Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: counterterrorism

Showing posts with label counterterrorism. Show all posts

Friday, October 28, 2022

Terrorists always win the PR battle in a TikTok world

Ambulances aiding victims of Elad terror attack

There is one thing missing in all the media coverage of IDF operations in the West Bank.

Why they are there.

For years, the IDF rarely entered Area A. The Palestinian Authority took responsibility for security there, and they generally cooperated with Israel in rooting out terrorists - who were enemies of the PA as well. The system wasn't perfect, but it mostly worked, to everyone's benefit.

But earlier this year there was a wave of terror attacks in Israel:

March 22: Doris Yahbas (49), Laura Yitzhak 43), Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky and Menahem Yehezkel, (67) were killed and two more were injured during a stabbing and vehicle-ramming attack in Beersheba.

March 27: Yezen Falah and Shirel Abukarat, two Border Police officers, were shot dead by two terrorists.

March 29: Amir Khoury (32), Ya’akov Shalom (36), Avishai Yehezkel (29), Victor Sorokopot (38), and Dimitri Mitrik (23) were killed during a series of drive-by shootings in Bnei Brak.

April 7: Tomer Morad (28), Eytam Magini (27), and Barak Lufan (35) were shot dead at a downtown Tel Aviv bar , seven others were wounded and hospitalized.

April 29: Two Palestinian terrorists murdered Vyacheslav Golev (23), a security guard, at the entrance to Ariel.

May 5: Boaz Gol (49), Yonatan Havakuk (44), and Oren Ben Yitfah (35) were killed in a terrorist attack in Elad.

Most (if not all) of the terrorists came from the West Bank. Israel could not sit back and wait for more attacks, so it went on the offensive to break up the terror cells that were planning these attacks.

That's why the IDF is there.

This is not ancient history. It is 5 to 7 months ago.

How many news reports mention the terror spree that sparked this current escalation?

When people's attention spans are limited to one-minute videos and 240 character tweets, the media isn't going to bother to give any context. Easier to pretend that Israel attacks Palestinians for no apparent reason, and they are locked into a never ending conflict that has no history. And the media doesn't mention the basic fact that these IDF operations are meant to root out terrorists that the PA could not - or now, refuse to - do themselves.

This helps the terrorists. When they attack Israeli civilians, they know that the world will forget the attacks - but not Israel's responses, which are framed as constant and never-ending. The impression given to those who are only casual consumers of news is that Israel is virtually always the aggressor, and therefore always at fault. And then the occasional fatal Palestinian terror attack is the response to Israeli aggression, not the other way around.

Israel doesn't want anything to do with Area A. It has been forced to react to terrorism, to bring the battle to the terrorists and away from Israeli civilians. And for the most part it has worked - there have been no fatal attacks on civilians in months.

But the Israeli lives saved by these operations are definitely not something the media will mention.

In the realm of public relations, terrorists cannot lose as long as the media panders to the lowest common denominator of news consumer who they assume cannot understand context that requires more than two explanatory sentences.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Amnesty report again accusing Israel of war crimes based on nothing but their hate for Israel (update)

Amnesty International has released a report on the August mini-war in Gaza where they say that Israel should be investigated for war crimes. (Unusually, they also accuse Islamic Jihad of possible war crimes for a single rocket misfire.)

Amnesty investigated three incidents, two of which are from Israeli fire. The first one:

Amnesty International has examined in detail two Israeli attacks that must be investigated as possible war crimes because they appear either to have deliberately targeted civilians or civilian objects or to have been indiscriminate attacks. On 5 August 2022, an Israeli tank round struck the house of the alAmour family in Khan Yunis, where 11 civilians were staying, killing Duniana al-Amour, aged 22, and wounding her mother and her sister. Based on its identification of the projectile that struck the house as a “highly accurate” 120mm M339 tank round, and its calculation of the distance between the house and the closest military objects using satellite imagery, Amnesty International believes that the al-Amour family’s house was the intended target of the attack. The killing of Duniana al-Amour and the apparently deliberate targeting of her house must therefore be investigated as a possible war crime.

It does appear that Israel targeted a house. Amnesty says it "found no evidence that any members of the al-Amour family could reasonably be believed to be involved in armed combat. "

This is true. But Amnesty is hiding something - something that they certainly reviewed before writing this report. They are hiding what the ITIC wrote about this attack, that one of the "civilians" in the house was Islamic Jihad's commander of the southern Gaza Strip.

The ITIC is close to the Israeli military. It said that the fatal attack on the Falluja cemetery was from the IDF when even Haaretz assumed it was an errant Islamic Jihad rocket, so it cannot be accused of lying. It is the closest thing we have to an official IDF comment on the incident.

If a senior commander was in the house, it was a valid military target. It is a tragedy but certainly not a war crime.

Amnesty doesn't want you to know that, so they simply don't report it.

The second incident:

In another instance, on 7 August 2022, a missile apparently fired from a drone hit Al-Falluja cemetery in Jabalia, killing five children and seriously injuring another. Based on a review of pictures of the weapon’s remnants, Amnesty International determined that they were consistent with an Israeli guided missile. Unnamed sources from the Israeli army told an Israeli newspaper that a preliminary internal probe conducted by the army into the attack showed that neither Palestinian Islamic Jihad nor the AlQuds Brigades were firing rockets at the time of the attack and that Israel was carrying out attacks on “targets” near the area. Satellite imagery showed that there were no military targets visible in the area 10 days before the attack and residents interviewed by Amnesty International said that none appeared in the intervening period. There are strong indications that the strike on Al-Falluja cemetery was either a direct attack on civilians or an indiscriminate attack where Israel failed to comply with the obligation to take all feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and fighters.

Notice how Amnesty assumes that the Israeli sources are simply lying when they say there were targets in the area. A "target" is likely a member or leader of Islamic Jihad. 10-day old satellite imagery will not find such a target, and residents being interviewed sure as hell will not admit they saw a militant even if they did. Amnesty simply assumes Israel either targeted kids for fun, or didn't check for civilians. It does not even consider that the laws of war say that a military commander can act based on the best intelligence information available at the time - he or she does not have to wait for 100% accuracy. Sometimes, as in this case, the information was not accurate enough and there is a tragedy.

And while Amnesty investigated only one (of several) Islamic Jihad rockets that fell short and killed people, it emphasizes that everything ends up being Israel's fault: "Israel’s apartheid remains the root cause of Palestinians’ suffering and the recurring violations against them and must be dismantled." Even though the August hostilities had nothing to do with the scurrilous "apartheid" accusation, to Amnesty, Israel's existence is the original sin.

And one that it is doing everything it can to destroy.

UPDATE: The Amnesty video accompanying the report mentions the Islamic Jihad rocket that killed 7 children - but then blames that on Israel as well.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

IDF operations in Jenin are saving many Israeli lives

Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israelis in February, the beginning of a new wave of terror. This was followed by four killed in March and four more killed in April.

16 of the victims were civilians.

The IDF increased its operations in terrorism hotbeds in the West Bank as a result. The most public of these operations were in Jenin.

While it is difficult to claim definitively that there is cause and effect, the IDF offensive appears to have been paying off. According to Israeli government sources, there have been no civilian deaths in two months, the last one being the stabbing attacks in Elad on May 5.

Col. Arik Moyal, head of operations in Jenin, said in late April “The lives of hundreds of Israelis have been saved thanks to attacks we foiled.”

In fact, over the past month, all types of terror attacks have gone down significantly. The Shin Bet released this graphic.

The three injuries in June came from the attack on worshipers at Joseph's Tomb last week.

Israel haters love to take the Jenin operations out of context, pretending that there is no military reason for them and that the Palestinians who are killed are innocent victims. The facts show otherwise - not only have they been terrorists, but these operations are saving lives.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Has the Biden administration decided that Islamist terror is no longer a domestic threat?

On June 15, 2021, the Biden administration released the first U.S. National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

It was created as a response to the January 6 events in Washington, and it is mostly concerned with the threats of white supremacist terrorists, with a smattering of other potential ideologies:

According to this assessment, one key aspect of today’s domestic terrorism threat emerges from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and networks whose racial, ethnic, or religious hatred leads them toward violence, as well as those whom they encourage to take violent action. These actors have different motivations, but many focus their violence towards the same segment or segments of the American community, whether persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, other religious minorities, women and girls, LGBTQI+ individuals, or others. Their insistence on violence can, at times, be explicit. It also can, at times, be less explicit, lurking in ideologies rooted in a perception of the superiority of the white race that call for violence in furtherance of perverse and abhorrent notions of racial “purity” or “cleansing.”

Another key component of the threat comes from anti–government or anti–authority violent extremists. This significant component of today’s threat includes self–proclaimed “militias” and militia violent extremists who take steps to violently resist government authority or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. Government based on perceived overreach; anarchist violent extremists, who violently oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions, which they perceive as harmful to society; sovereign citizen violent extremists, who believe they are immune from government authority and laws; or any other National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism 9 individual or group who engages in violence – or incites imminent violence – in opposition to legislative, regulatory, or other actions taken by the government. Other domestic terrorists may be motivated to violence by single–issue ideologies related to abortion–, animal rights–, environmental–, or involuntary celibate–violent extremism, as well as other grievances – or a combination of ideological influences. In some cases, individuals may develop their own idiosyncratic justifications for violence that defy ready categorization.

Nowhere in this document does it discuss any threat from Islamic terrorists.

It doesn't even mention 9/11 once.

This is frightening. Federal authorities have foiled many attacks from Muslim extremists over the past two decades, both against Jewish targets and against governmental targets.

The majority of unsuccessful terrorist attacks foiled by the FBI and others in this Wikipedia page were motivated by Islamist ideology. And there have been hundreds of Islamist terror attacks worldwide in recent years.

It is mind boggling that given the history of Islamist terror attack attempts over the past two decades, the White House implictly declares that this is no longer a problem that deserves strategic thinking - and possibly resources.

Many lives have been saved by US intelligence services and police monitoring for domestic Islamist terrorists. No one can doubt that the desire from both ISIS-style groups and Iranian-aligned terror groups to kill Americans and specifically Jewish targets has not abated.

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this national strategy is partially motivated by political factors. American lives, and American Jewish lives, should not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness - but this appears to be exactly what is in danger of happening.

(h/t JM Phelps)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Applying honor/shame to the metal detector fiasco

Once again, Palestinians are behaving irrationally.

Once again, no one knows what to make of it.

And once again, once you apply the honor/shame construct, it all makes perfect sense.

Abbas didn't want to see the terror attack on the Israeli policemen. But he is bound by the social rules of his society, and once the events were set in motion, he has no choice but to act like a typical Arab leader who is too cowardly to face down the insane shame culture.

Israel closing down the Temple Mount for two days was a source of a huge amount of shame. It showed that Jews ultimately control the area, and the myth that the Waqf controls it was shown to be a lie. The idea that Jews control the purported third holiest site in Islam is a source of deep shame that has been buried for years by the fantasy of Waqf control.

Once the shame started, it cannot be erased.

The fact that Israel re-opened the area in less than 48 hours is irrelevant; the metal detectors - or cameras or extra guards or wands or anything - just add to the shame of reminding the Arabs of who is the boss of the Temple Mount in the sense of who ultimately provides security. All else is irrelevant.

Once we have entered the honor./shame universe, actual facts or logic are meaningless - all that matters are symbols. And symbols don't get bigger than pretending to "defend Al Aqsa." (Which is what the stabber in Petah Tikva shouted this morning, as he stabbed an Arab mistaking him for a Jew.)

Abbas cannot act in a way that diminishes his honor, so he needs to double down on demanding honor and refusing shame. He must use all the weapons in his arsenal to "win". Because the other aspect of honor/shame societies is the zero-sum game, and if Israel gets anything out of this episode that it didn't have before- like normal security that any society would demand - Abbas thinks he loses. Winning the zero-sum game becomes more important than human lives. Abbas therefore ups the ante and says he will end security cooperation - the biggest weapon in his arsenal. He feels he has to go for the big guns because if he loses, he is finished - his shame will end him as a leader.

So now a very reasonable Israeli expectation for basic security becomes a life-or-death pissing match to the Palestinian leadership. They cannot back down. If Israel would offer to compromise by painting a stick figure of a camera on all entrances to the Mount the pushback would be exactly the same. Actual facts are of no interest.

Meanwhile, the honor/shame dynamic is played out with more terror attacks. Hamas' leader called the father of the murderer of the father and his children in Halamish explicitly in terms of honor, saying that "Your son brought pride to the nation." Abbas cannot be seen as less interested in national pride than Hamas, to do so would be politically costly, although he cannot explicitly praise the attack either or risk alienating his Western friends. So he stays quiet. But he will pay the salary of the murderer for the rest of his life.

As often happens, the logical West is confronted with the irrational Middle East. Usually the West blinks before dealing with these seemingly crazy people who would happily start a war over metal detectors. Because crazy people are scary and unpredictable and passionate, while normal people just want to live their lives without that drama.

The interesting part of this saga is how the Western world reacts. Israel's requirement for security in the face of a proven threat reflects what every other nation would do. The PA's reaction is completely bonkers by any normal yardstick. If the world wasn't so reflexively "pro-Palestinian" it wouldn't coddle the crazy demands, but the Palestinians have made an art form of these kinds of crazy demands that end up sounding reasonable over the years of constant repetition.

This time might be a little too crazy for, say, Western Europe at least. Palestinians have been losing their support behind the scenes, especially in Arab countries but cracks are appearing in the West as well. Their UN victories are getting narrower, and European parties are pushing back more against the UNHRC bias. They believe in the two state solution but they are not quite as certain that the 1967 lines are so sacred. Palestinian intransigence is being seen more and more as an obstacle to peace.

This episode may hurt the Palestinians in the long run much more than a symbolic victory would gain them. And this can be accelerated if the West uses the honor/shame dynamic to shame the Palestinians into acting like responsible adults.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.