"Israel’s government has emerged as an unexpected beneficiary of the Arab Spring uprisings."
Then they are exactly what I have been saying for a long time. The reason they got so much press was because they were USraeli intelligence agency operations regarding overthrows and removals of stale leaders sold under a banner of popular protest that met with propaganda pre$$ approval.
"In Hamas fight, Arab states align with Israel" by David D. Kirkpatrick | New York Times July 31, 2014
CAIRO — Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting. Not this time.
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated cease-fire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed.
“The Arab states’ loathing and fear of political Islam is so strong that it outweighs their allergy to Benjamin Netanyahu,” the prime minister of Israel, said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington and a former Middle East negotiator under several presidents. “I have never seen a situation like it, where you have so many Arab states acquiescing in the death and destruction in Gaza and the pummeling of Hamas. The silence is deafening.”
We will see them in hell, my friends. It is there where we will feast upon their entrails.
Egypt is traditionally the key go-between in any talks with Hamas — deemed a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — but this time the government in Cairo surprised Hamas by publicly proposing a cease-fire agreement that met most of Israel’s demands and none by the Palestinian group. Hamas was tarred as intransigent when it immediately rejected it, and Cairo has continued to insist that its proposal remains the starting point.
A cease-fire that was set up to fail, and did?
So HOW MANY KIDS HAS ISRAEL KILLED TODAY?
Commentators sympathetic to the Palestinians slammed the proposal as a ruse to embarrass Hamas. Egypt’s Arab allies praised it. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt the next day to commend it, in a statement that cast no blame on Israel but referred only to “the bloodshed of innocent civilians who are paying the price for a military confrontation for which they are not responsible.”
“There is clearly a convergence of interests of these various regimes with Israel,” said Khaled Elgindy, a former adviser to Palestinian negotiators and a fellow at the Brookings Institution. The Egyptian fight against the forces of political Islam and the Israeli struggle against Palestinian militants are nearly identical, he said.
The dynamic has inverted all expectations of the Arab Spring uprisings. As recently as 18 months ago, most analysts expected the popular uprisings to make the Arab governments more responsive to their citizens, and therefore more sympathetic to the Palestinians and more hostile to Israel. But Israel’s government has emerged for the moment as an unexpected beneficiary of the ensuing tumult.
Were it not part of the globe-kicking neo-con agenda it would not have gotten as much pre$$ as it did.
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Also see:
Israel's Ground Invasion of Gaza
Israel's Ground Assault in Gaza Continues
Furious Friday
Serenity Now
The 21st-Century's First Genocide
Back to the "battlefield":
"Israeli shells hit UN school, killing at least 17; Strike draws rebuke, renews calls for cease-fire" by Karin Laub and Tia Goldenberg | Associated Press July 31, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli tank shells tore through the walls of a UN school crowded with war refugees early Wednesday in the deadliest of a series of air and artillery attacks.
Hours later, Israeli strikes hit a crowded shopping area in Gaza City. The bloodshed followed an escalation by both sides fighting in the coastal territory, further dimming prospects for a sustainable cease-fire despite international diplomatic efforts.
The attack on the UN school in the Jebaliya refugee camp was the second deadly strike on a UN compound in a week. Shells slammed into the compound before dawn, said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which is sheltering about 200,000 people displaced by the fighting at dozens of UN schools across Gaza.
Gaza health ministry official Ashraf al-Kidra said at least 17 people were killed and about 90 wounded in the school strike.
The Israeli military said it fired back after its soldiers were targeted by mortar rounds launched from the vicinity of the school.
Yup, whatever.
Assad Sabah said he and his five children were huddling under desks in one of the classrooms because of the constant sound of tank fire throughout the night.
‘‘We were scared to death,’’ he said. ‘‘After 4:30 a.m., tanks started firing more. Three explosions shook the school.
‘‘One classroom collapsed over the head of the people who were inside,’’ he said.
In one classroom, the front wall was blown out, leaving debris and bloodied clothing. Another strike tore a large round hole in the ceiling of a second-floor classroom.
Hundreds of people crowded the school courtyard after the strike, some dazed, others wailing.
‘‘Where will we go?’’ asked Aishe Abu Darabeh, 56. ‘‘Where will we go next? We fled, and they are following us.’’
In all, 1,361 Palestinians have been killed — 116 on Wednesday — and more than 7,600 wounded since the July 8 start of fighting, Kidra said. The Israeli military said three of its soldiers were killed when a booby-trapped house collapsed after they identified an entrance to a tunnel inside, raising to 56 the number killed since a ground war began earlier this month. Three civilians also have been killed on the Israeli side.
The United Nations said it was the sixth school to be hit since the conflict began, and the second at which fatalities occurred. At least 15 civilians were killed last Thursday when the courtyard of a UN school in Gaza City was hit.
Then they are not accidents or errors.
Israel has acknowledged that troops fired a mortar shell that hit the courtyard, but it said aerial footage shows that the yard was empty at the time, and that the shell could not have killed anyone.
Israel's shameless lying about their actions is evil, and they will be damned for all eternity the way they have damned the Nazis the last 70 years.
The ultimate irony the Nazis treated their prisoners better than the Zionist Jews of Israel have treated Gazans.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called Wednesday’s strike ‘‘outrageous’’ and ‘‘unjustifiable,’’ and demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in the war.
‘‘Nothing is more shameful than attacking sleeping children,’’ Ban said on his arrival in Costa Rica. He added that ‘‘all available evidence points to Israeli artillery as the cause’’ and noted that Israeli military authorities had received the coordinates of the school from the United Nations 17 times, including on Tuesday night.
He will change his tune shortly.
Responding to Israeli statements that its soldiers were responding to rocket fire from near the school, the UN deputy secretary general, Jan Eliasson, drew attention to the Geneva Conventions, which in laying out the rules of war unequivocally prohibit attacks on schools and hospitals.
“This is a moment where you really have to say, ‘Enough is enough,’ and you have to search for the right words to convince those who have the power to stop this,” Eliasson said.
The White House also condemned the deadly shelling but did not assign blame. White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan also said the United States is ‘‘extremely concerned’’ that thousands of Palestinians are not safe in UN-designated shelters, despite being told by Israel’s military to leave their homes. Israel has been warning civilians by phone and leaflet to leave dangerous areas ahead of strikes on militant targets.
Then they bomb and shell the places where they went.
The mortar shells were fired from a distance of some 200 yards from the school, said an Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Yomtov Tamir, a retired Israeli general, said he was not familiar with Wednesday’s strike but said that even though tank fire is generally ‘‘very accurate’’ it can miss its target for a variety of reasons.
‘‘One, it might have gone through a target,” he said. “Two, it might be a mistake in identification, that they intended to hit something specific, but that it was actually something other than what the person aiming intended.’’
???????
The technological wonder that is the Israeli military f***ed up?
Hours later, several Israeli shells hit a crowded shopping area in the Shijaiyah district in Gaza City, killing at least 16 people, including local Palestinian photographer Rami Rayan, who was wearing a press vest at the time, and wounding more than 200 people, Gaza health officials said.
Kidra and witnesses said the shopping area was busy because residents, and many who had taken shelter in the area from fighting elsewhere, thought a cease-fire was in place.
The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the strike on the shopping area, saying it was investigating the report.
Gaza militants fired 84 rockets at Israel Wednesday, including more than 26 after the cease-fire was announced, the military said.
Yeah, it's always the Palestinians fault.
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"Israel, Hamas OK humanitarian cease-fire; 3-day period set to begin today; talks to aim for a firmer accord" by Ian Deitch and Ibrahim Barzak | Associated Press August 01, 2014
JERUSALEM — In a statement released in New Delhi, where Secretary of State John F. Kerry is traveling, the United States and UN said they had gotten assurances that all parties to the conflict had agreed to an unconditional cease-fire.
Talk about a report that is out of date before it is even read.
Related: New Delhi Nursing a Grudge
They must be hanging around with Israel too long.
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Israel says most of the 32 tunnels it uncovered have now been demolished and that getting rid of the remainder will take no more than a few days....
See: ISIS Tunneling Into Israel From Syria
Earlier, the Israeli military said it was calling up an additional 16,000 reserve soldiers to pursue its campaign against the Islamic militants.
At least 1,441 Palestinians have been killed, three-quarters of them civilians, since hostilities began July 8, according to Gaza health officials — surpassing the at least 1,410 Palestinians killed in Israel’s last major invasion in 2009, according to Palestinian rights groups.
Related: Memory Hole: Cast Lead II
Israel says 56 soldiers, two Israeli civilians, and a Thai agricultural worker have died — far more than the 13 Israeli deaths in the previous campaign.
It's a 30-to-1 ratio this time.
In Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay accused both Israel and Hamas militants of violating the rules of war.
She said Hamas is violating international humanitarian law by ‘‘locating rockets within schools and hospitals, or even launching these rockets from densely populated areas.’’
So she is believing the Israeli propaganda, huh?
And the Israeli government, she said, has defied international law by attacking civilian areas of Gaza.
And?
Pillay also took aim at the United States, Israel’s main ally, for providing financial support for Israel’s Iron Dome antirocket defense system. ‘‘No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling,’’ she said.
See: Under Israel's Iron Dome
The Iron Dome system has been credited with saving countless lives as Hamas militants fired nearly 3,000 rockets at Israel since hostilities began.
At the United Nations, Israel’s ambassador, Ron Prosor, responded to criticism of his country, saying: ‘‘I think the international community should be very vocal in standing with Israel fighting terrorism today because if not, you will see it on your doorstep tomorrow.’’
That is a THREAT along the lines of 9/11!
The rest of the article was so pro-Israel it is not worth posting. Sorry.
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There is really only one place to turn to for answers (it's Hamas's fault).
"Israeli forces, backed by heavy tank fire and airstrikes, moved deeper into southern Gaza late Friday in search of a soldier apparently captured in a clash with Hamas militants earlier in the day. At least 62 Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed in the fierce fighting that quickly shattered a US-brokered cease-fire. The truce collapsed less than two hours after it began. Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon blamed Hamas for violating what was meant to be a three-day humanitarian cease-fire and demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the missing soldier.
I told you he would be switching his whistle. Now his concern is the Israeli soldier. Whatta sphincter! Does he suck Zionist cock, too?
The breakdown of the truce and the apparent capture of the Israeli soldier set the stage for a major escalation.
So what Israeli hotel room is he staying at?
The conflict has already devastated large swaths of the coastal area and killed at least 1,500 Palestinians, mainly civilians, according to Palestinian officials. Israel has lost 63 soldiers and three civilians. A longtime friend of Goldin’s said he is engaged to get married and that he studied at a religious Jewish seminary in the West Bank settlement of Eli. Goldin has a twin brother who is also in the military on the Gaza front-lines, said the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not have the family’s permission to discuss Goldin’s personal details with the media. The soldier’s father, Simha Goldin, is a Tel Aviv University professor specializing in Ashkenazi Jewry, the friend said. If confirmed, Goldin’s capture could dramatically change the trajectory of the conflict. Any cease-fire efforts would likely be put on hold and Israel might instead expand its ground operation."
The shelling of Rafah and Gaza is secondary. So who benefited?
Kerry demands release of allegedly abducted Israeli soldier
I was standing by my Secretary of State, but not now. It was just what I thought it was: a good cop, bad coup routine.
And now Kerry is sending U.S. special envoy for the Mideast Frank Lowenstein to Cairo?
"The Senate on Friday rushed through a $225 million bill to replenish Israel’s missile defense system, and House approval was expected in the final hours before lawmakers began a summer break. The money will go to restocking Israel’s Iron Dome. Efforts in the Senate to approve the money stalled Thursday night after Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma sought cuts elsewhere in the budget to pay for the aid. Earlier, senators attempted to lump the Israel money into a broader spending bill that included border security and wildfire assistance money. That bill failed to get the necessary 60 votes on Thursday, and the House had little interest in it, anyway.
This government has no interest in spending money on you, American.
Friday’s separate Israel bill passed by voice vote. The Iron Dome system has emerged as a game-changer in the current round of violence, with Israeli officials citing a success rate as high as 90 percent.
That's a lie but so what?
Created by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Iron Dome has enjoyed strong U.S. technological and financial support. Throughout its history, the U.S. has provided more than $700 million to help Israel cover costs for batteries, interceptors, production costs and maintenance, the Congressional Research Service said.
Can there be any more doubt this government is Israeli-occupied territory?
The total already appeared set to climb above $1 billion after Senate appropriators doubled the Obama administration’s request for Iron Dome funding for fiscal 2015. Now it seems likely to rise even further, with President Barack Obama expected to sign any bill swiftly into law."
Look at how quickly the dy$functional Congre$$ and executive move for Israel in this time of slashing service cuts and austerity for the American people.
Also takes all the attention of this, doesn't it?
"Palestinians studying war crimes charges; Toll from conflict has spurred Abbas" by Karin Laub | Associated Press August 01, 2014
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is seeking written pledges of support from all political factions, including rival Hamas, before making any attempt to press for possible war crimes charges against Israel, senior officials said Thursday.
Abbas hesitated in the past because such a step would transform his relations with Israel from tense to openly hostile and could put him on a collision course with the United States.
But with nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel-Hamas fighting in Gaza in the past 24 days, according to health officials, Abbas is under growing domestic pressure to turn to the International Criminal Court to try to make a case against Israel.
He doesn't have to; Israel made it against itself with their actions.
Israeli officials have said Israel is acting in self-defense by targeting Hamas’s military arsenal and rocket launching sites and have accused Hamas of using Gaza civilians as human shields.
Earlier Thursday, the top human rights official for the United Nations accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes in the current Gaza fighting.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Hamas is committing war crimes by firing rockets from heavily populated areas and storing them in schools and hospitals.
She said Israel has defied international law in Gaza by attacking civilian areas with schools, hospitals, homes, and UN facilities.
They have done it for years with impunity.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment.
Hamas has portrayed its rocket fire on Israel as resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
With the Palestinian casualties in Gaza mounting, leaders of political factions in the West Bank have repeatedly urged Abbas to seek Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court.
‘‘We have been pressing him for a long time,’’ independent legislator Mustafa Barghouti said Thursday. At a meeting with political leaders Tuesday, Abbas asked participants to sign a declaration of support for such a move, said Barghouti, adding that everyone signed.
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Meanwhile, over in the West Bank:
"West Bank residents fear for Gaza relatives" by Sudarsan Raghavan | Washington Post July 31, 2014
RAMALLAH, West Bank — In 2000, the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, erupted in protest of Israel’s occupation and expansion of settlements. As attacks on its citizens mounted, Israel tightened its borders. It then imposed sweeping restrictions on the movement of Palestinians into Israel and between the West Bank and Gaza, putting in place a system of checkpoints, roadblocks, travel permits, and forbidden roads.
After Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, Israel imposed a total blockade of the strip.
Actually, they won elections and the jewspaper knows it but constantly repeats the distortion and lie. Then they wonder why I don't believe a word.
Today, Israel maintains control of its border crossings with Gaza, as well as its air and sea space, preventing Palestinians from entering or leaving save for humanitarian reasons, such as urgent medical care....
Sometimes not even for that.
For nearly 15 years, tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have been unable to visit their relatives in Gaza, roughly 50 miles away, because of travel and other restrictions imposed by Israel. It is an emotional divide, not just a geographic one, that separates them.
That is inhumane in the extreme.
As the conflict between Israel and Hamas enters its fourth week, Palestinians in the West Bank now find themselves, by their own admission, in a futile struggle to comfort relatives in Gaza, many of whom they have never met.
The lives of the West Bankers are ordered by rumors and news broadcasts, tweets and Facebook posts about Gaza. And with each day, the emotional toll increases.
*************
Ahmed Obaid, 58, came to Ramallah from Gaza with his family to work on an engineering project in the fall of 2000. After the Palestinian uprising began, they couldn’t return to Gaza. Now, he can’t wire money because Israel and the Palestinian government in the West Bank prohibit such transfers, fearing that they could finance Hamas. So Obaid is considering asking friends in Persian Gulf countries to wire funds.
It might be difficult, though, to track down his relatives. They have scattered across Gaza. ‘‘So if one gets targeted, the others will live and the dynasty will survive,’’ Obaid explained as he sat on the elegant, mosaic-tiled patio of his home. By his side was his 20-year-old son, Moad, who stays in touch by Facebook with a cousin in Gaza he has never met.
In another neighborhood of Ramallah, Abdul Karim Kashan, 65, said he was worried about his two sisters in Khan Younis. One has sought refuge in a UN shelter. The other is in a hospital where her daughter gave birth to a baby last week. Israeli airstrikes have been pounding the area.
He ought to be worried, and I hope his family is okay.
Kashan serves as a link between his two sisters and other relatives spread across Gaza. The pair have run out of money for their cellphones, so he calls them every day to update them about other family members. Recently, he gave his sisters bad news: A cousin was in a coma after an Israeli airstrike, and his 13-year-old son was killed.
Kashan said he plans to join anti-Israel protests in the West Bank. When he tells his sisters, he said, it ‘‘will boost their morale.’’
This thing has so BACKFIRED on ISRAEL!
***********
Whenever Sami Shaath, 52, an Arabic-language professor seated in the manicured garden of his comfortable four-story house, phones his brothers and sisters in Gaza, he prays they will pick up. When they do, they attempt to steer the conversation to mundane matters, he said, as if they are trying to transport themselves back to their prewar existence.
‘‘They don’t want to worry me,’’ Shaath said. ‘‘They try to change the mood, the rhythm of their suffering.’’
The other day, they asked about his son, Majid, and whether he had passed his high school exams. He did with high marks, Shaath told them. Did you throw him a party, they asked?
It’s questions like this that make Shaath feel even guiltier.
‘‘I hate myself,’’ he continued, looking at his beautiful home. ‘‘I have all the food I want in my house, and they are struggling to eat.’’
You have nothing to feel guilty about, and place the hate where it belongs: Israel and its government of mad dog Zionist Jews.
***************
Moments earlier, Shaath, a man compact in size but large in voice, with a pepper-colored moustache and graying hair, received a text message he had been dreading. His cousin Muhammad, 25, had died in a Cairo hospital from injuries he sustained when an Israeli airstrike hit his home in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, a few days earlier. Three of Muhammad’s brothers were killed instantly in the attack, which leveled their house.
Palestinian medics transported Muhammad to Egypt through the Rafah crossing, which is open only to those with medical emergencies....
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FREE GAZA!
"Another vivid example of the limited value of military force is now unfolding in Gaza. Radicals there, armed with rudimentary weapons, have dragged the mighty Israeli army into a bloody conflict. They win strength — and blacken Israel’s name in the world — even as they suffer inevitable defeat on the battlefield. Israel clings even more fervently than the United States to the dangerously outmoded view that countries can guarantee their long-term security by military means alone."
You know has all the answers (it's Hamas's fault)?
