Showing posts sorted by relevance for query egypt explosives. Sort by date Show all posts
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Monday, May 14, 2018

From Ian:

52 Palestinians said killed, including terror operatives, in Gaza border riots
Fifty-two Palestinians were killed Monday in violent clashes with Israeli forces along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, Palestinians said, in a burst of bloodshed that cast a cloud over Israel’s festive inauguration of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem.

It was the deadliest day in Gaza since the devastating cross-border war between the territory’s Hamas rulers and Israel in 2014.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 52 Palestinians were killed and more than 1,2000 were wounded in the violence, amid the biggest riots and rallies in a weeks-long campaign of protests against Israel.

The Israeli army said around 50,000 Gazans were demonstrating in 12 locations along the border. It said thousands more were gathered at points several hundred meters from the fence.

At around 4 p.m., the time that the US was inaugurating its embassy in Jerusalem, military sources said Hamas-spurred groups were trying to breach the border at several spots along the Gaza fence.

The army said three of those killed were trying to plant explosives at the border fence. In two separate incidents, IDF troops opened fire on gunmen who were trying to shoot them, Hadashot TV said.

The army also said aircraft struck a Hamas post after gunmen there opened fire on troops. There were no injuries among the soldiers. Reports said the IAF also struck five targets in the Jabaliya area.
Clashes in West Bank as Palestinians mark Nakba Day, protest new US embassy
Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli troops on the outskirts of Jerusalem and in other locations in the West Bank Monday in the hours leading up to the dedication ceremony for the new US Embassy in the capital.

In addition to protesting the embassy move, Palestinians were marking the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s creation in 1948.

The rioting came as dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces during violent protests on the Israel-Gaza border, among them several terror operatives.

At the Qalandiya crossing, north of Jerusalem, hundreds were marching and throwing stones at Israeli soldiers, who responded with firing live bullets, tear gas and rubber-coated steel pellets. A second clash was reported between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and there were further protests in the West Bank city of Hebron. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
Ahead of planned mass riots, Israel warns Gazans: 'Don't be Hamas's puppets'
Israeli military aircraft dropped leaflets over the Gaza Strip early Monday morning warning Palestinians to keep away from the fence separating the coastal enclave from Israel, the IDF said, ahead of mass demonstrations slated for later in the day.

“A few minutes ago, IDF jets once again distributed leaflets warning against approaching the security fence, attempting to sabotage it or to carry out terror attacks,” the army’s spokesperson office tweeted.

The Arabic leaflets also told residents of the coastal enclave that the Hamas terror group which rules the strip was endangering their lives.

“Hamas is trying to hide its many failures by endangering your lives,” the leaflets said. “At the same time, Hamas is stealing your money and using it to dig tunnels at your expense.”

One leaflet urged residents, “Don’t be puppets in the hands of Hamas.”

The message from Israel was that the people of Gaza deserve better.

“You deserve a better government and a better future,” the leaflets read. “The IDF is warning you against approaching the security fence.”

The last line was a strong warning to keep away from the border. “Do not approach the security fence and do not participate in Hamas’s life-threatening farce,” the army said.


Friday, May 11, 2018

From Ian:

Jason Greenblatt: U.S. envoy Greenblatt says Hamas has taken Gaza back to the Stone Age
The Israelis have indicated that they want to do more to help the people of Gaza, if they could be assured that additional things they allow into Gaza will not be repurposed into weapons or used to build tunnels to attack Israel. Israel might choose to ease restrictions on travel, if Israel could be assured that those who are crossing into and through Israel will not commit acts of terror or be smuggling weapons or cash to be used for terrorism.Egypt could also do more to help the people of Gaza, but Egypt shares the same legitimate security concerns as Israel. President Abbas and the Palestinian Authority could restore all salaries and payments in Gaza. But President Abbas also has legitimate concerns, even if the steps he has taken are unfortunate and damaging. Certainly, we would not want see the Palestinian Authority running an above-ground government and Hamas running a shadow government below ground. But neither Israel, Egypt nor the Palestinian Authority are the actual cause of the problems; they can only be part of the solution, if given the right opportunity.

Deep and pervasive donor fatigue has set in. In the 15 months I have been on the job, I have heard only quick, temporary, small fixes for the people of Gaza. Donors understand that none of us can significantly change the situation in Gaza in the current environment. No one wants to spend money building and rebuilding, only to find what they built is damaged or destroyed in yet another conflict. I have met many people from Gaza – impressive, resilient people. But there will be a limit to what we can do for them while Hamas is in charge. Hamas has managed to bring the people of Gaza, a people with a proud history and great potential, nearly back to the stone ages. What an embarrassment, what desolation, what failure.

I believe that given a real choice, the people of Gaza would reject this failed Hamas experiment. The fact is, Palestinians in Gaza need to be re-united with their West Bank counterparts under a single, responsible Palestinian Authority leadership. The future that Mr. Shammalah says he wants for his children – “a chance to thrive”– is the future we all strive to achieve for Gaza and its children.
Melanie Phillips: The elephant in the room is regime change
Amid the brouhaha over President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the appalling Iran nuclear deal, the elephant in the room is standing quietly all but unobserved.

Trump’s initiative is being either praised to the skies or deplored with dismay. The question being discussed is whether it will force the Iranian regime to abandon its nuclear program in a new deal or precipitate a terrible war.

Following Trump’s announcement, an Iranian missile attack on Israeli military bases on the Golan Heights led to heavy Israeli air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria.

There has been an equivalent, although more muted, flap over Trump’s decision to hold face-to-face talks with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The question discussed here is whether this will produce genuine nuclear disarmament by Kim, or whether Trump will be led by his monumental ego up the same garden path along which America has been lured before.

Both lines of thought are surely beside the point. For the elephant in the room is regime change.

Let’s go back to something approaching first principles. The Iranian regime is a menace to the world going far beyond its nuclear ambitions.
Seth J Frantzman: ‘House of Cards’: a perfect name for Israel’s anti-Iran campaign in Syria
Israel’s airstrikes on Syria overnight on Wednesday has been called “Operation House of Cards,” according to reports. On the surface the reference seems confusing. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 20 rockets at Israel and in response Israel carried out a massive and complex retaliation targeting more than thirty sites in Syria.

House of Cards may be a reference to the Netflix series or the saying “house of cards.” Here’s why “House of Cards” is a perfect name for the campaign against Iran’s presence in Syria.

Iran has overplayed its hand in Syria
Iran wanted to retaliate against Israel for months but it couldn’t figure out when and how. Its rockets were targeted in various air strikes which Syria’s regime blamed on Israel. Iran also wanted to wait for Lebanon’s elections to end on May 6 and to see if US President Donald Trump would leave the Iran Deal. Then Iran’s IRGC sought to fire only 20 missiles at Israel. Iran thought that Israel would retaliate in kind, a rocket for a rocket. It didn’t realize that it had badly miscalculated and that a massive response would occur. It has badly mismanaged its hand in Syria. But creating so many bases and infrastructure it left itself exposed. Its footprint grew over time, and at each phase of Iran’s growth in Syria it became more exposed, not less exposed. So like a poker player who thought he had a great hand, only to see the river card and realize all hope is lost, Iran now realizes it has a weak hand.

Because Iran's Syria policy could collapse like a House of Cards
Iran has built up an impressive presence in Syria. It’s militias and tentacles wrap around the regime. It has tens of thousands of fighters it recruited. But because it is stretched thin and has invested so much it also has more to lose. This presents a kind of “house of cards.” Iran has built up its networks carefully over time. Huge investments in men and resources. Construction equipment. Convoys. Missiles. Bunkers. Training. And now that house of cards is at risk. Too many provocative moves and Iran could find itself seriously threatened.

Thursday, May 10, 2018

From Ian:

IDF Strikes Iranian Targets in Syria
Iran is actively conducting its military activities beyond its borders, which not only is a threat to Israel, but to the Middle East as a whole. On Wednesday, May 9, 2018, the Quds force, a special force wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, stationed in Syria, shot 20 rockets towards IDF posts in the Golan Heights. The IDF intercepted four of the rockets, preventing casualties and damage. This is the first time that Iranian forces have directly fired at Israeli troops.

In response, IDF fighter jets struck dozens of military targets in Syria that belonged to Iran’s Quds force. The IDF’s wide-scale attack included Iranian intelligence sites, the Quds force logistics headquarters, an Iranian military compound in Syria, observation and military posts, et cetera. In spite of a warning from Israel, Syrian aerial defense forces fired towards the IAF aircraft as they conducted the strikes. In response, the IAF targeted several aerial interception systems (SA5, SA2, SA22, SA17) which belong to the Syrian Armed Forces. All of the IDF’s fighter jets returned to their bases safely.

This is the second time this year that Iran has used its military facilities in Syria to attack Israel. In February 2018, the Quds force launched a UAV from Syria, which violated Israeli airspace and threatened Israeli security.

Iran’s aggression is further proof of the Iranian regime’s intentions and the threat it poses to Israel and regional stability. Iran continues to use Syria as its personal military outpost from which it can attack the State of Israel and its civilians, while the Syrian regime allows it to happen.

Overnight clashes show Shiite ‘monster’ in Syria is limited, for now
The broadly unsuccessful Iranian military response overnight Wednesday to alleged Israeli attacks on Iranian-affiliated targets in Syria in recent weeks — themselves a response to Iran’s deepening military presence in Syria, and to its launch of an attack drone into Israel in February — reveals a lot about the present Iranian deployment in Syria.

Despite the impression one might get from some Israeli reports that a real monster in Syria is threatening the very existence of the Jewish state, it emerged that pro-Iranian Shiite forces in Syria are, at this stage, limited in their capacity to attack Israel.

During Iran’s overnight revenge operation, 20 rockets were fired at Israel, of which 16 landed in Syrian territory and the other four were knocked out of the sky by Israeli missile defense systems.

It’s doubtful that this was what the Iranians or the ayatollahs had in mind when they authorized Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Revolutionary Guards’s Quds Force, to respond to what foreign sources have called recent Israeli attacks on Iranian-affiliated targets in Syria.

Not only did the operation not achieve anything — there was no damage and there were no injuries on the Israeli side — it gave Israel the pretext for a wide-ranging attack on Iranian targets inside Syria.

According to Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, nearly the entire Iranian military infrastructure was attacked overnight. The Israeli army said this infrastructure sustained heavy damage.

What worries Israel, though, is not the attacks launched from Syria but the threat of a broader military confrontation with the much more important Iranian proxy in the region — Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Up until now, the Lebanese Shiite terror organization has avoided being drawn into war with Israel. It is keeping its troops on alert but has not ordered them into action.

As long as Hezbollah in Lebanon remains out of the picture, the exchange of blows in Syria can continue without escalating into war.
Liberman: Israel destroyed ‘nearly all’ Iranian military sites in Syria
Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Thursday morning that the IDF had destroyed “nearly all” of Iran’s military infrastructure sites in Syria overnight in response to a rocket barrage on Israel’s north, and warned Tehran that attacks on Israeli territory will be met with “the strongest possible force.”

In his first public comments following the strikes on dozens of targets that the IDF said were affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds Force, Liberman said that Israel has no interest in escalating tensions but will not accept any provocation against it.

“If we get rain, you will get a flood,” he warned Iran, speaking at an annual Herzliya Conference. “We will not let Iran use Syria as a base to attack us from.”

“The Iranians tried to attack the sovereign territory of Israel,” Liberman said. “Not one Iranian rocket landed in the State of Israel. Nobody was hurt. Nothing was damaged. And we’re to be thankful for that. We damaged nearly all of the Iranian infrastructure in Syria.”

But he added, “It’s not a stunning victory. Everything’s limited at the moment to a confrontation between us and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Syria. Everyone wants to limit this confrontation and keep it in this form.”

Liberman stressed that Israel had no interested in an escalation but that Iranian provocation met with force.

Monday, April 30, 2018

From Ian:

Netanyahu to announce ‘significant’ new info on Iran’s nuclear program
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will announce a “significant development” regarding Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in a live speech at 8 p.m. Monday, his office said.

Netanyahu will give the statement at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv.

According to Hadashot news and Channel 10 news, Netanyahu will reveal intelligence information, based on a large cache of documents recently obtained by Israel, which he believes proves Iran has duped the world regarding the state of its nuclear program.

Channel 10 reported that Netanyahu will speak in English, in order for the announcement to reach a worldwide audience.

Ahead of his remarks, Netanyahu cancelled a speech he was to make at the Knesset and his Likud party called off its weekly faction meeting due to the security tensions. The opposition Zionist Union and Yesh Atid parties withdrew their proposed no-confidence vote in the government. Given the “sensitive” security situation, it was appropriate to “show a unified front,” said Zionist Union MK Yoel Hasson.
Palestinians must make peace or shut up, Saudi crown prince said to tell US Jews
At a meeting with Jewish leaders in New York last month, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman castigated the Palestinian leadership for rejecting opportunities for peace with Israel for decades, and said they should either start accepting peace proposals or “shut up.”

Citing what it said were multiple sources, Israel’s Channel 10 News on Sunday night quoted what it said were remarks made by the crown prince at the meeting that left those who were present “staggered” by the ferocity of his criticism of the Palestinians.

“For the past 40 years, the Palestinian leadership has missed opportunities again and again, and rejected all the offers it was given,” the Saudi leader reportedly said.

“It’s about time that the Palestinians accept the offers, and agree to come to the negotiating table — or they should shut up and stop complaining,” he reportedly went on.

Prince Salman also told the US Jewish leaders that “the Palestinian issue is not at the top of the Saudi government’s agenda” and elaborated, “There are much more urgent and more important issues to deal with — such as Iran,” according to the TV report.
Officials: Trump 'seriously considering' letting Pollard move to Israel
US President Donald Trump is “seriously considering” changing the parole conditions of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard to allow him to come to Israel, Israeli officials said at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on Sunday.

Pollard was paroled from prison in November 2015 after serving 30 years of a life sentence for spying for Israel, America’s ally. But his parole conditions prevent him from leaving New York State and moving to, or even visiting Israel.

In a recent conversation with a visitor to New York, Pollard revealed that he and his wife, Esther, were suffering from poor health and had dealt with significant medical challenges over the past year.

Asked if he had hope that the Trump administration would commute his sentence and allow him to go to Israel, Pollard told the visitor he met on the street: “I am praying for a miracle. I just want to come home.”

Intelligence Services Minister Israel Katz said allowing Pollard to come to Israel would be another welcome gesture by the Trump administration when the US Embassy moves to Jerusalem.

“In order to make the celebration even happier, I would like to ask our great friend President Trump to give the Israeli public one more present and to allow Jonathan Pollard to come to Israel and celebrate with us in Jerusalem,” Katz said.

Saturday, April 28, 2018

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: As global press ignores swastika kites, Hamas is winning propaganda war
The good news from the south is that the number of protestors in the “March of Return” is decreasing. Hamas is encouraging, calling, shouting, broadcasting, publishing—but the masses are staying away.

From one Friday to the next, the numbers are dropping. Tens of thousands in the first protest; only several thousand last Friday. In this sense, at least in the current stage, it’s a failure.

The bad news is that there is no need for hundreds or tens of thousands of protestors to succeed. Just one 15-year-old boy, whose death is being investigated, is excellent fuel for the anti-Israel propaganda. And if the moment he was hit was caught on camera, it’s double trouble. It’s a great opportunity for Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi, and not just him, to turn IDF soldiers into murderers, and it’s an opportunity for the UN envoy and other functionaries and “rights activists” to use their arsenal of propaganda rockets against Israel.

The events on the Gaza border have stopped occupying a lot of space in the global press. But Natalie Portman’s announcement, unintentionally, put Gaza back in the headlines, as did the UN envoy’s statement and the European Union’s demand for an investigation into the incident. The IDF, in any event, intends on investigating.

Let’s put things in order. First of all, any killing of an innocent person is unfortunate. Hamas gains, Israel’s enemies celebrate, and Israel is the only one that loses from the situation. No one has placed cameras on the US-Mexico border, although 412 infiltrators or work migrants were killed there in 2017, and 498 in 2016, including children. But the border between Israel and Gaza, as well as the points of friction in Hebron, seem to have the highest number of cameras in the world.
The Media, Palestinian Nazi Flags, and Hamas Talking Points
The Times of Israel, Haaretz, and other newspapers have published pictures of Hamas using children as human shields, yet these images — and the double war crime they illustrate — go unmentioned by major US press organizations.

Clear evidence of Palestinian violence exists, but many news outlets either ignore it or present it as merely an “Israeli claim.” By contrast, some in the media have had no problem regurgitating Hamas statements.

For example, Brian Stelter, who hosts a CNN show called “Reliable Sources,” treated the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry as credible, repeating casualty figures supplied by that terrorist-controlled entity. In an anti-Israel screed masquerading as a “World Views” analysis, The Washington Post’s Ishaan Tharoor presented dead Palestinian terrorists as nonviolent civilians indiscriminately slaughtered by the IDF — long after they were publicly identified as belonging to terror groups.

But many in the media already have their talking points.

As Bassam Tawil noted in an April 18 Gatestone Institute report, Hamas’ “press office” has issued guidelines for how journalists should be covering the demonstrations. According to Tawil, “the first order that Hamas requires the journalists to obey is to refrain from focusing on the actions of individuals participating in the demonstrations.”

The directives, issued by a group with a history of kidnapping and intimidating journalists, require that the march be presented as a “peaceful and nonviolent civilian uprising.” The participation of terrorists must go unmentioned. Palestinian journalists — many of whom serve as producers, translators, and “fixers” for international news organizations — are instructed to highlight “the various personal and social aspects” of those killed at the border.

The goal is to single out Israel for international opprobrium, while securing greater aid relief for the Gaza Strip — despite the fact that Hamas has a long and documented history of pocketing aid money or using it to build “terror tunnels” to attack the Jewish state.

While many in the media have fixated on the “economic misery” of everyday Palestinians as a chief factor in the demonstrations, few have noted that a violent antisemitic terrorist group is clearly ill-suited to governing. To do so would require discussing Palestinian Nazi flags, kite bombs, and human shields. And that would mean departing from the Hamas-approved scripts.

Friday, April 27, 2018

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Three islands of exceptionalism in west's darkest hour
It is those liberal internationalists, after all, who are primarily responsible for the antisemitism and vilification of Israel now coursing through the Western intelligentsia.

And these same British and American liberals are also busily vilifying Britain and America, trying to destroy and transform their culture and emasculate Britain as a self-governing nation, for a similar reason to their hatred of Israel – that these are nations with a strong sense of their own exceptionalism.

That, of course, is why so many millions voted for Brexit and Trump – precisely because, in opposition to these elites, they wanted Britain and America once again to uphold and defend their national and cultural identity.

And that’s why liberals have become hysterical about President Trump’s stated aim of making America great again. It’s why those who want Britain to remain in the EU are hysterical about Brexit. And it’s why British audiences have been weeping and cheering at screenings of Darkest Hour.

It’s because at some level at least they know how the free society in which they so passionately believe has been systematically degraded, undermined and weakened by those who choose to portray Western cultural particularism as a form of bigotry.

As a result, the image of Churchill using the poetry of the English language to breathe into his people the courage and resolve to stand alone and fight to defend their nation’s exceptional values is almost unbearably moving.

Britain, America and Israel form a triple lock as islands of western exceptionalism. And whether or not their people recognize it, it is upon these three nations that the fate of the free world now depends.
Haley: Hamas using ‘children as cannon fodder’ in Gaza
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, lashed out at Hamas Thursday, accusing the Palestinian terror group of “using children as cannon fodder,” following the deaths of dozens of people in clashes with Israeli forces during protests along with border in the Gaza Strip.

“Anyone who truly cares about children in Gaza should insist that Hamas immediately stop using children as cannon fodder in its conflict with Israel,” Haley told a UN Security Council meeting convened to discuss the situation in the Middle East.

Ahead of the meeting, the Israeli rights group B’Tselem urged the Security Council to protect Palestinians taking part in the demonstrations on the border.

In an unusual move, the group’s executive director, Hagai El-Ad, wrote to UN Secretary General António Guterres, saying: “Preventing further loss of life is a responsibility that must be shouldered without delay.”
Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, at a press conference in Tel Aviv, February 5, 2016. (AFP/Jack Guez)

Tens of thousands of Gazans have taken part in Friday protests along the border with Israel, supported by the Hamas, which rules the coastal enclave. Hamas leaders say the ultimate aim of the demonstrations, dubbed “March of Return,” is to see the removal of the border and the liberation of Palestine.

B’Tselem gave a list of names and ages of 35 Palestinians it said were killed by Israel during the demonstrations.

The group described the victims as “unarmed” and said their deaths were “the predictable outcome of the manifestly illegal rules of engagement implemented during the demonstrations, of ordering soldiers to use lethal gunfire against unarmed demonstrators who pose no mortal danger.

Look How Palestinians Treat The Site Of Judaism's Holiest Place
A picture of the inside of the Dome of the Rock, which was built on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the ancient Jewish Temples were built, reveals the respect that the Palestinians have for a place whose ground is the holiest spot on Earth for the Jewish people:

Palestinians have treated the area of the Temple Mount with disdain for decades. Often they have displayed an active desire to destroy any evidence that the site was where the Jewish Temples stood in an effort to discredit the Jewish claim to Jerusalem, which dates back roughly 3,000 years.

In September 2,000, the Muslim Waqf refused permission for any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then it removed 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount and deposited it into the garbage; that rubble included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods. For details see here.

A report in 2012 stated that the Muslim Waqf was continuing to destroy Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount.

As Dr. Gabriel Barkay, professor emeritus from Bar-Ilan University and recipient of the 1996 Jerusalem Prize for Archeological Research, stated last October, “Temple denial started in the 1990s, even though the Islamic Wakf itself in the 1920s and ’30s issued booklets which were given to visitors of the Temple Mount in which they said the existence of the Temples is beyond any doubt. It was accepted and in the Islamic literature through the generations there is a plethora of mentions of Solomon’s Temple and the Temple of the Jews in Jerusalem, so it is very strange that they deny it now.”

Thursday, April 26, 2018

From Ian:

Malaysian hit said part of broad Mossad op against Hamas global training efforts
Palestinian engineer Fadi al-Batsh’s assassination in Malaysia on April 21 was part of a broader Mossad campaign against Hamas efforts to send experts abroad for technical training and weapons acquisitions, The New York Times reported Wednesday night.

The report was based on multiple unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence officials, who said the wide-ranging Mossad operation against Hamas’s overseas efforts was ordered by the agency’s chief, Yossi Cohen.

There was no official confirmation of The Times’ report, which did not itself cite Israeli sources.

The intelligence officials said Batsh himself, an expert on drones and the nephew of Gaza’s police chief Tayseer al-Batsh, traveled to Malaysia to “research and acquire weapon systems and drones for Hamas,” the Times reported.

Israel has a longstanding policy of not commenting on claims about Mossad operations. There has been no official statement about the killing of Batsh from Israeli officials, with the exception of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman hinting that he may have been a victim of an intra-Palestinian feud.

According to the Times, however, the timing of the killing was no accident. The hit occurred on a day in which Batsh was scheduled to travel to Istanbul, ostensibly for an academic conference. But an intelligence official told the Times that Batsh was to meet a Hamas official in the city, which according to the report serves as the terror organization’s hub for international training programs.

Khaled Abu Toameh: 220 Airstrikes on Palestinians; World Yawns
According to the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, 3,722 Palestinians (including 465 women) have been killed since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011. Another 1,675 are said to have been detained by the Syrian authorities, and another 309 are listed as missing.

More than 200 of the Palestinian victims died because of the lack of food and medical care, most of them in Yarmouk. Since the beginning of the civil war, some 120,000 Palestinians have fled Syria to Europe. An additional 31,000 fled to Lebanon, 17,000 to Jordan, 6,000 to Egypt, 8,000 to Turkey and 1,000 to the Gaza Strip.

On April 24, Syrian and Russian warplanes carried out more than 85 airstrikes on Yarmouk camp and dropped 24 barrels of explosives; 24 rocket and dozens of missiles were fired at the camp.

A day earlier, Syrian and Russian warplanes launched 220 airstrikes on Yarmouk camp. The warplanes dropped 55 barrels of dynamite on the camp, which was also targeted with 108 rockets and missiles.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the conflict in Syria "continues to disrupt the lives of civilians, resulting in death and injuries, internal displacement, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and persistent humanitarian needs. Affected communities suffer indiscriminate violence, restrictions on their freedom of movement and continued violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Palestinians are among those worst affected by the conflict."

UNRWA said that of the estimated 438,000 Palestine refugees remaining inside Syria, more than 95% (418,000) are in critical need of sustained humanitarian assistance. Almost 254,000 are internally displaced, and an estimated 56,600 are trapped in hard-to-reach or wholly inaccessible locations.
20 civilians killed in 'Palestinian refugee camp' in Syria
Around 20 civilians have been killed in week-long regime airstrikes on Yarmouk, a neighborhood of Damascus referred to as a "Palestinian refugee camp", the Turkish Anadolu news agency reported on Tuesday.

Several people were injured in the attacks, local sources told the news agency on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

According to the sources, regime forces were trying to advance from the southern side of the camp, which accommodates some 2,500 families, amid heavy bombardment.

The attacks come after the regime and the Islamic State (ISIS) group failed to reach a deal on evacuating the group’s jihadists from Yarmouk and its vicinity.
MEMRI: Israeli Druze Intellectual: The Syria Crisis Exposed Nothing More Than The Failure Of Arab Leaders And The Illusion Of Arab Solidarity
On March 2, 2018, Salman Masalha, an Israeli-Arab intellectual of Druze origin,[1]published an article in the Dubai-based Al-Hayat daily that harshly criticized the Arab leaders' response to the civil war raging in Syria, which is currently in its eighth year. Masalha claims that the Arab leaders aren't lifting a finger to alleviate the crisis in Syria and are unwilling to take in Syrian refugees, but are instead waiting for the international community to deal with the disaster there. This, he says, reveals their shameful failure to deal with the problems in their own Arab region and proves that the Arab slogans and Arab solidarity are nothing but an unfounded illusion. He adds that "every Arab who retains a shred of human dignity" should be "ashamed of belonging to this wretched nation and its leadership."

The following is a translation of his article:
"There is no morality in the politics of the superpowers, and all the more so where wars are concerned, especially when they take place in distant arenas. In such a situation, self-interest dictates policy, and these interests – even when couched in honeyed words – are ultimately economic interests. The people and their fate are not taken into account in the calculations of profit and loss of the superpowers' policymakers.

"For example, let us examine the recent statement by Russian General Vladimir Shamanov in the Russian parliament.[2] He stated that the Russian army had brought 200 types of new Russian weapons [systems] to the battlefields in Syria, to test them. The general added that these experiments proved the efficacy of the Russian weapons, which will increase the sales of Russian arms worldwide and advance the Russian economy. We are aware that the Russian economy is based solely on the military industries and that Russia has nothing to export to the world other than its military products. What this means is that the Russian war in Syria is an [just] an opportunity for the Russian Czar [President Vladimir Putin] to try out the new Russian weapons. What is true of Russia in this sphere is also true of the U.S. and of the other powers. As I said, there are no morals in politics.

"That's how Syria, with its ethnic and religious complexities, became an arena for disputes and tugs of war [between parties with conflicting interests], and a testing ground for the regional and international forces. In its calls on the 'international community' to intervene to bring an end to the Syrian tragedy, the Arab leadership expresses only its own shameful national failure to deal with what is happening in its own Arab back yard.

Friday, April 20, 2018

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: An open letter to the Muslim world
Dear Muslim world,

The State of Israel is 70 years old today and I am writing from its capital city, Jerusalem.

I realize that for most of you, the words I have just written will cause your gorge to rise. In Israel, they are a source of jubilation.

Israel’s rebirth as the Jewish national homeland out of the ashes of the Holocaust was in itself an astonishing achievement, unique in the annals of the world.

For it to have survived the unparalleled attempts to destroy it ever since is regarded by many as nothing short of miraculous.

Yesterday was Israel’s annual remembrance day. When the sirens sounded, the country paused and bowed its head. It’s the day when Israel mourns the price in blood it has had to pay for existing at all: 23,646 fallen Israeli soldiers and 3,134 Israeli civilians murdered through terrorism.

More than 26,000 dead—with most of the military casualties consisting of Israel’s precious young who must be conscripted to defend their country—purely because there are people determined to prevent the Jews from living in their own ancestral homeland.

But you know all about that because you are the people killing them.

You are the people who have been trying to destroy the Jewish homeland for the better part of a century. Look how hard you’ve tried. You’ve used war. You’ve used terrorism. You’ve used the Palestinian Arabs as pawns. You’ve used the diplomatic game. You’ve used economic boycotts.

Despite all this, you have been forced to watch as Israel has not only survived but become the strongest state in the region, stronger even than many countries in the developed world.

Einat Wilf with Shany Mor: Celebrating the argument
Zionism and the State of Israel are unique examples of a movement of national liberation, and a state, established as ongoing debates, claim Einat Wilf with Shany Mor. Democratic debate about the character and future of the state has been at once a necessity, a virtue, a strength and a saving grace; in fact it has defined who we are. Here’s to the next 70 years of the argument.

What is the Jewish state? This is the title of a talk I thoroughly enjoy giving, particularly to delegations – mostly of non-Jews – who come to Israel for the first time. At the outset, I promise that, if successful, at the end of my talk, my listeners will be more confused about the issue than they are at present.

In the talk, I walk through the span of Jewish history, emphasising the manner in which modernity gave birth to a wide variety of Jews, including devout atheists and committed Zionists such as myself, all the way to Haredi Jews, whose raising of the walls is in itself a modern phenomenon, conceived in response to the challenge of modernity. Once their heads spins with Zionist atheists, Haredi Jews, Religious Zionists, Reform and Conservative, and just plain Yom-Kippur-synagogue-attending-Shabbat-driving-shrimp-eating Jews, I explain that in the absence of a Pope and a Church hierarchy, and given that Jewish texts and traditions created over thousands of years offer sufficient material to support every possible world view, we have no way to determine what is the ‘right’ way to be Jewish and the ‘wrong’ way to be Jewish. We are then left with no choice but to do what Jews are known for doing: arguing.

From here emerges my definition of the Jewish state – the definition to end all definitions, if I may: The Jewish state is the one state in the world where we get to argue about what it means to be the Jewish state. Herein lies the essence of the Jewish state: the ongoing debate about its very nature. And this has been the case ever since the days of the First Zionist Congress. Zionism and the State of Israel have always been sites of an ongoing and fierce debate about the very fundamental question of what it means to be the Jewish state.

This has been the key insight of Zionism. Contrary to the common view that great undertakings require unity, Zionism progressed through unity-in-diversity. Yes, there was a broad agreement to move forward to some form of Jewish self-government – there was no agreement even that it should be a state – but beyond that, everything has been up for debate.
JPost Editorial: From Truman to Trump
Truman’s conflicting policies seem to reflect conflicting influences. Truman was a Christian Zionist who was a fierce believer in Jewish statehood in the Holy Land for religious reasons. From a moral perspective, he was haunted by the Holocaust and saw in a Jewish state rectification of a historic injustice. Pragmatically speaking, he realized that Americans would oppose large-scale immigration to the US and that the creation of a Jewish state would provide an option.

At the same time, Truman was up against the US State Department and the British government, which were pro-Arab and which, therefore, strongly opposed US involvement in the creation of Israel for fear it would hurt relations with Arab nations. Also, Truman, who sought, and won, the US presidency in the 1948 election, factored in the Jewish vote in electoral considerations. Perhaps he realized that his de facto support for Jewish statehood was enough and that it was politically unnecessary to be more outspokenly pro-Zionist in a way that would hurt his relations with the State Department, the British and the Arab world.

Undoubtedly, Truman’s support was instrumental in helping bring about the creation of the state. The tradition continues with President Donald Trump, who has proven to be a real friend of Israel and who in a tweet for Independence Day, reiterated his promise that next month the US Embassy will move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Still, the real work of building a viable Jewish state was not, and still is not, in the White House or in the UN’s corridors, but on the ground in the Land of Israel. It is no less than amazing that a group of ragtag emigrants from Europe and Arab countries and refugees from the Holocaust, who did not even speak the same language, managed to come together and fight to overcome a vastly larger Arab military force. To this day we have never asked a single US soldier to fight our fight.

As we celebrate the state’s 70th year of existence, its creation remains an odds-defying story of how improbable developments came together leading to a wildly successful endeavor.

And US support for Israel, which began with Truman and continues to this day with President Donald Trump, has been critical to this success.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

From Ian:

BESA: Hamas' Dirty War Against Israel
Throughout all the military confrontations Hamas initiated against Israel in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014, as well as in the recent "March of Return," it has systematically disseminated outright fabrications and distortions and manipulated Western and social media. Hamas presented the march as a peaceful demonstration initiated by suffering citizens to protest their awful economic and social conditions. Hamas also accused Israel of committing war crimes by intentionally shooting and killing demonstrators. The truth is exactly the opposite.

The march was initiated and organized by Hamas, not by oppressed citizens. Hamas invested millions of dollars in building an infrastructure for the demonstrators, and called for breaking the border fence and infiltration into Israeli territory. If Hamas had been permitted to accomplish this goal, the life and property of Israeli citizens living a few meters from the fence would have been in danger. These were not peaceful demonstrations.

Hamas deployed operatives among the demonstrators and ordered them to throw firebombs, shoot at Israeli soldiers, put explosives on the fence, cross into Israel's territory, and, if possible, kill or kidnap soldiers and citizens. They also wanted as many Palestinians as possible to be killed, including women and children, in order to obtain favorable media coverage.

Hamas is lying and cheating about the reasons for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It annually spends hundreds of millions of dollars on operatives, rockets, attack tunnels, and violence. If Hamas had spent that money on economic and social development, Gazans would now live in a better economic environment. The recent deterioration in the Gazan economy resulted from a bitter feud between Hamas and the PA, not from any Israeli action.

The media in the U.S. and Europe, including the elite press of the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, CNN, and BBC, largely accepted the manipulations, lies, and fabrications of Hamas without much questioning or reservation. They conveniently removed any reference to Hamas' motivation, aggression, war crimes, and manipulations.

Iran Would Destroy Syria to Get Vengeance on Israel
Tehran's steadfast support for Syria's Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the State of Israel. As senior Iranian officials like Ali Akbar Velayati, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have said, "The chain of Resistance against Israel by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, the new Iraqi government and Hamas passes through the Syrian highway."

Though Israel has virtually no direct impact on the daily lives of Iranians, opposition to the Jewish state has been the most enduring pillar of Iranian revolutionary ideology. Whether Khamenei is giving a speech about agriculture or education, he invariably returns to the evils of Zionism.

The number of Syrian deaths since 2011 is many times greater than the number of Palestinians killed in the last 70 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while many more Syrians than Palestinians have been displaced. Indeed, since 2011 far more Palestinians have been killed by Assad (nearly 3,700) than by Israel.
"Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime," said former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab. "The person who runs the country is not Bashar al-Assad but [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander] Qassem Suleimani."

Friday, April 13, 2018

From Ian:

Palestinian "March of Return" Seeks to Undo the Reality of Israel
Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, there would have been two states - the larger one Palestine, the smaller one Israel. The Jewish leaders accepted the proposal, reluctantly, but the Arabs rejected it and chose to launch a war that, despite all odds, resulted in the creation of the Jewish state. Seven decades later, the major stumbling block to peace remains Arab resistance to a Jewish state in the region, regardless of its borders.

The "March of Return" is not just an effort to mourn the Arab defeat but an attempt to undo it. Rather than face the reality of Israel, Hamas seeks to destroy it through violent means. Despite claims that the border protests are peaceful, the goal is to break through the physical barrier and wreak havoc on Israel's citizens.

Most Israelis hate the violence but are not ready to allow the state's borders to be breached so that their sworn enemies can come in and kill them. What country would?

While I have much empathy for Gazans who live in poverty, they should be venting against Hamas, which spends precious resources on digging tunnels and stocking up on rockets to attack Israel rather than attending to the needs of its people.

After the Holocaust and the decimation of the great majority of European Jews, the Jewish leaders of Palestine wept but did not whine. They proclaimed a state and fought valiantly to make it a reality. Palestinian leaders lost that war of aggression and still blame everyone but themselves for their predicament.

In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one side seeks peace and pursues the future with optimism, despite serious challenges, while the other seeks revenge and focuses on the past with bitterness and regret.

Official Palestinian TV Broadcasts Holocaust Denial
Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, an official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV channel broadcasted claims that Jews “colluded with Hitler.”

On April 10, 2018, PA TV aired an interview with Hani Abu Zeid, a Palestinian political analyst and commentator. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit that translates Arabic, Persian and Russian media, reported on the incident:

Hani Abu Zeid: "The [Israeli] soldier, the officers behind him, and even the Israeli war [sic] minister, and above him, Netanyahu should stand trial as war criminals. The accumulation of cases, one after the other... The Israelis will end up shedding tears of blood [out of regret] for their current conduct. They used to cry about the false Holocaust in the days of Hitler, the scope of which was not that large. I'd like to point out..."

Interviewer: "The [Holocaust] is a lie that they spread worldwide."

Hani Abu Zeid: "Yes, it was a lie, and many Israelis, or many Jews, colluded with Hitler, so that he would facilitate the bringing of settlers to Palestine."

As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has noted: “Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism.”

Yet, Holocaust denial remains commonplace in much of the Arab world, including in Palestinian society and culture. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, for example, claimed in his doctoral dissertation—done under Soviet auspices—that the Holocaust was exaggerated.
What is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Really About and How Will it End
Dr. Einat Wilf, former member of Israel's Parliament (Knesset), giving a definitive explanation as to the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it will end.


Monday, April 09, 2018

From Ian:

PMW: Murder of 11 was "greatest and most wonderful quality operation," says Fatah in video and Facebook post
In March 1975, eight terrorists traveled by boat from Lebanon to a Tel Aviv beach. They took over the Savoy Hotel and took guests as hostages. The next morning, while Israeli forces tried to free the hostages, the terrorists murdered eight hostages and three soldiers. Seven of the terrorists were killed.

For Abbas' Fatah Movement this attack was the "greatest and most wonderful quality operation." In a video and post on Facebook, Fatah's Nablus branch honored the terrorists who carried out the attack as "heroic" and "pure."


The video shows pictures of each of the terrorists who committed the Savoy terror attack posing with weapons, as well as the planner of the attack, arch-terrorist Abu Jihad who the PA has credited with planning attacks in which they claim 125 were murdered.

Text on screen: "Heroes of the Savoy self-sacrificing operation March 5, 1975
Heroic Martyr Abdallah Khalil Abdallah Kleib
Heroic Martyr Ahmed Hamid Ahmed Abu Qamar
Heroic Martyr Khader Ahmed Jarram
Heroic Martyr Muhammad Diya Al-Din Al-Hilwani
Heroic Martyr Musa Al-Abd Abu Thuraya
Heroic fighter Musa Jum'a Hassan
Heroic Martyr Naif Najd Ismail Al-Saghir
Heroic Martyr Omar Muhammad Mahmoud Al-Shafai
The one supervising the operation, Martyr leader Khalil Al-Wazir

May Allah's mercy be upon our pure Martyrs
Long live the memory - the revolution will continue!
Group picture of those who carried out the self-sacrificing Savoy operation"
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Nablus District Branch, March 6, 2018]

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that PA District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam honors the Savoy murderers with a wreath of flowers on their grave every year.


Honest Reporting: The Gaza Clashes: What’s Really Happening
Re-cap of events
  • On April 1, we posted this explanation and analysis of the events up to that date. It was immediately clear that the “protests” also included molotov cocktails, burning tires, rock throwing, and in one case even live gunfire at the IDF. There were ongoing attempts by rioters to breach the border fence and enter Israel.
  • Of the 30,000 Palestinians present, 16 were reportedly killed by IDF sniper fire. The figure later increased to 19.
  • It was well known since April 1 that at least ten of the casualties had clear affiliations to terror groups, including Hamas. An analysis of open-source information from Palestinian media brought that number up to 15, and HonestReporting was the first to publish that new information on April 5.
  • Another protest/riot on April 6 brought 20,000 people and new violence: including the burning of what may have been 10,000 tires, and further attempts to both attack IDF soldiers and to infiltrate Israel under the resulting smokescreen. Meanwhile, and this is not a joke, Hamas is now blaming Israel for what it claims is a “shortage” of tires in Gaza. Seriously. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
  • A number of Palestinians criticized Hamas for publicizing the deaths of its members, including holding military funerals and rallies. The main objection can be summarized as follows: by revealing that so many of the deaths were actually terrorists, Hamas undermines the PR illusion that this was a “peaceful protest.”
  • As of yesterday morning, Haaretz put the total number of Palestinian casualties at 29, while a slightly later AP story puts the number at 32. One casualty was Palestinian photojournalist Yaser Murtaja. Though the not all the facts are known yet, this story is making some strong waves in the press. The IDF says it is investigating and that it does not deliberately target journalists. Most of the information known so far is from the Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health or from Hamas itself.
Col. Kemp: SHOULD BRITISH FORCES HIT BACK OVER CHEMICAL ATTACK?
If the latest chemical attack in Syria is verified, the US should hit back and Britain must play a leading role.

President Trump’s cruise missile strike following a Sarin nerve agent attack one year ago failed to deter Assad which means much stronger action is needed this time.

Russia’s presence makes the risks of escalation greater. Assad is counting on that to deter Western retaliation.

We should not fear Russia but we should avoid hitting their forces on the ground in Syria.
Why should we take such risks? As a permanent member of the UN Security Council we have global responsibilities – including prevention of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.Rightly outraged by Russian use of nerve agent against one person in Britain, we cannot confine ourselves to ineffective speeches in the Security Council while the world’s most violent despot gases hundreds of his own people.

There are even bigger stakes. President Obama’s failure to enforce his red line against Syrian chemical weapons use in 2013 emboldened not only Assad but also Russia.

Putin’s aggression in the Ukraine and his intervention in Syria were the consequences.

Sunday, April 08, 2018

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Why Israeli Rule in the West Bank Is Legal under International Law
An interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich by Sarah Haetzni-Cohen
A version of this interview first appeared in Hebrew in Makor Rishon on March 23, 2018.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich is the head of the international law department of the Kohelet Policy Forum and a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He teaches at the Law Faculty of Northwestern University. Born in Ukraine, Professor Kontorovich spent most of his adult life in the United States. Several years ago, he moved to Israel with his family.

Q: From the viewpoint of international law, how can the legal position of Judea and Samaria [West Bank] be defined?

Professor Kontorovich: The question that should be asked is: What were the borders of Israel when it was first established? What defines this is the borders at the moment of independence. Israel was created, like most countries, after a successful war where no one came to its aid. In international law, there is a clear rule regarding the establishment of new countries: the country’s borders are determined in accordance with the borders of the previous political entity in that area. So what was here before? The British Mandate. And what were the borders of the British Mandate? From the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

The UN General Assembly’s declaration on November 29, 1947, was a recommendation for partition rather than an operative resolution. What actually defined the situation was what the Mandate did, and it neither accepted the recommendations nor put them into force. During the War of Independence, Jordan and Egypt conquered territories from Israel illegally, and it was almost universally agreed that neither Jordan nor Egypt had any legitimate claim of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria or Gaza. But Israel did. When Israel liberated the territories in 1967, it renewed its control over lands that it had sovereignty over based on the Mandatory borders.
Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism?
This week, an assemblywoman from Brooklyn — the New York City borough with approximately 2.7 million people, not some far-flung hamlet in flyover country — went on an near-hour-long rant in which she accused Jews of conspiring to gentrify her district and steal her home. In the midst of this outburst, Diane Richardson reportedly referred to one of her rivals as the “the Jewish senator from southern Brooklyn.”

This incident comes not long after a DC Council member named Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who represents the Eighth Ward of the capital of the free world in the twenty-first century, posted a video offering some of his thoughts on how “the Rothschilds” were controlling the climate to squeeze money out of the oppressed.

Both of these people have been treated as raving lunatics, which they might very well be. But a person could easily imagine the fate of any elected official in a large city had he or she aimed similar conspiracies at African-American neighbors. We would almost assuredly be plunged into a national conversation about the shameful bigotry that plagues our cities.

That’s not to argue that we should overreact to these incidents. Although certainly a serious concern, anti-Semitism is a relatively minor problem in American life. It is, however, getting difficult not to notice a trend among liberals of either ignoring, rationalizing, or brushing off anti-Semitism, which seems to be more commonplace on the Left than it has been in a long time.

But when identity politics and class warfare propel your movement, as it does the progressivism that’s becoming increasingly popular on the American Left, it’s almost inevitable that the Jews, who’ve tended to successfully navigate meritocracies, will become targets. This hate has traveled with socialists since Karl Marx first declared that “Money” was the god of the Jews.
JCPA: The Hamas Gimmick that Failed
The “Friday of Tires” protest failed to achieve its main objective, which was to impede the actions of IDF marksmen on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians did not manage to infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel in their vast numbers, and the Israeli deterrent was preserved.

The Palestinian “Return” campaign has also failed to mobilize Arab states and the West Bank. But there is still a month ahead for the campaign to run, on various notable dates, culminating in Nakba Day on May 14 and 15, the scheduled dates of the transfer of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and Nakba

On May 15, the month-long fast of Ramadan, which is sacred to the Muslims, is set to begin.

According to official statistics released by the Palestinian Health Ministry, 10 Palestinians were killed during the “Friday of Tires” in Gaza. Around 1,400 were injured, 33 of whom were in serious condition.

The second week of the “return” campaign organized by Hamas ended in failure, according to IDF estimations, which the Palestinians do not deny. Only around 20,000 people took part in these events, compared to 40,000 people who participated during the previous week.



Thursday, April 05, 2018

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Palestinian Casualties Are No Accident for Hamas
Leave it to Hamas to make nonviolence violent.

This is what happened over the weekend as thousands of Gazans swarmed the Israeli border crossing on what they called a "march of return." It's not just that the Israeli Defense Force claims to have video showing peaceful marchers interspersed with militants wielding Molotov cocktails and burning tires. The organizers of this civil disobedience, Hamas, are themselves devoted to bloodshed.

As the Qassem Brigades helpfully announced on Sunday, five of the 16 marchers killed during the march were members of this Hamas militia -- which shares a name with the short-range rockets its members launch at Israeli towns and cities. You may remember them. In 2014, their kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers sparked the last major war between Israel and Hamas.

In case the point was missed this time around, the statement from the Brigades promises: "The blood of the pure martyrs will not go to waste. The enemy will pay a price at a time and place and in a way that the resistance decides.”

None of this is to say that Gazans do not have legitimate grievances. They face a triple blockade from Israel to its north, Egypt to its south and the Palestinian Authority, that last year sought to choke off the strip from the electric grid in Israel. The fact that at least 16 Palestinians were killed in the march compounds this suffering.

And that suffering demands attention from people of conscience. But this attention should not treat the arsonist like the fire victim. The arsonist is the march's organizer, Hamas. For this group, any Palestinian casualties in the march were a feature and not a bug. Like its tactics in previous Gaza wars, where it launched rockets from apartment buildings and schools, Hamas seeks Palestinian casualties to earn legitimacy for its armed struggle.
Honest Reporting: Exposed: More Palestinian ‘Victims’ Identified as Terror Org Members
Total of 15 persons with actual military identification. Another 4 whose connection to military activity has not been proven.

Note: Failure to find any connection publicly in the Palestinian media does not mean that they are not military activists.

Another important factor to consider when examining the identity of the dead and their affiliation is the fact that out of the 19 killed, it is possible to clearly identify 15 military activists, i.e. around 80% of those killed at a minimum.

The entire Gaza Strip has fewer than 70,000 military operatives, including from all the various organizations. Gaza has a population of 2 million today. That is, the percentage of military activists out of the total population is lower than 3.5%.

Thus, the dry facts show that although the share of military activists in the population is only 3.5%, in practice, 80% of those killed are military activists. That is 23 times the rate of their percentage in the population. This high rate among those killed is even more amazing given the fact that they were dressed in civilian clothes and could not be identified in advance as military activists.
New Reports: 80% of Gaza Casualties are Terrorists


Ahead of fresh standoff, Hamas reveals payouts to injured protesters
Hamas has distributed payments to Palestinians injured in protests in the border region between the Gaza Strip and Israel and to the families of those killed, according to a report on the Islamist movement’s official website.

Palestinians critically and moderately wounded in the protests respectively received $500 and $200, while families of Palestinians killed were given $3000, Hamas spokesman Hazim Qassim is quoted as saying.

Since the start of the six week-long, Hamas-backed protests in the border region last Friday, which has been dubbed the “The Great March of Return,” the IDF has killed 21 Gazans, including 12 individuals whom Israeli authorities identified as militants.

The IDF has described the protests as “violent riots,” asserting that many protesters have thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at its soldiers, opened fire on them, attempted to infiltrate Israel’s borders and set tires on fire. Videos shared on Facebook and Twitter appear to show some protesters participating in violent actions, while several others did not.

However, several human rights organizations have said that the IDF has targeted “unarmed civilians.” Adalah — the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement last Friday that Israel opened fire on “unarmed civilians” and violated international legal obligations to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Videos shared on Twitter and Facebook appear to show Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians who do not seem to present any imminent threat to their lives.

Qassim said the payments were made as a part of Hamas’s “social and national responsibility to strengthen the steadfastness of our people in its struggle for return, freedom and breaking the siege.”


Friday, March 30, 2018

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Western Media Are Hamas's Partners in the War Against Israel
On Friday, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is inaugurating what it is calling “The March of Return.”

According to Hamas’s leadership, the “March of Return” is scheduled to run from March 30 – the eve of Passover — through May 15, the 70th anniversary of Israel’s establishment. According to Israeli media reports, Hamas has budgeted $10 million for the operation.

Throughout the “March of Return,” Hamas intends to send thousands of civilians to the Israeli border. Hamas is planning to set up tent camps along the border fence and then, presumably, order participants to overrun it on May 15. The Palestinians refer to May 15 as “Nakba,” or Catastrophe Day.

The first question that observers of this spectacle need to ask themselves is whether Hamas believes that it will be able to overrun Israel.

The obvious answer is, of course it doesn’t.

So this brings us to the second question.

If Hamas doesn’t expect its civilians to overrun Israel, what is it trying to accomplish by sending them into harm’s way? Why it the terror group telling Gaza residents to place themselves in front of the border fence and challenge Israeli security forces charged with defending Israel?

The answer here is also obvious. Hamas intends to provoke Israel to shoot at the Palestinian civilians it is sending to the border. It is setting its people up to die because it expects their deaths to be captured live by the cameras of the Western media, which will be on hand to watch the spectacle.

In other words, Hamas’s strategy of harming Israel by forcing its soldiers to kill Palestinians is predicated on its certainty that the Western media will act as its partner and ensure the success of its lethal propaganda stunt.

Given widespread assessments that Iran is keen to start a new round of war between Israel and its terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is possible that Hamas intends for this lethal propaganda stunt to be the initial stage of a larger war. By this assessment, Hamas is using the border operation to cultivate and escalate Western hostility against Israel ahead of a larger shooting war.
Evelyn Gordon: Use UNRWA’s financial crisis to end its shameful apartheid system
The status quo is also bad for Israel—and not just because of the anti-Israel incitement taught in UNRWA schools and Palestinians’ use of UNRWA facilities as weapons depots. By denying Palestinians the ability to assimilate into Jordan and the P.A., UNRWA effectively tells them that “returning” to Israel is their only hope of escaping refugee status. Nurturing such fantasies of mass relocation merely perpetuates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; peace is obviously impossible if Palestinians condition it on turning Israel into a Palestinian-majority state.

Yet the status quo is even worse for millions of Palestinian “refugees,” who are forced into dead-end lives with no hope of ever integrating into the places they should be able to call home.

Admittedly, there’s no guarantee that UNRWA will implement constructive reforms; it might instead slash essential services to blackmail the world into coughing up more money. But even in this worst-case scenario, at least America will no longer be propping up UNRWA’s shameful apartheid system and its perpetuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. If European or Arab countries want this abomination to continue, let their taxpayers fund it.

There’s also a risk that even constructive reforms could produce enough short-term pain to provoke violence. But Israelis understand that sometimes, you have to do what’s right, even if it comes with a price. That’s why, in a poll published just last week, 69 percent of Jewish Israelis said the U.S. Embassy should move to Jerusalem in May as planned, despite the fact that most believed the move would spark violence.

UNRWA reform is no less critical. And after 70 years of stasis, it’s clear nothing short of a financial crisis has any chance of bringing it about.
Melanie Phillips: Corbyn isn’t the cause of Labour’s antisemitism – he’s its product
This lie embodies the deeper calumny that the Jews falsify history to serve their own interests by oppressing and dominating another people. The “dispossession” lie thus leads directly to the deranged and paranoid conspiracy theories about the Jews with which the left is now riddled.

For this view of Israel is their default position and championing the Palestinian cause is their signature motif. And that means these British “progressives” all support Palestinians who pump out Nazi-style antisemitism, incite the mass murder of Jews and are led by a Holocaust denier, Mahmoud Abbas, who venerates the Arab Nazi ally Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Why then are these Labour “moderates” shocked when Corbyn’s friends spew out identical bigotry against the Jews? The Left thinks it embodies virtue itself and so it is impossible for it to be viciously bigoted toward Jews. But it is.

Corbyn may be an extreme ultra-leftist with the most extreme anti-Israel baggage, but he is not the cause of Labour’s antisemitism.

He is its product.

The Left embraced antisemitism when it embraced Palestinianism. And that’s without factoring in the Muslim voting bloc which is becoming ever more significant for British politics and for the Labour Party in particular, and which is infused with hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

The antisemitism in Labour’s ranks is an existential crisis not just for the party but for the Left as a whole.

It is a delusion to imagine that purging the most demented antisemites will make the Labour Party safe again for Britain’s Jewish community. It’s not just Jeremy Corbyn who poses such a threat. It’s the party itself and the left wing culture it embodies.

The Conservative Party may be in power in Britain, but the Left controls the universities, the BBC and the artistic and cultural world. It is Britain itself that’s no longer safe for Jews.
Melanie Phillips: OPEN AND SHUT CASE
An open letter backed by more than 2,000 supporters of Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that the Jewish community’s protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party was the work of a “very powerful special interest group”, the Independent reports.

Some 2000 people turned up at Monday’s demonstration. There are around 65 million people in the UK. The Jewish community numbers about 270,000. There are an estimated 2.8 million British Muslims.

The letter says the organisers of the demonstration had mobilised its “immense strength” to “employ the full might of the BBC” in order to launch an “onslaught” against the Labour leader. It also says the organisers sought to use their “history” and ”influence” to “dictate who the rest of us can vote for or how we vote”.

So 2000 people said that those falsely accusing Jeremy Corbyn of facilitating deranged claims that the Jews were an all-powerful and malign conspiracy manipulating events to serve their own interests were an all-powerful and malign Jewish conspiracy manipulating events to serve their own interests.

I think that is what is called an own goal.

Thursday, March 22, 2018

From Ian:

IDF Blog: The Intel operation behind the attack on the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007
For two years, the Military Intelligence Directorate worked with the Israeli intelligence community to collect information about the growing Syrian nuclear facility. It began with a hunch and a collection of sensitive information, continued with the recognition of suspicious buildings, and ended with the identification and destruction of the nuclear facility. Here’s the intelligence process behind the operation, step-by-step:

The beginning stages of intel-gathering

After major discoveries were made from 2005 until the beginning of 2007, it was determined that Syria was acting secretly within the nuclear field.

The Military Intelligence Directorate began to take-on the challenge: the Research Department of the Directorate established a large-scale team to analyze indications of Syrian nuclear efforts and strategies. Later on, the intelligence collection units outside of the military assisted in gathering information.

During this period of time, the Military Intelligence Directorate collected a number of key details that became the grounds for the attack:

  1. Towards the end of 2004: Military intelligence and the Mossad collected information that foreign specialists were aiding a nuclear project in Syria.
  2. January 2006: This was the first time it was suggested that a nuclear facility was being established in Syria. This was an important turning point in the understanding of it. Following this, the Military Intelligence Directorate collected vital information regarding the beginning process of a nuclear facility.
  3. April 2006: A nuclear facility was identified as a result of research conducted by the Military Intelligence Directorate and intelligence community.
  4. November 2006: Additional activity in the nuclear field was observed. With time, more aspects of Syrian nuclear efforts were revealed, specifically intensive contact with nuclear elements necessary for the operation of a nuclear facility.
Palestinian claim to Dead Sea Scrolls may be next up at UNESCO
The next “prize” the Palestinians will likely claim as their own at UNESCO will probably be the archeological site of Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said on Wednesday.

He spoke at a panel on the denial of Jewish history in international organizations at the Foreign Ministry-sponsored sixth Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem.

Samuels chronicled the Palestinians’ success at having attributed to themselves biblical and cultural sites, including Jewish ones, on the World Heritage List since joining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a member state in 2011.

The World Heritage Committee ascribed to “Palestine” Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2012; the agricultural terraces of Battir, site of the ancient Jewish fortress at Betar, in 2014; and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 2017.

The Palestinian Authority has a tentative list of 13 additional sites it seeks to register at UNESCO.

Out of that list the Palestinians are next likely to seek cultural ownership of the Qumran Caves and Dead Sea Scrolls, said Samuels, who is the director of international relations for the Wiesenthal Center.

This request may come up at the next meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee this July in Bahrain, he told the conference.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Ellison ‘Has to Be Fired Immediately’ From DNC
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on Friday said Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) should "be fired immediately" as Democratic National Committee deputy chairman for falsely claiming he had ended his relationship with Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Dershowitz joined "Fox & Friends" to discuss his new book, The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott Is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace. Co-host Steve Doocy introduced the topic of Farrakhan's contraversial relationship with some members of the Democratic party, first playing a compilation of clips where the Nation of Islam leader slams Jews and white people as "satanic" and deserving to die.

"I hear the Jews don't like Farrakhan, so they call me [Adolf] Hitler. Well that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man…Your country has been taken from you by the synagogue of satan… The satanic Jews… Because you see white people deserve to die… White folks are going down," Farrakhan said.

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat and supporter of Hillary Clinton, whether he thought that more Democrats should speak out against Farrakhan and separate themselves from his views.

"I think Keith Ellison has to be fired immediately as the deputy chairman of the DNC. Not only has he become close to Farrakhan, but he's lied to the American public about ending his relationship with Farrakhan," Dershowitz said. "We know that he continued to meet with Farrakhan even after he said he longer met with him. This is the leadership of the Democratic Party. Farrakhan is a bigot. He is far worse than David Duke. Why? Because Farrakhan has a large following. David Duke is a joke.


Karl Marx’s Jew-Hating Conspiracy Theory
When God became sidelined as the source of ultimate meaning, “the people” became both the new deity and the new messianic force of the new order. In other words, instead of worshipping some unseen force residing in Heaven, people started worshipping themselves. This is what gave nationalism its spiritual power, as the volksgeist, people’s spirit, replaced the Holy Spirit. The tribal instinct to belong to a sacralized group took over. In this light, we can see how romantic nationalism and “globalist” Marxism are closely related. They are both “re-enchantment creeds,” as the philosopher-historian Ernest Gellner put it. They fill up the holes in our souls and give us a sense of belonging and meaning.

For Marx, the inevitable victory of Communism would arrive when the people, collectively, seized their rightful place on the Throne of History.11 The cult of unity found a new home in countless ideologies, each of which determined, in accord with their own dogma, to, in Voegelin’s words, “build the corpus mysticum of the collectivity and bind the members to form the oneness of the body.” Or, to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

In practice, Marxist doctrine is more alienating and dehumanizing than capitalism will ever be. But in theory, it conforms to the way our minds wish to see the world. There’s a reason why so many populist movements have been so easily herded into Marxism. It’s not that the mobs in Venezuela or Cuba started reading The Eighteenth Brumaire and suddenly became Marxists. The peasants of North Vietnam did not need to read the Critique of the Gotha Program to become convinced that they were being exploited. The angry populace is always already convinced. The people have usually reached the conclusion long ago. They have the faith; what they need is the dogma. They need experts and authority figures—priests!—with ready-made theories about why the masses’ gut feelings were right all along. They don’t need Marx or anybody else to tell them they feel ripped off, disrespected, exploited. They know that already. The story Marxists tell doesn’t have to be true. It has to be affirming. And it has to have a villain. The villain, then and now, is the Jew.
'Jerusalem is not holy to Muslims, enough with this lie!'
Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein spoke on Thursday night at the National Council of Young Israel's annual dinner, debunking the myth that Jerusalem is holy to Muslims.

"Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, under King David, 3,000 years ago," Klein said. "It was never, ever, the capital of any other nation except Israel. When the Arabs conquered Palestine in 716, they made Ramla their capital, not Jerusalem."

"The Jewish holy books mention Jerusalem 700 times. it is never, ever mentioned in the Quran. Even about Mohammed allegedly going from Jerusalem to heaven, in the Quran...this is described as a dream. He simply has a dream, and it says he went 'from the farthest place to heaven.' ... And the nearest place, in the Quran, is Palestine. So clearly, it was not from Jerusalem."

Klein also noted that the Arabs, historically, have not cared enough to invest in Jerusalem.

"When the Arabs controlled Jerusalem from 1948-1967, when Jordan controlled it, they built everything of importance in Amman, not in Jerusalem," he said. "They allowed it to be a slum. There was no water, no electricity, no plumbing there. They destroyed the 58 synagogues in eastern Jerusalem."

Calling on his listeners to help debunk the lies, Klein said, "We must now tell everyone: It is not holy to Muslims, enough with this lie! Enough with the lie of occupation, there is no occupation, this is Jewish land, enough of the lie that settlements are the reason we have no peace. Settlements comprise 2% of all Judea and Samaria, there hasn't been a single new settlement built since 1993."

Friday, March 16, 2018

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: Understanding Israel’s Love Affair With Trump
Bipartisanship was the watchword at last week’s AIPAC conference, but it’s no secret that pro-Israel Democrats have trouble swallowing Israelis’ enthusiasm for President Donald Trump, whose approval rating in Israel hit 67 percent even before he decided to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They can understand Israel’s joy over that decision. But they can’t understand its seeming disregard of Trump actions that harm Israel, like abandoning Syria to Iran and Russia or divulging classified Israeli intelligence to Russia’s president.

The explanation is simple, but unfortunately, Democrats won’t like it: Barack Obama set the bar for US-Israeli relations so low that there’s literally no Israel-related issue on which Trump has been worse than his predecessor. And there are many on which he’s been not just modestly better, but spectacularly so.

In Trump’s negative column, Syria is “Exhibit A.” Anyone who has heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lately knows that Iran’s growing presence there is a top security concern. Moreover, thanks to Russia’s presence in Syria, Israel can’t handle this problem alone; Russia is way out of its weight class. Consequently, it needs America’s help, which hasn’t always been so forthcoming.

Nevertheless, it’s not Trump who abandoned Syria to Iran and Russia; that was Obama’s decision. When Syria’s civil war first began, America could have prevented Tehran and Moscow from moving in at relatively low cost. But by the time Trump took office, both were well-entrenched; ousting them now would be far more difficult and costly.

Granted, there are still things America could do — and Israelis wish America would do them. But thanks to Obama’s choices, low-cost solutions no longer exist. In this situation, many US presidents would have opted for inaction. Certainly, Trump’s Democratic rival would have; as Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was party to his decisions. So despite their dismay about the current situation, Israelis can’t blame Trump for this.
A New Entebbe Movie, Hijacked by Bad Ideas
The answer, to all but high-minded screenwriters intent on making serious movies about moral conundrums, is not too complicated: as long as there are bad guys with guns trying to kill us. In 7 Days, however, the bad guys aren’t that bad—they’re German intellectuals, which means that, periodically, they must put aside their AK-47s and debate the dialectical nature of history.

The villain-as-grad-student paradigm isn’t inherently terrible, nor is it historically inaccurate. Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, the plane’s two German kidnappers, were, by many survivors’ accounts, prone to lengthy conversations about justice and virtue and other abstractions, and there is something about the airless, dusty African terminal, with ultimatums afoot and the clock ticking down, that could’ve made for a fine piece of existential, almost abstract, theater. One can imagine an Entebbe film that, secure in the knowledge that we all know the action-packed fairy tale by now, would abandon the explosions and the gunfire for two hours of tense dialogue, a sort of Twelve Angry Men between hostages and their tormentors.

And, at times, that appears to be just the movie the actors portraying Böse and Kuhlmann—Daniel Brühl and Rosamund Pike—have in mind. When Kuhlmann telephones a lover back home in Germany and wearily recounts the hijacking, she seems eager to escape not just Uganda but the film itself, both of which deprive her of a role that much transcends a few angry shouts and nervous convulsions.

You can hardly blame her. Like much of Hollywood these days, 7 Days believes that a movie’s primary responsibility is to make progressive statements, not unfettered art. The message is the medium, and the message is best delivered in bursts of political speechifying. Sadly for the bien pensants, however, we unwashed masses go to the movies to be entertained, not educated, which leaves the film in a bind. Disinterested in the true depths of terror, and disdainful of the sheer kineticism of a good action sequence, it opts for something in between. The film’s climactic scene, for example, the raid on the terminal, is shot in infuriating slow-motion and cross-cut with a modern dance performance, forcing you to embrace its sophomoric war-as-metaphor theme one last, frustrating time. Whereas Chuck Norris, the hero of a previous Entebbe-inspired magnum opus, once blasted baddies with his rocket-launching dirt bike, lithe ballerinas now throw themselves on a bare stage. Catharsis is not permitted. Neither is fun.
Col Richard Kemp: Aussie Diary
He died in 1900, but my great grandfather, Archibald Richardson, outback explorer and early Rockhampton pioneer, is even today spoken of with respect in central Queensland. To me though he is a grave disappointment. I’ve been bragging about being descended from a criminal transported to the Australian colonies. But I learn from the Rockhampton Historical Society that Richardson made the journey of his own volition, destroying any street cred I had down under.

Shortly after I arrive in Sydney news breaks that Israeli intelligence foiled an Islamic terror plot to blow up a passenger plane flying out of here last year. I know of many other times Israeli intelligence has saved the lives of Australians – as well as Brits, Americans and Europeans – in our cities and on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The Israelis are not alone in their impressive track record against jihadists. The ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence system enables seamless cooperation between Australian, New Zealand, British, US and Canadian services. Asio and Asis, like their MI5 and MI6 counterparts in the UK, have prevented many more terrorist plots than have succeeded.

In TV and radio studios I’m asked the question: what do we do about Islamic State returners? My answer is the one I give in Britain: ban them. They chose to join an orgy of mass murder, torture and rape in the Middle East; let the ones we cannot kill with airstrikes rot there rather than return and threaten people here. To snowflakes who complain this breaches their human rights, I reply that no sane government would allow the rights of these savages to take priority over those of their innocent Australian victims.

Europe could learn a thing or two from Australia about putting a stop to the mass illegal immigration that jihadist groups use as a cover to infiltrate terrorists into our countries. But Australia’s successful strategy is too politically incorrect for the lily-livered European politicians who prefer to appease would-be attackers and their sympathisers. One of the main architects of that strategy is General Jim Molan, the distinguished soldier who was also chief of operations for the coalition in Iraq. I catch up with him in Canberra the week he takes his seat in the Senate.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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