IRIS Blog

Ehud Olmert, the leader with arguably the least popular support of any country in modern times (he consistently receives single-digit approval ratings) is about to offer the most controversial security concession in modern history:

Israel's government has agreed, in writing, to hand over 6,250 square kilometers of land – the equivalent of its entire biblical and strategic heartland - to an Arab terror state. So reports Dr. Guy Bechor, a leading expert on Arab affairs, who also supplies some of the details of the negotiations.

Bechor reports, based on "leaks from the Palestinian side," that Israel has, in the past few days, presented Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas at least one draft of an "agreement of principles."

-The agreement calls for a state named Palestine to be established alongside Israel, and have a territory of 6,250 square kilometers: the equivalent of all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

-"Palestine" will be demilitarized.

-Most of the Jewish communities built in Judea and Samaria over the past 40 years are to demolished and their inhabitants expelled, according to the plan. The remaining communities are to be concentrated in small salients for which the Arab state will be compensated with additional territory elsewhere in present-day Israel.

-A passage of some sort will connect Gaza and Judea and Samaria. It will be under Jewish sovereignty and Palestinian administration.

-Israel agrees to redivide Jerusalem. Arab neighborhoods will be under Arab sovereignty and Jewish ones under Jewish sovereignty. Mention is made of "religious areas," but further details are not known as of yet. Each side will recognize the other's spiritual needs.

-The "refugee" question is not mentioned at all, and Bechor reports that this is the main sticking point. Abbas is insisting that Arabs descended from those who fled Israel in 1948 be allowed to return to Israel, at least in principle.

Prediction: Prepare for a dramatic sweetener to the deal, such as the discovery by Abbas that he has control over the release of hostages Gilad Schalit, Ehud Goldwasser and/or Eldad Regev after all. Of course, Palestinians will then take more Israeli hostages later, making this "diplomatic breakthrough" nothing other than an emotional manipulation of the Israeli public.

Archeologists believe that a massive structure--7 meters long (23 feet)--uncovered during reckless, unsupervised Muslim construction on the Temple Mount is a wall from the Second Temple. No remnant of the Temple has ever been uncovered before; the Western Wall is only what remains from Herod's support structure to support the mount upon which the Temple was constructed.

Archeologists believe that heavy construction equipment has damaged the Temple wall, and that untold quantities of archeological treasures are being destroyed during the mosque construction. Previously, extraordinary finds were made in Jerusalem garbage dumps following unsupervised Muslim Temple Mount construction.

Remains of the Jewish second temple may have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, Israeli television reported Thursday.

Israeli television broadcast footage of a mechanical digger at the site which Israeli archaeologists visited on Thursday.

Gaby Barkai, an archaeologist from Bar Ilan University, urged the Israeli government to stop the pipework after the discovery of what he said is "a massive seven metre-long wall."

If confirmed, this may be one of the most significant archeological finds in history. The Temple is central to the authenticity of Judaism and Christianity, but is held in suspicion by some archeologists, typified by this quote:

There is virtually no archaeological evidence that the united kingdom of David and Solomon ever existed. David’s Jerusalem...was a poor, miserable village...there exists no archaeological evidence for Solomon’s Temple.

Of course, Palestinian leaders are intent on eradicating evidence of the Temple, despite classical Muslim commentaries that explicitly state that the "far mosque" (al-Aqsa) from which Muhammed is claimed to have ascended to heaven from, was actually the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem:

"We are fed up with this crap nonsense of the Temple Mount," said Nasser Abu Aziz, the deputy commander of Fata's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the northern West Bank.

"We do not know where this story came from. There is no historical or archeological proof that your legendary Temples existed. We are sick of this story. But Allah warned us that Jews will look for an excuse in order to corrupt life on earth, so we are not surprised from the fact that you keep raising this issue."

Muhammad Abdul-El, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization, said the Jewish Temples "existed only in your dreams.

"Go look for your stupid Temple elsewhere. And I am not saying this for political reasons. I say that the enemy invented this story in order to justify its occupation of Jerusalem."

Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' so-called military wing, accused all Jews of being pathological liars.

"Stop lying and believing your own lies. Even if there was such a thing (as a Jewish Temple) do you really believe that Solomon, who was a prophet, would have built a Temple in the place that Allah wanted for the Al Aqsa Mosque?"

See also: Archaeologists: Muslim Dig Damaged Temple Wall

How many times have we heard that Global Warming is the consensus view of scientists? That information is fifteen years out-of-date. An updated survey of all scientific papers published worldwide shows that less than half endorse the view that man is having any effect at all on the climate. Only one recent scientific paper makes any reference to Global Warming as leading to catastrophic results. This is thesis that many Western schoolchildren, including all Israelis, are being taught as gospel.

The reason for this is that the building blocks of the hysteria are essentially falling apart. Here, for example, are summaries of a number of this research, including one study from the Brookhaven National Lab that concludes that the Earth’s climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes.

Here is a typical story of the heroism of the Israeli nation (as opposed to the protexia class that oppresses her).

Cpt. Edan Morag ran through a minefield to save wounded soldiers. St.-Sgt. Dennis Moisaev took over a tank unit after his commander was wounded by an antitank missile. They are among those who have or will receive medals and citations of excellence for outstanding service during the Second Lebanon War.

When the war broke out on July 12, 2006 following Hizbullah's abduction of reservists Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, Morag and his unit - Battalion 82 of the 7th Armored Brigade - were already carrying out routine patrols along the Lebanese border. Shortly after the kidnapping, a tank from the battalion ventured into Lebanon to try to catch the abductors and drove over a massive bomb. All four crew members were killed.

Exactly one week later, Morag, 27, entered Lebanon in command of the first armored unit to enter the area, revisiting the same territory the IDF had evacuated six years earlier. His orders were to compile an extrication force for the elite Maglan Unit that was operating covertly just north of the Israeli community of Avivim, near the IDF's former Shaked outpost in southern Lebanon.

Maglan's operation did not stay covert for long, and the unit quickly found itself in the middle of a Hizbullah "nature reserve," and summoned Morag's unit to their rescue. Riding into Lebanon in a Merkava Mk 2 tank, Morag, whose father received a medal for his service during the Yom Kippur War, was followed by several additional tanks and armored bulldozers.

"As I crossed into Lebanon my tank track got stuck," he recalled in an interview with The Jerusalem Post. "I immediately jumped out of my tank and began running towards another tank but then I realized that I was running in the middle of an old Israeli minefield." Ignoring his personal well-being and safety, Morag said all he could think about while running through the minefield were the wounded Maglan troops who were waiting for his tank to evacuate them.

"I did not think about the risk," he said. "They teach us in the army to immediately get on to another tank. By the time I understood I was in a minefield it was too late and anyhow we had a mission to do." Morag made it safely through the minefield, climbed onto another tank and drove off towards Maglan's extrication point. But when he got there he had another surprise waiting for him. He had been told that there were two wounded soldiers, whom he had made room for inside the tank. However, when he got to the top of the hill there were four soldiers wounded seriously, all of whom required an immediate evacuation.

Knowing that time was against him, Morag and his tank crew quickly rearranged the interior of the tank and made room for all of the wounded. In the end, two died and two survived.

On Sunday, Morag was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service from Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi during a ceremony in Tel Aviv. While he is flattered by the honor, Morag said he had mixed feelings.

"It is a weird feeling for me since many other people went in to Lebanon to evacuate wounded," he said. "In the end, all I did was what they had told me to do and what they had trained me to do."

For those who have lost hope, know that this is the real Israel. The real Israel will come to the fore when it has been rescued from the oppressors who currently hold the reins of power and who create the rules to increase their control.

Here are more stories of heroism during the Lebanon War.

Two days before Shimon Peres became President of Israel, I predicted:

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.

Yesterday Shimon Peres has done just that: commuted the sentences of five Arab terrorist murderers of a random fifteen year-old. No decision could be more politically unpopular in Israel, which has a large number of Arabs ready to seize any opportunity to murder a Jew for jihad. But he doesn't have to worry about that any more, because he is now completely unaccountable to the electorate. The Presidency of Israel has now joined the Supreme Court as another branch of government now functioning to subvert the power of the Israeli people (see here for a must-read published today on the Supreme Court's constitutional coup). Kadima and Labor, who knew exactly why they gave Peres the pardon power, can feign ignorance:

President Shimon Peres defended his decision Wednesday to cut short the life sentences of the five murderers of teenager Danny Katz, telling critics - including Katz's family - that his decision was based entirely on legal considerations. A statement from Beit Hanassi read: "The president understands the pain of the Katz family, whose son Danny was murdered by evildoers. In accordance with the procedure in effect since the day the country was established, the president is responsible for determining the commutation of a life sentence, and that is after the committee for reviewing life sentences, headed by a judge, submits its detailed recommendations to the Justice Ministry."

Those judges are also appointed by the Leftist oligopoly that rules Israel. Of course, those 'detailed recommendations' will not be available for the public to see.

Peres's comments were in response to claims that his decision was based on political concerns, in an attempt to bring Israeli Arabs into the Kadima-Labor coalition.

Earlier Wednesday, Katz's mother blasted the president's decision and bemoaned the lack of importance awarded to life sentences in the state of Israel.

"The second Peres becomes president, he rushes to release murderers - five murderers, savages, who killed an innocent boy outside his home. We're getting calls from all over the country. They're all saying, 'Better [former president Moshe] Katsav than someone who frees murderers,'" Mira Katz said.

Katz's brother also took to the airwaves to slam the decision, saying that they had heard as far back as two months ago that at least one Arab MK was advocating the fives' release.

Why, exactly, would a Knesset member desire the release of terrorists? Why would his constituency want such a thing?

Danny Katz was 15 in 1983 when he left his Denya neighborhood house in Haifa and never returned. His body was discovered in a cave not far from Sakhnin four days after his disappearance. The five suspects were first indicted in Haifa District Court in 1984 and charged with premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit a crime and kidnapping with intent to murder.

In October 1985, all five - Ahmad Kozli, Samir Hanama, Fathi Guama, Ali Gnaim and Ataf Sabihi were convicted of all the charges against them and sentenced to life plus 27 years in prison each. In the nineties, the five repeatedly requested a retrial, claiming that their confessions were made under physical and psychological pressure.

In 1999, then-Supreme Court president Aharon Barak granted the five the long-awaited retrial, but that resulted in a verdict, handed down in 2002, which upheld their previous conviction.

There is one possibly positive development that can come from this: non-Leftist parties should make adoption of the death penalty for terrorist murderers a campaign issue. It would be wildly popular, particularly given the added reason that death is the only legal impediment to release by President Peres.

See also: Suspicion: Peres Paid for Arab Vote with Leniency to Arab Killers

Hamas is singlemindedly accelerating the growth of its military capabilities. Meanwhile, Israel is kicking the problem down the road:

Hamas has sent hundreds of its fighters abroad for military training, most of them to Iran, the Israeli Army’s deputy chief of staff says, and Israel has the names of more than 100 of them. Israel is watching as Hamas, in control of Gaza, is building an army there on the model of Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, said the deputy chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Moshe Kaplinsky,

He said Hamas was constructing positions and fortifications, building tunnels for fighting and smuggling in explosives, antitank weapons and more sophisticated rockets through the Egyptian desert. Hamas now has improved antitank missiles and mortars and possesses manufactured Katyusha rockets with a range of 10.6 miles, which they are keeping in reserve.

Apparently some people find IRIS objectionable. We have been under attack for the past few days, which explains why the site has been unavailable. It appears that the good has prevailed for the time being, with the help of a valiant effort by our technical forces who ended up ripping and replacing the server.

Please bear with some annoyances until we have fully regrouped.

Here are the details of a savage rape in a Somali Muslim neighborhood of St. Paul recorded on videotape. Also recorded are 5-10 neighbors who witnessed the rape, but did nothing. They didn't even bother to call the police.

As many as 10 people witnessed a man raping and beating a woman early Tuesday in the hallway of a St. Paul apartment building, police said Wednesday.

That isn't true. As many as 10 people were filmed on videotape witnessing the event. It is reasonable to assume that more knew what was happening but were not recorded on video. Most people in apartment buildings look through peepholes to see what the commotion is in the hallway.

No one stopped it. At one point, the 26-year-old victim knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside told police he didn't open the door or look out, though he said he called police. Police found no record of the call, according to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Ramsey County District Court. St. Paul police arrested Rage Ibrahim, 25, on suspicion of criminal sexual conduct Tuesday. He hasn't been charged.

It was horrifying. I can't describe how it sent chills up my back, watching this woman getting assaulted and people turning their backs and doing nothing, said St. Paul police Cmdr. Shari Gray, who oversees the department's sex crimes unit. She saw surveillance video that recorded the attack in the Highwood neighborhood. As the woman screamed, five to 10 people - men and women - peeked out their apartment doors to see what was happening or started walking down the hallway and retreated after witnessing the assault, Gray said.

The incident is reminiscent of the brutal kidnapping and torture to death of Ilan Halimi. Over a period of weeks, not only did none of the French Muslim neighbors report the crime; dozens of neighbors even dropped by to participate.

Why is the religion of the perpetrators relevant when sexual assault is a widespread phenomenon Because Islam and Muslim culture contributes to the problem of rape in a great many ways. (Here are a number of examples where the Koran-inspired antipathy for "the other" translates into gang rape of Westerners, and where adult Muslims even spit on victims who complain.)

Education Minister Yuli Tamir is best known for her innovation of teaching the view that the founding of Israel was a "disaster."

Now she has decreed that every Israeli schoolchild must watch the thoroughly debunked "An Inconvenient Truth" (see here for one example), a movie whose purpose is to frighten children into believing that the sky is literally falling.

His main claim, that devastation will result from a sea level rise of 20 feet by the year 2100 is actually off by 1,200%, according to the UN's own report.

Here is a must-read review of a book by an former Islamist warning of the ease in which moderate Muslims transform into terrorists:

On April 30, 2003, Asif Hanif, 21, achieved the notorious feat of becoming Britain's first suicide bomber, killing Ran Baron, Dominique Hass and Yanai Weiss and wounding 60 others when he detonated his explosives to murderously shatter the mellow peace of Mike's Place, the Tel Aviv beachfront blues bar.

Ed Husain knew Hanif, and remembers him as "a teddy bear of a character: generous, kind, selfless and committed."

Both men had been studying Arabic in Damascus not long before the bombing. But while Husain was in the process of reeducating himself and rejecting Islamic extremism, Hanif was plunging ever deeper into violent radicalism.

"The Asif I knew did not believe in killing innocent civilians in Britain or any other country, but Islamist rhetoric had convinced him that Israelis, without exception, were not innocent but occupiers of the Palestinian homeland," Husain writes in his frankly horrifying book The Islamist. "Asif's recruitment to suicide bombing came about against a backdrop of increasingly radicalized young Muslims in communities across Britain," the author notes. "The qualities that made Asif a great Muslim host - selflessness and commitment - were the same traits that, when corrupted, transformed him into a suicide bomber."

Had Husain not so starkly changed course, he might have wound up as murderously transformed as Hanif. For Husain had traveled along the same route to indoctrination. He too had been well on the way to persuasion, over years of deepening immersion in the prevalent victim-aggressor culture of perverted Islam, that it was God's will, Allah's will, for his soldiers to kill the infidels - Jews, Christians, even nonextreme Muslims - to establish an all-powerful Islamist state.

Husain's book, recently published in the UK and yet to appear in the US, is horrifying precisely because it documents so candidly the smoothness with which Husain was recruited to such misguided ruthlessness. He was gradually drawn into ever more intolerant circles, and became prominent within them - helping to galvanize the process by which the racist, misogynist and thuggish ideology came to dominate various colleges in East London a decade or so ago....

It is being facilitated in the UK, as he makes clear, by a staggering naivety on the part of the government, law enforcement and the educational authorities, who are shown to be hesitant and closed-minded as to the terrifying scale of the threat despite the series of Islamist attacks Britain is enduring, and insistently invoking free speech as an absolute value even as it is being abused to fuel vicious hatred for the very society that upholds it.

Read the whole thing...

Yet another of the Bill Clinton lies debunked:

In September 2006, during a famous encounter with Fox News anchor Wallace, Clinton erupted in anger and waived his finger when asked about whether his administration had done enough to get bin Laden. What did I do? What did I do?? Clinton said at one point. I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since.

See here for the evidence.

Just a reminder of the kind of evil that will prevail and spread if the United States retreats from Iraq:

Five-year-old Youssif is scarred for life, his once beautiful smile turned into a grotesquely disfigured face, the face of a horrifying act by masked men. They grabbed him on a January day outside his central Baghdad home, doused him with gas and set him ablaze.

It's an act incomprehensibly savage, even by Iraq's standards today.

That's not true. Al-Qaeda has made routine the practice of serving roasted Christian toddlers to their families on a tray of rice.

No one has been arrested and the motive remains unknown.

Incomprehensible? The motive remains unknown. Apparently the author has not studied much Islam:

Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220: Allah's Apostle said, "I have been made victorious with terror"

If you come upon them (infidels), deal so forcibly as to terrify those who would follow, that they may be warned. Make a severe example of them by terrorizing Allah's enemies.
-- Ishaq:326.

Koran, 8:57: If thou comest on them in the war, deal with them so as to strike fear in those who are behind them, that haply they may remember.

Perhaps journalists are ignorant of these verses, but the terrorists know them by heart.

In a war-ravaged city torn by sectarian violence and marked by acts of vengeance, this attack's apparent randomness stands out as an example of what life has become in a place where brutality even against young children is a constant.

They dumped gasoline, burned me, and ran, Youssif told CNN, pointing down the street with his scarred hands where his attackers fled.

As he sucked his thumb, he repeated, I was burning. He tried to put the flames out himself.

R. Yehoshua ben Levi said to his children: "Go early and stay late in synagogue in order that you should live a long life"

-Talmud Berachot 8a

Here is yet another of the many studies showing the positive lifestyle effects of religion:

Adults who attend synagogue regularly live longer than their peers who do not attend synagogue, according to a recently published study carried out by researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

The research, conducted by Professor Howard Litwin of the university's Israel Gerontological Data Center (IGDC), was published in The European Journal of Aging....

The study was based on a Bureau of Statistics survey conducted in 1997, for which 5,000 Israeli men and women aged 60 and above were interviewed about their way of life.

In 2004, the number of participants still living was monitored. In a focus group of 1,811, some 38 percent had passed away....

Data showed that the death rate was 75 percent higher among the group that did not attend synagogue than it was among the group that attended synagogue regularly.

Litwin said that there is no clear-cut explanation for the synagogue attendance effect, but outlined two main possibilities.

"One explanation is spiritual, that is, the individual faith factor," he said. "A series of studies that have been conducted in recent years, especially in the United States, argue that faith helps people deal with psychological pressure. People who believe and pray apparently survive longer," said Litwin.

"Another explanation is the connection between attending synagogue and belonging to a supportive community," he added.

Litwin said that in late old age decreased social activity is a common problem.

"A person who goes to synagogue has a function: He is called to the Torah, and he has a network of social ties in the community."

Litwin also noted that since religious Jews do not drive on Shabbat, a person who goes to synagogue regularly must be able to walk, and hence is healthier.

Of course, the researcher is quite close-minded to the possibility that billions of people might be religious because there may be some truth in it. It is a conceivable possibility that all that prayer for health might actually work.

There is also a reasonable chance that the effect is understated because many synagogue-goers are not terribly religious. In particular, formerly non-religious elderly often attend synagogues because of their fear of death. Also some people who are insufferable to others attend synagogue because they have a captive audience for their dysfunction.

IRIS has been reporting for years that the United States has been training and arming Palestinian terrorists. Any 'defensive' security training can be used offensively as well. Now here is confirmation from the horse's mouth:

American-run programs that train Fatah militias were instrumental in the "success" of the Palestinian intifada that began in 2000, said Abu Yousuf, a senior officer of Mahmoud Abbas' Force 17 Presidential Guard.

"I do not think that the operations of the Palestinian resistance would have been so successful and would have killed more than one thousand Israelis since 2000 and defeated the Israelis in Gaza without these [official American] trainings," he said.

"All the methods and techniques that we studied in these trainings, we applied them against the Israelis," he added.

Many members of Force 17 also openly serve in Fatah's "military wing," the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.