Showing posts sorted by relevance for query egypt explosives. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query egypt explosives. Sort by date Show all posts

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

From Ian:

Foreign min. chief challenges Abbas: Tear down terror monument
The Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, has released a video slamming the Palestinian Authority for building a monument to honor the terrorist who planted a bomb which killed 15 Israeli civilians in the center of Jerusalem.
The monument to Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukkar, who masterminded the 1976 attack, was unveiled at an official PA ceremony earlier this month.
In the video, Gold - who was shopping nearby when the bomb went off, described what he saw that day.
"It was a Friday and I was doing my shopping innocently, until all of a sudden I heard this incredibly loud explosion. I turned around and I saw bodies strewn everywhere."
In the attack, a refrigerator filled with explosives was detonated in the heart of Jerusalem. 15 people were killed and over 60 people were wounded. Abu Sukkar was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years, but was released from prison after 28 years as part of a "goodwill gesture" from Israel to the PA in 2003.
He was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and an adviser to the PA Chairman Yasser Arafat on prisoners' affairs. He died of a heart attack in 2013.
The decision by the PA to honor the terrorist proves Abbas is not serious about wanting peace, Gold contended.
"That's the education the Palestinian Authority wants to give to its children," he said.
"The way it is now, we're not gong to be able to get very far in any kind of negotiation, because negotiation requires a culture of peace and not a culture of death.
"So I'm hoping that Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority - who heads the Fatah movement - will tear down that monument."
Palestinian monument honoring murderer of 15 Israelis must be torn down


Top Trump advisor to ‘Post’: Settlement annexation legitimate if PA continues to avoid real peace
Israeli annexation of settlements in the West Bank could be viewed by a Trump administration as a legitimate way for Israel to move forward if the Palestinians continue to avoid a real and genuine peace deal, David Friedman, a senior advisor to Donald Trump, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Speaking as the Republican Party convention entered its second day in Cleveland, Friedman, who advises Trump on matters related to Israel, said that in his view, settlements in the West Bank were not illegal and were not the real impediment to peace with the Palestinians.
“The impediment to peace is very clear in both of our minds and that is the failure of the Palestinians to renounce hatred and renounce violence,” Friedman said. “Everything else is barely important.”
Friedman, a Manhattan-based attorney and president of the American Friends of Bet El Institutions who serves as an Israel advisor to Trump alongside Jason Greenblatt, told the Post that in his view annexation of the settlements would be a legitimate way for Israel to move forward.
“If there is no agreement with the Palestinians, Israel has to move forward and maybe there is another path and a better path that is not a two-state solution and obviously under those circumstances that [annexation D.Z.] is certainly an option,” he said “I don’t know when or if that would be implemented but it’s certainly not a third rail in terms of options. It is certainly a legitimate possibility.”

Monday, July 18, 2016

From Ian:

PMW: Another PA monument dedicated to “heroic” murderer
The Palestinian Authority went through with its plans yesterday to establish a monument honoring the terrorist Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukkar, who planned the detonation of a bomb-laden refrigerator in the center of Jerusalem, murdering 15 people in 1976. A few days ago, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly asked Mahmoud Abbas to cancel the event because of the negative impact terror glorification has on children:
Netanyahu: "Rather than dedicate a statue to a mass-murderer, I ask that you consider honoring a champion of co-existence. This will help educate future generations to love peace over war, compassion over violence.”
[Israeli Prime Minister's YouTube channel, July 15, 2016]
As seen in the above picture, the Palestinian Authority ignored Netanyahu’s request. Palestinian Media Watch exposed the PA's plans on July 13.
Text on the monument: “Monument for the heroic Martyr Prisoner Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukkar 1936-2013
Arrested in 1976 Sentenced to life Released in 2003”
[Official Facebook page of Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate, July 18, 2016]

NYTs Special: Can We Just "Live With" Terrorism?
We Can’t Prevent Terrorism But We Can Minimize Its Effects
The prospect of stopping every attack approach zero. Successful attacks are inevitable. The reality of that prospect isn't pretty; nor is it something that the American public will accept gladly. But that is the new doctrine we must accept: Prepare to fail and stress resiliency.
The grim reality is that we can no longer expect to succeed in preventing terrorism – so we must develop tactics to minimize its effects and recover from it quickly. The author is a former deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
Don’t Live With Terrorism, Go on the Offense
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, stated that France "will not give in to the terrorist threat," but then added, "Times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism, and we must face this together and share our collective sang-froid...."
Quel dommage; quelle absurdite.
Terrorism - of the Islamist variety - results from the purposeful conduct of people who are motivated by two things: an overly literal reading of Islamic scripture, and success. Their goal is to impose their will on the world by shaking the confidence of citizens that their governments can do what governments principally are there for, which is to keep them safe.
We can gather intelligence not simply to strengthen our defenses, but to go on offense. If we don't do anything, we can take Valls's advice, and learn to live with terrorism until we learn to die with it. The author served as United States attorney general from 2007 to 2009, and as a U.S. district court judge from 1988 to 2006.
As Israelis Know, Live as If There Is No Terrorism, but Deal With Its Reality
In response to horrors like the Nice massacre, some will want to lash out at particular ethnic groups and limit individual rights and freedoms. Israel has imposed many tough defense measures in response to the continual terror threat it faces.
But while these means of self-defense are understood to be necessary and justified, the public also wants to live. It wants to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. It wants not to be burdened by the realities of terrorism and the costs it imposes. That does not reflect callousness in the face of human suffering nor disregard of the pain of others but does reflect a mature response.
The most effective societal response to a terrorist attack is to continue living. Sitting at home, with a "woe is me" attitude is to give in to terrorism. Not to continue living is exactly what terrorists want. The author, a former commander of the Israel Defense Forces' School of Military Law, is a professor of law at the University of Utah.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: International Funding for Salaries and Benefits to Terrorists
The direct and indirect channeling by the Palestinian official bodies of international donor funding to pay salaries of Palestinians imprisoned for acts of terrorism raises serious legal and moral issues that must be addressed.
Such financial support for Palestinian terror prisoners is a formal component within internal legislation of the Palestinian Authority.
In attempts to sidestep international criticism of such direct funding, the Palestinians have tried to conceal it through channeling donor funding through the PLO, the Palestinian umbrella organization.
Financial or other support for terrorists is a clear violation of PLO obligations pursuant to the Oslo Accords, and as such, an abuse of the bona fides of the U.S., European, and other government signatories to the Oslo Accords.
Transferring funding to terrorists runs counter to international counter-terrorism conventions and resolutions of the UN calling upon the international community to prevent terrorism financing.
Matti Friedman: How Lebanon humbled, but didn’t break, Israelis
Author and journalist Matti Friedman spent much of his IDF service in the late 1990s in South Lebanon at an isolated base called Outpost Pumpkin, an experience he details in his acclaimed new book, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story. In this excerpt, published here to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, Friedman examines the effect that Israel’s Lebanon entanglements have had on its leaders and people. The years of the Lebanon “security zone,” he believes, taught Israelis that they cannot shape the Middle East to their will and that their fate is not entirely in their own hands. Instead of despairing, however, Israelis have found an admirable way of living with a profoundly troubling reality.
I was sitting not long ago along one of the boulevards in Tel Aviv. The Middle East had succumbed in recent years to chaos and butchery dwarfing our own conflict in one tiny corner of the region. But our country was relatively calm, at least for a time, thanks not to anyone’s goodwill but to the force of our arms.
The promenade was full of teenagers in tank tops, tattooed riders of old-fashioned bikes, men with women and men with men and women with women, speaking the language of the Bible and of Jewish prayer. There were old people sipping coffee outside a restaurant, and some music. The country was going about its improbably cheerful business on a weekday evening.
Beyond the city were the neighborhoods of middle-class apartments with parking lots of company Mazdas, the kinds of places where I found many veterans of Outpost Pumpkin when I went looking for them to write this book, most having first passed through Goa or the Andes for decompression before coming back to their families, finding work as programmers and accountants and settling down to watch their kids on the swings. All of this is more than our grandparents, the perpetual outsiders of the ghettos of Minsk and Fez, had any right to expect.
But it seemed for a moment — and this can happen to me in a cafe in my corner of Jerusalem, or picking up my children at school, anytime — that the buildings on either side of the boulevard were embankments, and the sky a concrete roof.
10 years after the Second Lebanon War, Israel isn’t in Hezbollah’s sights
Another war with Israel? Not so fast
In early July 2006, it was hard to find a Lebanese or Israeli commentator who would have bet that a war between Israel and Hezbollah was imminent. The prevailing assumption was that Hezbollah would not dare to start anything just before Lebanon’s tourist season. We were all wrong. A foolhardy attack by Hezbollah on the morning of July 12, 2006, near Milepost 105 led to a war that lasted for 34 days. Since then, Hezbollah has taken care to avoid attacking Israeli targets except in retaliation for Israeli attacks inside Lebanese territory.
Despite the mistake we commentators made back then, we can cautiously venture that Hezbollah has no intention of starting a war this summer. One consideration may be, as it was then, the economic issue and the tourist season that is about to begin in Lebanon, which enjoys an average of 2.5 million tourists per year, though the numbers are in decline due to the tough security situation. A war with Israel would definitely not improve those numbers.
But unlike the Second Lebanon War, that is not the main point. The most important issue in Hezbollah’s decision-making, it is clear, is the situation in Syria and the war against Islamic State. As long as its people are fighting and dying in battle in Syria, it is hard to imagine Nasrallah being dragged once again into another stupid escapade against Israel. He has the ability to bombard every point in Israel with the abundant store of rockets and missiles in his possession. But even he realizes that in the new reality that has been foisted upon him, opening a new front with Israel could lead to his military defeat not only against the Israeli army but also against the radical Sunnis in Syria.

Sunday, June 26, 2016

From Ian:

Filmmaker Calls for UNRWA ‘Self-Introspection’ Over Palestinian Classroom Incitement
A newly released 10-minute online video produced by the Jerusalem-based Center for Near East Policy Research says that many of the Palestinians who have murdered Israelis during the so-called “stabbing intifada,” which began in September 2015, were educated in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Titled “The UNRWA road to terror: Palestinian classroom incitement,” the video claims that the current wave of violence was not spontaneous, but rather has roots deriving “from an educational curriculum taught to Palestinians beginning in first grade.”
Thirty-eight Israelis and tourists have been murdered in the nine-month-long Palestinian terror wave, most recently the shooting at Tel Aviv’s Sarona market that killed four Israelis.
UNRWA’s curriculum, the video says, is focused on “jihad,” while UNRWA teachers glorify the so-called “right of return” of Palestinian refugees through war. The video reveals a military-themed school play held in April 2016 at the UNRWA Nuseirat School in Gaza, in which students hold an Israeli hostage at gunpoint and emerge from a tunnel in order to carry out an attack against Israelis — the latter scene mirroring the Hamas terror group’s efforts to attack the Jewish state through cross-border tunnels running underground from Gaza to Israel.
The footage begins by zooming in on classrooms of Palestinian children repeating phrases chanted by their teachers such as “Palestine is an Arab land from the river to the sea” and “We want Haifa, we want Acre,” with no recognition of a state called Israel.
The UNRWA Road to Terror: Palestinian Classroom Incitement


JPost Editorial: Blood libel
What was Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas thinking as he addressed the European Parliament last week? Was it about jump-starting the long-suspended peace process? Perhaps declining an EU offer to meet with President Reuven Rivlin, coincidentally in Brussels?
Or perhaps it was about his Soviet doctoral thesis denying the Holocaust and explaining how Hitler was really a Zionist (“The Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement”). It must have been along these lines, since Abbas chose to share with the parliamentarians of Europe – the cradle of anti-Semitism – a blood libel straight from the Middle Ages.
Israeli rabbis are ordering their disciples to murder Palestinians, Abbas shamelessly asserted. “Certain rabbis in Israel have said very clearly to their government that our water should be poisoned in order to have Palestinians killed. That is provocation and we are against this sort of call for violence,” he said.
“Our hands are extended with a desire for peace,” Abbas declared, although he went on to contend that Israel has started three wars in the Gaza Strip and killed thousands of his people. Moreover, he claimed, since 1967 Israel has imprisoned more than 1 million Palestinians. Israel has “turned our country into an open-air prison,” Abbas told the EU lawmakers.
Such appalling views are not uncommon in Palestinian society. A Hamas leader in Gaza, Salah al-Bardawil, said in an interview with Hamas TV last November that Jews have “ancient biblical beliefs, which instructed them to kill children and collect their blood, in order to knead it into the bread that is eaten on Passover. Today, they are trying to say that these things never happened, and that it was a joke or a lie, but these are the facts of history. Anyone reading about their history will find this there.”

PM: Water poisoning claims prove Abbas no peace partner
Ahead of his trip to Rome for talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s recent address at the European Parliament again proved he was an unsuitable partner for pursuing peace.
Abbas last week told European lawmakers in Brussels that an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem would end global terrorism, and repeated a debunked hoax story claiming that local rabbis had called for poisoning Palestinians’ water supply. Admitting the claim was “baseless,” Abbas on Saturday apologized and walked back the water poisoning allegation.
“Abbas again last week proved to the entire world that he is not interested in direct negotiations with Israel,” the prime minister said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting.
“Worse, he also spread abhorrent lies about the State of Israel and Judaism. True, he quickly apologized, a halfhearted half-apology, but the things he said there were in keeping with what he has said about us on other occasions, including at the UN General Assembly,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore, I think that people can conclude from this who wants to advance peace and a peace process – and who does not.”

Thursday, June 23, 2016

  • Thursday, June 23, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon


 
 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column



This happened on Tuesday: Palestinian terrorists spilled oil on highway 443 between Jerusalem and Modi’in and threw rocks and firebombs at passing vehicles, as they do on a regular basis. The IDF responded and opened fire at what they thought were the terrorists, killing one Palestinian teenager and wounding two others. Although all the facts aren’t available as I write this, it appears that the soldiers were mistaken about their target, and the people they shot were innocent.

Palestinians are understandably enraged, but it’s also understandable that an Israeli might ask, “what do they expect?” Every day they try and sometimes succeed to kill Jews with their rocks and firebombs, their cars and knives, and sometimes their guns and explosives. Of course we are going to fight back, and mistakes happen.

But how did we get here, to the point that our peoples are killing each other?

The Arabs and their supporters will tell you “nakba, occupation, blah blah.” That isn’t true. It is a rationalization but it is not an explanation. Here is the explanation in two words: 

The PLO.

In 1979, I drove with my wife and two-year old son from Jerusalem to Afula. I took route 60, through Samaria. Today I doubt that we would survive that trip, but when we got lost near Shechem (Nablus), local Arabs gave us directions to get back on the right road. They treated us like guests. 

Later, during the first Lebanon war, I had a conversation with an Arab from Abu Ghosh, a town that had chosen to be loyal to Israel in 1948. What is the solution? I asked him. We need a state of our own, he said, but not run by the PLO. They are killers and they don’t care about Arabs either.

The PLO was created in 1964 by the Arab league as a club to beat Israel with. It was taken over by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction in 1967. Its policy has always been to ‘liberate Palestine by armed struggle’ (although Arafat claimed during the Oslo period to have changed the PLO charter, this was not actually done). 

The PLO was funded and armed by the Soviet Union and carried out numerous terrorist actions against Israel during the 1970s, including the massacre of the Olympic athletes in 1972, the Ma’alot massacre in 1974, the Coastal Road massacre of 1978, and many more. The IDF invaded Lebanon in 1982 in order to eliminate the PLO, and at the end of the war had the PLO fighters and leadership trapped in Beirut. But a European/American brokered agreement allowed them to escape. French Foreign Legion troops and US Marines escorted Arafat onto a ship, and the PLO reestablished its headquarters in Tunis. Ariel Sharon later said that one of the things he most regretted was not killing Arafat when he had the chance.

Although it perpetrated a few terror attacks from Tunis (notably the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985), the PLO became more and more irrelevant in exile. But in 1993, Israel made the greatest political mistake in its history and signed the Oslo Accords, breathing life back into the PLO.

In January 1993 the PLO was outlawed in Israel and it was even illegal for an Israeli to meet with PLO representatives. But Yossi Beilin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under Shimon Peres, began secret negotiations with the PLO without informing the Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin only found out about the meetings in May, and although his conception of an acceptable deal with the Palestinians was very different than that of Peres and Beilin, he had no choice but to embrace the negotiations, especially once the Americans became involved.

The Oslo accords recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians, brought the execrable Arafat and his gangsters back to Israel (first to Gaza and later to Ramallah) and created the Palestinian Authority, a pseudo-government for the territories, run by the PLO.

Arafat immediately proceeded to kill or expel his enemies – including anyone who did not agree with the PLO program to destroy the Jewish state – and to turn the Palestinian Authority into a massive machine, fueled by money from the US, EU and Israel, to train future soldiers and martyrs for the Palestinian cause.

The PA did nothing for ordinary Arabs, stealing literally billions in international aid to enrich PLO big shots. It did not create the infrastructure for a future state. 

The PLO has always been ideologically flexible. It was Arab nationalist while its patrons were Egypt and Syria, Marxist when it needed Soviet aid, and today it is pleased to incite Muslims to murder over the alleged plans of Israel to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque. It even pretends to be interested in building a Western-style democracy to impress the Americans. 

But the one aspect of its ideology that has always been the same is its commitment to violently ‘liberating’ Palestine from the Jews, and it has turned all of its institutions to this purpose: schools and universities, mosques, media, arts, literature, sport. All of them focus on teaching the lesson that all the land from the river to the sea is ‘Palestinian’, and the Jews have no claim on any of it. 

Israel does not appear on their maps, and they name public squares, schools and sports teams after ‘martyrs’ who have died killing Jews. Their TV programs for children encourage young people to die for the cause, while their adult fare repeats blood libels against Jews from the Middle Ages. Although the PLO under Arafat and now Abbas has promised since the early days of Oslo to stop incitement against Jews and Israel, it has never taken even the smallest step to do so. 

The PLO created the generation that goes out every day hoping to kill, and left us no choice but to send armed soldiers against them. The PLO made the bloody world that Israelis and Palestinians are living in today.

But apparently neither side has learned the lesson of the last two decades. The Palestinians have not learned that terrorism will not make us leave, but will only cause us to take stronger and stronger measures to protect ourselves.

And the Israelis? Well, a few days ago it was revealed that Yitzhak Herzog, head of the Labor Party (I can’t bring myself to call it the ‘Zionist Union’), following in the treasonous footsteps of Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres, carried on secret negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas, and proposed a deal in which Israel would transfer all but 4% of Judea and Samaria to the PA/PLO, divide Jerusalem, give the Arabs sovereignty on the Temple Mount, and (my favorite part) ‘fight terrorism’ with a combined force of Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians! Luckily, Herzog lost the election, and recent polls show that the Labor Party is at a historic low in voter approval. 

All this is a tragedy. Jews and Arabs can live, if not together, at least in proximity. But not if the Palestinian leadership will continue to be the eliminationist PLO. And certainly not if Israel continues to support and empower the PLO, instead of crushing it for once and for all.




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Wednesday, June 22, 2016

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: Jews and Israel in a threatened, leaderless and delusional world
The painful lesson of the Orlando massacre is that no place in the world is immune to fanatical religious extremists willing to kill themselves to achieve heavenly salvation.
The Western world is floundering in its pathetic efforts to confront the demonic global forces threatening to plunge it back into the Dark Ages.
Its failure is largely due to the inability of democratic countries to face reality and devise a united strategy to vanquish these Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Instead, Western leaders bury their heads in the sand and cravenly resort to policies of appeasement, even though there is not a single recorded historical instance in which a millennial terrorist force has modified its behavior in response to such an approach.
Europe, where major cities are suffering suicide attacks from crazed imported and home-grown Muslim terrorists, is now perversely absorbing millions of additional migrants from the Middle East killing fields – migrants ironically rejected by Islamic countries as security risks. The demography of Europe is being permanently altered but any rational discussion of the subject is immediately condemned as Islamophobic.
Contrary to all evidence, most West European governments continue to blame the Israeli-Palestinian impasse as the principle factor inflaming Islamic terrorism. Currently, the French government – France’s Muslim population is estimated to be over 15 percent and expanding dramatically – chooses to ignore the ongoing mayhem in the region and instead seeks to force Israel to retreat to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines.
Much of the current breakdown can be attributed to the influence of US President Barack Obama and the policies he initiated. His overriding objective was to build a bridge between the US and global Islam, and to this end he has fawned on leaders of rogue Islamic states and humiliated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a low-level adversary rather than treating him as an ally.
Pro-settlement NGO urges Brexit over EU’s West Bank policies
An Israeli pro-settlement group is campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, to punish Europe for what it says is the continent’s pro-Palestinian stance, one of its officials said on Sunday.
Regavim is a right-wing NGO that supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Its campaign includes a mock video of a masked Palestinian terrorist purportedly from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip urging UK citizens to remain in the European Union because it supports the Palestinians.
Meir Deutsch, director of policy and government relations for Regavim, said the NGO wanted to harm the EU over its “intervention in the internal conflict here between Israel and the Palestinians.”
The EU has helped finance various projects in the West Bank and Israel has regularly demolished those it considers illegal. The cash-strapped Palestinian Authority also receives financial assistance from the EU.
The mock video posted by Regavim on its campaign website shows masked terrorists with the logo of Hamas’ armed wing, the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and in the background a line in English that reads: “Hamas wants UK to stay in the EU.”
Hamas wants UK to stay in the EU (satire)


Tuesday, June 21, 2016

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Explaining the Israeli Left
Haaretz and other leading leftist voices admitted openly that endangering the country by surrendering Gaza, along with Gaza’s border with Egypt, to terrorists was a small price to pay for destroying the religious Zionist movement.
A month before the August 2005 expulsions, Haaretz published an editorial, which explained that it really didn’t matter whether Israel’s security was damaged by the withdrawal.
The real question,” the paper argued, “is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi Route [between Gaza and Egypt], or whether the Palestinians will dance on the roofs of [the destroyed communities].
“The real question is who sets the national agenda. The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism’s status will be different.”
Israel has fought three wars with the Palestinians and one with Hezbollah since that withdrawal. Hundreds of soldiers and civilians have been killed. Thousands have been wounded.
Whereas 25,000 Israelis lived within range of Palestinian mortars and rockets from Gaza in July 2005, today Hamas’s missiles have a range covering nearly all of Israel.
Today we are subjected to daily claims by Leftist politicians, activists and their media partners that Israelis are tired of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. His days in power are over. The “public” now sees that the Left is the only side that brings hope so it behooves the government to listen to the “public” and let the Left rule for a change.
But to the dismay of the Left, the public won’t go along for another ride with them, no matter how much hysteria they promote.
Despite the best efforts of Herzog, Newman, and their allies in the media echo chamber, the public has taken their measure. The public is not interested in electing parties that subvert the national interest to advance their political fortunes. The public is not interested in being led by men and women driven by an irrational and dangerous hatred of their fellow Israelis.
EU thinks 'feeding Israel to the crocs means they will be eaten last'
The event was the initiative of the Israel Allies Foundation, the umbrella organization of pro-Israel caucuses in 35 parliaments around the world, and I Like Israel, an umbrella organization of pro-Israel groups in Germany.
“This conference is taking place under the shadow of a damaging peace initiative that aims to pressure Israel to make irrational concessions and force Israel to give up its sovereignty in the name of a false peace,” Israel Allies Foundation Executive Vice President Josh Reinstein told attendees.
“They believe by feeding Israel to the crocodiles they will be eaten last. This conference is our answer to that initiative.”
Yisrael Beytenu faction chairman Robert Ilatov, who heads the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus, attributed the French initiative and its support in Europe to historic anti-Semitism that has deep roots on the continent.
“We don’t understand why our friends in Western Europe create double-standards for Israel,” Ilatov told the crowd. “We don’t understand why they are attacking Israel and not countries in the Middle East that do not protect human rights and protect religious freedom.”
The Israel Narrative Is Wrong
The answer, of course, is that the narrative is simply wrong on every count. Diplomatically speaking, as I’ve noted before, this government is actually one of the more left-wing in Israel’s history: Though Netanyahu doesn’t consider a two-state solution achievable right now, he does accept the idea in principle; in contrast, during Israel’s first 45 years of existence, all governments from both left and right considered a Palestinian state anathema. And Netanyahu’s policy of restraining settlement construction – which, contrary to his “cowardly” image, he has maintained despite considerable opposition from parts of his base – is consistent with his stated commitment to a two-state solution.
Moreover, as the examples above show, his past three governments have actually been among the most progressive in Israel’s history in terms of their practical efforts to improve Arab integration. And unlike his settlement policy, his efforts to advance Arab equality have sparked no significant opposition from either his cabinet or his electorate, even though Israeli Arabs overwhelmingly vote for his political opponents. The reason is simple: Any government which considers Israeli-Palestinian peace unachievable in the foreseeable future has no choice but to invest in Israel’s internal development, in order to ensure that the country is strong enough to survive without peace. And improving Arab integration is crucial to the country’s internal development because Israeli Arabs, currently underrepresented in both higher education and the work force, represent one of the main potential sources of future economic growth.
But proponents of the “far-right-extremism” narrative seem utterly impervious to the facts. So they can only scratch their heads in puzzlement over why Israel’s “most right-wing government ever” is precisely the one that’s taking far-reaching steps to improve the lot of Israeli Arabs.

Wednesday, June 08, 2016

From Ian:

Pro-Palestinian activists storm former IDF officer's speech at DC museum
Former IDF lieutenant-colonel and current director of the American Jewish Committee Jerusalem office, Avital Leibovich, was bombarded by some dozen pro-Palestinian activists while giving a speech about social media on Tuesday afternoon in Washington, DC.
Leibovich, who formerly served as head of the Interactive Media Branch of the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit, was five minutes into her talk at the 'Newseum' when the activists stormed the stage bearing signs with anti-Israel phrases and shouting pro-Palestinian slogans, such as "free, free Palestine!"
Leibovich calmly responded saying anyone who wanted to hear what she had to say were welcome to stay, and welcome those who didn't to use the "big red exit sign."
Two of the most prominent activist were Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek. Security officials later ushered Blumenthal away from the address.
BDS: No Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech? They wouldn't even let Avital Leibovich of the AJC and former IDF spokesperson speak. Code Pink and other BDS activists disrupted her speech on "New media During War" in the Newseum in DC


Janna Jihad Unmasked: 10-Year-Old Media Darling Is a False Heroine
A 10-year-old Palestinian firebrand “journalist” who sent social media into a frenzy recently over her bravery for documenting Israeli “injustice” in Palestine can be unmasked as an anti-Israel propaganda tool – a child being used by a family of terrorists.
This murderous clan, responsible for a restaurant bombing that killed eight children, used a then seven year old Janna to demand for the murder of Israeli police officers in Jerusalem.
They have been exploiting the child for terror propaganda since she was just five.
Janna “Jihad” became a digital sensation after Vice Magazine and the Al Jazeera TV network dubbed her “the youngest journalist in Palestine”.
Living in the village of Nabi Saleh, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she apparently personally produces video reports from the centre of protests against the Israeli government – despite being a child.
But Heat Street can reveal that behind the supposed bravery and passion of “her” films, Janna is just another exploited child, used by an anti-Israel propaganda machine responsible for spreading fear and loathing.
How Isolated is Netanyahu?
After the much-anticipated French-sponsored Middle East peace conference ended last Friday with a whimper rather than a bang, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s critics were quick to point out that he shouldn’t be celebrating. They were right in that the event may be just the prelude to more such initiatives whose sole intent was to isolate the Israelis and perhaps set up one more climactic confrontation with the Obama administration this fall after the presidential election. It’s possible that at that point the United States might not oppose a new push for recognition of a Palestinian state without requiring it to first requiring it to make peace with Israel. If so, any satisfaction of the clear failure of the Paris conference would be premature. But as Netanyahu soon proved with a visit to Russia that highlighted Israel’s increasingly warm ties with the Putin regime, his nation is not as isolated as the prime minister’s domestic critics and foreign foes think.
Despite the French boasts about their plans to convene a conference that would establish a framework for Middle East peace without the presence of Israel or the Palestinians, nothing was accomplished in Paris. Nothing, that is, other than the usual bloviating by the French hosts and various Third World foreign ministers that were allowed to make speeches. If critics of the Obama administration can glean any satisfaction from this farce, it is that Secretary of State John Kerry was forced to sit through all of it for the sake of amity with Paris even though he was clearly put out by the futility of the effort and the indignity of having to attend. The platitudes issued at the end of the gathering could have just as easily been put out without the expense and inconvenience of the summit which left the world farther from a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than it had been before it started. The only thing it accomplished was to encourage the Palestinians to continue to refuse to negotiate directly with the Israelis because such conferences make them think the international community will bludgeon and isolate the Jewish state into concessions at no cost to themselves.
Moreover, those counseling that danger lies ahead, specifically from an Obama administration that, despite only having seven months left in office, still feels it has a score to settle with Netanyahu. The Palestinians torpedoed every administration Middle East initiative over the past seven and a half years even though each one sought to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction. But the White House continues to rail at the Israelis while largely giving the Palestinians a pass for their ongoing refusal to make peace.

Monday, June 06, 2016

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas falsely claims 6,000-year-old Palestinian nation
Mahmoud Abbas:
"The Bible says that the Palestinians existed before Abraham"
"The invention of the Canaanite-Palestinian alphabet [was] more than 6,000 years ago"
Abbas' advisor claims 5,000-year Palestinian history in the land:
Mahmoud Al-Habbash: "We have been here for the last 5,000 years, and have not left this land"
"Our forefathers are the monotheist Canaanites and Jebusites"
In order to make Palestinians believe that they have an ancient history that precedes Jewish history in the land of Israel, Palestinian Authority leaders regularly fabricate tales of a 5,000- or sometimes 6,000-year-old Palestinian nation. Recently, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his advisor Mahmoud Al-Habbash each spoke on two different occasions about a Palestinian nation that they claim preceded Abraham in the land of Canaan. Abbas even misrepresented the Bible by claiming biblical support for his claims:
Mahmoud Abbas fabricates history: "The Bible says the Palestinians existed before Abraham..."

Transcript: PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: "Our narrative says that we have been have been in this land since before Abraham. I am not saying it. The Bible says it. The Bible says, in these words, that the Palestinians existed before Abraham. So why don't you recognize my right?
[Official PA TV, March 21, 2016]
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas: "This land was never without a people, as we have been planted in its rocks and dust and hills since the beginning of civilization and writing and the invention of the Canaanite-Palestinian alphabet more than 6,000 years ago."
[Official PA TV, May 14, 2016]
Abbas’ Fabrication #1: The Bible says that Palestinians predate Abraham.
Fact #1: The Bible says Abraham dwelt “many days in the land of the Philistines.” (Genesis 21: 34). The Bible’s “Philistines” have no connection to today’s Arabs called “Palestinians.” The Philistines were a people of Greek origin who settled in the land of Canaan and lived beside the Israelite tribes. Both nations were exiled by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, the Philistines in 604 BCE and the kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE. The Philistines ceased to exist as a nation soon afterward, while the Judeans returned 70 years later, and rebuilt the Jewish/Judean national home.
Abbas’ Fabrication #2: There was an ancient Palestinian- Canaanite people connected to today’s Palestinian Arabs.
Fact #2: The land of “Judea” was renamed “Palestine” by Rome in 136 CE, as a punishment to the Jews for participating in the Jewish Revolt against Rome, known as “The Bar Kochba Rebellion.”
Arabs first arrived in the land of Israel/Judea with the Muslim invasion in 637 CE.
Arabs of “Palestine” first identified themselves as “Palestinians” in the 20th century.
Abbas’ Fabrication #3: Canaanite-Palestinians invented an alphabet 6,000 years ago.
Fact #3: Writing was invented around 3,500 BCE. The earliest Canaanite alphabet, considered to be the ancestor of most modern alphabets, is dated to around 1,500 BCE.

Monday, May 09, 2016

From Ian:

Israel turns 68 with 8.5 million people, 10 times more than in 1948
On the eve of Israel’s 68th birthday, the country’s population stands at 8,522,000, according to figures released Monday by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
There are 6,377,000 Jewish Israelis, 74.8% of the total population, and 1,771,000 Arab Israelis, 20.8% of the population, the bureau said. Christians, non-Arabs, and other minority groups account for 374,000 people, or 4.4% of the population.
By comparison, the nascent State of Israel had a population of just 806,000 in 1948.
Israel’s Independence Day begins with celebrations on Wednesday night, as the country transitions from Memorial Day — 24 hours of mourning for its fallen soldiers and terror victims.
In the 12 months since last Independence Day, the population increased by 182,000 people, a growth of 2.2%, the CBS said. During that period, 195,000 babies were born, 47,000 people passed away and some 36,000 new immigrants arrived in Israel. There are also some 192,000 foreigners in the country, based on figures from 2014.
Reebok releases new sneaker design in honor of Israel's 68th Independence Day
The Reebok shoe company released a new sneaker design on Monday in honor of Israel's 68th Independence Day celebrations.
The special edition sneaker is blue and white and has "Israel 68" engraved on it's heel.
Moshe Sinai, the CEO of Reebok Israel, explained that these sneakers were to be a one time celebratory release as a collector's item in Israel and the world.
The Independence Day sneaker features the Reebok "Pump" technology that allows the sneaker to form to the foot of its wearer. A push button releases compressed air into the shoe increasing the hold it has on the wearer's foot, allowing the shoe to maintain the person's natural step.
The shoe will be sold on Independence Day in an auction to take place on the Reebok Facebook page. All proceeds from the sale of the shoe will be donated to the organization Crossfit Without Borders which helps people with mental disabilities integrate into the Crossfit community.

BuzzFeed: 44 Totally Crazy #OnlyInIsrael Moments
1. #OnlyInIsrael does army radio broadcast government infomercials reminding listeners to call their grandparents.
2. #OnlyInIsrael does an IKEA showroom include a display Passover table, complete with matzah and haggadah booklets.
3. #OnlyInIsrael will the display on the front of the bus wish you a Happy Pesach.
4. #OnlyInIsrael can a secular, Jewish, female justice minister appoint judges to Shariah courts.
5. #OnlyInIsrael does the national air space completely close down for a whole day on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.
6. #OnlyInIsrael do heroes of Jewish history meet at street corners, like “Ben Yehuda corner of Jabotinsky”, “Bar Kokhba corner of Dizengoff” and “Ibn Gabirol corner of King David”.
7. #OnlyInIsrael is pork on sale but euphemistically labelled “other meat”.
8. #OnlyInIsrael do soldiers walk around with a rifle over one shoulder and a lulav (ceremonial willow branch) over the other.
9. #OnlyInIsrael can a totally non-kosher café, that even serves bacon on Shabbat, offer customers freshly-baked challah on Fridays.
10. #OnlyInIsrael is the religious beach literally right next to the gay beach.

Thursday, May 05, 2016

From Ian:


PA Antisemitism: Jews persecuted, deceived, and attacked Jesus
Antisemitism is an integral part of PA ideology. PA anti-Jewish hate speech includes demonizing Jews as enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs, representing satans and devils, and being an evil force in all countries where Jews have lived.
In addition, the PA maligns Jews as the killers of Jesus. In an interview this week on official PA TV, the PA Mufti of Bethlehem defamed Jews as "the group who persecuted, deceived and attacked Jesus," stating that the group is doing the same things to Palestinians today:
Mufti of Bethlehem Abd Al-Majid Amraneh: "Here in Bethlehem and Palestine, we are still suffering from the agony of those days, as almost the same group [Jews] that persecuted Jesus, the same group that wanted to deceive Jesus and attack him, is still attacking Palestine, Palestine's people, and Palestine's young men and women." [Official PA TV, May 2, 2016]
Mufti: “The same group [Jews] that wanted to deceive Jesus... is still attacking Palestine”


Israel arrested Hamas tunnel expert, Shin Bet reveals
Israeli authorities arrested a Hamas member last month who provided a trove of information about the Gaza-based terror group’s tunnel activities, the Shin Bet security agency revealed on Thursday.
Mahmoud Atawnah, 29, from the city of Jabalia in the Palestinian enclave, was arrested at the beginning of April after crossing the border fence into Israel armed with two knives, the Shin Bet said in a statement, adding that he disclosed during interrogation that he intended to kill the first Israeli — soldier or civilian — he encountered.
As a member of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Atawnah provided the Shin Bet with information on tunnel routes in northern Gaza, the group’s use of private homes and institutions to hide tunnel entries and transfer weapons, and details about the materials Hamas uses in excavations.
The security agency further said Atawneh described a sophisticated network of tunnels which includes break rooms, showers and dining tables, and divulged a number of names of Hamas members who fought alongside him in the northern branch of the eastern brigade in Hamas’s armed wing.
IDF uncovers new Hamas attack tunnel
The IDF uncovered a cross-border Hamas attack tunnel stretching from southern Gaza into Israel on Thursday.
A senior security source said that by Thursday morning, "We understood that we had located a tunnel. We are working in all areas, and have a number of focal points. In accordance with technological, operational, and intelligence efforts, we are improving all of the time. This has led us to focus in on certain areas, near the perimeter."
The source, describing the search process, added, "In places we understood that the focal points were incorrect, we left. In other areas, we thought we needed to continue. A number of hours ago, we found the tunnel." The IDF estimates the tunnel to be around 30 meters deep underground.
The IDF source said it did not know if the tunnel was dug before 2014's Operation Protective Edge or after it. The source said the tunnel is in "reasonable condition," adding that sections of it may have been added after 2014. "We will investigate it and then destroy it," he stated.

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

From Ian:

Springsteen guitarist slams ‘obnoxious idiots’ who back BDS
Amid rumors that Bruce Springsteen will perform in Tel Aviv this summer, he and his E Street band have come under fire from supporters of boycotting Israel.
On Monday, band guitarist Steven Van Zandt — who is also known for playing a mobster on HBO’s “The Sopranos” — responded in typically direct style. In a series of tweets, he called Israel boycotters “politically ignorant obnoxious idiots” and suggested to one: “go f— yourself.”
Van Zandt has taken tweet heat before for the unconfirmed show. And he’s not alone among his bandmates.
Bassist Garry Tallent has been heckled by the Twittersphere. And self-described anti-Zionist Stanley Cohen, who has more than 20,000 Twitter followers, went after the Boss himself back in February.
David Horovitz: On Israel, Springsteen’s guitarist outriffs Ken Livingstone
Bruce’s beloved long-time guitarist, it turns out, has been defending Israel in the Twittersphere. Little Steven. Miami Steve. Silvio from “The Sopranos.” Giovanni “Johnny” Henriksen from “Lilyhammer,” if you prefer your TV dramas Scandinavian.
More pertinently: Steven Van Zandt, the founder of Artists United Against Apartheid, the force behind anti-apartheid protest song Sun City.
What began as a Twitter row over Springsteen’s recent cancellation of a show in North Carolina lurched into an argument over Israel, in the course of which Van Zandt attacked “discrimination of any kind,” stressed his patriotism, and then, when challenged on the issue of the ostensible “rogue” state of Israel, slapped back with “You and the other Israel boycotters are politically ignorant obnoxious idiots. Israel is one of our two friends in the Middle East.” He told Israel critics to “get educated.” And then, when it was put to him that “Israel totally meets apartheid definition under under itl law” (sic), came back, bless him, with, “Trust me I am at least as aware of most of the injustices around the world as you are. One solution does not fit all,” and “The problems there have existed for a thousand years and you want the solution in 140 characters?” and, best of all, “I understand how it might appear that way but your analysis is incorrect. It’s a lot more complicated than SA.”
“Complicated.” Little Steven, I could kiss you. Yes, it is complicated. Complicated. Complicated. Complicated. If it were simple, we would have solved it. If we could have done so on our own, we would have solved it. Most of us don’t want to rule the Palestinians. We don’t want to send our kids to the army, to risk their lives in conflict with the death cult Islamists. But our country is nine miles wide at its narrowest point. This region, with Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic State and that terrifying regime in Iran, is hostile and ruthless. We are strong in our imperfect, gutsy little democracy, we’re defiant, we’re hanging in there. But meeting the challenges we face is complicated.
Please remember that, those of you tempted to fall into the Livingstone trap, those of you tempted to nod and add that caveat, as you properly condemn anti-Semitism, “Of course Israel’s totally wrong in its treatment of the Palestinians…”
BOYCOTT ISRAEL - Steven Van Zandt - Lilyhammer (h/t IsraellyCool)


Sunday, May 01, 2016

  • Sunday, May 01, 2016
From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Why we are optimistic about Zionism
By Col. Richard Kemp, Yossi Raskas and Dr. Harold Rhode
The Middle East is a mess. Terrorism is weakening resolve in the West. The migration crisis threatens to unravel the transatlantic security fabric. Civil society is faltering.
Yet we remain inspired by Israel as it celebrates its 68th year of existence. Why?
The answer is straightforward: Zionism, the movement inspired by belief that the Jewish people should return to the Land of Israel to rebuild their own sovereign state, has succeeded in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. And it continues to lead the way as a beacon of moral clarity and success for the West.
Of course, statehood is no guarantee for security, and we cannot perfectly predict fluctuations in the terrorist marketplace. We do not know, for example, whether Iran will decide to break out toward nuclear weaponization today, tomorrow fifteen years from now. What is clear, however, is that western rapprochement with Iran is moving forward, well before either the US or the European Union is capable of outlining an effective contingency plan.
But fears regarding Israel’s survival would be overwrought. The Israel Defense Forces—the strongest military in the Middle East —will remain battle-ready, as they always have been. They will continue to set the standard, morally and militarily, for armies of liberal democracies to operate against sub-state enemies.
Ultimately, Israel will not only survive but thrive. Since its inception, the Jewish state has endured several major wars, waves of suicide attacks, and other traumatic events. Still, Israel’s birth rate is steadily climbing, its economy is punching far above its weight, and its diplomatic ties with Sunni Arab states are growing stronger.

Douglas Murray: UK: The Left's Little Antisemitism Problem
Within a week, Britain's Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees -- and both for the same reason.
Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone both say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn "Islamophobia and all other forms of racism," a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.
They pretend that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a "brutal" attack "on the Palestinians" as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved "victim."
It is the narrative of the "left" on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.
Douglas Murray: Britain? Moderates? How's That Again?
A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of "Muslim community leaders" try to prove that the poll is a fraud.
If I had always known my "community" harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.
If there were indeed a "moderate majority," when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

From Ian:

Bret Stephens (WSJ): The Anti-Israel Money Trail
SJP’s self-declared goal is to end Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” while “promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.” That’s another way of saying destroying the Jewish state.
Yet as prominent as SJP and the wider BDS movement have become, less is known about the sources of their funding. That changed last week after testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Mr. Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official and terrorism-finance expert, notes in his testimony that a prominent backer of SJP and like-minded groups is an organization called American Muslims for Palestine, based in Palos Hills, Ill., and led by UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, who also happens to be one of SJP’s founders. AMP claimed to have spent $100,000 on anti-Israel campus activities in 2014, including to SJP. An AMP conference that year at a Chicago Hyatt invited participants to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”
FDD discovered that many of AMP’s leading members were previously active in some dubious former charities. The most prominent, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation For Relief and Development, was shut down in 2001 by the federal government for providing millions in funds to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas; five Holy Land officials eventually were convicted to prison terms and two others fled the country.
Today, AMP’s leaders include at least three Holy Land alumni. One of them is Milwaukee furniture salesman Salah Sarsour, who last year told Al Jazeera that an AMP conference he chaired “aims to keep up with and support the Palestinian people’s continuous intifada.”
Obama's view of reality
Truth be told, Obama is living in a movie we all want a part in. In this movie of his everyone is the good guy, everyone loves one another, and most importantly everyone has really good health insurance. Obama's reality is precisely like the health insurance reforms he forced on Americans: In theory everything is wonderful, but in real life it's not all that great. Maybe this is why 83 senators asked to increase defense aid to Israel -- because the world isn't becoming a safer place, even if Attila the Hun isn't around anymore.
Obama has a tendency to build high hopes. Remember the hullabaloo over his Cairo speech? Remember what happened afterward? It's possible that Obama's words from Hannover on Monday managed to snap even Hosni Mubarak to his feet. Over 80 million Egyptians truly can't recall such tranquility.
The truth is that Obama is a president with exceptional capabilities. He has even managed to jar the mythically unflappable Brits. The American president's intervention in the country's internal politics, by calling on British citizens to vote against leaving the EU, has not only incensed the Brits but according to polls has increased the number of those who favor such an exit.
Some 400,000 Syrians have been slaughtered in their own country. Not since the Second World War has Europe been flooded with so many refugees and migrants. Also not since that war has the radical right in Europe posed such a challenge. The threat of terror has never been as tangible as the threat posed by Islamic State today. And the stagnation presently threatening European markets has never been worse.
But not to worry, although we may be on the precipice of the abyss in many places across the globe, next year, heaven forbid, we could take that large step forward -- among other things, because of Obama's legacy.
Don’t Protect Terror Sponsors
It is true that other countries might respond in kind to the United States, though most respectable countries would have far more to lose than gain from such actions, and the United States can afford to ignore less than respectable countries, think the Zimbabwes, Venezuelas, and North Koreas of the world. At the same time, it is worth considering the opposite: What is the cost of not holding to account those who perpetrated or facilitated an attack in the heart of New York City?
This was a conundrum at the heart of “Sovereignty Solution,” a book co-authored by Anna Simons, Joe McGraw, and Duane Lauchengco. They proposed generally that governments should be responsible for their citizens and note that sovereignty is both an honor and a responsibility. When a citizen of a country perpetrates an attack, then that country has a choice: shield its citizen or hold them to account. If a Belgian citizen sought to strike at the United States, Brussels would likely cooperate with the United States to bring that person to justice, even waiving diplomatic immunity if need be. When Iranian or Saudi elements sponsor terrorism, Tehran and Riyadh should have the same choice: Join with the United States to bring the perpetrators to account or shield them. If the latter, then the government of the country should assume responsibility. Sovereignty Solution is, of course, far more complicated but it really has been one of the most insightful and provocative books on statecraft of the decade
In the Supreme Court victory for victims of terrorism and their families over the Islamic Republic of Iran, the court deferred to Congress. Perhaps Congress and, more broadly, the White House should then work more to protect and advocate for American victims of terror rather than for those who shield the terrorists. If a country does not want to risk the consequences of its citizens attacking the United States, then it should damned sure put mechanisms in place to make sure that the money is expends on radicalism isn’t used for that purpose and that it doesn’t distribute diplomatic passports without recognition of the consequence of their recipients engaging in an act of war.
The United States should not treat Saudi Arabia unfairly, but if Saudi Arabia truly did wish to be an ally, it would recognize that it is their responsibility to bring to justice those of its employees or civil servants who contributed materially or in services to that fateful day.

Friday, April 08, 2016

From Ian:


Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas's New Way of Poisoning the Minds of Palestinian Children
Since its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas has been using children as human shields and "soldiers" in the fight against Israel. Children dressed in military uniforms and brandishing automatic rifles and knives have become an integral part of Hamas's military parades and rallies.
Caught on camera, Palestinian children are taught to hate those who are perceived as enemies of Islam. This is how new generations of Palestinians are raised on the glorification of suicide bombers and jihadists.
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi expressed revulsion over the video, noting that the preachers' sermons were full of intimidation and horror. This behavior, Ashrawi, stated, demonstrates the "reactionary nature" of the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip, which would have a negative impact on the development of society and the values of Palestinians. Ashrawi also denounced the practice as a blatant violation of conventions protecting children rights.
Even the Marxist terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has come out against the video. The group voiced outrage at the "inhumane practices" against the children and called for an immediate inquiry into this form of mental torture and degradation. The group also warned against brainwashing the children and indoctrinating them through religious bigotry.
The Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders' brainwashing and abuse of their own children.
It also captures the march of Palestinian society towards endorsing the tactics and ideology of radical Islam and groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.


Caroline Glick: Inconvenient genocide
The Christian communities of Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon are well on the way to joining their Jewish cousins. The Jewish communities of these states predated Islam by a millennium, and were vibrant until the 20th century. But the Arab world’s war on the Jewish state, and more generally on Jews, wiped out the Jewish populations several decades ago.
And now the Christian communities, which like the Jews, predate Islam, are being targeted for eradication.
The ongoing genocide of Middle Eastern Christians at the hands of Sunni jihadists is a moral outrage. Does it also affect Israeli national interests? What do we learn from the indifference of Western governments – led by the Obama administration – to their annihilation? True, after years of deliberately playing down the issue and denying the problem, the Obama administration is finally admitting it exists.
Embarrassed by the US House of Representatives’ unanimous adoption of a resolution last month recognizing that Middle Eastern Christians are being targeted for genocide, the State Department finally acknowledged the obvious on March 25, when Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Islamic State is conducting a “genocide of Christians, Yazidis and Shi’ites.”
Kerry’s belated move, which State Department lawyers were quick to insist has no operational significance, raises two questions.

Thursday, April 07, 2016

From Ian:

Michael Oren: Sanders should apologize for Gaza ‘blood libel’
Bernie Sanders should retract and apologize for his “libelous” suggestion that Israel killed more than 10,000 innocent Palestinians during the last Gaza war, MK Michael Oren said Thursday, asserting that the Democratic candidate’s misrepresentation ultimately serves the interests of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States between 2009 and 2013, argued that the presidential candidate’s comments delegitimize the Jewish state and endanger its security.
“First of all, he should get his facts right. Secondly, he owes Israel an apology,” the freshman lawmaker (Kulanu) told The Times of Israel in an interview.
“He accused us of a blood libel. He accused us of bombing hospitals. He accused us of killing 10,000 Palestinian civilians. Don’t you think that merits an apology?” Oren went on.
“He doesn’t mention the many thousands of Hamas rockets fired at us. He doesn’t mention the fact that Hamas hides behind civilians. He doesn’t mention the fact that we pulled out of Gaza in order to give the Palestinians a chance to experiment with statehood, and they turned it into an experiment with terror. He doesn’t mention any of that. That, to me, is libelous.”

Sanders yet to correct claim Israel killed ‘over 10,000’ Palestinian innocents
Two days after the New York Daily News published the transcript of its editorial board’s interview with Bernie Sanders, in which the Democratic presidential candidate twice inaccurately said he believed that Israel killed “over 10,000” innocent Palestinian civilians during the 2014 Gaza War, he had yet to correct his misstatement or issue an apology as of Wednesday evening.
Earlier Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League, a major Jewish organization that monitors civil and human rights issues, urged Sanders to correct his misstatement. “Even the highest number of casualties claimed by Palestinian sources that include Hamas members engaged in attacking Israel is five times less than the number cited by Bernie Sanders,” noted ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. “We urge Senator Sanders to correct his misstatements.” The ADL, a tax-exempt nonprofit, generally avoids inserting itself into the fray of political elections and declines to take positions on candidates running for public office.
Following the transcript’s publication, The Times of Israel reached out repeatedly to Sanders campaign communications director Michael Briggs and national press secretary Symone Sanders to ask whether the Vermont senator would acknowledge and correct his mistake in massively inflating even Hamas’s own estimation of how many civilian lives were lost during Operation Protective Edge. There was no response from either official.
Petition: Tell Bernie Sanders to Retract His Statement That "10,000" died in Gaza
Even Hamas, the existing government in Gaza, predicted a total death toll of 1,462 civilians killed in the conflict not 10,000.
Regardless of who we support in the upcoming election, we the undersigned call on Bernie Sanders to immediately retract and disavow his inaccurate and dangerous assertion about the death toll in the conflict in Gaza.
(Full disclosure, I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders but believe he needs to be called out when he gets it wrong)
Israeli minister says US candidate Sanders' Gaza death figures "loony"
An Israeli cabinet minister described as "loony" on Thursday an account by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the 2014 Gaza war that went well beyond any official assessments.
The minister, Zeev Elkin, commenting on an interview by the Vermont senator in the New York Daily News on Monday, took a forgiving tack, saying politicians "sometimes make mistakes" in the heat of a campaign.
"I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?" Sanders told the newspaper. "I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been."
Sanders, who trails Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegates needed to win the nomination ahead of the Democratic party's July convention in Philadelphia, also criticised Gaza militants for launching rockets at Israel from civilian areas.
The war killed around 2,100 Palestinians, according to Gaza officials, Israel and foreign observers. The Palestinians say most of the dead were civilians. Israel says more than half were fighters. Israel lost 67 soldiers and six civilians in the war.
Asked about Sanders' toll, Elkin, using the Israeli military's term for the Gaza war, said in a radio interview: "Anyone who knows a little about what happened in Operation Protective Edge understands that this was a weird and loony statement."

Sunday, April 03, 2016

From Ian:

Charity backing anti-Israel rallies has state cash pulled
The statement comes as the Telegraph obtained undercover recordings of events where anti-Semitism, demands for the destruction of Israel or naked support for terror were expressed by academics and others at meetings in some of Britain’s most prestigious universities.
One speaker, Max Blumenthal, the son of a close adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, praised a massacre by Hamas as sending an “incredible message” and said that taking up arms should be “normal” for Palestinians. He compared Israel to the terrorist group Isil, describing it as “the Jewish State of Israel and the Levant, Jsil”.
At another rally – sponsored by War on Want – a speaker said that British government policy was created by “Zionist and neo-con lobbies”.
A second speaker at the same event spoke of a “rumour” that Israelis were harvesting dead Palestinians’ organs.
The meeting, at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), was the London launch of Israeli Apartheid Week, held across UK university campuses to “raise awareness about Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial project” and demand boycotts of Israel. They were secretly recorded and passed to the Telegraph.
War on Want, whose logo appears on publicity materials for Israeli Apartheid Week and the meeting, has received £260,000 in funding from Dfid over the last two years.
Clinton Confidante's Son: Palestinians Recover Their 'Dignity' In Violence Against Israelis


UK government halts funding to BBC quoted and promoted charity
As was reported here last year, this is not the first time that ‘War on Want’ has been active in the organisation of ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ in British universities and its activities include additional forms of anti-Israel campaigning.
Among the other bodies funding ‘War on Want’ is the charity ‘Comic Relief‘ which – as has been noted here before – receives considerable support from the BBC. In addition, BBC Radio 4’s charity appeals slot has featured ‘War on Want’ on several occasions.
In light of the circumstances which prompted the decision taken by the Department for International Development, one would of course expect that ‘Comic Relief’ and additional funders of ‘War on Want’ will be reviewing their position.
That same background should of course also prompt the BBC to ensure that on the fairly frequent occasions upon which it hosts representatives of ‘War on Want’ on its programmes, care should be taken to meet the existing BBC editorial guidelines on impartiality which require that audiences be made aware of the association of contributors with a “particular viewpoint”.

Monday, March 28, 2016

From Ian:

Vic Rosenthal: Western morality and Islamic jihad
In order to survive, we must adopt a different world-view, one that – just as a small example – embraces the Talmudic principle that “when they rise up to kill you, come and kill them first” and rejects the idea that “terrorists are people too.”
Survival will require a more particularistic world-view in which our culture is considered more worthy of continuing than theirs. In this view, enemies are enemies, people to fight, not empathize with. If they try to kill our civilian populations, we must kill theirs too. Deterrence comes from fear, and fear is created by disproportionate responses, not offers to surrender territory. Honor – a concept that has been all but forgotten by the West – is of supreme importance to the jihadists, and we must maintain ours. A man or a nation without honor becomes a target. Killing terrorists who have tried to murder our people, whether on the spot (preferable) or with a sure and speedy death penalty, is a way of preserving our honor.
This kind of moral system is not barbarism. It was commonly accepted several decades ago, and would have been recognized by Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Thatcher. The ‘evolution’ of what we call morality since their day, which has brought us multiculturalism, post-colonialism, the insane political correctness in our universities, the UN Human Rights Commission, B’Tselem and Peace Now, has failed to stand against the assault of the Islamic jihad. It will not protect our culture, but rather will lead to its destruction at the hands of the true barbarians at our gates.
It’s time for a massive rethinking. Is it even possible that the West can turn itself around, can re-embrace the values that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan? And can it change attitudes and behavior in time to save itself? I have no idea.
But I suggest we start here in Israel by dropping the charges against the soldier who simply did the job of every soldier from the beginning of warfare: he killed the enemy.
Noor Dahri: The difference between Palestinian resistance and terrorism: Hamas aren’t freedom fighters
I am heeding to the baseless statement of every Muslim organisation and individual that advocates that the Palestinians are resisting for their rights, their freedom and their stolen land. I asked them many questions regarding the difference between terrorism and resistance, but they could not satisfy me. We cannot label any individual as a terrorist or a freedom fighter but have to examine them through a clear definition of terrorism and Guerrilla warfare.
No doubt, there are 109 definitions of terrorism in the universe but the basic elucidation of terrorism is that mostly civilians have been targeted to attain a political goal. The majority of Muslims experts understand that terrorism and killing of innocent people is prohibited in Islam. Therefore, they do not support any type of terrorism but when the matter of Israel-Palestine raises, they change their posture and support Palestinian terrorism and justify it by stating that Israel is committing atrocities against the Palestinians. Why do they have a double standard when the situation comes to the Israel?
This is the ideology of anti-Semitism. I call it an ideology because hatred towards Jews is their religious obligation to perform whatever the social condition of the person, s/he gives birth to hate Israel and its Jewish citizens.
Killing an injured terrorist may be wrong, but it isn't murder either
Well, it wasn't. In fact, after half a year of daily attacks (and decades of brutal terrorism before that), that one soldier may have lost his calm and shot a would-be murderer in the head is far less worthy of outrage than the daily acts of Arab terror we have sadly become inured to. If anything, we should give pause for thought to just how few such incidents have occurred in spite of the huge pressure and constant dangers faced by IDF soldiers.
To those who answer with the predictable "we should be better than them," I would say that - apart from being a fundamentally racist sentiment (why are "we" better than "them"?) - I personally have no desire to be held to a "higher standard" than anyone else. "Higher standards," too, are a form of racism, particularly when - as is the case with Israel in the kangaroo court of international opinion - they magically apply only to our obligations, but afford us no greater rights or legitimacy.
So, as Israel navigates the difficult yet crucial task of enforcing the rule of law even on the complex and morally challenging battlefield, we must resist the urge to leap to uninformed conclusions, as well as the groupthink which pushes us to sympathize with the terrorist as a victim, and to view the soldier as a cold-blooded killer.
What happens subsequently is up to the military court to decide, and we should be proud of the State of Israel for that.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: A terrorist attack has happened in Europe. Let the standard response begin…
Well at least we all know the form by now. This morning Islamist suicide-bombers struck one of the few European capitals they haven’t previously hit in a mass-casualty terrorist attack.
The standard response now goes as follows. First the body parts of innocent people are flung across airport check-ins or underground trains. Briefly there is some shock. On social media the sentimentalists await the arrival of this atrocity’s cutesy hashtag or motif and hope it will tide them over until the piano man arrives at the scene of the attack to sing ‘Imagine there’s no countries’. Meantime someone will hopefully have said something which a lot of people can condemn as ‘inappropriate’. I see that the Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was this morning’s Twitter miscreant, foolish enough to say in the wake of the Brussels attack that the EU might not make us very safe. One may agree or disagree with this sentiment, but Ms Pearson should have known that the only acceptable thing to do after a suicide bomber detonates beside the European Commission is to acclaim the Commission as one of the few entities able to keep us safe.
We will shortly move to the next phase, which is to find a good news story amid the rubble. Anything will do, but best of all is a Muslim good news story. After Paris it was swiftly reported that one of the suicide bombers at Stade de France had been turned away by a brave Muslim security guard. The story whizzed around the world before anyone could check whether it was true. It wasn’t. But people needed it to be. Not because Muslims don’t do good deeds, but because in the wake of any Islamist terrorist attack people need people opposed to the bombers to be Muslim and the bombers themselves not to be Muslim. Then the good Muslim can represent Islam while the bad Muslims can be said to have nothing to do with it.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Europe must confront its reality
Belgium schools teach their students the Holocaust. One textbook includes a caricature of a Jew on a barbed wire fence with the inscription "never again." Just beside him, there is a Palestinian on the same fence with the inscription "once again!" The text book includes an explanation of the caricature, making clear its message: "The interpretation for 'never again' is what happened under Hitler will never happen again. The interpretation of 'once again' is what is happening today is exactly what happened under Hitler. Concentration camps were fenced off by barbed wire and today the border between Israel and Palestine is barbed wire and a wall."
When polls in Europe indicate that Europeans think what the Jewish state does to Palestinians is what the Nazis did to Jews, one should recall public education. This poison has not been injected only into the older generation of Belgians, but also the hundreds of thousands of Muslim youth studying in Belgium's education system. Combined with incitement in mosques, frustration with discrimination and claims of discrimination, propaganda from Arab TV networks, it becomes clear dangerous weeds are growing in the backyard.
The Belgians like many others in Europe believe that their enmity towards Israel grants them immunity from attacks. They do not understand that exactly the opposite is true: As long as incitement against Israel rises to new heights, hatred for Europe will rise to new heights. Europe will have to explain why its relations with Israel are flourishing, if Jews behave like Nazis. How can Europeans cooperate with Nazis? Not only Jews deserve to be punished, but also young Belgian collaborators as well.

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