Skip to main content

Pro-Israel News

Thursday, July 17, 2014

TIME

What does it mean to say that casualties are “disproportionate”?

On “NBC Nightly News” on July 12, David Gregory spoke of growing pressure from the United Nations for a ceasefire in Gaza. He noted that the United States and many other nations believed that Israel had a right to self-defense. Nonetheless, Gregory reported, these countries were likely to be sympathetic to calls for a ceasefire because of the “disproportionate” number of casualties between the two sides. Among the residents of Gaza, the death toll then exceeded 100, while Israel had suffered dozens of injuries but no casualties.

Mr. Gregory was simply reporting the news, but I found his comments disturbing, nonetheless. What does it mean to say that the casualties are “disproportionate”? And is that really the moral issue that we need to be concerned about?

The implication of the “disproportionality” claim is that, given their losses, the people of Gaza are the real victims. But morally and politically, this is an intolerable and distorted interpretation of the realities in the region.

The reason that Hamas has not killed more Israelis is not because they haven’t tried. In the seven years during which it has controlled Gaza, Hamas and its proxies have fired more than 5000 rockets into Israel; almost 800 have been launched just this past week. Each one has been aimed at civilians and intended to murder and maim. The reason that more Israelis have not died is that the weapons are mostly crude and inaccurate and that, over time, Israel has prepared herself with shelters, warning sirens and an anti-missile system. In addition, Israelis have been just plain lucky.

But that luck could change at any moment. If a single rocket were to hit a school or a mall, the number of dead could balance out in a flash. Then, to be sure, you would have “proportionality,” but there is no moral calculus by which additional dead civilians is a preferable outcome.

For Israel, the fundamental issue is the responsibility of its government to protect its citizens. As missiles have fallen on her cities over the years, the government has not succeeded in providing that protection. The reasons are many, including sensitivity to American wishes and a concern for world opinion; but the desire not to hurt the innocent is the most important. Now, however, as children in the south continue to live in terror and civilians throughout Israel flee to shelters several times daily, Israel’s leaders have concluded that they must act.

There is something bizarre, in fact, about the idea of “proportionality” being used as a moral criticism against Israel. A proportional response by Israel to the attacks of the last seven years would mean that every time a rocket is fired by Hamas at an Israeli civilian center, Israel would respond by firing a rocket at a civilian center in Gaza. Israel, of course, rejected that, then and now. Still, when Hamas violated the ceasefire yet again and got its hands on longer-range rockets, something had to be done.

The best way to evaluate Israel’s action is to imagine how we as Americans would respond to similar provocations. Assume the following: a terrorist group embedded in Mexico that the Mexican government refused to disarm is firing missiles into Houston night after night, endangering American lives. Our government would not wait a week or a month; indeed, it would not wait a single day before taking action to assure the well-being of her citizens. In fact, we need only remember how American forces flew half way around the world to engage in a war in Afghanistan against terrorists who carried out an attack on American soil. The talk then was not of proportionality, but of providing security for our country and stopping those who wished to do us harm.

Of course, let us not think for a moment, God forbid, that we can be indifferent to the death of innocents. The death of any child, Israeli or Arab, Muslim or Jew, is an unspeakable tragedy that rends the heart. Israel must do everything humanly possible to avoid the civilian casualties; already she issues warnings and calls for evacuation of areas about to be attacked, and must do more. Still, for any country, morality begins with a reasonable measure of security for her own citizens, and it is not right to say that Israel must protect Palestinian civilians at the cost of abandoning her own.

The issue was never “proportionality”; it is the suffering and dying of too many Arabs and Jews. And while there is much that is complicated about the Middle East, ending the violence in Gaza is not complicated. Hamas needs to halt the missile attacks and provide credible assurances to Israel and the world that they will not be resumed. If the rockets stop, quiet can come tomorrow. And tomorrow is not soon enough.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, a writer and lecturer, was President of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012. His writings are collected at ericyoffie.com.

Thursday, July 17, 2014
BY NAPP NAZWORTH , CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER
July 17, 2014

Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, author of Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel, 2014.

In the 1960's, Liberals were among some of Israel's strongest supporters, but have since become some of Israel's staunchest opponents. In his new book, Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel, Joshua Muravchik, a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, explores the reasons behind this change.

Last month's vote by the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. to divest from three American companies whose products are sold to Israel was a recent example of the animus toward Israel commonly found on the Left

In an email interview with The Christian Post, Muravchik says that opposing Israel and supporting Palestinians fits with a new Leftist ideology that views modern political struggles as between race and ethnic groups, with the predominantly white West against the non-white rest of the world. This viewpoint has surpassed the previous class-based, rich versus poor, categories as the predominant ideology of the Left, he argued.

Despite this change on the Left, Muravchik does not believe that Democrats will change their support for Israel because American voters are strong supporters of Israel.

Muravchik also spoke about the anti-Israel sentiments found among some liberal Evangelicals and the bias in media coverage of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Here is the full transcript of that interview:

CP: Why, today, are conservatives generally pro-Israel and liberals generally pro-Palestinian?

Muravchik: Leftists/liberals/progressives believe that the great moral drama of our era is "the rest against the West" or the "people of color" against the "white man." This has replaced poor-against-rich or worker-against-capitalist as the core idea of progressive thought. Seen through that lens, Israel (the "Western," "white" guys) is automatically wrong and the Palestinians (the "anti-colonialist" "people of color") are automatically right. On the other side, conservatives value Israel as a free country, a democracy, and an ally of the United States.

CP: U.S. foreign policy toward Israel has remained remarkably consistent across presidential administrations. Do you see that changing?

Muravchik: The U.S. will remain pro-Israel because polls show that the American public is strongly pro-Israel. President Obama has been cooler toward Israel that any other president in recent memory, saying in his first year that he wanted to "put daylight" between the U.S. and Israel, and he has done that, but still he has not changed U.S. policy radically.

CP: What would we see from the Democratic Party today if there were no strong pro-Israel forces within its coalition?

Muravchik: Support for Israel by Democratic politicians has less to do with any "forces" in the "coalition" than with the simple fact that U.S. public opinion is firmly pro-Israel. The Left, however, is now anti-Israel and it does its best to push the party in that direction.

We saw its influence at the 2012 Democratic convention when the draft platform was much less pro-Israel than in the past, and the Obama team had to pull out all the stops — and go through three votes — to change the wording because they feared it would cost votes.

CP: Last month, the Presbyterian Church (USA), a Mainline Protestant denomination, voted to divest from three American companies whose products are sold to Israel. What is the source of this strong anti-Israel sentiment among Mainline Protestants?

Muravchik: In the 1960s and 1970s the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the leadership of some of the individual Mainline Protestant denominations turned sharply to the Left. To an outsider it looked as if they were replacing religious faith with political messianism. They embraced "revolutionary" forces in Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other "third world" places even though those forces were both anti-human and anti-God. And they embraced Palestinian "revolutionaries" in the same spirit.

CP: In the United States, the strongest supporters of Israel have been Jews and Evangelicals. Recently though, there have been some vocal anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian sentiments from liberal Evangelicals. Has anything surprised you about this phenomenon?

Muravchik: It is not surprising for Evangelicals to be liberals. This faith does not require any particular political persuasion. But a genuine liberal must be pro-Israel. Israel — and not its enemies — is democratic, observes freedom of speech and worship, tolerates minorities, sanctifies the rights of women, and constantly reaches out to the other side with humanitarian gestures, such as the six Gazan babies who were transported to Israel this week, amidst the rocket fire, for free operations to repair congenital heart defects. To be anti-Israel is not to be liberal; rather it is to embrace the worldview of the radical Left which is totalitarian, anti-freedom, and anti-faith. It surprised me greatly to see some Evangelicals join that camp.

CP: What do you think about the media coverage of the current conflict taking place between Israel and Hamas? Some conservatives have complained that the coverage is unfairly biased against Israel.

Muravchik: The coverage is biased, especially in The New York Times, which once was fair and balanced but today filters the whole world through a leftish lens. And of course the Times influences others.

In addition to simple bias, another factor is at work. Israel is an open society, with a press that watchdogs the government and washes the country's dirty linen in public. Many stories in the U.S. press that show some of the bad side of Israel originate in the Israeli press. There is nothing remotely comparable on the Arab side. There is no press freedom, and if someone in Gaza wants to reveal Hamas's nasty deeds, it's as good as his life.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014
07/16/2014 
 
The premier spoke at a joint news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini at the Knesset on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday repeated his position that "Israel will continue to do what it needs to do to defend itself until peace and quiet are restored."

The premier spoke at a joint news conference with Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini at the Knesset on Wednesday.

Netanyahu called on the international community to condemn Hamas for committing the "double war crime" of firing on Israeli civilians and using Palestinian noncombatants as human shields. He also said that the "most important step for the international community to insist on" is "the demilitarization of Gaza."

The premier noted that while Israel accepted the Egyptian ceasefire proposal, Hamas rejected it.

Turning to the Italian foreign minister, Netanyahu said, "Imagine in Rome, Florence, and Milan were rocketed. You wouldn't accept that. You'd fight back. Those firing the rockets aren't seeking a political solution."

Mogherini commended Netanyahu for accepting the ceasefire while calling on both sides to refrain from civilian casualties. She also expressed concern for the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
 

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Israel’s military says it has resumed airstrikes on the Gaza Strip after Hamas militants rejected and violated a proposed cease-fire that was approved by Israel's Security Cabinet.

Israeli officials said that the truce proposed by Egypt's Foreign Ministry had been accepted by the cabinet shortly after it was due to take effect Tuesday at 9 a.m. local time (2 a.m. Eastern Time). Less than half an hour later, a senior Hamas official told The Associated Press that the group had rejected the proposal, claiming that Cairo had not consulted them.

"We did not receive any official draft of this Egyptian proposal," Sami Abu Zuhri said, adding that the plan, as is, was "not acceptable."

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Tuesday that after holding its fire for six hours Israel has "resumed operational activities.”

The military said that during the six hours Gaza militants fired about 50 rockets all over Israel. No injuries were reported.

In addition, the military said three rockets were fired at the southern city of Eilat, injuring two people and sparking a fire. The military did not immediately know who was behind the rocket fire. Previous rocket attacks on the city have come from radical Islamic militants in the neighboring Sinai Peninsula.

Earlier Tuesday, the military also denied it launched at an air strike on Gaza after a Hamas police spokesman Eyad Bouzam reported a strike on an apartment building.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was willing to intensify the country's military campaign against the Islamic militant group following their rejection of the proposed cease-fire.

"If Hamas rejects the Egyptian proposal and the rocket fire from Gaza does not cease, and that appears to be the case, we are prepared to continue and intensify our operation," Netanyahu said in a statement Tuesday.

Under the Egyptian plan, proposed late Monday, a 12-hour period of de-escalation was to begin at mid-morning Tuesday. Once both sides agree to halt hostilities, they would negotiate the terms of a longer-term truce.

But the armed wing of Hamas said the Egyptian plan "wasn't worth the ink it was written with." Reuters reported that a statement on the website of the al-Qassam Brigades called the proposal "an initiative of kneeling and submission" before vowing that "our battle with the enemy continues, and will increase in ferocity and intensity."

Word of Hamas' rejection of the cease-fire came hours after State Department officials told The Associated Press that Secretary of State John Kerry had opted not to travel to the region on his way back to Washington from talks regarding Iran's nuclear program in Vienna. There was no immediate word of whether Kerry would reconsider his decision in light of the cease-fire's rejection.

The militant group appeared to be holding out for better cease-fire conditions, with senior officials saying the current proposal offers no tangible achievements, particularly on easing a border blockade of Gaza enforced by Israel and Egypt.

Osama Hamdan, a key aide to top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, told The Associated Press that Hamas has a series of demands, including the release of Hamas activists arrested by Israel in the West Bank in recent weeks. Hamas also wants to be recognized by Egypt as a partner in any truce efforts.

Another Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouk, sounded more conciliatory, saying internal consultations on the cease-fire proposal are continuing.

Hamas officials are weary of promises by Egypt and Israel to ease the border blockade. Such promises were also part of a truce that ended more than a week of fighting in 2012, but were quickly broken as violence flared again.

An easing of the blockade of the coastal strip is key to the survival of Hamas.

Before the outbreak of the latest round of fighting, the militant group found itself in a serious financial crisis because a particularly tight closure by Egypt had prevented cash and goods from coming into the strip through hundreds of smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border.

Israel launched an offensive July 8, saying it was a response to weeks of heavy rocket fire out of Hamas-ruled Gaza. The Health Ministry in Gaza claims 185 people have been killed, and more than 1,000 people wounded, though it is not clear how many of those casualties were civilians and how many of those were Hamas operatives.

There have been no Israelis killed, although several have been wounded by rocket shrapnel, including two sisters, ages 11 and 13, who were seriously hurt Monday. Ahead of the Egyptian announcement, there appeared to be no slowdown in the fighting, with Hamas for the first time launching an unmanned drone into Israeli airspace that was shot down.

The violence followed the kidnappings and killings of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank last month, as well as the subsequent kidnapping and killing of a Palestinian teenager in an apparent revenge attack, along with Israeli raids against Hamas militants and infrastructure in the West Bank.

Israeli officials have said the goal of the military campaign is to restore quiet to Israel's south, which has absorbed hundreds of rocket strikes, and that any cease-fire would have to include guarantees of an extended period of calm. Hamas officials say they will not accept "calm for calm."

With the death toll mounting, both sides have come under increasing international pressure to halt the fighting.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Monday, July 14, 2014

The Daily Caller 7/14/2014

By: Jamie Weinstein (Senior Editor)
 

Don’t believe everything you read — especially as it relates to Israel.

As Israel’s latest war with the Palestinian terror group Hamas continues with no clear end in sight, it’s worthwhile to debunk some of the myths that have been perpetuated about the conflict.

Myth 1.) The current conflict between Israel and Hamas is part of a “cycle of violence”

The media love to use language that projects evenhandedness, but the current conflict is not merely a tale of tit-for-tat. As others have noted, if Hamas unilaterally stopped attacking Israel, Israel would have no reason to attack Hamas. But if Israel unilaterally stopped attacking Hamas, Hamas would continue to attack Israel.

The difference lies in the stated goals of both entities. Israel was not founded to destroy Palestinian Arabs. If Hamas had no beef with Israel, Israel would be happy to go about its business creating one of the most remarkably innovative societies in the world.

Hamas, conversely, was founded upon a charter that not only calls for the destruction of Israel, but the murder of all Jews. Perhaps if Hamas had a more uplifting mission, Gaza would be a seaside paradise today instead of a hell hole.

Myth 2.) Hamas is attacking Israel because of Israel’s occupation of its territory

We can debate whether the phrase “occupied territory” applies in the West Bank — I think it’s pretty clear that “disputed territory” is more accurate — but it sure doesn’t apply to Gaza. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Since then, Hamas won the most seats in a parliamentary election and ultimately kicked out the rival Fatah party from Gaza through force, before proceeding to turn Gaza into one big terror haven. Last month, Hamas and Fatah reconciled and came together in support of a unity government. Nonetheless, Hamas still effectively controls Gaza.

Myth 3.) The higher casualties on the Palestinian side prove Israel is the bad actor

This is idiocy.

It is true that far more Palestinians have been killed and injured than Israelis in the current conflict. But that’s because Israel, fortunately, is much stronger. There’s no doubt that if Hamas had the power Israel did, we would be witnessing a second Holocaust.

But we don’t judge what side is in the right and what side is in the wrong by a simple casualty count. In the 1991 Gulf War, for instance, America and its allied coalition took fewer than 500 casualties in battle compared to an estimated 20,000 or more it inflicted. Were the U.S. and its coalition allies therefore bad actors for taking action to reverse Iraqi aggression? Of course not.

Let’s be clear: Don’t think because Israel hasn’t taken many casualties, its population isn’t suffering. Well over half Israel’s population is within range of Hamas’ rockets and could, at any moment, be targeted. Israel’s Iron Dome missile shield is effective, but not full proof.  There is no country that would tolerate that kind of constant threat to its civilian population.

Myth 4.) Israel is perpetrating a genocide

Perhaps the most ludicrous charge is that Israel is perpetuating a genocide against the Palestinians.

“It’s genocide. It’s called genocide,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said of Israel’s actions. “What can I say about Abu Khdeir? Shall we recall Auschwitz?” he added, referencing the brutal death of an Israeli Arab at the hands of Jewish extremists who have now been arrested by Israel.

Where to begin? First, it’s especially rich for Abbas to be referencing Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz since his PhD dissertation was chock full of Holocaust denial. But if Israel is perpetuating a genocide, it is the most inept genocide in world history.

Israel has the power to indiscriminately level entire Palestinian towns and villages if it so desired. But it hasn’t. In fact, Israel tries its best to avoid civilian casualties, which is the crucial difference between itself and the other side. Israel even warns Palestinian civilians to leave buildings it is about to target. No need to grab a history book: The Nazis never did that.67=

Unfortunately, Hamas has encouraged its own people to ignore the Israeli warnings and stay in the soon-to-be destroyed buildings. As grotesque as that sounds, it’s not surprising. Hamas has a long history of using civilians as human shields.

 

Friday, July 11, 2014
By HERB KEINON, KHALED ABU TOAMEH
07/10/2014 22:28

At the end of Operation Protective Edge's third day, PM states campaign to continue, expand; premier gives no indication of when, whether IDF will send ground troops in to Gaza Strip.

 

Binyamin Netanyahu speaks at the Knesset on Monday Photo: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu emerged from a marathon security cabinet meeting on Thursday at the end of Operation Protective Edge’s third day, saying the campaign would continue and expand.

Netanyahu issued a statement saying the operation was progressing as planned, and that “more stages were expected.” Hamas and the other terrorist organizations operating from the Gaza Strip had been hit hard by the IDF attacks, and would be hit even harder as the operation continued, he said.

One official said it was clear that what Israel might have accepted two weeks ago in terms of “quiet for quiet,” it would not accept now. Netanyahu, the official said, would not agree to a situation whereby yet another cease-fire would be declared, which Hamas would then take advantage of to “tend to its wounds” and restock missiles for the next round.

Barkat: Hamas rockets don’t discriminate The official refused to say what exactly Israel was demanding in order to halt the operation. Rather than having a grocery list of demands, Israel has parameters, one of which is ensuring Hamas will be unable to rearm after the campaign, which is aimed at severely depleting Hamas’s rocket stockpile and degrading its ability to manufacture projectiles.

While neither Netanyahu nor Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon nor IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen Benny Gantz gave any indication of a decision being made to commit ground troops, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Thursday that Israel was about to launch a ground operation.

He called for an unconditional cease-fire, saying that all his efforts to end the violence had failed.

Abbas claimed that the government had already approved a ground operation, which – he added – would begin in the coming hours late Thursday evening.

He pointed out that the IDF had asked Palestinians living close to the border with Israel to leave their homes and move deeper into the Gaza Strip.

Abbas told residents of east Jerusalem who visited him in his office in Ramallah that Israel was seeking to expel Palestinians from their lands and homes.

“But we say to them that we’re not leaving,” he said. “We don’t have weapons, but we will remain steadfast and fight with words. If Israel has missiles and weapons, this doesn’t mean that we will surrender. We will fight in a civilized way that disturbs others.”

The two sides should agree to an unconditional truce, Abbas added. “The most important thing now is to avoid bloodshed,” he said. “The Egyptians have held contacts with the two sides, but these efforts have unfortunately failed.”

Abbas said he spoke with American officials and demanded that Israel halt its military operations unilaterally so that he could persuade Hamas to stop its attacks. These efforts also failed to end the fighting, he said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, who earlier this week broke with Netanyahu partly over his unhappiness that the prime minister was not responding more forcefully to the rocket fire from Gaza, cited that restraint positively in a letter sent on Thursday to his colleagues from around the world.

The letter, part of Israel’s diplomatic campaign to garner understanding and support for Operative Protective Edge, said that since the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens on June 12, Hamas has fired nearly 300 rockets at Israeli cities, “putting millions of Israeli lives at risk. Families have been forced into shelters, summer camps for children closed, and all normal daily activities have been impacted.

This is unacceptable.”

Israel, said Liberman, who has advocated taking over Gaza, has “shown great restraint prior to this operation. Our intention was to restore the calm without a major military operation.

However, Israel’s repeated efforts to achieve calm were met with increased rocket fire by what is becoming a Hamas terrorist state.”

As part of the effort to explain Israel’s actions, Netanyahu continued speaking with world leaders on Thursday, holding a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The prime minister, his office said, told Putin that Hamas was hiding behind civilians, and was responsible if they were unintentionally harmed.

During a meeting Netanyahu held with the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Thursday, he was asked why the government did not cut off Gaza’s water and electricity, and replied that Israel could not take measures like “the Russians did to the Chechens.”

Over the past two days, Netanyahu has also spoken to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, British Prime Minister David Cameron and US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The purpose of these conversations, one official said, was to create an atmosphere of understanding for what Israel was doing. For the most part, he said, that understanding exists in the West, though that atmosphere could change as the media broadcast more and more pictures of casualties in Gaza.

Liberman, in his letter, said Hamas “is a recognized terror organization... motivated by the most radical ideology, including a charter that calls for the murder of all Jews. Hamas is responsible for 80 suicide bombers that have killed nearly 1,000 Israeli civilians.”

This group, he wrote, “seeks to establish an Islamist state characterized by human rights violations, violent repression of minorities, women and non-Muslims.” He called on the PA government to immediately dissolve its partnership with Hamas, and on the international community to “take action to dismantle the Hamas terrorist infrastructure” and to “demonstrate understanding for Israel to exercise its legitimate right to self-defense.”

As part of the campaign to explain Israel’s position to the world, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi held a briefing for foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel.

 

 

Thursday, July 10, 2014
July 10, 2014 9:50 AM
 

WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — President Barack Obama has reportedly not spoken to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since violence flared up between Israel and Hamas this past week.

The Times of Israel reports that the Israeli prime minister has spoken with Secretary of State John Kerry, but has yet to have a conversation with Obama or Mideast adviser to the White House Philip Gordon.

“Gordon met with his opposite numbers from the Israeli national security team,” an official from the prime minister’s office told The Times of Israel.

Gordon was in Israel and the West Bank earlier this week and met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Times of Israel reports that Netanyahu has spoken with British Prime Minister David Cameron, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Israel dramatically escalated its aerial assault in Gaza Thursday hitting hundreds of Hamas targets, as Palestinians reported 16 people killed in strikes that hit a home and a beachside cafe and Israel’s missile defense system once again intercepted rockets fired by militants at the country’s heartland.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said Israel struck more than 320 Hamas targets overnight, focusing on underground tunnel networks and rocket launching sites. That brought the total number of targets hit to 750 in three days of the massive offensive that has killed at least 80 Palestinians.

CBS News reports that a family of eight was mistakenly killed in the airstrikes. Gaza residents were holding funerals for the victims Thursday morning.

Lerner said Israel has already mobilized 20,000 reservists for a possible ground operation into Gaza, but for the time being Israel remained focused on maximizing its air campaign. A ground invasion could lead to heavy civilian casualties on the Palestinian side while putting Israeli ground forces in danger.

Neither side is showing any sign of halting their heaviest fighting since an eight-day battle in late 2012. Israel says that Hamas must cease rocket fire from Gaza for Israel to consider a truce. Militants have fired hundreds of rockets, striking across the length of Israel and disrupting life across the country. No one has been seriously harmed as the “Iron Dome” defense system has intercepted at least 70 of the projectiles destined for major population centers.

The Health Ministry in Gaza has reported 81 deaths thus far, saying about half were women and children though the exact breakdown remains unclear.

Israel accuses militants of deliberately endangering civilians by using homes and other civilian buildings for cover.

The military has also directly targeted the offices and homes of known militants that it says are used as command centers. The military typically contacts the families first to ask civilians to evacuate before striking its targets.

(TM and © Copyright 2014 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

 

Wednesday, July 9, 2014
JERUSALEM — Jul 9, 2014, 7:12 AM ET
By DANIEL ESTRIN Associated Press
 
Israel Hit by 150 Rockets Targeting 10 Cities

The Israeli army on Wednesday intensified its offensive on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, striking Hamas sites and killing at least 14 people on the second day of a military operation it says is aimed at quelling rocket fire against Israel.

The offensive has set off the heaviest fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas since an eight-day battle in November 2012. Militants have unleashed rocket salvos deeper into Israeli territory than before, and Israel mobilized thousands of forces along the Gaza border for a possible ground invasion into the Palestinian territory.

Israel's defense minister warned the offensive would be long-term.

"The operation against Hamas will expand in the coming days, and the price the organization will pay will be very high," Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said.

Since the offensive began Tuesday, Israel has attacked more than 400 sites in Gaza, killing at least 41 people. The strikes came after militants fired more than 160 rockets at Israel, including one that reached the northern Israeli city of Hadera for the first time. The city is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Gaza.

The army said it attacked more than 160 sites in Gaza early Wednesday, including 118 concealed rockets launching sites, six Hamas compounds — including naval police and national security compounds — 10 militant command centers, weapons storage facilities and 10 tunnels used for militant activity and to ferry supplies in from Egypt. The border between Gaza and Egypt has effectively been closed for months.

Gaza health official Ashraf Al-Kedra said Wednesday's airstrikes killed one militant in south Gaza, an 80-year-old woman, the son, wife and neighbor of a Hamas militant, and three others whose affiliation was not immediately known.

Israel's army said it targeted a militant with the Islamic Jihad militant group who had launched rockets toward Israel. Separately, Islamic Jihad claimed that one of its militants was killed with his mother and four siblings, but Al-Kedra said they were all civilians.

Israel and Hamas are bitter enemies and have fought numerous times over the years. But until recently they had been observing a truce that ended the previous hostilities in 2012.

Tensions have been rising since the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank on June 12. Israel accused Hamas of being behind the abductions, although it provided no proof.

Israel then launched a crackdown on the group's members in the West Bank and arrested hundreds of people. Hamas, which controls Gaza, responded by stepping up rocket fire.

The situation deteriorated last week after the bodies of the three were found, followed a day later by the abduction of Palestinian teenager in Jerusalem — who was later found burned to death in what Palestinians believe was a revenge attack. Six Jewish Israelis were arrested in the killing.

It was a sharp contrast to the large number that hit Israeli cities the night before, setting off air raid sirens in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and other areas of the country.

In amateur video obtained by The Associated Press, guests at an outdoor wedding in the city of Holon, near Tel Aviv, ran screaming for cover as a rocket was intercepted in the sky, blowing up. The bride and groom rushed down the aisle as a second rocket whizzed above.

By early Wednesday, air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Israel's south, and the army said two rockets were apparently intercepted above the central Israeli city by an anti-missile battery. In total, at least seven rockets were fired toward Israel on Wednesday, and the "Iron Dome" anti-missile system intercepted about half of them mid-air, the army said. There were no reported injuries.

Lerner, the army spokesman, told reporters that the military's aim was to take a "substantial toll" on Hamas and to deplete its rocket capabilities. He said the army would gradually ramp up its strikes on Gaza.

"The organization is going to pay for its aggression. It is literally holding us hostage with its rockets," Lerner said. "The country is not willing for this situation to continue."

About 2,000 people attended a funeral for eight Palestinians, including at least one militant, four adults and two children, who were killed Tuesday.

In the attack, an airstrike flattened the home of a Hamas militant in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. Israel's military said it had called the home shortly before the airstrike to warn civilians to leave.

A security official said the army has been telephoning homes, or firing small projectiles dubbed "knock on the roof," to warn civilians to leave buildings before demolishing homes. The official said the army also warns militants about such attacks if civilians are with them.

Hamas is far weaker than the last round of fighting with Israel in 2012.

At the time, Egypt was governed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas' close ally. Following its ouster in 2013, Egypt's new government became hostile to Hamas and closed a network of smuggling tunnels used by the group as an economic lifeline, and as a way to smuggle in rockets.

An Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing Israeli tactical strategy, said Israel could make more significant achievements against Hamas now than in previous rounds of fighting.

"Things are different now," the official said. "Their ability to rebuild their arsenal is far more limited."

 

Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Published on July 7, 2014 from The Washington Free Beacon
 
Hamas outlines conditions to end terror as violence peaks

Multiple Palestinian terror groups renewed calls for violence against Israel and urged Arabs to rise up over the weekend, causing concern that a third Palestinian intifada could break out amid escalating violence between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Violence hit new heights over the weekend as Palestinian rioters took to the streets around Jerusalem, and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip continued firing rockets on Israeli civilians.

Arab-Israelis in East Jerusalem rioted and clashed with Israeli police following the death of Arab teen Muhammad Abu Khdeir, who was murdered by Israeli citizens in an apparent revenge attack for the abduction and killing of three Jewish teens by Hamas.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a radical terror group, dropped leaflets in Khdeir’s hometown of Shuafat, outside Jerusalem, over the weekend in a bid to stoke tensions and incite Arab-Israelis to launch a popular uprising against Israel, otherwise known as an intifada.

PFLP leaders called on Twitter and elsewhere for the “development of popular mobilization into a popular intifada.”

The PFLP was among several Palestinian militant groups urging Arabs to take up arms against Israel.

The radical Al-Qassam Brigades released propaganda posters warning Israel that more attacks are imminent.

“All the cities are close to Gaza,” read one Hebrew language poster featuring an armed militant carrying rockets.

The Al-Nasser Salah al-Deen Brigades, an armed offshoot of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee, held a press conference in Gaza over the weekend featuring armed masked militants.

The terror group’s spokesman said that armed Palestinian groups would not sign onto a ceasefire until Israel removes all presence from various territories,according to reports.

The PFLP, in its leaflets to Arabs around Jerusalem, called for citizens to erect “popular defense committees” across the West Bank and Jerusalem “as a means of self-defense” from Israeli attacks, according to a translation of the flyer provided to the Washington Free Beacon by Oren Adaki, an Arabic language specialist at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

The PFLP emphasized the murder of Khdeir and vowed that it would not “pass by without punishment.”

The terror group also called on Palestinian Authority security forces to join the fight against Israel and join “the people of Palestine in their confrontation against the violence and terrorism of the [Israeli] settlers,” according to the page-long leaflet.

Additionally, it instructed Palestinian civilians “to prepare for a long and hard battle against the occupation and emphasized the importance of transforming Israel’s occupation into a failed project,” according to Adaki. “The PFLP highlighted the necessity of adopting a popular resistance program focused on the various forms of national struggle that would serve the interests of the Palestinian people.”

As riots break out inside Israel, Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip continue to bombard Israel with rocket attacks.

At least 14 rockets hit Israel on Monday morning and several dozen struck over the weekend, bringing the total number of attacks to 150 since June 14, when hostilities first broke out.

Senior Hamas officials said on Monday that the attacks would continue until Israel abides by several conditions.

Hamas will not sign a ceasefire agreement until Israel completely removes its presence from the Gaza Strip and ends its blockade of the territory, which is meant to prevent arms from flowing across the border.

Hamas foreign relations head Osama Hamdan “ruled out the possibility of a large-scale Israeli aggression on Gaza” over the weekend and “warned that his movement might resort to unexpected scenarios in case the reconciliation agreement terms were not implemented in full,” according to reports posted on Hamas-affiliated websites.

Terrorism expert Matthew Levitt said that the calls for a new intifada are not likely to resonate with Palestinians.

“If the loudest voice you hear calling for an intifada is the PFLP that’s comment enough on the disinterest among most Palestinians for renewed widespread violence,” said Levitt, director of the Washington Institute’s Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

Hamas is seeking to leverage the situation by imposing demands on Israel that cannot be met, Levitt said.

“Hamas is eager to find an issue that will resonate with its constituency, and improve its really desperate situation right now, and it has latched onto the Gaza closure,” Levitt said.

“Meanwhile, it is also continuing to try to kidnap Israeli soldiers,” he added, noting that Israeli military officials confirmed that six militants killed inside an illegal tunnel last night were preparing to carry out a kidnapping operation.

As violence increases on all sides—including among disparate Palestinian factions—the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah appears to have disintegrated.

“For all intents and purposes the unity government is done,” said FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department.

“I don’t see unity,” he said. “Cooperation between Hamas and Fatah looks dead, and no one is even talking about whether the unity government is functioning. We’re right back to where we were” before the agreement, when the PA urged restraint in the face of Hamas violence.

 

Monday, July 7, 2014

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. on Sunday praised his government for the swift arrests in the killing of an Arab teen, saying those found guilty will not be lauded as heroes and urging Palestinian leaders to pursue those behind similar killings.

“They will not be hailed as heroes,” Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer told “Fox News Sunday.” “There will not be public squares named after them.”

Six Jewish men were arrested this weekend in connection with the killing of the Palestinian Arab teenager, whose death last week has sparked days of violent protests in Arab areas of Jerusalem and northern Israel. 

Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, was abducted early last week, and his charred body was found a short while later in a Jerusalem forest in what Palestinians say was a revenge killing for the earlier deaths of three Israeli teens.

Police have been investigating various motives in the Khdeir death, including criminal and personal.

“There’s strong suspicion that there are nationalist motives behind this,” Dermer said.

He wants Palestinian leaders to rigorously investigate the deaths of the three Israeli teens, on which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is blaming the militant Islamic group Hamas.

The series of killing and the resulting, violent protests have brought concerns that the country will be plunged into war.

This weekend, Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip stepped up rocket attacks on southern Israel, drawing Israeli air strikes in retaliation. The militants have fired more than 15 rockets and mortars into Israel, the military said. Overnight, Israel carried out air strikes on 10 sites in Gaza.

When Dermer was asked Sunday by ABC News whether he thought the violence would lead to all-out war, his response was “I hope not.”

He also responded to the release Sunday of Tariq Abu Khdeir, a 15-year-old Palestinian American who was badly injured in clashes with Israeli police. He was sentenced to nine days of home detention.

Dermer said his country condemns the use of excessive force but that Tariq Khdeir “was not an innocent bystander pulled out of a school yard.”

He said Khdeir was masked and joined several others in attacking police.

“But that doesn’t excuse the use of excessive force,” Dermer added.

The parents of Khdeir, who goes to school in Florida, say their son was beaten Thursday by Israeli police during clashes over the killing of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. The two youths were cousins.

As Tariq returned to his family Sunday, he was crying and appeared badly bruised, with both eyes and his mouth swollen. "I feel better, I am excited to be back home," he said.

Amateur video of what Tariq's father Salah said was the beating aired on a local television station, and he said he could recognize his son from his clothing.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Sunday that a judge at a hearing that morning allowed Tariq to be released under house arrest while the criminal investigation is conducted and that an official from the U.S. Consulate General was present.
 
The teen's family was asked to post bail, and Tariq is restricted to his uncle’s home in the Beit Hanina area of East Jerusalem. He is also permitted to make arrangements to visit medical facilities if needed. If the investigation is concluded promptly, the youth should be able to return to Florida as planned with his family later this month, Psaki said.

She also repeated what she said Saturday, that the U.S. wants "a speedy, transparent and credible investigation and full accountability for the apparent excessive use of force.”