Category Archives: Israel

Fear of Iran makes strange bedfellows

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(IsraelNN.com) The German news magazine Der Spiegel has reported that Saudi Arabia is hoping Israel will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, and is even prepared to open its skies to Israeli warplanes to allow such an operation to take place. Similar reports were published in 2009, and denied by both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Der Spiegel report stated that officials in Riyadh had spoken to United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the importance of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, even if doing so requires the use of military force.

The London Sunday Times claimed in 2009 that Saudi Arabia would allow Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran. The paper quoted a former Israeli intelligence officer as saying, “The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis.” Continue Reading →

High noon in the middle east

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From Prospect. BY Jonathan Power.

Israel’s once-legendary army has grown weaker, and its newly emboldened enemies are allying against it. It may not be long until full-scale war breaks out

Grenades seized by the Israelis last November aboard MV Francop, a container ship on course from Iran to Syria

“Netanyahu thinks he is the superpower,” remarked Bill Clinton bitterly in 1996, “and we are here to do whatever he requires.” Today, as the Americans and the Israelis refuse to budge on the fraught issue of settlements in East Jerusalem, this statement rings truer than ever. US-Israeli relations are at a historic low. But the current standoff is about much more than settlement-building. Underlying it is Washington’s concern that Netanyahu’s repeated gestures of provocation—like the establishment of Jewish heritage sites in the Palestinian territories—are drawing the region towards a conflict unprecedented since 1948. And this time there is a nuclear dimension. Continue Reading →

The crossing of the red line: jihadists fire rocket into Israel

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From The Telegraph U.K.

Israel targeted by Gaza rockets as Ashton visits

Palestinian militants fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip into a kibbutz in southern Israel, killing a Thai worker, while EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton was on an hours-long visit to the area.

Published: 1:08PM GMT 18 Mar 2010

Rocket in Gaza

Palestinian protesters take cover from tear gas fired by Israeli forces in the West Bank of Hebron on March 18 Photo: EPA

The rocket was launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing a Thai agricultural worker, while Baroness Ashton was visiting the Hamas-controlled enclave.

It was the first strike from the territory to cause any fatalities since the end in January 2009 of Israel’s Gaza war.

An hour before the attack, the EU’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton crossed into the Gaza Strip to tour UN facilities and see how the international funding was being used.

At a Gaza news conference after the attack, Baroness Ashton said: “I condemn any kind of violence, we have got to find a peaceful solution to the issues and problems.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also expressed his condemnation, saying in a statement: “All such acts of terror and violence against civilians are totally unacceptable and contrary to international law.”

An unknown Gaza group, Ansar al-Sunna, claimed responsibility for the attack – launched a day before the international Quartet of Middle East peace mediators was to meet in Moscow to discuss ways to revive Israeli-Palestinian talks.

Similar strikes since the Gaza war have been met by Israeli air raids against militants or suspected weapons-producing facilities, but the death of the Thai worker, in Netiv Ha’asara, an agricultural community, may harden Israel’s response.

“This is a crossing of the red line, which Israel cannot accept.

“The Israeli response will be appropriate. It will be strong,” Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said.

The Gazan group responsible for the attack, Ansar al-Sunna said in a statement: “The Jihadist mission came in response to the Zionist assaults against the Ibrahimi and al-Aqsa mosques and the continued Zionist aggression against our people in Jerusalem.”

It appeared to be referring to Israel’s national heritage plan to renovate holy sites, including the West Bank town of Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs that is revered by Muslims and Jews, and the rededication this week of an 18th-century synagogue in Jerusalem, some 400 yards from al-Aqsa.

In a statement on the rocket attack, Hamas steered clear of comments that could be seen by Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip as disapproving of a strike against its enemy, even while the strike strained an informal truce.

“The government of the Zionist enemy, which has launched a war against the Palestinian people and against holy sites and al-Aqsa mosque, bears the responsibility for all the escalation,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.

At Hamas’s urging, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem mounted stone-throwing protests this week after Israel reconsecrated the Hurva synagogue in Jerusalem’s walled Old City.

Palestinian militants in Gaza have been carrying out sporadic rocket and mortar bomb attacks on Israel since the end of the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza war, usually without causing any casualties.

The number of such strikes has dropped dramatically since the Israeli campaign ended.

What About The Arab Apartheid?

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From Hudson New York. By Khaled Abu Toameh.

How come the Lebanese students who recently talked about Israel’s “war crimes” in the Gaza Strip during Israel Apartheid Week on many North American college campuses had nothing to say about the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians have been massacred in Lebanon over the past four decades?

Dozens of refugees were killed and hundreds wounded in the three-month offensive that also destroyed thousands of houses inside the refugee camp. Reporters said it was the worst internal violence in Lebanon since the civil war that hit the country between 1975-1990. And just three years ago, the Lebanese Army used heavy artillery to bomb the Nahr-al-Bared refugee camp in north Lebanon.

Yet who has ever heard of a United Nations resolution condemning Syria or Lebanon for committing horrific atrocities or discriminating against the Palestinians? Continue Reading →

Khaled Abu Toameh, Palistinian journalist speaks in Ottawa

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Khaled Abu Toameh (Arabic: ???? ??? ?????, born 1963) is an Israeli Arab journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is the West Bank and Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post and U.S. News and World Report, and has been the Palestinian affairs producer for NBC News since 1988. His articles have appeared in The Sunday Times, Daily Express and the New Republic.

Khaled Abu Toameh was formerly a senior reporter for The Jerusalem Report, and a correspondent for Al-Fajr, which he describes as a front for the PLO.[1] He has produced several documentaries on the Palestinians for the BBC, Channel 4, Australian, Danish and Swedish TV, including ones that exposed the connection between Arafat and payments to the armed wing of Fatah, as well as the financial corruption within the Palestinian Authority.[1]

Abu Toameh was born in the West Bank city of Tulkarem in 1963 to an Israeli Arab father and a Palestinian Arab mother from the West Bank.[2] Abu Toameh received his BA in English Literature from the Hebrew University and lives in Jerusalem with his wife and three children.

Khaled Abu Toameh in Ottawa March 3 2010 from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.

Hamas founder spied for Israel

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BBC seems to have posted something which doesn’t de-legitimize Israel. Heads are gonna roll I suspect.

HT with thanks to Don’t Bend over

The reactions by west bankians are interesting.

From The BBC:

Hamas founder’s son ‘spied for Israel’

Mosab Hassan Yousef Mosab Hassan Yousef has converted to Christianity

The eldest son of a founding member of the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, has said he worked as a spy for Israel for more than ten years.

In a new book, Mosab Hassan Yousef said that after being released by the Israelis following his arrest in 1996, he began to supply intelligence to Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet.

He gave them information about suicide bombers and key leaders of both Hamas and its rival, Fatah.

Mosab Hassan Yousef now lives in exile in the US, where he spoke to the BBC’s Lyse Doucet.

How have people in the West Bank taken this news of Mosab Hassan Yousef spying for Israel?

The BBC’s Jon Donnison, has been gauging opinion.

Important documentary: The Turban and the Swastika

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This documentary from German TV, shows the amazing degree of cooperation between Hitler’s Nazi’s and Islam, specifically, Yasser Arafat’s uncle, The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. There is stunning footage and facts here of the degree to which shared Jew hatred was so strong for the Mufti, he begged Hitler to bomb Jerusalem, where his own family lived, just so he could kill more Jews. Please watch and send this link to all you can. This is an important document and explains a great deal about Islam then, now, and always. Eeyore for Vlad:

York U, afraid of offending anti-semites, prevents Jewish and Christian groups from displaying…

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…And times being what they are. Well, what are times exactly? Times are such that groups who wish to advocate positions not in accord with the far left or Islam on campus are prevented from doing so by the university itself. Times are such that we imagined could never happen again in history and perhaps even doubted they happened at all.

Of course the modern cowards and those who capitulate will have a good reason for violating every precept that is sacred to Western Civilization. But cowards always have a good reason. It is worth noting the reasons given, because the template itself should never exist as it was created to lend itself to selective enforcement by design, if not deliberately, inevitably. To be clear, the people involved with “Israel Apartheid week” could never pass the qualifications asked by the campus to those from the pro Israel side.

To the management of York University, how do you think you would have made out at the Nuremberg Trials?

From The Jewish Tribune with a thank you to Fred at GAR for telling me about it.

Eeyore for Vlad

York University discriminates against Christian and Jewish coalition ahead of Israel Apartheid Week

Written by —
Wednesday, 24 February 2010
TORONTO – At the last minute, York University has cancelled events organized by a coalition of Canadian pro-Israel students and organizations due to “security” concerns. The events organized by the Imagine With Us coalition were scheduled for this week in anticipation of Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), which begins on March 1.
The Imagine With Us coalition – a “multi-faith, multi-political movement that is concerned with maintaining Canadian values and keeping our campuses safe from hatred, discrimination and radical incitement, particularly from those subscribing to radical Islam,” explained Michael Mostyn, national director of public affairs for B’nai Brith Canada – is led by My Canada, a non-partisan organization of young adult Christians who are passionate about a variety of social justice issues, and B’nai Brith Canada.

On Monday and Thursday of this week, events were scheduled at York which included the participation of Middle East expert and political commentator Daniel Pipes, Israeli scholar of Arabic literature and political discourse Dr. Mordechai Kedar, ormer PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat, human right activist Rev. Majed El Shafie, social justice activist and founder of My Canada Faytene Kryskow, and B’nai Brith Canada CEO Frank Dimant. The events were scheduled to be streamed live to campuses across Canada and to be viewable online internationally.

On Monday morning, York University informed Imagine With Us campus partners Christians United for Israel (CUFI) that the university was cancelling the event due to the fact that Imagine With Us did not meet their requirements. York had required that the organizers include a formidable police and campus security presence paid for by the organizers, a list of all attendees in advance, a minute-by-minute synopsis of all speakers’ talking points and a ban on public advertising of the event at York and on satellite campuses. Continue Reading →

Report: Mabhouh aide arrested in Syria

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from Ynet News Israel:

Report: Mabhouh aide arrested in Syria

Fatah-affiliated website says Damascus authorities detained Muhammad Nasser, who arrived in Dubai before Hamas man’s assassination, for possible involvement in plot. Police uncover identity of four other people involved in operation

Roee Nahmias

Published: 02.23.10, 21:53 / Israel News

Syrian authorities have arrested one of the associates of assassinated Hamas member Mahmoud al-Mabhouh for possible involvement in the plot, a Fatah-affiliated website reported Tuesday.

The man, Mahmoud Nasser, was said to have been aware of all of Mabhouh’s movements and flights. According to an Arab diplomatic source, the Dubai police asked the Syrians to turn over Hamas members for questioning, including Nasser.

Nasser arrived in Dubai shortly before the assassination, and the Syrians suspect he cooperated with the assassins and provided information on Mabhouh’s whereabouts. According to the reports, Nasser was one of those who rook part in the kidnapping and killing of Israel Defense Forces soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon during the first intifada, together with Mabhouh.

Deterrent Power
Halutz: Dubai hit helped deterrence / Aviel Magnezi
Former IDF chief of staff explains Hamas man’s assassination contributed to Israel’s deterrence against terrorist organizations and states that support them. ‘Anyone like Mabhouh needs to think twice before every move,’ he states, adding he opposes military strike against Iran
Full story

Islamic antisemitism on campus.

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Here is a trailer for what looks like an interesting movie and project. Frankly, I think it’s too little too late. Universities are broken. The fact that Muslims have all the children and the oil revenues mean that university campus’s are demographically tilted towards brainwashed Muslims aided by self blinded leftists have pretty much set the agenda, and all pretence to scientific objectivity, or adjusting views post hoc to sit with the facts are gone. It’s about Marxism or some disguised version of it, and hatred of Israel.

Even so, I applaud the efforts of these people even if it is putting out the stable fire after the horses are all dead.

What is interesting, is how fast this video got views on youtube not to mention comments after I put it up. There is nothing like something which questions the demonization of Israel to get fast comments nd lots of views. A truly politically-incorrect point of view.

Meanwhile in the Islamic world, 12 year old boys are taught to cut the heads off of people who they don’t agree with religiously. Yet the political left in the west seem church-mouse quiet on that issue. Do not watch if you are sensitive at all. Do not watch if there are children present. Perhaps I should just advise you to, ‘do not watch’ the video below. However it is a stark contrast. Universities and leftists and Muslims siccesfully demonize Israel as an entity altogether, yet Islam is not taken to account for what you see below. This video is of a 12 year old boy cutting the head off of some captive. I suspect its a larger violation of the Geneva convention than… well any other one since Genghis Khan.

Part 1 & 2: The Turban and the Swastika

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Here is the first part of 5 of a stunning documentary from German TV, The Turban, and the Swastika, about the mutual admiration and stunning degree of cooperation between Islam and the Nazis. In fact Hitler was recorded to remark that he wished that Europe had been Muslim instead of Christian as Christian was weak and Islam was warlike and sufficiently anti semitic for him (paraphrasing)

Over the course of the week I hope to get all 5 segments done of this fantastic documentary but for now, here is part 1 with special thanks to Herbert R Clausen of Europe News who did the heavy lifting on this one of translating it.


The whole text of this part is below the fold:
Continue Reading →