Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: King Abdullah

Showing posts with label King Abdullah. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 04, 2023

An Israel-Jordan Prisoner Exchange is in the Works--Arab Media Suggests it's a Done Deal (Judean Rose)

Abdullah Barghouti—Hamas commander and bomb-making expert responsible for killing 66 Israelis and injuring hundreds more—is slated for release to Jordan in an upcoming prisoner exchange. It was his guitar bomb that was used in the Sbarro attack that took the life of Malki Roth.

Rehavam Ze’evi may have been in favor of transfer—but not the kind where the mastermind of his own murder gets transferred from Israel to Jordan. A member of Knesset, Ze’evi, also known as “Ghandi,” was gunned down in 2001. The man who planned his assassination, Majdi Rahima Rimawi, was sentenced to life in 2008. Now Rimawi's name appears on a very long list of prisoners with blood on their hands, said to be slated for release to Jordan in exchange for four Israeli captives in Gaza, two of whom are dead.

MK Rehavam Ze'evi, assassinated in 2001.

This is difficult to fathom. How has it come to the point where the Israeli government would even consider releasing the man behind the murder of one of their own: an Israeli member of parliament? In fact, in their sentencing of Hamid Quran, a member of the team that assassinated Ze'evi, the three-judge Israeli panel pointed out the exceptional nature of the killing, "Murdering a minister differs from murdering an ordinary citizen by the fact that it constitutes direct harm to a symbol of the State and harms its sovereignty.”

Now it appears that this symbol of State and sovereignty has no more meaning.

Rimawi’s name draws one’s attention because of his involvement in the murder of an MK. But the long list of prisoners to be released also includes Abdullah Barghouti. Barghouti made the guitar bomb that was used to blow up the Sbarro restaurant, the attack in which American citizen Malki Roth was murdered. Malki was 15. But she was not Barghouti’s only victim.

From Ynet:

Among the prisoners slated for transfer to Jordan is Abdullah Barghouti, who was convicted and sentenced to 67 life sentences and an additional 5,200 years in prison for his involvement in attacks that resulted in the deaths of numerous Israelis and the injury of hundreds of others during the second Intifada from 2000-2004.

In the case of the Sbarro attack, Barghouti’s bomb was transported to the site by his relative, Ahlam al-Tamimi, a beast who crows with delight over the number of Jewish children she has killed. Her crowing is done in Jordan, where she is celebrated by Jordanian society for having murdered so many Jewish children. Tamimi and a further 1,026 other prisoners were exchanged for a single Israeli prisoner: Gilad Shalit. This time we’ll get four kidnapped Israelis, two of them already dead.

It was Arnold Roth who reminded me of the prisoner exchange, in response to a tweet in which I held America responsible for not bringing Tamimi to justice.

Yet the US does nothing. Or rather, it does something. It wines and dines Abdullah. One can only conclude that Jewish blood is cheap. https://t.co/1EIqEgpbfc
— Varda Epstein #JusticeforMalkiRoth (@VardaEpstein) January 3, 2023

As Roth was quick to point out, no one is without blame in regard to the lack of will or caring to do anything about Tamimi, a terrorist on the FBI most wanted list. It’s not only America, but Israel too, that indulges King Abdullah. And it's an unfathomable betrayal of Jewish victims by the Jewish State.

The White House wines and dines King Abdullah, but apparently says diddly-squat about his refusal to honor the US/Jordan extradition treaty.

We know what will happen. The terrorists will be released to Jordan where they'll spend a bit of symbolic time in Jordanian prison cells before they are pardoned by the king and freed. We cannot even blame the planned prisoner exchange on the outgoing Israeli government as it appears Netanyahu was briefed and seems to be onboard with the plan, thus far.

John Glubb and Leila Khaled (guest post)

Guest post from Paul M.

John and Leila

The most effective army Israel faced in its 1948 war of independence was the Arab Legion of Transjordan. There’s a reason for that: It was not just armed and trained by Britain, it was led by British officers as well, commanded by Lt. General Sir John Bagot Glubb, affectionately known by the Ottoman honorific Glubb Pasha.

Glubb was a career soldier, a much-decorated British officer from 1915 until 1956, through two world wars and the assault on the new Jewish state. He was much-honored too, with an alphabet behind his name: KCB, CMG, DSO, OBE, MC, KStJ & KPM.

If, in the fighting world, you wanted to find Lt. General Sir John Bagot Glubb’s diametric opposite, you might be tempted to choose Leila Khaled, member of the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, serial airplane hijacker, pin-up for terrorism groupies everywhere.

And, surprisingly, you might be wrong. They’re less different than you would imagine.

In 1973 Leila Khaled wrote her autobiography, called “My People Shall Live.” (I expect there will be a second volume someday, “Your People Should Die,” but I digress.) Who supplied the foreword? John Bagot Glubb. I had always assumed Lt. General Glubb was simply a good soldier, following orders to serve his country by serving his country’s client, but it seems it was more personal than that.

The first thing to strike you about Glubb’s foreword is how naive it is. He simply takes her words at face value. Everything else written on Palestine is “prejudiced, if not pure propaganda,” full of “half-truths,” “distortions” and “intentional deception.” Khaled, by contrast, is “refreshing” because her position is so clear. The things she has to say are “simple facts.” Perhaps we should give him credit for at least acknowledging that she’s not impartial but there’s almost nothing to show that he has any opinion of his own on the morality of her refreshingly clear position or its consequences.

He does, though, eventually find a flaw. Her politics are “oversimplified” to the point of paranoia and her rejection of anyone who doesn’t embrace violence makes it hard for her sympathizers to help her. As you read this, you can’t help but feel his personal sense of unfair treatment. Perhaps it pulled at the quarter-century-old scar of his dismissal by King Abdullah.

What begins by seeming like amorality, a disinterest in Khaled’s choices, veers into something else soon enough. Before the end of the first page Glubb presents the conclusion of his moral thinking. Violence begets violence, but Palestinian violence is their “only means of recovering their country and their freedom.” Wait, wasn’t that what the Jews were doing?. He quotes Khaled,”As a Palestinian, I had to believe in the gun as an embodiment of my humanity,”without comment except to note that she’s a bit down on anyone who thinks otherwise. Even so, he wants us to know that she cried when John Kennedy was shot. When he turns to the Jews, it’s different: Jewish violence is inherited from the Nazis.

Now we know where to place him. We’ve heard that one before.

Her contempt for non-violence and political difference notwithstanding, Glubb simply takes Khaled at her word when she says Jews and Arabs will be equals in the democratic Palestinian state she and her friends are going to create. The real problem is the Jews won’t allow it. They “desire to have an all-Jewish state.” Like the one we see today, presumably.

Glubb ends by solemnly informing us that “It is easy for us, who have never been the victims of foreign conquest ... to denounce with vehemence the crimes of the evicted Palestinians.” That’s some chutzpah from a son and servant of the empire on which the sun never set. It’s world-class chutzpah when we remember that Transjordan’s purpose in invading on May 15th 1948 was not to free the Palestinian Arabs—who could have had their freedom for the asking but chose war instead—but to annex the land to itself. Abdullah had said as much to Jews and Arabs alike(1).

In his own memoirs, Glubb wrote that he came to love the Arabs(2). That must have been British understatement, because what shines through this foreword is not just love but infatuation. This is the Glubb Pasha who led his army into the Old City of Jerusalem and who had ultimate responsibility for the emptying, looting & burning of the Jewish Quarter. Some people (not me, obviously) can say much in a few words. Glubb was accidentally one of those. It’s hard not to wonder how many others among the British military and functionaries, in Mandatory Palestine and back in London, felt the way he did.

1) Howard Sachar, “A History of Israel” 2007, p.321–322

2) John Bagot Glubb, “A Soldier with the Arabs” 1957, p.5

09/29 Links Pt1: Glick: How Benny Gantz killed Israeli-Palestinian peace; Abbas Asked Why There Is No Palestinian State. The Answers Were in His UN Speech

From Ian:

The Women Burning Their Hijabs Want the Iranian Regime to Fall. Does Joe Biden?

Khamenei’s deal-denying obstinacy ought to be viewed as a liberating opportunity by the Biden administration. Why should we allow Khamenei and his regime a guaranteed pathway to bomb-grade uranium and long-range ballistic missiles and let them extort us? Unrestricted oil and gas sales, a bonanza of foreign investment, and big, legal purchases of Russian conventional weaponry will significantly abet Iranian expansionism . . . unless we believe just down the road that the Supreme Leader and his like-minded friends will give way to more reasonable people?

Obama’s nuclear deal never really made sense unless one believed the regime would evolve into something much less malign. But the theocracy has crushed every internal effort at even the most minimal political reform, and, as Masha Amini’s death makes clear, the regime that inspired The Handmaid’s Tale is still very much that regime.

Democrats, who’ve been pushing apologias since Bill Clinton apologized to Iran in an effort to jump-start better relations, have a chance to get more realistic about the nature of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei’s decision to tell Washington to pound sand may finally allow Democrats, who’ve been addicted to arms control with the theocracy, to regain a certain moral clarity about the most aggressive, antisemitic, revisionist state in the Middle East.

Many Republicans should also thank the cleric, who is the most impressive post-World War II dictator in the region. Those who’ve wanted to believe that a “good deal” and better Iranian behavior was possible if Washington just ramped up sanctions enough to coerce the mullahs into moderation are now obliged to ask themselves whether they are willing to argue for military strikes, which could lead to a war in the Persian Gulf. Whatever the timeline was for sanctions working—always just over the horizon—it certainly no longer matches the timeline for Iran to test a nuke.

If most Republicans, too, turn out to be Iran doves, then they can at least try to develop a bipartisan approach to the Islamic Republic that involves, at a minimum, continuing economic pressure. Sanctions won’t stop the mullahs’ nuclear drive, but they can weaken the clerical regime internally and deny it hard currency for its foreign adventures. Americans, Europeans, Turks, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and, most emphatically, the Israelis would be a lot better off if Washington forestalled the Iranian bomb.

But if Americans no longer have the self-confidence to engage in such military action, if they just don’t believe U.S. hegemony in the Middle East is worth the price, then they can still default to something less delusional and destructive than paying an endlessly lying enemy to forsake the cornerstone of its hegemonic ambitions. We should take a cue from the protestors in the streets: a regime that so easily kills women isn’t one the United States can do business with.

American and European “realists” have never been so wrong. It is the nature of the regime that counts.

Caroline Glick: How Benny Gantz killed Israeli-Palestinian peace

In 2014, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia acted as Israel’s unofficial allies in Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza. Among other things, they blocked the Obama administration from coercing Israel into accepting Hamas’ ceasefire terms.

Their opposition to the Palestinians and support for Israel only grew during Trump’s presidency. Many people who spoke with the Egyptians, the Emiratis, Saudis and Bahrainis during this period understood that they were no longer willing to stand with the Palestinians and were willing to reach a pragmatic resolution of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria that respected Israel’s rights and interests as well as those of the Palestinians.

But blinded by ideology, and guided no doubt by Gantz’s political interest in humiliating Netanyahu ahead of the third round of elections, Eshel and Gantz ignored all of this. They insisted that nothing had changed in the Arab world since 2002, when the Saudi king gave a fake peace offer to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demanding that Israel surrender to the PLO’s maximalist demands as a condition for Arab-Israeli peace.

While Kushner seems to reject Eshel’s version of events in his recently published memoir, in a way, the veracity of Eshel’s story is less important than the fact that he takes so much pride in his version of events that he chose to share it with the Israeli public. Eshel clearly never considered that he may have been mistaken, and as a result of his own ideological blindness and political interests, he had destroyed Israel’s chance of permanently securing its national and strategic interests in Judea and Samaria.

Eshel’s blindness is a testament to the most glaring and dangerous characteristics of the left, both in Israel and throughout the Western world today. For leftists from Tel Aviv to Washington to Paris, the world is a static place where the 1960s anti-colonialist slogans that blamed all the troubles of the developing world on the West and the Jewish state are truths etched in stone—a progressive Ten Commandments. And the tablets will never be broken. Anyone who rejects these slogans, or permits reality to seep into their policymaking at any level are enemies far worse than the likes of the PLO or the Iranian regime or any terror group or regime that bases their claim to legitimacy on anti-colonialist precepts. On the other hand, unelected elites who live and die by these precepts are “objective professionals,” who protect our societies from riff raff that actually take into consideration facts, events, statements and political forces that stand these anti-Western principles on their heads.

From the progressives’ collective slobberfest over Islamic terrorists from Ramallah to Tehran, to their political and legal wars against anyone who disagrees with them, all over the West, our ability to make informed decisions, whether as voters or policymakers, is under assault. Elites who insist that their catechisms to the anti-colonialist gods are the beginning and end of all legitimate policymaking are damning us to policies that cause our nations to fail perpetually.

The Trump peace plan, including the sovereignty plan, was the first pragmatic blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian peace ever presented, because unlike all of its predecessors it was not based entirely on anti-Israel mythology. Eshel and Gantz didn’t just kill the sovereignty plan when they scared Kushner with their myths. They killed the entire concept that reality should form the basis of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.

In his memoir and in subsequent interviews, former ambassador Friedman has said that whatever one thinks of the Trump peace plan, it was an opportunity for Israel to begin having a serious discussion about what it wants to do with Judea and Samaria. Obviously, so long as Israel’s left controls the discourse and blocks reality from entering the discussion, no such discussion will be possible.

Abbas Asked Why There Is No Palestinian State. The Answers Were in His UN Speech

PA President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN General Assembly on Friday why the Palestinians do not yet have a state. I found the answers to Abbas' questions were in his speech as well.

He claimed to genuinely want peace with Israel, but made clear that he rejects Israel's very legitimacy. He described Israel as a colonizing power for 75 years - that is, since its historic rebirth in 1948. He airbrushed Judaism out of his "eternal" Jerusalem, in which there are only Muslim and Christian holy sites.

There was no mention that Israel dismantled its settlements and withdrew all its soldiers from Gaza in 2005. No hint that Hamas took over, and has provoked conflict with Israel ever since with indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, teaching Israel that relinquishing adjacent territory merely empowers the forces that seek our destruction.

Abbas devoted some of his speech to Nasser Abu Hamid, whom he described as a heroic martyr who was now dying in jail of cancer, failing to note that Abu Hamid is serving multiple life terms for the murders of seven Israelis and the attempted murders of 12 more. Abbas championed the killers of Israelis - to whom his Palestinian Authority insists on paying salaries, thus nurturing the next generations of murderers.

Abbas ignored the "one condition" Prime Minister Yair Lapid set on Thursday for the implementation of a two-state solution: "That a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one. That it will not become another terror base from which to threaten the well-being and the very existence of Israel."

Lapid offered Abbas a one-sentence formula for Palestinian independence: "Put down your weapons, and there will be peace."

Hamas brags of killing Jewish children 20 years ago at the Sbarro pizza shop

The Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas loves to celebrate anniversaries of major terror attacks. The infamous Sbarro massacre, which happened on August 9, 2001, is no exception. Today is the Hebrew date anniversary of that attack.

It proves the utter depravity of not only Hamas but of all the Palestinians who celebrated at the time.

The ghoulish article exaggerates the death toll in order to make it sound even more "successful" than it was, claiming that 19 were killed. The facts are horrific enough - 15 murdered, including 7 children and a pregnant woman.

The Arabic text is revolting:

It caused an unprecedented state of terror and chaos among the Jews.
-....The operation is commensurate with the ability of the battalions to plan, develop and reach the depth of the enemy and in the most secure places, which astonished the enemy and made loved ones and family rejoice (and heal the hearts of a believing people).
...The mujahadeen chose the prime time for lunch at the restaurant.

Hamas freely admits that it targets Jews - not Israelis, not Zionists, but Jews.

In a separate article celebrating the "martyrdom" of the suicide bomber, Hamas describes the happiness of the Palestinians who heard about the attack. "Jenin received the news with demonstrations and rallies that came out to bless this qualitative process that gladdened the hearts of a believing people."

Interestingly, the article did not mention Ahlam Tamimi, the 20-year old monster who chose that restaurant as the target and who accompanied the suicide bomber while disguised as a Jewish woman.

Her description of going on an Arab bus as she escaped the scene is perverted and sickening:

Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians around Damascus Gate [in Jerusalem] were all smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. When I got on the bus, nobody knew that it was me who had led [the suicide bomber to the target]... I was feeling quite strange, because I had left [the bomber] 'Izz Al-Din behind, but inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another. They didn't even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings...While I was sitting on the bus, the driver turned on the radio. But first, let me tell you about the gradual rise in the number of casualties. While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another....I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said "three dead," I said: 'Allah be praised'...Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding.

We saw Palestinians celebrate murdered Jews only this past May. This isn't a one time thing - consistently, a vast majority of Palestinians have shown support for specific terror attacks after the fact, including, infamously, the 9/11 attacks that occurred only a month after Sbarro.

Here is a celebration after the 2014 attack at the Har Nof synagogue, killing four rabbis.

Ahlam Tamimi is still living a free, celebrity life in Jordan - not in spite of her murderous role but because of it. The parents of child victim Malki Roth, who are marking Malki's yahrzeit today, have been waging a heroic and lonely battle to convince the United States to extradite Tamimi, but even though King Abdullah visited Washington last week, nothing seems to have been done.

As gruesome as Hamas proves itself to be every single day, the international human rights community and As-A-Jew haters expend huge amounts of time and effort to try to prove that Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world while excusing the actions and words of Hamas terrorists.