From Israel: Triumphant Take!
Before we get to the take…
Last night, when I checked the YouTube link I had provided in my last posting for the incredible Pierre Rehov video on the violence at the Gaza fence, it was not working – you may have discovered the same thing. Pierre confirms that YouTube took it down. He has put it up again with YouTube using a different URL. I, however, prefer to provide you with another URL for the video, which is safer and will not come down:
It remains important that it be seen. Please! Share this link with your contacts. YouTube must not get the best of us on this.
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There were no fatalities this Friday at the fence, where it is estimated 7,000 gathered across five locations. Huge tires were burnt once again, and there were plans to send 300 incendiary kites over the fence to start multiple fires inside of Israel.
That plan failed to a considerable degree, however, as the wind was blowing from the east. The wind also blew the smoke from the tires back at the “protesters,” driving them away from the fence.
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But they had a new gambit, and this one is incredible:
Dozens of rioters broke through the barbed wire that surrounds the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel on the Gaza side (that is, they did not break through into Israel).
This crossing is utilized for bringing humanitarian aid into Gaza. Last week alone, 2,370 trucks carrying humanitarian supplies had entered Gaza via this crossing.
And what did they do when they reached the crossing? They set it on fire.
I am not making this up. I could not.
In the fire, the gas pipeline that supplies Gaza with fuel also went up. You can see a video of this, taken by IDF drones (which later crashed), here:
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/hamas/in-weekend-gaza-border-violence-gazans-burn-their-own-gas-pipeline/2018/05/05/
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Last night, for the first time, Israel struck a Hamas base in the north of Gaza in retaliation for the incendiary kite violence. The IDF said this was a base from which kites have been launched.
This single action cannot be effective in discouraging the kiters or getting Hamas to stop them. Hopefully, it is the start of a new campaign of persistently strong action regarding the kites.
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As to that “Triumphant Take”:
I am alluding to the coup by the Mossad that I wrote about in my last posting. I thought it was fantastic, as did many others. But there were, naturally, nay-sayers who found all sorts of things to criticize. Some of the major points that have been made:
— The Mossad should have just have scanned the documents and left the originals in the Iranian storehouse so that Iran would not even have known that we had the information.
— The prime minister should never have announced what the Mossad did, as this exposed intelligence work.
— Netanyahu should have made his announcement only in Hebrew, for the Israeli populace.
— Netanyahu didn’t reveal anything that was not known previously, and what is more, what he spoke about was worthless because it did not expose any material breach of the deal by Iran.
— Netanyahu should have attacked Iran way back when (as certain self-important persons advised him to do), so that all of this would have been unnecessary. In that way, Israel would have been defending herself. As it is now, by seeking to get the Western world to renegotiate or reject the Iran deal, Netanyahu has turned Israel’s security over to others.
Undoubtedly, a fair number of you have been exposed to this fault-finding.
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On Friday, a column by Caroline Glick was published that described Netanyahu’s plan in a way that addresses and rebuts these criticisms. As I have indicated, I thought it was an incredible operation from the time I heard Netanyahu speak. But after reading Glick, I was truly blown away.
Glick said that the public announcement of the operation by our prime minister was not aimed at the Americans — the Americans had been privy to this information since last March, when the Mossad gave the CIA the full archive. Netanyahu coordinated his presentation with Trump and Pompeo in the two days before he went public with it.
It was not for the Europeans, as they are not key players.
The presentation was for the Iranians. As Glick explains (emphasis added):
“At its base, Jew-hatred is a neurotic condition. Anti-Semites fear Jews. They perceive them as all-powerful…anti-Semites see Jewish fingers in everything bad that happens to them.
“Netanyahu’s presentation pushed all of Iran’s leaders’ neurotic anti-Semitic buttons.
“Netanyahu opened by revealing the existence of Iran’s secret archive of its military nuclear program:
“’Few Iranians knew where it was, very few,’ he began.
“And without missing a beat, as if stating the obvious, he added nonchalantly, ‘And also a few Israelis.’
“In other words, Netanyahu told the Iranians that just as they fear, the Jews know everything about them. The Jews know their deepest secrets. It doesn’t matter how closely guarded a secret is. The Jews know it.
“That would have been enough to send the likes of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Gen Kassem Suleimani into a fetal position. But Netanyahu was just getting warmed up.
“Netanyahu then showed photographs of the nuclear archive – first from the outside, and then from the inside. It was as if he just wrote, ‘Kilroy was here,’ on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s bedroom door.
“And then came the coup de grace. Netanyahu pulled down two black curtains and revealed the files themselves. Two hundred or so binders filled three bookcases. Two panels contained row after row of CDs – all taken from Iran.”
This potently answers the question about why the Mossad took the actual files: Israel’s enemies, says Glick, recognize Israel’s technological superiority but express contempt – saying that Israel resorts to methods such as cyberwarfare because we are afraid to send our soldiers into a physical battlefield.
“…Khamenei and Suleimani wouldn’t have risked placing the physical archive of Iran’s illicit military nuclear work under one roof if [they] had feared that Israel would send its forces to seize it.
“…if the Mossad scanned the documents onto a hard drive…the effect of the raid would have been significantly diminished.
“When Netanyahu pulled back the curtains, he exposed not only the regime’s perfidy, but its weakness. The Jews breached its vaunted defenses and made off with a half-ton of incriminating documents without being discovered.
There can be no greater humiliation.
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Glick makes clear what she sees as Israel’s strategic goal: “Netanyahu’s presentation indicates that Israel’s goal is to empower the Iranian people to overthrow the regime.
“The first step towards achieving that goal is to make the regime lose confidence in itself…”
She describes the extent of protests that are currently going on in Iran. I alluded to some of this recently with regard to public unrest because of severe water shortages.
“Anti-regime protesters who have taken to the streets since last December shout slogans attesting to their loss of fear of the regime. Israel’s stunning intelligence coup, and Netanyahu’s stone cold humiliation of the regime…will empower them to revolt.”
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One other aspect of the situation with Iran is pertinent, as Glick describes it:
“Since the Iranian Revolution, the US consistently shielded Iran and its proxies from Israel.” She describes several instances, but this had been particularly true with the Obama administration. But now, “over the past three weeks, the Trump administration has made clear that it has no intention of restraining Israel” with regard to actions in Syria…”
The implications of this are enormous: “Israel has taken its gloves off in Syria…The Iranians now realize Israel has been given a green light from the US to defeat its forces in Syria. And they are terrified.”
Glick maintains that recent actions, rather than fomenting war as some claim, have reduced the possibility of war: “Hemmed in by an empowered US-backed Israel and an angry, rebellious Iranian public, that just watched its humiliation on Israeli television, it is hard to see the scenario where the regime embarks on a war it is now convinced it will lose.”
https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Watching-Netanyahu-in-Tehran-553454
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A quick look here regarding our putative “peace partner” Mahmoud Abbas and his cohorts:
It was at an early moment in the four day meeting of the Palestinian National Council, held in Ramallah last week, that Mahmoud Abbas delivered his virulently anti-Semitic statement as part of broader comments.
Then, at a later point in the gathering, after those remarks had been made, Abbas was unanimously re-elected as head of the PLO’s Executive Committee, a position he has held since the death of Arafat in 2004.
There was no suggestion that it was no longer fitting for him to hold that position because of his overt Jew-hatred. On the contrary, the vote provided him with political backing when he was being attacked internationally.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-re-elected-plo-head-amid-furor-over-anti-semitic-speech
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To those of us with eyes to see, this comes as no surprise. But there are some who imagine that “moderates” exist within the echelons of the PLO, so that someone might be found to replace Abbas and further “peace.” What the PLO did last week handily dispenses with any such fantasy.
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On Friday, after he had been re-elected to his position, Abbas “apologized” if his statement “offended people of the Jewish faith,” expressing “full respect for the Jewish faith.”
However, please note that he did NOT retract his statement that the Holocaust was caused by usury and other financial behaviors of the Jews and not by Nazi anti-Semitism.
Defense Minister Lieberman had it exactly right when he declared Abbas to be “a pathetic Holocaust denier who wrote a doctorate on Holocaust denial,” and said “his apology is not accepted.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liberman-rejects-abbas-apology-calls-him-a-pathetic-holocaust-denier/
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I will save for my next posting discussions of what might or might not be coming down the road with regard to demands made on Israel by the Trump administration in connection with his “peace plan.”
Right now we are anticipating the celebration that will accompany the inauguration of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem next week. At this moment, there is apparently no solid information regarding whether the president will be attending. It is rumored that announcements about the plan will follow shortly thereafter.
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© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
