Posts Tagged ‘Israel’

This is one of the reasons Arabs are scared to death of the Israelis. What you are about to watch is an actual event. The Israeli Armed Forces filmed this in real time. What you’ll see is a fully armored Syrian tank being hit by an Israeli laser-guided, steel-penetrating, phosphorous-filled “hand held” rocket. The rocket is small, very portable and is a tightly controlled weapon. Each one is accounted for when they are checked out and back in. There must be no fewer than 2 soldiers present to verify the use; one must be a senior officer with a minimum of 10 years military service. (The name and program is classified)

This tank was headed for one of Israel’s settlements.. There were four more tanks one mile to the rear of this tank. They turned around before getting to this area after learning what had happened to the lead tank.

You can hear the ammunition going off after the initial strike. No Syrian tank crew member survived this event (pretty obvious) and it did not make the news.

It is an everyday event for Israel ‘s Armed Forces and they do not permit the “embedding” of news reporters with their armed forces like we Americans do. This weapon and its tactical use are for their survival, not for “news” entertainment.

According to the recent report 126 Palestinian Civilians has died during Israeli attacked on Gaza,Their report show all were Civilians,Nonsense. If a Palestinian Man,Woman,Boys or Girls hold a military weapon in his or her hands,makes you a Military Person.So how can Israel or any country differentiate the Civilians from a Military Person?report also say Israeli disproportionally and aggressiveness towards the Palestinian,Yes.Israel has to sent a message to all her enemy. The media will show massive of pictures of the Palestinian that were killed and not one of Israeli that was killed, There is no Country on this earth that will sit there and allow another County to fire in their Country,Nonsense. All those Countries and people that are against Israel, If any County fire rockets into their country, They will do the same as Israel. So it is with every Country. Man the UN and everybody that hate Israel can go to HELL.God Bless Israel

Posted on November 24, 2012 8:18 pm by mideastmag
Iran Press News/Ruters

(Reuters) – Both on the diplomatic and military front, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will draw some comfort from his offensive against Gaza as he switches his gaze once more to his main strategic challenge — Iran.

Israel views Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat in a totally different league to the problems posed by the Islamist group Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu fears a nuclear-armed Iran could one day eradicate Israel and has promised that Tehran will not get the bomb should he win a third term in office in elections on January 22.

In the meantime, he has just ended an eight-day offensive against Hamas with the aim of halting rocket fire out of the coastal Palestinian territory into southern Israel.

Six Israelis and 163 Palestinians died in the fighting before an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire came into effect on Wednesday, ending a localized, asymmetric conflict that looked very different to any potential war with Iran.

“You cannot compare the Gaza Strip to any other military environment, which makes it unwise to describe what has happened there as a rehearsal for attacking Iran,” said Uzi Eilam, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.

Nonetheless, the Israeli military inflicted serious blows to Hamas’s weapons arsenal, much of it sourced from Iran, and showed the world that it has cutting-edge technology, particularly when it comes to missile defense.

Israel says its new Iron Dome interceptors knocked out 421 incoming rockets from Gaza, scoring an 84 percent success rate. Without it, there would have been much more destruction and a significantly higher death toll.

HEZBOLLAH

Analysts here believe this will worry Iran’s main ally in the region, the Shi’ite movement Hezbollah, which is based in neighboring Lebanon and is estimated to have anywhere up to 60,000 rockets pointing across Israel’s northern border.

Netanyahu has suggested he might attack Iran if diplomacy and international sanctions fail to halt its nuclear progress. Iran says its atomic program is peaceful, and if war breaks out Israelis fear Hezbollah might leap into the fray.

Politicians say the Iron Dome gives Israel an advantage.

“The Iron Dome has proved itself to be a game changer … and has undoubtedly lessened the threat of Hezbollah,” said Yohanan Plesner, an opposition member of parliament who sits on the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee.

The fact Israel weathered some 1,500 short-to-medium range rockets from Gaza with relative ease was savored by the country’s leaders, who, for once, were not clamoring for an committee of enquiry following a major military enterprise.

“We have moved light years ahead in recent years, both in terms of preparation, instructions to the people, the whole way the municipalities operate,” Plesner told Reuters.

“This explains why almost 1,500 rockets have caused a relatively astounding level of low casualties.”

Defence Minister Ehud Barak predicted that it would take a “few years and billions of shekels” to build a defensive shield that covered the whole country, but the groundwork was in place.

“No army has such a system, nor does any state or civilian population… From this point we look on with optimism,” he said. “Eventually (it will) protect the entire state of Israel against most threats, short and medium-range missiles.”

Israel’s answer to the bigger, ballistic missiles of Iran is Arrow II, an interceptor that works in a similar way to Iron Dome, but at far higher altitudes. Tehran has vowed to retaliate if it comes under attack and is estimated to have a few hundred long-range rockets which could hit the Jewish State.

Developers of the Arrow II, which has so far proved itself only in trials, boast a shoot-down rate of some 90 percent.

IRANIAN ISOLATION

Israeli ministers were not just singing the praises of their missile technologies in the wake of the Gaza offensive, but also their intelligence gathering.

The Israeli Defence Forces said it attacked 1,500 sites in Gaza and “severely impaired” Hamas’s launching capabilities, suggesting it would take a long time to recover — possibly helping to sideline it in the event of an Iran conflagration.

“In Iran, I have no doubt, there are fevered discussions going on as they try to understand how was it that the Jews managed to crack so many targets,” Civil Defence Minister Avi Dichter told Israel Radio.

Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, has claimed victory in the fighting and denied that it suffered any major losses in the round-the-clock bombing raids.

Whatever the result on the ground, there is little doubt in Israel that Iran suffered a diplomatic setback this week.

“It was very important for Iran to see a major rift between Israel and Egypt,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian expert who teaches at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya.

But by avoiding a potentially bloody ground invasion of Gaza and welcoming Egyptian mediation in the crisis, Israel managed to stave off a major split with President Mohamed Mursi and opened a welcome window of dialogue.

Moreover, the ceasefire brokered by Mursi made clear that Hamas, once viewed as being under Iranian sway, is very much in the Egyptian camp and is not taking any orders from Tehran.

“It’s becoming clear that major Palestinian groups have realized that (Iran) would fight Israel to the last Palestinian, and this is a price which they are unwilling to pay,” said Javedanfar. “Hamas has moved away from Iran.”

Few Israelis believe that the ceasefire with Hamas will last for any great length of time, but it should provide Netanyahu with time to refocus on the Iranian dossier.

Whereas he had broad support from the military, the public and politicians for his Gaza offensive, he will rapidly rediscover that the divisions over a much more difficult assault on far-away Iran remain as deep as ever.

As such, the perceived achievements of the last eight days are unlikely to inform on final decision-making on Iran.

“This is not going to affect the future possible confrontation between Israel and Iran,” said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli National Security Adviser.

By Thursday night Israel was well into its second war against the Gaza terror statelet since Israel’s ill-considered “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005, a move widely hailed at the time as ushering in a new era of peace.

The year leading up to the first Gaza war, 2008, saw over a thousand rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza. In 2009 and 2010, the years after that war, the attacks declined steeply; then they began to rise again and this year, 2012, had reached about 800 before Israel, on Wednesday, finally started to fight back again.

Israel launched the campaign on Wednesday afternoon with two major, successful hits: a lethal aerial strike on Ahmad Jabari, head of Hamas’s military wing and the most senior Hamas figure in the Strip, known especially to Israelis for masterminding the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit; and a series of strikes against Hamas’s Iranian-made long-range Fajr missiles, considered strategic because of their ability to hit the Tel Aviv area in central Israel.

Since then southern Israel has been enveloped in rocket firings from Gaza. On Thursday morning three people were killed in the town of Kiryat Malachi, 18 miles from Gaza, when a rocket made a direct hit on a building there. In my city, Beersheva, 25 miles from Gaza, the attacks have been so frequent that this article is literally being written in intervals between air-raid sirens. So far the city’s Iron Dome battery has intercepted most of the rockets and no serious injuries have been reported.

Israel was further stunned on Thursday night when, for the first time ever, rockets from Gaza hit the greater Tel Aviv area, indicating that the air force had not managed to destroy all the Fajrs and signaling a strategic escalation on Hamas’s part. Israel, for its part, had hit over 200 targets in Gaza including terror hubs and arms caches.

On Thursday morning the Israeli air force dropped leaflets on Gaza warning civilians to stay out of the line of fire. That meant the war’s moral asymmetry was absolute, with one side doing its utmost to avoid civilian casualties and the other, Hamas and other Gaza terror groups like Islamic Jihad, launching hundreds of projectiles meant to kill, injure, and terrorize as many civilians as possible.

That did not, however, prevent Mohammed Kamel Amr—foreign minister of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood regime, in power since July—from asking U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton for “immediate U.S. intervention to stop the Israeli aggression.” And the spokesman for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, had still stronger words, saying Morsi had been “follow[ing] the Israeli brutal assault.”

As opposed to words, Egypt’s actions so far have been relatively mild. On Wednesday, immediately after the hostilities began, Egypt’s ambassador to Israel was recalled. On Thursday it was announced that Egypt’s prime minister Hesham Kandil—far less significant than Morsi—would be paying Gaza a solidarity visit on Friday.

In other words, despite the Muslim Brotherhood regime’s radical hostility to Israel, it is probably in no shape at this point to make more than symbolic gestures in Hamas’s defense, with Egypt not far from economic collapse and desperately dependent on U.S. aid. In other regards, too, the regional situation gives Israel a window for action, with both Syria and its Lebanon-based ally, Hizballah, enmeshed in trying to put down the Syrian rebellion.

After a day of aerial and tank fire at the Strip, it was reported by Thursday evening that Israel was calling up 30,000 reserve soldiers, making a ground invasion of the Strip likely. Israel’s goals probably do not include toppling Hamas, since Israel does not want to either reoccupy Gaza or install the Palestinian Authority there, but certainly do include regaining its deterrence by hitting Hamas hard, and restoring normal life to the people of southern Israel.

Although reactions from Washington and London have so far been supportive, it is hard to be optimistic that the West will keep backing Israel when Palestinian casualties start flashing across TV screens. It will be a shame, since one cannot imagine a more just war than one between, on the one hand, a country simply seeking to live in peace, and on the other, savage terror organizations trying to destroy it.

It’s to be hoped that, however much flak is flying Israel’s way, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will stay the course.

This is a very compelling video put together by the Republican Jewish Coalition on the actions of the Obama administration since 2009 and how these actions have affected both Israel and the Middle East. This mini-documentary is called “Perilous Times” and is a must watch:

ISRAELI GOVERNMENT TWEETS ARTICLE SLAMMING OBAMA

In a sign of increasing tension between the Obama administration and Israel, the Israeli government’s Press Office used one of its Twitter accounts to retweet an article criticizing the president.

“Israeli official: Obama doesn’t give us same sense Clinton did that he’ll be there if things go bad – Times of #Israel,” the Israeli government press office tweet read.

Gov’t Press Office@GPOIsrael
Israeli official: Obama doesn’t give us same sense Clinton did that he’ll be there if things go bad – Times of #Israel buff.ly/PhLNYI
25 Sep 12
The article in question, titled “PM heads to UN from region in turmoil, with a US president ‘failing to put Israel at ease,” goes right for Obama’s vulnerabilities on Israel and twists the knife, accusing Obama not only of failing to be a strong ally relative to his immediate predecessor, but even compared with former President Bill Clinton:

That Israeli sense that the region is becoming more dangerous with each passing day is driving the prime minister’s actions, the official, who asked to remain anonymous, said last week.
And while Israelis peer fearfully around at a region in turmoil, Obama is failing to put them at ease, the official added.
“President Clinton made us feel like he had our back [at Camp David]. When we made concessions that were greater than anything an Israeli government had ever offered, we felt he’d be there if things went bad. Would he have been there? I don’t know. But it felt that way, and it put us in a different frame of mind. President Obama doesn’t give us the same sense that he’d be there.”This official does not believe Obama is uniquely unfriendly toward Israel, noting, “He just doesn’t seem to make friends. Not with anyone. He isn’t friendly with David Cameron either.”
This Israeli official, who presumably spoke off the record to avoid ruffling feathers, may now consider his efforts wasted, if the government’s Tweet constitutes an endorsement. However, that is not necessarily a given. As Politico noted when they first reported the Tweet, the Israeli embassy in Washington studiously denies that this particular bit of social networking drama constitutes a sign of rising tensions between Tel Aviv and DC:

In a statement, the Israeli embassy in Washington said that the tweet did not constitute an endorsement — something that the Twitter account makes clear with a disclaimer that ”tweet/RT does not constitute endorsement of view.”
“The GPO distributes links to various articles to members of the press community and does not represent the government policy,” the embassy told POLITICO. ”The quote in this article doesn’t reflect the position of the government of Israel. Israel deeply appreciates President Obama’s commitment to its security and the superb defense cooperation between our two countries.”
This is a suitably diplomatic answer, and given that it comes from diplomats, that’s as it should be. However, critics may well look to the off-the-record statements as a more candid statement of the Israeli government’s thinking about the apparently “friendless” President Obama