Tag: Middle East

Netanyahu rival Gantz chosen to form new Israeli government

JOSEF FEDERMAN – March 15, 2020

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz will be given the first opportunity to form a new government after an inconclusive national election this month, the country’s president said Sunday, raising questions about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future.

The decision by President Reuven Rivlin was announced by his office after he consulted with leaders of all of the parties elected to parliament. He will formally designate Gantz with the task on Monday and give him a month to cobble together a governing coalition.

The political wrangling comes at a sensitive time. Netanyahu has been leading the country as it confronts a growing coronavirus threat, with over 200 cases diagnosed and the number quickly rising. Netanyahu also faces serious legal troubles as he prepares to go on trial to face corruption charges.

Netanyahu’s Likud emerged as the largest party in the March 2 election, Israel’s third in under a year. But with his smaller religious and nationalist allies, he received the support of only 58 lawmakers during Sunday’s consultations, leaving his right-wing bloc three seats short of the required majority in parliament.

Gantz’s Blue and White received the support of parties representing 61 seats, a slim majority. However, those parties are also divided, and it is not clear whether Gantz will succeed in putting together a coalition. One lawmaker refused to endorse either side.

Given the likelihood of continued deadlock, Rivlin late Sunday summoned both Netanyahu and Gantz to an emergency meeting, where the men pledged to explore a unity government.

https://apnews.com

Europe Under Siege

Bruce Bawer – March 10, 2020

In 1683 a massive army of the Ottoman Empire laid siege to the Christian city of Vienna. After two months, an allied force that consisted of men from all over the Holy Roman Empire and from other central European states, including Hungary, and that was led by John III Sobieski, the King of Poland and Lithuania, turned the Ottoman soldiers back, preventing the potential Islamization of the continent.

In recent days, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of the Ottoman Empire’s successor state, Turkey, has unleashed thousands of Muslims, mostly young males of military age, upon the European Union, today’s not-so-holy but increasingly imperial reincarnation of the Holy Roman Empire. More specifically, Erdogan, in violation of an agreement with the EU that netted him billions, has allowed – and encouraged – these people, who have been routinely described in the Western media as “refugees” and “migrants,” to storm the border separating his country from the EU’s southeasternmost satrapy, Greece. Indeed, he’s lent them active support, providing many of them with free transport to the border, which they’ve attacked with rocks, “makeshift battering rams,” and tear-gas canisters (supplied by Ergodan) while setting fires and shouting “Allahu akbar!” Photos taken at the border underscore just how perverse it is to call these thugs “refugees” or “migrants.”

Seems like old times. What’s different this time around is that whereas seventeenth-century Europeans understood that they were confronting, in the Islamic invaders of their day, an existential threat to their way of life, many of their descendants don’t seem to have a clue about what they’re dealing with. On Tuesday of last week, and again on Saturday, thousands of Germans, rallying in Berlin and other cities, demanded that the “migrants” on the Greek borders be allowed to pour into the continent and to find their way to Germany, if they wish, so that they can help form “a solidarity society” in which there will be “no more suffering.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com

Syria and Turkey Edge Toward All-Out War While Putin Smiles

Rick Moran – February 12, 2020

There have been several clashes between Syrian and Turkish military forces in the last two weeks, as Syria attempts to retake Idlib province from rebel forces. Turkey has carved out a demilitarized zone in Idlib, which is supposed to be a safe zone for Syrian civilians. Their goal is to prevent a flood of refugees from crossing the Syrian border.

But Syria is ignoring the Moscow-negotiated cease-fire and driving hundreds of thousands of refugees toward Turkey, most of them in desperate straits.

The UN is warning of a humanitarian catastrophe as 700,000 Syrians are on the move with nowhere to go. But there are likely to be more refugees as Syria and Turkey have now come to blows, with President Erdogan promising to “punish” Syria for attacking Turkish positions in Idlib.

Washington Times:

Analysts say the reignited Syrian crisis threatens to engulf  Turkey and force Ankara to greatly expand its military mission inside the country. The winner, they say, could ultimately be Russia, as President Vladimir Putin may emerge as the only player powerful enough to prevent a full-blown war.

“Erdogan went into Syria for entirely selfish and cynical reasons, and now finds that it was a lot easier to go in than get out,” said former Defense Department official Michael Rubin, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who tracks the region extensively.

https://pjmedia.com

Now The Iranians Are Promising More Military Action Against U.S. Forces, And That Would Definitely Start World War 3

– January 9, 2020

What in the world are the Iranians thinking?  After President Trump decided not to respond militarily to the rockets that the Iranians fired at U.S. bases in Iraq, it appeared that a major war had been averted.  People all over the world celebrated this unexpected turn of events, and global stock markets soared.  But now the Iranians are changing their tune again.  Instead of “standing down”, top Iranian leaders are warning that “harsher revenge” is on the way and that there will be more attacks against U.S. forces.  I think that Iran correctly perceives that Trump does not want a war, but if Trump gets pushed too far he will hit the Iranians extremely hard.  And once the Iranian homeland starts getting pummeled by U.S. missiles, the Iranians will start firing some of the 200,000 missiles that they have stockpiled at Israel, and needless to say the Israelis will respond with even greater force.  In other words, any escalation of this conflict at this point has the potential to spark World War 3.

So the Iranians would be wise to stop this nonsense while they still can, but apparently they have no intention of doing so.

On Thursday, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force claimed that the missile attacks the other night were just “the first stage of a major regional operation aimed at expelling U.S. forces from the Middle East”…

Iran’s missile strikes on Iraqi bases housing U.S. troops were the first stage of a major regional operation aimed at expelling U.S. forces from the Middle East, the Iranian commander responsible for the attack said Thursday.

Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who as commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Aerospace Force oversees most of Iran’s missile arsenal, stopped short of threatening further concrete military action. He also said Iran hadn’t intended to kill anyone in Wednesday’s attack but only to cause material damage.

And Revolutionary Guard commander Abdollah Araghi is promising that “harsher revenge” is coming soon.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

Fears of new conflict rise after US kills Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general, in strike on Baghdad airport

, , and – January 2, 2020

One of Iran’s most revered and powerful military commanders has been killed in a U.S. strike near the Baghdad International Airport, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday.

The strike will intensify tensions between the U.S. and Iran and many experts say it escalates the risk of a new conflict spreading across the region.

“At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” the Department of Defense said in an emailed statement.

Also killed in the strike was a top Iraqi leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, which is known as the PMF and is part of a larger umbrella group that includes a number of Shia militant groups supported by Iran..

An Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that al-Muhandis had arrived to the airport in a convoy to receive Soleimani whose plane had arrived from either Lebanon or Syria. The airstrike occurred as soon as he descended from the plane to be greeted by al-Muhandis and his companions, killing them all.

The DoD said Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region. General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”

https://www.militarytimes.com

Trump to Sign Executive Order Declaring Jewish People a ‘Nation’ Just as Written in Genesis

Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz – December 11, 2019

Once again, President Trump is attaching himself to the words of the Bible by passing an executive order which explicitly enacts God’s promise to Abraham; the Jews are a nation. One prominent American Israeli rabbi noted the sole Biblical character who referred to Judaism as a religion; Haman.

President Trump announced that he will be signing an executive order on Wednesday intended to withhold federal funding as a means of forcing universities to cope with growing anti-Semitism on campus. First reported in the New York Times, the order will effectively define Judaism as a race or nationality and not just a religion.

The order empowers the Education Department as described in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which allows the department to withhold funding from any college or educational program that discriminates “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” Religion was not included among the protected categories, so Mr. Trump’s order will have the effect of embracing an argument that Jews are a people or a race with a collective national origin in the Middle East.

The new executive order will be based on the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism which includes a section on anti-Semitism relative to Israel based on the three ‘D’s’: Demonization, Double-Standard, and Delegitimization.

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com