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As Operation Protective Edge winds down, there is growing speculation about the next and far more serious military threat that the country may be forced to confront. On its northern border with Lebanon, the Israeli army is faced with the daunting prospect of 100,000 long-range rockets far more accurate and effective than the missiles used by Hamas in its recent confrontation and far more likely to cause damage to life and property than the former offensive.   Hizb'allah, which launched a 34-day offensive against Israel in July, 2006, is the Hamas threat multiplied tenfold.   The former conflict is believed to...

U.S. airstrikes on Islamic State positions have begun. Fighter jets also bombed Islamic State militants in northwest Iraq on Thursday night. But it's not clear who the pilots were. The Pentagon immediately denied a New York Times report that the U.S. carried out Thursday's strikes. Iraqi military officials told CNN and the Wall Street Journal that the Iraqi Air Force had struck ISIS targets near Erbil, which is the regional capital of Iraqi Kurdistan and host to hundreds of U.S. military advisers. The Iraqi Air Force is poorly equipped, consisting of several Cessna planes carrying American-supplied Hellfire missiles, some American-...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. fighters dropped bombs on Islamic militants in Iraq Friday, the Pentagon said, carrying out President Barack Obama's promise of military force to counter the advancing militants and confront the threat they pose to Iraqi civilians and Americans still stationed there.

Al-Qaeda-inspired extremists seized control of the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar on Sunday, advancing against overstretched Kurdish forces and sending thousands of residents running for their lives. Families described scenes of panic as gunmen entered the town around 7 a.m. after Kurdish forces withdrew. The majority of residents are Yazidis, followers of a pre-Islamic faith, and the extremists accuse them of being devil worshipers. “People were terrified,” said Ilias al-Hussani, who like tens of thousands of others had fled on foot toward the mountains as soon as gunmen entered. “They are savages. We’ve seen what they’ve done to people of...

Israel was once again criticized on Sunday for an attack on a United Nations school in Gaza, which the United States said was “disgraceful”. According to the AFP news agency, in one of the most strongly-worded statements yet from Washington since the conflict began nearly a month ago, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was "appalled" by the attack on the school in Rafiah. At least 10 people were killed in the shelling, the third time in 10 days that a UN school has been hit in fighting. "The United States is appalled by today's disgraceful shelling...

Israel has evidence that almost half of Palestinians killed in the 25-day-old Gaza war were combatants, its deputy foreign minister said on Saturday, pushing back against international allegations of a lopsidedly heavy civilian death toll. Gazan human rights groups say at least 80 percent of the 1,669 Palestinians killed have been non-combatants, including hundreds of children. The U.N. Human Rights Council last week accused the Israelis of "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks" and launched an inquiry into possible war crimes. Israel, which has lost 63 soldiers and 3 civilians to the fighting, says it has done everything possible to avoid harming...

<p>Mosul governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, who fled to the largely autonomous Kurdish region when the Islamic State group and allied Sunni fighters seized Iraq’s second largest city in June, told The Associated Press on Sunday that the towns of Zumar and Sinjar fell after fierce clashes that erupted the day before.</p>

Arabia’s King Abdullah on Friday broke his silence on the Gaza conflict, which started in early July, by condemning the conflict and the inaction of the international community. “This [international] community, which has observed silently what is happening in the whole region, was indifferent to what is happening as if what is happening is not its concern,” Abdullah said in a statement on Saudi state-run television. Despite describing the situation in Gaza as “war crimes against humanity,” the Saudi monarch stopped short of calling for action against Israel. The Gaza conflict has highlighted a growing rift in the Arab world...

We asked Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and Aram Nerguizian, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to weigh in on the state of the Syrian army and how it can respond to the challenge from ISIS. Syria Deeply: What is the state of the Syrian army? Joshua Landis: In Damascus, ISIS has gone to war with the Islamic Front in the Ghouta area and has been squeezed out of Ghouta, and is now trying to open a new front in Qalamoun, the range of mountains near...

A nameless woman “dumped on a street, arms and legs cut off, entrails eviscerated” — this is just one testament from Bing West’s account of Fallujah in 2004. This was the first mini-caliphate of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). West’s quote still matters, because it sums up the real-world impact of Salafi jihadism, the ideology of sick totalitarianism that once inspired Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and that now motivates Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Leading ISIS, Baghdadi is painting Iraq and Syria with the blood of all those who do not yield. And be under no illusions: ISIS does not believe in geographic...

Islamic State fighters seized control of Iraq's biggest dam, an oilfield and three more towns on Sunday after inflicting their first major defeat on Kurdish forces since sweeping through the region in June. Capture of the Mosul Dam after an offensive of barely 24 hours could give the Sunni militants the ability to flood major Iraqi cities or withhold water from farms, sharply raising the stakes in their bid to topple Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government.

IRBIL, Iraq -- A supposedly secret but locally well-known CIA station on the outskirts of Irbil’s airport is undergoing rapid expansion as the United States considers whether to engage in a war against Islamist militants who’ve seized control of half of Iraq in the past month. Western contractors hired to expand the facility and a local intelligence official confirmed the construction project, which is visible from the main highway linking Irbil to Mosul, the city whose fall June 9 triggered the Islamic State’s sweep through northern and central Iraq. Residents around the airport say they can hear daily what they...

Kurdistan has declared a safe-haven for Christian refugees, as Islamist militants extinguish the Christian presence in Iraq’s second city, Mosul. According to news reports, every Christian has finally been driven out of the city. Displaced Christians have expressed anger towards the international community for failing to protect them or offer asylum. One priest, who cannot be named, told religious liberty organisation, Release International, that he was furious that Britain ‘offered visas to terrorists’ but refused to grant them to Iraqi Christians. The priest was also dismayed that British jihadis were among the IS fighters. ‘There is no hope, no future....

The Kurdish region of Iraq and Turkey, border Iran, and Syria. Kurds have a well developed, effective government, parliament and security force. The region has had nearly total independence since Iraq's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War. // Snipp // Largely corrupted remnants of U.S.-trained Iraqi Army, crumbled under the Saudi-wahhabi push East. Peshmerga recovered strategic northern positions, including suburbs of now, wahhab dominated City Mosul. //Snipp// Many Kurdish Iraqi leaders believe ever blossoming federal cronyism, and recently demonstrated national defense atrophy, lay bare a chronic Humpty Dumptyism. The Nation may best function as a Republic. “I don’t think Iraq...

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 Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan — 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 ceasefire even after more than...

During the Cold War, Israel was a pawn in a larger struggle between the US and the USSR. Now it is back to being a counter in a larger game. Israel’s function within the great halls of diplomacy was always as a lever on the Arab states. It was not an end, but a means of moving them one way or another. When the Arab states drifted into the Soviet orbit, the “Special Relationship” was born. The relationship accomplished its goal once Egypt was pried out of the Soviet orbit. It has lingered on because of the emotional and cultural...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be "glad" to return an award given to him in 2004 by a prominent American Jewish group, Turkey's embassy in the US said Tuesday, amid a growing controversy over the premier's anti-Israel remarks.According to Israel National News, the American Jewish Congress had given Erdogan the Profile of Courage award in recognition of his efforts at that time to seek peace in the Middle East. But the AJC now wants the award to be returned following Erdogan’s repeated verbal assaults against Israel, most recently over the Gaza conflict.Erdogan has slammed Israel's attacks on Gaza as "genocide" of...

Obama just released $2.8 billion to these savages. And he has sanctioned their nuclear weapons program. Mankind will always be plagued with evil annihilationists. But America funding them? And sanctioning their nuclear weapons program? That’s a whole new vicious reality for the free world to deal with. That’s new.

Let’s concede for a moment that most of us don’t believe the United States should be taking sides in conflicts abroad. Even so, most Americans would probably agree that at a minimum our diplomatic efforts should not cause unnecessary harm. Which brings me to Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent misadventure in the Middle East. It seems like a rather big deal that Egypt, Israel, Fatah, Jordan, Saudi Arabia—ostensibly, all allies of ours—agree on anything. This development, one imagines, might be something the United States would be interested in fostering rather than destroying. Certainly, the idea that Hamas’ power should...

My ways are not your ways , do not the planets hang in their places and move at my very command and will ?! So is your life that revolves around me, so do not fight my will for you for this friction will wear you to dust . "Release" your soul, spirit and life completely into my life and leave ALL your whys to me . I AM your ( (( constant )) ) and eternal and my path for you is irrevocable by the enemy if you remain in My will that is your "True Path" . Fast...