Monday, September 15, 2014
ISIS may target Israelis, Jews abroad, Counter-Terrorism Bureau warns
The National Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Bureau released a biannual travel advisory on Monday, ahead of the High Holy Days, warning that Western Europe may become the scene of Islamic State terror attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets.Hezbollah could advance into Israel in next war, official warns
"During this period, the potential threat has grown," the Counter-Terrorism Bureau warned.
The Bureau referred to the May 4 deadly shooting attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, in which a French-Muslim gunman killed four people – two of them Israelis. The gunman had returned from Syria, where he fought alongside radical rebel groups.
"There are concerns about additional attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets around the world, with an emphasis on Western Europe, by global jihadi elements (including the Islamic State), particularly by veterans of Syria and Iraq who return to their countries," the Bureau stated. Recent combat in Gaza has also led to a rise in anti-Israel demonstrations, it added.
At the same time, Iran and Hezbollah continue to wage a global campaign of terrorism, targeting Israeli and Jewish targets, with an emphasis on soft targets such as tourists, rabbis, Chabad homes, and heads of Jewish communities, the communique said.
Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists are also seeking to target Israeli business people and senior former officials for kidnapping or murder.
A senior IDF official warned Sunday that while Hezbollah has no immediate plan to attack Israel, a minor security incident could erupt into a full-fledged war on Israel’s northern front during which the terror organization would likely try to capture swaths of the Galilee.Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Many Arabs and Muslims Do Not Trust Obama
“The situation in the north is quiet; we don’t assume we are headed toward war,” the Northern Command official said, according to Channel 2. “On the other hand, there are many developments, there are small things that can create larger events. The instability can develop and erupt into war.”
The army also distributed pictures Sunday showing armed Hezbollah members near the border with Israel.
In the event of a confrontation with Hezbollah, the fighting would likely last some four months, would have the Israel Defense Forces face some 30,000 troops, would incur extensive civilian casualties on the Lebanese side, and may see infiltration into northern Israeli towns to carry out attacks, the IDF official predicted.
Many Arabs and Muslims identify with the terrorists' anti-Western objectives ideology; they are afraid of being dubbed traitors and U.S. agents for joining non-Muslims in a war that would result in the death of many Muslims, and they are afraid their people would rise up against them.
Many Arab and Muslim leaders view the Islamic State as a by-product of failed U.S. policies, especially the current U.S. Administration's weak-kneed support for Iraq's Nuri al-Maliki. Some of these leaders, such as Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, consider the U.S. to be a major ally of the Muslim Brotherhood. Sisi and his regime will never forgive Obama for his support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Also, they do not seem to have much confidence in the Obama Administration, which is perceived as weak and incompetent when it comes to combating Islamists.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Gaza landlords refusing to rent to Hamas, official says
Landlords in the Gaza Strip are refusing to rent apartments to Hamas members and their families, a senior Hamas official revealed on Sunday.Compromise with political Islam is impossible
Musa Abu Marzouk, a political leader of Hamas based in Egypt who recently toured the Gaza Strip, pointed out that landlords were afraid to rent out their apartments out of fear they would be targeted by Israel in the future.
“The phenomenon of refusing to rent out homes to families of resistance fighters is a dangerous one,” Abu Marzouk wrote on his Facebook page. “The landlords are punishing the resistance fighters and their families.”
Palestinians are indebted to those who made sacrifices for their people, who are required to embrace them, he added.
“This is what the occupation wants by targeting the homes of the resistance fighters,” he said.
Earlier this month, tenants of a high-rise in Gaza City demanded that Hamas evacuate its offices from their building for the same reason.
Algerian educator Salah Chouaki published this article in the newspaper El Watan on 15 March 1993 as Algeria headed into its “dark decade” of fundamentalist violence and state counter terror abuses. He was amazingly prescient about the rising threat of political Islam. The day after this article appeared a campaign of fundamentalist assassinations of Algerian intellectuals escalated with the killing of former Minister of Education Djilali Liabes. Just eighteen months later, on 14 September 1994, after receiving threats which failed to silence him, Chouaki himself was gunned down by the Armed Islamic Group. During the subsequent decade, as many as 200,000 Algerians were killed.Abbas to ask France to recognize Palestinian state
Compromise with fundamentalism and all political Islamism is absolutely impossible.
Persisting in defending the possibility and the necessity of such a compromise merely perpetuates illusions and mystifies public opinion. It paves the way for fundamentalism to seize absolute and undivided power.
This thesis is no longer simply theoretical. It has been proven in practice, at the cost of hundreds of victims. Every effort to build bridges with fundamentalism, every effort to draw away from the forces that strive for progress, results in emboldened fundamentalist forces, and a resumption of their initiatives.
The best way to defend Islam is to put it out of the reach of all political manipulation.
The best way to defend the modern state is to put it out of the reach of all exploitation of religion for political ends.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to ask French President Francois Hollande to recognize a Palestinian state when the two meet in Paris on Friday, according to the PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki.JPost Editorial The 8200 affair
It would be a first step toward rallying support from European countries for Abbas’s diplomatic diplomatic initiative ahead of his planned request that the UN Security Council set a timetable for Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories, the Ma’an news agency reported.
Abbas will spend two days in Paris before heading to New York, where he will attend the UN General Assembly, which opens on September 24, his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh told AFP on Sunday.
The Palestinian leader will use his speech to the UN to try to rally support for a new diplomatic initiative to set a date for ending an Israeli pullout from the West Bank.
Forty-three reservists of the military’s single largest section – Military Intelligence’s Unit 8200 – dispatched a letter to the prime minister, IDF chief of staff and the head of IDF intelligence informing them and the citizenry at large of their refusal to continue any service in the unit because of what they charged were serial breaches of the rights to privacy of individual Palestinians whose communications were intercepted.Wall-to-Wall Anger in Israel at IDF Intel Unit Refusal Letter, Dozens Volunteer to Replace Them
Unit 8200, it must be noted, had preempted numerous terrorist attacks and saved many Israeli lives on the battlefield. Nonetheless, the 43 signatories disparaged “the main function of 8200 in the territories, which is to control another nation.”
They are entitled to their opinions about what the policies of the state and its army ought to be. Since, however, the state is run by a democratically elected government and since the IDF is subordinate to that government, service personnel who flout authority in effect proclaim that their personal judgment trumps the will of the electorate.
That is arrogant, unconscionable and unacceptable, even if borne of conviction – and it is being exploited to demonize Israel abroad. No offenders are above the law, even if they purportedly committed their offenses in the service of a political creed.
Our national defense would be undermined if every conscript/career soldier/reservist can take liberties with no guideline but his or her hubris. If each soldier were to decide that he or she is empowered to determine national strategy or military tactics, the IDF would have to shut down. So would any army anywhere.
However, in response, at least 200 other soldiers in the unit wrote a counter letter in staunch support of the unit’s operational methods and goals, and dozens of others said they’d gladly replace the would-be deserters in the secretive unit, which is tasked with gathering electronic data pertaining to Israel’s security.'Israel Does Not Stand Alone'
“We, former and current 8200 soldiers, wish to express complete disclaim of the letter which our fellow unit soldiers articulated, who chose to go down the insubordination path and declared that they will no longer be willing to serve in the unit,” according to a reply released over the weekend by the hundreds of former 8200 soldiers, according to Israel’s Channel 2 News.
One of the authors of the counter-letter, Capt. “H” said Saturday that “we read the letter of declaring insubordination and we were appalled. It is full of lies. We decided to expose the truth about how the unit actually works, and the extremely high moral and ethical standards applied there. It is important to show the public that this is not the face of the unit. They are sullying our unit’s name,” Israel Hayom reported.
Speaking at a cybersecurity conference at Tel Aviv University on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the protest letter and lauded the unit’s work.
At a meeting with members of a large Israel Bonds delegation from the US, Canada, South America, and Europe, President Reuven Rivlin decried the growing anti-Semitism around the world. "Anti-Semitism is a disease that can reach all nations and spread all around the world,” Rivlin said. “I have met with many world leaders and I get the sense that anti-Semitism comes in a specific context, as a manifestation of extremism.”Islamic State secretly near Israel border, Syrian rebel group says
A total of 80 people – fifty leaders of Bonds groups and 30 businesspeople who are strong supporters of Israel – met with Rivlin, who thanked them for their support of Israel. “Bonds have had a unique role in the growth of Israel and its transformation from an agricultural country to a modern global economy. Bonds contributed to making the desert bloom, to the construction of Israel's transportation infrastructure, the creation of new industries, the absorption of new immigrants, and increasing the export capacity of the country.”
Among those attending were members of a newly-formed Bonds delegation from Paris. That group, along with the other members of the mission, came to express their solidarity with Israel and Israelis, said Rivlin – and Israel appreciated it.
The spokesman, speaking to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to communicate with Israeli media, said that some of the 6,000 Islamist fighters who fled southward toward the borders with Israel and Jordan in July actually belong to the Islamic State, not to the less extreme Nusra Front as previously believed.Report: UN pulling out peacekeepers from Syrian side of Golan Heights
The two Islamist organizations had clashed militarily in a struggle for control over oil-rich northeastern Syria, in which the Islamic State triumphed. The Times of Israel could not confirm the information, which was recently conveyed to the spokesman from a number of different sources.
While both are opposed to the rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad, the Free Syrian Army, a moderate rebel group, and Islamic State have fought a number of fierce battles in Syria.
UN peacekeepers in the Golan Heights are being relocated from four positions and one camp on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Israeli border, a diplomatic source said on Monday after recent clashes with al-Qaida-linked militants.'Qatar paid ransom for release of Fijian peacekeepers'
"Staff in UN positions 10, 16, 31 and 37, as well as Camp Faouar on the (Syrian) side are being relocated," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
There was no suggestion that the UN peacekeeping mission in the Golan Heights, known as UNDOF, was shutting down. Last month 45 UNDOF peacekeepers were kidnapped by Islamist militants fighting the Syrian army. They were released last week.
A UN source told the network that the troops, who were seen crossing into the Israeli-controlled portion of the plateau, were being pulled out for their safety.
Syrian opposition sources said on Saturday that Qatar paid militants from the Nusra Front in Syria a ransom of $20 million in return for the release of the 45 Fijian UN peacekeepers, the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported.Arab Assailants in Car Stone, Chase Fleeing Hearing-Impaired Motorists; ‘I Was Sure We Would Die’
The report comes a day after the Qatari Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that it had helped to secure the release of the peacekeepers following "the request of the government of Fiji".
"The efforts of the State of Qatar led to the successful release of the Fijian soldiers... who had been held for two weeks," the Gulf emirate said in a statement.
Qatar said it had acted on "humanitarian" grounds, and that did not hesitate to mobilise all its means and diplomatic channels to save lives".
Five Arab youths in northern Israel stoned and pursued a car containing two hearing-impaired Israeli couples in a terrifying high-speed chase overnight Saturday, Israel’s Walla News reported.Arabs In Shuafat Fire Carlo SMG At Police Checkpoint
“I still haven’t gotten over the ordeal; I’m still terribly traumatized,” said Dafna (name changed to protect her anonymity), one of the passengers in the vehicle, which left Lavon, a small Jewish village in the Upper Galilee at about 03:00 am Sunday morning.
Roads in the area, close to the Lebanon border, are narrow, twisting, and largely unlit. Jewish villages and kibbutim, and Israeli Arab and Druze towns and small communities dot the hilly, rural area.
“The pursuit was crazy, they traveled at 140 miles per hour throughout the Lavon descent towards Acco [on the northern coast].
“There were moments when they also opened the doors of the vehicle to better hurl stones at us,” Dafna said.
Firebombs, knifes, cobbles and excavators are just a plethora of ways Arabs in Jerusalem attack Jews (and other Arabs).Hamas attacked Israel’s Internet during war, PM charges
Now we can add 9 mm bullets.
That gun he’s firing at police checkpoint is one of those Carlo SMGs.
I’ve posted before about the prevalence of this type of weapon and similar designs in the hands of Arabs in Israel and the Palestinian territories
But don’t call it an Intifada though, it’s not violent enough apparently.
Hamas relentlessly attacked Israel over the summer not only with rockets and tunnels but also virtually, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. He warned that Islamist terrorists no longer suffice with conventional warfare against the Jewish state, but are increasingly taking to cyberspace to launch their attacks.Special Report (update): PA use of Holocaust imagery during Gaza War
“Our enemies in these various terrorist organizations — Hamas, Islamic Jihad — as they fail in the military terror campaigns they launch against us, continue to try to attack us in other ways, including the field of cyber-attacks. And that is an arena that is changing, both here and elsewhere, at an accelerating and dizzying pace,” the prime minister added.
“The attack by our enemies on Israel’s civilian — and, I stress, civilian — Internet structure during the recent operation, these attacks are clearly meant to disrupt the daily lives of Israelis to harm us. But those same attacks failed in exactly the same way as the terror campaign, the rockets and tunnels attacks failed.”
Executive SummaryEU Rep in Gaza: 'Lots of Anger Here – Directed at Palestinians'
During the Gaza operation, the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, both headed by Mahmoud Abbas, actively and repeatedly desecrated the memory of the Holocaust by comparing Israel's measures against Hamas to the Nazi genocide:
"[Israel has] become adorers of Nazism, and implement that barbaric model on the flesh of our children." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 26, 2014]
Often the PA claimed Israel was worse than the Nazis:
"Israel... has surpassed Hitler's massacres... By calling Israel Nazi, sadist and fascist for its present actions, we are letting it off lightly." [Fatah leader in Gaza Atef Abu Saif,PA TV, July 21, 2014]
Click to view the full report in PDF
John Gatt-Rutter, the EU's representative to the West Bank and Gaza, says, "There is a lot of anger in Gaza, and a lot of it is aimed at the Palestinians."Terrorist Rocket Soap Of Doom
Gatt-Rutter said he senses widespread despondency in Gaza and warns that it could lead to renewed warfare with Israel, reports the European Jewish Press. A month-long ceasefire currently underway has another 11 days before indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas resume – or, Hamas threatens, it will again start firing rockets at Israel.
“We are not hearing any good words [in Gaza] about anyone at the moment," Gatt-Rutter told reporters. The local population in Gaza is resentful that their major humanitarian needs have not been met, and that salaries have not been paid.
You remember the snow rocket right? When it snowed in Jerusalem and the Jewish kids built snowmen, the Arabs built a model of their terror rocket on the Temple Mount. Also recall the time they named a perfume after their beloved M75 rocket?Hamas denies Mashaal being expelled from Qatar, seeking shelter elsewhere
Well now we bring you…. drum roll please… Terrorist Rocket Soap of Doom™
Celebrating their big hits of the summer the M75, the J80 and the R160. All of which are terrorist rockets shot toward Israel and (usually) doomed to explode in a white puff in the sky when they met an Iron Dome interceptor coming the other way.
Hamas denied on Monday that its leader, Khaled Mashaal, might leave Qatar following the expulsion of seven Muslim Brotherhood leaders from the emirate.Musa Abu Marzouq: Negotiating with Israel No Longer Taboo for Hamas
A report in a Tunisian newspaper claimed that the Doha-based Mashaal was considering relocating to Tunisia, Turkey or Malaysia.
Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan said Qatar has not asked Mashaal to leave. He added that relations between Hamas and Qatar were "passing through an extraordinary phase."
New Israeli ambassador in Cairo meets President Sissi
Israel’s new ambassador to Egypt, Haim Koren, on Sunday presented his credentials to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi at his palace in Cairo, allowing Koren to officially contact Egyptian government officials in his capacity as Israel’s diplomatic representative.Dept of Oops: Egypt’s ‘Panama Canal’ blunder goes viral
Koren, whose appointment was approved by the cabinet in December, has been stationed in Egypt since May 11. He stayed in Cairo during most of the 50 days of fighting during this summer’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. According to international diplomatic protocol, an ambassador is legally restricted from reaching out to government officials before handing a letter of credence to the host country’s head of state.
In light of Koren’s friendly reception in Sissi’s presidential palace, Israeli diplomatic officials said they hoped Cairo would now follow suit and return its ambassador to Israel. Egypt recalled its envoy to Tel Aviv, Atef Salem, in late 2012 in the wake of Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, mere weeks after he had presented his credentials to the Israeli president, and never sent him back.
Egyptians on social media have derided a stamp that was supposed to depict the nation’s famous Suez Canal but instead showed the Panama Canal – situated over 11,500 km away.Douglas Murray: Isis are setting our news agenda. We need to stop playing their game
The new series of stamps had been commissioned to mark a new $8.4bn Suez Canal project which will run alongside the existing 145-year-old historic waterway.
An official source acknowledged the mistake and said the error will be corrected, adding that a new, accurate stamp would be released next Tuesday,
We have to be wiser about all this, as government, as media, as general public and as a society. Speaking for myself, I do not want to know whether British Special Forces have gone in. If they have gone in, then I do not want to know what they are going to do. This is not a soap opera, it is about the lives of people caught up in a dreadful conflict and an effort by a terrorist group to have an impact far beyond the lands they are oppressing. It would do some good if we the public made it clear there is a limit to what information we seek or expect.ISIS: ‘Imagine my joy at beheading a baby’
Indeed it would do some good if it were made clear to the Government that after an atrocity like this we do not want or expect grand pronouncements, rearrangements of travel or anything else. We simply want to be confident that at some point later this year or next we can open our pages and learn that a London-born jihadist has had two 500-pound bombs dropped on his head, by forces unknown.
A French journalist who was held hostage by rebels in Syria has given a chilling account of his ordeal at the hands of an Islamic terrorist who tortured him and bragged about beheading women and children.UK female doctor poses with decapitated head
Nicolas Hénin, who was released in April, recalled last week how his captor, Mehdi Nemmouche, a French citizen of Algerian origin, appeared to take perverse pleasure in describing atrocities he had committed while fighting with Isis (also known as Islamic State).
Nemmouche has since gone on trial in Belgium accused of the murder of four people in an attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels in May.
“Do you know what happens when I go into a Shi’ite home?” Hénin recalled Nemmouche asking him one day.
“First, there’s the grandmother — I only use one bullet on her, she’s not worth more — then the wife. Now things get a bit more interesting; first, I rape her, then I cut her throat.”
A woman believed to be a British medical student who left the UK to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) posted a photo of herself holding a decapitated head on social media, the Mail Online reported.Western Terrorists Who Wanted Out Imprisoned by ISIS Commanders
In the photo posted by a Twitter user who goes by the name Mujahidah Bint Osama, two children are seen in the background gawking at the severed head, held by a woman in a Niqab and a white lab coat.
A group of European jihadist fighters, disenchanted with fighting for the Islamic State and who desired to return home, were imprisoned by their commanders several days ago. According to reports, the group's weapons were confiscated and they were marched to a punishment center in the ISIS-controlled city of Raqqa, in Syria.Arab countries offer to strike IS, US officials say
The group consisted of five Britons, three Frenchman, two Germans, and two Belgians. They had grown frustrated with spending time fighting other rebel forces instead of the government of Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria. They worried that they were killing fellow Muslims, instead of who they believed to be the enemy.
State Department officials said Sunday that a number of Arab countries have expressed willingness to launch airstrikes against jihadists of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the New York Times reported.ISIS Prompts Hezbollah’s ‘Great Need to Remain in Syria’
“There have been offers both to Centcom [the US Department of Defense Central Command] and to the Iraqis of Arab countries taking more aggressive kinetic action,” an official said.
“I don’t want to leave you with the impression that these Arab members haven’t offered to do airstrikes because several of them have,” the official said. “The Iraqis would have to be a major participant in that decision. It has to be well structured and organized.”
The presence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist group has created a “great need” for guerrilla fighters from the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror organization to remain in Syria.WSJ Editorial: Our non-ally in Ankara
That was the message from Hezbollah executive council deputy head Nabil Qaouk, who spoke Monday at a ceremony in the southern Lebanese village of Aita Shaab.
Qaouk was quoted by The Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon as saying that Hezbollah and the Amal Movement had “succeeded in defusing sectarian tensions” following the beheading of soldiers by ISIS last week. He said the murders had “disappointed the radical group.”
Quaouk said, “There could never be a war of words between ISIS and us, but there is the field where we will defeat them. We will not engage in a war of statements or political disputes.
This history—along with the Erdogan government's long record of support for Hamas in Gaza and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt—explains why the excuses now being made for Turkey's nonfeasance ring hollow. ISIS has taken Turkish diplomats and their family members hostage in Mosul inside Iraq, but Turkey is not the only country whose citizens have been taken hostage. Ankara also fears that arms sent to ISIS opponents may wind up in the hands of the PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group. But that doesn't justify shutting down Incirlik for a U.S. operation.PreOccupied Territory: Eight Key Mistakes To Avoid When Applying For ISIS Membership (satire)
The unavoidable conclusion is that the U.S. needs to find a better regional ally to fight ISIS. True to type, Arab states such as Saudi Arabia are proving to be reluctant partners, at least in public, and it's unclear how much the new government in Baghdad can contribute before its army regroups.
The better bet is with the Kurds, who have the most on the line and are willing to provide the boots on the ground that others can't or won't. Incirlik has been a home for U.S. forces for nearly 60 years, but perhaps it's time to consider replacing it with a new U.S. air base in Kurdish territory in northern Iraq. America may no longer have friends in Ankara, but that doesn't mean we don't have options in the Middle East.
We all want to make a good impression, especially when it comes to gaining admission to a coveted institution. But it’s far too easy to mess up when you don’t know some of the basic things that will disqualify you right off the bat. To help you aspiring Islamists, here are some tips from experts in the field to help you keep from committing career-sabotaging blunders in your quest to fight for the Islamic State.
8. Sharing the notion that ISIS is a Zionist plot to divide the Muslim world
It’s counterintuitive, but not every claim of a Zionist plot will prove popular in every part of the anti-Zionist world. This is especially true when the people you’re essentially accusing of participation in that Zionist plot would behead themselves before acquiescing to any such thing. Remember that “Zionist” is the epithet of choice across the Islamic Middle East, so share your conspiracy theories carefully.
OK! You’re all set! Now, about that Star of David necklace…
