US Senate approves $225 million for Israeli 'Iron Dome' system

After earlier version blocked by Republicans over unrelated immigration crisis at US-Mexico border, Senate passes emergency funding.

News Agencies

The US Senate unanimously passed legislation on Friday to provide $225 million in emergency funding for Israel's "Iron Dome" missile defense system.

The money will go to restocking Israel's Iron Dome defense, which has been credited with shooting down dozens of incoming rockets fired by Hamas during a three-week war.

Iron Dome interceptor missile launch (Photo: AFP)

An earlier version of the funding plan had failed on Thursday when Senate Republicans blocked a broader spending bill that was largely intended to provide money to handle the current immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border.

What should Israel do? What would the United States do?

Alan M. Dershowitz

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4568/what-should-israel-do-what-would-the-united

Imagine you are the Prime Minister of Israel or the President of the United States, or the Chief-of-Staff of either Army.  Your soldiers are fighting a just war to try to prevent rockets from hitting your civilians or tunnels from being used to murder and kidnap your people.  Your enemy, knowing that you wish to prevent casualties among their civilians, purposely shoots at your soldiers from civilian areas.  Your soldiers, caught in the midst of an ongoing fire fight, basically have two choices:  one, fire back and try to stop the enemy from killing you, while trying to avoid or minimize civilian casualties; or two, lay down your arms, because you don't want to endanger civilians, and accept the risk that your soldiers may be killed.
The United Nations, and much of the rest of the world—sitting in the safety of peaceful areas—have condemned Israel for allowing its soldiers to try to stop the attacks on them while also trying to minimize civilian casualties.  "You can do more," the White House has insisted.

Look who hates the Jewish state

AMIR TAHERI 

The way pundits put it in the West, the current war in Gaza is stoking the flames of rage against both Israel and Western democracies throughout the Muslim world.
A closer look at what is being said and done on the ground offers a different picture.
Although there is great sympathy for the sufferings of Palestinians, in most Muslim countries there is little support for Hamas with its tactic of provoking Israel by firing rockets at civilian targets.
On Tuesday, leading Arab columnist Shamsan al-Na'ai took Hamas to task for putting its interests "as a political movement" above that of the Palestinian people.
"Hamas would have done better to tackle the task of improving the lives of the people," he writes. "Instead it has spent resources on rockets and missiles that are like children's toys in the face of Israel, which is the region's major military power."
He castigates Hamas' leaders for exposing "the ordinary people of Gaza" to the violence of war while they themselves are "hiding in the security in their secret bunkers."

“Potentially a Huge Turn-Around”

Today I am feeling a far greater certainty that our government is going to see through this war to its necessary end.  That our prime minister is working with resolve, looking first at the people of our nation and not over his shoulder at Obama, or the UN.

 

Another 16,000 reservists have been called up and more troops were deployed in Gaza today.  We are stepping up the pace of the fighting, and expanding the arena of battle, at the same time that we are seeking and destroying tunnels.

 

Credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90

 

We have sent a delegation to Egypt, where a ceasefire is being discussed.  But Netanyahu says ceasefire or no ceasefire, we will not stop our work.  He will not accept any ceasefire proposal that does not allow us to complete our work on the tunnels.

The UN Continues to Blame Israel for Everything

Joseph Klein On August 1, 2014 @ 12:30 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments

The United Nations Security Council met once again Thursday on the crisis in Gaza. This time it heard “humanitarian” briefings from Under Secretary-General for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Valerie Amos, and the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Pierre Krahenbuhl.
The briefings were as much a one-sided political attack against Israel as they were genuine reports on humanitarian conditions in Gaza. Relying on a preliminary UN assessment and ignoring the circumstances in which Israeli soldiers claimed to have been under fire from jihadists operating in the vicinity of an UNRWA elementary school in Jabalya, they seized on an alleged artillery shelling by the Israeli military on July 30th that was said to have struck the school and resulted in 19 Palestinian fatalities.  They condemned only Israel for violating international law.
Both senior UN officials had basically nothing to say about Hamas’s war crimes in using civilian homes, hospitals, mosques and schools to hide their weapons and to serve as entrances to their terror tunnels.  Indeed, neither official made any reference to the tunnels at all.

'Let IDF complete Gaza mission, 14 years of terror are enough'

Mayors of Israel's southern communities demand IDF be allowed to continue Gaza campaign until terror threat is fully eliminated • "If they reach a truce before the tunnels are taken care of we won't be able to go home," says resident of Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

Gadi Golan, Nitzi Yaakov and Israel Hayom Staff

An Israeli soldier inspects the remnants of a mortar shell that hit a field in one of the Gaza vicinity communities

The mayors of Israel's southern communities, which have come under heavy terrorist fire over the past three weeks, expressed a growing sense of frustration Wednesday over what they called the government's indecisiveness on the future of Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip.

The mayors are demanding that the Israel Defense Forces be allowed to continue the Gaza campaign until the threats posed by both rocket fire and terror tunnels are fully eliminated.

The government "can't continue with this zigzag policy. It hurts us and it undermines the soldiers, who need to know that actual decisions are being made," said one council head, who asked to remain anonymous.

"The military should be allowed to see the operation in Gaza through, for as long as it takes. We don't want to have to deal with rocket fire anymore, and we don't want to have to deal the judgment day weapon of the tunnels. Fourteen years of terror are enough," he said.

"The cabinet has to make a decision and that decision has to be to eliminate the tunnels and restore the residents' sense of security by any means necessary, even after a cease-fire is reached," Yair Farjun, head of the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council, said Wednesday.

Hamas' death wish

Dr. Reuven Berko

The words of Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas' military wing, contained a recurring theme that has been echoed by other Hamas terrorist leaders -- that Hamas mujahedeen yearn for death the way the Jews yearn for life. Is that so?

With this mantra, Hamas has dispatched many Palestinians to their deaths as suicide attackers, seeking to kill as many Jewish civilians as possible. Dim-witted and morally sinful Palestinians are promised sex and wine in paradise as a preferable alternative to their current lives of depression and shame.

But Hamas' lust for death does not stand the test of reality. If Hamas leaders actually sought death as much as they claim they do, they would have led their fighters onto the battlefield, rather than sought shelter in deep bunkers, surrounded by a human shield of Palestinian civilians. These civilians seek life, not death, but they cannot escape and are criminally forced to serve as a protective human layer for Hamas leaders, despite IDF warnings.

It turns out that words are one thing, while actions are another. The purpose of these statements by Hamas leaders is to frighten Israelis about murderers at their doorstep who have a crazy and irrational death lust and do not act in accordance with human norms that value life.

What UK leaders should be saying if they really cared about protecting British Jews‏

This lynch-mob mentality has been building for years

  Melanie Phillips 

The mask has been torn away. Supposedly anti-Israel protests over the Gaza war have convulsed Europe in the worst scenes of open Jew-hatred since the 1930s. In Paris, predominantly Muslim mobs screaming ‘death to the Jews’ have repeatedly tried to storm synagogues, torched cars and burnt Jewish-owned shops to the ground. In Berlin, demonstrators shouted ‘Gas the Jews’ while an imam beseeched Allah to ‘count and kill Zionist Jews to the very last one’.
In Britain, physical and verbal attacks on Jews have doubled. One woman was assaulted by a group of 50 protestors who heard her discussing Gaza on her mobile phone. Shouting ‘get her’ they surrounded and pushed her, calling her a Jew, Zionist, murderer and thief.
People are aghast. Yet this lynch-mob mentality has been building for years. Every time Israel takes military action to prevent further Palestinian attacks, it is falsely presented as the aggressive persecutor of the innocent.
Unless British Jews join this demonisation, they are deemed complicit with Israel’s ‘war crimes’. As a result, attacks on British Jews always spike during Israel’s wars. So much for the supposed distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Even more appalling is the silence in the face of all this of the political class.

Caroline Glick Briefs Capitol Hill on the Gaza War

Frontpagemag.com On July 31, 2014 @ 12:46 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments
Below is the video of Caroline Glick’s July 25th briefing on Capitol Hill on Israel’s Operation Protective Edge. The presentation is followed by a Q&A session:
Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.

Israel, Hamas, and Special Needs Children

Dan Gordon

Yesterday I wrote an article that ended with a suggestion to Hamas. The suggestion was, just stop trying to kill us, and be prepared to be amazed at how wonderful your lives will become.
You say you want the siege lifted?
The sanctions, which you call a siege, were put in place, as a non-lethal method of getting you to stop trying to kill us!
You say you want to improve the lot of the Palestinian people who are suffering in Gaza?
Just stop trying to kill to kill us, and you can become the Singapore of the Middle East!
Evidently Hamas didn’t read the article or, having read it, decided not to heed its advice.
Five minutes after I left the Eshkol group of agricultural communities, Hamas violated the latest cease-fire by launching a mortar attack against an Israeli farming village.
They killed four people, all soldiers.
According to Hamas spokesman Abu Odeh, “Hamas never targets civilians. It only targets Jews.”
By that reckoning, they hit their targets, as planned.

'Israel has ample evidence that Hamas is using UNRWA schools for terrorist purposes'

HERB KEINON

07/30/2014 

inShare

Deputy FM Hanegbi says that “instead of blaming Israel, UNRWA should make a real effort to stop being manipulated by terrorist organizations.”

UNRWA school damaged by fighting in Gaza Photo: REUTERS

Israel has ample evidence that Hamas is using UNRWA schools and facilities for terrorist purposes, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said Wednesday.
Speaking at a press briefing in Jerusalem, he pointed out that on three separate occasions UNRWA itself has admitted that rockets were hidden in the basement of their facilities. “Who knows how many were not found,” he said, adding that this phenomenon was “totally unacceptable.”

Related:

• UNRWA investigating 20 rockets found in one of its vacant schools
• IDF accuses Palestinians of firing from vicinity of UNRWA school, says probing deaths

Each time that the rockets were found, he said, they were given back to Hamas and have probably already been fired at Israel, “endangering and jeopardizing Israeli lives.”
“Instead of blaming and condemning Israel, UNRWA should make a real effort to stop being manipulated and used by the terrorist organizations.”
While saying that over a span of decades UNRWA “has done a great job helping the Palestinians in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip,” especially giving “blessed refuge for people leaving combat areas to save themselves,” the organization has failed to prevent its facilities from being used as terror headquarters and a hiding place for rockets.

From Arafat and Abbas to Hamas: Lying and Crying for Terror

Michael Widlanski On July 30, 2014 

Dear President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon:
Save yourselves lots of time, anguish and jet fuel, by learning a short saying in Arabic that sums up the current crisis in Gaza.
“Darabni wa-baka, sabaqni wa-ishtaka.”
It is a rhyme in Arabic that means:
“He hit me and quickly cried: ‘He attacked me,’ he lied.”
It aptly describes the way Palestinian thugs and leaders—from the PLO’s Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas to the maniacs of Hamas—attack or try to cheat someone and then rush to complain about being beaten up or victimized.
It is a form of misconduct perfected by Yasser Arafat. It is why other Arabs distrust the Palestinians and see them as hypocritical and ungrateful cry-babies.
ARAFAT’S MOTTO: Hit hard, complain harder:
This pattern began in 1967 when PLO chief Arafat slipped into Jordan, disguised in women’s clothing, asking refuge from King Hussein. Within two years, Arafat and his terrorist colleagues had taken over the country, directing traffic in Amman and blowing up hijacked planes in Jordan’s airports.

Israel and the US: Whose Survival Instinct Is Stronger?

DIANA WEST July 30, 2014

There's something darkly coincidental in the fact that the latest weapon to be deployed against the survival instinct of both Israel and the United States is an alleged "heartlessness" when it comes to children.
The people of Israel are castigated in news media, social media and the "international community" (read: the scoundrel United Nations, of whose budget U.S. taxpayers pay 22 percent) as lacking in "humanity" itself. Why? Because as the IDF fights to end Gaza's endless rocket barrages against Israel, many children under the age of 18 number among the civilian dead. This London Telegraph headline is not untypical: "Israel's offensive in Gaza has ‘killed more children than fighters,' say human rights groups. Israel has been accused of waging ‘war on the children' of Gaza ..."

No Economic Aid to Hamas-Ruled Gaza

Efraim Inbar
BESA Center Perspectives

http://www.meforum.org/4764/no-economic-aid-to-hamas-ruled-gaza

_{EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The developing international consensus to offer Gaza economic aid in exchange for a ceasefire is a moral and strategic mistake. As long as Hamas rules Gaza, funds sent to Gaza are likely to be used for aggression against Israel and the personal use of Hamas leaders. The world should not be rewarding the most extreme Palestinians for violence and terror.}

With terror tunnels costing $3 million apiece and all the concrete it can put its hands on, Hamas has neglected providing for the needs of the people in Gaza.

The developing international consensus to offer Gaza an economic package in order to convince Hamas to agree to a ceasefire is immoral and a strategic folly. It is also unlikely to be effective.
One of the main reasons for Hamas harassing several million Israelis by launching thousands of rockets and sending terrorists into Israel by tunnels, apart from the desire to kill Jews, is to rock the boat in order to get out of its dire economic conditions. Getting paid for stopping to shoot at Israeli civilians looks like the "protection money" collected by the Mafia.

Promoting ‘Proportionality’ in the Service of Genocide

Kenneth Levin On July 29, 2014

Once again, in warfare between Israel and its neighbors, Israel’s critics note the many more dead and wounded among the Jewish state’s adversaries than among Israelis and attack Israel for disproportionate use of force. While photos of dead and wounded civilians, or of non-combatants desperately fleeing fighting around their homes, should elicit everyone’s sympathy, the translating of that sympathy into a “proportionality” argument with which to beat Israel is less an expression of humane sensitivity to the plight of innocent victims than a display of sanctimonious depravity.
International law includes a concept of proportionality as it applies to warfare. Intentionally targeting civilians constitutes not simply a criminal act but a crime against humanity. It is also considered a crime to attack a military target when it is clear that the likely incidental civilian injuries and deaths will be disproportionate to any likely military advantage to be gained as a result of the attack.
Consider the nature of the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Hamas is explicit in its genocidal intent, stating in its charter and in myriad declarations by its representatives that its goal is not only the annihilation of Israel but the slaughter of all Jews. It makes clear that it has zero interest in the establishment of a Palestinian state living peacefully alongside Israel.

Caught between head and heart

Yoav Limor

On Monday night, Israel was caught between its head and its heart. Its heart demanded a harsh response to the three deadly incidents which were the direct result of Hamas' impudent decision to violate the very cease-fire that it, itself, had sought. Israel's head, on the other hand, knew that the Israel Defense Forces should remain focused on the goal of Operation Protective Edge -- the destruction of the tunnels -- and that expanding the operation would get Israel sucked into a dangerous vortex in the international diplomatic arena.

The high level of IDF casualties on Monday did not in fact reflect the intensity of the fighting in Gaza. Only one Israeli soldier was killed inside Gaza. He was killed in an anti-tank missile strike on an engineering vehicle in southern Gaza (eight terrorists were killed in this incident when an bulldozer knocked down the house in which they were located).

The other two incidents in which Israeli soldiers were killed took place inside Israel. In one of these incidents, four Armored Corps soldiers were killed in a mortar strike on a staging area near the border -- a well-known vulnerability point for the IDF. During the Second Lebanon War, twelve reservists were killed by a Katyusha rocket that struck a staging area near Kfar Giladi. Due to this, IDF staging areas were moved further from the border during Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defense. However, the nature of Operation Protective Edge has required troops to be assembled closer to the border, despite the risks. The border area has been closed to civilians in an effort to prevent casualties from rockets and mortars.

Hamas celebrates kidnapping-murder of 3 Israeli teens

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=12213 by Itamar Marcus Hamas broadcast a song yesterday honoring the kidnappers and murderers of the three Israeli teenagers Eyal Yifrach, 19, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Naftali Frenkel, 16. Unabashedly praising the murderers for capturing their "prey - a child," the song puts them on a pedestal: "You are from Hebron, O hawk, and all are proud of you." The song encourages further kidnappings as a means of freeing terrorist prisoners: "With the rifle open the [prison] cell Kidnap soldiers till we free my brothers" Click to view

Fatah promises "to turn Tel Aviv into a ball of fire," promotes West Bank violence and boasts about rocket attack on Israeli

Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik 

As rockets from Gaza continue to target and land on Israeli cities, Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement is using Abbas' speech last week as a trigger for more violence. Fatah threatens "to turn Tel Aviv into a ball of fire," takes credit for several rockets fired into Israel in the last 24 hours and boasts that "throughout history our movement's hand was the strongest hand in the confrontation with the occupation (i.e., Israel) and still is."

All the above quotes appeared in different posts today on Fatah's official Facebook "Main Page."

A new video promoting violence opens with Mahmoud Abbas' speech from last week in which he, as Palestinian Media Watch reported, presented the current conflict as a religious "war for Allah" by citing a verse from the Quran:

"Permission [to fight] has been given to those who are being fought, because they were wronged. And indeed, Allah is competent to give them victory." [Surah 22:39, trans. Sahih International]

  

Click to view

Is THIS How Obama is Planning to Betray Israel?

JANET LEVY July 28, 2014

Will Obama abandon Israel by not providing American military resupply?  Is he attempting to weaken Israel so that its ability to wage an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is crippled permanently?  What are his true intentions vis a vis Israel?

This week, when Israel was forced to initiate a land operation into Gaza, Obama ordered the FAA to shut-down both passenger flights and supply planes to Israel. As Ben Gurion is one of the most secure airports in the world and U.S. flights regularly fly to Afghanistan, this appeared to be an attempt at economic sabotage.  This was the way Obama's ban was viewed by the left-leaning former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, as well as conservative Senator and Harvard-trained lawyer, Ted Cruz, who both worked to put an end to the stoppage.
Yet, at the same time, Obama authorized a $47 million infusion to the Hamas government of Gaza - a terrorist group firing missiles and rockets at Israeli civilians! What about the re-supply of military goods that Israel will require in a few days?  Will it be forthcoming?
Another distinct possibility: Iran, who has trained and supplied Hamas, could open a second front in the war by ordering Hezbollah to attack Israel from the north, thus putting the Jewish state in a two front war with depleted military supplies.
Janet Levy, Los Angeles

JPOST.COM STAFF

07/28/2014

Use of child labor not stopped by police in Gaza, where children's "nimble bodies" help dig the tunnels that lead into Israel and Egypt.

Palestinian youngsters in Gaza take part in a Hamas military training camp. Photo: REUTERS

Hamas used children to help them dig numerous tunnels into Israel and Egypt, a 2012 paper written for the Journal of Palestine Studies reported.
The paper, titled Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege says that little had been done to stop the phenomenon of child labor during the digging of the tunnels by Hamas in Gaza.

In December 2011, the paper's author Nicolas Pelham accompanied a police patrol in Gaza and reported that "nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels, where, much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies."

“Time to Finish the Threat”

It’s going on 72 hours since I’ve posted – the longest interval I’ve gone without a posting since this war with Hamas began.  In that period, as I have attempted to track what is happening, I felt as if my head was spinning 350 degrees. Round and round.

 

Here I only intend to review the essential outline of what has been transpiring and then look at the bottom line basics that matter most.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

In the period leading up to Shabbat, on Friday, Israel was said to be considering a proposal for a week long ceasefire that had been put on the table by Kerry.  In the end, that proposal was unanimously rejected by the Israel Security Cabinet; its members were, to a person, furious: Kerry had come out solidly on the side of Hamas.

 

Communicating with representatives of Qatar and Turkey in putting together his proposal, Kerry had, in the words of unnamed Israeli sources cited by Times of Israel, “’dug a tunnel under the Egyptian ceasefire proposal’ — which Israel accepted and Hamas rejected last week — and presented the Israeli government with a text that accepted ‘most of the demands’ raised by Hamas...

The cease-fire and the donkey's jaw

Dr. Reuven Berko

When I was a child, my late uncle asked me how many donkeys were in this sentence uttered by Samson: "With a donkey's jawbone I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone I have killed a thousand men" (Judges 15:16). Over 1,000 dead in Gaza cause all of us to sorrow over those hurt and the destruction caused to places where Hamas members hid, using civilians as human shields.

It wasn't any modern-day Samson that brought this disaster upon the people of Gaza. It was actually their leaders. The catastrophe could have been twice as bad if many of the residents had not heeded the IDF's warnings and evacuated (despite Hamas forbidding it) and if Israel hadn't protected its citizens. Those who demand "proportionality" in the number of casualties must be angry at how few casualties Israel has and furious that the Israeli leadership committed the sin of giving its civilians siren alerts, shelters, and the Iron Dome system, and sent its soldiers to protect them while the Hamas leadership used its civilians as a bullet-proof vest.

Kerry's cease-fire draft revealed: U.S. ignored most of Israel's security demands

Haaretz obtains U.S. proposal for weeklong cease-fire which Israel's cabinet rejected; Kerry did not recognize Israel's demand to continue working against the tunnels and presented Hamas as equal to Israel.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry speaks during a press conference June 22, 2014 in Cairo, Egypt. / Photo by AFP

By Barak Ravid

27.07.14

The cease-fire draft U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented to Israel on Friday evening contained practically no mention of Israel's security needs or of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip of rockets. The draft also forbade Israel from demolishing terror tunnels running from Gaza into Israeli territory during the seven day "humanitarian cease-fire" that were meant to end the fighting, according to a draft of the document obtained by Haaretz, revealed here for the first time.

The one-page document, marked "confidential," was submitted to the Prime Minister's Bureau on Friday at 5 P.M. as the security cabinet was meeting. The draft is titled "Framework for Humanitarian Ceasefire in Gaza."

Draft of Kerry's framework for Gaza cease-fire. /

The draft described the urgent need of "protecting civilian lives, ending all hostilities in and from the Gaza Strip and achieving a sustainable cease-fire and enduring resolution of the crisis." The draft said that as such, the two sides - "the Palestinian factions and the State of Israel" have agreed to make the following commitments, detailed in three subsequent clauses:

Fatah Declares 'Open War' on Israel

Fatah Declares 'Open War' on Israel

  Dalit Halevi and Elad Benari

Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade terrorists

Flash 90

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the so-called “military wing” of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, has declared an "open war" against the "Zionist enemy."
In a recorded message dated July 23, three terrorists from the organization announced that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade will not sit idly by while Israel’s operation in Gaza continues, adding they intended to launch a campaign in Israeli territory.
"The language of blood" is the only language in which to answer “the aggression of the Zionists”, the statement said, and stressed that international law grants the Palestinian Arabs the right to conduct an armed struggle “on all Palestinian lands.”
All units operating under the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade were ordered to act against the "Zionist enemy", in a campaign in which "all options are open".