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A GRAD missile, similar to the ones that struck Ashkelon and Aqaba

Recently, there has been a spate of rocket impacts in southern Israel.  Qassams and GRADs launched from Gaza have hit Ashkelon, Sderot and vicinity. GRADs fired by terrorists in the Sinai also struck Eilat and the Jordanian city of Aqaba, where one man was killed.

The GRAD is based on a WWII Soviet design, and various versions have been deployed since then. It’s about 9 feet long and 5.5 inches in diameter. It has a much longer range, is more accurate and more deadly than the Gaza-built Qassam. It’s produced in numerous countries, including Iran and North Korea, and is smuggled into Gaza via tunnels under the Egyptian border.

While Hamas claims that it did not fire the GRAD that hit Ashkelon, it’s hard to believe that the alphabet soup of terror gangs operating in Gaza could do so without Hamas acquiescence.

One might ask why Hamas has decided to ramp up rocket attacks again, after the trouncing it got a year and a half ago. In order to understand that, we need to look at history according to Hamas. Here is how they see it:

• Israel’s initial exit from Gaza was a direct result of Hamas’ ‘military’ (that is, terrorist) pressure.
• Operation Cast Lead was a victory for Hamas. Israel was forced to exit Gaza, Hamas suffered only about a thousand casualties and succeeded in painting Israel as a war criminal. As a result, future Israeli attempts to attack Hamas in Gaza will likely be met with immediate US pressure.
• The flotilla affair was another victory.  Again Israel was portrayed as a criminal. But most important, Israel was forced to lift restrictions on goods entering Gaza, thus validating Hamas’ position that the blockade was either illegal, or constituted ‘collective punishment’, etc. The result has been to establish that Israel is not permitted to apply even non-military sanctions to Hamas!
• By continuing terrorism, Hamas gains credibility among Palestinians who judge the quality of leadership on the basis of how militant it is. Thus, secular Palestinians might say, “I don’t necessarily favor Islamic rule, but at least Hamas fights for us…”

Overall, the conclusion drawn is that terrorism produces gains, and the US and the rest of the ‘international community’ will insulate Hamas against negative consequences.

So why not fire rockets?

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, GRAD

Parents and spouses of firefighters lost on 9/11 take part in a protest against the Ground Zero mosque on June 6, 2010

NY Times:

An influential Jewish organization [ADL] on Friday announced its opposition to a proposed Islamic center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan, intensifying a fierce national debate about the limits of religious freedom and the meaning of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Wrong.

It is not about “the limits of religious freedom”. Nobody wants to limit the freedom of Muslims or anyone else to practice their religion, always assuming that the practice thereof violates no laws.

It is not about the meaning of 9/11. Even Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf agrees that that was a terrorist attack perpetrated by radical Islamists.

No, it’s not about those things. It is about whether we should allow  a monument for the first step in the Islamic conquest of America — because that is how it will be seen in the Islamic world — in a place where 2,750 people were burned or crushed to death in the name of Islam.

And here’s another thing it’s not about: domestic politics. The Times writer, Michael Barbaro, wants us to think that it’s just another partisan issue:

…around the country opposition is mounting, fueled in part by Republican leaders and conservative pundits. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, has urged “peace-seeking Muslims” to reject the center, branding it an “unnecessary provocation.” A Republican political action committee has produced a television commercial assailing the proposal. And former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has decried it in speeches.

Yeah, that’s it. The whole thing is ‘fueled’ by nasty Republicans and worse. Sarah Palin is radioactive to most Democrats and centrist Republicans, so Mr. Barbaro makes sure to mention her, although her statement is comparatively mild.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand — who, I will remind you, holds a Ph.D in History — nailed it when he said.

“The World Trade Center is the largest loss of American life on our soil since the Civil War,” Mr. Gingrich said. “And we have not rebuilt it, which drives people crazy. And in that setting, we are told, why don’t we have a 13-story mosque and community center?”

He added: “The average American just thinks this is a political statement. It’s not about religion, and is clearly an aggressive act that is offensive.”

Indeed. Anyone who can’t see the strands of politics and ideology — a particularly nasty form of expansionist politics and an anti-democratic, medieval ideology — woven throughout Islam, is blind.

The ADL didn’t go there. The ADL’s statement that the Times said “touched off angry reactions from a range of religious groups,” merely suggested that in deference to the expressed feelings of many of the 9/11 families, the mosque should be built somewhere else.

This argument — an appeal to decency –  ought to be enough. But it’s not, for reasons which I am just beginning to analyze.

Some suggest that opposition to the mosque stems from ‘bigotry’, which in their circles is the worst imaginable personality defect. But interestingly, many of the same people wax furious about the Christian Right. Somehow, it is bigoted to attack some forms of religious ideology, but not others.

Here are some of the reasons for not seeing the danger posed to the US by radical Islam:

1. You are a Muslim who thinks it would be better if the US were governed in accordance with Shaaria
2. You benefit in some way from Saudi petrodollars (this group includes several ex-presidents)
3. You are an anti-Zionist or antisemite who wants to stick it to the Jews
4. You are Jewish and want to show your goyische friends that you’re a regular guy
5. You are afraid that Islam will be victorious and you want your future rulers to like you
6. You are afraid but want to hide it, so you pretend that there’s no danger
7. You want to back the ‘strong horse’
8. You are a progressive and you see other progressives (including the President) pretending that there’s no danger, so you imitate them
9. You want to be on the other side of Newt Gingrich and especially Sarah Palin
10. You are white and think opposing Islamic expansionism is racist and you feel guilty for slavery and racism
11. You are black and think Islam is on the side of oppressed people of color (never mind Sudan, the history of slavery, etc.)
12. You listen to KPFA [a Berkeley radio station] and have become convinced that the US really is the great Satan and anything bad that happens to it is good

Technorati Tags: Islam, Ground Zero mosque, ADL

Malki Roth (2001)

I often write about Hamas and how hateful (in both senses) they are. But I want to make it concrete today.

Exactly nine years ago tomorrow, by the Jewish calendar, a Hamas suicide bomber detonated a massive blast at the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. One of the fifteen murdered (130 were hurt) was 15-year old Malka ‘Malki’ Chana Roth. Malki’s family has established a foundation in her name, to assist families with special needs children.

Is it necessary for me to point out the difference between a culture that responds in this way to the one that still considers the Sbarro bombing one of their finest moments?

There is a well-documented account of the bombing on the foundation’s site. This is a slightly edited version:

Suicide terrorist Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri

9th August 2001: A resident of the village of Aqaba, north of Tulkarm, Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, single and 23 (by some accounts 22), son of a well-to-do land-owning family, entered the busy Sbarro restaurant at the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road at lunchtime on a school vacation day in Jerusalem. The restaurant was filled with customers, most of them children and mothers. … eventually it was clear that 15 Jews (picture) were killed; one remains unconscious four years later, and 130 were injured in various serious degrees…

It’s been suggested at various times that al-Masri’s family were opposed to, or even horrified by, their son’s murderous actions. But a Palestinian Authority official source, quoted by the unimpeachable MEMRI, reports that Hamas official Ashraf Sawaftah, speaking publicly a week after the massacre of a ceremony honoring the bomber, said this: “His relatives distributed sweets and accepted their son as a bridegroom married to ‘the black-eyed,’ not as someone who had been killed and was being laid in the ground.”

The Sbarro massacre was coordinated and planned by the Hamas terror organization’s Ramallah branch. Six weeks later, a triumphal exhibit at [An-Najah] University, the largest in the West Bank, featured a mock-up of the Sbarro restaurant including gnawed pizza crusts and bloody plastic body parts suspended from the ceiling as if they were blasting through the air. See the New York Times report (PDF version) and this video record of the event.

Hamas, which today rules Gaza with an iron and bloody fist, published a particularly dishonest, self-delusional account here.

Engineer Abdallah Jamal Barghouti (2006)

The explosive charge was manufactured by Abdallah Jamal Barghouti, the chief “engineer” of the Hamas infrastructure in the Judea region. The bomb, along with screws and nails to magnify the devastation, was assembled inside a guitar case which Al-Masri carried. Barghouti is a Kuwaiti who settled in the West Bank village of Burqa in 1999. He has been frequently described in the media – and from his own mouth – as the brains behind the massacre.

At his trial, evidence was produced to show that Barghouti’s relative Marwan Barghouti – a prominent Palestinian Arab political figure now serving several life sentences for murder – paid Abdallah $500 to build the bomb. This came on top of the $117,000 he received for his troubles from Hamas, according to evidence given to the court in Abdallah Barghouti’s multi-murder trial.

Others were involved in providing funds – large sums of cash – for the terrorists themselves and for their families. A 2005 news article “Hamas Financier Detained” describes the involvement of Hamas ‘activist’ Ahmad Saltana [PDF version here] in the financing of the terrorist murders.

Guide Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi (2001)

The human bomb’s guide was Ahlam ‘Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi, also known as Ahlam Tamimi, a 20-year-old innocent-faced Jordanian national who lived in Ramallah, studied in Bir Zeit, and worked as a journalist. Tamimi was involved in gathering the intelligence for the attack and on the day of the massacre, along with the suicide bomber and the charge hidden inside the guitar, she headed for a taxi-cab station in Ramallah, where they took a taxi to Jerusalem.

Tamimi carried a camera and spoke with the suicide bomber in English so that they could inconspicuously pass for tourists. She was arrested on 14th September 2001. For her part, Tamimi was sentenced to sixteen life terms, or 320 years, in an Israeli jail (report and report). She was the first woman to have been recruited by Hamas’ Izzadine el-Qassam gang. She has never expressed remorse of any sort.

A 2006 report quotes Tamimi saying from an Israeli jail cell: “I’m not sorry for what I did. We’ll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison.”

For some additional, deeply disturbing, background about this female, see “The Real Ahlam Tamimi You Didn’t Read About In The Times” by Noah Pollak (published 3rd August 2007).

Another co-conspirator was Mohammad Daghlas, a “student” who delivered the bomb that was used in the massacre. He is now in an Israeli jail.

Abdallah Barghouti‘s counsel said Barghouti felt “his actions were legal as part of the game Israel is playing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”. Barghouti himself pleaded guilty and told the court he “did this to kill as many Israelis as possible”. He was rewarded in December 2004 with a sentence of 67 life-terms in an Israeli prison (report). In a later interview, he said: “I do not accept responsibility for their deaths. I feel pain, of course. They are little children. But the government of Israel is solely responsible.”

Interviewed in April 2006 by CBS’ television program “60 Minutes”, Abdallah Barghouti said of the death toll in the Sbarro massacre and the other bombings he engineered: “”I feel bad because the number is only 66.”

By the way, among the 1,000 (or 1,500 — it changes) prisoners that Hamas is demanding that Israel release in exchange for the kidnapped Gilad Shalit, we find the Barghoutis and Tamimi.

This is only a single story. There are hundreds of similar stories in which families are torn apart because children, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, etc. have been brutally and deliberately murdered by Hamas terrorists because they dare to be Jews living in the land of Israel.

The Hamas covenant says:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him…

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day…

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad…

In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.

There is no room for even-handedness with respect to Hamas. Just ask Malki’s parents, or any of the other families of Hamas victims. But don’t ask Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the effort to build a mosque two blocks from the destroyed World Trade Center:

Asked if he agreed with the State Department’s assessment [that Hamas is a terrorist organization], Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf told WABC radio, “Look, I’m not a politician.”

“The issue of terrorism is a very complex question,” he told interviewer Aaron Klein. “There was an attempt in the ’90s to have the UN define what terrorism is and say who was a terrorist. There was no ability to get agreement on that.”

Asked again for his opinion on Hamas, an exasperated Rauf wouldn’t budge.

“I am a peace builder. I will not allow anybody to put me in a position where I am seen by any party in the world as an adversary or as an enemy,” Rauf said, insisting that he wants to see peace in Israel between Jews and Arabs. — NY Post

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Malki Roth, Feisal Abdul Rauf 

This is really a tragic story.

A 21-year-old woman, an art student no less, goes to Israel as an exchange student. While she is there, she falls in with the pro-Palestinian activists of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). She attends demonstrations against the security fence at Bil’in and Nil’in, as well as protests in Nabi Saleh and the East Jerusalem Sheik Jarrah neighborhood.

On May 31, the day of the flotilla incident, she takes part an a protest against Israel’s ‘crimes’ near the Qalandiyah crossing, south of Ramallah. The protest is violent, and she is struck in the face with a tear-gas canister fired by Israeli police. Her eye cannot be saved.

The woman, Emily Henochowicz of Potomac MD, is Jewish. According to the NY Times, “Her father was born in Israel to Holocaust survivors whom he described as “ardent Zionists.” The AP reported that the last status update on her Facebook page was “Gaza on my mind.”

There is a controversy about who will pay for the medical care she received at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, and the followup care in the US, and another about whether she was hit directly by the canister or whether it ricocheted off of a wall, which apparently bears on the first one. She has an activist lawyer, Michael Sfard, who will help her while doing his best to screw Israel. I feel sorry for the young woman.

Her story is much like that of Furkan Dogan, Tristan Anderson, Rachel Corrie and others. A politically naive young ‘international’ is recruited to take part in purportedly ‘non-violent’ activities along with Israeli extremists and Palestinians. In many cases, violent elements are present, and the overall purpose is to provoke Israeli soldiers and police. Organizers know that the presence of these internationals will deter security forces from responding harshly.

Meanwhile, demonstrators can achieve their PR objectives, along with other practical things like cutting the security fence, tying up army and police units, costing Israel money, etc. And if it should happen that an international is hurt or even killed, it is a huge propaganda coup for the Palestinian cause.

This is another front in the information war against Israel, the struggle to destroy Israel’s credibility, moral standing and legitimacy in the world arena. It parallels the military campaign, and because it attacks international support for Israel’s self-defense, its importance shouldn’t be minimized.

It’s ironic that idealistic young people are being injured and even killed while being cynically used in support of anti-democratic, racist, misogynist — and murderous –  groups like Hamas.

It’s time that Israel put a stop to it. Efforts to detect infiltration from ISM and similar groups should be stepped up. And foreign activists who can be shown to have participated in anti-Israel activities should be rounded up and summarily deported.

Here is a video (h/t: Daled Amos) made by Ms. Henochowicz that is… indescribable. But I think it provides a window into the mindset that gives rise to tragedies like hers.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Emily Henochowicz, ISM

It’s hard for me to express the degree of antipathy I feel toward Roger Cohen.

He is one reason that I wish for an afterlife, including a Hell in which Cohen could have his liver eaten by eagles with dull beaks, over and over for eternity.

Cohen wrote a tear-jerker about the 19-year-old Turkish-American, Furkan Dogan, who was one of the nine members of the Turkish IHH contingent aboard the Mavi Marmara who were killed in a confrontation with Israeli commandos on May 31. It appeared in the New York Times, a newspaper which downplayed WWII reports of the Holocaust because of its Jewish ownership — and if you can understand this perhaps you can understand Cohen.

Cohen:

How he was killed is disputed — as is just about everything concerning the Israeli naval takeover of the six-boat Gaza-bound flotilla — but his father suspects a video camera carried by his son may have provoked Israeli commandos.

Anyone can dispute anything. But in this case there was a careful investigation, by the IDF (those who think that all Israelis are demons, the videos are fake, and that an IDF investigation is worthless can stop reading now). There is also a great deal of other information available, including testimonies from the ship’s personnel.

Here are some facts: of the 718 passengers on the Mavi Marmara, some 40 of them (according to the ship’s Second Officer) took over the upper deck. They prepared for the arrival of the IDF boarding party by cutting up railings, etc. to make metal clubs.

The hard core boarded the ship in Istanbul without undergoing a security check, as opposed to the other passengers, who boarded in Antalya [Anatolia] after a full examination… As they boarded they were given walkie-talkies for communicating with one another. — ITIC

The IHH’s connections to Islamic terrorism are well-documented, and its core operatives on the ship were planning for a violent confrontation. Reportedly, half of those killed had made statements to friends or family that they were seeking martyrdom.

The first officer reported that this group did not allow passengers or crew members that they did not recognize on the deck in the hours before the confrontation. When the IDF soldiers landed on the top deck, they were viciously attacked with various ‘cold’ weapons — metal bars, slingshots, knives, etc. — and with live fire. Numerous Israelis were injured, three of them critically.

Some of the deaths of the IHH  ‘activists’  occurred here. Somewhat later, in the process of taking over the ship, IDF personnel were met with live fire in several locations, and returned it. Some of the shooting came from weapons taken from wounded Israelis, and some from weapons that the passengers brought on board. The Israelis did not shoot to kill except in life-threatening situations.

It isn’t possible to determine exactly where Dogan was when he was shot. It was reported that he was shot five times, at least twice in the head. Cohen et al produce this as evidence of Israeli brutality, but in fact it indicates that Dogan was shot because he was perceived as a threat.

This implies that either he was involved in deadly violence or appeared to be. The suggestion that he may have ‘provoked’ the Israelis by holding a video camera is certainly reasonable — what would you expect to happen to someone who injects himself into the middle of a firefight and aims a small black object at a combatant?

Cohen is outraged that little has been written about Dogan:

I have little doubt that if the American killed on those ships had been Hedy Epstein, a St. Louis-based Holocaust survivor, or Edward Peck, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania, we would have heard a lot more…

I also have little doubt that if the incident had been different — say a 19-year-old American student called Michael Sandler killed by a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank when caught in a cross-fire between Palestinians and Israelis — we would have been deluged in stories about him.

But a chill descends when you have the combination of Israeli commandos doing the firing, an American with a foreign-sounding Muslim name, and the frenzied pre-emptive arguments of Israel and those among its U.S. supporters who will brook no criticism of the Jewish state.

Actually, Dogan has been written about far more than Michael Sandler. A Google search for “Furkan Dogan” brings up 3,600,000 results while “Michael Sandler” gets only 325,000 — and this includes numerous other people named Michael Sandler. A search for “Michael Sandler Palestinian” produces a mere 18,700. This is remarkable, because Dogan’s death is really not that interesting. It’s sort of like a guy that wanders out onto a busy freeway and gets hit by a truck.

What Cohen is really convulsing about is “the frenzied pre-emptive arguments of Israel and those among its U.S. supporters who will brook no criticism of the Jewish state.”

I don’t know what’s preemptive here. The Israelis were ambushed, and then the chorus of lies started: the commandos supposedly landed on the deck shooting; they targeted harmless ‘peace activists’. Turkey’s PM ErdoÄŸan accused Israel of “murder” and “genocide” (I would be careful with that word, if I were him).

How did we get from refuting vicious lies to “brook[ing] no criticism?”

Cohen mentions in passing an incredibly stupid article by Peter Beinart, lately more or less the manifesto of the Jewish anti-Israel crowd. It has nothing at all to do with the Mavi Marmara affair, except insofar as a it suggests that American Jews shouldn’t support Israel.

Roger Cohen is a one-trick pony, and his trick is hating Israel while being Jewish. He should be put out to pasture.

Update [2049 PDT]: minor changes.

Technorati Tags: Roger Cohen, Furkan Dogan, Mavi Marmara, Israel, NY Times