Posted tagged ‘Iran and Israel’

Iran opens The City of Games for Revolutionary Children, where children pretend to attack U.S. and Israel

December 8, 2016

Iran opens The City of Games for Revolutionary Children, where children pretend to attack U.S. and Israel, Jihad Watch,

“The children follow various paths simulating fighting the enemy, and at some places, the children learn about simple [combat] methods such as firing plastic artillery shells at a simulated enemy as well as aiming and firing a rifle with plastic bullets at [an effigy] of Netanyahu and at U.S. and Israeli flags.”

How do you think these children will fare against those who are being trained to be sensitive to microaggressions and flee to safe spaces at the slightest sign of challenge?

iran-jihad-theme-park

“Iran’s Mashhad Municipality Opens Military-Religious Amusement Park – To Reinforce Revolutionary Values For Children,” MEMRI, December 1, 2016 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

On September 24, 2016, the Iranian news agency Raja News, which is close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), published an interview with Child and the Future Cultural Center director Hamid Sadeghi about an event held during the second half of September that is a military-religious amusement park, called The City of Games for Revolutionary Children. Sadeghi, who operates under the aegis of the Mashhad municipality and also runs the Sharbehesht.ir website, said that his center had set up and inaugurated the City of Games park, and that it is open free of charge to children aged eight through 13. It should be noted that this is the second City of Games event held by the Mashhad municipality; the first was last summer (see MEMRI Special Dispatches – No. 6098, Revolutionary, Anti-West Indoctrination Of Children By Municipality Of Mashhad, Iran, July 08, 2015)….

“Cultural Center director Hamid Sadeghi: “The City of Games for Revolutionary Children [park was opened] at Mashhad’s Kooh Sangi Park by the Child and the Future Cultural Center organization. It will be open September 18 to September 28, and children aged eight to 13 will be admitted free. At the City of Games, we are trying to convey to the children messages about fighting, the Holy Defense [i.e. Iran-Iraq War] and current global issues, through games, amusements, and group activities.

“After registering, the children enter the City of Games compound and split up into groups of eight to 10. They don uniforms and go through 12 [activity] stations.

“One of [our] cultural experts guides the children at the City of Games. First they are brought into the stations of the Ghadir [Shi’ite holiday honoring Imam ‘Ali’s succession to the Prophet Muhammad] and of the Lovers of Ahl Al-Bayt [the family of the Prophet Muhammad descended from ‘Ali], and [the guide] explains to them about the Mahdi [the Shi’ite messiah]. Then they reach the station of the Rule of the Jurisprudent [Velayat-e Faqih], and then the station of the Revolution, where the guide explains about the Islamic Revolution and how the Iranian nation vanquished the [Shah’s] dictatorship. An explanation is also provided about the directives of the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini and [Supreme] Leader Khamenei. Each group of children is assigned a commander who must be obeyed.

“Next, the children enter the first station of the Holy Defense, which houses the dome of the Tomb of Imam Reza [the eighth imam]. Like the fighters during the eight years of the Holy Defense, the children take leave of the Imam Reza and set out for the [battle]fronts.

“The children follow various paths simulating fighting the enemy, and at some places, the children learn about simple [combat] methods such as firing plastic artillery shells at a simulated enemy as well as aiming and firing a rifle with plastic bullets at [an effigy] of Netanyahu and at U.S. and Israeli flags. Here the guide tells the children a story about some of the operations that were carried out during the eight years of the Holy Defense.

“[After] the children are victorious in the war, they enter the station of the defense of the Shrine of Zaynab [the granddaughter of Muhammad and the daughter of ‘Ali, who according to Shi’ite tradition is buried in Damascus] and learn about defending the holy places, about the fighting in Syria against ISIS, and about anti-ISIS thought. At this stage, the children are tasked with finding bullets, each of which have a single letter written on it, and then play a game to complete sentences according to the guide’s instructions. That is, the guide asks a question and the children have to find letters and make words and sentences out of them to answer his question.

“After that, the children have a contest throwing balls at effigies of ISIS and the Saudi royal family, and finish the station [activity] in triumph. Next they enter an area simulating the Shrine of Zaynab, and watch a video on the defense of the shrine. Finally, they receive a cultural souvenir gift, and then they enter the final stage.

“At the final station, the children learn that the most important element[s] for attaining victory are wisdom and intelligence for fighting the enemy.

“At this station, the children are blindfolded and asked to throw a ball at an Israeli flag in the form of a puzzle and knock it down, and then to assemble a puzzle of an Iranian flag….

Arrests Breaks Up PIJ Recruitment Scheme

November 30, 2016

Arrests Breaks Up PIJ Recruitment Scheme, Investigative Project on Terrorism. Yaakov Lappin, November 30, 2016

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Israeli security forces led by the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency have uncovered a recruitment drive by Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives located in Pakistan, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned.

The operatives hail from Gaza and tried to recruit fellow students in Pakistan to create a West Bank cell, according to Israeli security sources.

The investigation illustrates the ease with which terror organizations, particularly Islamic Jihad and Hamas, recruit Palestinian students overseas, often taking advantage of extensive contact networks, the sources said.

The case is unusual for exposing Palestinian Islamic Jihad activity so far from the Palestinian territories and from Israel.

According to the Shin Bet’s investigation, 22-year-old Baha’a Abu Marhiah, a resident of the West Bank city of Hebron, is a Palestinian student who was recruited by two Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives. Marhiah was studying for a law degree at a university in Lahore, Pakistan.

Two Islamic Jihad operatives from Northern Gaza’s Shati Refugee Camp were studying for doctorates at the same university.

Israeli security forces named them as Sharif Halabi, 34, a religious scholar and teacher, and Ramzi Shakshak, 32, who lectures at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.

Halabi, who told students in Pakistan about “martyrs” in Gaza and incited them against Israel, gained Abu Marhiah’s trust and convinced him to join Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the investigation found.

Halabi allegedly told Abu Marhiah to keep in touch after returning to Hebron, and to await further instructions on how to conduct attacks, according to the Shin Bet. Today, Halabi and Shakshak are back in Gaza.

But Marhiah was arrested Sept. 22 in a joint Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces, and police operation following his return.

In recent days, an IDF military court charged Abu Marhiah with carrying out a service for a banned organization, and holding contact with an enemy entity.

After Hamas, Islamic Jihad is the second largest terrorist organization in Gaza, with approximately 5,000 armed combatants split up into regional brigades and a domestically produced rocket arsenal which incorporates Iranian know-how.

Any expansion of Islamic Jihad from Gaza into the West Bank would also represent an Iranian push into the area.

Prior to 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield, Islamic Jihad maintained a high profile in the West Bank and launched a series of suicide bombing and shooting attacks against Israelis. Jenin and Hebron were considered strong areas for the organization. The terrorist group is now working strenuously to reinvigorate itself in the area.

Iran remains the principal financial backer of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Unlike Hamas, it has remained utterly loyal to Tehran and enjoyed sustained, continuous support from it.

While Hamas has distanced itself from Iran’s Shi’ite sectarian intervention in the region’s raging wars, particularly in Syria, Islamic Jihad has not.

In recent months, Iran has expanded efforts to create a zone of influence in the West Bank, according to Israeli defense assessments.

This included attempts by its proxies, Islamic Jihad and Hizballah, to set up terror cells there.

Israel identified and stopped efforts by Hizballah’s Unit 133, which seeks to set up terror cells among Palestinians and activate them, earlier this year.

Meanwhile Shin Bet periodically checks efforts by Islamic Jihad in Gaza to recruit West Bank attackers. Despite the successes, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) central command assessed last year that Islamic Jihad was gaining strength in the West Bank.

The small, yet highly focused organization will continue acting as the principal flag bearer for Iran in the Palestinian arena.

Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death

November 23, 2016

Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death, Gatestone InstituteKhaled Abu Toameh, November 23, 2016

It now appears that the Obama Administration’s failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians’ appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well.

Iran has one goal only: to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and undermine moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

“Relations between Iran and Hamas are currently undergoing revitalization, and are moving in the right direction,” announced Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official. He went on to explain that “moving in the right direction” means that Iran would “continue to support the resistance” against Israel.

Hamas and Iran have no meaningful ideological or strategic differences. Both share a common desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Iran expects results: Hamas is to use the financial and military support to resume attacks on Israel and “liberate all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

As far as Iran is concerned, there is nothing better than having two proxy terror organizations on Israel’s borders — Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

The biggest losers, once again, will be President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Israel’s presence in the West Bank has thus far thwarted Iran’s repeated attempts to establish bases of power there.

The Iranians and Hamas are exploiting the final days of the Obama Administration to restore their relations and pave the way for Tehran to step up its meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians in particular and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general.

Emboldened by the nuclear deal framework with the world powers, Iran has already taken the liberty of interfering in the internal affairs of other Arabs, particularly the Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Yemenites and some Gulf countries.

It now appears that the Obama Administration’s failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians’ appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well.

Thanks to the civil war in Syria, relations between Hamas and Iran have been strained over the past few years. Hamas’s refusal to support the regime of Bashar Assad — Iran’s chief ally in the region — has led the Iranians to suspend financial and military aid to the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip. However, recent signs indicate that Iran and Hamas are en route to a kind of Danse Macabre — a move that will undoubtedly allow Tehran to become a major player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

1162-2Iran used to funnel money to Hamas because the terrorist group shares Iran’s desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Relations between Iran and Hamas foundered a few years back, when Hamas leaders refused to support the Iranian-backed Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad. Pictured above: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal (left) confers with Iranian “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei, in 2010. (Image source: Office of the Supreme Leader)

This, of course, bodes badly for any future peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Iran has one goal only: to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and undermine moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

The new US administration would do well to take very seriously Iran’s comeback to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because of its implications not only concerning prospects for peace, but also because it means that this will lead to an upsurge in violence and terror attacks against Israel.

Proof of Iran’s renewed effort to infiltrate the Palestinian arena was provided this week by statements made by a senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, who is in charge of the Islamist movement’s “external affairs.” Asked about Hamas’s relations with Iran, Hamdan was quoted as saying that he had good reason to be optimistic.

“Relations between Iran and Hamas are currently undergoing revitalization, and are moving in the right direction,” Hamdan announced. He went on to explain that “moving in the right direction” means that Iran would “continue to support the resistance” against Israel:

“Relations between Iran and Hamas extend over a period of 25 years. Undoubtedly, any flaw in this relationship has a negative impact. But this relationship is capable of renewing itself. This is a relationship that is based on supporting the resistance and the Palestinian cause.”

In reality, Hamas and Iran have no meaningful ideological or strategic differences. Both share a common desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. The two entities are also committed to an “armed struggle” against Israel, and are vehemently opposed to any compromise with it.

The crisis between the two sides over the civil war in Syria is no more than a minor, tactical dispute. When it comes to the real agenda, such as destroying Israel and launching terror attacks, Iran and Hamas continue to be in total alignment.

Another sign of the apparent rapprochement between Iran and Hamas came in the form of reports that the Islamist movement has appointed a new leader in the Gaza Strip with close ties to Tehran. According to the reports, Emad El Alami, who previously served as Hamas’s first emissary to Tehran, has been entrusted with temporarily replacing Ismail Haniyeh as the ruler of the Gaza Strip. Haniyeh has in recent months relocated from the Gaza Strip to Qatar. At this stage, it remains unclear when and if Haniyeh will return to the Gaza Strip. Some Palestinians have surmised that Haniyeh may replace the Doha-based Khaled Mashaal as head of the Hamas “Political Bureau.” If this happens, then El Alami, who is regarded by many Palestinians as Iran’s agent, will become the permanent de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip.

El Alami’s rise to power will undoubtedly further facilitate Iran’s ambition to become a significant player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the gates of the Gaza Strip. This means that Hamas can expect more cash and weapons to enter Gaza in the coming weeks and months. Such an influx would significantly increase the likelihood of another war between Hamas and Israel. Iran’s millions will not be used by Hamas for building schools and hospitals, or providing desperately needed jobs for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Nor will the Iranian-supplied weapons be stored in Hamas warehouses and tunnels, or used in military parades.

Iran expects results: Hamas is to use the financial and military support to resume attacks on Israel and “liberate all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

When Hamas leaders talk about Iranian support for the Palestinian “resistance,” they mean suicide bombings, rocket attacks and other forms of terrorism. They are saying with unmistakable clarity that they seek a resumption of Iranian support for the “resistance” — not for the tens of thousands of unemployed and impoverished Palestinians living under the Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. The well-being of the Palestinians living under its rule is the last thing on Hamas’s mind.

The Iranians, for their part, appear to be extremely eager to resume their role as enablers and funders of any group that vows to eliminate Israel. As far as Iran is concerned, there is nothing better than having two proxy terror organizations on Israel’s borders — Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

Iran is already backing other terror groups in the Gaza Strip, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al-Sabireen. But these are tiny groups compared to Hamas, which has tens of thousands of gunmen and a strong military group, Ezaddin Al Kassam. And there is nothing to prevent Iran from extending its control to the Gaza Strip through Hamas, especially in the wake of the Obama Administration’s policy of appeasing not only the Iranians, but also the Muslim Brotherhood.

In the coming months, Hamas is scheduled to hold secret elections to elect a replacement for Khaled Mashaal. Mashaal’s departure from the scene is also set to facilitate Iran’s effort to infiltrate the Gaza Strip. The three candidates who are seen as potential successors to Mashaal — Ismail Haniyeh, Musa Abu Marzouk and Yehya Al Sinwar — have all pledged to improve their movement’s ties with Iran.

The biggest losers, once again, will be President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

PA officials continue to express deep concern over Iran’s meddling in Palestinian affairs, especially its financial and military support for terror groups in the Gaza Strip and even some parts of the West Bank. Yet Israel’s presence in the West Bank has thus far thwarted Iran’s repeated attempts to establish bases of power there. Abbas has no choice but to work with Israel if he wishes to prevent Iran and its supporters from overthrowing his regime, and perhaps dragging him to the center of Ramallah and hanging him as a traitor.

Abbas and his senior aides are nonetheless plenty worried about Iran’s increased efforts to infiltrate the Palestinian arena. At a lecture in Bahrain last week, PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat sounded an alarm bell when he said:

“Iran has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. Iran must respect the particularity of our country. We hope that Iran will focus on placing Palestine back on the map and not intervene through this or that group.”

But this warning is likely to fall on deaf ears in the waning Obama Administration, which obviously no longer shares the widespread concern among Arabs and Palestinians that Iran remains a major threat to stability and security in the region, including Israel. Perhaps the new US administration will see Iran and its machinations a bit more clearly. The alternative is allowing Iran and its proxy terror groups further to drench the region in blood.

If you love America and Israel, vote against the system

October 31, 2016

If you love America and Israel, vote against the system, Israel National News, Naomi Ragen, October 31, 2016

I can certainly see why women, including Jewish women, would prefer a seemingly well-spoken, mature senior stateswoman, to a brash, loud-mouthed political neophyte who has made so many off-handed offensive locker-room comments about women.

This would be your instinct.

How lovely, how easy, it would be then, to vote in a woman running against a man like that.

And how disastrously wrong.

I’ll give you the facts, but honestly, past experience does not leave me hopeful. Eight years ago, to tried to deter people from following their instinct
and voting in Barack Hussein Obama, the most anti-Israel president in U.S. history. But even after I made people aware he spent twenty years in an
anti-Semitic church, and was being advised by the likes of Rashid Khalidi, Zbigniew Brzezinski (Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor), pro-Hamas negotiator Robert Malley, UN Ambassador Samantha Power (who once suggested using American troops to guard Palestinians from Israelis), most Jews still voted for Obama.

Why? because they were brainwashed by lying, anti-Israel media to the extent that their instinct told them that what was important above all else was to elect a Black man: Their “instinct” told them how noble, how liberal to cast that vote! And if they didn’t, they were racists. In fact, many people lambasted me for writing “Barack Hussein Obama”. “Hussein,” why did you write that!!

Because it was his name, I answered.I wonder how that worked out for them. I can tell you how it worked out for us in Israel: our biggest enemy and the world’s foremost supporter of terror is now unimpeded in its rush towards nuclear weapons to destroy the next six million Jews.

I wonder sometimes, how these voters live with these consequences.  And now, Barack Hussein Obama and all the EXACT SAME PEOPLE are urging you to vote for Hillary Clinton, who proudly bragged online that she was the true author of the Iran deal, making you feel like a racist, a woman-hater, an idiot, and worse if you don’t.

Repentance is being in exactly the same situation and acting differently. For those who continue down the same road, there is no hope.

So, I’m going to give you some reasons to take a different path. For the sake of the safety and security of the State of Israel, and for the love of what was once the world’s greatest democracy, our beloved United States of America, I hope to change your mind from  possibly making the biggest mistake of
your life.

Hillary Clinton isn’t a friend of Israel

In November 1999, Clinton publicly appeared with Yasir Arafat’s wife Suha and listening quietly while the token bride of the world’s biggest terrorist scumbag accused Israel of using poison gas and chemical contaminants on the water supply wells against Palestinians. In response, Clinton hugged and kissed Suha. Days later, after outraged fallout, Clinton called ‘FOR ALL SIDES to refrain from ‘INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC.”Although Clinton had to please pro-Israel voters when running for the Senate in New York, hints about her real mindset can be gleaned from a careful reading of her book Hard Choices: “When we left the city and visited Jericho in the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted. [p.302] …There has been nearly a decade of terror, arising from the second intifada…Three times as many Palestinians were killed and thousands more were injured in the same period [as Israelis].”

This equating of murderers and murderees, victims and perpetrators has long been the code speak of The New York Times and other anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bigots.

And before you point to this or that pro-Israel thing she said, please check the dates: Was it, by chance, between 2001-2009 when she needed the votes of New York Jews?

Because when she left the Senate and became Secretary of State for the most anti-Israel President in the history of our country, the façade got dropped like a hot potato. The first thing she did was throw out an agreement with Israel during the Bush administration, calling for new restrictions on building Jewish homes in existing neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Hillary Clinton is funded by Israel-haters.

But like the chicken and the egg, what came first, Hillary’s anti-Israel perspective, or the money that Israel-haters have been pouring into Clinton Foundation coffers? Or perhaps, she and her husband will take money from anyone, and it was just a lucky coincidence her funders shared
her views?

Saudi Arabia donated ten million dollars to the Clinton Library in 2007 and another $25 million to the Clinton Foundation in June 2016, while individuals close to the Saudi family Nasir Rashid and Friends of Saudi Arabia donated millions more. Clinton’s State Department approved a $29 billion sale of fighter jets to Israel’s enemy Saudi Arabia against Israel’s vociferous objections. Coincidence?

Dubai – The Clinton Foundation has established Dubai Study departments in major U.S. and British Universities.Qatar gave millions to the
Clinton Foundation.In 2014, President Shimon Peres accused Qatar of being “the world’s largest funder of terror: Qatar does not have the right to send money for rockets and tunnels which are fired at innocent civilians,” Peres told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem. Just this past August, Qatar pledged and additional $31 million to Gaza.

On August 15, 2016 Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to the Attorney General Loretta Lynch revealed that Qatar was the recipient of approximately $271 million in military related export deals. During Clinton’s tenure Qatar was the recipient of approximately $4.3 billion altogether – a 1,482 % increase [in military exports] while Saudi Arabia saw a 97% increase in military exports.

In August 2014 Hillary Clinton wrote to her campaign manager John Podesta that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been “providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the area.”

Clinton advisors are anti -Israel

Clinton’s advisors, like Obama’s, have always been uniformly and virulently anti-Israel. They have her ear.

Sidney Blumenthal, Observer’s Ken Sliverstein, wrote recently, is the “ most dishonest, amoral political hatchet man of modern political times.” He is also one of Hillary’s closest friends and a highly paid advisor to her about Israel.

In 2010 he wrote her to “hold Bibi’s feet to the fire….” He told Clinton to “remind AIPAC…that it does not have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion.” Soros-funded anti-Israel J Street should be praised, he offers. In May Blumenthal wrote her, hinting that the raid on the Gaza flotilla was
deliberately organized to kill the peace process and embarrass Obama. Hillary forwarded this message with the words: “FYI and I told you so,” to her deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan at the State Department.

Blumenthal’s son Max is an even more self-hating Jew. In 2013, Max appeared in ninth place on that year’s Simon Wiesenthal Center list of
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel slurs, for equating Israel with the Nazi regime and “approving characterizations of Israeli soldiers as ‘Judeo-Nazis.’” This is what Hillary had to say in e-mails about Max and his work:

8.17/2010  Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”

4/7/2011  Will Max’s piece be posted anywhere else? It is powerful and touching.”

9/13/2012  “Your Max is a mitzvah.”

This is what the “mitzvah” wrote when Elie Wiesel died:  “Elie Wiesel went from a victim of war crimes to a defender of those who commit them. He did more harm than good and should not be honored.”

As most of you know, because even the mainstream media couldn’t hide it, Hillary Clinton deliberately ignored her responsibility and the rules, and created a private e-mail server that left highly sensitive, classified security documents vulnerable to hacking by America’s enemies.

But Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal wrote something which has mostly been overlooked: “The Democratic nominee obviously didn’t set up her server with the express purpose of exposing national secrets – that was incidental. She set up the server to keep secret the details of the Clinton’s private life – a life built around an elaborate and sweeping money-raising and self-promoting entity known as the Clinton Foundation. Had Secretary Clinton kept the Foundation at arm’s length while in office –as obvious ethical standards would have dictated – there would never have been any need for a private server or even private email.”

She had much to hide. Other leaked emails make it clear that under Hillary, the State Department took SPECIAL CARE OF DONORS TO THE CLINTON FOUNDATION. In 2010 a senior State Department aide to Clinton asked a Foundation official to let her know which groups offering assistance with Haitian earthquake victims were FOB (Friends of Bill) or WJC VIPS (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs) “Those who made the cut appear to have been teed up for contracts. Those who weren’t? Routed to a standard government website,” Strassel concludes.

Trump is the only one with the guts to have publicly stated she should be in jail for these things.

We could forgive Mrs. Clinton many things, though, if we were convinced she had any core values at all. As she cheerfully admitted in a paid speech to Goldman Sachs, she takes two positions, public and private, on every issue, depending on her audience. She is for and against trade agreements that will lose Americans jobs. She is for and against Wall Street corruption.

Hillary’s Immigration Policy endangers your family

Hillary Clinton supports unlimited immigration of unvetted Muslim immigrants, which will fundamentally change the character of the US, and will endanger Jews, Christians, and ordinary citizens by exposing them to increased levels of anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred, and acts of random, hate-based violence.

All you need to do to verify that statement, is to study the statistics of other Western countries that have allowed themselves to accept a huge influx of Muslim immigrants.

In the British capital alone, anti-Semitic incidents increased by more than 60 percent over the past year, while worldwide anti-Semitism was up by 40%.

“Many refugees come from countries where Israel is an enemy; this resentment is often transferred to Jews in general,” a delegation of German Jews told Chancellor Angela Merkel late last year.For American Jews, who have much to fear both as an individual community, and as part of the larger American population, this is the last chance to actually influence this process. As an Israeli who got brainwashed by progressives to paint doves and let Arafat arm “police” and pull down border checks, and then almost got blown up during the Passover Seder at the Park Hotel, I am telling you this is a life or death issue for you and your families. If you let yourself become brainwashed and complacent, which is what we Israelis did, and vote for this policy and this politician with her appalling track record, the consequences could be horrible. Believe me, I know.

Hillary Clinton is part of an immoral establishment that is destroying America and endangering Israel

Let me admit upfront: I loathe and mistrust The New York Times, NPR, CNN, LA Times, Washington Post Politico, etc. all of whom have lied about Israel, lied about terrorism, lied about Wall Street, lied and covered up Barack Hussein Obama’s incompetence.

A victory for Hillary Clinton is a victory for them and the system they support and the America they’ve created: a weak, bankrupt, racially divided nation of too many homeless, jobless, hopeless people, weighted down by bureaucracy, preyed upon by white collar criminals, unsafe in their cities and homes and schools and unprotected from brazen murdering, raping thugs and terrorists – both homegrown and imported.

It has become a place where veterans are neglected and police are attacked and hounded by the country they give their lives to protect every day. A place where health care is endangered for all by a system that simply doesn’t work.

The establishment that created this chaos would like nothing better than a citizenry that is complacent and stupid, easily swayed by epithets and ugly but irrelevant sound bites .

I prefer Trump because he has never been part of that system. He isn’t a politician. He isn’t afraid to say the things we all believe about the rigged
media, the backroom money deals, the pay for play, Islamic terrorism, unvetted immigration, a border wall, and despicable late term abortions.

A vote for him is a vote against what has happened to America under Barack Hussein Obama and against the political, corporate, and media empires that backed him and brought him to power and want Hillary to take his place.

Look at the facts. Don’t be part of the Punch and Judy show, manipulated by the puppet-masters. Vote against the system. Vote against corruption. Vote for real democracy and real, not fake, change.

Column One: From Yemen to Turtle Bay

October 14, 2016

Column One: From Yemen to Turtle Bay, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, October 13, 2016

sana-yemen

 

As far as Obama is concerned, Iran is a partner, not an adversary.

****************************

Off the coast of Yemen and at the UN Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack Obama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty.

Since Sunday, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al-Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately controls the Suez Canal.

Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply green-lighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.

The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the US? The simple answer is that Iran has challenged US power at the mouth of the Red Sea because it believes that doing so advances its strategic aims in the region.

Iran’s game is clear enough. It wishes to replace the US as the regional hegemon, at the US’s expense.

Since Obama entered office nearly eight years ago, Iran’s record in advancing its aims has been one of uninterrupted success.

Iran used the US withdrawal from Iraq as a means to exert its full control over the Iraqi government. It has used Obama’s strategic vertigo in Syria as a means to exert full control over the Assad regime and undertake the demographic transformation of Syria from a Sunni majority state to a Shi’ite plurality state.

In both cases, rather than oppose Iran’s power grabs, the Obama administration has welcomed them. As far as Obama is concerned, Iran is a partner, not an adversary.

Since like the US, Iran opposes al-Qaida and ISIS, Obama argues that the US has nothing to fear from the fact that Iranian-controlled Shiite militias are running the US-trained Iraqi military.

So, too, he has made clear that the US is content to stand by as the mullahs become the face of Syria.

In Yemen, the US position has been more ambivalent. In late 2014, Houthi rebel forces took over the capital city of Sanaa. In March 2015, the Saudis led a Sunni campaign to overthrow the Houthi government. In a bid to secure Saudi support for the nuclear agreement it was negotiating with the Iranians, the Obama administration agreed to support the Saudi campaign. To this end, the US military has provided intelligence, command and control guidance, and armaments to the Saudis.

Iran’s decision to openly assault US targets then amounts to a gamble on Tehran’s part that in the twilight of the Obama administration, the time is ripe to move in for the kill in Yemen. The Iranians are betting that at this point, with just three months to go in the White House, Obama will abandon the Saudis, and so transfer control over Arab oil to Iran.

For with the Strait of Hormuz on the one hand, and the Bab al-Mandab on the other, Iran will exercise effective control over all maritime oil flows from the Arab world.

It’s not a bad bet for the Iranians, given Obama’s consistent strategy in the Middle East.

Obama has never discussed that strategy.

Indeed, he has deliberately concealed it. But to understand the game he has been playing all along, the only thing you need to do listen to his foreign policy soul mate.

According to a New York Times profile published in May, Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes is the president’s alter ego. The two men’s minds have “melded.”

Rhodes’s first foreign policy position came in the course of his work for former congressman Lee Hamilton.

In 2006, then-president George W. Bush appointed former secretary of state James Baker and Hamilton to lead the Iraq Study Group. Bush tasked the group with offering a new strategy for winning the war in Iraq. The group released its report in late 2006.

The Iraq Study Group’s report contained two basic recommendations. First, it called for the administration to abandon Iraq to the Iranians.

The group argued that due to Iran’s opposition to al-Qaida, the Iranians would fight al-Qaida for the US.

The report’s second recommendation related to Israel. Baker, Hamilton and their colleagues argued that after turning Iraq over to Iran, the US would have to appease its Sunni allies.

The US, the Iraq Study Group report argued, should simultaneously placate the Sunnis and convince the Iranians of its sincerity by sticking it to Israel. To this end, the US should pressure Israel to give the Golan Heights to Syria and give Judea and Samaria to the PLO.

Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group report. Instead he opted to win the war in Iraq by adopting the surge counterinsurgency strategy.

But once Bush was gone, and Rhodes’s intellectual twin replaced him, the Iraq Study Group recommendations became the unstated US strategy in the Middle East.

After taking office, Obama insisted that the US’s only enemy was al-Qaida. In 2014, Obama grudgingly expanded the list to include ISIS.

Obama has consistently justified empowering Iran in Iraq and Syria on the basis of this narrow definition of US enemies. Since Iran is also opposed to ISIS and al-Qaida, the US can leave the job of defeating them both to the Iranians, he has argued.

Obviously, Iran won’t do the US’s dirty work for free. So Obama has paid the mullahs off by giving them an open road to nuclear weapons through his nuclear deal, by abandoning sanctions against them, and by turning his back on their ballistic missile development.

Obama has also said nothing about the atrocities that Iranian-controlled militia have carried out against Sunnis in Iraq and has stopped operations against Hezbollah.

As for Israel, since his first days in office, Obama has been advancing the Iraq Study Group’s recommendations. His consistent, and ever escalating condemnations of Israel, his repeated moves to pick fights with Jerusalem are all of a piece with the group’s recommended course of action. And there is every reason to believe that Obama intends to make good on his threats to cause an open rupture in the US alliance with Israel in his final days in office.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s phone call with Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday night made this clear enough. In the course of their conversation, Netanyahu reportedly asked Kerry if Obama intended to enable an anti-Israel resolution to pass in the UN Security Council after the presidential election next month. By refusing to rule out the possibility, Kerry all but admitted that this is in fact Obama’s intention.

And this brings us back to Iran’s assaults on US ships along the coast of Yemen.

Early on Sunday morning, the US responded to the Houthi/Iranian missile assaults by attacking three radar stations in Houthi-controlled territory. The nature of the US moves gives credence to the fear that the US will surrender Yemen to Iran.

This is so for three reasons. First, the administration did not allow the USS Mason destroyer to respond to the sources of the missile attack against it immediately. Instead, the response was delayed until Obama himself could determine how best to “send a message.”

That is, he denied US forces the right to defend themselves.

Second, it is far from clear that destroying the radar stations will inhibit the Houthis/Iranians.

It is not apparent that radar stations are necessary for them to continue to assault US naval craft operating in the area.

Finally, the State Department responded to the attack by reaching out to the Houthis. In other words, the administration is continuing to view the Iranian proxy is a legitimate actor rather than an enemy despite its unprovoked missile assaults on the US Navy.

Then there is the New York Times’ position on Yemen.

The Times has repeatedly allowed the administration to use it as an advocate of policies the administration itself wishes to adopt. Last week for instance, the Times called for the US to turn on Israel at the Security Council.

On Tuesday, the Times published an editorial calling for the administration to end its military support for the Saudi campaign against the Houthis/Iran in Yemen.

Whereas the Iranian strategy makes sense, Obama’s strategy is nothing less than disastrous.

Although the Iraq Study Group, like Obama, is right that Iran also opposes ISIS, and to a degree, al-Qaida, they both ignored the hard reality that Iran also views the US as its enemy. Indeed, the regime’s entire identity is tied up in its hatred for the US and its strategic aim of destroying America.

Obama is not the only US president who has sought to convince the Iranians to abandon their hatred for America. Every president since 1979 has tried to convince the mullahs to abandon their hostility. And just like all of his predecessors, Obama has failed to convince them.

What distinguishes Obama from his predecessors is that he has based US policy on a deliberate denial of the basic reality of Iranian hostility. Not surprisingly, the Iranians have returned his favor by escalating their aggression against America.

The worst part about Obama’s strategy is that it is far from clear that his successor will be able to improve the situation.

If Hillary Clinton succeeds him, his successor is unlikely to even try. Not only has Clinton embraced Obama’s policies toward Iran.

Her senior advisers are almost all Obama administration alumni. Wendy Sherman, the leading candidate to serve as her secretary of state, was Obama’s chief negotiator with the Iranians.

If Donald Trump triumphs next month, assuming he wishes to reassert US power in the region, he won’t have an easy time undoing the damage that Obama has caused.

Time has not stood still as the US has engaged in strategic dementia. Not only has Iran been massively empowered, Russia has entered the Middle East as a strategic spoiler.

Moreover, since 2001, the US has spent more than a trillion dollars on its failed wars in the Middle East. That investment came in lieu of spending on weapons development. Today Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missiles in Syria reportedly neutralize the US’s air force.

US naval craft in the Bab al-Mandab have little means to defend themselves against missile strikes.

The US’s trillion-dollar investment in the F-35 fighter jet has tethered its air wings to a plane that has yet to prove its capabilities, and may never live up to expectations.

Israel is justifiably worried about the implications of Obama’s intention to harm it at the UN.

But the harm Israel will absorb at the UN is nothing in comparison to the long-term damage that Obama’s embrace of the Iraq Study Group’s disastrous strategic framework has and will continue to cause Israel, the US and the entire Middle East.

Hizballah units regroup on Israel’s Golan border

September 7, 2016

Hizballah units regroup on Israel’s Golan border, DEBKAfile, September 7, 2016

qunetrafront

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that the Iranian media attached photos of Israel’s security force opposite Quneitra to their reporting on the new move, thereby framing the target of the Syrian-Iranian-Backed Hizballah build-

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A large Hizballah force, backed by the Syrian army and pro-Iranian Shiite militias, is building up outside Quneitra, just 2km from Israel’s Golan border. The Lebanese Shiite fighters, under the command of Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) officers, are streaming into southern Syria, armed with tanks and artillery.

Monday night, Sept. 5, Iranian state-controlled media shed light on this movement, reporting that the combined force had “completed preparations necessary for an extensive operation in southern Syria,” adding, “Hizballah aims to put an end to the presence of armed men in the area close to the border.”

The nature of the “armed men” was not specified, but the goal of the new operation was clear: after evicting the assorted anti-Assad groups, including the Islamic State, holding territory “close to the border,” Hizballah and its backers planned to regroup on the Syrian-Israeli boundary.

This would position Iran and its Hizballah surrogate ready to realize their six-year old design, which is to open a second warfront against Israel.

Western and Mid East sources have toldl DEBKAfile that the triple army is in high spirits after last week’s successful operation in Aleppo. By snatching back parts of the city they lost in mid-August, the Syrian army and its allies managed to cut off the rebels’ supply lines from Turkey.

It was then that some Hizballah units were detached from the Aleppo arena and redirected to the Quneitra front in southern Syria to face the Israeli border.

israeliborder480

Those sources report that the incoming troops were sighted this week when they arrived at Madinat al-Baath and Khan Amabeh, the main Syrian army bases on the Syrian Golan. They came with tanks and heavy artillery. Seen for the first time in the Quentra sector were heavy, self-propelled KS-19 artillery batteries, which are Russian anti-air guns adapted to ground warfare. They have a range of 21km and a firing capacity of 15 shells per minute.

The newly-arrived Hizballah force appears to have set the capture of Syrian rebel-held al-Hamdiniyah 2km from the Israeli border, as its first objective.

DEBKAfile’s military sources note that the Iranian media attached photos of Israel’s security force opposite Quneitra to their reporting on the new move, thereby framing the target of the Syrian-Iranian-Backed Hizballah build-up.

This fast-approaching development poses two tough questions:

1. Will Israel lie down for the avowedly hostile Hizballah and Iran to occupy territory along its eastern border?Israel officials have repeatedly emphasized that these forces would not be allowed to take up positions on the Golan border, a message Russia most certainly passed on to Damascus.

If Hizballah and its allies go through with their planned offensive, Israel will have to consider serious military action to prevent them from reaching the border fence, i.e., an operation on a scale quite different from the small-shot IDF reprisals for rockets or shells straying across into the Golan from fighting on the other side.

2. Will the advancing Iranian-led force have Syrian air cover? If it does, the Israeli Air Force will also be involved in aerial combat over the Golan.

Column One: Obama’s greatest achievement

September 1, 2016

Column One: Obama’s greatest achievement, Jerusalem PostCaroline B. Glick, September 1, 2016

Obama lies on Iran scamU.S. President Barack Obama and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (not pictured) speak during a press conference at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 2, 2016.  (photo credit:REUTERS)

The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has passed. The time has come to overcome the damage enormous damage his signature foreign policy accomplishment has caused.

To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the breadth and depth of Obama’s failure.

On August 4, during the course of a press conference, Obama gave his interim assessment of his nuclear agreement with Iran.

“It worked,” he insisted.

A year after the deal was signed, Obama argued, events have proven that he was right and the deal’s critics were wrong.

“You’ll recall that there were all these horror stories about how Iran was going to cheat and this wasn’t going to work and Iran was going to get $150 billion to finance terrorism and all these kinds of scenarios, and none of them have come to pass,” he proclaimed.

Obama then snidely swiped at the deal’s opponents saying that it would be “impressive” if the people who criticized the deal would own up to their mistakes and admit that it worked.

As it works out, everything that Obama said about the deal with Iran during his press conference was a lie.

Some of his lies became apparent within hours.

For instance, Obama falsely claimed that Israel now “acknowledges this has been a game changer and Iran has abided by the deal and they no longer have the sort of short-term breakout capacity that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons.”

Hours later, the Defense Ministry issued a stinging rebuke of Obama’s claim, parroted more diplomatically by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Obama’s press conference took place the day after The Wall Street Journal reported that in January 2016, the US sent an unmarked plane to the Tehran airport filled with $400 million in cash, on the same day Iran released four US hostages.

Obama angrily rejected allegations that the cash payment was a ransom payment for the hostages’ release. He insisted that the US had made the payment as the first installment of a $1.7b. payment the administration made to settle an Iranian government lawsuit against America.

Obama claimed that the administration agreed to the settlement at the urging of the Justice Department.

He said his administration was able to settle the dispute only due to the nuclear deal which placed US officials in direct contact with their Iranian counterparts for the first time in decades.

Within a day, Obama’s claims were exposed as lies. It turns out that Justice Department lawyers opposed the cash payout to Iran.

One of the hostages released in January told the media that the Iranians refused to allow the hostages to leave Iran until the airplane with the cash landed in the airport.

The Iranians, for their part, contemptuously mocked Obama, and stated openly that the $400m.

was a ransom payment for the hostages.

Two weeks later, Obama’s State Department admitted that the $400m. was a payment for the hostages.

Obama’s principle claim is that due to his deal, Iran no longer has a short-term nuclear breakout capacity. He also says that in accordance with the deal, Iran has shipped its nuclear materials out of the country. These claims are both untrue and misleading.

On Thursday Reuters reported that Iran did not ship the quantities of low-enriched uranium out of the country in the quantities the deal required.

Last January, when the deadline arrived for Iran to comply with the deal’s clauses calling for it to move its uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent out of the country and so enable the US and its European colleagues to cancel UN sanctions against it, it worked out that Iran had failed to comply.

Rather than acknowledge Iran’s failure and maintain the sanctions in accordance with their deal, the Americans and Europeans decided to move the goalpost closer to Iran.

They secretly decreased the amount of uranium the Iranians were required to part with. They then announced triumphantly that they were canceling UN sanctions because Iran had complied with the agreement.

Reuters reported that much of the low-enriched uranium Iran did remove from its territory wasn’t actually removed from its possession. Instead it was transferred to neighboring Oman, where it is held under Iranian guard and control.

Obama of course knows all of this. So his claims that the agreement “worked” are nothing more than a card trick meant to trick the American public.

Obama’s assertion that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear arsenal has been slowed as a result of his deal is similarly a stretch of the imagination. The Iranians have suspended much of their prior centrifuge spinning. But that is only because they are now directing their efforts to developing and deploying more advanced centrifuges that will be able to enrich uranium to bomb grade material far more rapidly than the centrifuges they were required to retire.

Experts have already placed Iran’s post-deal nuclear breakout time at a mere six months. And Iran can leave the agreement – which it never actually signed or officially agreed to – anytime it wants.

While developing their next generation centrifuges, the Iranians are expanding the range and precision of their ballistic missiles, deploying them and increasing the size of their arsenals. Despite the fact that these actions are prohibited under US law and breach what was initially claimed about the ever-changing nuclear deal, the Obama administration has refused to impose sanctions against Iran, insisting that its actions merely breach the spirit, rather than substance, of the deal.

The administration has had a similar response to Iran’s recent deployment of Russia’s S-300 missile defense battery around its military nuclear site at Fordo. On Sunday Iranian television showed footage of the missiles being set up around the formerly secret site.

As Omri Ceren of the Israel Project noted this week, Iran’s deployment of the S-300 system places it in breach of three US sanctions laws. Despite this, the White House announced on Wednesday that it has no intention of enforcing US law and applying sanctions on Iran. The S-300 missiles can be used both as a defensive system and as an offensive one.

On Tuesday, Tehran announced that it will be launching three satellites in the coming months.

Satellite launches are widely viewed as a means through which Iran is covertly developing a longrange ballistic missile capability. Rather than censure Iran for its actions, the Obama administration insists that such actions, as well as Iran’s recent longrange rocket tests, do not violate the nuclear deal or warrant US action.

Taken separately and together, Iran’s actions since the nuclear deal was officially concluded make clear that it continues to pursue its nuclear program, and indeed, has become more brazen in its nuclear operations than it was before the agreement was announced last year.

In other words, not only has the deal not worked, contrary to Obama’s claims, it has been a colossal failure on every level. The deal’s opponents were entirely right about the dangers it posed and Obama was entirely wrong.

This is true as well in relation to the administration’s qualified promises that the deal would lead to better relations between the US and Iran. As Shoshana and Stephen Bryen noted last week following the Iranian naval assault on the USS Nitze in the Strait of Hormuz, with its repeated harassment of US naval ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is clearly practicing its tactic of swarming US naval craft as a preparation for a real strike against them.

The main reason that Iran’s nuclear program is such a grave concern for Israel and for other Middle Eastern states is that the Iranian regime has hegemonic ambitions. It seeks to destroy Israel and dominate the entire region.

Since it concluded the deal with Washington, Iran has surged its forces and massively expanded its power projection throughout the region.

On Thursday the Daily Mail reported that the commonly held belief that Iran commands 16,000 troops in Syria is wrong. According to the National Council of Resistance in Iran, the regime actually commands 60,000 forces in Syria, deployed throughout the country. The entire Syrian army today numbers a mere 50,000 men.

On August 4, Obama mocked claims that Iran would spend its windfall profits of $100b.-$150b.

from the sanctions relief the nuclear deal offered to fund terrorism. Yet, according to the Daily Mail report, to date Iran has spent $100b. on the war in Syria.

The implications of the report are blood curdling.

They mean that despite Obama’s denials, the funds Iran has received as a result of the sanctions relief he brought about through his nuclear deal have paid for Iran’s war in Syria. That war has caused the death of nearly half a million people and forced more than 11 million people to flee their homes.

Obviously, it is important for Americans to know the truth about the Iran deal and its consequences as they consider their votes for Obama’s replacement.

One of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s top candidates for secretary of state is Wendy Sherman.

Sherman was the chief negotiator of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

For Israel, the question of what to do about Iran now is far more urgent than it is for Americans.

Today more and more commentators are voicing concern over the prospect that Obama will support an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council as a parting shot at Israel.

But any such resolution will be small potatoes in comparison to the strategic devastation his nuclear deal, which is his main foreign policy legacy, has caused.

The rapidity of Iran’s advance makes clear that there is no justification for waiting to act until Obama has left office. If it doesn’t act soon, Israel is on the fast track to waking up one morning and discovering it has no means of thwarting the threat.

Indeed, with each passing month, its options for action become more and more limited.

After Israel’s security leadership undermined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in 2010 and 2012, Netanyahu settled on a strategy of blocking Obama’s moves to appease Tehran.

That strategy of course failed last summer. Since then, Netanyahu has worked to build an anti-Iranian alliance with the Sunni Arab states. His efforts in this area have clearly met with some measure of success, as witnessed by public statements from prominent Saudis and others.

Whatever that success may be, and whatever the status of that burgeoning alliance of spurned US allies, the fact is that it’s time Israel and its new allies do something more than send signals. Time is a-wasting.

Last spring Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said, “Today the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are more present than ever before.”

Thanks to Obama, he may be right.

It is time for Israel to make him eat his words.

Iranian Dissidents Visit Israel, View Iran after the Nuclear Deal

August 21, 2016

Iranian Dissidents Visit Israel, View Iran after the Nuclear Deal, Jerusalem Center via YouTube, August 21, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4T8EpiqIVs

 

Officials In Lebanese, Gazan Terror Organizations Confirm: Iran Funds Our Activity

August 11, 2016

Officials In Lebanese, Gazan Terror Organizations Confirm: Iran Funds Our Activity, MEMRI, August 11, 2016

Arab media have recently published statements by officials in the Lebanese Hizbullah and the Gazan Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations, and by their supporters, confirming what has long been known – namely that these Lebanese and Gazan terror organizations receive substantial financial and military assistance from Iran. These statements join many reports, especially in the anti-Iranian media, regarding Iran’s funding of various terrorist organizations across the Arab world. According to these reports, the assistance comes mainly from the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

The following are some examples of these statements and reports from the last two months:

Hizbullah Secretary-General Nasrallah: Hizbullah’s Entire Budget Is Provided By Iran

In a speech he delivered on June 24, 2016, marking 40 days after the killing of Mustafa Badr Al-Din, who was considered to be Hizbullah’s chief operations officer, and following the imposition of U.S. sanctions on Hizbullah that threaten its financial infrastructure and income, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah clarified: “Hizbullah’s budget – its salaries and expenditures, [the money that pays for] its food and drink, weapons and missiles – [all come from] Iran. Is that clear?… As long as Iran has money we have money. Do you require greater transparency than that[?] The funds earmarked for us do not reach us through the banks. We receive them the same way we receive our missiles, with which we threaten Israel.”[1]

Hamas Official Abu Marzouq: Iran’s Assistance To Hamas Is “Not Comparable” To Any Other Assistance

The deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, Moussa Abu Marzouq, tweeted on June 15, 2016: “The aid extended by Iran to the Palestinian resistance, in provisions, training and funds, is not comparable [to any other aid], and most other countries cannot match it.”[2]

29502Abu Marzouq’s tweet

Former Lebanese Minister Wiam Wahhab: Iran Has Funded Resistance In Palestine

On June 25, 2016, in response to a remark by former Lebanese prime minister Sa’d Al-Hariri that Iran funds fitna(internecine strife) in the Arab world,[3] former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab, a known supporter of Hizbullah and the resistance axis, tweeted: “O Sheikh Sa’d [Al-Hariri], Iran has funded resistance in Palestine to restore Jerusalem, Al-Aqsa and the Church of the Sepulcher [to Palestinian hands, whereas] Saudi Arabia paid to destroy Syria, Iraq and Yemen.” In another tweet he wrote: ” O Sheikh Sa’d, Iran funded resistance in the Arab homeland rather than fitna, [whereas] your kingdom [Saudi Arabia, who supports Al-Hariri and his faction in Lebanon,] sponsors and funds terrorism. The funds of all the terrorist [organizations] in the world are Wahhabi [i.e., Saudi] funds.”[4]

29503Wiam Wahhab’s tweets

Saudi Daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat: Hizbullah’s Weapons Come Directly From IRGC; Iran Has Renewed Regular Aid To Islamic Jihad Organization

The anti-Iranian press, such as the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, also reported on Iran’s funding of terrorist organizations in Lebanon and Gaza. On June 29, 2016, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat confirmed Nasrallah’s statements regarding the Iranian funding. The report stated that Hizbullah’s funds came from the office of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei while its weapons are provided by the IRGC. It quoted the director of the Umam Research and Documentation center in Lebanon, Luqman Salim, a Shi’ite known for his opposition to Hizbullah, as saying that between 70% and 80% of Hizbullah’s funds come from Iran. According to Salim, Iran also invests about $400 million of the IRGC’s budget in the Islamic Radio and Television Union, a group of stations which includes the Iranian Al-Alam but also Hizbullah’s Al-Manar and Al-Mayadin and the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds (all of which broadcast from Lebanon) and Hamas’s Al-Aqsa station, which broadcasts from Gaza.

The daily also cited a “knowledgeable source” as saying that until 2005 Iran transferred to Hizbullah between $200 million and $250 million annually, but since then the allocation has increased: After the 2006 Lebanon War it rose to $850 million, and since Hizbullah entered the Syria war its budget has become unlimited, because it has become part of Tehran’s war effort there.[5]

On May 25, 2016, the daily reported, citing sources close to the Islamic Jihad organization in Gaza, that Iran had renewed its regular financial aid to the organization after the two sides agreed to renew their mutual relations.[6] According to these sources, an Islamic Jihad delegation headed by the organization’s secretary-general Ramadan Shalah visited Iran in April 2016, and during this visit Tehran renewed its sponsorship of the organization after the latter accepted its terms. In meetings held by the delegation during this visit, including with IRGC commander Mohammad Ali Jafari and Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani, Iran clarified its vision of Islamic Jihad’s course in the coming years. The sources claimed further that Soleimani decided, in coordination with the organization’s military and political bureaus, to grant $70 million a year out of the IRGC budget to Islamic Jihad’s military wing, Saraya Al-Quds, and to reorganize this body and appoint Khaled Mansour, who is close to Tehran, as its commander.[7]

Endnotes:

[1] Alahednews.com.lb, June 24, 2016.

[2] Twitter.com/mosa_abumarzook, June 15, 2016.

[3] Al-Mustaqbal (Lebanon), June 26, 2016; Al-Hariri’s remark was a response to Nasrallah’s  statement one day earlier that Hizbullah’s entire budget comes from Iran.

[4] Twitter.com/wiamwahhab, June 25, 2016.

[5] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (Lebanon), June 29, 2016.

[6] Reports in the Arab media in the passing year indicated that Iran had suspended its assistance to Islamic Jihad following disagreements between them on the crisis in Yemen. According to these reports, the Islamic Jihad refused Iran’s demand to declare its opposition to the Arab Coalition’s activities in Yemen. See for example Aljazeera.net, May 26, 2016, Janoubia.com, April 3, 2016.

[7] Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), May 25, 2016.

Has the IDF hit the Basij forces commander General Naghdi?

July 30, 2016

Has the IDF hit the Basij forces commander General Naghdi? DEBKAfile, July 30, 2016

EinZivan2 (1)

Gen. Naghdi’s visit to Quneitra undoubtedly presaged some decisions in Tehran with regard to direct Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian action against Israel.

The Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah agencies accuse Israel of the attack because the say it was executed by two Nimrod anti-tank long-range missiles, manufactured by the Israeli Aerospace Industry, for use by the IDF against armored vehicles, ships, bunkers and troop concentrations.

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Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah sources are intimating that the “Syrian officer” injured on July 26 in Quneitra by Israel’s double Nimrod’ missile shot was none other than Revolutionary Guards Gen. Muhammad Resa Naghdi, head of the paramilitary Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed, also known as the Basij, which falls under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The victim was earlier described officially as a Syrian officer.

If he was indeed hurt or killed by an Israeli rocket, Naghdi would become the highest-ranking IRGC general ever hit by the IDF.

On July 27, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that a top Iranian general recently visited the Israeli-Syrian border to tour Quneitra and the Golan demarcation lines between Syria and Israel – the first time the Tehran government had publicized a visit by a senior regime official to the area.

It may be presumed, DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources say, that someone at the IDF lookout posts spotted and reported on Gen. Naghdi’s arrival with an entourage in Quneitra on July 26 and saw him inspecting through binoculars the IDF defense positions. He was then quickly identified.

Any decision to go after a high-ranking Iranian would not have been left to local IDF commanders or even OC Northern Command Maj. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, but passed straight to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkot – especially in this case.

General Naghdi is not just another Iranian general. He heads the more than a million-strong Basij militia, which is a pillar of the ayatollahs regime in Tehran, and the backbone of the Iranian internal security forces which maintain the regime’s total control in every corner of the Islamic Republic.

Gen. Naghdi’s visit to Quneitra undoubtedly presaged some decisions in Tehran with regard to direct Hizballah-Syrian-Iranian action against Israel.

The IDF is holding its silence on reports of his injury, declining as usual to comment on reports by foreign publications.

The Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah agencies accuse Israel of the attack because the say it was executed by two Nimrod anti-tank long-range missiles, manufactured by the Israeli Aerospace Industry, for use by the IDF against armored vehicles, ships, bunkers and troop concentrations..

The missile has a semi-active laser guidance system, and is able to operate day and night. Its flight path can be below the clouds, while its operators far behind use a laser to guide it to target.

The launcher platform, with four missiles, can be installed on a Jeep, weapon-bearing vehicle, Abir, or armored vehicles. In addition, it is possible to send it from CH-53 ‘Yasur’ helicopter.

Israel has acted in the past against the establishment of an Iranian and/or Hizballah military presence on its Golan doorstep. On Jan. 19, 2015, an IDF air strike killed the Iranian Brig. Gen, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi and six Hizballah officers while they were on a tour of inspection near Quneitra.

Thursday, July 28, DEBKAfile ran an exclusive report on rising Israel-Russia tensions centering on southern Syria and the Golan.

For four days since July 25, the Syrian army has been continuously firing artillery batteries – moved close to Israel’s defense lines on the Golan border – in a manner that comes dangerously close to provoking an Israeli response. This carefully orchestrated Syrian campaign goes on around the clock.

It is the first time in the six years of the Syrian war that Bashar Assad has ventured to come near to provoking Israel. But now he appears to be emboldened by his Russian ally.

The IDF is holding its fire for the moment. But Israeli military and government leaders know that the time is near for the IDF to be forced to hit back, especially since it is becoming evident that the Syrian army’s steps ae backed by Russia.

DEBKAfile’s military sources provide details of the Syrian steps:

  • The Syrian army’s 90th and 121nd battalions have been firing their artillery batteries non-stop across a 10km band along the Golan border from Hamadia, north of Quneitra, up to a point facing the Israeli village of Eyn Zivan. (See attacked map).
    This means that the Syrian army has seized the center of buffer zone between Israel and Syria and made it a firing zone.
  • This artillery fire fans out across a radius that comes a few meters short of the Israeli border and the IDF troops stationed there. It then recedes to a distance of 500 to 600 meters and sweeps across the outposts and bases of the Syrian rebel forces believed to be in touch with Israel or in receipt of Israeli medical aid.
  • The new Syrian attack appears to hold a message for Jerusalem: For six years, you supported the rebels against the Assad regime in southern Syria. That’s now over. If you continue, you will come face to face with Syrian fire.
  • Damascus is also cautioning those rebels:  For years, you fought us with Israel at your backs. But no longer. Watch us bring you under direct artillery fire, while the IDF sits on its hands.
  • On July 26, Russian media published an article revealing that Russia had delivered to the Syrian Air Force, advanced SU-24M2 front-line bombers, which is designed for attack on frontlines of battle. Israeli officials were unpleasantly taken aback by the news. Up until now, the Russians and Syrians refrained from deploying air strength in South Syria near the Israeli border. Now the Syrian air force has the means to do so.
  • DEBKAfile military sources report that the SU-24M2, following recent upgrades and modifications in Russian factories, is now capable of dropping smart bombs – ballistic bombs with a guidance system on their tails that enable them to hit targets with precision.This guidance system does not rely on US GPS satellites but rather the equivalent Russian GLONASS system which is linked to a network of 21 Russian satellites and partially encrypted for military usages.
    In addition, the SU-24M2 is equipped with a system that projects the information the pilot needs (flight details and battle details) on the plane’s windshield (head-up display) and on the pilot’s visor.
  • The Russians delivered to the Syrians two of these sophisticated airplanes this week, out of 10 that they will supply soon.

The IDF has concluded that it is only a matter of time before these planes appear in Southern Syria and so generate a new and highly combustible situation on Israel’s northern and northeastern borders.

The Russians are colluding with Damascus to inform Israel that it will no longer be allowed by either to continue backing the rebel forces in southern Syria or sustain the buffer zone which they man.

Israel may pay dear if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot decide to continue to abstain from hitting back at the Syrian fire which is aimed every few hours at the vicinity of IDF posts or the impending arrival of Russian bombers. The price in store would be the weakening of the IDF’s hold on the Golan border.