Israel will see the WAR in Gaza through to VICTORY
By Ted Belman
I was privileged to participate in a conference call with Gen Effie Eitam organized by One Jerusalem. Others on the call included Jerry Gordon, Pamela Geller, Omri Ceren and Anne Lieberman.
We were all wowed by what Eitam, who is on the inner circle of the defense establishment, had to say.
1. Israel will continue with its assault for another two weeks. Rather than enter into Gaza City and fight street by street, Israel will invite the Gazans to leave the city and go to the sand dunes of Gush Katif where a temporary city will be set up for their care. Then Israel will pulverize Gaza City from the air until Hamas surrenders.
2. Israel, even then, won’t rush into a ceasefire agreement but will manage the aftermath carefully. Ultimately IDF will return to Israel.
3. Israel will insist in any settlement that Corporal Shalit be returned.
4. There will be no more smuggling of arms. Period.
5. The Defeat of Hamas will not move the peace process forward. There is no peace process. The Arabs have to choose between the status quo or a fate similar to the fate of Gazans. The Arabs prefer Israel protection to having their own state. Everything is improving in Judea and Samaria and the Arabs know it.
6. Israel is unified and committed to preventing Iran from getting the bomb. From what he said I got the impression that the attack on Iran is not far away hopefully with international support.
7. Bush is ending his presidency as a faithful friend of Israel and an enemy of terror.
If I left anything out I will insert it later.
Here is the AUDIO. The last half is where it really gets interesting.
Ted – and Israel’s “looking positively” on the French-Egyptian proposal has allowed it to politically isolate Hamas and give it cover for the third phase of its military operation. The aim should not be a ceasefire – it should be victory and Hamas is not interested in a real peace with Israel. It is time to press this war forward to the finish!
Israel now is bombing the tunnels from the Egyptian line inward along the Philadelphi corridor and widening it by bombing the housing adjacent to it.. Israel dropped leaflets earlier today for all residents of Rafiach to skadadle and advised that IDF would be retaking Rafiach shortly.
Peskin it ain’t over till it’s over. Eat your Jew Hating heart out.
What was not lost on any of my fellow bloggers on the One Jerusalem conference call with M.K. Brig. Gen. Effie Eitam: his moral clarity and the solidarity of the Israel people with IDF troops in Gaza. Something in excess of 80 % of Israelis polled according to Eitam support the IDF incursion. He noted that injured soldiers he met in Soraka Hospital in Beersheva, were anxious to return to their units to carry on the fight against Hamas in Gaza. At one point, the last questioner, Ann Lieberman of Boker Tov, Boulder!chocked up audibly when she thanked Gen Eitam and IDF soldiers in Gaza who were “also fighting for we Jews in the Diaspora.” A matter also underlined in Pamela Geller query about the ‘annihilationist’ protesters in Eurabia, U.K., and, yes, here in the US -a subject that Geller on her blog Atlas Shrugs has been relentless in conveying in the blogosphere. I asked Gen. Eitam about whether a ‘clear cut victory’ in Gaza would send a telling message to Iran and its axis of evil: Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and other Islamic terror groups supported by the Mullahs in Tehran. He said that Israel will not allow Iran to create a nuclear umbrella over the region and is convinced that if diplomacy failed that an international operation to take down the Nuclear umbrella would be launched. He also noted that the injcoming Obama Administration might carefully learn from the Israeli confrontation against Hamas in Gaza, how one should deal with Iran.
JPost.com » Special Reports » Confronting Hamas » Article
Jan 7, 2009 10:39 | Updated Jan 7, 2009 20:20
Cabinet okays continuation of Gaza op
Just hours after Jerusalem signaled it might give Franco-Egyptian diplomacy a chance on Wednesday, the Security Cabinet gave the IDF the green light to continue Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
After ceasing fire for three hours in order to allow humanitarian goods into the Strip, both sides resumed hostilities after 4 p.m., with Hamas firing two Grad-type rockets into downtown Beersheba and the IAF immediately attacking the rocket launchers.
Meanwhile, Israel clarified that when the cabinet stated it viewed French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s offer “favorably” earlier in the day, it did not mean Israel wholeheartedly accepted it.
Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said that Israel was ready to accept parts of the offer which were in line with its own interests – a complete cessation in terror activity and a halt to weapons smuggling through the Gaza-Egypt border.
Nevertheless, Israel announced on Wednesday evening that the Defense Ministry’s Diplomatic-Security Bureau chief, Amos Gilad, would fly to Cairo on Thursday to discuss the cease-fire proposal.
Earlier, following a four hour meeting, the Security Cabinet had issued a statement indicating that it was looking favorably upon French, US and Egyptian efforts to broker a Gaza cease-fire based on the establishment of an international mechanism to stop the arms smuggling.
“Israel is working to improve the security situation in the south,” the statement said, thanking Egypt and Sarkozy for “their efforts to stop the terrorist activities from Gaza, and to stop the arms smuggling from Egypt to the Gaza Strip.”
Israel, the statement said, viewed the dialogue between Egyptian and Israeli officials to further this issue “favorably.”
However, the Associated Press quoted Sarkozy as saying that Israel and the Palestinian Authority had accepted the proposal. Israeli officials would not confirm Sarkozy’s statement and the Palestinian Authority is not a direct party to the conflict.
Turkey has already been asked to put together an international force in Gaza, according to a Mideastern diplomat familiar with the country’s efforts to end the conflict. He said the responsibilities of the force were yet to be determined. The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, and Turkish officials would not immediately comment.
At the end of the bloodiest 24 hours of the operation Tuesday, during which the IDF lost five soldiers, senior defense officials revealed that the army was prepared to deploy in the entire Gaza Strip, if necessary.
Despite increasing international pressure on Israel to withdraw its troops, a senior official confirmed that plans had been drawn up to move troops into southern Gaza as well.
The cease-fire plan proposed by Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak received the endorsement of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a UN Security Council meeting Tuesday night.
According to Israeli officials, the cease-fire proposal was based on the establishment of an international force to prevent the smuggling of weapons from Sinai into Gaza, which would see an increase in the number of US military engineers already on the Egyptian side of the border.
The IDF is conditioning its acceptance of a new cease-fire with Hamas on the establishment of such a supervision mechanism in the Gaza Strip and along the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent the smuggling of weaponry and explosives from Egypt.
Egypt said on Tuesday night that it was proposing an immediate cease-fire, followed by talks on long-term arrangements for borders and crossings.
Olmert, on a tour of the South Tuesday, laid out the principles for an end to Operation Cast Lead.
“It will stop when the conditions that are essential for Israel’s security are met,” Olmert said. “First and foremost, all terrorist operations against us must stop. The strengthening of the terrorist organizations via the smuggling of war material from Egypt into Gaza must also stop.
Peskin, all this war stuff but lets go to one of your pet themes:
Last update – 00:00 30/05/2008
Introducing the world’s strongest currency: The shekel
By Nathan Sheva
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/988623.html
Even the powerful euro has had a hard time competing with what has become probably the strongest currency in the world since the beginning of 2008: the Israeli shekel.
Since the beginning of 2008 the shekel has made some serious gains against nearly all the major world currencies. The shekel has gained 15% against the dollar, slightly more against the British pound and the Canadian dollar, as well as 8% versus the Swedish kroner and 24% against the South African rand.
Even the solid euro has had a hard time competing with the shekel, and has fallen from NIS 5.74 at the beginning of April by 12% to NIS 5.00 – its lowest rate in five years. Since the start of the year, the shekel has strengthened against the euro by 9%.
There is mounting pressure within Israel for the Bank of Israel (BOI) Governor Stanley Fischer to do whatever it takes to weaken the shekel. Fischer has, to date, resisted calls for BOI intervention, relying instead on market forces to dictate the value of the currency. Over the last few weeks, as the U.S.Federal Reserve has dropped interest rates by 1.25%, instead of seeing a surging shekel (based on interest rate differential), we’ve actually witnessed the dollar stabilize (a phenomenon, we note, that has happened globally).
Headwinds turn into tailwinds
Israeli stocks have done a good job holding their own during the current market meltdown in spite of being weighted down by these currency issues. If the dollar continues to stabilize and even strengthen, Israeli stocks that trade in the U.S. will see this go straight through to their EPS lines. If this happens, look for leading Israeli high tech companies to blow past analyst estimates in future quarters and we’ll be off to the races.
Dubbed the “Super-Shekel” by BusinessWeek recently, in a few months Israel’s tiny coin, about the size of a dime and worth about a quarter, will stand proud beside the American dollar, the Japanese yen and the European euro by becoming a “fully convertible currency” in international currency markets.
Both Israel’s shekel and the Mexican peso will join 15 other convertible currencies now traded in about 80 countries. The decision to let Israel into the elite group was made by the CLS Bank, based in New York and supervised by the US Federal Reserve.
This right of passage for Israel’s shekel – whose name first came into being about 5,000 years ago – gives it a new status among international investors and buyers.
News of its convertibility enhanced a rumor that the shekel was the strongest currency in the world at the start of 2008. A source at Citigroup Israel, speaking on anonymity, confirmed to ISRAEL21c that the rumor was true.
A source at the Bank of Israel was more cautious. Says Michael Strawcznski, the deputy director of the research department at the Bank of Israel: “Whether it’s the strongest currency in the world in 2008, I can’t say for certain. But there is no doubt that the shekel is strong.”
Strawcznski who works directly under Stanley Fischer, Bank of Israel’s head, prefers looking at the long-term. In general, he says, the Israeli shekel is expected to stay strong. This is partly due to the fact that “Israelis have discovered foreign investment abroad,” he says.
The fact that the Israeli currency will appear at banks as a fully convertible currency is a big step for the tiny nation of just under seven million people, which recently introduced a two shekel coin, nicknamed the “schnekel” into the market.
“It is well known that [the fully convertible status] may open some new doors to traders who didn’t know about the shekel,” says Strawcznski, adding that it is “good for tourism in general. People now have the possibility to get the shekel wherever they are.
“In terms of the fiscal policy that we are running today [in Israel], we are in very good shape. We are a center for high-tech and there are a lot of financial possibilities through venture capital,” he adds.
Israel’s convertibility, newspapers report, will not only improve Israel’s status among investors, it will also affect how international credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch rate Israel.
Use of the word “shekel” as a currency has been traced back to Mesopotamia around 3,000 BCE. It is believed to have represented an ancient unit of weights. One explanation is that a “shekel” denoted a specific mass of barley, with the first syllable of the word, ‘she’ meaning barley in the Akkadian language.
Surviving all the way to modern day Hebrew, the word shekel in Israel today means “to weigh.” It is also likely, some sources indicate, that the English word “scale” is derived from “shekel.”
Maybe I am missing something,somebody please explain to me why the IDF doesn’t leverage the Arab need for outside assistance.
the Gazans need food,medicine,fuel & most everything else from the outside world to survive.Israel controls the access in for these materials & just allows the trucks through without demanding a price.In Everyday life if someone gives you a vital service he gets paid for his efforts!I know an answer would be that to not let the Arabs have essentials would be claimed to be criminal by the outside world.Give them the aid,but as the go between exact a price!
Why can’t this aid be disbursed by Israel at IDF distribution centers,let the Arabs come to these distribution points for thier needs.Israel can exercise a certain amount of control over Gaza civilians in this way & control thier behavior,to the advantage of Israel. Why give away for nothing that which can be traded for a profit?
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Distance is only a matter of time
http://www.merhak.com/main3112_english.html
Pro-Israel hasbara efforts
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/must/entry/israel_s_hasbara_efforts_posted
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/must/
I love this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uep5UCVC2io&eurl=http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/must/entry/israel_s_hasbara_efforts_posted
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1231167305027&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Egypt has always played a double and even a triple game with us since OSLO, and on one side they allow weapons to be stored on their side of the border for Palis to smuggle through tunnels initiated on their side(in violation to their signed agreements) of the border and have made almost no attempts to halt either the storing of weapons or the locating and plugging the tunnels.(except a few show actions when America pressures them) Their complicity should have placed hem outside of any participation in our conflict with Palis. They should have been sanctioned by refusing to include them in anything we do. They are our most serious and dangerous existential enemy.
Reports of Hizbollah launching rockets into northern Israel and providing the possibility of a two front war, is strongly suggesting the not so hidden hand of Iran manipulating this scenereo.While Israel is being diverted by bit players, Iran’s nuclear program (Israel’s real existential threat) is proceeding unhindered.This will not be the first time that Iran has outfoxed an opponent.
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IRAN-CONTRA HEARINGS; REGAN TESTIFIES REAGAN FELT IRAN ‘SNOOKERED’ HIM
Published: July 31, 1987
LEAD: Donald T. Regan, who was closer to President Reagan than anyone else who has testified before the Iran-contra committees, said today that the President felt he had been repeatedly ‘’snookered” by the Iranians
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