“I’ve just watched a video that shook me to the core of my being. In just a few seconds, it shows why our conflict persists.
So here is a short snippet:
“Shoot him! Shoot him! Here he is. Go, go. Shoot him!”
A Palestinian father holds up his 4-year-old son. He pleads with Israeli border police to kill his own child. He shouts, “Shoot this little boy!” His boy.
He pushes his young son forward toward the soldiers and screams, “Kill him! Shoot him!”
The boy pauses. He is scared. Any child would be.
He turns back, looking at his father for guidance.
With his shirt tightly tucked into his bright red shorts, the boy ambles forward towards the soldiers. One of them extends his hand in friendship. The boy gives him a high-five.
It’s hard to make a four-year-old hate.
Imagine your own child at that age. Think of his smile. Imagine her laugh. Picture the unrestrained joy and innocence that only a child possesses.
Encouraging someone to murder a child – let alone your own child – is probably the most inhumane thing a person can do.
What did this child do to deserve this? The answer is: nothing. He is innocent.
He should be in a playground. He should be in the sun, laughing with other children.
Sadly, this father’s crime is not an isolated example. In Gaza, Hamas runs summer camps that teach children to value death over life – suicide kindergarten camps.
The Palestinian Ministry of Education in Ramallah recently organized an event for students to honor terrorists who murdered three civilians.
Two weeks ago, the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper praised teenage terrorists and wrote that “death as a martyr is the path to excellence and greatness.” That’s a direct quote.
Palestinian and Israeli children deserve better. They deserve to live. They deserve to live in peace.
Children are not cannon fodder. They are the most precious things in the world. They’re the most precious things we have.
In the surveillance area, I believe the public is mostly wrong.
Andrew C. McCarthy writes: Should private companies that provide users with encryption technology be required to assist law-enforcement and intelligence services to defeat that technology? This question is a more pressing one in the wake of November’s Paris terrorist attacks. But it is a very tough question that has vexed both the government and providers of communications services for years.
“The problem is that encryption technology has gotten very tough to crack and very widely available. Consequently, if terrorists or other high-level criminals are using it to carry out schemes that endanger the public, government agents cannot penetrate the communications in real time.”
Part of what makes it so difficult is the new facts of life. As I noted during the debate over the NSA’s bulk-collection of telephone metadata, we are operating in a political environment that is night-and-day different from the aftermath of 9/11. Back then, a frightened public was demanding that the government do a better job of collecting intelligence and thwarting terrorist plots. Of course that sentiment was driven by the mass-murder of nearly 3,000 Americans, coupled with the destruction of the World Trade Center and a strike against the Pentagon. But it also owed in no small measure to the fact that government had done such an incompetent job gathering and “connecting the dots” prior to the attacks. There was a strong public sense that intelligence agencies needed an injection of muscle.
“That they have a legal basis to conduct surveillance is beside the point; all the probable cause in the world won’t help an agent who lacks the know-how to access what he’s been authorized to search.”
Today, the public’s sense tends in the other direction. There have been spectacular abuses of government power (e.g., IRS scandal), and intrusive security precautions infused by political correctness (e.g., airport searches). Americans understandably suspect that government cannot be trusted with enhanced authorities and that many of its tactics are more about the appearance of security than real security.
This makes it a very uphill environment in which to suggest, as FBI Director Jim Comey has recently done, that communications providers should provide the government with keys to unlocking their encryption technology – encryption-key repositories or what is often called “backdoor” access.
The problem is that encryption technology has gotten very tough to crack and very widely available. Consequently, if terrorists or other high-level criminals are using it to carry out schemes that endanger the public, government agents cannot penetrate the communications in real time. That they have a legal basis to conduct surveillance is beside the point; all the probable cause in the world won’t help an agent who lacks the know-how to access what he’s been authorized to search. Read the rest of this entry »
A video posted by a Jordanian-Palestinian teacher on Facebook shows his young daughter holding a large knife and declaring, “I want to stab a Jew,” the watchdog group MEMRI reported, amid an ongoing surge of stabbings and other terror attacks by Palestinians on Israelis.
“Why do you want to stab the Jew?”
Abdulhaleem Abuesha, a teacher in the Madaba refugee camp in Jordan, posted the clip on Friday. MEMRI translated and highlighted it on Tuesday.
“Because he stole our land.”
After his daughter Rahf, standing in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen, declares her desire to stab a Jew, Abuesha asks, “Why do you want to stab the Jew?”
“With what do you want to stab them?”
“Because he stole our land,” she replies.
“With a knife.”
Her father confirms approvingly: “They stole our land.” He then asks, “With what do you want to stab them?” Read the rest of this entry »
David P. Goldman writes: Ignored in news coverage of the Paris massacre is the single most pertinent piece of background: A 2014 opinion poll found that ISIS had an approval rating in France (at 16%) almost as high as President Francois Holland (at 18%). In the 18-to-24-year-old demographic, ISIS’ support jumped to 27%. Muslims comprise about a tenth of France’s population, so the results imply that ISIS had the support of the overwhelming majority of French Muslims (and especially Muslim youth), as well as the endorsement of a large part of the non-Muslim Left.
“Finding a needle in a haystack is possible only when the haystack helps you find the needles. The French authorities would have to persuade its own Muslim community to turn informer against its radicalized youth.”
Reporting the survey, conducted by the polling organization ICM for a Russian news service, Newsweek’s France correspondent Anne-Elizabeth Moutet wrote, “This is the ideology of young French Muslims from immigrant backgrounds, unemployment to the tune of 40%, who’ve been deluged by satellite TV and internet propaganda.”
“Muslim community leaders would have to fear the French state more than they fear their own radicals, and this would require a large number of arrests, deportations, and other coercive actions. In this case the situation would get worse before it got better.”
After last Friday’s massacres, to be sure, the flip-it-to-them attitude reflected in last year’s poll no doubt has attenuated somewhat. Nonetheless, it is clear that a very large proportion of French Muslims support the most extreme expression of radical Islam, offering the terrorists the opportunity to blend into a friendly milieu. The problem has gotten too big to be cured without a great deal of mess and pain. In the Gallic hedonistic calculus, a massacre or two per year is preferable to a breach of the tenuous social peace. And that is why France will do nothing.
That makes counter-terrorism challenging, but not impossible. There are two successful models for suppressing terrorists who enjoy the passive support of the ambient population: the French in Algeria and the Israelis after the Second Intifada of 2002. The first is infamous for the extensive use of torture and mass reprisals against civilians; the second succeeded on the strength of superb human as well as electronic intelligence and seamless integration of military, police and intelligence organizations. Israel reduced the number of Arab suicide bombings from 47 in 2002 with 238 dead to only 1 in 2007 with 3 dead.
Unlike the French in Algeria, Israel undid the Intifada entirely without the use of physical stress on prisoners. Israeli interrogation techniques do not require physical stress; humiliation is a more effective tool than pain with Arab suspects. Prior to 1999, Israeli security forces employed mild forms of enhanced interrogation (sleep deprivation, hooding, and so forth), but eschewed the practice afterwards. By contrast, the French Army shelled and bombed villages that gave refuge to the rebels of the Algerian Front de Libération Nationale, killing tens of thousands indiscriminately and forcing 2 million Algerians out of their homes.
It also used extreme forms of torture to elicit information from captured FLN fighters. Popular revulsion against the conduct of the war brought down the Fourth Republic and returned Gen. Charles De Gaulle to the presidency. More than 90% of French voters backed Algeria’s independence in a 1962 referendum, and France voluntarily abandoned what it had won by brutal methods on the ground. Read the rest of this entry »
Any way you look at it, the post-World War II era has never seen a refugee crisis on the scale of 2014
According to the U.N. Refugee Agency’s annual report, last year saw the total number of forcibly displaced persons rise to 59.5 million, an all-time high. That figure includes 38.2 million were displaced internally due to conflict, general violence, and human rights violations — also a record figure since such data began to be recorded in 1989. In 2014 alone, 13.9 million people were displaced due to conflict or persecution alone. More than half of refugees worldwide are children.
The primary driver of this nearly unprecedented level of human suffering was the civil war in Syria, now in its fifth year. For more than 30 years, Afghanistan had been the world’s largest source of refugees, but in 2014 Syria overtook it to claim the top spot. By year’s end, 7.6 million Syrians had been displaced within the country’s borders. In 2014 alone, 1.55 million Syrians fled the country, bringing the total number of Syrian refugees to 3.9 million. Today, one out of every four refugees is Syrian.
In this Jan. 31, 2014, file photo released by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), residents of the besieged Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus, Syria, queue to receive food supplies. Conditions in the camp have deteriorated since Islamic State militants muscled their way into it in early April 2015. The militants are trying to consolidate their hold on the camp. (AP Photo/UNRWA, File)
The Syrian crisis contributed to another milestone: Turkey is now home to the world’s single largest refugee population of 1.59 million. Pakistan had previously held that distinction but slipped to second place in 2014, with 1.51 refugees. The Syrian civil war has placed an enormous strain on surrounding countries, which have absorbed 95 percent of those who have fled. The war has also contributed to Europe’s foremost refugee crisis: Of the 219,000 who attempted to cross the Mediterranean, nearly half were Syrians.
Moreover, as fighting in Syria has continued and the Islamic State militant group has established a foothold there and expanded east, Iraq has seen its own refugee numbers worsen. In 2014, another 2.6 million Iraqis were displaced, bringing the total to 3.6 million.
Elsewhere in the world, the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatists and government forces saw just short of 230,000 Ukrainians take refuge in Russia. Renewed fighting in South Sudan displaced 1.5 million within that country. Half a million South Sudanese fled the country in 2014. Fighting in Congo displaced another million people there. With the government of Pakistan carrying out an offensive in the tribal areas against Islamist militants, some 283,500 people fled into Afghanistan.
And even as the government in Colombia carried out peace talks with the FARC rebel group to end a half-century civil war, another 137,000 Colombians were displaced, bringing the country’s total of internally displaced persons to 6 million. Read the rest of this entry »
Hamas violently took control of Gaza in 2007. What have they been doing since? Oppressing the Gazan population and investing billions in terrorism against Israel’s civilian population. Some people choose to close their eyes to the reality on the ground. What about you?
Chief Washington Correspondent Olivier Knox reports: The White House on Friday denied a report in a French magazine that the administration invited staffers from the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo to meet with and draw President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the bloody terrorist attack on the publication’s offices in Paris.
French President François Hollande, center, is surrounded by heads of state including, from left, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Donald Tusk and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as they attend the solidarity march in the streets of Paris. (Photo: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters)
“The idea was to have folks from Charlie to the White House. An interview? Awesome.”
Rénald Luzier, better known by his pen name, Luz, told the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles that U.S. officials conceived of the visit as a way to make up for the absence of a top American official at a march in support for Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 11, one week after the attack.
“We would have gone there directly. Except that they wanted to have a cartoonist come to draw Obama. This isn’t Montmartre. I said, ‘If he comes to Paris, I’ll put Budweiser in the fridge and I’ll draw him.’”
— Rénald Luzier
U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley attended the demonstration, along with leaders of Germany, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“We have seen some reports that a Charlie Hebdo staffer claims to have received, and declined, an invitation to the White House. These reports are not true. No such invitation was ever extended.”
— White House official, on condition of anonymity
But the absence of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden or Secretary of State John Kerry led to accusations from American conservatives that the president was turning his back on freedom of speech. The attack, by two brothers of Algerian descent, was in apparent retaliation for cartoons that many Muslims saw as blasphemous. Twelve people were shot to death and 11 injured.
“Obama didn’t send an important representative, and sending John Kerry to see [French President François] Hollande wasn’t enough,” Luzier said. Read the rest of this entry »
HAIFA, Israel – Paul Alster reports: A horrific missile attack that killed 11 children in Gaza during last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas, for which Israel was broadly condemned at the time, was actually caused by a Palestinian missile misfiring and killing its own people, Amnesty International charged in a report released Thursday.
“Although Palestinians have claimed that the Israeli military was responsible for the attack, an independent munitions expert, who examined the available evidence on behalf of Amnesty International, concluded that the projectile used in the attack was a Palestinian rocket.”
“In the deadliest incident believed to have been caused by a Palestinian armed group during the conflict, 13 Palestinian civilians – 11 of them children – were killed when a projectile exploded next to a supermarket in the crowded al-Shati refugee camp in Gaza on 28 July 2014, the first day of Eid al-Fitr,” Amnesty’s report said. “The children had been playing in the street and buying crisps and soft drinks in the supermarket at the time of the attack.”
“Palestinian armed groups, including the armed wing of Hamas, repeatedly launched unlawful attacks during the conflict killing and injuring civilians.”
“Although Palestinians have claimed that the Israeli military was responsible for the attack, an independent munitions expert, who examined the available evidence on behalf of Amnesty International, concluded that the projectile used in the attack was a Palestinian rocket.”
“Unlike Hamas, Israel is vigorously investigating its conduct, aiming to draw lessons and minimize civilian harm. Meanwhile, Hamas continues to incite terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, boast of building new cross-border assault tunnels, and test-fires rockets, in preparation for further violence against Israelis.”
— a spokesperson for Israel’s Embassy in London
The report highlights the fact that the blast could not have been caused by a drone attack or as the result of Israeli shelling. The crater was too shallow, it said, while “its circumference was too wide to have been caused by a tank shell.”
“The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, which against the wishes of the U.S. and others, intends to apply for membership of the International Criminal Court, next week, may be liable for this and other war crimes committed by Palestinians during the war if accepting ICC jurisdiction.”
“Palestinian armed groups, including the armed wing of Hamas, repeatedly launched unlawful attacks during the conflict killing and injuring civilians,” said Philip Luther, director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. “In launching these attacks, they displayed a flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law and for the consequences of their violations on civilians in both Israel and the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s insistence from the start that the 13 deaths were caused by one of Hamas’ own missiles going astray was generally disregarded as Hamas rushed to accuse Israel. Read the rest of this entry »
It isn’t Mr. Obama’s habit to admit error, or to be gracious to his opponents, but it would serve the interests of both nations if he were.
The Israeli election that looked like a cliffhanger when the polls closed on Tuesday had turned into a decisive victory for Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party by Wednesday morning. With at least 29 seats in the parliament compared to 24 for the main center-left party, Israel’s Prime Minister should be able to put together a ruling coalition of center-right parties that is more manageable than his last majority.
“President Obama might also reflect on his own contribution to Mr. Netanyahu’s victory. Israelis surrounded by hostile nations sworn to their destruction are most likely to take risks for peace when they feel secure in America’s support.”
The victory is a remarkable personal triumph for Mr. Netanyahu, who is now Israel’s second longest-serving Prime Minister after David Ben-Gurion. He gambled that he could assemble a more stable center-right coalition, as well as by giving a high-stakes speech to the U.S. Congress on Iran two weeks before the election, and in the final days stressing above all the security themes that must be Israel’s abiding concern.
“While the results may dismay Mr. Netanyahu’s detractors abroad, especially in the White House, they surely reflect Israel’s security consensus.”
Mr. Netanyahu and Likud were trailing in the polls in the final week as the opposition stressed the rising cost of food and housing and an economy that had slowed to about 3% growth from near 6% in 2010. But in the closing days Mr. Netanyahu played up that foreigners (read: President Obama) wanted him defeated, and he rejected statehood for Palestinians, reversing a position he had taken in 2009. Read the rest of this entry »
Blizzards are quite rare in Jerusalem, so when a recent storm dumped around ten inches of snow on the city, some people were pretty excited. Farther south in Israel, some communities got snow for the first time since the 1990s. (read more)
Hezbollah Claims Responsibility for Artillery Fire; Israeli Forces Retaliate With Attacks in Lebanon
JERUSALEM— Nicholas Casey And Joshua Mitnick reporting: Israel was hit by two artillery attacks along its northern border Wednesday, its military said, and Israeli forces retaliated with attacks in Lebanon.
“To all those who are trying to challenge us on the northern border I suggest to look at what happened…in the Gaza Strip.”
— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would respond sharply to Wednesday’s rocket and mortar attack, the second in two days on the country’s northern borders. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite political and militant group that controls southern Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the artillery fire.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israeli forces “reserved the right” to resume military operations in Lebanon if attacks continued. She said Israeli casualties were being tallied, but gave no further details.
Lebanon’s state news agency reported Israeli artillery attacks on several southern Lebanese villages. It also said a member of the U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon had been killed.
Israeli police were for the second consecutive day evacuating residents and tourists from border areas. At checkpoints, police were directing vehicles to move south, out of the range of artillery fire. Read the rest of this entry »
The city of light became a beacon of leadership Sunday when more than 40 heads of state came together to denounce terrorism, with one glaring exception: the lack of a high-ranking U.S. official.
Historic: World Leaders Gather With Crowd of Millions to Show Solidarity After Terror Attacks
PARIS— Stacy Meichtry reports: World leaders marched arm-in-arm with a massive crowd Sunday in defiance of terrorist attacks that ripped through the French capital in the past week.
A man dressed as the Statue of Liberty holds up the French national flag at the Place de la République. JOEL SAGET/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Hundreds of thousands of people from across France and elsewhere descended on Paris for a rally that drew a host of strange bedfellows from the world stage.
The families and friends of the 17 people killed in the spree of violence walked solemnly at the head of the march. In their wake came a spectrum of leaders, ranging from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron .
The rally was one of the city’s biggest gatherings in decades, and French officials adopted “exceptional” measures to manage the crowd and guarantee the security of foreign leaders. Large swaths of the city were sealed off from traffic and subway lines were shut down.
For a city that had become a backdrop of gunfire and bloodshed in recent days, the rally marked Paris’s return as a stage for symbolic gestures of peace. Ms. Merkel locked arms with Mr. Abbas, and Mr. Netanyahu shook hands with President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali, which doesn’t have diplomatic relations with Israel.
emonstrators gather in Place de la République before the start of a march on Sunday in Paris. Hundreds of thousands of people and dozens of world leaders are attending the event in memory of 17 people who were killed in a spree of terror attacks in the French capital. CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES
Thousands Gather in Paris
World leaders and dignitaries were due to march with a massive crowd in Paris on Sunday in memory of 17 people who were killed in a spree of terrorist attacks in France this past week. Photo: AP
“Today, Paris is the capital of the world. The whole country will stand up.”
— French President François Hollande
France and the rest of Europe have been on high alert since Wednesday, when brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi allegedly went on a deadly rampage, stalking through the newsroom of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo with AK-47s. The violence continued when a third gunman, Amedy Coulibaly, allegedly killed a police woman on Thursday and four hostages at a kosher grocery store on Friday.
Signs with the words “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), adorn the base of the statue of Marianne at the Place de la République before the start of the march. JOEL SAGET/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The Kouachi brothers and Mr. Coulibaly were killed by police in separate and simultaneous raids that brought the crisis to a dramatic climax.
The violence traumatized France, puncturing public confidence in the country’s formidable security forces and sowing tensions in a land that is home to one of Europe’s biggest Muslim populations.
French doctor Patrice Pelloux, right, takes part in the march with members of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine. THOMAS SAMSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
On the sidelines of Sunday’s rally, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve convened a meeting of senior security officials from both sides of the Atlantic, including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder , to address terrorist threats in the wake of the attacks.
Mr. Cazeneuve said the group of officials agreed to work together to combat threats from foreign fighters returning from Syria and Iraq and to tighten border controls.
A black X is put across the mouth on part of the base of the statue of Marianne at the Place de la République before the start of the march. The poster reads in French: “We are all defiantly Charlie,” referring to Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine whose Paris offices were attacked by brothers Chérif and Saïd Kouachi. JOEL SAGET/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
French police faced off with gunmen on two fronts. How did the alleged terrorists end up in these final confrontations? WSJ’s Jason Bellini has #TheShortAnswer.
The government mobilized thousands of police and paramilitary forces to oversee the rally. Special units, officials said, were dedicated to protecting dignitaries and leaders.
Mr. Hollande welcomes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Élysée Palace. THIBAULT CAMUS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Efforts to control the crowd, however, were at times overwhelmed by the sheer size of the gathering.
Crowds began flocking to the city center in the early hours of Sunday amid bright sunshine and crisp blue skies. Several dozen antique cars and tractors, in Paris for an annual procession, this year decked themselves out with “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie,” stickers in solidarity with the magazine, and drove near the Arc de Triomphe as passersby cheered and clapped.
Notably not present: Alleged world leader U.S. President Barack Obama
The sea of demonstrators pooling in Place de la Republique—the march’s starting point—quickly overflowed, sending human rivers into Paris’s manicured avenues. Crowds also breached the march’s official routes—toward Place de la Nation, 2 miles away—clogging the city’s cobblestoned byways with foot traffic.
Mr. Hollande embraces German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, as she arrives at the Élysée Palace. Mr. Hollande will lead the march and will be joined by world leaders in a sign of unity. Thibault Camus/Associated Press
Meanwhile, world leaders were ferried to the head of the rally in charted buses from the Élysée Palace, where Mr. Hollande had individually welcomed them in the morning. As the leaders arrived at the march, plain-clothed officers fanned out and police marksmen took rooftop positions. Read the rest of this entry »
Noah Rothman reports: President Barack Obama’s administration is reportedly considering putting some muscle behind its opposition to new settlement construction by Israelis in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. According to reports, the administration is weighing the possibility of imposing sanctions on the Israeli government.
“Senior Israeli officials said that White House officials held a classified discussion a few weeks ago about the possibility of taking active measures against the settlements,” Haaretz reported on Thursday.
When confronted with this rumor, administration officials did not deny it. “A few senior American officials approached by Haaretz did not deny this, but refused to disclose more details,” Haaretz continued. “National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan refused to comment.”
A discussion on such a sensitive and politically-loaded issue in the White House is extremely irregular and shows to what extent relations between the Obama administration and Netanyahu government have deteriorated. In recent years European states have imposed increasing sanctions against the construction in the settlements, while the United States has made do with denunciations.
An Israeli official who was briefed by the Americans on the issue said the administration started discussing it following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s last meeting in the White House in early October and the public confrontation over the settlements that occurred later.
On Friday, spokespeople with both the White House and the State Department refused to comment on the rumor that the administration was considering sanctions on Israel.
While Earnest reaffirmed the strong bond between the two nations, he called the settlements “illegitimate” and said the U.S. was deeply concerned about the settlement activity. Read the rest of this entry »
Adam Kredo reports: Iran’s Supreme LeaderAyatollah Ali Khamenei published early Sunday a 9-step plan to “eliminate” Israel, prompting Israel’s prime minister to file a formal complaint with Western negotiators involved in nuclear talks with Tehran.
Khamenei’s official Twitter account on Sunday tweeted out the 9-step plan explaining “the proper way of eliminating Israel.”
“The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime.”
— Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
“Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei’s answer to 9 key questions,” Khamenei tweeted, along with a graphic illustrating the plan to annihilate Israel.
“There is no moderation in Iran. It is unrepentant, unreformed.”
— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime,” Khamenei wrote. “And of course the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in the region. The Islamic Republic has proposed a practical and logical mechanism for this to international communities.”
Khamenei accuses “the fake Zionist regime” of committing acts of “infanticide, homicide, violence, and iron fist while boasts about it blatantly [sic].”
Israel’s enemies must commit to “armed resistance” until Israel is eliminated, Khamenei says. Read the rest of this entry »
“In the Middle-East, everyone loves hummus, regardless of their religion, origin or nation.”
I grabbed this because I love the headline. Besides being a great hangout, they do great headlines. Above is a screen cap of the Facebook page, click the image to follow the link. Or don’t. Just say you did. Imagine whirled chickpeas.
Supporters of a social-media campaign called “The Hummus Initiative” are aiming to achieve peace in the Middle East by posting pictures of themselves with hummus….(read more)
Israeli soldiers walk by foot near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip as they return from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian coastal enclave on August 4, 2014. The Israeli army said today it was resuming its strikes on the Gaza Strip, after the end of a seven-hour humanitarian lull. An army spokesman said troops were redeploying within Gaza while other forces were pulling out in a process which began on August 2. GIL COHEN MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images)
Gaza militants captured an Israeli officer in the southern Gaza Strip just as the cease-fire was falling apart, said a senior Israeli military spokesman. Two other Israeli soldiers were reported killed…(read more)
Rarely has civilian death been so propagandized by so many of our fellow Americans. Oh, now, I know they’ll protest this characterization. They hate — just hate — the horrific loss of life in Gaza. They hate it so much that they’re moved to wax as eloquently as they can about the horror of death in schools, in mosques, in hospitals — all the places where people are supposed to be “safe,” supposed to seek “refuge.” They can’t stop writing about this death, emoting about this death. And they write and emote until you can almost see the splash of their crocodile tears on your computer screen.
They love peace, you see. They love it so much that they attempt to use every one of their God-given gifts to make you feel what a Palestinian widow feels, to make you stand in the shoes of a man weeping for his lost son. Feel the ultimate anguish. Hear the wailing. Don’t look away from the blood or the rage or the tears.
Have hundreds of thousands of parents and children and aunts and uncles shed similar tears in Syria? Look away from that. No, look away. I mean it. I need your eyes to focus back where they should — on that dead Palestinian child…
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell sat down today with Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, and asked him a provocative question: is Israel “losing its soul [and] may be losing the war because of the political impact of what is happening on the ground” in Gaza?
Mitchell brought this up in the context of images depicting wounded and killed Palestinians, in those conditions as a possible result of Israeli bombing.
“The difference is Hamas is using their civilians as human shields. They’re placing missile batteries in hospitals, they’re putting weapons depots in mosques. They’re storing rockets in UN schools. This is sick and grotesque.”
Dermer insisted, “Israel is not losing its soul. We are upholding our values under the most extreme circumstances.” Read the rest of this entry »
An Israeli soldier was silhouetted as he guarded a post overlooking Bethlehem last month.
For The Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby writes: The Pew Research Center last week released a new survey of American attitudes in the Middle East. The results weren’t surprising. In the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, 51 percent of Americans say they sympathize more with Israel. Only 14 percent feel greater affinity for the Palestinians.
Sympathy Toward Israel Has Never Been Higher
Pew’s findings demonstrate the strength of pro-Israel feeling in the United States. The poll was conducted amid the current fighting with Hamas, but the bottom line hardly changed from Pew’s last survey in April, when it reported that in the 36 years it has been sampling public opinion, “sympathy toward Israel has never been higher.”
But below the surface, America’s Israel-friendly consensus is splitting along the same left-vs.-right fault line that has polarized so many other issues. While support for Israel is overwhelming among Republicans and conservatives, it has been shrinking among Democrats and liberals. “The partisan gap in Mideast sympathies has never been wider,” reports Pew, with 73 percent of Republicans sympathetic to Israel in the ongoing conflict, but just 44 percent of Democrats. Respondents identifying as liberal Democrats were five times as likely as conservative Republicans to sympathize more with the Palestinians.
Thus is the Democratic Party losing its way on one of the great moral issues of our time.
For roughly the first third of Israel’s existence, Democrats tended to support the Jewish state more strongly than Republicans did. In a compelling new book, ““Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel”, foreign-affairs thinker Joshua Muravchik writes that during the run-up to the Six Day War in 1967, “Israel was above all a cause championed by liberals.” So heartfelt was this support that even ardent Democratic opponents of the Vietnam War, such as John Kenneth Galbraith and Eugene McCarthy, advocated US military action on Israel’s behalf. Read the rest of this entry »
“This is the cruelest, most grotesque war that I’ve ever seen.”
For NRO, Celina Durgin: Hamas is purposely placing Palestinian citizens in Gaza in harm’s way to cause more civilian casualties at the hands of Israeli troops, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday on Special Report.
Hamas is “using their own people as propaganda fodder,” Netanyahu said.
Hamas soldiers have positioned their weapons in civilian homes… (read more)
Tens of thousands Israelis attend the joint funeral of Gilad Shaer, 16, Naftali Frenkel, 16, and Eyal Ifrach, 19, in the central Israeli town of Modiin on July 1, 2014. Photograph: GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP/Getty Images
For Commentary Magazine, Max Boot writes: It tells you all you need to know about Hamas that its biggest victory to date against Israel–one that is no doubt being celebrated in the fortified bunkers that house its leadership–was the death of four young Palestinian boys on a Gaza City beach on Wednesday. The boys were apparently killed by an Israeli bomb or missile.
Needless to say, the Israel Defense Forces do not deliberately target children–any more than do the armed forces of the United States or other civilized powers. That is both morally abhorrent and strategically stupid: What possible purpose can be served in killing children? But while deeply harmful and counterproductive for Israel, this inadvertent strike was a big win for Hamas. It produced the most coveted of victories in modern warfare: a front-page picture, taken by the storiedNew York Times photographer Tyler Hicks, of one dead boy lying on the Gaza sand and another being carried in a man’s arms.
There is no surer or better way for Hamas to make its propaganda point, which is the only point of this entire exercise from its standpoint. Hamas, like other terrorist groups, knows it cannot win a military victory against a much more powerful enemy, but it can win a public-relations victory by fostering the illusion that Israel is the aggressor and the Palestinians its victims.
Such an image is as powerful as it is misleading. All informed observers know the facts. Read the rest of this entry »
For the New York Post,Charles Schumer writes: Amid the recent troubles between Israel and the Palestinians, many Americans and media commentators are drawing disturbing lines of parallelism between the two societies, asserting a false moral equivalency to the actions of each.
“How did Hamas and too many diverse parts of the mainstream Palestinian community respond to the kidnap and murder of three young Israelis? They cheered.”
In essence, the claim goes like this: “Both sides are fighting each other with similar degrees of violence; both treat each other equally badly; each side is equally to blame for the violence, and they just can’t come together.”
“And is it no wonder, given the vitriolic hatred of Israel that has been preached in textbooks and schools to two generations of Palestinian children.”
That notion that there is a moral equivalency between the defensive and targeted actions that the rule-of-law-based Israel is compelled to take, and the proactive and indiscriminate actions that hate-based organizations like Hamas takes, is completely unfair, unfounded and infuriating to supporters of Israel — with good reason. Read the rest of this entry »
Police say the protesters began throwing stones and firecrackers at a group of visitors, prompting the authorities to respond with stun grenades and rubber bullets.
This poll is interesting, I recommend visiting the source site for detailed results. While it’s easy to see Kerry as a polarizing or unpopular figure, it would be useful to see how Kerry compares to previous U.S. Secretaries of State. I’m inclined to think Kerry’s unpopularity is not unique. It’s the office, not the person, that invites distrust in the Israli-Arab world, we’d have to compare him to his predecessors. Or–it could be that Kerry stands out as a distrusted figure?
Which Side are the Americans Pressuring?: 74% of Israeli Jews believe the Americans are more strongly pressuring Israel than the Palestinians to accept the framework agreement, while 12% believe they are equally pressuring both sides and 5% believe they are more strongly pressuring the Palestinians. (Israeli Jews who see Israel as under more pressure include 86% of the self-defined right-wing, 57% of the center, and 50% of the left-wing.) Among Israeli Arabs, 29% believe the Americans are more strongly pressuring the Palestinians to accept the framework agreement, 26% believe both sides are being equally pressured, and 25% believe Israel is under more pressure.
US Secretary of State John Kerry‘s Concern for Israeli Security:64% of Israelis (66% of Jewish Israelis and 53% of Arab Israelis) do not trust Kerry to take Israel’s security into account as a crucial factor in the framework agreement. 32% of Israelis (31% of Jewish Israelis and 32% of Arab Israelis) do trust Kerry to take into account Israel’s security. (Jewish Israelis who trust Kerry on security include 18% of the right, 39% of the center, and 79% of the left.)
US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Motivation: 60% of Israelis (61% of Jewish Israelis and 56% of Arab Israelis) believe that Kerry’s main motivation for reaching a framework agreement is a personal interest in making history as a statesman where others before him had failed. 21% of Israelis (22% of Jewish Israelis and 16% of Arab Israelis) believe Kerry is motivated by honest concern for the future of the two parties, and 9% of Israelis (8% of Jewish Israelis and 14% of Arab Israelis) believe he is equally motivated by the chance to make history and concern for the parties.
Daniel Schwammenthal writes: In a sane world, Israeli company SodaStream would be a poster child for corporate responsibility. Of the 1,300 staff in its West Bank plant, 450 are Israeli Arabs and 500 are Palestinians. All workers receive equal pay, which in the case of the Palestinians is several times the average salary they would normally make.
[Check out Amazon’s SodaStream Store] I call it “fizzy water”. I support SodaStream. I have one, I like bubbles…]
Here is a real-life example of coexistence, a place where Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Muslims, Druze and Christians work together in peace. To boot, they assemble a product that, by turning tap water into fizzy drinks, cuts the production of environmentally damaging beverage containers.
Alas, this world is not sane, certainly not when it comes to discussions of Israel. Simply because one of its 20-plus factories is in the West Bank, anti-Israeli activists have been targeting SodaStream and its celebrity spokesperson, American actress Scarlett Johansson.
No matter that the factory is in a location that would most likely remain Israeli in a future peace agreement. And if it became part of Palestine, even better for the new state’s tax revenues. But in the destructive world of supposedly pro-Palestinian activism, this facility must be boycotted, those 500 Palestinians and their families be damned.
Raheem Kassam reports: While the likes of MSNBC’s Chris Hayes are criticizing actress Scarlett Johansson‘s decision to stand by SodaStream and Israel and ditch the politicking Oxfam, there is another group of people whose opinions on this issue should be heard: the Palestinians employed by SodaStream in the West Bank.
Earlier this month, Johansson and Oxfam came to blows over the actress’s appearance for and endorsement of SodaStream, a company which has factories in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
And while there are of course many Palestinians not employed by the company who oppose the West Bank factories, the resounding consensus from employees and their dependents seems to be one of excitement and gratitude towards the Israeli-owned firm. Over 500 Palestinians are able to earn three times as much as the average Palestinian worker—and even more than Israel’s own minimum wage.
The prejudice against Israel in diplomatic matters is as troubling as more crude bigotry against Jews.
Victor Davis Hanson writes: An obscure academic organization called the American Studies Association not long ago voted to endorse a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli universities. The self-appointed moralists were purportedly outraged over the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.
Given academia’s past obsessions with the Jewish state, the targeting of Israel is not new. Yet why do the professors focus on Israel and not Saudi Arabia, which denies women the right to drive and only recently granted them the right to vote? Why not Russia, which has been accused of suppressing free speech, or Nigeria, which has passed retrograde anti-homosexual legislation?
The hip poet Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Everett LeRoi Jones) recently died. He was once poet laureate of New Jersey, held prestigious university posts, and was canonized with awards — despite being a hateful anti-Semite.
Palestinian President Yasser Arafat reviews at the Gaza Strip. Reuters/Suhaib Salem/Files
Russia said on Thursday former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning, but a Palestinian official called the finding “politicized” and said an investigation would continue.
Samples were taken from Arafat’s body last year by Swiss, French and Russian forensics experts after an al Jazeera documentary said his clothes showed high amounts of deadly polonium 210.
The Swiss said last month their tests were consistent with polonium poisoning but not absolute proof of the cause of death. The Russian finding was in line with that of French scientists who said earlier this month that Arafat had not been killed with polonium.
“Yasser Arafat died not from the effects of radiation but of natural causes,” Vladimir Uiba, head of Russia’s state forensics body, the Federal Medico-Biological Agency, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Karl Vick / Amman report: Yasser Arafat lived in ambiguity and died under circumstances shrouded in mystery and rumor. Should it come as any great surprise that the outcome of a scientific inquiry into the cause of his demise turned out to be something less than absolute as well?
The forensic examination of the Palestinian leader’s remains were released by his widow Suha on Tuesday, and immediately reported by al-Jazeera — the Arab satellite network that last year broke the news that Arafat’s clothes and personal effects contained suspicious traces of polonium 210, the radioactive isotope that killed Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Swiss scientists exhumed Arafat’s body last November and tested his skeleton and grave for telltale evidence of the isotope. The verdict, a full year later: “The results moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium 210.”
(AP) Possible evidence of Arafat poisoning is reported
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH
Associated Press
RAMALLAH, West Bank
Swiss scientists have found evidence suggesting that Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned, adding new fuel to long-standing allegations about the Palestinian leader’s death, a TV station reported Wednesday.
hed what it said was a long-awaited 108-page report by a team of Swiss experts who tested Arafat’s remains. The scientists wrote that “the results moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210,” according to the pan-Arab satellite channel.
A poll recently released by the Pew Research Center flies in the face of Barack Obama’s attitude toward the Palestinian people world and their desire for peace. The poll, which was conducted among 11 different nationalities comprised of large Muslim populations, found that there was unanimity among them in their opposition to suicide bombings-with one exception.
One question asked whether suicide bombings could ever be justified. The possible answers were “Never,” “Rarely,” “Sometimes,” “Often” and “Don’t Know.” Unlike their Muslim brethren, 62% of those from the “Palestinian Territories” (the areas of Palestinian Authority-controlled Judea and Samaria, and the area of Gaza) said suicide bombings were “sometimes” justifiable. The next largest group approving was from Lebanon, with 33% approving. Of those who said the suicide bombings were “often” justifiable, 37% of Palestinians approved. The second highest group was from Senegal, at 11%. Read the rest of this entry »
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
possible result of Israeli bombing.
Karl Vick / Amman
pundit from another planet 