15 Αναδημοσιεύσεις, Μόνον Για “Πιστούς”, Ήτοι… Για “Μάγκες” Αναγνώστες!..

3.THE JEWASHING OF GEORGE SOROS (Για τους… “Μάχιμους” Φίλους του… ΣΥΡΙΖΑ, κυρίως, όπως και για όλους σας! Ό,τι “φωνάζουμε” απ’ εδώ, τόσο καιρό τώρα) !..Millions of Jews are anti-Semitic for calling out an anti-Semite.

July 21, 2017

Daniel Greenfield

George Soros hates Jews.

He collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust and insisted that helping confiscate property from Jews brought him no guilt. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there, because that was well, actually, in a funny way, it’s just like in markets that if I weren’t there of course, I wasn’t doing it, but somebody else would”. He described the season of these horrors as “the most exciting time of my life.”

Soros grew up in a “Jewish, anti-Semitic home”. He called his mother a “typical Jewish anti-Semite” who hated his first wife because she was “too Jewish”. After undergoing psychoanalysis, he was able to understand that his shame was rooted in his Jewishness. He had a special contempt for Jewish philanthropies after a failed attempt to defraud a Jewish charity in London.

He was booed when he undermined the presentation of an award to a Holocaust survivor by comparing Israeli Jews to Nazis!!! Elie Wiesel had declared in disgust, “I heard what happened. If I’d been there—and you can quote me—I would have walked out.”

That same year, Soros blamed the Israeli government for a “resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe”. He might have been more honest if he took responsibility considering his funding of groups that traffic in anti-Semitic smears. And his own anti-Semitic allegations that “attitudes toward the Jewish community are influenced by the pro-Israel lobby’s success in suppressing divergent views“.

Soros has defended Hamas and Hezbollah who have called for the extermination of the Jews. He championed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt despite or because of its support for Hitler. Yusuf al-Qaradawi had claimed that Hitler had been sent by Allah to punish the Jews. “Allah willing,” theBrotherhood’s spiritual leader said, “the next time will be at the hands of the believers (Muslims)“.

There’s no denying that George Soros is a warped and twisted man. Especially when it comes to the Jews. But he’s also the money man behind a great deal of leftist activism. Especially anti-Israel activism.

And so he must be defended.

An editorial at “New York Times” by a figure linked to the +972 anti-Israel hate site decries “Israel’s War Against George Soros”. That’s right up there with Poland’s war on Nazi Germany.

What does this war consist of? Has Israel sent drones to the Soros estate? Did Mossad agents drag George out of his featherbed to face the justice of those injured through his actions? (Θα έπρεπε)!

No.

The “war” consisted of one statement. The Israeli Foreign Ministry condemned Soros for “continuously undermining Israel’s democratically elected governments,” and backing hate groups “that defame the Jewish state and seek to deny it the right to defend itself”. Not only is it true, but it’s underwhelming.

Even by the low fake news standards of today’s extremist media, you expect something more from a headline screaming “Israel’s War Against George Soros” than a single restrained criticism.

Do the thousands of hit pieces from the “New York Times” count as a “War on Israel? That includes the aforementioned Mairav Zonszein screed on Soros which in true Sorosesque fashion pivots from defending an anti-Semite to launching bizarre and hopelessly factless smears at the Jewish State.

Mairav claims that Israel is now aligned with “illiberal, autocratic states like Russia, Turkey and Egypt”. That would be news to Turkey which just accused Israel of a “crime against humanity” and backs Hamas. Or to Russia, which backs Iran and whose S-300 missiles guard Iran’s nuclear program against an Israeli strike. But using the stopped clock principle, getting one of three right isn’t bad for the “New York Times”.

Soros and the Times were aligned with the illiberal autocratic Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of Egypt under a leader who had urged Muslims to “nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred” of the Jews.

But there’s nothing anti-Semitic to see there.

According to the “New York Times”, criticizing an anti-Semite whose Jewishness can only be found with a DNA analysis is anti-Semitic, but attacking millions of Jews defending themselves against genocide isn’t.

The government that represents millions of Jews is anti-Semitic for calling out a left-wing anti-Semite. And the millions of Jews, and even the recently deceased Elie Wiesel, probably are too.

According to Mairav Zonszein, Israel’s criticism of Soros aligns it with anti-Semites. “It takes some gall on the part of Mr. Netanyahu to choose this moment to kick Mr. Soros while he’s down — not only because Mr. Soros is, once again, a victim of anti-Semitism,” Mairav fumes.

By “down”, Mairav means he’s the world’s 22^nd richest man and dictates policy to entire governments.

Mr. Soros has not refrained from kicking Israeli families when they were being shot and stabbed by Islamic terrorists. He hasn’t stopped funding hate against Jews or blaming Jews for anti-Semitism.

George Soros funds BDS, an organization run by a terrorist and one that defends the murder of Jews. But there’s mean ole Mr. Netanyahu kicking the 22^nd richest man in the world when he’s down.

This shameless Jewashing is despicable and typical. The left shrugs at the murderous anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. And at times it even defends it. It loves Jewashing its hatred of Jews by putting activists with a Jewish last name up front in its anti-Semitic activities. And it will defend anti-Semites like George Soros as victims of anti-Semitism at the hands of the government of millions of Jews.

When it’s convenient, George Soros takes a break from fond recollections of the most exciting time in his life, helping rob Jews, to play a victim of the Holocaust. And if it’s useful, he’ll even take a break from defending Hamas and Hezbollah, from funding the types of terrorists who call the murder of Jews “resistance” and from supporting Islamist groups that praise Hitler, to play the victim of anti-Semitism.

George Soros hates Jews. So do his apologists and supporters. They just can’t say so in public. Yet.

There are a thousand euphemisms. They’re not anti-Semites, they’re anti-Zionists. Yes, they just happen to be reviving the Nazi boycott against the Jews. And their favorite Muslim Brotherhood hate groups drew organizational inspiration from the Third Reich. But they’re only concerned for social justice. The social justice they’re concerned with just happens to require the persecution of the Jews. They just happen to disrupt Holocaust memorial events and Jewish holidays to bring attention to the cause of the oppressed Muslim terrorists whose heroic figures had egged on Hitler to wipe out the Jews.

And if you doubt their commitment to opposing anti-Semitism, watch them defend George Soros. Then when the Jewashing is done, they can go back to demanding that we fund the terrorists murdering Jews.

George Soros is not a Holocaust survivor. He has spent much of his life collaborating with totalitarian movements whose goal is the extermination of the Jewish people.

He is not a victim of anti-Semitism. He is a perpetrator of anti-Semitism.

The only thing more despicable than the left’s obsessive hatred of Jews is its Jewashing of anti-Semites. Hating Jews is anti-Semitic no matter what your last name might be. Collaborating with the murderers of Jews is attempted genocide no matter what your DNA may say. When you defend Hamas, fund BDS and defend anti-Semitism, no amount of lies and spin will Jewash your hatred and guilt away.

5.THE DEEP STATE WAR ON TRUMP’S FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA (Θυμάστε πχ τί γράφαμε για τον Έλληνα ΠτΔ, και το τί δήλωσε όταν είχε έλθει στην Ελλάδα ο πρώην Α/Αντιπρόεδρος Τζο Μπάϊντεν);

President’s policies on Israel, Iran, Qatar and climate change under attack by a rogue State Department. (Και όχι μόνον)!

July 28, 2017

Joseph Klein

The State Department’s own “deep state” is trying to sabotage President Trump’s foreign policy agenda. From the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Iran, Qatar and climate change, the State Department, under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, is reported to be in “open war” with the White House. Key high level positions remain vacant as Obama holdovers “continue running the show and formulating policy, where they have increasingly clashed with the White House’s own agenda,” according to the Free Beacon. Secretary Tillerson has reportedly run interference to protect the Obama holdovers from being removed, allowing resistance to President Trump’s foreign policy agenda to flourish within the State Department.

The first casualty of this internal coup by the State Department’s deep state is Israel. The shadow of the Obama administration’s anti-Israel bias was reflected in a report the State Department released on July 17, 2017 entitled Country Reports on Terrorism 2016. It praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for reiterating “his commitment to nonviolence, recognition of the State of Israel, and pursuit of an independent Palestinian state through peaceful means.” The report referred to what it called “significant steps during President Abbas’ tenure (2005 to date) to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank under its control do not create or disseminate content that incites violence.”

The State Department report brushed aside clear evidence of a continuing barrage of incendiary rhetoric appearing on official Palestinian Authority and Fatah social media outlets and of inflammatory statements by Palestinian officials, including Abbas himself. Instead, it claimed that the Palestinian Authority “has made progress in reducing official rhetoric that could be considered incitement to violence.”

The State Department report conveniently skipped over the fact that Abbas remains committed to paying regular salaries to Palestinian terrorists imprisoned for killing Jews and to terrorists’ families. Their perfidiously named “Martyrs Fund” has a treasure chest of about $300 million dollars. That blood money comes in part from foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority, some of which is contributed by American taxpayers. President Trump has spoken out against the ‘pay to slay Jews’ terrorist payments, but the State Department has turned a blind eye. Obama holdover Stuart Jones, the Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, is reported to have steered Secretary Tillerson into making the erroneous claim that the Palestinian Authority had ceased spending U.S. taxpayer funds to pay terrorists, according to the Free Beacon’s sources.

After reciting the litany of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israelis, the State Department report held Israel largely responsible:

“Continued drivers of violence included a lack of hope in achieving Palestinian statehood, Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, the perception that the Israeli government was changing the status quo on the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount, and IDF tactics that the Palestinians considered overly aggressive.”

Just a few hours after three members of an Israeli family were massacred by a Palestinian terrorist, a State Department official tried to defend the report’s conclusions on the drivers of Palestinian violence. The official sounded like a clinical psychologist or a social worker, declaring that there is “no one single pathway to violence—each individual’s path to terrorism is personalized, with certain commonalities.” This is the same type of irresponsible rhetoric used by the Obama administration in discussing the supposed root causes of what it called “violent extremism.”

The State Department has also carried over the Obama administration’s soft pedaling on Iran. Instead of presenting options to President Trump supporting a refusal to re-certify that Iran has complied with all of its obligations under the disastrous Obama nuclear deal with Iran, the State Department took Iran’s side. It recommended twice that President Trump sign certifications of Iran’s compliance. Deprived by the State Department of any analysis to the contrary, as he had requested, the president reluctantly signed the certifications in April and July. However, he has reportedly decided to sidestep the State Department going forward and rely instead on a White House team to prepare the way for refusing to sign the certification the next time it is presented to him. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, senior strategist Steve Bannon, and deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka opposed the State Department’s recommendation.

“The president assigned White House staffers with the task of preparing for the possibility of decertification for the 90-day review period that ends in October — a task he had previously given to Secretary Tillerson and the State Department,” a source close to the White House told Foreign Policy.

Foreign Policy quoted one senior State Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying, “The White House, they see the State Department as ‘the swamp.’”

The State Department is a swamp infested with Obama holdovers such as Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the former Iran director for Obama’s National Security Council, who helped push through the Iran deal. When she moved over to the State Department during the waning months of the Obama administration, she was assigned to oversee the Persian Gulf region policy planning portfolio, which included issues related to Iran. She continued in that high-level advisory position until April of this year, when she was re-assigned to the Office of Iranian Affairs. In other words, a strong supporter of the Iranian nuclear deal with a vested interest in its continuation was on Secretary of State Tillerson’s policy planning team. Secretary Tillerson no doubt relied on this tainted team for input into his decision to recommend the first certification signing last April. Ms. Nowrouzzadeh is still working on Iranian-related issues for the State Department where she can do some damage. However, at least she is no longer part of the Secretary of State’s brain trust.

The State Department has also sought to undercut President Trump’s sharp criticism of Qatar, a major state sponsor of Islamic terrorism. The president had tweeted that Qatar funds radical Islamists, which is demonstrably true. Nevertheless, the State Department contradicted President Trump’s observation.

“We recognize that Qatar has made some great efforts to stop financing of terror groups,” said State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert at the June 6, 2017 briefing. “Our relationship with Qatar is strong.”

Dana Shell Smith, ambassador to Qatar until she left in late June, who believes that Qatar is a “great country,” was another Obama holdover. She was still the ambassador when the row over Qatar erupted. The day before Heather Nauert’s news briefing extolling Qatar’s supposed “great efforts to stop financing of terror groups,” the U.S. embassy in Qatar, still led by Dan Shell Smith, retweeted the following, which was originally tweeted during the Obama administration: “U.S. supports #Qatar’s efforts in combating terrorism financing & appreciates its role in coalition against ISIL.”

These sentiments are in direct contradiction to the views expressed by President Trump. Indeed, Smith had little use for President Trump and was not shy about saying so. Stationed in an autocratic country ruled by sharia law, she tweeted in May while still ambassador: “Increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home, knowing I will spend today explaining our democracy and institutions.” Did this Trump-hater ever once think that the very idea of democracy, religious tolerance and equal rights for women are alien concepts to begin with in a country like Qatar that she called “great”?

After Smith’s departure, the State Department continued its praise of Qatar for supposedly being a partner in the fight against terrorism. In the same Country Reports on Terrorism 2016, which praised Abbas and blamed Israel for creating the conditions that fostered Palestinian terrorism, the State Department lauded Qatar for collaborating “to foster closer regional and international cooperation on counterterrorism, law enforcement, and rule of law activities.”

Finally, there is the issue of climate change. President Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change because it disadvantaged America economically. However, the Paris Agreement was the pride and joy of Secretary of State John Kerry’s State Department. Obama holdovers have remained at the State Department, in a position to do mischief to President Trump’s plans to extricate the United States from the bad climate change deal.

Within the bowels of the State Department, for example, is the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change, which, according to its website, is responsible for developing, implementing, and overseeing U.S. international policy on climate change. Its website still boasts how it led the way “in the negotiations in Paris at the 21st Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC (COP21).” The website goes on to praise the Paris Agreement as the “most ambitious climate accord ever negotiated.”  This website remains operational even though President Trump has reportedly decided not to name a special envoy for climate change. The United States deputy special envoy for climate change, Trigg Talley, who served as head of the U.S. delegation for negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, remains in office, however. The opportunity for the State Department to conduct a deep state war against the president’s climate change policies is a real threat unless the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change is completely shut down.

There are other potential pockets of resistance to President Trump’s climate change policies inside the State Department, such as the Office of Global Change. It too should be shut down or sharply curtailed.

President Trump, not State Department bureaucrats, was elected by the American people. He should have the final say on policy matters within his scope of executive authority, which includes the setting of foreign policy priorities. Deep state saboteurs within the State Department and other government agencies need to be rooted out at once and removed from positions of influence where they can do harm to the president’s agenda.

6. RED LINES IN SYRIA

Will Turkey’s attacks on U.S. allies stir Washington to action?

July 19, 2017

Kenneth R. Timmerman

Suleymania, Iraq – With Saturday’s bombing of Afrin, a town controlled by America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria, Turkey appears to have crossed a line.

Turkish artillery pounded the Ashrafiyeh neighborhood near the city center as well as surrounding villages. Reports from the region said the Turkish attack killed five civilians, including an entire family that was buried alive in their own home, and damaged dozens of homes.

“This is considered the first targeting of the city since the start of Turkish preparations” to expand military operations in Northwest Syria last month, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Turkish attacks were not directed against ISIS or against any other Islamist group. The Turks targeted Afrin because it has become a key political hub for the Democratic Union Party of Syria, the YPD, which Turkey accuses of being part of the PKK.

I spoke with Asya Abdallah Osman, the co-president of the YPD, on the sidelines of a conference both of us were attending in Iraqi Kurdistan. She was visibly shaken when she called home and learned details about the civilian casualties in Afrin.

“We have been fighting [ISIS] because we as women do not want to be subjected to their inhumanity. But we need your help,” she said, meaning the United States. “We need no other. This is war and people are dying. It won’t be resolved by politics, only by hard power.”

She swept aside the Turkish allegations that the regional government of the YPD, and its associated militia, known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG), were controlled by the PKK, or that the PKK was using YPD territory to launch attacks into Turkey.

“We are an independent political party that belongs to Syria and to the Kurds. If the PKK has come to Syria, it’s because Turkey has forced them to come,” she said.

Turkey has long accused the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, or fighting a terrorist war against it, but also has been willing to negotiate with PKK leaders when it felt it could reach a deal to curtail the violence.

After Turkey violated a 2013 truce negotiated in Oslo that called for the PKK to remove its fighters from Turkey into northern Iraq, the PKK relocated remaining fighters into the Kurdish areas in Syria, known as Rojava.

Like most Kurds, Ms. Osman believes Turkey and its allies in the region do not want to see a successful democratic self-governing region in northern Syria, because it would encourage their own Kurds to seek greater autonomy.

“They accuse us of not being democratic, but we have allowed all political and ethnic groups to have representatives in the regional government. Our project is for all of Syria, not just Kurds,” she told me.

Ms. Osman traveled to Northern Iraq in a group of 65 Syrian Kurdish activists, representing nearly twenty political groups.

Normally, they would have entered Iraq via a pontoon bridge over the Tigris River at Semalka, in an area that has escaped the current fighting.

But the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq closed the border recently, forcing the Syrian pro-democracy delegates to make a dangerous 16-hour trek by foot across the only other border crossing into Iraq near Mount Sinjar, which is controlled by Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

“There is no Kurdish Regional Government,” Ms. Osman said dismissively. “There is only the KDP,” the Kurdish Democratic Party, dominated by President Massoud Barzani and his family.

She and other Kurdish activists at the weekend conference believe that Turkey pressured the Barzanis to close the Semalka border crossing in order to further isolate them. “Semulka is our only gate to the outside world,” she said. “When it is shut, we are closed off.”

She attributed claims that the YPD and its militia were controlled by the PKK to Turkish propaganda. “Of course, we have dialogue with other Kurdish parties, including the PKK. So do most Kurdish groups in the region. But we run our party and our administration ourselves. We elect our own officials and they take orders from no one.”

Indeed, I only learned after the conference that a member of the PKK central committee had attended the weekend event, sponsored by the Kurdistan National Congress, where three hundred delegates from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey strategized over a future Kurdish state or confederation.

There were few references to the PKK by the speakers, and the PKK central committeeman himself never spoke. The final declaration of the conference makes no mention of the PKK.

Both President Trump and Secretary of Defense Mattis have warned Turkey not to attack America’s Kurdish allies in Syria. Turkey has blithely ignored those admonishments until now.

Less than a month after President Trump at the White House personally rejected Erdogan’s demand that the U.S. drop support for the Syrian Kurds, Turkey began moving troops to encircle Afrin, the political capital of the Syrian Kurdish region, and other Kurdish controlled areas.

After Turkey started to attack YPG positions in late June, Secretary of Defense James Mattis upped the ante by declaring that the United States might allow the Kurdish group to keep U.S. supplied weapons after the battle for Raqqa to smash ISIS was over.

Some of Erdogan’s erstwhile political allies believe he Erdogan is playing a dangerous game.

Even before the Turkish attacks on civilians over the weekend, former Turkish Foreign Minister Yasar Yakis, who helped found Erdogan’s ruling AKP party, counseled against attacking the Syrian Kurds.

“The best course would be to negotiate a deal with the Syrian Kurds, persuade them not to attempt to change the ethnic composition of the region, and establish – preferably in cooperation with the Syrian government – a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional democratic administration,” Yakis wrote in a column for Arab News.

That is precisely the project Ms. Osman and the YPD have been proposing.

Erdogan showed his arrogance in Washington when he calmly observed his bodyguards cross a Capitol Police barrier in May to viciously bludgeon opposition protestors with truncheons.

But by putting his forces in a position where they could potentially clash with U.S. military units assisting the YPG and the Syrian Democratic Forces, Erdogan has shown a reckless side as well.

Turkey has been warned twice. Will Afrin prove to be the third strike for Erdogan in Syria?

7. THE MERKAVA 4: WHY HEZBOLLAH SHOULD BE AFRAID—VERY AFRAID

The lessons of the 1973 and 2006 wars.

July 21, 2017

Ari Lieberman

Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, armchair pundits determined that the age of the tank as king of the battlefield had come to an ignominious end. They argued that the introduction of anti-tank guided missiles rendered the tank obsolete. How wrong they were. Several post-war studies of the conflict demonstrated that the tank was still indispensable to modern warfare and when employed in a combined arms manner with artillery and mechanized infantry, still reigned supreme.

Israel learned many lessons from the Yom Kippur War and incorporated those lessons into the development of its own indigenous tank, the Merkava (Chariot). The Merkava 1 entered service with the Israel Defense Forces in 1978 and first saw action in 1982 during Operation Peace for Galilee when it engaged and destroyed no fewer than nine Soviet-made, Syrian T-72 tanks without sustaining a single loss. It also reportedly succeeded in downing a Syrian anti-tank helicopter with its main gun.

Since that time, the Merkava has undergone several modifications and improvements, the latest iteration of which is the Merkava 4. The Merkava 4 is considered by armored warfare experts to be among the finest tanks in the world, and in terms of crew survivability, the safest.

In the summer of 2006, Israel was forced to go to war again, this time with the notorious terrorist organization Hezbollah. On July 12, two Israeli reservists were killed and their bodies snatched during a Hezbollah cross-border attack. Israel could not allow the outrage to go unanswered and decided to launch an offensive against Hezbollah. Nearly 400 Merkava tanks, mostly of the older II and III variants, were haphazardly deployed in the latter stages of the 34-day conflict.

During the course of the war, Hezbollah guerrillas fired thousands of anti-tank missiles – from the first generation Sagger to the highly advanced Kornet – at static Israeli infantry and tanks but only succeeding in damaging some 40 tanks and of these, there were only 20 penetrations. Despite these encouraging numbers, so-called experts began to once again challenge the utility of the tank and its place in modern warfare.

IDF planners saw things differently. They went back to the drawing board in an effort to draw conclusions from the performance of the Merkava and tactics employed by its crew members.

With at least 1/3 of its fighting force permanently stationed in Syria, the probability of Hezbollah initiating war against Israel in the near future is low. Even in the absence of the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah will soon not forget the thrashing it took at the hands of the IDF during the 2006 campaign. Nevertheless, most experts agree that the next Lebanon war is not a question of if, but when, and when it does begin, Israel’s latest Merkava variant, the vaunted Merkava 4 will be in the thick of it.

The Merkava 4 incorporates many sophisticated design features including advanced electro optics that ensure a 100% first-hit kill capability from its formidable 120mm smooth-bore gun. The Merkava also features an internally operated 60mm mortar to deal with missile-armed infantry. The Merkava is also capable of firing the long-rang, third generation LAHAT laser homing, guided missile from its main gun, an advantage lacking in the Merkava’s contemporaries. Another feature possessed by the Merkava but lacking in its competitors is the ability to accommodate up to eight infantry soldiers or three litter patients.

But among its most outstanding features is its emphasis on crew safety and ability to negate anti-tank missile threats. The tank, whose well-sloped armor is composed of advanced spaced and composite materials, is arguably the best protected in the world.

Unlike other tank designs, the Merkava’s 1,500hp diesel engine is located in the front, providing the crew with an additional layer of protection from frontal hits. Learning from past experience, the Merkava’s vulnerable underbelly was up-armored to provide additional protection against anti-tank mines and Iranian supplied explosively formed projectiles (EFP), which have been used to devastating effect by Iraqi and Afghan insurgents against American forces, claiming no fewer than 500 American lives. In addition, the Merkava 4’s armor is modular, allowing for quick battlefield repair and tailoring the armor for the tank’s mission-specific purposes.

But perhaps the Merkava’s most outstanding feature is its use of the Trophy active self-protection missile defense system, which acts like the tank’s personal Iron Dome missile defense shield. The system is designed to shoot down incoming missiles before the projectile reaches the tank’s armor. The IDF is the first military to deploy such a platform and all Merkava 4s and Namer (leopard) and Eytan armored personnel carriers (APC) are equipped with it. The United States Army is currently testing the Trophy system for use and adoption in its M1A2 Abrams tanks and other armored fighting vehicles such as the Stryker wheeled APC and the Bradley tracked APC.

The Trophy’s first baptism under fire occurred on March 1, 2011 when it successfully intercepted an RPG-29 anti-tank rocket fired by a Hamas terrorist from Gaza. Three years later, during Operation Protective Edge, the system proved itself again, shooting down no less than five anti-tank missiles fired by Hamas terrorists. Not a single Merkava tank was damaged thus depriving the enemy of any psychological or propaganda victory.

But the Trophy is more than just a missile interceptor. It simultaneously calculates the trajectory of the incoming rocket to determine the location of the source of fire and instantly transmits the coordinates by interfacing with another Israeli innovation known as the Tzayad battle management system. Soldiers in the theater or aerial platforms hovering above are instantly apprised of the enemy’s position and can quickly engage the belligerent seconds later. This seamless integration of battlefield technology has dramatically reduced the sensor to shoot cycle, enabling rapid elimination of the enemy.

While war with Hezbollah is not likely on the horizon due to the terror group’s efforts to prop up Assad, any miscalculation by Hezbollah in underestimating Israeli resolve, such as that which occurred in July 2006, can trigger a massive conflagration. When that occurs, it’s a sure bet that Israel’s fleet of formidable Merkava 4s will be at the tip of the spear.

9. VENEZUELA ON THE BRINK (Θα γνωρίσει, “ναι” ή “όχι”, και η Ελλάδα τη Βενεζουελάνικη Τραγωδία, απ’ τους εδώ Εραστές της “ΜΑΔΟΥΡΟ-ΜΑΦΙΑΣ“);

The opposition fights President Maduro’s power grab as Trump administration imposes sanctions.

July 27, 2017

Joseph Klein

Venezuela is at the breaking point. Its failed socialist system is imploding. Venezuela’s economy is in a free fall, a classic example of how top-down centralized government control ends up making conditions worse for virtually everyone except the autocrats running the show. Venezuela’s embattled president, Nicolas Maduro, is facing a determined opposition that is conducting a general strike and a mass protest this week.

Tensions have been building for months, but the country is approaching a critical juncture as Maduro plans to go ahead with a sham “election” on Sunday to choose 545 members for a body known as the Constituent Assembly. This new body would be empowered to rewrite the country’s constitution, which the opposition sees as a way for Maduro to consolidate his autocratic powers even further.  The sham “election” of the Constituent Assembly members is procedurally stacked in such a way that Maduro will almost certainly get a pliant assembly to do his bidding. This move has not only angered the opposition, which has called for a boycott of Sunday’s election, but it has split Maduro’s own ranks. On July 4, 2017, Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega, a so-called Chavista, strongly denounced Maduro’s plan for a re-write of the constitution.

The opposition controls the National Assembly, which is trying to choose judges for Venezuela’s Supreme Court who are not Maduro loyalists. The Supreme Court back in March had announced that it was taking over the powers of the National Assembly in a blatant bid to suppress the opposition politically. While the Supreme Court reversed its decision a few days later, the move increased distrust in Maduro’s government. Maduro exacerbated the distrust when his intelligence forces began arresting judges appointed by the opposition. He has threatened to arrest more.

“As a direct result of Maduro’s power grab,” The Diplomat has reported, “more than 100 people have been killed, 1,000 injured, and nearly 3,000 arrested in the recent wave of violence and protests.”

Beyond the political struggle, the Venezuelan people are struggling to put food on the table. Inflation may reach as high as an unsustainable 720 percent, destroying the average citizen’s purchasing power. Venezuela’s economic health relies on revenues from oil exports, which have been steadily shrinking. As a result, its currency reserves are shrinking as well. Venezuela’s GDP collapsed by 19 per cent in 2016. Once one of the richest countries in Latin America with its huge proven oil reserves, Venezuela’s socialist government has squandered it all in the service of a failed ideology and greed.

Lower oil revenues have meant cuts in social services. Venezuela is suffering an acute humanitarian crisis, including severe shortages of medication and food.

Rather than confront Venezuela’s political, economic and humanitarian crisis head on and work with the opposition collaboratively to resolve it, President Maduro is lashing out at scapegoats. He has alleged a conspiracy between the opposition and the United States to bring his regime down.  “The US right wing thinks it can give orders in Venezuela, but the only one who gives orders in Venezuela is the people,” Maduro said on his weekly broadcast.

If the people of Venezuela are truly the ones giving orders, Maduro is obviously not listening. According to Datanalisis’s June 2017 poll, 69% of Venezuelans oppose the Constituent Assembly maneuver that he is shoving down the throats of the Venezuelan people.  An even larger majority (including a majority of the so-called Chavistas) prefer that the current constitution be enforced. Maduro insists that a new constitution is needed in order to stave off “coup-plotters.” Maduro is the real coup-plotter. The opposition-controlled National Assembly leader Julio Borges called Maduro’s insistence on drawing up a new constitution “a scam to deceive the Venezuelan people with a mechanism that is nothing more than a tightening of the coup in Venezuela.”

On July 17^th, President Donald Trump called Maduro “a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator.” He promised that the United States will “not stand by as Venezuela crumbles.” On July 26th, President Trump followed through on his promise. His administration imposed new sanctions on current and former high level government officials, military officers and managers of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA).

The Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, warned that more U.S. action will be forthcoming if Maduro does not change course. “The United States will keep all options on the table, including sanctioning anyone who joins the Constituent Assembly, and will look into additional measures to hold the Maduro regime accountable,” Ambassador Haley said. “We will also continue to have the backs of the Venezuelan people as they fight to save their once prosperous democracy – even in the face of violence, intimidation, and denial of services by their own government.”

Socialist ideology imposed by brute force is not only morally bankrupt. As proven time and time again, it is self-destructive. Venezuela is but the latest example as it descends into chaos and human misery.

10.PALESTINIANS, MOTHER OF TERRORIST, CELEBRATE SLAUGHTER OF JEWISH FAMILY

“Praise Allah. I am proud of my son. May Allah be pleased with him”! / Τί Γράφω / -με τόσο καιρό τώρα; Ε! Εσείς οι… Χουντο – Αριστερο – Δημοκράτες πού είστε;

July 24, 2017

Joseph Klein

A Palestinian mother extolled her 19-year old son’s “accomplishment” in the name of Allah. She exclaimed:  “Praise Allah. I am proud of my son. May Allah be pleased with him.” The mother was not celebrating her son’s graduation, new job, marriage, fatherhood or some other life-affirming event. Rather, she was celebrating the deaths that her terrorist offspring, Omar al-Abed, brought to a Jewish family on July 21^st.  The family was about to sit down for a Sabbath dinner and to celebrate the birth of a grandson that same day when the Palestinian terrorist prodigy invaded the family’s home. Wielding a knife, he proceeded to kill a grandfather, his daughter and his son, and to seriously wound the grandmother. The massacre ended only after a neighbor, who belongs to an elite IDF unit and was home on leave, heard cries for help from the house and shot the terrorist. Al-Abed was eventually handcuffed and taken to a hospital for treatment of his wounds.

The terrorist’s mother was joined in her celebration by Palestinians dancing in the street in Gaza. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh reportedly phoned Omar al-Abed’s father to congratulate him for what his son had done to bring “pride to the nation.”

The trigger for this latest spurt of violence was said to be Israel’s decision to install metal detectors at the entrances leading to the Temple Mount. Israel took this action in response to the killings by terrorists on July 14^th of two Israeli police officers guarding the holy site. The murders were carried out by Arab Israeli citizens who used guns previously smuggled into the compound. Israel installed metal detectors to prevent any further smuggling of arms.

Palestinian violence has been spreading since then, resulting in the deaths of four Palestinian rioters in confrontations with Israeli security forces trying to restore calm.

The spiraling violence is being spurred on by Muslim religious leaders and Palestinian officials claiming that Israel’s security actions were defiling the Al Aqsa mosque situated on the Temple Mount. Omar al-Abed picked up on this theme in the “will” he posted on Facebook three hours before his cowardly attack. He said he was acting against “the sons of apes and pigs who defile Al Aqsa.” Hoping for martyrdom, he posted: “I will go to heaven. How sweet death is for the sake of God, his prophet and for Al-Aqsa mosque.” The 19-year old terrorist, who is the apple of his mother’s eye, did not get his wish and will now have to answer for his crimes. No doubt, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will reward the terrorist’s family with a generous stipend while he remains in Israeli custody. That’s the way Abbas operates.

After first mouthing an insincere condemnation of the murderous attack on the police guarding the Temple Mount, Abbas has exploited the situation ever since. He announced that he was going to suspend all contacts with Israel until the metal detectors were removed. Abbas reached out to the United States and the so-called “international community” to pressure Israel into cancelling its heightened security measures. He reportedly said that unless Israel backed down, tensions over access to the holy site could spiral out of control. The United Nations Security Council is meeting in closed session Monday morning to discuss the crisis. Sweden, Egypt and France requested the special meeting. None of these countries have supported Israel in dealing with the ever present threat of Palestinian terrorism. They have bought into the Palestinians’ victimhood narrative.

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has been holding firm so far on its latest security measures. Tzachi Hanegbi, the minister for regional development and a senior member of the ruling Likud party, told Army Radio: “They (metal detectors) will remain. The murderers will never tell us how to search the murderers. If they (Palestinians) do not want to enter the mosque, then let them not enter the mosque.”

However, there is some division within the Israeli government on the utility of the metal detectors. Senior security officials have reportedly warned that the potential danger the metal detectors may pose in being used as a pretext for widespread violence may outweigh their usefulness. Thus, the government could be preparing a way to replace the metal detectors with a less controversial alternative. Israel has begun installing sophisticated security cameras at one of the entrances. While security officials have told Israeli media that the cameras are meant to complement the metal detectors, not replace them, the cameras may provide the Israeli government with a face saving way to defuse the immediate crisis. Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted as much when he said at his weekly cabinet meeting, “The only thing we want is to ensure no one can again take weapons in and carry out another attack. We’re willing to examine alternatives to the metal detectors, so long as the alternative ensures the prevention of the next attack.”

However, it is unlikely that any alternative security measure the Israelis institute will quell the rising level of violence. Indeed, it could have the opposite effect. Already, Abbas is said to be protesting the installation of the cameras. Only the Palestinians have the right to determine what security measures are appropriate outside the entrance to the site of their mosque, he said on Sunday. Moreover, some Muslim religious leaders may argue that photographing of people and other living animate moving beings is forbidden in Islam. They would likely rail against the “Zionist infidel occupiers” taking pictures of Muslim worshippers entering the “sacred” site of a mosque over which the Palestinians claim exclusive sovereignty.

The Palestinian grand mufti, the acting Palestinian chief justice and the Jordanian-sponsored Waqf religious trust issued a no-compromise joint statement:

“We stress our absolute rejection of the electronic gates, and of all measures by the Occupation (Israel) that would change the historical and religious status in Jerusalem and its sacred sites, foremost the blessed Aqsa mosque.” (Emphasis added)

Palestinians continue to reject all paths to a reasonable compromise on any issue related to the conflict that they created in the first place by not accepting a two-state solution seven decades ago. There is no reason to expect any different outcome this time. As Debkafile put it so well: “The Palestinians are consistent in their tactics: First shed Israeli blood, then tell the world they are victims and as martyrs are justified in seeking revenge.” As usual, much of the “international community,” as represented in the UN, will fall for this charade.

11.Is Turkey’s Military Becoming Overstretched? / Άλλαξε Κάτι Και Τί, Μέχρι Σήμερα (Μέσα Σε 8 μήνες; / Εκτός από τον ΥΠΑΜ, αχαχαχαχαχαχαχα); 

Dorian Jones

November 17, 2016

The Turkish army is engaged in a two-front war, fighting both in Turkey and Syria against PKK Kurdish rebels. With a third front possibly looming, questions are being raised about how sustainable such operations are, given the military is still reeling from massive purges within its ranks following July’s failed coup in Turkey.

Since the collapse of last year’s cease-fire with the PKK, the military has launched unparalleled numbers of counterinsurgency operations across Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast. The operations have turned many towns and cities into rubble in vicious street warfare with the rebels. Further demands on the army came with an ongoing military incursion into Syria, targeting both Islamic State, and Syrian Kurdish forces of the YPG that Ankara accuses of being the affiliate of the PKK. Turkey considers the PKK a terrorist organization.

Now Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dispatched soldiers and armor to the Iraqi border to deter what he says are threats to Iraq’s Sunni minority. The prospect of an unprecedented third front is a front too many. “No army including the American army can deal with so many conflicts or fronts at the same time,” warns Retired Brigadier Haldun Solmazturk, head of the Ankara-based research group “21st Century Institute”.

“There will be two outcomes – one, the slowing of the operational tempo and the other is the increase in the causality rates. And in Syria, both are happening and I don’t see any reason that an intervention in Iraq would end up any different. And the situation is less than favorable for the army because army has been suffering from various blows, I mean purges, for the last 10 to 15 years.” Solmazturk has firsthand experience fighting the PKK throughout much of the 1990s and involved in cross-border operations into Iraq.

The Turkish military has admitted its operations in Syria have slowed, but blames a recent ban by Damascus on Turkish airstrikes on its territory, a ban that Ankara says has at least in part, now been lifted.

Since July’s failed coup, the military has been hit by a succession of major purges within its ranks. Nearly half its senior commanders have been arrested or dismissed, while its army special forces and air force have been hit especially hard. Over 300 of its 600 combat pilots have been arrested or dismissed.

Specter of growing demands

Demands on the beleaguered military could increase further. Current Syrian operations have been confined to non-Kurdish regions of Syria. That could change, “If there would be a terror attack from the Syrian Kurdish region, on Turkey. Then that would be a justified reason to intervene,” warns Muhammad Akar, head of the ruling AK Party in Diyarbakir, the main city in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. “In that case, everyone in Turkey would consider this intervention as a legitimate act of self-defense, but, as yet, there is no such planning of Turkey at the moment.”

Ankara has made little secret of the fact that it views the Syrian Kurdish region on its border as a threat to its national security. It accuses the ruling PYD as being linked to the PKK.

For now, analysts say the army appears to be coping with the growing demands; but, with the ongoing operations showing little signs of ending, rotation could prove an increasing problem, “As the Turkish army is deploying troops, armor from the central region, Ankara, it means that they don’t have much left behind,” observes General Solmazturk. “So the replacement would be a problem, and very difficult to solve and eventually this would have a detrimental effect on the operational tempo.”

The Turkish army is set to face a new demand. Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has warned that there will be no let up in anti-PKK operations during winter, traditionally a quiet time due to severe weather conditions. There have been no reports of dissent within the military or at the growing numbers of funerals. Media coverage remains strictly controlled.

Maintaining morale could be the next challenge facing the country’s commanders and political leaders, in the face of the ongoing purges both within the army and wider society. General Solmazturk, warns of an approaching perfect storm.

“The recent government decisions to close military schools, to close army academies, to close army hospitals, and the general political situation in the country. Army people are individuals; they are in uniform, but they are Turkish citizens, they are human beings. They are happening as I am, with the media situation in turkey, with the suppression of rights, with the suppression of freedoms, coming together are having a detrimental effect on morale and operational capability of the Turkish army.”

Ankara dismisses such warnings, pointing to recent opinion polls showing strong support for the military crackdown on the PKK both in Turkey and Syria. Those polls, analysts say, will likely color deliberations by President Erdogan and his government with a referendum expected early next year to extend his presidential powers.

12. ALLEN / BAUMAN PEACE PLAN DANGEROUS FOR ISRAEL

Putting one’s security in the hands of foreign forces.

(Ξανά και Ξανά, Για τον Κο Α/ΓΕΕΘΑ και Α/Κλάδων)

July 11, 2017

Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel

President Donald Trump entered the White House committed to finding “the ultimate deal” to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian Arab peace. Though putting himself on record in February as favoring no particular type of solution other than one that commends itself to both sides, President Trump’s advisers are now reportedly examining a plan for a Palestinian state.

The plan, devised by General John Allen during the Obama Administration, calls for a sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state to be established within the 1949 armistice lines. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would be withdrawn from within its territory, including the strategically vital Jordan Valley –– something Yitzhak Rabin, weeks before his murder, insisted on Israel retaining under any peace agreement. Instead, Israel would have to rely for its security upon a US military force operating in the Jordan Valley and, perhaps acontinuing IDF presence for a 10-15 year period.

Colonel Kris Bauman, who assisted General Allen in the formulation of the original plan, is now serving as adviser to Trump’s National Security Council –– an indication of the seriousness with which the Plan is being considered.

Is the Allen Plan a good one? Unfortunately not, for several reasons.

Reliance on foreign forces holds a cautionary history for Israel.

The «United Nations Emergency Force» (UNEF), which was designed to keep the peace between Egypt and Israel after the 1956 Suez War, was simply withdrawn at Egypt’s request in 1967, leading to the Six Day War.

President Eisenhower’s 1957 military guarantee to Israel of free, unmolested maritime shipping through the Straits of Tiran turned out to be unenforceable when Israel needed the US to provide it in 1967 –– another factor that produced the Six Day War.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) never prevented the PLO or, later, Hizballah from attacking Israel and has actually become a hindrance to Israel stopping Hizballah militarizing the Lebanese-Israeli border, resulting in several wars.

With the emergence in the last two years of jihadist groups on the armistice lines with Israel on the Golan Heights, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has similarly ceased to provide any form of protection for Israel or accountability from its attackers. International forces and guarantees can vanish overnight.

Foreign forces, even that of an ally like the US, have neither the commitment nor compulsion to sustain the casualties that protecting Israel might one day require. US forces have been evacuated from deteriorating military situations in Vietnam and Iraq where direct US interests were at stake. Are they more likely to hunker down in the Jordan Valley on behalf of Israel?

If foreign forces are no security panacea, neither is Palestinian demilitarization. However careful the security arrangements for Israel under General Allen’s Plan, history demonstrates that no sovereign state has ever permitted itself to be permanently and entirely demilitarized.

Even Weimar Germany, which was in no way an aggressive, irredentist state, as Mahmoud Abbas’ PA would undoubtedly become, refused to remain demilitarized. Weimar Germany trained military forces under the guise of police and scouting organizations and engaged in arms production under civilian cover.

Even purely as a matter of law and treaty, there is no effective means to compel a state to remain disarmed, even if its permanent disarmament were an explicit clause in a peace treaty or international agreement pertaining to that state.

To quote Professor Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue University,

“International law would not necessarily expect Palestinian compliance with any limitations on negotiated agreements concerning national armies and armed forces … After declaring independence, a Palestinian government … could point to particular pre-independence errors of fact, or to duress, as appropriate grounds for invoking selective agreement termination.”

Add to this the fact that only sovereign states can be held to conclude authentic treaties, and the government of a future Palestinian state could realistically claim not to be bound by the demilitarization clauses of the peace treaty that created it.

Accordingly, at some point in the future, a Palestinian state could simply renege on demilitarization and Israel would have neither legal nor diplomatic redress. This would be a recipe for a full-scale war, as any attempt on the part of Israel to forcibly disarm such a state would become.

As retired IDF Major-General Gershon Hacohen, now a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan, Israel, has observed, “it is hard to imagine under what circumstances Israel would attain the international legitimacy to pursue an offensive deep within the Palestinian state, should the need arise.”

The PA has already consistently violated all Oslo limitations on its armed forces. It has imported prohibited weaponry, permitted armed terrorist groups to establish themselves in its midst, and armed far larger forces than permitted under signed agreements. How likely is it that a sovereign Palestinian state would be more sedulously observant of such terms than the PA has been till now?

In short, Israel cannot place its ultimate security in the hands of foreign forces, nor in the supposed security to be found in Palestinian demilitarization, nor still in the durability of any demilitarization clauses, however stringent, enshrined in a future peace agreement. 

Whatever other proposals the Trump Administration might consider, it should discard General Allen’s without delay.

Morton A. Klein is National President of «the Zionist Organization of America» (ZOA). Dr. Daniel Mandel is Director of the ZOA’ s Center for Middle East Policy and author of H.V. Evatt & the Establisment of Israel (Routledge, London, 2004).