Hamas attacks Israel

[Ron in Regina]

I hope so. You havent asked any about how extremists took control of Israel yet so how many can there be?

In looking for the big picture, in a neutrally impartial unbiased nonpartisan connect the dots sort of objectively unprejudiced way, knowing there’s another 17 chunks of this yet to come & somewhere in that will be the balance between the narratives…what is the paywalled source called that these 13 (so far) lumps of information are coming from?

 

[Ron in Regina]

Post #3245. It got lost in the volume.

 

[petros]

In looking for the big picture, in a neutrally impartial unbiased nonpartisan connect the dots sort of objectively unprejudiced way, knowing there’s another 17 chunks of this yet to come & somewhere in that will be the balance between the narratives…what is the paywalled source called that these 13 (so far) lumps of information are coming from?

Part 3 is coming which leads to today.

 

[Ron in Regina]

Part 3 is coming which leads to today.

The 17 chunks of part 3 that are coming, do they take a step back to look at the whole conflict (?) or is the focus solely on “Jews are bad & right of center Jews are worse” sorta thing?

Do they look at the competing narratives, outside influences, and history of the conflict as a whole (?) or stick to the one lane shown in the first 13 pieces so far?

 

[petros]

The 17 chunks of part 3 that are coming, do they take a step back to look at the whole conflict (?) or is the focus solely on “Jews are bad & right of center Jews are worse” sorta thing?

Do they look at the competing narratives, outside influences, and history of the conflict as a whole (?) or stick to the one lane shown in the first 13 pieces so far?

What's the title?

 

[petros]

13

PART III.
A NEW GENERATION

The ascent of a far-right prime minister did little to prevent the virulent, anti-government strain inside the settler movement from spreading. A new generation of Kahanists was taking an even more radical turn, not only against Israeli politicians who might oppose or insufficiently abet them but against the very notion of a democratic Israeli state. A group calling itself Hilltop Youth advocated for the total destruction of the Zionist state. Meir Ettinger, named for his grandfather Meir Kahane, was one of the Hilltop Youth leaders, and he made his grandfather’s views seem moderate.

Their objective was to tear down Israel’s institutions and to establish “Jewish rule”: anointing a king, building a temple in place of the Jerusalem mosques sacred to Muslims worldwide, imposing a religious regime on all Jews. Ehud Olmert, who served as Israeli prime minister from 2006 to 2009, said in an interview that Hilltop Youth “genuinely, deeply, emotionally believe that this is the right thing to do for Israel. This is a salvation. This is the guarantee for Israel’s future.”

A former member of Hilltop Youth, who has asked to remain anonymous because she fears speaking out could endanger her, recalls how she and her friends used an illegal outpost on a hilltop in the West Bank as a base to lob stones at Palestinian cars. “The Palestinians would call the police, and we would know that we have at least 30 minutes before they arrive, if they arrive. And if they do arrive, they won’t arrest anyone. We did this tens of times.” The West Bank police, she says, couldn’t have been less interested in investigating the violence. “When I was young, I thought that I was outsmarting the police because I was clever. Later, I found out that they are either not trying or very stupid.”

The former Hilltop Youth member says she began pulling away from the group as their tactics became more extreme and once Ettinger began speaking openly about murdering Palestinians. She offered to become a police informant, and during a meeting with police intelligence officers in 2015, she described the group’s plans to commit murder — and to harm any Jews that stood in their way. By her account, she told the police about efforts to scout the homes of Palestinians before settling on a target. The police could have begun an investigation, she says, but they weren’t even curious enough to ask her the names of the people plotting the attack.

In 2013, Ettinger and other members of Hilltop Youth formed a secret cell calling itself the Revolt, designed to instigate an insurrection against a government that “prevents us from building the temple, which blocks our way to true and complete redemption.”

During a search of one of the group’s safe houses, Shin Bet investigators discovered the Revolt’s founding documents. “The State of Israel has no right to exist, and therefore we are not bound by the rules of the game,” one declared. The documents called for an end to the State of Israel and made it clear that in the new state that would rise in its place, there would be absolutely no room for non-Jews and for Arabs in particular: “If those non-Jews don’t leave, it will be permissible to kill them, without distinguishing between women, men and children.”

This wasn’t just idle talk. Ettinger and his comrades organized a plan that included timetables and steps to be taken at each stage. One member even composed a training manual with instructions on how to form terror cells and burn down houses. “In order to prevent the residents from escaping,” the manual advised, “you can leave burning tires in the entrance to the house.”

The Revolt carried out an early attack in February 2014, firebombing an uninhabited home in a small Arab village in the West Bank called Silwad, and followed with more arson attacks, the uprooting of olive groves and the destruction of Palestinian granaries. Members of the group torched mosques, monasteries and churches, including the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. A police officer spotted Ettinger himself attacking a herd of sheep belonging to an Arab shepherd. He stoned a sheep and then slaughtered it in front of the shepherd, the officer later testified. “It was shocking,” he said. “There was a sort of insanity in it.”

Shin Bet defined the Revolt as an organization that aimed “to undermine the stability of the State of Israel through terror and violence, including bodily harm and bloodshed,” according to an internal Shin Bet memo, and sought to place several of its members, including Ettinger, under administrative detention — a measure applied frequently against Arabs.

The state attorney, however, did not approve the request. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) documented 323 incidents of violence by settlers against Palestinians in 2014; Palestinians were injured in 107 of these incidents. By the following year, the Revolt escalated the violence by openly advocating the murder of Arabs.

The Shin Bet and the police identified one of the prominent members of the Revolt, Amiram Ben-Uliel, making him a target of surveillance. But the service failed to prevent the wave of violence that he unleashed. On the night of July 31, 2015, Ben-Uliel set out on a killing spree in a central West Bank village called Duma. Ben-Uliel prepared a bag with two bottles of incendiary liquid, rags, a lighter, a box of matches, gloves and black spray paint. According to the indictment against him, Ben-Uliel sought a home with clear signs of life to ensure that the house he torched was not abandoned. He eventually found the home of Reham and Sa’ad Dawabsheh, a young mother and father. He opened a window and threw a Molotov cocktail into the home. He fled, and in the blaze that followed, the parents suffered injuries that eventually killed them. Their older son, Ahmad, survived the attack, but their 18-month-old toddler, Ali, was burned to death.

It was always clear, says Akerman, the former Shin Bet official, “that those wild groups would move from bullying Arabs to damaging property and trees and eventually would murder people.” He is still furious about how the service has handled Jewish terrorism. “Shin Bet knows how to deal with such groups, using emergency orders, administrative detention and special methods in interrogation until they break,” he says. But although it was perfectly willing to apply those methods to investigating Arab terrorism, the service was more restrained when it came to Jews. “It allowed them to incite, and then they moved on to the next stage and began to torch mosques and churches. Still undeterred, they entered Duma and burned a family.”

Shin Bet at first claimed to have difficulty locating the killers, even though they were all supposed to be under constant surveillance. When Ben-Uliel and other perpetrators were finally arrested, right-wing politicians gave fiery speeches against Shin Bet and met with the families of the perpetrators to show their support. Ben-Uliel was sentenced to life in prison, and Ettinger was finally put in administrative detention, but a fracture was spreading. In December 2015, Hilltop Youth members circulated a video clip showing members of the Revolt ecstatically dancing with rifles and pistols, belting out songs of hatred for Arabs, with one of them stabbing and burning a photograph of the murdered toddler, Ali Dawabsheh. Netanyahu, for his part, denounced the video, which, he said, exposed “the real face of a group that poses danger to Israeli society and security.”

 

[petros]

14

American Friends

The expansion of the settlements had long been an irritant in Israel’s relationship with the United States, with American officials spending years dutifully warning Netanyahu both in public and in private meetings about his support for the enterprise. But the election of Donald Trump in 2016 ended all that. His new administration’s Israel policy was led mostly by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who had a long personal relationship with Netanyahu, a friend of his father’s who had stayed at their family home in New Jersey. Trump, in a broader regional agenda that lined up perfectly with Netanyahu’s own plans, also hoped to scuttle the nuclear deal with Iran that Barack Obama had negotiated and broker diplomatic pacts between Israel and Arab nations that left the matter of a Palestinian state unresolved and off the table.

If there were any questions about the new administration’s position on settlements, they were answered once Trump picked his ambassador to Israel. His choice, David Friedman, was a bankruptcy lawyer who for years had helped run an American nonprofit that raised millions of dollars for Beit El, one of the early Gush Emunim settlements in the West Bank and the place where Bezalel Smotrich was raised and educated. The organization, which was also supported by the Trump family, had helped fund schools and other institutions inside Beit El. On the heels of the Trump transition, Friedman referred to Israel’s “alleged occupation” of Palestinian territories and broke with longstanding U.S. policy by saying “the settlements are part of Israel.”

This didn’t make Friedman a particularly friendly recipient of the warnings regularly delivered by Lt. Gen. Mark Schwartz, the three-star general who in 2019 arrived at the embassy in Jerusalem to coordinate security between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority. A career Green Beret who had combat deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq and served as deputy commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, the military task force with authority over U.S. counterterrorism special missions units, Schwartz wasn’t short on Middle East experience.

But he was immediately shocked by the landscape of the West Bank: settlers acting with impunity, a police force that was essentially nonexistent outside the settlements and the Israeli Army fanning the tensions with its own operations. Schwartz recalls how angry he was about what he called the army’s “collective punishment” tactics, including the razing of Palestinian homes, which he viewed as gratuitous and counterproductive. “I said, ‘Guys, this isn’t how professional militaries act.’” As Schwartz saw it, the West Bank was in some ways the American South of the 1960s. But at any moment the situation could become even more volatile, resulting in the next intifada.

Schwartz is diplomatic when recalling his interactions with Friedman, his former boss. He was a “good listener,” Schwartz says, but when he raised concerns about the settlements, Friedman would often deflect by noting “the lack of appreciation by the Palestinian people about what the Americans are doing for them.” Schwartz also discussed his concerns about settler violence directly with Shin Bet and I.D.F. officials, he says, but as far as he could tell, Friedman didn’t follow up with the political leadership. “I never got the sense he went to Netanyahu to discuss it.”

Friedman sees things differently. “I think I had a far broader perspective on acts of violence in Judea and Samaria” than Schwartz, he says now. “And it was clear that the violence coming from Palestinians against Israelis overwhelmingly was more prevalent.” He says he “wasn’t concerned about ‘appreciation’ from the Palestinians; I was concerned by their leadership’s embrace of terror and unwillingness to control violence.” He declined to discuss any conversations he had with Israeli officials.

Weeks after Trump lost the 2020 election, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Israel for a trip that delivered a number of gifts to Netanyahu and the settler cause. He announced new guidelines requiring that goods imported to the United States from parts of the West Bank be labeled “Made in Israel.” And he flew by helicopter to Psagot, a winery in the West Bank, making him the first American secretary of state to visit a settlement. One of the winery’s large shareholders, the Florida-based Falic family, have donated millions to various projects in the settlements.

During his lunchtime visit, Pompeo paused to write a note in the winery’s guest book. “May I not be the last secretary of state to visit this beautiful land,” he wrote.

 

[petros]

15

A Settler Coalition

Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to become prime minister for an unprecedented sixth term came with a price: an alliance with a movement that he once shunned, but that had been brought into the political mainstream by Israel’s steady drift to the right. Netanyahu, who is now on trial for bribery and other corruption charges, repeatedly failed in his attempts to form a coalition after most of the parties announced that they were no longer willing to join him. He personally involved himself in negotiations to ally Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism Party, making them kingmakers for anyone trying to form a coalition government. In November 2022, the bet paid off: With the now-critical support of the extreme right, Netanyahu returned to office.

The two men ushered into power by this arrangement were some of the most extreme figures ever to hold such high positions in an Israeli cabinet. Shin Bet had monitored Ben-Gvir in the years after Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, and he was arrested on multiple charges including inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization. He won acquittals or dismissals in some of the cases, but he was also convicted several times and served time in prison. During the Second Intifada, he led protests calling for extreme measures against Arabs and harassed Israeli politicians he believed were insufficiently hawkish.

Then Ben-Gvir made a radical change: He went to law school. He also took a job as an aide to Michael Ben-Ari, a Knesset member from the National Union party, which had picked up many followers of the Kach movement. In 2011, after considerable legal wrangling around his criminal record, he was admitted to the bar. He changed his hairstyle and clothing to appear more mainstream and began working from the inside, once saying he represented the “soldiers and civilians who find themselves in legal entanglements due to the security situation in Israel.” Netanyahu made him minister of national security, with authority over the police.

Smotrich also moved into public life after his 2005 arrest by Shin Bet for plotting road blockages to halt the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. He made Shin Bet’s Jewish Department a frequent target of criticism, complaining that it was wasting time and money investigating crimes carried out by Jews, when the real terrorists were Palestinians. His ultraright allies sometimes referred to the Jewish Department as Hamakhlaka Hayehudit — the Hebrew phrase for the Gestapo unit that executed Hitler’s Final Solution.

In 2015, while campaigning for a seat in the Knesset, Smotrich said that “every shekel invested in this department is one less shekel invested in real terrorism and saving lives.” Seven years later, Netanyahu made him both minister of finance and a minister in the Ministry of Defense, in charge of overseeing civilian affairs in the West Bank, and he has steadily pushed to seize authority over the territory from the military. As part of the coalition deal with Netanyahu, Smotrich now has the authority to appoint one of the senior administrative figures in the West Bank, who helps oversee the building of roads and the enforcement of construction laws. The 2022 election also brought Avi Maoz to the Knesset — the former housing-ministry official whom Talia Sasson once marked as a hidden hand of Israeli government support for illegal settlements. Since then, Maoz had joined the far-right Noam party, using it as a platform to advance racist and homophobic policies. And he never forgot, or forgave, Sasson. On “International Anti-Corruption Day” in 2022, Maoz took to the lectern of the Knesset and denounced Sasson’s report of nearly two decades earlier, saying it was written “with a hatred of the settlements and a desire to harm them.” This, he said, was “public corruption of the highest order, for which people like Talia Sasson should be prosecuted.”

Days after assuming his own new position, Ben-Gvir ordered the police to remove Palestinian flags from public spaces in Israel, saying they “incite and encourage terrorism.” Smotrich, for his part, ordered drastic cuts in payments to the Palestinian Authority — a move that led the Shin Bet and the I.D.F. intelligence division to raise concerns that the cuts would interfere with the Palestinian Authority’s own efforts to police and prevent Palestinian terrorism.

Weeks after the new cabinet was sworn in, the Judea and Samaria division of the I.D.F. distributed an instructional video to the soldiers of a ground unit about to be deployed in the West Bank. Titled “Operational Challenge: The Farms,” the video depicts settlers as peaceful farmers living pastoral lives, feeding goats and herding sheep and cows, in dangerous circumstances. The illegal outposts multiplying around the West Bank are “small and isolated places of settlement, each with a handful of residents, a few of them — or none at all — bearing arms, the means of defense meager or nonexistent.”

It is the settlers, according to the video, who are under constant threat of attack, whether it be “penetration of the farm by a terrorist, an attack against a shepherd in the pastures, arson” or “destruction of property” — threats from which the soldiers of the I.D.F. must protect them. The commander of each army company guarding each farm must, the video says, “link up with the person in charge of security and to maintain communications”; soldiers and officers are encouraged to cultivate a close and intimate relationship with the settlers. “The informal,” viewers are told, “is much more important than the formal.”

The video addresses many matters of security, but it never addresses the question of law. When we asked the commander of the division that produced the video, Brig. Gen. Avi Bluth, why the I.D.F. was promoting the military support of settlements that are illegal under Israeli law, he directly asserted that the farms were indeed legal and offered to arrange for us to tour some of them. Later, a spokesman for the army apologized for the general’s remarks, acknowledged that the farms were illegal and announced that the I.D.F. would no longer be promoting the video. This May, Bluth was nonetheless subsequently promoted to head Israel’s Central Command, responsible for all Israeli troops in central Israel and the West Bank.

In August, Bluth will replace Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fox, who during his final months in charge of the West Bank has seen a near-total breakdown of law enforcement in his area of command. In late October, Fox wrote a letter to his boss, the chief of Israel’s military staff, saying that the surge of Jewish terrorism carried out in revenge for the Oct. 7 attacks “could set the West Bank on fire.” The I.D.F. is the highest security authority in the West Bank, but the military’s top commander put the blame squarely on the police — who ultimately answer to Ben-Gvir. Fox said he had established a special task force to deal with Jewish terrorism, but investigating and arresting the perpetrators is “entirely in the hands of the Israeli police.”

And, he wrote, they aren’t doing their jobs.

 

[petros]

16,

‘Only One Way Forward’

When the day came early this January for the Supreme Court to hear the case brought by the people of Khirbet Zanuta, the displaced villagers arrived an hour late. They had received entry permits from the District Coordination Office to attend the hearing but were delayed by security forces before reaching the checkpoint separating Israel from the West Bank. Their lawyer, Quamar Mishirqi-Assad, noting that their struggle to attend their own hearing spoke to the essence of their petition, insisted that the hearing couldn’t proceed without them. The judges agreed to wait.

The villagers finally were led into the courtroom, and Mishirqi-Assad began presenting the case. The proceedings were in Hebrew, so most of the villagers were unable to follow the arguments that described the daily terrors inflicted by settlers and the glaring absence of any law-enforcement efforts to stop them.

The lawyers representing the military and the police denied the claims of abuse and failure to enforce the law. When a judge asked what operational steps would be in place if villagers wanted to return, one of the lawyers for the state said they could already — there was no order preventing them from doing so.

The next to speak was Col. Roi Zweig-Lavi, the Central Command’s Operations Directorate officer. He said that many of these incidents involved false claims. In fact, he said, some of the villagers had probably destroyed their own homes, because of an “internal issue.” Now they were blaming the settlers to escape the consequences of their own actions.

Colonel Zweig-Lavi’s own views about the settlements, and his role in protecting them, were well known. In a 2022 speech, he told a group of yeshiva students in the West Bank that “the army and the settlements are one and the same.”

In early May, the court ordered the state to explain why the police failed to stop the attacks and declared that the villagers have a right to return to their homes. The court also ordered the state to provide details for how they would ensure the safe return of the villagers. It is now the state’s turn to decide how it will comply. Or if it will comply.

By the time the Supreme Court issued its rulings, the United States had finally taken action to directly pressure the Netanyahu government about the violent settlers. On Feb. 1, the White House issued an executive order imposing sanctions on four settlers for “engaging in terrorist activity,” among other things, in the West Bank. One of the four was Yinon Levi, the owner of Meitarim Farm near Hebron and the man American and Israeli officials believe orchestrated the campaign of violence and intimidation against the villagers of Khirbet Zanuta. The British government issued its own sanctions shortly after, saying in a statement that Israel’s government had created “an environment of near-total impunity for settler extremists in the West Bank.”

The White House’s move against individual settlers, a first by an American administration, was met with a combination of anger and ridicule by ministers in Netanyahu’s government. Smotrich called the Biden administration’s allegations against Levi and others “utterly specious” and said he would work with Israeli banks to resist complying with the sanctions. One message that circulated in an open Hilltop Youth WhatsApp channel said that Levi and his family would not be abandoned. “The people of Israel are mobilizing for them,” it said.

American officials bristle when confronted with the question of whether the government’s actions are just token measures taken by an embattled American president hemorrhaging support at home for his Israel policy. They won’t end the violence, they say, but they are a signal to the Netanyahu government about the position of the United States: that the West Bank could boil over, and it could soon be the latest front of an expanding regional Middle East war since Oct. 7.

But war might just be the goal. Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, said he believes that many members of the ultraright in Israel “want war.” They “want intifada,” he says, “because it is the ultimate proof that there is no way of making peace with the Palestinians and there is only one way forward — to destroy them.”



D U N dun.

 

[Ron in Regina]

What's the title?

Sunday afternoon. Was tied up folding laundry for the week.

Post #3245. It got lost in the volume.

It was more than 40 posts back. For balance, are you going to do Palestine next (starting about 1967?) or Iran (starting about 1979?) or others are to do that for equilibrium?

Now entering the dog-pile: Turkey or Türkiye. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey “might” enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting?

AK Party representatives did not respond to calls asking for more detail on Erdogan's comments. Israel did not immediately make any comment.

In 2020, Turkey sent military personnel to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord of Libya.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, who heads the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, is backed by Turkey.

Erdogan says Turkey might enter Israel to help Palestinians — Reuters

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.

apple.news

Turkey has denied any direct role in Azerbaijan's military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, but said last year it was using "all means", including military training and modernisation, to support its close ally.

 

[petros]

Sunday afternoon. Was tied up folding laundry for the week.

View attachment 23723
It was more than 40 posts back. For balance, are you going to do Palestine next (starting about 1967?) or Iran (starting about 1979?) or others are to do that for equilibrium?

Now entering the dog-pile: Turkey or Türkiye. President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey “might” enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting?

AK Party representatives did not respond to calls asking for more detail on Erdogan's comments. Israel did not immediately make any comment.

In 2020, Turkey sent military personnel to Libya in support of the United Nations-recognised Government of National Accord of Libya.

Libyan Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, who heads the Government of National Unity in Tripoli, is backed by Turkey.

Erdogan says Turkey might enter Israel to help Palestinians — Reuters

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.

apple.news

Turkey has denied any direct role in Azerbaijan's military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh, but said last year it was using "all means", including military training and modernisation, to support its close ally.

You gotta try this:

Crunch Punch Chicken
(639) 382-2355

https://g.co/kgs/yoyMfoM

 

[Ron in Regina]

You gotta try this:

Crunch Punch Chicken
(639) 382-2355

https://g.co/kgs/yoyMfoM

Will eventually. Literally just had supper. Fried Rice & Chicken Fingers. Easy.

 

[Retired_Can_Soldier]

There are people who think PP is also far right. Maxine is further than him.

Personally I think PP is just an idiot. He is not Conservative as I grew up knowing them, he is further right than they are but I don't think he's far/extreme right.

You are welcome to think so about PP and you aren't alone. I don't agree, but I'll judge him when he is elected. I wish we could get on with an election, I would like to move on with the campaigning, which is tiresome.

I will give Pollievre this, he's not afraid to go toe to toe with a reporter on an issue. Justin Trudeau does escape and evasion when its comes to answering questions, and he just sticks to talking points.
Pollievre might piss some reporters off, but he doesn't run away.
I haven't seen a politician do that since this guy.

 

[petros]

You are welcome to think so about PP and you aren't alone. I don't agree, but I'll judge him when he is elected. I wish we could get on with an election, I would like to move on with the campaigning, which is tiresome.

I will give Pollievre this, he's not afraid to go toe to toe with a reporter on an issue. Justin Trudeau does escape and evasion when its comes to answering questions, and he just sticks to talking points.
Pollievre might piss some reporters off, but he doesn't run away.
I haven't seen a politician do that since this guy.

With tightening crime and sentencing additional jails and prisons will need to be built which the left will say are concentration camps.

Ill put money on it.

 

[spaminator]

Israel's Prime Minister faces near-impossible task of re-election
Benjamin Netanyahu was applauded in Washington, D.C. last week, but he won't be getting many standing ovations back home

Author of the article:Warren Kinsella
Published Jul 27, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read

If you had the impression this week that Benjamin Netanyahu was running for office, you’d be right – he is.


But the Prime Minister of Israel wasn’t running where he was this week, which was at a podium in Washington, D.C., speaking to members of the U.S. Congress.

Bathing in the standing ovations he received – reportedly more than any foreign leader has ever received when addressing congresspeople – Netanyahu could be forgiven for wishing he was running for re-election in America, and not Israel.

Back in Israel, you see, he is really, really unpopular. Presently, he is facing three separate corruption prosecutions; he is met with protesters wherever he goes in Israel, including hundreds who have camped outside his residence for months; and he is deeply unloved by as many as 70% of Israelis who want him out.

They disapprove of his inability to get all the hostages home, they disapprove of how he is conducting the war against Hamas, they disapprove of him.


But, mostly, they disapprove of something that is little-known in places like America but is very well-known in Israel. Namely, what Netanyahu and his government knew about Hamas’ savage attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – and what, if anything, he did about it.

Because, on balance, it doesn’t look like he did much. It doesn’t look like he did anything meaningful to prevent the worst pogrom in the 76-year history of the Jewish state – a vicious, sadistic, Satanic attack that left 1,200 men, women and children dead, over 200 taken hostage, and an untold number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence that is beyond comprehension.

For that, Benjamin Netanyahu now faces a near-impossible task: re-election.

The damning facts are well-known in Israel – and, in some cases, are actually still to be found on the Internet. They can be seen in videos created by Hamas and their evil cabal, and uploaded to assorted platforms.


For those who had been paying attention online, Oct. 7 really shouldn’t have been a surprise. For months, Hamas had been posting videos of its terrorist members openly preparing for an attack on Israel.

One Hamas video, released in late 2022, showed Hamas terrorist battalions being trained to take hostages and fly paragliders into Israel. Another video, just a few months later, showed Hamas training to breach the border with Israel, and destroying communications towers.

Other videos showed Hamas training exercises in a full-scale mock Israeli settlement in Gaza, South of Khan Younis. It looked like the real thing, right down to the signage and building design.

In another video – part of what Hamas called the “Strong Pillar” training exercise – uniformed terrorists stormed a counterfeit Israeli military base, which they had built with a life-sized model of a tank, complete with Israeli flag.


The video showed Hamas jogging through cinderblock buildings, capturing Israeli prisoners. It was filmed near the town of Beit Hanoun, which is about a kilometre from the Israeli border wall.



There was other evidence of what was to come, not all of it online, and all of which Netanyahu’s government knew about. The New York Times would report that Israel’s military – months before Oct. 7, 2023 – even possessed detailed Hamas plans for an attack on Israeli civilians. The 40-page plan detailed rocket attacks, border vulnerabilities and how to destroy surveillance cameras on the barriers between Israel and Gaza.


The plan identified the location of Israeli military forces and communications hubs. Later, it would be learned that Hamas knew who was responsible for security in individual communities, where they lived, and where arms were stored. They even knew who had a dog.

The Hamas plan – called The Jericho Wall by the IDF – circulated within the Israeli military but was dismissed as far-fetched.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” one IDF analyst wrote.

Not long after that, a veteran analyst within Unit 8200 – the IDF’s signal intelligence agency – reported Hamas was conducting intensive training exercises that were identical to what was described in the 40-page plan. The analyst’s concerns were dismissed by a colonel, who said “the scenario is imaginary.”


The analyst pushed back: “It is a plan designed to start a war. It’s not just a raid on a village.”

She was ignored. No steps were taken to prevent an attack. In fairness to Netanyahu, no politicians were apparently briefed on that. Apparently.

But in elections – here, or in Israel, or in any democracy – claims that “we didn’t know” rarely work. The response, from voters, is always: “You should’ve known. We elected you to know, and to protect us. You didn’t.”

That is why Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington, D.C., soaking up the applause and the standing ovations this week.

Because he isn’t going to be getting many standing ovations back home.

KINSELLA: Israel's Prime Minister faces near-impossible task of re-election

If you had the impression this week that Benjamin Netanyahu was running for office, you'd be right – he is.

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

A strike from Lebanon killed 12 youths. Could that spark war between Israel and Hezbollah?
Author of the article:Associated Press
Associated Press
Melanie Lidman And Samy Magdy
Published Jul 28, 2024 • 4 minute read

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The Middle East braced for a potential flare-up in violence on Sunday after Israeli authorities said a rocket from Lebanon struck a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, killing 12 children and teens in what the military called the deadliest attack on civilians since Oct. 7. It raised fears of a broader regional war between Israel and Hezbollah, which in a rare move denied it was responsible.


Overnight, the Israeli military said it struck a number of targets inside Lebanon, though their intensity was similar to months of cross-border fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. Hezbollah said it also carried out strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Saturday’s attack came at a sensitive time. Israel and Hamas are negotiating a cease-fire proposal to end the nearly 10-month war in Gaza.

Here is a look at the broader repercussions:

What happened?

On Saturday, a rocket slammed into a soccer pitch where dozens of children and teens were playing in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) south of Lebanon and next to the Syrian border. Twelve youth were killed and 20 others wounded, according to the Israeli military. One 11-year-old child was missing, residents told Israeli media.


“I feel darkness inside and out. Nothing like this happened here,” resident Anan Abu Saleh said. “There’s no way to explain this. I saw children, I don’t want to say what I saw, but it’s horrible, really horrible. We need more security.” On Sunday, the coffins passed through a crowd of thousands.

The Druze are a religious sect that began as an offshoot of Shiite Islam. There are Druze communities in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. There are about 140,000 Druze in Israel, 25,000 in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, according to Yusri Hazran of the Hebrew University.

The Druze are considered among Israel’s most loyal citizens, although those in the Golan Heights have a more fraught relationship with authorities. Israel captured the Golan, a strategic plateau, from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in 1981. Much of the international community considers the area to be occupied territory. While Druze leaders in the Golan profess allegiance to Syria, relations with Israel are normally good.


What could this mean for a wider war?

The attacks on the Israel-Lebanon border have simmered below the threshold of all-out war since the start of the conflict in Gaza in October. But the deadly toll of Saturday’s attack, and the victims’ young age, could push Israel to respond more severely.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hurried home from America after the strike, warned that Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price for this attack, one that it has not paid so far.” Israeli military’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said a Falaq rocket with a 53-kilogram warhead that belonged to Hezbollah was fired.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that “every indication” showed the rocket came from Hezbollah. He said Israel had a right to defend itself but the U.S. didn’t want the conflict to escalate.


Hezbollah began firing rockets at Israel the day after Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. Israel has responded by targeting what it says is Hezbollah’s military infrastructure with airstrikes and drones. Most attacks have been confined to border areas, though Israel has assassinated Hezbollah and Hamas leadership farther north in Lebanon. Tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border have evacuated.

Since early October, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon have killed more than 500 people, mostly Hezbollah members but also around 90 civilians. On the Israeli side, 22 soldiers and 24 civilians have been killed.

Hezbollah has far superior firepower to Hamas. Igniting a war in Israel’s north while it’s engaged in Gaza would overburden the military, Barak Ben-Zur, a researcher at the International Institute of Counter-Terrorism, told journalists: “We are not, let’s say, capable to do it in both places and at the same time.”


Ben-Zur said the tragedy in Majdal Shams is a statistical inevitability with the Iron Dome missile defense system: If Hezbollah or other groups launch enough rockets and missiles, some will get through.

In Lebanon, some prepared for more fire from Israel. Lebanon’s national airline announced it had postponed the Beirut arrival of seven flights until Monday morning, without saying why.

“I doubt that there will be a strike, but nothing is far-fetched when it comes to the enemy,” said Abdallah Dalal, a resident of the Lebanese border village of Chebaa. Israeli officials have said the rocket that hit Majdal Shams was fired from nearby.

Any conflict could bring in Iran, which on Sunday warned Israel that a strong reaction to the Golan Heights strike will lead to “unprecedented consequences.” Iran and Israel’s yearslong shadow war burst into the open in April, when Iran launched 300 missiles and drones at Israel, most of which were intercepted, in response to the killing of an Iranian general.


How could this impact the war in Gaza?

An Egyptian official said the attack in the Golan Heights could give urgency to negotiations to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza.

“Both fronts are connected,” he said. “A cease-fire in Gaza will lead to a cease-fire with Hezbollah.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media.

In a statement, the Egyptian foreign ministry called on all influential international players to “intervene immediately to spare the peoples of the region further disastrous consequences of the expansion of the conflict.”

Officials from the United States, Egypt and Qatar were meeting Sunday with Israeli officials in Rome in the latest push for a cease-fire deal.

A strike from Lebanon killed 12 youths. Could that spark war between Israel and Hezbollah?

Could that spark war between Israel and Hezbollah?

torontosun.com

 

[spaminator]

Turkish president escalates anti-Israel rhetoric, threatens Gaza intervention
Author of the article:Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Ugur Yilmaz
Published Jul 28, 2024 • 1 minute read

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is escalating his rhetoric against Israel, suggesting Turkey could intervene on behalf of Palestinians, possibly with military support, in ways similar to what it has done in other conflicts.


“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these things to Palestine,” Erdogan said in his hometown of Rize on Sunday. “Just as we entered Karabakh and Libya, we might do the same here. There is nothing we cannot do. We must be very strong.”

Erdogan spoke vaguely and made no indication that he was considering any direct military operations in the Israel-Gaza war. Still, his remarks underscore the growing hostility with Israel and could cause volatility in Turkey’s financial markets this week.



Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded to Erdogan’s comments in a post on X.


“Erdogan follows in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein and threatens to attack Israel. Just let him remember what happened there and how it ended,” he wrote.

Turkey intervened in the Libyan civil war to support the United Nations-recognized government and supported Azerbaijan against Armenia by supplying arms and conducting joint military drills during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. It also has troops in other areas it considers in its interests, including Iraq and Syria.

In the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Erdogan has recalled Turkey’s ambassador and suspended trade with Israel, and also accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing genocide. Turkey has also been sending humanitarian aid to Gaza and facilitating medical treatment for those injured in the conflict by allowing them to receive care in Turkey.

Before the war, Turkey and Israel had been working to normalize their relations after a decade of tensions.

— With assistance from Galit Altstein.

Turkish president escalates anti-Israel rhetoric, threatens Gaza intervention

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan escalated his rhetoric against Israel, suggesting Turkey could intervene on behalf of Palestinians.

torontosun.com

 

[petros]

Turkish president escalates anti-Israel rhetoric, threatens Gaza intervention
Author of the article:Bloomberg News
Bloomberg News
Ugur Yilmaz
Published Jul 28, 2024 • 1 minute read

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is escalating his rhetoric against Israel, suggesting Turkey could intervene on behalf of Palestinians, possibly with military support, in ways similar to what it has done in other conflicts.


“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these things to Palestine,” Erdogan said in his hometown of Rize on Sunday. “Just as we entered Karabakh and Libya, we might do the same here. There is nothing we cannot do. We must be very strong.”

Erdogan spoke vaguely and made no indication that he was considering any direct military operations in the Israel-Gaza war. Still, his remarks underscore the growing hostility with Israel and could cause volatility in Turkey’s financial markets this week.



Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded to Erdogan’s comments in a post on X.


“Erdogan follows in the footsteps of Saddam Hussein and threatens to attack Israel. Just let him remember what happened there and how it ended,” he wrote.

Turkey intervened in the Libyan civil war to support the United Nations-recognized government and supported Azerbaijan against Armenia by supplying arms and conducting joint military drills during the Nagorno-Karabakh war. It also has troops in other areas it considers in its interests, including Iraq and Syria.

In the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Erdogan has recalled Turkey’s ambassador and suspended trade with Israel, and also accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing genocide. Turkey has also been sending humanitarian aid to Gaza and facilitating medical treatment for those injured in the conflict by allowing them to receive care in Turkey.

Before the war, Turkey and Israel had been working to normalize their relations after a decade of tensions.

— With assistance from Galit Altstein.

Turkish president escalates anti-Israel rhetoric, threatens Gaza intervention

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan escalated his rhetoric against Israel, suggesting Turkey could intervene on behalf of Palestinians.

torontosun.com

Hes upsetting Adolf Netanyahu by calling him out for what he is. Oh my.

 

[petros]

Israel's Prime Minister faces near-impossible task of re-election
Benjamin Netanyahu was applauded in Washington, D.C. last week, but he won't be getting many standing ovations back home

Author of the article:Warren Kinsella
Published Jul 27, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 4 minute read

If you had the impression this week that Benjamin Netanyahu was running for office, you’d be right – he is.


But the Prime Minister of Israel wasn’t running where he was this week, which was at a podium in Washington, D.C., speaking to members of the U.S. Congress.

Bathing in the standing ovations he received – reportedly more than any foreign leader has ever received when addressing congresspeople – Netanyahu could be forgiven for wishing he was running for re-election in America, and not Israel.

Back in Israel, you see, he is really, really unpopular. Presently, he is facing three separate corruption prosecutions; he is met with protesters wherever he goes in Israel, including hundreds who have camped outside his residence for months; and he is deeply unloved by as many as 70% of Israelis who want him out.

They disapprove of his inability to get all the hostages home, they disapprove of how he is conducting the war against Hamas, they disapprove of him.


But, mostly, they disapprove of something that is little-known in places like America but is very well-known in Israel. Namely, what Netanyahu and his government knew about Hamas’ savage attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – and what, if anything, he did about it.

Because, on balance, it doesn’t look like he did much. It doesn’t look like he did anything meaningful to prevent the worst pogrom in the 76-year history of the Jewish state – a vicious, sadistic, Satanic attack that left 1,200 men, women and children dead, over 200 taken hostage, and an untold number of women and girls subjected to sexual violence that is beyond comprehension.

For that, Benjamin Netanyahu now faces a near-impossible task: re-election.

The damning facts are well-known in Israel – and, in some cases, are actually still to be found on the Internet. They can be seen in videos created by Hamas and their evil cabal, and uploaded to assorted platforms.


For those who had been paying attention online, Oct. 7 really shouldn’t have been a surprise. For months, Hamas had been posting videos of its terrorist members openly preparing for an attack on Israel.

One Hamas video, released in late 2022, showed Hamas terrorist battalions being trained to take hostages and fly paragliders into Israel. Another video, just a few months later, showed Hamas training to breach the border with Israel, and destroying communications towers.

Other videos showed Hamas training exercises in a full-scale mock Israeli settlement in Gaza, South of Khan Younis. It looked like the real thing, right down to the signage and building design.

In another video – part of what Hamas called the “Strong Pillar” training exercise – uniformed terrorists stormed a counterfeit Israeli military base, which they had built with a life-sized model of a tank, complete with Israeli flag.


The video showed Hamas jogging through cinderblock buildings, capturing Israeli prisoners. It was filmed near the town of Beit Hanoun, which is about a kilometre from the Israeli border wall.



There was other evidence of what was to come, not all of it online, and all of which Netanyahu’s government knew about. The New York Times would report that Israel’s military – months before Oct. 7, 2023 – even possessed detailed Hamas plans for an attack on Israeli civilians. The 40-page plan detailed rocket attacks, border vulnerabilities and how to destroy surveillance cameras on the barriers between Israel and Gaza.


The plan identified the location of Israeli military forces and communications hubs. Later, it would be learned that Hamas knew who was responsible for security in individual communities, where they lived, and where arms were stored. They even knew who had a dog.

The Hamas plan – called The Jericho Wall by the IDF – circulated within the Israeli military but was dismissed as far-fetched.

“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” one IDF analyst wrote.

Not long after that, a veteran analyst within Unit 8200 – the IDF’s signal intelligence agency – reported Hamas was conducting intensive training exercises that were identical to what was described in the 40-page plan. The analyst’s concerns were dismissed by a colonel, who said “the scenario is imaginary.”


The analyst pushed back: “It is a plan designed to start a war. It’s not just a raid on a village.”

She was ignored. No steps were taken to prevent an attack. In fairness to Netanyahu, no politicians were apparently briefed on that. Apparently.

But in elections – here, or in Israel, or in any democracy – claims that “we didn’t know” rarely work. The response, from voters, is always: “You should’ve known. We elected you to know, and to protect us. You didn’t.”

That is why Benjamin Netanyahu was in Washington, D.C., soaking up the applause and the standing ovations this week.

Because he isn’t going to be getting many standing ovations back home.

KINSELLA: Israel's Prime Minister faces near-impossible task of re-election

If you had the impression this week that Benjamin Netanyahu was running for office, you'd be right – he is.

torontosun.com

Adolf Mileikowsky has no choice but keep the war cabinet going as long as possible or his career and freedom is over.

 

[Ron in Regina]

Hamas wants a ceasefire agreement to end the war in Gaza, while Netanyahu says the conflict will stop only once Hamas is defeated. There are also disagreements over how a deal would be implemented.

Mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the U.S., have repeatedly said doors to more negotiations remain open, with both Israel and Hamas voicing readiness to pursue them, etc…

Hamas, Israel trade blame for not reaching Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal — Reuters

Israel and the Islamist group Hamas traded blame on Monday over the lack of progress in reaching a ceasefire and hostage release deal in the Gaza Strip despite international mediation.

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