Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: terror attack

Showing posts with label terror attack. Show all posts

Thursday, June 29, 2023

When the Mufti planned to build settlements on the West Bank

From The New York Times, September 17, 1951:

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 16— Haj Amin el Husseini, the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, and his Arab Higher Committee have started. a move to create a solid belt of Palestine Arab settlements around Israel and prevent-the moving of refugees away from Israel borders.

This change of front has come with the present evident collapse of the. former insistence by the Arab League, the Arab Higher Committee -and the Arab governments on the return of Palestine Arab refugees to their original homes under the terms of a 1948 United Nations resolution.,

The Arab Higher Committee was the last to demand that the refugees must return to the territory now under Israeli control. This demand not only has been abandoned. for practical, as opposed to political, purposes but the Arab Higher Committee and certain Arab statesmen now are opposed to. any return of Palestine Arabs to Israel territory. This change has been brought about by the fact that Israel will accept only a few Arabs into their old home, and that it is better to avoid the impression that the Palestine case has been settled. by agreement for a few to return.

...Strongly nationalist elements apparently are rallying around the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee’s program for a belt of thickly settled Palestinians surrounding Israel.

...‘The shift in. the Mufti’s policy was apparently connected with the enthusiasm which Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria displayed for the preservation of the independent Kingdom of Jordan, and their strong opposition to its unification with Iraq. The Palestinian element is becoming increasingly predominant in Jordan in which it constitutes not only some two-thirds of the. population but is an educated and trained element that is pushing the original Jordanians, largely of Bedouin stock, into the background.

At the time, UNRWA was actually trying to solve the problem: it was pushing hard for Palestinian Arabs to be resettled in areas of Syria and Lebanon where they would be given plots of land and could become financially independent. And Israel had agreed to allow tens of thousands of Arabs to return but only in conjunction with the Arab world naturalizing the rest.

But the Mufti did not care about what was best for the Palestinian Arabs. He wanted to destroy Israel. If he couldn't flood Israel with hundreds of thousands of refugees, he intended to turn Jordan into a temporary Palestinian state whose only purpose would be to destroy Israel - and that included building settlements surrounding Israel where they could be used as a means to attack Israel from a short distance.

While his entire plan was not realized, during the 1950s and 1960s Israel suffered numerous terror attacks from Palestinian "fedayeen" who lived in nearby communities in Syria, Jordan and Gaza.

The Mufti's plan still lives, though. The PA, with the EU, are building their own settlements non-stop in Area C specifically to block Israel from controlling the land it is supposed to control in the Oslo Accords. Hundreds of illegal structures and ramshackle communities have been built, and Palestinians moved in from Areas A and B, daring Israel to tear them down in front of the cameras.

It is an updated version of the Mufti's plan for settlements being built in Judea and Samaria not to benefit Palestinian Arabs but to hurt Israel.

(h/t Charles)

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The terror attacks you don't hear about - and Palestinians brag about

According to Palestinian media, there were 16 "acts of resistance" in the past 24 hours.

These terror attacks included an attempted stabbing, 4 shooting attacks, the detonation of an explosive device and the throwing of a Molotov cocktail.

The stabbing attempt was near Beit El, and the explosive device was detonated at Itamar.

Here is the Palestinian tally of 193 attacks in the past week.

The media is silent on all these attacks, and only when Israel responds does it make the news.

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Just a video of Palestinian terrorists firing on Jewish homes

During the State Department briefing yesterday, Said Arikat badgered spokesperson Vedant Patel trying to get him to condemn Israel, and in part of his diatribe he said, "Now, who guarantees that equality? Who will guarantee that Palestinians and Israelis can actually have the same equal measures, as you keep repeating? It’s not the Palestinians that keep going day after day into Israeli villages and towns and so on and attack them during night raids..."

Actually, Palestinians attack Jews literally every day. They brag about it. They keep detailed statistics, is this poster of last week's attacks shows:

Today, Islamic Jihad issued a press release: "The Al-Quds Brigades - Jaba Groups announced, this morning, Friday 27-1-2023, that they were able to target the Homesh settlement with dense and successive salvoes of bullets."

What exactly does that look like?

On January 15, another division of the Al Quds Brigades published a similar statement saying they attacked the village of Hermesh. This time they included a video showing automatic machine gun fire aiming at random Jewish homes.

Do the residents of Hermesh deserve to live in peace, without worry that they would be subject to automatic gunfire randomly shot at their houses?

Does any human rights group ever say that?

Do any of the reporters at the State Department even know that this happens every day?

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A few reminders on the 58th anniversary of Fatah's first terror attack

January 1 is considered the 58th anniversary of the Fatah movement.

Just a few reminders about what exactly that means:

1. Fatah was founded in the 1950s, but it doesn't celebrate the date of its founding. It celebrates the date of its first attempted terror attack, against Israel's national water carrier. It was the definition of a terror attack, an attempt to make most Israelis die of thirst.

Fatah defines itself as a terror group.

2. The Palestinian Authority is run by Fatah.

3. Mahmoud Abbas controls Fatah - meaning, he is the head of a group that openly celebrates terror.

4. Fatah has never stopped actively supporting terror, as its current party platform makes clear.

5. This attack happened in 1965 - before "occupation." Fatah then had, and now has, a goal of the destruction of Israel, not an end to "occupation."

6. Hamas congratulated Fatah on this occasion, saying "We congratulate our brothers in the Fatah movement on their 58th anniversary, and we affirm our firm strategy with the inevitability of joint national action on the grounds of adhering to the principles of our people, and the struggle in all its forms, to restore its just national rights, foremost of which is liberation."

There is no fundamental difference between the two.

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75 years ago: Arab terrorist attacks on Jews intensify, and an early "BDS" from Egypt

In the Palestine Post of December 26 and 27, 1947, Arab terror attacks on Jews were as bad as they were during the second intifada.

No one talks about that today.

It is worthwhile to study them. The Palestinian mentality and antisemitism, their making no distinction between Jewish civilians and armed forces, remains exactly the same today.

The December 26 edition mentions the murder of a Jewish Olympic athlete, Elias "Elo" Katz, who had won the silver and gold medals in the Paris Games in 1924 (the article is mistaken.)

While any Palestinian terrorists who ever kicked a ball are trumpeted to the world as if Israel targets athletes (this article today from the official Palestinian news agency claims Israel has targeted and killed over 700 Palestinian athletes!), here was a real Olympics gold medalist who was murdered by Palestinians.

The December 27 Palestine Post reports on two more convoys - meant to bring food and supplies to isolated Jews - ambushed and seven Jews murdered:

The Arab Legion of Transjordan at the time partnered with the British to help keep things calm - but instead, this professional army shot at two civilian buses near Haifa, killing one Jew and wounding others, originally claiming that the Jews attacked first but it was found to be a lie.

An absolutely heartbreaking story of a little girl in bed killed by Arab gunfire.

Violence was so prevalent that here we see four separate incidents - including an attack on a Jewish children's home, a Jew killed - are thrown together on a single Page 3 story (the newspaper was only four pages long.)

Palestinian Arabs openly threatened Jews - from London.

Egypt decided that since it was impossible to ensure that they were only boycotting Jews in Palestine, they should boycott everyone in Palestine.

Like today's BDSers, the point isn't to help Palestinian Arabs but to try to hurt the Jews. Like today's BDSers, they would swear that they are doing this to help the Palestinian Arabs. Like today's BDSers, they never actually asked the affected Arabs if they want to be collateral damage.

Other news from that paper are also echoes of today: a huge blizzard in the US that kills many people, and a fatal cholera outbreak in Syria that people are desperate to contain.

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Palestinians celebrate how many Jews they murdered this year

To the West, Palestinians cry about the number of them - mostly terrorists - who were killed this year.

In Arabic, though, they brag about how many Jews they managed to kill - which is the entire reason the IDF was forced to respond to begin with.

This poster celebrates the attacks.

It says, "Palestine in numbers. 2022 was a year of resistance par excellence.

* 14,000 resistance acts during the year

* 31 Israeli dead

* 770 shooting operations

This graphic celebrates 31 Israelis killed, listing out each attack:

Here is the list of attacks from the Jewish Virtual Library; I didn't try to reconcile the two lists.

November 23	Aryeh Shechopek (15), Tadese Tashume Ben Ma’ada (50)	Two explosions at a bus station near the entrance to Jerusalem killed two and injured 22. Aryeh Shechopek died on the day of the attack, Tadese Tashume Ben Ma’ada, several days later.
November 15	Tamir Avihai (50), Michael Ladygin (36), Motti Ashkenazi (59)	Muhammed Soof, a cleaner in the Ariel industrial zone. stabbed seven people, killing three, in Ariel.
October 25	Shalom Sofer (55)	Died two weeks after being seriously wounded in a stabbing attack near Kedumim.
May 5	Boaz Gol (49), Yonatan Havakuk (44), Oren Ben Yitfah (35)	A terrorist attack in the city of Elad left three men dead and eight injured, one critically.
April 29	Vyacheslav Golev (23)	Two Palestinian terrorists murdered Vyacheslav Golev, a security guard, at the entrance to Ariel.
April 7	Tomer Morad (28), Eytam Magini (27), Barak Lufan (35)	A shooting at a downtown Tel Aviv bar left three people dead and seven others were wounded and hospitalized.
March 29	Amir Khoury (32), Ya’akov Shalom (36), Avishai Yehezkel (29), Victor Sorokopot (38), Dimitri Mitrik (23)	Five people were killed during a series of drive-by shootings in Bnei Brak. The perpetrator was Diaa Hamarsheh who had been imprisoned in 2015 for charges of supporting terrorism as well as arms trafficking.
March 27	Yezen Falah and Shirel Abukarat, both 19	Two Border Police officers were killed by two terrorists believed to be supporters of the Islamic State.
March 22	Doris Yahbas (49), Laura Yitzhak (43), Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky and Menahem Yehezkel, (67)	Four people were killed and two more were injured during a stabbing and vehicle-ramming attack by an Islamic State supporter in Be’er Sheva.

Here are some Felesteen cartoons this year that are either antisemitic or that glorify terror:

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Another day, another batch of lies by UN's Francesca Albanese

The "UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories" has shown, yet again, how little she cares about the truth - and about Jewish lives - in this Twitter thread about the lung cancer death of arch-terrorist Nasir Abu Hmeid (Hamid).

Abu Hamid, Palestinian refugee from Al-Amar Camp, West Bank, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002, for alleged involvement in attacks against Israeli forces during the 2nd Intifada. His detention appeared to violate basic human rights standards, including denial of family visits.

Lie #1: He was not a "Palestinian refugee." By definition, a refugee cannot live in the same country they are supposedly refugees from. The definition of refugee is very clear in the UN Refugee Convention.

Lie #2: He was not sentenced for "alleged involvement in attacks against Israeli forces." He was sentenced to multiple life sentences for his involvement in murdering seven Israeli civilians, not soldiers.

And there is nothing alleged about it. Palestinians openly brag about his so-called "resistance."

Lie #3: While Israel may have sometimes denied family visits for specific technical reasons, but they certainly allowed them. Not only did the family get to visit Abu Hamid and his three terrorist brothers in prison - they would all get together in a single group, with no glass wall between them, laughing and having fun together. I have seen two separate visits documented in photos:

That's only one tweet.

Albanese links to a letter she co-write about Abu Hmeid in October, that shows how little she cares about fairness and truth. Even though she tries to ensure that no one can call her a liar because she liberally sprinkles her spurious accusations of Israeli mistreatment of Abu Hmeid with "allegedly" and "reportedly," she still manages to show her contempt for Israel and for Israeli civilians, and the lies still shine through:

* She again makes the false accusation that his arrest was for "attacks against Israeli forces." This shows that she believes Palestinian propaganda, where every Israeli civilian is considered a legitimate military target.

* She repeats the lie by saying "On 19 September 2022, the Board postponed the date of the hearing for Mr. Abu Hamid’s case until 6 October 2022, allegedly in light of objections to his release by the families of Israeli soldiers allegedly killed by Mr. Abu Hamid."

This is not a mistake - she repeats the lie that he did not kill civilians, only "soldiers."

* She writes, "Mr. Abu Hamid has served most of his sentence in Askalan Prison, where he was reportedly subject to detention conditions that do not respect the minimum safety, hygiene or health standards. He was placed in a narrow and overcrowded cell without proper ventilation and deprived of adequate health care."

First of all, the prison name is Ashkelon, not Askalan. Even if you use the Arab name of the city, the prison does not have that name. This shows that Albanese simply does not accept any information from Israel as truth, while she believes Palestinian lies implicitly.

Secondly, she doesn't couch her accusations of prison conditions with any "allegedly." Albanese states, as fact, that the prison is overcrowded and has improper ventilation. Has the Red Cross said that there is no proper ventilation there? Has she read any Israeli inspection reports? Of course not.

Palestinians lie about the prison conditions all the time...and yet, when they go on strike for better conditions, we can see the truth. This extensive list of demands in 2004, during the height of the second intifada, asks for things like allowing second cousins to visit and "to allow all cells to have access to a computer and not only students." But it doesn't demand basic things like better ventilation or less crowded conditions!

Why not? Because that wasn't a problem even in 2004, let alone today!

Here is more proof, as if any is needed, that Francesca Albanese is a liar. And her refusal to believe a word that Jewish Israelis say while believing the accusations of murderers and their supporters shows, yet again, that her railing against the "Jewish lobby" was not a mistake, but antisemitism is part and parcel of who she is.

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

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11/24 Links Pt1: Jerusalem Bombings Don't Mark Beginning of 3rd Intifada; Learn from the Druze and get results; Ending Jew-bashing at the UN; BBC pundit calls Jerusalem bombing 'Palestinian World Cup'

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Terror is still here, Israel needs secure government to stop it - editorial

Attacks that are carried out by lone attackers are usually more difficult to thwart. They can be perpetrated by people who wake up one morning and decide to try and kill some Jews without any prior warning. An attack like the one that took place on Wednesday is something else.

This was an attack that required the involvement of a number of people – to assemble the bombs and obtain the necessary ingredients, smuggle the bombs into Israel and plant them next to their targets.

This is already what is called “terrorist infrastructure,” the kind that likely is affiliated with a known organization, which should have been on the Israeli intelligence community’s watch list.

What this also shows is the need to focus now on establishing a government. The sooner there is a stable government in Jerusalem the sooner Israel will be able to create a clear strategy for how to stop the terrorist wave that is not going away. Fights about ministries and portfolios

Fights about ministries and portfolios might interest the politicians who are supposed to occupy those offices, but they are not of real interest to Israelis, who want to see safe streets and to know that their children – like Shechopek – are safe when they stand at a bus stop waiting to go to school.

Comments like the one made by an Army Radio reporter on Wednesday – that the attack was connected to the pending appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as the next public security minister – do not do any good. Neither are appearances at the scene soon after the crime by Ben-Gvir, who promised as presumptive internal security minister to wield an iron fist against terrorism.

After 75 years of statehood that has been marred by wars and terrorist attacks, we do not need to look for excuses for why Arab terrorists want to try and kill Israeli Jews. This has been part of the Israeli story since it was created as an independent state and will, sadly, likely continue as long as some of our neighbors refuse to come to terms with our existence here.

There was terrorism when there were left-wing governments in power and there was terrorism when there were right-wing governments. Israelis have not forgotten, for example, how Benjamin Netanyahu promised to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip during an election campaign in 2009 and how through 12 consecutive years as prime minister he refrained from ordering the IDF to do so.

Netanyahu was quick to respond to Wednesday’s attack, saying his administration would once again make the country safe. What Israelis need right now is security, not boasting of how the incoming government is going to do things differently. Let’s hope they can put their actions where their mouths are.

David Singer: Ending Jew-bashing at the UN

The United Nations favourite sport – Jew bashing - was on full display this past week at the 77th Session of the United Nations Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) - which approved six draft resolutions - all highly critical of Israel.

One of these draft resolutions - approved by 98 voting in favour to 17 against, with 52 abstentions - was titled “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1).

By its terms, the UN General Assembly would demand that Israel cease:
all measures that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, including the killing and injuring of civilians,
the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of civilians,
the forced displacement of civilians
the transfer of its own population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and that:
“the General Assembly should request the International Court of Justice to render urgently an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”.

Vituperative verbal attacks on the Jewish State made by Bangladesh, Venezuela, South Africa, Iran, Libya, Niger, Türkiye, Algeria, Brunei Darussalam, Namibia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Japan, Qatar, Lebanon, Sudan, Malaysia and Yemen, all bastions of civil liberties, ensured Jew-bashing would continue at the United Nations whilst the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.

It is unacceptable for the ICJ to deliver opinion on Israel, West Bank

THE HISTORICAL, political and legal issues are extremely complex. An Israeli take on them was set out in convincing detail in a recent study by Professor Abraham Sion, which he called, “To whom was the promised land promised?” Sion is a former deputy state attorney of Israel and is a professor emeritus of law at Ariel University. If the world were governed by reason, logic and conscientious adherence to the rule of law, Sion’s book would be a game changer.

He submitted the entire legal process leading to the establishment of Israel to meticulous forensic examination and he demonstrates beyond any doubt that judicial rulings from the UN, the EU, the ICJ and elsewhere have often been at odds with a scrupulous interpretation of their legal basis. Over the past few decades, international bodies have reached a consensus that the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are Palestinian territories, and that Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. Sion uncovers the solid legal building blocks that have been ignored or overlooked and that prove different.

In short, he demonstrates with chapter and verse that the almost universally accepted consensus on Israel’s legal position regarding the West Bank, settlements and Jerusalem is legally flawed.

In undertaking his scrupulous legal analysis, Sion’s original purpose was to ascertain who owned the legal right to the territory of Mandatory Palestine under international law. He identified the two competitors as the Arab nation on the one hand and the Jewish people on the other. Concerned solely with the legal position and not with political or related issues, he set out to establish the legal rights under the international law of both parties.

Sion demonstrates that in concluding that Israel is illegally occupying territory, international bodies never refer to the treaties that shaped the legal structure of the Middle East. He shows that the rights derived from those binding international commitments were still valid when Israel occupied the West Bank.

Sion is not alone in reaching conclusions like these, but of course, they have never been tested openly in any international judicial forum. If in due course the UN General Assembly asks the ICJ for an opinion, how could the court possibly render a valid legal determination without having the issues raised by Sion and many others argued before it?

On the very day that the UN committee voted to appeal to the ICJ for an opinion – November 11 – the ICJ began public hearings in The Hague in a long-running dispute between Venezuela and the former British colony of Guyana on the issue of the border between them. Each party is presenting its case to the court in preliminary hearings scheduled to last until November 22. The proceedings are not only open to the public but they are being videoed and publicized widely on social media.

11/23 Links Pt1: Israeli-Canadian teen killed as terror bombings target 2 Jerusalem bus stops; Palestinian gunmen steal body of Israeli from hospital; U.S. creates special representative for Palestinian affairs

From Ian:

Israeli teen killed as terror bombings target 2 bus stops at entrances to Jerusalem

Two explosions at two bus stops near entrances to Jerusalem on Wednesday morning killed one person and left another 22 people injured, police and medics said.

Police described the explosions as a terror bombing attack.

The first explosion occurred close to the main entrance of Jerusalem in Givat Shaul, shortly after 7 a.m., peak commuter hour.

Eighteen people at the bus stop were injured in the blast, including two critically and two seriously, medical officials said. The victims were taken to two hospitals in Jerusalem.

One of the victims injured in the first blast later died at Shaare Zedek Medical Center, hospital officials said. He was named as 16-year-old Aryeh Schupak, a yeshiva student from Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood, and a dual Israeli-Canadian national.

A second blast occurred shortly after 7:30 a.m., at Ramot junction, another entrance to Jerusalem.

Five people lightly hurt by shrapnel or suffered from anxiety in the second explosion were taken to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Medical Center, hospital officials said.

A bus at the station was damaged by the explosion. It was unclear if the victims were at the station or on the bus itself.

Deadly ‘high quality’ Jerusalem bombs planted by organized terror cell, police say

A senior officer said police were hunting for an organized terror cell that detonated two “high quality” explosive devices at two bus stops near entrances to Jerusalem on Wednesday morning, killing one and wounding more than 20 others.

Speaking to reporters, the head of the police operations division said the “two high-quality, powerful explosive devices with a high level of damage” were hidden behind the bus stop and in a bush.

The first explosion occurred close to the main entrance of Jerusalem in Givat Shaul, shortly after 7 a.m., peak commuter hour. The second blast occurred shortly after 7:30 a.m., at Ramot junction, another entrance to Jerusalem.

A 16-year-old yeshiva student, Aryeh Schupak, was killed and 22 people were hurt in the two attacks, including one listed as critical and another three in serious-moderate condition, according to medical officials.

Schupak, who was killed in the first bombing, was a Canadian national as well as an Israeli citizen, according to Canada’s ambassador to Israel.

The remotely detonated devices were packed with nails to maximize casualties, according to police officials.

Due to the nature of the attack with two near-identical bombs exploding within half an hour of each other at two bus stops, Deputy Commissioner Sigal Bar Zvi said police suspected an organized cell was behind it, rather than just one person.

“I believe we will capture the terror cell,” she said.

‘We saw people running, children crying’: Witnesses describe J’lem attack aftermath

Victims and witnesses described the terrifying moment they were caught up in the twin bomb attacks at Jerusalem bus stops on Wednesday morning.

Aryeh Schupak, 16, was killed, and at least 20 injured in the two blasts at entrances to the city.

Many of those caught up in the terror were children and teens on their way to school.

The first explosion hit a bus stop at the entrance to the city at around 7:05 a.m., and barely half an hour later another bomb went off at another stop near the Ramot neighborhood in the northwest of the capital.

Shahar Sorkis and Neta Varshavski, both 14-year-olds who attend a school in Ramot, saw the second explosion as they traveled with other schoolkids on a nearby bus.

“We saw loads of shrapnel flying off the bus… it was a mess,” Varshavski told the Ynet news site. “We heard a noise and then we saw a lot of people running, a lot of children crying.”

“When we saw the explosion a lot of the girls began to cry. There was a lot of stress,” Sorkis added. Police and security personnel at the scene of a terror attack in Jerusalem, on November 23, 2022. (Olivier Fitoussil/Flash90)

The explosion damaged a No. 67 bus that was passing at the time. The driver, Motti Gabay, told Ynet that he quickly realized it was a terror attack.

“There was panic,” he said.

Gabay, who has been a bus driver for 23 years, including the period of the Second Intifada in the early 2000s when Palestinian terrorists frequently targeted buses with bombs, said he had expected that such attacks would one day return.

“First of all, I opened the doors and people got off,” he said, noting that Israelis “are used to this already.”

Al Jazeera praises Palestinian murderer, calling stabbing three Jews to death a "hat trick"

Al Jazeera has become considered a trustworthy news source in the West - but in Arabic, it is just as disgusting and supportive of terror as it was in the years after 9/11.

It published an article about the terrorist attack in Ariel last week where it describes his bloody spree in terms of sports, saying that Muhammed Souf "scored goals" with his stabbings and car rammings. Describing his murderous attack in poetic terms, the article says, "he decided alone, like a falcon flying in the expanses of pride, to play his match solo."

Written by Palestinian Muhammad Khair Musa, the article praises the murderer:

History will record for a long time that on Tuesday the fifteenth of November of the year 2022 AD, a young man named Muhammad Souf, at the age of eighteen, ... executed an epic triple in the face of a heavily armed army, and he had nothing but a knife in his hand and a heart in his chest that did not fear death.

Even worse, the article explicitly calls on other Palestinian youth to follow in his footsteps and attack Jews. It compares Souf with Mohammed's young companions, and urges Palestinians to use Souf as a model.

This is Al Jazeera - not the airbrushed, carefully edited Western version of Al Jazeera English, but the real, terrorist supporting media empire from Qatar.

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

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11/16 Links Pt1: Glick: The Biden administration weaponizes the FBI against Israel; Stray missiles: What Ukraine, Poland can learn from Israel; Dershowitz says US-Israel ties could reach 'doomsday scenario'

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Biden administration weaponizes the FBI against Israel

Even if the crisis passes quickly, the incoming government needs to understand that so long as the Democrats are in power, the next crisis is just a progressive rally away. As the midterm elections demonstrated, today, there are two Americas, not one. The Republican America, led by the likes of Sen. Cruz, Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, is the best friend Israel has ever had.

The Democratic America hates Israel and the Republicans. They view both as fundamentally illegitimate.

This state of affairs, where one America loves Israel and the other hates it, is unlikely to change for the better in the foreseeable future. The Abu Akleh affair makes clear that moderates in the Democratic Party—like Biden himself—have transferred policymaking power regarding Israel to their all-but openly anti-Semitic progressive base.

What awaits us will be even worse than what Israel suffered with Barack Obama. We can expect to see the Democrats’ America backing arrest warrants of IDF soldiers and commanders. Democrats can be expected to cut off critical arms supplies. We can expect them to do in public what they are already doing in private—namely funding Palestinian terrorists. We can expect them to support economic boycotts of Israel and to enable the passage of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council.

To contend with the threat posed by the Democrats’ America, the incoming government must move to swiftly diminish Israel’s strategic dependence on the United States. We should end our receipt of U.S. military assistance. We should move production lines for critical platforms, including Iron Dome missiles, from the United States to Israel, regardless of the economic cost. And we should withdraw the outgoing government’s offer to allow the United States to fund the completion of our military laser program. Full ownership and control over the critical program should be restored to Israel’s military industries, again, regardless of the cost.

Apparently, the FBI informed Israel that it was opening the probe a few weeks ago—presumably before the Nov. 1 election. Gantz and outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid hid the news from the public, for obvious reasons. For a year and a half, they had insisted that Netanyahu was the cause of Israel’s troubled relations with the Democrats. The Biden administration’s probe of our soldiers makes clear that this was never the case. Netanyahu was right to stand up to Obama, and he will be right to stand up to Biden. Israel cannot be beholden to those who view our boys and girls as murderers for defending our lives and our nation. We can only defy them, even when they are former friends in Washington.

FBI has a double standard for Abu Akleh, Israeli victims - comment

What is behind Washington's double standard?
In a way, this fits in with the way the Biden administration has treated other allies in the Middle East, as though the accidental killing of someone caught in a crossfire is akin to the horrific murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, whose body was dismembered and dissolved in acid, ordered by the Saudi leadership. The Washington Post also recently published details of a leaked National Intelligence Council report on Emirati efforts to influence US policy. It must be said that those countries are not democracies and the actions Washington is criticizing were not followed with cooperation and transparency, in contrast with Israel following Abu Akleh’s death.

Some have talked about it being a shot across the bow to prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu as he’s expected to form a far-right government, though Washington is expressing dissatisfaction at events that occurred under a government to the left of Netanyahu.

Another argument made is that this is about US politics. The midterms just took place and US President Joe Biden may feel freer to take more controversial actions than he did before. The left-wing of the Democratic Party pushed for a probe of Abu Akleh’s killing and, as Netanyahu says in his recently-published memoir, Biden professed to feeling pressure on Israel issues in what is “not Scoop Jackson’s Democratic Party.”

US Senator Ted Cruz certainly sees it that way, saying the FBI investigation “underscores how corrupt and blatantly politicized the Justice Department has become, and how entirely beholden to the radical left-wing Squad Democrats really are. This administration has spent its time in office weaponizing the DOJ to target their political enemies as a matter of policy, and now they have allowed that tactic to bleed into their obsession with undermining our Israeli allies.”

Whether it’s about the Biden administration’s moralistic approach to the Middle East or about Democratic Party dynamics, this just contributes to a broader sense that the FBI has used and abused as a political tool in recent years.

The Abu Akleh investigation announcement happened to take place in the week in which Commentary released an issue with a cover story by intelligence reporter Eli Lake about how the FBI is desperately in need of reform.

“FBI officials routinely deceive not only the public but also the institutions designed to protect the public from FBI overreach. Agents lie to supervisors. Supervisors lie to judges. FBI directors mislead Congress. And almost no one is ever punished,” Lake wrote, following it up with a litany of recent abuses.

FBI leaders who leaked to the press and went after certain politicians are feted, Lake pointed out, asking: “What lesson will others draw from this, except that there are no consequences for abusing authority against the right political targets?”

JPost Editorial: Would the FBI come to different conclusion of Shireen Abu Akleh's death?

We are dismayed by the news that the FBI is launching an investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin on May 11. Israeli officials confirmed media reports on Monday that the US Justice Department had recently informed Israel’s Justice Ministry of the move, and they also voiced their firm opposition to the probe.

Israel conducted several thorough investigations into the circumstances of Abu Akleh’s killing, with the IDF concluding in September that she was most likely killed in “unintentional fire” from an Israeli soldier who did not realize she was a journalist. The US even participated in one of the investigations, including examining the bullet that the Palestinians said was the fatal one. The results of all the investigations were shared with the US, and particularly with the State Department.

Why then does the US administration believe that a new FBI investigation is necessary? As Defense Minister Benny Gantz succinctly said in a statement, the FBI probe is a grave error and there is no reason for Israel to cooperate with its investigation, even though it has nothing to hide.

“The decision taken by the US Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the tragic passing of Shireen Abu Akleh is a mistake,” Gantz said. “The IDF has conducted a professional, independent investigation, which was presented to American officials with whom the case details were shared. I have delivered a message to US representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers, and that we will not cooperate with an external investigation.”

Just heartbreaking 💔

At funeral of Michael Ladygin, father of two, who was murdered by Palestinian terrorist in Ariel yesterday, his wife in tears says:

“My husband loved Israel, he wanted to live here. I hope no other family ever enters this circle of bereavement.” pic.twitter.com/N9CdmOlOVz
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 16, 2022

Fatah praises terror attack (and may be behind it.) What will it take for the EU and US to call Fatah a terror group?

This morning, terrorist killed 3 Jews and injured others in Ariel.

The Palestinian Amad news site and others identify the terrorist as Muhammad Murad Sami Souf, 19. It says that he is a member of Fatah and his father was a leading Fatah figure who had been released from Israeli prison.

Fatah has not yet taken responsibility, but it has praised the attack.

This heroic and courageous operation is a natural response to the orgy of the occupation soldiers and settlers and their daily crimes against the Palestinian people, their land, and their Islamic and Christian sanctities.This heroic and qualitative attack confirms the continuation and escalation of the resistance act in the occupied West Bank, and that our Palestinian people are fully aware that resistance is the only way to protect the land and sanctities, and that it is capable of raising the cost of the occupation and defeating it.

Significantly, only yesterday Fatah issued a statement that incited Palestinians to violence, saying "independence and achieving sovereignty over the land of the Palestinian state is a legitimate right of our Palestinian people, and it is a goal that we will continue to struggle with determination and determination to achieve, regardless of the sacrifices."

Fatah has taken credit for numerous other attacks this year, issuing many "martyr posters."

There has been no difference in rhetoric or actions between Fatah and other terror groups like Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the PFLP during the current wave of attacks.

Yet the West still pretends that Fatah is somehow more "moderate" than the other groups. Only the Fatah-linked Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are designated as a terror group by the State Department, but not Fatah itself.

This is because the world wants to maintain the fiction that the PLO - which is dominated by Fatah - is a peace partner, and it would be awkward to say that Abbas is a man of peace but that the political party he heads is a terror group.

The US, EU and PLO play into the fiction that these terror attacks have nothing to do with Fatah, making a distinction between rogue Fatah elements and official Fatah positions. The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center describes this ambiguity:

To understand the connection between Fatah and the Al Aqsa MArtyrs Brigades [AAMB,] a distinction has to be made between “official” Fatah, which is always conflicted because of the need display “resistance” activities while violating the ground rules agreed on with Israel, and Fatah operatives or security force operatives who ignore the official commitment. That duality is reflected in the inconsistent, diverse statements about the AAMB made by members of the Fatah movement. Some occasionally express reservations, and others publicly support, identify with and praise the armed “resistance,” while local Fatah branches support and openly aid it (al-Jazeera, August 9, 2022).

The duality of the PA’s approach is also reflected in the way it responds to terrorist attacks for which the AAMB claim responsibility. Publicly, some of the senior PA figures condemn the attacks, primarily those carried out inside Israel territory, but often praise those who carry them out and represent them as role models and heroes who sacrifice their lives for the sake of the Palestinian people. The PA also issues mourning notices for them and senior Palestinian figures attend their funerals and go to the mourning tents to offer condolences. In the case of Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, AAMB leader in Nablus, Fatah even named its summer camps after him.

There's another reason why the West is reluctant to call out Fatah's clear support for these terror attacks. If every single Palestinian faction supports terror so explicitly, then Israel really cannot be blamed for concentrating on defending itself and its citizens - but the West wants to maintain the fiction that Israel is equally responsible for the violence, that it is a "cycle of violence" and not Israel responding to terror.

In the end, it is all politics and optics, and the West doesn't want to admit that the two state solution they want so desperately cannot work as long as one of the states is committed to destroy the other, one Jew at a time.

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!

11/14 Links Pt1: Gleefully abandoning Israel; Why the Palestinians Snubbed the Israeli Left; Zelensky aide; Ukraine’s vote against Israel at UN ‘a grave mistake’

From Ian:

Gleefully abandoning Israel

Kasher's post was so incendiary that Facebook removed it for violating rules of decent conduct. But Kasher didn't let up. He continued to expectorate that "a Jewish people with this face is not my Jewish people, and not the Jewish people among which I wish to be counted as a son." As a result, he announced that he now prefers not to be called a Jew but rather only "a person of Jewish origin."

He then went on to reject "invalid" calls for unity with the two camps he views as mutations. "The differences between me and the people of the mutations are not marginal and should not be ignored for the sake of a higher goal," he wrote. "There is no true unity and there never will be."

What makes Asa Kasher's diatribe so disturbing is its source. Until now, Kasher had been considered one of this country's respected and reasonable thinkers, someone who authored the IDF's code of ethics in warfare and who defended its targeted assassination policies in academic and legal forums worldwide. He is an Israel Prize laureate. Now it seems that Kasher has lost his bearings in a haze of hatred and self-hatred.

Religious Zionist Party Chairman Bezalel Smotrich responded to Kasher's remarks, saying they saddened him. "People like Asa Kasher, whose wisdom, integrity, and morality I wanted to appreciate, are now unmasked as lacking national responsibility, personal integrity, and minimal morality."

Addressing his "brothers on the Left," Smotrich said his camp was "given a mandate to promote what we believe is right and good for the State of Israel. We are positively going to fulfill this mandate. But you should know that your attempts at intimidation are baseless and unnecessary. No one is going to destroy democracy, turn Israel into Iran, harm someone's individual rights, or force Israelis to change their personal lifestyle."

My conclusion is that "Ben-Gvir-Phobia" (as opposed to reasonable concern about his rise) is a purposefully blown-out-of-proportion fear of the Right that serves as cover for people who apparently weren't comfortable with staunch Zionist and real Jewish identity to begin with. It leads to off-the-rocker reactions like those of Friedman and Kasher, who seem only-too-happy to jettison their associations with Israel and Judaism.

We shouldn't go there. Israel's democratic and Jewish discourse is sound even as it tends towards the conservative side of the map, and Israel's religious, defense, and diplomatic policies will not easily be hijacked by Ben-Gvir-ism. The radicals that truly worry me are those that seek to crash Israel's diplomatic relations and Israel-Diaspora relations with false, apocalyptic prognostications of Israel's descent into barbarism.

Perhaps the best advice is to ignore angry self-declared prophets like Friedman and Kasher. Perhaps I shouldn't have written about them at all. I am certain that they do not represent mainstream opinion in either the American-Jewish or Israeli communities. The Israel they fabricate and scorn ain't the real, responsible and realistic Israel I know.

Ruthie Blum: Let’s replace the term ‘national unity’ with ‘majority rule’

It’s no wonder, then, that the “anybody but Bibi” bloc disintegrated as soon as the latest election campaign kicked off. Grasping that the best he could hope for—even with the virulent anti-Zionist parties’ support—would be to prevent Netanyahu from being able to form a coalition, Lapid’s goal was to remain interim prime minister for as long as possible until a sixth round of elections.

He thus discouraged voters from opting for smaller left-wing parties. The upshot was that Meretz didn’t pass the threshold and Labor garnered only four mandates. He also colluded with the far-left Jewish-Arab Hadash-Ta’al Party not to join forces with its radical Islamist counterpart, Balad, which then didn’t make it into the Knesset.

Then there was Gantz, who ran against, rather than with, him. To do this, he established a party whose name in English, hilariously, is “National Unity.” Neither this nor his enlisting of former Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot as a draw helped him come close to surpassing Lapid, let alone Netanyahu.

The icing on the “unity” cake was on display during the coalition consultations with Herzog. The only parties to recommend Lapid were his own, Yesh Atid, and Labor, headed by Merav Michaeli, who publicly blamed Lapid for the electoral defeat.

Angry at her for having dared to cross him in this manner, he stormed out of the Knesset last Sunday when she took to the podium to deliver a speech at the ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The “unity” was heartwarming.

To be fair to Lapid, who is about to assume the role of opposition leader, “unity” is a meaningless concept in general, unless applied to a specific tenet or circumstance at a given time. The same goes for Netanyahu’s newfound coalition, which undoubtedly is and will continue to be fraught with frequent squabbles.

Still, the contrast in this respect between the outgoing and incoming governments is stark. Whereas the sole glue for Lapid’s coalition was anti-Bibi animosity, Netanyahu’s espouses a set of values and objectives shared by a higher percentage of the population.

Whether this constitutes “unity” is questionable. But it’s what democracies call “majority rule.”

PreOccupiedTerritory: People Who Think Actual Terrorist Arafat Changed Ways Refuse To Accept Former Kahanist Has Moderated (satire)

The evolution of a far-right figure who, among other beyond-the-pale rhetoric, once expressed admiration for a man who massacred dozens of Palestinians at prayer, into an influential kingmaker who professes a shift to more tolerant views, has prompted skepticism among his political opponents, many of whom had little problem believing that the mass-murderer Yasser Arafat sincerely disavowed violence, despite the latter’s flagrant use of such means to achieve his political ends after signing peace agreements.

Numerous commentators, politicians, and other public figures in Israel have spent months, some even years, denouncing Itamar Ben-Gvir as a fascist Islamophobe who must be kept as far from governmental power as possible – warnings that have taken on greater urgency since the alliance of his Otzma Yehudit Party and the Religious Zionism Party garnered fourteen seats in elections two weeks ago, putting Ben-Gvir in position to extract policy and personnel concessions from Binyamin Netanyahu, the prospective prime minister of an emerging right-wing coalition. Ben-Gvir has in recent years renounced some of the extreme positions that characterized his activism in prior decades, such as calling Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and threatening harm to him; Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by another extremist with views that overlapped Ben-Gvir’s. That political evolution, however, has failed to sway Ben-Gvir’s critics, who find unconvincing his protestations of moderation, even as many of them make excuses for the arch-terrorist who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization and commitment to pursue his political aims through negotiation rather than terrorism, but disregarded that commitment repeatedly.

“A leopard can’t change his spots,” insisted Zehava Gal-On, whose far-left Meretz Party failed to meet the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the vote, and will be absent from the Knesset for the first time in more than thirty years, but for some reason journalists keep seeking out her opinion despite its questionable relevance. “Arafat was totally different. He renounced violence and I believed him. Anything that happened afterwards was just technicalities, necessary sacrifices for peace. Doesn’t count.”

Palestinian media brags of 29 attacks in 24 hours

Hamas' Al Resalah quotes a Palestinian think tank "Muetta" that monitors "acts of resistance," proudly reporting:

Resistance activities continued in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem against the occupation forces and settlers during the last 24 hours.

The Palestinian Information Center "Muetta" monitored 29 acts of resistance in the West Bank and Jerusalem during the last 24 hours, most notably 3 shootings against the occupation forces, confronting settlers' attacks and destroying their vehicles.

Even Israeli media doesn't report on most of these incidents.

Muetta listed the "acts of resistance" during October:

Shootings 144
A stabbing or attempted stabbing 3
Run over or try to run over 3
Operations planting or dropping explosive charges 36
Destruction of military vehicles and equipment 46
Burning military installations, machinery and places 9
Throwing stones 631
Throwing a Molotov cocktail 57
Shooting firecrackers 27
Encounters of many forms 754
Resisting settlers’ attacks 218
Demonstrations and rallies 69
Drone 2
Total 1999

This was more than double the 832 incidents they tallied in September.

There are dozens of Palestinian terror attacks daily. They brag about it. Yet the media only takes notice when Israel responds.

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!

11/03 Links Pt1: Israelis Want Leaders Who Have a Vision for a Jewish and Zionist State; Melanie Phillips: Israel joins the West’s culture wars

From Ian:

With overwhelming victory, Netanyahu set to form strong, stable, legitimate, right-wing gov’t

Apparently in Israel, the fifth time is the charm. After repeated attempts by the opposition, by defectors from his own right-wing bloc, by the prosecution and the Supreme Court to prevent embattled former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from ruling, the electorate finally ended Israel’s protracted political deadlock by voting overwhelmingly in favor of Netanyahu and his natural—and loyal—right-wing allies.

With 87.6 percent of the paper ballots counted, Netanyahu’s bloc is likely to surge to as many as 65 seats in the 120-member Knesset. The number represents a stable parliamentary majority. By contrast, Israel’s left-wing collapsed to barely 45 seats—a massive 20-seat gap between the right-wing and left-wing blocs. Parties comprising the outgoing coalition secured only 50 Knesset mandates this time around, including an Arab party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Even if the distribution of mandates shifts slightly as the final votes are counted, the results are clear: Netanyahu is returning to power for a third stretch as head of government, after a year in the opposition.

The vote was a national referendum on the fitness of Netanyahu—Israel’s longest-serving prime minister—as the man best suited for the top job. It was also a referendum on the tremendous damage caused cycle after election cycle by opposing parliamentarians who conspired to block the people’s choice from serving as prime minister.

In a major surprise, turnout was the highest in years. Many had said that Israelis were growing tired of going to the polls each year and might boycott the voting booths. On the contrary, Israelis embraced their hyper-democracy and voted overwhelmingly to return stability to the electoral system. And the voters proved once again that Israel is a traditional, center-right country.

Despite all the efforts to oust him, it is now clear that Netanyahu has not lost any support across five consecutive elections. And now, the right-wing government he is poised to assemble represents the most stable alignment he has ever secured. There is virtually zero chance that Netanyahu will attempt to move towards a so-called unity alignment with parties that have tried to prevent him from serving as premier. Doing so would bring a Trojan horse and the opposition directly into his cabinet. Stability depends on forming an alliance with parties that actually support Netanyahu’s candidacy.

Continuity expected on Bennett-Lapid policies on Lebanon, Turkey - analysis

The next government is likely to continue some of its predecessors’ key regional policies if Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu forms a coalition, as expected.

Netanyahu expressed sharp opposition to the Lebanon maritime demarcation agreement shortly before it was set to be signed, calling it “terms of surrender.”

However, when the deal was finalized last week, Netanyahu said he would “behave as [he] did with the Oslo Accords.” When Netanyahu became prime minister in 1996, he fulfilled the previous government’s commitment that Israel would mostly withdraw from Hebron, following negotiations in which he demanded the Palestinians pledge to stop terrorism.

Netanyahu’s attitude towards the Oslo Accords as prime minister can be summed up in a statement he made at the time: “If they give, they will get; if they don’t give, they will not get.” Netanyahu repeated this call for reciprocity several times in his autobiography published last month, and as such, is likely to be his approach to the Lebanon agreement, as well.

US President Joe Biden provided Prime Minister Yair Lapid with a letter of guarantees over the weekend that would likely limit Netanyahu’s ability to change the deal. The letter backs up the Lebanon agreement and states that the US is committed to supporting the IDF and strengthening its ability to defend Israel, including against threats to its ships and energy assets.

Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati told Reuters on Wednesday that the US guarantees protect the maritime boundary deal.

Melanie Phillips: Israel joins the West’s culture wars

With the result of its election this week, Israel has joined other Western countries in a notable current trend: A revolt by the public against the political establishment.

The Religious Zionist Party has now become the third-largest party in the Knesset. This is likely to mean cabinet posts for the rabble-rouser Itamar Ben-Gvir and the ultra-conservative Bezalel Smotrich in a new government led by the Likud Party’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

While their likely inclusion is due to Israel’s baroque political structure—some 90% of voters didn’t vote for them—the increase in support they received is significant.

Just as happened in Hungary, Italy, the U.S. and Sweden, the once-fringe Religious Zionist Party has come to power because a significant proportion of the public has become profoundly disillusioned with a political establishment that it felt was ignoring and betraying its interests and values.

Before the election, a number of mainstream conservative-minded Israeli voters said they would be voting for Ben-Gvir. So too did a surprising number of the secular young in Tel Aviv. For the latter, Ben-Gvir’s authenticity and directness made him an unlikely political rock star. In addition, among some conservatives, there was a weariness with Netanyahu.

Others who had previously voted for the Yamina Party’s Naftali Bennett felt a deep sense of betrayal when he tore up his previous promises and principles and formed a governing coalition with the left-of-center Yair Lapid that depended upon the Islamist Ra’am Party.

As this coalition staggered along, there was further disillusionment. Bennett and Lapid seemed to be groveling to the Biden administration, only for Israel to get kicked in the teeth in response.