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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Thursday Links Part 2

From Ian:

Munich, Israel, and Boston
How Israel prepares security for major sports events
Dr. Ganor says that the public awareness so prevalent here isn’t just a product of the long Intifada years, but of top-down education, of the sort he was exposed to in preschool. “It’s a process that takes time, but public awareness can and should be taught,” Dr. Ganor said. “Americans need it more than most people do, because they are more threatened than others but at the same time they’re also more complacent.” This is of particular importance because yesterday’s bombing seems to him to have been planned and carried out by a “lone wolf”, acting independently of a larger organization. In such cases, better intelligence – the secret to the vast majority of Israel’s counter-terrorism successes – would probably not have picked up on any early warning signals.
Analysis: Is Sinai Israel’s Achilles’ heel?
The al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists who targeted Eilat with rockets on Wednesday morning believe they have found Israel’s strategic Achilles’ heel.
Striking from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, they hope, rules out Israeli retaliation.
Jerusalem is highly reluctant to embark on any kind of counterterrorism operation on Egyptian territory, a fact readily exploited by Wednesday’s attackers.
Netanyahu: Syrian WMD a ‘worldwide’ terrorist threat
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has affirmed that Israel is prepared to conduct military action inside Syria to keep “game-changing” weapons out of terrorists’ hands. In an interview with the BBC in London Wednesday, Netanyahu also warned of a possible backlash if the international community decides to arm rebel groups.
Barry Rubin: Libya, a U.S. Client is a Mess Whose Anarchy Subverts the Region
This is a description of an anarchic mess. It is important for U.S. interests especially regarding Libya’s role as an arsenal for terrorist and insurgent groups. The trouble, however, is that the Obama Administration wants most of these arms to go to most of these groups. The other reason for Libya’s importance is that there is no progress being made on the Benghazi attacks on Americans. But perhaps the Obama Administration wants no progress on investigations of this incident.
Israeli NGO campaigns for Haniyeh, Abbas ICC trials
Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center said that the Palestinian Authority was recently recognized as a full state by the United Nations General Assembly and is now “threatening to bring soldiers and senior Israeli leaders to trial” before the ICC.
A Shurat HaDin press release also said that, “We at Shurat HaDin, know that the real victims are actually the harmed Israelis. Therefore, we are initiating a preemptive strike and collecting testimonies of every person who was physically or emotionally hurt by Palestinian terror.”
Parents Fight Textbook Trivializing Murder of Israeli Civilians
Williamson County, TN, resident Laurie Cardoza-Moore, mother of five and the head of an organization of pro-Israeli Christians, says she “appalled” to read in “The Cultural Landscape Curriculum – An Introduction to Human Geography” (list price a whopping $157.53) a social studies textbook her children study at the local high school the following, the following “dilemma”:
“If a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism, or wartime retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions?”
5 charged for plot to kill Jews praying at Temple Mount
The Jerusalem District Attorney's Office on Thursday submitted an indictment to the Jerusalem District Court against five east Jerusalem Palestinians for conspiring to carry out shooting and kidnapping attacks against Jews praying on the Temple Mount and security forces posted in east Jerusalem.
Israel ranks 2nd in worlds most educated countries
Israel ranked second in an international survey looking at the world’s Top 10 countries with the highest proportion of college-educated adult residents. Israel recorded 46 percent of its population completing a tertiary education, just five percent behind top-rated Canada.
Lewis Yelland Andrews, the Jews' forgotten friend
Andrews therefore became the Yishuv's trusted confidant in land affairs. He attained to this status after he helped the defenders of Hadera against the Arab attackers in 1920, and in 1929 rushed to rescue 20 Jewish families from Hadera and brought in a squad of Circassians armed with machine guns to break up a Bedouin mob that was threatening to attack the members of Beit Alfa (the chronicles of the Haganah describe Andrews' good deeds during that time at length). But Andrews neglected his own safety. (h/t Yoel)