IRIS Blog

Another bold multi-phased strike by American forces in Iraq:

The most wanted al-Qaeda in Iraq figure south of Baghdad was killed last weekend by a precision-guided artillery round, the U.S. military said Tuesday.

Abu Jurah, an al-Qaeda cell leader, died Saturday in the Arab Jabour area just south of the city after U.S. troops received word that he and 14 others were meeting at a house there, a U.S. statement said.

About an hour later, the 1st Battalion, 9th Field Artillery Regiment fired two Excalibur precision-guided shells at the house, destroying it. An unmanned aerial vehicle saw people leaving the rubble and loading the injured into a vehicle.

An AH-64 Apache helicopter attacked the vehicle and destroyed it, the statement said.

Three people were seen fleeing into a second house, which was destroyed by a U.S. Air Force F-16 jet that dropped two 500-pound guided bombs on it.

Note the persistence in the followup strikes, including on the wounded. Al-Qaeda is fighting for its life in Iraq and much of its energy is therefore diverted from offensive jihad in Western countries. Credit George W. Bush, even though his pass to Palestinian terrorists may prove to be suicidal.

I bet that the majority of these gunmen are still on the Fatah payroll, subsidized by both Israel and the United States:

Hamas-Allied Fatah Forces in Gaza

Palestinians never used to do these things to one another. Putting bullets in the back of the heads of men on their knees. Shooting up hospitals. Killing patients. Knee-capping doctors. Executing clerics. Throwing handcuffed prisoners to their deaths from Gaza's highest apartment buildings. Hamas claimed it was fighting infidels, with a holy sanction to kill. Poor young men, their heads filled with religious slogans and revolutionary cant, took off their black masks to pose in front of the gilded bathrooms of the once-powerful and rich men of Fatah. Then they stole the sinks, toilets, tiles and pipes.

Khaled Abu Hilal, 39, is an ex-Fatah man now associated with Hamas in Gaza. Two weeks after Hamas pulled Fatah down in early June, Hilal announced he would lead a new Fatah movement and military force in Gaza, allied with Hamas, called Fatah al-Yasir. The major mistake of Arafat and Fatah was to accept the Oslo accords, Hilal says. Hilal brought with him, he told me, 1,000 members of the Fatah-affiliated Aksa and Abu Rish Brigades. (The Israeli security agency, Shin Bet, confirmed this information to me.) Israel is now confronted with a dilemma. There is a hostile entity on its southern border, run by an armed group that is committed to fighting Israel and is opposed to its existence. Should Israel now let a Gazan Hamastan grow?

I have been documenting how Olmert's release of 250 Fatah terrorists without blood on their hands wasn't actually 250, wasn't actually Fatah, and wasn't actually without blood on their hands.

Today there is news that the list of prisoners includes terrorists from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). Today one of the group's leaders called for the killing of Israeli soldiers, which is likely to violate the terms of the released prisoners' sincere commitment to be good boys from now on.

National Resistance Brigades Call for a United Resistance Front, Aimed
Exclusively at Occupying Israeli Military

The spokesman of the National Resistance Brigades, the armed wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Abu Salem, has stated his belief in "the legality of the resistance weapons and the fighter's right to resist. This weapon should be used against the occupational forces in their aggression against public possessions and associations".

Of course, that isn't very shocking. Abbas himself had called for his forces to "turn their guns on the Israeli occupation" in a speech in which he called the Jews "the corrupters of humanity."

Here is a must-read from Caroline Glick:

'It's all a joke. It's just a joke." That's how the Palestinian terror commanders in Judea and Samaria explained the show they made of handing in their weapons to Fatah commander Mahmoud Abbas's official militias over the weekend.

"This is all a big joke," they told reporters while posing for pictures. "Abbas asked us to sign a declaration saying we won't attack Israel and so we are." And why not? The Palestinian Authority Chairman agreed to pay them thousands of dollars in exchange for the photo opportunities. There is also the non-financial incentive. In exchange for their propaganda photos and their signatures on declarations not to engage in terror anymore, Israel has pledged to take these murderers off of its wanted list. So just for participating in a satire, these men get to walk without fear for the first time in years.

The deal between Prime Minister Olmert and Abbas claims that 178 members of Fatah's Aksa Martyrs' Brigades terror organization will hand in their weapons and pledge to stop being terrorists. From now on the only Palestinians in Judea and Samaria who will bear arms will be members of Abbas's "official" security forces. But since most of these men are already members of those official militias, and the rest are set to be commissioned in short order, the deal has no impact on any of them.

In anticipation of the formalization of the agreement at the Olmert-Abbas meeting yesterday, the IDF ended its nightly raids in Judea and Samaria for the first time in five years. Those raids, in which thousands of terrorists were apprehended in their sleep and their networks disrupted, were the main reason that Israelis in Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Netanya and Hadera have been able to sleep in a modicum of safety for the past three years.

It is these raids, rather than Abbas's vaunted efforts to strengthen the so-called peace camp in Palestinian society or the security fence that have prevented suicide bombers from entering Israeli cities with any frequency.

Some have killed many Israelis personally. Others have only directed suicide bomb attacks:

The list of Palestinian Arabs granted amnesty this weekend by Prime Minister Olmert of Israel is composed of members of President Abbas's Fatah Party and includes almost the entire senior West Bank leadership of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, The New York Sun has learned.

The Al-Aqsa Brigades, Fatah's self-declared military wing, have taken responsibility for every suicide bombing in Israel the past three years.

Mr. Olmert's office hasn't released the names of the 178 Palestinian Arabs granted amnesty, but sections of the list obtained by the Sun include Al-Aqsa's overall chief, Ala Senakreh, the leader of a cell from which a suicide bomber killed 10 civilians ? including an American teenager, Daniel Wultz ? in Tel Aviv in April 2006, and the perpetrator of a December 2000 shooting that killed Israeli nationalist leader Benyamin Kahane.

The government has issued 178 documents promising that, in return for a signed pledge to resign from any paramilitary organizations and to refrain from terrorism, Israel will not conduct antiterror operations to capture the Fatah fugitives.

Of course, Palestinian terrorists can't resist adding insult to injury. Most newspapers are reporting that part of the deal involves their "turning in their guns." The truth is that they have agreed to sell their guns and will then receive their regular salary as part of the "security forces." The price of a gun? Up to 60,000 shekels (over $14,000). Then many will be reissued "official" guns.

One of the greatest questions of the day is whether the Bible is true. This has been a year of major archeological discoveries on the Bible's side, including David's palace and Joshua's altar.

Today brings news of a dramatic new translation of an old find:

A routine research visit to the British Museum nets a landmark archaeological discovery and proof of the truth of the Bible.

British newspapers report that ancient Babylonian expert Dr. Michael Jursa of Vienna discovered a small clay tablet that provides proof of the Bible's veracity. Though the tablet was unearthed near Baghdad in 1920, only last week was it deciphered for the first time, by Dr. Jursa.

Upon reading the tablet, which records a donation of gold by "the chief eunuch of King Nebuchadnezzar," a man named Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, Jursa suddenly realized that the name sounded familiar. He quickly consulted Jeremiah 39, where he found the man's name listed as one of Nebuchadnezzar's top ministers who took part in the destruction of the First Holy Temple 2,500 years ago. The Biblical account, however, has his name spelled slightly differently: (Samgar) Nevo Sarsekim.

Irving Finkel, assistant keeper in the British Museum's Middle East Department, was very excited: "This is a fantastic discovery," he told The Telegraph, "a world-class find. If Nevo-Sarsekim existed, [then] which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power."

Speaking with The Times, Finkel said, ?A mundane commercial transaction takes its place as a primary witness to one of the turning points in Old Testament history. This is a tablet that deserves to be famous.?

Dr. Jursa, associate professor at the University of Vienna, said, ?It?s very exciting and very surprising. Finding something like this tablet, where we see a person mentioned in the Bible making an everyday payment to the temple in Babylon and quoting the exact date, is quite extraordinary.?

Here is an interesting site that aggregates support for the Jewish position on the Bible.

Yet another Hezbollah virtue for the mainstream media to extol: they practice recycling. Ehud Barak abandoned all kinds of useful material during the hasty night-time retreat from Lebanon:

Reports from Lebanon claim that the IDF reservists kidnapped last year were alive at the time and abducted by Hezbollah terrorists using weapons abandoned by the IDF during the hasty 2000 withdrawal.

According to Maariv, an investigation has found that the terrorists who captured IDF reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were using equipment that was left behind when the IDF retreated from Lebanon in 2000.

The retreat was conducted hastily during the night at the orders of then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak. "The Barak government's irresponsible withdrawal from Lebanon brought Hezbollah to the fence, paved the way for Nasrallah and caused the problems in Lebanon in 2006," former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at a Tuesday ceremony marking a year since the Second Lebanon War.

Ehud Olmert is finding it hard to locate 250 Fatah terrorists to release who missed their targets and are therefore guilty only of attempted murder. The prisons have been emptied too many times before as "goodwill gestures."

So now he's found another loophole: set free pre-Oslo murderers. After all, Fatah renounced all violence at Oslo, so it makes sense that anything prior to Oslo doesn't really count. Certainly they wouldn't kill again after Fatah signed multiple contracts to stop.

Government Considering Release of Pre-Oslo Terrorists

The idea of including Palestinian prisoners with "blood on their hands" who carried out terrorist acts before the Oslo Accords were signed is being discussed in Jerusalem, to "raise the level" of the 250 security prisoners that Israel will release as a good will gesture toward Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

A ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to meet on Sunday, after the weekly cabinet meeting, to discuss which prisoners Israel will release.

Olmert said last month at the summit in Sharm e-Sheikh with Abbas, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and Jordanian King Abdullah II that Israel would release 250 Fatah prisoners "without blood on their hands." The cabinet approved this in principle this past Sunday.

Drawing up the list, however, has proven more difficult than expected, because Olmert, according to government officials, does not just want to release Palestinian "rapists or thieves" from Israeli prisons, or security prisoners who are slated to be released within the next few months in any case. He is concerned that the release of these types of prisoners would not strengthen Abbas.

The government is willing to release security prisoners who took part in attacks that did not lead to any deaths, such as terrorists who shot at an IDF patrol, but missed.

Yet another reason for Israel to implement the death penalty for terrorists--left-wing governments won't later be able to release them.

Prediction: Releasing terrorist murderers will be easier in the future now that Shimon Peres has been made President by Olmert and company. Leftists don't need to tone down their true desires when they no longer face reelection. See, for example: Jimmy Carter, Avraham Burg and Ramsey Clark.

The IDF Military Intelligence assessment concludes that Iran may go nuclear in 6 months:

The IDF Military Intelligence (MI) assessment was reported Tuesday to the Knesset and included a concrete assessment determining that Iran could cross the technological threshold required to produce nuclear weapons in the next 6-12 months and possess an operational warhead by the middle of 2009.

The assessment is at odds with US estimates that put the date between 2010 and 2013. Both agree, however, that military strikes could set back the technology for years.

IDF MI also is of the opinion that sanctions against Iran have not weakened the regime, because huge oil reserves still provide all the money necessary to neutralize any pressure created by the international community.

The assessment also revealed that Israel?s withdrawals ? from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005 ? have added precedents and solidified belief throughout the Middle East that armed struggle can achieve the destruction of Israel within this generation.

Ehud Olmert, however, doesn't seem to follow these things terribly carefully, however:

"Why does the answer have to be military?" he asked. "The economic sanctions are working and should be continued."

That Jew-killing habit is unfortunate, but this time they have gone too far:

How PA Gunmen Pass High School Exams, by Khaled Abu Toameh

Earlier this week, some 150 Fatah gunmen stormed a number of schools in Nablus and demanded to take high school matriculation exams in special halls.

One of the teachers said most of the gunmen cheated. "They opened books and copied the answers word by word," he said. "We were afraid to stop them because they were carrying M-16 rifles."

The M-16s are provided free of charge, thanks to your tax dollars and shekels.

Usually, the flimsiness of mainstream reporting in Israel is centered around its Leftist bias. In this case, however, it is simple incompetence combined with possibly slander.

Yediot Acharonot published a hit piece today on a relatively unknown Knesset member who will likely be henceforth known primarily as a suspected sexual harasser. Of course, it is possible that the allegation is completely true; the question is the journalistic standard used when the truth is unknown.

The story asserted two times:

A lie detector test, however, showed that the political activist was telling the truth

Apparently, Yediot is unaware that:

-The conventional wisdom on polygraphs is that they are anything but conclusive, as the article reported as objective fact.

-Many serious opinions conclude that polygraphs are "bunk".

-They are not acceptable as evidence in many courts (including the US) because of their unreliability.

-The least reliable use of a polygraph is quite possibly what occurred here, i.e. when a private individual orders an independent test. Obviously, this raises the possibility of reporting the result only if favorable.

-The term "lie detector" itself is a common misnomer.

-The most notable recent book on the subject notes an interesting use of polygraphs. Because of the widespread misimpression that they are effective, their only actual benefit is as a bluff to elicit criminal confessions.

As an aside, fathers need to explain the facts of life to their daughters. The average man does not view private bedroom tours from an architectural perspective. When a young woman enters a politician's bedroom alone (as this article asserts), most people would interpret that as a green light for some kind of advance. Obviously, the story, if true, does constitute criminal behavior.

Caroline Glick presents another blistering gust of truth in response to the now-fashionable fantasy of bringing in the Jordanians to fight against the Palestinian jihad. En passant, however, she presents a realistic solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that logically attempts to build on what is essentially working now:

Today, for all the talk of bringing in the Jordanian army, the fact of the matter is that the security situation in Judea and Samaria is the only good news in town. Since the IDF reasserted its control over the areas in 2002 during Operation Defensive Shield, the Israeli military has managed to largely prevent the Palestinians from rebuilding terror infrastructures capable of carrying out major or sustained attacks against Israel. Since Israeli military control is the only strategic asset to be found, it is the only thing that should be left untouched.

What should be radically altered is the political strategy informing US and Israeli policymakers. The 14-year obsession with strengthening Fatah has hooked the Palestinians on the belief that they can and should expect Israel to fund and legitimize them even as they become ever more radical in their hatred of the Jewish state and ever more devoted to the cause of its destruction.

It will no doubt take a generation to disabuse the Palestinians of this belief. And as long as this belief informs the Palestinians, there is no chance of ever reaching a political accommodation between them and Israel.

SO RATHER than seeking to appease the Palestinians into accepting statehood, Israel and the US must set the course for an internal Palestinian reckoning with what they have become. To this end, the most Israel can responsibly offer the Palestinians is civilian autonomy with no military component. This state of affairs must last until the Palestinians themselves have proven, through their actions, that they have kicked their addiction to jihad.

Read the whole thing

As I wrote yesterday, Israel's government is paralyzed by the systemic flaws inherent in any welfare state, particularly regarding its encouragement of impossible demands for publicly-supplied goods. In this case, however, the 'activist' Supreme Court which is the legacy of Aharon Barak has subverted its functioning even further:

Legal appeals to the High Court of Justice continue to delay the construction of the West Bank security fence, which now may not be finished until 2010, The Jerusalem Post has learned from the Defense Ministry.

That projection extends by two years the completion date of 2008 provided at the end of 2006. It also makes the barrier an eight-year project instead of the yearlong endeavor envisioned in 2002, when the cabinet approved the measure.

To date, only 56.9 percent, 450 kilometers, of the 790-km. structure has been completed, according to the ministry. Work is progressing on an additional 85 km., of which only 50 are expected to be completed by the end of 2007, leaving some 290 km. to be constructed in the next three years.

Included within the as-yet unbuilt 290 km, are some 255 km. in areas around Jerusalem, Ma'aleh Adumim, Gush Etzion, the area in the south leading to the Dead Sea and the finger that will encase the settlements of the Shomron.

In addition, there is an environmental dispute over the construction of the security barrier along some 31 km. in the southern Hebron Hills, according to the Defense Ministry.

A Defense Ministry report issued in January said that the High Court of Justice has heard 109 cases against the fence and there were an additional 39 cases pending.

But not everyone is satisfied with blaming the issue on the High Court of Justice. MK Danny Yatom (Labor), who heads the Knesset lobby group for the fence, and Marc Luria of the non-profit Public Committee for the Security Fence for Israel, said part of the problem was government apathy.

Despite attempts by liberal newspapers to whitewash Hamas, it has only one priority: jihad:

Hamas' military industry is giving serial production numbers to the roadside charges and Qassam rockets it manufactures, a senior intelligence officer in the Southern Command told Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi during his visit to the rocket-battered town of Sderot on Monday.

According to the officer, intelligence sources believe that a real 'Hamas army' exists in the Gaza Strip and includes between 7,000 and 10,000 soldiers, who are being armed continuously with weapons smuggled through the Philadelphi route.

The officer told Prodi that Hamas and radical Islam organizations have completely taken over the Fatah headquarters in the Strip.

"Six kilometers (3.7 miles) away from here, some 800,000 people are concentrated in the Gaza Strip, where they are controlled by the Hamas army. This army's goal is to hurt innocent Israeli citizens living around the Gaza Strip," the officer said.

According to the report given to the Italian premier, about 30 tons of explosives have been smuggled over the past year into the Strip to Hamas and radical Islam organizations. Thousands of rifles and antitank missiles were also smuggled.

"As if this smuggling, which comes from Egypt, is not enough, Hamas has developed a real military industry, which operates inside buildings and private houses. The weapons manufactured there already have serial numbers, which testify to the development of this military industry," the intelligence officer said.

Senior officers described the change in Hamas in a way that was reminiscent of Hizbullah: A hierarchy, a clear division of roles, a training system, groups responsible for smuggling weapons and others in charge of preparing explosive devices, planning sophisticated terror attacks in an effort to take advantage of the IDF's weak points, etc.

In spite of the smuggling of weapons from Egypt to Gaza, the most worrying thing as far as the IDF and the Shin Bet are concerned, is the fact that representatives of the organization acquire knowledge outside the Strip, mainly in Tehran.

The return of the "students" to Gaza and the passing of knowledge to many others constitutes a key threat which cannot be fully addressed even through a wide-scale ground operation in the Strip.

Meanwhile, Israel's leaders are fixated on enhancing their personal political power through cronyism (protexia).

There are two reasons for this:

1. Israel's welfare state mentality that encourages impossible-to-fill expectations (like free nursing homes for all and subsidies for ballet tickets and bread). This causes shortages in every government service as well as pervasively low quality. Additionally, the government's real tasks, like national security, invariably suffer.

2. Israel's current leadership is composed of its worst traders in cronyism and corruption ever. The announced release of 250 Fatah terrorists is viewed only from a personal profit basis only, so national security concerns are tertiary at best. Those who try to convince the leaders that it will inevitably lead to many more murders are wasting their breath.

While tension is mounting in the Golan Heights and senior defense officials are warning of the possibility of imminent war with Syria, less than 50 percent of the population will have their gas masks renewed by the end of the year, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

The cabinet on Sunday decided to cut NIS 480 million from the overall defense budget - mostly from administrative expenses - and instead redirect the funds to the Home Front Command and for defense procurement.

In total, the defense establishment received in Sunday's decision NIS 400 million for procurement of new weaponry and military platforms as well as NIS 344m. for the home front, out of which NIS 110m. is designated for the renewal of gas masks.

Syria is believed to have a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons. According to the Global Security Web site, the Syrian arsenal is comprised mostly of large amounts of Sarin and mustard gas and is reportedly producing and weaponizing VX. The US, the report says, has estimated Syria to possess several hundred liters [sic] of chemical weapons with hundreds of tons of agents produced annually.

Acknowledging that the population's gas masks will not be renewed and effective for at least another two years, defense officials told the Post Sunday that the IDF Home Front Command was currently considering proposals, if the need arises, to make emergency purchases of gas masks from Israeli and American companies.

If war were to break out in the coming months, the Home Front Command would only have enough gas masks for 1.5 million adults and half-a-million children.

The shortage in gas masks stems from a 2003 Defense Ministry decision to collect the public's gas masks, a project that only began at the beginning of 2007. Due to a lack of funds, the project was recently suspended and is expected to be renewed - following Sunday's government decision - in the coming weeks.

"This situation could be interpreted as neglect," a senior official told the Post. "If war breaks out and non-conventional weapons are used then we could find ourselves in a major crisis."