Monday, November 10, 2014
Dear Family & Friends,Time to take over our own Jewish Israeli Sovereignty on the Land G-d gave us!
We are receiving too much Terror on our own Land from those who would dare to take it from us. They will use Lawfare, Warfare, Terror-fare – by bullets, knives, fire, murder by car, van, truck, tractor. They will defame us, our valiant IDF, our own Temple Mount, our MKs, our PMs, our DMs, our FMs, our children, our “Right Wing Activists” who defend us. Those who want to take it from us do not want to create a State of their Own for their own ‘people’. They just want to destroy ours, our Jewish State of freedom of worship for all. When you’all can internalize those hard facts, then maybe we will all be motivated to change the paradigm & further survive.
- Bill: Apply all Israeli laws in Judea and Samaria to Jews only 2. Arlene Kushner “Never Ending” 3. Obama and the definition of “Islamic” by Caroline Glick 4. Why MKs Won’t Give Up on Temple Mount Visits 5.Washington Reiterates its Objection to PA’s UN Resolution 6. YEMEN & THEN SAUDIA ARABIA 7. Palestinians: Stop the Children’s Intifada! byKhaled Abu Toameh 8. “We Need Your Head”: Muslim Persecution of Christians 9. REDEEMING THE TEMPLE MOUNT by Bernard J. Shapiro 1993 10. Terrorists Gunning for Egypt, Hamas Aims at West Bank 11 The Euro Politician by Yaacov Kirschen “Dry Bones”12. Washington Reiterates its Objection to PA’s UN Resolution 13. US Solicitor General: Israel Has No Claim to Jerusalem
Have a wonderful night & day. All the very best,
Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba/Mom
PLEASE VIEW OUR WEBSITE: WinstonIsraelInsight.com
Apply all Israeli laws in Judea and Samaria to Jews only
Ministerial Committee on Legislation to debate proposal seeking to subject the Israeli citizens of Judea and Samaria to the full extent of Israel’s civil and criminal codes • Current situation effectively imposes dual legal system on the area. By Gideon Allon and Israel Hayom Staff
Habayit Hayehudi MK Orit Struck
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation is scheduled to debate a new bill seeking to subject the Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria to the full extent of Israeli law.
According to Israel’s Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1967, while most articles in Israel’s criminal and civil codes apply across Judea and Samaria, the area is simultaneously under military law, meaning its Israeli citizens are subjected to a dual legal system. Furthermore, many legal amendments enacted in Israel over the years, especially those pertaining to property and labor laws, exclude the settlements.
The proposal, presented by MK Orit Struck (Habayit Hayehudi) and supported by the Knesset’s Land of Israel Lobby, has been dubbed the “norms bill.” Other signatories to the bill include Coalition Chairman MK Zeev Elkin (Likud), Habayit Hayehudi MK Ayelet Shaked, Land of Israel Lobby chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud), Shas MK Avraham Michaeli, Yisrael Beytenu MK David Rotem and United Torah Judaism MK Menachem Moses.
The bill states that every law passed by the Knesset would be enacted in Judea and Samaria by a GOC Central Command order, within 45 days of its approval.
The proposal’s stated purpose is to “rectify the current situation … in which some 350,000 Israelis living across Judea and Samaria participate in elections for the Knesset, but it does not actually run their lives due to the lacking application of Israeli law in the area,” and to “equate the legal norms imposed on Israeli citizens, regardless of their place of residence.”
The bill’s brief stressed that it does not seek to promote a change in the area’s diplomatic status, nor does it seek to contradict the international law edicts to which Israel subscribes to in the area.
“There is no reason that Israeli citizens living in Judea and Samaria should be unable to realize their rights, as well as their obligations, via their elected officials in the Knesset, even without imposing [Israeli] sovereignty on the area,” Struck noted.
The Ministerial Committee on Legislation is set to debate the bill on Sunday
Bill: Apply all Israeli laws in Judea and Samaria to Jews only
From: Arlene Kushner [akushner18@gmail.com] November 5, 2014
“Never Ending”
I am referring to the grief that is leveled at us, here in Israel, on a regular basis. I don’t really mean “never ending.” This is hyperbole; some day it will end. But I don’t know when; I only recognize that we must be strong in all respects as we face down the situation.
But before I get to our difficulties, I want to say “Baruch Hashem.” I awoke with great gladness this morning to the news that the Republicans had taken Congress. May the Almighty grant the Republican majority wisdom and strength as they work to stop Obama in his tracks and turn around a great deal of the bad that has been done. With the finest of intentions, the results will be far less than ideal, I know. Obama still sits in the White House. But there is much that CAN be done. We have at least hope now for a better America, an America that reflects traditional values and loyalties.
Credit: aoc.gov
And…if the Republicans bring about a marked improvement in America’s situation, we have hope, as well, that Hillary, or whoever runs in the presidential campaign as the Democratic contender, can be defeated at the polls.
It falls to each of you, my friends, to remain vigilant: to watch how matters proceed and to remind the Republicans of why they were elected and what they are being called upon to do.
A shame that this delight at good news has been so deeply marred by goings-on here.
First, with regard to the Temple Mount. I had written yesterday that we are engaged in a war, and that is what we saw today.
Israeli intelligence picked up information that young Muslims had turned their “beloved” mosque, Al Aksa, into a building of war. Having stored weaponry – rocks, fire crackers, fire bombs – inside the structure, they remained overnight, in order to be ready for attack on Israeli police in the morning. They had even set up barricades at the doors of the mosque in an attempt to prevent the police from shutting them in.
Credit: nauterre
Sure enough, when the Mount opened this morning, masked terrorists attacked police with fireworks, rocks and iron bars at the gate to the Mount where they entered. Jews were told by the police that they could not come up until the situation was taken care of. But, with police fortitude it was taken care of; some police officers were injured in the course of handling the situation. The attacking Muslims were driven back into the mosque, barricades were removed, and they were locked in. Jews were then told they could come up.
Once again, it pleases me that police handled the riot in a way that made it possible for Jews to be on the Mount.
The physical battle ended there (for now), but the diplomatic battle continues as Arab leadership attempts to make the trouble the fault of the Israelis. There were threats of going to the Security Council (the ultimate panacea for the PA) with complaints that Israel (Israel!) is trying to escalate the situation on the Mount and “isolate” the Al Aksa mosque. King Abdullah is playing it to the hilt, saying that he is working to prevent “unilateral” actions by Israel; Jordan is recalling its ambassador to Israel.
When the police drove the rioters into the mosque, some of the officers stepped in, going a few meters at most (which enabled them and to see for themselves the stockpiled weapons). Now much is being made of the outrage of Israeli police violating Muslim holy space. You can see how sacred this space is to them.
Unfortunately, this has been a day when one terrorist action followed another:
We have had a repeat terrorist attack involving a vehicle riding into passengers at a Light Rail station. This station is located in the Shimon HaTZadik neighborhood, at the corner of Bar Lev and Shimon HaTZadik streets, which is next to the Arab area of Sheikh Jarrah and not far from border police headquarters.
Even now I’m getting conflicting reports on how many were injured – somewhere between 10 and 14, some seriously, one critically. Some police officers were hit.
Credit: Yonatan Sindel/FLASH90
One person has died: a Border Police officer, Jedan Assad, 38, from Beit Jann, a Druze village. He leaves behind a three year old son, and a wife who is five months pregnant. Assad’s father said he loved Jerusalem and loved his work.
Credit: Shahar Ali
The attacker, Ibrahim al-Akari of the neighborhood of Shuafat, didn’t just run his vehicle into one group; he hit some people and then kept going to target others. Then he got out of his van and began attacking people with an iron bar. Security forces shot him dead.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/driver-plows-into-jerusalem-crowd-in-suspected-terror-attack/
Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch called for the demolition of the terrorist’s home.
Hamas has taken credit for this attack, praising the terrorist as a “martyr” of course, and saying that what he did was “the natural response to the crimes of the occupation.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/187078#.VFpLn5txnIU
This business of it being a “natural response to the occupation” is a refrain I’ve heard before. It seems to be their new tack, an attempt to justify before the world what cannot be justified in any terms. The terrorist has been identified as a Hamas operative. His brother, according to reports also Hamas-connected, had been in prison for a terrorist conviction but was in the prisoner exchange for Shalit.
There has got to be some way to protect Light Rail stations that are in or near Arab neighborhoods. It is being worked on: the first concrete barriers are scheduled to go up around the French Hill station tonight.
Netanyahu said today that, “We are in an ongoing struggle for Jerusalem, and I have no doubt we will win.”
I have no doubt either. We are very strong and very committed.
The prime minister, along with other members of the government, today pointed a finger directly at Abbas, whose extreme incitement over the last several days has set the climate for violence.
This too I agree with – Abbas must be held accountable.
But I feel the need to make an additional point: We are not looking at lone actors, individual terrorists, who, inspired by the inciteful words of Abbas, decide to take it upon themselves to commit a terrorist act. What is going on in our city now is far more calculated and organized than this. Just as this latest terrorist had Hamas associations, from what I am learning, the attacks in general are choreographed by terrorist groups. In fact, Hamas is choreographing the agitation on the Temple Mount. (I’ve heard that the Muslim women who carry on like hysterical banshees up on the Mount – you saw them in the video of Shuli Mualem yesterday – are paid to intimidate Jews.)
Clearly, Abbas is aware of all of this, and doing everything in his power to aid and abet the terrorist climate. This makes him even more culpable, as he is in bed with Hamas.
It also means that I am not exaggerating when I call this a war. It is the war for Jerusalem. Which must be won.
I will leave off writing here, until the next posting.
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
If it is reproduced and emphasis is added, the fact that it has been added must be noted.
Arlene Kushner [akushner18@gmail.com] “Never Ending” November 5, 2014
Why MKs Won’t Give Up on Temple Mount Visits
By Ari Soffer Arutz Sheva IsraelNationalNews.com First Publish: 11/4/2014, 10:10 PM
Jewish Home Secretary General says MKs will up their campaign for Temple Mount prayers; ‘Jordan is in no position to threaten us.’
Temple Mount Flash 90
The attempted assassination of veteran activist Rabbi Yehuda Glick and clashes over the subsequent temporary closure of the Temple Mount have cast a spotlight once again on the struggle for Jewish prayer on the Mount – Judaism’s holiest site – and the angry, often violent Muslim opposition to the prospect of Jewish worship there.
And yet, despite the continued harassment and threats of violence by Islamist groups, as well as calls by Prime Minister Netanyahu for MKs to hold back, many – including senior officials and MKs – continue to visit theTemple Mount.
Soon after it was reopened, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin made the first high-profile Israeli visit, brushing off the verbal abuse and threats hurled at him by Muslim extremists. Jewish Home MK Shuli Mualem followed suit, under a similar barrage of abuse and even a physical assault, as did Feiglin’s fellow party member, Deputy Minister Tzipi Hotoveli.
During her visit Mualem was accompanied by Secretary General of the Jewish Home party Uri Bank (seen walking beside Mualem in video footage taken at the site). Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Bank explained why he felt such visits were so important and what his party believes must be done to affect positive change.
As representatives of the State of Israel, visits by MKs are a particularly powerful statement of the will of the people for Israeli sovereignty and Jewish freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, he said. “In order to implement our sovereignty on the Temple Mount we need MKs to ascend regularly.”
Bank also noted that visits by “visibly Jewish,” regular Israelis were just as significant, in order “to show we’re there” and not willing to abandon Judaism’s holiest site in spite of the difficulties.
As a religious Jew himself, Bank said he felt two very distinct sets of feelings during his visit on Monday – his third to the holy site.
On the one hand, he felt “the holiness, the sense of closeness to the Holy of Holies. Conscious of the fact that I’m walking on the holiest place on earth – and during all of that praying in my heart for Yehuda Glick’s speedy recovery, the man who has spearheaded the campaign for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount.”
But on the other hand, encapsulating the kind of mixed emotions felt by many Jewish visitors to the site, he described his opposing feelings of “outrage” at the relative impunity with which Muslim extremists are able to harass – and sometimes even physically assault – Jewish visitors.
Far from helping to calm the situation, he claimed the sense of impunity granted to them via authorities’ softly-softly approach to incitement on the Temple Mount merely invites further violence – reinforcing the false notion “that their ‘historic rights’ trump ours.”
“The fact is that they feel that the Temple Mount is theirs and it isn’t really ‘in our hands’,” he said, referring to the famous quote by IDF Lt. Gen. Mordechai “Motta” Gur, who led the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967 and announced over radio that: “The Temple Mount is in our hands!”
Ironically, the Waqf Islamic trust to which Israel handed over administration of the Temple Mount is run by the very state from which the site was liberated during the Six Day War: Jordan. The Jordanian government has led pressure against any Jewish prayers being conducted on the Temple Mount, with Jordan’s King Abdullah II recentlyvowing to fight any attempts to implement equal prayer arrangements for Jews.
Watch – Uri Bank and MK Shuli Mualem’s stormy visit to the Temple Mount:
“For so many years now that has not been the case,” Bank lamented, relating to Gur’s iconic broadcast. “De facto, the Temple Mount is not in our hands and sovereignty has been given to them because they are allowed to do whatever they want – they riot, they throw rocks at the Kotel (Western Wall) plaza and they are never accountable for their actions.”
“It’s only the Jewish side which is forced by the government of Israel, bythe Prime Minister, to suffer,” he continued, referring to the much-resented practice of police banning Jews – not Muslims – from the Temple Mount in response to Muslim violence.
“The Muslims riot – so they take Jews off the Temple Mount!” he exclaimed. “And if they riot even further… and throw rocks on the Kotel plaza, the reaction of the authorities is to clear the plaza so people don’t get hurt by rocks, instead of arresting and jailing those responsible.
“So not only have Muslim threats of violence been able to prevent Jews from praying on the Temple Mount for so many years now, when they feel like it they can even stop us praying at the Kotel!”
Popular effort needed
Bank stresses that the issue is not one of legislation – despite the fact that several bills, including one proposed by Jewish Home MK Deputy Religious Affairs Minister Rabbi Eli Ben-Dahan, have been drafted in an attempt to force the government to implement Jewish prayer rights there. The ball is firmly in the court of Prime Minister and the security services – headed by Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovich.
“As far as I know, on the legislative level there is nothing that needs to be done,” he stated. “The High Court has already ruled that the Prime Minister’s Office and police have to find a way for Jews to receive equal rights of worship on the Temple Mount.
“There is no law that says that Jews can’t pray there, so there’s no law that has to be changed – we just have to convince or force the Prime Minister or the police to implement the letter of the law.”
The constant visits by MKs are an important way of keeping the issue in the public consciousness, but in his opinion Jewish people in general need to reconnect with the central importance of the Temple Mount and stop “making do” with praying at its outer wall, the Kotel. Bank himself has refused to pray at the Kotel for 10 years, and urged other Jews to do the same.
“The Kotel is the outer wall of what used to be our Temple – and it only became sanctified and holy because it was the closest place the Muslims let us get to the Temple Mount,” he explains, insisting that by accepting such an arrangement Jews are facilitating their own oppression.
“Our willingness to suffice with the Kotel is what is allowing the Muslims to feel like they are in control of our holiest site. If all Jews would decide that the Kotel isn’t good enough – that we’ve come home to our homeland and the Temple Mount is in our hands – we will have true impetus to affect a change in the whole situation there.”
Of course, the issue is somewhat more complicated. Although many major Halakhic (Jewish law) authorities encourage visits to the Temple Mount, other leading rabbis discourage it for fear of violating the complex laws of ritual purity which apply there.
Bank himself notes that his own party’s MKs are split on the issue on a personal level: while some regularly ascend with rabbinic approval, others follow the instruction of their own rabbis not to do so.
Uri Bank (L) with MK Shuli Mualem on the Temple Mount Uri Bank
But as a matter of policy that is beside the point, he says; the Jewish Home party is united in the belief that those who wish to pray on the Temple Mount should be allowed to do so.
“Even if there are MKs within Jewish Home who might not ascend the Temple Mount out of specific Halackic concerns, there is an official party position that those Jews who want to and have rabbis who rule it is permissible should be allowed to pray.”
He describes as “unthinkable” the fact that a democratic society such as Israel should be implementing blatantly discriminatory policies regarding freedom of religion – and cited several High Court rulings upholding the rights of Jews to pray at the site.
“There’s no such thing in the democratic world that only one religion is allowed to have their freedom of worship under the threat that if anybody else gets it they’re going to riot!”
Jordanian threats? Just ‘saber-rattling’
But what of Jordanian threats to end its peace treaty with Israel if Jews are allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, as well as likely international pressure to restore the current “status quo”?
To start with, he says the Jewish Home party rejects to the very term itself, and called for a fundamental change in the public discourse on the matter.
“We argue that the term ‘status quo’ is a false term (in the case of the Temple Mount). If you go through the history of when the Jews were allowed to go up to the Temple Mount and pray, you see it has changed constantly. There is no ‘status quo’ – it ebbs and flows. So we don’t accept the terminology of the prime minister and internal security minister.”
Regarding Jordanian threats and international pressure, Bank says that Israel should have confidence in the strength of its own case.
“Diplomatically and legally-speaking we have a very easy case to make,” he insists.
“The fact that the State of Israel has the responsibility to ensure freedom of religion for everyone is a very easy sell – and that’s what we should be telling the Jordanians as well.”
Under Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan the Waqf has administrative control over Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem, including the Al Aqsa mosque compound, built on the ruins of the two Jewish Temples. But Bank rejects any attempts to suggest that Israel is thereby obligated to ban Jews from praying on the wider Temple Mount.
“If anybody signed a treaty with Jordan that disallowed Jews the freedom to worship on their holiest site I think that would be an illegitimate treaty to begin with,” he declared, dismissing Jordanian threats to abrogate its treaty with Israel as “empty saber-rattling.”
“I don’t think the Jordanians are going to go to war with us even over such a volatile issue,” he pointed out. And despite the fiery rhetoric coming from Amman, it is firmly against the precariously-situated Hashemite Kingdom’s interests to stoke Islamist violence, given the very real possibility of a fatal blowback from the country’s own simmering Islamist opposition.
“The Jordanians are very much dependent on Western and Israeli support,” particularly in the aftermath of recent upheavals in the Middle East, and with the Islamic State knocking on Jordan’s door.
“The King of Jordan is very shaky to begin with and is essentially being propped up by the US and to an extent Israel – I don’t think he is in a position to make any such threats against us,” he added.
As for the potential for violence: Bank admits it is a possibility that the current wave of violence would worsen should Jews stake their claim to pray on the Temple Mount, but predicts it would be relatively short-term, comparing it to the 1996 Kotel Tunnels incident in which Palestinians reacted violently to Israel extending the Western Wall tunnel.
As a possible way to avoid an all-out conflagration – and give Israel ample opportunity to present its case – Bank suggests Israel begin by closing the Mount altogether to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and follow the move with a “worldwide PR campaign to explain to the world that our courts, and our democracy do not allow us to discriminate on issues of freedom of religion. So either nobody, no religions, can pray on the Temple Mount, or there is freedom of worship for all.”
In any event, he predicts legislators and other prominent officials will step up their public appearances at the Temple Mount, describing it as a “protest vigil.”
“The MKs who believe in this – whether they’re from Jewish Home or not – are going to continue ascending the Temple Mount day after day after day.”
“We’re not going to allow this issue to settle back down,” he vowed. “We are going to keep this issue in the Israeli consciousness until the prime minister has to deal with this.”
Why MKs Won’t Give Up on Temple Mount Visits
FREEMAN CENTER BROADCAST November 4, 2014
For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Isaiah 62.
FREEMAN CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES P.O. Box 35661 * Houston, Texas 77235-5661
* E-mail: bernards@sbcglobal.net OUR WEB SITE < www.freeman.org >
Obama and the definition of “Islamic” by Caroline Glick
In his speech on September 11 announcing that the US would commence limited operations against Islamic State, US President Barack Obama insisted, “ISIL, [i.e. Islamic State In the Levant] is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim.”
To be sure, it is hard to see how any human faith can countenance IS’s actions. For the past several months, on a daily basis, new videos appear of IS fighters proudly, openly and wantonly committing crimes against humanity. This week for instance, a video emerged of an IS slave market in Raqqah, Syria, where women and girls are sold as sex slaves to IS fighters.
Despite the glaring contradiction between divinity and monstrosity, the fact is that IS justifies every single one of its atrocities with verses from the Koran.
IS referred to its sex slave market in Raqqah for instance as the “Booty Market… for what your right hands possess.” The phrase “what your right hands possess” is a Koranic verse (4:3) that permits the sexual enslavement of women and girls by Muslim men.
Whether it is mainstream Islamic jurisprudence or not to embrace the enslavement of women and girls as concubines is not a question that Obama – or any US leader for that matter – is equipped to answer. And yet, Obama spoke with absolute certainty when he claimed that IS is not Islamic.
Obama speaks with similar conviction whenever he refers to Iran as “The Islamic Republic of Iran.”
Obama’s consistent deference to the Iranian regime, exposed by his studious use of the regime’s name for itself whenever he discusses Iran indicates that at a minimum, he is willing to accept the regime’s claim that it is an Islamic regime. In other words, he is willing to accept that everything about the Iranian regime is authentic Islam. Similarly, if he is right that “no religion condones the killing of innocents,” then that means that the “Islamic Republic” similarly does not condone the killing of innocents.
Of course, there is a problem here. In fact, there are two problems here.
First, in its treatment of its own people, the Iranian regime condones and actively engages in the killing of innocents, the vast majority of whom are Muslims. The Islamic regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran invokes the Koran to justify its killing.
Likewise, the political imprisonment, torture and general repression of Iranians from all faiths are justified in the name of Islam.
Consider two recent examples.
On October 25, 27-year-old Reyhaneh Jabbari was hanged for allegedly killing a man who was trying to rape her. Jabbari was imprisoned for seven years prior to her execution.
Although her suffering was a ‘cause celebre’ for advocates of human rights in Iran, the regime didn’t care. In contempt of the international community, it murdered her a week ago.
As her attorney Mohammed Mostataei explained at a conference held by UN Watch in Geneva last week, Jabbari was tried under Islamic law – the law of the land in the Islamic Republic of Iran. And under Islamic Sharia law, intent in adjudication of criminal offenses is irrelevant. As a consequence, once regime inquisitors force a person to confess, he or she is doomed.
Forced confessions are the stock in trade for Iranian investigators.
Last month, 25 women in Isfahan, Iran’s tourist capital, were reportedly victims of acid attacks.
The women had acid thrown in their faces while they were driving in their cars.
The public immediately suspected that they were targeted because their faces were not covered sufficiently to satisfy Islamic goon squads that drive around the city seeking – with the tacit if not open support of the regime – to terrorize the public into obeying their repressive, inhumane interpretation of Islam.
On October 22, human rights activists in Iran held demonstrations against the acid attacks outside the judiciary building in Isfahan and outside the Iranian parliament in Tehran. In both instances, protesters insisted that there is no difference between the repression inherent in the radical Islam propagated by IS and that practiced by the Iranian regime.
In both cities, demonstrators were attacked by regime forces with tear gas. Many were arrested.
After the acid attacks were first reported, the Iranian parliament passed measures to strengthen the authority of the regime’s Basij shock troop squads to enforce repressive, misogynist Islamic dress codes on women and enforce other socially repressive aspects of the regime’s Islam.
As Baron Alexander Carile of Barriew, a member of the British House of Lords and expert on terrorism explained last Friday in The Washington Times, “In essence, the regime responded to the acid attacks that have seriously injured 25 people so far by legitimizing the motives of their attackers.”
According to the UN, Iran executed 852 Iranians for various offenses from July 2013 through June 2014.
This of course is just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of the regime’s killing is carried out by its proxies.
IS’s persecution of those who have had the misfortune to fall under its control is a blight on the human race. And so is the persecution committed by Iran’s puppets – the Assad regime in Syria, and its Lebanese terror army Hezb’Allah.
Since the Syrian civil war began three years ago, the Iranian-controlled regime has killed somewhere between 120,000 and 200,000 people.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, nearly 10,000 of the dead are children, another 6,000 are women. Other groups place the number much higher.
More than 2.14 million Syrians are now refugees in neighboring countries. Half of the refugees are children. Another 4.25 million Syrians are internally displaced.
If it hadn’t been for Iran’s support for the regime, the vast majority of the victims of Syria’s civil war would still be alive and living in their homes.
Thanks to Iran and its Hezbollah army, Lebanon is on the brink of sharing Syria’s fate.
Hezb’Allah has played a major role in the war in Syria, and over the years, with Iran’s total backing, it has murdered thousands of people in Lebanon, Israel and throughout the world.
Hezb’Allah has trained sister Iranian supported or commanded terrorist groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas. With the blessing, and often acting on direct orders from the Islamic Republic, these groups have killed hundreds of innocents. Like Hezb’Allah, Assad and the mullahs in Tehran, they have also repressed their own people in the name of their Islamic devotion.
And this brings us back to Obama and his insistence that IS is not Islamic, but the Iranian regime is Islamic. How are we to understand this seeming anomaly?
Throughout his tenure in office, Obama has gone out of his way to mainstream Muslim extremists. This has taken the form of granting senior appointments to people aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, amid a Congressional investigation into suspected leaks, Mohamed Elibiary, a senior fellow at the US Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council, resigned his position.
Just before his resignation, Elibiary tweeted that the rise of the caliphate is “inevitable.” In 2004 he spoke at a conference in Dallas celebrating the legacy of Iranian dictator Ayatollah Khomeini. As Robert Spencer has reported, the conference was titled, “A Tribute to a Great Islamic Visionary.”
Moreover, Obama had befriended radical Islamic leaders who openly support terrorism, including Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
And of course, as we see more and more clearly each day, the centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy has been appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran in the hope of achieving détente with the nuclear weapons pursuing state sponsor of terrorism.
The likes of IS, with its love of the video camera, discredit Obama’s narrative that radical, terror- supporting Muslims are peaceful. Since IS is openly evil, it is un-Islamic.
On the other hand, despite the fact that it is nearly as barbaric as IS, the Iranian regime is Islamic, because as far as Obama is concerned, it is good. And it is good because he wants to make a deal with the mullahs.
In other words, Obama is neither an expert on Islam, nor a man moved by moral indignation.
He opposes IS because IS makes it hard for him to defend Islam from bad public relations. And he coos about the “Islamic Republic of Iran” because he is dedicated to his mission of whitewashing and mainstreaming the regime born of an Islamic revolution. Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.
Obama and the definition of “Islamic” by Caroline Glick
Washington Reiterates its Objection to PA’s UN Resolution By Ben Ariel, Arutz 7 IsraelNationalNews.com
The second point below reaffirms Israel’s criticism of Sweden’s vote because it make an agreement hard to achieve, i.e., because it will make the PA more intransigent. Unfortunately she didn’t explain herself here.
But the second point is very hypocritical, because the US keeps calling for ’67 lines plus swaps. Is that not also “a unilateral step…that attempt[s] to prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations.” Ted Belman
State Department spokeswoman says PA’s resolution to “end the occupation” attempts to “prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations.”
The United States made clear on Tuesday that it is against the Palestinian Authority’s plan to submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for an end date for “Israeli occupation”.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, during a Monday meeting in Washington, that the U.S. was opposed “to unilateral steps by either party that attempt to prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations.”
Urging the UN to call for an end to the Israeli occupation “contradicts their stated goal of a two-state solution and having their own state, an aspiration we support,” Psaki added.
Earlier Tuesday, a senior official said the PA would submit the draft resolution later this month.
The PA has been under intense pressure not to push forward with the Security Council resolution, which Washington would have the power to veto.
In response, chief negotiator Saeb Erekat declared several weeks ago that if the United States vetoed the PA’s UN resolution, the PA would apply for membership to 522 international organizations and statutes – in violation of previous treaties with Israel.
Erekat said in a statement quoted by the Ma’an news agency that the PA should also seek recognition by EU countries, especially after the new Swedish prime minister’s announcement that his country would recognize “Palestine” and the British parliament’s symbolic vote to do the same.
The plans for the resolution have been accompanied by threats from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his aides. Abbas recently threatened to cut ties with Israel if his latest unilateral move at the UN fails.
“If all efforts fail, we will end relations with Israel and I will tell Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, ‘Come and take over’. However, I will not dismantle the Palestinian Authority and I will submit a request to join all the organizations belonging to the UN,” he declared.
Fatah leader Nabil Shaath recently threatened Israel with a “political war” if there is a negative response to Abbas’s steps at the United Nations.
Washington Reiterates its Objection to PA’s UN Resolution
YEMEN & THEN SAUDIA ARABIA
By Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall, November 3, 2014
Institute for Contemporary Affairs
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation
Vol. 14, No. 36 November 3, 2014
- Yemen’s geostrategic location at the entrance to the Red Sea and across from the Horn of Africa along with the inherent weakness of the central regime has made it an attractive target for subversion by external power centers.
- In September, Shia rebels took over the capital city of Sana’a and the Al-Hudaydah port on the Red Sea. Iran has long been trying to take over the sea lanes surrounding the Arab world. It commands the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and is now trying to seize the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
- A member of the Iranian parliament who is close to Khamenei declared, “Three Arab capitals (Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad) have already fallen into Iran’s hands and belong to the Iranian Islamic Revolution.” He suggested Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, is the fourth.
- Iran views Yemen as a convenient staging ground for subversive activity against Saudi Arabia, its main religious-political rival in the Middle East.
- There is nothing new in Iran’s subversive activity aimed at promoting Shia Islam in various Middle Eastern countries. Iran’s officials no longer fear voicing Iran’s real intentions and have become open, blunt, and defiant in doing so.
- Iran will keep trying to augment its advantage over Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab world with its nuclear program, or, to put it simply, a “Shia bomb,” which would provide an umbrella and immunity for promoting the further spread of the Shia revolution and the survival of the regime.
In recent years the Yemeni government conducted a series of military operations against rebels of the al-Houthi clan of the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam.1 This conflict, which has already gone on for over 10 years, stems from feelings of political, economic, and social discrimination among the Zaidi Shia residents of Yemen’s north. The Houthis constitute about 30 percent of Yemen’s population, which totals over 25 million people. The Zaidi Shia are considered one of the moderate Shia schools, closer from a legal standpoint to the Shafi’i school of the Sunna. At the same time, since the Islamic Revolution in Iran and all the more so in recent years with growing Iranian subversive activity in Yemen, the Zaidi Shia have been increasingly exposed to the ideological influence and political agenda of the regime in Iran, leading to a change in the usually moderate attitudes of the Zaidi Shia.2
Iran’s copying machine Source: Suhail Yemen News
Yemen’s geostrategic location at the entrance to the Red Sea and across from the Horn of Africa, along with the inherent weakness of the central regime, has made it an attractive target for subversion by external power centers, both political and nonpolitical. That pertains particularly to Iran and Saudi Arabia, with Al Qaeda as another disruptive element.
In September, Shia rebels of Ansar Allah (Houthi’s military wing) were able to exploit the weakness of Yemen’s central government, which is also engaged in a struggle with the Sunni Al Qaeda and with tribal and separatist elements in the southern part of the country. Ansar Allah took over on September 21 the capital city of Sana’a and the Al-Hudaydah port (150 kilometers southwest of Sana’a) on the Red Sea, Yemen’s second most important port after Aden almost without resistance by the security forces and the Yemeni army. The Houthi forces’ entry into the capital was accompanied by calls of “Death to America” and “Death to the Jews,” imprecations heard frequently from the Iranian regime. Battles are also being waged in Yemen between Ansar Allah and Ansar al-Sharia, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) and has had difficulty coming to terms with the recent Shia successes in Yemen.
Map of Yemen
The Houthi Shia rebels, having conquered Sana’a and Al-Hudaydah, are now concentrating their efforts on a further conquest of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. This key waterway, the southern gateway to the Red Sea, passes through the Gulf of Aden, linking the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean, and historically constituted a strategic hub connecting Eastern and Western trade routes. Yemen overlooks and indeed commands movement through the strait from the island of Miyun (Birim). From the African side, Eritrea and Djibouti overlook the strait.
Iran views Yemen, in general, and the northern Shia sector in particular, as a convenient staging ground for subversive activity against Saudi Arabia, its main religious-political rival in the Middle East, via the Saudis’ “backyard.” Iran also sees Yemen as an important factor in its policy of establishing a physical Iranian presence, both ground and naval, in the countries and ports of the Red Sea littoral, which control the shipping lanes that lead from the Persian Gulf to the heart of the Middle East and onward to Europe. If the Shia rebels gain control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Iran can attain a foothold in this sensitive region giving access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, a cause of concern not only for its sworn rivals Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf states, but also for Israel and European countries along the Mediterranean.
Arab commentators in the Gulf have warned in recent years about this Iranian push. For example, economic analyst Muhammad Abduh al-Absi said in an interview to Asharq Al-Awsat that Iran has long been trying to take over the sea lanes surrounding the Arab world. It commands the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf (through which five million barrels of oil pass daily) and now is trying to seize the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (through which three million barrels of oil pass daily), which forms a key conduit of trade for all the states along the Red Sea. Al-Absi emphasized that Houthi control of the strait will have a harmful impact on the entire world, but those that will suffer the most will be the Gulf states, which will be at Iran’s mercy.3
Before invading Sana’a and seizing other parts of the country, the Houthis were concentrated in the city of Sa’dah in northern Yemen, on the Saudi border. There the Zaidi Shia form a majority of the population. Now the Houthis are trying to extend their control beyond the oil-rich Mar’ib province in the country’s east.
Sana’a: The Fourth Arab Capital to Fall into Iran’s Hands
For Iran, which in recent years has supported the Houthis’ struggles as part of its fight with Saudi Arabia over regional influence, the Houthis’ recent gains in Yemen mark an impressive achievement. Senior Iranian spokesmen have referred publicly and particularly defiantly to the latest Houthi successes and have not hidden their support and satisfaction with the expansion of their control in Yemen and their political gains. It should be noted that before the Arab spring erupted and undermined the old order in the Middle East harsh criticism was leveled in Iran at the government’s helplessness in the face of the “slaughter of the Shia” in Yemen.
Ali Akbar Velayati, former Iranian foreign Minister, and currently adviser on international affairs to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and president of the Expediency Council’s Center for Strategic Research, recently told a group of Yemeni clerics in Tehran: “The Islamic Republic of Iran supports the rightful struggles of Ansar Allah [Houthis] in Yemen and considers this movement as part of the successful materialization of the Islamic Awakening [the name Iran adopted for the “Arab Spring”] movements.”4 Velayati added that the Houthis had succeeded in creating a movement without precedent in any Arab state, and that their frequent and rapid triumphs (in the domestic arena) proved that “Ansar Allah planned their moves well in advance [perhaps hinting at Iranian involvement?] and learned from past experience.” [5]Velayati added that he was sure Ansar Allah’s triumph in Yemen meant that the Houthis would play a similar role to the one Hezb’Allah plays in Lebanon.6
Velayati was asked about the effects of the Yemeni revolution and responded, “The important issue is that the road to freeing Palestine passes from Yemen since Yemen has a strategic location and is near Indian Ocean, Gulf of Oman and Bab al-Mandeb.”7
Ali Riza Zakani, a member of the Majlis (Iranian parliament) who is close to Khamenei, said in a similar vein but with the defiance that increasingly marks Iran’s foreign policy, “Three Arab capitals (Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad) have already fallen into Iran’s hands and belong to the Iranian Islamic Revolution.” He added that Iran is now at a stage of “Grand Jihad” [one of the outcomes of the Arab Spring] and must carefully calibrate its foreign policy to this reality. Iran’s functionaries, he asserted, must be informed of the regional developments and the political actors in each country, through whom one can influence the course of events and help
“the oppressed peoples in the Middle East.”
Iranian official: “Sana’a – fourth Arab capital that belongs to us.”
http://suhailnews.blogspot.co.il/2014/09/karekatir_23.html
Ali Riza Zakani added that, whereas before the revolution there were two principal trends – Saudi Islam and Turkish secularism, today the Islamic Revolution has changed the power equations in the region in its own favor and Iran is now at the height of its power, imposing its will and strategic interests on the region as a whole.
Qassem Suleimani, with scarf, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds force, poses with a group of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters
Zakani praised the activity of Qasam Suleimani, commander of the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC-QF), and said that without the Qods Force’s intervention in Baghdad it would have fallen into ISIS’s hands. “If Haj Qassem [Suleymani] had come to Baghdad several hours later it would have fallen,” said Zakani. The same held true for Syria, according to Zakani: “If we had hesitated in the face of the Syrian crisis and not intervened militarily, the Syrian regime would already have fallen at the beginning of the revolt.” After Assad’s victory in the elections, he said, “Instead of congratulating me, congratulate the leadership of Iran.”
Social networks post pictures of Qasam Suleimani on visits to Iraq and in meetings he holds with commanders of the Iraqi army, with the Kurdish Peshmerga, and with Shiite militias in Iraq that are fighting ISIS.8
First Yemen, then Saudi Arabia
As for Yemen, Zakani added that it constitutes “a natural extension of the Iranian Revolution…. What is happening in Yemen is bigger than what’s happening in Lebanon… 14 of its 20 provinces will soon to fall into Houthi control.” In a jibe at Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s sworn enemy, he warned the revolution would not be restricted to Yemen and would also permeate deeply into the Saudi kingdom …. After the victory of the revolution in Yemen, the turn of Saudi Arabia will inevitably come because these two countries (Yemen and Saudi Arabia) share 2,000 kilometers of common borders. Now there are two million organized armed men in Yemen.9
In this vein the editor of Kayhan, who is close to Khamenei, estimated a few days before the Houthi takeover of Sana’a that “the al-Saud family would fall and the kingdom would not survive the Houthi revolution transpiring in Yemen.”10
Yadollah Javani, one of Khamenei’s senior advisers in the IRGC, wrote in the conservative, IRGC-affiliated newspaper Javan that recent developments in Yemen had again shown the power of the Islamic awakening and induced great concern in the Gulf states and in the West. He also remarked that the Houthis in Yemen have accumulated greater experience than other Islamic movements [by implication, Sunni] in the Arab world, and that “it is worth noting the pictures of the Leaders of Iran, Khomeini and Khamenei, that the Yemeni Shia carried.”11 The paper also used the Houthi rebels’ takeover of the Yemeni capital to slam the BBC in Persian, a target of Iranian criticism, saying it prefers highlighting the chickenpox of Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi to reporting on the dramatic events in Yemen.12
The deputy commander of the IRGC, Hussein Salami, analyzed the strategic situation in the region and assessed that it was favorable to Iran, stressing that Iran is “capable of controlling the political developments in the region without using military force and without having a direct presence on the ground.” Salami added that U.S. aerial attacks on ISIS testify to the United States’ blatant failure, its being sidelined from the main events in the region despite its aim to regain control over them, while the U.S. policy in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Libya had suffered a complete failure. He pointed to the West’s inability to isolate Iran and noted that the United States, France, and Britain were begging Tehran for help in their war against a small organization, ISIS, which is actually, he claimed, their own creation. In contrast, Salami asserted, “Iran is on the verge of reaching a new level of power…. Today our conflict with the West has expanded to the Mediterranean and this indicates a change in the regional power equations, an increase in our power, and a narrowing of the range of our enemies’ power,” along with the rising power of Islam and the Muslims.13
In this vein Brigadier General Massud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, accused the United States (before the Shia rebels’ takeover of Sana’a) of a double-standard policy in Yemen and called on it “to respect the will of the Yemeni people…. The Yemenis do not provoke foreigners, including the United States and the reactionary Arab states [Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states], to interfere in its internal affairs.”14 Houthi-led demonstrations in Yemen calling for restoration of fuel-price subsidies (as indeed was done in the end) and to replace the government won support in the Iranian media.
An Iranian journalist interviewed on a Hezb’Allah-affiliated TV channel, Mayadeen TV, said that: “The Bab Al-Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz tighten the noose on the Red Sea, on Israel in the Suez Canal,” and called Saudi Arabia a “tribe on the verge of extinction.” He added that the leader of the Houthis, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi, would become the leader of the Arabian Peninsula and that U.S. president Barack Obama, after having drunk from the poisoned chalice at the gates of Damascus, the walls of Gaza, and the suburbs of Baghdad, was drinking from it for the fourth time in Yemen.15
The conquest of the capital strengthens the Houthis’ bargaining posture in the political negotiations they are conducting with the Yemeni government, and enables them – with Tehran’s encouragement – to pose political dictates and adopt an anti-Western line. For the first time in years, Shiites in Yemen publicly commemorated the day of Ashura in Sana’a to mark the death of Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.16
Iran has expressed support for the reconciliation agreement that was signed by the Shia rebels and the government in September, a short time after Sana’a fell. Iran will probably intensify its involvement in the Yemeni domestic sphere in line with the Hezb’Allah model in Lebanon, determining the identity of the prime minister and his government and holding the reins of the army. Iran will do so while exploiting the political vacuum created by the Houthi takeover of the capital. With most of the Houthis’ power concentrated in areas along the Saudi border, Iran will also leverage the Houthis’ gains to step up its effort to subvert the kingdom, with the Shia in the oil-rich areas of eastern Saudi Arabia as its target audience.
Yemeni Prime Minister Mohammed Basindawa resigned shortly after Sana’a’s fall to the Shia rebels. On October 13 Khaled Bahah (who served until June as UN ambassador) was elected to the post after gaining the support of most of the political groups, and after Chief of Staff Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, the preferred candidate of Presidential Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, was rejected for the post because of Houthi protest. In any case, Bahah’s job will not be easy; he will have to secure the agreement of the Houthis (with Iran meddling behind the scenes) for his moves and deal with the growing battles between the Houthis (Ansar Allah) and Al Qaeda, which has been infiltrating Sana’a, and between Al Qaeda and the army. In addition, the central government remains weak in relation to the south and to the tribal elements.
Houthis unfurl banner in Sana’a with pictures of (from left) current Houthi leader Abd Al-Malik Al-Houthi, Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini, the late Houthi founder and leader Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, and Hezb’Allah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Public Subversion
There is nothing new in Iran’s subversive activity in various Middle Eastern countries aimed at promoting Shia Islam. The Arab Spring and the collapse of the old regional order reinforced and accelerated this activity, and Iran is now conducting it publicly without any fear of negative consequences. Iran is exploiting the Arab regimes’ weakness, along with the decline of U.S. influence and power projection in the region, to aggressively promote its agenda, which centers on strengthening the Shia element in the Arab countries. The main change in Iran’s policy is that its senior officials no longer fear voicing Iran’s real intentions and have become open, blunt, and defiant in doing so.
Iran’s enhanced confidence is apparent in other areas as well. In southern Lebanon, for example, Hezb’Allah has gone back to challenging Israel, and for the first time since the 2006 Second Lebanon War the organization was quick to take responsibility for laying explosive charges it activated against the IDF.17 Hezb’Allah is indeed bogged down in Syria and Iraq, operating in Yemen, and paying a heavy price in blood for its involvements. Yet it is also accumulating battle experience in urban warfare and the conquest of villages.
Iran’s defiant posture intensifies the threat felt in the Arab states in general and in the Gulf states in particular. The United States’ continued ignoring of this trend along with its de facto détente policy18 toward Iran further reinforce these states’ unease and sense of threat. Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal said that Iran’s military involvement in active conflicts in the Arab states only fans the flames of these conflicts. At the end of an emergency meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia following the Houthi takeover of Sana’a, the interior ministers of the Arab states declared they “will not stand idly in the face of foreign interventions which are of a sectarian nature, as Yemen’s security and the security of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are considered one issue which cannot be separated.”19 Yet the GCC states’ ability to intervene in Yemen is limited, even though in the past, after the Shia in Bahrain (who constitute a majority) gained strength and posed a threat to the regime, these states under Saudi leadership sent a military force – the Peninsula Shield Force – to help the king of Bahrain maintain his throne against the Iranian-supported Shia.20
While Iran is not actually part of the coalition fighting ISIS, it reaps the benefits – the weakening of a radical Sunni actor that has been gaining sympathy in the region and in the world and that could threaten Iran’s western border (Iraq). ISIS also diverts the spotlight from Iran’s nuclear program and its subversion of regional countries. Meanwhile Iran continues its activity in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen by means of the Qods Force and local Shia organizations under its authority, thereby ensuring its long-term interests in these countries.
Involvement of the Qods Force and the IRGC
Since the battles between Yemen and the Houthi Shia rebels began Yemen’s government has accused Iran and Hezb’Allah of helping the insurgents. Yemen also arrested Hezb’Allah and IRGC members who aided the Houthi rebels and the secessionist Al-Hirak movement in southern Yemen. The Yemeni prime minister also charged that the leader of the movement, Salem al-Beidh, enjoys Hezb’Allah protection. Hezb’Allah also helped establish the Houthi rebels’ Al-Masira radio station. On September 25, Yemeni president Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced to free a number of IRGC members and Hezb’Allah operatives under the pressure of the Houthis, who had taken over Sana’a. These individuals left Yemen on an Omani plane. At the beginning of the year, IRGC men were arrested at the airport after arriving in Yemen to help train the Houthis.21
In mid-2014 Yemen arrested some Hezb’Allah operatives who were helping train the Houthi military force. According to different reports, Hezb’Allah’s Unit 380022 (whose corollary Unit 1800 also operates with Palestinian organizations in Israeli territory) has been training the Houthis’ military wing in Yemen. For years Yemeni security professionals have been charging that Hezb’Allah is active in training the Houthi rebels’ military wing in northern Yemen. Iran, through the Qods Force and with Hezb’Allah’s help, is fortifying a presence in Yemen that enables it to smuggle weapons and drugs from Iran to the Yemeni ports and from there via the Red Sea to terror organizations it supports in the Middle East and North Africa and even to European shores. The Shia insurgents’ takeover of the Al-Hudaydah port and their aim to conquer the Bab al-Mandeb Strait further facilitates such activity by Iran. The combination of the Qods Force and Hezb’Allah Lebanon, which is training local Shia actors, repeats itself in other Middle Eastern countries where Iran is operating, especially Syria, Iraq, and Bahrain.
On January 23, 2013, Yemen interdicted an Iranian ship, the Jihan-1, which was carrying weapons for the Houthi rebels. The weapons on the ship included 122-mm rockets, 20 shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS), 100 bombs and RPG launchers, Iranian- and Russian-made night-vision binoculars, silencers for automatic weapons, large quantities of high-quality RDX plastic explosives, electronic equipment for the activation or production of IEDs, monitoring equipment, and other weaponry.23 A report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea said the captured shipment may have been intended for the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab terror group.24 It should be noted that the UN investigatory committee revealed that the weaponry was hidden among diesel-fuel tanks, and stated that all the findings led to the conclusion that Iran was behind the smuggling attempt in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1747.25 In October 2009 Yemen interdicted the Mahan-1 ship carrying weapons, mainly antitank missiles for the Houthi rebels.26
A Far-Reaching Struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia
The intensifying political-religious-military struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran has expanded to most of the Middle East’s countries. Iran’s power projection to the southern border of Saudi Arabia adds regional implications to the conflict between the Yemeni regime and the Shia rebels well beyond the domestic Yemeni dimension. The ongoing success of the al-Houthi tribe’s revolt with Tehran’s support, which has now led to the takeover of extensive parts of Yemen, creates another locus of regional confrontation (in addition to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian territories) between Iran and Saudi Arabia, each with its own interests and proxies in the Yemeni arena.
The warfare between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels is not only being waged on the ground but also on TV screens, satellite channels, and social networks. The two main actors in this war for public awareness, however, are Iran and the Saudis.
Iran’s media favorably cover the efforts and achievements of the Shia rebels while slamming Saudi Arabia and its ties with the United States; whereas the Saudi-affiliated media, particularly the satellite channel Al Arabiya, which broadcasts from Abu Dhabi with Saudi funding, and the pan-Arab press led by Asharq Al-Awsat, harshly condemn Iran for backing the Houthi rebels and intervening militarily in other Middle Eastern centers of conflict and crisis, particularly Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Bahrain. Iran blames Saudi Arabia for manipulating oil prices with the U.S. to weaken Iran. The oil glut, aided by Saudi production, has plunged the current prices close to $80 per barrel; Iran requires more than $100 p/b to sustain its budget.
Clear and Present Danger
In sum, Iran is continuing to exploit the Arab camp’s weakness and Washington’s hesitant policy toward the developments in the region since the start of the Arab Spring. While the Gulf states, chiefly Saudi Arabia, are occupied with thwarting ISIS and are joining the rickety coalition the United States has formed to defeat it, Iran keeps pursuing with increased intensity and without fear its policy of exporting its revolution to main areas of conflict, particularly Iraq, Yemen, and Syria.
Via its proxies, Iran is gradually managing to take hold of strategic areas of the Arab world that are mired in ongoing internal crisis and where there is an active Shia population that has long been subject to Sunni authority. The Arab states’ weakness plays into Iran’s hands; it encounters no substantial resistance to its activity apart from feeble, toothless protests. As for the international community, Iran suddenly finds that it is the United States that, in effect, is helping strengthen and stabilize the Shia axis that extends from Iran through Iraq, Syria (where the United States refrained from military action after Bashar Assad crossed the chemical weapons “red line” it had drawn), Lebanon, and now also crosses the Red Sea to Yemen and back through Bahrain in a sort of circle surrounding the Arab world. For the Gulf states the fall of Sana’a (“the fourth Arab capital in Iran’s hands”) to the Shia rebels and the possibility that they will soon control the Bab al-Mandeb Strait constitute a “clear and present danger.”
In the context of its campaign against ISIS, the United States turned to — and was rebuffed by — Iran. Yet Washington believes that its interests in the struggle against ISIS overlap with those of Iran. As in the past, however, it is doing Tehran’s work (as in the defeat of the Taliban in 2001 and the ouster of Saddam Hussein) and serving Tehran’s long-term interest in achieving regional Shia hegemony. Washington is investing limited effort and great diplomatic energy in defeating about 20,000 ISIS operatives while simultaneously strengthening Iran and its role in Iraq and Syria. In actuality, the United States is playing in the Shia court and helping vanquish a radical Sunni actor (ISIS) that poses a substantial challenge to Iran. And in the court of the nuclear talks, the United States is not taking a strong position comparable to the red lines that Iranian Leader Khamenei is laying down.27
In any case, in fighting ISIS Washington is apparently using as collateral its long-term interests connected to its continued presence in the region, ties with traditional regional allies (which are weakening), and attempts to stabilize the region for the pursuit of short-term interests – particularly a conciliatory line toward Iran and avoidance of angering it when there is a common enemy, ISIS. The great fear is that the United States will also take a conciliatory approach in the nuclear negotiations in return for Iran’s continued, apparently indirect cooperation in the war against ISIS.
The Sunni-Shia Fault Line
Even the “degrading and destroying of ISIS,” as Washington has put it, would not remedy the ongoing collapse of the Middle Eastern political system and old historical order. The relations between (Sunni) Saudi Arabia and (Shia) Iran in particular, and the relations in the Arab world in general, will continue to be defined in the near and more distant future by the religious division and the Sunni-Shia fault line, which has been the dominant factor in these relations for hundreds of years.
The Sunni-Shia rivalry will continue to characterize and dictate the course of events in the region; meanwhile, as part of this struggle, Iran goes on gaining strategic territorial assets.
This rivalry will also continue to affect other conflict arenas throughout the Middle East where Iran will try to impose its influence, as it does in Lebanon through Hezb’Allah. Saudi Arabia, for its part, will keep trying to counter the Iranian-Shia threat, as it is doing in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq with great transfusions of money. This will be very difficult for Saudi Arabia in the absence of U.S. support. Yemen, which is not threatened by ISIS and where Iran has now prevailed, is clearly a case in point.
A Shia Bomb
Meanwhile, Iran will keep trying to augment its advantage over Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arab world with its nuclear program, or, to put it simply, a “Shia bomb,” which would provide an umbrella and immunity for promoting the spread of the Shia revolution and the survival of the regime. From Iran’s standpoint this will entail the redress of a historical injustice – dating back to the dawn of Islam – of contemptuous, arrogant treatment of the Shia by the Sunnis, while providing a viable, Islamic, Shia alternative for confronting the West and Israel, the West’s “handiwork” in the Middle East, after the repeated failures of Arab nationalism.
Should Iran complete its nuclear program and attain a bomb, Saudi Arabia and the other Arab states will be forced to settle for an American or Pakistani nuclear umbrella, and may even choose to launch their own nuclear program and thus open a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.
More than they fear enriched uranium or a few thousand determined ISIS fighters, the Saudis fear Shiism enriched to high levels of subversion in the east of the kingdom (in the oil-rich areas with their restive Shia population) and to the south (along the border with Yemen). The Houthi takeover of Sana’a, which constitutes an Iranian victory in the pitched battle with Saudi Arabia over its backyard, Yemen, has augmented the Saudi sense of threat and shown that Iran, which is gaining a foothold at the entrance to the Red Sea and the major international shipping lanes, does not intend to stop there. From Iran’s standpoint, Yemen is part of a series of “heavenly” victories as Khamenei calls them (the “victory” of Hezb’Allah in the Second Lebanon War and the rounds of fighting between Hamas and Israel), as Iran builds its status as a regional power on the ruins of the old Arab and superpowers order.
* * *
Notes
1 Its name is derived from Zaid ibn Ali (grandson of Hussein), one of the descendants of the Imam Ali, who claimed the rights of the descendants of Ali from the Umayyad caliphs and paid for that with his life (in the year 740).
Publication: Jerusalem Issue Briefs
Filed Under: Iran, Radical Islam, The Middle East
Tags: Iran, Sana’a, Yemen
About Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall
IDF Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael (Mickey) Segall, an expert on strategic issues with a focus on Iran, terrorism, and the Middle East, is a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and at Foresight Prudence.
- See more at: http://jcpa.org/article/iran-sanaa-yemen/#sthash.33esSx5J.dpuf
Palestinians: Stop the Children’s Intifada! by Khaled Abu Toameh October 29, 2014 at 5:00 am http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4824/palestinians-children-intifada
The exploitation of children in the fight against Israel has attracted little attention from the international community and the media. Human rights groups and the UN have chosen to turn a blind eye to this human rights abuse. Instead of condemning it, these groups are busy denouncing Israel for targeting minors.
This strategy works out well for Hamas and Fatah, who can always blame Israel for “deliberately targeting” Palestinian children — an allegation the media in the West often endorses without asking questions.
Even more worrying is that the Palestinian groups often reward the families, who then become less motivated to stop their children from risking their lives.
Adult activists who encourage and send children to take part in violence should be held accountable, not only by Israel but by their own people. If these adults want an intifada, they should be the first to go out and confront Israeli policemen and soldiers.
Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian groups are using children from east Jerusalem and the West Bank in what appears to be a new intifada against Israel. Nearly half of the Palestinians arrested by Jerusalem Police over the past few months are minors. Some of them are as young as nine. These children are being sent to throw stones and firebombs, and launch fireworks at policemen and IDF soldiers, as well as at Israeli civilians and vehicles, including buses and the light rail in Jerusalem.
Masked Palestinian youths hurl rocks at a Jewish kindergarten near the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, Sept. 2014.
Instead of condemning those who exploit the children and dispatch them to confront policemen and soldiers, these groups and institutions are busy denouncing Israel for targeting minors. Most of the children’s attacks occur after school, so they are not deprived of education. But sadly, some of the Palestinian minors get killed or wounded in clashes with Israeli security forces.The exploitation of children in the fight against Israel has attracted little attention from the international community and media. Human rights groups and United Nations institutions have chosen to turn a blind eye to these human rights abuses.
Orwa Hammad, a 14-year-old Palestinian-American boy from the village of Silwad near Ramallah, was shot dead by IDF soldiers last week. The IDF says he was spotted preparing to hurl a firebomb at Israeli vehicles.
Earlier, 13-year-old Bahaa Bader was shot dead by IDF soldiers in the village of Beit Likya, also in the Ramallah area. An IDF spokesman said soldiers responded with live fire when residents threw firebombs at them as they were exiting the village.
Last month, 16-year-old Mohammed Sinokort from the Wadi al-Joz neighborhood of Jerusalem was killed during a stone-throwing incident.
This is not the first time that Palestinian groups use children in the struggle against Israel. During the first intifada, which erupted in 1987, children and women were often at the forefront in clashes with Israeli security personnel.
This strategy works out well for Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Fatah. At the end of the day, they can always blame Israel for “deliberately” targeting Palestinian children and women — an allegation that the mainstream media in the West often endorses without asking questions.
Moreover, the Palestinian groups know that the children who are being sent to confront Israeli soldiers and policemen will not be held accountable. Most of the minors detained by the Jerusalem Police for their involvement in the violence are released to house arrest. In cases where the children are aged nine to 13, they are referred to social welfare authorities without being detained.
The majority of these children are going out to throw stones and firebombs at Israelis because they are come from poor families or are lacking in good education and other economic and social privileges. But many of them come from middle-class families and do not live in refugee camps.
These children are victims of a campaign of indoctrination and incitement that is being waged by various Palestinian groups such as Hamas and Fatah. It is a campaign that is being waged through the media, mosques, educational institutions and the fiery rhetoric of leaders and activists.
What is even more worrying is that the Palestinian groups often reward the families of the children by hiring lawyers and paying fines imposed on them by Israeli courts. As a result, the families are less motivated to stop their children from risking their lives.
There are also reports that Fatah and Hamas activists in Jerusalem have been paying children small sums of money to throw stones and firebombs at Israelis and block roads in several Arab neighborhoods.
Hamas and Fatah had long discovered that children are one of the most effective tools in the fight against Israel — especially because of the damage Israel sustains in the court of international public opinion.
Thus far, it appears that the Palestinian groups have been successful in their effort to depict Israel as a country that deliberately targets Palestinian minors whose only crime is that they “resisted occupation.”
Dressing children in military uniforms and allowing them to carry rifles and pistols during rallies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is one way of encouraging them to put their lives at risk. But of course Hamas, Fatah and other Palestinian factions do not see anything wrong with this practice.
The adult activists who send and encourage children to take part in violence should be held accountable, not only by Israeli authorities, but also by their own people and international human rights organizations. If these adults want an intifada, they should be the first to go out and confront Israeli policemen and soldiers.
The time has come for the international community and media to pay attention to their disturbing conduct and demand that Palestinian groups stop hiding behind children.
Palestinians: Stop the Children’s Intifada! by Khaled Abu Toameh
“The United States did not come out to say anything about Boko Haram. They kept talking about economic problem. That is not true… The United States deliberately ignored the fundamental issues of religious ideology.” — Nicholas Okoh, Primate, Church of Nigeria
A judge in Iran sentenced a Christian man to have his lips burnt with a cigarette for eating during the day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
A church member added that members of the Muslim group had said they wanted to transform Uganda into an Islamic nation and would kill anyone who refused to convert.
The purge of ancient Christian communities throughout Iraq that started in June culminated in great intolerance in July.
Among other Islamic attacks, a Christian church that had stood Iraq for 1,800 years — a church that was erected less than 200 years after Christ — was reportedly torched by the Islamic State, according to countless news agencies, including Al Arabiya.
A fire rages in the compound of Mosul’s 1800 year-old church, July 2014.
Islamic State jihadis also stormed and took over an ancient monastery in northern Iraq. St. Behnam monastery had stood since the fourth century and was one of Iraq’s best-known Christian landmarks. It was built by an Assyrian king as a penance for executing his children Behnam and Sarah for converting to Christianity.
The jihadis expelled its few monks; they said, “You have no place here anymore, you have to leave immediately.” The monks pled to be allowed to save some of the monastery’s ancient relics, but the jihadis refused and ordered them to walk miles along a deserted road with nothing but their clothes.
The Islamic State issued a July 19 deadline for Mosul’s Christians either to convert to Islam or face execution. Islamic State members also singled out Christian homes by placing the Arabic letter for “N” — based on the Arabic word Nasara, or “Nazarenes,” the Koran’s pejorative for Christians — on the sides of their homes. The result, in the words of Patriarch Louis Sako, is that, “For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians.”
Muslim Attacks on Churches and Carnage
Afghanistan: According to BosNewsLife, the central Asian nation’s “tiny Christian community was left in shock Friday, July 25, after two Finnish Christian aid workers were shot dead.” The attack “underscored the dangers faced by Christian aid workers.” The two women were slain by motorcycle riding gunmen in the western city of Herat, “the latest in a series of attacks targeting Westerners, including Christian believers. The Christians, who represented International Assistance Mission (IAM), had been working in Afghanistan since the 1990s… They both spoke Dari well and knew and respected the culture of Afghanistan.” Among those the aid workers were helping were people with mental disabilities and illiterate women.
Central African Republic: At least 27 Christians were slaughtered during a July 7 attack on the St. Joseph’s Cathedral compound in Bambari, where thousands of people, mostly Christian, were receiving sanctuary. The attackers were fighters from the Islamic Seleka rebel movement and Muslim civilians. The armed attackers entered the grounds at around 3pm and began shooting indiscriminately. Women and children were among those killed; over 20 people were injured. The Islamic attackers burned down 20 buildings within the church compound, set fire to three cars, and stole two others as well as a number of motorbikes. Weeks earlier, on May 28, another attack on a church compound in Bangui, the capital, left around 20 people dead.
Kenya: On July 5, Muslims attacked the Covenant Church, three kilometers north of Hindi, just as Bible study was closing. As the Bible study participants fled, two men chose to hide inside the church building — and were burned alive after the Islamic attackers set the building on fire. On the same night, a Catholic church building in the village of Gamba, in neighboring Tana River County, was also destroyed by attackers. Two days earlier, 15-20 assailants armed with guns and knives attacked Gamba and the village of Hindi. The assailants killed at least 13 people, including a 12-year-old student and a 30-year-old man, “who was found in a pool of blood with a Bible on his back,” according to Morning Star News. One survivor of the attacks said the invaders were heard “saying non-Muslims should get out, and if not they should convert to Islam.” Another survivor said, “I was removed with my daughter from the house while the attackers tied my husband to the bedside before setting the house on fire. The attackers, who spoke mainly in Somali, targeted non-Muslims, whom they tied with ropes before slitting their throats.” (Gamba is about 28 miles from Mpeketoni, another Christian town where gunmen killed at least 57 people in a June 15 attack.)
Lebanon: A shadowy group known as the Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade, which had only recently pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State, announced on its twitter account that a “specialized group of free jihadists were tasked with cleansing the Islamic state of Bekaa in particular and in Lebanon in general from the churches. We will target crusaders in the state and in Lebanon to silence the ringing of the bells.” (According to Islamic Sharia law, churches under Islamic authority are forbidden from ringing their bells.) The Brigade has claimed responsibility for several rocket and bomb attacks inside Lebanon, the last of which were the suicide blasts in Dahr al-Baydar and Raouche’s Duroy Hotel.
Nigeria: A bomb blast inside the Saint Charles Catholic Church left five people dead and eight injured. The attack came shortly after Sunday mass ended, when an improvised explosive device was thrown in the city of Kano, which has a strong presence of Boko Haram, the local Islamic terrorist organization. On the same Sunday, also in Kano, a woman suicide bomber blew herself up outside a university after police prevented her from carrying out an attack. Five officers were injured. According to a police spokesman, “A female suicide bomber was isolated (by police) as she was walking towards the gate of the university.” She had hidden the bomb under her “long black hijab” and was singled out for behaving strangely, said the spokesman. Police were about to ask a female colleague to frisk the woman when she detonated the bomb, killing herself and injuring the police officers. Also in July, Nicholas Okoh, primate of the Church of Nigeria, said in an interview that, despite Boko Haram’s nonstop attacks on Christians and their churches, for long “the United States did not come out to say anything about Boko Haram. They kept talking about economic problems, [saying] that Boko Haram is fighting because of economic problems. That is not true … The United States deliberately ignored the fundamental issues of religious ideology.”
Sudan: In adherence to Islamic law, the east African nation formally announced a ban on the construction of any new Christian churches in the country. This move came after the authorities bulldozed several churches to the ground. Some had been in existence for decades. The most recent one destroyed was the Sudanese Christ Church at El Izba residential area in Khartoum North, on July 1. According to Pravoslavie, “The Sudanese Minister of Guidance and Religious Endowments Shalil Abdullah announced that the government will henceforth not issue permits for the building of churches in the country. Minister Shalil Abdullah told the press on Saturday [July 12] that the existing churches are enough for the Christian population remaining in Sudan after the secession of South Sudan in 2011.” Since 1989, Sudan has been governed by an Islamic regime that enforces Sharia law. Reverend Kori El Ramli, the Secretary-General of Sudan Council of Churches, criticized this move as contradicting the nation’s Constitution, adding, “Yes, we are a minority, but we have freedom of worship and belief just like the rest of the Sudanese as long as we are Sudanese nationals like them.”
Turkey: A band of Muslims attacked the Saint Stephanos Church in Istanbul during a baptismal service held on July 15. Yelling obscenities, and with one waving a knife and threatening to stab a parishioner, they pushed their way into the baptismal service. The attack occurred during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which often sees a rise of intolerance in Muslim majority areas. Two months earlier, men in their late teens and 20s had entered the church at night, ripped out most of its audio equipment and destroyed what they could not carry away. They also took some of the ceremonial candles, lit them and started setting items in the back of the building on fire. They stacked all remaining candles into a pile, lit them and left.
Uganda: A gang of Muslims armed with machetes stormed a church during services. Theyhacked one 18-year-old woman to death and left three others, including a one-year-old baby, injured. A group of approximately 20 Christians had gathered at Chali Born Victory Church in Kyegegwa district for their regular Friday night prayer session when armed Muslims burst into the building around 2 am. Pastor Jackson Turyamureba was preaching when he saw somebody looking through a window. According to the pastor,
I thought he was a drunkard and told him to either enter or go away. Shortly after that I heard doors being banged and men shouting ‘Allahu Akhbar’ (‘Allah is Greater’) as they stormed the church brandishing pangas (machetes) and beating worshippers…. One of the attackers followed me and threw a panga which went over my head. I ran through a garden and the man who was pursuing me fell down and gave up the chase.
The Muslim attackers then fled to a nearby mosque. Police surrounded the mosque; one officer was killed when the attackers opened fire. Two suspects were arrested. According to the pastor, the church has had problems in the area with a group of Muslims who had unsuccessfully tried to convert its members to Islam. Church member Polly Tashobya added that members of the group had said they wanted to transform Uganda into an Islamic nation and would kill anyone who refused to convert.
Muslim Attacks on Christian Freedom and ‘Dhimmitude’
Iran: Authorities detained a pastor and two other members of the Church of Iran, one of the country’s largest house-churches. Pastor Matthias Haghnejad, Mohammad Roghangir, and Suroush Saraie were arrested on July 5 by security forces at the pastor’s home in the city of Bandar-Anzali. According to BosNewsLife, “Their detention comes amid an ongoing government campaign to halt the spread of Christianity in the Islamic country. Especially converts from Islam, many of whom visit the Church of Iran, have been targeted.” Security forces reportedly confiscated the pastor’s belongings, including his Bible, and several other books. That loss would be just the latest setback for Pastor Matthias, who was jailed for his faith on three other occasions between 2006 and 2011.
Separately, a judge sentenced a Christian man to have his lips burnt with a cigarette for eating during the day in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims are required to abstain from food and drink during daylight. The punishment was carried out in public in a square in the city of Kermanshah. Five Muslim men were also flogged in public with 70 lashes for not fasting during Ramadan. A spokesperson from The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a political coalition which opposes the government, denounced the treatment as ‘savage’ and called on Western countries to respond: “The silence of the world community, especially of western countries, vis-à-vis these medieval punishments under the excuse of having nuclear talks with Iran has intensified the brutal and systematic violation of human rights in Iran.”
Somalia: Muslim converts to Christianity who fled Somalia and reside in Kenyan refugee camps remain in mortal danger. One convert, known only as “Abubakr,” and his wife reportedly held each other under their bed in their refugee camp as gunmen suspected to be from the Islamic terrorist organization Al Shabaab pounded on their door. They ordered the man to come out and called him an “infidel” (in both the Arabic and Somali languages), saying, “We need your head.” When the apostate refused, they opened fire through the spaces of the poles of the couple’s hut, striking their legs. Then they heard the attackers say, “We have killed the infidels” as they shot into the air while leaving. The Christian couple was found two days later lying in their own pool of blood. According to Abubakr, far from providing security for the hiding apostates, Muslim guards at the refugee camp actually help Al Shabaab militants locate them. Another Somali convert from Islam, Abdikadir, saw Muslim relatives and other Somalis burn down his home in one of the Dadaab refugee camps in April. In the course of destroying his home, they took away his wife and four children. He fled the camp and is now living elsewhere.
United Kingdom: According to the Telegraph, “Children were taught that all Christians are liars and attempts were made to introduce Sharia law in classrooms as part of an alleged ‘Trojan Horse’ takeover plot of Birmingham schools, an inquiry has found.” Commissioned by Birmingham City Council, the inquiry found “evidence of religious extremism in 13 schools as school governors and teachers tried to promote and enforce radical Islamic values.” Among other anti-Christian and pro-Islamic measures, schools canceled Christmas festivities, put up posters warning children that they would “go to hell” if they did not pray, and girls were taught that women who refused to have sex with their husbands would be “punished” by angels “from dusk to dawn.” The report found that the extremism went unchecked because the council “disastrously” prioritized community cohesion over “doing what is right.”
About this Series
While not all, or even most, Muslims are involved, persecution of Christians is expanding. “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month.
It documents what the mainstream media often fails to report.
It posits that such persecution is not random but systematic, and takes place in all languages, ethnicities and locations.
Raymond Ibrahim is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War in Christians (published by Regnery in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, April 2013)
Terrorists Gunning for Egypt, Hamas Aims at West Bank by Yaakov Lappin Nov. 5, 2014 at 4:00 am http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4844/terrorists-egypt-hamas-west-bank
Under Hamas’s rule, terrorist groups are trying to acquire a foothold in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.
Hamas is also trying to construct terror cells in the West Bank.
Hamas’s dark influence is… starting a new countdown to the next showdown.
Under Hamas’s rule, terrorist groups in Gaza are currently trying to acquire a foothold in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and Hamas is trying daily to resurface in West Bank.
Recent events in Sinai have placed Hamas on a collision course with Egypt, and threaten further instability in the region.
Egypt finds itself threatened by Al-Qaeda-inspired jihadi organizations that use Gaza — under Hamas rule, a nest of weapons and terrorism — as a base of operations.
These jihadi groups often attack the Egyptian state in the Sinai Peninsula, then, with their weapons, move back into Gaza through underground tunnels to escape Egyptian security forces.
Hence, Egypt continues to block underground smuggling passages linking Gaza and Sinai as quickly as it can find them.
On October 24, terrorists launched a major attack in Sinai in coordinated assaults. They targeted Egyptian security personnel in the Al-Arish area of north Sinai, near Gaza. The attack represented a blow to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and his quest to stabilize Egypt.
The car bomb, and subsequent gun attack, killed 33 Egyptian soldiers and resulted in a staggering number of casualties.
Egypt declared a state of emergency in north Sinai, closed its Rafah border crossing with Gaza, and proceeded to evacuate and destroy all homes and farm areas on the Egyptian side of the border, to create a 500-meter wide security zone.
Egyptian soldiers and armored vehicles operate to demolish all homes and other buildings in a 500-meter wide corridor, creating a “security zone” along Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip, October 2014. (Image source: PressTV video screenshot)
These acts, in turn, had a direct effect on affairs between Hamas and Israel.In the aftermath of the terror attacks, President Sisi blamed “foreign powers.” Egyptian media reports cited security officials who claimed that the terrorists were trained in Gaza, and that Palestinian elements were involved.
Cairo placed its mediation role between Israel and Hamas on hold. As the Rafah border crossing has been sealed shut by Egypt, for an unknown period, Hamas members from Gaza cannot now cross into Egypt for talks.
The closure of this border by Egypt means that talks on reconstruction for Gaza, and for coordinating the entrance of goods to rebuild the Strip are on hold, thereby increasing the pressure on, and isolation of, the Hamas regime.
Hamas, for its part, has denied any role in the Sinai attacks, and has attempted to dodge Egyptian fury by highlighting its efforts to prevent Gaza-based terrorists from acting in Sinai.
Whether or not Hamas’s denial is sincere, it is no secret that Hamas has forged links with Salafi-jihadi groups that travel between Gaza and Sinai. In the past, such links have been used by Hamas to “outsource” terrorism against Israel, in a way designed to cover up that the attacks have originated from Gaza.
In recent days, after a Palestinian projectile attack targeted southern Israel, Israel also shut down two border crossings with Gaza.
Hamas quickly arrested a number of suspects to prevent further Israeli counter-measures. Yet no matter how much Hamas attempts to distance itself from smaller terrorist groups in Gaza, the mere fact that under Hamas rule, multiple terror entities can flourish and arm themselves, in an environment conducive to jihad, places Hamas in worrisome place.
All the while, according to Israeli security assessments, Hamas is also attempting to construct terrorist cells in the West Bank. In its home turf of Gaza, Hamas is continuously rebuilding its rocket supplies, and in the Fatah-controlled West Bank, Hamas is attempting to resurrect terror cells. These efforts, however, have been unsuccessful, due to Israel’s ongoing intelligence control and nightly counter-terrorist raids by the Israel Defense Forces.
Hamas also has a hand in unrest around the Temple Mount site in Jerusalem, according to Israeli assessments.
The dynamics that led to the long conflict this summer between Israel and Hamas have not disappeared, and neither has the jihadi terrorism that still seeps out of the Gaza Strip in all directions.
Understanding this triangle of “Egypt – Gaza – Israel” is key to unlocking the significance of current regional events. The more that Gaza-linked terror groups threaten Egypt, the more the Egyptian government will seek to isolate and punish Hamas. A distressed Hamas, struggling to initiate reconstruction efforts, is more likely to try to break its isolation through a terrorist provocation against Israel, even if this attempt takes an indirect form, through a proxy terror group.
Hamas’s dark influence continues to cast a shadow on the region, raising tensions from Sinai to the West Bank, and starting a new countdown to the next showdown.
Terrorists Gunning for Egypt, Hamas Aims at West Bank
FREEMAN CENTER BROADCAST November 5, 2014
For Zion’s sake I will not hold my peace and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Isaiah 62.
FREEMAN CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES P.O. Box 35661 * Houston, Texas 77235-5661
* E-mail: bernards@sbcglobal.net OUR WEB SITE < www.freeman.org >
REDEEMING THE TEMPLE MOUNT by Bernard J. Shapiro 1993
Editorial in THE MACCABEAN ONLINE (1993)
Back in 1993, I started inviting people to explain the significance of rebuilding the Temple Mount in Jewish history and its affect on the World. Rabbi Moishe Traxler was very helpful in explaining to me the Lubavitch position regarding the rebuilding of the Temple. They very clearly prohibit any activity on the Temple Mount until the coming of the Messiah. The Israeli Consul General (Houston) Meir Romem was quick to tell me about the horrible international consequences of attempting to rebuild the Temple.
Others, including Rabbis of great note, told me the rebuilding of the Temple would require the introduction of animal sacrifices. A friend, a vegetarian and animal rights activist, was horrified by such a prospect.
All the myths were refuted. Rambam explained that animal sacrifice is not necessary if the Temple is rebuilt. He talked about a process of REDEMPTION. First regain control of the Temple Mount. Second remove the Moslem buildings that desecrate our Holy Mount. Then the Temple (Beit HaMigdash) should be built. He was very clear on this: Building the Temple is preparatory process for Redemption. It is not an end in itself. Worship at the Temple would still await the Messiah. It is important, We must PREPARE and WORK for Redemption. In other words, the Messiah will not come to Israel and reclaim the Temple Mount and rebuild the Temple. We must do those things BEFORE the Messiah comes, in order to CAUSE him to come.
What about the Arabs? Wouldn’t they object to the removal of the Mosque of Omar (Dome of the rock) and the Al Aqsa mosque from the Temple Mount? Of course they would, but they have no legitimate rights in the area. In fact, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount are not even mentioned in the Koran. From my Hindu friends I have learned how Moslem conquerors built mosques on Holy Places of other people in every part of the world. They did it to humiliate, degrade and acquire the spiritual power of their subject nations. There is no reason the sovereign State of Israel, needs to allow this desecration Jewish Holy Places to continue.”
Today on the Mount, the Arabs are supreme. They are destroying all archaeological remnants of Jewish sites. They are storing weapons in their mosques to kill Jews. They have built a museum to Palestinian nationalism, including gut-wrenching pictures from the battles of Sabra and Shatilla. Tourists from the world over are told Jews committed these killings ( It was Christians).
I am not competent to discuss Halacha with reference to the Mount. I do know that it is wrong for us to allow the Arab desecration of our people’s most Holy Site. What about the consequences of our asserting our rights to the Temple Mount? The Moslems cannot hate us anymore, and the Christian world will be electrified with anticipation of coming of the Messiah.
In fact, Christians the world over will raise millions of dollars to help us rebuild the Temple. As in the days of Solomon, the nations of the world will send their best architects, artisans and materials to help build the Temple. Jews in the Diaspora will be inspired to “go up to Jerusalem” and join in the sacred process of Redemption.
(From my mouth to G-d’s ear).
Bernard J. Shapiro is the Chairman of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies <www.freeman.org> and Editor of its Publications. [This article has been revised from the original published on July 15, 1993 in the Jewish Herald-Voice (Houston).]
REDEEMING THE TEMPLE MOUNT by Bernard J. Shapiro
FREEMAN CENTER BROADCAST November 5, 2014
* E-mail: bernards@sbcglobal.net OUR WEB SITE < www.freeman.org >
Here are your Dry Bones blog updates
Dry Bones blog updates for bernards@sbcglobal.net the Euro Politician
We watch as Europe’s politicians are blinded by political correctness, anti Israel media bias, and the intimidation of their growing Moslem immigrant populations.
The Euro Politician by Yaacov Kirschen “Dry Bones”
Washington Reiterates its Objection to PA’s UN Resolution,
By Ben Ariel, Arutz Sheva INN IsraelNationalNews.com
The second point below reaffirms Israel’s criticism of Sweden’s vote because it make an agreement hard to achieve, i.e., because it will make the PA more intransigent. Unfortunately she didn’t explain herself here.
But the second point is very hypocritical, because the US keeps calling for ’67 lines plus swaps. Is that not also “a unilateral step…that attempt[s] to prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations.” Ted Belman
State Department spokeswoman says PA’s resolution to “end the occupation” attempts to “prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations.”
`The United States made clear on Tuesday that it is against the Palestinian Authority’s plan to submit a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for an end date for “Israeli occupation”.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, during a Monday meeting in Washington, that the U.S. was opposed “to unilateral steps by either party that attempt to prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations.”
Urging the UN to call for an end to the Israeli occupation “contradicts their stated goal of a two-state solution and having their own state, an aspiration we support,” Psaki added.
Earlier Tuesday, a senior official said the PA would submit the draft resolution later this month.
The PA has been under intense pressure not to push forward with the Security Council resolution, which Washington would have the power to veto.
In response, chief negotiator Saeb Erekat declared several weeks ago that if the United States vetoed the PA’s UN resolution, the PA would apply for membership to 522 international organizations and statutes – in violation of previous treaties with Israel.
Erekat said in a statement quoted by the Ma’an news agency that the PA should also seek recognition by EU countries, especially after the new Swedish prime minister’s announcement that his country would recognize “Palestine” and the British parliament’s symbolic vote to do the same.
The plans for the resolution have been accompanied by threats from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his aides. Abbas recently threatened to cut ties with Israel if his latest unilateral move at the UN fails.
“If all efforts fail, we will end relations with Israel and I will tell Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, ‘Come and take over’. However, I will not dismantle the Palestinian Authority and I will submit a request to join all the organizations belonging to the UN,” he declared.
Fatah leader Nabil Shaath recently threatened Israel with a “political war” if there is a negative response to Abbas’s steps at the United Nations.
Washington Reiterates its Objection to PA’s UN Resolution
US Solicitor General: Israel Has No Claim to Jerusalem,
Lawyers for the Obama administration compared Israel’s control of Jerusalem to Russian claims over the Ukrainian territory of Crimea during oral arguments this week before the Supreme Court in a case concerning the rights of U.S. citizens to list Jerusalem as part of Israel on their passports.
U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, who is rumored to be in the running to replace outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, drew the comparison on Monday while he attempted to convince the Supreme Court that Jerusalem is not officially part of Israel.
The controversial case hinges around Menachem Zivotofsky, who was born in Jerusalem in 2002. Zivotofsky’s parents requested that Menachem’s U.S. passport bear “Jerusalem, Israel” as his place of birth, a request that was denied by the Obama administration on the basis of its longstanding policy to not recognize the holy city as part of Israel.
The Zivotofsky family sued following the decision and the case has been stuck in judicial limbo since. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and initial arguments by both sides were presented this week.
Obama administration lawyers argue that the case infringes on the president’s executive right to conduct foreign policy. By acknowledging Jerusalem as Israeli territory, the White House would lose its credibility in the peace process, as well as its jurisdiction to manage foreign affairs, the government maintains.
Lawyers for the Zivotofsky family disagree.
They argue that a portion of a 2002 law permitting U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to have “Israel” listed as their birthplace supersedes the Obama administration’s policy position on Jerusalem. While the law was signed by former President George W. Bush, he and President Barack Obama have both issued signing statements to avoid implementing the measure.
During Monday’s arguments before the court, Solicitor General Verrilli maintained that a formal acknowledgment of Jerusalem being part of Israel would be tantamount to the United States putting “Crimea, Russia” on a citizen’s passport.
Verrilli was referring to the Ukrainian region of Crimea, which Russia forcefully seized earlier this year.
“The position of the executive [Obama] is that we recognize, as a practical matter, the authority of Israel over West Jerusalem,” Verrilli argued, according to court transcripts. “With respect to the rest of Jerusalem, the issue is far more complicated.”
“I do think, for example, Your Honor,” Verrilli said to Justice Samuel Alito, “if [we] were to start issuing passports to people born in Crimea tomorrow that identified Russia as the country of birth, that would carry obvious implications for our foreign policy position, and it would contradict the foreign policy position in a way that could be quite deleterious.”
As with the disputes over Crimea’s status, stating that Jerusalem is part of Israel also would interfere with the White House’s policy positions, Verrilli argued.
As arguments proceeded in the case, the justices appeared to split along the justices’ traditional conservative and liberal lines.
At multiple points, Justice Sonia Sotamayor appeared to argue that it would be a “lie” for the U.S. government to acknowledge on a passport that Jerusalem is in Israel.
Putting “Jerusalem, Israel” on a U.S. passport is a lie since the executive branch does not believe it to be true as a matter of policy, Sotamayor said.
“What they’re asking you [the Zivotofskys] to do is to look—they’re asking the government to lie,” Sotamayor said.
She repeated this argument again later in the arguments.
“How could you tell me it’s not a lie?” Sotamayor asked Alyza Lewin, the lawyer representing the Zivotofsky family. “You, the United States, are being asked to put on the passport that you believe the place of birth of this individual is Israel, and the government—and the executive has said, no, we don’t think it was Israel, we think it was Jerusalem.”
Lewin maintains that the addition of “Israel” to the passport in question does not constitute official U.S. government “recognition” of Jerusalem as belonging to Israel, and, therefore, does not breach foreign policy pronouncements.
The Obama administration has countered that such a declaration would harm President Obama’s “credibility” in global affairs.
“Foreign governments, foreign peoples will not be able to have complete confidence that the position that the president announces on behalf of the United States is, in fact, the position of the United States,” Verrilli argued.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wondered why the administration would not just submit to the request with an added clarifier stating that it does not reflect official U.S. policy.
Justice Alito also was skeptical that there could be any reasonable “misunderstanding” of the executive branch’s position.
“So why will there be any effect on foreign policy except by people who will misunderstand the situation, either because they really don’t understand it or they will exploit it in some way?” he asked.
Court observers have paid particular attention to the case since it focuses on one of the world’s most intractable and hot button problems.
“This case manages to combine two of the things that this administration dislikes the most: Congress and Israel,” Adam J. White, a D.C.-based lawyer and writer, told the Washington Free Beacon.
“The administration’s fundamental position is that if the State Department is required to comply with the statute, then there may be confusion about what President Obama’s position is on the state of Israel,” White explained.
However, “that argument could be politely classified as a ‘legal fiction,’ because no one really questions what President Obama’s policy is toward Israel,” he said. “His administration has made that painfully obvious, and no matter what the Supreme Court decides in this case, President Obama’s position will continue to be obvious throughout the Middle East.”
US Solicitor General: Israel Has No Claim to Jerusalem