Israel braces for fresh round of Islamic terror

Here's a fact you might want to ponder, at least if you're keen on peace in the Middle East.

Half the Palestinian population in greater Israel is under twenty years of age.

In their lifetimes, what has PLO/PA done for them?

If they are in Gaza, what has Hamas done for them?

Palestinians under both Hamas and the PA have known nothing but humiliation.

Along comes ISIL, Islamic State, with a promise of restoring Palestinian pride.

Driven out of Syria and Iraq after wreaking immense havoc, these toxic fundamentalists, with whom the IDF played footsie while they were on our side in Syria, seem to have a foothold in greater Israel today.

This can only get much worse before it gets better.

The wily Erdogan outflanks team Trump in Qatar

For the first couple of days after Saudi Arabia announced the excommunication of Qatar from the community of US vassal states in the Gulf, the punditocracy was unanimous that Qatar's goose was cooked. They'd have no choice but to deep-six their civil relationship with Iran. They'd have no choice but to drastically rein in their pain-in-the-ass Al Jazeera network. In fact, there was widespread talk that regime change wouldn't be long in coming.

What's coming instead is the Turkish military, and they're not coming to expedite the removal of the Emir. Quite to the contrary. Qatar and Turkey are two of the main sponsors of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thanks mainly to Israeli lobbying efforts, the MB have long been a listed terrorist outfit in much of the West, and also in Saudi Arabia. I would hazard a guess that if and when push comes to shove, an Erdogan-led Turkey would have more loyalty to the MB than to NATO.

Israel's main problem with the MB is that it's the backbone of the democratically elected government in Gaza. There was a time when Israel happily nurtured the fledgling Hamas to undercut the PLO. Those days are long gone. Today, the PLO/PA are generally seen as Israel's bum-boys, while Hamas are considered Palestinian patriots.

This unfolding shitstorm was unleashed by Trump's bombastic rhetoric on the occasion of his visit to Riyadh last week, when he demanded that his audience stand with America in the war to exterminate "terrorism" once and for all. Even in mainstream American media it's widely acknowledged that it's the Saudis who are the primary enablers of this thing we call terrorism.

Not that the Qatari's have clean hands, but after the putative leader of the free world put things so baldly, it was just a matter of time before the finger-pointing got serious.

So here we are. The Saudis are doing way more to keep the order books of Lockheed and Raytheon and Boeing plumped up than Qatar is, which is why they've got more cred in the West, at least for now. But with Erdogan throwing this spanner into the works and Washington in chaos, it's impossible to predict what's next.

Interesting times indeed!

Bibi's latest peace initiative: let Gaza drown in its own sewage

Experts were warning more than five years ago that the Gaza sewage treatment system was grossly inadequate for the demands placed upon it. Even then, tens of thousands of gallons of raw sewage were being pumped into the Mediterranean every day.

Perhaps realizing that that is the same Mediterranean that the Chosen People like to frolic in at vacation time, the Israeli government has recently denied Gaza the diesel fuel required to run the generators that run the pumps that can pump the sewage away.

From the Likud perspective this is a win-win. Not only is sewage being kept out of the Mediterranean, but the citizens of Gaza are being taught yet another sharp lesson on why they should turn their backs on their Hamas leaders!

They can ponder this lesson till they drown in their own sewage.

This crime against basic human decency is being waged with the full connivance of the Egyptian military junta that seized power from the democratically elected Morsi last July, and also with the full connivance of the Palestinian Authority, those shameless collaborators who will stoop to any depths to best their Hamas rivals.

This disgusting strategy to bully the Palestinians of Gaza will no doubt have the same result as every previous heavy-handed Israeli tactic.

The radicals in Gaza will be strengthened, and Israel will end up with yet another PR fiasco in the court of world public opinion.

Cutting off the head of the snake III

In 2004 an American Hellfire missile, fired from an American attack helicopter manned by an IAF flight crew, took out an old man in a wheelchair and a dozen bystanders in Gaza City.

The old man was Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, reputed head of Hamas.

"The head of the snake."

At the time there was a lot of infantile gloating about having dispatched the head of the snake.

What a glorious victory! Nevermind that we'd just murdered an old man in a wheelchair and a dozen bystanders; he was the head of the snake!

It was a Hellfire missile well spent.

Two years later Hamas won the elections in Gaza.

Free and fair and utterly democratic elections by all accounts, just like the ones we in the Nations of Virtue love to sermonize about.

By the time another year was over, Hamas had routed the PA in an ill-advised counter-revolution that we put the PA up to.

Hamas have been the undisputed masters of Gaza ever since.

Just a couple of months ago the Emir of Qatar, an erstwhile ally of the Nations of Virtue, paid a visit to Gaza and promised 400 millions in rebuilding assistance.

Since then there have been pro-Hamas rallies galore in the supposedly PA-controlled West Bank. There is little doubt that in a fair and free election Hamas would rout the PA in the West Bank as well.

All of which flows from having cut the head off the snake in 2004.

Perhaps "cutting off the head of the snake" is a strategy that could bear revisiting.

Can anybody get John Baird to shut the f@ck up?

Where are you, Rabbi Mendelsohn, now that we need you more than ever?

Your protege seems to have slipped his leash.

A week ago he was making a fool of himself at the General Assembly, wagging his finger at the PA for having the audacity to make a "unilateral" bid for statehood.

When Netanyahu announced 3000 new settler abodes the next day, Baird was initially muted in his response. But given a couple of days to see which way the wind was blowing, it was soon announced in the papers that Baird was "reprimanding" Israel about the new settlements.

Is there a serious person in the world who imagines that John Baird "reprimands" Israel?

But look here; now he's reprimanding Syria!

This no doubt has Assad quaking in his loafers... quaking with laughter perhaps!

Is there a serious person on this planet who imagines that the Syrians care what pronouncements come from the Canadians?

Enough! Please, Rabbi Mendelsohn, get this idiot under control. We're counting on you.

The resurrection of Ehud Olmert

Look who is emerging as the voice of reason in Israel's political landscape. None other than the guy who seemed so eminently forgettable, that everybody thought would spend at least a couple of months behind bars for that corruption hanky-panky, Ehud Olmert.

Ehud is remaking himself as the voice of moderation. He is the phoenix rising from the dust-bin of history.

According to the Jerusalem Post, Ehud has no problem whatsoever with the Abbas gambit at the UN.

 "We have to support the moderates" he says.

Well, no kidding! This is the most profound revelation to strike the Middle East since Saint Paul's vision on the road to Damascus... oh, probably an unfortunate metaphor at this moment in history...

But he is absolutely right.

That's why I don't really get the anti-PA line coming from Hillary and a few other adherents of the anti-Palestinian hard line.

If you can't make a deal with Abbas, you'll never make a deal with anybody.

Is there still time for him to put together a list for January?

"Diplomatic terror" and the PA's UN canard

Tomorrow's vote on granting "state" status to the PA observer delegation at the UN is an exercise in imbecility from beginning to end.

As every serious person who follows these matters well understands, Mahmoud Abbas is America's bum-boy in Palestine.

While he's been "negotiating" a sovereign Palestinian state with Israel for the last eight years, the settler population in the occupied territories has doubled.

During those eight years the credibility and prestige of his Hamas rivals has blossomed.

But Israel and the Nations of Virtue claim that this empty UN gesture is some sort of "short-cut" that seeks to by-pass negotiations with Israel. Hence you see the spectacle of international lightweights like Canadian PM Harper waxing grave on how Canada cannot support any attempt to bypass negotiations.

What a crock of shit!

At no point in his tenure have the Nations of Virtue conceded a single hollow "victory" that Abbas could take to his people and show them that he's a serious champion of a Palestinian state.

That's no way to treat a bum-boy.

Meanwhile Hamas looks better and better to the Palestinian masses, because they're willing to take a beating every few years, and after every beating they come back stronger.

Unlike Abbas, who bows to every demand of his US masters and comes back looking weaker and weaker.

So his juvenile act of defiance, taking this issue to the UN General Assembly in defiance of his handlers, should be applauded and supported by Canada and the US and that handful of other countries that still deny the realities of the new Middle East.

Supporting Abbas in this vote is their last chance to make the PA look like a meaningful option.

The only other option is Hamas.