Four Dutch NGO's - including the local branch of Oxfam - are laying off significant portions of their staff. But note where their activities are being cut back: In countries like Sudan and Rwanda where such activities are critical. Note where they're not being cut back: In 'Palestine' or 'Palestinian territories' where they're more political advocacy than humanitarian (Hat Tip: Mike P).
Minister Lilianne Ploumen of Foreign Trade and Development
Cooperation announced the cuts earlier this year. From January 1st 2016
the development aid organizations will be losing more than 80 percent of
their government subsidy, going from about 50 million euros per year to
between 7 and 15 million euros per year.
The Minister wants to limit subsidies to initiatives that helps
people in third world countries defend their rights – something she
calls “lobbying and advocacy”. She therefore largely stopped the subsidy
for normal development, such as helping small farmers in Africa break
into the local market. She called the cuts “painful”. But according to
Ploumen, the world has changed and the importance of official
development funds for the development of a country is decreasing. “It is
also no longer the only funding stream”, she said when she presented
the new policy, according to the Volkskrant. “Businesses now contribute
in many ways. The concept of development aid will eventually disappear.”
This translates into layoffs for the four large development aid
organizations. Hivos will be laying off 50 of its 145 employees at the
Dutch office, Oxfam Novib will be laying off about 75 of its 325,
Cordaid 69 of its 250 and Icco will lose 175 of its 350 employees. The
organizations will also stop funding to projects all over the world next
year. Hivos will be withdrawing support from, among others, a project
to stop female genital mutilation in Iraqi Kurdistan – a project that is
internationally regarded as successful. Icco is withdrawing from South
Africa, Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Oxfam Novib is stopping all
initiatives in Bangladesh, Rwanda, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
According to the four development aid organizations, focusing only on
lobbying and advocacy is a risky strategy. “You only have legitimacy to
lobby and advocate for something if you’re already active in the
place”, Marinus Verweij, director of Icco, said to the Volkskrant.
“Otherwise it is not credible.”
Multiple Arab media outlets reported an explosion in an area west of
Khartoum on Tuesday night. By Wednesday, the Sudanese military claimed
it had shot down an Israeli drone carrying two missiles.
The Israelis have neither confirmed nor denied. However, the Israelis
have historically targeted weapons in Sudan bound for the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
This was the case in 2012, when Israeli jet fighters struck the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Yarmouk facility in Khartoum housing
advanced Fajr-5 rockets. Israeli officials denied any knowledge of that raid. But weeks later, war erupted and Israel struck dozens of sites in Gaza believed to be housing the missiles that the air strike had missed.
The Yarmouk raid was not an isolated incident. In 2009, the Israelis
reportedly targeted Iranian weapons shipments in Sudan destined for
Hamas, conducting a strike on a large truck convoy. Another strike in 2011 incinerated a car carrying two men believed to be involved in the Iran-Hamas weapons pipeline. Just last year, Israeli commandos boarded the Klos-C
in the Red Sea, seizing a massive arms shipment from Iran destined for Sudan.
The link goes to this Haaretz article (who else in Israel would publish such a thing?). But when you read the story, blaming Israel doesn't exactly add up.
At least one of the three asylum seekers, T., was held in the Holot
detention center in the Negev before leaving Israel. T.'s relative,
Mesi, told Haaretz that the family identified him in the ISIS video. "He
appears in the video and in the photographs, definitely," she said. "He
had been in Israel since the end of 2007. He decided to go back after
the [Israeli] Ministry of Interior told him he would be better off."
According to Mesi, T. "went back to Uganda or
Rwanda – I think Rwanda – where they are not accepted. From there he
went on to Sudan, and from Sudan to Libya." She said that he was not
able to remain in Libya, and tried to reach Europe by boat. "I
understood that the boat was returned to Libya," she said, "where they
were arrested. Rumors have it that the extreme Islamic group snatched
them from the jail itself."
Mesi said she tried to dissuade T. from going to a
third county. "They told him he would be better off if he flies. I asked
him not to. He didn't tell us he had signed [papers] to leave." She
added that she and other friends of T. tried to tell him things could
change for the better, "that [asylum seekers] would be released from
Holot."
Mesi added that she did not keep in touch with T. after
he left Israel, but received updates from his brother, who resides in
Norway. "He told me that T. arrived in Sudan and Libya and that he
hadn't spoken to him in a long time because he was in Libyan prison."
She said T.'s brother saw the images of ISIS' execution, but did not
think his brother was among the group of Ethiopian Christians.
So why is Israel being blamed? Who sent the boat back to Libya? Why isn't Uganda or Rwanda or Sudan blamed? Why isn't the United States blamed because President Hussein Obama led from behind to depose the Gadhaffi's? Why isn't ISIS blamed?
But wait, it gets worse. There's this hit job from the Daily Beast (the title is enough to tell you where this article is headed).
At least three of the victims were Eritrean refugees who had been
deported from Israel. An Eritrean named Mesi Fashiya who works as a
translator for The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli NGO
that advocates for Israel’s estimated 46,000 refugees, identified the
victims.
Sadly, one was her relative.
Fashiya told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz
that her cousin, identified as “T.,” was deported from Israel “back to
Uganda or Rwanda—I think Rwanda—where they are not accepted. From there
he went on to Sudan, and from Sudan to Libya.”
“I recognized my relative, T., from the photos published by ISIS that
appeared on Facebook before the video was released,” Fashiya told +972 magazine.
T. was sent abroad in a program that Israel initiated to deal with
its burgeoning refugee problem. In a brochure obtained by The Daily
Beast, the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority “offers foreign
nationals from [Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, and Guinea
Conakry], who entered Israel illegally, the option to leave the country
voluntarily, in a fair and dignified manner.”
In the brochure,
Israel offers to assist in the “arrangement of travel documents,
purchase of airline tickets, and a financial grant in the amount of
$3,500 per person, including children,” to asylum seekers who agree to
leave.
While this may seem a fair deal, Israel’s record with asylum seekers and migrant workers is, for lack of a better word, awful.
Excuse me, but since when is little Israel responsible for solving the world's problems? Until ISIS came in, these people were economic refugees - what country in the world grants asylum to economic refugees? (Answer: The United States under Obama, but there are a lot of people who are unhappy about that, and it will likely change in 2017). The financial grant is quite generous for that part of the world. And note that Libya is not one of the countries on the list. These people could have gone to Eritrea or Ethiopia where they came from.
Funny how Israel is the only country blamed for this. Coincidence? I think not.
The Arabs know how to deal with their own. Libya has announced that it is banning 'Palestinians,' Syrians and Sudanese from the country, because... they're terrorists.
Libya has immediately and indefinitely banned
Palestinians, Sudanese and Syrians from entering the country, because it
suspects those citizens of belonging to armed groups operating in the
country, Arab News reported.
The report, picked up by the Kuwait news agency Kuna, said that Omar al-Sanki, Libya's interior minister, based the decision on a thorough screening of those nationals.
In addition, the ministry said it would require
Maltese nationals to receive security clearances before entering Libya,
because of suspicions that some have been providing logistical help to
militias in Libya, the report said.
I know. A lot of you Americans are wishing that the US would do the same....
Deja vu all over again: IAF reported to have destroyed missiles bound for Hamas in Sudan
Now where have we heardthisbefore? This is from the second link.
Sources in Khartoum claimed on Monday that Israeli forces struck a weapons arsenal which held long range missiles for Hamas.
The Arabic-language UK-based newspaper Al-Arab reported that
the government in Sudan is not confirming the incident in order to cover
up relations with the terrorist organization in Gaza. Such ties could
entangle the country's president Omar al-Bashir with an accusation of
supporting terrorism from the US and Western nations.
The attack came only hours after Israel accused the Sudanese government of storing long range missiles for Hamas.
Eye witnesses claimed to have seen a "huge explosion" and billows of
smoke before ambulances and firefighters arrived at the scene. Six
people were allegedly wounded in the attack.
Sudanese security forces stated that the huge explosion in a weapons
arsenal was the result of a fire that broke out and took place on Friday
morning in the al-Jili neighborhood of the capital.
The Sudanese Army Spokesman Khaled Sa'ad denied all connections in the incident to an attack by foreign forces.
Two weeks before the alleged Israeli strike, Sudan's President al-Bashir
was seen meeting with Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal in Qatar.
According to the report, eyewitnesses said they saw a “huge
explosion” after planes flew over the building. Six people were injured
in the attack, witnesses said. The resulting blaze required the services of large numbers of firefighters, they added.
Sudanese officials confirmed that there was an explosion, but denied
any connection to weapons or missiles. The officials did not accuse
Israel of the attack, but did say that it was carried out by “foreign
forces.”
There has been no independent confirmation of the story, which did
not appear in any other publication. Israel has not commented on the
story.
“[I am] not aware that any release is imminent,” Abu Bakr
al-Sideeg, spokesman for the Sudanese foreign ministry, stated Sunday.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was sentenced to death on May 15, in
accordance with Sharia law. Sharia law outlaws Muslim women marrying
non-Muslim men - and outlaws conversion under pain of death. Ishag, who
has refused to renounce her faith, also gave birth to a baby girl
Tuesday.
Ishag's husband, US citizen Daniel Wani, also denied that her release was imminent.
“No Sudanese or foreign
mediator contacted me. Maybe there are contacts between the Sudanese
government and foreign sides that I’m not aware of,” Wani told BBC. “As far as I’m concerned I will wait for the appeal which my lawyer submitted and I hope that my wife will be released.”
Manar Idriss, Sudan researcher for Amnesty International, reiterated that reports of a release remain unconfirmed.
“We’ve received no
confirmation that Meriam is going to be released and the appeal court
has yet to issue any such ruling confirming a release," she said.
Ishag was born to a Muslim father, but has insisted that she herself is not guilty of "apostasy," as she is not Muslim.
According to the British Telegraph,
she even produced a marriage certificate as evidence that she had not
committed adultery, and called three witnesses from her home town to
testify of her lifelong adherence to Christianity.
Sharia court
ultimately disagreed, and sentenced her to death and 100 lashes for
"adultery." The death sentence is not due to be carried out until 2016.
How 'humane' of them. They're going to let her nurse her newborn child for two years before they murder her.
Christian woman sentenced to hang in Sudan to be freed
A rare win for the good guys.
A Sudanese foreign ministry official has told AFP that a Christian Sudanese woman who was sentenced to hang for apostacy will be released.
Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag was condemned to death on May 15 under the
Islamic Sharia law that has been in place in Sudan since 1983 and which
outlaws conversions under pain of death.
"The lady will be freed within days in line with legal procedure that
will be taken by the judiciary and the ministry of justice," Abdullah
al-Azraq, a foreign ministry undersecretary, told AFP.
Azraq, who spoke via telephone from London, did not elaborate.
The 27-year-old gave birth to a baby girl on Tuesday in a women's prison in Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman.
Her husband, U.S. citizen Daniel Wani, visited Ishag and the baby on
Thursday, after being denied access earlier in the week, and told AFP both were in "good health."
Ishag was born to a Muslim father but told the court during her trial that she had never been a Muslim herself.
The court gave her three days to "recant" her faith and when she
refused, Ishag was handed the death penalty and sentenced to 100 lashes
for "adultery".
Under Sudan's interpretation of Sharia, a Muslim woman cannot marry a
non-Muslim man, so any such relationship is regarded as adulterous.
Especially given that her husband is a US citizen, she should leave Sudan and move to the US. You have to wonder how many more cases there are like this that we never hear about because there are no westerners involved.
The big show won't be until Monday, when the government hopes to bring most of the foreign diplomats in the country to Eilat, but the IDF has already posted its final inventory of the weapons discovered on the Klos-C - the Iranian weapons ship that was intercepted off the coast of Sudan this past week.
After detailed analysis carried out by the Engineering Corps, the IDF
found 40 M-302 rockets, with a range of between 90 to 160 kilometers,
hidden in crates.
The Klos C also carried 180 120mm. mortar shells and some 400,000 7.62mm. bullets.
“These
are advanced weapons that were intended to threaten the security of
millions of Israeli civilians. The IDF will continue in its mission to
prevent arms smuggling across the Middle East to various terrorist
organizations, under Iranian cover and funding,” the military said in a
statement.
Before being intercepted,
the ship was heading for Port Sudan, where the Iranian Quds Force had
planned to pick up the rockets and move them overland via Egypt and
into Gaza through smuggling tunnels, the IDF determined.
Wednesday morning, the IDF intercepted an Iranian shipment of rockets to terrorist organizations in Gaza 160 kilometers off the coast of Sudan.
Israel Navy forces identified the target, and upon arrival requested to board. With the full consent of the crew, the IDF soldiers opened a number of containers on board the ship. They discovered a substantial amount of weapons hidden behind bags of cement.
Let's go to the videotape.
So how did they get the full consent of the crew. Apparently, the captain realized he didn't have a choice.
As for the timing and location of the operation, the officer said
that various factors were taken into account, including the height of
the waves, “We were concerned that the ship's crew would think that we
were pirates, and that is why we identified ourselves from the outset as
the IDF, and when the captain looked right and left, he saw two Navy
missile ships, including additional vessels – and it was a show of force
he could not resist, and therefore the boarding of the ship was quiet.”
The officer said that the Turkish captain and the rest of the crew did not know that there were weapons on board.
Rumor has it that this is what the captain said when he was captured.
The operation was performed very close to the ship’s destination,
possibly, in order to avoid potential confrontation with Iranian naval
forces operating in the area. In previous occasions Israeli forces have
struck missile convoys in Sudan, on their long journey north through
Egypt to Sinai. The Iranian Navy is routinely operates in the Gulf of
Aden, Bab-el Mandeb and the southern part of the Red Sea, where the
Iranian Navy’s 29th Fleet recently thwarted two piracy
attacks on an Iranian oil tanker sailing at the Red Sea. Last month,
Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced that
his naval forces have foiled tens of attacks by international pirates on
the country’s cargo ships and oil tankers. He noted that the Iranian
Navy warships have escorted some 2,000 merchant vessels and freighters in the same period.
According
to UN Security Council resolutions, different countries can send their
warships to the Gulf of Aden and coastal waters of Somalia against the
pirates. Linking the Indian Ocean with the Suez Canal and the
Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Aden is an important energy corridor for
tankers transporting oil from the Persian Gulf to the West, via the Suez
Canal.
Hmmm. And they wonder why we don't just let them ship whatever they want into Gaza....
Iran’s experiences in Sudan demonstrate how traditional diplomacy is
subordinated to the Islamic Republic’s boarder, asymmetrical goals.
Sudan’s Islamist National Congress Party (NCP)-led government signed a military cooperation agreement with Iran in 2008; according to The Telegraph, the IRGC maintained
a base in Al Fashr, Darfur, as recently as September of 2011. The
Conflict Armaments Research report strongly suggests that Iranian
ammunition was used in at least some of the atrocities committed by
Khartoum-allied militias during the conflict in Darfur, and that Sudan
was a transit point for Iranian ammunition that eventually made its way
to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, on the other side of Africa.
This relationship is widely resented within Sudan itself. A
significant faction within Sudan’s notoriously divided regime is set
against a continued relationship with Iran, and in November of last
year, foreign minister Ali Karti spoke out
against the docking of Iranian warships in the Red Sea city of Port
Sudan. According to one East Africa-based analyst who works frequently
in Khartoum, the Sudanese government views its alliance with Iran as
purely opportunistic. “It’s a very self-interested relationship,” he
says. “In its propaganda, the NCP will talk about the infidel west, the
Zionists, the communists, the atheists — and they will put the Shia in
that list as well.”
For many Sudanese, the Yarmouk incident only demonstrated the cost of
Sudan’s conscription into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by its
Iranian allies—a conflict which has nothing to do with Sudan’s own
already-shaky internal affairs. “A lot of Sudanese are very upset, but
not at the actual Israeli strike,” the analyst said. “They’re upset
about the fact that the government is involving themselves in something
that’s a lot bigger than what Sudan can handle.” Amongst some of Sudan’s
leaders, and a significant part of its populace, Iran is an unwelcome
ally. Even a fellow pariah state — truly an ally of last resort—harbors
little real enthusiasm for the Islamic Republic and its policies.
But Iran has gotten exactly what it needs out of Sudan, regardless of
how facile and opportunistic the ties between the two countries really
are. Sudan is a beachhead for the IRGC — a transit point for weaponry
that allows Hezbollah to aid in the Assad regime’s survival, and Hamas
to rain Fajr 5s on the majority of Israel’s civilian population. It
doesn’t matter that Sudanese resent the bombing of their capital city,
or that Sudan is under international sanctions, or that Iran’s
relationship with such a problematic country is liable to deepen
perceptions of the Islamic Republic’s international isolation. All
across the continent, Iran’s expansionist foreign policy is in direct
conflict with its economic and soft power outreach—and Iran has
succeeded is using Africa to advance its interests anyway.
South Africa, for instance, seems at first glance like a signal
Iranian failure. Africa’s largest economy has totally caved to American
and E.U. pressure on Iranian oil purchases, even despite the
traditionally left-leaning foreign policy of the ruling African National
Congress. In early June, the country’s Department of Energy announced
that it had totally cut off its oil trade with Iran, and Trevor Houser
of the Rhodium Group, which tracks the effects of sanctions on Iran’s
oil sales, confirmed by email that “South African customs has not
recorded any oil imports from Iran for several months now.”
Iran’s oil trade with South Africa has evaporated, but the Islamic
Republic scored a crucial consolation prize: a major investment from
South African cell phone giant MTN, along with a raft of favors from the
South African government. According to a civil complaint filed in
District of Columbia federal court, MTN elbowed Turkcell, a Turkish
competitor, out of a 49% stake in an Iranian joint venture called
Irancell by “promising Iran that MTN could deliver South Africa’s vote
at the International Atomic Energy Agency, promising Iran defense
equipment otherwise prohibited by national and international laws, and
the outright bribery of high-level government officials in both Iran and
South Africa.”
The suit alleges that between 2003 and 2005, MTN won its Iranian
license through a series of lucrative kickbacks. These consisted of straightforward bribes
paid to Iranian officials, although the suit presents strong evidence
that South Africa’s pro-Iran votes at the IAEA between 2005 and 2008
were a quid pro quo for the Islamic Republic’s approval of MTN’s
Irancell investment. The complaint boasted over 60 pages of
documentation, including damning internal emails leaked by an employee
at MTN’s Tehran offices. It goes into specific detail about vehicles and
military equipment the South Africans would provide to Iran if MTN were
awarded the Irancell stake, a list which included “Rooivalk helicopters
(based on the U.S. Apache platform), frequency hopping encrypted
military radios, sniper rifles, G5 howitzers, canons…and other defense
articles.” (The weapons were never delivered, and the Turkcell case was
withdrawn in May of 2013–but only because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a
month earlier that international corporate civil suits could no longer
be tried in U.S. court).
The scandal has resulted in no criminal prosecutions in South Africa.
MTN still owns nearly half of Irancell, an arrangement that nets the
company over $117 million
a year. Irancell’s Iranian owner is a holding company whose investors
include Iran Electronics Industries, a government-connected electronics
and defense company that has been under U.S. sanctions
since September of 2008. Iran and the IRGC are still leveraging their
relationship with South Africa, even after the collapse of the
companies’ oil trade. And according to Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies, the country is “a very hospitable place for
Iranian sanctions-busting.” In early June, the U.S. Treasury Department added 37 Iranian front companies to its sanctions list. Three were based in South Africa.
This pattern—in which Iran scrapes for asymmetrical gains within a
challenging diplomatic environment, and in spite of its own internally
divided conventional diplomacy—repeated itself in Nigeria. In October of
2010, Nigerian authorities scored the largest seizure of an Iranian
weapons shipment in African history, when a container ship carrying
crates of rocket launchers and heavy mortars was impounded in the port
of Lagos. This embarrassment hardly ended Iran’s efforts in the country.
In June of 2013, a Hezbollah cell was uncovered in
the northern Nigerian city of Kano. And Iran has an asset in Nigeria
that’s arguably more valuable than a foothold for its Lebanese proxies:
Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, a radical Iranian-trained Shi’ite cleric and a
promoter of Iranian state ideology in Sub-Saharan Africa’s most populous
country.
...
But perhaps the most startling Iranian success in Africa has to do
with its pursuit of the ultimate asymmetrical objective: a nuclear
weapons capability. Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe inked a
uranium agreement with Iran in 2011, and Ahmadinejad visited Niger, the
world’s fourth-largest uranium producer, late in his second term as the
Islamic Republic’s president. A 2006 Wikileaks cable asserts that
Iran had smuggled Congolese uranium through ports in Tanzania. As for
Tanzania—its government has proven remarkably tolerant of Iranian
tankers operating under Tanzanian registration
in order to evade the oil sanctions regime. Tanzania is a close enough
U.S. ally to warrant a visit from Barack Obama during his July, 2013
trip to Africa. Iran can get what it needs even from African countries
with established, pro-western bona fides—and despite an almost total
absence of real friends in the continent.
As with its nuclear program, Iran has found its way around the
obstructions that diplomacy and statecraft are constantly throwing in
its path. Despite the pinch of international sanctions, and setbacks
like the Stuxnet computer virus, Iran has increased the number of its
operating uranium centrifuges, along with its stockpile of fissile
material. Thanks to diplomatic stalling tactics, like the ones perfected
by Iranian president-elect and former nuclear negotiator Hassan
Rowhani, and its patient, decades-long accumulation of nuclear
components, Iran has steadily progressed towards a nuclear weapons
capability —even in the face of a nearly-global effort at derailing
them.
Obama's half brother close friends with Sudan's Omar al-Bashir, IRS gave their foundation preferential treatment
In this photo, from the Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF) website,
headed by Malik, Omar al-Bashir can be seen dressed in black, to the
right. Another man to take notice of is seated directly to the right of
Bashir; his name is Suar Al Dahab.
A foundation headed by President Obama's half brother Malik, and called the Barack H. Obama Foundation received an IRS tax exemption within a month of its application despite having connections to the terrorist Bashir regime in Sudan (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
The Barack H. Obama Foundation (BHOF) is linked to top Sudanese officials, a regime accused of terrorism and genocide. Walid Shoebat reported:
It has been learned that the relationship between President Barack Obama’s half-brother Malik Obama and Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir is much closer than previously thought…
…In 2010, Malik Obama attended the Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO)
conference in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. One of the objectives of
the IDO is to spread Wahhabist Islam across the African continent.
Al-Bashir wasn’t just present at the conference; he supervised it.
Anti-government newspaper Hurriyat Sudan cited an unnamed opposition
source on Monday as saying that the Sudanese government had struck a deal with
Iran for building a base on the Sudanese coast.
Meanwhile, Sudanese rebel
group The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said on Sunday that Sudan’s
President Omar Bashir has reached a “very advanced” arrangement with Iran’s
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to establish a naval base either in Port Sudan
or elsewhere on the Red Sea, according to the Sudanese anti-government news
outlet Al Rakoba.
The accusations came after two Iranian naval vessels,
the 1,400-ton frigate Jamaran and the 4,700-ton support ship Bushehr, docked in
Port Sudan on Saturday morning.
Mahjoub Hussein, a spokesman for the
Justice and Equality Movement, said that the visit of the Iranian warships, the
second in recent months, was not intended as a message to Israel but rather to
test regional opinion regarding the establishment of an Iranian military
base.
According to reports in the Sudanese press, Sudan’s army
spokesperson Colonel Al- Sawarmi Khalid Sa’ad said on Friday that the visit by
the Iranian military vessels is part of a “military exchange” with Iran. The
ships are scheduled to stay for three days, during which they will be open for
view by the public.
Would an Iranian military base in the Red Sea be a game changer for Israel, and therefore bring about military action? Consider this:
By extending its naval presence as
far as Sudan and the Red Sea, Iran would gain several advantages, including in
regards to combating Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden but also in gaining
control over the Red Sea shipping route, part of the channel through which Iran
ships arms to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. An Iranian naval presence in Port
Sudan would also upset Iran’s Sunni rival Saudi Arabia, located just across the
Red Sea.
If having a military base in Sudan means that Iran will have the ability to ensure that its weapons shipments to Gaza make it through, Israel cannot stand aside. It would have to stop the construction of such a military base.
You are looking at the deadliest weapon of them all. This one happens to be located in Maaleh Adumim in the Judean desert just outside of Jerusalem, but it could have been located anywhere in Judea, Samaria, 'east' Jerusalem, or for that matter, in 'west' Jerusalem, the Galilee, the Negev or Metropolitan Tel Aviv. You see, there is no weapon in the world that is as deadly as a Jewish home in Israel. The proof? Compare the world's reaction to the construction of Jewish homes to its reaction to murder and genocide in other countries in this region.
Forget the cluster bomb and the mine, the poison gas shell and even
tailored viruses. Iran can keep its nuclear bombs. They don’t impress
anyone in Europe or in Washington, DC. Genocide is equally not worthy of
attention when in the presence of the fearsome weapon of terror that is
an Israeli family of four moving into a new apartment downwind from
Jerusalem.
Sudan may have built a small mountain of African corpses, but it
can’t expect to command the full and undivided attention of the world
until it does something truly outrageous like building a house and
filling it with Jews. Since the Sudanese Jews are as gone as the Jews of
Egypt, Iraq, Syria and good old Afghanistan, the chances of Bashir the
Butcher pulling off that trick are rather slim.
Due to the Muslim world’s shortsightedness in driving out its Jews
from Cairo, Aleppo and Baghdad to Jerusalem, the ultimate weapon in
international affairs is entirely controlled by the Jewish State. The
Jewish State’s stockpile of Jews should worry the international
community far more than its hypothetical stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
No one besides Israel cares much about the Iranian bomb. But when Israel
builds a house, then the international community tears its clothes,
wails, threatens to recall its ambassadors and boycott Israeli peaches.
You can spit on the White House carpets and steal all the gold in
Greece. You can blow up anything you like and threaten anyone you will,
but you had better not lift a drill near Gilgal, where Joshua and a few
million escaped Hebrew slaves pitched their camp.
Obama has yet to respond to the Muslim Brotherhood coup in Egypt. The
gangs of paid rapists assaulting women in Tahrir Square on behalf of
the Sharia state are nothing for the White House to worry about.
Everyone has their standards and he and the international community have
theirs. There are things that we all cannot abide. And for all the Miss
America answers about ending war, hunger and people who wear plaid in
public, the one thing that everyone will stand up against or sit down in
opposition to is the Israeli house.
“Two Iranian warships would also visit Port Sudan harbor on November 30
and would stay at the harbor for three days within the military maritime
cooperation,” AFP quoted Sawarmi Khaled Saad, Sudan’s army spokesman,
as saying.
Sudan’s relationship with Iran has come under scrutiny following
Israel's alleged October 23 bombing of the Yarmouk installation, which
led to speculation that Iranian weapons were stored or manufactured at
the site.
A pair of Iranian warships spent two days in Port Sudan
last month in a visit Saad said evidenced the “strong political,
security and diplomatic relations between the two states.”
...
According to Sudan’s Al-Rakoba
daily, Khidr said that its military factories had enriched the country,
making it a “target for enemies of the nation.” His comments reportedly
came during a ceremony condemning “Israeli aggression against the
Yarmouk compound."
Earlier this month, Sudanese President Omar
Bashir said Khartoum would seek to acquire “advanced weaponry” to
counter “repeated Israeli attacks.”
Echoing Tehran’s terminology
and rhetoric, Bashir said Israel was “the Zionist enemy and Israel will
remain the enemy,” Sudanese news sources reported.
Curiously, the Sudanese have also decided to move the factory outside Khartoum. What - there aren't enough human shields in the city? Maybe they can ask Hamas to teach them how.
In any event, I hope they will keep an eye on those Iranian ships. We wouldn't want anything to happen to them now, would we? Heh.
Israel to strike ships carrying Iranian arms to Gaza
Russia Today is reporting based on a Sunday Times of London report that Israel plans to strike a ship that is carrying Iranian missiles to Gaza.
Israeli spy satellites spotted a cargo vessel in the Iranian port of
Bandar Abbas that was allegedly Gaza-bound and carrying arms, the Sunday
Times reported.
“Regardless of the ceasefire agreement, we will attack and destroy any shipment of arms to Gaza once we have spotted it,” an Israeli defense official told the newspaper.
The
vessel reportedly began its voyage last week just as Israel and Hamas
agreed to a ceasefire ending eight days of violence in Gaza, in which
over 150 Palestinians died. The cargo is believed to include Fajr-5
rockets, similar to those used by Hamas in the conflict, and Shahab-3
ballistic missiles.
The ship is set to travel through the Red Sea, Sudan
and Egypt, according to the Sunday Times report. The newspaper also
cited Israeli officials speculating that Iran could be moving
longer-range ballistic missiles into Sudan, which could be aimed at
Israel from the African country.
The Sunday Times’ report comes a
day after the Hamas leadership announced they aren’t ready to stop
arming themselves, despite the recently-agreed truce and ceasefire.
"We have no choice but to continue to bring in weapons by all possible means," senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar told reporters, adding that he expected Tehran would "increase its military and financial support to Hamas."
Earlier on Wednesday, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal thanked Shia-majority Iran for what he described as arms and funding.
There is nothing new in Israel saying that it will destroy any weapons being shipped to Gaza. It also has nothing to do with the 'cease fire' agreement, which only deals with Gaza and not with actions outside of Gaza.
I want to stick with the weapons smuggling for a minute - I actually pulled this to post last night and did not get to it.
The flow of weapons into the Gaza Strip continues, according to
sources familiar with the Palestinian resistance logistics, despite the
ongoing Israeli assault on the Strip and Syria’s compromised role as a
conduit for weapons.As the conflict enters its sixth day, Hezbollah and
the Iranian Revolutionary Guard units specialized in smuggling weapons
from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Sudan, and other countries into the Gaza
Strip are on high alert.
These weapons usually begin their journey in Iranian or Syrian ports.
From there, they head to Sudan, where they are transported to the Sinai
in Egypt and end up in Gaza.
But such units have other routes they can use to reach Gaza.
Sources say the communication lines between the Resistance in Lebanon
and various groups in Gaza, especially Hamas remain open and active.
Resistance factions are currently assessing the damage inflicted on
the long-range missile arsenals Israel claims to have destroyed in the
raids following the assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmad
al-Jaabari.
But it seems that the Palestinian resistance learned its lessons from
the 2008 aggression against Gaza and the 2006 war on Lebanon, since a
large number of ‘strategic’ arsenals are still safe.
Sources told Al-Akhbar that the focus is now on transporting
large quantities of long-range missiles, considerable numbers of which
have already reached the Strip since the beginning of the Israeli
assault.
If anyone thought that the 'cease fire' would mean that Hamas and Iran would stop trying to smuggle weapons through Sudan, they can already stop deluding themselves. Sudan announced without comment on Thursday morning that it stopped a 'sabotage attempt,' which is presumably an attempt by Israel to stop Hamas' weapons smuggling.
Sudan's security services have thwarted a "sabotage attempt," state-linked media reported on Thursday, without elaborating.
"The
security and intelligence agency frustrated a sabotage attempt this
morning," the Sudanese Media Center said in a brief text message sent to
mobile phones. Officials could not immediately be reached for comment
on the report.
Witnesses told Reuters they saw tanks and armored
vehicles moving down a major street in central Khartoum after midnight.
Security at the defense ministry, intelligence headquarters and other
buildings appeared normal early in the morning, a Reuters witness said.
Anyone want to start taking bets on how long this 'cease fire' lasts? Schools in southern Israel remain closed. And while I reported on Wednesday night that 12 rockets were shot into Israel between the cease fire's effectiveness at 9:00 and 10:00 pm, by midnight that count was up to 20 rockets.
There haven't been any since midnight (as of this writing), so I guess the terrorists decided to get some sleep.
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
