UPDATES
9:00 am Israel time, Sunday, July 12 2015
**It has been another violent weekend in eastern Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria with at least 21 Palestinian terror attacks recorded. “Rocks” were thrown at Israelis in Hizma, Silwan, A-Ram, Hebron, and on Mt. Scopus. The Moskowitz House in Ras al-Amiud as well as a car near Atarot were hit by Molotov cocktails. IDF troops were assaulted with IEDs near Rachel’s Tomb beside Bethlehem.
Early this morning, terrorists standing on an overpass at Baqa al-Garbiya on Highway 6–one of Israel’s major highways–dropped a “rock” on an Israeli car that blew out its back “windshield”.
Miraculously none of the children in the back seat were physically wounded. This is one of the first times that the epidemic of “rock” throwing has reached outside of Judea and Samaria.
**The way that the Iranian nuclear talks continue is mind-numbing. Reports this morning are that a deal has been reached on some elements of the agreement and will be announced shortly.
This comes in the context of an extraordinary statement yesterday by Iranian President Rouhani who remarked that even if a nuclear weapons deal is not reached, Iran has won by artfully altering the world’s perception of the Tehran government:
“Even if nuclear talks fail, our diplomacy showed the world that we are rational. We never left the negotiating table. 22 months of negotiations show that we managed to charm the world, and this is art.”
Rouhani has that right. 22 months of dragging out the negotiations, duping John Kerry and Barack Obama at every turn, and charming the international media in the process is diplomatic art–actually artifice–of the highest (or lowest) form.
By the way, the Iranian government released a new game yesterday that Iranians can play on their telephones. With no attempt at artifice whatsoever, the game is called “Death to Israel”.
A screen shot from the game: note the ballistic missile carrying an Iranian nuclear warhead on its way toward the Knesset building with the Star of David:
**The saga of the 4 “Israelis” (in quotation marks because two of the Israelis are dead soldiers and only their body parts are being held) continues with PM Netanyahu under withering criticism because of his handling of the case of Abraham Mengisto–the mentally ill Israeli-Ethiopian from Ashkelon who walked across the Gaza border last September and has not been heard from since.
Why is Netanyahu under attack? Simply because he has been carrying out quiet diplomacy to try to obtain the return of Mengisto from Hamas (if they indeed have him). Some members of the previous Netanyahu cabinet are particularly peeved because they were not informed of the possibility that Mengisto might be held by Hamas.
Meanwhile Hamas is crowing that the Israeli media is helping it to exact a heavy price for the return of the soldiers’ body parts. As was noted by a columnist in the official Hamas newspaper yesterday: “The Israelis are desperate to receive even a fraction of a body part . . . and the Israeli newspapers will cause Israeli decision makers to end the affair by reaching a deal [to free Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons.]
By the way, in the last 30 years of “prisoner-exchange” deals, Israel has released more than 7500 Palestinian and Arab terrorists for 14 living and 6 dead Israelis.
**Speaking of withering criticism, Hassan Nasrallah–the head of Hezbollah–has been on the receiving end from all sides in the last few weeks as the Hezbollah death toll has reached about 10 per day. According to one Lebanese report yesterday, Hezbollah has now lost more men in Syria than it lost in all of its wars with Israel.
Even cartoonists are having a field day, with the main theme being that Hezbollah is not fulfilling its expressed mission of attacking Israel:
The man in green is gesturing toward a sign that reads “Al-Quds” (Jerusalem) and is saying to Nasrallah that he is running the wrong way toward the sign that reads “Syria”. Underneath Nasrallah is the facetious comment “Jihadist”.
And another one:
In this one, the Hezbollah man is shooting in the wrong direction.
TODAY’S BLOG:
If you want to see what has gone wrong with the IDF General Command these days, you don’t have to look very far.
Yesterday, Israel’s Maariv newspaper published an interview with the IDF official spokesman, Brig. Gen. Motti Almoz on the anniversary of last year’s war with Hamas. Almoz’s responses to the reporter’s questions were revealing and astonishing.
Herewith is some of that interview:
Reporter: [How would you characterize the war last summer?]
Almoz: The point is that we won.
Reporter: We were paralyzed for a whole summer because of a terrorist organization. This was a victory?
Almoz: Last summer, people had to cancel vacations, one hundred thousand troops were mobilized, and we paid a very heavy price. But Israel continued functioning. During the war, we saw it happen: people jumping from the swimming pool to the bomb shelter and back to the swimming pool.
[Can you believe this? The new IDF definition of victory is that Israel “continued functioning”. And swimming pools? What swimming pools? Nobody here in southern Israel was in any swimming pool–especially the poor people living in the communities along the Gaza border who were being mortared or rocketed every 5 minutes.]
Reporter: You talk about national resilience. The question is whether militarily and politically we won the war?
Almoz: The truth is that there was no instance in which Hamas surprised the IDF in terms of weapons or tactics.
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[Really? What about all those tunnels? What about all the Israeli soldiers who got killed by terrorists coming out of those tunnels?]
Almoz continues: . . . I say that today a victory looks different.
Reporter: The residents along the Gaza border are still being hit by rockets. There is still what you always call a “drip”.
Almoz: Every rocket is a rocket, each of which is an alarm in the middle of the day or night. This is a significant disruption of the lifestyle. But in the end everything is relative.
[A significant disruption of the “lifestyle”? How about a traumatic disruption of “life”? Everything is “relative”?]
Reporter: We are filled with outrageous phrases like “lone terrorist”, “drip” and ‘seeping out “. Why not call a spade a spade?
Almoz: These are not our words, they do not originate from my office . . . Most of these expressions are media products, whereas we (in the IDF office) describe the facts. In any case, the expression ‘drip’ was not said to convince ourselves that the threat not significant or even slight. Shooting from the Golan Heights clearly directed at us is really leakage.
[Can you believe this claptrap? The IDF invented the words “drip”, and “seepage”, and “leakage”–in a blatant effort to convince Israelis outside of southern Israel how insignificant and slight the missile fire is. And then Almoz uses the very word “leakage” in his answer.]
Reporter: What about the situation in Judea and Samaria?
Almoz: If you ask the settlers do they feel safe, it seems to me that most of them will say yes . . . The security situation on the ground is easy with occasional jumps that are properly taken care of.
[Say what? Is that why hundreds of Jewish community members are currently camped out in front of Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem protesting against the violence in Judea and Samaria? Almoz’s comments are just plain unbelievable.]
Reporter: The volume of attacks like we saw last week–isn’t this an intifada?
Almoz: Intifada is a much broader phenomenon that involves the recruitment of fighters against the state, and is an explosive event that came at once . . . but that’s not what we’ve seen here lately. ”
[Incredible. What have we seen here lately? By the IDF’s own admission, Hamas in Turkey is plowing money and weapons into Judea and Samaria. Qatar is plowing money and weapons into Gaza. Stabbings, shootings, IEDs, Molotov cocktails, and rocks on a scale not seen since the last intifada–which by the way, far from being “one explosive event”, lasted for almost 8 years.]
We could go on and on this morning, but you get the idea. The IDF General Command as evidenced by its own IDF spokesman is severely out of touch with reality. Living in a deluded self-created bubble, the General Command cannot see what is actually happening on the ground all around us.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.