Israel Matzav

While the world protests against terrorism

I actually got an email from BDS South Africa last week with Leila Khaled's speaking schedule. Lovely.

For those of you who don't remember Khaled, go here.

Labels: BDS, El Al, hijacking, Leila Khaled, Palestinian heros, Palestinian terrorism, Palestinian terrorists, South Africa

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:17 PM 0 comments

J Street activists wear pro-terror t-shirts

These are the kind of people who are attracted to J Street.

The allegations broke this morning when photos were discovered of the two students wearing the shirts at an event sponsored by J Street U last April. In coverage of the event, AbuNe’meh is quoted as a representative of the group. In AbuNe’meh’s Facebook postings, shown below, when asked where they acquired the shirts, he pointed to a vicious anti-Israel website called existenceisresitance.org. That website also offers shirts with a map of the entirety of Israel drawn in with a keffiyeh pattern and the caption “Un-Occupy,” calling for the elimination of Israel as a whole. The site describes the shirts explicitly as showing a picture of Leila Khaled....

It is worth noting that another student, Elisabeth Housman, who is listed here as “liking” the pro-terror photo, is also listed on the local campus Hillel website as the official contact person for J Street U on campus.

The second student in the photo, Yamaguchi, was described as the moderator of the event. He has gone on record advocating for the ”full right of return” of Palestinians to pre-1967 Israel. “In some ways,” he has written, “the essence of being Palestinian today is the right of return itself: what we lost, and what we fight to regain.” 

Neither student was apparently available to respond to the accusations, as both seem to be off campus this year. As of this writing, both list “Ramallah,” in the Palestinian Authority, as their current city of residence on what appear to be their Facebook pages.

Washington University’s J Street U branch came under fire recently this week for sponsoring an event for the discredited anti-IDF group “Breaking the Silence.”

 'Pro-Israel, pro-peace'?

Read the whole thing. There are lots of Leila Khaled t-shirts for sale....

Labels: J Street, J Street U, Leila Khaled, Palestinian terrorism, pro-Israel pro-peace

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:35 PM 0 comments

How to thwart a hijacking at 29,000 feet from the only man who has ever done it

On September 6, 1970, an El Al pilot thwarted the hijacking of his plane in a way that most commercial pilots would have no clue how to do. The pilot, who was supposed to fly from Amsterdam to New York, ended up landing the plane in London. What's most amazing about this story is the way the British authorities treated the El Al crew after the plane landed....

Before take-off, El Al’s security officer on duty at the airport told the pilot that there were four suspicious people seeking to board the flight. Two held Senegalese passports with consecutive numbers; two others, a couple, carried less suspicious looking Honduran passports, but all had ordered their tickets at the last minute.

Bar-Lev, in consultation with the security officer, barred the Senegalese passengers from boarding and demanded that the local security officers closely inspect the two Honduran nationals before allowing them to board.

Although at the time he did not know that no such inspection had been performed, he stopped at seat 2C and had a chat with Avihu Kol, one of the two armed security officers on the plane. “I told him, I want you in the cockpit with me,” Bar-Lev said.

Kol was alone in first class. He might as well have been wearing a sign that said air marshal. “Someone could just come up behind him and shoot him in the head,” Bar-Lev said, recalling that Kol had warned him about just such a scenario two weeks before.

At 29,000 feet, with the plane still climbing, the emergency light flashed in the cockpit. False alarm, one of the crew members said. It happened often. Flight attendants sometimes grazed against the warning panels, sounding the alarm. “No,” Bar-Lev responded, “we’re being hijacked.”

Seconds later a flight attendant’s voice came through the intercom: two people, armed with a gun and two grenades, wanted to enter the cockpit. If he didn’t open the door, they would blow up the plane.

Bar-Lev sent flight engineer Uri Zach to look through the peep hole. The “Honduran” man, Nicaraguan-American Sandinista supporter Patrick Argüello, a former Fulbright scholar operating on behalf of George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was holding a gun to a female flight attendant’s head. Uri, she said to the pilot through the locked door, they are going to kill me if you don’t open up.

According to the International Air Transport Association rules, Bar-Lev said, a pilot is responsible “for the welfare of his passengers” and therefore must acquiesce to the demands of terrorists. His thinking was just the opposite: acceding will only further endanger the passengers. Giving voice to an unformed thought, he said aloud, “We are not going to be taken hostage.”

Sitting in the right-hand seat, having let the co-pilot handle the take-off from Amsterdam, Bar-Lev recalled his mandatory training on the Boeing 707 at the company headquarters several years earlier. The certification training was eight hours long. After six hours, the company instructor told Bar-Lev he was cleared to fly and wondered if he had any other questions. He did. He wanted to know the outer limits of the plane’s capacity. The instructor, a Korean War vet, walked him through some of the maneuvers and explained that the passenger plane was very strong and could endure more than it would seem at first glance.

Bar-Lev told Kol, the air marshal, to hold on tight. He was going to throw the plane into a dive. The negative g-force, akin to the feeling one gets on the downhill section of a roller coaster ride, would accomplish two things: it would lower the plane’s altitude, reducing the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the plane, which would make a bullet hole or a grenade explosion less dangerous; and it would throw the hijackers off their feet. The passengers, he said, were all belted in and would be fine.

Bar-Lev lifted the nose of the aircraft, dipped one of the wings, and then tilted the nose down to earth. The plane began to plummet, dropping 10,000 feet in a minute. When he pulled out of the dive, Kol charged through the door and killed Argüello.

The second terrorist, Leila Khaled, a Palestinian veteran of previous skyjackings, rolled a grenade forward but it didn’t explode. In her memoir, Bar-Lev said, Khaled claimed to have been violently subdued, but the air marshals found her passed out from the dive and quickly arrested her.

“The whole thing took two and a half minutes,” Bar-Lev said.

Why did the plane land in London? What did the British authorities do (aside from releasing Khaled)? Read the whole thing.

Obviously, this story was published now due to Malaysia Airlines flight 370. I don't believe that plane was hijacked. I believe that one or both of the pilots decided to crash the plane like EgyptAir 990. But that won't be proven unless and until the black box is found.

Labels: El Al, hijacking, Leila Khaled, London Heathrow Airport, Palestinian terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:25 PM 0 comments

Shutting down the debate: Why the BDS'ers hate the hoopoe

Although I got through law school doing crossword puzzles, I really don't do them anymore. Perhaps that's why I didn't know that the hoopoe is Israel's national bird.

And perhaps Linda Claire and George Abendstern didn't know either and that's why they were so angry at the British Socialist Daily Morning Star for including 'Israel's national bird' as a clue in their crossword puzzle.

In a letter to the newspaper, Linda Claire, the chairwoman of Manchester’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign, asked why it had referred to the bird after it has “always been the newspaper you could rely on to support the cause of the Palestinians.”

“Maybe you don’t support the methods chosen by the international solidarity movement of BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel] to assist the Palestinians in their struggle for freedom and justice,” she said, adding that this included any reference to Israel’s wildlife.

“Despite its condemnation of zionists [sic] it yet finds space to include an item in its daily quiz about Israel’s national bird. Is the Star not aware there’s a cultural boycott going on?” Claire’s husband, George Abendstern, asked in another letter.

But that's not all that's going on in Manchester, a city with a sizable Jewish community. One Sarah Irving has written an ode to 'Palestinian terrorist' Leila Khaled, who was overpowered while trying to hijack an El Al plane near London in 1969. Irving was due to appear in Manchester to promote the book, but the appearance was canceled because the store was overwhelmed with phone calls and emails about it (yes, it does pay to call or email). Irving wrote the following on her new blog:

It is, of course, a measure of the desperate rearguard action which apologists for the actions of the State of Israel are currently fighting that they feel the need to close down all debate and discussion of issues around Palestinian history, politics and culture.

Funny. I thought that the goal of BDS was to close down all debate and discussion of issues between Israel and the 'Palestinians.'

By the way, Irving's book launch has been rescheduled.

Labels: BDS, Britain, Leila Khaled, Palestinian terrorism

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:39 PM 1 comments

Sweden rolls out the welcome mat for a terrorist

The taxpayers of Sweden have just funded a visit to their country of 'Palestinian' terrorist Leila Khaled.

In 2002, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, The European Union through its European Council decided to include the PFLP on its list of terrorist groups.

The people of Israel are all too familiar with the savagery of the PFLP. It took responsibility for the 2001 assassination of Tourism Minister, Rehavam Zeevi. On Friday night, March 11th 2011, two PFLP members butchered the Fogel family in Itamar, including four-and eleven-year-old children and a three-month infant.

Ms. Khaled sits on the PFLP Central Committee and has not expressed regret for her involvement in terrorism. Because of her history of aiding and abetting terrorism, a police complaint was recently issued against her in Sweden for gross violations of international law.

But that came too late. During her tax-payer funded visit to Sweden, Khaled spoke at the May Day demonstrations of the Stalinist Swedish Communist Party and the Anarcho-syndicalist Trade Union Federation. She held publicly funded lectures at an Art Gallery and spoke on developments in the Middle East at the publicly- funded Södertörn University College.

Incredibly, Khaled also participated at a seminar on political activism arranged by the Left Party represented in Sweden’s Parliament.

The organizers of her appearances had nothing but praise for the PFLP leader. Anna Ahlstrand, Project Manager at Konsthall C, which is funded by the government’s Arts Grant Committee, declared “she is an icon for many people”. Jonatan Habib Engqvist, Project Manager at the Governmental Arts Grants Committee that financed her tour described the arch terrorist as “a very established feminist thinker.”

...

Unfortunately, Leila Khaled isn’t the first member of a Palestinian terrorist group to get special treatment from Stockholm. In 2006, the Swedish consulate in Jerusalem, in contravention of EU regulations, granted a Schengen visa to Hamas’ Minister of Refugees, Atef Adwan. Such a visa makes it possible for the bearer to travel across 15 European Countries. That decision provoked protests from Israel, which said it lent legitimacy to Hamas, and from France, which had rejected earlier visa requests by Hamas leaders.

So far Sweden’s decision to grant entry to Khaled – a leading representative of an organization deemed a terrorist group by more than 30 countries, including Sweden, all EU Member States and the United States – hasn’t spurred protest from the US or other European countries.

But the decision to allow her into Sweden could have broader consequences. It comes at a time when many European nations want to take back direct control of their national frontiers. Indeed, the European Commission is currently debating the re-imposition of border controls within the so-called Schengen region.

Leila Khalid’s taxpayer-funded trip comes even as Swedish authorities continue to turn a deaf ear to repeated calls from the Jewish Community and the Simon Wiesenthal Center to fund security for Jewish institutions facing increasing anti-Semitism and global Islamist threats.

The irresponsible behavior of Swedish authorities will likely doom any future role in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Back in 2000, following a more even-handed Middle East policy under then Swedish PM Goran Persson, Stockholm did help facilitate Israeli Palestinian negotiations.

I doubt that anyone in Israel would accept a mediation - or any other - role for the current Swedish government in Middle East 'peace process.' We already know too well where the Swedes stand. But Khaled's visit is yet another nail in the coffin of Swedish-Israeli relations.

More on Khaled here.

Labels: Atef Adwan, Carl Bildt, Leila Khaled, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Schengen visa, Swedish hypocrisy

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:04 PM 0 comments

Swedish trade union invites Leila Khaled to speak

As if we needed any more evidence of how much anti-Semitism there is in Sweden, a Swedish trade union has invited 'Palestinian' terrorist Leila Khaled (who tried and failed to hijack an El Al flight from Amsterdam to New York in 1970) to speak at its annual May Day event on Sunday.

A Swedish trade union has invited convicted Arab terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled to speak at its upcoming May Day celebration.

A post on the SAC-Syndikalisterna Facebook page proudly announces that “Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled” will be one of the speakers at the Stockholm LS of SAC – Syndikalisterna celebration, set for May 1.

Blame the Brits for this one. After the hijacking was foiled, the plane landed in London and Khaled was turned over to the British authorities (her partner was killed). The Brits should have locked her up for life, but they didn't.

Labels: Leila Khaled, Palestinian terrorists

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:19 AM 0 comments