Palestinian cop shoots, injures 3 IDF soldiers
Three Israeli soldiers were wounded, one seriously, in a shooting attack by a Palestinian police officer at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, according to officials.PMW: PA official defends naming school after mastermind of Munich Olympics massacre
According to the Israel Defense Forces, the gunmen approached the Focus checkpoint, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, and opened fire with an AK-47 assault rifle at the troops stationed there, the army said.
“The force responded [to the attack] with return fire at the terrorist,” the army said.
The assailant was shot and killed by Israeli forces, an IDF spokesperson said.
The gunman was named as Muhammad Turkman, a police officer, by the official Palestinian Authority news outlet al-Hayat al-Jadida.
The soldiers were all approximately 20 years old and sustained “penetrating wounds” — meaning gunshot injuries — to the extremities, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
Following Palestinian Media Watch's report on a new Palestinian Authority school named after Salah Khalaf, one of the planners of the murders of the 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, District Governor of Tulkarem Issam Abu Bakr, who is a PA official, defended the naming of the school after the terrorist.
After the Israeli Prime Minister's Arabic spokesman Ofir Gendelman responded to PMW's report and tweeted about the naming of the "Martyr Salah Khalaf School," the PA official replied with praise for the terrorist and others like him, stating that Palestinians will never forget them:
"The occupation is deluded if it thinks that the Palestinian people can change its culture and forget its leaders, Martyrs Yasser Arafat, Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Salah Khalaf, and a great number of the fighters who sacrificed their blood for the freedom, independence, and establishment of the independent Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem." [Ma'an, independent PA news agency, Oct. 26, 2016]
Fatah also glorified the Munich Olympics massacre this week, honoring Muhammad Daoud Oudeh, another of the planners of the terror attack, boasting that they "executed" the Israeli athletes "in the heart of Germany":
Posted text: "Picture of Muhammad Daoud 'Abu Daoud,' one of the leaders of Fatah's Black September organization and the main planner of the Munich operation that executed the Israeli Olympic delegation in 1972 in the heart of Germany."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 24, 2016, emphasis added]
Mosul, CNN, ISIS and Israel
An American led coalition is fighting Islamic State (ISIS) in its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. This is very similar to Israel's battles against the terror group Hamas. So why does CNN report on Israel so differently? Why the double standard?
Israel Calls on Google, Apple to Remove ‘False, Aggressive’ Gaza Game App Encouraging Violence Against IDF Soldiers
According to the report, Gilad Erdan was complaining about “Liyla and the Shadows of War,” which invites users to put themselves in the shoes of a Palestinian girl in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s war against Hamas in the summer of 2014.Where Human Rights Come Second
The description of the free app, developed by Gaza resident Rasheed Abueideh, is as follows:
When you live in a war zone and death is hunting everyone, things will look different and choices become harder. Face your fate in an unjust war to survive with your family from the shadows of war.
Time is running against you, your family is in danger and there is nowhere to hide or to do but to get them out of home through a hero journey to a safer place.
Shooting and bombing everywhere and it will hunt you unless you make fast decisions as you progress through different events. These events are real and they will make you choose the hard way. Live or die!
Since its release in May, the game — which portrays Israeli soldiers as murderers — has been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Though the Apple App Store makes no mention of Gaza or Operation Protective Edge, Abueideh states on the game’s site that it is “based on actual events; it tells a story of a little girl liv[ing] in Gaza during the war in 2014.”
Give the United Nations a cheer–but not two.India and UNESCO: Historical View vs. Jihad View
On Friday, Russia lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. It tells you something about the moral standards of the UN that this was seen as a huge surprise. Russia, mind you, has been turned into a complete dictatorship by Vladimir Putin. It has invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea. Now it is committing war crimes with its indiscriminate bombing of Aleppo. But it was still a shock that Russia was denied a seat on the UN body charged with adjudicating human rights abuses–an organization that has been fit to issue “scathing assessments” of the state of human rights in the United States.
While mercifully voting Russia off the Human Rights Council, however, General Assembly members, in their infinite wisdom, chose to reappoint China and Saudi Arabia–two countries where civil liberties are as unknown as they are in Russia. But then, the Chinese and Saudi Arabian ambassadors will fit right in next to their compatriots from Burundi, Venezuela, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, Vietnam, and other illiberal states.
The Human Rights Council was created after the previous UN Commission on Human Rights was thoroughly discredited. It became notorious in 2004 for granting a seat to Sudan at the height of its mass killing in Darfur. It was also guilty of flagrant anti-American and anti-Israeli bias. Unfortunately, the UN Human Rights Council hasn’t done much better.
As the Council on Foreign Relations noted in 2009, two years after the council’s creation: “Experts say bloc voting, loose membership standards, and bias against Israel are keeping the two-year-old council from living up to expectations as a responsible watchdog over global human rights norms. It is earning a failing grade from a broad range of groups, including human rights advocates, international law experts, and democracy activists.”
King Solomon built the First Temple here around 1000 BC. The Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar tore it down 400 years later. In the first century BC, King Herod refurbished a Second Temple. It is here that Jesus Christ lashed out against the money-changers. The Roman General Titus exacted revenge against Jewish rebels, sacking and burning the Temple in 70 AD.Yisrael Medad: Jews Do Not ‘Occupy’ Their Own Homeland
UNESCO seeks to erase this history of faiths and replace it with a jihadi narrative that would deny both Christians and Jews their age-old access to the symbols of their faiths. If they are not stopped, the Islamist backers of the UNESCO resolution will be emboldened eventually to back Islamist elements in India to question its Hindu historical and religious sites.
After so many recent votes at UNESCO erasing Judeo-Christian history in favour of Islamist misrepresentation one thing is clear: the sooner democracies leave the UN, the better. Consider the UN's oil-for-food scandal of 2004-2005 and its growing sex-for-food scandal that is still ongoing. Now, with the UN's wholesale erasure of Biblical history, the only intelligent response is to head for the exits. The UN seems nothing more than a bloated, corrupt jobs program of champagne for diplomats. It does far more harm than good. Nothing worth having can come from such a degraded place.
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote about the Jews. In 109 CE.‘Our answer to a UNSC resolution must be annexation of settlements”
About Jerusalem.
About the Jewish Temple, that existed.
About Judaea.
He was not Jewish. He wasn’t “biblical.”
He was an external source of testimony to the truth of what went on in a phantom geographical unit supposedly known as something termed “Palestine” which actually was the Jewish national home.
Examples:
A.D. 70
Early in this year Titus Caesar, who had been selected by his father to complete the subjugation of Judaea, and who had gained distinction as a soldier while both were still subjects, began to rise in power and reputation…He found in Judaea three legions, the 5th, the 10th, and the 15th, all old troops of Vespasian’s. To these he added the 12th from Syria, and some men belonging to the 18th and 3rd, whom he had withdrawn from Alexandria. This force was accompanied by twenty cohorts of allied troops and eight squadrons of cavalry, by the two kings Agrippa and Sohemus, by the auxiliary forces of king Antiochus, by a strong contingent of Arabs, who hated the Jews with the usual hatred of neighbours [note: “neighbors’. not residents of the same country -YM], and, lastly, by many persons brought from the capital and from Italy by private hopes of securing the yet unengaged affections of the Prince. With this force Titus entered the enemy’s territory, preserving strict order on his march, reconnoitring every spot, and always ready to give battle. At last he encamped near Jerusalem.
Israel’s answer to any United Nations Security Council resolution on settlements must be the annexation of Area C of the West Bank, Education Minister Naftali Bennett said at a political meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.UN investigator to Israel: Give PA complete control of Area C
“The UNSC resolution should be a trigger to put this plan into action,” he said at a conference of the National Union party.
But many settlers and right-wing politicians are not waiting for the UNSC to take action. To mark the opening day of the Knesset on Monday, they plan to hold a demonstration to demand that the legislature pass a bill to annex the third-largest West Bank settlement, Ma’aleh Adumim, which is home to more than 37,000 people.
Already on Sunday morning they began a campaign, in which they plastered buildings with large photographs of former prime ministers, including Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon, who spoke of the city’s eternal place in Israel and its importance in protecting Jerusalem.
Canadian UNHRC investigator Michael Lynk says Israel must give full control over Judea and Samaria to the Palestinian Authority.National Post Editorial: The Anti-Israel Virus that Pervades the UN
"Allow the Palestinian Authority to assume security control in Area B and civil and security control in Area C so as to end the geographic fragmentation of the occupied Palestinian territory," Lynk said.
Area A is under full PA control, and Jews are forbidden to enter it. If a Jew were to enter Area A, chances are high he would not come out alive, and would suffer abuse and brutality before he was finally killed. Area B is under PA civil control, but the IDF controls security of the area, while Area C is under full Israeli civil and security control.
All Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria are located in Area C, along with several Arab villages.
Lynk also blamed the "occupation" on Israel's "settlement enterprise."
"Without Israel's settlement project, there would be no rationale for the continuing occupation," he said. "Israel's discriminatory planning regime, particularly in East Jerusalem and Area C, minimizes or excludes Palestinian participation."
He also said Israel acted as "a colonial-like regime in the occupied Palestinian territory, with two separate and unequal systems as regards laws, roads, justice regime, access to water, social services, freedom of mobility, political and civil rights, security and living standards."
Ironically, Lynk claimed Israel creates a "coercive environment that exacerbates the risk of individual and mass forced transfer" by not permitting Arabs to build and demolishing their homes. He also said forced transfer is a war crime.
The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has declared its determination to “re-engage” with the UN after a decade in which the Conservative government kept its distance. Trudeau insisted this would not involve dilution of Canada’s firm support for Israel. “Israel is a friend, Israel is an ally, Israel is a country that has values and an approach on many, many issues that are very much aligned with Canadian values,” he said, adding, “at the same time … we won’t hesitate from talking about unhelpful steps like the continued illegal settlements. We will point that out. We will continue to engage in a forthright and open way because that’s what people expect of Canada.”UNESCO's Insult
Engaging in a “forthright and open” discussion of “unhelpful steps” would certainly include condemnation of a resolution as blatantly one-sided and biased as the one approved by UNESCO. Trudeau has recognized that “the double standard that’s often applied to Israel” does not help bring peace to the region, yet that very same double standard is what’s on display here.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion responded on Twitter, by saying that “Canada strongly rejects @UNESCO World Heritage Cmte for res. singling out #Israel & denying Judaism’s link to Old City + Western Wall. Old City important to 3 faiths – to deny one undermines integrity of site for all and the purpose of UNESCO.”
Is that the best Canada can do? If so, it undermines Trudeau’s claim that Israel will retain Canada’s strong support. It will take more than a pair of tweets to root out the anti-Israel virus that pervades the UN. Canada should make clear its determination to take concrete steps to destroy the hatred that lies behind it. One hundred and 40 characters is simply not enough.
Since the U.S. in 2011 withdrew its funding of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) after it granted the Palestinian Authority full membership, little has changed within the so-called cultural arm of Turtle Bay. Witness its latest resolution:PLO Official says he is concerned Israel will prevent international peace conference
In further appeasement to Palestinians, UNESCO dismissed the importance of the Old City of Jerusalem to Israel, which it refers to as the “occupying power,” The Daily Signal reports. And while UNESCO notes the significance of Jerusalem's holy sites to Christianity, Islam and Judaism, it specifies only Muslim holy sites, according to The Daily Signal.
“To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Subsequently Israel has suspended its cooperation with UNESCO.
Rightfully so, the U.S. has suspended its UNESCO funding — U.S. laws prohibit funding any U.N. agency that grants membership to the Palestine Liberation Organization — but America remains an agency member. The Obama administration has tried repeatedly to change the law to allow U.S. funding. In effect, that would reward Palestinian efforts to avoid a negotiated peace or even recognizing Israel.
UNESCO has made clear its anti-Israel bias. The U.S. should make equally clear its objection by fully withdrawing from UNESCO.
Ahmad Majdalani, top adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said on Sunday that the Palestinian Authority leadership still hopes to participate in an international peace conference in Paris before the end of the year but fears that Israel will prevent it from taking place.Report: Israel ‘Panicked’ by Quality, Quantity of Russian Presence, Weaponry in Region, Which Dramatically Hamper IDF Operations
“I cannot say with certainty that [the conference] will take place, because the Israeli government is placing all the possible obstacles and impasses in front of it,” Majdalani, who also serves as a PLO executive committee member, told The Jerusalem Post, adding, “I don’t think Israel will participate and it is also pressuring its allies not to participate.”
The PA leadership has vigorously lobbied for an international peace conference that includes multiple international parties, since the conclusion of the Iran nuclear deal in June 2015.
Majdalani added that if the conference does not take place, the French government could recognize the state of Palestine.
“The French government is responsible for making its own decision, but it has already said that the issue of recognizing the state of Palestine is on the table,” he said.
The IDF is in a panic about the Russian military’s presence and deployment of sophisticated weaponry in the region, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Sunday.Coalition members to boycott speeches by Joint List’s MKs
According to the report, though the IDF is not admitting this openly, high-ranking officers have said behind closed doors that the “surprising” quality and quantity of Russian systems in the area is dramatically hampering the way the Israeli Air Force and Navy are able to operate.
Both these branches of the IDF, according to Channel 2, were used to flying and sailing wherever and whenever they saw fit, with no real threat to their movement. But since Russia began to intervene in the Syrian civil war last year in an attempt to protect the regime of President Bashar Assad, things have changed.
One particular worry, the report said, was the impending arrival of the Admiral Kuznetsov, Russia’s flagship aircraft carrier, which is on its way from the North Sea to the Middle East, and is expected to anchor off the Mediterranean coast of Syria in the coming weeks.
The Kuznetsov force is made up of some 1,900 sailors, more than 50 advanced fighter jets, the latest aeronautical defense systems, radars and among the world’s best electronic warfare capabilities. The force has anti-submarine capabilities and boats with a wide range of missiles for aerial photography and intelligence-gathering.
Knesset members from the Likud-led governing coalition are planning to stage a walkout during all plenary speeches by Joint List lawmakers, over the predominantly Arab faction’s decision not to send any representatives to the funeral of former president Shimon Peres.Minor Involved in Murder That Sparked Palestinian Terror Surge Sentenced to 9 Years in Prison
MKs from the six parties in the coalition will leave the Knesset chamber when members of the Joint List speak from the podium during all sessions this week, coalition chair David Bitan told reporters Monday.
In response, the Joint List Knesset members walked out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech inaugurating the Knesset’s winter session on Monday.
Knesset members were returning from a three-month summer recess during which Peres, the longest-serving MK in Israel’s history as well as a former prime minister, died.
The minor involved in the murder of Alexander Levlovich, 64, whose death came to signify the beginning of last year’s wave of terror across Israel, received a prison sentence of nine years Monday morning as part of a plea bargain in which he confessed to all charges leveled against him and agreed to testify against four other accomplices. The Levlovich family will also be compensated with NIS 10,000 as part of the plea bargain.PreOccupiedTerritory: SJP Demands Local Y Stop Offering Krav Maga Course (satire)
The sentence comes just over a year after Levlovich was fatally wounded on the eve of Rosh Hashana in 2015—the Jewish new year— when he lost control of his car after it was pelted with stones by Palestinians. He was returning home after a festive meal.
Three suspects indicted for manslaughter
The indictment against the terrorists was submitted a year ago, while the plea bargain on behalf of the minor was submitted Monday morning. As part of the latter, the charges were reduced from manslaughter to accessory to manslaughter.
A chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine is calling for a local community center to cancel its plans to give instruction in an Israeli-developed martial art, with the claim that offering the course legitimizes Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.Abbas rival Dahlan rules out Palestinian presidency run
SJP activists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign held a protest this morning outside the city’s Young Men’s/Women’s Christian Association, (YM/YWCA) in response to a notice on the Y’s website and Facebook Page that registration for a Krav Maga course had commenced, with instruction to begin in two weeks. Eighteen demonstrators attempted to block the entrance to the facility, and engaged in vociferous exchanges with staff and visitors. The protest disbanded before police arrived to break it up.
Krav Maga, or “contact combat,” originated with a Czechoslovakian Jew who adapted boxing, wrestling, and martial arts principles in the 1930’s to help defend Jews in Bratislava from antisemitic thugs. He further adapted the form to the needs of combat soldiers in the nascent IDF in the 1940’s, and he and his associates continued to refine and teach it through the ensuing decades. Krav Maga eventually became a feature of hand-to-hand combat training in police and military forces around the world, and is offered to private citizens seeking to augment their personal safety. Because of its Israeli pedigree, opponents of Israel’s existence and policies who study at the Urbana-Champaign campus have seized on it as a target of their pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“Stop enabling war crimes!” read one of the posters at the demonstration. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” they chanted.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s top internecine rival, Mohammad Dahlan, often mentioned as a possible candidate to succeed the 81-year-old leader, said Sunday he will not run for president in future Palestinian elections.West Bank Arms Itself in Run-Up to Succession War for Post-Abbas Era
In a long interview with the Palestinian news agency Ma’an, Dahlan said he supports Marwan Barghouti to become president, out of “personal belief” and because according to opinion polls, Barghouti — who is currently in Israeli jail for multiple murder convictions and for anti-Israel terror activity — is the preferred choice of the Palestinian people.
The former Gaza strongman, for years estranged from the Palestinian leader’s power base, said he is willing to reconcile with Abbas, but asked for “the magic recipe” that could make it happen.
Anyone who thinks Fatah isn’t being run “like a private company,” he said, “is either disingenuous or deluded.”
On a recent Friday, dozens of security men dressed in green-olive uniforms were deployed along the main street near Balata refugee camp, in the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and exchanged fire with gunmen who were shooting from the camp's alleyways.Lebanon's new pro-Hezbollah president vows to retake 'Israeli-occupied' land
Echoes of the gunfire were heard across the camp of 17,000 refugees and the city's nearby neighborhoods, frightening the residents, and their children in particular.
Over the next few days, similar clashes erupted in Jenin refugee camp, as well as the in al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah.
“They are Fatah gunmen,” said Jihad Harb of the militants who have been opening fire on Palestinian security forces. Harb is a commentator who lives in Balata, the biggest and most impoverished refugee camp in West Bank.
He said he sees three kinds of armed men in Balata: gunmen from Fatah, who are funded by and loyal to various leaders in the movement; gunmen from criminal gangs involved mostly in the drugs and arms trades; and gunmen from the Palestinian Authority, funded by security apparatus and local governors.
The situation in Balata refugee camp is being replicated in refugee camps, cities and villages across the West Bank.
The Lebanese parliament elected former army commander and Hezbollah ally Michel Aoun as president on Monday, ending a 29-month presidential vacuum as part of a political deal that is expected to make Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri prime minister.Saudi Arabia: ISIS plot to bomb 60,000 sports fans foiled
Aoun, who is in his 80s, secured the presidency by winning the support of at least 65 MPs, or an absolute majority of the members of the 128-seat chamber, according to a Reuters tally of votes read out in a televised broadcast from parliament.
The Lebanese presidency is reserved for a Maronite Christian in the country's sectarian power-sharing system.
In 2006, Aoun signed a formal agreement of alliance between his Free Patriotic Movement and Hezbollah, and has consistently backed the Shi’ite group ever since.
In remarks made after the election aimed at Hezbollah backers, Aoun vowed to "release what is left of our lands from the Israeli occupation," referring to contested territories along the border with the Jewish state.
Saudi Arabian officials reported on Sunday that it had successfully thwarted an ISIS-linked terrorist plot to attack up to 60,000 sports fans at a soccer stadium in the port city of Jeddah, according to Iranian state news agency PressTV.Jewish MP denies telling Israel media Iran deterred from war
The Saudi Interior Ministry said that four suspected Islamic State operatives were arrested one day before executing a plan to bomb the King Abdullah Sports City Stadium, also known as the “Luminous Jewel,” during a UAE-Saudi FIFA World Cup qualifying match on October 11.
“Daesh wants any operation that could result in the highest number of victims,” said an Interior Ministry spokesperson, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
According to Press TV citing Saudi security officials, a vehicle containing an estimated 400 kilograms (882 pounds) of explosive material was discovered near the stadium parking lot.
“Another equally horrifying scenario would have occurred had the device exploded whilst the spectators were exiting the stadium,” the spokesman added.
Iran’s sole Jewish parliamentarian has denied speaking to Israeli media, hours after an Israeli radio station played a tape of him telling the broadcaster that Tehran was not seeking war with Israel, since doing so would amount to “suicide” by the Islamic Republic.
In a recent interview, Siamak Moreh Sedgh told Israel Radio’s Paris correspondent Gideon Kotz that he believed Iranian leadership to be “healthy and wise enough to avoid a war with Israel,” and asserted that war between the two countries was not “probable” at the moment.
“Iran does not want to start a war against Israel, because they know that everyone who starts a war in the Middle East is doing suicide,” Moreh Sedgh can be heard saying in a recording of the English-language interview that aired on Sunday.
However, by Sunday evening Iran’s semi-official Fars News reported that Moreh Sedgh denied speaking to “Zionist media” and rejected “claims” made in a Times of Israel report on the interview.
“I have had no interview with the Israeli Radio and deny both the report and the interview,” the Jewish lawmaker told Fars. “I do not answer phone calls and questions from the Zionist media because they are not the creatures that we want to answer.”