How the Media Makes It Seem Like Gaza Deserves Israel’s War Crimes

(FAIR) As Adam Johnson (FAIR.org, 4/9/18) writes, media have engaged in extraordinary mental gymnastics to describe the Israeli military’s deliberate killing of Palestinian protesters in the Great Return March, framing long-distance sniper shootings as “clashes” in order to misleadingly “give the reader the impression of two equal warring sides.” Equally torturous are the linguistic contortions news outlets […]

Israeli Collective Punishment and Cold-Blooded Murder

[image: loonwatch]During 15 days of attacks on Palestinian Al-Aqsa mosque worshipers, Israeli security forces committed 15 extrajudicial killings throughout the territories, around 1,400 others injured, some seriously, scores requiring hospitalization.

Collective punishment Israel imposes is prohibited under international law, including actions violating religious rights, free expression, assembly and movement, the right to privacy and self-determination.

During the 15-day period, scores of Palestinians were arrested, including 30 children – most arrests occurring in Jerusalem’s Old City, at Al-Aqsa’s Lion’s Gate, as well as in East Jerusalem’s Al-Tur and Al-Issawiya areas.

Palestinian political leaders and activists were targeted, 15 individuals lawlessly arrested. Later released, they’re barred from entering Al-Aqsa, speaking publicly, demonstrating or giving media interviews – violations of their fundamental rights.

Children arrested were harshly treated. They were beaten or otherwise mistreated, some because of their Facebook posts.

Article 37 (b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states:

“No one is allowed to punish children in a cruel or harmful way. Children who break the law should not be treated cruelly.”

“They should not be put in prison with adults, should be able to keep in contact with their families, and should not be sentenced to death or life imprisonment without possibility of release.”

They should not be arbitrarily detained or denied their liberty. Detention should be a last resort and only for short duration.

During 15 days of defiling Al-Aqsa, Israeli security forces assaulted and arrested 30 journalists for doing their jobs, their equipment confiscated, according to the Palestinian Media Forum (PMF). Israel wants its high crimes suppressed.

On Saturday, regime security forces stormed PMF’s West Bank offices. They raided al-Quds satellite channel’s office and Pal Media headquarters, seizing equipment and documents, damaging the facilities.

Daily use of rubber-coated steel bullets, at times live fire, stun grenades, toxic tear gas, pepper spray, chemically-treated skunk water, and brutal beatings violated international and Israeli civil laws. So is use of lethal force against demonstrators.

Israeli forces stormed Al-Maqassed hospital, using tear gas and stun grenades. Intensive care and emergency area medical staff were assaulted.

Severely wounded Muhammad Abu Ghannam was abducted. He died for lack of treatment. The hospital became a virtual war zone, people screaming, blood on floors and walls.

Palestinians lawlessly arrested included women, children, students, the elderly and Palestinian Legislative Council members. Israeli forces brutalized and otherwise mistreated them.

Palestinians’ long nightmare continues, including daily Israeli raids, assaults, abductions and other forms of brutality.

On Sunday, dozens of heavily protected extremist settlers desecrated Al-Aqsa compound by their unwelcome presence.

Mosque guards and staff were abusively searched before allowed in, at least one lawless arrest made.

Extremist MK Yehuda Glick announced he and scores of others provocatively intended to visit the compound on Sunday, defiling it by their presence.

Gaza Near Collapse

A decade of Israeli blockade, compounded by PA complicity with its harshness, deteriorated conditions to the breaking point – the suffering of two million Gazans largely ignored by the world community.

Israel’s blockade was and continues to be for political, not security, reasons, encouraged and supported by Washington.

A report titled “Three Three Years After the 2014 Gaza Hostilities – Beyond Survival: Challenges to Economic Recovery and Long-Term Development” explains nightmarish conditions amounting to slow-motion genocide.

Gaza’s economy is in shambles. One-third of its arable land and over half of Oslo-agreed on fishing waters are off-limits. Palestinians venturing into them risk being shot and killed.

Electricity in Gaza is at an all-time low, at most one-fifth of demand. Power cuts last as long as 20 hours daily, sometimes longer. Lack of it endangers lives, damages the Strip’s fragile infrastructure, and prevents normal activities.

Three years after Operation Protective Edge, rebuilding is woefully slow. Most aid pledged wasn’t supplied. Most getting in hasn’t gone for reconstruction.

Blockade and Israeli aggression at its discretion makes economic recovery unattainable. Deep poverty, unemployment, underemployment, food insecurity, fractured infrastructure, limited public services (including healthcare and education), along with environmental degradation make daily life a struggle to survive.

Unemployment for youths and new labor force entrants is around 60%, overall unemployment over 40%, conditions worsening, not improving.

Gaza’s private sector is incapacitated by blockade, restricted movements, along with limited access to natural resources and markets.

Economic activity is little more than half its pre-2014 war level, while Gaza’s population steadily grows. Most households need humanitarian aid to survive.

The UN’s prediction about Gaza being unlivable by 2020 should have said it’s been this way for years, especially post-Operation Protective Edge.

On July 8, the Strip’s power crisis deepened. Two generators shut down. Production dropped to 20 megawatts daily because entry of Egyptian fuel stopped.

The PA is responsible for non-payment to Cairo. Israel cut its supply delivered to minimal amounts. Lack of power forced sharp cutbacks in all vital aspects of life – commercial, industrial, medical and residential.

Gaza’s health ministry instituted major cuts in vital services. Fuel used to run generators in hospitals is close to running out.

If things don’t improve quickly, most operating rooms, laboratories and blood banks will close.

The lives of patients needing vital surgery, in intensive care, and on dialysis will be endangered. Safe water and sanitation are gravely affected.

Gaza is occupied territory. Israel fails to fulfill even minimal obligations as an occupying power, international humanitarian law ignored.

The lives, health, safety and welfare of two million Gazans are endangered by its ruthlessness.

Israel and Palestinian Authority Plunge Gaza into Darkness

(AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra) (The Associated Press)

(The Real Agenda News) Even in four-star hotels in Gaza, generators are blocked during prolonged power outages.

Since last April, the only power plant in the Gaza Strip has been shut down for lack of fuel, so the two million inhabitants of the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave have been provide only four hours of energy per day.

If the decision taken by the Israeli Government on Sunday at the behest of the Palestinian Authority is confirmed, the Gazans will remain in the dark.

When it comes to ten years of the seizure of power in Gaza by the Islamist Hamas movement – in which three wars have been waged against Israel – the Palestinian territory has been plunged into darkness.

The escalation of tension threatens to blow up the fuses of a new armed conflict.

The Palestinian Authority presiding over Mahmoud Abbas seems to have grown tired of waiting for the promised formation of a unity government with Hamas and has begun to exert intense economic pressure on the Gaza Strip.

After refusing to pay gas taxes for the Gaza power plant, which was affected by the Israeli bombing in the summer war of 2014, the Ramallah Government has cut the salaries of its officials by 30%.

In May it announced that it would only pay Israel 75% of the energy supplied to the territory controlled by the Islamists.

Israeli Minister of Construction and Housing, Yohav Galant, was 10 years ago the commanding general of the Army’s Southern Command, deployed to Gaza.

“For Israel, Hamas is the equivalent of ISIS in Western countries,” he said in Jerusalem before a group of foreign journalists, hours after the Cabinet had agreed to cut power supply to Gaza.

The Islamists won the 2006 legislative elections, the year after Israel withdrew completely from the Strip.

“In 2007 they surrounded the positions of Fatah (the nationalist party of President Abbas), evicted their political rivals and seized power,” Galant recounts. “Between 30,000 and 40,000 Hamas militiamen continue to hold Gaza’s two million inhabitants hostage.”

Like the rest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Galant argues that the growing climate of tension has been due to the Palestinian fracture between Fatah, in power in the West Bank and Hamas, which rules over Gaza.

The minister declines to reveal when the works of the so-called underground wall, a barrier excavated in the subsoil around the border of the Strip to prevent the tunnels built by Hamas from penetrating the nearby kibbutz, are about to begin.

“The tunnels are their great strategic asset to attack Israel by surprise. If Hamas believes that it is going to lose it, it can trigger a new conflict “, says the former general.

The United Nations has warned Wednesday that the Strip faces an “absolute collapse” of its vital services to the population if the electricity supply is cut by 40%, as announced by the Government of Israel after the reduction of payments from the Palestinian Authority.

The UN humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories, Robert Piper, told France Presse that “increasing the duration of power outages can have a devastating effect on health facilities, water supply and sanitation”.

With the civilian population in Gaza trapped by fighting between Palestinian factions, political analyst Talal Okal, one of the few who still maintains independence of opinion in the Strip, believes that “the situation is so bad that it can hardly get worse.”

It is not foreseeable to have a popular outburst, in spite of the protests of the past winter, when the blackouts began to become a common thing, he explained.

“People are not going to stand up to the Hamas militias with their bare chest. Everyone knows that Gaza is subject to a military regime, but they are aware that, directly (in the West Bank) or indirectly (in the Strip), the central problem is the Israeli occupation. Or there is an agreement between the Palestinian parties,” he warns “or the risk of a new conflict with Israel can skyrocket.”

The population also suffers the refusal of Egypt to increase its electrical connections with the Strip.

The embargo imposed on Qatar – one of the main donors of energy to Gaza – by the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia’s break with Hamas, which until just a few weeks ago claimed its loyalty to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood enemies of Riyadh, have further aggravated the humanitarian situation.

The Israeli NGO Doctors for Human Rights has found that hospitals in the Gaza Strip lack one-third of the medicines considered basic.

No energy, with the water from the wells and beaches contaminated; in a territory subjected to a strict blockade by Israel, with the Egyptian border half-frozen, and frozen Gulf financial support, Hamas spokesmen predict a “catastrophe” and an “explosion” in the Strip.

The UN warned long ago that Gaza will cease to be habitable by 2020.

Gaza’s Sole Power Plant Shut Down

Palestinians walk on a road during a power cut in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.. (image: REUTERS)

Last Saturday, the plant shut down for lack of fuel. Funds donated by Qatar and Turkey were exhausted.

Gaza’s Energy Authority said it won’t buy more unless hostile PA authorities exempt it from fuel excise taxes it can’t afford to pay.

Under less dire conditions, electricity is severely limited. It’s been reduced from eight to six hours, followed by 12-hour blackouts.

Maintenance problems on Monday reduced power intervals to every four hours on, 12 hours off.

Gaza Energy Authority’s deputy chairman Fathi al-Sheikh explained monthly operating costs for two plant generators are about $13.6 million. Lifting the fuel tax would reduce it to around $5.5 million, a major savings.

Gaza buys 80% of its electricity from Israel, the rest from Egypt. When plant generators are operating, they supply 60 megawatts of power – 400 megawatts required to supply Strip needs.

Blockading Gaza, Israeli wars, along with frequent air and ground attacks lie at the root of its problems. Inadequate funding prevents proper maintenance.

Israel has the power to change things. Another preemptive war is more likely. Gazan infrastructure already is in deplorable condition.

Israel wants it kept this way, enforcing harshness, holding two million Gazans hostage to its viciousness, denying them fundamental rights everyone deserves.

Gaza’s Sole Power Plant Shut Down

Palestinians walk on a road during a power cut in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.. (image: REUTERS)

Last Saturday, the plant shut down for lack of fuel. Funds donated by Qatar and Turkey were exhausted.

Gaza’s Energy Authority said it won’t buy more unless hostile PA authorities exempt it from fuel excise taxes it can’t afford to pay.

Under less dire conditions, electricity is severely limited. It’s been reduced from eight to six hours, followed by 12-hour blackouts.

Maintenance problems on Monday reduced power intervals to every four hours on, 12 hours off.

Gaza Energy Authority’s deputy chairman Fathi al-Sheikh explained monthly operating costs for two plant generators are about $13.6 million. Lifting the fuel tax would reduce it to around $5.5 million, a major savings.

Gaza buys 80% of its electricity from Israel, the rest from Egypt. When plant generators are operating, they supply 60 megawatts of power – 400 megawatts required to supply Strip needs.

Blockading Gaza, Israeli wars, along with frequent air and ground attacks lie at the root of its problems. Inadequate funding prevents proper maintenance.

Israel has the power to change things. Another preemptive war is more likely. Gazan infrastructure already is in deplorable condition.

Israel wants it kept this way, enforcing harshness, holding two million Gazans hostage to its viciousness, denying them fundamental rights everyone deserves.

Official Resigns After U.N. Accidentally Tells the Truth About Israel

(ANTIMEDIA) A U.N. report published this week accused Israel of imposing an “apartheid regime” of racial discrimination on the Palestinian people. Shortly after its release, the official who approved its publication resigned amid pressure to pull it, and the report has since been withdrawn.

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The report, written by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), concluded that “Israel [has] established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole” — a charge Israel vehemently denies.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman likened the report to Der Sturmer, a Nazi propaganda publication that was strongly anti-Semitic.

It is a unique and beneficial position to be in wherein every legitimate criticism of one’s policies is deemed to be racially or politically motivated. In that sense, Israel wants to be ultimately free of criticism, even when the nation commits serious violations of international law. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. has staunchly come to Israel’s defense.

“The United Nations secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said in a statement, as reported by the Independent.

The ESCWA comprises 18 Arab states in Western Asia and has a view of supporting economic and social development in member states, according to its website. The report was prepared at the request of its member states and notes it reflects the views of the authors only. It was also published without any prior consultation with the U.N. secretariat.

Is the report entirely without merit, as the U.S. and Israel would have us believe? According to the report’s abstract, which Anti-Media cited before the publication was pulled:

“A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond. This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.”

South Africa, a country whose infamous history of an apartheid regime shows its people are adept enough to recognize apartheid when they see it, has been a staunch backer of the Palestinian movement for years. South Africa’s International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, once famously stated “the Palestinian struggle is our struggle.”

The U.N. report was authored by Richard Falk, a former U.N. human rights investigator for the Palestinian territories, and Virginia Tilley, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University.

After its publication, U.N. Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf resigned amid pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw it, Reuters reports. She stood by the report, adding, “It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary-general to renounce the report.”

The report is no longer visible on UNESCWA’s website, but can be found in the Internet archive.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Trump’s Self-Inflicted Policy Failures (VIDEO)

Even the most avid and enthusiastic Trump supporter needs to be critical of their most hopeful America First president. For a dose of reality and objective conviction, who better to rely on than Pat Buchanan? His article, Israel First or America First concludes with the fateful warning for President –Elect Trump. “Having America publicly reassert herself as Israel’s best friend, with “no daylight” between us, could have us ending up as Israel’s only friend – and Israel as our only friend in the Middle East. Bibi’s Israel First policy must one day collide with America First.”

No other foreign policy issue can or will destroy Trump’s administration as clearly as becoming the lap dog for the Likudnik sociopaths. They relish in their apartheid subjugation of the descendants of Ishmael, who are more Semitic than the Khazars that made their exodus from Eastern Europe and Central Asia to occupy the lands of Palestine.

Being born, raised and establishing his real estate empire in what Jessie Jackson called “Hymietown”, it is no surprise that Donald Trump has adopted the kosher culture of Jewish Supremacism. Metro New Yorkers are not known for their scholarship in authentic historical analysis, but are well renowned for their media manipulation in ‘Political Correct” purity and social uniformity of anti-traditional viewpoints.

The Trump family daughter Ivanka preferred the company of Jewish men. She converted to Judaism before she married Jared Corey Kushner. The praxis of Zionism is well established in their private and public life. Since both are slated to be intimate advisors in a Trump administration, it should be expected that the influence of Jewish Son-in-law Kushner Guided Trump’s Triumphant AIPAC Speech, will be substantial.

So when Trump selects his trusted bankruptcy attorney David Friedman to stake out properties to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the reaction received push back. According to Chemi Shalev, Trump’s Ambassador, Makes Netanyahu Look Like a J Street Lefty.

“This is not an ambassador that a rational U.S. administration would send if it had any plans whatsoever to advance the peace process. This is an ambassador who will please Evangelicals, delight Jewish settlers and bring pleasure to Land of Israel zealots far and wide. In many ways, Friedman will seem like a turbo-charged Ron Dermer, courting the extreme right in his host country while shunning all the rest. It will upset many Israelis, including, possibly, Netanyahu himself. The prime minister is always concerned more about his right-wing flanks than his opposition on the left: The last thing he needs is a U.S. ambassador who supports his most feared rivals.”

Even the New York Times is having a hemorrhage as reported in Donald Trump’s Israel Ambassador Pick Is Hazardous to Peace.

“After his election, Mr. Trump suggested that he wanted to bridge divisions within our country. Mr. Friedman proudly announces that he wants to widen and deepen those divisions. Will Mr. Trump’s stated desire to heal or will Mr. Friedman’s divisive calls define the direction of the incoming administration?”

Complicate these concerns with the historic Secretary of State John Kerry farewell speech that Israel must adopt two-state solution for lasting peace. Well, Trump jumped on the Orthodox bandwagon with both feet. While Trump Slams Obama “Inflammatory Statements”, Tells Israel To “Stay Strong, Jan 20 Is Fast Approaching” the path is laid to adopt such a pro Zionist intervention that even the most hostile Neoconservative might start to warm up to Rabbi Trump.

The prospects that the United States will broker a negotiated Trump style mediation on the most dysfunctional region in the Middle East and upon quintessential eternal enemies in all of human existence are total folly. The veritable art of the deal can and only come when all parties embrace that their own existential survival is contingent upon renouncing violence as a means of extermination for deep enmity towards their never-ending feud.

There is no essential American national interest in dealing with intractable zealots that view coexistence as tribal suicide. Continuous military support for Israeli’s nuclear blackmail is irrational. Trump is risking everything by allowing AIPAC a veto over our own foreign policy.

The warmongers within the Republican Party such as Senators McCain and Graham have thoroughly demonstrated their Neocon insanity and will do more damage to sabotage any Trump effort to put into place a non-interventionist shift in policy. By what fantasy rationale could Trump use to ignore empirical reality to further Zionist imperialism? Forget coherent American self-interest, supporting Israel threatens World War III.

Now turn your attention to the economic character of continuing the strangle hold over money and commerce. The Wall Street model for crony capitalism is a charade of free enterprise. A market economy has been dead for over a century with the imposition of the Federal Reserve.

Watch the video, Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs Is Big Winner In Trump Election Victory.

Trump has capitulated to the powers of the corporatist elites with his appointments that Make America Goldman’s Again (#MAGA): The Swamp Is Now Full. “Removing all doubt about the Parasite Guild theory, Donald Trump rolled out his latest Jewish vampire squid pick as chief economic adviser: Goldman Sachs COO (((Gary Cohn))). Cohn’s specialization is total debt strangulation.”

Even Forbes admits Goldman Sachs Wins Again As Trump Eyes Gary Cohn For Top Economic Post. This appointment is especially ominous.

“With Cohn advising President Trump, Goldman Sachs will have one of its own advocating on economic policy. Much has been made of Trump’s decision to add Wall Street-types to his administration, including some with former ties to Goldman, like Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and Trump’s top White house adviser, Stephen Bannon. But Mnuchin and Bannon have not worked at Goldman Sachs for years.

On the other hand, Cohn has worked at Goldman Sachs since 1990 and has been a partner since 1994.”

The New American weighs in this assessment, Trump Picks Another Goldman Sachs Executive.

“A global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities,” was the wording of a Trump TV commercial late in the presidential campaign, complete with the face of the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, on the screen.

Yet President-elect Donald Trump has named Blankfein’s friend and associate, the chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn (shown), to lead the National Economic Council (NEC), the third Goldman executive tapped for either a staff or Cabinet post.”

The reason why placing the perpetual clan of banksters to control the levers of government monetary and economic policy is so detrimental to the well being of working Americans is well stated in how Goldman Sachs: Making Money by Stealing It.

“It makes money the old-fashioned way, through market manipulation, the scamming of investors, bribing political Washington, having its executives in top administration posts, and getting open-ended low or no interest rate bailouts when needed.”

By continuing the placement of Goldman Sachs in charge of Treasury and the NEC, the Trump revolution lost the first major battle. It also proves that international finance rules every administration. Review the List of Goldman Sachs employees in the White House for additional documentation.

If Trump is going to make America Great Again, he will need to refinance the national debt. With a highly overpriced dollar, now is the time to shift short term Treasury borrowing into long term debt. Issue a fifty year bond and retire T-Bill obligations so that when the dollar sinks (as it surely will) the government can retire (don’t hold your breath) relatively low interest rate obligations with cheap money.

Somehow, Goldman shylocks have seldom manifested national sympathy for American taxpayer citizens. Just maybe some dual loyalist bankster will want to fund the perennial deficit in order to keep the funds flowing to pay for those newly delivered F-35 fighter jets to continue Bibi’s Israel First policy.

Donald Trump could have avoided these missteps if he was confident that the establishment could be defied directly. Sadly, the reality is that Trump already has a bulls- eye target painted on his administration and that cutting Israel loose and firing the money-lenders may just be one bridge too far.

As a strong supporter of the Trump Nation, the hopes and faith in his middle class revolution was always a long shot. Getting elected was certainly a political phenomenon, but being able to effectively defy the entire federal government career class of establishment sycophants would be a miracle.

America First is not very popular within the chambers of government corruption. The reign of terror system of bureaucratic governance fears that Trump actually wants to drain the swamp. He is walking a tightrope already and cannot afford adding complications of his own making by doing the bidding of the viper den bourse for derivative speculation. Sincere and goodwill citizens need to give support and have patience so that the populist movement can take root.

Israel’s Lieberman Threatens Gazans With Genocide

 

Minister of war Avigdor Lieberman is part of Israel’s lunatic fringe – ruthless, lawless, racist, militant, extremist and nightmarish for Palestinians.

A former nightclub bouncer in Moldova before moving to Israel in 1978, he heads the ultranationalist Israel Beiteinu party. Its agenda includes no concessions, no settlement freeze, no Palestinian self-determination (except maybe on worthless, isolated bantustans), no peace process whether or not he admits it.

On Monday, Lieberman said Israel’s next war on Gaza will be its last “because we will completely destroy them,” adding:

“As minister of defense (sic), I would like to clarify that we have no intention of starting a new war against our neighbors (sic) in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, Lebanon or Syria.”

“But in Gaza, like the Iranians, they intend to eliminate the state of Israel…If they impose the next war on Israel, it will be their last. I would like to emphasize again: It will be their last confrontation because we will completely destroy them.”

Destroy means genocide. Two million Gazans are trapped by illegal siege and blockade, unable to seek safety next time Israel preemptively attacks them – virtually certain to be worse than last time based on Lieberman’s threat alone.

How much death and destruction is too much? How much suffering must Palestinians endure to be free from a gangster, Arab-hating Jewish state?

How long will Americans tolerate Washington funding its killing machine with their tax dollars – used for mass slaughter and ruthless persecution?

How long will Israelis put up with racist, fascist governance threatening their security and well-being?

Israel waged three wars of aggression on Gaza since December 2008/January 2009 – Cast Lead, Pillar of Cloud in 2012 and Protective Edge in 2014, each exponentially more destructive than the previous hostilities.

Further conflict is certain, likely far more severe than earlier, based on the trend of the last three, exacerbated by lunatics like Lieberman in charge of warmaking, along with leadership under Netanyahu just as bad.