quarter billion dollars a year to a United Nations agency that shows every sign of cooperating with Hamas to kill soldiers of our ally Israel? Israel National News reports:
The three IDF soldiers who were killed on Wednesday in Gaza, were killed when explosives detonated within a booby-trapped UN building in Khan Younis,Breitbart reports.
An elite IDF tunnel unit was in the process of uncovering an opening to a Hamas tunnel located at an UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) health clinic when all of a sudden the explosives detonated, causing the entirety of the building to fall on top of the soldiers.
Neither the UN nor UNRWA have commented on the incident that resulted in the deaths of three Israeli soldiers, according to Breitbart.
This latest incident comes in the wake of the discovery of Hamas rockets in three UNWRA schools, only to have UNWRA give the rockets back to Hamas. The UN is demonstrating clear support for Hamas in many ways. For example, the UN immediately joined the propaganda war by blaming Israel for a strike on a Gaza hospital, which it was later reported was from misfired HAMAS rocket.
UNWRA and the UN also failed to comment on the loss of Israeli life at the booby-trapped, missile stock pile they allowed in their school.
UNRWA -- the UN Agency dedicated solely to helping Palestinian “refugees” -- has 30,000 employees; all but 200 are Palestinian. And we, the U.S. taxpayer, support them with almost a quarter of a billion dollars a year! We pay for food, education and housing, and all sorts of other services like personal loans, irrespective of financial need. We have perpetuated a welfare monster – an entire terrorist mini-state on the U.S. dole.
Since there are only 30,000 Palestinians alive today who were displaced by the Arab war against Israeli in 1948, that’s a one to one staff to refugee ratio. Of course, for the Palestinians there’s a special definition of being a refugee and qualifying for money -- no it’s not for life, it’s for the generations, and it makes no matter if you become the citizen of another country. (2 million Palestinian ‘refugees” became citizens of Jordan.) It doesn’t matter how much you earn, or if you own a mansion.
We are now supporting the fourth generation of Palestinians. They need only have one-eighth of a connection to Israel, that is, one great-grandparent who once worked in Israel (not lived there, worked there – and part time counts). They are still entitled to your money. The U.N. even defines Palestinians as refugees who always lived on the Arab side of the 1949 armistice line. There are supposedly 5 million Palestinians whom we owe.
In contrast, U.N. international staffing for all other refugee services in the world is less than 6,000 people – that’s for 126 countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and in Africa – where there are genuine refugees in need of emergency food and housing. The most staff any one country gets is 437. Yes, 437 compared to 29,800 for Palestinians. Other people only get to be called refugees until they are resettled somewhere.
Where are our fiscal hawks? Where is Ted Cruz’s golden tongue? Senator Rand Paul, this is a case for you. Here’s a beautiful example of international involvement we could do without.
The festering sore of the Palestinian grievance industry could not exist without American dollars. We pay for their schools and their housing. Gaza lives on American welfare. It is time to cut them off.
Had a little trouble finding out who Mudar Zahran was.
Palestinian leader?
Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian Palestinian writer and political activist who lives in the United Kingdom,[1] where he has been granted political asylum.[2]
==============
Trial
In 2013 Zahran was indicted by a Jordanian military court and scheduled to be tried in absentia for four separate charges against him, relating to what it labels "incitement against the ruling political regime of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, (calling for) changing the basic conditions of society and using a long tongue [i.e. criticism – ed.] against the king and undermining an official entity"[4] in addition to "damaging the country's image and inciting hatred.[1][5]According to the Jordanian newspaper Al Ghad, “Zahran’s social networking sites carry articles and phrases offensive to Jordan and his own people (Palestinians)."[2][6]
Publications
"Jordan: In Bed With Islamists", Gatestone Institute, 31 January 2011 "Is Jordan's King Losing Control over the Bedouin?", Gatestone Institute, 20 June 2011 "UNRWA: The Palestinians' Worst Enemy", Gatestone Institute, 21 March 2012 "Egypt under Islamists: The Trouble Has Just Begun", Gatestone Institute, 3 July 2012 "Does Freezing Settlements Help Peace?", Gatestone Institute, 13 July 2012 "Jordan's Next Leader? With Help from the U.S. Department of State", Gatestone Institute, 26 October 2012 "Who Is Really Besieging Gaza?", Gatestone Institute, 15 November 2012 "More Trouble in Jordan", Gatestone Institute, 23 November 2012 "Jordan is Palestinian", Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2012, vol 19, no.1, pp. 3–12 "Who Is Destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque?", Gatestone Institute, 9 December 2013 "Who Is to Blame for "Islamophobia" in the UK?", Gatestone Institute, 24 February 2014
Somehow I doubt anyone is surprised that he would be criticizing Hamas.
Mudar Zahran, Palestinian Leader, now speaking out against Hamas and calls them a dictatorship and fascist.
The Hamas Egg is cracking...
You make it sound like this guy is so influential amongst Palestinians that his criticism will bring Hamas crashing down.
He writes for the Jerusalem Post. He is quoted glowingly by sites like United for Israel.
Speaking of him
Renowned Jordanian journalist Taghreed al-Rishik, tweeted, “It is about time to deal with such people, the charge of inciting hatred has been given to ‘Israel’s dear friend,’ Mudar Zahran.”
She also tweeted to Zahran that he should be ashamed for supporting “Israeli apartheid.”
In August, Zahran spoke at the Begin Heritage Center and was introduced by former MK Arieh Eldad.
The guy has been supporting Israel and railing against the MB for years. Do you think him calling Hamas fascists and a dictatorship will even be noticed by Hamas?
It is like Obumble quoting American Thinker articles from people like Karin McQuillen or Jonathon Keiller.
Karin McQuillen, a novelist who writes mysteries and Jonathon F. Keiler, author of Upfall an alternative history novel described at Amazon thusly:
What if a modern Israeli commando sayeret took on the German SS? While using a secret transport device designed for covert operations behind enemy lines, a team of elite Israeli commandos instead find themselves in Poland in 1942. Chased by a rogues gallery of authentic German SS men, the commandos raid death camps and battle Nazi combat groups, while keeping one step ahead of their own destruction.
American Thinker, in the tradition of Weird Tales and Dime Mystery Magazine, has become the pulp fiction website of the modern age.
Age sensitive graphic novel for the likes of Obumble.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”
Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda. “We understand that they are pretty bad guys,” Oren said in the interview.
Dozens of federal employees at an obscure agency that handles appeals of patent applications went years with so little work to do that they collected salaries — and even bonuses — while they surfed the Internet, did laundry, exercised and watched television, an investigation has found.
The employees, paralegals making $60,000 to $80,000 a year, were idle with full knowledge of their immediate bosses and multiple layers of managers and judges who “sat on their hands” waiting for work to give them, a year-long probe by the Commerce Department inspector general’s office uncovered...
>>>The report lists off the types of diseases that are becoming prevalent in the facilities and that are requiring treatment. They include “respiratory illnesses, chicken pox, tuberculosis, and scabies.” These diseases have also spread to several DHS employees working at the locations, the report states.<<<
DHS Report: Tuberculosis And Scabies Spreading In Migrant Holding Facilities
August 1, 2014 The Mythical Drying of Idaho By Sierra Rayne
According to Channel 7 KTVB out of Boise, Idaho, a "panel says climate changing wildfires."
Apparently we also have the following climate crisis in Idaho to go along with the wildfire apocalypse:
Idaho is drying out. Charlie Luce, a hydrologist with the Forest Service, says the Gem State is using more water, but seeing less in the aquifers. There's 20 percent less water coming into our basins, when compared to the 1940s.
That's not what the NOAA National Climatic Data Center database shows. There has been no significant trend in annual precipitation for the state since records began in 1895, and – wait for it – the correlation is actually positive, toward more annual precipitation, not less, over the past 120 years. Same goes for summertime precipitation in the Gem State – no significant trend, but an increasing – not decreasing – correlation.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index for Idaho exhibits no sign of a significant trend since 1895 for the summertime, annual, 24-month, 36-month, 48-month, or 60-month drought indices. There is almost a perfect non-correlation with the drought index over time. In other words, there is absolutely no sign that "Idaho is drying out."
I looked at all 217 hydrometric stations in the USGS database for streamflow in Idaho. Not a single station exhibits a significant declining trend in annual streamflow since 1940.
There is no scientific evidence linking anthropogenic climate change to the wildfires in this region, and there is no evidence I can find that Idaho is drying out due to anthropogenic climate change. If the climate alarmists have real data to support their claims, they should provide it – and in raw, unfiltered formats for the rest of us to independently analyze.
Bob OreilleThu Jul 31, 09:16:00 AM EDT
ReplyDeleteThe son of the founder of Hamas was interviewed on Fox, Mosab Hassan Yousef, was on Fox New being interviewed. His opinion was that Hamas was a terrorist organization. He finally got out, moving on. He said that even if Israel moved back to the '67 borders Hamas would continue as their objective is genocide of the Jews.
Here he is in an 8 minute video -
http://www.ironicsurrealism.com/2014/07/23/video-son-of-hamas-founder-hamas-atrocities-led-me-to-convert-muhammad-a-false-prophet/
Bob OreilleThu Jul 31, 09:17:00 AM EDT
Not quite awake yet, thus the mangled first sentence.
DeleteIsrael -Founded by Terrorists and Sustained by Terrorism
No one denies that Hamas is a terrorist organization, too.
So what that they are?
What doe Hamas have to do with actions and behaviors of the Israeli NASI?
Are you looking for 'Equivalency' when comparing Israel to Hamas?
Nope. There is no equivalency.
DeleteHamas is the big bad stinking bastard on the block.
No missiles = peace
Even many Arab leaders in other nations think so -
Delete'Arab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent'
From the article directly below....
You should use your own name, rat, and quit with the Anon non sense.
Delete.
DeleteMiddle East
ReplyDeleteArab Leaders, Viewing Hamas as Worse Than Israel, Stay Silent
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Photo
A cease-fire proposal by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt met most of Israel’s demands; Hamas immediately rejected it. Credit Fady Fars/Middle East News Agency, via Associated Press
CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting.
Not this time.
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents.
“I have never seen a situation like it, where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummeling of Hamas,” he said. “The silence is deafening.”
Although Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — the government in Cairo this time surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point for any further discussions.
But as commentators sympathetic to the Palestinians slammed the proposal as a ruse to embarrass Hamas, Egypt’s Arab allies praised it. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to “the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible.”
“There is clearly a convergence of interests of these various regimes with Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In the battle with Hamas, Mr. Elgindy said, the Egyptian fight against the forces of political Islam and the Israeli struggle against Palestinian militants were nearly identical. “Whose proxy war is it?” he asked.
The dynamic has inverted all expectations of the Arab Spring uprisings. As recently as 18 months ago, most analysts in Israel, Washington and the Palestinian territories expected the popular uprisings to make the Arab governments more responsive to their citizens, and therefore more sympathetic to the Palestinians and more hostile to Israel.
DeleteBut instead of becoming more isolated, Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult, now tacitly supported by the leaders of the resurgent conservative order as an ally in their common fight against political Islam.
Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again on Wednesday.
And the pro-government Egyptian news media has continued to rail against Hamas as a tool of a regional Islamist plot to destabilize Egypt and the region, just as it has since the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood one year ago. (Egyptian prosecutors have charged Hamas with instigating violence in Egypt, killing its soldiers and police officers, and even breaking Mr. Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders out of jail during the 2011 uprising.)
The diatribes against Hamas by at least one popular pro-government talk show host in Egypt were so extreme that the government of Israel broadcast some of them into Gaza.
“They use it to say, ‘See, your supposed friends are encouraging us to kill you!’ ” Maisam Abumorr, a Palestinian student in Gaza City, said in a telephone interview.
Some pro-government Egyptian talk shows broadcast in Gaza “are saying the Egyptian Army should help the Israeli Army get rid of Hamas,” she said.
At the same time, Egypt has infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels used for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting.
“Sisi is worse than Netanyahu, and the Egyptians are conspiring against us more than the Jews,” said Salhan al-Hirish, a storekeeper in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. “They finished the Brotherhood in Egypt, and now they are going after Hamas.”
Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finding themselves allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran, a rival regional power that has a history of funding and arming Hamas.
For Washington, the shift poses new obstacles to its efforts to end the fighting. Although Egyptian intelligence agencies continue to talk with Hamas, as they did under former President Hosni Mubarak and Mr. Morsi, Cairo’s new animosity toward the group has called into question the effectiveness of that channel, especially after the response to Egypt’s first proposal.
As a result, Secretary of State John Kerry turned to the more Islamist-friendly states of Qatar and Turkey as alternative mediators — two states that grew in regional stature with the rising tide of political Islam after the Arab Spring, and that have suffered a degree of isolation as that tide has ebbed.
But that move has put Mr. Kerry in the incongruous position of appearing to some analysts as less hostile to Hamas — and thus less supportive of Israel — than Egypt or its Arab allies.
For Israeli hawks, the change in the Arab states has been relatively liberating.
“The reading here is that, aside from Hamas and Qatar, most of the Arab governments are either indifferent or willing to follow the leadership of Egypt,” said Martin Kramer, president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and an American-Israeli scholar of Islamist and Arab politics. “No one in the Arab world is going to the Americans and telling them, ‘Stop it now,’ ” as Saudi Arabia did, for example, in response to earlier Israeli crackdowns on the Palestinians, he said. “That gives the Israelis leeway.”
With the resurgence of the anti-Islamist, military-backed government in Cairo, Mr. Kramer said, the new Egyptian government and allies like Saudi Arabia appear to believe that “the Palestinian people are to bear the suffering in order to defeat Hamas, because Hamas cannot be allowed to triumph and cannot be allowed to emerge as the most powerful Palestinian player.”
DeleteEgyptian officials disputed that characterization, arguing that the new government was maintaining its support for the Palestinian people despite its deteriorating relations with Hamas, and that it had grown no closer to Israel than it was under Mr. Morsi or Mr. Mubarak.
“We have a historical responsibility toward the Palestinians, and that is not related to our stance on any specific faction,” said a senior Egyptian diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. “Hamas is not Gaza, and Gaza is not Palestine.”
Egyptian officials noted that the Egyptian military and the Red Crescent had delivered medical supplies and other aid to Gaza. Cairo continues to keep open lines of communication with Hamas, including allowing a senior Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouq, to reside in Cairo.
Other analysts, though, argued that Egypt and its Arab allies were trying to balance their own overriding dislike for Hamas against their citizens’ emotional support for the Palestinians, a balancing act that could grow more challenging as the Gaza carnage mounts.
“The pendulum of the Arab Spring has swung in Israel’s favor, just like it had earlier swung in the opposite direction,” said Mr. Elgindy, the former Palestinian adviser.
“But I am not sure the story is finished at this point.”
Correction: July 30, 2014
An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the college of which Martin Kramer is president. It is Shalem College, not Salem.
Merna Thomas and Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo, and Ben Hubbard from Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/world/middleeast/fighting-political-islam-arab-states-find-themselves-allied-with-israel.html?_r=0
From the New York Times !
DeleteWhat else would you expect from Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.?
DeleteDear Reader, this commenter with the nifty crossed swords and the pirate hat is really the old desert rat.
Delete.
Why he seeks anonymity only he could know for sure, and even he may not know for sure.
He's rotating his names, like Israel rotates troops (real people), Rat, Farmer Rob, Jack and numerous other names, not to worry, he's got his cue cards all lined up to have his brilliant conversations with himself in due time...
DeleteIn my neverending quest to ignore "The Turd With No Clean End," some good news on the "American" front:
ReplyDeleteFewer Americans filed applications for unemployment insurance benefits over the past month than at any time in more than eight years, signaling employers are hanging on to workers as demand improves.
The four-week average of jobless claims, considered a less volatile measure than the weekly figure, dropped to 297,250, the lowest since April 2006, from 300,750 the prior week. Claims in the period ended July 26 climbed to 302,000, in line with the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, from a revised 279,000 the prior week that was the lowest since 2000.
Claims
Good economic news lately, Rufus. It is undeniable.
DeleteWill it last?
Will Israel last?
DeleteAs a democratic republic, perhaps, it can.
As an apartheid theocracy, not a chance.
AnonymousThu Jul 31, 09:53:00 AM EDT
DeleteWill Israel last?
As a democratic republic, perhaps, it can.
As an apartheid theocracy, not a chance.
Well win tit great that Israel AINT a " apartheid theocracy"!!!
Now will nationalism in the arab and islamic world last? Now that is the question.
Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan and every islamic nation in-between are in fact, apartheid theocracies. Christians, B'hais, Jews, Atheists are all (IF allowed to live) relegated to ghettos and slums (real ones).
But back to Israel?
Have you noticed? The 20% of Arabs WHO LIVE as full fledged citizens of the Jewish State (with small exceptions) is NOT protesting..
THEY above all others understand and KNOW what and who the Hamas are...
And they are silent. As is the arab street. As is Egypt.
Hamas is killing it's own in Gaza and EVERYONE who is HONEST knows it....
Thankfully it is not an apartheid theocracy.
DeleteIt is actually a secular state with arabs sitting in the Knesset.
A refuge for Jews worldwide who may be atheists, agnostics, or theists.
With anti-semitism on the rise it is a wonderful thing that Israel exists.
NOTHING IS MORE SHAMEFUL THAT ATTACKING SLEEPING CHILDREN
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Hamas has done this 10,000 times over the last 10 years.
100 rockets a day are keeping 2/3 of Israel in bomb shelters.
Maybe if Hamas and the palestinians used the aid they received (including 900,000 TONS of concrete) to build a decent society instead of a rocket laden, rat tunnel infested terror camp things could be different.
israel accepted a cease fire BEFORE the ground invasion started (and 5 OTHER arab initiated ceasefires) but Hamas still is shooting rockets.
No one knows the true number of dead palesitnian KIDS by the very hand of Hamas.
What is KNOWN? a full 13% of all Hamas rockets HIT palestinians.
Not to say that Israel has not hit civilians, it has. And it is not done on purpose, what is hit on purpose? Ammo dumps, Hamas rockets and launching sites and of course command and control sites.
War is hell. Hamas started it by firing rockets at Israeli sleeping children.
Then the Hamas? Used it's rat tunnels to seek to kidnap, rape and capture MORE Israeli Children.
That crossed more red lines and of course, TIPPED HAMAS's hand!!!
Israel learned of the 5000 rat terror tunnels going from Hospitals, Mosques, UNRWA Schools, and Clinics (and civilian homes) and now has vowed to destroy them...
Hamas's stated position is the destruction of Israel and the killing of every Jew.
Deuce's position is that there will not be peace until the "criminal settler colony" is dismantled and replaced by Palestine with a majority Arab population. Deuce already has stated that there will be payback by the arabs against the Jews (and their kids)...
So if this is a war? And Hamas targets Israeli kids?
Why the selective outrage?
The only thing that was a game changer? israel spent billions on bomb shelters and antimissile technology.
What if israel just bombed Gaza like Hamas bombs Israel? Just let loose and shell all the civilians of Gaza with out any selection of specific targets?
Instead of 400 or so civilians out of 1200 deaths? you'd have Syria, with 700 a day being killed....
The Israeli NASI have been killing Palestinian children at the rate of 13 per month, for the entirety of the 21st century.
DeleteNo rant, no raves, no fabricated numbers, no fantasies
The Israeli NASI have been killing Palestinian children at the rate of 13 per month, for the entirety of the 21st century.
Now they are using F16s instead of M16s to do the evil deeds.
The US should institute an arms embargo of the region.
The US is not funding the Assad regime.
DeleteIt is not as great an isue, what Syria does, because of that.
Few of the people killed in Syria are killed munitions dropped by an F16, few are shot with M16s.
That is the primary issue, the US funding of the evil that the Israeli NASI do.
AnonymousThu Jul 31, 09:57:00 AM EDT
DeleteThe Israeli NASI have been killing Palestinian children at the rate of 13 per month, for the entirety of the 21st century.
And in syria? they have been killing 15 THOUSAND a month!
15,000 a month verses 13 a month...
Heck, more than 13 a WEEKEND are killed in Chicago's South Side!
Car Crashes Kill 40,000 in U.S. Every Year.... that's 3333 a MONTH!!!!
"O"rdure is now trying to conflate the killing of children to maintain the state of Israel's apartheid system of physical and political control in Palestine ... to accidents on the highways of the United States.
DeleteThe boy has not lost his moral compass, it look like he never had one. A man would know, naturally, which way "Right" is.
Israel is calling up 16,000 more reservists.
ReplyDeleteLooks like they are going for it.
WiO, the son of the founder of Hamas has turned........
ReplyDeleteHow great is this......!
The son of the founder of Hamas sees more clearly than many here.
This ebola thing looks to be getting serious......
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletethe USA provides 400 MILLION a year, not counting UNRWA funding to the palestinians INCLUDING HAMAS. which is huge portion of their GDP.
DeleteAmerica DOES fund Syria by the purchase of Iranian and Syrian oil....
get over yourself, you don't even pay taxes.
Hamas does not carry US weapons
DeleteThey use US medicines, eat US wheat, and are also supplied by the UN because of the prison conditions the Israeli have imposed upon Gaza.
If the US did not supply the NASI of Israel with weapons, it could cut back on the subsidies paid to the Palestinians and the UN. The US should impose an arms embargo and blockade upon both the geographic area and all the participants of the conflict. Israel, Palestine and Egypt. With US aid payments to those respective governments suspended until the end of the conflict to all three participants
Then, like a TRUE Socialist or Israeli "O"rdure then conflates commercial trade with Governmental aid, subsidies and grants.
DeleteNot realizing there is a difference between the free associations of individuals and the authoritative aspects of Government and the distance between the two.
GAO says Obama wasted $840,000,000 millions of your tax dollars trying, and failing, to properly launch and then fix the ObamaCare website.
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't they just hire Bill Gates to do it? That's what I would have done.
And the website is still not working as intended.
Gates might have done it for free.
DeleteBut then Obama wouldn't get the good will from all those to whom all that money was gifted/grafted.
Yeah, Windows worked PERFECTLY the first time.
ReplyDeleteNever "Crashed."
Meanwhile, none of the exchanges that Oracle built has worked for One Day, Yet.
The "Blue Screen of Death" was just a figment of our imaginations.
DeleteDoubt if he knows what you are referencing, Rufus.
DeleteProbably right.
DeleteWashington - The Obama administration condemned the deadly shelling of a United Nations school in Gaza on Wednesday, using tough, yet carefully worded language that reflects growing White House irritation with Israel and the mounting civilian casualties stemming from its ground and air war against Hamas.
ReplyDeleteThe US frustrations were compounded by a flurry of Israeli media reports this week that appeared aimed at discrediting President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, who spent days trying to negotiate an unsuccessful cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
In unusually blunt language, a state department spokesperson on Wednesday repeatedly described one of the reports as "complete crap".
The developments injected fresh tension into the often fraught relationship between Obama and the Israeli government, while also highlighting the president's willingness to take a tougher line against the long-time US ally than some of his predecessors or lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
From a purely "political" standpoint: Israeli leadership had better quit "fucking with da man."
DeleteObama's in deep trouble with his base over what they are increasingly seeing as Israeli genocide.
His stark drop in the polling is not from Republicans "voting twice;" it's from the young, non-white, female, liberals registering their disapproval of his support of the Zionists.
Better believe it.
DeletePlus the pressure Turkey is applying.
The US cannot ratchet up the "Cold War" with out the Turks by our side.
Obama's in deep trouble with his base over what they are increasingly seeing as Israeli genocide.
DeleteSo the killing of 500 civilians out of a population of 1.8 MILLION is genocide?
What did we hear when three Israeli teens were killed out of a population of six million?
DeleteThis is the total crap that needs to stop
ReplyDeleteIsrael mobilises 16,000 more reservists - US restocks Israeli ammo
THE US has confirmed that it restocked Israel’s supplies of ammunition hours after finally sharpening its tone to condemn an attack on a UN school in Gaza.
But while both the White House and the State Department condemned the shelling of the UN-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp in northern Gaza in which at least 16 Palestinians were killed, neither would assign blame to staunch US ally Israel.
“Obviously nothing justifies the killing of innocent civilians seeking shelter in a UN facility,” deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf acknowledged, in some of the toughest US comments since the start of 23 days of fighting in the Gaza Strip.
“Innocent Palestinians seeking refuge in these schools should not have shells dropped on them, should not come under attack.”
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said Israeli forces had hit the school, which had been sheltering about 3300 Gazans.
Despite heated exchanges with reporters, Ms Harf stressed that “We don’t know for certain who shelled this school, we need to get all the facts”.
National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also condemned “those responsible for hiding weapons in UN facilities in Gaza” and warned of rising fears that thousands of Palestinians who have been told by Israel to leave their homes increasingly had nowhere to go in the blockaded narrow coastal Strip.
US officials also warned that patience with “crazy” Israeli criticism of would-be-peacemaker John Kerry had snapped.
The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defence Department approving the sale three days later.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to US national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defence capability,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said.
“This defence sale is consistent with those objectives.”
Two of the requested munitions came from a little-known stockpile of ammunition stored by the US military on the ground in Israel for emergency use by the Jewish state.
The War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel is estimated to be worth $1 billion. The decision to provide ammunition to Israel could fuel controversy, coming just as Washington expresses growing concern about the deaths of more than 1300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, since the Israeli operation began on July 8.
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DeleteThe Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defence Department approving the sale three days later.
As noted in the Libyan war, Nato wouldn't have been able to operate for more than a few weeks without the US replenishing their stockpiles of arms.
Renders rather humorous those who posit Israel could get along just fine without US aid.
.
No.
DeleteThey could, but it would take some time to change the ammo over.
Perhaps they should turn to the Chinese.
But, Obama won't be around much longer, the Pubs will control all of Congress and hopefully the White House in '16, the American people support Israel as usual, so maybe they should just stick with us.
Things will be getting back to normal.
.
DeleteAs much as I despise Hillary, were the Pubs to take over both House and Senate and appear to be able to hold them in 2016, I would vote for her for president rather than any currently mentioned candidate in the GOP field with the possible exception of Rand Paul.
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DeleteQuirkThu Jul 31, 11:26:00 AM EDT
.The Pentagon confirmed the Israeli military had requested additional ammunition to restock its dwindling supplies on July 20, with the US Defence Department approving the sale three days later.
Renders rather humorous those who posit Israel could get along just fine without US aid.
Renders funny how the ONLY reliable ally in the middle east is ISRAEL.. After all America cannot rely on Turkey or Egypt, Arabia or Kuwait
.
DeleteRely on Israel for what?
I am not trying to be a smart ass. It is a serious question.
I guess if it came down to votes in the UN Israel would have our back just as the US has hers. But Israel in not in the SC so that help is limited. Fly over rights? I don't know if the US flies over Israel or not. I assume that if Egypt gave us a hard time we could always use Turkey and vise versa.
.
I am so very sad for Quirk.
DeleteIt is tough watching a good man lose his mind.
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DeletePlease. I'll take the answer from you, Obumble.
.
Where does the figure 1,300 come from?
ReplyDeleteDoes the US Government have someone over there counting?
Glad to hear the ammo is being re-stocked.
The son of the founder of Hamas thinks Hamas is awful.
And he's right about that, for sure.
He is a brave man with a death sentence on his head.
Letting an Israeli speak -
ReplyDeleteJuly 31, 2014
Time for Hamas's Hollywood Sympathizers to Snap out of It!
By Dan Gordon
I love actors. Honestly -- that wasn't sarcasm. I started out as an actor before I began writing for a living. I shared my life with an actress who was/is a wonderful artist and woman. As they used to say about Jews And African Americans some of my best friends ... actors and writers, directors, musicians, artists of every type are the most empathetic people on earth. We have to be. It's not just a job, for the ones who are serious about it, it's our calling. When we say, "I feel your pain," we mean it. Because we must feel the pain of every character we portray or create. We feel the pain of that part of our own soul that corresponds to that of the character.
And no writer, actor or director ever plays, creates or directs a villain. Each character we create is the hero of his own story, and we find the humanity in each, no matter how villainous the character's actions may be.
That is even more so with the truly great artists like Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Pedro Almadovar. Their work, collectively and individually, is an alter at which, I, as a screenwriter, playwright and novelist, worship often. They are my artistic Rabbis and teachers. They feel others' pain, no matter how villainous the character.
Bardem portrayed a chilling mass murderer in No Country For Old Men, and deservedly won the Academy Award for it. His portrayal was riveting, not because he portrayed the character's villiany, but because he somehow managed to convey his humanity, despite the fact that the character was a heartless serial killer who murdered, or not, depending on the outcome of the toss of a coin. That makes for great acting.
Unfortunately it can, and does, cloud both the moral and intellectual compass of many artists like the truly wonderful Bardem, Cruz, Almadovar et al.
They look at pictures of Palestinians, who truly are suffering in this war, which Hamas and it's terrorist army have perpetrated against Israel and our civilian population, and they "feel their pain" or as close as you can get to doing that in Madrid or Malibu.
Palestinian homes are being destroyed. Israel is the one shelling them, as they rightly state, by land, air and sea. Therefore Israel, a white European Colonial transplant persecuting a brown skinned indigenous people, are the villains in this reality show watched by millions on TV. Therefore Israel must be condemned, damned, censured and stopped by the international community!
They have signed a letter stating," Palestinian homes are being destroyed!"
That is indeed true. The reason for that, my brothers and sisters in Cinema, are the actions of Hamas, a murderous and cynical terrorist organization which seized power, not from Israel but from the Government of the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas!
DeleteThey lined up their fellow Palestinian brothers against walls and machine gunned them to death. If you have the stomach for it the videos are still on YouTube. They blindfolded and bound their Palestinian Brothers and pushed them off multiple storied buildings to horrific deaths.
That's Hamas. That's how they seized power.
Those were their crimes against their fellow Palestinians.
With the greatest respect, Javier, Penelope and Pedro, from one who admires your artistic achievements more than words can express, did you write any letters of outrage and condemnation then? Did you call on the international community to end the suffering then?
Well, but the deaths were only in the hundreds then, not over a thousand like now, and besides that was a Palestinian internal affair, one, which I'm sure, you felt uncomfortable in condemning.
But what Israel is doing is clear-cut.
It's genocide!
Is it really?
We're all visual artists at the end of the day, creating images for the screen. Look, then, at the picture below.
I can get you literally hundreds more just like it. I'd be happy to. Just ask. The picture is of the entrance to a terrorist tunnel that was uncovered in the tiny space between two Palestinian homes. The tunnel to which it connects goes underneath the internationally recognized borders of Israel, the borders you demand we return to put a pin in that thought for a moment). The tunnel, and scores of others like it, then comes up next to and in some cases inside Israeli civilian farming communities. One tunnel came up in the communal dining hall of a farming village where as many as eight hundred people would have been gathered for holiday meals in normal times. Terrorists armed with anti tank missiles, machine guns, hand grenades, thousands of rounds of ammunition, handcuffs and tranquilizers then come up out of those tunnels with the intent of murdering, maiming and kidnapping hundreds of Israeli men, women and children. That's not in theory. Hamas terrorists have tried to do that almost half a dozen times in the last few weeks.
DeleteWell, but you say, no such killings of hundreds of Israelis have taken place!
Meanwhile the poor Palestinian people are suffering from Israeli bombardment.
My dear friends, no such killings of hundreds of Israeli civilians have taken place because of Israeli bombardment.
They have not taken place because my brothers and sisters in arms watch the border diligently, and when necessary, lay down their lives to protect our men, women and children from the terrorists who entered those tunnels next to, and many times from within, those very Palestinian homes whose destruction you rightly bemoan, as by the way do I, and, oddly, most other Israelis.
Those Palestinian homes are being destroyed because Hamas is committing a war crime under the Geneva accords, which you cite, against their own people, by launching their rockets, hiding their terrorist tunnel entrances and missiles, rockets mortars and machine guns, inside those homes, thus turning their own people's dwellings into Military targets . Why in the name of all that is holy, don't you at least acknowledge, let alone condemn, that clear and cruel war crime, not just against Israeli civilians but Palestinian civilians?
In your letter you state, "they (the Palestinians) are being denied.. electricity and free movement to their hospitals, schools and fields while the international community does nothing."
DeleteMy friends, Hamas has fired from, launched rockets from, put terrorist tunnel entrances in, and hidden weapons inside, not just people's homes, but inside their schools and mosques and hospitals. Hamas has hidden their rockets in UN operated schools! That's not a wicked Zionist lie, that's a UN finding, against which they have, albeit weakly, protested.
I personally have been in Gaza as an Israeli soldier and have had Palestinian farmers come up to me, personally, because I wear an officer's rank, and demand of me that we, the Israel Defense Forces, not stop until we have killed all the Hamas operatives. Those aren't my words. They were the words of Palestinian farmers in El Atatra, and the reason they made that demand of us was because Hamas had confiscated the fields that had once supported them and their family by growing sunflowers, and now used them as rocket launching sites aimed at Israeli civilians.
Why in the name of the humanity I know you treasure, are you not condemning that?
That was a rhetorical question.
I know why you're not condemning that.
It's because they look weak and we look strong. And one always roots for the underdog in the movies. Except this isn't a movie. There's no one to say "cut" when the terrorist comes up out of the tunnel or the rocket or mortar is hurtling toward you.
It's not even a reality show though I know many in the media try to milk the ratings by presenting it as such.
But we're not Honey Boo Boo or The Housewives of whatever.
We're a country that was attacked, that said calm would be answered with calm and was answered instead with thousands of rocket attacks aimed almost exclusively at Israeli civilians while hiding behind Palestinian civilians. Hamas is committing war crimes against both our peoples not only while the international community dies nothing, but while well-meaning, empathetic people like you enable them like a well-meaning friend turning a blind eye to a junkie's addiction. Except in this case the junkie is a terrorist organization as wicked as any on earth. Don't you see that your misguided enabling is killing both our peoples?
I know it takes more effort to understand something than to simply emotionally react with whatever the bumper sticker mentality if the day is. But honestly, both the Palestinian people and we deserve better of you.
But you may excuse Hamas's terrorist tactics because they don't have an air force or tanks and thus is the only way they can fight back against a wicked force of Zionists who have invaded" the Palestinian territories instead of returning to the 1967 borders."
Friends, there's no excuse for not getting the facts straight -- you can Google them. With regard to Gaza, which is, after all, where the war is, Israel unilaterally withdrew to the 1967 borders almost ten years ago!!
In that time Hamas had launched three wars against us. There was no air campaign against Hamas until they began firing hundreds of rockets a day against us.
t.html
Because of the Iron Dome anti-missile system we developed, the rockets caused no loss if life on our side and so when Egypt proposed a cease fire and the Palestinian President and the Arab League endorsed it...we accepted it. I know history is a bore but this was only two weeks ago!
DeleteThat's when Hamas launched its first terrorist tunnel attack against our civilians. Had we not intercepted and killed and driven back the terrorist force, it would have resulted in the worst terrorist attack, the highest loss of civilian life, in Israel's history .
That's when we had no choice but to begin the ground operation … after Israel, Egypt, the Arab League and the President of the Palestine Authority all agreed to end the violence, stop the killing And destruction and try to create a cycle of peace. It Is Hamas that has brought about this awful cycle of death.
I wrote a movie called The Hurricane that Norman Jewison directed. It gave me an opportunity to complement what I thought was one if the best scenes he had ever directed. The scene is in Moonstruck between Cher And Nicholas Cage, in which an emotional Nick Cage prattled on about his endless love blah, blah, blah.
Cage is pitch perfect the sincere, emotive lover. But he's just spewing so much nonsense that Cher hauls off and slaps him so hard his grandchildren probably felt it. She then shouts the same two words that, with the greatest respect, we who are suffering from Hamas' dual war crimes, have every right to demand of you, and every other armchair enabler, snap out of it!
Dan Gordon is a captain in the IDF (Res)
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/07/time_for_hamass_hollywood_sympathizers_to_snap_out_of_i
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DeleteI love actors. Honestly -- that wasn't sarcasm. I started out as an actor before I began writing for a living. I shared my life with an actress who was/is a wonderful artist and woman. As they used to say about Jews And African Americans some of my best friends ... actors and writers, directors, musicians, artists of every type are the most empathetic people on earth. We have to be. It's not just a job, for the ones who are serious about it, it's our calling. When we say, "I feel your pain," we mean it. Because we must feel the pain of every character we portray or create. We feel the pain of that part of our own soul that corresponds to that of the character.
And I work with a black guy and I go to Mexican restaurants all the time.
Where are my boots?
.
.
ReplyDeletePerhaps they should turn to the Chinese.
Good on them.
Love to see it.
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Israel, the Perma-Victim
ReplyDeleteIsrael claims that it is acting in self-defense in Gaza, thereby portraying itself as the victim in the present conflict. President Barack Obama and both houses of the U.S. Congress have endorsed this justification for the use of force. But is it an accurate assessment?
Gaza is not an independent state like Lebanon or Jordan. Israel accepts this but instead sees Gaza as a “hostile entity,” a concept unknown to international law and one that Israel has not sought to explain.
But the status of Gaza is clear. It is an occupied territory — part of the occupied Palestinian territory. In 2005 Israel withdrew its settlers and the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza, but it continues to retain control of it, not only through intermittent incursions into and regular shelling of the territory but also by effectively controlling the land crossings into Gaza, its airspace and territorial waters and its population registry, which determines who may leave and enter.
Effective control is the test for occupation. The International Court of Justice recently confirmed this in a dispute between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The physical presence of Israel in Gaza is not necessary provided it retains effective control and authority over the territory by other means. Modern technology now permits effective control from outside the occupied territory, and this is what Israel has established.
That Gaza remains occupied is accepted by the United Nations and all states except, possibly, Israel.
{...}
{...}
DeleteAn illegal occupation
Military or belligerent occupation is a status recognized by international law. According to the terms of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 — to which Israel is a party — a state is allowed to occupy a territory acquired in armed conflict pending a peace settlement. But the occupation must be temporary, and the occupying power is obliged to balance its security needs with the welfare of the occupied people. Collective punishment is strictly prohibited.
The occupation of Gaza is now in its 47th year, and Israel is largely responsible for the failure to reach an agreement on a peaceful settlement. Moreover, Israel is in breach of many of the humanitarian provisions contained in the Fourth Geneva Convention as a result of the siege it has imposed on Gaza since 2007. In short, Gaza is not only an occupied territory; it is also an illegally occupied territory.
The present operation in Gaza — Operation Protective Edge — must therefore not be seen as an act of self-defense by a state subjected to acts of aggression by a foreign state or nonstate actor. Instead, it should be seen as the action of an occupying power aimed at maintaining its occupation — the illegal occupation of Gaza. Israel is not the victim. It is the occupying power that is using force to maintain its illegal occupation.
The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
History is replete with examples of occupying powers using force to maintain their occupations. Apartheid South Africa used force against the people of Namibia; Germany used force against the people of France and the Netherlands during World War II.
The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must thus be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
Before Israel’s physical withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian acts of violent resistance were directed at Israeli forces within the territory. This was during the second intifada. Since then, Palestinian militants have been obliged to take their resistance to the occupation and the illegal siege of Gaza to Israel itself. The alternative is to do nothing, a course no occupied people in history has ever taken.
It is unusual for an occupied people to take its resistance outside the occupied territory. But it is also unusual for an occupying power to maintain a brutal occupation from outside the territory. When the occupying power maintains its status through military force within the occupied territory because of these acts of resistance on its own territory, as Israel has done, it acts as the enforcer of an occupation — not as a state acting in self-defense.
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DeleteLack of accountability
A state seeking to enforce its occupation, like a state acting in self-defense, must comply with international humanitarian law. This includes respect for the principle of proportionality, respect for civilians and the drawing of a distinction between military and civilian targets, and the prohibition of collective punishment. Both Israel and Palestinian militants are obliged to act within the confines of these rules.
Sadly, Israel is in violation of all three of these basic tenets. Its action is a clear collective punishment of the people of Gaza. The numbers of the dead and wounded and the property damage inflicted on them are completely disproportionate to the few civilians killed and wounded and property damaged in Israel. It is also clear from its bombing of schools, hospitals and private homes that Israel makes little, if any, attempt to distinguish between civilian and military targets.
What is to be done? The United Nations is powerless to act in the face of the U.S. veto. This places a heavy burden on the European states to use their influence to stop the bloodshed.
It is also incumbent on the International Criminal Court to act. Palestine, recognized as a state by the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, has accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. Under pressure from the U.S. and Europe, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court refuses to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. History will surely judge unkindly both the prosecutor and the institution that she serves if nothing is done.
John Dugard is emeritus professor of international law at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera America's editorial policy.
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deuce: The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
DeleteYour point advocates the total defeat and actual occupation of Gaza. I guess the best way to deal with Gaza is to conquer it, execute all Hamas terrorists and force the Palestinian people to live under REAL occupation.
That is your option SINCE the people of gaza consistently choose violence over self government.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/u-s-has-sold-ammunition-to-israel-since-start-of-gaza-conflict/
ReplyDeleteU.S. Has Sold Ammunition to Israel Since Start of Gaza Conflict
"In the last week the U.S. has provided Israel with tank rounds and illumination rounds for grenade launchers requested as part of a foreign military arms sale. The weapons came from a $1 billion stockpile of ammunition stored by the U.S. military in Israel for that country’s use if needed for an emergency.
However, a U.S. defense official stressed the delivery of weapons from the existing stockpile in Israel was more a matter of convenience to rotate U.S. ammunition stocks than an emergency request from Israel.
Since the 1990′s U.S. European Command has maintained a little -known stockpile inside Israel officially known as War Reserve Stockpile Ammunition-Israel (WRSA-I)..."
Mr. Obama approved the sale so everything is cool.
120mm peanut paste is potent stuff. :-)
Glad you are so pleased.
DeleteIt's no longer the "stupid party." It's, now, the "full-on, batshit crazy party.)
ReplyDeleteYesterday, the Republican House authorized Boehner to go ahead with his lawsuit against Obama for for taking the entirely legal action that they, themselves, voted overwhelmingly to try to force him to take.
Today, John Boehner declares that Obama should take action on the border "On His Own."
Obama has been out of control since winning the last election.
DeleteI hope the lawsuit works though I doubt it will.
Guy thinks he is a dictator.
Here Rufus -
DeleteThe Case For Suing The President
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/192593/
Article in The Wall Street Journal
>>>>Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress. Article II imposes a duty on the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” When a law is unambiguous, the president cannot rewrite it to suit his own preferences. “The power of executing the laws,” as the Supreme Court emphasized in June in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, “does not include a power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.” If a law has defects, fixing them is Congress’s business.<<<<
DeleteClear enough, is it not?
What is "Occupation"Thu Jul 31, 05:15:00 PM EDT
ReplyDeletedeuce: The rockets fired by Palestinian factions from Gaza must be construed as acts of resistance of an occupied people and an assertion of its recognized right to self-determination.
Your point advocates the total defeat and actual occupation of Gaza. I guess the best way to deal with Gaza is to conquer it, execute all Hamas terrorists and force the Palestinian people to live under REAL occupation.
That is your option SINCE the people of gaza consistently choose violence over self government.
Let’s call it the “Warsaw Ghetto Convention” where an oppressed people trapped into a geographic area, has no choice but to take the law into their hands and resists their hated oppressor.
Ironically, The Zionists rebuke the world for not coming to their aid and stood aside as the Brown Shirts and then the Nazis turned segregation, economic oppression and then artillery to kill them.
Have a nice fucking day, with all due respect, and Dodo-Bob, do your own creative work. You are beginning to irritate me.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteGot a reply from my old girl friend whose current husband is half Jewish and half Lutheran. A Marine. Asked her what he thought of the situation. His opinion is there is no solution unless Hamas is wiped out. Then there will be peace 'for a while'.
DeleteHis opinion, for what it is worth.
:):):):)
DeleteLet’s call it the “Warsaw Ghetto Convention” where an oppressed people trapped into a geographic area, has no choice but to take the law into their hands and resists their hated oppressor.
DeleteAnd yet the palestinians are not shelling the egyptians that CONTROL their border..
HMMMMMMMMM
Deuce: Let’s call it the “Warsaw Ghetto Convention” where an oppressed people trapped into a geographic area, has no choice but to take the law into their hands and resists their hated oppressor.
DeleteNice revisionism. Did the NAZIS provide thousands of tons a month in food and medical care? To call it the "warsaw ghetto convention" would only apply if the palestinians were in fact being actively starved and put to death.
No matter how you slice it, 300 kids killed (not murdered) in war, out of a population of 1.8 MILLION does not make a genocide. Nor does it make it the "warsaw ghetto".
Learn history, you sound hysterical.
You assess not one fathom of responsibility to Hamas, the elected government of Gaza.
You do not mention the rockets, unless you call the "bottle rockets"
How insulting.
But you have your opinion and we have ours. But no one who is HONEST disputes that Hamas PREPPED and PREPARED to have a war, dug 5000 tunnels and imported and made 30,000 rockets in prep for the war...
And Hamas STARTED it...
And Hamas USES civilians as shields, in fact hamas forces it's civilians to protect with their lives the missiles...
ReplyDeleteIs Hamas calling it quits?
posted at 12:01 pm on July 31, 2014 by Noah Rothman
Over the course of the four-week-long conflict in the Gaza strip, Hamas, the governing authority in that territory, has rejected a variety of ceasefire proposals. Many of those were submitted by Arab negotiators, including Egypt and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. One ceasefire Hamas found favorable, submitted by United State Secretary of State John Kerry, was deemed so favorable to Hamas that Israel’s security cabinet rejected it unanimously.
On Thursday, a sign of hope emerged indicating that the conflict will soon come to a close. According to one unconfirmed report in the Arabic language Quds Press International News Agency, Hamas has consented to allow proxies to negotiate a long-term ceasefire agreement with Israel (translation of the text via Google):
Hamas and across the head of its political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, has given the green light to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate a long-term truce and discuss and amend the Egyptian initiative presented by President [Abdel Fattah] Sisi for both the Palestinian and Israeli sides, on the imposition of calm in the sector of the ceasefire by Israel and the resistance movements in the Gaza Strip.
There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of this latest report, the most glaring of which is the claim that Meshaal is amenable to a ceasefire negotiated by Egypt. While that Arab state enjoys a traditional role as a key negotiator in conflicts between Israel and the various Palestinian governing entities, Sisi has a cool relationship with Hamas.
As The New York Times reported Wednesday, the Arab states are leery of Hamas and view their rejection of a number of ceasefire proposals as irresponsible. The rejection of a ceasefire proposal submitted by Cairo, which The Times notes “met most of Israel’s demands and none from the Palestinian group,” has sapped the region of much of its goodwill toward Hamas.
“King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt the next day to commend it, Mr. Sisi’s office said, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to ‘the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible,’” The Times reported.
Egyptian officials have directly or implicitly blamed Hamas instead of Israel for Palestinian deaths in the fighting, even when, for example, United Nations schools have been hit by Israeli shells, something that occurred again on Wednesday.
Hamas is surely losing friends in the region, but they continue to be buoyed by the amount of support they have received in Western press outlets, on the streets of Europe, and in the United Nations. On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, accused both Hamas and Israel of crimes of war. That alone may lead Hamas to believe they can negotiate more favorable ceasefire terms down the road.
The Quds report is an interesting development, but there are many reasons to take it with a grain of salt. For now.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/07/31/is-hamas-calling-it-quits/
One tactic of the Apartheid South African regime was to consign black Africans to Bantustans, territories that were subordinate to Pretoria. In this way their citizenship could be revoked but they did not gain an actual new state. Gaza is very much like a Bantustan of Israel, surrounded by it and kept weak and disrupted.
ReplyDeleteBut in this way the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced there from their original homes in what is now southern Israel can be denied citizenship in Israel while also being kept stateless with regard to their “Palestine” Bantustan.
As in Apartheid South Africa, resistance to the Apartheid policies of Israel is met with extreme violence. In Israel “law and order” is maintained “at all costs” just as in Apartheid South Africa. If it is necessary to shoot down 700 students and youth for refusing to go along with the dictates of old white men, then so be it. The minority government “has nothing to apologize for.” Just as the sabotage and bombings of Umkhonte we Sizwe were termed mere terrorism and the ANC was demonized as a stalking horse for Stalinist dictatorship, so resistance organizations welling up from the slummy conditions imposed on Gaza are demonized and their very resistance to being denied the rights of human beings is used to justify further repression.
No wonder that today’s South Africa is calling on Israel to cease its ground offensive into Gaza.
JUAN COLE
"But in this way the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced there from their original homes "
DeleteFunny there was ONLY 650,000 arabs from the river to the sea in 1948. and 200,000 STAYED on to become Israelis...
Where did Juan come up with the other 1.6 MILLION?
Bob,
ReplyDeleteThe Caroline Glick video was informative and spot-on. Thanks
You are most welcome, allen.
DeleteThe latest death toll in Gaza, according to the Gazan health ministry, is 1,364, including 315 children. That number looks likely to soon surpass Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, when around 1,400 were killed.
ReplyDelete3 Israeli teens were kidnapped and killed. In the rest of the cilized world, a normal police action would be taken to capture the criminals and bring them to trial. The motivation would be to get them off the street to benefit and protect the community.
In the twiested perversion of present-day Israel, the political leader gets involved and committs 80,000 troops to pummel and attack a trapped civilian population, repressed by Israel for 47 years.
The results are the deaths 315 children murdered by the IDF, but who cares, they are not Jewish children.
These 315 childern have been described as rats by two of Israel’s most ardent supporters on this site. Those children are now dead, not at the hands of the IDF. Nothing personal you see. The IDF prefers long range artillery and high impact explosives, staying way out of harms way from an irregular army, with bottle rockets.
The dead children will never be adults and will never be able to defend themselves from being called rats, but if we take the written words on this site from two of Israel’s loyal defenders, we as adults can decide who is the vermin and who is not.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteBut both Deuce and Hamas agree, only thru the destruction of the state of Israel and the murder of 6.5 Jews will peace occur...
DeleteSorry Deuce, Jews will fight back and defend their right to live, even if your heroes, the Hamas, hid behind the diapers and panties of civilians.
"according to the Gazan health ministry"
DeleteMaybe I just don't trust people, but I would not believe any figures put out by 'the Gazan health ministry'.
They simply have too much incentive to pad the figures upward.
These 315 childern have been described as rats by two of Israel’s most ardent supporters on this site. Those children are now dead, not at the hands of the IDF. Nothing personal you see. The IDF prefers long range artillery and high impact explosives, staying way out of harms way from an irregular army, with bottle rockets.
DeletePlease post where the dead kids were called "rats"
In the rest of the cilized world, a normal police action...
DeleteHit to close to home Deuce?
The world, the entire world, would not permit a terrorist group .5 miles from it's border to collect and arm with 30,000 rockets and spend a BILLION dollars digging tunnels into their land for the express purpose to murder it's citizens..
The arab world for 66 years have not stopped trying to destroy Israel. It's citizens, under content rocket attack for the last 10 years, by BOTH Hezbollah and Hamas understand the blood lust of the arabs for Jew-blood.
DeleteThat is why the arabs that surround israel have never stopped stabbing, shooting rockets, planting IEDS and even kidnapping them (and murder and corpse mutiliation)
The only thing I've said about the children in Gaza is they should all be put under the care and protection of Child Protective Services in some western country or in Israel. They'd have a chance for a childhood and to grow up 'normal'.
ReplyDeleteThe kids, and some of the women too, in Gaza are the ones there for whom I have sympathy.
QuirkThu Jul 31, 01:32:00 PM EDT
ReplyDelete.
Rely on Israel for what?
I am not trying to be a smart ass. It is a serious question.
It's been answered dozens of times.
.
Delete:-)
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July 31, 2014
ReplyDeleteIDF Soldiers Killed in Booby-trapped UN Building
By Karin McQuillan
Why are US taxpayers sending a quarter billion dollars a year to a United Nations agency that shows every sign of cooperating with Hamas to kill soldiers of our ally Israel? Israel National News reports:
The three IDF soldiers who were killed on Wednesday in Gaza, were killed when explosives detonated within a booby-trapped UN building in Khan Younis,Breitbart reports.
An elite IDF tunnel unit was in the process of uncovering an opening to a Hamas tunnel located at an UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) health clinic when all of a sudden the explosives detonated, causing the entirety of the building to fall on top of the soldiers.
Neither the UN nor UNRWA have commented on the incident that resulted in the deaths of three Israeli soldiers, according to Breitbart.
This latest incident comes in the wake of the discovery of Hamas rockets in three UNWRA schools, only to have UNWRA give the rockets back to Hamas. The UN is demonstrating clear support for Hamas in many ways. For example, the UN immediately joined the propaganda war by blaming Israel for a strike on a Gaza hospital, which it was later reported was from misfired HAMAS rocket.
UNWRA and the UN also failed to comment on the loss of Israeli life at the booby-trapped, missile stock pile they allowed in their school.
UNRWA -- the UN Agency dedicated solely to helping Palestinian “refugees” -- has 30,000 employees; all but 200 are Palestinian. And we, the U.S. taxpayer, support them with almost a quarter of a billion dollars a year! We pay for food, education and housing, and all sorts of other services like personal loans, irrespective of financial need. We have perpetuated a welfare monster – an entire terrorist mini-state on the U.S. dole.
Since there are only 30,000 Palestinians alive today who were displaced by the Arab war against Israeli in 1948, that’s a one to one staff to refugee ratio. Of course, for the Palestinians there’s a special definition of being a refugee and qualifying for money -- no it’s not for life, it’s for the generations, and it makes no matter if you become the citizen of another country. (2 million Palestinian ‘refugees” became citizens of Jordan.) It doesn’t matter how much you earn, or if you own a mansion.
We are now supporting the fourth generation of Palestinians. They need only have one-eighth of a connection to Israel, that is, one great-grandparent who once worked in Israel (not lived there, worked there – and part time counts). They are still entitled to your money. The U.N. even defines Palestinians as refugees who always lived on the Arab side of the 1949 armistice line. There are supposedly 5 million Palestinians whom we owe.
In contrast, U.N. international staffing for all other refugee services in the world is less than 6,000 people – that’s for 126 countries such as Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and in Africa – where there are genuine refugees in need of emergency food and housing. The most staff any one country gets is 437. Yes, 437 compared to 29,800 for Palestinians. Other people only get to be called refugees until they are resettled somewhere.
Where are our fiscal hawks? Where is Ted Cruz’s golden tongue? Senator Rand Paul, this is a case for you. Here’s a beautiful example of international involvement we could do without.
The festering sore of the Palestinian grievance industry could not exist without American dollars. We pay for their schools and their housing. Gaza lives on American welfare. It is time to cut them off.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/07/idf_soldiers_killed_in_boobytrapped_un_building.html
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DeleteIf I didn't know you so well, I would be surprised that you had the balls to post this.
.
If I didn't know you so well, I would have been surprised you'd vote for Hillary, the biggest 'dick' of all.
DeleteYou've lost you mind.
;)
Mudar Zahran, Palestinian Leader, now speaking out against Hamas and calls them a dictatorship and fascist.
ReplyDeleteThe Hamas Egg is cracking...
.
DeleteHad a little trouble finding out who Mudar Zahran was.
Palestinian leader?
Mudar Zahran is a Jordanian Palestinian writer and political activist who lives in the United Kingdom,[1] where he has been granted political asylum.[2]
==============
Trial
In 2013 Zahran was indicted by a Jordanian military court and scheduled to be tried in absentia for four separate charges against him, relating to what it labels "incitement against the ruling political regime of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, (calling for) changing the basic conditions of society and using a long tongue [i.e. criticism – ed.] against the king and undermining an official entity"[4] in addition to "damaging the country's image and inciting hatred.[1][5]According to the Jordanian newspaper Al Ghad, “Zahran’s social networking sites carry articles and phrases offensive to Jordan and his own people (Palestinians)."[2][6]
Publications
"Jordan: In Bed With Islamists", Gatestone Institute, 31 January 2011
"Is Jordan's King Losing Control over the Bedouin?", Gatestone Institute, 20 June 2011
"UNRWA: The Palestinians' Worst Enemy", Gatestone Institute, 21 March 2012
"Egypt under Islamists: The Trouble Has Just Begun", Gatestone Institute, 3 July 2012
"Does Freezing Settlements Help Peace?", Gatestone Institute, 13 July 2012
"Jordan's Next Leader? With Help from the U.S. Department of State", Gatestone Institute, 26 October 2012
"Who Is Really Besieging Gaza?", Gatestone Institute, 15 November 2012
"More Trouble in Jordan", Gatestone Institute, 23 November 2012
"Jordan is Palestinian", Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2012, vol 19, no.1, pp. 3–12
"Who Is Destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque?", Gatestone Institute, 9 December 2013
"Who Is to Blame for "Islamophobia" in the UK?", Gatestone Institute, 24 February 2014
Somehow I doubt anyone is surprised that he would be criticizing Hamas.
.
Yep he'd be DEAD if still lived in the Middle East. Murdered by Islamists
Delete.
DeleteMudar Zahran, Palestinian Leader, now speaking out against Hamas and calls them a dictatorship and fascist.
The Hamas Egg is cracking...
You make it sound like this guy is so influential amongst Palestinians that his criticism will bring Hamas crashing down.
He writes for the Jerusalem Post. He is quoted glowingly by sites like United for Israel.
Speaking of him
Renowned Jordanian journalist Taghreed al-Rishik, tweeted, “It is about time to deal with such people, the charge of inciting hatred has been given to ‘Israel’s dear friend,’ Mudar Zahran.”
She also tweeted to Zahran that he should be ashamed for supporting “Israeli apartheid.”
In August, Zahran spoke at the Begin Heritage Center and was introduced by former MK Arieh Eldad.
http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Jordanian-Palestinian-who-writes-for-Post-indicted-in-Jordan-for-inciting-hatred-336626
The guy has been supporting Israel and railing against the MB for years. Do you think him calling Hamas fascists and a dictatorship will even be noticed by Hamas?
It is like Obumble quoting American Thinker articles from people like Karin McQuillen or Jonathon Keiller.
.
.
Sounds like a decent guy to me.
DeleteIt's time for me to think up a good derogatory name for po' ol' demented Quirk.
DeleteIt's sad to watch him go down so rapidly, but he has no business calling names, so I'll think of something good.
Tomorrow, or the next day, whenever the inspiration hits........
Quirk will get his.......
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete.
DeleteKarin McQuillen, a novelist who writes mysteries and Jonathon F. Keiler, author of Upfall an alternative history novel described at Amazon thusly:
What if a modern Israeli commando sayeret took on the German SS? While using a secret transport device designed for covert operations behind enemy lines, a team of elite Israeli commandos instead find themselves in Poland in 1942. Chased by a rogues gallery of authentic German SS men, the commandos raid death camps and battle Nazi combat groups, while keeping one step ahead of their own destruction.
American Thinker, in the tradition of Weird Tales and Dime Mystery Magazine, has become the pulp fiction website of the modern age.
Age sensitive graphic novel for the likes of Obumble.
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Quirk: You make it sound like this guy is so influential amongst Palestinians that his criticism will bring Hamas crashing down.
DeleteAnd you got that from: "the Hamas Egg is Cracking"?
Wow you are looking for giants in a land of midgets...
The egg cracking is symbolic of a tiny crack in the shell, which can only grow..
and you told us you were so smart...
repeatedly
DeleteAge sensitive graphic novel for the likes of Obumble.
DeleteI think a suitable name for Quirk should be "Quirkenstein"
ISRAEL PREFERS al-QAEDA
ReplyDeleteIsrael’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren told the Jerusalem Post that Israel so wanted Assad out and his Iranian backers weakened, that Israel would accept al-Qaeda operatives taking power in Syria.
“We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”
Even if the other “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.
“We understand that they are pretty bad guys,” Oren said in the interview.
http://www.jpost.com/Syria-Crisis/Oren-Jerusalem-has-wanted-Assad-ousted-since-the-outbreak-of-the-Syrian-civil-war-326328
Wow rat that's original...
DeleteWhy not post the entire context?
Or is context your enemy?
rat repeats himself endlessly......just scroll on by.......
Delete.
ReplyDeleteDozens of federal employees at an obscure agency that handles appeals of patent applications went years with so little work to do that they collected salaries — and even bonuses — while they surfed the Internet, did laundry, exercised and watched television, an investigation has found.
The employees, paralegals making $60,000 to $80,000 a year, were idle with full knowledge of their immediate bosses and multiple layers of managers and judges who “sat on their hands” waiting for work to give them, a year-long probe by the Commerce Department inspector general’s office uncovered...
WaPo
.
And you are going to vote for Hillary......
DeleteGod Almighty, poor old Quirk......
hmmmmm........right now I'm thinking Quack Quack
ReplyDeleteBesides Quirk having become silly as a duck, this is a reference to those days when Quirk was 'practicing' medicine without a license.
"I was just practicing, your Honor, I really wasn't treating people." Quack Quack
DeleteThis didn't fly with the Judge.
Who noted a lot of 'patients' had been fleeced out of considerable sums of money.
DeleteFor Rufus -
ReplyDelete>>>The report lists off the types of diseases that are becoming prevalent in the facilities and that are requiring treatment. They include “respiratory illnesses, chicken pox, tuberculosis, and scabies.” These diseases have also spread to several DHS employees working at the locations, the report states.<<<
DHS Report: Tuberculosis And Scabies Spreading In Migrant Holding Facilities
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/31/dhs-report-tuberculosis-and-scabies-spreading-in-migrant-holding-facilities/#ixzz397HSYF4n
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/31/dhs-report-tuberculosis-and-scabies-spreading-in-migrant-holding-facilities/#ixzz397HFD5fP
August 1, 2014
ReplyDeleteThe Mythical Drying of Idaho
By Sierra Rayne
According to Channel 7 KTVB out of Boise, Idaho, a "panel says climate changing wildfires."
Apparently we also have the following climate crisis in Idaho to go along with the wildfire apocalypse:
Idaho is drying out. Charlie Luce, a hydrologist with the Forest Service, says the Gem State is using more water, but seeing less in the aquifers. There's 20 percent less water coming into our basins, when compared to the 1940s.
That's not what the NOAA National Climatic Data Center database shows. There has been no significant trend in annual precipitation for the state since records began in 1895, and – wait for it – the correlation is actually positive, toward more annual precipitation, not less, over the past 120 years. Same goes for summertime precipitation in the Gem State – no significant trend, but an increasing – not decreasing – correlation.
The Palmer Drought Severity Index for Idaho exhibits no sign of a significant trend since 1895 for the summertime, annual, 24-month, 36-month, 48-month, or 60-month drought indices. There is almost a perfect non-correlation with the drought index over time. In other words, there is absolutely no sign that "Idaho is drying out."
I looked at all 217 hydrometric stations in the USGS database for streamflow in Idaho. Not a single station exhibits a significant declining trend in annual streamflow since 1940.
There is no scientific evidence linking anthropogenic climate change to the wildfires in this region, and there is no evidence I can find that Idaho is drying out due to anthropogenic climate change. If the climate alarmists have real data to support their claims, they should provide it – and in raw, unfiltered formats for the rest of us to independently analyze.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/07/the_mythical_drying_of_idaho.html
What the article doesn't mention is the State government hired Quirk to do rain dances.
My garbanzo beans still looked stressed from the heat and lack of rain, though.
It's been over 100 degrees in most places for the last week.
Sierra Rayne.......nice name.
Deletehmmmmm......I'm also thinking Quart, since Quirk drinks so much, and while driving too.
ReplyDeleteI've decided !!
ReplyDeleteQuirk is now Quart.
g'nite