Tag: Jerusalem

America Vs. the UN: Why Nikki Haley’s Speech After the Jerusalem Vote was Both Appropriate and Necessary

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

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“When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don’t. They cause problems. So, if it lives up to the potential, it’s a great thing. And if it doesn’t, it’s a waste of time and money.” – United States President Donald J. Trump

Breitbart.com reports that

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley tore into the U.N. General Assembly Thursday, threatening to pull U.S. funding from the international body in response to a resolution condemning President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation,” Haley said in remarks to the assembly in New York.

“We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations and we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit,” she warned.

The resolution, which passed 128-9, expressed “deep regret” at the call made by President Trump, and calls on “all States to refrain from the establishment of diplomatic missions in the Holy City of Jerusalem.” It was sponsored by Turkey and Yemen and comes after the U.S. vetoed a similar resolution at the Security Council. The U.S. does not hold veto power at the General Assembly.

Haley’s remarks were her toughest to date in her career as ambassador, where she has consistently grilled various U.N. officials over the body’s anti-Israel and anti-American bias. She has repeatedly noted the enormous U.S. contributions to the U.N. and has demanded better value for money from the bloated bureaucracy.

While Haley has repeatedly pointed to bias at the U.N., the latest resolution from the GA is different in that it directly singles out the U.S. for a decision in line with long-standing U.S. policy, and it seeks to shame the U.S. Haley has frequently contrasted the treatment of the U.S. and Israel with countries that have appalling human rights records like Cuba, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia – all three of which remain on the Human Rights Council.

The Trump administration has shown a willingness to back up its tough talk with action. In October, the U.S. withdrew from UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural body, over that organization’s long-standing anti-Israel bias.

Haley’s remarks emphasized democratic accountability and took a possible swipe at countries that oppose the U.S., countries which are frequently lacking in such accountability. She warned:

America will put our embassy in Jerusalem, that is what the American people want us to do, and it is the right thing to do. No vote at the United Nations will make any difference on that, but this vote will make a difference on how Americans look at the U.N. and on how we look at countries who disrespect us in the U.N. and this vote will be remembered.

Haley’s remarks come a day after President Trump also warned about pulling money from “nations that take our money and vote against us.”

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars then vote against us, well we’re watching those votes,” he said. “Let them vote against us; we’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”

On Thursday, Israel Ambassador Danny Danon expressed support for Haley, describing those who supported the resolution as “puppets” for the Palestinian leadership.

“Those who support today’s resolution are like puppets pulled by the strings of the Palestinian puppet masters,” Danon said.  “You are like marionettes forced to dance while the Palestinian leadership looks on with glee.”

And, just who is the “Palestinian Leadership”?

Per DiscoverTheNetworks.org,

The Palestinian Authority (PA), alternately known as the Palestinian National Authority, was created by the Oslo peace process’s Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangement, signed on September 13, 1993 by the Government of Israel and by the “Palestinian Delegation” that included representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Since then, the PA has acted as a semi-autonomous institution nominally governing approximately 99 percent of Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority has an observer status in the United Nations. It operates a “police force” with up to 45,000 members (three times the number permitted by the Declaration of Principles and subsequent agreements), many of whom carry automatic weapons and use armored cars as if they were a militia or an army. The PA operates at least 14 different security services, including secret police such as the Preventive Security Service, and controls intimidating street gangs entrusted with the duty of enforcing its edicts by means of fear.

The PA’s chief executive from its inception until his death in 2004 was Yasser Arafat, who also retained his title as Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO. Arafat was elected “President” (or more precisely ra’is, Arabic for “head”) of the Palestinian Authority on January 20, 1996, garnering 88.1 percent of the votes. According to PalestineFacts.org, “The date of the elections was more than 18 months later than planned, a delay used by … Arafat to consolidate his grip on the Palestinian populace and silence opposition. Any independent news sources were intimidated into silence, and opposing political organizations quietly disappeared. Arafat manipulated the election with rules to forbid anyone from running against him without his express approval, as reported by the UN election observer team.”

Arafat controlled all PA media by way of the 1995 Palestinian Press Law, which made it a crime for any newspaper to publish articles that “may cause harm to national unity.” In practice, this vague phrase meant that both newspaper print runs and entire publishing companies could be expropriated if they reported anything that displeased Arafat and the PA. 

Economically, the Palestine Commercial Services Company is the economic arm of the Palestinian Authority. It owns stakes in many companies and it operates monopolies in industries where the PA prohibits competitors, including the production of cement, commercial sand, flour, oil, and cigarettes. PA operatives are also reportedly involved in a wide range of money-making criminal activities, from extortion and shakedowns of businesses to the counterfeiting of money and merchandise.

The Palestinian Authority collects a five percent “Palestine Liberation Fund Tax” on the incomes of all Palestinians worldwide, which reportedly brings in about $50 million each year.

…In March 2013, an op-ed in the official PA newspaper, Al-Haya Al-Jadida, stated that Adolf Hitler had been ujustly maligned by historians: “Had Hitler won, Nazism would be an honor that people would be competing to belong to, and not a disgrace punishable by law…. Churchill and Roosevelt were alcoholics and in their youth, were questioned more than once about brawls they started in bars, while Hitler hated alcohol and was not addicted to it. He used to go to sleep very early and wake up early and was very organized. These facts have been turned upside down as well, and Satan has been dressed with angels’ wings…” 

A regular bunch of sweethearts, huh?

Oy Vey.

While Barack Hussein Obama held the Office of the President of the United States of America, he was bound and determined to make America into just another nation, assigning American Exceptionalism to the trash heap of  history. His pure ignorance to America’s place in the world was overwhelming. Obama’s bowing and scraping, like a leader of a country who occupied a subservient position to nations filled with barbarians, who would slit every American’s throat, if given the chance, was a stunning example of this naiveté and downright ignorance.

After terrorists murdered four Americans at the US Embassy Compound in Benghazi, Libya, Obama stepped in front of the General Assembly of United Nations, like a little school boy, repeating the lie which he and his staff concocted, that it was some little unwatched Youtube Video that caused the Muslims’ actions over there.

There is a reason that the Headquarters of the United Nations is in New York City in New York State in the United States of America.

We are not their servants. In fact, the United Nations would not exist if not for America.

Obama’s acquiescence to the United Nations emboldened that body to believe that THEY were our, forgive the term, “Masters”.

The United States of America is a Sovereign Nation, created by the blood, sweat, and tears of men and women, who rise above those who do not believe in American Exceptionalism and our Sovereignty as a Free Nation, in stature, honor, integrity, and courage to the point where those who are the enemies of our country, Foreign and DOMESTIC, are not even fit enough to tie their boots.

We are an “independent state”, completely independent and self-governing. We bow to no other country on God’s green Earth. We are beholden to no other nation. America stands on its own, with our own set of laws, the most important of which is The Constitution of the United States, which guarantees us, as a Free People, the right to determine our own destiny, both individually, and, as a free people.

We are Americans.

We man up and we handle our own problems.

Only by standing up to the thug nations represented at the UN, like Ambassador Haley did, will America be respected, and left alone, as the Sovereign Nation that we are.

The idea of President Trump and his Administration to stop financially supporting those nations who do not support us is a great idea which is long overdue.

America is no nation’s doormat, nor should we be their piggy bank.

It is a breath of fresh air to have a President who is putting AMERICA FIRST.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Trump Announces Embassy’s Move After Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital. Palestinians and Pearl-Clutchers Upset.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics1 Comment

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“I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” – President Donald J. Trump, 12/6/2017

The Los Angeles Times reports that

Fresh anger poured in from across the Muslim world Wednesday as President Trump said the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that Arab and European leaders have warned could spark violence and destroy any hopes of reviving the Mideast peace process.

Israel responded with satisfaction to the president’s announcement, in which Trump also said he was setting in motion the process of moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv. In a show of appreciation, the Jerusalem municipality projected the American and Israeli flags onto the walls of the Old City, home to important Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites.

Yet even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the president’s declaration as “courageous and just,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas slammed the “destruction of all the efforts to achieve peace.”

Ahead of the announcement, U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe had urged Trump to refrain from taking steps they fear could ignite unrest across the region.

Jerusalem’s status is one of the most sensitive and inflammatory issues fueling the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Israel claims the city in entirety as its capital; Palestinians want the eastern sector to be the seat of government for a future state.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, speaking from New York moments after the president finished his address, said Jerusalem’s status was an issue to be decided through negotiations.

“In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear there is no alternative to the two-state solution,” he said, referring to a broad international consensus supporting side-by-side Israeli and Palestinian states.

At the Vatican, Pope Francis prayed that Jerusalem’s status quo would be preserved to avoid adding new tension to a world “already shaken and scarred by many cruel conflicts.”

“Jerusalem is a unique city, sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims who venerate the holy places of their respective religions, and has a special vocation to peace,” Francis said at his weekly audience.

Leaders from Britain, France, Germany and Italy joined in the chorus of opprobrium for Trump’s decision. France’s President Emmanuel Macron called the U.S. move “regrettable.” British Prime Minister Theresa May said she intended to speak with Trump and express concerns.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meeting in the Turkish capital with Jordan’s King Abdullah II, said the U.S. president’s stance would provide a boost for terrorist groups. The leaders plan to convene extraordinary meetings of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League in the coming days to discuss the region’s response to the U.S. moves.

Ahmed Aboul Gheit, the Arab League’s secretary-general, said he was surprised that the U.S. administration would “get involved in an unjustified provocation of the feelings of 360 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims to please Israel.”

The status of Israel is one of the few issues that unites leaders in a part of the world riven by war and sectarian divides. Archrivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are engaged in deadly proxy conflicts in Yemen and Syria, have offered some of the harshest commentary about Trump’s plan in recent days.

The Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told a gathering of Iranian officials Wednesday that “without a doubt, the Islamic world will resist this conspiracy … and beloved Palestine will finally be freed,” the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

Yet officials could not pass up the opportunity to take digs at their rivals.

“If half the funds spent by some rulers in the region to encourage terrorism, extremism, sectarianism and incitement against neighbors was spent on liberating Palestine, we wouldn’t be facing today this American egotism,” Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, said in a tweet.

Palestinians, already discouraged over what they describe as a consistently pro-Israel stance by the United States, said Trump’s decision essentially killed any remaining peace hopes. Leaders called for three “days of rage” culminating after Friday prayers.

Although protests in the West Bank were muted Wednesday, in part because of the cold weather and rain, hundreds took to the streets in the Gaza Strip, chanting angry slogans against the U.S. and Israel, and burning the flags of both countries.

“Trump has just declared the end of the two-state solution,” said Tahrir Aloumor, 36, who joined a demonstration in the Jabaliya refugee camp. “Shame on you, Trump.”

As darkness fell, the walled Old City — focus of many outbreaks of violence — was largely quiet. A visiting Palestinian American, Jamal Abu Sneineh, 53, called Trump’s move “shortsighted” and said it would harm the already moribund peace process.

“It feels surreal to be back in Jerusalem during this time,” he said. “Look at the stones, and you can feel the history and the hands that built them.”

International backing for Trump’s plan was almost nonexistent, but Israeli media reports on Wednesday cited at least one leader who is on board with the president’s move: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is denounced by human rights groups and many Western governments for a deadly anti-drug campaign.Israel’s Channel One reported that Duterte expressed interest in moving his country’s embassy, as Trump plans to do, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Palestine…Palestine…Palestine…all this angst over a country which never existed.

Just who are the “Palestinians” and the “Palestinian Authority”?

Per discoverthenetworks.org,

According to Palestinian revisionism, the Palestinians lived from time immemorial in historic Palestine, which is portrayed as a veritable paradise of flourishing orchards and fertile vineyards, teeming with happy peasants. Then, according to the mythic narrative, the Zionists came and, with the support of the British, stole the Palestinians’ land, exiled the people, and initiated a reign of terror and ethnic cleansing that has not abated until this very day.

Since the Six Day War of 1967, the Arab world’s most powerful leaders — in Egypt, Libya, Arabia, Syria, and Iraq prior to Saddam Hussein’s demise — have waged a war of words against Israel. Having failed to defeat Israel by means of naked military aggression, these leaders and their advisors decided, sometime between the end of the war and the Khartoum Conference of August-September 1967, to bring about the destruction of Israel by means of a relentless terror war.

To justify to the world their ruthless murder of Israeli civilians and their undying hatred of the West, these leaders needed to invent a narrative depicting Israel as a racist, war-mongering, oppressive, apartheid state that was illegally occupying Arab land and carrying out the genocide of an indigenous people that had a stronger claim to the land of Israel than did Israel itself.

Thus the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), under the tutelage of the Soviet KGB, invented “The Palestinian People” who allegedly had been forced to wage a war of national liberation against imperialism.

To justify this notion, Yasser Arafat, shortly after taking over as leader of the PLO, sent his adjutant, Abu Jihad (later the leader of the PLO’s military operations), to North Vietnam to study the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare in the hopes that the PLO could emulate Ho Chi Minh’s success with left-wing sympathizers in the United States and Europe. Ho’s chief strategist, General Giap, offered advice that changed the PLO’s identity and future:

“Stop talking about annihilating Israel and instead turn your terror war into a struggle for human rights. Then you will have the American people eating out of your hand.”
Giap’s counsel was simple but profound: the PLO needed to work in a way that concealed its real goals, permitted strategic deception, and gave the appearance of moderation. And the key to all this was creating an image that would help Arafat manipulate the American and Western news media.

Arafat developed the images of the “illegal occupation” and “Palestinian national self-determination,” both of which lent his terrorism the mantle of a legitimate peoples’ resistance. After the Six Day War, Muhammad Yazid, who had been minister of information in two Algerian wartime governments (1958-1962), imparted to Arafat some wisdom that echoed the lessons he had learned in North Vietnam:

“Wipe out the argument that Israel is a small state whose existence is threatened by the Arab states, or the reduction of the Palestinian problem to a question of refugees; instead, present the Palestinian struggle as a struggle for liberation like the others. Wipe out the impression . . . that in the struggle between the Palestinians and the Zionists, the Zionist is the underdog. Now it is the Arab who is oppressed and victimized in his existence because he is not only facing the Zionists but also world imperialism.”
The term “Palestine” (Falastin in Arabic) was an ancient name for the general geographic region that is more or less today’s Israel. The name derives from the Philistines, who originated from the eastern Mediterranean, and invaded the region in the 11th and 12th centuries B.C.  The Philistines were apparently either from Greece, Crete, the Aegean Islands, and/or Ionia. They seem to be related to the Bronze Age Greeks, and they spoke a language akin to Mycenaean Greek. Their descendents, still living on the shores of the Mediterranean, greeted Roman invaders a thousand years later. The Romans corrupted the name to “Palestina,” and the area under the sovereignty of their city-states became known as “Philistia.” Six-hundred years later, the Arab invaders called the region “Falastin.”

Throughout subsequent history, the name remained only a vague geographical entity. There was never a nation of “Palestine,” never a people known as the “Palestinians,” nor any notion of “historic Palestine.” The region never enjoyed any sovereign autonomy, remaining instead under successive foreign sovereign domains from the Umayyads and Abbasids to the Fatimids, Ottomans, and British.

During the centuries of Ottoman rule, no Arabs under Turkish rule made any attempt to formulate an ideology of national identity, least of all the impoverished Arab peasantry in the region today known as Israel.

The term “Palestinian,” ironically, was used during the British Mandate period (1922-1948) to identify the Jews of British Mandatory Palestine. The Arabs of the area were known as “Arabs,” and their own designation of the region was balad esh-Sham (the province of Damascus). While some Arab nationalist writers, and coffee-shop intellectuals in Cairo or Beirut, developed the concept of Arab nationalism in large part as a response to Zionism, the terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian” were used in their traditional sense as geographic designations, not as national identities.

In early 1947, in fact, when the UN was exploring the possibility of the partition of British Mandatory Palestine into two states, one for the Jews and one for the Arabs, various Arab political and academic spokespersons spoke out vociferously against such a division because, they argued, the region was really a part of southern Syria, no such people or nation as “Palestinians” had ever existed, and it would be an injustice to Syria to create a state ex nihilo at the expense of Syrian sovereign territory.

During the 19 years from Israel’s victory in 1948 to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, all that remained of the UN’s partitioned territory to the “Arabs” of British Mandatory Palestine were the West Bank, under illegal Jordanian sovereignty, and the Gaza Strip, under Egyptian rule. Never during these 19 years did any Arab leader anywhere in the world argue for the right of national self-determination for the Arabs of these territories. A “Palestinian” nation and “Palestinian” people had not yet been invented.

Article 24 of the PLO’s original founding document, the PLO Covenant, states: “This Organization (the PLO) does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area.” For Arafat before the Six-Day War, Palestine was Israel. It was not the West Bank or the Gaza Strip — because the West Bank and the Gaza Strip belonged to other Arab states, and the inhabitants of these areas were not numbered among the Palestinians whose “homeland” Arafat sought to “liberate.” The only “homeland” for the PLO in 1964 was the State of Israel. However, in response to the Six Day War, the PLO revised its Covenant on July 17, 1968, to remove the operative language of Article 24, thereby newly asserting a “Palestinian” claim of sovereignty to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This ploy was revealed, perhaps inadvertently, to the West in a public interview with Zahir Muhse’in, a member of the PLO Executive Committee, in a March 31, 1977, interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper Trouw:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism. For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”
Arafat himself said the same thing, on many occasions. In his authorized biography (Terrorist or Peace Maker, by Alan Hart), he is quoted saying: “[T]he Palestinian people have no national identity. I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.”

But such admissions did not stem the enthusiasm with which these fictions were greeted by Western leaders. Within a few years, the USSR’s invention of the fictitious narrative of Palestinian national aspirations and rights of self-determination created the facade of morality and legitimacy that the terrorists needed in order to curry favor with the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

As you can see by the reaction of the United Nations and those nations who despise Israel for being the strong Jewish Nation that they are, liked the advantage that they  gained under the weak and vacillating Foreign Policy of Barack Hussein Obama.

And, they certainly do not want a President who will honor both his campaign promises and our nation’s friendship with our ally, Israel.

President Barack Hussein Obama placed us in untenable position with his weak and vacillating Smart Power Foreign Policy.

Those who used to cringe in their desert tents, while calling us the Great Satan, laughed in our faces as they walked across our southern borders with the rest of the illegal immigrants.

That is, if Obama simply did not invite them to the White House and meet with them, as he did with the Muslim Brotherhood.

It was far more lucrative for the UN and the enemies of both Israel and America, when the United States “negotiated from a position of weakness”, when we had a vacillating dhimmi in the White House.

To survive as a Sovereign Nation, America must have a president who will man up and negotiate from a position of strength with both our friends and our enemies.

In Donald J. Trump, these nations now have to negotiate with an American President who has mastered “The Art of the Deal”.

…one who places America and her best interests, first.

Moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem was the right move for both America and Israel.

In business parlance, it is a “WIN-WIN” Situation.

Isn’t that refreshing?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Israel Lights the Fuse

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics3 Comments

The Powder Keg that is the Middle East has exploded, once again. And this time, our ally, Israel, lit the fuse.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak signaled that Israel is ready to escalate its military operations against Gaza after at least one long-range missile was fired at Tel Aviv by Palestinian militants.

The missile attack and the volume of fire in general toward Israel “is an escalation and there will be a price to pay,” Barak said on Channel 2 television yesterday. It was the first such attack on Israel’s commercial hub since Iraqi missiles in 1991 during the Gulf War.

Neither side showed signs of yielding as international diplomacy ramped up. Hamas kept up rocket fire in the most serious conflict since Israel sent troops into Gaza in December 2008 in a three-week offensive it said was aimed at stopping such attacks. Israeli Army Spokesman Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai told Channel 2 that the military was calling up 30,000 reservists hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was ready for a “substantial expansion” to stop rocket attacks.

In a phone call with Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, U.S. President Barack Obama supported Israel’s right to self defense as the two leaders agreed on “the importance of working to de- escalate the situation as quickly as possible,” according to a Nov. 14 White House statement. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to go to Egypt and Israel next week, according to a Security Council diplomat informed of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip hasn’t been announced. The UN spokesman’s office declined to comment.

Israel began a military operation termed Pillar of Defense against militants in the Gaza Strip on Nov. 14. At least 19 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military strikes, including the leader of the Hamas military wing, and three Israelis died in one of 300 rocket attacks launched from Gaza in the past 24 hours.

Israel launched a wave of air strikes at 70 underground launch sites for medium-range rockets late yesterday, and direct hits were confirmed, the army said in an e-mailed statement. Israeli naval vessels fired on Hamas bases on the Gaza shore, the army said.

The rocket fired at the Tel Aviv area of Gush Dan, home to about 1.3 million people, probably fell in the sea, said police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld, noting there was no damage and no injuries reported. Air-raid warnings sounded in the city, which is at the limit of the approximately 70-kilometer (44 mile) range of the Iranian-developed Fajr-5 rocket.

About the elimination of that Hamas Terrorist…the Jerusalem Post reports that

Israel’s leaders were literally looking in the opposite direction, and making sure everyone knew it, just before catching Hamas’s top commander in the Gaza Strip off-guard in an air strike that killed him.

In what now appears to have been a diversionary tactic, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak paid a visit to the Syrian frontier in the north, hours before the air offensive began in the south.

In fact, Israeli experts now say, the visit may have been part of a ploy to deceive Hamas into believing that a truce was in place in Gaza, so that the Israeli army could catch its target, Hamas military mastermind Ahmed Jabari.

“The sense of complacency that Barak and Netanyahu created … brought Jabari and his friends out of his holes and made possible the surprise attack,” military affairs analyst Alex Fishman wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth.

Israel has a thick list of potential targets in the Gaza Strip, an enclave regularly criss-crossed by IAF drones and where militants’ movements are routinely logged. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which oversaw the assassination of Jabari, keeps tabs on Hamas leaders with a network of informers.

So it is surprising that the usually cautious militant, who had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca, chose to drive in broad daylight down a main Gaza street. His car was hit by a missile in an attack filmed from the air and put on YouTube.

Jabari may have been lulled into the open by public signals from Israel that a round of cross-border violence along the frontier in the past week had run its course.

On Monday, Netanyahu convened the nine-member inner cabinet to discuss an upsurge of Hamas rocket attacks last weekend that had been disrupting life for a million Israelis in the South but seemed to be abating.

It was at that meeting, political sources said, that a Shin Bet plan to assassinate Jabari was approved and the first act of deception was played out: Minister Benny Begin, a member of the forum, went on Israeli radio to say the current round of violence appeared to be over.

Hamas apparently bought the message. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel, in launching the offensive, had violated an informal truce brokered by mediators.

“The factions abided by the understanding of calm, and the occupation bears the responsibility for the consequences that will follow the ugly crime,” he said.

Israel had largely suspended assassinations of top Hamas men in recent years, strikes that could have triggered wider violence along the Gaza frontier.

It focused instead on targeting rocket launching crews in low-intensity warfare marked by cyclical cross-border exchanges usually calmed by Egyptian-mediated ceasefires.

The IDF used similar ruses to conceal its plans before launching its three-week Gaza war in December 2008.

Days before that offensive began, Defense Minister Barak made an unusual and unannounced live appearance on a top-rated TV satire show, giving the impression that starting a war could not be further from his mind.

In another twist at the time, officers were summoned from garrisons around Gaza to a weekend with their families at a countryside spa. All but the most senior of those invited commanders were then surprised to be woken up, that Saturday morning, and sent back to base for combat within hours.

Were the Gaza missiles a  retaliation for Israel’s strike against Syria? It’s certainly a possibility.

Will President Barack Hussein Obama continue to defend our closest ally, or will he stand with the Muslims “should the political winds shift in an ugly direction”?

Considering Israel launched their attack on Syria after Obama’s re-election, I think Israel’s Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu knows exactly where Obama stands.

So, they threw the first punch.

I hope y’all are all prayed up.

You see, I know how this whole thing ends. I’ve read The Book.

Until he comes,

KJ