Israel's mission - http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Israels-mission-361190
The tragic end to the kidnapping of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah has elicited a number of responses from the government.
An intensive military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is being considered along with a continued crackdown in areas in the West Bank where Hamas is known to operate or receive funds. This would send a clear message to Hamas that no differentiation will be made among its various activities, whether they are political or "military." Rather, the terrorist organization as a whole must be held responsible for any act of violence carried out by a person or group that identifies with Hamas's goals, clearly stated in its charter.
It hardly matters that the two Hamas terrorists Amer Abu Aysha and Marwan Kawasme, who went missing hours before the June 12 kidnapping, murdered the three boys without a specific order from the organization's leadership. They carried out their ugly act with the full knowledge that what they did reflects Hamas's spirit.
Implementing the death penalty against terrorists convicted of murder is another option being weighed. Not necessarily a deterrent, instituting a death penalty for terrorist murderers would be a moral statement. The State of Israel would be upholding an ethical principle: Anyone who commits murder and justifies it in the name of religion - in this case a violent and reactionary form of political Islam that is responsible for most of the suffering in the region - deserves to be obliterated.
Regardless of the steps Israel takes in response to the kidnapping, however, it is yet another reminder that swathes of Palestinian society continue to be irreconcilably committed to Israel's destruction and are willing to condone the most despicable acts of violence, even if by doing they doom to oblivion any chances for national self-determination.
From its inception, the Palestinian national movement has chosen time and again violence over compromise, a strategy that has consistently failed and brought ruin upon Palestinians.
It began with the 1929 Hebron massacre, which left 67 Jews dead, including a dozen women and three children under the age of five. It continued with a series of riots launched by Palestinians between 1936 and 1939 that resulted in the deaths of several hundred Jews. Ultimately, however, the Palestinians suffered from the results of their own actions. The aggressive response of British Mandatory forces resulted in the death, wounding, imprisonment or exile of more than 10 percent of male Palestinians aged 20 to 60. While the Palestinians emerged from the riots severely weakened, pre-state Zionist militias such as the Hagana received crucial support from the British Mandate.
This set the stage for the next Palestinian debacle: the rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the misguided decision to launch a military offensive against the fledgling Jewish state. The result was aptly called the "Nakba," or disaster, by the Palestinians and it was entirely their own doing because they chose violence over compromise.
Palestinian political choices after the Six Day War resulted in additional defeats. Yasser Arafat's return to terrorism after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David talks yielded similarly disastrous results. So did Palestinians' decision in the 2006 Palestinian Authority legislative election to vote Hamas into power. Dozens of suicide bombings and shootings, thousands of Kassam rockets have yielded no benefits for Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Jewish state has continued to flourish and grow and develop in leaps and bounds. It has produced amazing people such as Naftali, Gil-Ad, Eyal and their families and it will produce many more.
While Palestinians focus their energies on destruction and victimization, Israel has became one of the most innovative economies in the world, producing technologies in every field from medicine and computers to agriculture.
There is nothing we can do to stop the Palestinians from choosing, time and again, violence over compromise, destruction over construction, and we should not deceive ourselves that we can.
All we can do is mourn the terrible loss of Naftali, Gil- Ad and Eyal, and continue with the amazing project of Zionism. This is our revenge and our way of honoring the memory of the three boys. This is our mission.
This is a terrible loss
Are they dancing in Gaza? Are they giving out candy in Ramallah as they usually do when Jewish people grieve?
Who are these savages that rejoice at the misfortunes of their neighbors - and who are these savages that commit these atrocities?
We all know where we were when we first heard it: "The Three Abducted Israeli Teens Found Murdered."
Their names are important: Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar. They should be remembered for all time because whatever children they were destined to produce, thousands into eternity, are now stillborn. So it is our duty to offer them and their families the gift and comfort of blessed remembrance.
These kids - they were the light of Israel. They were the best. This is a terrible loss.
What was the purpose of this? What the hell was the purpose? These Palestinian Arab monsters, Hamas or otherwise, they cannot be human.
We walk the same streets and yet we live a universe apart. We celebrate life. They celebrate death.
There can be a thousand peace processes but never can there be conciliation with such people.
Menachem Begin spoke to his own generation but he still speaks to us today, saying, "They want a holy war. We will give them a holy war."
So let the wartime Shofar be blasted and heard throughout the Land. It is time for Israel to awake and realize that she is at war and has always been at war and that no amount of handshaking on the White House Lawn has ever made a bloody difference.
Nobel Peace prizes come and go, but Hamas is still Hamas, Fatah is still Fatah, and now united they are as malignant as ever.
But this cancer did not grow on its own. The entire world has blood on its hands.
The nations share in this murder by hook and by crook:
By focusing hysterically on the "Settlements" as if it were the only issue facing the world, they contributed to the murders of Eyal, Naftali and Gilad.
By marginalizing Eyal, Naftali and Gilad as mere "settlers" (rather than proud Israelis with a glorious future) they had a hand in the gruesome crime.
By failing to tell the world that Hamas and Fatah continue their vile incitement against Israel, Haaretz and The New York Times and the rest of the news media share the blame. The barrage of hatred that begins in their schools goes on daily, nonstop, so how dare we be surprised when they turn to kidnapping and slaughter?
By insisting that Israel relax access to the Holy Land, so that her enemies need no walls to stop them from killing, the United Nations shares the blame.
By isolating Israel as if it does not share the intolerance of global jihad, when in fact Israel is on the front lines, the international community shares the blame.
By demanding that Israel show restraint rather than retaliate against acts of terrorism, the United States State Department shares the blame.
For urging Israel to release thousands of convicted terrorists for the pipe dream of peace, governments all over the world share the blame, including Israel's.
What insanity is this? Even when Hamas (together with Fatah) has been pinpointed as being responsible for Eyal, Naftali and Gilad...what?
Israel continued to provide electricity to Gaza!
That is no way to run a war and make no mistake, this is war. Israel had better catch on while it still has the guns.
U.S., Israel, aid Jordan amid ISIS threat - Aaron Klein - http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-s-israel-aid-jordan-amid-isis-threat/?cat_orig=world
Allies could be drawn in to military conflict with jihadists
The U.S. and Israel are in close communication with Jordan amid fears the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, will attempt to attack the Hashemite Kingdom, a close Israeli and American ally.
Middle Eastern security officials said the countries are sharing intelligence. In addition, Israeli drones, according to news reports, were conducting surveillance along the Jordan-Iraq border to detect any ISIS movements there.
Some reports indicate Israel or the U.S. could be drawn into the conflict militarily should ISIS attempt to storm into Jordan.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel needed to support "efforts by the international community to strengthen Jordan and support the aspirations of the Kurds for independence."
"I think it is our common interest to make sure that a moderate, stable regime like (Jordan) is able to defend itself," he said in a speech to the Institute of National Security Studies think-tank in Tel Aviv.
Also Sunday, Yaakov Amidror, who served as Netanyahu's national security adviser until recently, said that if Jordan asks Israel for military aid, the Jewish state should oblige.
"We need to help with whatever they may need in order to overcome the problems developing on their eastern borders," Amidror said in an interview with Israel's Army Radio.
Last week, the Daily Beast reported Israeli diplomats recently told American counterparts Israel is prepared to aid Jordan militarily if ISIS posed an existential threat to its neighbor.
Israel's Haaretz newspaper pointed out the large number of American F-16 fighter squadrons stationed in Jordan and reported there were about a thousand U.S. military personnel still in the country.
"The American contingent is meant to be a kind of logistical first strike team on the Syria-Jordanian border if one is required," according to Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel.
Last week, WND reported ISIS members were claiming on jihadist websites that the group is preparing an operation in which more than 15,000 of its fighters will storm into Jordan.
The claims were made on Arabic jihadist websites in which ISIS is known to be active.
Jordan is not sitting idly as the ISIS threat grows.
In addition to reports of Jordanian forces operating inside Iraq, according to Theodore Karasi, director of research and consultancy at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, Amman is planning an ideological counter offensive against ISIS.
Karasi reports Jordan is counting on two Islamic clerics, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, also known as Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi, and Abu Qatada, both known for their pro-al-Qaida views, to make arguments against ISIS advances into Jordan.
ISIL on Sunday declared the establishment of a "caliphate," or Islamic state, which it said will spread from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala in eastern Iraq. The group demanded Muslims in those territories immediately obey ISIS.
The Obama administration announced Friday, June 27, that unmanned aerial vehicles flying over Baghdad would henceforth be armed in order to defend the US Embassy in the Green Zone. The embassy was originally assigned the tasks of guardian of Iraq's central government and symbol of post-Saddam national unity. These roles have remained out of reach ever since the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003. Today, the armed drones overhead are reduced to holding back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and its local Sunni allies from overrunning the Green Zone and seizing the embassy, most of whose 5,000 staff were evacuated as a precaution.
President Barack Obama has again decreed that no US soldiers will take part in combat in Iraq. Therefore, American military personnel on the ground will be there to guide the drones to their targets.
Those targets were defined Saturday, June 28, by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as striking at ISIS leaders and defending Iraq's strategic facilities. He did not elaborate.
debkafile reports that he was referring to the Haditha dam on the Euphrates. ISIS fighters have been battered the town of Haditha on and off for some days.
Its dam is the key to the water supply of most of Iraq, including Baghdad. With its capture, Al Qaeda's affiliates will have gained control of northern Iraq's oil refineries and pipeline networks.
US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jordan Friday laid out another piece of the Iraq-Syria imbroglio. He estimated that the Syrian rebel recruits enlisted from among the nearly one million Syrian refugees sheltering in Jordan could be deployed in Iraq for fighting ISIS.
His words were accompanied by the Obama administration's application to Congress for half a billion dollars to arm and train such a force.
President Obama is therefore in the midst of yet another U-turn on the Syrian-Iraqi war scene - this one involving Israel too.
Until now, the Syrian rebels undergoing training by US instructors in Jordan wre sent into southern Syria to hold a line up to the outskirts of Damascus and act as a buffer between the Syrian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia units and the Israeli and Jordanian borders.
Their presence in this sector of the Syrian warfront was to have provided Washington with a bargaining chip against the Assad regime.
This operation was run from an underground US-Jordanian-Israeli war room situated not far from the Jordanian capital of Amman.
Kerry's latest statement gave this bunker-command a new war focus and diverted Jordan-based Syrian rebel forces from their mission south of Damascus to contesting the rapidly-advancing Sunni Islamists in Iraq.
Our military sources note that these forces - albeit with full US-Jordanian-Israeli intelligence and logistical back-up - were not an outstanding success in their Syrian mission and should not be expected to do much better in Iraq.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Lebanese army and Hezbollah militia are bracing against the latest round of ISIS-engineered suicide bombing attacks, which was in fact launched last week with two explosions in Beirut - one by a female bomber.
To the south of Lebanon, Israel's unusually mild military retaliation against "terrorist targets" in Gaza for the swelling hail of rockets aimed day by day at Ashkelon, Hof Ashkelon and the Eshkol District , points to a decision by Israel's government military leaders to avoid being dragged into the cauldron boiling up around its borders.
Israel's armed forces and three intelligence services, the Shin Bet, Mossad and AMAN, are in fact nursing the blow to their prestige from the failure of their massive, all-out hunt of two weeks discover the three teenagers abducted on June 10.
Some serious soul-searching is taking place about the wisdom of throwing all of the IDF's deterrent strength against the kidnappers, who have since been identified as a pair of Hamas operatives, who outsmarted Israel's mightiest resources and vanished off the face of the earth with their captives.
Israel's conduct in this episode appears in retrospect to have been ruled less by sense than by emotions.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was sidetracked by his fixed desire for a reckoning with Hamas and with the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for dealing with this extremist group - notwithstanding their near-irrelevance to the main stream of events in the region.
Three months after Israel's National Intelligence Estimate judged the prospect of a conventional war close to nil, Al Qaeda's cohorts are grabbing wide stretches of Iraq and knocking on the doors of Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Iran, Hizballah - and now ISIS - must be wondering what makes Israel tick in view of this behavior. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's jihadis are fighting under the flag of the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant. For them, the Levant is not just Syria and Lebanon and Jordan, but also "Palestine" i.e. Israel.
Jerusalem had better wake up fast. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have deployed tank divisions on their borders against ISIS encroachments. The two kingdoms are Israel's eastern and southern next door neighbors.
The Kidnapping, the Settlements, and History - Jonathan S. Tobin - http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/27/the-kidnapping-the-settlement-and-history-gush-etzion/
As the second week of the ordeal of the three Israeli teens kidnapped by Hamas terrorists begins, there were few signs, other than yesterday's announcement of the names of two suspects, of progress in the search. But the indifference of much of the world to the abduction stems from the fact that the yeshiva to which the trio was hitchhiking is located in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion. But, as historian Benny Morris noted this week in Tablet, the notion that a resident of this community is an "illegal settler" contradicts history.
To most Westerners, the "West Bank" is a place where illegal Israeli colonies have been planted among Palestinians in order to rule over them. That this territory is the heart of the historic Jewish homeland to which Jews have legal, religious, and moral claims is something that is almost never discussed. But even if you wish to ignore the fact that the West Bank is merely disputed territory where both Jews and Arabs have valid claims rather than "occupied Palestinian land," it is not possible to classify Kfar Etzion in that manner.
As Morris writes, the existence of what is known as the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem on the road between Bethlehem and Hebron predates Israel's War of Independence. When war broke out in 1947 after the Arabs rejected the United Nations partition of the country into Jewish and Arab states, the Etzion bloc came under siege from Arab gangs and eventually the Arab Legion, the Transjordan army commanded by British officers.
Though the leaders of the Jewish state sought to reinforce the bloc, the settlements succumbed to Arab attack in the days before Israel declared independence. The battle cost the lives of 151 Jewish fighters (27 of them women), most of which, as Morris writes, were killed while surrendering or after they had surrendered. Both local Arab fighters and British-led Legionnaires carried out the massacre of the Jews.
While Palestinian Arabs have burnished the memory of the towns and villages they abandoned when their war of aggression against the Jews failed, they and their foreign cheerleaders have conveniently forgotten the fact that in some cases, it was the Jews who lost their homes. As with the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, which was similarly besieged and eventually fell, the survivors of Kfar Etzion were driven from their homes. But in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel came into possession of all of the Jewish heartland, the first request of many Israelis was to see the Etzion bloc rebuilt.
As such, the communities of Gush Etzion were Israel's first West Bank settlement. But the notion that the people who live there on Jewish-owned land and in homes that were built on the ashes of those torched by the vandals who destroyed the place and killed its inhabitants in an orgy of anti-Semitic blood lust are "illegal settlers" is a hard sell even among left-leaning Israelis. When Israelis speak of retaining settlement blocs close to the 1967 lines they are speaking primarily of the 40-year-old Jewish neighborhoods that were built in Jerusalem and its environs after the war where hundreds of thousands now live. But they are also speaking of Gush Etzion, which came to symbolize both the heroism of the Jewish nation and its indomitable will to survive on its own land.
For Palestinians, the presence of any Jew in the West Bank (if not inside the 1967 lines) is both an intolerable insult to their national pride and an indicator of the theft of what they believe to be their country. That is why the majority of Palestinians has not only condoned terrorism against Israelis, but have cheered the abduction of the three boys. To them, the mere fact that they were studying in the Etzion bloc is a crime that renders violence against them an act that can be rationalized if not treated as a heroic endeavor. This is an expression not merely of Palestinian nationalism but of intolerance. But though violence against all West Bank Jews cannot be defended, the notion of treating the inhabitants of the Etzion Bloc as "illegal settlers" is particularly objectionable.
If the Palestinians wish to live in peace with Israelis, they must come to terms with the permanent nature of the Jewish return to the country and give up fantasies of Israel's elimination. Even more to the point, if they wish Israelis to come to terms with the reality of Palestinian nationality, the abduction of the Etzion yeshiva students is a good occasion for them to stop ignoring or denying Jewish history.
The tragic end to the kidnapping of Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-Ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrah has elicited a number of responses from the government.
An intensive military operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is being considered along with a continued crackdown in areas in the West Bank where Hamas is known to operate or receive funds. This would send a clear message to Hamas that no differentiation will be made among its various activities, whether they are political or "military." Rather, the terrorist organization as a whole must be held responsible for any act of violence carried out by a person or group that identifies with Hamas's goals, clearly stated in its charter.
It hardly matters that the two Hamas terrorists Amer Abu Aysha and Marwan Kawasme, who went missing hours before the June 12 kidnapping, murdered the three boys without a specific order from the organization's leadership. They carried out their ugly act with the full knowledge that what they did reflects Hamas's spirit.
Implementing the death penalty against terrorists convicted of murder is another option being weighed. Not necessarily a deterrent, instituting a death penalty for terrorist murderers would be a moral statement. The State of Israel would be upholding an ethical principle: Anyone who commits murder and justifies it in the name of religion - in this case a violent and reactionary form of political Islam that is responsible for most of the suffering in the region - deserves to be obliterated.
Regardless of the steps Israel takes in response to the kidnapping, however, it is yet another reminder that swathes of Palestinian society continue to be irreconcilably committed to Israel's destruction and are willing to condone the most despicable acts of violence, even if by doing they doom to oblivion any chances for national self-determination.
From its inception, the Palestinian national movement has chosen time and again violence over compromise, a strategy that has consistently failed and brought ruin upon Palestinians.
It began with the 1929 Hebron massacre, which left 67 Jews dead, including a dozen women and three children under the age of five. It continued with a series of riots launched by Palestinians between 1936 and 1939 that resulted in the deaths of several hundred Jews. Ultimately, however, the Palestinians suffered from the results of their own actions. The aggressive response of British Mandatory forces resulted in the death, wounding, imprisonment or exile of more than 10 percent of male Palestinians aged 20 to 60. While the Palestinians emerged from the riots severely weakened, pre-state Zionist militias such as the Hagana received crucial support from the British Mandate.
This set the stage for the next Palestinian debacle: the rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan and the misguided decision to launch a military offensive against the fledgling Jewish state. The result was aptly called the "Nakba," or disaster, by the Palestinians and it was entirely their own doing because they chose violence over compromise.
Palestinian political choices after the Six Day War resulted in additional defeats. Yasser Arafat's return to terrorism after the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David talks yielded similarly disastrous results. So did Palestinians' decision in the 2006 Palestinian Authority legislative election to vote Hamas into power. Dozens of suicide bombings and shootings, thousands of Kassam rockets have yielded no benefits for Palestinians.
Meanwhile, the Jewish state has continued to flourish and grow and develop in leaps and bounds. It has produced amazing people such as Naftali, Gil-Ad, Eyal and their families and it will produce many more.
While Palestinians focus their energies on destruction and victimization, Israel has became one of the most innovative economies in the world, producing technologies in every field from medicine and computers to agriculture.
There is nothing we can do to stop the Palestinians from choosing, time and again, violence over compromise, destruction over construction, and we should not deceive ourselves that we can.
All we can do is mourn the terrible loss of Naftali, Gil- Ad and Eyal, and continue with the amazing project of Zionism. This is our revenge and our way of honoring the memory of the three boys. This is our mission.
The Blood Cries Out - Jack Engelhard - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15261#.U7LjkZtOV9B
This is a terrible loss
Are they dancing in Gaza? Are they giving out candy in Ramallah as they usually do when Jewish people grieve?
Who are these savages that rejoice at the misfortunes of their neighbors - and who are these savages that commit these atrocities?
We all know where we were when we first heard it: "The Three Abducted Israeli Teens Found Murdered."
Their names are important: Eyal Yifrah, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar. They should be remembered for all time because whatever children they were destined to produce, thousands into eternity, are now stillborn. So it is our duty to offer them and their families the gift and comfort of blessed remembrance.
These kids - they were the light of Israel. They were the best. This is a terrible loss.
What was the purpose of this? What the hell was the purpose? These Palestinian Arab monsters, Hamas or otherwise, they cannot be human.
We walk the same streets and yet we live a universe apart. We celebrate life. They celebrate death.
There can be a thousand peace processes but never can there be conciliation with such people.
Menachem Begin spoke to his own generation but he still speaks to us today, saying, "They want a holy war. We will give them a holy war."
So let the wartime Shofar be blasted and heard throughout the Land. It is time for Israel to awake and realize that she is at war and has always been at war and that no amount of handshaking on the White House Lawn has ever made a bloody difference.
Nobel Peace prizes come and go, but Hamas is still Hamas, Fatah is still Fatah, and now united they are as malignant as ever.
But this cancer did not grow on its own. The entire world has blood on its hands.
The nations share in this murder by hook and by crook:
By focusing hysterically on the "Settlements" as if it were the only issue facing the world, they contributed to the murders of Eyal, Naftali and Gilad.
By marginalizing Eyal, Naftali and Gilad as mere "settlers" (rather than proud Israelis with a glorious future) they had a hand in the gruesome crime.
By failing to tell the world that Hamas and Fatah continue their vile incitement against Israel, Haaretz and The New York Times and the rest of the news media share the blame. The barrage of hatred that begins in their schools goes on daily, nonstop, so how dare we be surprised when they turn to kidnapping and slaughter?
By insisting that Israel relax access to the Holy Land, so that her enemies need no walls to stop them from killing, the United Nations shares the blame.
By isolating Israel as if it does not share the intolerance of global jihad, when in fact Israel is on the front lines, the international community shares the blame.
By demanding that Israel show restraint rather than retaliate against acts of terrorism, the United States State Department shares the blame.
For urging Israel to release thousands of convicted terrorists for the pipe dream of peace, governments all over the world share the blame, including Israel's.
What insanity is this? Even when Hamas (together with Fatah) has been pinpointed as being responsible for Eyal, Naftali and Gilad...what?
Israel continued to provide electricity to Gaza!
That is no way to run a war and make no mistake, this is war. Israel had better catch on while it still has the guns.
U.S., Israel, aid Jordan amid ISIS threat - Aaron Klein - http://www.wnd.com/2014/06/u-s-israel-aid-jordan-amid-isis-threat/?cat_orig=world
Allies could be drawn in to military conflict with jihadists
The U.S. and Israel are in close communication with Jordan amid fears the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, will attempt to attack the Hashemite Kingdom, a close Israeli and American ally.
Middle Eastern security officials said the countries are sharing intelligence. In addition, Israeli drones, according to news reports, were conducting surveillance along the Jordan-Iraq border to detect any ISIS movements there.
Some reports indicate Israel or the U.S. could be drawn into the conflict militarily should ISIS attempt to storm into Jordan.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel needed to support "efforts by the international community to strengthen Jordan and support the aspirations of the Kurds for independence."
"I think it is our common interest to make sure that a moderate, stable regime like (Jordan) is able to defend itself," he said in a speech to the Institute of National Security Studies think-tank in Tel Aviv.
Also Sunday, Yaakov Amidror, who served as Netanyahu's national security adviser until recently, said that if Jordan asks Israel for military aid, the Jewish state should oblige.
"We need to help with whatever they may need in order to overcome the problems developing on their eastern borders," Amidror said in an interview with Israel's Army Radio.
Last week, the Daily Beast reported Israeli diplomats recently told American counterparts Israel is prepared to aid Jordan militarily if ISIS posed an existential threat to its neighbor.
Israel's Haaretz newspaper pointed out the large number of American F-16 fighter squadrons stationed in Jordan and reported there were about a thousand U.S. military personnel still in the country.
"The American contingent is meant to be a kind of logistical first strike team on the Syria-Jordanian border if one is required," according to Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel.
Last week, WND reported ISIS members were claiming on jihadist websites that the group is preparing an operation in which more than 15,000 of its fighters will storm into Jordan.
The claims were made on Arabic jihadist websites in which ISIS is known to be active.
Jordan is not sitting idly as the ISIS threat grows.
In addition to reports of Jordanian forces operating inside Iraq, according to Theodore Karasi, director of research and consultancy at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai, Amman is planning an ideological counter offensive against ISIS.
Karasi reports Jordan is counting on two Islamic clerics, Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, also known as Isam Mohammad Taher al-Barqawi, and Abu Qatada, both known for their pro-al-Qaida views, to make arguments against ISIS advances into Jordan.
ISIL on Sunday declared the establishment of a "caliphate," or Islamic state, which it said will spread from Aleppo in northern Syria to Diyala in eastern Iraq. The group demanded Muslims in those territories immediately obey ISIS.
Mid-East is sizzling: Armed US drones over Baghdad, Saudi, Jordanian tanks deploy
The Obama administration announced Friday, June 27, that unmanned aerial vehicles flying over Baghdad would henceforth be armed in order to defend the US Embassy in the Green Zone. The embassy was originally assigned the tasks of guardian of Iraq's central government and symbol of post-Saddam national unity. These roles have remained out of reach ever since the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003. Today, the armed drones overhead are reduced to holding back the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and its local Sunni allies from overrunning the Green Zone and seizing the embassy, most of whose 5,000 staff were evacuated as a precaution.
President Barack Obama has again decreed that no US soldiers will take part in combat in Iraq. Therefore, American military personnel on the ground will be there to guide the drones to their targets.
Those targets were defined Saturday, June 28, by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as striking at ISIS leaders and defending Iraq's strategic facilities. He did not elaborate.
debkafile reports that he was referring to the Haditha dam on the Euphrates. ISIS fighters have been battered the town of Haditha on and off for some days.
Its dam is the key to the water supply of most of Iraq, including Baghdad. With its capture, Al Qaeda's affiliates will have gained control of northern Iraq's oil refineries and pipeline networks.
US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jordan Friday laid out another piece of the Iraq-Syria imbroglio. He estimated that the Syrian rebel recruits enlisted from among the nearly one million Syrian refugees sheltering in Jordan could be deployed in Iraq for fighting ISIS.
His words were accompanied by the Obama administration's application to Congress for half a billion dollars to arm and train such a force.
President Obama is therefore in the midst of yet another U-turn on the Syrian-Iraqi war scene - this one involving Israel too.
Until now, the Syrian rebels undergoing training by US instructors in Jordan wre sent into southern Syria to hold a line up to the outskirts of Damascus and act as a buffer between the Syrian, Iranian, Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia units and the Israeli and Jordanian borders.
Their presence in this sector of the Syrian warfront was to have provided Washington with a bargaining chip against the Assad regime.
This operation was run from an underground US-Jordanian-Israeli war room situated not far from the Jordanian capital of Amman.
Kerry's latest statement gave this bunker-command a new war focus and diverted Jordan-based Syrian rebel forces from their mission south of Damascus to contesting the rapidly-advancing Sunni Islamists in Iraq.
Our military sources note that these forces - albeit with full US-Jordanian-Israeli intelligence and logistical back-up - were not an outstanding success in their Syrian mission and should not be expected to do much better in Iraq.
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the Lebanese army and Hezbollah militia are bracing against the latest round of ISIS-engineered suicide bombing attacks, which was in fact launched last week with two explosions in Beirut - one by a female bomber.
To the south of Lebanon, Israel's unusually mild military retaliation against "terrorist targets" in Gaza for the swelling hail of rockets aimed day by day at Ashkelon, Hof Ashkelon and the Eshkol District , points to a decision by Israel's government military leaders to avoid being dragged into the cauldron boiling up around its borders.
Israel's armed forces and three intelligence services, the Shin Bet, Mossad and AMAN, are in fact nursing the blow to their prestige from the failure of their massive, all-out hunt of two weeks discover the three teenagers abducted on June 10.
Some serious soul-searching is taking place about the wisdom of throwing all of the IDF's deterrent strength against the kidnappers, who have since been identified as a pair of Hamas operatives, who outsmarted Israel's mightiest resources and vanished off the face of the earth with their captives.
Israel's conduct in this episode appears in retrospect to have been ruled less by sense than by emotions.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was sidetracked by his fixed desire for a reckoning with Hamas and with the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for dealing with this extremist group - notwithstanding their near-irrelevance to the main stream of events in the region.
Three months after Israel's National Intelligence Estimate judged the prospect of a conventional war close to nil, Al Qaeda's cohorts are grabbing wide stretches of Iraq and knocking on the doors of Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Iran, Hizballah - and now ISIS - must be wondering what makes Israel tick in view of this behavior. Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's jihadis are fighting under the flag of the Islamist State of Iraq and the Levant. For them, the Levant is not just Syria and Lebanon and Jordan, but also "Palestine" i.e. Israel.
Jerusalem had better wake up fast. Jordan and Saudi Arabia have deployed tank divisions on their borders against ISIS encroachments. The two kingdoms are Israel's eastern and southern next door neighbors.
The Kidnapping, the Settlements, and History - Jonathan S. Tobin - http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/27/the-kidnapping-the-settlement-and-history-gush-etzion/
As the second week of the ordeal of the three Israeli teens kidnapped by Hamas terrorists begins, there were few signs, other than yesterday's announcement of the names of two suspects, of progress in the search. But the indifference of much of the world to the abduction stems from the fact that the yeshiva to which the trio was hitchhiking is located in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Etzion. But, as historian Benny Morris noted this week in Tablet, the notion that a resident of this community is an "illegal settler" contradicts history.
To most Westerners, the "West Bank" is a place where illegal Israeli colonies have been planted among Palestinians in order to rule over them. That this territory is the heart of the historic Jewish homeland to which Jews have legal, religious, and moral claims is something that is almost never discussed. But even if you wish to ignore the fact that the West Bank is merely disputed territory where both Jews and Arabs have valid claims rather than "occupied Palestinian land," it is not possible to classify Kfar Etzion in that manner.
As Morris writes, the existence of what is known as the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem on the road between Bethlehem and Hebron predates Israel's War of Independence. When war broke out in 1947 after the Arabs rejected the United Nations partition of the country into Jewish and Arab states, the Etzion bloc came under siege from Arab gangs and eventually the Arab Legion, the Transjordan army commanded by British officers.
Though the leaders of the Jewish state sought to reinforce the bloc, the settlements succumbed to Arab attack in the days before Israel declared independence. The battle cost the lives of 151 Jewish fighters (27 of them women), most of which, as Morris writes, were killed while surrendering or after they had surrendered. Both local Arab fighters and British-led Legionnaires carried out the massacre of the Jews.
While Palestinian Arabs have burnished the memory of the towns and villages they abandoned when their war of aggression against the Jews failed, they and their foreign cheerleaders have conveniently forgotten the fact that in some cases, it was the Jews who lost their homes. As with the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, which was similarly besieged and eventually fell, the survivors of Kfar Etzion were driven from their homes. But in the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel came into possession of all of the Jewish heartland, the first request of many Israelis was to see the Etzion bloc rebuilt.
As such, the communities of Gush Etzion were Israel's first West Bank settlement. But the notion that the people who live there on Jewish-owned land and in homes that were built on the ashes of those torched by the vandals who destroyed the place and killed its inhabitants in an orgy of anti-Semitic blood lust are "illegal settlers" is a hard sell even among left-leaning Israelis. When Israelis speak of retaining settlement blocs close to the 1967 lines they are speaking primarily of the 40-year-old Jewish neighborhoods that were built in Jerusalem and its environs after the war where hundreds of thousands now live. But they are also speaking of Gush Etzion, which came to symbolize both the heroism of the Jewish nation and its indomitable will to survive on its own land.
For Palestinians, the presence of any Jew in the West Bank (if not inside the 1967 lines) is both an intolerable insult to their national pride and an indicator of the theft of what they believe to be their country. That is why the majority of Palestinians has not only condoned terrorism against Israelis, but have cheered the abduction of the three boys. To them, the mere fact that they were studying in the Etzion bloc is a crime that renders violence against them an act that can be rationalized if not treated as a heroic endeavor. This is an expression not merely of Palestinian nationalism but of intolerance. But though violence against all West Bank Jews cannot be defended, the notion of treating the inhabitants of the Etzion Bloc as "illegal settlers" is particularly objectionable.
If the Palestinians wish to live in peace with Israelis, they must come to terms with the permanent nature of the Jewish return to the country and give up fantasies of Israel's elimination. Even more to the point, if they wish Israelis to come to terms with the reality of Palestinian nationality, the abduction of the Etzion yeshiva students is a good occasion for them to stop ignoring or denying Jewish history.
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