Monday, 19 November 2012


IsraPundit


She’s hot, she’s blue collar, she’s electable.  

I kid you not and this article was published by the LA TIMES, Not only that but if you go to the site they are holding a poll on Sarah Palin for president in 2016? and the vote as of this posting is 76% in favour and 23% against. You should also read the comments while visiting. Ted Belman
By Charlotte Allen, LA TIMES
November 18, 2012
In 2008, Palin, running as my party’s vice presidential candidate, was widely supposed to have cost John McCainthe election. But that wasn’t so. A national exit poll conducted by CNN asked voters whether Palin was a factor in their voting. Of those who said yes, 56% voted for McCain versus 43% for Barack Obama.
Furthermore, Mitt Romney, the GOP’s anointed contender this year, got almost a million fewer votes than McCain did in 2008. (Meanwhile, President Obama, although winning reelection, lost far more voters than the Republicans, with nearly 7 million fewer voters checking his name on their ballots than did in 2008).
Millions of Americans didn’t much care for Obama and his Obamacare spending blowout, but they didn’t feel like voting for Romney either. Some said that Romney didn’t resonate with recession-hit blue-collar folks in swing states because he “looked like the boss who outsourced their jobs,” as one blog commenter quipped. (Read more…)

Here’s How Western Elites Are Baffled by the Middle East  

The new war between Hamas and Israel has a lot of important lessons for international diplomacy and U.S. policy today. It once again shows that a country, especially one faced by a hostile adversary who cannot be turned away by words or compromises, has limited choices. And in that case a government must do what it must do.
A key to the problem of Western comprehension of international realities is admirably summarized by a New York Times editorial on the subject:
No country should have to endure the rocket attacks that Israel has endured from militants in Gaza, most recently over the past four days. The question is how to stop them permanently. (Read more…)

How to End the War in Gaza  

THIS ARTICLE IS WORTH READING BECAUSE IT GOES IN TO A MULTIPLE OF ISSUES THAT MIGHT BE NEGOTIATED WITH EGYPT like TO AFFIRM THE PEACE AGREEMENT WITH ISRAEL ETC. I THINK IT IS WISHFUL THINKING TO GET AN AGREEMENT ON SUCH ISSUES.
What an Egypt-Brokered Cease-Fire Should Look Like
Ehud Yaari, FOREIGN AFFAIRS November 17, 2012
Israel and Hamas are once again locked in a shooting war. Each day,
hundreds of missiles fly toward Israeli cities and villages. Meanwhile, the
Israeli Air Force has been systematically pounding the Gaza Strip, carrying
out no less than 1000 strikes on Hamas military targets in the last several
days. As indirect negotiations over a cease-fire progress at this moment,
with active U.S. involvement, it is time to chart a course to end this
round of hostilities.
(Read more…)

Israel launches fresh, major air-sea attack in Gaza after Hamas spurns ceasefire  


Hamas would dearly love for Israel to invade Gaza in order to get the world on their side and for Israel to suffer casualties. Then they would agree to a hudna. They are trying to exact concessions from Israel which Israel should reject like the plague. Ted Belman
Egyptian and Turkish leaders in Gaza mediation bid
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report November 18, 2012, 5:07 AM (GMT+02:00)
Israeli air and naval forces launched heavy assaults in Gaza before dawn Sunday, Nov. 18 – Day 5 of the IDF’s Gaza operation – after daylong bargaining Saturday among Washington, Jerusalem, Cairo and Gaza, failed to produce an Israel-Hamas truce accord. When Egyptian and Turkish middlemen suggested a ceasefire was close, Israel accused them of pushing Hamas’s terms which were fashioned to present the Palestinian radicals as the victor in the contest. The trio leading the Israeli war, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, countered by intensifying the IDF’s Gaza offensive – though not as yet sending ground troops in.
(Read more…)

A Hudna on the horizon  

[Vote in hudna poll in right column,]
By Ted Belman
    Senior officials tell Daily Beast Israeli PM assured US president Israel would not consider full-scale ground invasion of Gaza unless Hamas escalates rocket fire
Netanyahu says Israel will agree to ceasefire if rockets from Gaza stop.
Egypt, Turkey and Qatar are attempting to arrange a ceasefire.
If a ceasefire was to be agreed up at this time, I would accept it. Israel is looking pretty good now if one looks the price Hamas has paid for its aggression. Israel has suffered a minimum of casualties and damage. The Iron dome has proved its worth. Iron Dome system shoots down 243 rockets, with an 88 percent success rate. Some 460 rockets have landed in Israeli territory, 33 of them in built-up areas. Yet only three people were tragicly killed. It could have been much worse.
The alternative is to invade Gaza which could well turn the PR battle against Israel and result in many IDF casualties. Israel would not be allowed to finish the job and woul ultimately have to withdraw. So little to gain at great risk.
    An SMS from the Islamic Jihad to several Israeli Journalists has warned that the Gaza Strip will be the IDF’s graveyard.
    United States officials are pressuring Israel not to progress to a ground operation in Gaza, the New York Times reports.

    According to the report, the U.S. government fears that a ground operation would lead to civilian casualties and would be turned to Hamas’s benefit.


A Pillar of Problems  

by Jonathan Schanzer, Foreign Policy, November 16, 2012
Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense, after three days of air strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza, could be entering into a new phase of a larger ground invasion. While the war has been dissected six ways to Sunday, there are still gaping holes in our understanding of it, and several questions remain unanswered. Here are eight of them.
1. Was there an Israeli intelligence failure? There is reason to believe that the Israelis were surprised that so many Iranian-made Fajr-5 missiles had found their way into Gaza. Of course, the Israelis cannot account for every single item smuggled through the tunnels connecting the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip. And the Israelis appear to know exactly what they are hunting for. But the existence of these rockets — which one senior Israeli intelligence official calls “game changers” — is a red line for the Israelis. The very fact that they made it into Gaza without being intercepted or destroyed, and that some have subsequently been fired deep into Israeli territory, represents a failure on some level. This could prompt an official inquiry in Israel, where the brass put a premium on learning from mistakes. (Read more…)

“Israel doesn’t want to eliminate Hamas”  


“Everybody is afraid of what’s next,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political science professor at Al Azhar University in Cairo, predicting that the rockets fired at Tel Aviv and, on Friday, at Jerusalem, would provoke a rerun of Israel’s ground invasion four years ago.
Mr. Abusada and Efraim Halevy, a former head of Israel’s intelligence service, both said there is no clear endgame to the conflict, since Israel neither wants to re-engage in Gaza nor to eliminate Hamas and leave the territory to the chaos of more militant factions. “Ultimately,” Mr. Halevy said, “both sides want Hamas to remain in control, strange as it sounds.”
(Read more…)

BREAKING: The president knew the truth about Benghazi  

In a blockbuster report, John Solomon, the former Associated Press and Post reporter, has ferreted out the president’s daily brief that informed him within 72 hours of the Sept. 11 attack that the Benghazi attack was a jihadist operation.
Citing officials directly familiar with the information, Solomon writes in the Washington Guardian that Obama and other administration officials were told that “that the attack was likely carried out by local militia and other armed extremists sympathetic to al-Qaida in the region.”
(Read more…)


Ted Belman
Jerusalem, Israel

Posted by Britannia Radio at 09:11