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

Thursday, April 16, 2015

  • Thursday, April 16, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Egypt's destruction of smuggling tunnels on the Gaza border is having an economic impact - on the price of guns and ammunition.

Firas Press reports that Gaza arms dealers are frustrated by Egypt's actions of destroying tunnels with either explosives or by flooding them with waste water.

Arms dealer "Abu Mohammed" said that arms smuggling operations have been suspended since mid-February and this has had an impact on the availability of weapons, missiles and ammunition which has led to higher prices in the market.

He said that the price of one bullet has gone from between 3-4 shekels up to 7- 9 shekels.

An Egyptian Kalashnikov rifle has gone from $900 up to $ 1,300, and Chinese Kalashnikovs from $1200 to $2000,and Russian versions are now going for $3000.

"The smuggling operations have ceased almost entirely; rarely does one succeed in smuggling very light weapons and ammunition here," he said.

The arms dealer added that the heavy and medium missile smuggling operations completely stopped since the last war on Gaza.

This is just more evidence of the dire economic situation in Gaza, Perhaps the UN and Oxfam can release reports about how much more difficult it is for Gaza terrorists to obtain their basic necessities, and how Israel must therefore lift its "blockade."

Wait - they are already demanding that!



I have always been skeptical of Egyptian claims that Gaza is the source of weapons, explosives and fighters in the jihadist terror in the Sinai. It never made sense that material that had to be smuggled into Gaza from Libya and the Sudan - through the Sinai - were being smuggled back. The jihadists can get weapons far more easily directly from the same sources Hamas was getting them from. The Egyptian government and army simply can't stand the Muslim Brotherhood aligned terror groups in Gaza and use the Sinai terror as their excuse to isolate the sector.



Friday, September 07, 2012

  • Friday, September 07, 2012
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Egypt Independent:
Anonymous gunmen attacked the Rayesa checkpoint outside Arish in Sinai on Friday morning, the 34th such attack in the last 19 months.

Security forces exchanged fire with the assailants, who fled. There were no injuries.

The troops combed the surrounding areas, in addition to inspecting the passing cars and questioning their occupants.

Rayesa checkpoint has been attacked 34 times since the beginning of the 25 January revolution, most recently on 31 August.

The checkpoint is located on the international road leading to Rafah at the east entrance of Arish. It is manned by joint forces of the police and Armed Forces.

A number of checkpoints in Sinai were targeted in August. Egyptian authorities have speculated that radical groups are behind these attacks.
Checkpoints? You mean, where the military checks to make sure that people aren't transporting weapons and explosives?

Aren't they, like, violations of international humanitarian law or UN resolutions or something?

I was so sure that checkpoints are illegal and immoral. Terrorists must have the right to freely travel to their intended targets.  It's a human right. And people being forced to add extra minutes to their trips in order for their cars to be checked for guns and explosives is a heinous crime. I know I've read that somewhere.

Ah - here's one place, lightly edited:
Checkpoints: A Violation of Human Rights
Sky McLaughlin

...The very concept of the checkpoint itself stands in gross violation of the human rights of the people. Each human being should be guaranteed the right to emotional and psychological health and security. However the symbolism of these checkpoints has severe psychological repercussions on the people. The implication is that citizens are entirely too dangerous and evil to be allowed the freedom of movement in their own country, or their neighbour’s. The damaging impacts on the psyche, not to mention self-esteem, particularly of young people, are tremendous.

Freedom of movement and the right to physical safety are just two of the fundamental human rights violated by the checkpoints. People are not free to travel from region to region in their own country, and this has far-reaching effects on the relations of the family. Families are split and divided, and cannot join together to provide emotional support and comfort during this time of tragedy and suffering. Fear has become a permanent part of their psyche, as they constantly worry about the time when there may be an emergency in their family, whom they cannot reach in time.
See? I knew that human rights activists were against all checkpoints, everywhere.

Good thing those activists in Egypt are attacking them by gunfire. They are the true human rights defenders.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

  • Tuesday, February 24, 2009
  • Elder of Ziyon
The UN reported last week a large amount of unexploded ordnance from the Gaza operation had disappeared before it could be safely disposed of. I had exclusively reported that Hamas had claimed to taken those explosives with the intent of using them in new weapons, saying that they were "a gift from the sky."

Today, we have further confirmation, from Palestine Today:
Private sources confirmed that the Palestinian resistance obtained the Israeli missiles which did not explode during the aggression on Gaza, saying that resistance experts were able to dismantle the missiles and extract the the explosive material inside.

The same sources pointed out that they will be able to manufacture hundreds of improvised explosive anti-tank devices, after the dismantling of dozens of huge rockets that did not explode during the Israeli war.

The sources added that the experts were able to extract the detonators of the missiles as well.

The sources said the explosive article by Israeli missiles, located in one of the finest and most powerful species in bringing about breakthroughs in the explosions and the place where he received meant that the Palestinian resistance and put her hand on the precious treasure of the Israeli explosives.

Palestinian factions would use quantities of explosive materials from remnants of the wars that took place in Egypt's Sinai for the manufacture of missiles against the Israeli occupation forces, but they were of poor quality.
The last sentence is interesting, because it seems to confirm that some Hamas collaborators are in Egypt, scouring the Sinai for old mines to smuggle to Gaza.

Wednesday, September 02, 2020

From Ian:

A tectonic shift in the relations between Israel and Arab world
Over the past decade or so I have reported from around 100 countries. I have been in the White House during the good moments (with US President Donald Trump) and during the bad moments (with then-President Barack Obama).

I have witnessed the return of the remains of an Israeli MIA through Moscow, and traveled with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Uganda, Brazil Ethiopia and Beijing for his diplomatic visits. But the flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi was something completely different.

It underscores the major breakthrough between the UAE and Israel. The fact that El Al's Star of David flew over Saudi Arabia symbolizes the tectonic shift underway in relations between Israel and the Arab world. Israel made a giant leap forward on Monday in its effort to integrate in the region and be like any other normal country. The hostility and the boycotts are now a thing of the past, a new era of cooperation and friendship has begun.

The enormity of these developments was palpable among all those who were on board, not just the Israeli and US officials but also the flight crew and reporters. Everyone talked about how it was such a great privilege to be taking part in this historic event. Special face masks decorated with the flags of the US, the UAE and Israel were handed out; the boarding passes also had a special design.


It's also worth noting that throughout the three-hour flight, Israeli and US officials sat next to each other as if they were family or citizens of the same nation. Such closeness among the senior members of both governments is unprecedented. This intimacy in and of itself is an accomplishment that stands out.
JPost Editorial: The UAE-Israel deal could mark a new dawn for relations in the Middle East
The new dawn that is the UAE-Israel relationship is not just built on practical issues such as economics and security. It is already being built on human relationships. Whether it is stories about kosher deli service for the Expo in the Emirates, or the small but thriving Jewish community, we can see that there is a very real human warmth that is emerging in Abu Dhabi and Dubai towards Israel.

This warmth goes both ways. Israelis have lit up their buildings with the UAE flag, and opened their hearts to the possibilities of peace. This is welcome news during the COVID-19 crisis and the way that the world’s nations and citizens have become isolated and cut off from one another.

The symbolic visit to the Western Wall by Kushner prior to the historic flight and the morning prayers in the UAE bookend this phenomenal trip.
However, we must not glory only in success and fanfare. Too often our presumptions, and sometimes arrogance, have clouded reality. There is a long road ahead in the UAE, just as there have been hurdles in the Jordanian and Egyptian peace agreements.

There are questions about US F-35 sales to the Emirates. Israel is divided on whether the sales would erode its qualitative military advantage. It will take years for F-35 sales to materialize, even if approved in the US. By that time, Israel will have several squadrons of the advanced aircraft.

There may be other hurdles as well, such as the UAE wanting to see some progress on issues in the West Bank, or Iran and Turkey seeking to throw a spanner into the process. Israel and the UAE have dangerous enemies, from Tehran to the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a part. Navigating the US election and Washington’s increasingly partisan foreign policy will be difficult.

We can face the future together with the UAE. This week began what should be a beautiful friendship.
David Singer: Saudi Arabia is impeding Trump's effort to end the conflict
Israel’s then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced Israel’s readiness to resume negotiations with the Palestinian Authority “based on previous agreements between us, U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, the road map and the April 14, 2004 letter of President Bush to the Prime Minister of Israel.”

No mention was made of the API forming part of those renewed negotiations – nor could it be - since its total territorial withdrawal demands had been undercut by the Bush Congress-endorsed letter.

Those Arab nations and entities – indeed all parties present at the Conference - failed to object or demur to the new territorial reality of partial Israeli withdrawal which the Bush letter had engendered.

Saudi Arabia’s insistence on Israel’s total territorial withdrawal stipulated by the API as the price to be paid for Saudi Arabia signing a peace treaty with Israel has been seemingly backed by Sudan,Bahrain and Oman to prolong the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.

The Trump vision for peace is a plan that can end that conflict. It needs to be embraced by all who attended the Annapolis Conference – especially by Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Bahrain and Oman now joining the UAE as real trailblazers for peace.

Trump did not present his meticulously detailed deal of the century to see it rejected before its implementation was even attempted.

Pressure by top Trump aides in the region this week to get Saudi Arabia to endorse Trump’s plan is certain.

Failure to do so could see Trump administering his proven shockwave therapy to jolt Sudan,Bahrain and Oman from backing Saudi Arabia’s continuing rejection of Trump’s plan.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

From Ian:

Mujahed Kobbe (Siraj Hashmi's co-host): I grew up with anti-Semitism in the UAE. Peace with Israel is a dream come true.
Never in a million years did I believe there would be a deal in my lifetime where an Arab Gulf state would recognize the Jewish state. Watching the news this week of Israel and the United Arab Emirates normalizing relations was something of a dream come true.

From the age of eight until adulthood, I called the UAE home. It was a place I enjoyed most of my firsts: my first day of school, the first time I ditched school, my first kiss, my first chicken shawarma, crashing my first car.

It’s also where I had my first experience with anti-Semitism. Of course, I didn’t know what that actually was at the time.

Calling Israel and its Jewish inhabitants the enemy of Islam and God was as common as breathing while I was growing up. Anti-Semitism was in my home. It was in the school hallways and yard. You heard it at the café while having a hookah, enjoying a chicken shawarma and playing a hand of tarneeb.

At Friday prayers, a religious cleric at any given mosque was sure to make a comment about how Allah will one day destroy Israel from the map and all the yahoud that live in it so that our brothers may finally be free.

Believing in conspiracies like the idea that Israel was the true mastermind behind 9/11 or that Israel is funding ISIS was prevalent, mainstream, part of the culture. It was a hate taught and passed down through generations by people who had never once interacted with a Jew.

It’s so weird looking back at it now, trying to understand how it is that I had this hate in my heart for an entire group of people I had never met.

I myself didn’t meet a Jewish person until I was about 25 years old and traveling through New York. He also happened to be an Israeli.

I’m not going to lie: I was nervous when he first told me where he was from. I didn’t know how to feel about, if I was supposed to walk away, or punch him in the face.

But something came over me, a curiosity, a deep desire to know more about this person I was taught to just hate. We talked about a wide range of topics in the short time we spent together, but the one that interested me the most was Israel.

You could tell he loved his country; there was a glow about him when talking about his favorite bakery that he would go to on the marina, or how he enjoys his chicken shawarma with pickles and garlic paste — just the way I would eat it as a kid in the UAE.


Vivian Bercovici: A Dream of Peace Made Real
To say that Israel is reeling today is a cosmic understatement.

All of Israel–left, right, center–was dealt a knockout blow by the indefatigable Netanyahu on Thursday when the Oval Office announced on Thursday the agreement between Israel and the UAE to immediately formalize “full normalization” of diplomatic, economic and all relations.

The revelation was so surreal, in fact, that in this hopelessly gossipy nation, where everything leaks, nothing did. It was the equivalent of an atomic bomb. In terms of sheer force, not devastation. A good atomic bomb.

For the Emiratis to engage openly, fully, and proudly has left this nation stunned. In the best way. It was totally unexpected.

Perhaps it was best expressed in a tweet by former MK Einat Wilf, who wrote: “Israeli Jews are keenly aware of their minority status in an Arab and Islamic region and so yearn for peace with the Arab and Islamic world. The #UAE showed today yet again that when the Arab world comes to us with offers of genuine peace, they always find in us willing partners.”

Mired in an evergreen domestic political morass, PM Netanyahu, “the magician,” has clearly worked for years to pull off the impossible, as he was sliced and diced six ways to Sunday by local scandal and subterfuge.

“Full normalization.”

Peace, in the vernacular. With one of the most important, progressive, influential Middle Eastern countries, the UAE.

Israeli media reports that this agreement has been brokered by Jared Kushner, Mossad Chief Yossi Cohen, and others. But foremost, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, ruler of the UAE, has boldly led the Middle East into what will not just re-align the region’s geopolitics, but quite likely those of the world. And, in a flash, the notoriously aggressive Israeli media was rocked back on its heels, collective mouths agape, at the unsurpassed brilliance of Bibi.

If Shakespeare were alive, he would have to reinvent his canon, which has become the literary foundation of Western story-telling. With Bibi, there simply is no Act V–no denouement. We are stuck in Act III, where the hero is unstoppable. Where his brilliance and unsurpassed triumphs continue, mere human frailties notwithstanding.



Tuesday, May 29, 2018

From Ian:

Findings of the ITIC’s examination of the identity of Palestinians killed in the events of the “Great Return March” (March 30, 2018 – May 15, 2018)
After preparations which lasted for about two months, mass riots began to take place every Friday near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The declared purpose of these demonstrations and riots, organized and orchestrated by Hamas, was to break through the border fence and have masses of people enter into Israeli territory. According to the Palestinians, this should symbolically realize what the Palestinians refer to as the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees (i.e., the destruction of the State of Israel). Another objective was to bring the severe economic situation of the Gaza Strip into public awareness and exert pressure to “break the siege.” The demonstrations and riots still haven’t ended. Hamas intends to pursue them also during the forthcoming weeks, even at the cost of more fatalities.

Hamas aspired to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Gaza Strip residents to participate in these events. However, eventually, the number of participants did not exceed several tens of thousands. In the two peak events, on March 30, 2018 (Land Day, the opening events) and on May 14, 2018 (the day on which the US Embassy was relocated to Jerusalem), about 40,000 residents took part in the demonstrations and riots. On other Fridays, Hamas could not mobilize that many residents. During the rest of the week days, several thousands of people took part in the riots and there were also a number of attempts to carry out terrorist attacks.

The riots culminated in the events of May 14, 2018, with attempts, halted by IDF soldiers, to penetrate en masse into Israeli territory. The attempts to break into Israeli territory were accompanied by intentionally increased violence, throwing pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails at IDF soldiers; attempting to cut the fence; and sending Molotov kites, which set fire to fields in Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip. As a result of the increase in the number of rioters and the extensive violence on their part (which was unusual compared to previous incidents), the number of fatalities reached its height. Those fatalities consist of Palestinians who were in the front line of the rioters, most of them Hamas operatives.

PMW: Birthday in Paradise – suicide bomber’s preferred way to celebrate, says Fatah
Emphasizing the message to Palestinians that “sacrificing” oneself for “Palestine” and dying as a “Martyr” while carrying out a terror attack against Israelis is an admirable act, the Bethlehem branch of Abbas’ Fatah Movement lauded the female suicide bomber Andalib Takatka, who murdered 6 when she carried out a suicide bombing in 2002.

Fatah stated that the suicide bomber hurried and carried out her attack a few days before her birthday because she “preferred” celebrating in Paradise, and that “her desire to take revenge against the Jews” was stronger than her desire to blow out birthday candles:
Posted text: "Sixteen years ago, on April 12, 2002, heroic self-sacrificing fighter Andalib Takatka carried out a self-sacrificing operation in occupied Jerusalem that led to the death of 6 Zionists and the wounding of another 85...
It was a deeply moving sight to see Andalib read her will... while holding Allah's book and saying: 'This life is fleeting, pointless, and worthless, and the best thing man seeks is a dignified life in Paradise.' ... Andalib carried out the April 12, 2002 self-sacrificing operation, and did not wait until Sunday, April 14, in order to celebrate her 20th birthday. This was because she preferred to celebrate it in a different place and a different manner, and she hurried to extinguish the flame of her desire to take revenge against the Jews instead ofextinguishing her 20th candle in her father's house...
We all bow in admiration and appreciation before the soul of heroic Martyrdom (Shahada) seeker Andalib Takatka."

[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, April 12, 2018]
Peaceful Palestinian Terrorists Fire Peaceful Mortars At Jewish Kindergarten, Attempt Peaceful Murderous Border Breaches Against Israel
On Tuesday, Hamas fired an enormous wave of mortars into Israel, striking an Israeli kindergarten but causing no injuries. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were forced to bunkers to weather the attack. That wave of mortars followed an attempt over the weekend by Islamic Jihad terrorists to cut through the Gaza border in order to murder Israelis in their beds; during the chase, terrorists fired at Israeli troops. One terrorist was killed, and another injured. The Israeli Defense Forces also announced that several days ago, Hamas attempted to fly a drone loaded with explosives over the border.

Israel has retaliated with targeted strikes against Islamic Jihad positions in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted out:


The media coverage of Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s latest acts of terrorism has been skimpy at best, even though just two weeks ago, the media went full-coverage over terrorist-organized riots on the Gaza border during the US’ Jerusalem embassy move. During those riots, Hamas announced that the vast majority of Palestinians killed had been Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, and stated openly that they were attempting to use protests at the border as a cover for paramilitary action. Nonetheless, the American and European media insisted that Israel was firing indiscriminately at peaceful protesters, and that the Jerusalem embassy move had been the cause of the violence.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

From Ian:

134 House Members sign letter against academic boycott of Israel
A total of 134 Members of the House of Representatives have signed a letter, organized by the offices of Reps. Peter Roksam (R) and Ted Deutch (D) condeming the academic boycott of Israel passed by the American Studies Assoction. The effort was truly bipartisan, with 65 Republicans and 69 Democrarts signing. The full list of signatories is at the bottom of this post.
As previously reported, the congressional organizers were hoping for 50 signatures, so the response was better than expected. Gathering signatures on short notice was difficult, one of the staffers explained to me, because of the press of House business before members left today on break.
Report: Soccer Club Sponsor Delivers Ultimatum Over Anelka ‘Reverse Nazi Salute’
The shirt sponsor of British soccer club West Bromwich Albion (WBA) has threatened to immediately axe its multi-million pound deal with the club over the growing furor surrounding one of its star players, who recently used a quenelle “reverse Nazi salute” after scoring a goal, the UK’s Marketing Week reported.
Zoopla, an online property portal, which is concerned that its brand is being tarnished, reportedly told WBA that if the offending player, Nicolas Anelka, plays in an upcoming match against Everton on Monday its threat will go into immediate effect. Zoopla is co-owned by Jewish businessman Alex Chesterman.
British City of Liverpool Overwhelmingly Rejects Anti-Israel Motion
The city council of Liverpool, England, has rejected a motion that condemned Israel for “human rights violations,” voting it down 74 to two, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported on Friday.
The JC said the motion was tabled by two members of Britain’s Green Party ahead of the Liverpool International Festival for Business 2014, in June and July, when Israeli investors and businesses are expected to come to Liverpool to take part in the business networking event. The motion urged the council to “distance” the city from “condoning or tolerating the human rights violations, of some participating countries,” including Israel, Russia and China.

Monday, November 16, 2020

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: We can't ignore the funding of terrorism any longer - opinion
The effects of Iranian-sponsored terrorism have been felt around the globe, through Hezbollah attacks in place as diverse as Argentina and Burgas, Bulgaria, to attacks regularly taking place against targets in Saudi Arabia.

Israel has not made any official comment regarding the targeted killing, but that is in keeping with its policy in such cases.

The report itself serves Israeli interests even without an official statement: Firstly, it sends another strong message to Iran that Israel is closely monitoring what goes on in the Islamic Republic and able to take action there. This targeted assassination, not the first, follows a series of mysterious fires and explosions at Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year and the heist of its nuclear archives from a Tehran warehouse in 2018, for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credited the Mossad.

Both issues – Iran’s nuclear aspirations and its backing of global terrorism – remain high on Israel’s agenda and the government is clearly concerned that the incoming US administration under Joe Biden, unlike Trump, will not see eye-to-eye with Israel on how to confront Iran. Israel, of course, is not alone in its concerns regarding the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia, a frequent Iranian target, is also concerned that Biden might roll back the US policy on Iran. Similarly, the recently signed Abraham Accords between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are also seen as being based on similar concerns about Iranian intents. Iran has created a crescent of terrorism that expands from Tehran to Beirut and as far south as Yemen.

If Iran is serving as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists in addition to backing other terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, this should concern all decent peace-loving people everywhere – especially as Iran continues to advance its nuclear weapons capabilities.

No government can afford to ignore the deadly implications of the combinations of terrorism and nuclear weapons. When Iran receives funds through the lifting of sanctions, the world must ask where this money is going and what it is supporting.
PMW: Where is the EU aid to the Palestinian Authority going?
In May 2020, Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that the PA and the PLO no longer see themselves bound by the agreements signed with Israel. Implementing this decision, the PA has refused to accept tax monies that Israel collects and transfers to the PA. These funds provide for half of the PA’s annual budget. The unilateral decision to refuse the tax income has once again plunged the PA into a self-made financial crisis. In order to deal with the ramifications of the decision, the PA decided to cut the salaries of all of its civil servants by 50%.

Since the beginning of 2020, the European Union has provided the PA with hundreds of millions of euro in aid. Of that aid, over 90 million Euro was given to the PA, designated, according to EU press statements, for the payment of salaries to “civil servants mostly in the health and education sector in the West Bank.”

In November 2019, European Member of Parliament Carmen Avram submitted written questions to the European Commission seeking to ensure that the EU aid to the PA was not being used to fund the payment of salaries to terrorists. The March 2020 response of the commission explained the mechanism by which the EU ostensibly tracks the final beneficiaries of the EU aid saying:

“The Palestinian Authority provides a list of eligible beneficiaries which is checked by EU-contracted independent auditors against a list of eligibility criteria as well as a second check of individuals considered to be associated with any terrorist organisations or activities. No payments are made to any beneficiaries falling within these categories.”

According to this answer, the EU thinks it knows exactly which civil servants are the recipients of the EU aid.

Since the EU is providing a considerable amount of funding to these specific civil servants, one would assume that their salaries have not been affected by the PA decision to cut all salaries. But this does not appear to be the case.
Gov’t not enforcing transparency law on NGO foreign funding
The government has not enforced its law requiring organizations mostly funded by foreign government entities to submit special reports and disclose its funding publicly, a Knesset Research and Information Center report found.

The requirement was legislated in the 2016 NGO Law, which was highly controversial and drew international criticism. At the time, a US State Department spokesman said the law poses dangers to a “free and functioning civil society,” and the EU said “the reporting requirements imposed by the new law go beyond the legitimate need for transparency and seem aimed at constraining the activities of these civil society organizations.”

Yet, despite the pitched Knesset battle to pass the law and then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked’s defense of it to her counterparts abroad and in the international media, the Associations Registrar, a department in the Justice Ministry, has done nothing to enforce the law.

Knesset Research and Information Center report, ordered by Yamina MK Bezalel Smotrich, found that the Associations Registrar does not take any particular action to oversee the law’s implementation, beyond its general supervision of NGOs.

In 2019, only 118 (0.3%) of 39,399 NGOs registered in Israel reported foreign entity funding, a decrease from the previous two years; in 2017 there were 204.

One complaint from a member of the public on undisclosed foreign funding of 13 organizations found that 11 of them were violating the law, but the Associations Registrar did not take action to enforce it.

Monday, October 02, 2017

From Ian:

The Big Middle East Lie
Nimer Mahmoud Jamal, the 37-year-old Palestinian terrorist who on September 25 murdered three Israelis at the entrance to Har Adar near Jerusalem, had a permit from the Israeli authorities to work in Israel.

His family and friends say he also had a good life and was considered lucky to have been employed by Jews because he received a higher salary and was protected by Israeli labor laws. The night before Jamal set out in his murderous mission, he spent a few hours at the fitness gym in his village, located only a few miles away from Har Adar.

So, Jamal, the murderer of the three Israelis (two of the victims were Arab Israelis), was not poor. He was not unemployed. In fact, according his friends, Jamal earned much more than what a senior police officer or school teacher working for the Palestinian Authority or Hamas brings home every month.

What was it, then, that drove Jamal to his murderous scheme, gunning down three young men who were supposed to be facilitating his entry into Israel? Was it because he could not provide for his children? No. Was it because his landlord was pressuring him about the rent? No: Jamal lived in a nice place of his own, complete with furniture, appliances and bedrooms that any family in the West would be proud to own.

Jamal wanted to murder Jews because he believed this was a noble deed that would earn him the status of shaheed (martyr) and hero among his family, friends and society. In Palestinian culture in particular, and Arab culture in general, murderers of Jews are glorified on a daily basis.

They are touted as the lucky ones who are now in the company of Prophet Mohammed and the angels in Paradise. Male terrorists are also busy with the 72 virgins they were awarded as a prize for murdering Jews. The murderers -- as Muslim clerics and leaders hammer into the heads of Palestinians -- are also given access to rivers of honey and fine drinks once they set foot in their imaginary Paradise.

Jamal's friends and family are now convinced that he has been rewarded by Allah and Prophet Mohammed in Paradise for murdering three Israelis. They do not care about his children, whom he left behind, and certainly not about the families of the three Israelis he murdered.
Exposé: CNN and NYT ignored US Defense Secretary revelation on Taliban
We are living in a sick,news world, not a “fake news” world. Two of the largest pillars of the American established news media, the New York Times and the Cable News Network (CNN) just happened to omit the central point of US Secretary of Defense James Mattis’,explicit comments during his trip to Afghanistan.

He said that Russia and Iran were arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal ]reported Mattis’ comments accurately, publicizing the declaration referring to Iran and Russia arming the Taliban in Afghanistan, “Those two countries [Russia and Iran] have suffered losses to terrorism, so I think it would be extremely unwise if they think they can somehow support terrorism in another country and not have it come back to haunt them.”

We are living in a truly ‘sick news’ world in which the NYT and CNN, due to some bizarre-world political slant, fail to report that the US Defense Secretary has openly accused Russia and Iran of actively helping murder our troops in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a new Iranian ‘malign’ development. In fact,as Yogi Berra would say: With the US in Afghanistan, it’s the US Iraqi Military Catastrophe Groundhog Day all over again. In Iraq from 2004-2010, Iran, the ultimate terror-state, and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad (the same genocidal-psychopath that’s still there), armed the Sunni al Qaeda in Iraq to murder thousands of US soldiers and all the while Presidents Bush, and Obama, and the US military did absolutely nothing to stop them.
Israel’s security precautions
Sir, – After reading Mike Murphy’s opinion piece, one would wonder if Mr Murphy had actually travelled to Israel or if he had simply read a guide to the worst slurs against the State of Israel and decided to regurgitate them for the purposes of this article (“Degradation of Palestinians shocking to witness”, Opinion & Analysis, September 23rd).

In a piece littered with mistruths, one of the most heinous has to be his claim that Israel wants the Palestinian people to disappear. Apart from the fact that a fifth of Israel’s own citizens are Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, Israel has repeatedly called for a two-state solution where Israel will stand side by side with a democratic Palestinian state. Since the beginning of peace talks in 1993, we have made repeated and courageous offers of full statehood to the Palestinians, only to be rebuffed. The late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin paid the ultimate price for his courage in pursuing peace with the Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the current Palestinian leadership seems to lack the courage to recognise Israel’s right to exist and move forward in direct negotiations to bring about a Palestinian state. Instead they pursue their quest for statehood in the international arena, seeking symbolic recognition, which does nothing to achieve the objectives of two states for two peoples.

Numerous false allegations about how Israel treats the Palestinians are littered throughout Mr Murphy’s article. I would suggest that if Mr Murphy has an issue with the conditions of the roads around Bethlehem, he take it up with the Palestinian Authority who are responsible for the governance of that area.

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Human rights, European money and the ICC wars
The Palestinian campaign to “bring Israel to the dock” at the International Criminal Court (ICC) did not suddenly arise out of “frustration” at the failure of the peace talks, the setback at the UN Security Council, or other recent events.
Rather, the strategy was explicitly adopted during the negotiations of the Rome Statute that led to the establishment of the ICC, and has been moving steadily since then. In 1997, towards the end of this process, the members of the Arab League pushed through language inventing a new war crime to ostensibly cover Israeli settlements. The purpose was clearly to prepare the grounds for exploiting the ICC for “lawfare” to target Israel.
Since then, this legal war has proceeded step by step, led by a powerful army of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), largely funded by European governments under the façade of human rights and international law. While the exact amounts and NGO allocation processes in the European Union under frameworks such as the EU Instrument Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) are top-secret and exempted from Freedom of Information laws, the annual total for anti-Israel campaigning related to this warfare is estimated at approximately 100 million euros. (h/t Elder of Lobby)
INSS: Legal and Political Observations on the Defeated Palestinian-Jordanian Draft Resolution
While calling for total withdrawal from all the territories, including East Jerusalem, the Jordanian draft does, however, refer to the possibility of "mutually agreed, limited, equivalent land swaps," a proposal not included in the Arab League initiative.
Along with the artificially rigid timetable and the call for total withdrawal, the Jordanian draft proposes that the Arab refugee problem be resolved on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (III). Like the Arab League initiative, the Jordanian draft thus indirectly tries to introduce the so-called “right of return” as a condition of negotiations. When Resolution 194 was passed in December 1948, all the Arab states voted against it, and there is no reference to this resolution in UN Security Council Resolution 242, nor in the 1978 Camp David Agreement with Egypt, the 1979 Peace Treaty, the Israel Jordan Peace Treaty, or even in the Oslo agreements with the PLO. It is thus an attempt to introduce an element that is completely unacceptable to Israel and had in fact been quietly abandoned in all the agreements with Israel.
In voting against the draft, the US was not only expressing its political displeasure but was also fulfilling its obligation as part of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, where the US reaffirmed its commitment to "oppose and, if necessary, vote against any initiative in the Security Council to … change Resolutions 242 and 338 in ways which are incompatible with their original purpose."
Daniel Gordis: Palestinians Still Don't Want a State
Abbas was much better off with the proposal dying an ugly death because the defeat enables him to use the ICC to indict Israeli soldiers, a move bound to infuriate Israel and rile up the Arab street rather than lead to negotiations.
Nothing sums up the Palestinian street better than comments made by Mahmoud Zahar, a co-founder of Hamas and still a member of its leadership, this week. “This Palestinian resolution is catastrophic and has no future on the land of Palestine,” he said. “The future belongs to the resistance. We will continue to work to liberate all the land and achieve the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Hamas will not accept anything less than all the lands that were occupied in 1948.”
For decades, the Palestinian leadership has preferred conflict to statehood. When the UN voted on Nov. 29, 1948, in favor of the Partition of Palestine (and thus in favor of the creation of a Jewish State), the land allocated to Israel was home to 500,000 Jews and 450,000 Arabs. It barely had a Jewish majority. With the demographics almost equally balanced, birthrate differentials and the ease of encouraging Arabs from nearby lands to immigrate to this new state, Arabs could quickly have tipped the scales and created an Arab majority. There would have been two Arab States and no Jewish State.
But in 1947, the Arabs attacked Israel instead. The rest is history. If last week’s events are any indication, nothing much has changed.

Thursday, March 03, 2016

From Ian:

What a Palestinian State Looks Like
When European nations and even some American Jews proclaim their support for Palestinian statehood, one must always ask which state are they talking about? Is it the demilitarized one that is prepared to live in peace with Israel that everyone fantasizes about? Or will it resemble the only Palestinian Arab state that has ever existed — the one that has transformed Gaza into an Islamist tyranny in which even the leaders of the group can be purged with impunity.
We may not have much sympathy for Mahmoud Ishtiwi, whose secret private life might have been revealed because of charges of embezzlement. But, like others who refused to conform to Hamas theocratic dictates, there was only one fate possible for him in the Palestinian state. The nature of Palestinian society may not justify Israel holding onto territory that might be traded for peace if an end to the conflict was possible, which is unfortunately not the case with either Fatah or Hamas. But so long as Palestinians are oppressed by theocrats whose priority is a terrorist war to destroy Israel, more Israeli withdrawals are out of the question.
Yet far from being tangential to the question of theoretical land-for-peace deals, there is very little chance of the Palestinians ever embracing coexistence and ending their century-long war against Zionism so long as they are lead by the sort of group that would execute a gay man for the crime of being gay.
As a lively and free democratic country, Israel’s reputation doesn’t need to be pinkwashed because of the freedom that gays enjoy there. But those crying for Palestinian freedom should start by campaigning to free the Palestinian people from their gay-killing Hamas tyrants before worrying about Israel’s actions. Until they do, those claiming that human rights are only an issue if the topic can be used against Israel should be labeled as hypocrites and liars.
JCPA: Palestinian Authority Funding to Terrorists and their Families
Blood Money Incitement
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for one more nefarious form of incitement to attack Jews – paying large bounties to the attackers and their families. An attacker can go out to commit murder assured that if he is arrested he will receive a monthly salary; if he is killed, his family will receive a monthly pension; and if his family home is destroyed, the family will receive a very generous award to rebuild their home.
Rather than being deterred by the harsh consequence of their terrorist attack at Israel’s hand, the perpetrators are actually encouraged and incentivized by the Palestinian leadership. According to one study published by the Gatestone Institute, “Terrorists in prison receive higher average salary than PA civil servants and military personnel.”
An Israeli government 2014 memorandum, citing official PA budgetary reports, noted that $75.5 million had been paid out in stipends to convicted terrorists and their families in 2012.
The instructions for compensation payments come from the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority, according to the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website in February 2014: “The Jerusalem Martyrs’ families and the National ‎Campaign to Return the Bodies of the ‎Martyrs confirmed that ‎President Mahmoud Abbas promised to ‎compensate the Jerusalem Martyrs’ ‎families for their homes, which the ‎occupation forces demolished or ‎damaged.”
Guy Bechor: Meanwhile in Syria, the pseudo-ceasefire
The Americans are not talking about any violations of the 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria, because to them, there aren't any. Europe pays the price of Washington's failed foreign policies, while Israel stands firm.
The Americans' delusional foreign policy is not just in Syria but also in Iraq. Just recently, Obama was boasting that ISIS was retreating and had weakened. So how come ISIS managed to commit a serious attack 10 kilometers from the international airport in Baghdad, the lifeline of the Shiite Iraqi regime? Not to mention the way ISIS is fooling Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi and other cities, succeefully killing hundreds of people every month in attacks. The Iraqi army hesitates to directly fight ISIS, which continues to grow in strength and draw Sunnis into its fold.
Where were the Americans in the battles on Sunday? According to Iraqi reports (which were also sort of delusional) ISIS retreated, but it is also remains everywhere in the western and northern part of the country. Even the US understands that its bombings don’t really help. Will Obama put American boots on the ground? I doubt it. That is why the Americans are stuck with no way out in Iraq as well, despite their many attempts.
They overthrew Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qaddafi, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Ali Abdullah Saleh because of their delusions. Took down the leaders and caused a storm.
And they didn't just do this in Syria and Iraq, but also in Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Tunis, and among the Sunnis in the land of Israel (who used to be called "Palestinians"). Was it not John Kerry who tried to reach a peace agreement here two years ago and failed? Then, like today, this was a policy of delusions.
Just like there can be no arrangement with the mass murderer Assad, there can be no arrangement with Abbas' gang, and now it's Europe’s turn to pay the price of this foreign policy. The only country that remains with its feet firmly on the ground and did not capitulate to the imaginary reality produced by the West - was Israel.

Monday, February 20, 2017

From Ian:

PMW: PA wipes Israel off the map PA and Fatah leaders disseminate map of "Palestine" denying Israel's existence.(19/02/2017)
At his joint press conference with President Trump last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated:
"The Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state. They have to stop calling for Israel's destruction. They have to stop educating their people for Israel's destruction." [White House website]
Indeed, far from educating its people towards a two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority leadership encourages its people to anticipate a future in which Israel no longer exists. In every context, the PA's map of "Palestine" completely erases Israel from the map.
Palestinian Media Watch has found maps of "Palestine" in school books, on honorary plaques, in ministerial offices and on sculptures in public places.
Below are several recent examples of PA leaders with such plaques:
Melanie Phillips: Hope for a real solution No wonder Europe's dismayed
The Palestinians’ strategy therefore lies in ruins. In Gaza, an even harder Hamas hard man has now come to power who doubtless will redouble efforts to rain down missiles upon Israeli citizens. Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority thought it was so clever in pretending, by contrast, to have clean hands by adopting the diplomatic route to destroy Israel – courtesy of the UN and with a nod and a wink from the Obama administration. Now they are staring at a UN which itself is suddenly all too aware that its own hate-mongering, extermination-conniving party may finally be over.
Moreover, developments in the region mean that the Palestinians suddenly find themselves friendless in the Arab world. Their usefulness as the devilish threat to be cynically brandished in order to protect Arab rulers against the fury of their own enslaved populations has come to an abrupt end. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, now engaged in a fight to the death against Iran, are building an alliance with none other than the State of Israel; and now also with America.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel al Jubeir, today accused Iran of being ”the single main sponsor of terrorism in the world”. He went on: “We look forward to working with the Trump administration on all issues. I believe progress can be made in the Arab Israel conflict, if there is a will to do so. We know what the settlement looks like, if there is just the political will to do so. And my country stands ready with other Arab countries to work to see how we can promote that.”
Of course there can be no illusions about Saudi Arabia, the primary source of Sunni Islamic radicalisation and the principal exporter of jihadi Islamism around the world. And the previous Saudi peace initiative was an elephant trap. Nevertheless, between these tectonic regional shifts and the hurricane in the White House, the Middle East log-jam has been smashed. There is accordingly now more hope for a just and realistic solution to the Arab war against Israel than there has ever been.
No wonder Europe is so dismayed.
IsraellyCool: Private Palestinian Land #FakeNews
If Hitler gave the Eiffel Tower to Eichmann and his son showed up claiming it, would you call it “Private German Land”?
It seems the combined might of all the anti-Israel NGOs financed by such bodies as J-Street, the New Israel Fund (NIF) and the various anti-Israel arms of the European Union and the UN have all got one central talking point to delegitimise the perfectly natural building of Jewish homes, schools, businesses and other signs of progress in the Jewish heartlands of Judea and Samaria.
Their favourite term is “private Palestinian land”.
Most of what the radical left and the left wing Israeli Courts call “Private Palestinian Land” comes from deeds handed out by the King of Jordan during his illegal occupation from 1949 to 1967. He would gift parcels of land to anyone who’d take it and then demand land taxes! Most never walked on or developed their land and few paid the taxes. It is land claims like these that form the bedrock of the lawfare efforts by anti-Israel NGOs such as the one which resulted in the residents of Amona being thrown out of their homes.
It’s not a perfect analogy, none is, but if Hitler had handed out bits of Paris to his friends and their children showed up today and claimed them, calling them “private German land” would make just as much sense.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

From Ian:

Dennis Ross: Hamas could have chosen peace. Instead, it made Gaza suffer.
The Israelis will certainly resist an outcome that offers Hamas any gains. Having destroyed the tunnels that could penetrate Israel, the Israelis have pulled out of Gaza and were willing to extend the 72-hour truce that ended Friday. Hamas was not willing to do so. If Israel hopes to build broader international pressure on the group to stop firing, the Israel Defense Forces will need to avoid targets such as U.N. schools and hospitals. Of course, that is easier said than done, given that Hamas often fires rockets from or near such sites.
At some point, Hamas will stop firing rockets — if for no other reason than its arsenal is depleted. For the people of Gaza, however, the price has been staggering. But Hamas’s leaders have never been concerned about that. For them, Palestinians’ pain and suffering are tools to exploit, not conditions to end.
When relative calm returns, there will understandably be a push for a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas now even less able politically to tackle the core issues , a permanent agreement between the two sides is not in the cards. U.S. diplomacy, therefore, needs to be guided by several considerations and achievable aims. (h/t Alexi)
Exclusive: New Details Surface in Hamas Murder of IDF Soldier Hadar Goldin (update)
The officer explained how, after the suicide bombing that killed Lt. Goldin, a second kidnapping team of Hamas terrorists grabbed parts of his body and ran back into the tunnel from which the terrorists emerged. The tunnel led back into a mosque. From the mosque, they escaped in a clearly marked UNRWA ambulance. The terrorists then made contact with high-ranking Hamas officials hiding in the Islamic University.
As a result Abu Marzook, a senior member of Hamas, announced in Cairo that Hamas had kidnapped an Israeli soldier. Israeli intelligence intercepted a conversation between the kidnappers and the Hamas officials at the Islamic University and thus got all the particulars regarding the hiding place of the kidnappers. Within minutes, the IAF attacked both the kidnappers' location and the Islamic University.
In the midst of this attack, a second force of IDF soldiers--which had gone into a mosque looking for weapons, explosives, and rockets-- encountered a female suicide bomber who was about to detonate the belt she wore, which would have resulted in the deaths of the soldiers. One of the soldiers instinctively recited the opening words of the holiest Jewish prayer “Shema Yisrael”. The female suicide bomber hesitated and began trembling, giving the soldiers a chance to grab her and disable the device.
The soldiers then took her prisoner and turned her over to a counter-intelligence unit. Their investigation uncovered that the female suicide bomber’s mother was a Jew who had married a Palestinian in Israel and, after the wedding, was smuggled against her will into Gaza. There she lived a life filled with abuse and humiliation, and was basically a captive. In addition to the female suicide bomber, there were two smaller children as well. An armored force went in and rescued the two small children.
UPDATE: People I trust are telling me that this story does not add up to the known facts about the attack. There have been a lot of rumors going around as fact to try to make up for Israeli censorship and this story very well may be an example of that.

Hillary Clinton Criticizes Obama Foreign Policy, Slams ‘Unfair’ World Response to Gaza War
Much of my conversation with Clinton focused on the Gaza war. She offered a vociferous defense of Israel, and of its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well. This is noteworthy because, as secretary of state, she spent a lot of time yelling at Netanyahu on the administration's behalf over Israel’s West Bank settlement policy. Now, she is leaving no daylight at all between the Israelis and herself.
“I think Israel did what it had to do to respond to the rockets,” she told me. “Israel has a right to defend itself. The steps Hamas has taken to embed rockets and command-and-control facilities and tunnel entrances in civilian areas, this makes a response by Israel difficult.”
I asked her if she believed that Israel had done enough to prevent the deaths of children and other innocent people.
“[J]ust as we try to do in the United States and be as careful as possible in going after targets to avoid civilians,” mistakes are made, she said. “We’ve made them. I don’t know a nation, no matter what its values are—and I think that democratic nations have demonstrably better values in a conflict position—that hasn’t made errors, but ultimately the responsibility rests with Hamas.”(h/t Bob Knot)
Doctors for terrorism
The one-sided campaign waged by Physicians for Human Rights Israel is also supported by several European governments as well as the New Israel Fund.
It is possible to diminish the influence of these bodies by exposing their misuse of medical ethics and holding the Norwegian, British and other bodies who fund them to account. This is not a simple process, but it has been proven effective in the long-term.
The Lancet medical journal is a financial body, therefore, the most effective (and certainly the most complicated) strategy would be to cancel subscriptions and to pull advertising in protest of the misuse of medical ethics. Those who use their professional status and prestige to promote anti-Semitism and support terrorism are dishonoring the Hippocratic oath they took, vowing to "never do harm."

Thursday, March 31, 2016

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: ISIS Makes the EU More Anti-Israel
Like every major Islamist attack in Europe, last week’s terror attacks in Brussels left many Israelis wondering whether Europeans will finally understand what Israel faces. Unfortunately, such attacks are more likely to intensify anti-Israel activity in Europe. To understand why, it’s worth reading an article from the Islamic State magazine Al-Naba that propounds a surprising thesis: Jihad against Israel doesn’t take precedence over jihad anywhere else.
The article, translated by MEMRI, argued that the “Palestine first” slogan, which has reigned supreme for almost seven decades, has led good Muslims to ignore all the other places where jihad is no less necessary, or even more so. Indeed, it said, Muslims’ top priority should be purifying lands already under Islamic control, for both religious and practical reasons. Religiously speaking, “The apostate [tyrants] who rule the lands of Islam are graver infidels than [the Jews].” And practically speaking, defeating Israel won’t be possible without first destroying neighboring Arab regimes that are its “first line of defense.” Consequently, “Waging jihad with the aim of replacing the rule of the Jews with a regime like that of those who currently rule Gaza and the West Bank is jihad that is null and void,” because it would just replace infidel Jews with infidel Muslims.
But fighting Jews also doesn’t take precedence over “fighting the Crusaders and all the polytheists in the world,” the article stressed. In fact, “Muslims everywhere should fight the infidels nearest to them,” since that’s where they have the best chance of succeeding.
That last sentence sums up why Islamic State’s approach is Europe’s worst nightmare. For decades, Europe had a cushy arrangement: All the world’s jihadists were so fixated on Israel that they were willing to overlook longstanding hatreds against “Crusader” Europe, as long as Europe would help them wage war on Israel. As Manfred Gerstenfeld pointed out this week, many European countries — including Switzerland, Germany, France and Italy — tried to take advantage of this offer: They sought deals under which Palestinian terrorists could operate freely in their countries – usually without fear of arrest, but with swift release guaranteed if arrests were necessitated by American pressure – and in exchange, the terrorists wouldn’t attack those countries.
UN Watch exposes bias of proposed Palestine investigators, incurs wrath of Palestinian delegation



Wednesday, December 14, 2016

From Ian:

Analysis: Jerusalem likely disappointed by Trump's secretary of state pick
Nobody will admit it, but it is safe to assume Jerusalem was disappointed Tuesday when US President-elect Donald Trump announced the winner of his secretary of state sweepstakes.
It’s not because Jerusalem dislikes or does not trust Trump’s nominee, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson – policy makers in Israel, like those in most other non-oil producing countries, don’t know that much about him. It’s just that the Netanyahu government really liked some of the other candidates that were bandied about over the last five weeks: Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John Bolton.
Giuliani, Romney, Bolton – these are men that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has known for years and with whom he shares a similar world view. Tillerson, however, is a largely unknown quantity.
Jerusalem knows that Tillerson is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that he has worked intensively in Arab countries with which ExxonMobil does business. But no one seems to have any idea about where he stands on issues such as the settlements, Jerusalem and the two-state solution.
Some are making assumptions, however, that because he was highly recommended for the position by former secretaries of state James Baker and Condoleezza Rice, and because he is reportedly close to former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, that he doesn’t have a warm spot in his heart for either the settlement enterprise or Israel. But Tillerson has left no public record of comments on these issues to support that assumption. In short, his positions on the Mideast conflict are, at this point, anyone’s guess.
One thing it is important to keep in mind, said Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the US and deputy foreign minister, is that US secretaries of state “serve at the pleasure of the president, and we know that Trump is closer to Israel on issues like the settlements.”
ICC threat lingers over Settlements Bill among others
Politicians on the Right have been regularly underplaying the threat of the International Criminal Court and slamming Israel’s internal lawyer take-over revolution as well as the Supreme Court for interfering in the Amona debate by telling them what is or is not legal.
Apparently some of this is for show and on Monday at the Knesset’s joint committee closed-to the media meeting on the Settlements Bill, some of the same politicians took the threat far more seriously, which will likely impact their votes.
The question is whether passing the Settlements Bill would change an ICC full criminal war crimes investigation into the settlement enterprise from a neutral or remote possibility to a much higher likelihood.
If the ICC went after the settlement enterprise for war crimes, Israeli defense ministers, housing ministers, local settlement councils and possibly others could be on the hook.
Can Trump Really Move the Embassy?
The assumption of those promoting a two-state solution is that the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem would serve as the capital of the Palestinian state that would be created as part of a peace settlement. We don’t know whether the Palestinians will ever take yes for an answer and accept a peace that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. But no reasonable person can dispute that Israel will always keep Western Jerusalem and those Jewish neighborhoods that were built after 1967. The city is the country’s capital, and always will be.
To a Middle East novice like Trump, recognizing this is just common sense. But for the foreign policy establishment, doing so would be a grave mistake. It would prejudge the outcome of peace negotiations, their thinking goes, and would result in violent riots throughout the Arab and Muslim world with unforeseen consequences. Yet Trump, with his outsider’s viewpoint, may get that these dire predictions are self-fulfilling prophecies, and trap the U.S. in a policy that perpetuates the conflict rather than moving towards a solution. If peace is to be achieved, the Palestinians and their supporters must accept that the Jewish presence in Jerusalem will never be reversed or its history erased (as the Palestinians have sought to do in various United Nations resolutions that designate the Temple Mount and the Western Wall as exclusively Muslim shrines).
It would be foolish to pretend that an embassy move would not cause problems or lead to riots ginned up by Islamists who hate the U.S. as much as they do Israel. But the world will not come to an end if the U.S. sends a signal to the world Washington has finally understood that the conventional wisdom about Jerusalem has done more to encourage Palestinian intransigence than it has to promote a solution. The new embassy would also not preclude a two-state solution or make it harder to achieve assuming the Palestinians wanted peace since all it would do is to make it easier for U.S. diplomats to travel between their new offices (at an empty site owned by the U.S. that has been designated for that purpose for decades) and Israeli government institutions they deal with.
On Jerusalem and One China, Trump may not be playing by the existing diplomatic rules. But it’s time for even those who doubted his fitness for the presidency to admit that those rules don’t always make sense and changing them might do more good than harm.

Monday, June 24, 2019

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich (WSJ): Take the Palestinians’ ‘No’ for an Answer (click via tweet)
This week’s U.S.-led Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain on the Palestinian economy will likely be attended by seven Arab states—a clear rebuke to foreign-policy experts who said that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory would alienate the Arab world. Sunni Arab states are lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s plan, making it all the more notable that the Palestinian Authority itself refuses to participate.

The conference’s only agenda is improving the Palestinian economy. It isn’t tied to any diplomatic package, and the plan’s 40-page overview contains nothing at odds with the Palestinian’s purported diplomatic goals. Some aspects are even politically uncomfortable for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Given all that, the Palestinian Authority’s unwillingness to discuss economic opportunities for its own people, even with the Arab states, shows how far it is from discussing the concessions necessary for a diplomatic settlement. Instead it seeks to deepen Palestinian misfortune and use it as a cudgel against Israel in the theater of international opinion.

This isn’t the first time the Palestinians have said no. At a summit brokered by President Clinton in 2000, Israel offered them full statehood on territory that included roughly 92% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, along with a capital in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority rejected that offer, leading Israel to up it to 97% of the West Bank in 2001. Again, the answer was no. An even further-reaching offer in 2008 was rejected out of hand. And when President Obama pressured Israel into a 10-month settlement freeze in 2009 to renew negotiations, the Palestinians refused to come to the table.

After so many rejections, one might conclude that the Palestinian Authority’s leaders simply aren’t interested in peace. Had they accepted any of the peace offers, they would have immediately received the rarest of all geopolitical prizes: a new country, with full international recognition. To be sure, in each proposal they found something not quite to their liking. But the Palestinians are perhaps the only national independence movement in the modern era that has ever rejected a genuine offer of internationally recognized statehood, even if it falls short of all the territory the movement had sought.


Palestinian Leaders To United States: We Don’t Need Your Stinking Money
The Palestinian Authority also attended a “counter-conference” in Bahrain last week, titled “The Holocaust of the Century in Bahrain… Its Signs, Consequences, and Ways to Deal With It,” bizarrely applying terminology that describes Nazis’ genocide against the Jews to an economic conference with a $50 billion proposed investment.

The boycott and calls for violence rehash the same unproductive methods the Palestinians have used in the past to thwart peace measures, only this time the incoherence of the boycott is made more evident by the fact Israel will not even attend. Palestinian leaders continue to promulgate the notion that the workshop is some devious machination of the West or President Trump or both, despite many Palestinian-Arab neighbors agreeing to attend and host.

If anything, their attendance shows the Palestinian-Arabs’ gradual isolation among the Gulf States, who have grown weary of the Palestinian Authority’s political gymnastics and obsession with destroying their Jewish neighbors. Bahrain will prove another missed opportunity for Palestinian leadership to engage with their neighbors in a significant way. Palestinian leadership sees the political capital to be had in human suffering, so any attempts to mitigate such suffering meet serious skepticism from Palestinian officials.

Since rejecting the suggested partitioning the 1937 Peel Commission, Arab leaders have thwarted the creation of an Arab state west of the Jordan River more than six times, depending on whether one considers refusal to talk to mean refusing the possibility of a state. Thus, if anything is to be gleaned from the Bahrain conference boycott, it is that the Palestinian leadership does not have a genuine interest in bettering the lives of their own people—and perhaps that they are quite unprepared for actual statehood.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians and the Bahrain Conference: Condemning Arabs While Asking for Arab Money
The Palestinian strategy is clear: to incite the Arab masses against their leaders and governments. The Palestinian attacks are no longer directed against US President Donald Trump... Now the targets are the Arab heads of state, particularly those who are seen by Palestinians are being in collusion with Israel and the Trump administration.

As the Palestinians were condemning Arabs for agreeing to attend the conference in Bahrain, Palestinian leaders repeated their appeal to the Arab states for financial aid. On the one hand, the Palestinians are condemning Arab countries for attending a conference aimed at boosting the Palestinian economy and improving living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Palestinian leaders have no problem begging their Arab brothers for urgent financial aid.... The Palestinians are asking the Arabs to give them $100 million each month to help them "face political and financial pressure" from Israel and the US administration.

The Palestinians realize that some of the key Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, are no longer prepared to wait for them and have decided to board the train whose final destination is prosperity and economic opportunities for both Palestinians and Arabs.

The decision of six Arab states to attend the Bahrain conference despite the Palestinian boycott call shows that the Arabs have chosen to endorse a new direction – one that will leave the Palestinians to fend for themselves in a hell of their own making. For their choice to thumb their noses not only at the US but also at influential Arab states, the Palestinians are likely to emerge as the biggest losers.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

From Ian:

Israel Survives Because of an Iron Will and an Iron Wall
In the run-up to this week’s 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, Israeli Defense Forces chief of Staff General Gabi Eisenkot pronounced the country “invincible.”

This was a bold statement. The country faces a growing threat from Iran and its puppets in Lebanon and Gaza, and the possibility of a clash with Russia over Syria. And yet, few Israelis have disagreed with this assessment.

There is mood of confidence here, and its origin lies in a doctrine of strategic defense that has proven itself over nearly a century of intermittent warfare.

That doctrine was first enunciated in an article in 1923 entitled “The Iron Wall.” Its author was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a visionary Zionist leader and the ideological father of the Likud.

At the time of its publication, the Jews of Palestine were a small, embattled minority. Only three years had passed since the first Arab riots in Jerusalem against them. The Jewish community’s socialist leaders hoped they could appease Arab enmity by offering economic cooperation, progress and prosperity.

Jabotinsky derided this as childish, and insulting to the Arabs, who would not barter away their homeland for more bread or modern railroads. They would, he said, resist while they had a spark of hope of preventing a Jewish state.

“There is only one thing the Zionists want, and that is the one thing the Arabs do not want,” he wrote. Nothing short of abandoning the Zionist project would placate Arab hostility and violence. If the Jews wanted to remain, they would have to come to terms with a harsh reality: This was a zero-sum game. There could be no peace until the Arabs accepted Israel’s right to exist.

Jabotinsky saw that the Arabs (in Palestine and beyond) were far too numerous to be defeated in a single decisive war. The Jews needed to erect an iron wall of self-defense and deterrence -- a metaphorical wall built of Jewish determination, immigration, material progress, strong democratic institutions and a willingness to fight. Gradually, the enemy would be forced to conclude that this wall could not be breached.
PMW: Fatah names camp for kids after arch-terrorist responsible for murder of 125 Israelis
The Palestinian Authority and Abbas' Fatah continue their terror role modeling, presenting terrorist murderers as heroes to Palestinian youth. This month, 600 high school students belonging to Fatah's Shabiba youth movement in Jenin are participating in the "Martyr Abu Jihad Camp." The camp is held at a facility of the PA National Security Forces:

"The Fatah Movement's Jenin branch, in cooperation with [Fatah's] Jenin region leadership, held the third coexistence camp under the title Martyr Abu Jihad Camp, and this was at the [PA] National Security [Forces] camp Horsh Al-Saada. The camp will last for an entire month, three days a week, and 600 students from the [Fatah] High School Shabiba will participate in it." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 7, 2018]

The PA Ministry of Education emphasized the importance of the terrorist's heritage to students in all PA schools via school radio:

"Director-General of Student Activities and Spokesman of the [PA] Ministry [of Education] Sadeq Al-Khadour said that as part of the activities in the schools, broadcasts of the radio stations in the schools were dedicated to talking about the prisoners in the occupation's prisons and the life of Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2018]

Abu Jihad (Khalil Al-Wazir) was a founder of Fatah and deputy to Yasser Arafat. He headed the PLO terror organization's military wing and also planned many deadly Fatah terror attacks in the 1960's - 1980's. These attacks, in which a total of 125 Israelis were murdered, included the most lethal in Israeli history - the hijacking of a bus and murder of 37 civilians, 12 of them children.

On the occasion of the anniversary of Abu Jihad's so-called "Martyrdom," the PA, Fatah, and Fatah's Bethlehem branch in particular made a point of glorifying the arch-terrorist as a great heroic Palestinian leader, vowing to remain "loyal" to his "path."
Im Tirtzu: New Israel Fund: “Subversive Political Organization Operating as Opposition in Israel”
A new campaign launched by the Zionist organization Im Tirtzu is calling on the Israeli government to end all cooperation with the New Israel Fund.

The campaign will see billboards titled “Ridding Israel of the NIF” displayed throughout the country, the first of which, a 100-foot sign, was displayed this morning on Tel-Aviv’s Ayalon Highway.

The billboard depicts NIF President Talia Sasson as harming IDF soldiers, and states that the NIF has transferred over 310 million NIS ($87 million) to “activities against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel.”

According to Im Tirtzu, the campaign’s goal is to expose the NIF as a foreign political organization operating as a political opposition within Israel against the government and IDF, while engaging in anti-Israel lawfare by means of its grantees in the Supreme Court.

At the same time, Im Tirtzu published a new position paper detailing what it dubs the NIF’s M.O. in wiping Israel of the map. The position paper, titled “The Roadmap to Israel’s Destruction,” comes in the form of an Israeli map and accuses the NIF and its grantees of exploiting various issues in the country in order to accuse Israel of perpetrating war crimes, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and other crimes against humanity.

The report also notes how many NIF grantees receive extensive funding from European governments, the European Union and United Nations.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

From Ian:

The BDS folly
There is, after all, something decent and intimate in the reciprocal relations imposed by the discipline of the market. The idea that businessmen produce tolerance as a by-product of their self-interested innovations might be an oversimplification of the situation. There are extremists – particularly on the Palestinian side but not only – who are bitterly opposed to any form of normalization between Palestinians and Israelis. And the conditions under which Palestinian businesses must operate are hardly conducive to economic growth.
BDS is not, however, the solution. If anything it is more economic cooperation and mutual development.
Any two-state solution will inevitably entail strong ties between Israel and Palestine. Fostering such ties could even be a means of moving toward a two-state solution organically, gradually and with mutual respect. BDS only hampers this process.
NGO Monitor: Why does the EU continue to fund anti-peace NGOs?
For years, the EU has been providing millions of euros to radical political advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that, as repeatedly demonstrated, promote the images of Palestinian victimization and Israeli oppression. In many cases, the reports and lobbying efforts of these NGO are central to EU policy formation, forming a closed circle in which biased anti-Israel narratives are reinforced.
Although claiming to support moral causes such as human rights, democracy and peace, these EU funding policies actively promote boycott and isolation of Israel.
And as a result, the Palestinians have an easy alternative to the “painful compromises” necessary for peace.
‘Nice country you’ve got there’ (UK FM) Hague gets a soft ride on BBC’s ‘Hardtalk’
Sackur also conveniently refrained from dissecting Hague’s cringingly transparent ‘equality’ chimera of EU or UK censure of the Palestinian Authority (the same body which was recently revealed to be holding explosives and weapons in a diplomatic mission on EU soil) should peace negotiations collapse. After all, as past experience shows, even when the PA actively sabotaged the Oslo Agreements by initiating and financing an unprecedented campaign of terror against Israeli civilians in 2000, the EU continued to fund that body and even raised its contributions to the tune of an annual average of 250 million Euros. Hence, there is little reason to anticipate an about-face this time around and just as little reason to anticipate any letting-up in EU and UK funding of anti-Israel NGOs or an end to the practice of paternalistic, diplomatically illiterate finger-wagging from the hand which still feeds sections of the BBC.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

From Ian:

Iranian drone shot down in northern Israel in February was armed with explosives
Israel revealed on Friday that an Iranian drone shot down in Israeli airspace in February after launching from an airbase in Syria was carrying explosives. The base was attacked on Monday, allegedly by Israel, in a strike that reportedly targeted Iran’s entire attack drone weapons system — prompting soaring tensions between Israel and Iran.

The Iranian drone shot down in February was carrying enough explosives to cause damage, military sources said. Its precise intended target in Israel was not known, they said.

The February incident marked an unprecedented direct Iranian attack on Israel. Israel’s acknowledgement of the nature of the drone’s mission “brings the confrontation” between Israel and Iran “into the open” for the first time, Israel’s Channel 10 news noted Friday.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day this week to warn Iran: “Don’t test the resolve of the State of Israel.”

Iranian officials, for their part, have been vowing a response to the Monday airstrike, and an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on Thursday threatened Israel with destruction.

The alleged Israeli attack this week on the base from which the drone was despatched is understood to have targeted Iran’s entire drone weapons system at the Syrian base, which was protected by surface-to-air missiles and other defenses, the TV report said.
David Horovitz: Attack drone revelation shows grave, immediate, adjacent threat to Israel: Iran
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long warned of the danger posed to Israel not many years hence by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. As of Friday night, Israelis are contemplating the danger posed right now by a non-nuclear Iran that is working to entrench itself in Syria.

Two months after an Israeli Apache helicopter shot down an Iranian drone dispatched from Syria, 30 seconds after it crossed into Israeli airspace, Israel’s military censors on Friday finally allowed local media to report that the drone was not merely taking surveillance footage, but was carrying explosives and was primed to attack and damage an unspecified target somewhere in Israel.

The timing of the revelation — which was accompanied by the Israeli Air Force’s release of footage showing the Apache downing the infiltrating Iranian drone — was plainly linked to a potent attack, carried out pre-dawn Monday, that reportedly caused substantial damage to a facility Iran has been building at the T-4 air base in central Syria, and from which that drone was launched on February 10.

While Jerusalem has been silent, the Monday raid has been widely attributed to Israel — by Russia, Syria, Iran and some in the US. At least seven Iranian military personnel were killed in the raid. Iran has threatened retaliation. A top Iranian aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Iran could destroy Haifa and Tel Aviv. Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Netanyahu not to cause
destabilization in Syria. And so, if anyone was asking why Israel would have risked the repercussions of a raid like Monday’s, Friday’s revelations evidently provided at last part of the answer:

Iran is now sufficiently emboldened as to directly attack Israel. The February drone attack was the first direct Iranian confrontation with Israel, after years of it employing Lebanese and Palestinian proxies to target the Jewish state from Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. That attack had real cost for Israel, which lost an F-16 in retaliatory raids later that same day.
Seth J. Frantzman: Three weeks: How Gaza’s mass protests are failing to make an impact
The “Great March of Return” protests that Hamas and Gaza activists launched on March 30 saw their lowest turnout in three weeks and the smallest number of casualties in clashes with Israeli forces, with one Palestinian killed and 528 reported injured on Friday.

Israeli authorities have been steadfast and on message about the protesters being a cover for violent action, while Hamas and the local activists have attempted to keep up the momentum. The proportion of those injured by live fire has declined by half, indicating a major reduction not only in the size of the protests but the level of violence along the border.

On the eve of the third Friday of mass protests in Gaza, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza published a list of casualties from the past two weeks, stating that 3,078 Palestinians had been injured, including 1,236 from live ammunition. It claimed four people had lost legs. Of those injured 445 were under 18 and 152 were women. Thirty had been killed. It also said 30 paramedics had been injured and 14 journalists, including Yaser Murtaja who was shot on April 6.

This Friday the protests didn’t reach the levels they had in the past. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman tweeted that “from week to week there are fewer riots on our border with Gaza. Our resolve is well understood from the other side.”

The IDF tweeted that 10,000 had participated in the “rioting” on the border. It also posted a photo showing a “terrorist wielding an item suspected of being an explosive device” while crouching next to journalists and a handicapped person.


Monday, April 03, 2017

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Six Reasons to Reject HRW’s Latest Gaza Attack on Israel
On April 3, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a 47-page report and a press release, complaining that Israel blocks its employees and those of other NGOs from entering Gaza ostensibly “to document violations of human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) and to advocate for their remediation.” In this context, HRW references the International Criminal Court (ICC) preliminary inquiry into the 2014 Gaza War, and alleges that Israel’s restrictions “rais[e] questions not just about the capability of the Israeli authorities to investigate potential violations of the laws of war but also their willingness to do so.”
1. HRW’s main contention is both absurd and illogical. Israel’s ability to conduct its own investigations is not contingent on the activities of NGOs that lack both military and forensic expertise. If anything, NGO interference with these processes contaminate evidence and disqualify witnesses, making real investigations much more difficult.
Indeed, NGO Monitor has documented repeatedly how inquiries by NGOs into armed conflict, and in particular those conducted by HRW, are characterized by methodological problems, factual errors, and legal distortions.
HRW’s lack of capacity to investigate armed conflict is particularly acute in areas tightly controlled by terror groups as Gaza is by Hamas. Therefore, the only violations and evidence that HRW can “investigate” in Gaza are those that Hamas allows. In other words, HRW will be unable to do any credible research on co-locating of Hamas weaponry in civilian areas, plans for targeting Israeli civilians, Palestinian casualties from misfired rockets or secondary explosions, failure of Hamas to wear distinctive emblems, Hamas military operations and strategy, tunnel construction, and theft of humanitarian aid. Without this information, HRW allegations accusing Israel of “war crimes” amount to gross distortion if not outright fraud.
2. Nearly three years after the fact, the ability of NGOs to “bring relevant information to light” about the 2014 Gaza war is negligible at best. In its baseless claim that Israeli officials are “unwilling or unable” to investigate violations of the laws of war, HRW ignores the hundreds of investigations that have been completed or are in process by the Military Advocate General, does not provide any comparative criteria as to what constitutes sufficient investigations, and blatantly disregards the findings of three independent military investigations by actual experts (here, here, and here) dismissing HRW’s claims.
3. The real purpose is clear: this publication is the latest HRW attempt to denigrate Israel’s investigatory process and judicial system in order to bolster the NGO’s long-standing lawfare campaign, aimed at pushing the ICC to indict Israeli officials. The latest effort shows the absurd lengths to which HRW will go in pursuit of this ideological goal.
Human Rights Watch gives Israel ultimatum over Gaza war crime probe
Human Rights Watch demanded on Monday that Israel allow its investigators into Gaza if it wants the International Criminal Court "to take seriously" Israel's own war crimes investigations.
The ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda started a preliminary examination of 2014 Gaza war crimes allegations in January 2015.
HRW accuses Israel in a 47-page report of preventing its researchers for accessing Gaza. It has also accused Egypt of preventing HRW visits to the coastal territory since 2008.
Israel has not yet issued a response to the report but has said it investigates allegations made against its own soldiers and has long accused HRW of unfair bias against Israel.
Recently, Israel has taken a more aggressive stance toward some human rights NGOs, barring some activists from entering Israel, and accusing them of involvement in the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign and general efforts to delegitimize Israel.

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