Category Archives: Israel

The persecution of Christians in Muslim lands

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From The Jerusalem Post, courtesy TROP

Dec 12, 2009 23:32 | Updated Dec 13, 2009 21:18

Human rights group: Hamas disinters Christians in Gaza

By MATTHEW WAGNER

Every three minutes a Christian is being tortured in the Muslim world, and in 2009 more than 165,000 Christians will have been killed because of their faith, most of them in Muslim countries, according to a human rights organization that is visiting Israel starting Sunday.

“Hamas digs up the bodies of Christians from Christian burial sites in the Gaza Strip claiming that they pollute the earth,” said Reverend Majed El Shafie, President of One Free World International (OFWI), who will head a delegation of human rights activists, members of Parliament from Canada and religious personalities.

During their visit to Israel, the delegation will hold a conference on human rights and persecuted minorities at the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The conference will provide new statistics on the persecution of minorities in Muslim countries.

El Shafie said that between 200-300 million Christians are being persecuted in the world, 80 percent of whom lived in Muslim countries and the rest in communist and other countries.

Members of the delegation will meet with Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon and Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat in the hope of enlisting Israel to champion their cause.

OFWI is a human rights organization whose headquarters are located in Toronto, Canada. The organization numbers some 3,000 members, divided into 28 branches that are active in countries all over the world, including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and even Iran.

El Shafie, 32, was born in Cairo to a distinguished Muslim family of lawyers and judges. Through a Christian friend he was exposed at an early age to hatred toward the Christian minority in Egypt.

He decided to convert to Christianity, wrote a book about it and as a result became an outcast and a victim of oppression.

In 1998 he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured and condemned to death.

El Shafie managed to escape, fled to the Sinai, where a Beduin family hid him for two months, and crossed the Israeli border on a jet-ski. He was arrested in Israel and was imprisoned for over a year in Beersheba, until he was released through the assistance of the UN, Amnesty International and the InternationalChristian Embassy in Jerusalem, which managed to obtain political asylum for El Shafie in Canada, where he emigrated. He founded OFWI in 2004.

Best example of Muslim tolerance to date perhaps.

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Jewish bride and her father arrested on Temple Mount for uttering non-Muslim prayer. Found on TROP and from Israel national News this has to be the best example yet in defiance of the multi-culti morons who think Islam is an enriching aspect of some utopian mosaic.
by Hana Levi Julian

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(IsraelNN.com) A Jewish bride and her father were arrested on the Temple Mount the day before her wedding, after an Arab policeman claimed he saw the father muttering prayers and the bride nodding her head.

The father and daughter were being taken around the site on Wednesday morning by her brother Eli, a volunteer who conducts regular tours at the Temple Mount, when suddenly they were accosted by the Jerusalem policeman.

“We were in the northern part, and I was showing them the archaeological evidence when suddenly a police officer came over to us, Mahmoud Hativ was his name, and h claimed that my father had muttered prayers. “We tried to argue with him and said it wasn’t true, but he said, ‘You can’t fool me,’ and insisted that my father had prayed,” Eli told Israel National News.

“My sister was just standing there silently, not moving at all. She didn’t say a word. It was her first time at the Mount. Other cops came over, Mahmoud said that she had also been involved, and they decided to arrest them both,” he continued. “He let me go right away, because he couldn’t make any claim against me.” His sister and father were taken to the Kishla police station near the Jaffa Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem.

‘Lack of Will to Exercise Israeli Sovereignty’

“The fact that a father comes to the holiest place of the Jewish people and can be arrested simply for allegedly moving his lips is an outrage,” Eli said.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the holy sites of all religions have to be protected and respected – that explicitly includes the rights of Jews on the Temple Mount. Jerusalem police continue to ignore that ruling.”

Asked if he believes U.S. pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinian Authority had anything to do with the incident, Eli said, ‘No. It is a result of the lack of will of the Jerusalem police to exercise Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, not U.S. pressure on Israel. It is unheard of to arrest someone just for praying in their own religion. In the U.S. that wouldn’t fly. There is no public place in the U.S. where a Jew could not pray. It is unfortunate, and sad.”

The family, which immigrated to Israel from New York in 1996, lives in Beit Shemesh.

‘Police Misled Them to Sign Confession’

The two were held for several hours. At approximately 11:30 a.m., the two were ordered to sign a declaration which they were told said they would promise not to return to the Temple Mount for 15 days.

However, the father, who spoke with Israel National News from the courtyard of the police station while waiting to be questioned by the police commander, said that further examination of the paper showed they had been misinformed. The declaration actually said that they were confessing to have violated a law about disturbing the public order.

It was also made equally clear that if they did not sign the paper, they might not be freed for hours – perhaps not even in time for the young woman to make it to her own wedding.

Officers at Jaffa Gate Station Mocked the Bride

“The police officers talked very improperly to my daughter. She was very upset – in tears – and they ridiculed her. ‘What’s the matter, are you baby?’ they mocked her.”  Her father immediately fired back, “That’s how you talk to someone?”

The father said that the officer in charge threatened to keep them longer in response. “Be careful,” the cop warned. “If you talk to me that way, I can keep you here for a few more hours.”

“So I asked them: ‘How would it be if we arrested a young lady for praying anywhere else in the State of Israel? Or maybe a Muslim woman for praying in Mecca? This is about police enforcement – so enforce the law! And they answered me, ‘It’s a very sensitive issue. This is the law.’ That’s what they answered me,” said the father. “So I shut up, because I wanted to get out of there, and he would have kept us for hours. We signed the paper, and we will deal with it in the court of public opinion.”

The father was not praying although he was, in fact, moving his lips. “They asked me if my daughter was nodding her head. I said I didn’t know – but if she can now be arrested for nodding her head… well, anyway, in the end, that’s what they got her for. Nodding her head. That’s the nature of the public order.”

Israel: Iran now capable of building multiple nuclear bombs.

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Stratfor today sent out a report from a closed door security session in Israel where it was claimed that Iran is now capable of building more than one nuclear bomb and that all which is required for these bombs to be built is the descision from Tehran and not any technical obstacles.

According to Israeli Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz, Iran has refined over 1800 kilos of uranium and has the missiles capable of delivering these weapons to Israel.

However, according to Stratfor:

These statements are much more an indication of Israeli intentions in dealing with Iran than an accurate reflection of Iranian nuclear capabilities. That the statements of this closed Knesset session were leaked in the first place is particularly revealing of the message that Israel wishes to send Iran and the international community at this point in time. That message, to put it bluntly, is “time’s up.”

Stratfor also makes the point:

Israel is also operating on a different timeline than that of the United States. Whereas U.S. President Barack Obama would much rather avoid a military conflagration in the Persian Gulf while he attempts to sew up Iraq, make over the Afghanistan war and nurse the U.S. economy back to health, Israel is dealing with a matter of state survival. And that, from the Israeli point of view, takes precedence over its relationship with the United States. This statement from Baidatz is thus likely one of many signals Israel will be sending in the coming weeks to accentuate the Iranian nuclear threat.

To read the full report and make sure that you have the context as it was meant to be exactly, please subscribe to Stratfor.com as I have only published the two paragraphs allowed by agreement.

Eeyore for Vlad

Palistinian woman stabs Israeli soldier in cold blood.

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The fruits of raising generations of people to hate from the bottom of their hearts no doubt. In keeping with good koranic practices no doubt.
H/T Snaphanen

palestinian-stabbing-guard[Astonishing video below.] A video appearing on the video-sharing Web site Youtube yesterday contains first-hand footage of a Palestinian female terrorist stabbing a civilian security guard at a West Bank checkpoint.

In the video, filmed on October 25, the Palestinian, who allegedly asked to enter Israel via the Kalandiya checkpoint for medical treatment, is seen being examined by a Border Police officer.

The officer finds a knife in her purse, and while he takes the purse aside, the woman pulls another blade from her trousers and stabs the civilian security guard standing by.

The security guard, working for a private firm, was still recuperating from his moderate wounds yesterday.

The video seems to not be direct footage, but footage of a closed-circuit TV surveillance camera’s output. The date “10/25/2009? appears faintly at the bottom of the screen early in the clip.

An investigation was launched to find the source that leaked the video to Youtube.

Stratfor: Sanctions and Iran

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This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR

Sanctions and Strategy
November 23, 2009

By George Friedman

The Iranian government has rejected, at least for the moment, a proposal from the P-5+1 to ship the majority of its low-enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment. The group is now considering the next step in the roadmap that it laid out last April. The next step was a new round of sanctions, this time meant to be crippling. The only crippling sanction available is to cut off the supply of gasoline, since Iran imports 35 percent of its refined gasoline products. That would theoretically cripple the Iranian economy and compel the Iranians to comply with U.S. demands over the nuclear issue.

We have written extensively on the ability of sanctions to work in Iran. There is, however, a broader question, which is the general utility of sanctions in international affairs. The Iranian government said last week that sanctions don’t concern it because, historically, sanctions have not succeeded. This partly explains Iranian intransigence: The Iranians don’t feel they have anything to fear from sanctions. The question is whether the Iranian view is correct and why they would believe it — and if they are correct, why the P-5+1 would even consider imposing sanctions.

The Assumptions of Sanctions
We need to begin with a definition of sanctions. In general, sanctions are some sort of penalty imposed on a country designed to cause it sufficient pain to elicit a change in its behavior. Sanctions are intended as an alternative to war and therefore exclude violence. Thus, the entire point of sanctions, as opposed to war, is to compel changes of behavior in countries without resorting to force.

Normal sanctions are economic and come in three basic forms. First, there is seizing or freezing the assets of a country or its citizens located in another country. Second, sanctions can block the shipment of goods (or movement of people) out of the target country. Third, sanctions can block the movement of goods into a country. Minor sanctions are possible, such as placing tariffs on products imported from the target country, but those sorts of acts are focused primarily on rectifying economic imbalances and are not always driven by political interests. Thus, the United States placed tariffs on Chinese tires coming into the United States. The purpose was to get China to change its economic policies. On the other hand, placing sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s or on Sudan today are designed to achieve political and military outcomes. Continue Reading →

Stratfor’s George Friedman on Iran, Israel and nuclear negotiations

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Stratfor has done much better stuff than this on Iran, some of which, that which is public, is here on Vlad. In a nutshell, Iran is dicking around everyone on the issue until they have exactly what they want. My guess is they already do, but its fun to mess with the US and the longer they can stall everyone, the better their military position is and the greater the degree of damage to all when it finally comes to what it is going to come to. Can Israel allow a nation who gives speeches about it’s utter annihilation weekly to posses atomic weapons? If I were the IDF I would be very close to action by now.

Canadian partizan politics and Dhurban I and II

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Vlad attempts to avoid (not always very well) partisan politics except where it crosses the line of our two areas of interest. Islam and it’s threat to western secular democracy, and the new leftism for the same reason, and its very frequent alliance with Islam, also for that reason. In that spirit, I present these two videos.

Lecture: Victor Davis Hansen, Mid east prof. warfare then and now

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Victor Davis Hanson, Professor of Classics at California State University at Fresno, leads a discussion on the nature of war throughout civilization and how it might enlighten us about the contemporary troubles in the Middle East. Presented as part of UC Santa Cruz’s Jewish Studies Lectures. [8/2004] [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 8856]


As is often the case, the Q&A is excellent. Please watch to the end.

Todays Iran positions

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Two stratfor SITREPS on various nations position concerning the Iranian nuclear weapons program. At least few if any governments are in denial about what it is at this point. To be honest I do not understand the French one at all. If it is not a typo, Iran should be holding a party over that one. Hopefully Stratfor meant to say “Is NOT out of the question….

1. Israel

Israel: All Options On Iran Being Prepared – IDF Chief

November 10, 2009
The chief of general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Gabi Ashkenazi, said Nov. 10 that Israel is “readying all the options” to try to get Iran to end its nuclear program, Reuters reported, citing an unnamed official as quoting Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi reportedly said that Israeli “decision-makers will have to consider which paths to take.” The official said Ashkenazi added, “If the Iranians understand they will have to pay a steep price, it wouldn’t be illogical or unreasonable to say they may change their current direction.”

2. France

France: FM Rules Out Military Option Against Iran

November 10, 2009
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Nov. 10 that the military option against Iran is out of the question, if talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program are not resolved quickly, KUNA reported, citing France’s Inter Radio. Kouchner said it would be a catastrophe to resort to the military option and efforts are being made to avoid the use of force. He urged returning to the U.N. Security Council in December to discuss sanctions.

At last. An iphone app that makes sense.

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Israel to send out missile warnings by cell phone:  h/t Fred

cell phone rocket alert

From Brietbart

Israel is working on a warning system that will calculate the precise location of where a rocket will hit and alert residents in the area using cell phones, a newspaper reported on Sunday.”The rocket sensor will create a virtual ellipse (of the predicted impact zone) and all phones in that area will receive a warning,” the Jerusalem Post quoted Chilik Soffer, a senior official at the Israeli Home Front Command, as saying.

“We will use communications technology to send the signals and we are now working with the communications ministry to make the alert available,” he said.

The alert will come in as a vibration, audio alert, light flash or text message, he added.

The aim is to make more specific the air raid systems that Israel currently has in communities near the border with Lebanon and Gaza, which have in the past come under regular rocket fire from Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups.

Massive Iranian Weapons Transfer to Hezbollah Uncovered by Israeli Commandos

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The Tundra Tabloids good friend and colleague TINSC, just recently stated that the UN and it’s peace keepers can’t be trusted to keep weapons out of Hezballah hands. TINSC states:

“We presently have an armored UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon with the express mission of disarming Hezbollah. Not only did this UN force fail to lift a finger to disarm Hezbollah, it did nothing as Hezbollah re-armed after the 2006 resolution put the peacekeeping force in place.”

That’s right, and it’s something that was predicted would happen once the EU sponsored ceasefire went into effect. Finland held the EU presidency at the time, and the Tundra Tabloids gave its own analysis at the time, that the “new and improved” UNIFIL mandate lacked any of the teeth to get the job down. And now we know just how right that analysis was, as the Hezbollah keep receiving these arms shipments. This just happens to be one of them snagged by the Israelis. KGS

Weapons Bound for Syria, Hizbullah

Hundreds of tons of weaponry, ten times the size of the Karine A shipment of 2002, were seized in an overnight raid Tuesday by the Israeli navy, some 100 nautical miles west of Israel, officials said.

Defense officials said the 140-meter long Francop, intercepted near Cyprus, was carrying arms sent by Iran and destined for Syria and possibly also Hizbullah.

The weapons seized on the ship, which was sailing under an Antiguan flag, included some 3,000 rockets of various types, as well as bullets and ammunition.

The transfer of such large amounts of weapons out of Iran could “create a balance of power” between Israel and terrorist organizations, assessed Brigadier General Rani Ben-Yehuda, deputy commander of the Israeli navy, at a press conference following the seizures.

More here.

Another look at the Goldstone report, and the response to the Israeli gynecologist who testified

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UN Watch Oral Statement
Delivered by Dr. Mirela Siderer, 29 September 2009
Agenda Item 7: Report of the fact-finding mission on Gaza

[version française]         [Swedish]

My name is Dr. Mirela Siderer. I am a gynecologist living in Ashkelon, Israel.

Judge Richard Goldstone, in July you invited me to testify. I told you my story. I am known by my patients — including many women from Gaza. For me, every human being is equal. Continue Reading →