WarSclerotic

Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s Secretary-General Ziad al-Nakhaleh has warned that should Israel harm or kill members of armed Palestinian factions, Islamic Jihad will respond with force and target major cities in the Jewish state.

Nakhaleh, who was named the new Islamic Jihad chief in September 2018, made the comments after the Israel Defense Forces accused operatives in the terror group of firing a rocket that landed off the Israeli coast Monday evening.

Asked by Dar al-Hayat, an Arabic-language news site, whether Islamic Jihad feared Israel carrying out assassinations against its members, Nakhaleh stated: “If you intend by your question to [refer] to the threats in recent days connected to rocket-fire, I clearly state that we will respond with force and attack major cities, if any harm is done to [members of] the resistance or premeditated assassinations are carried out against them, regardless of their organizational roles.”

Islamic Jihad, which is backed by Iran, is considered the second-most powerful terror group in the Gaza Strip after Hamas, the coastal enclave’s de facto rulers; it has an arsenal of rockets that can reach deep into Israel.

The IDF said on Tuesday that the group had “intentionally fired” the rocket from northern Gaza in an effort to derail ongoing efforts to maintain a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and other terror groups.

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Israel Defense Forces

✔@IDF

This is Bahaa Abu-Ala’ta, the #Gaza Commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Last night, his operatives fired a rocket at #Israel to bring about an escalation. Thankfully, the rocket landed in the sea.

The IDF remains ready and committed to defend Israel against such terror.

1,525

10:00 AM – Apr 30, 2019

The IDF also specifically accused operatives under the command of Bahaa Abu al-Ata, a senior official who is responsible for the group’s military activities in northern Gaza, of firing the rocket.

The IDF identifying Abu al-Ata by name could be seen as a tacit threat; the military also tweeted out his photograph. The IDF has targeted Abu al-Ata in the past, including during the 2014 Gaza war.

Islamic Jihad official Walid al-Qatati, however, denied later on Tuesday that the terror group stood behind the rocket fire.

“The Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad movement, has not announced that it shot a rocket toward the occupation,” Qatati told the Islamic Jihad-linked Palestine Today. “This accusation is a fabrication that the occupation wants [to use in order to achieve] specific goals, most important of which is inciting against Islamic Jihad.”

Nakhaleh also said that if members of terror groups were harmed, Islamic Jihad would respond with force and target large Israeli cities “irrespective of whether understandings have been reached or will be reached.”

Last month, Israel and Hamas reached unofficial Egyptian-brokered ceasefire understandings, under which terror groups in the Strip would scale back violence along the Gaza border in exchange for economic and humanitarian concessions by Israel.

While there has not been a complete cessation of violence along the Gaza border since the ceasefire went into effect last month, the situation there has been relatively calm.

WASHINGTON  —  Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, one of the victims of a weekend gun rampage at a California synagogue, praised US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday as a “mensch par excellence,” using a Yiddish phrase for a person of integrity.

Goldstein, the rabbi of the Chabad of Poway synagogue, near San Diego, was among four worshipers hit on Saturday — one of them fatally — as a gunman burst into a service and opened fire.

“Mr. President, when you called me I was at home weeping. You were the first person who began my healing. You heal people in the worst of times and I am so grateful to that,” Goldstein told Trump at a national prayer service at the White House.

“My dear rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, taught me the way we react to darkness with light,” Goldstein said, referring to the late Chabad leader.

President Donald Trump looks on as Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, survivor of the Poway, Calif synagogue shooting, speaks during a National Day of Prayer event in the Rose Garden of the White House, May 2, 2019. (YouTube screenshot)

Goldstein recalled facing “evil and the worst darkness of all time” as the shooter, identified as 19-year-old John Earnest, opened fire in the Poway synagogue during prayers on the last day of Passover.

He said that at that moment “I made a decision that no matter what happens to me, I am going to save as many people as possible.”

Addressing the gathering, Goldstein, who lost his right index finger in the assault, said: “I should have been dead by now. I was in the line of fire, bullets flying all the way.”

“My life has changed forever, but it changed so I can make change and so I can help others learn how to be strong, might and tall,” he added.

Earnest has pleaded not guilty to murder and hate crimes charges over the attack. The Poway shooting came exactly six months after a white supremacist shot dead 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, known as the worst attack against Jewish people in the modern history of the United States.

Trump called for an all-out fight against anti-Semitism.

“We will fight with all our strength and everything that we have in our bodies to defeat anti-Semitism, to end the attacks on the Jewish people and to conquer all forms of persecution, intolerance and hate,” Trump said.

“As we unite on this day of prayer, we renew our resolve to protect communities of faith and ensure that all people and all of our people can live, pray and worship in peace,” Trump said.

Goldstein said Trump “helped bring Lori Kaye great honor,” referring to the woman murdered in the shooting.

Trump and Goldstein had spoken by telephone after Saturday’s shooting.

US President Donald Trump (left), off-duty Border Patrol agent Jonathan Morales (center) and US Army veteran Oscar Stewart in the Rose Garden of the White House, May 2, 2019. (White House video screenshot)

“There is nobody that expressed the horror and the beauty of what you represent better than you did,” Trump said of Goldstein, whom he called a “warm and incredible man.”

Congregant and US Army veteran Oscar Stewart and off-duty Border Patrol agent Jonathan Morales, who chased the alleged gunman away, also attended the ceremony.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report

“Israel wants a war? Let it go to war. The Israeli units and brigades that dare to enter southern Lebanon will be annihilated and destroyed on live television before the whole world,” he said, according to multiple media reports in Israel and Lebanon.

The taunts are typical of the Lebanese terror group leader, whose organization faced its last war with Israel in 2006.

In a speech on April 22, Nasrallah claimed Israel’s ground forces were unprepared for a ground offensive in Lebanon and the Jewish state could no longer win battles solely from the air.

“The Israelis say the home front is not ready. Any theoretical Israeli war needs a ground operation to achieve its desired goal. The era in which the air force decides the battle is over.”

Supporters of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group listen to a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah via a video link in a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, March 8, 2019. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

His latest comments on Thursday were at an event commemorating three years since the death of Mustafa Badreddine, Hezbollah’s former military chief who, according to reports in Arab media and statements by the IDF chief at the time, was killed by his own men, possibly on orders from Iran and Nasrallah himself.

After issuing his threat to a purportedly war-hungry Israel on Thursday, Nasrallah then assured his audience that Israel did not, in fact, want war, since it was deterred by Hezbollah’s military prowess.

“Our ground combat capabilities are strong,” he said, “and Israel takes that into account. It’s scared of getting entangled in Gaza, even though Gaza is exposed on all sides, so would it dare to enter Lebanon?”

He also blamed Israel and the United States for the poverty afflicting the Middle East.

“Our entire region is subject to American and Israeli plots and hegemony; the poverty and unemployment are caused by them,” he was quoted as saying.

Israeli ground troops march toward the front during the Second Lebanon War on August 2, 2006. (Pierre Terdjman/Flash90)

“All the oil and money flow to the US and Israel… They’re exploiting us,” he added.

Last month, the new head of the IDF’s Ground Forces Command said Hezbollah was still planning to carry out a surprise invasion of northern Israel, despite the recent Israeli operation to uncover and destroy an extensive network of cross-border attack tunnels dug by the militia.

Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick, a former chief of the IDF’s Northern Command, was tapped to lead the Ground Forces Command in February amid increased criticism from some quarters in the Defense Ministry charging that Israeli troops were not prepared for war. His comments came less than four months after the IDF concluded its anti-tunnel operation along the Lebanese border.

“Hezbollah still has plans to invade the Galilee,” he told the Ynet news site in an interview. “Of course, we won’t allow that to happen. We will thwart these plans.”

Back in December, Israel accused Hezbollah of digging cross-border tunnels into its territory from southern Lebanon and launched an operation to destroy the tunnels.

Israeli troops search for attack tunnels dug into Israel from southern Lebanon that the Israeli military believes Hezbollah planned to use in future wars, in January 2019. (Israel Defense Forces)

According to the army, Hezbollah had planned to use the tunnels to kidnap or kill civilians or soldiers, and to seize a slice of Israeli territory in the event of any hostilities.

The IDF did not give a total figure for the tunnels found, though it announced in January that six were destroyed during the course of the operation.

Strick also voiced support for declaring war on Lebanon as a whole in Israel’s next fight against Hezbollah.

“In the next war, it would be a mistake for us to distinguish between the state of Lebanon and Hezbollah, since Hezbollah is a political actor and part of the government,” Strick said.

In such a conflict, “if it were up to me, I would recommend declaring war on Lebanon and Hezbollah,” he said. “I have no doubt what the outcome will be… It will be a decisive victory.”

Then-head of IDF Northern Command Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick, center, visits soldiers searching for Hezbollah attack tunnels on the Israeli-Lebanese border on December 4, 2018. (Israel Defense Forces)

In March, recently retired army chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot said that Israel had come close to all-out conflict with Hezbollah during his tenure.

Israel last fought a war with Hezbollah over a decade ago, but tensions along the northern border have remained high. Israel has carried out airstrikes in Syria for years to prevent weapons transfers through Syrian territory to the Iran-backed terror group.

“The Hezbollah threat is a serious threat,” Eisenkot told a conference. “It is a strong organization that has gained experience in running large operations and wants to prepare an attack plan to conquer the Galilee and bring 5,000 fighters underground” into Israel.

The threat of war with Hezbollah had increased during the last three years, he said.

DOHA, Qatar — Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Wednesday criticized the United States for seeking to blacklist the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

“The United States is supporting the biggest terrorist in our region, and that is Israel,” Zarif told reporters on the sidelines of the Asian Cooperation Dialogue in Doha.

“Trying to designate others as terrorists, the United States (is) not in a position, theoretically and practically, to start naming others as terrorist organizations,” he said when asked about US President Donald Trump’s bid to designate the Brotherhood as a terrorist group.

“We reject any attempt by the United States in this regard.”

In April, the US declared Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization.

The Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Islamist movement born in Egypt with pockets of support across the Arab world, was designated a terrorist organization by Cairo after the military in 2013 ousted Mohamed Morsi, a democratically elected president with roots in the movement.

Egypt’s then-president Mohammed Morsi, right, meets with Iran’s then-foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi at the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, September 18, 2012. (photo credit: AP/Egyptian Presidency)

Placing the Brotherhood on Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations would make it a crime for any American to assist the group and would ban from the United States its members, who are active in political parties in several countries.

The terrorist designation would delight Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi as well as Saudi Arabia, which despite its ultra-conservative Wahhabi ideology disdains the Brotherhood due to its support for political change in the kingdom, including over Riyadh’s alliance with Washington.

Egypt made peace with top US ally Israel 40 years ago and remains one of the largest recipients of US aid, at more than $1 billion a year.