Naomi Ragen - Israel - Hamas - Gaza

I have been on Naomi Ragen’s email list for several years. No. I am not Jewish. Yes, absolutely I support Israel and Naomi’s writings are sensitive, passionate, informative, fair.

The below came in an email today and I thought I would post it along with the Roger L. Simon piece –

So Many Miracles – This e-mail is going around in Hebrew. It is all true.

The soldiers in Gaza are switched out with other units in order to rest. This story was told by one of these soldiers.

“I and my friends captured a number of Hamas terrorists. When they were interrogated, we asked them, if you have so many tunnels that come into Israel, and that are built 25 feet under the ground and reach to Beer Sheva, why until now have you never used any of them for terrorist attacks? To kidnap or kill Israelis?

And this is what he answered:

“For twelve years we have been building these tunnels and waiting for the right moment, when we were trained and ready. We decided that the time would be this year on Rosh Hashana, 2014. We chose Rosh Hashana because most of the soldiers get leave to go home and there aren’t a lot on guard duty, and it’s a two day holiday. All of Hamas would go through the tunnels we’ve built over twelve years and capture Israel. In every tunnel we’d send two, three dozen armed terrorists and kidnap civilians, women, children and bring them back to Gaza through the tunnels. And then Israel couldn’t bomb the tunnels because of all the Israeli civilians inside them. And in this way we would occupy the entire country and rule Israel and kill all the Zionists. For years we were planning this and it was going to happen in two months. Your attacks on Gaza destroyed our plans.”

The person who sent this to me added this:

“Many religious people asked after our three boys were found dead what happened to all our prayers? So you see, this is what happened. God heard us. And because of these three martyred boys, all of Israel was saved from a terrible massacre. All the things that we have seen this summer are one miracle after the next. Continue to pray and strengthen each other. And give thanks to God who watches over the Jewish people in the land He promised them.

Roger L. Simon – Israel’s Most Dangerous Enemy

Barack Obama is apparently very angry with Bibi Netanyahu.

We have known for some time, via hot mike and other methods, that neither he nor his secretary of State much care for the Israeli prime minister. But — perhaps exacerbated by a multiplicity of foreign and domestic policy failures, plus atrocious poll numbers, one this weekend showing Romney beating him handily were the election held today — Obama seemed more irked than usual.

He needed someone to beat up since the world was beating him up. And the Israelis had just hugely embarrassed his secretary of State (and by extension him) by pointing out their absurd bias in favor of Hamas in ceasefire negotiations, so absurd in fact that they outraged even Israel’s most famous liberal/left politician, Tzipi Livni, who would normally do almost anything for a chance for peace. (Ironically, the details of the pro-Hamas negotiations in which Israeli security concerns — the tunnels, demilitarization, etc. — were ignored were exposed by Barak Ravid in Israel’s most liberal newspaper, Haaretz.)

Further, they had outraged the Egyptians, who were dumped from the negotiations by Obama and Kerry in favor of Turkey and Qatar. Our administration seems to have a preference for the more extreme Islamist/Muslim Brotherhood societies, although you would think, given their professed loyalty to women’s and gay rights, these cultures would be anathema to them. Never mind. Obama is an equal opportunity narcissist and everything’s fine, unless you cross him.

Which, according to sources in Israel, is where Netanyahu found himself when the American president called Sunday to admonish him about Gaza. Obama reportedly used or implied the threat of withholding the resupply of weapons — don’t know if this includes the Iron Dome itself — if Israel didn’t fall into line and stop attacking Gaza immediately.

What Obama is doing, in effect, is saving Hamas. It’s almost mind boggling to think, but it’s true. Continue here.