Monday, June 08, 2015
The case for Israel is rooted in more than security
Noses went out of joint and knickers got in a twist when Israel’s new deputy foreign minister delivered her inaugural speech to the Jewish state’s diplomatic corps.History Matters: Remembering the Six-Day War
“We need to get back to the basic truth of our right to this land,” said Tzipi Hotovely, who is running the foreign ministry’s day-to-day operations, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu retains the title of foreign minister. The land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people, she declared, and their claim to it is as old as the Bible. “It’s important to say this” when making Israel’s case before the world, she said, and not to focus solely on Israel’s security interests. Of course security is a profound concern, Hotovely observed, but arguments grounded in justice, morality, and deep historical rights are stronger. She even quoted the medieval Jewish sage Rashi, who wrote that Genesis opens with God’s creation of the world to preempt any subsequent charge that the Jewish claim to the land was without merit.
Needless to say, Hotovely’s message was scorned on the left as primitive zealotry. “Her remarks raised eyebrows among many in the audience,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported. One diplomat said his colleagues “were in shock” at the suggestion that they should cite the Torah when advocating for Israel abroad.
Diplomacy is not Bible class. Yet why should Israel and its envoys shrink from making the fullest defense of Jewish rights in what was always the Jewish homeland? Though modern Zionism didn’t arise as a political movement until the 1800s, the land of Israel has always been at the core of Jews’ national consciousness. Even during 19 centuries of exile, Jewish life in Israel (renamed “Palestine” by the Romans) never ceased. In all those years, no other people ever claimed the land as their country, or built it into their own nation-state.
Jewish sovereignty wasn’t regained by downplaying the historical and religious bonds linking the Jews to the land. World leaders and opinion-makers didn’t regard those links with patronizing disdain; many found them intensely compelling.
Mention the word “history” and it can trigger a roll of the eyes.Declassified documents reveal Israel feared Egyptian attack on Dimona nuclear reactor
Add “Middle East” to the equation and folks might start running for the hills, unwilling to get caught up in the seemingly bottomless pit of details and disputes.
But without an understanding of what happened, it’s impossible to grasp where we are — and where we are has profound relevance for the region and the world.
Forty-eight years ago this week, the Six-Day War broke out.
While some wars fade into obscurity, this one remains as relevant today as in 1967. Many of its core issues remain unresolved and in the news.
Politicians, diplomats, and journalists continue to grapple with the consequences of that war, but rarely provide context. Yet without context, some critically important things may not make sense.
First, in June 1967, there was no state of Palestine. It didn’t exist and never had. Its creation, proposed by the UN in 1947, was rejected by the Arab world because it also meant the establishment of a Jewish state alongside.
One of Israel’s most worrisome concerns in the days preceding the 1967 Six Day War was that the Egyptian Air Force would attack the nuclear reactor in Dimona. This was revealed in the newly released and declassified secret documents of the IDF archives, to mark the 48th anniversary of that war, which began June 5.
The war broke out with the Israel Air Force’s surprise preemptive strike, which within three hours destroyed the entire Egyptian Air Force, sitting like ducks on the tarmacs of its airfields.
On June 2, the government’s security cabinet convened for a tense and dramatic meeting with the IDF General Staff. It was the first session to include Moshe Dayan as the new defense minister, appointed only a day before, after prime minister Levi Eshkol was forced due to public pressure to relinquish the defense post.
Eshkol’s decision to step down as defense minister was a result of a confusing speech that he delivered during a live radio broadcast in which he stuttered. The impression on the Israeli public, already under tremendous fear of another Holocaust, was overwhelming.
Egypt, June 1967: the longest ten minutes
During the first three days of the Six Day War, the Egyptian media claimed victory, and Egyptians did not know their army was crushed. Everyone was certain troops were at the doors of Tel Aviv. Rumors spread that thousands of Israeli prisoners were being shipped to Cairo by train to be paraded for all to see in Ramses Square, where the train station is located.Dutch cops may have foiled terror attack on Israeli embassy in ’04
The authorities had trouble satisfying this demand, as Egypt had caught no more than a handful of Israeli POWs. But a solution was found. On the first day of the war, at a quarter to five sharp, we heard a knock at the door. We opened. Two policemen in civilian clothes wanted my brother Sami for 10 minutes at the station.
Several of those incarcerated cannot to this day cope with their experience. Two who were sexually molested committed suicide. On June 15, 1970, my brother was taken from Tourah prison to the airport at Helipolis. Am Taher was sure what his final destination would be. On the eve of the departure, I heard him say: "He will go live with the Jews in their country, in Israel"; he was right.
Zeinab wanted so badly to come for a last look at my brother, but my father feared she would get in trouble if she was seen with us at the airport. He explained to her: "He is thrown out, Zeinab." She cried once more.
It was my first visit to an airport. As I watched the Air France Boeing 727 take off, I looked at the black quadrant of my new watch. My mother bought it a week before for the occasion and let me wear it for the first time on that day. It was 10:43 a.m.
The 10 minutes were over: They had lasted three years, nine days, 17 hours and 58 minutes.
Dutch police officers in 2004 may have foiled a terrorist attack on Israel’s embassy in the Netherlands, according to leaked documents.For Some Arab States, Breaking Up Isn't Hard to Do
The suspected perpetrators, Jamal M. and Bandar A. from Somalia and Saudi Arabia respectively, were detained by two Royal Netherlands Marechaussee officers who noticed them men filming Israel’s embassy in The Hague from a parked car, according to the report Thursday by the Algemeen Dagblad daily.
The paper said its report was based on leaked diplomatic cables from the US embassy in the city.
The two suspects had a third partner, according to the report. Their camera contained footage of additional embassies and of a synagogue in the Netherlands. All the suspects were Netherlands residents in 2004.
The report said the two men were unknown to Dutch police. The daily’s report did not say whether the men were prosecuted or otherwise processed by Dutch or other authorities.
Whatever the eventual outcome of the struggle raging across large parts of the Arab world, it may be concluded that the cause of the collapse of Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Yemen is the prior failure to develop strong national identities and workable institutions in the areas in question.NGO Monitor: Letter to UN Sec-Gen Regarding 2015 Report on Children and Armed Conflict
Despite this failure, pan-Arab nationalism and the brutal police states it spawned managed to achieve stability for a long, stagnant period. That period is now over. Ethnic, tribal, and sectarian war is the result. What will follow these wars cannot be stated with any certainty. What can be asserted with confidence, however, is that those regional states that are based on a strongly-held national identity—Egypt, Israel, Iran, and Turkey—are likely to remain intact despite these pressures, though they may face revolts from within by national minorities and other marginalized groups.
The failure of the populous Arab states of the Levant and Mesopotamia to build strong national identities and institutions is one of the most remarkable and comprehensive of modern times. Unfortunately, this failure has now cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. What “ought” to happen is that these failed states should give way to successor entities based on more stable foundations. Strategic realities, however, make such an outcome uncertain. It seems, unfortunately, that the bloodletting is far from over.
Dear Mr. Secretary-General,Netanyahu: Palestinians Setting a 'Perfect Trap' for Israel
We are writing to express our concern regarding an outrageous campaign by Human Rights Watch (HRW) to influence your preparation of the Report on Children and Armed Conflict. In a submission to your office, as well as in letters and other publications, HRW is advocating for the inclusion of Israel in the annex of the Report, on a list that entirely comprises terrorist organizations, armed guerrilla groups, and militias associated with failed states.
Under the standards proffered by HRW regarding Israel, every Western country should also be listed in the Report’s annex, all the more so countries like Russia and Ukraine (to name two). However, this is not the case. In line with its ongoing attempts to criminalize Israeli actions and demonize its self-defense measures, HRW has chosen to single out Israel for censure.
Notably, HRW’s June 5, 2015 letter to you omitted several grave breaches by Hamas, including the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in June 2014, and its “graduation” of more than 10,000 children from armed camps training to be soldiers for the Islamic terror organization. It similarly ignored the dozens of children killed by misfired Hamas rockets within Gaza, including 11 killed at the Al-Shati refugee camp on July 28. In contrast, in every instance where HRW accuses Israel of killing children, the NGO did not have any access to information regarding targeting, military necessity, or proportionality calculations in order to substantiate its allegations of unlawful killing.
HRW’s double standards and disproportionate focus on Israel is the result of several endemic problems with the organization. For more than a decade, NGO Monitor has conducted systematic research studies regarding the reporting practices of HRW.
Netanyahu noted, however, that the current situation does not engender that vision.Czech FM Urges Israel to Use Mideast Crisis to its Advantage
"Unfortunately, the Palestinians don’t negotiate," he said. "They ran away from negotiations. They ran away from [former Prime Ministers Ehud] Barak; they ran away from [Ariel] Sharon; they ran away from [Ehud] Olmert; they ran away from me."
This, he said, is intentional.
"It’s a perfect trap, Foreign Minister," he said. "What they do is they refuse to negotiate, refuse to deal with the framework of John Kerry, in the White House, run to Hamas, which calls for our destruction, go to the UN and try to get sanctions on Israel."
"They refuse to negotiate and then try to get boycotts on Israel for there not being negotiations which they refuse to enter," he added. "Catch 22."
"And Israel is being blamed. There is talk of labeling products on Israel, there’s talk of UN Security Council resolution demands on Israel. This will push peace further and further back. Because why should the Palestinians negotiate when the UN will give them everything without negotiations?"
"I think this cycle has to be stopped," Netanyahu urged. "I think we have to get back to direct negotiations without preconditions. I think it’s important that the international community stop giving the Palestinians a free pass. They’re engaging in BDS, which calls for the elimination of Israel."
Israel may face yet more fallout in foreign relations, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Lubomír Zaorálek, warned Monday - adding his voice to the chorus of international diplomats urging Israel to acquiesce to the demands of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for territory.Andrew Bolt: No Jewish state, says Greens leader
The Czech Republic has been one of the most sympathetic countries regarding Israel in Europe in recent years, opposing initiatives against Israel in various forums in the European Union (EU), and is only one of two EU countries to have opposed the United Nations (UN) recognition of the PA as "Palestine."
But now, Zaorálek warned, "as your close friend, it is important to the Czech Republic to say that if the situation does not change we will be hard to maintain our position."
Diplomats involved in EU relations in Jerusalem stated to Walla! News that, over the past year, there has been a decline in support for Israel from the Republic - but added that, even today, it maintains a friendly and balanced approach on the subject of Israel-PA relations.
No to the Jewish state, says [Australian] Greens leader Richard di Natale:Major-party Parliamentarians denigrate Greens' leader Richard Di Natale
The [Australian Jewish News] asked him if Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas should recognise Israel’s existence as a Jewish State.
“Of course,” he replied. “How can you have a two-state solution when you refuse to acknowledge the right of one state to exist? It’s patently nonsense."…
The backlash [from supporters] prompted a clarification, in which his executive assistant stated that Di Natale was “concerned about the way in which his comments were reported” and that while he supports a two-state solution, “the establishment of a ‘Jewish state’ (as opposed to an ‘Israeli state’) is not conducive to that outcome"…
Di Natale this week reiterated his position in correspondence with the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). “I have always supported a peaceful, two-state solution… I have never believed that the establishment of a ‘Jewish state’ (as opposed to an ‘Israeli state’) is conducive to this outcome and I absolutely do not support that goal.”
Stressing that Israel’s establishment “as ‘the Jewish State’ ... has been the reality since Israel’s proclamation of independence in 1948” and citing its recognition as such by the United Nations and in international law, ECAJ executive director Peter Wertheim wrote to Di Natale, “When you deny Israel’s character as the state of the Jewish people you not only place yourself against the entire current of history and international law, you also deny the right of national self-determination of the Jewish people...”
Mind you, when it comes to homelands for other minorities, the Greens are quite keen. There’s just something about this one.
Ms Bishop said she was “disappointed” by the episode.UK Govt Refuses to Raise Hamas Brutality Report With Palestinians
“Richard Di Natale has caved in to the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment and sanctions activists in the green movement,” she said.
Labor MP Michael Danby said the episode undermined “the image of moderation that the Greens political party is so desperate to cultivate’’.
He said other parties would be “excoriated” over such a reversal.
“It is an indictment of the media advocates in organisations like The Age that this promise and its reversal is not reported as it would destroy the part of the story that the Greens are not as hardline and militant as they were in the past,” he said.
Executive Council of Australia Jewry head Peter Wertheim said the senator had “been bullied by the far-left zealots in his party into adopting a position on this issue that is intellectually and morally untenable”.
"I now look forward to the Greens withdrawing recognition from the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Islamic Republic of Iran because of the unacceptable ethnic and religious identifiers in the official names of these states," he said.
“To lecture other countries about their identity, and to refuse to recognise and respect the way they define themselves, is a truly unique approach to international relations.”
The British government has today admitted that despite numerous, Hamas-induced human rights violations listed in a recent Amnesty International report, it has not raised the issues with government counterparts in the Palestinian territories.Dagan and Ashkenazi deny Caroline Glick's claim that they prevented attack on Iran
The government risks being accused of hypocrisy, as many if not all alleged human rights violations levied at the State of Israel are routinely picked up on, and in the words of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “representations” are often made to the Israeli government.
Last week saw the release of the Amnesty report which detailed how the terrorist group Hamas which runs the Gaza Strip used the cover of the war with Israel last summer to harass, abduct, torture, and kill Palestinian civilians – what Amnesty called “settling the score” with anti-Hamas activists.
The report states that Hamas killed at least 23 people, many of which had made false confessions under torture.
But despite the evidence, the British government has refused to raise the issue, as Lord Beecham found out yesterday after submitting a question on the matter. He asked: “…what representations [the government] have made to the Palestinian Authority in the light of the recent Amnesty International report on the conduct of Hamas in Gaza; and what response they have received, if any.”
Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi denied on Sunday that they refused orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike Iran in 2010.US Treasury Secretary Lew jeered at JPost Annual Conference
They made the claim during a heated debate at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York with the paper’s columnist Caroline Glick who charged that under their leadership, Israel’s defense apparatus refused to attack, defying the prime minister’s order.
“We were always willing to obey any legal order by the prime minister. We never refused an order,” said Dagan.
“There was never a decision about it,” Ashkenazi added, acknowledging that his assessment was that such a unilateral Israeli strike would not have been wise.
Glick, however, charged that Dagan and Ashkenazi’s prevention of the military option in 2010 led to the current situation in which Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear bomb.
“In 2010, according to a report from 2012 on the Israeli news program Uvda, we learned that two of the gentlemen on this panel were given an order to prepare the military for an imminent strike against Iran’s military installations and they refused,” Glick said. (h/t Jewess)
US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew faced a crowd vocal in its opposition to the policies of President Barack Obama at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on Sunday.JPost Editorial: Lew, Israel’s friend
Facing sporadic jeers, the cabinet member laid out a broad defense of the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran from a financial perspective, offering new details of its expectations of a final agreement. And he defended the president’s record on recommitting US support to Israel, speaking over repeated catcalls.
A full text of his remarks is available here.
“I would only ask that you listen to me as we listen to you,” Lew told the crowd, after the Post’s editor-in-chief, Steve Linde, chastised the hecklers.
Lew’s message on a budding nuclear deal with Iran was especially detailed, tailored for a crowd particularly concerned with its consequences.Sanctions will be reimposed automatically if Iran cheats, he asserted, despite acknowledging that the precise measure for snapping back sanctions has not yet been settled.
“We are still developing the exact mechanisms by which sanctions stemming from UN Security Council resolutions would be reimposed,” Lew said.“But we will not allow such a snapback to be subject to a veto by an individual P5 member, including China or Russia.”
And pushing back against Iran’s condition ruling out international inspections at its military sites, Lew said that an agreement must include “robust monitoring and inspection anywhere and everywhere the IAEA has reason to go.”
National Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz said it best on Sunday at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York City when he called US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew a great friend of Israel.UN atomic chief urges Iran to cooperate in probe of past activity
Lew received a mixed reception during his speech at the conference, with some members of the audience mistaking the divergent paths that the US and Israel would like to follow to prevent a nuclear Iran as representing something other than what they do, a divergence of opinion.
They should be educated about the following facts. A veteran of almost four decades of government service, Lew began his work in Washington as an aide to House speaker Tip O’Neill in the 1980s and has often been outspoken in support of Israel. He served as US President Barack Obama’s chief of staff before being confirmed as Treasury secretary in February 2013. He was the first Orthodox Jewish White House chief of staff.
In June 2014, Lew made his first trip to Israel in his current position. Speaking at a meeting of the US-Israel Joint Economic Development Group he said, “After a very difficult winter that hit productivity hard, we expect a better second quarter, and the most recent data we have received reinforce our optimism.”
The UN atomic watchdog chief called Monday on Iran to increase its cooperation with a probe into alleged nuclear weapons activity, a key part in a hoped-for historic deal with world powers.EU warns Iran: No deal without UN probe
The International Atomic Energy Agency “remains ready to accelerate the resolution of all outstanding issues,” agency head Yukiya Amano told a regular meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors in Vienna.
“This can be realized by increased cooperation by Iran and by timely provision of access to all relevant information, documentation, sites material and personnel in Iran,” Amano said, according to the text of his speech.
The IAEA, which conducts regular inspections of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, will have a beefed-up role if negotiators can finalize a framework deal by a June 30 deadline.
The European Union has warned Iran that if it wants a nuclear deal that would remove sanctions, it must cooperate with a stalled U.N. probe of its suspected work on nuclear weapons.Iranian Military Commander: Americans Only Understand the Language of Force
The cautionary EU statement comes ahead of a June 30 target date for such an agreement. It was obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its delivery at a meeting of the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency that opened Monday.
Iran has been stalling an investigation by the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, into its nuclear program. The probe is running in parallel to talks between Iran and six world powers designed to reach a nuclear agreement that would see Iran abandon its nuclear weapons aspirations.
Iran denies any work on -- or interest in -- nuclear arms, and has fended off IAEA demands for cooperation with its investigation. The EU statement said getting to the bottom of the allegations "will be essential" to a nuclear deal.
The Deputy Commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said on Sunday that the decisions made by the U.S. government are not guided by logic, and that the Americans only understand the language of force, Iranian state-run IRNA reported.Bennett to world: Recognize Golan Heights as Israeli territory
Brigadier-General Hossein Salami, made his comments to a group of clerics at a theological school in the Iranian holy city of Qom. The clerics and Salami were assembled in the city for a seminar “to highlight current crimes in Yemen,” according to IRNA, a reference to the Saudi-led ongoing “Operation Decisive Storm.”
Salami alleged that, while the “crimes of the Zionists in Lebanon” received global media attention, there were no reporters in Yemen to reflect the country’s realities.
“The Yemeni people are more oppressed than the Palestinian people and the Saudi attack against Yemen is the most stupid war in the history,” Salami said.
Bayit Yehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett reopened a long-forgotten front in Israel's campaign for international legitimization Sunday, when he called on the world to officially recognize the Golan, captured from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, as Israeli territory.White House backs Israeli self-defense against Gaza rockets
"I want to challenge the entire world," said Bennett at the 15th annual Herzliya Conference of the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at IDC Herzliya. "I want to give the international community an opportunity to demonstrate their ethics. Recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights."
Bennett continued to call for the expansion of Jewish presence in the area to 100,000 in the next five years. Some 20,000 Jews reside in the Golan Heights today.
"In 1981 the Golan Heights law was passed, applying Israeli law in the area," said Bennett. "The world in that time shouted and sharply criticized Israel, and no country has recognized the Golan as part of the State of Israel up to this day, but that didn't stop Begin who understood that the Golan Heights is ours and that we can't give land to our enemies."
The Bayit Yehudi leader then compared the Golan Heights to the West Bank where he said he "understood" the disagreements between Israel and the rest of the world.
The White House said it supports Israel’s right to defend itself after Israel retaliated for strikes on the country from Gaza.Jerusalem Stabbing Attack Foiled
“Clearly the U.S. stands with the people of Israel as they defend their people and their nation against these kind of attacks,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Sunday in Germany, where the G7 summit of the world’s economic powers is being held.
Rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel on Saturday evening — the third attack in two weeks. In response, the Israel Defense Forces struck what it called in a statement “terror infrastructure” in the northern Gaza Strip.
On Sunday morning, before the U.S. statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the international community’s failure to speak out against the renewed rocket attacks from Gaza on Israel.
“I have not heard anyone in the international community condemn this firing; neither has the U.N. said a word,” he said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting. “It will be interesting if this silence continues when we use our full strength to uphold our right to defend ourselves.
“Let it be clear: The spreading of hypocrisy in the world will not tie our hands and prevent us from protecting Israel’s citizens. Thus we have acted; thus we will act.”
Alert policemen foiled a terrorist stabbing attack Sunday in Jerusalem's Old City.26-Year-Old Woman Stabbed in Ramle
The terrorist, an Arab man aged 25, from the Hevron area, had reached the Cotton Gate that leads to the Temple Mount, when officers the Temple Mount police spotted him and decided that he seemed suspicious.
They began to question him about what he was doing there but he managed to get away.
The police team alerted other teams on the radio, and another police group stationed at the Iron Gate spotted the suspect trying to enter the Temple Mount from there. They detained him and alerted Temple Mount Police commander Shlomi Tubul.
The suspect admitted to Tubul that he had decided to carry out a stabbing attack that day and that he had come to the Temple Mount for a last prayer before carrying it out. He also said that he had purchased a knife and had stashed it away near the Damascus Gate.
He led the policemen to the Damascus Gate and pointed to a bag that had been hidden in the bushes, Inside it were a knife and screwdrivers that he intended to use for the stabbing.
Tubul expressed pride in the alertness of police officers who prevented "a murderous stabbing attack."
A 26 year-old woman was stabbed in the back with a screwdriver in Ramle on Sunday afternoon, and has been evacuated to Assaf HaRofeh hospital in Tzrifin in moderate condition.Gazan soccer game depicted as battle between dead soldiers
Israel Police officers called to the scene pursued the suspect and shot him after he attempted to stab police.
The suspect, a 20 year-old Arab man, was seriously wounded from police gunfire in his limbs. He has also been transferred to Assaf HaRofeh for treatment.
"At this stage it is unclear whether the incident was criminal or a terror attack," a police officer at the scene stated to Channel 2 shortly after the attack. "Police saw the incident and told the suspect to stop, and he began to run toward them brandishing weapons [...] the police had no choice but to neutralize him."
Promoters of a Sunday soccer final in the Gaza Strip used images of dead Israeli soldiers whose bodies have not been recovered from Gaza in posters to advertise the event, playing on the fact that the two soldiers were killed in the home neighborhoods of the contesting soccer teams.Gaza Dedicates Football Teams to Kidnapping of Killed IDF Soldiers, No FIFA Officials in Sight
Photographs of IDF soldiers Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul were displayed on banners and posters for the game between Khadamat Rafah and Itehad Shejaiya.
The two soldiers were killed in 2014 during the summer war in Gaza. Their bodies are believed to be held by Hamas.
The poster for the game announces that “the two pillars of the kidnapped soldiers are at the end of the Gaza Strip Cup.” (h/t Bob Knot)
Do you wonder why Israelis are moving politically rightward, and see no prospects for peace on the horizon with their depraved neighbors?Siege Forcing Gazans To Reuse Antisemitic Epithets (satire)
The answer, in part, has to do with the self-inflicted daily decline of humanity of the Gazans.
While terror chief and local PA soccer representative Jibril Rajoub was trying to stick Israel in the dock at FIFA, as usual no one was checking out what’s really going on in the “Palestinian” sports scene.
To help boost attendance at the Sunday game, the Gazans decided to link the game to their only “victories” in the war they initiated last summer.
On Sunday, in the final Gaza Cup soccer game, the two city’s teams, Team Itchiad Shujaiyeh and Team Khadmat Rafiach morbidly represented themselves based on the two dead Israeli soldiers who were kidnapped in their respective cities and whose remains Hamas still hold on to.
The ongoing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of this coastal territory has strained local availability of new anti-Jewish insults, all but compelling Gaza residents to use the same slurs again and again, relief agency workers warned today.Islamic State magazine Dabiq withdrawn from sale by Amazon
United Nations Relief and Works Agency spokesman Chris Gunness appealed for international help to replenish Gaza’s dwindling supply of anti-Semitic epithets, which he said has never been lower. Gunness also called on the international community to pressure Israel to ease restrictions on the import of the slurs into the territory.
“It is shameful that the people of Gaza, especially the Palestinian refugee community, must rely on secondhand, third-hand, and sometimes fourth-hand insults to use when referring to Jews,” he said. “It can be hard for people outside Gaza to appreciate the harshness of these conditions, but this situation should provide some small indication of the daily privations the blockade wreaks on daily life here.”
Until recently, demand for new epithets could be met via numerous smuggling tunnels under the border with Egypt, but the al-Sisi government in Cairo has taken a hard line against the Muslim Brotherhood-allied Hamas, and has embarked on extensive operations to locate and destroy as many of those tunnels as possible in the border town of Rafah. The operations are part of a broader Egyptian effort to combat Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, under which the border crossing to and from the Gaza Strip has been closed almost continuously.
Copies of Islamic State's English-language propaganda magazine, Dabiq, have been pulled from the website of online retailer Amazon.‘Islamic State working to develop chemical weapons’
Four different volumes were available for sale on the site, but in a statement to the BBC, Amazon said the product had now been removed.
The author of the publications was listed as al-Hayat Media Centre, which is IS's Western-focused media arm.
Islamic State is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.
The magazines were being sold in paperback form on Amazon sites in the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. It can be downloaded for free elsewhere.
Amazon's statement to the BBC read: "This product is no longer available for sale." The company did not give any further details.
Dabiq is described on Amazon as "a periodical magazine focusing on issues of tawhid (unity), manhaj (truth-seeking), hijrah (migration), jihad (holy war), and jama'ah (community)".
In a speech late Friday, Bishop said Australia had no doubt that the Syrian regime had used toxic chemicals including sarin and chlorine over the past four years.Raif Badawi and Saudi "Justice"
But she said apart from some crude and small scale endeavours, the conventional wisdom had been that the Islamic State group’s intention to acquire and weaponize chemical agents was largely aspirational.
“The use of chlorine by Daesh, and its recruitment of highly technically trained professionals, including from the West, have revealed far more serious efforts in chemical weapons development,” she said in Perth, using the Arabic acronym for IS.
“Daesh is likely to have amongst its tens of thousands of recruits the technical expertise necessary to further refine precursor materials and build chemical weapons.”
The use of chlorine in homemade bombs has been reported in several parts of Iraq and Syria, with car and roadside bombs easy to rig with chlorine canisters.
You may have seen the face of Raif Badawi, a young Saudi man, or a short article about him, or impressive efforts by The Independent, to bring attention to the cruel punishments inflicted on him by a series of deeply illiberal Saudi courts: 1000 lashes -- "very harshly," the flogging order read -- to be administered 50 at time for 20 weeks, or five months.EU vows to make ‘every effort’ to free Saudi blogger
Raif Badawi is a 31-year old author, blogger and social activist, who gently tried to introduce just the smallest traces of enlightened thinking to the government and the religious elite of Saudi Arabia from his home in Jeddah.
He did this mainly through a website and public forum entitled, "Free Saudi Liberals." An example of what he is now to be flogged to death for goes: "My commitment is... to reject any repression in the name of religion... a goal that we will reach in a peaceful and law-abiding way."
It is for unspeakable thoughts such as this that the Saudi authorities have come down on him with such cruelty as to make themselves look globally like a pack group of insatiable, perverted, sadistic, sexual deviants.
Badawi received the first 50 of the 1,000 lashes he was sentenced to outside a mosque in the Red Sea city of Jeddah on January 9. Subsequent rounds of punishment were postponed on medical grounds.Ben-Dror Yemini: Will Erdogan's slap in the face lead to real change in Turkey?
But the Saudi supreme court then upheld the blogger’s sentence of 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes, his wife said Sunday, despite worldwide outrage over his case.
“Corporal punishment is unacceptable and contrary to human dignity,” a statement for the European Union’s diplomatic service said.
“We reiterate our call to Saudi authorities to suspend any further corporal punishment for Mr Badawi,” the statement added.
The EU spokesperson said Brussels would try to pursue talks with the Saudis on “the need to recognize and respect freedom of speech for all.”
Even without the changes in the constitution, which would have turned the Turkish president into a sultan, he still has too much power; the anti-Semitism he nurtured won't go away soon, but it might start to retreat – like the man who led it.Jew-baiting Turkish bully Erdogan’s party loses parliamentary majority
When your enemies fall, we are told, don't rejoice. But it's a bit hard resisting the urge. This evil man, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been rising and growing stronger for nearly a decade and a half. And now, a turning point is taking place before our eyes. He will not be a sultan.
This is good news mainly for Turkey and the Turks. Because global experience shows that wherever political Islam raises its head in the first act, there is destruction in the third act.
In between, Erdogan succeeded in leading Turkey to economic prosperity. But the damage to democracy grew deeper. So did the corruption. Erdogan managed to expel the military, police and legal elite, which was the spinal cord of the secular-democratic state.
Erdogan basically carried out a counter-revolution. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of modern Turkey, led the country out of Islam. Erdogan led it back into Islam.
I was against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan before it was cool to be against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Turkish Election Reminds Middle Eastern Leaders Why They Hate Democracy (satire)
My first post warning of his anti-democratic, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic tendancies was on January 31, 2009, barely four months after the launch of Legal Insurrection in mid-October 2008.
We continued to follow Erdogan’s progression over the years, as he became more and more authoritarian and Islamist, undermining secular institutions such as the judiciary and military, repressing the press, and cracking down on social media.
Erdogan was an obsessive Israel hater long before the deaths on board the Gaza Flotilla Erdogan’s party helped organize in 2010.
Leaders from throughout the Arab world and Middle East were reminded again this week why it’s a bad idea to let people vote, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party failed to win a majority, much less cross the 99-percent threshold standard in the region, in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
“I’m so glad I’ll never have to deal with this shit,” remarked Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz as he watched television coverage of the Turkish election. “Letting citizens vote without a representative of the regime approving their ballot? What a rookie mistake.”
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who joined King Salman on his yacht to monitor the Turkish election and play drinking games, cited Sunday’s results as proof that Erdogan, despite his ambition, doesn’t have what it takes to become a true dictator.
“The guy shuts down YouTube and jails a few journalists, as if that’s enough to control the media. It’s like, have you even heard of torture?” Sisi asked mockingly. “And did you see the way he broke up the Gezi Park protests? It’s almost as if he was trying not to kill demonstrators.”
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