In January 2016, the Obama administration successfully negotiated the release
of four Americans who had been imprisoned in Iran in exchange for the
release of seven Iranians who had been imprisoned in the United States.
(A fifth American prisoner
was released separately.) At around the same time, the U.S.
airlifted the equivalent of USD$400 million in various currencies to
Tehran, sparking conspiracy theories about the timing:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was among those who seized on the timing and cloak-and-dagger delivery method, which was first reported
by the Wall Street Journal, saying it proved suspicions that the Obama
administration had tried to hide a payment for the four Americans,
including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. GOP candidate Donald
Trump called it an example of the administration’s foreign policy
failures.
“Obama administration sent plane load of cash
to #Iran as ransom as part of deal on hostages. Just unreal,” tweeted
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a long-standing critic of the Iran talks.
As with other issues that would normally fall by the wayside in a
normal daily news cycle, the payout to Iran became prime fodder for yet
another election-year debate:
State Department spokesman John Kirby joined Bill Hemmer
on "America's Newsroom" to defend a $400 million cash transfer to Iran
during the release of four Iranian-held U.S. hostages.
Kirby said the money had been frozen in a trust fund in the U.S. for decades and it was "their money."
He asserted that the fact that the transaction occurred during the
release of the detained Americans was "coincidental." Hemmer pressed
Kirby, saying that it appears that this cash transfer was kept secret
and was effectively a "ransom."
"It looks bad," Hemmer said.
In reality, however, the money transfer was the result of a settlement of a long-standing claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague around the same time that the prisoners were released.
So why should it bother us that $400 million was paid in small unmarked bills, in cash, via an unmarked airplane in violation of US law? At the third link, Robert Gehl explains:
So those are the facts. Yet Snopes conveniently leaves out one key
detail: the Iranians demanded this payment as a condition of releasing
those four Americans.
Whatever the terms were before, and whether or not we were going to
eventually give them this money anyway, is inconsequential. Iran
demanded the money, so we gave it to them. Period. But that’s not how
they see it:
“[T]he money transfer was the result of a settlement of a
long-standing claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague
around the same time that the prisoners were released. The Tribunal was
created specifically to deal with diplomatic relations between Iran and
the United States.”
Snopes spends most of the article rehashing points that nobody
disputes – the story was covered before, the money was owed to Iran, blah, blah, blah.
The point is that Snopes is conveniently glossing over the most
salient and important news item to come out of the initial story: that
Iran demanded the money in exchange for the hostages and that Iranian
officials call the money a “ransom payment.”
Snopes needs to go back to debunking claims of the Loch Ness Monster, Elvis and Hitler and stop playing with the big boys.
Sorry, but in my book Snopes no longer has any credibility on anything political.
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.
Belgium's state broadcaster reported that
the Belgian-born French citizen was injured in a shootout that ended
with his capture. The Belgian counter-terrorism source said two people
were wounded.
"We have him," tweeted Theo Francken, Belgium's state secretary for asylum policy and migration.
The
26-year-old Abdeslam was brought to a hospital after being shot in the
leg, CNN Belgium affiliate VTM reported, citing a police source. The
same broadcaster said two suspects may still be in the house in
Molenbeek where Abdeslam was captured.
Three
explosions were heard in that area early Friday evening, CNN French
affiliate BFMTV reported, though it wasn't clear if those were
controlled blasts or part of a continuing operation.
Molenbeek, the impoverished Brussels suburb where Friday's raid took place, has a reputation as a hotbed for jihadism.
Several members of its large, predominantly Muslim population -- many
of whom are first-, second- and third-generation immigrants from North
Africa -- have been linked to terror plots and attacks.
Last
fall, Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens cited Molenbeek as a place
where more needs to be done to address what he called Belgium's "foreign
fighter problem."
...
Earlier Friday, the Belgian federal
prosecutor's office revealed that the 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam's
fingerprints and DNA were found in a Brussels apartment raided three
days earlier. One person was killed and two people escaped that
operation, according to authorities.
The man killed by a special forces sniper was Mohamed Belkaid, an Algerian who used the name Samir Bouzid, and who is believed to have directed the Paris attackers via calls from Belgium, according to the prosecutor's office.
Belkaid
is believed to have helped Abdeslam travel prior to the attacks and
transferred money to a female cousin of Paris ringleader Abdelhamid
Abaaoud following the attack, the Belgian senior counter-terrorism
official told CNN in January.
Authorities
believe Abdeslam was using the apartment as a hideout following the
Paris attacks, according to the Belgian counter-terrorism official.
...
Investigators think Abdeslam may have been
the driver of a black Renault Clio that dropped off three suicide
bombers near the Stade de France, one of the attack sites near Paris.
They also believe he had worn a suicide belt found on a Paris street
after the attacks.
He is believed to
have called friends to take him to Belgium after the attacks. They
passed through police checkpoints, but Abdeslam had not yet been
identified as a suspect and they were allowed to continue on their way.
Surveillance video emerged of him and another man at a gas station near the Belgian border the day after the attacks.
He has eluded authorities ever since.
You have to wonder whether ISIS will try to take hostages in an attempt to spring him, or whether being targeted by hostage-taking to exchange for terrorists is something that only happens to Israel, which finds itself urged by 'friends' to give in to the hostage-takers.
“[Saleh] al-Arouri is not in Turkey at the moment,” sources from the
Turkish Foreign Ministry told Hürriyet Daily News. The same sources,
nonetheless, declined to elaborate on whether al-Arouri had ever resided
in Turkey, as Israeli officials have claimed, and whether he was
recently deported, as news reports have suggested.
The
explanation by Turkish officials following months-long silence on the
issue came only days after Israeli Channel 10 reported last week Turkey
had bowed to pressure by the United States and ordered al-Arouri, who Israel has accused of organizing terrorist attacks in the West Bank, to leave the country.
Channel
10 suggested the Turkish government agreed to al-Arouri’s ouster
because it was one of the prerequisites for Turkey’s entry into the
Western coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL).
The explanation by senior Foreign Ministry sources came
on the same day when Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’ political
bureau, was scheduled to arrive in Turkey for a meeting with President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, amid the flurry of regional contacts made by
Hamas, which have intensified since the recent nuclear deal between Iran and Western powers.
I believe that Naftali Frenkel HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) was a US citizen, and I have to wonder why the United States did not demand Arouri's extradition to face charges in the US. I'm sure Frenkel's family is wondering the same thing.
Here's hoping the Mossad finds Arouri soon and deals with him the way Israel knows how to deal with terrorists.
Kayla Mueller, an American woman who was allegedly killed last week in a coalition bombing of an Islamic State encampment, had a Syrian boyfriend who is a prominent member of the Syrian revolutionary groups. But the boyfriend, Omar al-Khani, has a story that doesn't quite add up.
Something also doesn’t ring true about his account of how he met
Mueller. He claims she answered an ad for a roommate in Cairo, where
he’d moved after spending several years in Sudan working as “events
marketing” executive, and where she’d traveled on a short vacation. (Who
knew there was a market for event planning in Sudan?) The Sudan
connection jumps out, because at home in Arizona Mueller had been
actively engaged in Darfur-related protests. Maybe the story in the Mail
is accurate, but it is also plausible that they had been in contact
online regarding Sudan before, and that’s why she went to visit him in
Cairo.
Al Khani was in Cairo when the Arab Spring broke out. Soon the
ferment spread to Syria, and he went back there to participate in the
anti-Assad movement. He
soon became a “coordinator” of a “Facebook battalion of
revolutionaries” that facilitated communications among anti-Assad forces.
He claims the title of “Secretary General of the Syrian Revolution
Coordinators.” Before long, he was a go-to guy for western media, being
quoted about Syrian events in the Telegraph, Financial Times, Die Welt, Public Radio International,
and other publications. He also worked as a photographer for Reuters,
and his photos were run by Vanity Fair, AFP, and other media. He was
regularly traveling to rebel-held areas of Syria as a photographer.
In other words, al Khani was pretty much a celebrity in Syrian
revolutionary circles, with considerable familiarity with ISIS. It is
almost inconceivable that ISIS did not know who he was. But in the Daily Mail
interview he presents himself as just some Syrian guy, and plays down
his activism: indeed, that isn’t mentioned at all. Why so shy all of a
sudden about describing his work? He was General Secretary, after all,
and had been quite assiduous in promoting his role as an activist in
print and film. Now all of a sudden he hides his light under a bushel
basket.
And of course Syrian revolutionary circles are rife with Islamists of
all stripes, from the Muslim Brotherhood to numerous varieties of
Salafists. Al Khani navigated in those circles for years. He did not
mention much about religion from what I’ve seen, though an
acknowledgement of receiving funds from Muslim Brotherhood members
and an expression of gratitude to people in Turkey for help are
tantalizing clues.
That all raises questions about his relationship with ISIS, and their
treatment of him. He obviously had deep connections in the Syrian
opposition. That had to have mattered.
Again, his word is the sole basis for reports that ISIS held him
captive and tortured him, and then freed him. Twice. Maybe it happened,
but maybe it didn’t.
The story of the reason for his fateful trip with Mueller in August,
2013 also strains credulity. He supposedly made the trip to one of the
most dangerous cities on earth to fix the wifi at the Medicins Sans Frontiers office
in Aleppo. Events marketing executive, photographer, activist,
filmmaker, and . . . wifi repairman? Quite the Renaissance Man.
The Daily Mail story also suggests that Mueller insisted
that al Khani take her to Syria with him on this trip, and insinuates
she hadn’t been there before. But she posted pictures from “Souria” (a
tell that she had been radicalized) she had taken earlier, so why the
suggestion that she had to pester al Khani to take her along?
Finally, I don’t find the story of Mueller ruining her chance at
freedom by refusing to acknowledge that she was his wife to be credible.
Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe. But it sounds like a convenient tale to
explain why he could not bring her out. Again, we have only his word
that he tried.
Abdullah Abu Rahma, coordinator of the popular committee in the village
of Bil’in where Kayla joined the protests, told ISM: “Kayla came to
Palestine to stand in solidarity with us. She marched with us and faced
the military that occupies our land side by side with us. For this,
Kayla will always live in our hearts. We send all our support to her
family and will continue, like Kayla, to work against injustice wherever
it is.”
...
With the ISM, Kayla worked with Palestinians nonviolently resisting the
confiscation and demolitions of their homes and lands. In the Sheikh
Jarrah neighborhood of Occupied East Jerusalem, she stayed with the Al
Kurd family to try and prevent the takeover of their home by Israeli
settlers.
Kayla accompanied Palestinian children to school in the neighborhood of
Tel Ruimeda in Al-Khalil (Hebron) where the children face frequent
attacks by the Israeli settlers and military. She stayed with villagers
in Izbat Al Tabib in a protest tent to try to prevent the demolition of
homes in the village. She joined weekly Friday protests in Palestinian
villages against the confiscation of their lands due to Israel’s illegal
annexation wall and settlements.
Guy Bechor explains who Kayla Mueller was (original in Hebrew - I improved on the Bing translation).
"For the wise person,
a hint is sufficient enough, and but a fool needs a stick on the head:" A young American girl, Kayla
Mueller (Jewish?), taken by ISIS, was killed this week in a Jordanian air force bombing. She was a familiar figure in our area. She was hostile to Israel and supported the 'Palestinians,' demonstrating against us in Bil'in, Sheikh Jarrah, and at checkpoints. She slandered Israel worldwide, and was a member of anti-Israel organizations like the International Solidarity Movement. She was like many other fools who collect illusions and didn't
understand how much she was being used. Incidentally, before she was killed, she was not kept
as a hostage, but was given as booty to an ISIS commander to be his private maidservant.
Please share this. The mainstream media will not publish the truth.
Indeed. I heard that the White House already has 'noted' Mueller's 'work in Israel and the Palestinian territories.'
Note that's the day after the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by 'Palestinian' terrorists this past summer. If that stands, it means that the kidnapping and murder would not by justiciable by the International Criminal Court.
Not that it's likely to matter. The court is likely to be institutionally biased against Israel anyway.
There is no reason to think the prosecutor or Court are eager for
Israel/Palestine cases, and a lot of reasons to think they are not,
given the disproportionate political headaches they entail.
Yet
there is cause to think that the the Court is a most improper venue for
sorting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, even absent any bias,
the Court is structured in a way that cannot do equal justice, and is
thus properly seen as a Palestinian tool against Israel. Moreover,
recent statements by the Prosecutor give troubling evidence that she may
be willing to replace legal analysis with the off-the-shelf views of
the “international community” on the conflict.
To be clear, I
think the most likely outcome from the Palestinian effort is no full
investigation of either side, at least any time soon. Rather, I am
trying to explain why the Palestinians see the ICC as a good bet – one
more likely to break their way than not. This is important because many
distinguished jurists and academics
not unsympathetic to the Palestinians have warned them that they have
more to loose than gain from ICC proceedings. But they went ahead
anyway, which means they have a different analysis – one that I try to
reconstruct here.
The Court’s track record suggests it is
incapable of rendering impartial justice in an ongoing bilateral
conflict. The Court is not some well-established, Olympian seat of
judgment. Rather, it is a weak, conflicted and floundering institution, beset by profound embarrassments that might affect its decision-making.
It has completed only three cases, with two convictions. Most recently,
it has seen two of its highest-profile matters – the only ones
involving sitting heads of state – disintegrate. These were the
prosecutions of Kenya’s president for election violence, and of Sudan’s
president Bashir, for genocide. Both proceedings failed because of the
persistent, and in the case of Kenya, subtle, non-cooperation of the
target regime. (Despite their current embrace of the ICC, the
Palestinians have long been on record opposing the ICC’s arrest warrant
against Bashir.) The ICC has proven itself completely incapable of
prosecuting a case against an unwilling regime, especially an
authoritarian or illiberal one.
Former ISIS hostages: No, Sotloff didn't convert; Yes, he fasted on Yom Kippur
When Stephen Sotloff HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) was murdered by ISIS, and it was publicized that he was an Israeli citizen and observed Yom Kippur, at least one blogger attacked him for converting to Islam (see the comments to that post).
Former
hostages said that a majority of the Western prisoners had converted
during their difficult captivity. Among them was Mr. Kassig, who adopted
the name Abdul-Rahman, according to his family, who learned of his
conversion in a letter smuggled out of the prison.
Only
a handful of the hostages stayed true to their own faiths, including
Mr. Sotloff, then 30, a practicing Jew. On Yom Kippur, he told his
guards he was not feeling well and refused his food so he could secretly
observe the traditional fast, a witness said.
'Most pro-Israel administration evah' refused to assist Israel in locating body of missing IDF soldier
I'm sure that many of you recall the incident from this past summer in which the body of IDF soldier Oron Shaul was snatched from a burnt out APC in Gaza City's Shujaiyya neighborhood. It now turns out that the IDF requested assistance from the FBI in finding Oron's body and was turned down. Why the FBI? Because Hammas hacked into Shaul's Facebook page and Facebook's servers are located in the United States. The IDF hoped that it could find out where Hamas was located using the IP address from which Hamas was posting to the Facebook page. Walla.com (via Israel Hayom) explains.
On July 22, as international
news reports carried Hamas' claim of Shaul's capture, the IDF really had
no idea whatsoever what happened to the Israeli soldier. The only
statement made by the IDF at that point was that Shaul was missing in
action. Even two days later, the IDF still did not know if Shaul had
been kidnapped by Hamas or whether he was dead.
Kidnapping an Israeli soldier is one of the
highest priorities for Hamas, since Israel has in the past proven
willing to trade large numbers of imprisoned terrorists to get back just
one soldier, as happened in the case of Gilad Schalit. The news of
Hamas' alleged kidnapping triggered wild celebrations in Gaza.
The IDF and Israeli intelligence agencies
initiated a massive man hunt for Shaul, but to no avail. "We simply did
not know whether he was alive or not," an Israeli military official told
me, "or whether Hamas had killed him or whether Hamas had simply
kidnapped his body. But we had immediately set up a dragnet around the
entire area to encircle the terrorists and prevent them from leaving the
general area. We knew we did not have much time."
The dragnet proved porous, as Hamas terrorists
had many ways of escaping especially through the network of underground
tunnels they had built.
But in hacking Shaul's Facebook page, Hamas
may have inadvertently given away the location of the terrorists who had
Shaul or his body. That's because whenever a Facebook account is
accessed, Facebook's servers would automatically keep a record of the
Internet Protocol address where the account was accessed. IP addresses
are leased, which then can provide a geographic location of the IP
address where the Facebook account was hacked. In addition, there was
also a remote possibility that Shaul had been carrying his cell phone
although Israeli soldiers are not supposed to take their cell phones
into battle. But if he had done so, then it was also theoretically be
possible that Hamas had hacked into the mobile Facebook application on
Shaul's phone. If the Israelis could obtain the Facebook server data as
soon as possible, they thought they might have had a chance to find the
whereabouts of the Hamas terrorists who took Shaul.
Israel made an urgent appeal to the FBI for
help in trying to determine the remote source or information that would
be stored on Facebook servers indicating the location where Shaul's page
had been hacked. Upon receiving the request from Israel in Washington
on July 21, the FBI immediately issued a "preservation letter" to
Facebook ordering them to preserve all data saved on their server
pertaining to the Shaul's account.
At 4:25 p.m. on July 21, the FBI contacted a
United States Attorney's Office in a nearby district to initiate the
legal process to get a court order to serve Facebook for server
information on the account belonging to Israeli soldier Oron Shaul.
"Due to HAMAS status as a Designated Terrorist
Organization (DTO), there is a great effort to locate those who
kidnapped and/or killed ORON," read an FBI email to the U.S. Attorney's
Office, "HAMAS is already using the kidnapping as propaganda, which is
material support to a DTO."
In the email, the FBI noted there was unusual
activity on Shaul's Facebook account after the time of his kidnapping
and said it needed more information from Facebook that it could only
obtain with a court order to be able to fully determine what "HAMAS was
doing with Oron's Facebook account and possibly his phone." Was the U.S.
Attorney's Office in a position, the FBI wanted to know, to immediately
obtain a court order for the FBI to deliver to Facebook?
Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Attorney's Office
thought it was near ready to be able to immediately obtain a court
order. But before it could obtain such an order, it needed specific
information on Shaul's Facebook account that it could present to the
judge.
...
But the next day, July 22, the
U.S. Attorney's Office received a startling response from the FBI:
"Thank You for your effort, input and assistance. I regret to inform you
we have been denied approval to move forward with legal process. We
were told by our management we need a MLAT [Mutual Legal Assistance
Treaty] in order to continue to assist our partner with the request in
question." Those words put an immediate halt to the Israeli request.
An MLAT is a standardized legal agreement
between the United States and other countries that spells out the legal
and diplomatic protocols in processing requests for legal information
pertaining to court cases in either the United States or in another
country. MLATs go through various bureaucratic channels, usually take
weeks to process and would generally be used for non-pressing legal
matters in which the United States or another country was carrying out a
legal process such as a prosecution involving a citizen of another
country.
Prosecutors familiar with their use say that
an MLAT would definitely not be used in an urgent life-or-death
intelligence or counter-terrorist incident, especially with a close ally
such as Israel. "In a pressing court matter, there is no way the USG
would invoke an MLAT with a close ally," said a veteran prosecutor who
has worked on international counter-terrorism cases.
Law enforcement officials knowledgeable about
this incident say both prosecutors and FBI were shocked at the sudden
turn of events. "This sudden reversal was devastating," said one law
enforcement official who was intimately familiar with this incident.
"For those working this case, they felt this decision was tantamount to a
death sentence. Nothing less."
And thus, the FBI was never able to supply
Israel with any information on Shaul's Facebook account that might have
led to the location of the soldier or his remains that had been seized
by Hamas.
A reminder of the difference between the 'Palestinians' and Israel
Isn't it a pity that the New York Post chose to depict this mass adulation of terrorists as showing the difference between Israel and Hamas... as if Abu Bluff's 'Palestinian Authority' doesn't also regard the two terrorist murderers who were buried last week as 'martyrs.'
As The Jerusalem Post reports, thousands of mourners marched Tuesday
in honor of two men who were the lead suspects in the murder of three
Israeli teens.
The two dead men, Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha, were both
affiliated with Hamas, and were killed during a gun battle with Israeli
troops. Mourners waved Hamas and Palestinian flags as they carried the
two bodies through Hebron.
We’re talking about two men whose victims were not soldiers but three Israeli students.
Now compare this to the Israeli response to the horrific, retaliatory
killing of 16-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khudair. Israeli
authorities pulled all stops to hunt down and arrest those suspected in
the killing.
Three Israelis have now been indicted for the killing of this
innocent Arab boy. Two of these suspects also face charges of trying to
commit other crimes against Arabs.
Israel is not perfect. But in the clash between the Jewish state and
its enemies, it helps to remember that one side uses all its might to
bring to justice those who target innocent life — while the other too
often celebrates this deadly work so long as the target is a Jew.
Yes, but that 'clash' is not just between Israel and Hamas. It's between Israel and the 'Palestinians.'
Hamas and the 'Palestinian Authority' (Fatah) only differ on tactics. They don't differ on goals. Nearly all 'Palestinians' regard those two terrorists as heroes. It's time to stop pretending that it's 'only' Hamas that hates us.
The two 'Palestinians' who kidnapped and murdered Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach aren't going to be part of any 'prisoner exchange.' They've been eliminated.
The operation was carried out by the Yamam, a special unit of
the Border Police, and the IDF, in Hevron. An attempt was made to arrest
the suspects but an exchange of fire developed in which they were
killed.
The operation was made possible by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), which located the murderers' hideout. In
the last few days, several Hamas suspects were arrested and questioned
on the assumption that they were assisting the fugitives.
"We have been pursuing these two since the abduction,” said
Judea and Samaria Division Commander Brig. Gen. Tamir Yadai. “Last night
the investigation ripened as regards their location and we have been
surrounding the place where they were hiding since 1:00 a.m. We killed
them and there are arrests of several other collaborators.”
"We began areesting suspects and at the same time we applied [IDF]
'pressure cooker' protocol on the house. It is a big house and they hid
out in a secret arms store on the basement floor. The floor is not
visible from the outside. At one stage they went outside and opened
fire. One was shot and the other fell inside, into a hole.”
"There was use of weapons, like hand grenades and the deployment of
explosives that were prepared ahead of time,” he added. “We know that
they have been staying in this location quite a lot in the last few
days. We know for certain that they were not here the whole time. They
had weapons like M-16s, a Kalachnikov and handguns, too.”
Thank God they weren't arrested. Thank God they were killed. I only wish they had died a slow and painful death.
The families of the three murdered Israeli teens are also relieved.
"Throughout the period [after the murders], there were two people
going around there with two pistols and automatic weapons, who have
nothing to lose," [Racheli Frenkel - mother of Naftali HY"D] recounted to Walla! News Tuesday
morning. "We were afraid that more innocent people would be hurt, and we
are pleased that this was resolved without any injuries to our
soldiers."
"We know that the Shin Bet [Israel Security Agency - ed.] and the
military were working on it intensely," she added. "I'm glad they were
able to accomplish their mission without harming soldiers."
Citing Israeli officials who have confirmed fresh details that have come
to light, Army Radio says that the incident appears to have been borne
out of a misunderstanding between the two men who brokered the
cease-fire – US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary-General
Ban Ki-moon – and the Israeli government.
Israel and the US accused Hamas of violating the cease-fire.
For his part, Hamas diplomatic bureau chief Khaled Mashaal claimed that
there was no violation of the truce, since Hamas never agreed to hold
its fire against IDF soldiers who were operating on Gazan soil in search
of tunnels.
Israeli officials confirmed to Army Radio that in
retrospect Mashaal and Hamas never committed to a truce deal whereby it
pledged not to act against IDF troops in Gaza even though Washington led
the Israeli government to believe that Hamas did in fact promise to do
just that.
“We
demanded two things from the Americans,” a diplomatic source in
Jerusalem is quoted as telling Army Radio. “We wanted a cease-fire, and
we wanted complete freedom of operation against the tunnels, without the
threat of coming under fire from Hamas.”
“We demanded it in
writing, that Hamas accepts these conditions,” the official said. “There
were also the statements to the press.”
Kerry broke the news of
the three-day, unconditional truce in a statement to the media. A UN
spokesperson also confirmed that as part of the cease-fire, IDF troops
would be permitted to remain in place, where they would have a free hand
to ferret out more tunnels. In other words, the perception in Israel
was that Hamas had agreed to hold their fire while the IDF searched for
tunnels in Gaza, what in hindsight turned out to be incorrect.
Obama's best friend forever denied use of base for Foley-Sotloff rescue - was an Israeli base used?
From a lengthy Wall Street Journal article that I received by email on the failed July 3 attempt to rescue US hostages James Foley and Steven Sotloff from ISIS (Hat Tip: Dan F). The two were both subsequently beheaded, with videos posted online.
The U.S. hoped to launch the raid from a base in Turkey that would give easy
access to Raqqa. But the Turks, worried about their own hostages, were wary,
U.S. officials said, so the U.S. sent the team to another country in the region
for final preparations.
Shifting the operation didn't delay matters, said one of the military
officials, although the distance to Raqqa increased. A senior Turkish official
denied that the U.S. approached Ankara seeking a base in the country. The
ultimate host country agreed on the condition the U.S. not reveal its
identity.
Gee, I wonder what country was the 'ultimate host country.' There are only two possibilities really: Israel or Jordan.
Incirlik (Turkey's air base) to Raqqa is 458.3 kilometers by land.
One base that might have been used is Jordan's al-Muwaffaq air base, which is east of Amman. I could not find out how far away that air base is (Amman is 526 kilometers away), but flying from Jordan would have required taking a roundabout route or crossing substantial Syrian and/or Lebanese territory.
Among Israeli air bases, Ramat David is 671.5 kilometers from Raqqa by land, Palmachim is 778.9 kilometers from Raqqa by land, Hatzor is 799 kilometers from Raqqa by land, and Hatzerim is 854.4 kilometers from Raqqa by land. But the advantage of using an Israeli base is that you go straight out over the Mediterranean until you reach the Syrian coastline and then fly along the Euphrates (see the bottom left map)... as Israel did when it destroyed Assad's nuclear capability at al-Kibar.
As he's called a 'terrorist sympathizer,' Stephen Sotloff's mother talks about his connection to Israel
The mother of Stephen Sotloff HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) has spoken to Israel's Yedioth Aharonoth daily about her son's connection to Israel.
"The first time Steven visited Israel he immediately fell in love
with it," Shirley told those coming to comfort the bereaved family,
according to Yedioth Aharonoth.
Sotloff was an Israeli citizen,
having made aliyah (immigration) to the Jewish state in 2005, where he
studied at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya until 2008.
According to his mother, who is herself the daughter of a Holocaust
survivor, Sotloff first traveled to Israel on the Taglit-Birthright
Israel program and was enchanted by what he saw.
On Friday the family is to hold a memorial ceremony for him at the
Beit Am synagogue in Miami, where Sotloff studied as a child and where
his mother taught, and then sit shiva, the traditional seven-day period of intense mourning.
The grieving mother added "our Steven was not a man of war. He always
looked for the human things; he always told us that his goal was to
show the world what really is happening in the daily lives of citizens
in Syria during the war."
Sotloff's family has asked for privacy during their mourning; on Wednesday a family friend Barak Barfi spoke to media representatives on their behalf, saying Sotloff was "pulled by the Arab world” to “tell the stories of those who didn't have anyone else to tell them.”
Yid with Lid reports that a number of people have attacked Sotloff as a 'terrorist sympathizer.' Yid with Lid refutes those claims here.
New details on teens' kidnapping and murder emerge
An indictment was filed on Thursday against Hussam Kawasme, the ringleader of the plot to kidnap and murder Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrach HY"D (May God Avenge their blood). With the indictment come more details that make it clear that this was not a spontaneous or lone wolf operation.
Hussam's interrogation, as well as those of a number of other
arrested suspects, revealed that he had played a fundamental part in the
kidnapping, and served as its mastermind and overall coordinator of the
entire terrorist "operation". In that capacity, he secured some 200,000
shekels from his Gaza-based brother and Hamas operative Mahmoud to fund
the attack.
The money was used, among other things, to purchase the car used in the abductions, which was later found burned out, near Hevron, together with spent bullet casings and traces of blood.
The money was also used to buy weapons - two pistols and two assault
rifles - which were given to Marwan Kawasmeh prior to the attack. Hussam
received those weapons from another Hamas terrorist in Hevron, Adnan
Mohammed Azzat Zaro.
Also under interrogation, it was revealed that immediately after the
murders Marwan went to Hussam, who helped him to take the bodies to a
field the latter had purchased several month before in preparation for
the killings. After burying the bodies in a shallow grave, he then
helped Marwan and Amar Abu-Eisha to find a place to hide.
Security forces also extracted the names of several other terrorists
involved in the abduction and murder, including two brothers. One of
them, 50-year-old Hevron resident Arafat Ibrahim Mohammed Kawasmeh,
admitted after his arrest to helping hide the suspects. The second -
64-year-old Ahmed Ibrahim Mohammed Kawasmeh - confessed that Marwan had
turned to him prior to the attack to secure him safe passage in advance
to Palestinian Authority-controlled territory, and that he had referred
him to his brother Arafat.
With the conclusion of the interrogation process, the suspects cases
have been transferred to the Judea and Samaria prosecutor, who will be
pressing charges.
For the record, 200 Shekels is approximately $56,000 at today's exchange rates. Not exactly chump change.
Sotloff made Aliyah
and studied at the IDC. Little information regarding his time in Israel
is known, and after he was captured in Syria it seems any connection to
Israel was deleted from his online presence in a bid to prevent the
information reaching his captors.
National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden announced the US
intelligence community's assessment of the video in a statement
Wednesday.
Colleagues and acquaintances recalled Sotloff as a generous man
fascinated by journalism and the changes gripping the Middle East, and
determined to tell stories from the perspective of average people, not
army movements on the battlefield.
A friend who was with
Sotloff in captivity told Ynet's sister-print publication Yedioth
Aharonoth that Sotloff was Jewish - a fact he hid from his captors - and
even managed to observe the Yom Kippur fast while in Islamic State
captivity.
"He told them he was sick and doesn’t want to eat, even though we
were served eggs that day," the friend said. "He used to pray secretly
in the direction of Jerusalem. He would see in which direction (his
Muslim captors) were praying and then adjust the angle."
...
Sotloff, a 31-year-old
Miami-area native who freelanced for Time and Foreign Policy magazines,
vanished in Syria in August 2013 and was not seen again until he
appeared in a video released last month that showed Foley's beheading.
...
Just how Sotloff made
his way from Florida to Middle East hotspots is not clear. He published
articles from Syria, Egypt and Libya in a variety of publications.
Several focus on the plight of ordinary people in war-torn places.
One individual familiar with the case said the family's theory
had been that Sotloff was grabbed by a criminal gang, and later
transferred or "sold" to Islamic State. This could not be confirmed by
his family, which declined interview requests.
Preparing for the trip to Syria, Sotloff reportedly asked a
fellow reporter in June 2013: "What type of lawlessness in Aleppo?
Should I keep my eyes open for anything regarding safety?"
"Can you meet with ISI," he asked, using an earlier acronym for
Islamic State. "And the quality of life? Is there still plenty of food
available? Gas?"
In a statement, Foreign Policy magazine called him a "brave and
talented journalist" whose reporting "showed a deep concern for the
civilians caught in the middle of a brutal war."
Time
Editor Nancy Gibbs said Sotloff "gave his life so readers would have
access to information from some of the most dangerous places in the
world."
Given that that Sotloff's Judaism was widely publicized after Foley was beheaded, I find it hard to believe that ISIS did not know Sotloff was Jewish. Therefore, the acronym HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) seems to fit here.
UPDATE 4:04 PM
Much more detail about Sotloff's time in Israel and his contacts with Israeli journalists here.
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
