In an attack reminiscent of the massacre of the Fogel family in Itamar in 2011, a 'Palestinian' terrorist knocked on the door of a Jewish family in the village of Halamish (Neve Tsuf) that was holding a Shalom Zachar (celebration of the birth of a boy) on Friday night, walked in, and started stabbing the residents. The terrorist murdered the grandfather - 70-year old Yosef Salomon, his daughter 46-year old Chaya Salomon, and his son, 36-year old Elad Salomon HY"D (May God Avenge their blood). The grandmother, 68-year old Tova Salomon, was seriously wounded. If not for quick thinking by daughter-in-law Michal Salomon, who rushed her five children into a room, locked the door and called the police, the massacre might have been much worse. An off-duty soldier neighbor shot the terrorist through a nearby window, wounding him. The entire attack, from the time the terrorist jumped the fence of the village until he was neutralized, took less than 15 minutes.
In Gaza, the terror attack triggered celebrations. This morning, Israel's Hebrew-English 'Palestinian' daily, Haaretz, publishes a column by Gideon Levy that dances on the victims' blood before they can even be buried. I won't sicken you by posting quotes from it.
The other group that's dancing on the victims' blood is the international media. Those include al-AP and al-Guardian.
And for those of you who are still foolish enough to believe that Muslims are 'just like us,' here's the terrorist's mother. Let's go to the videotape.
Watch:The mother of the terrorist who butchered 3 members of an Israeli family last night as they were having dinner says she's proud of him pic.twitter.com/85ZBDFZ8xI
Pilots didn't crash EgyptAir plane - there was an explosion
Greetings from... would you believe Lakewood, New Jersey?
Remember that EgyptAir plane that went down over the Mediterranean on a flight from Paris to Cairo back in May? This time, it wasn't a pilot suicide that crashed the plane. It was a more mundane form of terrorism: a bomb explosion.
Egypt's Ministry of Civil Aviation on Thursday said investigators
found traces of explosive materials on the remains of the victims aboard
EgyptAir Flight MS804.
...
Egyptian officials in July said the word "fire" was clearly audible from cockpit voice recorder
before the plane crashed into the Mediterranean Sea on May 19, killing
all 66 people aboard. The plane was traveling from Paris to Cairo.
Electronic messages sent out by the jet showed smoke detectors going
off in a toilet and in the avionics area of the plane moments before it
crashed.
The ministry said a forensic report "included a reference to find traces of explosive materials some human remains for victims of the accident."
Think about that the next time you take off from Paris. Yours truly was practically strip-searched by French 'security' while boarding a flight from Paris to the US a few months ago. I guess I fit the profile (not!).
More good news: Trump to designate Hamas' parent a terrorist group
For those who don't recognize his name, Eric Trager is a fellow of the Washington Institute, a respected Washington think tank that researches the Middle East, and the author of 'Arab Fall: How the Muslim Brotherhood Won and Lost Egypt in 891 Days'.
This morning, he quotes Trump adviser Walid Phares as saying that President Elect Donald Trump intends to designate Hamas' parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood, a terror organization.
For those who read Arabic (I don't), you can find the full story here. (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News).
Being a designated terrorist organization would severely restrict the Muslim Brotherhood's ability to operate in the US and abroad and is a step that is way overdue, but would never happen under an Obama administration. If this turns out to be true, it's great news.
Federal Judge slams Facebook and its legal counsel for not taking terrorism seriously
Greetings from New York City, where I have been since Thursday evening and where I have been totally tied up with work. I have a few minutes now before a conference call - not enough to work but enough to post something.
On Thursday, a Federal Judge in Brooklyn told a shocked lawyer from Chicago's Kirkland & Ellis that the lawyer's client, Facebook, isn't doing enough to deter terrorists from using its site. And then the judge laid into the firm for sending a first-year associate (someone about four months out of law school at this time of year) alone to the hearing.
U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, New York, also
accused Facebook’s lawyers -- by sending a first-year associate to a
hearing -- of not taking seriously lawsuits with implications of
international terrorism and the murder of innocent people.
“I
think it is outrageous, irresponsible and insulting,” Garaufis told the
attorney Thursday. The judge ordered Kirkland & Ellis LLP, the law
firm representing Facebook, to send a more senior lawyer to the next
hearing on Sept. 28 because he wanted to “talk to someone who talks to
senior management at Facebook.”
Garaufis
is overseeing two lawsuits in which more than 20,000 victims of attacks
and their families accused Facebook of helping groups in the Middle
East such as Hamas.
The judge noted similar suits haven’t been
successful under U.S. law which insulates publishers from liability for
the speech of others. But he said that doesn’t mean Facebook shouldn’t
take it seriously and try to address the issue.
Isn’t the social
media platform “basically putting together people who’d like to be
involved in terrorism with people are are terrorists?” the judge asked.
“Doesn’t Facebook have some moral obligation to help cabin the kinds of
communications that appear on it?”
The judge didn’t stop there.
"Let’s put the law aside and talk
about reality,” Garaufis said, less than a week after a bomb rattled the
Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, injuring 29 people. “The reality is
that people are communicating through social media and the outcome of
these inquiries, be it Google or Facebook, has the potential of hooking
people up to do very dangerous, bad and harmful things in terms of
international and domestic terror."
Federal
judges have limited ability to address terrorism and don’t usually get
involved in such cases until someone is arrested and charged with a
crime, Garaufis said.
"Don’t you have a social responsibility as
citizens of the world without having these plaintiffs come to me in
Brooklyn?" he asked. “There are things you could do that don’t involve
the courts or the judicial system."
Facebook said it’s committed to making people feel safe using the social network.
“Our
Community Standards make clear that there is no place on Facebook for
groups that engage in terrorist activity or for content that expresses
support for such activity, and we take swift action to remove this
content when it’s reported to us,” the company said in a statement. “We
sympathize with the victims of these horrible crimes.”
A Kirkland & Ellis spokeswoman didn’t have an immediate comment on the judge’s remarks.
The page pictured above was deemed not to violate Facebook's community standards. But Twitter last week briefly suspended Professor Glenn Reynolds (known as Instapundit on social media) for making a sarcastic comment that didn't threaten anyone. Some 'community standards.'
I've been warning about this for years. There have been two attempted terror attacks in New York City this evening. The first was in Chelsea, on 23rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, around 8:30 pm.
The Clarion Project posts a brutal summary of the beating and torture of military personnel by Turkey's Islamist police in the aftermath of the supposed coup attempt last week. It finishes off with this:
Since 1952, Turkey has been a member of NATO, which is supposed to
defend freedom and democracies. However for decades, Turkey has been a
center of torture and other human rights abuses of the worst magnitude.
If the Turkish government authorities, police officers and so many
average citizens are capable of torturing, starving and raping even
their own soldiers and citizens, how can they be worthy of being
recognized as a Western ally and partner?
Moreover, we can only imagine that if
this is what they do to their own soldiers, imagine what they have been
doing to their minority citizens, who they fundamentally see as
“enemies” -- Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Kurds, Alevis and
others.
By the way, is their EU application still live? And what on earth is the President of the United States doing hugging Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan?
Last week's truck rampage in France and
Monday's axe attack aboard a train in Germany have raised European
concern about self-radicalised assailants who have little or no
communications with militant groups that could be intercepted by spy
agencies.
"How do you capture some signs of someone who has no contact
with any organisation, is just inspired and started expressing some kind
of allegiance? I don't know. It's a challenge," EU Counter-Terrorism
Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told Reuters on the sidelines of a
intelligence conference in Tel Aviv.
Internet companies asked to monitor their own platforms'
content for material that might flag militants had begged off, De
Kerchove said.
He said they had argued that the information was too massive
to sift through and contextualise, unlike paedophile pornography, for
which there were automatic detectors.
"So maybe a human's intervention is needed. So you cannot just
let the machine do it," De Kerchove said. But he said he hoped "we will
soon find ways to be much more automated" in sifting through social
networks.
"That is why I am here," he said of his visit to Israel. "We know Israel has developed a lot of capability in cyber."
Here's hoping that everyone who does this is located in Judea and Samaria - probably too much to wish for. But it seems to be the only alternative. Everyone else is waiting for the United States to take the lead, and that seems unlikely to happen.
While Israel's emergency laws give security
services more leeway, its intelligence minister, Yisrael Katz, called
for cooperation with Internet providers rather than state crackdowns. He
cited, for example, the encryption provided by messaging platform
WhatsApp which, he said, could be a new way for militants to communicate
and evade detection.
"We will not block these services," Katz told the conference.
"What is needed is an international organisation, preferably headed by
the United States, where shared (security) concerns need to be defined,
characterised."
If the Obama administration ever started an organization like that, it would probably include Turkey (and Iran) and exclude Israel. Remember this? Maybe someone could ask Hillary Clinton about it.
Good
morning. We are a young Jewish family
here in the Triangle and recently learned of Rabbi Solomon's Behind the
Scenes Tour of Israel. The rabbi says his goal with the trip is to
raise the awareness American Jews to the realities on the ground in
Israel so they can form their “own positions that
are based on fuller, more complex information.” However, according to
the online trip guide, most of the sources of information during Rabbi
Solomon’s trip, will come from the most radical proponents of
BDS, and even pro-Islamic terror sources.
I
hope that Rabbi Solomon is
being honest about his intentions with this tour and it’s objectives.
As you will see below, it will appear to most that the Rabbi intends to
stir hatred for Israeli Jews and fro the IDF, who is sole guarantor of
the Jewish State.
To begin, the most troubling
aspect of MEDJI Tours is that they partner with the Holy Land Fund, a designated terror group who
has provided funding and support to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood according
to the U.S. Justice Department. That a Rabbi from Raleigh is partnering with a Hamas terror
financier is alarming and it must be investigated by the community and others.
Parents’ Circle Families Forum -An active and vocalsupporter
of the International
Solidarity Movement, a pro-terror group that recruits American students to
pose as peace activists while they abet terrorists in the
West Bank and Gaza, the center routinely launches rhetorical attacks on
Israel and denigrates the American presence in Iraq. Many
bereaved families in Israel have spoken out against PCFF for its
demands of an acceptance of the Palestinian narrative of exclusive
Israeli guilt, a corresponding rejection of the legitimacy of Israeli
narratives, and the political messages that are transmitted,
explicitly and implicitly, through PCFF activities. http://www.ngo-monitor.org/ngos/parents_circle_families_forum/
All that’s Left -They
report to be a collective unequivocally opposed to the occupation and committed to building the diaspora angle of resistance. taking to the streets with visual and educational strategies to reshape how visitors
think about Israel, which includes total, one-sided demonization of the IDF.http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.528285
Tent of Nations - notorious
for lying about the IDF supposedly ruthlessly confiscating the property
of innocent Palestinians, never mind these lies disproven in court. The
libelous narratives of Tent of Nations has fueled the Presbyterian Church USA’s boycott of Israel.This
organization raises money by claiming “Israeli Military Destroys Orchards at Tent of Nations – Please Act Now!" https://rabbibrant.com/2014/05/21/israeli-military-destroys-orchards-at-tent-of-nations-please-act-now/
Mahmoud Darwish Museum
- who partners with BDS group IACHD to sponsor anti-Israel propaganda tours to gin up hatred of Israeli Jews.http://www.summerinpalestine.org/2015/blog.htmlIn
fact, Mahmoud Darwish was a poet who not only called for all living
Jews to leave "Palestine" , but to take with them also their dead
ones!!!
Yassar Arafat's Tomb - the father of modern
terrorism deserves respect with a visit to his gravesite? Arafat
is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Israeli
citizens,
the deaths of untold numbers of Arabs and the killing of more than 100
U.S. citizens and the Rabbi pays his respects thereby validating his
muderous acts??
Combatants for Peace – partner of pro-BDS movement, anti-IDF
activists who
utilizes highly demonizing language, accusing Israel of “ethnic
cleansing,” “genocide,” “collective punishment,”
and “apartheid”; promotes BDS campaigns against Israel; and explicitly
advocates for the end of the state of Israel as the nation state of the
Jewish people.
Even the Bait al Karama Culinary School and the Birzeit
Brewery company travelers will visit for pleasure are known anti-Israel BDS activists whose companies were created for this purpose
Rabbi Solomon’s ittenerary also includes a stop where travelers will “Learn the story of Open
House Ramle where the non-fiction story Lemon Tree took place.” According to Stand With us, “Lemmon Tree” is pure fiction and it’s a propaganda piece that presents
the extremist Palestinian case against Israel and says we should be
“deeply concerned” that some secondary schools are using the book. https://www.standwithus.com/news/article.asp?id=256
These
are but a sampling of the details of this trip, which promotes hatred
towards Israeli Jews from beginning to
end. This tour should be led by either the Palestinian Authority,
Hamas, or the Muslim Brotherhood; not by the Rabbi of a Conservative
synagogue in Raleigh, North Carolina.
I am
asking today that you look into this trip further and to ensure that
all consumers understand clearly the pro-BDS
and anti-IDF education this trip will offer. And above all, consumers
should be well informed of the Islamic terror-supporting partners of
this trip. Many
are now researching whether it's legal to financially partner with
foreign terror sponsors and with companies who organizes boycotts
against Israeli Jewish citizens.
Thank you for your consideration in this troubling matter.
Here we go again: 60 dead over 100 injured in terror attack in Nice, France
It's Bastille Day in France, the equivalent of Independence Day in many other countries. But it's not a happy day.
Some 60 people are dead tonight and over 100 injured after a truck driver drove his truck through a crowd of revelers in Nice in Southern France this evening. The Islamic State terror group has already taken responsibility for the attack.
Let's go to the videotape.
At least 60 people have been killed and 100 more injured in the
southern French city of Nice tonight after a lorry was “deliberately
driven” into a crowd out celebrating Bastille Day in a confirmed
terrorist attack.
French officials have confirmed that they are investigating a
terrorist attack and there are unconfirmed reports that there are gunmen
on the loose in the city. . . .
Witnesses said the truck “rammed” the crowd where it was thickest at
more than 30mph, and images emerged of the cab riddled with bullets.
Police have identified the driver, who was killed during the
incident, and it is believed to have been a man who was known to
security services.
Crowds had packed out the city’s main promenade to watch a fireworks
display marking Bastille Day, a major public holiday in France, and
were beginning to head home when the lorry hit.
witness reported horrific scenes with “dead bodies everywhere”
and distressing video footage emerged of people fleeing the Promenade
des Anglais, in the southern French city, in terror.
Fox News is reporting that gunmen are believed to be holding hostages at
Nice’s Meridien Hotel.
French officials have confirmed that they are investigasting a
terrorist attack and there are unconfirmed reports that there are gunmen
on the loose in the city. French TV channel iTele tonight reported that
a gunman "holed up in a nice restaurant downtown" had been
"neutralized" by police.
The channel said it is not believed the
man had taken any hostages during the incident. The man is believed to
have been in the lorry with the driver and fled on foot to a restaurant
called Le Buffalo nearby, where he was killed by an officer with a
handgun.
If you were expecting State Department spokesman John Kirby to say something about terror attacks in Israel last week, you were disappointed with Tuesday's State Department briefing. Here's the sum total of what they had to say about Israel.
QUESTION: Do you have a comment on the Israeli settlement construction announcement?
MR KIRBY: We’re aware of reports that the Government of Israel
intends to advance plans for hundreds of housing units in Israeli
settlements in the West Bank as well as East Jerusalem. If it’s true,
this report would be the latest step in what seems to be a systematic
process of land seizures, settlement expansions, and legalizations of
outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state
solution. We oppose steps like these, which we believe are
counterproductive to the cause of peace. In general, we’re deeply
concerned about settlement construction and expansion in East Jerusalem
and the West Bank, and the design – and the – I’m sorry, the designation
of land throughout the West Bank for exclusive Israeli use.
As the Quartet report highlights, since the beginning of the Oslo
process in 1993, the population of settlements has more than doubled,
with a threefold increase in Area C alone. Currently, there is at least
570,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Moreover, approximately 100 settlement outposts in Area C have been
built without formal Israeli Government approval, making them illegal
even under Israeli law. Again, as the Quartet report makes clear, these
actions risk entrenching a one-state reality and raise serious questions
about Israel’s long-term intentions.
QUESTION: Given that you raise the idea of this as a
systematic process of land – land expropriation or land seizures or
however you put it, what is the U.S.’s systematic response beyond just
saying this is bad every time? Do you have a systematic approach to
counteracting this trend that is blocking peace, in your opinion?
MR KIRBY: Our approach has been consistent throughout. First
of all, calling it like we see it and not being afraid to do that;
having tough discussions with Israeli leaders about this and being
willing to continue to do that; working inside the Quartet, and the
Quartet report addresses this pretty clearly as I just said; as well as
working with other members of the international community to try to see
if we can advance a two-state solution.
QUESTION: Do you – do you – the way I understood it was this
is a response to the violence. Do you see the notion of settlement
expansion as a consequence of violence as an appropriate countermeasure?
MR KIRBY: Look, I’m – I really am loath to get into analyzing
cause and effect here in terms of connecting that particular dot. We’re
obviously deeply concerned about violence and we condemn the recent
attacks. There’s – and we’ve said this before – no justification for
terrorism, no justification for the violence, no justification for the
taking or maiming of innocent life. And so we’re going to continue to
look for leaders in the region to do what they need to do, take the
affirmative steps that are required, and act – demonstrate leadership to
take down the tensions to reduce the violence to get us to help create
the conditions for a two-state solution. That doesn’t change, however,
at all our opposition to settlement activity, which we believe is
illegitimate.
QUESTION: I have a last one, tangentially related. The wife of
a man killed in a West Bank attack was an American citizen. I think the
car was shot at and it was just another American – I think it might
have been Hebron – another American who almost died in this case. Are
you having conversations with the Palestinians about the rising American
death toll in this wave of violence?
MR KIRBY: Obviously, we’re – any death and any injury is
significant when it results from this sort of violence. And so our
conversations with leaders on both sides are about, again, taking steps
to reduce the violence so that innocent people can go about their lives –
all innocent people can go about their lives.
Okay, so the last question mentioned Chavi Mark (whose husband Rabbi Mickey Marc HY"D was murdered last Friday), but it didn't mention Hallel Yaffa Ariel HY" (May God Avenge her blood).
There was NO condemnation from the State Department - and certainly none from Hussein Obama.
And then there was a little more, but still no condemnation:
QUESTION: Do you think that that --
QUESTION: But your first job’s to protect Americans --
MR KIRBY: And we take that very --
QUESTION: -- and there are --
MR KIRBY: And we take that very seriously.
QUESTION: Well, a lot – there’s been several now, I think, killed in this wave of violence --
MR KIRBY: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- more than in a lot of places where you have --
MR KIRBY: We take that – no, we take that very seriously, but --
QUESTION: -- deeper engagement.
MR KIRBY: Well, I’m not going to --
QUESTION: Even military engagement in some places.
MR KIRBY: I’m not going to detail the specifics of diplomatic
discussions we may be having on this. I can tell you obviously we take
that responsibility very seriously. But more broadly speaking, we want
to see all innocent life protected.
QUESTION: And do you think that the Palestinian attackers are
attacking Americans on purpose? Do you think that they are targeting
Americans?
MR KIRBY: As I said, I’m not going to analyze each and every specific act here from the podium, Said.
QUESTION: Just to follow up on Brad’s question, do you ask the
Palestinians to investigate whether there’s actually been deliberate
attacking or deliberate targeting of Americans?
MR KIRBY: We want – first of all, we want the attacks to stop.
QUESTION: Right, I understand. But things that have already taken place.
MR KIRBY: And obviously – obviously we would – we – and we’ve
said this before – we welcome thorough, complete investigations on these
matters, transparent investigations by all sides. But I’m not going to
get into a discussion of each and every one.
QUESTION: According to the Israeli press, the Palestinian
Authority is getting ready to cut off all relation with the Quartet
because they feel that the report was completely biased towards Israel.
First of all, are you aware of these reports? And second, are you having
a conversation with the Palestinians on this very issue?
MR KIRBY: I think what we’ve seen is a PLO statement that
takes issue with some aspects of the Quartet report, and that’s our
understanding, is that this is more a statement of their concerns and
objections to the report itself. And as I said last week, we fully
expected that there would be objections, that there will be concerns,
that not everybody would like everything that they read in there. But
I’ll say it like I said last week – I’ll say it again – both sides had
input and we valued – welcomed and valued that input.
QUESTION: Okay.
Again, no condemnation of 'Palestinian' terrorism.
And in case you missed it, look at Kirby's opening statement.
MR KIRBY: I have some comments here at the top that I want to
make, certainly regarding what happened over the weekend. We strongly
condemn the recent spate of deadly terrorist attacks that have been
focused on civilians, including women and children, and which have
brutally taken hundreds of lives from Istanbul to Dhaka to Baghdad to
the attacks in Saudi Arabia. These acts have shown no respect for human
life, whether young or old, male or female, Muslim or non-Muslim. These
terrorists murdered without discretion. We cannot say whether these
attacks were coordinated or whether they were conducted by independent
opportunists. As you know, investigations are still ongoing, and I’m not
going to get ahead of those processes. I’d refer you to those countries
to talk about it.
But what we do know is that the goal of these attacks was to attract
attention and to spread terror and to spread fear. They occurred during
and at the end of Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslims.
Indeed, a Daesh spokesman himself called for targeting during this very
holy month. So what’s obviously evident is that Daesh certainly has no
respect for Muslim life, life in general, or any respect for Islam
itself.
Notice what's missing (added emphasis is mine).
Bottom line: No condemnation of the terror attacks against Jews. The message to the 'Palestinians' is clear.
This the home of the terrorist who murdered 13-year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel HY"D (May God Avenge her blood) in her bed last Thursday morning.
This is Barack Obama:
Third, we must address the grievances that terrorists exploit,
including economic grievances. As I said yesterday, poverty alone does
not cause a person to become a terrorist, any more than poverty alone
causes someone to become a criminal. There are millions, billions of
people who are poor and are law-abiding and peaceful and tolerant, and
are trying to advance their lives and the opportunities for their
families.
But when people -- especially young people -- feel entirely trapped
in impoverished communities, where there is no order and no path for
advancement, where there are no educational opportunities, where there
are no ways to support families, and no escape from injustice and the
humiliations of corruption -- that feeds instability and disorder, and
makes those communities ripe for extremist recruitment. And we have
seen that across the Middle East and we've seen it across North Africa.
So if we’re serious about countering violent extremism, we have to get
serious about confronting these economic grievances.
Anyone still wonder why the US has no effective answers for Islamic and 'Palestinian' terrorism?
The attack near Al-Haram Al-Nabawi took place
during Maghreb prayers, the time when observing Muslims break their fast
during the holy month of Ramadan.
How to stop 'Palestinian' and other Islamic terrorism
Greetings from the Holy City of Jerusalem. I am home.
There's been another terror attack this afternoon. An Israeli father and husband has been murdered, and the wife and mother and two children have been wounded near Otniel in the Hebron Hills. More on that in a bit, but I'd like to talk about something else that's been bothering me: How do we deal with terrorists?
I spoke with a cousin of mine while I was in Boston, and he had a great idea: If the terrorist lives through the attack, castrate and lobotomize him and return him to his family to deal with him for the rest of his life. If the terrorist dies, run his body through a meat grinder, mix it with ground pork, and return it to the family in a nice box for burial.
On September 30, 1985, a group of gunmen seized four Soviet diplomats
and embassy workers (Arkady Katkov, Valery Myrikov, Oleg Spirin, and
Nikolai Svirsky) in Beirut. During the kidnapping right outside the
embassy, Katkov was wounded in the leg.
The abductors called themselves "The Khaled Al-Walid Force" and the
"Islamic Liberation Organization". According to SVR (Foreign
Intelligence Service) Colonel Yuri Perfilyev, who at the time was the
KGG rezident (station chief) in Lebanon, the kidnapping was
orchestrated by infamous Hezbollah operative Imad "Hyena"Mugniyeh in
response to an offensive by Syria-backed leftist militias in the
Lebanese city of Tripoli. The Shiite radicals demanded that Moscow force
Damascus to suspend the Tripoli offensive and close its embassy in
Beirut. To demonstrate that they meant business, only two days after the
kidnapping, Mugniyeh murdered the wounded Katkov by riddling him with
machine gun bullets and left his body in a Beirut rubbish dump.
Perfilyev then met up with Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fadlallah, then
spiritual leader of Lebanese Shiites and told him: "A great power cannot
wait forever. From waiting and observing, it can proceed to serious
action with unpredictable consequences". Met with silence from
Fadlallah, the KGB station chief spoke bluntly:
We aren't only talking about people in Beirut. I'm talking about Tehran
and Qom [Shiite holy city and the residence of Ayatollah Khomeini],
which is not that far from Russia's borders. Yes, Qom is very close to
us and a mistake in the launch of a missile could always happen. A
technical error, some kind of breakdown. They write about it all the
time. And God or Allah forbid if this happens with a live, armed
missile.
The visibly shaken Fadlallah responded after a moment of silence: "I
think everything will turn out well". Later, his closest advisor
"Hassan" (Nasrallah?) told Yuri Perfilyev that no one dared to talk to
the Grand Ayatollah in such a fashion.
But the ominous threat against one of the holy cities of Shiism was
only one prong in the Soviet strategy. According to Benny Morris, who
was Jerusalem Post's diplomatic correspondent at that time and
later became famous as a brilliant historian, in tandem with the
threats, the Soviets took sharper action:
[T]he KGB kidnapped a man they knew to be a close relative of a
prominent Hezbollah leader. They then castrated him and sent the severed
organs to the Hezbollah official, before dispatching the unfortunate
kinsman with a bullet in the brain.
In addition to presenting him with this grisly proof of their
seriousness, the KGB operatives also advised the Hezbollah leader
that they knew the indentities of other close relatives of his, and that
he could expect more such packages if the three Soviet diplomats were
not freed immediately.
Soon thereafter, the surviving three hostages were dropped off by the
Soviet embassy "from a late-model BMW that couldn't drive away fast
enough" and never again was a Soviet (diplomat or otherwise) kidnapped
in Lebanon. As Benny Morris put it: "This is the way the Soviets
operate. They do things - they don't talk. And this is the language the
Hezbollah understand." Not only Hezbollah, but ISIS and every other
Muslim terror group.
Istanbul terror attack had nothing to do with reconciliation with Israel
Just a brief comment on Tuesday night's triple suicide bombing at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport in which at least 36 people were killed and 147 injured (I saw a number that had over 200 injured a short while ago).
Although Israel and Turkey supposedly 'reconciled' earlier this week, I can guarantee you that last night's terror attack had NOTHING to do with that. Although there were Israeli diplomats present in the airport at the time (they escaped injury), the planning for this type of attack takes weeks and months. The fact that it took place a day after the announcement of an Israeli-Turkish rapprochement is nothing but coincidence.
I'm sure you'll all be shocked to hear that Seddique Mateen, the father of the terrorist who murdered 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando last week, has connections to several radical Islamic groups, including some who set attacking Israel as their primary goal.
The father of Orlando mass shooter Omar Mateen has longstanding connections to prominent Islamist groups in the U.S., a document discovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism shows. Seddique Matin is listed as president of a then-new American Muslim Alliance (AMA) chapter in Fort Pierce in a July 1997 announcement archived by the IPT.
The AMA sponsored several radical conferences in the U.S. and its
leader, Agha Saeed, has spoken in defense of convicted terrorists,
including Aafia Siddiqui (a.k.a "Lady al-Qaida"), Palestinian Islamic Jihad board member Sami Al-Arian, and Pakistani intelligence lobbyist Ghulam Nabi Fai.
The Fort Pierce chapter is among 10 new AMA chapters opened, the announcement in an AMA bulletin says.
...
AMA no longer exists as a registered nonprofit and it last filed tax
returns in 2010. But the organization continues to maintain an active Facebook account. In its posts, the AMA refuses to consider any Islamist motivation for the attack and lays the blame for Omar Mateen's massacre which killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub solely on the country's lax gun laws. [Sounds like the Obama administration. CiJ].
The organization has a history of working with radical Islamist
groups and has issued statements in support of several terrorists later
convicted in the U.S. The FBI cut off outreach communication
with CAIR, for example, after uncovering evidence placing the
organization and its leaders in a U.S.-based Hamas-support network.
In October 2000, AMA co-sponsored a rally in Washington's Lafayette Park where AMC's then-executive director Abdurahman Alamoudi announced his support for Hamas and Hizballah.
...
In 2003, Saeed testified on Al-Arian's behalf, describing the man who ran "the active arm"
of Palestinian Islamic Jihad as "my friend and during the last ten
years we have worked together to mainstream American politics. We have
worked together to replace the culture of despair with culture of hope
and the culture of bullet with the culture of ballot." AMA's website
also featured a section entitled "Valiant Civil Rights Struggle of Dr. Sami Al Arian."
What's worse: if a certain type of terror attack hasn't happened outside
of Israel, for the most part, no one is prepared for it. So yes, my Red
Sox tickets for next week say "No bags or items larger than 16 x 16 x
8, coolers, cans, bottles, flagpoles, firearms or fireworks will be
permitted into the ballpark." (So much for the days of the picnic lunch
in the bleachers). And the ticket says that you are subject to search:
but they'll search my father and me, and they won't search a 21-year old
Muslim because that would be 'profiling'. And I will still walk into
shopping malls or large stores tomorrow, and no one will search my bags -
or anyone else's - because no American shopping mall has ever been
attacked by a suicide bomber. No one will search me on my way into a
movie theater until the first time someone with a political agenda
shoots up a movie theater. And no one will search me going into Sbarros
(which I cannot do here because they are not Kosher) or any other
restaurant until a suicide bomber blows up a restaurant. In Israel, you
cannot walk into an enclosed public space without being searched.
Ten years later, terror has come much closer to the United States. If the World Trade Center attacks can be looked upon as isolated in their times, during the eight years of the Obama administration there has been at least one major terror attack in the United States each year. But very little has changed. And ISIS is warning of more.
Titled "You Are Not Held Responsible Except for Yourself," the
Al-Furat Media Foundation release was distributed online with a
promotional banner featuring President Obama, Omar Mateen and scenes
from the previous weekend's carnage.
Al-Furat specializes in
Russian-language messages to Muslims in the Caucasus and beyond. Earlier
this year, for example, the media wing released the Philippine
terrorist group Abu Sayyaf's video pledging allegiance to ISIS leader
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The video opens with the tag "USA" in the
upper corner and shots of an unseen person assembling a bomb to put in a
suicide vest. The person buttons up a blue shirt, straps on the bomb
belt, and zips up a dark brown leather jacket to conceal it. He's
wearing a stainless steel wristwatch that reads 9:25.
That's
followed by scenes of Times Square and the torso of the leather-jacketed
man walking along the street. A TGI Friday's sign is shown.
In a close-up of the man with no location shown, he's pulling the ring on his detonator.
It appears to be mock-up footage from an Al-Jazeera segment, with the network's logo fuzzed out but still discernible.
News footage is then shown of the ABC News building banner in New York scrolling a headline about the November Paris attacks.
Then,
pictures of Mateen along with closeups of the weapons he used in the
June 12 attack on the Pulse nightclub: a Sig Sauer MCX .223 caliber
rifle and Glock 17 9 mm.
Footage of the attack from American and Arabic TV is shown.
A
black jihadist in fatigues with an outdoor backdrop that looks like IS
territory in the Middle East is identified as Abu Isamil al-Amriki; he
speaks perfect English and is referred to as an American, yet he speaks
with a slight accent.
"Do
you think you are at war with a small group of mujahideen in Iraq,
Syria, Libya and other places? You are sadly mistaken. And do you think
you will defeat us by bombing our homes with your drones and F-16s?" Abu
Ismail says.
"O America, indeed you are at war with ... sincere
Muslims around the world who yearn and desire to see the honor of Islam
returned," he adds. "And O America, indeed you are at war with the
people who wish to be killed and slain for the sake of Allah... you are
at war with the holy Quran."
Let's go to the videotape.
Will this warning be heeded? Given that the FBI has released partial transcripts of phone calls from terrorist Omar Mateen, who murdered 50 people in a gay nightclub ten days ago and has deleted all references to ISIS, things don't look very promising.
To maintain liberty, sometimes you have to compromise a little bit of liberty. Unfortunately, some people can only learn that lesson the hard way.
Must see: The leader of the free world reacts to the Orlando attack
Prime Minister Netanyahu puts Obama, Clinton and Trump to shame with his reaction to the Orlando massacre.
Let's go to the videotape. A transcript follows.
"In Orlando, a terrorist walks into a nightclub and murders nearly 50
human beings. Sons and daughters, brothers and sisters cut down in cold
blood.
They did nothing wrong. They were dancing with friends, they were enjoying music with loved ones.
Why did the terrorist murder them?
Because he was driven by a fanatical hatred.
He targeted the LGBT community because he believed they were evil.
Now, the murderer wasn't alone.
Regimes and terrorist organizations around the world ruthlessly persecute the LGBT community.
In Syria, ISIS throws gays off rooftops.
In Iran, the regime hangs gays from cranes.
Too many people have remained silent in the face of this awful persecution.
This
week's shooting wasn't merely an attack on the LGBT community. It was
an attack on all of us, on our common values of freedom and diversity
and choice.
Radical Islamist terror makes no distinction between shades of infidel.
This
week it was gays in Orlando. A few days before that it was Jews in Tel
Aviv. Before that it was music fans in Paris; Travelers in Brussels;
Yazidis in Iraq; Community workers in San Bernardino; Christians and
journalists in Syria.
All of us are targets.
We believe that all people are created in the image of God.
ISIS, by contrast, believes that all people who aren't just like them deserve to die.
We will not be terrified into submission.
We will fight back. And we will triumph.
Today I ask you to reach out to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them.
Tell them you stand together, we stand together as one. And that you will always remember the victims.
Tell them they will never be alone, that we are all one family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.
I have no doubt that those who seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.
Working together we will defeat them even faster.
We
need to stand united, resolute in the belief that all people regardless
of their sexual orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of
their ethnicity, all people deserve respect, deserve dignity."
-Bibi Netanyahu
So it's come to this. The leader of the free world is not Barack Obama (it never was) and it's not likely to be either of the candidates for President of the United States. It's the Prime Minister of little Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Notice that Netanyahu doesn't shy away from calling the attack what it was: Islamic terrorism.
Will it say 'Allahuakhbar' and if it does will we be told?
The flight data recorders from EgyptAir Flight 804, which crashed into the Mediterranean on a flight from Paris to Cairo on May 19, were recovered today, damaged but intact.
Will they show that the plane went down due to terrorism? And if they do, will we be told the truth?
In a statement, investigators said: "The vessel's equipment was able
to salvage the part [of the recorder] that contains the memory unit,
which is considered the most important part of the recording device."
The recorder will now be taken to the Egyptian city of Alexandria to be studied.
The plane's manufacturer, Airbus, previously said that finding the
black boxes was crucial to understanding what happened when radar lost
track of MS804.
Electronic messages sent by the plane revealed
that smoke detectors went off in the toilet and the aircraft's
electrics, minutes before the radar signal was lost.
According to
Greek investigators, the plane turned 90 degrees left and then 360
degrees to the right, dropping from 11,300m (37,000ft) to 4,600m
(15,000ft) and then 3,000m (10,000ft) before it was lost from radar.
A terror attack has not been ruled out but no extremist group has claimed to have downed the plane.
Analysts say human or technical error is also a possibility.
The crew on board do not appear to have sent a distress call.
The cockpit voice recorder should allow investigators to hear what
the pilot and co-pilot were saying to each other, plus any alarms in the
background.
If the flight data recorder is recovered, it should show what the plane's computers were recording at the time.
Experts have warned that signals emitted by the data recorder are expected to expire by 24 June.
That's next Friday. Meanwhile, there are very few clues.
The little evidence so far suggests a fire broke out in the front of the
aircraft, so they will be keen to film and photograph that area. One
experienced investigator who worked on the Lockerbie bombing told me
bomb damage looks very different to fire damage.
I'm sure it does. But everything I've seen about this one seems to point to terrorism.
At the 2012 and 2014 conferences, speakers
blamed radical Islam’s violence against Christians in the Middle East on
Christian support for Israel, as if Muslims had no moral agency of
their own. Speakers condemned Jews for having rejected Jesus as the
messiah, suggesting that this rejection rendered Jews unfit to run a
sovereign state of their own.
On a more practical level, speakers
falsely reported that the security barrier completely surrounds
Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birth, in an attempt to portray the
Jewish state as an obstacle to God’s purposes for peace in the Middle
East.
I was stunned that the speakers defamed the
Jewish people so brazenly and that the audience of 600 Evangelicals from
North America and Europe listened so happily to it all.
Similar messaging was broadcast at the 2016
conference. I should be in a high dudgeon about what I heard, but
instead I feel pity.
Spreading lies about the Jewish state, as
unsavory and self-destructive as it is, is the price Palestinian
Christians pay for staying in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It’s
what they have to do.
Jews stay in the land through the force of
arms and diplomacy. Palestinian Christians stay in the West Bank by
shilling on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt
and incompetent set of elites in the world.
Palestinian Christians have to pretend that their fellow Palestinians are ready for statehood, jihadism
in the Middle East is not the fault of Muslim radicals but the West,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all Israel’s fault and that
Palestinian leaders can be trusted to make peace with the Jewish state
even though they can’t be trusted with the money thrown at them by
Western governments.
Repeating these messages is the tax, or jizya
Palestinian Christians must pay to maintain peaceful relations,
precarious as they are, with their Muslim neighbors in the West Bank.
In
previous epochs, Christians paid protection money to Muslim rulers to
ensure their safety, but today they pay the jizya by telling lies to their fellow Christians in the West.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
