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

Sunday, October 11, 2015

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas justifies violence and murder as “protection of holy sites”‎
After ongoing Palestinian riots, which have including shootings, stabbings, and rock and Molotov cocktail throwing - as well as the murder of 4 Israeli civilians - Abbas last week justified it all as legitimate defense of holy sites:
"The Palestinian side did not attack and did not do anything against the Israelis. If they [Israelis] think that the [Palestinian] people in Jerusalem are protecting themselves, that is our right. We have to protect our holy sites." [Official PA TV, Oct. 6, 2015 and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 7, 2015]
Abbas then attacked Israel's defense measures against Palestinian terror:
"The Israeli government is escalating its strong offensive against the Palestinian people everywhere... Honestly, we do not know what the reason is for this."
After Palestinians murder 4 Israelis Abbas says “the Palestinian side did not attack”


MUST WATCH: This Is how the Palestinians Raise their Children (h/t Yoel)
In the past weeks, Israelis suffer from hundreds of terror attacks: stab attacks, firebombs, rock-throwing - all as the outcome of ongoing Palestinian incitement on social media and TV. Imagine if this was you. Imagine if this was happening somewhere else. IMAGINE.
SHARE THIS VIDEO. SPREAD THE WORD. SAY 'NO' TO HATE.


Jeremiah Wright: 'Jesus was a Palestinian'
The controversial religious leader Jeremiah Wright compared Native Americans to Palestinians at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March on the National Mall on Saturday, going so far as to assert that “Jesus was a Palestinian."
Wright, who once served as pastor to President Obama, was one of several hours' worth of speakers in Washington, D.C., for an event called “Justice or Else!” that sought to channel the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement. Wright placed the event in historical context.
“The same issue is being fought today and has been fought since 1948, and historians are carried back to the 19th century… when the original people, the Palestinians — and please remember, Jesus was a Palestinian — the Palestinian people had the Europeans come and take their country,” Wright said.
He said African-Americans in the United States have much in common with Palestinians in Israel.
“The youth in Ferguson and the youth in Palestine have united together to remind us that the dots need to be connected,” Wright said. “And what Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, has implications for us as we stand beside our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who have been done one of the most egregious injustices in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
Wright, who was the reverend of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the president attended intermittently from 1988 to 2008, also accused Israel of being an apartheid state. (h/t Jewess)


Friday, October 09, 2015

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Abbas must be stopped
As for the incitement, the government needs to go to the source of the problem – Abbas’s blood libel regarding Jewish rights to the Temple Mount.
As things stand, Abbas is exacting a price in human lives for his obscene anti-Jewish propaganda about our “filthy feet defiling” the most sacred site in Judaism. By barring elected officials from visiting the Temple Mount, not only is the government failing to exact a price for Abbas’ obscene propaganda. It is rewarding him and so inviting Abbas to expand his rhetorical offensive.
To remedy the situation an opposite approach is required. Rather than bar elected officials from visiting the Temple Mount, Netanyahu should encourage them to do so. Just as he sent a letter to Jordan’s King Abdullah telling him that Israel is preserving the status quo on the Temple Mount, so he should write a similar letter to our lawmakers.
In his letter, Netanyahu should say that in keeping with the status quo, which protects the rights of members of all religions to freely enter the Temple Mount, so he commits the government to protect the rights of all believers of all religions to ascend the Mount.
The Palestinian terrorist onslaught now raging against us is not spontaneous. Abbas has incited it and is directing it. To stop this assault, Israel must finally take action against Abbas and his machinery of war. Anything less can bring us nothing more than a temporary respite in the carnage that Abbas will be free to end whenever he wishes.
Why is the world ignoring a wave of terror in Israel?
Not only has the Palestinian Authority failed to condemn these barbaric terror attacks, they have now, incredibly, sought to condemn Israel for defending ourselves. Abbas is surely giving new meaning to the term "chutzpah". Is this really a sign of a leader who yearns for peace?
Only when the Palestinian leadership unequivocally renounces terrorism and roots out and condemns all those who preach violence against Israel and hatred of the Jewish people, can there be hope for real peace.
As the PA continues to insist that the world recognize a Palestinian state, one must ask exactly what type of state it wants: one that teaches the virtues of peace, or incites and glorifies terror?
In a groundbreaking speech on Islamic extremism this July, the British Prime Minister David Cameron made clear, if you say “violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter” – then you too are part of the problem.”
To all those people who fail to condemn this Palestinian terror, or find ways to excuse, equivocate or minimize it, I say the same – "then you too are part of the problem."

Palestinians: What will happen to the Israelis when you take back Palestine of 1948 (Israel)?


Wednesday, October 07, 2015

From Ian:

Aaron David Miller: What If Israel Had Given Up the Golan Heights? A Lesson for Syria’s Crisis
As Syria continues to be ravaged with no signs that the end of its crisis will produce a unified and stable (let alone pro-Western) Arab state, I wonder from time to time what would have happened had U.S. efforts succeeded in negotiating an Israeli-Syrian peace agreement in the 1990s.
For me, this is more than a remote thought experiment. For almost two decades, under Republican and Democratic administrations, I was part of a U.S. negotiating team that tried to reach such a deal. But had we succeeded, the results might have been catastrophic for Israel and for the U.S.
Interest in an Israeli-Syrian peace deal was bipartisan: U.S. presidents including Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush expressed varying degrees of interest. So did Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Several U.S. presidents and Israeli leaders were fascinated with longtime Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and considered him a strategic thinker with whom one might do business. The collapse of the Soviet Union generated some interest from Mr. Assad in looking to the U.S. as a possible partner.
Rarely did we hear from Israeli leaders or focus ourselves on the prospect that an Israeli-Syrian accord might be at risk if instability in Syria led to a change in regime. This concern was prevalent generally as Israelis did peace deals with other Arab leaders. But fear of instability in the Arab world didn’t stop Menachem Begin from returning Sinai to Egypt; it didn’t stop Mr. Rabin from concluding a peace deal with Jordan’s King Hussein; nor did it prevent the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. And with Hafez Assad there was an assumption–warranted at the time–that his brutality in suppressing dissent and his track record–governing longer than all of Syria’s previous leaders combined since independence in 1946–would somehow guarantee stability. Rarely has a political judgment been more wrongheaded.
Will Obama Back a Palestinian State?
Indeed, there is little doubt about where Obama stands. Upon entering office, Obama made Israeli-Palestinian peace a priority but, by shredding previous White House commitments and insisting on a freeze on natural growth within disputed areas of Jerusalem, he gave Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas an excuse to walk away from talks. In effect, Obama acted more as Jerusalem’s municipal zoning commissioner than as leader of the free world. In the years since, he has become positively petulant if not unhinged toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There was the “hot-mic” incident and the over-the-top reaction to Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. (Democratic complaints that Netanyahu lobbied Congress hold little water, as the British, French, and German ambassadors did as well; complaints that Netanyahu should not have criticized White House policy while in the United States are hypocritical as well, given that Obama criticized the sitting Australian government’s climate policy while in Australia). New reports suggest Obama brushed off Senate Minority leader Harry Reid’s request that he give members of his own party assurances that he would support Israel at the United Nations, and Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s decision to miss Netanyahu’s UN speech was simply rude (as was their underlings’ refusal to applaud). If Obama acted so unpresidential and petulant before, how might he act when he no longer has to worry about how unilateral action might impact other agendas back home? Perhaps it’s time to recognize the real possibility that Obama will support any UN Security Council binding initiative to recognize a Palestinian state and impose borders. Power, after all, had once recommended doing just that and then utilizing U.S. troops to make it a reality.
The question now is less whether Obama might try to create such a state as a fait accompli and allow others to pick up the pieces, and more what the U.S. Congress might do to dissuade Obama from doing so. Rhetoric alone will not do the trick. It is clear that Obama does not respect Congress, nor care about its input. Frankly, the Congress has neither given the White House nor the State Department reason to respect it.
Now is the time for Congress to lay out consequences for any unilateral action: Freezing confirmations, slashing funding, forbidding any aid and assistance to any Palestinian entity until it reaffirms Oslo, and constraining the State Department’s worst instincts to relieve Palestinians of accountability, as it did with the PLO Commitments Compliance Act in the late 1980s. Diplomats might whine, but their recent performance as well as the disdain Kerry’s crew has shown for Congress suggests that the U.S. would suffer little from constraining State Department functions. The alternative is not only the creation of a new state that refuses to recognize its neighbor, but one which would quickly become a satellite of Iran, a sponsor of terrorism, and guarantee a devastating war rather than usher in any peace.
Inside Story - Is Israel Maintaining the Status Quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque?
Middle East Forum director Gregg Roman appeared on Al-Jazeera English on October 6, alongside Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada, and Ian Black, the Middle East editor of the Guardian newspaper, to discuss the recent tensions at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Excerpt
Abunimah: With all respect, I don't agree with Ian Black that these things are irreconcilable. If it were a matter of access for religious communities, as he said, that has been managed for centuries. Muslims, Christians, and Jews had access to Jerusalem. What is causing the problem is Israel's violent and aggressive colonization of Jerusalem ...
moderator: Ok, Gregg, I want to bring you in here ...
Abunimah (interrupting): ... and more broadly the West Bank. And it's claim that it alone should control everything.
moderator: If we could just let Gregg respond to your fears. Are they realistic? Is the destruction of Al-Aqsa mosque imminent with the arrival of these Jewish settler groups, these Jewish activist groups, coming onto the compound ...
Abunimah (interrupting): I didn't say imminent
moderator: Ok, but is it a possibility, then?
Roman: It's not a possibility, Mr. Abunimah sounds more like a spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad when he uses these vile accusations of the "judaization" of Jerusalem. The fact ...
Inside Story - Is Israel maintaining the status quo at al-Aqsa Mosque?


Thursday, October 01, 2015

  • Thursday, October 01, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon



Address by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly
October 1, 2015

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you greetings from Jerusalem. The city in which the Jewish People's hopes and prayers for peace for all of humanity have echoed throughout the ages.

Thirty-one years ago, as Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, I stood at this podium for the first time.
           
I spoke that day against a resolution sponsored by Iran to expel Israel from the United Nations.  
Then as now, the UN was obsessively hostile towards Israel, the one true democracy in the Middle East.

Then as now, some sought to deny the one and only Jewish state a place among the nations.

I ended that first speech by saying: 

Gentlemen, check your fanaticism at the door.
           
More than three decades later, as the Prime Minister of Israel, I am again privileged to speak from this podium.

And for me, that privilege has always come with a moral responsibility to speak the truth.

So after three days of listening to world leaders praise the nuclear deal with Iran, I begin my speech today by saying: 

Ladies and Gentlemen, check your enthusiasm at the door.

You see, this deal doesn't make peace more likely. 

By fueling Iran’s aggressions with billions of dollars in sanctions relief, it makes war more likely.

Just look at what Iran has done in the last six months alone, since the framework agreement was announced in Lausanne.

Iran boosted its supply of devastating weapons to Syria.

Iran sent more soldiers of its Revolutionary Guard into Syria. Iran sent thousands of Afghani and Pakistani Shi’ite fighters to Syria.

Iran did all this to prop up Assad's brutal regime.

Iran also shipped tons of weapons and ammunitions to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, including another shipment just two days ago.

Iran threatened to topple Jordan.

Iran’s proxy Hezbollah smuggled into Lebanon SA-22 missiles to down our planes, and Yakhont cruise missiles to sink our ships.

Iran supplied Hezbollah with precision-guided surface-to-surface missiles and attack drones so it can accurately hit any target in Israel.

Iran aided Hamas and Islamic Jihad in building armed drones in Gaza.

Iran also made clear its plans to open two new terror fronts against Israel, promising to arm Palestinians in the West Bank and sending its Revolutionary Guard generals to the Golan Heights, from which its operatives recently fired rockets on northern Israel.

Israel will continue to respond forcefully to any attacks against it from Syria.

Israel will continue to act to prevent the transfer of strategic weapons to Hezbollah from and through Syrian territory.

Every few weeks, Iran and Hezbollah set up new terror cells in cities throughout the world. Three such cells were recently uncovered in Kuwait, Jordan and Cyprus.

In May, security forces in Cyprus raided a Hezbollah agent’s apartment in the city of Larnaca. There they found five tons of ammonium nitrate, that's roughly the same amount of ammonium nitrate that was used to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

And that’s just in one apartment, in one city, in one country.

But Iran is setting up dozens of terror cells like this around the world, ladies and gentlemen, they're setting up those terror cells in this hemisphere too.

I repeat: Iran’s been doing all of this, everything that I've just described,  just in the last six months, when it was trying to convince the world to remove the sanctions.

Now just imagine what Iran will do after those sanctions are lifted.

Unleashed and un-muzzled, Iran will go on the prowl, devouring more and more prey.

In the wake of the nuclear deal, Iran is spending billions of dollars on weapons and satellites.

You think Iran is doing that to advance peace?

You think hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief and fat contracts will turn this
rapacious tiger into a kitten?

If you do, you should think again.

In 2013 president Rouhani began his so-called charm offensive here at the UN. Two years later, Iran is executing more political prisoners, escalating its regional aggression, and rapidly expanding its global terror network.

You know they say, actions speak louder than words.

But in Iran’s case, the words speak as loud as the actions.

Just listen to the Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force. Here's what he said in February:

“The Islamic revolution is not limited by geographic borders….” He boasted that Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Yemen are among the countries being “conquered by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Conquered.

And for those of you who believe that the deal in Vienna will bring a change in Iran’s policy, just listen to what Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei said five days after the nuclear deal was reached: “Our policies towards the arrogant government of the United States will not change.”

The United States, he vowed, will continue to be Iran’s enemy.

While giving the mullahs more money is likely to fuel more repression inside Iran, it will definitely fuel more aggression outside Iran.

As the leader of a country defending itself every day against Iran’s growing aggression, I wish I could take comfort in the claim that this deal blocks Iran’s path to nuclear weapons.

But I can’t, because it doesn’t.

This deal does place several constraints on Iran’s nuclear program.

And rightly so, because the international community recognizes that Iran is so dangerous.

But you see here’s the catch:

Under this deal, If Iran doesn’t change its behavior, In fact, if it becomes even more dangerous in the years to come, the most important constraints will still be automatically lifted by year 10 and by year 15.

That would place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.

That just doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve said that if Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country.

But this deal, this deal will treat Iran like a normal country even if it remains a dark theocracy that conquers its neighbors, sponsors terrorism worldwide and chants “Death to Israel”, “Death to America.”

Does anyone seriously believe that flooding a radical theocracy with weapons and cash will curb its appetite for aggression?

Do any of you really believe that a theocratic Iran with sharper claws and sharper fangs will be more likely to change its stripes?

So here's a general rule that I've learned and you must have learned in your life time - When bad behavior is rewarded, it only gets worse.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have long said that the greatest danger facing our world is the coupling of militant Islam with nuclear weapons.

And I’m gravely concerned that the nuclear deal with Iran will prove to be the marriage certificate of that unholy union.

I know that some well-intentioned people sincerely believe that this deal is the best way to block Iran’s path to the bomb.

But one of history’s most important yet least learned lessons is this:

The best intentions don’t prevent the worst outcomes.

The vast majority of Israelis believe that this nuclear deal with Iran is a very bad deal.

And what makes matters even worse is that we see a world celebrating this bad deal, rushing to embrace and do business with a regime openly committed to our destruction.

Last week, Major General Salehi, the commander of Iran’s army, proclaimed this:

“We will annihilate Israel for sure.”

“We are glad that we are in the forefront of executing the Supreme Leader’s order to destroy Israel.”

And as for the Supreme Leader himself, a few days after the nuclear deal was announced, he released his latest book.

Here it is.

It’s a 400-page screed detailing his plan to destroy the State of Israel.
           
Last month, Khamenei once again made his genocidal intentions clear before Iran's top clerical body, the Assembly of Experts.

He spoke about Israel, home to over six million Jews.

He pledged, “there will be no Israel in 25 years.”

Seventy years after the murder of six million Jews,

Iran’s rulers promise to destroy my country.

Murder my people.

And the response from this body, the response from nearly every one of the governments represented here has been absolutely nothing!

Utter silence!

Deafening silence.


(42 seconds of silence)





Perhaps you can now understand why Israel is not joining you in celebrating this deal.


Thursday, September 24, 2015

From Ian:

IDF Blog: The Palestinian Attacks that Terrorized Israel this Year
In the past 12 months the lives of thousands of Israelis have been threatened by Palestinian terror. Driving your car, taking the bus, or simply walking around- daily routine has become dangerous to Israelis. Here is a recap of all the main terrorist attacks against Israelis in the last year.
October 2014
October 22- A 20 year old Palestinian terrorist, Abed a-Rahman a-Shalud, drove his car into a Jerusalem light rail station, killing a three-month-old infant, Haya Zissel Braun, and a 22 year-old Ecuatorian, Karen Mosquera, and injuring seven others.
November 2014
November 10- A Palestinian stabbed an IDF soldier near the Haganah train station in Tel Aviv. The soldier, Almog Shilony, was evacuated to the hospital in critical condition. He succumbed to his wounds later that evening.
PMW: Fatah: Israel is decapitating the Dome of the Rock
In a cartoon published on the website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, Israel is portrayed as an Islamic State executioner dressed in black with a Star of David on his hood and the text “Judaization” across his robe. The executioner is swinging an axe, about to decapitate a Palestinian whose head is the Dome of the Rock. The Palestinian is resting his head on a sleeping chopping block labelled “the international disregard.” [Website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, Sept. 19, 2015]
This cartoon is yet another example of how the Palestinian Authority and Fatah - both headed by Mahmoud Abbas - keep fanning the flames of recent months’ riots and unrest in Jerusalem. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA and Fatah support and promote the riots in Jerusalem.
PA Chairman Abbas himself promised that Allah will reward those who "will not allow" Jews' "filthy feet" to "defile" the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem.
The official PA daily has published cartoons promoting rock throwing and both PA and Fatah officials have endorsed continued conflict at the Temple Mount, encouraging Ribat - religious conflict/war to protect land claimed to be Islamic.
Earlier this month, Fatah spokesman in Jerusalem, Raafat Alayan, repeated the libel that Israel is acting “to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and build the alleged Temple”:
Is the Iran Deal a Dud?
Two new studies have confirmed that this fear is justified. Iran will be able quickly to produce nuclear weapons fuel even under the terms of the JCPOA.
Iran can emerge in 15-20 years, or less, as a nuclear power with the potential, at a time of its choosing, "to make enough weapon-grade uranium for several nuclear weapons within a few weeks." – David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
If sanctions failed to do the job, and if Iran engaged in future illegal nuclear activity -- no matter how serious -- would the U.S. use military force? When the U.S. and its allies discovered that North Korea had illegally built a nuclear weapon and massively cheated on the agreed framework, did anyone use military force to stop its effort? No.
The likelihood is far greater that the U.S. will look the other way in order not to admit that the deal it agreed to is a dud.
Iran has already repeatedly attacked the United States, from the murder of 241 Marines in Lebanon in 1983, to the attack on Khobar Towers; the murder of Americans over Lockerbie; the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya; the attack on the USS Cole; has been complicit in the attacks of September 11, 2001; is still holding four Americans hostages and, openly, is daily threatening America again.

  • Thursday, September 24, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Israeli media today are reporting that last week, Israel thwarted the smuggling of 15 tons of sulfuric acid into Gaza.

Sulfuric acid is banned as an ingredient in the manufacture of explosives. The amount seized is enough to help manufacture 3 tons of explosives.

The acid was apparently discovered at Israel's  Nitzana border crossing with Egypt, where goods from Egypt to Gaza go before going through the Kerem Shalom crossing. (Arutz-7's English report says it was caught in the Ashdod port on the way to the "Nitzanim" crossing to Gaza, which doesn't exist.)

The 15 tons of sulfuric acid, at 90% concentration, was apparently hidden in a much larger shipment of 30 tons of paint thinner.

Sulfuric acid is allowed into the West Bank.

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

From Ian:

UK Labor Front-Runner Campaigned to Free Israel Embassy Bombers
The man likely to be elected head of the UK's major opposition party, Labor MP Jeremy Corbyn, campaigned in support of two terrorists convicted for bombing Jewish and Israeli targets in London, it has been revealed.
It is just the latest disturbing revelation of the Labor front runner's connection to extremists, including terrorists and virulent anti-Semites.
Corbyn led the campaign to release Palestinian terrorists Jawad Botmeh and Samar Alami, who were convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for bombing the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish charity headquarters in 1994.
14 people were injured in the embassy attack, while six were wounded in the attack on the offices of the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA) just one day later. Both attacks involved car bombs packed with high explosives.
Botmeh and Alami were found in possession of five pounds of explosives, which investigators say were were used to make the bombs, and a sizable cache of guns. But while they admitted possession of the arms the convicted terrorists protested their innocence, saying they weren't intended for use in the UK. Botmeh even claimed Israel had bombed the sites themselves to gain sympathy.
But a 2001 appeal against their conviction was rejected, with the prosecution noting the "overwhelming" evidence of their involvement in the plot - though their suspected accomplices have never been caught.
Undeterred, Corbyn took up their cause in 2002, signing five early day motions in Parliament between 2002-2006 and calling for their parole, according to the Jewish Chronicle. He called for the pair's release repeatedly, and in 2003 questioned then-Home Secretary David Blunkett over the investigation, suggesting the men had been framed.
His support for the bombers continued after their release from prison as well.
Douglas Murray: Jeremy Corbyn isn’t alone in thinking that Osama bin Laden’s death was ‘a tragedy’
The news that Jeremy Corbyn thought the death of Osama bin Laden ‘a tragedy‘ because he was never put on trial is not very surprising. Nor is it as far-out-there as most of his comments.
I did a BBC Question Time immediately after bin Laden’s death where I got the impression I was the only person in Britain not to feel sad about the terrorist’s death. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Paddy Ashdown and most of the audience seemed horrified by the terrorist’s early demise and were most exercised of all over whether or not he had been given an appropriately ‘Islamic’ burial.
Fortunately there was a woman in the audience (in Hammersmith, London) who had been on the Tube on 7 July and had seen people ripped from their lives far more brutally and with far less reason than Osama bin Laden was. But most people in the room were far too high on ‘liberal’ fury to care about that or about commuters murdered on the transport most of them would use each morning.
All of which is to say that people should beware of thinking Corbyn is in a minority on this one. It is possible – I have certainly thought for some time – that a liberal death-wish, as exemplified by weeping over your enemies, is fairly mainstream in our country these days.
Emails Show Blumenthal Pushed Son’s Anti-Israel Activism On Hillary
In response to a tweet from The Daily Caller’s Jamie Weinstein asking the younger Blumenthal if he was an “informal adviser” to Clinton, Blumenthal responded, “I warned her about the danger of #JSIL. She didn’t listen.”
The JSIL (The Jewish State of Israel in the Levant) hashtag on Twitter is the creation of Max and fellow anti-Israel writer, Rania Khalek. The hashtag is meant to compare Israel to the terrorist organization ISIL.
In June 2010, Sid sent Clinton a piece Max wrote about the Gaza-bound flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists, which ended in a deadly raid by Israeli commandos after the flotilla refused to turn around when it attempted to break through Israel’s coastal territory.
The incident remains in dispute to this day. In his piece, Max claims that Israel provided no proof the flotilla passengers had terrorist connections and Israeli media was playing along with whatever the Israel Defense Forces told them.
Sid sent Clinton another Max article that attacked Israel over the flotilla incident in June 2010. The piece is titled, “The Flotilla Raid Was Not ‘Bungled.’ The IDF Detailed Its Violent Strategy In Advance.”
A few months later in August, Sid sent Clinton an email with Max’s piece that described Israeli teenagers who spent their summer demolishing Palestinian structures in the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib. Max calls it the “Summer Camp Of Destruction.” (h/t Effect)
Israeli-Palestinian Faceoff - on a Welsh Mountain?
Now that's commitment: When a group of British pro-Israel activist got wind of a fund-raising event for a terrorist-linked charity they decided they had to act.
Dozens had already signed up for the fundraiser for Interpal, a charity which is banned in the US for funding Hamas, but which is still legal in the UK, despite Hamas also being a proscribed terrorist group there.
Hamas is responsible for the murder of thousands of Israelis and the maiming of many more, mostly civilians. Its charter details its commitment to the destruction of the State of Israel and the ultimate genocide of the Jewish people.
Joseph Cohen, founder and leader of the Israel Advocacy Movement, decided to arrange a counter-protest in response. A simple enough task - except the fund-raiser was a hike up the highest mountain in England and Wales, Mount Snowdon.
But that didn't deter the half-dozen Israel activists who, together with Cohen, schlepped all the way from London to Wales for a mountaintop showdown.
They decided the most appropriate response would be to dedicate their own hike to the One Family organization, which helps survivors of terrorist attacks and bereaved families deal with their physical, psychological and emotional wounds.
However, not wanting to tip-off the pro-Palestinian group, they only announced their own fundraiser after the event.

Monday, August 17, 2015

From Ian:

IDF plans for possible Syria operation as jihadist, Hezbollah threats mount
The Israeli military is preparing for a possible ground operation on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights in the event of sustained rocket strikes or coordinated terror attacks against Israel either by Sunni jihadists or Hezbollah operatives.
The number of Islamists flooding into the area close to the border with Israel has the IDF on high alert, Channel 2 reported Sunday, adding that the military held a large-scale drill last week simulating a possible advance into Syria and the evacuation of Israeli civilians from border communities.
According to a Channel 10 report Sunday, the drill included preparation for a scenario in which Islamist forces launch a sophisticated, multi-pronged attack on Israeli troops, similar to attacks against Egyptian security forces in Sinai in recent months.
The IDF is also planning for a possible Hezbollah offensive directed by Iran, with an IDF source saying that hundreds of Hezbollah members are present in the Golan, and that Tehran has been behind several recent attacks against Israel. Israeli officials have routinely raised concerns over the presence of Iranian and Hezbollah fighters using positions in the Syrian Golan, partially held by rebel forces, to attack Israel.
“It’s clear that Iran is behind all of the terror attacks here [in the Golan] in the past two years,” the IDF officer said Sunday during a briefing with reporters. “The Iranians are using the border – they establish units – whether it’s [Jihad] Mughniyeh, [Samir] Kuntar, and more – to carry out [the attacks].”


Iran׳s Al Quds Force builds forward command near Israeli border, but war isn't on the horizon
On Sunday the IDF gave Israeli military reporters a tour in the area of Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights and later there was a briefing with senior commanders in the Northern Command. As is usually the case with such briefings, facts and assessments were presented. They were rather routine. There certainly was not anything dramatic in the IDF's comments that suggested a change, an increased state of preparedness or higher level of alert.
But to drive 200 km. from Tel Aviv in each direction and to go a whole day without filing news? No way. So after the tour and the briefings, journalists were filmed in a fighting stance with the northern Golan Heights border fence in the background, delivering reports on an IDF plan for a ground attack in Syria.
Indeed, this possibility was also brought up, but it was a marginal piece in a presentation of a number of hypothetical scenarios.
Imagine the response from media, politicians or the public if the chief of staff or another senior army official would say that the IDF has no plan and is not prepared for the worst case scenario. Of course the IDF prepares for every possibility, even the most difficult. This is the role of the commanders: to prepare the IDF for every situation, scenario or eventuality.
However, the few sentences uttered by the officers giving the briefing about the possibility of the IDF taking control of territory in Syria, and even conquering a village or two on the border, were on the margins of what was said. These sentences were intended to explain that this is only one scenario that was practiced in a wide-ranging exercise that was carried out recently by the IDF's 210th Regional Bashan Division to prepare for a situation in which one of the terror groups, like the Nusra Front or Islamic State would try to break through the Golan border to attack IDF soldiers in the way that the Sinai Province of the Islamic State (formerly known as Ansar Bayit al-Maqdes) are doing against the Egyptian army.
Video: IDF Kills Iran-Sponsored Golan Terrorists
The IDF published video Sunday of an incident from last month in which it eliminated terrorists who infiltrated the northern Israeli Golan Heights from Syria. The terrorists, who set off on their mission from the village of Hadr in Syria, intended to plant powerful bombs and set them off against the IDF.
A senior military source in the Northern Command said that Iran was involved in all the recent terror attacks in the Golan. “The Iranians are behind all of the attacks and attempted attacks,” he said. “In the internecine fighting between them, [the battling forces in Syria] are also using chemical weapons, and we take this into account.”
“When one gazes deep into Syria from the peak of the Hermon,” the officer added, “one does not see a Syrian state anymore. Assad's grip on the ground is gradually weakening, and yet, there are still many forces loyal to the regime, including 180,000 in the regular army, and another 60,000 defending communities, 15,000 militiamen and about 5,000 Hezbollah men.”
"All these have turned Syria into a terror arena and the IDF treats it as such. The IDF understands that any small terror attack can cause the relatively quiet situation to deteriorate into war, and that is why scenarios are constantly being drilled.”

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The New Racists: Jew Hate
If you had thought that the only qualification needed is to excel at your chosen art form and then see if you can gather audiences, you were wrong. That is not enough anymore -- certainly not if you are Jewish.
The treatment of the reggae star Matisyahu is something new. For Matisyahu is not an Israeli -- he is an American. For a while, only Israeli Jews were made pariahs among the nations because of an unresolved border dispute involving their country. Now it is Jews born anywhere else in the world who can be targeted in the same way. They are singling out Jews -- Jews and only Jews.
Habima performers were insulted and vilified while on stage at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, trying to perform "The Merchant of Venice." None of the protesters seemed to see the irony of vilifying Jews on stage during that of all plays.
Spain has its own border issues. Perhaps Spanish performers should henceforth be quizzed about their political attitudes before they are allowed to perform abroad? Maybe the rest of the world should demand that all artists from Spain sign a statement or make a video supporting Catalan independence if they are to be allowed to perform in public?
Only one country and one geopolitical question is addressed in this way. Turkish artists are nowhere in the world asked to condemn their country's illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus -- an occupation, lasting more than four decades, of half an EU member state.
Their singling out of Jews, wherever they are from, makes their racist motivation abundantly clear. If the Rototom Sunsplash festival wants to take part in this racist BDS fever then it is them -- and not Jews -- whom the world must make into pariahs.
Foreign Ministry: Spanish festival's boycott of US Jew Matisyahu proves BDS is anti-Semitic
If you plan on going to the Sunsplash Rototom Reggae Festival in Spain this week, you better not speak the language of the Hebrewman. If you do, they might kick you out.
The festival’s cancellation of a scheduled August 22 appearance by Jewish-American reggae artist Matisyahu – under pressure from Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists – unmasks the anti-Semitic nature of that movement, a Foreign Ministry representative said Sunday.
“We always said that BDS was not connected to the Palestinian issue or the settlements but was nothing more than Jew hatred,” spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said.
“And this demonstrates that.”
Matisyahu, Nahshon stressed, is not Israeli.
WJC President Condemns Cancellation of Matisyahu Concert
World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald S. Lauder on Sunday expressed “outrage” and “utter bewilderment” at news that a music festival in Spain had disinvited American Jewish musician Matisyahu for failing to sign a pro-Palestinian declaration.
“This is a clear instance of anti-Semitism, and nothing else,” Lauder said in a statement, urging Spanish authorities “to condemn this sad incident and to take appropriate action those responsible for it.”
“Matisyahu is an American Jew. More importantly, like everybody else in a free and democratic society, he not only has a right to express his views – whether you agree with them or not — but he also has every right not to have the repugnant views of the festival organizers imposed on him. He is a musician who has been denied the opportunity to play his planned gig at a European reggae festival purely because he is Jewish and because he refuses to side with the vicious and bigoted BDS movement,” Lauder said.
“And to the people of Spain, I say this: Being a ‘Zionist’ and supporting Israel has nothing to do with supporting apartheid. Rather, it is about supporting democracy, the rule of law, freedom, openness and diversity,” he continued.
“The Rototom Sunsplash festival benefits from financial support from public authorities. I very much hope that they will convey a clear message to the organizers that either they re-invite Matisyahu and apologize for their outrageous behavior, or they pay back that financial aid, because anti-Semitism and racism must not be rewarded by public support – not in Spain, and not anywhere else,” added Lauder.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

From Ian:

Wistrich takes aim at ‘anti-Zionist mythology’ of left in posthumous essay
In his final essay, Wistrich went on the attack against what he saw as one of the most pernicious dogmas of Israel’s critics, firmly rejecting any comparisons between the Jewish state and European colonialist regimes.
“Jews who arrived in British Mandated Palestine manifestly did not come in order to destroy or displace the Palestinian Arab ‘nation’—contrary to the myth propagated by the pro-Palestine radical left, until today,” he wrote, asserting that economic modernization spurred by Jewish national revival turned Palestine into a land “attracting substantial Arab immigration.”
According to Wistrich, there were around six hundred thousand Arabs in the entire British Mandated Territory in the early 1920s, rising to well over a million by 1940, “hardly an example of colonial dispossession of the ‘indigenous’ population.”
Most Palestinian Arabs during the Mandatory period were “either immigrants from neighboring Arab lands or descendants of immigrants who had arrived since the late nineteenth century,” he added.
“Not only were they not Palestinian ‘natives,’ but at the time of the Balfour Declaration there was no clear or distinct concept of a Palestinian Arab nation. The left-wing narrative, especially since 1967, has consistently sidelined such inconvenient realities, replacing them with ideological fictions,” he asserted.
Wistrich wrote that he believed Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War to be a turning point for much of the liberal and democratic left in their approach to Israel, with the state’s image turning into that of an occupier which “began to erode an unwritten taboo against open antisemitism since the Shoah.”
“A much harsher anti-Israel rhetoric” emerged both on the right and the left, including “an increasingly aggressive and vituperative anti-Zionism” on the part of radical “progressives.”
WSJ Book Review Takes on "Holocaust Syndrome"
Author and former AP reporter and editor Matti Friedman has previously, like CAMERA, drawn attention to the inaccuracies in media coverage of Israel. Now, in a sharp and funny book review in The Wall Street Journal, Friedman turns his gaze to “non-fiction” inaccuracies. In a review of Padraig O’Malley’s “The Two-State Delusion,” Friedman points out:
More work should have gone into ensuring accuracy. The author asserts, for example, that Israel’s military victory in 1967 resulted from “massive U.S. assistance,” when there wasn’t massive U.S. military assistance before 1967. (France was then the main arms supplier; the planes that won the war were Mirages and Mystères.) We learn that Ariel Sharon was an agriculture minister in 1971 and that this has something to do with the genesis of the settlements; he wasn’t, and it doesn’t. The author describes Israeli soldiers carrying their Uzis “nonchalantly,” which is a nice touch. But no Israeli soldiers carry the Uzi, which was deemed obsolete after the 1973 war and removed from frontline service after that. The word “homeland” is quoted pointedly from the Balfour Declaration of 1917, where that word doesn’t appear. Would it have been too much trouble to check the text? It’s a single sentence.
The sub-headline of the review is “The idea that a collective memory of the Holocaust renders Jewish judgment defective is somehow acceptable these days,” a point Friedman illuminates with this passage:
The “bonding, primal element” of the Jewish psyche, we learn, is the Holocaust. Israelis are in thrall to weapons because of the Holocaust; they are obtuse to the suffering of others because of the Holocaust; and in general they are sort of crazy because of the Holocaust. Actually, half of the Jewish population in Israel has roots in the Islamic world. Their families were displaced by Muslims, not Nazis. Israelis think many of their neighbors are out to destroy Israel not because of the Holocaust, but because many of their neighbors say they are out to destroy Israel. Israel’s actions in the Middle East, in other words, have to do with its experience in the Middle East. The country’s objective success against long odds would have to indicate that at least some of its decisions have been reality-based, if not quite reasonable.
The idea that a collective memory renders Jewish judgment defective seems to be something acceptable to say aloud these days in connection with Israel, which is why I’ve dwelled on it. It’s important to point out not only that this observation is wrong, but that it is a patronizing ethnic smear. I don’t like the careless generalizations in Mr. O’Malley’s book or his shaky grasp of the facts. But I don’t think they have anything to do with the potato famine.

The entire review, unlike the book apparently, is worth reading.
PROOF: EU is funding anti-Israel organizations, violating international law
Israel and the EU established diplomatic relations in 1959. TheRebel.media recently sat down with the Ambassador of the EU to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, to discuss this complicated relationship.
Because Israel is a democracy, the EU is far more critical of them than of other Middle Eastern countries.
This double standard extends to EU NGOs pushing anti-Israel "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" campaigns, even though the Ambassador insists that the EU is against BDS.
According to Israeli officials, the EU is acting illegally (and violating its own signed agreements) by funding unauthorized Palestinian buildings in areas placed under Israel control by international law, including the West Bank.
Investigative journalist Ben-Dror Yemini says "Israel should tell the EU, 'enough.'"
He says that the EU's official statements about Israel often contradict their real world actions.
Igal Hecht presents a number of examples of this.
EU violating international law in relations with Israel


Saturday, August 01, 2015

From Ian:

PodCast: Focusing on Israel, the U.S.-Iranian detente, and the conflicted Middle East: with Caroline Glick and Richard Baehr
We make no secret of our respect, admiration and, yes, love of Israel. And though turmoil in the region is nothing new, we thought that we should continue to examine the percolating situation in the Middle East after we’ve been able to analyze the Iranian nuclear deal.
Two of our favorite people with whom to discuss the topic are Richard Baehr, the Chief Political Correspondent for American Thinker (simply one of the best), and Caroline Glick, Deputy Managing Editor for the Jerusalem Post, and former assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
A distorted evening with Max Blumenthal
And it was at this point I realised that shock is a major part of Blumenthal’s selling process. He deliberately seems to go out of his way to anger the part of the audience he knows is both present and critical of him. The BDS boys are already sold; they don’t need feed such as this, Blumenthal desires to be disliked. He wants to agitate because it gets him noticed. Once the Q&A highlighted the presence of pro-Israelis, Blumenthal visibly became more outrageous; it was as if the two sides feed off each other. His message of hate towards Israel sells his books and the more we shout his name in anger from the rooftops, the more books he will sell. So he turns the level of venom up another notch.
Israelis don’t shoot Hebrew speakers. It’s a fantasy world created by a conspiracy nut who suggested that ‘my government’ ‘his government’ and ‘Israel’ are all engaged in some deep dark scheme that keeps the innocent Palestinians locked away in their refugee camps because it pleases some cabal of capitalists. All we need is for all those capitalists to be Jewish and we have a new edition of Protocols.
Blumenthal works on the premise that you cannot attack his position without appearing to attack victims, cynically using dead Gazan children as human shields. As Blumenthal mentions the amount of explosives the Israelis used as being more than ‘Hiroshima’, describes military strategies where Hebrew speakers are targeted for killing and uses comparisons with Darfur to infer genocide, the clear message is one of total force by a brutal army against an innocent population. Massive force being used without care against one of the highest populated areas on earth. And yet more innocent people died in Syria last week than in Gaza in a 50 day conflict ( Didn’t you see the massive protests in London?) Given Israel’s supremacy, the numbers simply do not tell the same tale. Israel clearly is not behaving the way that is being attributed to it.
And it was over. Having seen a slight altercation outside the building caused by two seemingly harmless women, I approached them at the station on the way home. They did not know who I was, and my possession of a bag with Blumenthal’s book suggested I was ‘a friend’. I am not going to recount the exchange here, but as usual a simple conversation about the conflict highlights a thorough lack of knowledge or information and a deep hostility to ‘Zionists’. They have formed solid opinions without even a grasp of the basics. When eventually they realised I was a Jew who wouldn’t spit on the Israeli flag, they walked away.
I haven’t read the whole book yet, but having seen Blumenthal talk, the over-riding sensation I am left with is one of sadness. The only challenging questions that came out in the Q&A were from pro-Israelis, the remainder of the audience had nothing to say and gushed over every word. It was an empty room with a few empty people looking for their bias to be fed. And fed they were.
Sarah Honig: The humanistic ardor of interwar Poland
Poland made history on Monday morning, April 19, 1937. It taught the world how to implement a boycott without actually admitting that it’s doing anything of the sort.
Headliners of today’s European Union have learned the lesson well, even if few of the EU’s sanctimonious sermonizers can likely cite the source and inspiration for their very unoriginal charade.
The Polish non-boycott was no mean feat on the eve of WWII, when dark clouds of impending doom already gathered over the heads of European Jewry.
Given the bestial goings-on and the brutish anti-Jewish boycotts next-door in the Third Reich, Poland appeared positively refined by comparison – the soul of sophistication.
The Poles never sank as low as the crude and vulgar Germans. They didn’t adopt the practice of daubing storefronts with giant Jude inscriptions, smashing windows or sending out storm troopers to form scary picket lines, carry offensive signs in the formidable Teutonic tradition and warn off the super-race away from subhuman Jewish shopkeepers.
Instead, Poland’s Minister of Industry and Commence Antoni Roman issued an edict that looked impeccably non-discriminatory.
It ordered that all business signs boldly display the proprietor’s name, directly above any other incidental scrap information such as what was sold at the premises. Precise rules were stipulated regarding the size of the letters required.
What could possibly be wrong with that? The measure applied to everyone throughout the republic. Surely nothing could be more equitable. No single community or grouping was targeted.
JPost Editorial: Don’t parole Pollard
Last week, screaming headlines were generated worldwide by breaking news in The Wall Street Journal that the US was preparing to release Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard after 30 years in prison. This announcement, predictably, unleashed a tidal wave of media coverage.
A subsequent announcement a few days later officially confirming imminent parole for Pollard added to the deluge of reports, which continue unabated.
There is something suspect in the timing of these news stories.
Jerusalem’s rejection of Pollard’s release as intended to mitigate Israel’s displeasure with the disastrous Iranian nuclear pact was predictable.
However, denials by US officials, claiming that Pollard’s release is unrelated to the Iranian deal were less predictable.
There were simply too many denials, at too high a level and employing too strident a tone to be credible.
Clearly, the media frenzy about Pollard occurs precisely when the Obama administration needs headlines diverted away from the Iranian deal. The public’s attention instead has become focused on a subject that many love to hate: Israel.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

From Ian:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry chief: Sunni Arab nations are our ‘allies’
The director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, called the Middle East’s Sunni Arab nations “Israel’s allies.”
Gold used the term twice in a presentation Wednesday in New York focused on the shortcomings of the Iran nuclear deal.
“What we have is a regime on a roll that is trying to conquer the Middle East,” Gold said of Iran, “and it’s not Israel talking, that is our Sunni Arab neighbors — and you know what? I’ll use another expression – that is our Sunni Arab allies talking.”
Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and a longtime adviser to Israeli prime ministers from the right-wing Likud Party, is also the author of a 2003 book on Saudi Arabia called “Hatred’s Kingdom: How Saudi Arabia Supports the New Global Terrorism.” Saudi Arabia has been one of the most vocal Arab opponents of US-Iran rapprochement and the Iran nuclear agreement.
The presentation, which was organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, also featured Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence who now heads Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. Yadlin ran unsuccessfully for the Knesset in March on the center-left Zionist Union list.
Infamous Terrorist Samir Kuntar Not Killed in Syria Airstrikes Attributed to Israel, Brother Claims
The brother of infamous Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar was quick to deny Samir’s death on Wednesday after air strikes attributed to Israel were reported in Lebanon and Syria, Israeli news site NRG reported.
According to the reports, two Hezbollah operatives and three loyalists to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were killed in the strikes.
On Twitter, Bassem Kuntar claimed, “Samir is fine” and added his condolences to the “martyrs of the Syrian Arab resistance to the Israeli occupation in the Golan who were killed during the Israeli strike in the afternoon.”
Syrian State TV Reports Second Israeli Airstrike on Terror Targets in a Day
An Israeli warplane on Wednesday attacked a terrorist base belonging to a pro-Syrian government Palestinian terror group, Syrian state television claimed.
The Israeli plane purportedly attacked a military base along the Lebanon-Syria border belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Reuters reported, citing the television report.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment on the reported strike.
Earlier on Wednesday, Arab media outlets reported that the Israeli Air Force struck a vehicle in the Quneitra region of southern Syria, killing at least two people and as many as five, who were possibly members of the Hezbollah terror group and the People’s Committees, a pro-Assad militia led by the Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar.
Netanyahu: Under nuke deal, Iran has months to hide illicit activity
If Iran honors the agreement, it will be able to build numerous nuclear weapons with the blessing of the international community, he lamented during a briefing for Israeli diplomatic correspondents in his Jerusalem office.
“The inspections regime is full of holes,” Netanyahu said. “This deal is terrible. It’s preferable to have no deal than this deal.”
Under the Comprehensive Joint Plan of Action that the world powers signed with Iran earlier this month, Iran has 24 days before it needs to grant international inspectors access to hitherto undeclared sites they suspect host nuclear activity.
But, Netanyahu said, if no agreement has been reached after that time elapses, the deal says that the complaint is to go to another committee trying to bridge the dispute, which will deal with the issue for another 30 days. If Iran still refuses to let inspectors into the site and the United Nations Security Council is involved, it will take another 30 days before any action is taken, the prime minister said.
“It could take a total of three months,” Netanyahu said.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Dr. Jonathan Spyer Makes Sense of the Middle East
With the rise of the so-called Islamic State, multiple groups fighting each other in the disintegrating states of Syria and Iraq, the bitter Sunni-Shia conflict and the competing interests of state actors and their proxies, the Middle East has never been more confusing for the casual observer. Not to mention the recent Iranian nuclear deal that has the potential to alter the balance of power within the region.
To make sense of it all, over 90 people joined HonestReporting to hear Dr. Jonathan Spyer, the Director of the Rubin Center, IDC Herzliya and a fellow at the Middle East Forum on July 23 in Jerusalem.
Using his experiences traveling to some of the Mideast hot spots, including most recently Iraq, Dr. Spyer expertly wove together the various threads that link the multiple conflicts affecting the region as well as addressing the impact of the Iran’s nefarious influence and the effects on Israeli security and diplomacy. He addressed how those Arab states that lacked a unified national identity or national institutions have imploded over the course of the past five years, for example Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, while others that did have strong national identities and institutions such as Egypt or Tunisia, have avoided this scenario.
Dr. Spyer explained how with the collapse of states, older sub-state, primordial identities have resurfaced forming the basis of the various political and military groups battling over the remains of those collapsed states. He traced the beginning of the process to Syria in the summer of 2012 when the Assad regime took a strategic decision to pull back from a very large swathe of territory in the country’s north and east in the belief at that time that he could reconquer the area in the future. Instead, what is clear is that this ushered in the creation of separate entities – a Sunni rebel entity, a Kurdish entity. The Sunni rebel entity has further splintered into other entities including Islamic State and Al-Nusra. Dr. Spyer also outlined how Iraq had also split into separate entities.
Dr. Jonathan Spyer: HonestReporting Speaker Series


Elliott Abrams: Bensouda Saves the ICC
In a recent blog post, I noted the 2-to-1 decision by a “pre-trial chamber” to overturn the decision of International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda not to proceed against Israel in the Mavi Marmara case. This was the first time such a decision of the ICC Prosecutor had been overturned.
As several people who wrote in comments added, the chamber didn’t force Bensouda to prosecute–just to look at the case again. So she did. Last week she said she was “carefully studying the decision and will decide on the next steps in due course. The decision on whether to open an investigation depends on the facts and circumstances of each situation.”
Having looked again at the facts and circumstances, she has stuck with her decision. In a very quick reply to the judges, she told them that their decision failed to consider “the unique context of violent resistance aboard the Mavi Marmara.” She’s absolutely right.
And she has done the ICC a great favor. As my original blog post noted, there has always been political pressure on the ICC to become–like the U.N. Human Rights Council–an Israel-bashing enterprise. That would destroy whatever chance the tribunal has of gaining legitimacy. The first ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina, avoided that trap, and now Bensouda is doing the same. She has saved the ICC from driving into a dead end where only politics and bias could be found.
Israel rejects ‘flawed’ war crime claim by rights group
Israel accused Amnesty of “a false narrative – claiming that four days of military operations by the IDF were in direct response to the killing and kidnapping of one IDF soldier,” the foreign ministry said, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
“It seems that Amnesty forgot that there was an ongoing conflict – during which the IDF was operating to stop rocket fire and neutralize cross-border assault tunnels, and Palestinian terrorist organizations were actively engaging in intensive conflict against the IDF from within the civilian environment.”
Last summer’s 50-day war took a heavy toll on Gaza, killing 2,251 Palestinians, including more than 500 children according to Palestinian tallies. Israel claimed as many as 1,000 of the casualties were fighters.
Seventy-three people were killed on the Israeli side, including 67 soldiers.
Israel officially blames Hamas for Palestinian civilian casualties, noting that the group, which rules Gaza, often launched attacks from within residential areas.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

From Ian:

Overwhelming Israeli Opposition Strongest Sign Iran Deal Is A Bad One
No country has more to lose from a military confrontation with Iran than Israel — and no country has more to gain than Israel from a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue.
And yet, an overwhelming majority in the Jewish State views the Iran deal as a catastrophic mistake, one that potentially threatens the country’s very existence. This reality alone should make you think twice about the Obama administration’s claim that it negotiated a strong deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Critics of Israel’s position on the Iran deal are often quick to paint Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a warmonger. But why would Netanyahu be anxious for a military confrontation? Israel would likely be the main target of any Iranian response to a strike on its nuclear program, even if the attack was conducted by the United States. With Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah armed with an estimated 100,000 rockets in southern Lebanon, the consequences of an Iranian retaliation could be very grave for the Jewish State.
Conversely, Israel would benefit most from a deal with Iran that actually prevented the Islamic Republic from being able to obtain nuclear weapons capability. A good deal would eliminate the threat of an apocalyptically anti-Semitic regime being able to gain the means to make its genocidal dreams a reality. At the same time, a good deal would remove the need for a possible military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities that could precipitate a bloody confrontation between Israel and Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah.
 Jennifer Rubin: Blaming failure of a rotten deal on Israel?!
Kerry does not “fear” Israel would be blamed; he is threatening to blame Israel if U.S. lawmakers decide that the deal is not in the interests of the United States. Not only is he inciting anti-Israel fervor, but he also is repeating another canard, namely that Israel controls Congress. In doing all this, the administration echoes ancient tropes against the Jews and not-so-ancient ones against an Israeli government that won’t meekly assent to its death.
The administration sounds more unhinged with each passing day, no doubt because it is not convincing Democrats to stand with the White House in defense of a rotten deal. In particular, many lawmakers who insisted on disclosure of the possible military dimensions (PMDs) of Iran’s nuclear program are learning it won’t be in the dealIn other words, the administration caved on PMDs and the deal would go into effect without ever forcing Iran to disclose information necessary to conduct adequate inspections. (“Outside nuclear experts said understanding Iran’s past nuclear work was critical to verifying the new agreement because it establishes a baseline for what Tehran has done in the past.”) Democrats who insisted on a credible inspection process and know that it depends on our understanding of Iran’s past nuclear weapons program have a choice: Cave (as the president did, thereby sacrificing their own credibility) or insist the president go back (with additional leverage in the form of new sanctions) to obtain what Kerry once promised he would get.
No wonder the administration is throwing a fit, louder and more overtly anti-Israel with each passing day. The president and his advisers desperately want to divert attention from their own grossly defective deal — and blame Israel if it fails. Nothing could be more revealing of the deal’s weakness and the Obama administration’s hostility to Israel than the manner in which it is defending the deal.
Can @TheTimes cite examples of Bibi saying he ‘opposed’ Iran negotiations? #IranDeal
In a July 28th article (Huckabee likens Iran deal to Holocaust), Times of London Middle East reporter Hugh Tomlinson claimed that Israel’s prime minister not only opposes the current Iran nuclear deal, but actually has opposed negotiations with Iran altogether.
Here’s the relevant passage, in the penultimate paragraph of the article.
Congress has two months in which to review the Vienna accord before voting to accept or reject it. Israel, which bitterly opposed negotiations with Iran from the outset, has been lobbying Congress for months in an attempt to block the deal.
Given that serious negotiations with Iran date back to 2009, Tomlinson is in effect saying that Binyamin Netanyahu has “bitterly opposed negotiations with Iran from the outset”. Indeed, Tomlinson has made this same claim on at least one other occasion.
However, as CAMERA has demonstrated, despite some media claims echoing Tomlinson’s take on Netanyahu’s position, the fact is that the prime minister has consistently supported negotiations with Iran, albeit one which achieved ‘a better deal’ than the one the six world powers have been prepared to accept.
A Washington Official, and the Washington Post, Fabricate Israeli Praise for the Iran Deal
The Post's headline promises a discussion of Israelis who feel the deal is "good" for their country. And the article goes on to name four prominent Israeli security experts. The message for readers, then, is that even if Israel's government and the largest opposition party are united against the deal — an inconvenient reality for the deal's advocates in the American government and the media, who normally can find allies among Israeli politicians who are so often at each other's throats — at least those in the know understand how truly good the agreement is.
Except it isn't true. Let's look at the security experts named in the piece:
Tharoor first mentions Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, and links to a Daily Beast piece entitled "Ex-Intel Chief: Iran Deal Good for Israel."
Unfortunately for Tharoor (and for Daily Beast commentator Jonathan Alter), Ayalon, who begrudgingly supports the deal because it is "the best plan currently on the table" and because he believes there are no available alternatives, nonetheless has said in no uncertain terms, "I think the deal is bad. It's not good."
Tharoor then cites former intelligence chief Efraim Halevy, but strangely links to an Op-Ed Halevy wrote after a framework agreement was finalized in Lausanne last April but before the details of this final deal were agreed upon in Vienna this month. In a more recent (and thus relevant) Op-Ed, Halevy described what he sees as several strong points in the agreement and concludes that it is "important to hold a profound debate in Israel on whether no agreement is preferable to an agreement which includes components that are crucial for Israel's security."
He didn't explicitly state which side of the debate he favors, although there is a sense that leans toward the idea that Israel must get behind the deal. But like Ayalon, his tepid defense of the deal, if it is even that, seems to hinge on the idea that this agreement makes the emergence of any other, better deals unrealistic. "There will be no other agreement and no other negotiations," Halevy says in his recent Op-Ed.

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