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This is beginning to look like a Marx Brothers movie. Several days ago, immediately after a meeting between PM Netanyahu and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the Russians made it known that they would not deliver the S-300 air defense system — this is the one that can hit Israeli military and commercial aircraft as they take off from Israel — to Syria after all.

But then, the very next day, the EU announced that it was really, really tired of Bashar al-Assad and would, in principle, allow its members to sell weapons to his opposition (these are the guys that cut the hearts out of their enemies and bite them).

Of course, they also indicated that they will not be providing said weapons any time soon, nor have they explained how they will tell the ‘good’ opposition from the ‘bad’ opposition from the heart-biting opposition.

Nevertheless, this apparently caused the Russians to say that after all, they would too deliver the S-300. But it’s not that simple.

Yesterday, the Guardian reported,

Israel has read Moscow’s insistence on pursuing its deal to supply Damascus with the powerful missile systems as part of a “cold war” power struggle between the US and Russia playing out in the theatre of the Syrian civil war in which it wants no part.

“We are unhappy with the prospect of these very serious weapons arriving in Syria but we cannot stop Russia delivering them to the Middle East. We would not strike a Russian target – our egos are big but they’re not that big,” one senior Israeli diplomat told the Guardian on condition of anonymity.

The Israeli military will not hesitate, however, to take any steps necessary to prevent the transfer of this sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft technology to Hezbollah militants or other hostile groups.

“I don’t know how upset the Russians would be if, at some point between payment and the installation of this technology in Damascus by Russian experts, something was done to damage the weaponry. As long as no Russians were hurt and they got paid, I don’t think they would care,” the diplomat added.

There may be other obstacles to the Syrians getting the systems operational. Like this news item suggests:

National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror told EU diplomats that Israel would prevent S-300 missiles sold by Russia to Assad from becoming operational.

Diplomats reported they believed this was not necessarily a threat to use military force, rather an Israeli assessment that Assad would simply not get around to putting the Russian missiles together, since they are delivered with assembly required.

FresnoZionism’s undercover Syrian correspondent has sent us the following transcript. Of course we can’t guarantee that it is 100% correct.

Ahmad: Hurry up, Nizar, let’s get this crate containing the S-300 system unloaded. Soon we can deploy it against the Zionist and imperialist terrorists who are trying to overthrow our great leader and his attractive wife!

Nizar: (grunting as he pushes large crate emblazoned with a large red bear logo down a ramp from a truck) It’s heavy, Ahmad!

A: Of course it’s heavy, dolt, you can’t expect to crush Zionist and imperialist terrorists with light stuff! Hurry up, and then get the crowbar.

N: (pushes crate onto the ground) There!

A: Let’s get it open.

N: (picks up big crowbar and starts prying open the crate. The sides fall away, revealing several bags of small parts, screws and bolts, hanks of wire, various tubes and boxes, a large can with a hazardous material symbol on it, some rubber tires, and what appears to be a fat instruction manual) Allahu Akbar, the S-300!

A: Hmm… there seems to be some assembly required. Give me the book, Nizar. Let’s see… Crap, it’s all in Russky! What does пошёл нахуй,товарищ mean?

N: I don’t speak Russky. But maybe some of those Hizballah volunteers sitting around picking the lice out of their beards while I work do.

A: Hey you — Hizbaloon — what does пошёл нахуй,товарищ mean?

Hizballah terrorist: (squinting at book) Er, it says “Congratulations on your purchase of this fine Russky air defense system.”

A: Keep reading. We need to put this together before the Zionists find out we have it and bomb us!

H: “You will need a few simple tools like a horizontal milling machine, a 5-axis lathe, and a  screwdriver Feeloops to assemble your S-300.”

A: (sweating) Nizar, do we have a screwdriver Feeloops? What is a screwdriver Feeloops, anyway?

N: I don’t know, but that looks like a Zionist F-15 over there (runs away).

The transcript ends here.

Technorati Tags: Syria, S-300, Russia, Israel

When we think of warfare, most of us think of tanks roaring across the desert, dogfights in the air, infantry battles, or even guerrilla war, in which shadowy figures strike and then melt away. But when enemy populations are closely intermingled, then warfare can also comprise what we normally think of as crime. So when one population deliberately targets another in order to damage morale, to increase insecurity and even to drive them out, and when they do it for nationalistic motives, it can be more than a nuisance — it can be war.

This kind of warfare is traditional in the Middle East, where simple banditry is often more than that. I’ve written about how thefts and vandalism in the Galilee and the Negev have given rise to vigilante groups to protect farmers from wholesale loss of animals, machinery and crops to Bedouin and Palestinian thieves.

But today a far worse situation has arisen in Judea and Samaria where attempted murder — and sometimes the attempts are successful — is a daily occurrence. Although one often hears that terrorism in Israel has become far less frequent recently, this is simply not true. It is just much less likely to make the news if it occurs in Judea and Samaria, or if it happens to that less-than-human being, a ‘settler’.

There are multiple reasons for this. Palestinian Arab ideology encourages them to see themselves as oppressed, so anything they do is ‘justified’. Parents often encourage their children to act out their feelings of victimization, or at least accept their behavior, even when it’s violent. Official Palestinian media and schools continually glorify all forms of ‘resistance’, even murder.

The Israeli police are in general ineffective and outnumbered. The IDF operates with strict rules of engagement, and anyway is the not the best tool — after all, armies are, or should be, designed to kill people — to deal with theft, arson, vandalism and harassment (which, nevertheless, often turns into murder).

And then there is most of the Israeli and international media, which seem to believe that if a ‘settler’ gets hurt, it’s his or her own fault for living in a place where, “Palestinians want the land for their future state.” According to them, the solution to the problem  is ‘peace’ and a ‘two-state solution’.

Anyone with sense enough to listen to what the Palestinian Arabs themselves say knows that they consider Haifa, Acco, Yafo, Lod, etc. Arab land too. I suspect that if the Jews abandoned everything but downtown Tel Aviv, the violence would follow them there.

Here is a report, provided by Yisrael Medad, which lists some of the violent acts carried out by Arabs against Jews in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem over the past two weeks. That’s it — two weeks. Could you live with this level of violence in your community?

Low-Intensity Conflict Report #79 May 13-26, 2013

These reports are translated and publicized by Yehudit Tayar for Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron with the clearance and confirmation of the IDF.  Hatzalah Yehudah and Shomron is a voluntary emergency medical organization with over 500 volunteer doctors, paramedics, medics who are on call 24/7 and work along with the IDF, 669 IAF Airborne Rescue, the security officers and personal throughout Yesha and the Jordan Valley, and with MDA [Magen David Adom]. …

From the reports which we received here is a partial summary of the hundreds of attempts to murder innocent Jews during the past week;

3 IDF soldiers, 9 civilians, and 3 policemen were injured:

• Civilian injured from rocks a Sinjal, child injured moderately from bottle thrown on bus at the Mt. of Olives, young civilian injured from rocks near Ofra, 5 children moderately from rocks between El Hadar and Efat,

• IDF soldier moderately [injured] from rocks near the Tunnel Road, IDF soldier moderately in his head from rocks near T Junction in Etzion, IDF soldier moderately at El Fuar, Border policeman moderately from rocks at Abu Dis, 2 policemen moderately at the Temple Mt., Fireman moderately injured from rocks at Issawiya during attempt to extinguish a fire at Opharin Base.

We received reports of at least 143 Molotov Cocktail attacks:

100 at Azoria, 6 Abu Dis, 9 Shuafat Refugee Camp, 1 at bus at El Arub, 5 at car and 1 at security vehicle near Ofra, 4 Kever Rachel, 3 at security force at Tunnel Road checkpost, 4 at security force El Fuar, 3 at security force at Parsa Junction,1 thrown by rioters at Shuafat which caused a fire to break out near Pisgat Ze’ev, 1 at Ophrit Base, 2 at the security fence near Ja’ama. [Molotov cocktails, of course, are gasoline bombs that can and have burned people to death or scarred them for life — ed]

10 explosive devices at Azaria

5 Arab rioters attacked a yeshiva student on his way to the Kotel (Western Wall)

3 PA policemen were apprehended who were involved in the murder of Ben Zion Livnat HY”D, after they had been released from prison by the PA after serving short sentences.

Arab with improvised weapon caught in his car at Bene Naim

This week also there were scores of attempted murder of innocent men, women and children by Arabs  attacking with rocks thrown on the roads at the cars as they drove in their vehicles:

A partial list of the places where the attacks occurred:

160 turn – Hevron, Policeman checkpost – Hevron, Adoriam Junction Southern Hevron Hills, El Fuar, near the Tunnel Road checkpost, Har Homa-Tekoa Highway, near the Spring by Hevron, El Arub, H Junction, T Junction by Tekoa, Arab Tekoa, between Efrat and El Hadar, Halhul, luben A-Shrakia, Postmans Junction Benjamin Region, Ras Karkar, Wadi Haramia, Sin’jil, Dir Abu Mishal, Nebe Zalah, near Ofra, Abud bypass, near Na’alin, Betliu, El Moyar, near Ba’al Hazor, Shokba, Abu Dis, Azaria, the Temple Mt., A’Zaim checkpost, Ras hamis, Issowiya, at the almond grove in Yitzhar, between Ariel and Nofei Nechemia, a rock barricade between Tapuah and Migdalim, Pundok, Gat Junction, this week also Beduin damaged property near Retamim. [This is the kind of attack that killed Asher Palmer and his son in 2011 and critically inured a young girl this March — ed].

Here is a short video to give you a taste of what ‘stoning’ is like:

Technorati Tags: Israel, terrorism

The lamed hey — the Thirty-Five — the heroes of Gush Etzion

Gush Etzion is an area southeast of Jerusalem, which contains several ‘settlements’. One of them is Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. Part of the Palestine Mandate from 1917 to 1948, and the Ottoman empire before that, it was purchased from local Arabs and settled by Yemenite Jews in 1927.  They lived there on and off (they were driven out several times by Arab ‘riots’) until May 1948 when the invading Jordanian army overran it and massacred all but four of its defenders. All of the West Bank and East Jerusalem were made Jew-free by the Jordanians, who illegally occupied the area until 1967, when the kibbutz was reestablished.

The Haganah sent thirty-five men to relieve the besieged kibbutzim of Gush Etzion in January 1948, following an Arab attack. They were wiped out and their bodies mutilated after an Arab shepherd, whom they unwisely set free after encountering him on the way, reported their presence. They are referred to as the lamed hey, “the thirty-five.”

Let me spell it out more clearly: Jews lived there on land they owned. The kibbutzim of Gush Etzion (there were four of them) represented the realization of the promise made by the world to the Jewish people in the Palestine Mandate, that there would be a national home in the land of Israel. Arabs violently resisted their presence, and when Jordan violated the UN charter by invading and occupying Judea and Samaria in 1948, Jews were murdered or expelled. Not one Jew was allowed to remain on the Jordanian side of the cease-fire line. Because they were Jews.

But in the eyes of the ‘international community’, the ethnic cleansing of the area east of the 1949 armistice line and the 19-year Jordanian occupation thereof transformed Gush Etzion into Arab land, land that today ‘belongs’ to the new non-member-state of the UN, ‘Palestine’.

Apparently this magical transmutation was recognized by Google, because when Jewish residents of Gush Etzion tried to use Google’s search engine this month, they received a message suggesting that they switch to the appropriate page for their location, Google Palestine (Google.ps), in Arabic, rather than the Hebrew-language Google Israel (Google.il) they had been using. This follows Google’s recent decision to re-title Google.ps ‘Palestine’ instead of ‘Palestinian territories’.

Some people think this is much ado about nothing, and at a time when nobody knows if Israel will be at war with Hizballah, Syria and Iran tomorrow, they have a point.

But it is indicative of a much bigger problem. In its desire to present itself as a peace-loving member of the ‘international community’, Israeli governments have not asserted the historic right of the Jewish people, guaranteed in international law, to the land of Israel. They have not challenged the UN’s abdication of its responsibility, inherited from the League of Nations, to preserve this right. They have allowed the Arab position, that the Jews are colonialist interlopers occupying Arab land, to become the conventional wisdom.

I am not saying that it isn’t possible for Israel to agree to a negotiated settlement that would transfer some part of the area of the original mandate to Arab sovereignty, assuming that it could be consistent with Israel’s security. But this has to be negotiated from the starting point that the Jewish people have prima facie rights to Judea and Samaria, not the Palestinian Arabs.

This distortion underlies the position of the US that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines “with land swaps.” In other words, the US believes that the armistice lines represent the boundaries of ‘Arab land’ and so if Israel annexes any of it, the Arabs must be ‘compensated.’ Why? the land wasn’t theirs to begin with!

Recent Israeli governments have argued for holding onto parts of the territories for security reasons, an argument which makes eminent sense. But they have generally avoided firmly asserting that Israel, on behalf of the Jewish people, holds the legal title to the land and has the right to dispose of it as it sees fit. The Arabs, of course, aren’t shy in saying that it’s all theirs, and that in addition, Jews aren’t allowed to live there.

So we shouldn’t be surprised when Google follows the lead of the corrupt UN and declares that Gush Etzion is in ‘Palestine’. No Israeli Prime Minister since Yitzhak Shamir has contradicted them!

What do you think the defenders of Kfar Etzion and the lamed hey would have said?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Judea and Samaria, Gush Etzion, Google, lamed hey

So you don’t understand why Israel gets such bad treatment in the international press? And you wonder why the war crimes of Hamas and Arab terrorism are invisible to the “human rights” industry?

Let’s look, thanks to Alana Goodman, at how these folks talk among themselves, on their (no longer) private Facebook page, the Vulture Club (which, according to Goodman, has about 3,500 members).

Cast of characters:

Peter Bouckaert, senior official of Human Rights Watch
Jerome Delay, AP photojournalist
Javier Espinosa, El Mundo reporter
Marc Bastian, Agence France Press reporter
Andrew Ford Lyons, International Solidarity Movement activist
Julia Macfarlane, BBC World Service journalist
Fredrik Naumann, Photojournalist for Felix Features (Norway)
Jan Eikelboom, “News hour” reporter (Netherlands)
Thomas Haley, independent photojournalist
Bruno Stevens, independent photojournalist, Belgium
Susan Glen, university lecturer in photojournalism, UK

Here they are discussing the recent report of the Israeli government about what I called “one of the most damaging fake atrocity stories in military history,” the al-Dura hoax.

How professional and unbiased they are! The initial post appears to be by the university lecturer, Susan Glen.

Update [23 May 1237 PDT]: Can you read more about these conceited liars without throwing up? Try reading Yori Yanover’s exposé here.

Technorati Tags: journalism, Human Rights Watch, Israel, al-Dura

Thirteen years after Israel’s enemies unleashed one of the most damaging fake atrocity stories in military history, the Israeli government has come up with an official report [1.8 mb pdf] to refute the September 30, 2000 France 2 news broadcast, narrated by respected correspondent Charles Enderlin, that claimed to show 12-year old Mohammad Dura shot dead by IDF soldiers.

Oh, we already know and knew almost immediately beyond a reasonable doubt that al-Dura was not shot by the IDF, and we almost certainly know that he was not shot at all, by anybody. Persuasive evidence (more persuasive than the official report) is here.

In fact, we can say with confidence that the incident was a fake, set up by France 2’s Palestinian cameraman and local Gaza residents.

But what is difficult to understand is the Israeli diffidence in the face of the vicious allegations.

The immediate response of the IDF was to temporize. From the official report:

On that same day, following the France 2 report, the Spokesperson Unit released a statement which made clear that while it was not possible to determine, based on the footage broadcast by the network, the source of the shots apparently fired at Jamal and the boy, ultimate responsibility lay with the Palestinians for cynically launching armed attacks from within the civilian population. …

But then, at a press conference on October 3, it turned disastrous:

[Maj. Gen. Giora] Eiland, in response to a question regarding Al-Durrah, answered that as a result of the gunfire at the junction, Jamal and the boy “took cover next to a wall, several meters from where Palestinians fired at us. The soldiers returned fire and apparently the boy was hit by our fire.”

Eiland later explained,

I had not seen all the evidence made available to the Israeli army only later…Given the long history of Palestinians exposing their children to danger, I assumed that the main issue in this case would be the question: Why would the Palestinians have exposed their own civilians to danger by firing on the Israelis while a boy and his father were in the crossfire? I did not realize that my words would be used to accuse Israel of cold-blooded murder.

The footage was played and replayed around the world. Two weeks later, two IDF reservists were torn to pieces in Ramallah to shouts of “al-Dura! al-Dura!” The alleged cold-blooded murder became the symbol of the Intifada, and an inspiration for suicide bombers. Daniel Pearl’s murderers and even Osama bin Laden, before and after 9/11, invoked it as justification for their acts.

Meanwhile IDF Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia, OC Southern Command, reenacted the incident, examined the relative locations of soldiers and Palestinians, and concluded that IDF bullets could not have hit al-Dura. This was announced at a press conference on November 27, which was almost entirely ignored by the media — and by top officers and Israel politicians. Indeed, the IDF Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, told the Knesset that the investigation was a “private initiative of Samia,” not part of an official investigation.

Why didn’t Mofaz and his boss, Ehud Barak, who was serving as both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense at the time, take up the cause of the IDF and demand, with the maximum possible diplomatic force, that all information related to the incident — including all the footage shot by France 2 on that day — be placed at Israel’s disposal to do a proper investigation?

It didn’t happen, not then and not later, despite the revelation of more and more facts casting doubt on the story that the IDF had shot Dura. In 2005, the PM’s spokesperson to the foreign press, Ra’anan Gissin, asked France 2 for the footage and was turned down. In 2007, the IDF spokesperson tried to get the footage, but again Enderlin refused to provide it. More recently, the French Ambassador was asked “to help,” to no avail. Surely the State of Israel could have done more to defend the honor of its armed forces than to deploy low-level officials.

A French media critic, Philippe Karsenty, who has been defending himself against a libel suit filed against him by France 2 correspondent Enderlin for at least 10 years — he called the presentation “a hoax” — spoke bitterly in 2009 about the treatment he received from government officials:

During all those years, I got the cold shoulder from Israeli officials. With the exception of a few mavericks like Danny Seaman (director of the Government Press Office), Raanan Gissin (Spokesman, Prime Minister’s Office), Shlomi Amshalom, former deputy spokesperson for the IDF, or former ambassador Zvi Mazel, the vast majority of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs personnel treated me and others who pursued this case, as embarrassments – conspiracy nuts who they wished would just disappear…

In 2002, when it was still possible to do something immediate, Nissim Zvili was the Israeli ambassador to Paris. He listened courteously but explained to me that he was a friend of Charles Enderlin, the French journalist who narrated the al Dura hoax.

In 2006, Zvili was replaced by Daniel Shek, who refused to shake my hand, and later commented on a Jewish radio that I was defending “conspiracy theories.” When I asked his colleague in charge of communication at the embassy in Paris, Daniel Halevy Goitschel, why he never returned my phone calls, he responded: “the phone doesn’t work at the embassy”. We are not even dealing with a lack of support here. On the contrary, I was being sabotaged.

When I won the case [against another media outlet] in May 2008, Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said: “Karsenty is a private individual and no one in the Israeli government asked him to take on his battle against France 2. Karsenty had no right to demand that Israel come to his aid. All calls on the Israeli government to come and ‘save’ him are out of place. He was summoned to court because of a complaint of the French television channel. I don’t see where there is room for the Israeli government to get involved.”

Last December, I went over the evidence with Aviv Shir-On, who now claims to have helped me, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). After two hours he repeated the old MFA refrain, “I’m not convinced”. Let’s say, for the sake of generosity, that Shir-On is just one more timid defender of Israel, so afraid of what “others” might say, that even the judgment of an independent (and hardly well-disposed) French court in favor of his own country, does not give him the courage to speak. So even though I won the case, and the new evidence from France 2 sharpens our argument, I could not count on Israeli officials to help move into a counter-attack. Enderlin, humiliated by the court decision, was allowed to bluff his way back to prominence, and recently, in the Gaza war, lead the journalists’ attack on the Israeli government…

On January 2009, I met Tsipi Livni, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and asked her about the al Dura story and the lack of reaction of the Israeli officials. Why didn’t the State of Israel demand that France 2 admit their blood libel following the court decision? I was stunned by her answer: “Well, it happens that we kill kids sometimes. So, it’s not good for Israel to raise the subject again”. — Philippe Karsenty: Israel Losing the Media War: Wonder Why?

Karsenty was convicted, and the conviction was overturned on appeal — but recently the decision that exonerated him was reversed by France’s highest court.

It’s too late for the Israeli government to help him with his case, but let’s hope it can find the strength at last to support the IDF.

***

Update [23 May 1148 PDT]: Richard Landes, who has been writing about the incident and its significance in the cognitive war against Israel for years, answered a question I asked above:

Why didn’t then [Chief of Staff] Shaul Mofaz and then Prime Minister Ehud Barak demand that all the footage shot by France 2 on that day be placed at Israel’s disposal to do a proper investigation?

Because back then, it was unthinkable. I had to do Pallywood before Al Durah (2005-6) because people literally couldn’t believe that “staged” was even a possibility.

Even if they did believe, Enderlin had told everyone that he had more material he didn’t publish because it was “too horrible to see” – the famous “death throes.” In one move, he explained why he edited the original footage and, by invoking the “public’s sensibilities” he was able to implicitly blackmail me. The Israelis were afraid of what was on the tapes, and afraid that if they asked for it, he’d release the rest of the world.

What shocked and outraged Esther Schapira into her second movie was seeing the rushes in Paris in 2007, and realizing that there were only 60 seconds of the Al Durah sequence. She confronted Enderlin outside the court, and he just shrugged her off. I argued with the Israelis from the moment I saw them that there was nothing to afraid of in the tapes, but by then the attitude of fear of a reprisal had become pervasive.

[IDF Spokesperson] Miri Eisen asked me if I thought it was staged. When I said yes, she said, “end of conversation.” When I asked her if she would like a crack forensic team to examine any future footage of Israeli carnage before she had to face the cameras in case it were clearly a fake (this was after Lebanon and Kafr Qana), and she said, “no.”

As you can imagine, we didn’t have lots to say to each other.

Technorati Tags: al-Dura, IDF, Israel