Monday, May 05, 2014
JPost Editorial: Indomitable spirit
Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars and Victims of Terrorism began on Sunday at sundown and ends at sundown Monday. During these 24 hours, we pay tribute to the 23,169 casualties of war and terrorism who have fallen since 1860, the year marked as the advent of the modern Jewish Yishuv or settlement in the Land of Israel.Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas: Do Not Believe Abbas; We Want Jihad
In truth, 1860 is an arbitrary date. The Jewish people’s yearning to return to its historic homeland extends far back in history to 70 CE, the time of the destruction of the Second Temple. And the Jewish people’s prayers and hopes for an end to exile stored up over nearly two millennia gave it unique strength.
When asked how the fledgling Jewish state, born into a state of war, managed to overcome the combined armies of the Arab states, Yigael Yadin, one of the founding fathers of the IDF, pointed to the Jewish people’s pent up desire for a state of its own where it could live in freedom and independence. Yadin likened the Jews’ longing to a “spring compressed... to the utmost of its compressibility” over thousands of years of exile, which “when finally released, it liberated.”
Abbas's words might sound heart-warming to Westerners, but they must bear in mind that he is not a Hamas spokesman. Above all, the world needs to pay attention to what Hamas itself is saying.Netanyahu: The Jews would be massacred like our neighbors in Syria without the IDF
Abbas knows that Hamas has not changed and will not change. Abbas is seeking to avoid a suspension of U.S. and European financial aid and potential Israeli economic sanctions. Abbas is now waiting to see if the Americans, Europeans and Israelis will buy his claim that the unity government will recognize Israel and reject violence. If they do, he will take credit for ensuring continued financial aid not only to the Palestinian Authority, but also to Hamas. If they do not, Abbas will be forced temporarily to suspend the deal with Hamas to avoid losing the aid.
Hamas signed the deal because it sees it and an opportunity to restore its relations with Egypt and other Arab countries, and to benefit from the Western financial aid that is provided to the Palestinian Authority.
Netanyahu cited the deaths of tens of thousands in Syria, as a possible fate of the Jews, without the existence of the state of Israel and the IDF.Yom Haatzmaut 2014: 66 Israeli Heroes Share a Powerful Message
"A few kilometers north of Jerusalem a massacre is occurring that has killed tens of thousands that do not have the power to defend themselves. Who would doubt that that would be our fate without the IDF. The IDF is the only thing that separates us from the massacres that our people knew in the past," he said.
"Israel can defend itself against any threat, but this security is gained by the loss of our sons and daughters," he said.
He said the sacrifices of the fallen make life possible in Israel.
Powerful Youtube from Nefesh B'Nefesh with the message, Am Yisrael Chai!
Peres on Memorial Day: ‘Our joy is always incomplete’
The siren was followed by the lighting of a memorial flame to the fallen at the Western Wall, the site of the official state commemoration ceremony.Yom HaZikaron: Moment of Silence throughout Israel
“It wasn’t a declaration that founded this wonderful country. It was founded upon the blood of its sons and daughters, upon the sweat of the pioneers and the vision of its prophets,” President Shimon Peres said at the Western Wall ceremony. “Israel today is a strong country, a miracle in the eyes of the Jews, a wonder in the eyes of the world. We, the Israelis, are not like any other people. For a generation already the sadness does not release us, even for joy. Our joy is always incomplete. A cloud of sadness envelops us. It is hidden deeply but stares out of our eyes,” the president lamented to an audience of IDF soldiers and families of the fallen.
App brings stories of dead soldiers to life
Remembering Them All, an app released on the eve of Memorial Day and distributed for free by the Defense Ministry on its IDF memorial site, lets users scan the memorial stones at Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery and bring up an information page on the soldier buried there. The app uses pictures, text and video to help Israelis learn the personal stories of IDF soldiers who fell in battle defending the country.Bereaved families heckle Netanyahu at memorial event
The app is similar to one the IDF distributed several years ago, which allowed users to scan bar codes on army memorial stones using a QR reader and load the official memorial page for that soldier on the IDF’s “Nizkor” (We Remember) page. The new app will be able to load information from the Nizkor site and other sources as well, creating a “virtual reality” interface with photos and even videos of the soldier.
Several angry protesters shouted at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he took the podium at a ceremony in memory of Israelis killed in terror attacks, held at the Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem on Monday.Alan Dershowitz: No Place for Kerry's Apartheid Analogy
The demonstrators, who were apparently members of families of terror attack victims, held red flags over their heads and yelled at Netanyahu as the prime minister rose to make his speech. They then staged a walkout.
John Kerry’s misstatement about apartheid is an educational moment. He can now use it to help educate the world both as to the real meaning of apartheid and as to the true situation of Palestinians in Ramallah and other vibrant and affluent Palestinian cities on the West Bank.After Failed Peace Talks, Pushing to Label Israel as Occupier of Palestine
The Israelis and Palestinians should negotiate a two-state solution which would end the occupation and settlements. The fault for not having yet done so lies largely within the Palestinian leadership, which constantly places preconditions on negotiations and has refused generous offers by former Israeli Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert.
The time has come for telling the truth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to stop using loaded and incendiary words that distort the reality on the ground.
Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry who was involved in negotiating the Rome Statute, said that Arab states injected language referring to the “direct or indirect” transfer of populations.UN's Office for Human Rights lavishes praise on "Palestine" after it officially joins 5 UN treaties
“The whole idea was to declare Israeli settlement as one of the most serious crimes against humanity,” said Mr. Baker, who now works at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative-leaning research institute.
Yet at the same time Mr. Baker, himself a settler, and some other Israelis dismiss the risk of Israel’s being prosecuted for the settlements.
They note that the court deals only with grave crimes committed since its establishment in 2002; the bulk of the settlements were established before that. The court also deals with the crimes of individuals, not governments, meaning that it would have to establish who was most responsible for the diffuse settlement project that took place over decades.
What is conspicuously missing from this list are all the provisions in these human rights treaties, or their associated "protocols," that permit individuals to complain of violations of human rights by the ratifying party.Fugitive ex-MK Azmi Bishara to head new Qatari TV channel
In other words, "Palestine" is only too happy to appear to be interested in human rights protection, but it won't allow Palestinians to hold them to it by empowering people to complain if it doesn't.
For instance, the Torture Convention and the Racial Discrimination Convention in theory permit individuals to complain of violations of the two treaties. But "Palestine" refused to agree to these discretionary features.
Other complaint provisions are associated with the two covenants on civil and political rights, and economic rights, and the conventions on women's rights, children's rights and disability rights. There is no indication that "Palestine" is acceding to any of them - effectively excluding any Palestinian from complaining to UN bodies about "Palestine's" violations of their new rights.
Former Balad MK Azmi Bishara, who fled Israel in 2007 following accusations that he had contacts with a foreign agent and aided an enemy during wartime, is set to head a new Qatari TV channel meant to act as a counterweight to the country’s flagship news network, Al Jazeera, amid criticisms that the latter has become “too supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood.”Gerstenfeld on why Stoltenberg is a bad choice for the NATO
Bishara, who heads the Doha-based Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies and is reportedly close to the new Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, is said to have been the driving force behind the initiative, according to a report in The National.
As time passes, it becomes increasingly clear how absurd the choice of former Norwegian Labor Party Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s next Secretary General is. The new Hamas-Fatah agreement brings to mind the many ways Stoltenberg, his government and Labor have directly and indirectly promoted Hamas’ interests.Israel energy supplier mulls legal action over PA debts
Hamas calls for the murder of Jews in its party platform. In January 2006, it won a majority in the only Palestinian general elections. The European Union and the U.S. classify Hamas as a terrorist group. Both ended contacts with Palestinian officials after Hamas formed a new Palestinian government led by Ismael Haniyeh in March 2006. The United States and the E.U. then also cut off aid to the Palestinians.
Israel's main electricity supplier said on Monday that it considers legal action against the Palestinian Authority (PA) due to the latter's inability to repay its accumulating debts.PMW: PA and Hamas honor Sbarro suicide bomber who murdered 15
In a statement, the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) said it had sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu informing him that the PA owed it some 1.5 billion Israeli shekels (roughly $430 million) as of the end of April.
The company said it planned to cut power intermittently to Palestinian homes.
On Aug. 9, 2001 suicide bomber Izz Al-Din Al-Masri detonated himself in a Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem, killing 15, 7 of them children. 5 members of one family were killed in the attack. Palestinian Media Watch has reported that the PA in the past has honored Ahlam Tamimi, the terrorist who picked the Sbarro restaurant as the place for the bombing "because many people entered it", and later led the bomber there. Official PA TV has also glorified her.PA TV honors Sbarro suicide bomber: Funeral was "national wedding"
Last week, Israel transferred the body of the suicide bomber to the PA and both the PA and Hamas took the opportunity to honor the murderer once again. Reporting from the official military funeral, PA TV News called him a "Martyr," the highest religious level a Muslim can reach. In calling the terrorist a Martyr - a Shahid - the PA continues to teach its people that according to its interpretation of Islam, killers of Israeli civilians in suicide terror attacks are doing such a positive act, that it overrules the general Islamic prohibition against committing suicide.
Hamas honors Sbarro suicide bomber: He "gave the Zionists a taste of humiliation"
Hamas official: Unity deal forbids security cooperation with Israel
Hamas is preparing to incorporate 3,000 [US trained] Palestinian Authority security men from the West Bank into its Gaza apparatus, a Hamas official has announced. He also referred to a previously unknown “security clause” in the agreement with Fatah criminalizing security coordination with Israel.Elliott Abrams: Chlorine, nukes, and U.S. credibility
Abdul Salam Siyam, secretary general of the Hamas government in Gaza, told Palestinian media that Hamas’s security agencies will remain intact pending the formation of a new unity government in June.
“The government and the [Hamas] movement in Gaza have taken a strategic decision to move forward with reconciliation and create necessary conditions for its implementation,” Siyam said in a press statement Sunday.
One of the greatest Israeli concerns about a possible nuclear deal with Iran goes beyond the terms of any deal itself to the issue of enforcement. The issue is summed up in a Laura Rozen piece: "The Israelis are also deeply concerned, [an unidentified] former U.S. diplomat said, that if there is a violation by Iran of a final nuclear accord, that the violation will be seen by Washington as too ambiguous or incremental, that there 'is no smoking gun.' The Israelis are 'nervous that the U.S. will continuously say, we are checking into it, we need more proof,' the former diplomat described. 'At what point does the cumulative effect of the small things add up to a violation?'"Analysts: Hezbollah Push for Lebanon Off-Shore Drilling Risks War with Israel
She describes the diplomat as "a senior former U.S. diplomat involved in the April consultations in Israel."
The Israeli concern is serious, because the pattern they fear is familiar. Officials who have gone out on a limb to negotiate a deal despite criticism of it, rejected the criticism, defended the deal, and indeed celebrated the deal as a great diplomatic achievement, do not wish to find that it has been violated and that their achievement is in tatters.
The Israeli daily financial newspaper Globes had already explained months ago that Israel would be “liable to lose territory if it does not object to the Lebanese acts in court, or even militarily.” The Examiner noted that the Israelis have deliberately “avoided issuing tenders” so as not to inflame the situation.Egypt claims Israeli spy ring uncovered
Meanwhile Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah recently reemphasized that his Iran-backed terror group would seek a military confrontation with Israel and has claimed an April attack on Israeli soldiers.
The group is widely thought to be seeking a way to rebuild its shattered brand as a Lebanese organization protecting Lebanese sovereignty from Israel, and last October Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea slammed Hezbollah for trying to open “another front with Israel” by pressuring the Lebanese Energy Ministry – which it controlled by proxy – to issue drilling tenders to disputed waters. National Liberal Party leader Dori Chamoun piled on, accusing then-Energy Minister Gebran Bassil of being used by Hezbollah to among other things cause “another clash with Israel.”
Observers fear that Hezbollah has been specifically setting up a naval confrontation. The group has for years been accusing Israel of stealing Lebanon’s energy resources – going so far as to describe Israel’s Leviathan field as inside Lebanese waters – and has even warned that Lebanon’s oil and gas sector was “becoming vulnerable to Israeli piracy”:
According to Egyptian news reports, 12 suspects were arrested by Egyptian security services. Three of the suspects were Egyptians, and the remainder had entered the country as tourists, the Ynet news site reported.TV Host Slams Head of Egyptian Community in Paris for Anti-Christian Remarks
The Egyptian newspaper Alyoum Sabaa said the suspects had gathered information on the current political climate in Egypt. Presidential elections, the first since the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was elected into power, are expected to take place later this month. (h/t Norman F)
Michael J. Totten: The Conspiracy Theory Capital of the World
Conspiracy theories exist everywhere in the world, but they’re especially common in the Middle East and are rampant in Egypt even by regional standards. They’re generally harmless when only crackpots on the margins believe them, but when they go mainstream and infect the highest levels of government and the media—watch out.Egyptian TV: Simpsons Episode Proves Syria War Is U.S. Conspiracy
Egypt can’t even begin to dig itself out of its hole until it faces up to the fact that Egyptians—not Israelis, not Americans, not the Turks, and not the Qataris—are the authors of their own tragedy. As addiction therapists like to say, you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.
The country has a host of problems, but the largest, from which so many others spring, is its ideological rejection of liberal political values. The majority of Egypt’s secular parties are just as vehemently anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Israeli, and anti-liberal as the Islamists. Egypt doesn’t need to copy the West down to the last detail in order to flourish, but there’s no getting around the fact that people who reject everything the West stands for are guaranteed to live in poverty with a boot on their neck.
And it’s about time we realized that nobody in power in Egypt right now, including the most militant anti-Islamists, is our friend.
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