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RT has two cameras on a split screeen, overlooking Gaza. You can hear the 'crump' of mortars or artillery, and the whine of at least two drones in the air. It is just before the dawn there. You can hear the call to prayer in the background, right now.

As of Tuesday night, despite the efforts of international intermediaries here in the region, there was no sign of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had failed to achieve the long-term humanitarian truce he planned. This despite signs Monday that Hamas might want to halt the fighting. The Al-Mayadeen satellite station, which has good contacts in the office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, claimed late Monday that Abbas and Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal had reached a ceasefire deal, based on Egypt’s proposal for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Abbas’s intelligence chief Majid Faraj set...

“Berlin police cower before Jew-haters,” proclaimed a headline in the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel—and this line has been posted numerous times on social networking sites. It was reported that a group of Arabs shouted “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone” at a recent demonstration and police officers did not interfere.In many European cities, what began as peaceful protests turned into outpourings of anti-Jewish sentiments and violence against counter-demonstrators. […] The Gaza conflict has stirred up public opinion in Europe, and it has brought Israel-hatred to Germany along with it, according to political scientist Stephan Grigat. […] Grigat has...

A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin on Monday night. Police said it was too soon to say whether it was part of a political protest. Amid tensions in Berlin over pro-Gaza protests and a rise in anti-Semitism, the 46-year-old doused himself in a flammable liquid and then set himself alight with a cigarette lighter at 11.45pm on Monday. Police said the man, who is of Arab descent, only suffered minor injuries outside the Israeli embassy in south-west Berlin. …

Wounded soldiers have given shocking testimony regarding Hamas’ use of young children as human shields. Parents of wounded soldiers spoke to Kol Yisrael on Tuesday and shared some of the disturbing stories they had heard from their sons. They said soldiers have repeatedly seen young children in Sheijaya, Gaza, be sent out into the streets with guns to try to attack IDF troops. One parent reported that terrorists had run at IDF soldiers with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other, apparently in hopes that the soldiers would see the child and hold their fire. If...

The European Union on Tuesday called upon terrorist groups in Gaza to disarm, and to end and renounce violence. The official statement read: "The EU strongly condemns the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and militant groups in the Gaza Strip, directly harming civilians. These are criminal and unjustifiable acts. The EU calls on Hamas to immediately put an end to these acts and to renounce violence. All terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm. The EU strongly condemns calls on the civilian population of Gaza to provide themselves as human shields."

Left-wing justice minister says IDF operation in Gaza is "unavoidable"; Kerry meets Egyptian leaders in Cairo in attempt to forge resolution to conflict between Israel, Hamas. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni dismissed on Tuesday the possibility of an imminent halt in fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, adding that the IDF ground incursion in the Strip was impossible to avoid. Related: • US, UN pushing hard for immediate cease-fire in Gaza "There is no real option for a cease-fire now. This operation is unavoidable," the left-wing minister told Army Radio. "Hamas is not close to a cease-fire in terms of...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the fighting and bombing in Gaza. “Both sides must distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and Israel must ensure that its use of force is proportionate in accordance with international humanitarian law. More immediately, all combat operations must stop, and Israeli troops should withdraw from Gaza,” Carter said in a statement released Tuesday. So far, more than 600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the fighting, according to reports. The Israeli death toll is estimated at 29, including two civilians. Humantarian groups have also called for an end to...

EU countries have defended Israel’s use of force in Gaza, but blamed it for harming peace prospects in the longer term. Foreign ministers in a joint statement on Tuesday (22 July) said they are “appalled by the human cost” of some parts of “the Israeli military operation”, which has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. But they “recognized Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself”, while blaming Hamas, the militant group which rules Gaza, for “indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel”, in what they described as “criminal and unjustifiable acts”. They also gave credence to Israeli claims that Hamas is urging civilians...

Two videos related to ISIS were released on Monday. A Twitter account for the Islamic State posted pictures and a video of a training camp in Ninevah and Al-Arabiya released a video with the real wife of ISIS's leader.

I recently received an email from a reporter asking me to comment on questions of the “when did you stop beating your wife” variety. I receive these near daily from anti-Israel and anti-Semitic publications who accuse me of everything from supporting genocide against Palestinians, to lending my name to African regimes that slaughter their people (they’re referring to my friend President Paul Kagame, who actually stopped the genocide in Rwanda in 1994), to abandoning Michael Jackson. But this one came from a Jewish publication and included these gems: Do I disappear for days, sometimes weeks, into a room where I...

In most such cases, the US does not even acknowledge its responsibility for its own lethal drone attacks, let alone issue an apology. With a predictability that is rapidly becoming mind-numbing monotony, various US officials from the president on down have been stressing the need for Israel to exercise restraint in its counter- terror operation in Gaza so as to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. In addition to President Barack Obama, this concern has been voiced in recent days in one form or another by none other than US Secretary of State John Kerry, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, as...

Support for Operation Protective Edge among the Israeli Jewish public remains strong, and a majority say that Israel has racked up more successes than Hamas since the beginning of the campaign, which entered its ground phase last week, a poll conducted by Israel Hayom and the New Wave Research firm shows. When asked if they supported or opposed Israel's ground incursion into Gaza, 80 percent of respondents replied that they supported it, 12 percent said they opposed it and 8 percent said they didn't know. When asked if Israel should expand its current ground operation, 71 percent of respondents said...

War On Terror: The fanatical Islamist group torches an 1,800-year-old church built before the founding of Islam and forces the Christian residents of Mosul to convert, pay a tax, leave or face execution. This is what the West faces. 'From Boston to Zanzibar, there's a worldwide war on Christianity," Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said at the Values Voters Summit last October, an annual conservative gathering. The number and intensity of attacks was so great, he said, that it's "almost as if we lived in the Middle Ages." That was an era when the swords of Islam had conquered much...

Egypt's foreign minister raised the possibility Tuesday of restarting stalled peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians as part of negotiating a cease-fire in the war that has broken out on the Gaza Strip. At the start of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri said he planned to work with U.S. and other world leaders “to not only resolve this issue but also to set in motion once again the peace process that Secretary Kerry has been so actively involved in so as to end this ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”...

The French authorities have reportedly authorized a demonstration in support for Gaza on Wednesday (23 July) after two government-banned protests over the weekend turned violent. Wednesday’s gathering is to be allowed because the pro-Palestinian organizers are considered “serious and responsible” by the authorities, reports French daily Le Parisien.The Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) as well as a handful of left wing groups is behind the demonstration, set to kick off in the early evening from the city’s center. The move comes on the heels of a controversial French government ban on demonstrations in the capital after several protesters...

The man who suggested that the US shoot down Israeli airplanes is at it again. Surveying the Israeli/Hamas conflict, Zbigniew Brzezinski couldn't summon up one word of condemnation for Hamas' intentional targeting of Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets and mortars. Instead, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser had harsh words for only one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. Appearing on today's Morning Joe, Brzezinski said he didn't include Netanyahu in the category of leaders man enough to negotiate, accusing the Israeli PM of having "scuttled" peace efforts--again without a word of criticism for Hamas. Zbigniew ended his anti-Israel tirade by decrying that...

Hamas and Egypt are at odds over an unconfirmed cease-fire deal with Israel, Walla! News reports Tuesday—after Cairo refused to add to the terms of its mediation unprecedented “conditions” tempering the move. Hamas, which has rejected not one, but three separate ceasefire attempts, called on Israel over the past week to submit to a number of “conditions”—or demands—in return for an end to the violence against Israelis. The calls were accompanied by threats against the Israeli people, made through a series of weakly-worded text messages. These “conditions” include, among other things, greater access to international waters, reopening of border crossings,...

Are the Gazans Who Voted for Hamas Ever Responsible for their Actions?Posted By Daniel Greenfield On July 21, 2014 @ 8:14 pm In The Point | 13 Comments Hamas didn’t just take power. It won an election. There was never any doubt then or before what its favorite tactics involved.The media acts as if the Muslims in Gaza are in a category apart from Hamas, but they’re no more separate than the Japanese were from their government or the Germans were from their government. Less so since Hamas did win an election.That’s the question that Thane Rosenbaum raises. The...

While jihadists are recruiting people from all corners of the earth to join them in the war against Jews (and all infidels), there are also young men and women from around the world going to Israel to fight for her survival. The Israeli Defense Forces calls them lone soldiers. Lone soldiers have no family in Israel. They are young men and women who come to Israel to join the IDF and defend the Jewish homeland, as well as young people considered “at risk” who live in poverty, come from broken homes, or who are estranged from their parents. Estimates of...

There will be endless admonitions to Israel from the Obama administration, the United Nations, and so forth, demanding an early end to the Gaza war now underway. Israel’s security needs dictate the opposite: Hamas’ capacity to make war must be crippled.Tel Aviv last week remained one of the safest cities in the world despite the incessant rocket bombardment. In the bomb shelters at the David Intercontinental, we joked about the lack of drinks and canapes at the hotel’s hastily improvised guest mixers. The cafe terraces were full every night on Dizengoff Street. But complacency on Israel’s part would be...

Police have been showing less patience for extremist Arab MKs' antics lately, MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash) learned Monday in Nazareth when he attempted to storm the local police station. The video shows Barakeh, who has been inolved in numerous scuffles with authorities over the years, trying to storm the Nazareth police station together with an Arab mob. The police form a wall and push the crowd back, and Barakeh eventually finds himself on the ground. Police arrested two of Barakeh's sons, and 21 other citizens, following the large scale demonstration in Nazareth on Monday, which was attended by thousands. The...

Kerry and Obama want to give the PLO-Hamas 45 million USD. Pass this article on and hopefully we can stop it. US Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Monday that the US is providing $47 million dollars

CAIRO - The US is sending $47 million in humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip to help tens of thousands of Palestinians.....

In a notably critical interview, Michael Oren emphasizes that Israel would prefer Egyptian, not American, mediation Michael Oren, who until recently served as Israel’s ambassador in Washington, said US envoy John Kerry was coming to the region “to our chagrin.” US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected in Cairo Monday for discussions surrounding a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The White House said Kerry would seek “an immediate cessation of hostilities based on a return to the November 2012 ceasefire agreement,” and stressed the need to protect civilian life both “in Gaza and in Israel.” In strikingly outspoken comments...

IRAQI special forces secured full control of a crucial former US military base on the outskirts of Tikrit, officials said yesterday. Camp Speicher, the headquarters for US forces in northern Iraq during the 2003 invasion and subsequent war, has become a focal point in the fight between Iraqi forces and Islamist militants.

In a recent confrontation between protesters against the illegal flood of unaccompanied children into the United States and counter-protests by some Hispanic group, one man from the latter group said angrily, "We are as good as you are!" One of the things that make the history of clashes over race or ethnicity such a history of tragedies around the world is that — regardless of whatever particular issue sets off these clashes — many people see the ultimate stakes as their worth as human beings. On that, there is no room for compromise, but only polarization. That is why playing...

July 18, 2014 Well, this has been a depressing day. The smoke here in Sandpoint is like soup. A short walk through the city beach left my lungs on fire. Apparently the forest fire in Washington state blowing our way is one of the biggest forest fires in decades. Close to 200,000 acres burned so far. At times, the breeze blows away the smoke but then it comes back and it’s oppressive. The fire is zero percent contained. Smokey, gritty Sandpoint isn’t the Sandpoint we know and love. But I love it anyway. I slept late, as always when I...

From Berkeley to Boston and from Paris to Sydney, the season is upon us again. Hipsters twirl Keffiyahs from some Shanghai factory around their necks, don army surplus jackets and Decembrist t-shirts and head to the nearest Israeli embassy to scream about a new Holocaust. Shiites and Sunnis temporarily put aside their blood feuds and entire families of Syrian Alawites and Turkish Sunnis stand in London or Berlin screaming “Death to the Jews”. Joining them are elderly Trotskyists and aging Stalinists, normally as mutually hostile as Shiites and Sunnis, who put aside their differences to feebly wave cardboard signs about...

From reading the international and national news you would probably never have known that last Thursday and Friday alone, over 700 people were killed in Syria at the hands of jihadists and pro-Assad forces. Muslim on Muslim, Arab on Arab, human on human, whatever you like to think of it as - Western media is doing an awful job of reporting these abhorrent incidences - and I think I know why. My colleague Jonathan Spyer from the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, and fellow at the Middle East Forum (full disclosure: a position I also hold) noted it...

Asserting that India's policy on Palestine issue remains unchanged, government on Monday refused to take sides over the Gaza conflict as it said Israel and Palestine should have peace talks and forestalled a resolution in Rajya Sabha which was demanded by the opposition. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said the House should not be divided but send out a joint message that wherever there is violence, it is condemnable and both Israel and Palestine should accept Egypt's offer of peace talks. She was replying to a short-duration debate on Gaza situation during which opposition condemned the violence in Gaza, pressed...

Chris Boudreau has been reeling for months after learning her son died fighting with a terrorist group overseas. Now, a self-proclaimed jihadist is urging the Calgary mother to embrace an extremist ideology she suspects was used to brainwash her son. On his blog, Abu Dujana al-Muhajir claims he was among a group of young men who left Calgary to join “various fronts of Jihad” after forming a study group at a downtown mosque. Damian Clairmont, Boudreau’s son who was also part of the group, was later killed during rebel infighting in Syria. Clairmont’s death devastated and confounded his mother, who...

It was bad enough that the alleged rape took place in the sanctity of a mosque and that the accused man was a mullah who invoked the familiar defence that it had been consensual sex. But the victim was only 10 years old. And there was more: The authorities said her family members openly planned to carry out an honour killing in the case – against the young girl. The mullah offered to marry his victim instead. This past week, the awful matter became even worse. On Tuesday, local policemen removed the girl from the shelter that had given her...

Elhanan Miller, The Times Of Israel July 21, 2014A large explosion in a Sudanese ammunition warehouse last Friday was the result of an Israeli attack targeting weapons intended for Hamas, and not a fire, as claimed by the government, an Arab daily reported on Monday. Sudanese Intelligence had claimed that the explosion, which took place in a military training camp in Al-Gaili, north of the capital Khartoum, early Friday morning, was caused by “a local fire.” A Sudanese army spokesman, A-Sawarmi Khaled Sa’ad, said the explosion had no connection to “external hands, or a domestic act of sabotage.” But unnamed...

A report in London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Arab Monday said that Israeli planes over the weekend destroyed a warehouse in Sudan that was holding a large number of long-range Iranian missiles. The missiles belonged to Hamas, and were to be used against Israel after they were smuggled into Gaza. According to the report, eyewitnesses said they saw a "huge explosion" after planes flew over the building. Six people were injured in the attack, witnesses said. The resulting blaze required the services of large numbers of firefighters, they added. Sudanese officials confirmed that there was an explosion, but denied any connection...

Who Is Killing Palestinian Children?Posted By Anna Geifman On July 18, 2014 @ 12:50 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 44 Comments Political differences aside, few will disagree that Palestinian children are innocent victims of the on-going hostilities in Gaza. IsraelÂ’s air strikes, aimed to defend its citizens from HamasÂ’ terrorization, resulted in civilian casualties, which included child victims. Yet, none other than Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, are responsible for the general humanitarian crisis there and for scores of killed, wounded, and traumatized children.Civilian fatalities are inevitable in any war, and thus far there are 230 in Gaza, despite...

The Incoherent Excuses for Hating IsraelPosted By Bruce Thornton On July 21, 2014 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 23 Comments Israel’s military operation to degrade Hamas’ ability to rain rockets down on Israeli cities has stirred up the usual noisy and nasty protests in Europe. We need not dwell on demonstrations by Muslim immigrants, whose genocidal Jew-hatred has been an Islamic tradition for 14 centuries. More revealing is the hatred of Israel by so many Europeans, ranging from leftover leftists and idealizers of the dark-skinned “other,” to far-right xenophobes and morally addled Christians. Whatever its origins, one thing...

Now that the U.S.-Russia relationship has broken down, Moscow could throw a wrench into the teetering nuclear negotiations with Iran. The escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow, brought to fever by the MH17 airliner disaster, are finally to the point where they threaten to spoil the number one item on President Obama’s foreign policy agenda: the nuclear talks with Iran. The man doing the threatening is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this week, Putin promised to retaliate against the United States for new sanctions targeting his friends and business associates, as well as large Russian defense, energy, and financial firms....

Hamas claimed it had kidnapped an IDF soldier, prompting celebrations in the streets of Gaza, Hevron and Jerusalem. Israel's UN ambassador denied on Sunday that an Israeli soldier had been abducted by Hamas terrorists in the course of the fighting at the Shejaiya neighborhood. "There is no kidnapped Israeli soldier and those rumors are untrue," said Ambassador Ron Prosor when asked about the kidnapping. The armed wing of the Palestinian Hamas group claimed late Sunday that it had kidnapped an Israeli soldier, prompting celebrations in the streets of Gaza City.

An imam in the German capital, Berlin, recently gave a sermon in which he expressed support for Gaza and called for “the annihilation of Jews”. […] “Oh Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews. They are no challenge for you,” he continued. “Count them and kill them to the very last one. Don’t spare a single one of them. Shake the ground beneath their feet. Make them suffer terribly. Deflect their bullets. Disperse them. They behave tyranically all over the world and spread corruption.” …

United Nations (UN) Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Israel on Sunday to “exercise maximum restraint” and spare civilian lives in its campaign in Gaza, AFP reports. He also condemned what he called the “atrocious action” of Israel in Shejaiya, near Gaza City, where 62 people were killed in an Israeli attack on Hamas terrorists. […] “Gaza is an open wound. We must stop the bleeding now,” said Ban, adding that beyond a ceasefire the “root causes of the conflict” must be addressed. …

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the nation and answered reporters' questions Sunday evening during the prime time newscasts after 8:00 p.m., and spelled out relatively modest aims for Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, which completes its 13th day Sunday night. In response to a question, Netanyahu said that Israel has embarked on a gradual process of undoing the harm done by the 2005 unilateral Gaza withdrawal known as the Disengagement, which ended up allowing Hamas to take over Gaza. At the time, he noted, he had warned that the vacuum left behind by Israel would be filled by Hamas, which...

When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, there were at least 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Over the last ten years, significantly in the last few months with the emergence of ISIS, that figure has dropped to about 400,000. In a region where Christians predate Muslims by centuries, over one million Christians have been killed or have had to flee because of jihadi persecution, while America is basically standing by and watching. This is the sad news that Breitbart’s National Security Editor and one of the world’s leading experts on asymmetric warfare, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, brought to Breitbart News Saturday,...

We regret civilian deaths. Those lay at hamas' door. Hamas is deliberately targeting our civilians. They have fired 2,000 rockets at Israel's cities. 75% of our population has to be in bomb shelter alert. Of 60 seconds or 90 seconds. They're digging these terror tunnels from gaza. From homes in gaza to penetrate and infiltrate Israeli territory. They've emerged there and killed Israelis and run back or tried to run back into their territory. We have tried to take action. What hamas is doing is embedding its rocketeers, these tunnels, these terror tunnels in homes, in hospitals, in schools. When...

The chief editor of a Sudanese newspaper was attacked and beaten by an angry mob late Saturday just days after a televised appearance in which he called for “normalized ties” with Israel. AFP is reporting that Osman Mirghani, editor in chief of Sudan’s Al-Tayar daily newspaper, was taken to Al-Zaytouna Hospital after the mob stormed the paper’s offices Saturday night. …

A video released by the IDF Sunday shows soldiers in action, destroying a tunnel dug by Hamas terrorists into Israel. The video shows the soldiers stringing explosives and blowing the tunnel up. “This is one of the first tunnels we found during this operation,” a soldier tells the camera. “It was dug in order to infiltrate Israeli communities. The IDF said Sunday that in three days of the ground campaign in Operation Protective Edge, soldiers had found and destroyed dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas terrorists into Israeli territory. Video

Thirteen IDF soldiers have been killed since Saturday night, the IDF said. The process of identifying the bodies is still ongoing. Golani Brigade, armor and engineering corps forces were met with effective close range guerrilla actions in Shejaiya, Gaza. The dead are apparently all from the Golani Brigade. The Brigade's commander, Col. Rasan Alian, was also lightly injured. According to Channel 2, there were several incidents that involved IDF deaths that occurred one after the other after midnight. In the most serious incident, around 1:00 a.m., an armored personnel carrier hit a large explosive charge, or may have been hit...

In an unusual moment during Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace presented Secretary of State John Kerry with video recorded before he came on air. Wallace presented the segment as being in reference to civilians killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, writes the Washington Post. "While you were on camera and while on microphone," Wallace said, "you spoke to one of your top aides between the interviews about the situation in Israel." He then played what the network had recorded. In the clip, Kerry is holding a cellphone conversation with an unidentified person, but Kerry's comments are clear. "It's...

JERUSALEM – The belt strapped onto the donkey's body was laden with explosives, the Israeli military said in a statement. The animal was urged forward by Hamas militants, the army said, toward troops stationed near Rafah, inside the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces "engaged the donkey and it exploded at a safe distance,” the army wrote in a blog post. The statement condemned the use of “animals as explosives couriers.” Such beast-borne attacks have been seen before within the bitter confines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The first such incident appears to have been in Gaza in 1995. But there were frequent...

The UN agency for Palestinian Arab “refugees,” UNRWA, has caused outrage by apparently giving rockets to Hamas. On Thursday, UNRWA confirmed that 20 rockets had been found in one of its vacant schools in Gaza. UNRWA staff said last week that they had “informed the relevant parties and successfully took all necessary measures for the removal of the objects.” However, Channel 2 reports Sunday that—rather than destroying the rockets—UNRWA workers called Hamas to come remove them. …