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Monday, October 04, 2021

10/04 Links Pt1: Iran tried to kill Israeli businessman in Cyprus; What’s behind the obsession with U.S. Aid to Israel?; Before meeting Meretz ministers, Abbas called parents of Palestinian attackers

From Ian:

Iran tried to kill Israeli businessman in Cyprus - Bennett spokesman
Iran was behind the attempt on Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi’s life last week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s spokesman Matan Sidi said Monday.

“Contrary to some of what was published [Sunday] night in connection to the incident in Cyprus, I ask to clarify, in the name of security officials, that this was a terrorist attack by Iran against Israeli businesspeople living in Cyprus,” he said.

“This was not a criminal incident, and the businessman Teddy Sagi was not the target of the attack,” Sidi said.

The Iranian Embassy in Nicosia said the claims were baseless.

Sidi’s comments came after conflicting reports about whether the assassination attempt was a terrorist attack or the result of a business dispute between Sagi and Russian businessmen.

Sagi indicated that Iran was responsible for the attack.

The attempted murder was “another act of aggression by Iran aimed at Israeli targets,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Monday.

“Iran continues to be a global and regional threat and a challenge to Israel, and we will continue to act to defend our citizens and the security of the State of Israel everywhere and against every threat,” he said at a Blue and White faction meeting.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said: “Israeli businesspeople will continue to travel the world. They need to be careful and listen to instructions, but Israel can and knows how to protect its citizens.”

The Cyprus police arrested a 38-year-old Azeri-Russian man on September 27 for plotting to murder several Israeli businessmen living in Nicosia.
Biden Ignores Palestinian Support For Terrorists
The Biden administration's talk about achieving a "two-state solution" does not seem to impress many Palestinians. They believe, according to a recent public opinion poll, that this solution is no longer practical or feasible. These Palestinians, the poll found, prefer to wage an "armed struggle" against Israel.

With such views, it is safe to assume that the Palestinian state the Biden administration is hoping to establish alongside Israel will be controlled by Iranian-backed terrorists such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.....

The findings of that poll confirmed that a majority of Palestinians continue to see Hamas and other terrorists as their heroes and role models. The results also confirmed that a majority of Palestinians continue to believe that violence and terrorism are the best and only way to deal with Israel.

Their demand reveals that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians have no confidence in Abbas and are likely to reject any peace agreement he signs with Israel. First, anyone who signs a peace deal with Israel will be regarded as a traitor and rewarded the same ill-starred way as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who signed a peace treaty with Israel and was assassinated. It is a consequence with which Abbas is acquainted.

Those who continue to talk about a "two-state solution" are not only deluding themselves, but also endangering the security of the Middle East by seeking to establish yet another terrorist state, especially so soon after the debacle of the U.S. surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Here is some well-intentioned advice for Biden and other world leaders: before you link the idea of peace and security to the idea of a "two-state solution," try believing the Palestinians when they say that the prefer "armed struggle." Try believing the Palestinians when they say that they would vote for any leader who supports violence and terrorism against Israel. Try believing, when the Palestinians say they reject peace with Israel, that they actually mean what they say.


Before meeting Meretz ministers, Abbas called parents of Palestinian attackers
Ahead of a meeting with ministers from the Meretz party on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with the parents of two Palestinians who were killed recently as they carried out attacks on Israeli security forces.

Official Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that Abbas called the father of Israa Khuzaimia, who police said was shot dead last Thursday as she tried to stab officers in the Old City of Jerusalem. Abbas offered his condolences over the death of Khuzaimia, 30, a mother of four.

Abbas also called the father of Alaa Nassar Shafik Zayoud, a member of the Palestinian Islamist Jihaad terror group, who was also killed Thursday after he opened fire on IDF and Border Police officers in Kfar Bourkin near Jenin, in the West Bank.

Later Sunday evening, Abbas met for talks with Israel’s Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and Regional Cooperation Minister Issawi Frej from the left-wing Meretz party in the West Bank city of Ramallah, in the second such high-profile meeting in recent months.

In statements after the meeting, the ministers and Abbas said they were working to keep alive the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which envisions a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem alongside Israel.


What’s behind the obsession with U.S. Aid to Israel?
These woke educators, like the students and faculty who express similar sentiments concerning aid to Israel, apparently have no issue with the huge sums of U.S. aid given in 2020, for example, to such countries as Afghanistan, Egypt ($1.445 billion), Iraq ($1.017 billion), Jordan ($2.388 billion), and Ukraine (more than $1.5 billion in security aid between 2014 and 2019), countries which are not reliable strategic and diplomatic partners and not useful in sharing technology and intelligence in the way that Israel is and does.

The US Department of Defense, in the case of Afghanistan, recently reported that our country’s total military expenditure from October 2001 until last December was $825 billion, not even including another $130 billion spent on reconstruction projects, for a total of just under a trillion dollars for a country that, after all of that blood and treasure, has almost immediately after our withdrawal reverted to a medieval theocratic state under Taliban rule.

And U.S. aid is not limited to the Middle East, obviously. The International Institute for Strategic Studies issued a report indicating that the United States spends some $36 billion annually on maintaining a military presence and capability in Europe. More than 170,000 active-duty personnel are currently deployed to overseas locations in some 140 countries, a presence that the Department of Defense Comptroller’s Office has estimated to cost American taxpayers over $24 billion in 2020.

Rarely mentioned, too, is the fact that, since the end of World War II, U.S. forces have been in Japan, and in South Korea since the outbreak of the Korean War. The price tag for that military presence is in the billions.

The recent effort by the Congressional “Squad” to kill funding for Iron Dome, the defensive technology which enables Israel to neutralize incoming rockets launched by Hamas from Gaza, indicated very clearly that for Israel-haters—in politics, academia, unions, NGOs, and other elite institutions and organizations—it is not enough to merely strip Israel’s ability to defend itself with offensive weapon and military technology.

They even revealed that their pathological loathing of the Jewish state is so fundamental to their ideology that they attempted, unsuccessfully, as it happened, to strip Israel of a defensive weapon that saves Jewish and Arab lives, alike. So, clearly, the issue is not the dollar amount the U.S. gives in aid to Israel—as it does in similar amounts to many other countries around the world.

Those who obsess about the very existence of Israel, and who focus exclusively on it and what it receives from American taxpayers while they are indifferent or ignorant of aid given to other, less deserving nations, reveal that their anti-Semitic desire to decrease or eliminate funding to the Jewish state can only be motivated by one insidious impulse: a desire to weaken and cause harm to Israel, the Jew of nations.
Honest Reporting: 'The Squad' & Congress' Iron Dome Fiasco Is Bigger Than You Think. Here's Why.
An earth-shattering event happened in Congress: House Democrats removed $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system from an emergency funding bill and later put it back in a different bill.

This is not a “right-left” issue and it’s not even an Israeli-Palestinian issue. It’s much deeper and more important than that.

The Iron Dome is an amazing technology that almost miraculously knocks attack rockets right out of the sky. It saves lives on both sides and prevents deadly military escalations. But it’s very expensive to operate, with each interceptor missile costing about $50,000.

Last May, Iranian backed US designated terror groups in Gaza launched nearly 4,500 rockets at Israel. Hundreds of those terror rockets fell short in Gaza, killing Palestinian people, in the same way that ISIS and Bashar Assad often kill Syrians. Israelis and Palestinians are both victims of terror groups. Iron Dome is everyone’s best protection.

The US presented a bill that included funds to help Israel replenish its supplies for this system, and to help keep everyone safe. A few extreme lawmakers altered the bill to remove this important aid, and they succeeded. But then almost every Democrat and Republican in Congress voted to reinstate the funding in a separate bill: the vote was 420-9.

So why would 9 members of Congress vote against a defensive system that weakens terrorists and protects ordinary civilians?

Because for those extreme politicians it’s not about saving lives, it’s about narrative.


The Aftermath of the Iron Dome Vote
The recent House vote on $1 billion in supplemental Iron Dome funding - 420 in favor, 9 opposed, 2 present - is even more one-sided than it looks. The vote was commonly portrayed as part of the Obama-era MOU that provides $3.8 billion in annual security assistance to Israel, but the Iron Dome request was a supplemental funding request coming on top of the $500 million for missile defense that is part of the annual $3.8 billion. Despite all the attention that cutting, conditioning, or restricting security assistance to Israel has received, only eight House Democrats voted against providing even more security assistance to Israel.

It is difficult to look at this vote and still credibly talk about the Democratic Party having been taken over by anti-Zionism. The vote also reveals the overreach in trying to portray Israel in the same light as the globe's worst actors and serial human rights violators; it is not a portrayal that aligns with policymakers or with the sentiments of most Americans.

The lesson is that there is and will remain wall-to-wall support for Israeli security when it is unambiguously clear that security is indeed the issue. Those who want to downgrade the U.S.-Israel relationship will get nowhere with spurious charges and legislative overreach.
Pompeo calls reopening Jerusalem consulate ‘illegal’
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Biden administration’s intended reopening of the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem is “illegal,” telling co-hosts Richard Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein in an upcoming episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast” that President Joe Biden lacks the legal authority to reopen the consulate given the existing embassy’s presence.

“I think it’s illegal,” Pompeo said. “We don’t have consulates in the same city we have embassies anywhere in the world.”

The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem was closed in 2018 following the decision by the Trump administration to relocate the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. At the time, Pompeo announced that Palestinian relations would be handled by a special affairs unit within the embassy. In May, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced the State Department would reopen a Jerusalem consulate.

Asked if a future Republican president would reverse such an opening, Pompeo, considered a possible 2024 presidential candidate, called the issue non-partisan. “I think every president needs to commit to it.”

“It’s unnecessary and counterproductive, and I think, frankly, sends the wrong signal to the Palestinians as well,” the former secretary of state continued. “It signals to them [that it’s] back to business as usual, back to the kleptocracy, and ‘pay to slay’ and all the horrors that the Palestinian leadership and the West Bank [has] imposed on its own people as well,” he said, invoking a term used for the Palestinian Authority’s payments to families of individuals who commit terror attacks against Israelis.
A Silent Arab Spring Is Sprouting in Israel
I was thinking about Rep. Rashida Tlaib's accusation last week that Israel is an "apartheid" state while at a cafe in Mamilla mall in Jerusalem. Next to my table sat a young Muslim woman wearing hip jeans and an elegant head scarf, ordering lunch and working on her laptop. You can read a thousand tweets and media commentaries, but when you actually walk the streets, "apartheid" is probably the last word you'd want to use to describe this place.

As Arab-Israeli Yoseph Haddad recently asked: Is Samer Haj Yehia, the chairman of Israel's largest bank, Leumi, living under an apartheid regime? And what of Dr. Masad Barhoum, director general of Galilee Medical Center, or George Karra, the Supreme Court justice? And what of the Arab doctors, lawyers and police officers, the Arab members of Knesset and the ministers? Are they living in an apartheid state too?

The prosaic reality of Arab-Jewish relations is driven by answers to simple questions, such as: Am I allowed to have a coffee here, to get a university degree there, to hang out at this park, to get a job in this hotel, to vote for this candidate, to take my kids to this hospital? The answers are the sharpest rebuttal to the apartheid charge.

Many Arab citizens are still bitter about Israel's very existence. But for the first time in Israel's history, an Arab-Muslim party is part of its governing coalition. This is a hopeful sign that pragmatic needs in the Arab sector are superseding the ideological toxins that feed passions but leave stomachs empty. That would be in keeping with the new spirit of the Abraham Accords, which are reshaping Israel-Arab relations around mutual interests.
Jewish and Muslim organizations give joint statement at UNHRC
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) and the Muslim World League issued a joint statement promoting the protection of human rights for all on Monday at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The declaration marks the first coordinated statement given by both Jewish and Muslim groups at a UN body.

"I am honored to make this statement on behalf of the Muslim World League and the World Jewish Congress, organizations that represent a wide majority of the Muslim and Jewish faiths," said WJC UN representative, Leon Saltiel in his address to the council.

"We come together in the spirit of peace, tolerance and respect for human rights. We believe that all human beings are given the same freedoms and rights by the Creator, are destined to live in liberty, prosperity and equality, free from conflict, oppression or harassment. We share a commitment to promote and protect human rights for all.

"Our two organizations have already commenced multifaceted cooperation, such as a joint Ramadan celebration we co-organized in April 2021 that featured community and religious leaders from both faiths from all around the world. We intend to continue, strengthen and expand these links with further joint activities, visits and exchanges.

"We also reiterate the importance of safeguarding freedom of religion or belief around the globe as well as the right of every individual to practice one's religion without restrictions of any kind, as a basic human right.
UAE-Israel ties bear fruit one year since Abraham Accords
Interview with Dharur Bel Hol El-Fasi, member of Parliament of the Federal National Council fo the UAE


Mossad recently held operation to locate Ron Arad - Bennett
The Mossad conducted a special operation in the Middle East in an effort to find the remains and information about Israeli Air Force (IAF) Navigator Ron Arad, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed in a speech to the Knesset plenum on Monday.

Despite the dramatic announcement, Bennett did not give any further information about the fate of the captive, who has long been presumed dead. Nor was his office forthcoming with context or explanations of the timing of the prime minister’s statement revealing the secret operation. Bennett told the Knesset he authorized the operation for the airman who has been missing since 1986 out of the spirit of the Jewish concept of redeeming captives and that he had informed Arad's family.

"Last month, Mossad agents - men and women - embarked on a complex, wide-ranging and daring operation to find the remains and whereabouts of Ron Arad," said the Prime Minister.

"That is all that can be said at the moment," Bennett said. He also thanked the IDF and Shin Bet for the "outstanding collaboration" in the special operation.

Bennett added that “redeeming prisoners is a Jewish value that became one of the holiest values of the State of Israel…It defines us and makes us unique. We will continue to act to bring all our sons home from anywhere.”

The prime minister also said that he informed Arad’s family of the operation. His relatives told Channel 12 that they “continue to hope that maybe one day we will know what was Ron’s fate.”

Arad was captured on October 16, 1986, after a bomb his plane dropped caused damage to the aircraft, forcing him and the plane’s pilot to bail out. The pilot was saved, but Arad was taken by Lebanese Shiite group Amal, and later transferred to Iranian forces.

Arad sent three letters from captivity, and two photos of him were released. Israel lost track of Arad in 1988.

There have been several Israeli operations to get more information about Arad’s fate, including the capture of Hezbollah members and offering a $10 million reward. A joint report by Mossad and the IDF determined in 2016 that Arad likely died in 1988.
They tried to burn Jews alive. Again.
I wouldn’t have imagined that 76 years after the Holocaust ended, I would be writing these words but here we go again. Last week, anti-Semites tried to burn Jews alive. And the world looked away.

Several hundred Jewish worshippers were on their way to hold peaceful, legal religious services on the holiday of Sukkot, at the tomb of the biblical patriarch Joseph, located in the city of Shechem. The city, better known by its Roman name, Nablus, had a sizeable Jewish community until Palestinian Arab rioters drove them out in the 1930s. Today’s generation of Palestinian Arab terrorists ambushed last week’s worshippers. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the city, did nothing to intervene.

The attackers hurled “homemade explosives”—that is, Molotov cocktails—at the buses of worshippers, hoping to set them on fire. If not for the heroic actions of Israeli soldiers, the buses would have turned into rolling infernos, and hundreds of Jews would have been burned alive. That was the terrorists’ intention. Yet the world looked away.

I checked the major newspapers and news websites in the days following the attack. Aside from the Israeli and Jewish media, I could not find a word about it. World leaders were not interested. “Human rights” organizations were busy elsewhere. The major news media outlets shut their eyes. They all looked away.

The moral outrage of an attempted massacre of Jews should have been sufficient to rouse the international community. But let’s put the moral considerations aside for a moment and just consider the legal implications.

The protection of Jewish worshippers is enshrined in the Oslo II agreement. The Palestinian Authority signed it. The PA has an obligation to abide by its terms. Israel fulfilled its side of the Oslo accords, by withdrawing from 40% of Judea-Samaria and allowing the PA to set up a de-facto state in that area. In return, the PA is required to fulfill its side of the deal, including the provisions applying to protection of Jewish worshippers.

You can find the relevant obligation in Annex I, Article V, Section 2, paragraph (b), under “Jewish Holy Sites.” It concerns Jewish religious sites that are located in PA-governed territory. And Appendix IV specifically lists “Joseph's Tomb (Nablus)” as one of those sites.

The agreement states that “the protection of these sites, as well as of persons visiting them, will be under the responsibility of the Palestinian Police.” The PA must “ensure free, unimpeded and secure access” to the site, and “ensure the peaceful use of such site, to prevent any potential instances of disorder and to respond to any incident.”

Since the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world, it would not have had any trouble preventing would-be murderers from attacking Jews at the site. That is, if the PA wanted to prevent them. But it doesn’t. In fact, the PA, through its anti-Jewish incitement in its mosques, media and schools, encourages Palestinian Arabs to aspire to kill Jews. Hence last week’s attempt to burn Jews alive.
Former MK Hanin Zoabi, 12 others convicted in Balad party fraud scandal
Former Knesset member Hanin Zoabi and 12 others tied to the Balad party, including senior officials, were convicted Monday at the Nazareth Magistrate’s Court on forgery and fraud offenses in the party’s financial irregularities scandal.

As part of the plea deal, the officials confessed to the crimes and are expected to receive sentences ranging from community service to suspended prison sentences and fines ranging from NIS 25,000 to 75,000 ($7,700-$23,200).

The convictions pertain to financial irregularities in the party, a hardline Palestinian nationalist faction that makes up part of the Joint List alliance.

According to the indictment, Zoabi and the others were involved in the forgery of documents that were submitted to the state comptroller between 2013 and 2016. They then systematically deceived the ombudsman by misrepresenting the source of millions of shekels the party had received.

An investigation was opened in 2016 by the Lahav 433 fraud unit of the police after a state comptroller report found issues with the party’s donations and expenses.

In addition to Zoabi, 35 other people were questioned in the case.


Palestinian terrorist should be given death sentence, father says
The father of Yehuda Guetta, who was murdered by convicted Palestinian terrorist Muntasir Shalabi in an attack in May, requested the Judea Military Court judges to punish Shalabi with the death penalty during a sentencing hearing on Monday.

"That is the only way to prevent the next murder," Elisha Guetta said, adding the death penalty "is just what he deserves."

Guetta also demanded Shalabi's family, whose West Bank home was razed by the IDF in July, be deported from Israel.

"We demand to deport his family, maybe to Syria," Guetta said. "We can not allow his children to travel to Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) and take photos to upload on Facebook," he added.

In August, Muntasir Shalabi was convicted for the murder of 19-year-old Guetta in a drive-by shooting on May 2 at Tapuah junction. Shalabi, 44, was also convicted of multiple attempted murder counts after he wounded two other 19-year-olds during the attack.

Muntasir Shalabi, who holds dual Palestinian-American citizenship, said during the hearing Al-Aqsa was his motive for the drive-by shooting.


For peace, Abbas’s long-standing rejectionism has to be defeated
The opposite can and should be enacted. Israel should now be thinking about how it can break Abbas’s will to continue his rejectionism: diplomatic, legal, economic and violent. One just has to listen to Abbas refer to the creation of Israel as a Nakba, a catastrophe, and look at the maps on the wall behind him as he recorded his UN speech which do not feature Israel, to hear and witness that his ultimate goal is to turn back time and reverse the reality on the ground.

This should be shocking to every single Israeli, but many see this as harmless or irrelevant background noise or banter. However, on the Palestinian street, since the beginning of the year there has been a constant talk of a “Third Intifada.” Israel witnessed how quickly the fuse was lit to take advantage of the legal dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

Israel is faced with a choice: Look back after there is further bloodshed, enacted or goaded on by a leader who has moved his people further away from peace, or instead the Jewish state can act now. It needs to raise and not lower the pressure on Abbas. He is teetering and the UN speech demonstrated this more than anything else. He is irrelevant to the vast majority of Palestinians, many of whom dream of a better tomorrow, so he should be made irrelevant for Israel.

By taking a strong hand against Abbas and his stalwarts in the Palestinian Authority, Israel can ensure that rejectionism comes to an end and the cycle of seemingly never-ending conflict and violence is ended. This will have obvious benefits for Israel, but it will be even better for the Palestinians. It will bring about the badly needed peace and prosperity, and allow them to build up their polity without the distraction of the conflict and for the betterment of the people.

This would be a win-win situation for both peoples, but first Abbas and his impermeable form of rejectionism must be defeated.


PMW: Islamic Jihad official expects terrorist prisoners will be exchanged for Israeli hostages held in Gaza like Shalit
Shortly before the recent 10-year anniversary of the exchange of 1,027 terrorist prisoners in return for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held hostage by Hamas for 5 years (2006-2011), a representative of the terror organization Islamic Jihad stated that they expect similar prisoner swaps to free the remaining terrorist “heroes” from Israeli prisons.

Referring to Israeli hostages Avraham Mengistu and Hisham Al-Sayed and the bodies of soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin that are currently being held by Hamas, Islamic Jihad Information Office Director Daoud Shihab compared them to Shalit:
Islamic Jihad Information Office Director Daoud Shihab: “A great achievement was recorded by the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. It’s still holding, as it held [former Israeli captive soldier Gilad] Shalit. It’s holding a number of Zionist prisoners and soldiers’ [bodies] today. This is good news for all our people… and all the heroes inside the occupation prisons, for all our people, because freedom is coming and the freedom celebration is coming.”

[Al-Mayadeen TV (Lebanon), Sept. 10, 2021]

When Israel released the first group of terrorists in exchange for Shalit, Palestinian Media Watch documented that Hamas called to kidnap 6 more Israeli soldiers to free the remaining 6,000 prisoners.

Hamas was not alone in its calls to kidnap more Israelis. Fatah leader Jibril Rajoub, who could potentially replace PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, has made similar calls. Representing Abbas at an event to mark the release of the terrorist prisoners Rajoub said:
"I say in the name of the Fatah movement -- We salute those who dug the tunnel [to capture the Israeli soldier]; we salute those who captured the captive (Gilad Shalit), and salute those who guarded the captive until this deal was completed."

[Official PA TV, Oct. 30, 2011]
Islamic Jihad official expects terrorist prisoners will be exchanged for Israeli hostages

Azerbaijan denies Iran’s claim it is hosting Israeli military troops
Azerbaijan on Monday denied allegations from Tehran that Israel’s military was in the Caucasus country during drills run by Iran’s army on their shared border.

The Iranian claims about sworn enemy Israel come after its state television last week showed tanks, howitzers and helicopters firing at targets in the northwest of the country.

Israel is a major arms supplier to Azerbaijan, which last autumn won a six-week war with neighbor Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Leyla Abdullayeva said Monday that Iran’s claims were groundless.

“We reject the allegations of any third party’s presence near the Azerbaijani-Iranian border, such allegations are totally baseless,” she said.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev last week criticized the Iranian war games in an interview with Turkish news agency Anadolu, asking “why now, and why on our border?”

Israel came under diplomatic fire from Armenia during last year’s conflict between the Caucasus neighbors.

The fighting ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire that saw Yerevan cede swaths of contested territories, including the Karabakh section of Azerbaijan’s 700-kilometer border with Iran.







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