Love of the Land: Europe’s imperialist chutzpah

Europe’s imperialist chutzpah

FresnoZionism.org
02December 09

The Israeli Knesset has belatedly become aware of the huge amount of money that is flowing into Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from European governments and other sources with anti-Israel agendas. Prof. Gerald Steinberg of the organization “NGO Monitor”spoke at the Knesset yesterday, saying in part,

As Israeli citizens, we do not know how much money is involved – it is at least tens of millions of euros – or the names of all the organizations that receive these funds. In most cases, we are also not informed of European government funding behind rallies in support of one policy or in protest to another.

The same is true for academic conferences on human rights, occupation, or international law; large advertisements on the front page of a Friday newspaper (at the cost of tens of thousands of shekels); when the High Court pronounces on a case regarding the location of the separation barrier or security checks at the airport; submissions to the United Nations committees condemning Israeli responses to terror; and in many other crucial issues that affect our lives and the policies of our democratically elected government.

The nature and scale of this manipulation is unprecedented in relations between democratic countries – in no other case does one government (or groups of governments) use taxpayer money to support opposition groups in another democratic country. And there is no precedent for allowing these groups to use foreign government money to influence and manipulate the civil societies, political discourse, legal process and foreign policies.

Imagine the French response [to] an American government program that secretly gave one billion dollars to anti-abortion campaigners in Paris, or to promote human rights in Corsica. Or the Spanish response to funds from foreign governments that promote Basque issues.

Some of the organizations that receive this funding are simply — there’s no other way to describe them — enemies of the Jewish state. For example, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-I) worked closely with Human Rights Watch (HRW) to develop the medical ‘evidence’ for Israeli ‘war crimes’ that were supposedly ‘documented’ in a tendentious HRW report that I called a “blood libel”. This report was then used as one of the sources for the Goldstone Commission’s slanderous report, which may be used to prosecute Israelis for ‘war crimes’.

(Continue article)

Related: The Eu Lobby in Israel, Gerald Steinberg on European Funding for Israeli NGOs

Love of the Land: Europe’s imperialist chutzpah

Love of the Land: ElBaradei's failure

ElBaradei's failure

JPost Editorial
01 December 09

As of yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear watchdog, has a new director-general, the understated Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano. Mr. Amano has his work cut out for him. His predecessor, 67-year-old Mohamed ElBaradei, stepped down after 12 years with what, by his deplorable standards, amounted to a bang rather than a whimper.

In the last few days, ElBaradei declared bitterly that the IAEA's probe of allegations that Iran has been trying to make nuclear arms is at "a dead end" because Teheran is not cooperating. He warned that confidence in Teheran had shrunk in the wake of its belated revelation of a previously secret nuclear facility at Qom.

He slammed Teheran for rejecting a proposal meant to delay its ability to make nuclear weapons. Iran would have had to ship out most of its stockpile of 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium. Its demand to "dilute" the proposal, ElBaradei stressed firmly, "was unacceptable because it could mean Teheran retaining enough enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapon."

Reflecting its outgoing director's frustrated assessments, the IAEA's board on Friday overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding that Iran stop construction at the Qom facility and stop uranium enrichment.

The US promptly warned that its "patience" on Iran might be exhausted by year's end. Britain, sounding increasingly irritated, urged Iran to "accept the hand that has been extended toward it." And the French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, spoke of "one last chance for dialogue" before "very harsh" sanctions.

"Why did Iran announce 10 new uranium enrichment sites when it has only one nuclear plant to burn this fuel?" Kouchner demanded, not unreasonably, referring to the defiant Iranian response to the IAEA's resolution.

THE ANSWER to Kouchner's question, and to the wider question of why Iran treats the IAEA with such contempt, is simple: because, under ElBaradei's blinkered watch, it has learned that it can.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: ElBaradei's failure

Love of the Land: Hezbollah New Manifesto: We Want Strong, United Lebanon

Hezbollah New Manifesto: We Want Strong, United Lebanon

Hussein Assi
Al-Manar TV
30 November 09

30/11/2009 Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah announced on Monday the Resistance party's new political document that was approved during the party's General Conference that lasted for months.

Sayyed Nasrallah held a press conference through a giant screen at al-Jinan hall on the airport road to declare the new political document. The press conference was attended by prominent Lebanese, Arab and international journalists as well as some Hezbollah leaders and various political figures.

His eminence started the conference by noting that Hezbollah new political document aims to define the political vision of the party and includes its visions, stances, and aspirations. "This political document also comes as a result of the responsibility of sacrifice that we have experienced," his eminence added.

"At an exceptional time filled with transformations, it is no longer possible to address these changes without noting the special position our resistance has reached. We will address these transformations through two paths: the first is the Resistance one that resorts to the military and political victories as well as the expansion of the Resistance while the second focuses on the path of the US-Israeli mastery and hegemony which is witnessing military defeats that showed a failure in administering the developments."

"What strengthens the international hegemony system crisis are the actual collapses in the financial markets and the entry of the US economy in a situation of failure. Therefore, it's possible to say that we are amid historical transformations that signal the retreat of the US role as a predominant power and the demise of the Zionist entity."

"The resistance movements are at the heart of international transformations and emerge as a strategic factor after performing a central role in producing those transformations in our region," Sayyed Nasrallah read out, adding that the Resistance in Lebanon was the first to fight occupation and perceived since the beginning that it will reach victory at the end. "Through its long path and its depicted victories, the Resistance's project has grown from a liberation power to a balance and confrontation one to a defense and deterrence one in addition to its political and internal role as an influencing basis in building the just and capable state. The Resistance in Lebanon has evolved from a Lebanese national value to an Arab and Islamic value and has become today an international value that's taught all over the world."

(Continue to full article)

Love of the Land: Hezbollah New Manifesto: We Want Strong, United Lebanon

Love of the Land: Leadership that does not Capitulate

Leadership that does not Capitulate

From the Desk of Moshe Feiglin:

12 Kislev, 5769 (Nov. 29, '09)

Wherever I go and wherever I speak, the same question surfaces time and again: How do we know how you will stand up to pressure when you are prime minister? Who's to say that you won't change your policies like all of your predecessors?

"It makes no difference who the prime minister is," explained Israel Radio's commentator this week. "He will always implement the policies of the Left."

Is he right? Is this just a fact of life? Maybe once a person becomes prime minister he is privy to knowledge that we mere citizens do not know? Maybe this secret knowledge leaves them with no choice but to capitulate? What exactly did Sharon discover when he became PM that he did not know when he served in almost every other ministerial capacity in the government? What new insight has Netanyahu perceived that he didn't know the last time he was prime minister?

Let us explore the two worst-case scenarios:
One scenario is that Obama is threatening Netanyahu that the US will not stop Iran's nuclear development and will even penalize Israel if it attacks Iran without his authorization. The second scenario is that Obama has threatened Netanyahu that if he does not clamp an immediate freeze on building in the settlements, he will consent to a "Palestinian" unilateral declaration of independence – which would effectively transform us all into war criminals.

When Ben-Gurion was poised to declare the establishment of the State of Israel, our situation was much worse. We did not have tanks or fighter jets, seven Arab armies threatened to easily finish the job that Hitler had begun and to top it all off, the US threatened that if Ben-Gurion would declare statehood, it would impose an embargo on all US arms sales to Israel. That is, in fact, exactly what happened and the American arms embargo remained intact until Israel liberated Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the six day war of miracles in 1967.

When Saddam Hussein was about to produce his own nuclear bomb, America was opposed to an Israeli pre-emptive strike. When Begin instructed the air force to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor, Shimon Peres tried to torpedo the plan. Begin was forced to keep the mission a secret from Peres so that he would not leak the information to America. After the fact, the Americans condemned the attack, but Israel was strengthened, which in turn strengthened the American interest in continued relations with Israel. Ultimately, the US also thanked Israel for its pre-emptive strike.

Today, Israel is in a much more dangerous situation. Elimination of the Iranian nuclear threat is liable to trigger a massive missile attack on Israel from Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. We must be prepared to deal with all of those threats simultaneously.

(Continue to full article)

Love of the Land: Leadership that does not Capitulate

Love of the Land: How The NYTimes Interprets Historic Rights

How The NYTimes Interprets Historic Rights

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
02 December 09

You'll have to read this carefully to get my point:

The house at the center of Tuesday’s flare-up is in Sheik Jarrah, a district just north of the Old City, where three Palestinian families have been evicted from other houses in the last year after losing a lengthy legal battle in the High Court and lower district and magistrates courts.

A Jewish association won its claim to historical ownership of the land in question, and has plans to build a large Jewish housing complex there. The Palestinians fear that the Jewish presence in Sheik Jarrah is part of a larger project to cement Israeli control of the eastern part of the city and to push Palestinian residents out.

The latest Jewish residents to move into the area were escorted by the police and private security guards and immediately removed furniture from the property, which was built by a Palestinian family headed by Refka al-Kurd, 87.

The small, one-story structure was built about 10 years ago as an extension of the Kurds’ original home, but it was unoccupied, having been sealed by the authorities after it was determined to have been constructed without the proper permits.

“The authorities took our keys to the property because we built it without permits,” said Nabil al-Kurd, 66, who lives in the original house. “But it seems the settlers can live here without permits because they are the sons of God,” he said bitterly, referring to the Jewish newcomers.

Shmulik Ben-Ruby, the spokesman for the Jerusalem police, said his force acted in line with the court decision that determined that the property “is owned by Jews.”

You'll note:

a) there was a lengthy court battle.

b) if the Jews have a case based on historical ownership which means pre-1948, and we know the neighborhood only grew after Jordan dumped Arabs there after 1948, what concern is there about push Pals. out? if they got free housing without property rights while also trying to block Jewish legal rights, who do they think they are?

c) the extension that was taken over is 10 years old! that's historical?

d) how can Jews live without permits if they had to go through a lengthy court case?

Love of the Land: How The NYTimes Interprets Historic Rights

Israel Matzav: Dear Americans, Welcome to my world

Dear Americans, Welcome to my world

I've been saying for a couple of years now that it's just a matter of time before my American friends are subject to the same kind of searches before they enter a shopping mall, a movie theater or a public library that we get here in Israel. In an address to the American - Israel Friendship League in New York earlier this week, Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano all but confirmed that those days are coming. The United States has home grown terrorists.

Addressing the American Israel Friendship League in New York, Napolitano said a string of recent domestic arrests should "remove any remaining comfort that some might have had from the notion that if we fight the terrorists abroad, we won't have to fight them here," rebutting an argument advanced on several occasions by former president George W. Bush.

"The fact is that home-based terrorism is here. And like violent extremism abroad, it is now part of the threat picture that we must confront," Napolitano said. "Individuals sympathetic to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, as well as those inspired by their ideology, are present in the U.S., and would like to attack the homeland or plot overseas attacks against our interests abroad."

Napolitano cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, a Denver airport shuttle driver arrested in September after allegedly training with al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

Zazi allegedly tested homemade bombs, styled after those used in the 2004 Madrid transit bombings, before driving cross-country to New York from Denver. He faces charges of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction.

...

A U.S. counterterrorism official called Zazi "the first concrete case" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks of al-Qaeda sending operatives to prepare an attack inside the country. Although intelligence analysts had long identified such a threat, they had begun questioning their assumption, the official said. "The surprising thing is Zazi is the first," the official said, calling Zazi's contacts with core al-Qaeda leaders "at most one step removed."

We're all in this together. It's us against the terrorists. Maybe this will be good for aliya anyway. If you're going to have to live like you're under siege all the time, you may as well at least do it in Israel.

Israel Matzav: Dear Americans, Welcome to my world

Israel Matzav: No more blank checks for Iran's Green revolution#links#links

No more blank checks for Iran's Green revolution

One of the reasons that the Ahmadinejad - Khameni regime has not purged its enemies in Iran over the last six months is that Ayatollah Khameni fears the man pictured in the top left of this post: Mir Hossein Mousavi. Mousavi is a consummate insider in Iran, and is no less ruthless than Ahamdinejad and Khameni.

While a purge to uproot supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, Ahmadinejad’s main challenger in the June 12 election, could restore a semblance of stability, it might also damage the regime’s viability. For as much as they portray Moussavi as a sore loser and a saboteur trying to destabilize the Iranian state, he is a regime insider, with supporters throughout the religious and educational establishments and within Iran’s most dangerous programs.

Moussavi’s background is at odds with his new reformist stance. He pretends to have been out of politics for 20 years, returning now as an Iranian Cincinnatus to save the country from the “irrational and superstitious” Ahmadinejad. This is an affectation. Moussavi has retained his regime credentials and connections while carefully avoiding the entanglements of daily politics. For the last 20 years, he has been a member of the powerful Expediency Council, an unelected body designed to prevent the Iranian parliament from exercising any real power, though he has chosen not to attend its meetings. Like Hashemi Rafsanjani, the hardy perennial of Iranian politics, Moussavi represents the “deep state,” a network of personal, family, and professional relationships that cuts across Iran’s institutions. Unlike Rafsanjani, Moussavi has avoided conspicuous corruption.

During the election campaign, Moussavi ran on his record as a competent economic manager during the Iran-Iraq war. This dull technocratic persona masked a prime ministership from 1981 to 1989 characterized by repression. The human-rights abuses of the Moussavi era relegate Ahmadinejad’s to historical footnotes. Religious and ethnic minorities suffered particularly harsh treatment; for example, more than 200 Baha’is were executed, all Baha’i organizations were declared to be criminal in August 1983, three-quarters of Iran’s remaining Jews fled the country, and thousands were killed in a “counterinsurgency” campaign in Iran’s Kurdish regions. The cultural scene was devastated by a “cultural revolution” in which the regime violently seized control of universities, “Islamized” courses, informally barred all Baha’is from universities, threw academics out of their jobs, banned books, and rejoiced in the flight of dissident intellectuals. Indeed, Moussavi still sits on the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution, another membership he retains but doesn’t use. His record worries dissidents and democrats. Yet it’s precisely that bleak past that makes Moussavi a greater challenge to the state than former president Mohammad Khatami, who had once been the national librarian.

Read the whole thing.

This article confirms that having Mousavi as President would be very little improvement over Ahmadinejad.

In a post on Thursday, I argued that it is too late for regime change to stop Iran's drive toward nuclear weapons. It's actually worse than that. The kind of regime change that is currently in the offing will accelerate or at least maintain that drive - possibly even with the same goals. The world has to confront Iran's nuclear program on the assumption that we will be dealing with nothing better than Ahmadinejad and Khameni.

Over the course of the last six months, we have been urged to support the Green revolution in Iran. Watching the brutal crackdown on the streets of Iran, it's very difficult not to support them. But every time anyone has raised the question of Mousavi not being any improvement over Ahmadinejad, we are brushed off with assertions that his record should be ignored, that Mousavi is just a tool for a better change to come, that the idea is to get rid of Ahmadinejad and Khameni, because anyone would be better than they are, and a host of other excuses.

While I would be thrilled to see Ahamdinejad and Khameni deposed, the questions need to be asked and answers need to be given: Who would replace them? What sort of government would the replacement set up? What would the human rights situation be in a post-Khomenist Iran? How would Iran's existing disagreements with the 'international community' - particularly regarding its nuclear weapons program - be resolved by that replacement government? Iran is still the world's fourth largest oil producer and given Iran's oil production, having a nuclear capability cannot be explained away as simply a matter of national pride. Blank checks just don't cut it anymore. It's time to start answering the questions.

Israel Matzav: No more blank checks for Iran's Green revolution

Israel Matzav: Iran's global crackdown

Iran's global crackdown

Boy am I glad I'm not Iranian.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ahmadinejad regime has taken to harassing Iranian dissidents abroad - even those with no official position - using emails, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidating members of its diaspora world-wide -- not just prominent dissidents -- who criticize the regime, according to former Iranian lawmakers and former members of Iran's elite security force, the Revolutionary Guard, with knowledge of the program.

Part of the effort involves tracking the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity of Iranians around the world, and identifying them at opposition protests abroad, these people say.

Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad -- college students, housewives, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople -- in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and other places indicate that people who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them.

Although it wasn't possible to independently verify their claims, interviewees provided consistently similar descriptions of harassment techniques world-wide. Most asked that their full names not be published.

...

Five interviewees who traveled to Iran in recent months said they were forced by police at Tehran's airport to log in to their Facebook accounts. Several reported having their passports confiscated because of harsh criticism they had posted online about the way the Iranian government had handled its controversial elections earlier this year.

Before this past summer, "If anyone asked me, 'Does the government threaten Iranians abroad or their families at home,' I would say, 'Not at all,'" says Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent lawyer inside Iran. "But now the cases are too many to count. Every day I get phone calls and visits from people who are being harassed and threatened" because of relatives' activities abroad.

...

An Iranian engineer in his 30s who lives in a German-speaking area of Europe, and who attended protests there this year, described having his passport, cellphone and laptop confiscated when he later traveled to Tehran. He said he was called in for questioning several times, blindfolded, kicked and physically abused, and asked to hand over his email and Facebook passwords.

Interrogators showed him images of himself participating in protests in Europe, he said, and pressed him to identify other people in the images.

"I was very scared. My knees were trembling the whole time and I kept thinking, 'How did this happen to me?'" he said recently. "I only went to a few demonstrations, and I don't even live in Iran."

He said he was told he was guilty of charges including attending antiregime protests abroad, participating in online activities on Facebook and Twitter that harmed Iran's national security and leaving comments on opposition Web sites. He said he was given a choice: Face trial in Iran, or sign a document promising to act as an informant in Europe.

He says he signed the paper, took his passport and left Iran after a month. He says he has received follow-up emails and phone calls but hasn't responded to them.

Read the whole thing. And don't hold your breath waiting for the spineless Western governments to do anything about this.

Israel Matzav: Iran's global crackdown

Israel Matzav: Britain 'open' to contacts with Hezbullah

Britain 'open' to contacts with Hezbullah

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Lebanon's English language Daily Star that his country is 'open' to contacts with Hezbullah.

Britain is willing to step-up contact with Hizbullah as they begin to play a bigger role in Lebanon’s government, Foreign Secretary David Miliband told The Daily Star in an exclusive interview. Miliband told the paper this week he believed “carefully considered contact with Hizbullah’s politicians, including its MPs, will best advance our objective of the group rejecting violence to play a constructive role in Lebanese politics.”

He said that the UK government was only interested in serious dialogue with members who “value the political process, not those that seek to undermine it,” and reiterated its firm opposition to those in Hizbullah supporting terrorism.

Miliband is basing his assertion on an imaginary distinction between Hezbullah's 'military wing' and its 'political wing.' But there is no difference between the two. This is what Hezbullah's number 2, Naim Qassem told the Los Angeles Times in April.

Neither Qassem nor Washington [no longer true regarding Washington - see below. CiJ] distinguish between the Shiite militant group's political wing, which has members serving in the Lebanese Cabinet and parliament, and its military wing, preparing for the next round of battle against Israel. "Hezbollah has a single leadership," said the 57-year-old cleric in a rare interview with an American reporter recently.

"All political, social and jihad work is tied to the decisions of this leadership," he said. "The same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel."

When you combine this with US Secretary of State Clinton's apparent acceptance of the military wing v. political wing distinction last week, you end up with a most disturbing trend.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Britain 'open' to contacts with Hezbullah

Israel Matzav: Argentinean prosecutor warns of growing terror network in Latin America

Argentinean prosecutor warns of growing terror network in Latin America

Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who prosecuted the bombing of the 1994 suicide bombing of the Jewish Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, warns that Iran is rapidly setting up shop all over South America.

He said that Iran, particularly through Lebanese proxy Hizbullah, has a growing presence in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, using techniques it honed in Argentina before the country took measures to counter Teheran following the AMIA bombing.

He described sham operations involving taxi drivers, who conducted surveillance without arousing suspicion; fake medical school students, who could stay in the country for many years without raising eyebrows; and business fronts that helped funnel cash to operatives.

Meanwhile, the Iranians cultivated ties at the local mosques to search for people who could be radicalized.

Now, he said, Argentina is considered a "hostile environment" for Iran, but the Iranian terrorist groups are finding fertile ground in other countries.

"The stronger element that happens today is the complicity of the government," said Nisman, pointing to the networks Iran develops through its embassies. "We know that Chavez allows Hizbullah to come in."

But the Obama administration continues to coddle the likes of Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and Manuel Zelaya (who is apparently now finally out of the way). What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Argentinean prosecutor warns of growing terror network in Latin America

Israel Matzav: British anti-Semite caught on camera

British anti-Semite caught on camera

And as far as we can tell, he's not even a Muslim.... But if you've ever spent any time in London, this ought to make your blood boil.

On 1st December 2009, there was a pro-Israel rally outside the Palestine Solidarity Campaign 'Christmas concert' at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church on Tuesday December 1st, starting at 6pm.

The carol concert featured Caryl Churchill, author of the antisemitic play Seven Jewish Children, which demonises Israel and suggests that Israeli parents teach their children to hate Arabs.

The leader of the Church, Vicar Simon Perry disgracefully buys into the PSCs propaganda. He supports the event and believes people here would endorse the PSC. He supports a boycott of Israeli goods and fails to see anything antisemitic about Seven Jewish Children.

Those protesting did so because the event was organised by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, whose agenda goes far beyond working for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. The PSC supports the terrorist organisation Hamas whose Charter seeks the genocide of Jews and the destruction of Israel. The PSC was responsible for the appallingly biased TUC Congress statement on Israel which demonised that country.

David Gifford, Chief Executive, Council for Christians and Jews says this church is politicising the Christmas message. A Christmas carol service should be about the message of Christmas and by politicising that, it misses the point.

Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Hawkeye).





Israel Matzav: British anti-Semite caught on camera

Israel Matzav: France has 'strong reservations' about Swedish proposal on Jerusalem

France has 'strong reservations' about Swedish proposal on Jerusalem

In an interview that will appear in Friday's JPost, French ambassador to Israel Christophe Bigot said that his country has 'several strong reservations' to a Swedish proposal that would have the European Union recognize 'east' Jerusalem as the 'Palestinian' capital.

Bigot, in an interview that will appear in full in Friday's Post, said that France expressed its reservations on the text for two reasons.

"First, it should take into account the positive move of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu regarding the partial freeze on settlement construction. We should welcome such a move even if it does not meet all our expectations," he said.

"And secondly, we consider that we want to promote the re-launching of the peace process. These should be the two issues that should mainly be dealt within the statement."

...

According to Bigot, "several" of the EU states had "a series of remarks and observations" on the Swedish proposal.

"I'm pretty sure that the text that will be agreed by next Tuesday will be different from the text proposed by Sweden last Friday," he said.

Bigot, asked what France or the EU could do to push Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to negotiations, said: "We are not going to pressure someone in a delicate position. It is not about pressure. To the contrary, we can give him some help, guarantees, reassure him and look at the framework of the negotiations." [I guess it's okay to pressure Netanyahu because he's not in a delicate position. CiJ]

As to what kind of help might be offered, Bigot hinted at the possibility of EU forces in the West Bank.

"The EU has said several times we are willing to provide security guarantees," he said.

"If there is any agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and if they are interested and willing [to go] in that direction, the EU has said repeatedly we are willing to provide security guarantees in the West Bank - that would help both the Israelis and the Palestinians." [Like they did in Gaza? CiJ]

Asked if that meant EU troops on the West Bank border or patrolling in Nablus, Bigot said, "How it will work depends on the agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, and what they are looking for.

"There are several options between a minimalist observation mission, to a maximalist NATO force. This really depends on the two parties. We are not going to impose on them something. It is up to them, basically."

I can't wait to see what they do on Tuesday.....

Israel Matzav: France has 'strong reservations' about Swedish proposal on Jerusalem

Israel Matzav: Another crack in the 'settlement freeze'

Another crack in the 'settlement freeze'

Here's another crack in the 'settlement freeze.'

During a meeting with Haredi religious Minister Yakov Leitzman, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu reportedly told the latter that, in light of the lack of housing for the Haredi public, he would re-consider the freeze on construction in Haredi cities located in Yesha.

Hmmm.

I was in town on Thursday afternoon and I saw signs for a mass protest against the 'freeze' in Paris Square (the Prime Minister's official residence) in Jerusalem next Wednesday night. Buses from all over the country as usual.

UPDATE 6:02 PM

Here's another crack:

In another effort to placate angry settlement leaders, Barak vowed on Wednesday to restore mayors' power to approve minor renovation projects such as enclosing balconies or building pergolas over a porch - powers they had initially lost under last week's cabinet decision on a settlement freeze.

Barak made the promise at a meeting with settlement mayors following a day of clashes throughout the West Bank between settlers and the inspectors enforcing the freeze.

Israel Matzav: Another crack in the 'settlement freeze'

Israel Matzav: The 'West Bank's 'good reality'

The 'West Bank's 'good reality'

You may recall that back in May, 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazen told the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl that the 'Palestinians' were in no rush to accept Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's offer of 'statehood' on 97% of the 'West Bank' (with extra territory from 1949 armistice line Israel making up the other 3%) because the 'Palestinians' enjoy a 'good reality.'

In Thursday's Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross updates us about that 'good reality.' It's worth reading the whole thing. But here's Tom's bottom line.

In June, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert's offer last year to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall). "In the West Bank we have a good reality," Abbas told Diehl. "The people are living a normal life," he added in a rare moment of candor to a Western journalist.

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance. So long as the Obama administration and European politicians don't clumsily meddle as they have in the past and make unrealistic demands for the process to be completed more quickly than it can be, I am confident the outcome will be a positive one. (The last time an American president—Bill Clinton in 2000—tried to hurry things along unrealistically, it merely resulted in blowing up in everybody's faces—literally—and set back hopes for peace by some years.)

Israelis and Palestinians may never agree on borders that will satisfy everyone. But that doesn't mean they won't live in peace. Not all Germans and French agree who should control Alsace Lorraine. Poles and Russians, Slovenes and Croats, Britons and Irish, and peoples all over the world, have border disputes. But that doesn't keep them from coexisting with one another. Nor—so long as partisan journalists and human rights groups don't mislead Western politicians into making bad decisions—will it prevent Israelis and Palestinians from doing so.

So who says the status quo is a bad thing?

Read it all.

Israel Matzav: The 'West Bank's 'good reality'

Israel Matzav: Nasrallah meets Hamas reps to discuss Shalit

Nasrallah meets Hamas reps to discuss Shalit

Lebanon's al-Manar television reports that Hezbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah met with three representatives of Hamas on Wednesday. Although al-Manar did not say what was discussed at the meeting, Israel's Channel 10 reports that Hamas was seeking Hezbullah's advice on the 'terrorists for Gilad' negotiations.

According to TV network, Hamas' most senior foreign affairs official, Osama Hamdan, participated in the meeting. Senior Hamas representatives Mohammed Nasser and Mounir Said also reportedly took part in the talks.

Citing a statement released by Hezbollah, Al-Manar said: "The meeting was an opportunity to review the international and regional situation in light of the confusion the U.S. administration is experiencing in its approach to the crises arising from its aggressive policies in our Arab and Islamic region, particularly its blatant bias and full coverage of the Israeli stances and practices against the Palestinian people, their rights and interests."

The network said both sides also expressed satisfaction with the formation of Lebanon's new government, in which Hezbollah is a partner, and stressed the importance of renewing a Lebanese-Palestinian dialogue.

I'm sure the Obami will be thrilled to hear about its 'blatant bias' in Israel's favor.

What could go wrong? Why weren't there any helicopters or fighter jets near that meeting?

Israel Matzav: Nasrallah meets Hamas reps to discuss Shalit

Israel Matzav: Who's the liar?

Who's the liar?

Prime Minister Netanyahu denied on Wednesday that he had agreed to the 'settlement freeze' because the Obama administration wore him down.

The Prime Minister's Office has denied reports that he said that the decision to freeze Jewish construction in Yesha came after the Americans wore him down.

The Prime Minister's Office stated that "the claims made by the YNET website have no basis and were never said by him. They are lies, plain and simple."

I hope and believe that Bibi is lying about this. He doesn't want to get into hot water with Obama as happened when he allegedly called Rahm Emanuel a kapo. If the 'settlement freeze' was his own initiative, he has no place being Prime Minister. That's not to say that Bibi should not have displayed a little more backbone in resisting the 'freeze.'

Israel Matzav: Who's the liar?

Israel Matzav: Too late for regime change in Iran?

Too late for regime change in Iran?

In Wednesday's Washington Post, Michael Gerson argues that the Obama administration should try supporting Iran's revolutionaries as a means of countering that country's nuclear threat.

Iran's theocracy has become a military junta with a veneer of religion. There are fatigues beneath the robes. On the nuclear issue, the main question is: Does this regime believe that nuclear weapons will help ensure its survival? There is every reason to believe that it does. As the disorders since June revealed the regime's vulnerability, it has sped up its nuclear program. Drained of legitimacy and fearing a color revolution, Iran's military government seems to believe that the bomb will confer influence and permanence. It is not an irrational calculation.

In this light, Obama's policy of setting deadlines for cooperation that are violated with impunity, and continually extending the hand of engagement after it is slapped again and again, is both weak and irrelevant. But the alternatives are not easy or obvious. The crippling economic isolation of Iran is worth trying, again. But it would require a number of unreliable nations to sacrifice large economic interests in Iran -- something they have been unwilling to do before. Direct military options are uncertain and opposed by the military itself. It is difficult to imagine Obama, the Great Deliberator, taking actions that George W. Bush concluded were too risky.

But the security implications of a nuclear Iran could be greater than failure in Afghanistan. Iran is an unstable revolutionary power with global ambitions and terrorist ties. Nuclear proliferation does not get more dangerous than this.

There is, however, an untried option. So far, President Obama has seemed to view Iran's ongoing democratic uprising as a pesky obstacle to engagement. The administration has reduced funding for human rights programs in Iran and looked the other way as exiled opponents of the Iranian regime have been attacked within Iraq.

In addition to serious economic and military pressure, Obama could try the strategy the Iranian regime most fears: supporting, overtly and covertly, the democratic resistance against military rule. Not out of idealism, but realism. It would be a source of leverage on the Iranian regime, at a time when American leverage is limited. And it might hasten the return of civilian control in Iran, so that America would actually have a negotiating partner.

Unfortunately, this won't work for two reasons. First, there's not enough time. Iran is too close to attaining its goal and the revolutionaries are too far from attaining theirs for it to have an effect. Obama has missed the boat on supporting the revolutionaries (more about that here).

But nearly as important is the fact that Iran's opposition is as strongly in favor of continuing its nuclear quest as the current government. Moussavi, the opposition leader, helped to drive Iran's rejection of the P - 5+1 proposal to ship its uranium out of the country. And Moussavi has continued to criticize Ahmadinejad for 'giving away' Iran's 'nuclear rights.'

Getting behind Iran's revolution might have helped if it had been done immediately in June. It's too late for that now.

Israel Matzav: Too late for regime change in Iran?

Israel Matzav: Iran: We'll enrich our own uranium

Iran: We'll enrich our own uranium

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad told his countrymen on Wednesday that Iran is finished negotiating with the West over its nuclear program and that it would enrich its own uranium to 20% rather than sending it out of the country as had been proposed by the P - 5+1.

"I declare here that with the grace of God, the Iranian nation will produce 20 percent (enriched uranium) fuel and anything it needs itself," Ahmadinejad told a cheering crowd of thousands in the central city Isfahan.

...

David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, which has tracked Iran for signs of covert proliferation, said that Iran could be producing 20 percent uranium "within months" after adjusting its present enrichment program.

The real concern, said Albright, is that such a move would put Iran well on the way to making weapons grade uranium - material enriched to levels above 90 percent.

While the process of moving from the present level of enrichment to producing 20 percent enriched uranium would take months, the next stage - enriching to weapons grade - could be done "within a couple of weeks," said Albright.

"They're 90 percent on the way" to being able to make weapons-grade uranium "if they make 20 percent," he said.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration still doesn't get it.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Iran: We'll enrich our own uranium

Israel Matzav: Breaking: Bus explosion in Damascus

Breaking: Bus explosion in Damascus

There has been an explosion in a bus crowded with Iranian pilgrims near a Shiite shrine in a Damascus suburb this morning. Anywhere from five to twelve people have been killed depending on which report you believe. This is from MSNBC:

"Body parts are still scattered around the bus," one of the witnesses told Reuters. Several more people were wounded in the explosion in the Sayyeda Zainab area in Damascus.

Syrian security forces deployed in the area, a popular destination for Shiites from Iran and Lebanon, and were investigating the blast.

The bomb attack took place as Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, was visiting Damascus for meetings with Syrian officials.

Coincidence? Maybe.

He was not known to be at the shrine, but the blast may serve as a message to Iran by Syrians opposed to the increasing domination of Iranian Shiites in the suburb, known as Sayyeda Zainab. The attack, which eyewitnesses said was carried with rockets, occurred near Khomeini Hospital, named after the late Iranian Islamist dictator Ayatollah Khomeini. Witnesses said the hospital sustained serious damage.

Details are sparse due to Syria’s tight lid on media in the country. Syrian media have not reported any news of the explosion.

Hmmm.

Israel Matzav: Breaking: Bus explosion in Damascus

Israel Matzav: Lebanon endorses Hezbullah's 'right' to bear arms

Lebanon endorses Hezbullah's 'right' to bear arms

Repeat after me: "Lebanon is Hezbullah. Hezbullah is Lebanon." Do you want proof? Consider this: The Lebanese government has decided to give Hezbullah the 'right' to bear arms and to keep its militias functioning.

One of the key concepts of a government is that it has a monopoly over the right to bear arms. If anyone outside the government bears arms then either the government is nothttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=20498788 functioning or that group is actually running the show. Take your pick, but the result is the same: Lebanon = Hezbullah.

When there's another war with Hezbullah Lebanon and you see Sa'ad Hariri pulling a Fouad Saniora and crying (literally) to his fellow Arabs and to the media, don't feel sorry for him. Here's why:

All 30 cabinet ministers voted Wednesday to approve the policy statement that endorses Hizbullah's right to keep its weapons. Five ministers from the pro-Western majority expressed "reservations" over the clause addressing Hizbullah, but did not vote against it.

The policy statement - which lays out the government's goals for the next four years - illustrates how the government is loath to take any strong action against Hizbullah for fear of sparking a crisis. The group has virtual veto power over the government's moves, most analysts believe, because sectarian violence could follow if it pulls out.

Sa'ad Hariri is backed by the United States, which didn't have the guts to make Syria and Iran butt out. Just like Fouad Saniora was backed by the US government. But in the next war there should be no doubt: Israel should hit Lebanese infrastructure on Day One.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Lebanon endorses Hezbullah's 'right' to bear arms

Israel Matzav: Why foreign funding of Israeli NGO's is different

Israel Matzav: Why foreign funding of Israeli NGO's is different

Israel Matzav: The Something about Islam

The Something about Islam

Hugh Fitzgerald argues that Western Europeans are discovering Something about Islam, and when they finish discovering it, they will support Israel.

Things became very bleak for Israel in Western Europe. But now things are changing, and they are not changing because of anything the Israelis have done. They remain as inept as ever in the proper presentation of their own history, their own claims, their own rights, their own case. No, what has changed is that, over the last thirty years, the political and media elites of the countries of Western Europe allowed into their midst, into the midst of their countries, and their by-now long-suffering peoples, far too many, even millions, of Muslims. The behavior of those Muslims makes clear that behind that behavior is something else, a Total Belief-System, that is not susceptible of change, and that rests on the idea, inculcated by Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, that between Believer and Unbeliever, Muslim and Infidel, a state of permanent war, though not always of open warfare, must and does exist. And the texts of Islam, the tenets of Islam, are coming into view -- slowly but surely. The behavior of Muslims themselves is by now obviously more threatening and intransigent than the behavior of any of the other many immigrant groups that have arrived in Western Europe.

They are most threatening, it seems, in those very countries, Denmark and the Netherlands, which have elevated Tolerance practically to the level of state religions. And since it is not the Chinese, not the Hindus, not the sub-Saharan but Christian black Africans, not the Filipinos or the South Americans, but always and everywhere the Muslims who are the cause of such trouble and anxiety, and since they are the cause of such trouble and anxiety for non-Muslims not in one, or two, or five countries of Western Europe, but absolutely everywhere that they go, that they live, in numbers large enough -- 2 or 5 will apparently do -- it has become clear that there is Something About Islam. It is that very Something that many inhabitants of Western Europe can no longer pretend does not exist. They are now determined to find out just exactly what that Something is.

As soon as the peoples of Western Europe come to realize what Islam is all about -- and they are being forced to realize, for the Muslims in their midst are doing the forcing -- they will, slowly, come to understand not the non-existent "plight" of the non-existent "Palestinian people." They will change, and change in favor of Israel. They will come to realize that, as they become aware of what is truly happening in their own countries. Those countries are now faced from within with what is a quite-unnecessary danger, that of Muslim populations that cannot, save at the edges, among the least-Muslim of Muslims, integrate, and that believe they have not only have a right but a duty to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam. That goal will be, is being, pursued by all means. Those means include, in addition to terrorism and its ever-present threat, such means as the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest (discussed openly among Muslims, and sometimes even, as by Boumediene at the U.N. in 1974, and Qaddafy a few years ago, Arab or other Muslim rulers). That goal requires the slow or rapid undoing of the political and legal institutions of Infidel nation-states, the undoing of social arrangements and understandings, the undoing of the very freedoms, and solicitousness for the individual, that characterize advanced Western democracies, and are regarded as the accomplishment of many centuries of thought.

And as they begin to better comprehend Islam, those Europeans will, necessarily, begin to realize as well that the war against Israel has no end and is unsusceptible of a "solution." For the Arab and Muslim claim, or the Arab Muslim claim, is not to be met, nor assuaged, by any reduction in Israel's size. Already absurdly tiny, Israel is now, in its current borders (including the "West Bank," which is the name the Jordanians gave to those parts of Judea and Samaria, part of the Mandate for Palestine that was always intended to be included in the tiny territory allocated for the Jewish National Home by the League of Nations), existing in a state of permanent peril that no other state must endure. For any of those other states to lecture or hector Israel on why it should surrender more territory, is both cruel and absurd. Once Islam is grasped, both that cruelty, and that absurdity, of such pressures and demands on Israel, will be clear.

I wish I could share Hugh's optimism that Israel might actually garner support from Western Europe. But the World's oldest hatred doesn't have a rational basis and it's not likely to go away that easily. To remind you all, the World was supposed to stop hating us once we had a Jewish state, because then we wouldn't just be a minority everyplace else. That didn't work out too well either.

Read the whole thing.

Israel Matzav: The Something about Islam

Israel Matzav: Iranian arms dealer secretly extradited to the US in '07

Iranian arms dealer secretly extradited to the US in '07

An Iranian arms dealer was arrested in Eastern Europe and secretly extradited to the United States in 2007 according to a report that appeared on Wednesday in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Iranian has been quietly jailed in a Philadelphia-area prison for nearly two years - the case sealed from public view - as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have scoured his laptop to pursue hundreds of leads about Iran's covert effort to acquire American military gear, law-enforcement sources said.

"This guy was very prolific - there were five or six years' worth of records related to Iranian procurement on the seized laptop," an official said. "His only customer was and always has been the Iranian government."

...

The charges against Ardebili, a former Iranian government procurement official, are likely to include a count of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which essentially prohibits arms and other sales to Iran. He also likely faces money-laundering and conspiracy charges.

...

U.S. officials said the Ardebili case was unusual because it involved the arrest of an arms dealer living in Iran and working almost exclusively for the Iranian government. The case is rarer still, the officials said, because it involves the successful extradition of an Iranian citizen from a third country to the United States.

Law-enforcement sources said that the undercover ICE agents in Philadelphia made first contact with Ardebili in 2004 over the Internet, and that he began to request a wide variety of military gear, including night-vision equipment and missile parts.

In October 2007, the ICE agents lured Ardebili to an Eastern European country with the promise of buying gyroscopes and radar components. The law-enforcement sources declined to name the European nation involved, but another source confirmed that it was Georgia and that the sting operation took place in the capital of Tbilisi.

The ICE agents, posing as shady U.S. arms salesmen, captured their negotiations with Ardebili on videotape, officials said, and he was arrested by Georgian police on Oct. 2, 2007. Prosecutors in Wilmington won his extradition to the United States from Georgia in January 2008.

To pursue the leads from Ardebili's laptop, U.S. authorities kept the case under wraps in Wilmington for nearly two years. But in recent months the Iranian government and associated groups had begun to make public but cryptic statements about Ardebili.

Hmmm.

Israel Matzav: Iranian arms dealer secretly extradited to the US in '07

Israel Matzav: Shalit in Egypt?

Shalit in Egypt?

The Kuwaiti daily al-Jarida reported on Thursday that kidnapped IDF corporal Gilad Shalit has been moved to Egypt and that the 'terrorists for Gilad' exchange is underway.

The newspaper quoted sources as saying that Shalit has been taken to a secret and secure location in the country, accompanied by Ahmed Jabari, head of Hamas' military wing and senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar.

Israel and Hamas have yet to comment on the report.

While this could be true, it does not mean that the deal is a done deal.

Arab media reports have said Hamas is likely to present additional conditions for the agreement, which Israel has already agreed to in principle.

The main remaining dispute, said the reports, is over a few senior prisoners who are described as "symbols of the Palestinian struggle." It seems Hamas has concluded it will be difficult to convince Israel to free the senior Hamas leaders.

Therefore, Hamas will likely focus its demands on two prisoners not from Hamas: Marwan Bargouti of Fatah, and the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Ahmad Saadat. One option is that Israel may release them and ban them from the West Bank, reported the Al-Arabiya network.

The final negotiations center on which senior prisoners Israel will release.

As some of you may recall, I reported earlier this week that Fatah Tanzim chief Marwan Barghouti is going to be given the right to decide whether he will stay in jail or be exiled. It's being reported on Thursday morning that Barghouti has decided he'd rather stay in jail than be exiled.

"Marwan is going nowhere; he wants to return to his home and family in Palestine," said his wife, Fadwa Barghouti.

She said that neither she nor her husband would agree to his deportation.

His friends in Ramallah said they were unaware of any Israeli offer to deport Barghouti, along with dozens of prisoners whom Hamas was demanding in return for Schalit's release.

...

Issa Qaraqi, the Palestinian Authority minister for prisoners' affairs, who met recently with Barghouti, said that the top Fatah operative was opposed to the idea of living in exile.

Qaraqi said Israel was insisting on the deportation of Barghouti and 11 other prominent prisoners, including Ahmad Sa'adat, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Meanwhile, the 'good terrorists' from Fatah are pushing for Barghouti to be released before the Hamas terrorists so that they and not Hamas get credit for his release. Israelis are denying Barghouti will be released at all.

By the way, at the end of that last article, there's a claim that Israel totally failed to find out where Shalit is being held and that is why it is being humiliated with a 'prisoner exchange.' The word here is that's rubbish. Israel has known all along where Shalit was being held but at the insistence of the Shalit family - which feared an outcome like Nachshon Wachsman HY"D (may God avenge his blood) - the IDF did not undertake a rescue mission.

UPDATE 12:12 PM

Hamas is denying that Shalit has been transferred to Egypt.

Israel Matzav: Shalit in Egypt?

DoubleTapper: IDF Uniforms

IDF Uniforms

IDF Uniforms have changed over the years.

The basic uniform seen in this first picture (IDF Servicemen 1, 2, and 3) is the basic dress uniform worn by IDF Land Forces today.

The IDF Women's headgear has been replaced by the same beret worn by men.


The suspender rig, Foreign Legion Cap, Officer's Billed Service Cap, Mens' Tunic and Shirt, and IDF Women's Khaki colored Uniform have all been retired.
Servicemen in the IDF Land Forces now wear a simple dress uniform consisting of a Long Sleeve 2 pocket Shirt, 3 pocket button fly Trousers, and Paratroop Style Black or Brown Boots.

Berets are now worn on the left shoulder under the epaulett daily and on the head only for ceremonial purposes. There are many Beret colors issued to IDF Servicemen and Women. Paratroops are isued a maroon beret, Golani brown, Givati purple, Kfir Camouflage, Combat Engineers gray, IDF Naval and Air force personnel also have berets. Light blue for the IDF Air Corps and Black for the IDF Naval Forces.

The service uniform for all IDF Land Forces personnel is olive green; naval and air force uniforms are beige.

IDF Women's dress parallels the men's but may substitute a skirt for the trousers, and a blouse (tunic) for the shirt.

Some corps or units have small variations in their uniforms - for instance, military policemen wear a white belt and police hat, Naval personnel have dress whites for parades.

Similarly, while most IDF soldiers are issued black leather boots, some units issue brown leather boots for historical reasons- the paratroopers, Nahal and Kfir brigades, as well as some SF units. Women are also issued sandals.

I'll try and post how the different insignia and patches are worn later.

Leave a comment and let me know if you have any questions.


DoubleTapper: IDF Uniforms

Antisemite with Glasses

Antisemite with Glasses

CiFWatch has a link to a short film made recently in London, in which one John Sullivan, antisemite, tells some young Jews in London why Jews are so repulsive.

If I find the time I'll write about the Betselem tour to Hebron I joined yesterday, which was quite interesting. Part of the interest was in the group of young European students and aspiring journalists, some of whom resembled this fellow though in a different context. Uninformed Europeans who know more about all the evil motivations of the Jews than the Jews know about themselves.

In the meantime, as I never tire of pointing out, note how this Sullivan antisemite looks like any normal bloke, doesn't have horns, would probably be a perfectly normal fellow if you were discussing anything else with him, and inevitably tells us that some of his best friends are Jews.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations