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“Hama’s Gaza Victory”: Did Netanyahu capitulate?

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Headline from the Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday: “Hama’s Gaza Victory.” And their lead sentence: “The cease-fire leaves the terror group intact and politically stronger.”

“Let us be totally honest: This is not a cease-fire – it is a SURRENDER,” says Shmuel Sackett, spokesman for Moshe Feiglin who seeks “authentic Jewish leadership for Israel.”

From Arutz Sheva, Israeli National News: The Hamas terrorist organization has declared November 22, the day after its ceasefire was signed with Israel, as a public holiday in Gaza. “The Palestinian government announces that Thursday 22nd November is a national holiday of victory and an official holiday,” read a statement issued by Hamas. Hamas invited “all citizens to celebrate this occasion and visit the families of the martyrs and the wounded and those affected by the violence and to affirm national solidarity.”

“Everyone is angry at Netanyahu now for signing the cease-fire,” said Moshe Feiglin, who the New York Times not long ago said brought the Tea Party to Israel. Feiglin faces a vote to become a key member of Likud’s Knesset team on November 25. “I see myself as the representative of Liberty in the Knesset,” he said in a recent TV interview.

“But Netanyahu’s predicament is a precise reflection of post-Oslo Israeli society . . . If Netanyahu had ordered a ground invasion of Gaza, soldiers would have been killed. After a short period of time he would have pulled the troops out of Gaza without significant achievements . . . To remain in Gaza, we first have to renounce the very essence of the idea of partitioning this Land. We have to internalize that this is our Land – exclusively. We must – on a national scale – return to the Land of Israel and our Jewish identity. . . Is Israeli society ready for this type of return to ourselves?

“The Israelis want the best of both worlds: security and normalcy. But it has become quite clear that it is specifically the mental servitude to Oslo, the flight from destiny to the enslavement to normalcy and pragmatism – that has so severely compromised Israel’s security.”

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Bernie Quigley is a prize-winning magazine writer and has worked more than 30 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and book, movie, music and art reviewer. His essays on politics and world affairs have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News and other newspapers and magazines. He has published poetry in Painted Bride Quarterly and has written dozens of magazine articles. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He has written hundreds of columns for “Pundits Blog” in “The Hill” a political journal in Washington, D.C. He lives in the White Mountains with his wife and four children.

Madness: Exchanging One Pro-US Dictator For Another Dictator Who Hates Both the US and Israel

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Egypt’s new President (for life?), Mohammed Morsi, riding the afterglow of huge praise from President Obama and Hillary Clinton for his role in ending 8 days of hostility in Gaza, leveraged that glow to seize dictatorial powers over his countrymen.

Morsi a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is tied closely to the United States mortal enemy, Al Quaeda, has been aggressively seizing power since he gained office by winning a democratic election 52-48.

On Thursday he issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight & extended that same immunity to a committee drafting a new constitution for the country that many say has been hijacked by Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood allies. Morsis’s critics say he is trying to push through an Islamist state that will marginalize women and minority Christians, infringing on personal liberties.

“Morsi today usurped all state powers & appointed himself Egypt’s new pharaoh,” pro-reform leader Mohamed El Baradei wrote. “This is a major blow to the revolution that could have dire consequences.”

The last time Hillary Clinton visited Egypt, her motorcade was pelted with tomatoes by Egyptians who felt they have been sold out by the Obama administration. These Egyptian citizens feel the Obama administration let Egypt fall into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, an arch enemy of democracy and the western worlds way of life.

But since the pelting of Hillary’s motorcade several months ago, the Obama administration has showered millions of dollars on the Morisis government in spite of his dictatorial moves and his aggressive disregard of previous peace agreements with neighboring country, Israel.

Many Americans think “foreign aid” should be based on the carrot and the stick approach. Regardless of the fact that America is broke, it still borrows money and prints it in order to dole out foreign aid. So lets help our friends, so they can help us.

This foreign aid money should have strings attached…It seems we have exchanged a previous dictator, who was friendly towards us, for a new dictator who is not friendly towards us or our close ally Israel. What kind of madness is this?

We are showering Egypt with billions of dollars; in fact Hillary just authorized giving the Morsi government 450 million in emergency funds on the heels of the just completed cease of hostilities in Gaza. Despite the fact Egypt has total control over weapons smuggled into Gaza and Hamas. Read more from this story HERE.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Video: Hamas Summarily Executes Six “Israeli Spies,” Drags Bodies Through Gaza Streets Behind Motorcycles

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Six men accused of being ‘Israeli spies’ were dragged through the streets of Gaza City and executed in front of a chanting mob today as Israel warned Palestinians to evacuate some areas of the territory in apparent preparation for a ground invasion.

Witnesses said the six were taken to an intersection in the north of the city where they were summarily shot for providing intelligence that helped Israel pinpoint key figures in Hamas and the Islamic Jihad targeted by their warplanes.

The names of the men are said to have been scrawled on the road after they had been questioned by Hamas security officials about who provided the ‘human intelligence’ necessary to pinpoint targets for ‘precision’ attacks that have 118 Palestinians – half civilians, including women and children, dead – in seven days of military operations.

Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers have staked tough, hard-to-bridge positions, and the gaps fuel the threat of an Israeli ground invasion. The content of the Egyptian plan is unknown, but both Israel and Hamas have presented conditions and Egyptian intelligence officials are meeting representatives from Israel and Hamas separately.

Israel demands an end to rocket fire from Gaza and a halt to weapons smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt. It also wants international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt’s Sinai region, which abuts both Gaza and southern Israel, to attack Israelis.

Hamas wants Israel to halt all attacks on Gaza and lift tight restrictions on trade and movement in and out of the territory that have been in place since Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israel has rejected such demands in the past. Read more from this story HERE.

Turkish Prime Minister: ‘Israel Is A Terrorist State’

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A top Turkish official has claimed that Israel is committing acts of terrorism by bombing Hamas targets in Gaza.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told the Eurasian Islamic Council conference in Istanbul that the Jewish state is systematically mass-killing Muslims.

“Those who associate Islam with terrorism close their eyes in the face of mass killing of Muslims, turn their heads from the massacre of children in Gaza,” Erdogan said, according to Reuters. “For this reason, I say that Israel is a terrorist state, and its acts are terrorist acts.”

The conflict between Israel and Hamas escalated last Wednesday after an Israeli airstrike killed the terror group’s military commander, Ahmed Jabari.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hamas Missile Strike Gets Personal

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Like many of us, I’ve been carefully watching operation “Pillar of Cloud” launched by Israel against the forces of darkness. Israel is the last country on the planet that would attack its neighbors without an enormously just cause. It’s the last country in the world that would launch a massive aerial strike against anyone, unless its very survival was in the balance. I know because I grew up there. My entire family is still there, many of whom are under constant daily missile attacks, attacks which have been haunting them for more than a decade.

With that being said, this article is not an attempt to analyze the war, nor is it an attempt to coin a superficial solution to the almost-eternal battle between good and evil. Rather, I would like to tell a personal story, which just so happens to have involved not just myself, but also 2010 US Senate candidate Joe Miller.

I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel with Joe and his son Jacob all over Israel in October of 2011. Although I was born in Israel and lived there half of my life, Joe and I still managed to tour many sites around the country which I had never been to before. From the Golan Heights in the north, to Masada and the Dead Sea in the south, we tried to cover as much ground as we could during the two weeks we were in country.

One of the places on our tour map was the city of Sderot. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Sderot, it is the closest Israeli city to the Gaza Strip, literally, only a few hundred meters from the border fence. The residents of Sderot have only 10 to 15 seconds to find the nearest bomb shelter when the sirens go off, indicating another missile from Gaza is on its way.

As it turned out, a personal friend of mine who lives in Israel, and who has some connections around the country, managed to arrange for a personal tour of Sderot for us. We were graciously hosted by the Sderot Media Center and its director, Noam Bedein. We toured much of the town and were briefed on the unique issues the city is facing in light of its extremely close proximity to Gaza.

One of the spots we arrived at was a small hill overlooking the Gaza Strip. The hill itself wasn’t more than 20 or 30 yards away from the nearest family homes behind us. Immediately in front of us, near the bottom of the hill, was the borderline fence between Gaza and Sederot.

Looking at the proximity of Gaza, along with the pock-marked walls of many of the nearby buildings, helped us appreciate what the brave residents of Sderot have been dealing with for the past 12 years. But we could only start to imagine what it is like to always worry about being 15 seconds away from the nearest bomb shelter, or what it feels like for Sderot’s children to be shocked awake in the middle of the night by the missile siren, and then try to run for their lives to a bomb shelter. It is truly something that most Americans can’t even begin to comprehend.

While we were standing on that hill, Noam Bedein gave us a very detailed explanation about the surrounding areas, the security issues facing the residents of Sderot, and the unbearable circumstances affecting everyone’s daily routines. He also explained how the Sderot Media Center attempts to inform the outside world about what is going on in Sderot.

So why this anecdote of our trip to Sderot? In part because the current Gaza war is being waged just 5 minutes outside of Sderot and many Hamas missiles are raining down on its people.

But what really spurred me to write this article is the following fact: the exact spot where Joe, his son Jacob, I and Noam were standing while looking at Gaza and listening to Noam’s overview suffered a direct missile hit less than 24 hours ago. [The picture above is Joe standing at that spot, overlooking Gaza]

It is one thing to hear about the missile strikes on Sderot, not knowing the terrain, but it’s a totally different experience when you know and understand that if the missile would have hit just another 20 yards behind where we had been standing, it likely would have wiped out an entire family.

This is the life the people of Sderot have to live, while the world watches, yawns, and goes about its way. The world only wakes up when Israel retaliates and drops bombs on the missile launchers, trying to prevent the indiscriminate missile strikes against its civilians.

It is my hope and prayer that one day, Joe, I, or anyone else who feels like it, can stand on top of that small hill in Sderot – or anywhere else in Israel, for that matter – in peace and safety.

But the answer is not pacifism.

Golda Meir, one of Israel’s Prime Ministers once said, “If the Arabs laid down their arms today, there will be peace tomorrow. If Israel laid down her arms today, there will be no Israel tomorrow.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

A View From Israel: Gaza Missiles Launching from Oslo

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[Editor’s note: This article was written by Moshe Feiglin, regarded by some as a Tea Party leader in Israel. In this article, Mr. Feiglin describes his conversation with residents of Sderot, a southern Israel community adjacent to Gaza that Joe Miller visited this past fall. Sderot has been hit by many missiles from Gaza this past week]

On Tuesday of this week, I was at a campaign rally in Sderot. “I would like to ask what some of you may see as a strange question,” I said to the audience in the packed hall. “In the war that is raging right now (this was before the major fighting began on Wednesday) between us and the Gazans, who is right?”

The hall fell silent. The audience looked uncomfortable and curious. “They are right,” one woman said. “We are right,” said another. Most of the audience just looked baffled.

“Look at what is happening “, I continued. “Even here in Sderot, we cannot get a clear answer to the most fundamental of questions. So who is right?”

An endless stream of commentators, security experts and politicians visit Sderot. One advocates targeted assassinations, the other conquest, one says we should talk and the other says we should disengage. When all is said and done, it is clear to all that not one of them has gotten to the root of the real problem and is still incapable – after 12 years of Sderot being on the receiving end of incoming missiles – of relieving the misery of the residents of southern Israel.

Sderot’s problem is not military in nature. Clearly, we are stronger than they are. The reason that we cannot deal with murderous attacks on our citizens is not military – it is spiritual. We have lost our belief in the justice of our cause. A mistake of this proportion cannot be rectified with shortcuts. We must return to the point at which we strayed from the path. That point is Oslo. It is there that we declared that this land is not our land. It is there that we recognized the rights of a different sovereign on our country’s heartland. It is there that we lost the legitimacy for our existence in Sderot and as a result, the ability to fight against an enemy who does believe in the justice of his cause.

Read more from this story HERE.

War Looms Over Gaza as Israel Mobilizes Troops Near Border (+video)

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photo credit: stringsofasoulJERUSALEM – Both the Israeli military and militants in the Gaza strip continued relentless air strikes Friday as Israeli troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers massed near the Palestinian territory, signaling a ground invasion might be growing near.

Hopes of even a brief cease-fire were dashed after both sides accused the other of violating a proposed cease-fire during a visit by the prime minister of Egypt to Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told Egypt that Israel was prepared to suspend its military offensive in the Gaza Strip during Prime Minister Hisham Kandil’s three-hour visit there Friday.

However, Israel later said Hamas did not honor the deal, saying rockets fired from Gaza had hit several sites in southern Israel as Kandil was in the enclave.

Israel strongly denied it had carried out any attacks from the time Kandil entered Gaza, though Gaza militants claimed Israel had continued strikes during the visit.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Israel vs. the World!!!

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Steven Crowder, a comedian frequently featured on Fox and other networks, created this humorous video covering a deadly serious issue: anti-Israel violence:

Here’s a little more background on the producer/actor in the above video, Steven Crowder:

As “FoxNews’ brightest, funniest young Conservative mind,” Steven Crowder is a mainstay in the worlds of television, comedy and writing.

Before being brought in as one of FoxNews’ youngest contributors on record, Steven began his career in entertainment starting with voicework in children’s cartoons (most notably voicing the character of “The Brain” on the hit series “Arthur”) along with acting in both television and film.

After beginning to perform stand-up comedy at the age of 18, he was quickly scouted as the youngest Comedian ever to perform at the world famous “Just For Laughs” comedy festival in Montreal. Afterward, he went on to win Myspace’s national “So You Think You’re Funny” contest. Still unsatisfied, Steven decided to take his brand of take-no-prisoners, politically incorrect, comedy-club-favorite humor… to the Internet. Before long, his viral videos were being posted all over the web. Steven then began making the rounds on every major cable news and radio program in the country, bringing his unique and irreverent point of view to the mainstream. You name the show, Crowder’s done it. During this time, Steven delivered a stand-out performance in the nationally successful Christian film, “To Save a Life.” Impressed with his ability, FoxNews invited Steven into the family as a full-time contributor. A true rebel of the entertainment industry, Steven continues to please audiences with his no-holds-barred style of comedy and poignant social commentary across the globe.

Video: Celebrating Obama Supporters-“No More Israel, F–k Those Mother F–kers”

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This disturbing video was taken at a celebration of Obama supporters after the election.

Although this is obviously not a scientific sampling of the Democratic Party attitudes toward Israel, it is exceptionally disturbing to see such an open display of antisemitism among Obama’s supporters.

One celebrant is asked why he is there. He says, “Obama.” The interviewer asks what that means to him. His first answer? “No more Israel.”

Another claims to be the son of a Jewish parent but says Israel is wrong about everything. He also says that “I really don’t think that us being with Israel is a good choice for us or for the world.”

Caution: the following, eye-opening video is packed with profanity:

Another Reason Why the UN Has to Go: Only Israel Wants Romney

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In contrast to a recent survey finding that respondents in 21 countries around the world favor President Obama over Mitt Romney by a significant margin, a new opinion poll in Israel suggests that Jews in that country would be much happier to see the Republican candidate win.

Fifty-seven percent of Jewish respondents said that, “when it comes to Israel’s interests,” they would prefer Romney as the next U.S. president, compared to 22 percent who said the same of Obama.

Among Israeli Arab respondents, Obama was favored by a 45-15 point margin.

The Peace Index poll, a project of Tel Aviv University and the independent Israel Democracy Institute, was conducted last week and released on Monday.

Breaking down the Jewish response, among those identifying themselves as on the right 70 percent preferred Romney and 13 percent favored Obama. Among self-identified leftists, Obama led by 51-30 points. In the political center, Romney was favored over his Democratic rival by 54 points to 25.

Read more from this story HERE.