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ISIS Fires Up Palestinians

October 19, 2015

ISIS Fires Up Palestinians, Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, October 19, 2015

  • The current wave of stabbings of Jews in Israel is an attempt to imitate Islamic State terrorists, who have been using knives to behead many Muslims and non-Muslims. In most attacks, the Palestinian terrorists focused on the victims’ throats and necks. They are trying to replace Islamic State jihadis as the chief “butchers” of humans in the Middle East.
  • How can our leaders in Ramallah accuse Jews of “contaminating” the Aqsa Mosque with their “filthy feet” at a time when our youths burn a religious site such as Joseph’s Tomb? Palestinian Authority security forces, which maintain a tight grip on Nablus, did nothing to prevent the arson attack.
  • The attacks are an attempt to erase history so that Jews will not be able to claim any religious ties to the land. This is exactly what the Islamic State is doing in Syria and Iraq.
  • Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders are lying. This is not a struggle against “occupation” or a wall or a checkpoint. This is an Islamic State-inspired jihad to slaughter Jews and wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

By now, it has become clear that our young Palestinian men and women have learned a lot from the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group.

This new “intifada” that some Palestinians are now waging against Israel should be seen in the context of the wider jihad that is being waged by the Islamic State, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda against the “infidels, Zionists, apostates, Crusaders” and against non-extremist Muslims.

The tactics employed by Palestinian youths over the past two weeks show that they are doing their utmost to copy the crimes and atrocities committed by the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Libya and other Arab countries.

Although the Islamic State is not physically present in the West Bank or Jerusalem (largely thanks to the efforts of the Israel Defense Forces and other Israeli security agencies), there is no denying that its spirit and ideology are hovering over the heads of many of our young men and women.

The current wave of stabbings of Jews in Israel and the West Bank is an attempt to imitate Islamic State terrorists who have been using knives to behead many Muslims and non-Muslims during the past two years.

Like the Islamic State, many of the Palestinian terrorists who recently stabbed Jews saw themselves as jihadis acting in the name of Allah, the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed. This was evident by the Palestinian terrorists’ cries of “Allahu Akbar!” [“Allah is Greater!”] as they pounced on their victims. Our young men and women must have been watching too many videos of Islamic State jihadis shouting “Allahu Akbar!” as they beheaded or burned their victims.

The stabbing attacks that were carried out in the past two weeks were actually attempts to slit the throats of Jews, regardless of their age and gender. In most instances, the terrorists were aiming for the upper part of the body, focusing on the victims’ throats and necks. The Palestinian terrorists are now trying to replace Islamic State jihadis as the chief “butchers” of human beings in the Middle East. For now, they seem to be partially successful in their mission.

Our young men and women have learned from the Islamic State not only the practice of stabbing the “infidels,” but also how to destroy religious sites. On Thursday night, scores of Palestinians attacked and torched Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank city of Nablus, in scenes reminiscent of the Islamic State’s destruction of ancient and holy sites in Syria and Iraq.

1309Last week, Palestinians torched Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus (left), in scenes reminiscent of the Islamic State’s destruction of holy sites in Syria and Iraq, such as the Armenian Church in Deir Zor (right).

The shrine was set on fire for no reason other than that it is revered as the tomb of a Jewish biblical figure. This is a site frequented by Jewish worshippers, although it is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its security forces in Nablus. It is worth noting that agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians guarantee access for Jewish worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb, and there were assurances to the Israelis that the PA could be trusted to safeguard the site.

What the Palestinians did to Joseph’s Tomb is no different from what the Islamic State and other terrorist groups have been doing to holy sites and archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq. The Palestinians who attacked Joseph’s Tomb were obviously influenced by the crimes of the Islamic State against religious and ancient sites.

What is still not clear is why the Palestinian Authority security forces, which maintain a tight grip on Nablus, did nothing to prevent the arson attack.

How can our leaders in Ramallah accuse Jews of “contaminating” the Aqsa Mosque with their “filthy feet” at a time when our youths burn a religious site such as Joseph’s Tomb?

This is not the only Jewish holy site that has been targeted by Palestinians in recent years. While our leaders are screaming day and night about Jews “invading” and “desecrating” the Aqsa Mosque, Palestinians from Bethlehem have been throwing stones, petrol bombs and explosive devices at Rachel’s Tomb near the city. This has been going on for several years now, in an attempt to kill Jewish worshippers and the Israeli soldiers guarding Rachel’s Tomb.

The attacks on Joseph’s and Rachel’s Tombs in Nablus and Bethlehem are part of a Palestinian-Islamic campaign to destroy Jewish holy sites and deny any Jewish link to the land. The attacks are an attempt to rewrite history so that Jews will not be able to claim any religious ties to the land. This is exactly what the Islamic State is doing these days in Syria and Iraq: “erasing history that lets us to learn from the past.”

The terror campaign that we have been waging against Israel in the past few weeks shows that the Islamic State and Islamic fundamentalism and fascism have invaded the minds and hearts of many of our young men and women. We have turned the conflict with Israel into a jihadi war, the goal of which is to slaughter Jews, erase their history and expel them from this part of the world. This is not an intifada. This is brutal killing spree targeting Jews of all ages, including a 13-year-old boy, a 72-year-old woman and a 78-year-old man.

President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian leaders are lying to us — and the rest of the world — when they describe the stabbing attacks against Jews as a “peaceful popular resistance.” This is not a struggle against “occupation” or a wall or a checkpoint. It is time to recognize that this is an Islamic State-inspired jihad to slaughter as many Jews as possible and wipe Israel off the face of the earth. When and if the Islamic State is finally eliminated or disappears, the Palestinians will emerge as the successors of one of the most brutal and murderous Islamic gangs that has surfaced in modern history.

Categories: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Hamas, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Jews, Joseph's Tomb, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Temple Mount
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The ‘Jerusalem Awakening’

October 19, 2015

The ‘Jerusalem Awakening’ Front Page Magazine, Richard L. Cravatts, October 19, 2015

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The carnage in Jerusalem and other parts of Israel continued this week with an increased ferocity and barbarity, with stabbings, shooting, bombings, car ramming, rocket attacks, and other assaults on Israeli citizens claiming the lives of five Israelis and twenty-five Palestinians in the past two weeks alone. While the violence intensifies and seems to be spiraling out of control, not only touching Jerusalem but also the West Bank, Gaza, and other Israeli towns, officials are intent on identifying the inspiration for the latest escalation of jihad against Jews.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was quick to assign blame, not to the perpetrators of the deadly attacks—psychotic young men acting in the name of Allah to purge the land of Jews—but to the victims themselves, Israelis. Speaking at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, Kerry disingenuously observed in a question and answer session after his talk that, “There’s been a massive increase in settlements over the course of the last years and there’s an increase in the violence because there’s this frustration that’s growing.” Blaming the settlements for being an obstacle to peace is a favorite refrain for this administration, of course, and it puts the responsibility for the outbreak of violence squarely on Israel, and Netanyahu, instead of where it more justifiably belongs: namely, with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and a culture of death where “resistance” and martyrdom are promoted as virtuous rather than inhumanly counterproductive.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was more accurate in identifying the inspiration of the current uprising, this so-called “Jerusalem Awakening,” that has increased the tension of everyday life for Israelis and Arabs alike. At a weekly cabinet meeting Netanyahu correctly observed that Israel is “. . . in the midst of a wave of terrorism originating from systematic and mendacious incitement regarding the Temple Mount – incitement by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and the Islamic Movement in Israel.”

Secretary Kerry may well wish that it is the dreaded settlements that have motivated young Arab men to begin indiscriminately slashing and shooting Jews, but the prime minister’s view is clearly more accurate, and more believable, given PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s own words of warning when he spoke at the UN at the end of September. He was, he said before the morally-challenged audience, “. . . compelled to sound the alarm about the grave dangers of what is happening in Jerusalem, where extremist Israeli groups are committing repeated, systematic incursions upon Al-Aqsa Mosque . . , while preventing Muslim worshipers from accessing and entering the Mosque at those times and freely exercising their religious rights.”

These actions, Abbas claimed, are “in direct violation of the status quo since before 1967 and thereafter, [and are] aggravating the sensitivities of Palestinians and Muslims everywhere. I call on the Israeli government, before it is too late, to cease its use of brutal force to impose its plans to undermine the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at Al-Aqsa Mosque, for such actions will convert the conflict from a political to religious one[emphasis added], creating an explosive in Jerusalem and in the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Putting aside the laughable contention that Muslims care even the slightest bit about the sanctity and protection of Christian holy places, the claim that Israel is trying to destroy or undermine mosques on the Temple Mount is an oft-repeated charge, used by Arabs against Israel as a way of inciting hatred toward Jews for their alleged perfidiousness and guile. Israeli columnist Nadav Shragrai has referred to this tactic as the “Protect the Al Aqsa Mosque” blood libel—a propaganda tool that has been employed since the 1920s to cause mistrust of Jews when the then-Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, Hitler’s Middle East ally, exhorted Muslims everywhere to defend Islamic holy places in Jerusalem from the pernicious Jews, causing riots, bloodshed, and 133 Jewish deaths.

Abbas was surprisingly candid in admitting that the incursion onto the Temple Mount, where Jews and Christians have traditionally been barred from worshiping, changed the nature of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis from a political debate to a religious war. Of course, a holy war against Israelis specifically, and Jews in general, has been a core tenet of Islam since Jews rejected Mohammed in the seventh century, and animates the foundational charters of the PA and Hamas as part of a theological responsibility devout Muslims feel to purify the world through the extirpation of the rapacious, thieving Jews.

The perceived assault by Israel on the Al Aqsa Mosque, and the Temple Mount in general, then, is yet another affirmation to the Muslim world that the scheming Jews seek to weaken and eventually destroy the House of Islam—here in Jerusalem at Islam’s third holiest spot—and replace it with a Third Temple. What seem like random, “lone wolf” attacks on Israeli civilians at bus stops and on streets are actually thought of as part of a religiously-inspired war in the defense of Islam, a holy war in the form of jihad.

The Hamas Charter, for instance, proclaims that the circumstances through which the “Zionist regime” was established through the perfidy of the Jews is, in the honor/shame culture of the Middle East, an open wound on the Islamic world, a situation which demands jihad to restore the sanctity of Islamic land and rid the world of the festering sore that is Israel. “[T]he land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Islamic religious endowment] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day,” the Charter states. “The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem,” stipulating that jihad is not only a tactical choice for ridding Palestine of the Zionist interloper, it is seen as a religious duty; in fact, it is demanded of true believers.

The Charter’s Article 7 also contains the oft-cited hadith which exhorts Muslims to seek out and murder Jews specifically as a sacred obligation. Islamic teaching depicts Jews as the descendants of “monkeys and pigs,” treacherous deceivers, manipulative barbarians and thieves who attempted to murder the prophets, and who are satanic, murderous, unlawful occupiers of holy Muslim land whose elimination is sacralized in Koranic and hadithic precepts.  “. . . The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to realize the promise of Allah, no matter how long it takes,” Article 7 reads. “The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: ‘The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: “Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,” except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.’”

It is no surprise that in a culture marinated in Jew-hatred, where Jews are debased, portrayed as a subhuman species, bacteria, a disease, fomenters of wars and strife—in fact, are portrayed as the enemies of Allah and mankind—the extermination of Jews, especially in defense of Islam and its holy places, would therefore become not only a reasonable goal but a desired outcome. Who would not murder Jews if they pose such threats to mankind and Islam specifically? Who would ever make peace with the eternal enemies of Allah, let alone negotiate a peace and borders for a new Arab state with them? And would not those jihadis who willingly sacrifice themselves to murder Jews in the name of Allah be celebrated as shahids, martyrs, and have town squares and summer camps named for them and their bravery, exactly as they are by Palestinian leadership now?

If Jews are the most wretched of humans, and the “liberation” of all of Palestine—including the Temple Mount, including Jerusalem, including all of Israel—is considered a sacred duty and religious obligation, then the murder of Jews must, and will, continue in this millennial apocalyptic struggle in which devote Muslims see themselves playing a central role.

Abbas’s disingenuous and lethal tactics in inciting rage against Jewish “interlopers” and “defilers” of Muslim holy ground on the Temple Mount are not new. Scholars and archeologists remember, for instance, the howls of outrage that arose from the Arab world in February 2007, when Israeli authorities initiated a project to rebuild a ramp to the Mugrabi Gate, an entrance to the Temple Mount plaza and the Al Aqsa Mosque platform that had been damaged in an earlier storm.  Riots and protests began immediately, with accusations against Israel coming from throughout the Arab world for its “scheme” and treachery in digging under and threatening to destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque itself. The committee of Muslim scholars in Jordan’s Islamic Action Front, for one, “urge[d] … jihad to liberate Al Aqsa and save it from destruction and sabotage from Jewish usurpers”—a spurious claim, since construction was taking place well outside the Mount platform, some 100 meters from the mosque, and clearly posed no possible threat.

But false irredentist claims, Islamic supremacism which compels Jews and Christians to live in dhimmitude under Muslim control, and an evident cultural and theological disregard for other faiths— while troubling in the battle over sovereignty in Jerusalem—are not, according to Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, the most dangerous aspects of a diplomatic capitulation which would allow the Palestinians control holy places and to claim a shared Jerusalem. In his engaging book, The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City, Gold pointed to a far more troubling aspect: in their desire to accede to Arab requests for a presence and religious sovereignty in Jerusalem, the State Department, EU, UN member states, and Islamic apologists in the Middle East and worldwide may actually ignite jihadist impulses they seek to dampen with their well-intentioned, but defective, diplomacy.

Why? Because, as Gold explained, “In the world of apocalyptic speculation, Jerusalem has many other associations—it is the place where the messianic Mahdi [the redeemer of Islam] is to establish his capital. For that reason, some argue that it also should become the seat of the new caliphate that most Islamic groups—from the Muslim Brotherhood to al-Qaeda—seek to establish.”

In September, Abbas announced in Ramallah that “We will not forsake our country and we will keep every inch of our land,” reaffirming his belief that all of Jerusalem would, and should, be retained by the Palestinians as the capital of their new state. “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.” In facgt, the establishment of the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem is the first important step in the long-term strategy to rid the Levant of Jews and reestablish the House of Islam in all of historic Palestine. “Jerusalem’s recapture is seen by some as one of the signs that ‘the Hour’ and the end of times are about to occur,” Gold suggested. “And most importantly, because of these associations, it is the launching pad for a new global jihad powered by the conviction that this time the war will unfold according to a pre-planned religious script, and hence must succeed.”

So far from creating a political situation in which both parties—Israelis and the Palestinians—feel they have sought and received equal benefits, such negotiations and final agreements would have precisely the opposite effect: destabilizing the region and creating, not the oft-hoped for Israel and Palestine “living side by side in peace,” but an incendiary cauldron about to explode into an annihilatory, jihadist rage. Those in the West who are urging Israel “to redivide Jerusalem by relinquishing its holy sites,” Dore cautioned, “may well believe that they are lowering the flames of radical Islamic rage, but in fact they will only be turning up those flames to heights that have not been seen before.” If Kerry’s State Department and other Western diplomats are intent on mollifying the Arab street by pressuring Israel to divide Jerusalem as a peace offering to the Palestinians, it may well be setting into motion the exact opposite result—a jihadist, apocalyptic movement invigorated by the misguided diplomacy of the West that, once more, asks Israel to sacrifice its security and nationhood so that Islamists can realize their own imperial and theological ambitions at the Jewish state’s expense.

Categories: Abbas, Al-Aqsa Mosque, Death to Israel, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, Islam's war on Jews, Israel, Jerusalem, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama and Israel, Temple Mount
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Hamas Welcomes Be’er Sheva Attack as ‘Heroic Act’

October 19, 2015

Hamas Welcomes Be’er Sheva Attack as ‘Heroic Act’ Hamas says terrorist attack in Be’er Sheva was a response to Israel’s alleged “cold-blooded executions”.

By Ben Ariel

First Publish: 10/19/2015, 12:16 AM

Source: Hamas Welcomes Be’er Sheva Attack as ‘Heroic Act’ – Middle East – News – Arutz Sheva

Hamas terrorists   Emad Nassar/Flash 90

Hamas on Sunday night welcomed the terrorist attack at the Central Bus Station in Be’er Sheva, in which an IDF soldier was murdered and nine other people were injured.

In a statement, Hamas spokesman Husam Badran said the attack is “another heroic action against the occupation, which is on high alert. Our people will not be afraid of anything.”

Badran added that the attack was a response to the “cold-blooded executions of the military of the occupation.”

One terrorist carried out the attack. He was armed with a handgun and knife.

The terrorist shot a soldier and killed him, and then took his M-16 semiautomatic assault rifle and began firing it at a group of policemen, four of whom were injured.

Another man was also shot by security forces, in the belief that he was a terrorist. However, he apparently is an Eritrean infiltrator and he may not have had anything to do with the attack.

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An Islamist Intifada

October 18, 2015

An Islamist Intifada, American Thinker, Jonathan F. Keiler, October 18, 2015

The history of phony Palestinian Arab nationalism inevitably has led back to this point, revealing the violence for what it is: a war against Jews, and ultimately against anybody else who refuses to submit.

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The current Palestinian Arab “uprising” against Israel appears to be a mostly Islamist offensive, not different in any significant ideological way from radical Islamist movements like ISIS, al-Qaeda, and Hezb’allah.  The idea that it is motivated by Israeli policies, the stalled “peace process,” or Palestinian Arab nationalism is nothing but propaganda, and the laziness and bias of the international press and political classes.

The violence is motivated by the Palestinian Authority’s deliberate agitation, which knowingly taps into the Arab masses deep-seated hatred of Jews and other infidels.  The Authority has a parochial interest in diverting the attention of the masses from its own corruption and incompetence.  It also wants to insulate itself against its Hamas rival in Gaza, which correctly sees the Authority for the hapless and rotten organization it is and would replace it with an incompetent and corrupt Islamist entity in the West Bank.

What neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas wants is independence, having rejected every opportunity to create a viable Palestinian Arab state.  The Authority, like all Palestinian Arab leadership since the 1930s, has rejected every opportunity to create a Palestinian state, despite claiming that purpose.  Correspondingly, Gaza is already a wholly independent Palestinian territory, but Hamas also laughably still claims it is “occupied” by Israel.  This patently idiotic assertion is nonetheless accepted as truth by the international left, many governments, and most likely the current occupant of the White House.

Still, Palestinian Arabs in the recent past have consistently played the nationalist card.  The first and second Palestinian intifadas could be characterized as nationalist uprisings, at least to the extent that the stated motivations of Arab leadership and the masses was to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  The name of the uprisings, “intifada,” or “shaking off” in Arabic, suggested as much.  Predictably, though the Palestinian Arabs succeeded in ending the occupations of Gaza and most of the West Bank, they rejected the fruits of victory.

The uprisings demonstrated the disingenuous nature of Palestinian nationalism.  They furthered supposed Palestinian Arab national aspirations by intensifying international support of Palestinian goals and winning Israeli territorial concessions, but because of Palestinian disinterest in an actual state, these gains have led nowhere.

The result of the first intifada was the Oslo Accords, the withdrawal of the Israeli military from most populated parts of the West Bank, and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.  If the Palestinian Arabs had any real interest in ending the conflict with Israel and establishing a real national polity, this could have led to a state in the West Bank and Gaza.  However, when Israel offered Yasser Arafat just that, accompanied by further Israeli territorial concessions, he rejected the offer and instead launched another intifada.

The second intifada was manufactured by Arafat, and also erupted over false claims of an Israeli violation of Arab sensitivities on the Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.  But with Arafat’s guidance, it quickly adopted the rhetoric of nationalist occupation.  The extreme violence of the second intifada, which cost Israel almost ten times the losses of the first intifada, also resulted in a tangible gain for the Palestinian Arabs: the abandonment of Israeli communities in Gaza and the Israeli military’s full retreat from that enclave.  When the Israelis departed, they intentionally left behind valuable infrastructure that the Palestinians could have used to build their nation.  In addition, the international community lavished aid and investment on the newly independent territory, which might have tried to transform itself into an Arab Singapore.

But again, the Palestinian Arabs rejected the opportunity.   They destroyed the abandoned Israeli infrastructure in typical self-destructive fits of “rage,” embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of international aid, and launched a series of pathetic military offensives against Israel, designed to make their own people suffer.

Under Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas (who remains in charge of the Palestinian Authority in the tenth year of a four-year term), and later under Hamas (after they kicked Abbas and his Fatah Party out), the Palestinians have ludicrously continued to claim that Gaza is occupied.

What is most interesting about the current uprising is that the Palestinians appear to have mostly abandoned any pretense of fighting for a state, and instead have now fully joined the Islamist wave sweeping the Middle East.  Other than Abbas’s posturing, the violence is relatively leaderless, at least in terms of traditional Palestinian Arab political organizations, and driven by Islamist youth.  This uprising, like the second intifada, was instigated by Abbas’s repeated lies about Israeli actions and intentions regarding holy sites in Jerusalem.  But it is persisting in that vein, as radicalized Palestinian Islamists attack Jews in the name of protecting Islam.

Thus, the current violence is less of a piece with the first and second intifadas as it is with the Arab revolts in Mandated Palestine during the 1930s.  Those uprisings were religious, based also on supposed threats posed to Islamic holy sites, with little nationalist motivation.  That’s because in the 1930s there was no Palestinian national movement, there being no such thing as a Palestinian historically, ethnically, or culturally.  To the extent there was any national element to the revolts, it was of the pan-Arab variety – a movement that has proven to be as chimeric as Palestinian nationalism.

In theory, the religious nature of this revolt should put “Palestine’s” many supporters in the West in a more difficult position.  The basis of Western support of Palestine, from the BDS movement to formal recognition to the “peace process,” has been the idea that the conflict between Israel and the Arabs is nationalist, not religious.  As a national conflict, the left and liberal Western governments take the side of the “indigenous” people (Palestinian Arabs), as opposed to the colonial occupiers (Israelis).  But with Palestinians adopting the ideas of the most radical Islamists, this ought to challenge that narrative.  And it reflects reality, because from the 1930s until today, there never has been an authentic Palestinian national movement, as opposed to a basically Islamist desire to rid the Middle East of its only non-Islamic polity.

Hamas has always been an assertively an Islamist organization, openly embracing terror; hostage-taking; public executions of infidels and heretics; and tyranny, both political and religious.  But it also claims to want to vindicate Palestinian national aspirations, which allows some governments and leftists in general to ignore Hamas’s Islamist nature and accept its partial self-depiction as a “resistance movement” to (nonexistent) Israeli occupation.   Likewise, Hezb’allah, the Shia-Islamist terror organization, also self-depicts as a resistance movement to nonexistent Israel occupation (Israel having totally quit Lebanon over 15 years ago).  This nationalist cover allows Western leftist politicians like Jeremy Corbyn (Britain’s new Labor leader) to embrace these groups .

It has also allowed Western leaders like President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to divorce the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict from the larger war on terror.  They prefer to depict it as a local nationalist phenomenon, in which Israeli occupation – rather than Jews simply trying to live as Jews – drives Arab terror.  So far, true to form, the White House and State Department are sticking with that story with the current violence, blaming Israel and the Palestinian Arabs equally, and willfully ignoring the facts of Abbas’s incitement and the Islamist motivations of Arab murderers.

The history of phony Palestinian Arab nationalism inevitably has led back to this point, revealing the violence for what it is: a war against Jews, and ultimately against anybody else who refuses to submit.

 

Categories: Abbas, Arafat, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Islam's war on Jews, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Obama and Israel, Palestinians
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United Nations Apologists for Deadly Palestinian Violence

October 18, 2015

United Nations Apologists for Deadly Palestinian Violence

By Joseph A. Klein

Bio and Archives October 18, 2015

Source: United Nations Apologists for Deadly Palestinian Violence

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the same day as Palestinians torched a site containing Joseph’s Tomb in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank city of Nablus, the United Nations Security Council held an “emergency” session to address the escalating violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank.  The October 16th meeting was called by Jordan, a non-permanent member of the Security Council. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has expressed his willingness to meet with the Palestinian leadership and resume peace talks immediately without preconditions, in order to bring calm to the region. The Palestinian leadership’s response was to have Jordan act as their promoter-in-chief and call on the Security Council to hold the “emergency” meeting for the purpose essentially of condemning Israel and rationalizing the Palestinian killing spree.

Mr. Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs, briefed the Security Council on the latest developments. Although strongly condemning the attack on Joseph’s Tomb, Mr. Zerihoun tried to explain away the wave of Palestinian violence in general as stemming from the “persistence of the occupation and the diminishing prospects of achieving Palestinian aspirations for statehood.” He also threw in the “continued and expanding settlement activities” as contributing “to the anger and frustration driving the violence we are seeing today.” Finally, he added the widespread unfounded fears in the Muslim world that “Israel is aiming to change the status quo at the holy sites.”

There is no justification whatsoever for random stabbings of innocent civilians including children, women and the elderly. But that is exactly what Palestinian assailants have been doing while the so-called “international community” looks the other way. Israel has every right to use whatever means of restraint it deems necessary to protect its own civilians from such harm. Indeed, that is the first obligation of any responsible state – to defend its own citizens.  Yet vacuous phrases such as “collective punishment” and “violations of international law” are thrown at Israel for trying to contain the violence instigated by Palestinian thugs.

Mr. Zerihoun acknowledged the “impact of social media and irresponsible rhetoric” in playing “a dramatic role in escalation.” However, he failed to reference the incontrovertible evidence that the abuse of social media and irresponsible rhetoric to incite violence are coming almost exclusively from the Palestinian side, not the Israeli side. Instead, Mr. Zerihoun disgracefully indulged in the UN’s typical moral equivalence narrative, saying that “both sides have much to be blamed for.”

As just one example of the incitement to violence appearing on social media posted by Palestinians or their sympathizers, the following tweet was posted recently under the hashtag “The Intifada Has Started”: “There is no greater reward in Islam than the one given for jihad, and there is no greater reward than the one given for #Slaughtering_the_Jews… Kill them wherever you find them.” (Source: The Middle East Media Research Institute [MEMRI])

Tutorials on how to most effectively stab Jews to death

There are also tutorials on how to most effectively stab Jews to death. For instance, in a tweet posted from an individual in Gaza under the hashtag ” Poison The Knife Before You Stab,” the following ghastly advice was offered: “Dip [your] knife in an active poison before carrying out [a stabbing], so that even if the knife does not manage [to kill], the poison will do the job.” (Source: MEMRI)

Another gives elaborate instructions on how to stab a Jew, illustrated by a graphic anatomical diagram with protruding knives.

The issue used on social media to fire up the Palestinian assailants involves the false rumors about alleged Israeli plans to change the status quo at the Temple Mount or, as Muslims refer to it, Haram al-Sharif. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that Israel is fully committed to maintaining the status quo at the compound. But that has not stopped exploitation of the false rumors by social media and by Palestinian leaders including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas’s lies and incitements to violence

Here is one recent example of the big lie propagated by Abbas, delivered in a speech on Palestinian TV on October 14th:

“These days Israel’s hostile attack on our Palestinian people, its soil and its holy sites is intensifying, and the savage racism in its ugly form adds hideousness and repulsiveness to the occupation. These pose a threat to peace and stability and herald the lighting of the fuse of a religious conflict that will spark an all-consuming conflagration not only in the [Middle East] region but in the entire world.”

“We say explicitly and unequivocally that we will not agree to a change in the status quo in the blessed Al-Aqsa and we will not allow Israel to carry out any plot intended to damage its sanctity and its purely Islamic [character]. The right [over Al-Qasa] is our exclusive right – Palestinians and Muslims everywhere. We seek rights, justice and peace. We have attacked nobody and we will not agree to attacks on our people, our homeland and our holy sites.” (Source: MEMRI)

Abbas also lied in accusing Israel of “executing” in cold blood a 13 year old “child.” The Palestinian boy is in fact alive and being treated in an Israeli hospital. And he was no innocent victim caught in the crossfire. He had stabbed an Israeli boy his own age who was riding along on his bicycle.

Abbas’s lies and incitements to violence are to be expected. That’s what Palestinian leaders do. However, even worse, the Palestinian leaders are getting cover for their lies from the so-called “international community” as represented at the United Nations. For example, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein blamed the escalating tension on various Israeli actions, including “the ongoing settlement expansion” and “recent restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on Palestinian worshippers wishing to access the Al-Aqsa compound.”

While other UN officials such as Deputy Secretary Tayé-Brook Zerihoun denounce the use of social media to incite or glorify violence, there is disturbing evidence that personnel working at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) are guilty of doing just that.  UN Watch has issued a report, which it sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl, compiling examples of hate-filled social media posts by individuals claiming to work for UNRWA. Here is a sampling from the UN Watch report:

  1. “Stab Zionist Dogs” – caption to a cartoon posted by self-describe d “Projects Support Assistant at UNRWA”
  2. Video demonstrating use of guns, knives and Molotov cocktails – posted by individual who said he “works at UNRWA”
  3. Video of “mosque sermon in which Sheikh Abu Rajab pulled out a knife and, with violent stabbing motions, exhorted Palestinians to murder Jews in the name of Islam” – posted by self-described “teacher at UNRWA”
  4. “Mohammed Assaf, UNRWA’s ‘Youth Ambassador’ and most famous personality — an ‘Arab Idol’ winner who is a key fundraiser and face of the organization, appointed by UNRWA’s Commissioner-General — has been using his UN imprimatur to glorify violence throughout his Facebook timeline” including display of “three Palestinian youths who attacked Israeli Jews.” The Palestinians are referred to as “shahid,” which means martyrs.

UNRWA might as well change its name to the Palestinian Propaganda Agency

UNRWA might as well change its name to the Palestinian Propaganda Agency. Originally established as a temporary relief agency for displaced Palestinians with the objective of resettling them in communities willing to receive them, UNRWA has morphed into a permanent Palestinian advocacy fixture. Its clientele today are some 5 million registered Palestine “refugees,” most of whom are descendants separated by several generations from the actual refugees who left their homes when Israel was created and who were supposed to have been resettled and integrated into their new communities. UNRWA intends to stay in business until as many of the 5 million so-called “refugees” as possible can return “home” from Jordan where they are already citizens of that Palestinian majority country and from Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. “Home” to UNRWA and its clientele is not limited to just a new state bordering Israel along essentially the pre-1967 lines. It also means the “refugees’” claimed “right of return” to lands encompassing pre-1967 Israel.

Against that backdrop, consider UNRWA’s rationalization for the recent spurt of Palestinian violence:

“The root causes of the conflict, among them the Israeli occupation, must be addressed. Across the occupied Palestinian territory there is a pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair resulting from the denial of rights and dignity… An entire generation of Palestinians is at risk.”

UNRWA officially condemned Israel’s response to the violence initiated by Palestinian assailants, who have been lionized by self-proclaimed UNRWA personnel in their social media postings. When Palestinian assailants die or are injured after Israeli security forces respond to quell the violence and take down the murderous aggressors, the Palestinians, we are told,  were simply acting on their understandable anger born of “hopelessness” and “frustration.” Israeli security forces are accused of using “excessive” force even as they themselves are attacked when trying to defend their own lives and the lives of innocent civilians.

Violence is not the Palestinians’ last resort, born of frustration after seeing that nothing else has worked. It is the Palestinians’ first reflexive action in dealing with their own self-inflicted plight. The Palestinians regularly lie to the world with their propaganda campaign aimed at exonerating themselves of all responsibility and at delegitimizing the Jewish State of Israel. The United Nations establishment serves as their apologist and enabler

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Day of Rage: Intifada 3.0 (Dispatch 3)

October 17, 2015

Day of Rage: Intifada 3.0 (Dispatch 3), VICE News via You Tube, October 16, 2015

 

VICE News video:

 

(The following video is not from VICE news. More than four years old, it’s still relevant. — DM)

 

Categories: Day of rage, Hamas, Intifada, Islamic jihad, Israel, Jews, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes
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Russia, Israel, Hamas & ISIL: Putting Together the Pieces of the Puzzle

October 15, 2015

Russia, Israel, Hamas & ISIL: Putting Together the Pieces of the Puzzle

21:40 15.10.2015(updated 21:47 15.10.2015)

Source: Russia, Israel, Hamas & ISIL: Putting Together the Pieces of the Puzzle

Speaking to Radio Sputnik on Thursday, Israeli political analyst Avigdor Eskin attempted to explain Israel’s motivations in the war against ISIL.

Commenting on Hamas’s role in the war, Eskin recalled that Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, adding that “the Muslim Brotherhood is, in a sense, partially ISIS,” with some of their members “turning to ISIS: It happened in Iraq, it happened in Syria, when certain significant numbers of their people decided to become more radical.”

A man inspects a site hit by what activists said were airstrikes carried out by the Russian air force in the town of Babila, in the southern countryside of Idlib, Syria, October 7, 2015
© REUTERS/ Khalil Ashawi
Russian, Israeli General Staff Members to Meet on Syria in Moscow

In the case of Hamas, as you know, this organization was aided largely by Syria and Iran up until a couple of years ago, and their military headquarters were sustained in Damascus…And what they did when the civil war started was to turn their weapons against the government of Syria. Therefore the government of Syria –Assad and Iran today are very unhappy with Hamas –they fight Hamas. And Hamas people in Syria joined ISIS. Therefore, today we cannot separate Hamas from ISIS.”

As far as Israel’s position toward ISIL is concerned, Eskin noted that “Israel is definitely threatened by ISIS, and has helped Yazidis and the Kurds in Iraq since the beginning of the fighting there. Israel was the first to assist them in their fight against ISIS. Thus, Israel has been fighting ISIS in indirect ways since shortly after ISIS came into existence.”

Citing the recent arrests of ISIL-affiliated would-be terrorists in Moscow, Eskin emphasized that today, “everybody is threatened by ISIS. As far as Israel is concerned, the one thing I can say is that the country is trying not to interfere in Syrian affairs, since there are still anti-Israeli sentiments in the Arab world…the involvement of Israel could undermine Russian efforts, so Israel just needs to keep quiet about the situation in Syria. Let Russia and President Assad do the job. But on the other hand, Israel is assisting indirectly by helping the Yazidis and the Kurds to destroy ISIS in Iraq.”

The analyst noted that “one thing is clear: terrorism is terrorism. And it’s important that the West will help Russia, President Assad and Israel instead of criticizing, instead of undermining their efforts and spreading information which is not correct.”

A man rides his bike past a statue of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, father of current President Bashar al-Assad, in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia on September 24, 2015
© AFP 2015/ JOSEPH EID
Israeli Media Takes Objective Stance on Russia in Syria as it ‘Knows the Stakes’

Commenting on the assessment that Israel may actually benefit from the existence of ISIL, Eskin suggested that this was a “disturbed way of thinking,” adding that “ISIS is a group which wants to destroy Israel, and acts against Israel, and from the very beginning supports the idea that Israel should not exist in the Middle East, so how can anyone be benefiting?”

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Terror slowdown as Israelis absorb first shock and gear up for the next round

October 14, 2015

Terror slowdown as Israelis absorb first shock and gear up for the next round, DEBKAfile, October 14, 2015

Central_Bus_Station_in_Jerusalem_14.10.15Anti-terror operations in Jerusalem

Israelis have absorbed the first shock of the wave of Palestinian terror unleashed in the last two weeks. The Palestinians are likely absorbing the package of tough penalties for terror and deterrents the Netanyahu government began putting together Tuesday night. Wednesday, Oct. 14, saw relative calm after the deadly violence reached a new peak Tuesday with the first Palestinian shooting attack on a Jerusalem bus – this time by adults.

The relative lull is expected to last only until the Palestinians and their Israeli Arab supporters take stock, before inevitably launching their next round of terror.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem saw “only” two stabbing attacks. In the first, a terrorist wearing army fatigues tried to stab a Border Guardsman at Nablus Gate in Jerusalem, and was shot and killed by policemen and visitors. Two hours later, another terrorist attacked a woman bus passenger at the city’s central station. A police special ops officer ran after him up and shot him dead.

One of the counter-terror measures that went into effect Wednesday morning was the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee’s approval of Emergency Order 8 authorizing the mobilization of an additional 600 Border Guards combatants from the reserves, over and above the 800 already called up.

DEBKAfile’s military experts note that the rapid processing of this new intake with equipment and operational orders will reduce the need to detach from their regular duties the 500 IDF soldiers allocated for manning the streets of Jerusalem.

That is all to the good, because managing police officers and soldiers in harness is bound to be problematic.

Israel is not the first country to inject military strength into its capital to fight terror. The British and French governments have been known to deploy paratroops and armed personnel carriers into the streets of London and Paris when they were beset by a rising level of terror. This deployment never lasted more than a few days – just enough to calm a terrified citizenry.

But Jerusalem is different. The state of security is such that soldiers once in place may face a long-term stay in the capital to contend with a long-running security threat.

Another difficulty is that the soldiers assigned to this mission have been pulled out of tank, artillery and engineering courses with no training for combating urban terror. Those who come from outside the city will furthermore need to familiarize themselves with a new environment and its rhythms.

The Jerusalem Police are special. They must cope with complex, demanding and multi-tasking challenges to the town’s security. More than one terror attack may take place at different parts of the city. Unlike ordinary soldiers, they are trained and have the experience to quickly spot and take action against a terrorist in ordinary clothes who may pop up suddenly from among a large crowd to sow death.

A seasoned police officer can judge when to cut the assailant down to save lives and when to arrest him.

But the IDF servicemen to be recruited for anti-terror duties in support of security forces are much younger than the average policeman – on average around nineteen years old. Their firearms and kits are designed for conventional warfare on the Golan in the north or the Gaza Strip in the south – not for securing civilian buses or heavy vehicular and pedestrian traffic in a crowded city center.

That Border Guards reservists were hastily mobilized at the same time as the military units indicates that someone had the sense to understand that the presence of IDF troops on the streets and buses was good psychological first aid for people jumping at shadows for fear of a lone terrorist, but hardly an effective operational arm for the war on terror.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Fatah, Hamas, IDF, Intifada, Islamic jihad, Israeli government, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians
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Looking beyond the ‘third intifada’

October 14, 2015

Looking beyond the ‘third intifada’ Jerusalem Post, Louis Rene Beres, October 13, 2015

ShowImage (14)Funeral in the Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, on October 10, 2015. (photo credit: AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

About expected Palestinian state intentions, there is little real mystery to fathom. It should already be widely understood that any new state of Palestine could provide a ready platform for launching endlessly renewable war and terrorism against Israel. Significantly, not a single warring Palestinian faction has ever even bothered to deny such overtly criminal intent. On the contrary, aggressive intent has always been openly embraced, fervently cheered as a distinctly sacred “national” incantation.

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It’s farewell to the drawing-room’s civilized cry, The professor’s sensible where to and why, The frock-coated diplomat’s social aplomb, Now matters are settled with gas and with bomb.”

– W.H. Auden, Danse Macabre

With apparent suddenness, and a very deliberate brutality, Palestinian terrorists are launching a new wave of indiscriminate assaults they proudly hail as a “third intifada.”

But behind the protective veneer of language, where homicide is conveniently transfigured into revolution, these latest Arab attacks remain what they have always been – that is, crudely camouflaged expressions of rampant criminality.

Jurisprudentially, this is all perfectly obvious. Prima facie, under all pertinent international law, calculated assaults on mostly women and children can never be sanitized or justified. Always, rather, they represent codified crimes of war and crimes against humanity.

Always, such crimes are unpardonable.

Oddly enough, even after the painfully long history of egregious Palestinian crimes carried out against noncombatant populations, a sizable portion of the “international community” still seeks to encourage Palestinian statehood. Self-righteously, of course, and with ritualistic indignation directed against Israeli “intransigence,” the “civilized community of nations” remains willing to rip a 23rd Arab state from the still-living body of Israel. Even now, as the Palestinians remain rigorously segmented into barbarously warring factions – into opponents who enthusiastically maim and torture each other, all while cooperating in doing the same to their commonly despised Israeli victims – world public opinion calls naively for Palestinian “self-determination.”

Even now, when any new Palestinian state could quickly come to resemble an already-fractured Syria, the United Nations and its secretary – general seem much more concerned with comforting the markedly unheroic Palestinian criminals than with protecting fully innocent Israeli civilians.

Unapologetically, and whatever their unhindered and ongoing excesses, Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are easily able to incite followers to inflict and then celebrate incessant harms upon Israel.

At some point, it is likely that such harms, joyously imposed with a reassuring impunity, could involve diverse weapons of mega-terrorism, including assorted chemical, biological, or even nuclear agents.

In this last category of insidious choice, Palestine, after formalizing its sought-after condition of statehood or sovereignty, could be placed in an optimal position to assault Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.

This plainly sensitive facility was previously attacked, in both 1991 and again in 2014. Those earlier missile and rocket barrages, which produced no ascertainably injurious damages to the critical reactor core, had originated with Iraqi and Hamas aggressions, respectively.

About expected Palestinian state intentions, there is little real mystery to fathom. It should already be widely understood that any new state of Palestine could provide a ready platform for launching endlessly renewable war and terrorism against Israel. Significantly, not a single warring Palestinian faction has ever even bothered to deny such overtly criminal intent. On the contrary, aggressive intent has always been openly embraced, fervently cheered as a distinctly sacred “national” incantation.

A September 2015 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey research – the leading social research organization in the Palestinian territories – found that a majority of Palestinians unhesitatingly reject a two-state solution.

When asked, as a corollary question, about any preferred or alternate ways to establish an independent Palestinian state, 42 percent called for “armed action.”

Only 29% favored “negotiation,” or some sort of peaceful resolution.

Not much mystery here.

On all currently official Hamas and Palestinian Authority (PA ) maps of “Palestine,” Israel has been removed altogether, or identified exclusively as “occupied Palestine.”

By these revealingly forthright and vengeful depictions, Israel has already been forced to suffer a “cartographic genocide.” Unambiguously, from the standpoint of any prospective Palestinian state policies toward Israel, such incendiary maps are portentous, predictive and possibly even prophetic.

What is not generally recognized is that a Palestinian state, any Palestinian state, could play a determinedly serious role in bringing some form of nuclear conflict to the Middle East. Palestine, of course, would itself be non-nuclear; but that’s not the issue. There would remain several other ways in which the new state’s predictable infringements of Israeli security could make the Jewish state more vulnerable to an eventual nuclear attack from Iran, or, in the even more distant future, from a newly-nuclear Arab state.

This second prospect would likely have its core origins in understandable reactions to the plainly impotent Vienna pact with Iran.

Following the July 14, 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA ), several Sunni states in the region, most plausibly Egypt and/ or Saudi Arabia, will likely feel compelled to “go nuclear.”

In essence, any such considered Sunni Arab nuclear proliferation would represent a more-or-less coherent “self-defense” reaction against expectedly escalating perils, once still-avoidable dangers now issuing from the reciprocally fearful Shi’ite world.

There is also more to expect from the Sunni side. Here, in actions that would have no apparent connection to expected Iranian nuclearization, Islamic State (IS) could begin an avowedly destructive march westward, across Jordan, and all the way to the borders of West Bank (Judea/Samaria). There, should a Palestinian state already be established and functional, dedicated Sunni terrorist cadres would likely make quick work of any deployed Palestinian army. In the event that a new Arab state had not yet been suitably declared – that is, in a fashion consistent with codifying Montevideo Convention (1934) expectations – invading IS forces (not Israel) will have become the principal impediment to Palestinian independence.

Credo quia absurdum – “I believe because it is absurd.” In either case, any such IS or IS-related conquest could create another available platform for launching relentless terrorist attacks across the region.

In time, of course, most of these murderous attacks would be aimed precisely at Israel.

IS, as everyone can see, is on the move. It has already expanded well beyond Iraq and Syria, notably into Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Somalia.

Although Hamas leaders generally deny any IS presence in Gaza, that terrorist group’s black flag is now seen more and more regularly in that expressly Palestinian space.

In principle, at least, Israel could sometime find itself forced to cooperate with Hamas against IS, but any reciprocal willingness from the Islamic Resistance Movement, whether glaringly conspicuous or beneath the radar, is implausible.

Additionally, Egypt regards Hamas as part of the much wider Muslim Brotherhood, and prospectively, just as dangerous as IS.

In any event, after Palestine, and even in the absence of any takeover of the new Arab state by IS forces, Israel’s physical survival would require increasing self-reliance in existential military matters.

Such expansions, in turn, would demand: 1) an appropriately revised nuclear strategy, involving deterrence, defense, preemption and warfighting capabilities; and 2) a corollary conventional strategy.

Significantly, however, the birth of Palestine could impact these strategies in several disruptive ways.

Most ominously, a Palestinian state could render most of Israel’s conventional capabilities substantially more problematic. It could thereby heighten certain eventual chances of a regional nuclear war.

Credo quia absurdum. A nuclear war in the Middle East is not out of the question. At some point, such a conflict could arrive in Israel not only as a “bolt-from-the-blue” surprise missile attack, but also as a result, whether intended or inadvertent, of escalation.

If, for example, certain enemy states were to begin “only” with conventional and/or biological attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem might then respond, sooner or later, with nuclear reprisals. Or if these enemy states were to begin hostilities with certain conventional attacks upon Israel, Jerusalem’s own conventional reprisals might then be met, at least in the future, with enemy nuclear counterstrikes.

For now, this second scenario could become possible only if Iran were to continue its evident advance toward an independent nuclear capability. It follows that a persuasive Israeli conventional deterrent, at least to the extent that it could prevent enemy state conventional, and/or biological attacks, would substantially reduce Israel’s risk of any escalatory exposure to a nuclear war. Israel will need to maintain its capacity for “escalation dominance,” but Palestinian statehood, on its face, could still impair this overriding strategic obligation.

A subsidiary question comes to mind. Why should Israel need a conventional deterrent at all? Israel, after all, seemingly maintains a capable nuclear arsenal and corollary doctrine, even though both still remain “deliberately ambiguous.”

And there arises a still further query. Even after “Palestine,” wouldn’t enemy states desist from launching conventional and/or biological attacks upon Israel, here, out of an entirely reasonable and prudent fear of suffering a nuclear retaliation? Not necessarily. Aware that Israel would cross the nuclear threshold only in certain extraordinary circumstances, these enemy states could be convinced – rightly or wrongly – that so long as their attacks were to remain non-nuclear, Israel would respond only in kind. Faced with such probable calculations, Israel’s ordinary security would still need to be sustained by conventional deterrent threats.

A strong conventional capability will still be needed by Israel to deter or to preempt conventional attacks – attacks that could, if undertaken, lead quickly, via escalation, to various conceivable forms of unconventional war.

Credo quia absurdum. It is still not sufficiently understood that Palestine could have serious effects on power and peace in the Middle East. As the creation of yet another enemy Arab state would need to arise from the intentional dismemberment of Israel, the Jewish state’s strategic depth would inevitably be diminished. Over time, therefore, Israel’s conventional capacity to ward off assorted enemy attacks could be correspondingly reduced.

Paradoxically, if enemy states were to perceive Israel’s own sense of expanding weakness and desperation, this could strengthen Israel’s nuclear deterrent. If, however, pertinent enemy states did not perceive such a “sense” among Israel’s decision-makers (a far more likely scenario), these states, now animated by Israel’s conventional force deterioration, could then be encouraged to attack. The cumulative result, spawned by Israel’s post-Palestine incapacity to maintain strong conventional deterrence, could become: 1) defeat of Israel in a conventional war; 2) defeat of Israel in an unconventional chemical/biological/nuclear war; 3) defeat of Israel in a combined conventional/unconventional war; or 4) defeat of Arab/Islamic state enemies by Israel in an unconventional war.

For Israel, a country less than half the size of Lake Michigan, even the “successful” fourth possibility could prove intolerable. The tangible consequences of a nuclear war, or even a “merely” chemical/ biological war, could be calamitous for the victor as well as the vanquished.

Under such exceptional conditions of belligerency, the traditional notions of “victory” and “defeat” would likely lose all serious meaning.

Although a meaningful risk of regional nuclear war in the Middle East must exist independently of any Palestinian state, this uniquely serious threat would be still greater if a new Arab terrorist state were authoritatively declared.

Palestine, it has increasingly been argued, could sometime become vulnerable to overthrow by even more militant jihadist Arab forces, a violent transfer of power that could then confront Israel with an even broader range of regional perils.

In this connection, IS, again, could find itself at the outer gates of “Palestine.” In such a scenario, it is plausible that the IS fighters would make fast work of any residual Palestinian defense force, PA and/ or Hamas, and then absorb Palestine itself into a rapidly expanding Islamic “caliphate.”

Before anything remotely decent could be born from such a determined theocracy, a very capable sort of gravedigger would have to wield the forceps.

The “third intifada” is just another legitimizing term for remorseless Palestinian terrorism. Should it transform the always fratricidal Palestinian territories into another corrupted Arab state, Palestine, either by itself, or as a newly-incorporated part of a still-growing IS “caliphate,” would become another Syria. Even more significantly, Palestine could bring specifically nuclear-based harms to the broader region.

Then, quite predictably, all pertinent “matters” would be settled “with gas and with bomb.”

Categories: Defense of Israel, Fatah, Foreign policy, Hamas, International Community, Iranian nukes, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Middle East, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama - Middle East, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Two state solution
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Three killed and at least 20 injured in double terror attack within Jerusalem

October 13, 2015

Three killed and at least 20 injured in double terror attack within Jerusalem Two armed Palestinians with a knife and a pistol attacked passengers on a bus in East Talpiot. Seconds later, another terror attack occurred on the Kings of Israel Street in Jerusalem. Three people were killed, at least 20 were injured, and 6 were critically injured.

Oct 13, 2015, 03:00PM | Rachel Avraham

Source: Three killed and at least 20 injured in double terror attack within Jerusalem – JerusalemOnline

Three people were killed and over 20 people were injured in a double terror attack in Jerusalem. Since this morning, the wave of terror has spread across the country and has struck the Israeli capital city twice within seconds. Following these incidents, the Israeli cabinet will convene this afternoon for a special discussion.

In an incident in the East Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem, two terrorists boarded a bus. One of them had a pistol and his partner in crime had a knife. The two started to shoot and stab passengers. Border Police forces rushed into the bus and fired at the terrorists. One of the terrorists was eliminated and the other one was injured. As a result of this terror attack, two people were killed and 18 others were injured, among them at least 3 critically injured.

In another terror attack that occurred immediately afterwards on the Kings of Israel Street in Jerusalem, a terrorist ran over three passengers waiting at a bus stop. After that, the terrorist got out of his car with a knife in his hand and started to stab people. In this terror attack, one person was killed and a number of others were injured including some that were critically injured. The man killed was identified as 59-year-old Rabbi Yeshayahu Krishevsky.

The terrorist who implemented this attack was Alaa Abu Jamal, who worked for the Israeli Bezek Telecommunications Company. He is a resident of East Jerusalem and used company property in order to wage the terror attack. The Bezek Company rushed to condemn the terror attack: “Bezek expresses deep shock following the terror attack in Jerusalem on the Kings of Israel Street that was implemented by a company employee. We are deeply grieved by the deep pain of the families of the murdered individuals and are praying for a speedy recovery of the wounded.”

“We have to take dramatic steps to change the reality in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem,” Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat stated following the double terror attacks today in Jerusalem.  “I call upon the government and the security forces to take severe steps.  I also call upon the residents to not take the law into their own hands.

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