Once again proving its utter disregard for all human life, Hamas continued its indisciminate rocket fire into Israel today, striking a Beersheva school. The school was thankfully unoccupied due to summer vacation. That vacation is due to end in a few weeks. Had school been in session, the casualties may well have been horrific.
On Saturday night, Hamas succeeded in its attempts to murder Israeli civilians when a Grad rocket landed on a house in Beersheva, killing one and wounded several others. Two children, including a four-month-old baby, were wounded in the town of Ofakim.
Rockets have been falling steadily since a series of coordinated terrorist attacks on Thursday. The IDF has been responding with a series of retaliatory strikes, and the Jerusalem Post is currently reporting that the government is considering a ground offensive against the Gaza Strip.
However, the defense establishment has apparently already ruled out a major offensive operation. Air Force strikes resumed after a brief lull early Sunday afternoon.
Perhaps the only bright spot in recent days has been the relative success of the Iron Dome defense system. While it has not been 100 percent successful in indicting rockets fired at Israel, and it is not currently widely deployed, the IDF is apparently impressed with the system's success thus far.
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Is Israel bluffing about Iran?
Israel's 'Threat' to Bomb Nuclear Facilities is Central to its Iran Strategy
Posted by TONY KARON Friday, July 22, 2011 at 5:00 am
74 Comments • Related Topics: iran, iraq, israel, nuclear weapons, obama, u.s., , baer, bombing, cia, dagan, gabi ashkenazi, goldberg
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) attends the weekly cabinet meeting on July17, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo: Uriel Sinai - Getty images)
The reason TIME.com's intelligence columnist Bob Baer this week found himself cast as the unintended source for "authoritative" claims that Israel is about to bomb Iran, is precisely because what he said had been speculative comments inadvertently played into the game of bluff at the heart of the matter. Bob saw an implicit warning in the unprecedented public comments last month by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former Chief of Staff, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi warning that Israel attacking Iran would be an act of spectacular self-destructive folly -- and lamenting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were both prone to such reckless whims. The likes of Dagan and Ashkenazi don't bluff, Bob reasoned, and Israeli reports even suggested they may have directly blocked military action by their political masters. By speaking out, they seemed to be explicitly warning the Israeli public that Israel's elected decision-makers were strategically incompetent, and needed to be reined in by more sober heads.
If these respected securocrats were willing to tempt the wrath of Israel's government to sound the alarm, they must surely be trying to stop something that was in the works. And Bob's history as a former CIA operative allowed some media outlets to cast what he insists was simply his analysis of what was being said in public as an authoritative claim that Israel was about to attack Iran.
Such an attack remains highly unlikely in the near term, of course, and Dagan even said as much, indicating that there were no imminent plans for a strike. But the centerpiece of Israel's Iran strategy has been to cultivate the belief that if sanctions and other pressures fail to force Tehran to yield, Israel will feel compelled to go to take military action, even without U.S. backing. Israel said nothing at all before its 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, but scarcely a month has passed over the past three or four years without some new report calculated to create the impression that it was planning air strikes in Iran. The main line of criticism of Dagan in the Israeli camp did not challenge the content of what he said -- that bombing Iran would be a catastrophic mistake, plunging Israel into a war it couldn't win but from there would be no exit; instead he was pilloried for giving the game away.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel's ability to deter Iran was weakened by "any ability to disperse the ambiguity surrounding the issue" -- Dagan's arguments had a valid place in a strategic debate, he said, but not in public. Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit also ripped into Dagan for undermining the impression that Israel was gearing up for war with Iran. "This threat is crucial for scaring the Iranians and for goading on the Americans and the Europeans [into putting more pressure on Tehran]," Shavit wrote. "It is also crucial for spurring on the Chinese and the Russians. Israel must not behave like an insane country. Rather, it must create the fear that if it is pushed into a corner it will behave insanely. To ensure that Israel is not forced to bomb Iran, it must maintain the impression that it is about to bomb Iran.
Atlantic Monthly correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg, a leading exponent of the "minutes to midnight" idea, tore into Dagan as "a bungling strategist". Goldberg echoed Shavit's logic in charging that "if Israel does attack the Iranian nuclear program, it will in part be because Dagan undermined his country's deterrent credibility."
Translation: Israel is bluffing, hoping that Iran will back off its nuclear program for fear of Israel doing something catastrophically stupid; should the bluff be exposed, however, Israel will have no choice but to actually go ahead and do something catastrophically stupid.
Goldberg, of course, last August had set off a media flurry far more intense than the on that followed Bob Baer's comments with his piece in the Atlantic Monthly predicting that
"...one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq's airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It's so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)
In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission."
Spring has come and gone, of course, and Goldberg's dramatically detailed scenario did not unfold. Undeterred, Goldberg insists that this was because the Stuxnet computer worm set back Iran's program, but he nonetheless believes his original thesis holds true. After all, Dagan wouldn't have spoken out if he didn't believe that Netanyahu and Barak were about to plunge Israel into a vortex.
The obvious problem with his bluff-as-deterrence strategy, of course, is that it has had no effect on Iran's behavior. Even before Dagan burst the bubble, the Israelis were the ones most loudly sounding the alarm over Iran's nuclear progress despite Israel (and the U.S.) keeping "all options on the table". Tehran has heeded none of the red lines previously laid down by the Israelis and the Americans (remember, uranium enrichment itself was once such a red line). No amount of ambiguity appears to have persuaded they Iranians that they face Israeli attack -- or else, if they believe such an attack is possible, they must assume they can withstand whatever the Israelis throw at them and exact the heavy price that Dagan himself warned of.
Not so, says Netanyahu. In his speech to Congress earlier this year, the Israeli leader argued that Iran had "briefly suspended its nuclear weapons program only once, in 2003, when it feared the possibility of military action. In that same year, Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons program and for the same reason. The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation."
Some senior U.S. intelligence officials, quoted in a recent New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh, suggested, in fact, that Iran had suspended work on a bomb program in 2003 because the threat it was meant to counter -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which Iran believed had been developing a bomb program, and which had killed many thousands of Iranians using chemical munitions in the '80s -- had been eliminated by the U.S. invasion. (They also told Hersh that the U.S. intelligence assessment remains that Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons and has made no decision to do so, even though its nuclear program is designed to put the means to build weapons in Tehran's hands.)
But there may be an alternative explanation for Dagan's remarks on the idiocy of Israel attacking Iran. While the Iranians don't seem to believe the threat or take it overly seriously, a different problem arises if the Israeli public is seduced by Netanyahu's apocalyptic rhetoric, which paints Iran as the same threat to their physical survival as Nazi Germany was to Europe's Jews in 1938. To the extent that they Israeli public buys into that hysteria, they will expect their leaders to attack this implacable annihilationist threat no matter what the odds and consequences. In other words, they will expect their leaders to do something that sober heads in the Israeli strategic establishment believe is stupid, self-destructive and unnecessary given a realistic assessment of Iran's capabilities and the danger they represents.
Even Defense Minister Barak appears to have recognized the danger created by alarmist rhetoric, repeatedly reiterating his belief that even a nuclear-armed Iran would not, repeat not, threaten Israel's existence.
The real target audience for Israel's threatening to do something crazy may not be the leaders of Iran as much as it is the leaders of the Western powers and other international players, as Shavit noted, that the Israelis hope to scare into raising pressure on Iran. Dennis Ross, President Obama's point man on Iran and the wider Middle East had even suggested this strategy in the last book he published before joining the Administration, arguing that a diplomatic solution required that Iran and others believe that an Israeli attack is a real and imminent threat. Ross even advocated sending the Israelis around European capitals threatening to do something crazy, knowing that Europeans' fears of such a catastrophic course of action would stampede them into backing tougher sanctions. Presumably, the technique would be equally effective in Washington.
Suggesting, as Dagan had done, that bombing Iran is not a plausible course of action for a serious Israeli leadership does not help that campaign. But any evidence, no matter how flimsy, that such a strike may be a looming possibility, reinforces it -- even if the Iranians don't seem to take it seriously.
Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/07/22/israels-threat-to-bomb-nuclear-facilities-is-central-to-its-iran-strategy/#ixzz1VUOuAfIC
Posted by TONY KARON Friday, July 22, 2011 at 5:00 am
74 Comments • Related Topics: iran, iraq, israel, nuclear weapons, obama, u.s., , baer, bombing, cia, dagan, gabi ashkenazi, goldberg
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) attends the weekly cabinet meeting on July17, 2011 in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo: Uriel Sinai - Getty images)
The reason TIME.com's intelligence columnist Bob Baer this week found himself cast as the unintended source for "authoritative" claims that Israel is about to bomb Iran, is precisely because what he said had been speculative comments inadvertently played into the game of bluff at the heart of the matter. Bob saw an implicit warning in the unprecedented public comments last month by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former Chief of Staff, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi warning that Israel attacking Iran would be an act of spectacular self-destructive folly -- and lamenting that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were both prone to such reckless whims. The likes of Dagan and Ashkenazi don't bluff, Bob reasoned, and Israeli reports even suggested they may have directly blocked military action by their political masters. By speaking out, they seemed to be explicitly warning the Israeli public that Israel's elected decision-makers were strategically incompetent, and needed to be reined in by more sober heads.
If these respected securocrats were willing to tempt the wrath of Israel's government to sound the alarm, they must surely be trying to stop something that was in the works. And Bob's history as a former CIA operative allowed some media outlets to cast what he insists was simply his analysis of what was being said in public as an authoritative claim that Israel was about to attack Iran.
Such an attack remains highly unlikely in the near term, of course, and Dagan even said as much, indicating that there were no imminent plans for a strike. But the centerpiece of Israel's Iran strategy has been to cultivate the belief that if sanctions and other pressures fail to force Tehran to yield, Israel will feel compelled to go to take military action, even without U.S. backing. Israel said nothing at all before its 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, but scarcely a month has passed over the past three or four years without some new report calculated to create the impression that it was planning air strikes in Iran. The main line of criticism of Dagan in the Israeli camp did not challenge the content of what he said -- that bombing Iran would be a catastrophic mistake, plunging Israel into a war it couldn't win but from there would be no exit; instead he was pilloried for giving the game away.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel's ability to deter Iran was weakened by "any ability to disperse the ambiguity surrounding the issue" -- Dagan's arguments had a valid place in a strategic debate, he said, but not in public. Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit also ripped into Dagan for undermining the impression that Israel was gearing up for war with Iran. "This threat is crucial for scaring the Iranians and for goading on the Americans and the Europeans [into putting more pressure on Tehran]," Shavit wrote. "It is also crucial for spurring on the Chinese and the Russians. Israel must not behave like an insane country. Rather, it must create the fear that if it is pushed into a corner it will behave insanely. To ensure that Israel is not forced to bomb Iran, it must maintain the impression that it is about to bomb Iran.
Atlantic Monthly correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg, a leading exponent of the "minutes to midnight" idea, tore into Dagan as "a bungling strategist". Goldberg echoed Shavit's logic in charging that "if Israel does attack the Iranian nuclear program, it will in part be because Dagan undermined his country's deterrent credibility."
Translation: Israel is bluffing, hoping that Iran will back off its nuclear program for fear of Israel doing something catastrophically stupid; should the bluff be exposed, however, Israel will have no choice but to actually go ahead and do something catastrophically stupid.
Goldberg, of course, last August had set off a media flurry far more intense than the on that followed Bob Baer's comments with his piece in the Atlantic Monthly predicting that
"...one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran—possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq's airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft. (It's so crowded, in fact, that the United States Central Command, whose area of responsibility is the greater Middle East, has already asked the Pentagon what to do should Israeli aircraft invade its airspace. According to multiple sources, the answer came back: do not shoot them down.)
In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission."
Spring has come and gone, of course, and Goldberg's dramatically detailed scenario did not unfold. Undeterred, Goldberg insists that this was because the Stuxnet computer worm set back Iran's program, but he nonetheless believes his original thesis holds true. After all, Dagan wouldn't have spoken out if he didn't believe that Netanyahu and Barak were about to plunge Israel into a vortex.
The obvious problem with his bluff-as-deterrence strategy, of course, is that it has had no effect on Iran's behavior. Even before Dagan burst the bubble, the Israelis were the ones most loudly sounding the alarm over Iran's nuclear progress despite Israel (and the U.S.) keeping "all options on the table". Tehran has heeded none of the red lines previously laid down by the Israelis and the Americans (remember, uranium enrichment itself was once such a red line). No amount of ambiguity appears to have persuaded they Iranians that they face Israeli attack -- or else, if they believe such an attack is possible, they must assume they can withstand whatever the Israelis throw at them and exact the heavy price that Dagan himself warned of.
Not so, says Netanyahu. In his speech to Congress earlier this year, the Israeli leader argued that Iran had "briefly suspended its nuclear weapons program only once, in 2003, when it feared the possibility of military action. In that same year, Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons program and for the same reason. The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation."
Some senior U.S. intelligence officials, quoted in a recent New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh, suggested, in fact, that Iran had suspended work on a bomb program in 2003 because the threat it was meant to counter -- Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which Iran believed had been developing a bomb program, and which had killed many thousands of Iranians using chemical munitions in the '80s -- had been eliminated by the U.S. invasion. (They also told Hersh that the U.S. intelligence assessment remains that Iran is not currently developing nuclear weapons and has made no decision to do so, even though its nuclear program is designed to put the means to build weapons in Tehran's hands.)
But there may be an alternative explanation for Dagan's remarks on the idiocy of Israel attacking Iran. While the Iranians don't seem to believe the threat or take it overly seriously, a different problem arises if the Israeli public is seduced by Netanyahu's apocalyptic rhetoric, which paints Iran as the same threat to their physical survival as Nazi Germany was to Europe's Jews in 1938. To the extent that they Israeli public buys into that hysteria, they will expect their leaders to attack this implacable annihilationist threat no matter what the odds and consequences. In other words, they will expect their leaders to do something that sober heads in the Israeli strategic establishment believe is stupid, self-destructive and unnecessary given a realistic assessment of Iran's capabilities and the danger they represents.
Even Defense Minister Barak appears to have recognized the danger created by alarmist rhetoric, repeatedly reiterating his belief that even a nuclear-armed Iran would not, repeat not, threaten Israel's existence.
The real target audience for Israel's threatening to do something crazy may not be the leaders of Iran as much as it is the leaders of the Western powers and other international players, as Shavit noted, that the Israelis hope to scare into raising pressure on Iran. Dennis Ross, President Obama's point man on Iran and the wider Middle East had even suggested this strategy in the last book he published before joining the Administration, arguing that a diplomatic solution required that Iran and others believe that an Israeli attack is a real and imminent threat. Ross even advocated sending the Israelis around European capitals threatening to do something crazy, knowing that Europeans' fears of such a catastrophic course of action would stampede them into backing tougher sanctions. Presumably, the technique would be equally effective in Washington.
Suggesting, as Dagan had done, that bombing Iran is not a plausible course of action for a serious Israeli leadership does not help that campaign. But any evidence, no matter how flimsy, that such a strike may be a looming possibility, reinforces it -- even if the Iranians don't seem to take it seriously.
Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2011/07/22/israels-threat-to-bomb-nuclear-facilities-is-central-to-its-iran-strategy/#ixzz1VUOuAfIC
Israel facing new battle in South
ish World Review August 19, 2011 / 19 Menachem-Av, 5771
Blood in the Streets
By Caroline B. Glick
Has Israel let its guard down again?
The Jewish State and the 'Arab Spring'
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Israeli military preparedness follows a depressing pattern. The IDF does not change its assessments of the strategic environment until Israeli blood runs in the streets.
In Judea and Samaria, from 1994 through 2000, the army closed its eyes to the Palestinian security forces' open, warm and mutually supportive ties to terror groups.
The military only began to reconsider its assessment of the US- and European-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian forces after Border Police Cpl. Mahdat Youssef bled to death at Joseph's Tomb in October 2000. Youssef died because the Palestinian security chiefs on whom Israel had relied for cooperation refused to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded policeman.
Youssef was wounded when a Palestinian mob, supported by Palestinian security forces, attacked the sacred Jewish shrine. They shot at worshipers and the IDF soldiers who were stationed at Joseph's Tomb in accordance with the agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians.
In Lebanon, the IDF only reconsidered its policy of ignoring Hezbollah's massive arms build-up in the south after the Shi'ite group launched its war against Israel in July 2006.
In Gaza, the IDF only reconsidered its willingness to allow Hamas to massively arm itself with missiles and rockets after the terror group running the Strip massively escalated the scale of its missile war against Israel in December 2008.
It is to be hoped that Thursday's sophisticated, deadly, multi-pronged, combined arms assault by as yet unidentified enemy forces along the border with Egypt will suffice to force the IDF to alter its view of Egypt.
By Thursday afternoon, seven Israelis had been killed and 26 had been wounded by unidentified attackers who entered Israel from Egyptian-ruled Sinai and staged a four-pronged attack. The attack included two assaults on civilian passenger buses and private cars. The assailants used automatic rifles in the first attack, and rifles as well as either anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades in the second attack.
The assault also involved the use of missiles and roadside bombs against an IDF border patrol, and open combat between the attackers and police SWAT teams.
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There can be little doubt of the sophisticated planning and training required to carry out this attack. The competence of the assailants indicates that their organizations are highly professional, well-trained and in possession of accurate intelligence about Israeli civilian traffic and military operations along the border with Egypt.
Without the benefit of surprise, Thursday's attackers will be hard pressed to maintain their offensive in the coming days. But the possibility that the assault was just the opening round of a new irregular war emanating from Sinai cannot be ruled out. Unfortunately, due to the IDF's institutional opposition to confronting emerging threats before they become deadly, Israel faces the prospect of escalated aggression from Sinai with no clear strategy for contending with the enemy actors operating in the peninsula.
This enemy system includes Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic terror cells. It also includes the Egyptian military and security forces operating in the area, whose intentions towards Israel are at best unclear.
LIKE THE watershed events in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Thursday's attack from Sinai did not come out of nowhere. It was a natural progression of the deterioration of the security situation in Sinai in recent months and years.
For more than a decade all the security trends in Sinai have been negative.
Sinai is populated mainly by Beduin. When Israel controlled Sinai from 1967 through 1981, the Beduin were willing to cooperate with Israel on both civil and military affairs. When Egypt took over in 1981, it punished the Beduin for their willingness to work with Israel. Perhaps as a consequence of this, perhaps owing more to regional trends emanating from Saudi Arabia, since the mid-1990s, the Sinai Beduin, like neighboring tribes in the Jordanian desert and, to a degree, their Israeli Beduin brethren, have been undergoing a process of Islamification as the loyalties of more and more tribes have been transferred to regional and global jihadist forces.
The first tangible indication of this came with the 2004 bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Taba.
That attack was followed by bombings in Sharm e-Sheikh and Dahab in 2005 and 2006. All the attacks were reportedly carried out by Beduin terror cells affiliated with al-Qaida.
Since the Palestinian terror war began in 2000, then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak did almost nothing to prevent massive arms smuggling by Palestinian terror groups through Sinai. The Palestinians - from Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad - were assisted by Sinai Beduin as well as by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah. Mubarak also did next to nothing to prevent human and drug trafficking from Sinai into Israel and Gaza.
Mubarak did, however, protect the Egyptian regime's control over Sinai by among other things sealing the official land border from Egypt to Gaza at Rafah, defending Egyptian police stations and other security installations and vital infrastructure such as the gas pipeline from attack. Forces from his Interior Ministry kept a firm grip on the Beduin tribes.
As bad and increasingly complex as the security situation was becoming in Sinai under Mubarak, it has drastically deteriorated since he was overthrown in February. Actually, the Egyptian government arguably lost control over Sinai while Mubarak was being overthrown, and until last weekend made no attempt to reassert its sovereign control over the area.
As the world media ecstatically reported on the photogenic anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, almost no attention was paid to the insurgency unfolding in Sinai. Shortly after the protests began in Cairo in mid-January, Hamas sent forces over the border into Egyptian Rafah and El-Arish to attack police stations with rifles and RPGs. Hamas fighters reportedly went as far south as Suez. There they joined other terror forces in bombing and raiding the police station in the town that abuts the Suez Canal. In consortium with local elements, Hamas carried out the first of five bombings so far of Egypt's gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan.
In a sharp departure from Mubarak's policies, the ruling military junta opened Egypt's border with Gaza and so gave local and regional jihadists the ability to freely traverse the international border.
Hamas and its fellow terrorists have used this freedom not only to steeply expand the missile and personnel transfers to the Gaza Strip. They have also escalated their challenge to Egyptian regime control over Sinai.
Over the past several months, in addition to recurrent bombings of the gas pipeline, these forces have attacked police stations and the port at Nueiba. In the wake of their July 30 attack on El-Arish in which two policemen and three civilians were killed, jihadist cells distributed leaflets calling for the imposition of Islamic law on Sinai.
According to media reports, jihadists also took over many of the main highways in Sinai at the beginning of August.
THESE LATEST assaults and the open challenge the leaflets and road takeovers pose to Egyptian state authority caused the military to deploy two battalions of armored forces to Sinai last weekend.
The stated aim of their operation is to defeat the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist cells operating in the peninsula. Since Egypt's peace treaty with Israel prohibits the deployment of Egyptian military forces to Sinai, the Egyptian military regime requested and received Israeli permission for the deployment.
It is unclear how effective the latest Egyptian military deployment had been until Thursday's cross-border attacks on Israel had been. What is clear enough is that Israel cannot expect to receive serious cooperation from the Egyptian military in combating the enemy forces emanating from Sinai. Indeed, at this point it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Egyptian military personnel participated in the murderous attacks.
Passengers in one of the civilian cars attacked by gunmen in the first stage of the operation told the media that their attackers were wearing Egyptian army uniforms.
Almost immediately after the attacks took place, Egyptian military authorities denied the attackers entered Israel from Sinai. These denials signaled that the Egyptian military government will not assist Israel in its efforts to defend itself against the rapidly escalating threats it now faces from Sinai.
And this is not surprising. Since it overthrew Mubarak, the ruling military junta has assiduously cultivated close ties with the politically ascendant Muslim Brotherhood.
Three days before the attack, the IDF announced that its 2012-2017 budget includes no increase in either force size or equipment levels. As one IDF official told Reuters, "Our current capabilities are sufficient for our foreseeable requirements, though we will be investing anew in training and improving rapid-response mobility to allow for more flexibility during emergencies."
Recently, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz explained that the reason the IDF does not intend to change the training or size of the Southern Command, despite Egypt's increasing hostility towards Israel, is because Israel doesn't want to provoke Egypt by preparing for the worst. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quick to ignore Egypt and point his finger at the usual suspects in Gaza.
While it is reasonable to assume the Palestinians were involved in the attack, it is unreasonable to assume that they are the only culprits. And given the deteriorating security situation in Sinai and Egypt's escalating hostility, it is madness to limit Israel's attention in the wake of the attack to Gaza.
What the attack shows is that Israel must prepare for the new strategic reality emerging in Egypt. True, it is early yet to predict how Egypt is going to behave in the coming years. But we do not need perfect information about the emerging strategic reality to prepare for it.
Israel's requirements are clear. We need to invest the necessary resources to fortify the 240-km. border with Egypt by completing the security fence.
We need to increase the Southern Command's force levels by at least one regular division, preferably an armored one. We need to equip the IDF with more tanks and other platforms designed for desert warfare. We need for the IDF to begin training in desert warfare for the first time in 30 years.
We need to drastically ramp up the quality of our intelligence about Egypt.
On Thursday, we were shown that although the revolution in Egypt was not about Israel, Israel will be its first foreign victim as the new Egypt rejects the former regime's peace with the Jewish state.
It is a bitter reality. But it is reality all the same and we need to contend with it, as the blood in our streets makes clear.
Blood in the Streets
By Caroline B. Glick
Has Israel let its guard down again?
The Jewish State and the 'Arab Spring'
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Israeli military preparedness follows a depressing pattern. The IDF does not change its assessments of the strategic environment until Israeli blood runs in the streets.
In Judea and Samaria, from 1994 through 2000, the army closed its eyes to the Palestinian security forces' open, warm and mutually supportive ties to terror groups.
The military only began to reconsider its assessment of the US- and European-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian forces after Border Police Cpl. Mahdat Youssef bled to death at Joseph's Tomb in October 2000. Youssef died because the Palestinian security chiefs on whom Israel had relied for cooperation refused to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded policeman.
Youssef was wounded when a Palestinian mob, supported by Palestinian security forces, attacked the sacred Jewish shrine. They shot at worshipers and the IDF soldiers who were stationed at Joseph's Tomb in accordance with the agreements Israel has signed with the Palestinians.
In Lebanon, the IDF only reconsidered its policy of ignoring Hezbollah's massive arms build-up in the south after the Shi'ite group launched its war against Israel in July 2006.
In Gaza, the IDF only reconsidered its willingness to allow Hamas to massively arm itself with missiles and rockets after the terror group running the Strip massively escalated the scale of its missile war against Israel in December 2008.
It is to be hoped that Thursday's sophisticated, deadly, multi-pronged, combined arms assault by as yet unidentified enemy forces along the border with Egypt will suffice to force the IDF to alter its view of Egypt.
By Thursday afternoon, seven Israelis had been killed and 26 had been wounded by unidentified attackers who entered Israel from Egyptian-ruled Sinai and staged a four-pronged attack. The attack included two assaults on civilian passenger buses and private cars. The assailants used automatic rifles in the first attack, and rifles as well as either anti-tank missiles or rocket-propelled grenades in the second attack.
The assault also involved the use of missiles and roadside bombs against an IDF border patrol, and open combat between the attackers and police SWAT teams.
FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO INFLUENTIAL NEWSLETTER
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here.
There can be little doubt of the sophisticated planning and training required to carry out this attack. The competence of the assailants indicates that their organizations are highly professional, well-trained and in possession of accurate intelligence about Israeli civilian traffic and military operations along the border with Egypt.
Without the benefit of surprise, Thursday's attackers will be hard pressed to maintain their offensive in the coming days. But the possibility that the assault was just the opening round of a new irregular war emanating from Sinai cannot be ruled out. Unfortunately, due to the IDF's institutional opposition to confronting emerging threats before they become deadly, Israel faces the prospect of escalated aggression from Sinai with no clear strategy for contending with the enemy actors operating in the peninsula.
This enemy system includes Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic terror cells. It also includes the Egyptian military and security forces operating in the area, whose intentions towards Israel are at best unclear.
LIKE THE watershed events in Judea and Samaria, in Lebanon and in Gaza, Thursday's attack from Sinai did not come out of nowhere. It was a natural progression of the deterioration of the security situation in Sinai in recent months and years.
For more than a decade all the security trends in Sinai have been negative.
Sinai is populated mainly by Beduin. When Israel controlled Sinai from 1967 through 1981, the Beduin were willing to cooperate with Israel on both civil and military affairs. When Egypt took over in 1981, it punished the Beduin for their willingness to work with Israel. Perhaps as a consequence of this, perhaps owing more to regional trends emanating from Saudi Arabia, since the mid-1990s, the Sinai Beduin, like neighboring tribes in the Jordanian desert and, to a degree, their Israeli Beduin brethren, have been undergoing a process of Islamification as the loyalties of more and more tribes have been transferred to regional and global jihadist forces.
The first tangible indication of this came with the 2004 bombing of the Hilton Hotel in Taba.
That attack was followed by bombings in Sharm e-Sheikh and Dahab in 2005 and 2006. All the attacks were reportedly carried out by Beduin terror cells affiliated with al-Qaida.
Since the Palestinian terror war began in 2000, then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak did almost nothing to prevent massive arms smuggling by Palestinian terror groups through Sinai. The Palestinians - from Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad - were assisted by Sinai Beduin as well as by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah. Mubarak also did next to nothing to prevent human and drug trafficking from Sinai into Israel and Gaza.
Mubarak did, however, protect the Egyptian regime's control over Sinai by among other things sealing the official land border from Egypt to Gaza at Rafah, defending Egyptian police stations and other security installations and vital infrastructure such as the gas pipeline from attack. Forces from his Interior Ministry kept a firm grip on the Beduin tribes.
As bad and increasingly complex as the security situation was becoming in Sinai under Mubarak, it has drastically deteriorated since he was overthrown in February. Actually, the Egyptian government arguably lost control over Sinai while Mubarak was being overthrown, and until last weekend made no attempt to reassert its sovereign control over the area.
As the world media ecstatically reported on the photogenic anti-Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, almost no attention was paid to the insurgency unfolding in Sinai. Shortly after the protests began in Cairo in mid-January, Hamas sent forces over the border into Egyptian Rafah and El-Arish to attack police stations with rifles and RPGs. Hamas fighters reportedly went as far south as Suez. There they joined other terror forces in bombing and raiding the police station in the town that abuts the Suez Canal. In consortium with local elements, Hamas carried out the first of five bombings so far of Egypt's gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan.
In a sharp departure from Mubarak's policies, the ruling military junta opened Egypt's border with Gaza and so gave local and regional jihadists the ability to freely traverse the international border.
Hamas and its fellow terrorists have used this freedom not only to steeply expand the missile and personnel transfers to the Gaza Strip. They have also escalated their challenge to Egyptian regime control over Sinai.
Over the past several months, in addition to recurrent bombings of the gas pipeline, these forces have attacked police stations and the port at Nueiba. In the wake of their July 30 attack on El-Arish in which two policemen and three civilians were killed, jihadist cells distributed leaflets calling for the imposition of Islamic law on Sinai.
According to media reports, jihadists also took over many of the main highways in Sinai at the beginning of August.
THESE LATEST assaults and the open challenge the leaflets and road takeovers pose to Egyptian state authority caused the military to deploy two battalions of armored forces to Sinai last weekend.
The stated aim of their operation is to defeat the al-Qaida-affiliated jihadist cells operating in the peninsula. Since Egypt's peace treaty with Israel prohibits the deployment of Egyptian military forces to Sinai, the Egyptian military regime requested and received Israeli permission for the deployment.
It is unclear how effective the latest Egyptian military deployment had been until Thursday's cross-border attacks on Israel had been. What is clear enough is that Israel cannot expect to receive serious cooperation from the Egyptian military in combating the enemy forces emanating from Sinai. Indeed, at this point it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Egyptian military personnel participated in the murderous attacks.
Passengers in one of the civilian cars attacked by gunmen in the first stage of the operation told the media that their attackers were wearing Egyptian army uniforms.
Almost immediately after the attacks took place, Egyptian military authorities denied the attackers entered Israel from Sinai. These denials signaled that the Egyptian military government will not assist Israel in its efforts to defend itself against the rapidly escalating threats it now faces from Sinai.
And this is not surprising. Since it overthrew Mubarak, the ruling military junta has assiduously cultivated close ties with the politically ascendant Muslim Brotherhood.
Three days before the attack, the IDF announced that its 2012-2017 budget includes no increase in either force size or equipment levels. As one IDF official told Reuters, "Our current capabilities are sufficient for our foreseeable requirements, though we will be investing anew in training and improving rapid-response mobility to allow for more flexibility during emergencies."
Recently, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz explained that the reason the IDF does not intend to change the training or size of the Southern Command, despite Egypt's increasing hostility towards Israel, is because Israel doesn't want to provoke Egypt by preparing for the worst. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quick to ignore Egypt and point his finger at the usual suspects in Gaza.
While it is reasonable to assume the Palestinians were involved in the attack, it is unreasonable to assume that they are the only culprits. And given the deteriorating security situation in Sinai and Egypt's escalating hostility, it is madness to limit Israel's attention in the wake of the attack to Gaza.
What the attack shows is that Israel must prepare for the new strategic reality emerging in Egypt. True, it is early yet to predict how Egypt is going to behave in the coming years. But we do not need perfect information about the emerging strategic reality to prepare for it.
Israel's requirements are clear. We need to invest the necessary resources to fortify the 240-km. border with Egypt by completing the security fence.
We need to increase the Southern Command's force levels by at least one regular division, preferably an armored one. We need to equip the IDF with more tanks and other platforms designed for desert warfare. We need for the IDF to begin training in desert warfare for the first time in 30 years.
We need to drastically ramp up the quality of our intelligence about Egypt.
On Thursday, we were shown that although the revolution in Egypt was not about Israel, Israel will be its first foreign victim as the new Egypt rejects the former regime's peace with the Jewish state.
It is a bitter reality. But it is reality all the same and we need to contend with it, as the blood in our streets makes clear.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Various items from ZOA Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg
ZOA To Media: Stop Referring To Terrorists As 'Militants' - Murderers Are Terrorists
ZOA has urged media outlets to cease referring to the Itamar murderers as ‘militant’ and call them what they are, terrorists.
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THE LATEST
ZOA Criticizes Sen. Leahy For Seeking Cut in U.S. Aid To Elite I.D.F. Forces
August 17, 2011
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has criticized Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) for promoting a bill that seeks to cut from the U.S. foreign assistance legislation for 2012 the component from U.S. military aid to Israel that is earmarked for three elite Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units – the Israeli Navy’s Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force’s Shaldag unit. These units have been on the front lines protecting Israeli citizens in counter-terrorist operations, hunting down terrorists and securing Israel’s borders. In contrast, Senator Leahy has never called for reducing aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), despite the PA’s continuing failure to arrest terrorists, outlaw terrorists groups, end the promotion of hatred and violence against Israel and its recently signed unity agreement with Hamas. In fact, he has supported increased aid to the PA.
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ZOA Condemns Israel-Basher, Jew-Hater Tutu's Campaign to Delegitimize Israel
August 16, 2011
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned veteran Israel-basher and Jew-hater, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for his campaign to boycott and delegitimize Israel. In recent months, Tutu: Persuaded the University of Johannesburg to end its relationship with Israel’s Ben-Gurion University as part of a boycott against Israeli academic institutions; Promoted the boycott of all Israeli goods by the US Food Co-Cop; Sponsored a call for an arms embargo against Israel. Tutu just promoted an appeal to the US pension fund of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association for cutting the partnership with Israeli companies
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ZOA Supports Israel's F.M. Lieberman's Call For Israel To Cut Ties With PA Unless PA Ends Incitement, Arrests Terrorists, Ends Hamas Alliance
August 12, 2011
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has declared support and understanding for Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s call for Israel to sever ties with the Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA), saying that unless and until the PA fulfills its signed obligations under the Oslo agreements to arrests terrorists, outlaw terrorist groups and end the incitement to hatred and murder within the PA-controlled, media, mosques, schools and youth camps, such action is necessary. In light of the recent Fatah-controlled PA unity government agreement with Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls it is Charter for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, PA rescission of this agreement is also a prerequisite for maintaining ties with the PA. Mr. Lieberman told reporters this week that he would ask the ‘forum of eight’ – a subgroup of ministers within the Cabinet – to end Israel’s relations with the PA, following the PA’s attempt to prosecute IDF officers at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
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Immgrant, Resident Of US Calls For Murder Of Sen. Joe Lieberman & Is Released - American Media Largely Silent
August 11, 2011
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed alarm and concern at the almost-total silence of the American media following the arrest of an Uzbekistan-born immigrant who wrote on his blog calling for the murder of “at least, one Jew,” Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT). Senator Lieberman, who was Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, is not running for re-election in 2012 but is currently chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Dmitry Dyatlov, who arrived in the U.S. in 1998 from Uzbekistan, in a post on his blog entitled, entitled, ‘Rammstein Concerts: Better than killing Jews,’
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After ZOA's Supreme Court Amicus Brief In Jerusalem Passport Case Cited Many White House Web Site References To "Jerusalem, Israel" - White House Suddenly Removes "Israel"
August 10, 2011
On August 5, 2011, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) filed an amicus (“friend of the court”) brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a petition by Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky, an American citizen born in Jerusalem who was denied his right under U.S. law to have “Israel” listed as his birthplace on his passport. In refusing to implement the law, the State Department claimed that enforcing it and listing “Israel” would infringe on the president’s foreign policy powers. The ZOA’s brief refuted that claim, showing that many departments and agencies in the Executive branch – including the Executive Office of the President – routinely refer to Jerusalem as part of Israel, without any evident impact on any presidential power, and thus listing “Israel” on a passport would have no such impact either. Recognizing the persuasive power of this aspect of the ZOA’s argument, the White House has engaged in a shameful and outrageous tactic, this week suddenly changing references to “Jerusalem, Israel” on its Web site to “Jerusalem” only, with no mention of Israel.
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ZOA Criticizes Obama For Denouncing Jewish Israelis Announcing Future Construction Project in Eastern J'lem
August 10, 2011
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is strongly critical of President Barack Obama’s renewed effort to stop additional Jews living and building homes in Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem by his denouncing the mere announcement of a new construction project for Jewish homes in the Har Homa neighborhood of the city, even though the actual construction project will not commence for another two years. The U.S. State Department criticized Israel’s decision to approve the building of 930 homes in Har Homa, saying that it was “deeply concerned” by the approval announcement. It also said that such “unilateral actions work against efforts to resume direct negotiations and contradict the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties … [the United States] will continue to press ahead with the parties to resolve the core issues in the context of a peace agreement” (‘U.S. “deeply concerned” by Israel's approval of East Jerusalem construction plans,’ Haaretz, August 9, 2011). This statement ignores the fact that the Palestinians have refused to negotiate even during Israel’s recent 10 month freeze. President Obama’s anti-Israel bias is flagrantly conspicuous in that he has never expressed ‘deep concern’ about on-going, continuous and illegal Arab construction in eastern Jerusalem.
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Two Weeks in Abbas' PA: PA TV - Israeli Cities Are Part Of "Palestine"; PA Summer Camps Named After Terrorists, Sponsored By "Moderate" Fayyad
August 9, 2011
Incitement to hatred and violence against Israel continues undiminished within Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA), In the space of the past two weeks, PA TV rebroadcast a popular song which refers to Tiberias, Acre, Haifa, and Jaffa – all cities within Israel as being part of “my country Palestine”; and the ‘Palestine in the Eyes of the Children of Martyrs (Shahids) Summer Camp,’ – in which the participating children were divided into groups named after Palestinian terrorists Yasser Arafat, Salah Khalaf, Abu Ali Mustapha and Dalal Mughrabi – was held upon the auspices of PA prime minister Salaam Fayyad, often wrongly described as a “moderate” and peace-maker.
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Syrians butcher Palestinians and the world is silent
SYRIAN ARMY BRINGS IN IRANIAN SNIPERS, EMPTIES PALESTINIAN NEIGHBORHOOD
Iranian snipers have been deployed in Syria as part of an increasingly brutal crackdown on protests against the rule of President Bashar Assad, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday. The report confirms existing evidence that Damascus has turned to the Islamic Republic, its closest ally, for help in putting down the protests. On Tuesday, Syrian security forces continued their assault on the city of Latakia, leading as many as 10,000 residents of a Palestinian refugee neighborhood in the city to flee. Military operations in Latakia have left 36 people dead, and the U.N. estimates that more than 2,000 civilians in Syria have been killed since the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime in mid-March. In light of the situation, the U.N. announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing all non-essential staff from Syria.
Iranian snipers have been deployed in Syria as part of an increasingly brutal crackdown on protests against the rule of President Bashar Assad, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday. The report confirms existing evidence that Damascus has turned to the Islamic Republic, its closest ally, for help in putting down the protests. On Tuesday, Syrian security forces continued their assault on the city of Latakia, leading as many as 10,000 residents of a Palestinian refugee neighborhood in the city to flee. Military operations in Latakia have left 36 people dead, and the U.N. estimates that more than 2,000 civilians in Syria have been killed since the beginning of the uprising against the Assad regime in mid-March. In light of the situation, the U.N. announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing all non-essential staff from Syria.
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