It is amazing how pro-Israel rallies are peaceful, and pro-Hamas rallies are wrought with violence, looting, and effigy burning.
Also, check out pictures from the pro-Israel rally in Toronto (which too was peaceful).
Hat Tip: Israel Matzav
(1 Ratings)
MENACING texts sent to Israeli soldiers’ families by Hamas supporters were traced to Britain yesterday.
Scores of messages have been sent — warning that Israeli sons fighting in Gaza face slaughter.
Checks of the code from the sender’s number revealed the texts originated in the UK.
British supporters of the Islamic fanatics in the besieged Gaza Strip were assumed to be responsible for the scare tactics last night.
The message — sent randomly to Israeli mobiles — reads: “Come on into Gaza. Lots of surprises waiting for your sons, the least of which is death — Hamas.”
Israeli and British anti-terrorist investigators are attempting to trace the terror texter — but last night the number had been switched off, suggesting the line had been disconnected.
Liron Morris, whose husband is an Israeli army reservist, said: “It seems very legitimate to me to be scared when someone gets a hold of your telephone number and threatens you.”
Hopefully the terror texters are caught.
Hat Tip: Israel Matzav
(1 Ratings)
Two new polls show that Americans strongly back Israel over Hamas in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
A McClatchy/Ipsos poll found that 44 percent of Americans support Israel’s use of force, in comparison to 18% who think Hamas’s use of force is appropriate. And 57% think the latter is using excessive force - something only 36% believe Israel to be doing.
The poll also found that more Americans now oppose rather than support creating a Palestinian state, with 45% saying the US shouldn’t favor one, versus 31% who said it should and 24% who didn’t know.
In addition, the majority of Americans (51%) are not confident that President-elect Barack Obama will be able to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians once he takes office: 32% said they were somewhat confident, and only 10% said they were very confident.
A large plurality, 49%, put the blame for the current conflict squarely on Hamas, with only 14% blaming Israel and 29% undecided. Nine percent said both, and 4% said neither.
A recent poll by the pro-Israel advocacy group The Israel Project also found that more Americans (55%) hold Palestinians responsible for the violence rather than Israelis (11%), with 23% blaming both and 5% blaming neither. They also fault Palestinian leaders over Israeli ones for the humanitarian crisis (66%-17%), and see the latter as working toward peace more than the Palestinians (48%-5%).
The people surveyed identified the conflict as stemming more from ideology and religion than land (73% versus 19%). Between 87% and 91% of those questioned agreed that stopping Iran from training and funding terrorists, and Palestinians from firing rockets and teaching hate, was important to bringing about peace. A much lower percentage - 38%-41% - felt it was important for Israel to stop building settlements and to give Palestinians land, open the Gaza borders and stop the military incursion in the Strip to bring peace.
The Israel Project survey as was conducted among 800 registered voters from January 10 through January 12, with a margin of error of +/- 3.5.
The McClatchy/Ipsos poll was conducted from January 6 through January 12 among 1,054 Americans 18 and older. The margin of error was +/- 3 percentage points.
We have your back, Israel!
Hat Tip: Israel Matzav
(1 Ratings)
The so-called “Iranian Unit” of Hamas has been destroyed, according to Gaza sources cited Thursday by the Haaretz daily. The sources said most of the unit’s 100 members were killed in fighting in the Zeytun neighborhood of Gaza City.
The terrorists had been trained in infantry tactics, the use of anti-tank missiles and the detonation of explosives, among other skills, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard at Hizbullah camps in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley, as well as sites in Iran.
The IDF Southern Command has reportedly stepped up ground operations in Gaza, in anticipation of a ceasefire declaration in the near future. Senior officers said Thursday that there are probably no more than a few days until the end of the fighting.
Hamas: We Didn’t Expect It.
Two captured terrorists interviewed by Maariv/NRG say that Hamas was not expecting Israel’s response to the escalation in missile attacks on Israeli targets that preceded Operation Cast Lead.
One of them, a 52-year-old victim of a premature detonation who had already done time in an Israeli jail, said:
“Hamas took a gamble. We thought, at worst Israel will come and do something from the air - something superficial. They’ll come in and go out. We never thought that we would reach the point where fear will swallow the heart and the feet will want to flee. You [Israel] are fighting like you fought in ‘48. What got into you all of a sudden?”
The second terrorist, a 21-year-old, said Hamas brought order to Gaza, but also brought fear. He noted that it was dangerous in Gaza for non-Hamas members, citing an instance of his being beaten and another in which he saw a friend killed when he went to get gas. “Now they’re all gone,” he said. “There have been no Hamasniks in the streets since the start of the campaign.”
Wow!
The Israeli Defense Forces are going for the jugular.
They are going to destroy Hamas.
Keep kicking ass, IDF.
Hat Tip: Instapundit
UPDATE 1: Ed Morrissey at Hot Air adds:
This comes as a severe blow to the prestige of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, as well as Hezbollah. If their best can’t stand up for a week against the IDF, then their own enemies will look at their military as much less of a deterrent against action. Since their nuclear program appears close to fruition, this is the wrong time to send that kind of message about Iranian capabilities.
Ha’aretz also reports that Hamas badly miscalculated the effect of their renewed missile attacks on Israel. After watching the Olmert government in action in 2006 against Hezbollah and the political reaction to it, they assumed Israel would just return fire by air and cause “superficial” damage to their organization. Surprise!
Really, what got into Israel was the narrowing options for dealing with Hamas. They’ve tried just about everything, including cease-fires and the aforementioned air strikes, with no success. Invasion and absolute confrontation was about all they had left short of complete surrender. If Hamas leadership had paid attention, they might have realized this.
The Israelis are widely expected to bring the offensive to a halt in the next few days, but I’m not certain they will. They’re starting to do tremendous damage to Hamas both in Gaza and worldwide. They have restored the reputation for their military efforts that got damaged in 2006. The IDF and Israeli government should consider completing the rout of Hamas rather than worry about timetables at this point.
Sweet. Exactly what I said, but with better sentence structure.
Again, the IDF should just go for the jugular against Hamas and set an example if Hezbollah thinks about attacking Israel again.
(2 Ratings)
Well, there is more news than the plane crash on the Hudson River.
Check out this amazing video!
Had to add the translation again as it wasnt part of the video file.
“Soldiers from the IDF Golani Infantry Division get ambushed by terrorists and respond by killing them.”
You don’t expect to see anything like this anywhere other than in the movies. Fair play to the IDF soldier, takes some guts to do that. Speaking of which I’d imagine there is a fair amount spread over the desert after that grenade went off.
Ace writes:
The video (QUALITY) is less than awesome, as you can’t see a damn thing, really.
But the narration — just imagining — is perfect. (I’ll take their word for it that the little black squibbles on the screen are doing what they say they’re doing.)
He turned a Hamas terrorist into his own human shield. Explosively ironic.
Israeli Defense Forces - 1,000,000
Hamas - 0
Hat Tip: ACE OF SPADES HQ
UPDATE 1: AllahPundit at Hot Air does not think the video is real.
Secretly, he knows it is real.
(2 Ratings)
Plus, liberals at the rally are already mad at Barack Obama. Apparently, Obama is not left-wing and radical enough for their tastes!
The only pro-Israel supporter at the rally was asked by the police to leave as pro-Hamas terrorist supporters burned flags.
The family that hates together, stays together!
Scoop This still stands with Israel.
Hat Tip: The Jawa Report
(2 Ratings)
Breaking News…
Developing…
UPDATE 1: There is a report that the Israeli Defense Forces may have hit some type of warehouse with Hamas rockets, which caused huge explosions deep inside of Gaza.
Developing…
UPDATE 2: breitbart.com
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stood within Hamas rocket range Monday and warned Islamic militants that they face an “iron fist” unless they agree to Israeli terms for an end to war in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas showed no signs of wavering, however, with its leader, Ismail Haniyeh, saying the militants were “closer to victory.”
Despite the tough words, Egypt said it was making slow progress in brokering a truce, and special Mideast envoy Tony Blair said elements were in place for a cease-fire.
As Olmert spoke in the Israeli city of Ashkelon, Israeli tanks, gunboats and warplanes hammered suspected hiding places of Hamas operatives who control the poor, densely populated territory just across the border.
After nightfall, flares and explosions lit up the sky over Gaza and heavy gunfire was heard in parts of the coastal territory of 1.4 million people.
Fighting has intensified on both sides. Israeli forces continue to drive deep into Gaza.
Hamas leaders are hiding inside hospitals. They know their time is running out.
(1 Ratings)
My friend Eric Golub of THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS attended a pro-Israel rally in Los Angeles this past weekend. There was also a simultaneous pro-Hamas rally.
Here is part of his report:
Over a 24 hour span, I attended one Pro-Israel rally and one anti-Israel gathering of terrorist murderers.
To describe the stark differences between the human beings that rallied for Israel on Sunday and the savage animals that congregated the day before would be akin to describing night and day. Like night and day, the differences should be self evident.
I was interviewed by FOX Los Angeles, although they edited out my more strident comments about wanting Iran and Syria to have their government buildings turned into 50,000 hole golf courses.
Unfortunately I was labeled as a “Pro-Israel Protester” instead of a “Pro-Israel Supporter.” Then again, this is local news. They did not have time to do the story about the escaped Panda from the zoo.
Besides, the Palestinians in these crowds would have most likely shot the infidel fuzzy critter.
Check out the video of Eric being interviewed!
Video link: My FOX LA.
(1 Ratings)
Samuel Wurzelbacher of Ohio, aka Joe the Plumber, arrived in Sderot at noon Sunday to show local and foreign reporters how to do it right.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” he told foreign reporters.
“You should be patriotic, protect your family and children, not report like you have been doing for the past two weeks since this war has started,” he said.
Wurzelbacher, the man who stole the limelight from Republican presidential candidate John McCain during the American election campaign, has found a new job - as a correspondent for the Internet Web sites PJTV and Pajamas Media.
Armed with a camera and a temporary Government Press Office card, he got a taste of reality in Sderot, visiting a house hit by a Kassam rocket two weeks ago and experiencing a “Code Red” alert first-hand. He also observed and reported from the house where a Kassam landed on Sunday afternoon.
…”Do you think this is normal, the way you cover this conflict and give away information to your enemy?” he asked the journalists that gathered around him.
“It makes me sick to see the way you behave - you guys need to be protective of your homes, your children, your family.”
“I am angry,” he said, “and this is why I came here.”
It takes a conservative rookie reporter to shine light on the truth in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Screw the liberal media. They have no honor or integrity. No wonder CNN was butt-humped by a fake pro-Hamas video.
Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin
UPDATE 1: Check out the video on breitbart.tv.
(1 Ratings)
WASHINGTON — President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.
The White House denied that request outright, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama.
This account of the expanded American covert program and the Bush administration’s efforts to dissuade Israel from an aerial attack on Iran emerged in interviews over the past 15 months with current and former American officials, outside experts, international nuclear inspectors and European and Israeli officials. None would speak on the record because of the great secrecy surrounding the intelligence developed on Iran.
More…
Attack Planning
Early in 2008, the Israeli government signaled that it might be preparing to take matters into its own hands. In a series of meetings, Israeli officials asked Washington for a new generation of powerful bunker-busters, far more capable of blowing up a deep underground plant than anything in Israel’s arsenal of conventional weapons. They asked for refueling equipment that would allow their aircraft to reach Iran and return to Israel. And they asked for the right to fly over Iraq.
Mr. Bush deflected the first two requests, pushing the issue off, but “we said ‘hell no’ to the overflights,” one of his top aides said. At the White House and the Pentagon, there was widespread concern that a political uproar in Iraq about the use of its American-controlled airspace could result in the expulsion of American forces from the country.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, declined several requests over the past four weeks to be interviewed about Israel’s efforts to obtain the weapons from Washington, saying through aides that he was too busy.
Last June, the Israelis conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean Sea that appeared to be a dry run for an attack on the enrichment plant at Natanz. When the exercise was analyzed at the Pentagon, officials concluded that the distances flown almost exactly equaled the distance between Israel and the Iranian nuclear site.
“This really spooked a lot of people,” one White House official said. White House officials discussed the possibility that the Israelis would fly over Iraq without American permission. In that case, would the American military be ordered to shoot them down? If the United States did not interfere to stop an Israeli attack, would the Bush administration be accused of being complicit in it?
More…
A New Covert Push
Throughout 2008, the Bush administration insisted that it had a plan to deal with the Iranians: applying overwhelming financial pressure that would persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear program, as foreign enterprises like the French company Total pulled out of Iranian oil projects, European banks cut financing, and trade credits were squeezed.
But the Iranians were making uranium faster than the sanctions were making progress. As Mr. Bush realized that the sanctions he had pressed for were inadequate and his military options untenable, he turned to the C.I.A. His hope, several people involved in the program said, was to create some leverage against the Iranians, by setting back their nuclear program while sanctions continued and, more recently, oil prices dropped precipitously.
There were two specific objectives: to slow progress at Natanz and other known and suspected nuclear facilities, and keep the pressure on a little-known Iranian professor named Mohsen Fakrizadeh, a scientist described in classified portions of American intelligence reports as deeply involved in an effort to design a nuclear warhead for Iran.
Past American-led efforts aimed at Natanz had yielded little result. Several years ago, foreign intelligence services tinkered with individual power units that Iran bought in Turkey to drive its centrifuges, the floor-to-ceiling silvery tubes that spin at the speed of sound, enriching uranium for use in power stations or, with additional enrichment, nuclear weapons.
A number of centrifuges blew up, prompting public declarations of sabotage by Iranian officials. An engineer in Switzerland, who worked with the Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan, had been “turned” by American intelligence officials and helped them slip faulty technology into parts bought by the Iranians.
What Mr. Bush authorized, and informed a narrow group of Congressional leaders about, was a far broader effort, aimed at the entire industrial infrastructure that supports the Iranian nuclear program. Some of the efforts focused on ways to destabilize the centrifuges. The details are closely held, for obvious reasons, by American officials. One official, however, said, “It was not until the last year that they got really imaginative about what one could do to screw up the system.”
Then, he cautioned, “none of these are game-changers,” meaning that the efforts would not necessarily cripple the Iranian program. Others in the administration strongly disagree.
In the end, success or failure may come down to how much pressure can be brought to bear on Mr. Fakrizadeh, whom the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate identifies, in its classified sections, as the manager of Project 110 and Project 111. According to a presentation by the chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Agency, those were the names for two Iranian efforts that appeared to be dedicated to designing a warhead and making it work with an Iranian missile. Iranian officials say the projects are a fiction, made up by the United States.
Basically, Israel asked for permission to attack Iran. Israel wanted to fly over Iraqi airspace. President Bush said no citing the safety of American troops in Iraq. Also, Israel asked for bunker-buster bombs, which were also denied by President Bush.
President Bush, however, has decided to use the Central Intelligence Agency to disrupt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The CIA most likely was able to turn the suppliers of centrifuges to Iran, thus the faulty equipment blew up once it was installed in Iranian nuclear plants. Also, President Bush used falling oil prices and created a European bank credit crunch against Iran, and was successful in persuading European banks to cut off financing to Iran.
Finally, the U.S. needs to take decisive action against Mr. Mohsen Fakrizadeh, who is a professor that is deeply involved in designing a nuclear warhead for Iran.
Back on September 25, 2008, Scoop This reported that Israel asked for the green light to attack Iran, and President Bush said no.
Hat Tip: Hot Air
(1 Ratings)
How terrible to happen to such a beautiful woman! It is soo sad....
What made them think they could get SO MUCH through customs? Stupid Heads. HAH!!!
