Thursday, July 31, 2014

Another Round Up

Alaska Hidden Forests Discovered in NASA Images

Must be all that plant food - CO2.

How Arab leaders’ ‘loathing’ of Hamas has kept them quiet on Gaza war
"Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbours to end the fighting.

Not this time.

After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states – including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan – that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated ceasefire even after more than three weeks of bloodshed."
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"The diatribes against Hamas by at least one popular pro-government talk show host in Egypt were so extreme that the government of Israel broadcast some of them into Gaza.

“They use it to say, ‘See, your supposed friends are encouraging us to kill you!’ ” said Maisam Abumorr, a Palestinian student in Gaza City, said in a telephone interview. Some pro-government Egyptian talk shows broadcast in Gaza “are saying the Egyptian army should help the Israeli army get rid of Hamas,” she said.

At the same time, Egypt had infuriated Gazans by continuing its policy of shutting down tunnels for cross-border smuggling into the Gaza Strip and keeping border crossings closed, exacerbating a scarcity of food, water and medical supplies after three weeks of fighting."
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"Egypt and other Arab states, especially the Persian Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are finding themselves allied with Israel in a common opposition to Iran (BINGO!), a rival regional power that also has a history of funding and arming Hamas."(Emphasis mine.)
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"U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry turned to the more Islamist-friendly states of Turkey and Qatar as alternative mediators – two states that grew in regional stature with the rising tide of political Islam after the Arab Spring and that have suffered a degree of isolation as that tide has ebbed.

But that move has put Kerry himself in the incongruous position of appearing to some analysts as less hostile to Hamas – and thus less supportive of Israel – than Egypt or its Arab allies.

For Israeli hawks, the change in the Arab states has been relatively liberating. “The reading here is that, aside from Hamas and Qatar, most of the Arab governments are either indifferent or willing to follow the leadership of Egypt,” said Martin Kramer, president of Shalem College in Jerusalem and an American-Israeli scholar of Islamist and Arab politics. “No one in the Arab world is going to the Americans and telling them, ‘stop it now’”"

Israel calls up 16,000 reservists, vows to dismantle Hamas tunnels
"Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel will destroy the Hamas tunnel network in the Gaza Strip "with or without a cease-fire,"
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"Israel says that most of the 32 tunnels it has uncovered have now been demolished and that getting rid of the remainder will take no more than a few days."
Get 'er done, Israel!


















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