Posted on 07/17/2014 9:28:41 AM PDT by Star Traveler
Op-ed: A land invasion is our last resort, but we might have to do it nonetheless; Hamas might compel us to.
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If we emerge from this round of conflict with an extended period of quiet, I will consider that to constitute success. Operation Cast Lead (winter 2008-9) gave us almost four years of quiet. Operation Pillar of Defense (November 2012) gave us 20 months. Longer, needless to say, would be better.
In pursuit of that goal we are hitting Hamas hard. We are damaging Hamas’s military machine. We are diminishing its capacity to cause us harm. And Hamas is losing support among the local population for the harm it is causing to Gaza.
There are no perfect solutions, no magic fixes. There are limits to what can be achieved by force.
I am only too aware of some of the limitations of our response. Hamas now has a sophisticated rocket-production capability inside Gaza; we are doing our best to target its workshops. We are targeting its key terror chiefs, knowing full well that they are trying to keep themselves out of reach, in the subterranean network of reinforced tunnels and bunkers they have fashioned for themselves.
But under President el-Sissi, Egypt today has a very different stance on Hamas than did the previous regime of Mohammed Morsi. We see that Egypt has acted unprecedentedly to seal the tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border; we hope that, in partnership with our security forces, Egypt’s role will limit Hamas’s capacity to rearm.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
Netanyahu should use a few “well placed” MOABs, and turn Gaza into a parking lot, and be done with it...
Anyone who is one of those “faux supporters” of a Israel who urges Israel to commit WAR CRIMES when Israel denies these false accusations should SHUT UP and go crawl back into that hole where they got those genocidal ideas!
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Israel ambassador to U.S. Jews: Hamas winning war of public opinion
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3181017/posts
NEW YORK — Ambassador Ron Dermer, Israel’s chief diplomatic representative in the U.S., asked some 700 American Jews on a conference call this week for their help shifting the messaging on Israel. Israel is being routinely portrayed in both conventional and social media as an angry, well-armed giant leaving many innocent victims in its wake during the current crisis with Hamas, Dermer said.
The call was organized by the Jewish Federations of North America, which this week sent federation leaders to visit targeted towns in Israel, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Dermer told his audience that Hamas may be winning the war over public opinion, as Israel is vilified for the civilian casualties its bombs cause in Gaza, while Hamas is not being blamed for instructing Palestinians to stay in their homes – even when they have been warned by the IDF that the locations will be bombed imminently.
“Hamas is putting its missile batteries and command centers next to schools and hospitals. That is a major war crime. While we are doing everything possible to keep civilians out of harms way, Hamas is trying to put their people into harms way. Gaza’s interior minister said people should ignore warnings and go back into their homes. We are taking action to minimize to the greatest extent possible number of civilian casualties, they are doing everything to maximize it.”
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We need to make ABSOLUTELY CLEAR when we talk about and support Israel, that it is NOT engaging in a GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN against the Palestinian civilians - but that it’s HAMAS who is.
We must be STRONGLY EMPHATIC that Israel does NOT COMMIT WAR CRIMES against Palestinian civilians and explain the ways that Israel goes about avoiding collateral damage, while strongly attacking Hamas and its missiles that are flying into Israel.
If you believe that Israel should commit war crimes and engage in a GENOCIDAL CAMPAIGN against Palestinians — then just SHUT UP! ... because you’re doing Israel no favor with your genocidal talk!
Gazans are more scared of Hamas than the IDF
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3181469/posts
Analysis: Islamist organizations in Gaza are still negotiating over negotiations, while in Israel, defense chiefs are seeing start of unrest against Hamas.
The negotiations for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza are complicated and are destined to be drawn out. This is mainly due to Hamas’ determination to leave the battlefield with clear achievements for its military wing, especially in the eyes of the Gaza population. These achievements should be clear enough to justify to the Palestinian street – in Judea and Samaria as well - the escalation of the fire on Israel, which resulted in Operation Protective Edge. Also, Hamas does not see Egypt as an honest broker and wants Qatar and Turkey involved in the negotiations, viewing them as without bias. In fact, what is happening now is negotiations about the negotiations, with fighting.
Meanwhile, those suffering are the people of Gazan population, among whom Hamas is hiding and fighting. Until the sixth day of the IDF operation, it appeared Gaza’s civilians supported the coalition of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in particular their military wings, who are managing the fighting. Tuesday saw a reversal of this support.
The civilians of Gaza, including Hamas supporters, have begun to express resentment towards the militant organizations that have made their lives hell. Such expressions of dissatisfaction, both to foreign reporters and in private conversations, have become more and more common, and could well signal the beginning of unrest against Hamas.
Hamas, not Israel, is the real enemy of the Palestinians
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3181483/posts
To Gaza’s innocent civilians: Demand a ‘Gaza Spring’ and rid yourself of Hamas’ violent theocrats and kleptocrats, who love Palestinian children less than they hate Israel.
The real enemy of the innocent civilians of Gaza is Hamas, not Israel. Despite the fact that many Gazans voted for Hamas in the last Palestinian election, that terrorist organization has ill-served its constituents.
When Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005, it left behind farm equipment and other material capable of feeding the population. Donor countries promised support, both financial and political if Gaza would live up to its potential as a Singapore on the Mediterranean. But instead the leaders of Gaza enriched themselves and used the remaining resources to build rockets instead of plowshares. They fired these rockets at Israeli civilians and devised a strategy of using their own innocent civilians as human shields against Israel’s anticipated responses to the rocket fire. Only after Hamas started firing rockets at Israeli civilians, did Israel impose a painful blockade against Gaza, which contributed to the area’s poor economic situation.
The Hamas human shield strategy—in combination with its refusal to allow its civilians to seek shelter in Gaza’s many tunnels, which are reserved for Hamas terrorists and commanders—has resulted in what appears to be a disproportionate ratio of civilians to combatants among Gazan casualties. Although the international media blames this unfortunate ratio on Israel, the civilian population of Gaza knows the truth: That Hamas deliberately seeks to increase the number of civilian casualties by not providing them shelter, while seeking to decrease the number of terrorist casualties by providing them the safety of tunnels and other secure areas.
“Netanyahu should use a few “well placed” MOABs, and turn Gaza into a parking lot, and be done with it...”
Good thought. Let me expound on it. Kill a high ranking Hamas leader. When they march his dead body through the streets, all the people who come out to cheer are Hamas supporters.
Now use the MOAB’s.
Israel doesn’t engage in genocidal war crimes ... see Post #3 ...
No mention of partners on Israel's side that are outside of the region - Canada, Australia.... That is all.
Note what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says to the WHINERS around him ... LOL ...
Thanks all the same, Messrs Liberman and co, but nobody needs to lecture me about the dangers posed to Israel by Hamas and Islamic extremism. As for minnows like my Likud “colleagues,” Gideon Sa’ar, Yisrael Katz, Danny Danon, et al, I marvel at their arrogant inexpertise.
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Liberman’s unacceptable war on Netanyahu [Israel]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3181417/posts
If the foreign minister thinks the prime minister is doing a lousy job, he should either shut up when outvoted or quit, not publicly undermine the PM at the height of a bitter conflict with Hamas.
Israel is currently a nation at war. It has been targeted with some 1,300 rockets over the past eight days fired at its population almost everywhere in the country.
Untenably, on Tuesday, Liberman sought to score points at the expense of Israelis’ faith in their leadership. Whether his prescription for Gaza is right or wrong — does Israel really want to reconquer Gaza and retake responsibility for 1.6 million Palestinians there? How many Israelis might die in the process? How will Israel’s international legitimacy be affected? Are there better ways to de-fang Hamas, including via the quietly flourishing Israeli-Egyptian axis? — the fact is that he was not elected to run this country. If he thinks the man who was is doing a lousy job, he should quit the government, not undermine it from within. Least of all from his position at the helm of Israel’s entire diplomatic hierarchy
The foreign minister is not the only prominent Israeli government politician to be openly opposing Netanyahu. Lesser-known figures including ministers Yisrael Katz (Likud) and Uzi Landau (Yisrael Beytenu), and Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) were also spouting criticism in the course of Tuesday, and the eminently dispensable Danon was fired later Tuesday. But Liberman is the prime minister’s former bureau chief and was his political partner going into January 2013’s elections, when their two parties ran on a joint list (a partnership Liberman abrogated last week). He is seen as someone who knows the prime minister well, and here he is telling us that Netanyahu doesn’t know what he’s doing.
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The Danon effect: Rightists tone down criticism of PM [israel]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3181259/posts
The dismissal of Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon on Tuesday night had an immediate dampening effect on the right wing’s criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Danon was fired after publicly opposing the cabinet’s decision to accept a cease-fire with Hamas.
“Firing Danon was intended to send a clear message to our ministers and MKs that Netanyahu has lost his patience and will take harsh measures against those who come out against him at this time,” a hawkish Likud MK said.
He said that in view of the critical statements made by other ministers and MKs, such as Gideon Sa’ar, Gilad Erdan and Miri Regev, Netanyahu had no choice. “Netanyahu lost control over quite a few party members who blasted his policy publicly. Danon is only a symptom of a much wider trend,” he said.
Government Ministry Buildings... Leave the regular folks alone but blast the infrastructure stuff to rubble..
Israel is in agreement with that. And they have not spared any buildings of Hamas. In fact, Israel says that if a Hamas operative sets up an office at home and does his Hamas business from there - then it is a legitimate target and they will destroy it,
Israel is not messing around, while they also work diligently to avoid collateral damage to civilians.
I don’t think we have to tell Israel “how to do it”. They’re the ones who can tell “us” how to do it.
Never said Israel should go genocidal. Think I said they should MOAB all the Hamas supporters. The ones who wouldn’t hesitate to kill a Jew if given the chance.
Plus, it’s a war. People get killed. And in a war, sometimes you have to go to extremes to end it. Countries that try to avoid collateral damage are countries with high moral values. They are also countries that will always face conflict. America killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in WW2 to prevent an even larger war where more people would have been killed.
I understand where you are coming from. I lived in Israel and spent time in Ashkelon and Ashdod. I went to the bomb shelters and had a rifle within arms reach.
Oh yeah ... I remember him. And that’s exactly what Israel does and that’s okay, as those kinds are the leadership. Israel is busily engaged in eliminating the leadership and that’s effective.
I think Netanyahu is doing a very good job - and as he says, he does have to weigh many different options and factor in things about the surrounding region.
Israel really couldn’t have a better leader than Netanyahu right now.
Anything less than the clearing of all traces of things Islamic in Gaza will perpetuate the problem.
Agree
That won’t happen, because of Israel’s laws. Their own law protects all religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Those laws also protect all religious sites. So there will be no clearing of Islam from Gaza. You’re simply engaging in a pipe-dream.
However, that’s not to say there won’t be a clearing of the “Islamic Terrorists” like Hamas from Gaza.
It is a pipe dream. Alas, pipe dreams contain the only real solutions. Politics renders reality as pipe dreams.
Israel doesn’t want your pipe dream.
Israel ACTUALLY ADVERTISES to the entire world that Israel should be COMMENDED for being the only country in the Middle East that protects all religious rights for these religions, and their religious sites. There is no other Middle East country that does so.
ALSO Israel advertises to the world that the Arabs and Muslims inside Israel have full citizenship rights and there is even an Israeli Supreme Court Justice who is an ARAB!
So, you see, your pipe dream is not Israel’s pipe dream ... :-) ...
You did not respond to my own fanciful solution. It does not address Moslems in Israel proper. They are not a problem. Islam in Gaza in all its ramifications is an intractable problem that can only be successfully dealt with by ending it.
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