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Mideastern surrealism

News item:

Iraq will demand that Israel pay compensation for bombing the unfinished nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981, an Iraqi member of parliament told the Iraqi al-Sabah newspaper in an article published on Tuesday…

The Iraqi demand is based on UN Security Council Resolution 487, which was drafted following the bombing of the reactor in June 1981. The resolution harshly condemned Israel’s aerial attack and determined that Iraq had a right to demand compensation over the damages.

This is reminiscent of the time the Egyptians demanded that Israel compensate them for the gold and valuables taken by the bnei yisrael at the time of the exodus (in response to which someone said that Israel would gladly pay as long as they received back wages for 400 years of slave labor).

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The rabbi’s strange perspective

Rabbi David Saperstein of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center will speak at our local Reform congregation, Temple Beth Israel, next Sunday. His subject: “Israel’s Three Most Vital Challenges: Peace, Equality, and Religious Freedom.”

Just to make things clear, ‘Peace’ means something like “making an agreement with the Palestinians to end the occupation of Judea and Samaria”, ‘Equality’ refers to the position of Arab citizens of Israel, and ‘religious freedom’ means ending the dominance of the Orthodox establishment over religious affairs (and funds) in Israel.

As Dave Barry, a very funny writer, always said, I Am Not Making This Up.

I don’t suggest that Rabbi Saperstein’s issues are unimportant, but I wonder how he missed these three:

• The Iranian nuclear project
• The 40,000+ rockets aimed at Israel by Hezbollah, plus thousands more by Iranian satellite Syria
• The supply of rockets – much more powerful than the Qassams of the past — and other weapons now in the hands of Hamas

English assignment for the rabbi: get a dictionary and look up ‘vital’.

More to come, after his talk.

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Bakri, the artist with a postmodern concept of truth

Last week I wrote about the possibility that Israeli Arab (excuse me, ‘Palestinian resident of Israel’) filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, who was responsible for the propaganda film ‘Jenin, Jenin’,  would be indicted for criminal libel. It turns out that he will not. But Attorney General  Menachem Mazuz said that he would support the appeal of several reserve soldiers in their civil libel suit against Bakri.

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But people still take them seriously…

How did I miss this one? Not only is J Street funded by Arab and Iranian money, but the connections to Saudi Arabia are even closer than had been previously imagined, writes Lenny Ben-David. The close relationship between J Street and Qorvis Communications, the Saudi-employed PR firm, should remove all doubts that J Street is no more than an anti-Israel front group.

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Statistics

This blog has been in existence for a bit more than three years. There are 1311 posts, most of them written by me, and 985 comments, most by my old friend (of almost 50 years) Shalom Freedman from Jerusalem. My own favorite blogs are still The Rubin Report and Elder of Ziyon.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Osirak, J Street, Bakri, Saperstein

Today’s morning NPR newscast was almost entirely devoted to Islamic terrorism: President Obama’s comments about the attempted airliner bombing ; news of yet another horrendous suicide bombing — at least one hundred dead — in Pakistan; the CIA operatives blown up in Afghanistan (OK, they were not exactly civilians, but we are in Afghanistan because of Islamic terrorism), and the attempt by a Somali assassin to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard.

I should mention that the words ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ were not spoken in the newscast. Of course they didn’t need to be — what other kind of  ‘extremist’ would want to kill Westergaard, of Prophet-Muhammad-as-bomb fame? And we know that the pants-bomber identified as ‘Nigerian’ in the almost-tragedy on Christmas day was — as Charles Johnson used to say — a “non-Buddhist.”

President Obama’s weekly address, released today, included this:

Meanwhile, the investigation into the Christmas Day incident continues, and we’re learning more about the suspect.  We know that he traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies.  It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group-al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula-trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America…

…our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred, and that we will do whatever it takes to defeat them and defend our country, even as we uphold the values that have always distinguished America among nations.

One might ask why he didn’t specify the ideology of this ‘network’. The answer — if one were even allowed to ask such a politically-incorrect question — would be that this might imply that all of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims were terrorists, while the murderous perpetrators of these crimes represent a tiny fraction of them, who have ‘hijacked’ the language of Islam for their un-Islamic purposes.

But it is not exactly correct to say that peace-loving Islam has been hijacked and replaced with something else. Rather, the concept of violent jihad, something that has always been part of Islam, has been emphasized and focused on by the radicals; and their approach has gained strength in the Muslim world. So it’s not exactly a well-defined ‘network’ of extremists whose ideology is different in kind from that of other Muslims, rather that a growing proportion of them have begun to see the West as an enemy of Islam which must be defeated. This is far more serious and difficult to deal with than a tiny group of extremist militants, but our leaders either don’t understand this or are afraid to articulate it.

For the same reason, it is considered absolutely unacceptable to ‘profile’ young male Muslim air travelers for special examination. But as has been said so many times, while not all young Muslim males are terrorists, most terrorists are young Muslim males. Although it is conceivable that al-Qaeda would recruit Jewish grandmothers, it’s unlikely; profiling airline passengers would improve the odds immensely.  But it seems that the desire to  “do what it takes” to defeat our radical Islamic enemies and defend our country is not strong enough to overcome the same taboo that prevents the President (or NPR) from uttering the phrase “Islamic terrorism”.

It’s also interesting to note that the President mentioned that Yemen is “grappling with crushing poverty”, although the Nigerian terrorist in question, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was neither Yemenite nor poor — in fact he was a member of Nigeria’s upper crust, the son of a bank chairman and former minister in the Nigerian government. He was influenced in Yemen by Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born (and also not poor) imam who allegedly gave Maj. Nidal Hasan a religious ruling that it was permissible to shoot American soldiers.

Barry Rubin provides the following snippet from a news report about the pants bomber:

In Funtua, Nigeria, Abdulmutallab’s hometown, they blame his wealth and foreign education for his becoming an Islamist revolutionary. A local student said, “We the children of the masses in this country, we don’t know anything about terrorism because our parents are poor.” Another resident added, “My only advice to the elite is to allow their children to mingle with the children of the masses so that [they] will have some of the traditional morals and values….”

He continues,

This is an extraordinarily important statement. Ideology, systemic failure of their own regimes and societies, and fear that the very attractiveness of Western life will transform them into similar modernized, secular societies — not poverty and Western foreign policy — are the real problems.

In addition, traditional Islam in most places was socially reactionary but also relatively moderate. While jihad was part of the sacred texts, no one was advocating that it be carried out. Suicide attacks were viewed as a heretical activity.

But just as leftism has succeeded in reinterpreting liberalism in many places, so has revolutionary Islamism reinterpreted conservative traditional Islam. Both movements have used deep-seated beliefs and values, but also made them into something quite different.

The Obama Administration should acknowledge that the United States confronts a huge — but not united — revolutionary movement which has major assets. Elements control Iran, Syria (not Islamist but allied with it), Sudan, the Gaza Strip, and now in part Lebanon, too. There are major elements in the Pakistani and Turkish governments that lend it aid and comfort. It is also fueled by Saudi Wahabi Islam and money. It is fighting in two dozen countries, from Indonesia, the Philippines, China, and Thailand in the east, to Morocco and even within Europe on the western flank. That movement is also challenging for authority in every Arabic-speaking country and trying to destroy Israel.

Like Presidents Truman and Clinton, Barack Obama needs a sign to place on or behind his desk:

It’s the ideology, stupid!

Technorati Tags: terrorism, radical Islam, political correctness, Barack Obama, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, pants bomber

Bakri's propaganda film is popular worldwide.

Filmmaker and actor Mohammad Bakri, a ‘Palestinian resident of Israel’, may be prosecuted for criminal libel for his 2002 film “Jenin, Jenin”.

You may recall that in 2002, after a horrendous wave of bombings and shootings in which hundreds of Israelis were murdered and thousands injured, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank to root out the terrorists responsible for it. One of their strongholds was the city of Jenin,  in Northern Samaria. According to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the period of 2001-2002, 57 Israelis were killed and hundreds injured by terrorists based in or directed from Jenin alone. During April 3-11, 2002, IDF soldiers fought a fierce battle in Jenin with members of Fatah’s al-Aqsa brigades, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

After the first day, the fighting moved to the adjacent ‘refugee camp’, which had been heavily fortified and booby-trapped by the Palestinians. Nevertheless, in order to reduce civilian casualties as much as possible, IDF soldiers fought house-to-house instead of employing artillery and air strikes. As a result — as ultimately attested to by the UN — only 52 Palestinians were killed, almost all combatants; but 23 Israeli soldiers were lost, 13 of them in one ambush on April 9.

After the battle, Palestinian spokesmen such as Nabil Sha’ath, Hassan Abdel Rahman, Yasser Abed Rabbo and Saeb Erakat, claimed that Israel had massacred hundreds of Palestinians, burying them in mass graves or leaving their bodies to decompose under the rubble. But unlike the situation in Gaza, the Palestinians did not control access to the area, and the truth ultimately came out (although, as CAMERA notes in the link above, the fact that they had lied through their teeth didn’t seem to hurt the credibility of the Palestinian spokesmen with the international press).

The anti-Israel media, particularly in the UK, took up the story of the ‘Jenin Massacre’ with glee, embellishing it with ever-more bloody details and accusations of wanton Israeli cruelty. Alleged body counts rose to the thousands. And Mohammad Bakri’s crude propaganda film won a film-festival prize for “Mediterranean Documentary Film-making and Reporting”.

The film consists of after-the-fact interviews with Palestinians who tell ever more horrible stories, and ‘visualizations’ of events such as tanks crushing Palestinians which even Bakri admits didn’t happen:

Bakri spliced together video footage shot during the offensive in which an Israeli tank [armored personnel carrier — ed.] appears to trample a group of Palestinian prisoners. Bakri said there was no proof that incident ever took place, but that he was trying to demonstrate what an Israeli tank symbolized to Palestinians. — Joshua Mitnick in the NJ Star-Ledger, from Electronic Intifada [my italics]

As I reported once before, my daughter met Bakri in Tel Aviv a few years ago and asked him if he really believed that his film was accurate. He responded that he was an artist and not a historian, and that although perhaps all the details weren’t accurate, the film was a true depiction of what Israel was doing to Palestinians. Bakri’s theory of truth seems a bit different from mine.

The definitive refutation of Bakri’s film is a short article by Dr. David Zangen, who was present during the battle as an IDF doctor, and even treated one of Bakri’s interviewees. It’s called Seven Lies about Jenin. Almost as interesting as his comments about the film is his account of the way the audience at a Jerusalem screening treated him.

The film was originally banned by Israel’s film board, but the ban was overthrown by the Supreme Court. Bakri was then sued for civil libel by five IDF reservists who had taken part in the operation. However, the suit was thrown out because the judge ruled that while the film libeled IDF soldiers as a group, it did not single out these soldiers, so they did not have standing to sue.

Now the soldiers have appealed to the IDF Advocate General, who asked Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to indict Bakri on criminal charges. Bakri’s response was typical: “This is the difference between me and the military advocate general: He is busy with murdering people and I am busy with art.”

Bakri is wrong. He is as much a soldier in the war against Israel as any Hamas bomber. It is unacceptable that he be allowed to use ‘art’ as a shield and to benefit from Israel’s free society as he does his best to destroy it. He should be indicted and held responsible for his actions.

Technorati Tags: Mohammad Bakri, Israel, documentary films, Jenin

‘Any other country in the world would…’ department:

Nuclear traitor Mordechai Vanunu

Why is this man walking around free?

In 1985, Mordechai Vanunu, left his job as a  technician at Israel’s nuclear installation in Dimona. Before leaving he took several rolls of film and in 1986 helped the UK Sunday Times write a bombshell story (so to speak) exposing the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Vanunu revealed that Israel had ten times the number of bombs heretofore thought, and that it was developing hydrogen and neutron weapons.

Vanunu was lured into a trap in Italy by a female Mossad agent; he was brought back to Israel and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for “transmission of secret information with the intent to harm state security, collecting secret information with the intent to harm state security and of aiding the enemy during a state of war”. When he was released in 2004, he was forbidden from leaving the country, meeting foreigners or even having a cell phone. I presume he is carefully watched day and night.

Born a Jew in Morocco in 1954 (but not, as Wikipedia says, the son of a rabbi), Vanunu converted to Christianity and now lives in an Anglican monastery in Jerusalem. He insists that he was incarcerated as punishment for his conversion. Right.

During the time that he worked at Dimona, Vanunu was also a part-time student at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, studying Philosophy and Geography.  According to www.vanunu.org, he experienced a “political awakening”, and “opposed [the] Israeli invasion of Lebanon and criticized the Israeli states [sic] militarism and policy toward the Palestinians in Israel and occupied territories.”

Vanunu is considered a martyr and a person of conscience by the usual suspects. Interviewed by the notorious Israel-hater Amy Goodman in 2004, Vanunu explained his motivation:

When I get out of the prison, I am saying many, many times that I am very glad, happy and proud to reveal its nuclear secrets to all the world and to let all the world to see the stupidity of Israel’s nuclear weapons policy and the danger of a nuclear weapons policy in secret by Israel. And I was not a traitor. The real traitors are Israel’s government who was behind this nuclear weapons policy for 40 years, and continues. They are betraying the Israeli citizens, and betraying the Arab community, and betraying all of humanity and the world, the human beings of all the world. They are the real traitors.

Vanunu continued that

This means Israel was ready to use nuclear weapons in the next war, in 1986 if it had war with Iraq, or Iran or Syria. It could use them against armies. That means the beginning by Israel using atomic bomb…. That was the most dangerous point in the Middle East: Israel, they could have used nuclear weapons like no other state there…

Since only the lunatic fringe would accuse Israel of wanting to expand beyond the post-1967 borders, any such use in war would be defensive. It’s notable that since Israel developed its nuclear arsenal in the late 1960’s, it has never been used, neither directly nor even as a threat. Instead it has been a last-resort deterrent, and an effective one, against enemies such as Syria, which have massive amounts of non-conventional weaponry. Vanunu’s view that it is a ‘danger’ for Israel to have a nuclear capability is entirely the opposite of the truth.

One wonders where his distorted ideology came from. But it’s possible to guess. Ben Gurion University of the Negev today is a center of leftist extremism in Israel, with faculty like Neve Gordon and others espousing positions similar to those of Vanunu.

Vanunu is now on house arrest after violating, for the nth time, the provisions of his release agreement. In an Arab country or Russia, he would be long dead. In the US, where the Rosenbergs were executed and where Jonathan Pollard continues to serve a life sentence for far less serious acts, he would still be in prison. But Vanunu wants — are we surprised? — to go to the US!

Technorati Tags: Mordechai Vanunu, Israel, Mossad, nuclear weapons, traitors

Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai, z"l, teaches his kindergarten class at Shavei Shomron. Rabbi Chai was murdered by Palestinian terrorists on Thursday.

On Thursday afternoon, Rabbi Meir Avshalom Chai was shot from ambush while driving on Route 557 between the settlements of Shavei Shomron and Einav, in Samaria.  He died at the scene from multiple head wounds, according to reports. Aged 40 or 45 (reports differ) and a teacher at the local school, Rabbi Chai left a wife and seven children. The al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a militia associated with Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization, took credit for the murder.

On Friday night, acting on intelligence from the Shabak [general security service], Israeli soldiers from the Duvdevan unit attempted to arrest three al-Aksa members:

Nader Raed Sukarji, a 40 year-old inhabitant of Shechem [Nablus], was arrested in 2002 and suspected of being a top Al Aksa terror group brigade operative and participant in many terror attacks.  He also prepared bombs and helped establish explosives factories in Nablus.  He was released from prison in January 2009…

Ghassan Abu Sharkh, 39, was imprisoned by security forces in 1990.  His brother, Nayef, was the head of the Tanzim terror organization’s military  wing in Nablus. Nayef facilitated several terror attacks until being killed by IDF forces in June 2004.

Anan Suleiman Mustafa Subih, 36, resident of Nablus, was an operative of the “Shuhada al-Aksa” brigade, which was involved in extensive Tanzim military operations as a cell of Tanzim in Nablus.  The group was led by Nayef Abu Sharkh, until Nayef’s death.  Subih worked in trafficking weapons and supplies for use in terror acts.  Subih had recently been accepted to Israel’s amnesty program for Fatah gunmen.  His participation in Tanzim activity was a direct violation of that agreement. — Arutz Sheva

The three refused to surrender and were shot dead by the IDF troops. A rifle found in the home of Subih was identified as having been used in the ambush.

So what is notable about this skirmish in the hundred-year old war against the Jews of Eretz Israel?

One thing was the response of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel’s supposed ‘peace partner’, which presently refuses to negotiate with Israel because, according to them, the settlement freeze is inadequate to meet Israel’s Roadmap obligations  (the PA’s major roadmap obligation, it should be recalled, is to ‘fight terrorism’):

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Nablus raid, as well as the killing of three Palestinians [Hamas operatives — ed.] from the Gaza Strip who tried to cross the border into Israel, showed that Israel “does not want peace.”

“The policy of assassinations and the indiscriminate killings reveal that Israel has decided to destroy the stability and security of the Palestinians,” Abu Rudaineh said. “Israel is seeking to drag our people into a new cycle of violence to avoid growing international pressure on the Israeli government to fulfill its obligations toward the peace process…”

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO official and a close adviser to [PA President Mahmoud] Abbas, accused Israel of “returning to its policy of executing innocent Palestinians and members of the Palestinian security forces.” Abed Rabbo claimed that Israel was preparing for a “comprehensive and bloody terror campaign” against the Palestinians and the PA.

He added that Saturday’s events were in the context of Israel’s attempt to distract attention for its “bigger crimes – the demolition of houses in Jerusalem and the construction of the racist wall.”

PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that the Nablus operation was intended to destroy his government’s efforts to restore law and order to the city. He too accused Israel of escalating tensions to avoid fulfilling its obligations under the terms of the road map for peace in the Middle East. Fayyad and commanders of the PA security forces visited the families of the three Fatah gunmen to offer condolences. — Jerusalem Post

I have not been able to find any comments by Fayyad, or any other Palestinian officials, that expressed even the slightest sympathy for the family of Rabbi Chai.

Moderate Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad pays condolences to families of murderers in Nablus.

At the Fatah convention this August, the al-Aqsa brigades were formally endorsed as Fatah’s “military wing”. So official Palestinian concern for the murderers is understandable.

Keep in mind that the PA security forces are directly funded by the US, and are presently being trained by US General Keith Dayton. Which bring us to the next notable item:

The United States has demanded clarifications from Israel after IDF special forces killed three terrorists Saturday who murdered a civilian, Rabbi Meir Chai, on Thursday.

Calls were made to National Security Adviser Prof. Uzi Arad, apparently by senior U.S. Administration officials, in which he was asked to provide clarifications. The calls came from the United States after Palestinian Authority officials complained to the Americans that the IDF had carried out “executions.” — Arutz Sheva

One wonders if the US demanded ‘clarification’ from the Fatah-dominated PA about the actions of Fatah’s “military wing”? Nothing like support from an ally, is there?

Another thing: one of the terrorists was recently released from an Israeli prison in a ‘gesture to bolster Abbas’, while another one was a participant in a special program in which terrorists were asked to give their word that they would lay down their arms — another ‘gesture’. Can we learn anything from this?

And finally: I don’t know if the IDF could have arrested them without killing them, and in all honesty I don’t care. These are three murderers who will not be freed in some future ‘prisoner exchange’. Indeed, this action and similar ones should be viewed as the military operations that they are, and soldiers must not be judged by the standards applied to police officers operating in peacetime.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Meir Chai, Fatah, Palestinian Authority, terrorism, IDF