IRIS Blog

Apparently Binyamin Ben-Eliezer has been drinking the Kool-Aid again:

Ben-Eliezer Hopes Israel will Leave Territories as Soon as Possible

A week ago he appeared to be making sense:

Minister of Infrastructure and former Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) is the latest senior politician to admit that the 2005 Disengagement was a mistake.

Speaking in an interview with Radio L’lo Hafsaka, a regional radio station, Ben-Eliezer dropped the bombshell: "I admit and I confess that I was among those who strongly supported [former PM] Ariel Sharon [and the Disengagement]. Today I say, with my head held high, ‘We erred, we made a very big mistake.’”

Ben Eliezer did not say it was the withdrawal itself and abandonment of parts of the Land of Israel that was the problem, but rather the nature of the recipients of the territory. "Withdrawals can only work when the areas are handed over to responsible hands and rotted in agreements and international guarantees,” he explained. “Here we have a precedent - a territory we left turns into a base for terror - period."

Ben Eliezer also called for a wide scale counter-terror offensive in Gaza, complaining that Israel’s fear of harming civilians was harming its own populace instead. "Israel continues to say we bind ourselves to these ethical obligations that no other country in the world is bound by. We are facing a conflict here between two disciplines. One nation is prepared to commit suicide and sees it as a religious imperative and an honor, the other wants to spare every ounce of blood."

This is being reported as a "shock," but it is actually quite consistent with many other recent news stories from sharia (Muslim Law) countries, which intentionally discriminate against women and non-Muslims:

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The 19-year-old woman -- whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms -- was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200.

A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."

Here are some other "shocking" stories which paint a more complete picture:

In Pakistan, Rape Victims Are the 'Criminals'

French Teen Flees Dubai Prosecution After HIV Gang Rape

12-Day Mother/Daughter Gang Rape as Punishment for College

Pan-European Arab Muslim Gang Rape Epidemic

At a memorial service celebrating the third anniversary of the death of Yassir Arafat, wild gunbattles caused large numbers to be shot:

A rally marking the third anniversary of the death of former Palestinian president Yasser Arafat ended in bloodshed yesterday, when clashes between Hamas police and supporters of the rival Fatah movement left eight people dead and 150 wounded.

Each movement blamed the other for instigating the violence in Gaza City, but witnesses said Hamas police fired the first shots after the Fatah supporters had taunted them with cries of "Shi'ite, Shi'ite."

Of the eight dead, three were identified as Fatah members.

Another shoe drops, but ironically, this may help Olmert succeed in giving away territory by encouraging complacency in the opposition:

The head of the police investigative team probing Olmert's alleged intervention in the Bank Leumi privatization recommends charges against the Prime Minister.

According to a report in the Yisrael Hayom Hebrew-language commuter paper this week, the entire investigative team that was actively engaged in the probe supports the decision to indict the Prime Minister, in opposition to the stance taken by the head of the Police Department's Investigations Wing, Yochanan Danino.

The Bank Leumi case is one of four cases against the Prime Minister currently being investigated by the police. It involves suspicions that Olmert, as Acting Minister of Finance in late 2005, attempted to change the terms of the sale of the bank to fit the terms of two of his friends, who were in the bidding to buy it.

How can this be? Israel participated in a solemn ceremony with Egypt where they agreed to guard the border as diligently as Israel had:

An estimated $20 million is smuggled into Gaza each month through the Philadelphi Route, according to Rep. Gary Ackerman, chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia.

In an interview with Ha'aretz on Monday, Ackerman pointed an accusing finger at Egypt, arguing that Cairo's failure to control the Sinai border with Gaza helps to empower Hamas.

Ackerman said there has been an increasingly deteriorating situation along the Philadelphi Route.

He said intelligence information has revealed the smuggling of more people, materials and arms than ever, and that the type of weaponry being brought in was more sophisticated and with higher destructive capacity.

Perhaps Israel should whine to put more pressure on Egypt to do the right thing. That's what Israel used to do regarding Palestinian broken promises until everyone tired of it.

For years, the UK had a tacit deal with jihadis: don't attack us and we won't hinder you. The jihadis broke the deal in spectacular fashion on 7/7, and Britain released too late that it had an enormous problem on its hands:

British security officials suspect that at least 4,000 people are involved in terrorism-related activities in Britain and that al-Qaeda's "deliberate campaign" against Britain poses the "most immediate and acute peacetime threat" to the nation in a century.

See also:

MI5 Warns: Al-Qaeda Recruiting Teenagers to Attack Targets in Britain

Teenagers as young as 15 are being groomed to carry out terrorist attacks in Britain and al-Qaeda sympathizers are hatching plots in a growing number of foreign countries against targets in the UK, the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, warned Monday.

Islamist Extremism Greatest Threat to Europe, EU's New Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Says

To fight terrorism effectively, EU member states need to share information more widely, both with each other and with the EU institutions. But compensatory measures are also needed, so that the fight against terrorism does not shrink individual liberty, the EU's new Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove told the Civil Liberties Committee on Monday.

While the world focuses on the Annapolis ceremony celebrating the possible delivery of territory to the Palestinian National Movement, the dirty secret is that one of the parties there is on the endangered species list:

It would not be a great exaggeration to conclude that the Palestinian national movement has ceased to exist in recent years. The institutions of the PLO, which were to represent all groups among the Palestinian people, have become outdated and of little importance.

One of the clearest signs of the decline of the Palestinian national project is the departure of many of its key figures. Nabil Shaath, a PLO veteran who was a minister in the Palestinian government after returning with Arafat and settling in Gaza, has return to his home in Cairo where he runs a thriving business. Muhammad Dahlan and Hasan Asfor, who not long ago were ministers and powerful advisors in Gaza, now spend most of their time in Cairo with their families.

In Ramallah, it is estimated that 50,000 residents have left the West Bank in recent years, most to return to their homes and property in Amman. They had come to Ramallah and Nablus to work in PA offices there.

With the failure of the PA experiment, the Arab states have begun to return to the scene. The Jordanian government, with the encouragement of Israel, is establishing a renewed presence in the West Bank, especially in eastern Jerusalem. King Abdullah II and government leaders in Amman are careful to publicly announce that they have no designs on the West Bank. While this may be true, there is no doubt that their interest in events there is growing.

There is every reason to expect further cooperation between the West Bank and the East Bank in Jordan, which will also have political consequences. As long as the separation fence between Israel and the West Bank continues to be built, relations between the West Bank and Jordan will strengthen.

Around the time Arab leaders were creating the famous Palestinian refugee problem by encouraging them to flee the nascent state of Israel in order to make it easier to "throw the Jews in the sea," they were creating the largely unknown, but equally sized Jewish refugee problem by conspiring to decimate Jewish populations throughout the Middle East:

New research shows there was Arab inter-state “collusion” to persecute Jews in Arab countries after Israel’s creation, former federal justice minister Irwin Cotler and Jewish rights scholars will announce today in New York.

While it is known up to 850,000 Jews left Arab countries after the post-war division of the Palestine mandate, the group is holding a news conference to highlight a rediscovered Arab League “draft law” that suggests a pan-Arab conspiracy was at play.

The new assessment comes just ahead of a major Israeli-Palestinian peace conference in Annapolis, Md., where the rights of millions of descendants of up to 600,000 Palestinian refugees of the Arab-Israeli conflict will be discussed — but not the rights of Jews squeezed from Arab countries.

Without the inter-Arab draft, the measures individual Arab states took against their Jewish citizens may not have been so widespread, the researchers will say. Only 8,000 Jews remain in 10 Arab countries today that once hosted many more.

“We will show that the various state sanctions in Arab countries did not occur haphazardly, but were the result of an international collusion organized by the League of Arab States at the time to set in place a blueprint for the denationalization of their Jewish nationals, the sequestrations of their property and the declaration of Jews as enemies of the state,” Mr. Cotler said.

He said he and his research colleagues will also present evidence showing the United Nations failed to investigate the matter, in part because an Arab League representative ran the agenda at one of its key debating chambers.

(Via: LGF)

In defiance of the UN ban, despite the presence of the UN "disarmament force":

Hizbullah recently held a large-scale exercise south of the Litani River that included thousands of gunmen, under the personal supervision of the organization's leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar reported Monday.

According to the report, the maneuvers, which included all military and logistic units of Hizbullah, were meant to convey a warning to Israel. The paper quoted sources in the organization saying that after Israel's military exercises in the Galilee last week - which, the paper claimed - included some 50,000 troops, the organization's top echelon adopted steps to "deter the enemy from undertaking any further Lebanese adventures."

The exercise lasted for three days and was reportedly the largest in Hizbullah's history. According to the sources quoted by Al Akhbar, one of the exercise's main objectives was to convey to Israel the "big surprises" Nasrallah had threatened to unleash if Israel attacks Lebanon.

Furthermore, the exercise was tailored to the IDF's strategy as observed during the Second Lebanon War and after it. The exercise took into account, for example, the increased deployment of UNIFIL peacekeepers since the war ended.

Here is a must-read from the reliably on-target Ruth Wisse.

These days, it's becoming downright chic to hint forebodingly that America's Jews are just too powerful. But whether it's the political scientists John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt or former president Jimmy Carter, those who accuse modern Jews of having excessive clout are getting it precisely backward. In the real world, Jews have too little power and influence. They also have too little self-confidence about defending themselves.

Consider a basic paradox. Even anti-Semites often give Jews credit for having exceptional intelligence. Self-congratulatory Web sites reckon that Jews, who make up about 0.2 percent of the world's population, have been awarded more than 160 Nobel Prizes. But if Jews are so smart, why do 22 Arab League countries account for a tenth of the Earth's land surface while the Israelis struggle to secure a country that is 1/19th the size of California? If Jews are so powerful, why does Israel attract twice as many venture-capital investments as all of Europe, even while it's the only one of the United Nations' 192 member states that has been charged with racism for the crime of its existence? How powerful is that?

Read the whole thing...

The drawback in Wisse's piece is that she is so historically focused that she overlooks one of the Gifts of the Jews: that history is not destiny. Progress means that patterns can be changed through focused action. Clearly Zionism and the Soviet Jewry movements were examples.

The solution, I believe, lies in an initiative brewing at the Shalem Center. Its president, Dan Polisar, recently delivered a speech in which he put his finger on the allergy that most young Israelis now feel for the repugnant sphere of politics. He argues that the successful slogan "ha-tovim l'tayis" ("the best youth to the air force") should be recast as "ha-tovim l'politica," as part of a major educational initiative. Currently, self-interested scoundrels, often supported by antagonistic foreigners, have the run of the government.

Here is a long, brilliant piece on the surge of anti-Semitism in England, from the reliably terrific City Journal. It is indicative of what is happening everywhere where Jewish and Muslim populations intersect, given that "imams routinely preach anti-Jewish sermons."

When will the West learn from history that Jews are canaries in the coal mine and that non-Jews are next?

In August 2006, as the war in Lebanon raged, a gang of teenage girls confronted 12-year-old Jasmine Kranat and a friend on a London bus. “Are you Jewish?” they demanded. They didn’t hurt the friend, who was wearing a crucifix. But they subjected Jasmine, a Jew, to a brutal beating—stomping on her head and chest, fracturing her eye socket, and knocking her unconscious.

According to the Community Security Trust, the defense organization of Britain’s 300,000-strong Jewish community, last year saw nearly 600 anti-Semitic assaults, incidents of vandalism, cases of abuse, and threats against Jewish individuals and institutions—double the 2001 number. According to the police, Jews are four times more likely to be attacked because of their religion than are Muslims. Every synagogue service and Jewish communal event now requires guards on the lookout for violence from both neo-Nazis and Muslim extremists. Orthodox Jews have become particular targets; some have begun wearing baseball caps instead of skullcaps and concealing their Star of David jewelry.

Anti-Semitism is rife within Britain’s Muslim community. Islamic bookshops sell copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the notorious czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; as an undercover TV documentary revealed in January, imams routinely preach anti-Jewish sermons. Opinion polls show that nearly two-fifths of Britain’s Muslims believe that the Jewish community in Britain is a legitimate target “as part of the ongoing struggle for justice in the Middle East”; that more than half believe that British Jews have “too much influence over the direction of UK foreign policy”; and that no fewer than 46 percent think that the Jewish community is “in league with Freemasons to control the media and politics.”

But anti-Semitism has also become respectable in mainstream British society. “Anti-Jewish themes and remarks are gaining acceptability in some quarters in public and private discourse in Britain and there is a danger that this trend will become more and more mainstream,” reported a Parliamentary inquiry last year. “It is this phenomenon that has contributed to an atmosphere where Jews have become more anxious and more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer.”

Read the whole thing...

One has to do detective work to piece together the sporadic news of the remarkable turnaround in Iraq, but that's why you have IRIS:

A 'significant' fall in US air raids in Iraq has been recorded over the past few weeks, a top US air force officer told reporters on Sunday. '[Yesterday (on Saturday), for the first time in a long time, we dropped no ammunitions,' said Major General David Edgington, a co-ordination director for the US-led multinational forces. 'We were called several times, but we dropped no ammunitions.'

See also: Al Qaeda In Iraq Defeated?

Two years ago, I predicted the obvious regarding the consequences of the overwhelming leftist bias in mainstream news coverage:

My prediction is that the main result will be an acceleration of the mainstream media's erosion of credibility and therefore, its audience.

Here is more confirmation from today's news:

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007. Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation (see chart, separate story), only four showed gains.

For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394, at least partly due to a price increase.

Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428.

Daily circulation at The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same, 6.5% to 548,906.

What is important to note is that normal businesses have a 'bad year' if they do not continually grow by 5-6% annually. This often brings immediate management consequences. In the case of newspapers, however, the solution is quite obvious (stop the incessant propaganda), but leftists apparently have their hearts set on going down with the ship.

For Americans who care about Israel, no presidential election has ever offered so stark a choice. Rudy Giuliani is likely to be the second leader of any nation to resist political pressures to moderate his pro-Israel positions. (The first was Yitzhak Shamir.)

Hillary Clinton, however, is beloved for pressing rhetorical hot buttons in front of Jewish audiences, but elsewhere, she is pure weasel:

>Hillary Clinton has published her foreign policy agenda in Foreign Affairs magazine, under the title "Security and Opportunity for the Twenty-First Century." The one paragraph on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict draws deeply on the notions that "resolving the conflict" should be America's top priority, that both sides are equally at fault for the "violence," and that Palestinians need only make promises to earn statehood. The passage strongly suggests that Hillary's support for Israel is more "triangulated" than many have assumed.

Here is the passage in full: Getting out of Iraq will enable us to play a constructive role in a renewed Middle East peace process that would mean security and normal relations for Israel and the Palestinians. The fundamental elements of a final agreement have been clear since 2000: a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank in return for a declaration that the conflict is over, recognition of Israel's right to exist, guarantees of Israeli security, diplomatic recognition of Israel, and normalization of its relations with Arab states. U.S. diplomacy is critical in helping to resolve this conflict. In addition to facilitating negotiations, we must engage in regional diplomacy to gain Arab support for a Palestinian leadership that is committed to peace and willing to engage in a dialogue with the Israelis. Whether or not the United States makes progress in helping to broker a final agreement, consistent U.S. involvement can lower the level of violence and restore our credibility in the region.

THIS IS a carefully crafted paragraph, loaded with allusions and references that the casual reader is likely to miss, but that send a clear signal on the high frequency of the "peace process." The message is this: a Hillary administration would constantly busy itself with Israeli-Palestinians talks, regardless of their prospects, and would strive to avoid any appearance of partiality - toward Israel.

The hyper-activism is made explicit in the promise of "consistent U.S. involvement," "whether or not the United States makes progress."

This is exactly what the US did during the Clinton years, when Yasser Arafat visited the White House 11 times, and met with President Clinton 24 times. Not only did this "consistent involvement" at the highest level not produce any progress, it raised the expectations of Palestinians to an absurd level, leaving them more intransigent and belligerent than they were at the outset.

Obsessive US diplomacy eventually blew up in Washington's face when Arafat launched a so-called "intifada" against Israel in 2000.

IT IS ALL the more astonishing, then, that Hillary, who witnessed the debacle from up close, thinks "consistent US involvement," whatever its outcome, will "lower the level of violence and restore our credibility in the region." She ignores precisely the lesson inflicted upon us by the failed policy of the Clinton administration: If the US obsessively tinkers with this issue without result, it is bound to raise the level of violence and damage our credibility.

In this same sentence, Hillary makes another nod toward the Palestinian position. She imagines that all this busy "involvement" will somehow "reduce violence." Aside from the probability that it would have the opposite effect, the very choice of the word "violence" evokes the infamous phrase "cycle of violence," by which Israelis and Palestinians are deemed equally responsible for the bloodshed.

That the Palestinians have deliberately cultivated a culture of terrorism, celebrating suicide bombers, is entirely lost in this formulation. Instead of terrorism, there is only "violence," which includes both the suicide-bomb dispatchers and the Israeli operations to stop them. By avoiding the word "terrorism," Hillary adopts a position of studied neutrality.

Ever wonder what the consequences are for trying to board an American airplane with a shoe bomb? Exactly the same as trying to sneak on a bottle of water. In both cases, the contraband is forfeited and then travel continues as normal.

Here are a few examples:

July 11, 2005: McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada

An Iraqi national was stopped at McCarran Airport on July 11, 2005 after a TSA screener discovered a 3-inch serrated knife hidden in his shoe. According to a leaked memo: “[Name withheld] was stopped at D checkpoint with a concealed sheetrock cutting knife concealed inside his shoe. [Name withheld] was born in Iraq. He claimed not to know the knife was there. Subject was traveling on American Airlines Flight #1806 LAS to Chicago. Metro PD ran an NCIC check, which was negative. [Name withheld] was allowed to continue his travel.”

December 2, 2005: John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York

A 50-year-old Egyptian man, who claimed to be a student at Iowa State University, and whose name was Gamal Al Badawi (not to be confused with the USS Cole bomber in today’s headline news), arrived from overseas wearing high-top sneakers bound with tape and with unusual rubber protrusions. Badawi’s shoes were tested for explosives; the sneakers tested positive five times. “The reading for explosives was off the charts,” CBS News’ Scott Weinberger reported, quoting a federal source, who called explosive reading, “the highest ever.” The TSA kept the modified sneakers but let Badawi continue on his travels. When the embarrassing story broke, FBI officials tracked down Badawi somewhere in the mid-west, interviewed him and deemed the case “officially closed.”

June 26, 2006: William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas

Mohamed Bataineh, age 31, was stopped by TSA officials at the Houston Hobby Airport wearing suspicious shoes. Upon examination, federal officials discovered that the “entire soles of both [Mohamed Bataineh’s] shoes were gutted out.” The TSA screener who examined the shoes told local media, “The shoes had been tampered with and there were all the components of [a bomb] except the explosive itself.” Bataineh, who hails from Jordan, was briefly detailed and then allowed to board a flight to Atlanta.

The West is utterly unserious about the War on Terror because of political correctness.