Will there be war in Israel this summer? - By Eric R. Mandel -
Today there are upwards of 150,000 missiles in Hezbollah's arsenal, enough to overwhelm every layer of Israel's missile shield, capable of targeting any location in Israel.
Since the State of Israel was created 70 years ago, the question has always been not if there would be a war, but when. The only question now is will it be in the north against Iran and its proxies Hezbollah, Syrian President Bashar Assad and the Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Units, or will it be in the south against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or will it originate from over the Green Line among the Arab Palestinians of the West Bank? In the north, the likelihood of war this summer will be increased if US President Donald Trump goes ahead with his plan to withdraw American soldiers from Syria and ends aid to allies in Syria fighting Assad.
This will be taken as a sign to Iran, Russia, Turkey and the whole Muslim world that America has yet again tried to abandon the region, except poor choices in the Middle East have a way of bringing America back with less leverage and not on its own terms.
As Tom Rogan of The Washington Examiner wrote, "President Trump should pay attention to what happened after former President Barack Obama's hasty 2011 withdrawal from Iraq.
Because Obama's withdrawal led to the increasing influence of Iran over Iraqi politics... In turn, these policies helped foster the rise of ISIS and led to Obama being forced to return forces to Iraq."
This decision will hurt both Israeli and American security interests, as it increases the likelihood that Israel will be drawn into a northern war, confronting Russian troops stationed in Syria.
Iranian, Hezbollah, Syrian and Shi'ite PMU's are positioned, on purpose, next to Russian military sites or have Russian advisers embedded. It is inevitable that Israeli strikes in Syria will kill Russian soldiers, increasing the chances of turning this into a wider regional conflict.
Ronen Bergman in The New York Times wrote, "Israel has been asking Russia to guarantee that the Iranians will leave Syria once the war is over. Those requests have been met with indifference... Russia wants to build a secure foothold in the Middle East and its policy requires it to maintain good relations with Iran...
if anyone was not yet aware of it, Russia is the dominant power in the region."
The downing of both the Iranian drone in Israeli airspace and an Israeli fighter jet in February brought all the adversaries to the brink of war. Russia, the new sheriff in town, ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand down, and knowing he was alone, he did.
Simon Tisdall opined in The Guardian, "if Iran refuses to leave Syria and continues to expand its military presence...and if Israel continues its cross-border raids, something big, sooner or later, is going to blow."
A few years ago I spoke to one of the senior international medical personal stationed in Lebanon caring for Syrian refugees. He told me that in every one of the 300 villages he visited in Hezbollah- controlled southern Lebanon missiles were hidden in people's homes.
Today there are upwards of 150,000 missiles in Hezbollah's arsenal, enough to overwhelm every layer of Israel's missile shield, capable of targeting any location in Israel.
To the south, Hamas in Gaza is now feeling like a cornered rat, with no way out. The economic situation is worsening as the Palestinian Authority tightens the noose around their neck. The PA allows Gazans only four hours a day of electricity, while Gaza is an inferno always waiting to explode, fertile ground for radicalization and recruitment to terrorism, with an unemployment rate nearing 50%.
Four years ago Hamas was in a similar economic position, and it choose war as a way to get the attention of the international community. Expect Hamas to have learned from its past three wars with Israel, becoming a more lethal enemy. Israel does not want to take over Gaza, becoming responsible for its services, and it fears that if it overthrows Hamas, an even worse entity may emerge, or uncontrollable chaos.
Last week Hamas did a test run of its newest weapon, mass protests on the border, sending human probes to the security fence, hoping they would be killed and elicit the usual Pavlovian denunciations from anti-Israel groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW), who condemn Israel first and ask questions later. HRW choose not to mention that Hamas even sent a seven-year-old child as bait to cross the border, breaking all international standards. This ongoing test-run may be the starting point for a summer of violence and war.
In Judea and Samaria, PA President Mahmoud Abbas is still trying to show he can be as anti-Israel as Hamas, while the battle to succeed him has already begun. He wants to be remembered as leader of a resistance that did not make peace with the Jews. The rogues' gallery of would-be successors, from intelligence chief Majid Faraj to former security chiefs Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan, to deputy Fatah chairman Mahmoud Aloul, may also decide that agitation and violence this summer may give them the upper hand.
So will there be a war this summer? Nobody knows. But the possibility of a coordinated war aligning Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran, all acting in concert, would present Israel with unprecedented challenges. Israel must be prepared for the next war to break out at any time, and even with the best intelligence, events can spiral out of control, even if none of the adversaries are prepared for an all-out war.
The best way to decrease the chance for war in the Levant this summer is for Trump's new team of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to convince him that it is in American interests to remain in Syria for the immediate future, and be resolute that Iran cannot remain in Syria after the civil war ends.
The writer is director of MEPIN�, the Middle East Political and Information Network �. He regularly briefs members of Congress on the Middle East. He is a contributor to The Jerusalem Post, The Hill, and The Forward.
Hamas's Partners in its War Against Israel - By Caroline Glick - https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/105343/hamass-partners-in-its-war-against-israel-opinion/#xY9GX81PEhTv4rYe.97
On Friday, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is inaugurating what it is calling "The March of Return."
According to Hamas's leadership, the "March of Return" is scheduled to run from March 30 - the eve of Passover - through May 15, the 70th anniversary of Israel's establishment. According to Israeli media reports, Hamas has budgeted $10 million for the operation.
Throughout the "March of Return," Hamas intends to send thousands of civilians to the Israeli border. Hamas is planning to set up tent camps along the border fence and then, presumably, order participants to overrun it on May 15. The Palestinians refer to May 15 as "Nakba," or Catastrophe Day.
The first question that observers of this spectacle need to ask themselves is whether Hamas believes that it will be able to overrun Israel.
The obvious answer is, of course, it doesn't.
So this brings us to the second question.
If Hamas doesn't expect its civilians to overrun Israel, what is it trying to accomplish by sending them into harm's way? Why it the terror group telling Gaza residents to place themselves in front of the border fence and challenge Israeli security forces charged with defending Israel?
The answer here is also obvious. Hamas intends to provoke Israel to shoot at the Palestinian civilians it is sending to the border. It is setting its people up to die because it expects their deaths to be captured live by the cameras of the Western media, which will be on hand to watch the spectacle.
In other words, Hamas's strategy of harming Israel by forcing its soldiers to kill Palestinians is predicated on its certainty that the Western media will act as its partner and ensure the success of its lethal propaganda stunt.
Given widespread assessments that Iran is keen to start a new round of war between Israel and its terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is possible that Hamas intends for this lethal propaganda stunt to be the initial stage of a larger war. By this assessment, Hamas is using the border operation to cultivate and escalate Western hostility against Israel ahead of a larger shooting war.
Several Israeli commentators have noted that Hamas's plan to send civilians to the border and, presumably, order them to breach it at a certain point, is not original. Hezbollah, acting in concert with Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) and the Syrian regime, did something similar in 2011.
As the UK Guardian's Jonathan Steele reported in March 2015, that operation played a major role in transforming the civil war in Syria from a few scattered battles between the regime and opposition groups into a full-fledged civil war.
Steele recalled that ahead of "Nakba Day," on May 15, 2011, the Syrian regime sent forces into the Yarmouk refugee camp (actually an upscale neighborhood five minutes from central Damascus). In early 2011, the "camp" was home to 150,000 Palestinians and 650,000 Syrians.
The government forces encouraged the Palestinians to participate in a march on Israel on Nakba Day. On May 15, 2011, the regime sent buses to Yarmouk. Several hundred people from Yarmouk were driven to the border with Israel. The passengers alighted and began marching to Israel.
Israeli soldiers stationed on the Israeli side of the border in the Golan Heights were taken by surprise by the marchers and opened fire. Three of the Palestinians were killed.
A month later, the regime sent minivans to Yarmouk. Several dozen Palestinians climbed aboard. At the border, they were joined by several hundred more marchers. Together, they began scaling the border. Israeli forces responded with live shells and tear gas.
23 people were killed. Twelve of the dead were from Yarmouk. The next day, 30,000 people attended their funeral.
The mourners were livid at the regime for sending them to die and infuriated with Jibril for encouraging them to go. They surrounded Jibril's offices in Yarmouk. PFLP-GC gunmen killed a 14-year boy in the crowd. The angry mourners stormed the offices and burned them to the ground.
Steele reported that Jibril himself was rescued by regime forces.
The anger the Palestinians directed against the regime inspired the opposition forces to mobilize the Palestinians to their side. The Free Syrian Army and the al-Nusra Brigades took over Yarmouk.
The regime responded by laying siege on Yarmouk. Most of the residents escaped to other areas of Syria, to Lebanon and Jordan. 18,000 civilians and combatants remained. The regime starved and bombed them into submission over the ensuing three-and-a-half years.
Some Israeli commentators believe that having studied the events in Syria, Hamas will end up calling off the marches to avoid a rebellion in the event that Israel kills civilians at the border.
But there is a good reason to believe that Hamas intends to go through with the operation.
Wednesday, Arab affairs commentator Yoni Ben Menachem reported that one of the chief organizers of Hamas's March of Return is Zaher al-Birawi. According to Ben Menachem, al-Birawi, a senior Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood operative, holds the title, "Liaison for the International Committee for Breaking the Embargo on the Gaza Strip."
In years past, Ben Menachem reported, al-Birawi was a key operative involved in organizing the flotillas to Gaza.
The most lethal flotilla charged with challenging Israel's naval blockade of Gaza's coastline was the May 2010 flotilla organized by Turkey's IHH organization. IHH is an Islamist NGO affiliated with al Qaeda. The lead ship in the six-ship flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, was commanded by IHH. Most of its 630 passengers were anti-Israel activists from Western nations. Forty well-trained IHH members were on board and tasked with assaulting any and all IDF soldiers who attempted to board.
The Israeli naval commandos who were dropped onto the deck of the ship from helicopters were attacked by IHH personnel armed with axes, iron bars, knives, and guns. During a pitched battle between the IHH attackers and the naval commandos, nine soldiers were wounded, three seriously. Nine IHH attackers were killed.
Israel was harshly condemned for what the international media and the international left referred to as a murderous use of force against innocent peace activists.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan demanded that Israel pay compensation to the dead IHH attackers' families, and accused Israel of state-sponsored terrorism while opening war crimes trials against senior Israeli military commanders in Turkish courts.
During his visit to Israel in 2013, then-President Barack Obama strong-armed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer an apology to Erdogan and agree to pay compensation to the dead attackers' families. Obama participated and oversaw the call, which took place on the tarmac of Israel's Ben Gurion airport before Obama boarded Air Force One to depart from Israel. Most Israelis were angered by Netanyahu's apology, and Netanyahu privately said he regretted agreeing to offer one.
For their part, the Western anti-Israel activists who were on the Mavi Marmara joined the pile on against Israel, accusing its soldiers of wanton aggression against them.
Earlier this month, British investigator David Collier exposed the existence of a virulently antisemitic secret Facebook group called "Palestine Live." Collier's most newsworthy finding was that British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn was an active member of the group until shortly after he was elected head of Labour in 2015.
Collier also reported that Greta Berlin, a member of the Palestine Live group, and one of the heads of the Free Gaza Movement that organized the Mavi Marmara flotilla together with IHH, admitted in one of her exchanges there that Israel was not responsible for the lethal events aboard the ship. Had the IHH activists - including Kenneth O'Keefe, a former U.S. Marine-turned-Hamas terrorist and "Palestine Live" group member - not attacked the Israelis, Berlin wrote, they wouldn't have opened fire.
In her words, "Had [O'Keefe] not disarmed an Israeli terrorist soldier, they would not have started to fire."
In addition to a massive quantity of axes, crowbars, chains, tear gas, knives, and other weaponry, Israeli forces found an advanced broadcast and film editing studio aboard the Mavi Marmara. The attackers clearly viewed media warfare as an integral component of their aggression against Israel.
Which brings us back to Hamas' plan to have Gaza civilians die at the border with Israel to make Israel look bad.
Israel will, no doubt, find means to undermine Hamas's operations. It has already announced it intends to use drones and snipers. The IDF can be expected to block communications. And in an interview with al-Hurra Arabic television, IDF Maj. General Yoav Mordechai warned that Israel will penalize any bus company that transports Gazans to the border.
The real issue revealed by Hamas's planned operation - as it was revealed by the Mavi Marmara, as well as by Hamas's military campaigns against Israel in 2014, 2011 and 2008-09 - is not how Israel will deal with it. The real issue is that Hamas's entire strategy is predicated on its faith that the Western media and indeed the Western left will side with it against Israel.
Hamas is certain that both the media and leftist activists and politicians in Europe and the U.S. will blame Israel for Palestinian civilian casualties. And as past experience proves, Hamas is right to believe the media and leftist activists will play their assigned role.
So long as the media and the left rush to indict Israel for its efforts to defend itself and its citizens against its terrorist foes, who turn the laws of war on their head as a matter of course, these attacks will continue and they will escalate.
If this border assault does, in fact, serve as the opening act in a larger terror war against Israel, then a large portion of the blame for the bloodshed will rest on the shoulders of the Western media for empowering the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel.
Prophetic storm on the horizon
There are a series of stories in the news recently that show how the Ezekiel 38 prophecy of a coalition headed by a leader from modern Turkey brings a host of enemies against Israel in a colossal end time battle in which God saves Israel and declares in Ezekiel 38:23, "Thus will I magnify myself and sanctify myself: and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord." Currently, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the "Palestinians" in Israel, Israel, and Iran are all locked into a curious mix of politics, military effort and intrigue that is whirling around the Middle East and gathering the end time players together like the building of a prophetic storm on the horizon.
Turkey's dictator Racep Tayyip Erdogan is making a move in Syria to destroy the Kurd fighters who are a mainstay against the Islamic State. Many believe that Erdogan wants to eliminate the Kurds in general and do a land grab along the Syrian border. At the same time, Turkey and Russia are collaborating on the building of a Russian-made nuclear power plant on Turkey's Mediterranean coast. In addition, Turkey has agreed to purchase Russia's long-range S-400 missile system and the two countries are building a pipeline to transport Russian gas to Turkey. AP reports that Russian "president" Vladimir Putin, Erdogan and Iranian "president" Hassan Rouhani are expected to hold a summit in Ankara to discuss Syria's future.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman stirred the prophetic pot by speaking out of both sides of his mouth. The Atlantic reports that bin Salman said that Israel has a right to exist as a nation. What bin Salman really said, however, was, "I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land." This is a dualist statement in that the Palestinians claim all the land in Israel. He also said that Islam was a religion of peace and that the "triangle of evil": Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni terrorist groups (ISIS and al-Qaeda) were seeking world conquest. He didn't mention that Saudi Arabia was the birthplace of al-Qaeda, and supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He also denied that Wahhabism exists.
Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel as a nation. The Saudi Crown Prince does not recognize Wahhabism, a radical evangelical sect of Islam originating from Saudi Arabia. The Crown Prince recognizes the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda as an evil triangle with Iran, but fails to mention that Saudi Arabia is known to support these terrorist groups. Iran and Turkey are working together with Russia as a unifier. We can see how eventually the diverse forces of Ezekiel 38 can be brought together to fight against Israel, which includes modern day Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Libya and even parts of Saudi Arabia. What appears to be isn't and what is secret is brewing a prophetic storm on the horizon.
Prophetic Turkey arising -
Bill Wilson -
Turkey's dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan has characterized Israel as a terrorist state and its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, a terrorist. Erdogan used as an illustration Israel's response to the terrorist group Hamas' organized march against the Israeli border. Netanyahu then pointed out that it is Turkey under Erdogan's leadership that is murdering its own Kurdish people, as confirmed by many human rights organizations. Netanyahu said, "The most moral army in the world (referring to the Israeli Defense Force) will not be lectured by someone who for years has indiscriminately bombed civilian populations." Turkey's influence in the Arab world was accelerated by the former US "president's" support of Arab Spring.
In April 2012, The Jerusalem Post reported, "Turkey has been one of the biggest winners of the Arab revolts, as people around the Muslim world look to its ruling Justice and Development Party as a model for combining Islamic values with economic growth (the number of Egyptians expressing approval for the Ankara government grew 22% since April 2011 to 37%)." The New York Times wrote in January 2012, "Supporters credit Erdogan with elevating Turkey's profile in the Middle East, turning the country into an increasingly assertive regional player at a time when several of its neighbors are locked in sometimes violent struggles for democracy."
Case in point: After a two-day visit to Iran 8 years ago, Erdogan told reporters that an Israeli attack on Iran would devastate the entire Middle East. Erdogan made the point of saying he shares concerns with the American "president" at the time that an Israeli attack on Iran could trigger a regional war. The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reports that Erdogan also sided with Iran by saying the International community is turning a blind eye to Israel's "250-300 nuclear warheads" while trying to stop Iran's peaceful nuclear program. Erdogan was acting as a bridge between Shiite Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt which promotes a return of the Islamic Caliphate.
The Islamic Caliphate/Ottoman Empire, headquartered in Turkey, was one of the longest lasting empires in history spanning 624 years from 1299 to 1923. It ruled over much of southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. Its control over the Middle East was far greater than the Roman Empire. Some scholars now believe that a revived Ottoman Empire is the one prophesied by Daniel as the end-time antichrist system. Also the antichrist army of Ezekiel 38 is led from specific locations in Turkey--Magog, Meshech, Tubal. Also Christ is quoted in Revelation 2:13 that Pergamos is "even where Satan's seat is...where Satan dwells." Pergamon is in Turkey. Turkey arising--a sign of these prophetic times in which we live.
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