IRIS Blog

According to the report, the UNIFIL activity was uncovered two days ago, during a video conference conducted between the Spanish defense minister and various Spanish military commanders stationed throughout the world, in which the commanders briefed the minister on their military operations. In a video aired by Channel 10, the Spanish UNIFIL commander was seen reporting that his troops had been engaged in "looking for Israeli spies."

"I would like to note the continuation of operations that were conducted this week, searching for an Israeli spy ring." he began. "A number of arrests were made."

"This shows that in the Shi'ite areas there is a continuous feeling of mistrust," the commander said, "because they think that everybody near their area is looking for information that could hurt them."

Following publication of the briefing, the Spanish defense minister told Spanish media that the whole situation was just a "misunderstanding."

Israel has yet to react to the UNIFIL commander's statement.

In the past few months, there have been repeated reports that dozens of alleged Israeli spies were arrested in Lebanon. It is not clear exactly how many people have been detained by Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah operatives.

Fresh questions about the... downed Air France flight 447 continue as search crews pulled more bodies and wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean. The latest questions have emerged over the doomed flight's passenger list. A French magazine, L'Express, reported this week that two of the passengers were on a French terrorism watch list.

French and U.S. government sources, however, told ABC News that no Islamic extremists were aboard flight 447. A former senior White House official said "no names on the manifest triggered any U.S. intelligence persons of interest."

A current senior CIA officer says he hasn't seen anything suggesting that the Rio de Janeiro to Paris flight was downed by an act of terrorism. Additionally, French interior ministry spokesman Gerard Gachet denied the... report.

The French news report reported that it was possible that the two names on the manifest that matched two names on the terrorism watch list was a coincidence.

All 228 aboard flight 447 are presumed dead, after the plane disappeared from radar screens and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean between the coast of Brazil and the coast of West Africa on May 31. Last week, Brazilian military crews found passenger remains and small sections of debris floating on the ocean surface.

Some of the confusion over who was aboard the flight stems from Air France's decision to keep the manifest private. An Air France spokesperson told ABC News that French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the families of the victims that France would never release the names as a privacy concern. Most of the passengers were French and Brazilian. Flight 447 carried passengers and crew from a total of 31 different countries.

ABC News has learned that news reports in Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey have identified citizens of those countries who also perished on flight 447.

A former senior CIA official told ABC News that there is added confusion with terrorism watch lists because Muslim and Arabic names are often poorly translated by Western governments.

"Most Arabs have four names as a full name," the former official said. "But North African countries that were colonized by the French, for example, chopped the names down to two, like theirs, so they could find people. Now, they have a hard time identifying people on the list because the names are inconsistent."

Officials Not Ruling Out Terrorism

Because so little of the plane has been recovered, French officials have refused to officially rule out terrorism as the cause of the crash. However, their investigation thus far has focused on faulty wind-speed sensors on the Airbus A330 airplane. There is no evidence yet that the sensors contributed to the tragedy but initial reviews of flight data transmissions indicate the plane had electrical malfunctions as it went through a tropical storm, some 400 miles northeast of Brazil.

A terrorist attack was 'highly likely' to be behind the Air France plane crash in the Atlantic, a pilot claimed.

The unnamed flyer said a bomb explosion on board was the probable cause, he told a French newspaper.

'I have flown these jets for Air France for more than ten years and the chances of an electrical fault seem unfeasible to me,' he added.

A bomb threat was made against an Air France plane flying from Buenos Aires days earlier, it has emerged.

A warning phone call came in ahead of take-off on Wednesday last week but a search revealed nothing.

An attack could not be ruled out bec­ause it is 'the main threat for all Western democracies' but no one had claimed responsibility, said French defence minister Herve' Morin.

The shooter was named as James Von Brunn by a law enforcement official, pending confirmation and speaking on condition of anonymity, who noted that his car had been found near the museum.

Both Von Brunn and the security officer, named as Stephen T. Johns, were rushed to hospital following the shootout, which took place at midday. Von Brunn was described by officials as in "grave condition." A Washington Fire Department spokesman said that a third person had been lightly wounded in the exchange, in which two officers fired back at the assailant...

Bystanders... heard security officers yell at hundreds of students, tourists and museum staff to flee the premises.

Public safety officers then secured the perimeter and cut off vehicles from the site. FBI agents are helping with the investigation, as authorities said they were checking for possible terror connections.

Washington Police Chief Kathy Lanier said the police had received no information or threats that such an attack was in the offing. She refused to confirm that Von Brunn was the lead suspect during a press conference following the shooting.

Von Brunn is a well-known white supremacist, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center told CNN, referring to a Web site and publications he produced over several years in which he has "raged" against Jews and blacks. He noted that Von Brunn had been arrested in the past in connection to hate crimes.

PM Netanyahu no doubt remembers that the last time someone suggested he could get away with a policy move that conflicted with his mandate that he soon found himself on the way out the door.

Will Netanyahu say "state"?

On the one hand, he knows full well that a sovereign state, once created, remains a sovereign state even if it violates the terms under which it was created.

So all the special terms and conditions that are tacked onto the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state are just fig leafs - if one agrees to the formation of a sovereign Palestinian state. And it takes no imagination whatsoever to think through how the terms and conditions would fall by the wayside.

This was the very argument he presented at the Likud meeting that voted to reject PM Sharon's talk of a sovereign Palestinian state.

So this isn't a case of "if the czar only knew".

Netanyahu knows.

99.9% of the talking heads on TV don't know. But that's because they are part of the "retreat to '67 line will bring utopian peace" cabal.

A lot of people in policy making also don't know. Is it a question of attention span - or simply a desire to find simple solutions to big
problems?

But Netanyahu does know.

Will he sacrifice his intellectual honesty?

Here's the irony.

If it really looked like President Obama would seriously act to stop Iran from going nuclear then there might be a logic to going for a "logic hiatus" on a sovereign Palestinian state with the idea being that after Iran was stopped Israel could find ways to prevent the talks with the Palestinians from concluding with a sovereign state.

But since it doesn't look like Obama is going to actually act against Iran regardless of what Israel concedes to the Arabs, then that excuse falls by the wayside.

That the President of United States isn't going to stop Iran from getting the bomb is hardly something to celebrate.

But it shouldn't be ignored.

Under the cover of morning fog, a group of... gunmen armed with "huge amounts of explosives" launched a failed Gaza border assault at the Karni Crossing on Monday...

At least four terrorists were killed in an ensuing exchange of fire with the IDF. No Israeli soldiers were wounded in the incident.

The terror cell belonged to... a small group which is linked to Iran and Hizbullah, the security source added.

Members of the cell, some of whom had suicide bomb belts strapped around their bodies, led the horses off of trucks and began planting explosive devices along the fence. They were identified by IDF soldiers on patrol, of Golani's 13th Battalion. The gunmen proceeded to open fire on the troops, while mortar fire from deep within the Gaza Strip was also directed at the soldiers.

Soldiers returned fire, and called for backup. At first, tanks were dispatched to the scene, and fired on the terror cell. Air Force combat helicopters then joined the fight, also firing on terrorist targets from above.

"A very big terror attack was thwarted," the security source said. "These terrorists were armed with a huge quantity of explosives. They launched a combined attack, using mortars, and attempted to approach the border fence with booby-trapped horses to harm our soldiers, before firing on our force."

"Hamas did not carry out this attack but they certainly provide general coverage for these small groups," the source continued, adding that it was too soon to know whether the cell had planned on kidnapping soldiers.

"The area turned into a war zone," the source said.

"Southern Command forces are prepared for these types of attacks, and are aware of the dangers present in the morning fog. There is always the chance terrorists will try to use that for an attack," he added.

First, the good bits in Obama’s speech in Cairo.

He told the Palestinians unequivocally that violence was wrong.

He said that there was an unbreakable bond between America and Israel.

He told the Arab states firmly:

The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state; to recognize Israel’s legitimacy; and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.

He condemned the persecution of non-Muslims in the Islamic world and urged equal rights for Muslim women.

He referred to Iran’s role since 1979 in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians.

Now the bad bits – and they were really bad.

He revealed gross ignorance of the Jews’ unique claim to the land of Israel. He said that America’s unbreakable bond with Israel was based upon:

the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust...

The Jews’ aspiration for their homeland does not derive from the Holocaust, nor their overall tragic history. It derives from Judaism itself, which is composed of the inseparable elements of the religion, the people and the land. Their unique claim upon the land rests upon the fact that the Jews are the only people for whom Israel was ever their nation, which it was for hundreds of years – centuries before the Arabs and Muslims came on the scene. As for antisemitism, he made no mention of the alliance between the Palestinians and the Nazis during the 1930s, and the fact that Nazi-style Jew-hatred continues to pour out of the Arab and Muslim world to this day.

Worse, Obama appeared to draw a subliminal equivalence between the Holocaust extermination camps and the Palestinian 'refugee' camps:

Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed - more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction - or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews - is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.

And with this awful and revealing linkage, he duly segued seamlessly into the distorted Arab and Muslim narrative of Israel's history. It is not undeniable that the Palestinians 'have suffered in pursuit of a homeland' because it is untrue. The Palestinians have been offered a homeland repeatedly – in 1936, 1947, 2000 and last year. They have repeatedly turned it down. The Arabs could have created it between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. They chose not to do so. They could have created it after 1967, when Israel offered the land to them in return for peace with Israel. They refused the offer. The Palestinians have suffered because they have tried for six decades to destroy the Jews’ homeland.

For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.

The ‘pain of dislocation’ was caused by the fact that six decades ago they went to war against the newly recreated Israel to destroy it, and were subsequently deliberately kept in ‘refugee’ camps by the Arab world. What other aggressors in the world are described as suffering ‘the pain of dislocation’ caused by their own aggression -- which has continued for sixty years without remission and shows no sign of ending?

Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.

There is one reason for that and one reason alone – the Palestinians have ensured that Israel has never lived in peace or security, because they have continued to attack it and murder its citizens. And Gaza? Doesn’t Obama realise the Israelis no longer occupy Gaza? It is run by Hamas, which shows its commitment to the peace and security of its inhabitants by throwing them off the tops of tall buildings.

So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.

And what about the intolerable situation of Israel, forced to live in a state of siege for sixty years because of the unending aggression of the Palestinians and the wider Arab and Muslim world? The Palestinians could have lived in peace and prosperity alongside Israel at any time since 1948. If they were to end their attempt to destroy Israel and accept instead the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state -- that crucial qualification Obama omitted to mention -- they could do so tomorrow. The only reason their position is intolerable is because they themselves have made it so. What other aggressors in the world have their situation described as ‘intolerable’?

Palestinians must abandon violence.

Good. But then:

Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.

‘Resistance’? 'Resistance' is a term of moral approval. ‘Resistance’ describes a fight against injustice. But the Palestinians have been engaged in an attempt to wipe out Israel. Obama sees this as 'resistance' – even though he says violence is wrong. And then this:

For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.

So Obama has equated genocidal terrorism by the Palestinians with the civil rights movement in America and the true resistance against apartheid in South Africa. Thus the moral bankruptcy of the moral relativist.

Next, he repeated that the settlements (all of them? just new ones?) undermined peace and so had to stop. But they don’t undermine peace. It is Arab rejectionism that prevents peace in the Middle East, and the settlements are a palpable excuse. Yet Obama delivered no ultimatum of any kind to Iran, the real threat to peace in the region and the world; indeed, he repeated that Iran

should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty,

an alarming indication that he might view as acceptable a formulation which might enable Iran to continue to make nuclear weapons under some kind of verbal and political camouflage.

For his egregious sanitising of Islam and its history, and his absurd claims about its contribution to western civilisation, read Robert Spencer here. But in this regard, one of Obama’s references in particular made me catch my breath. It was this:

The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.

This is boilerplate misrepresentation by Islamists and their apologists. The fact is that it is Judaism which teaches this as a cardinal precept. The Talmud states:

Whoever destroys a single soul, he is guilty as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul, it is as though he had preserved a whole world.

The Koran appropriated this precept – but altered it to mean something very different. Thus (verses 5:32-5:35):

That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind. Our apostles brought them veritable proofs: yet many among them, even after that, did prodigious evil in the land. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land.

In other words, this turns a Talmudic precept affirming the value of preserving human life into a prescription for violence and murder against Jews and ‘unbelievers’. Yet Obama passed it off as evidence of the pacific nature of Islam.

In short, deeply troubling.

To be Barack Obama is to be, as he says, a person who can see all issues from all sides. ....The signing of the Oslo peace accords in 1993... began the process of handing over large portions of the area reserved by the League of Nations for the creation of a Jewish National Home for the creation of a Palestinian equivalent. But Israel offered these same Palestinians a state in virtually all of the West Bank and Gaza as well as part of Jerusalem in 2000 and again in negotiations conducted by the government of Ehud Olmert just last year. So, the problem is not... the Israelis... Rather, it is, as Mahmoud Abbas said in Washington only a week ago, that the Palestinians aren't interested in negotiating with Israel.

Even more obnoxious is his comparison of the Palestinians' plight to that of African-Americans in the U.S. before the civil rights era. Israelis have not enslaved Palestinians. The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians rests on the latter's unwillingness to come to terms with the former's existence. The plight of Palestinians in Gaza is terrible, but it is a direct result of their own decision to choose war over peace... Going to the Middle East while ostentatiously avoiding Israel and picking a fight with its leadership sends a message that will resonate throughout the Arab world. His signal that America is now an impartial broker rather than Israel’s ally can only encourage a Palestinian people that continue to reject peace.

Though he made a number of important points about fighting terror, religious tolerance and women’s rights and democracy, the speech was constructed and delivered as a series of moral equivalencies that undermine both the search for peace as well as the equally necessary drive to reform the Islamic world.blockquote>

Barack Obama's mention of "seven million American Muslims" in the course of his rambling and complex six-thousand-word address to the Muslim world from Cairo symbolizes the whole message.

Study after study has found that demographic figure about three times too high. But Islamist organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America relentlessly promote the notion of seven or even ten million American Muslims. Obama's accepting their version amounts to a giveaway, a cheap way to win the approbation of Islamists who so widely influence Muslim opinion.

"Giveaway," indeed, defines the whole speech – inexpensive nods, tips of the hat, and salutations to win Muslim favor without initiating new approaches or embarking on new policies. The speech confirms Obama's personal efforts (note how, in keeping with his past practice, he uses the word "respect" ten times in this speech) as well as the established practice of American political leaders to promote Islam, tell Muslims what their religion really means, avoid references to radical Islam, and excoriate violent Islamism while accepting the non-violent variety.

On other issues too – Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Arab-Israeli conflict, democracy – Obama reiterated his known policies.

In brief, he broke little new ground but raised to new heights the art of sugaring words in ways appealing to Islamists.

...Obama's moral equivalency was disconcerting. Undeniably, Palestinians have endured dislocation - but it would have been courageous of the president to say that much of this pain has been self-inflicted, thanks to 60 years of intransigence.

He was right to remind the Arab states that their peace initiative was only "an important beginning." And we were gratified when he insisted Hamas end its violence, recognize past agreements, and accept Israel's right to exist.

But we cringed when he associated the Palestinian struggle with the US civil rights movement and with the campaign for majority rule in South Africa - even if the punch-line of this false analogy was: Terrorism is always unjustifiable.

We were braced for his reiteration of long-standing US policy against the settlement enterprise. But he missed a crucial opportunity to prepare the Arabs for territorial compromise. No Israeli government is going to pull back to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines.

Obama didn't really need to tell Israelis to acknowledge "Palestine's" right to exist since every government since Yitzhak Rabin's has been explicit that the Jewish state does not want to rule over another people. The real question is whether a violently fragmented Palestinian polity is capable of making the necessary compromises required to close a deal.

As could be expected, President Barack Obama on Thursday identified "the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world," as being "a source of tension." In this respect, he correctly delineated the issue as being much broader than a conflict solely between Palestinians and Jews, a distinction which is very important in terms of working towards a possible solution.

Precisely for this reason, however, his comments regarding Israel and Jewish history were so problematic. First and foremost was his linkage of the establishment of the State of Israel and the Holocaust.

Thus, according to Obama, Americans recognize that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied," an obvious reference not to the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the Jewish people from its historic homeland, but rather to the Shoa. The continuation of the speech, in which he refers to his visit today to Buchenwald and attacks Holocaust denial, make this linkage absolutely clear.

Besides being historically inaccurate, this false connection strengthens one of the strongest canards of anti-Israel propaganda in the Muslim world; that Europeans guilty of Holocaust crimes established a Jewish state in Palestine at the expense of the local Arab residents to atone for their World War II atrocities.

By ignoring three thousand years of Jewish history, by neglecting to even mention the unbreakable link, started long before the advent of Islam, between the Jewish people and Eretz Yisrael, Obama totally failed to deliver what should have been one of his most important messages to the Arab world.

The major problem of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the tensions between Jews and Muslims all over the world is not Holocaust denial. As irritating and disgusting as that phenomenon undoubtedly is, it is merely a symptom of something much deeper, which Obama either failed to understand or refused to publicly identify. And that is the basic refusal of the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state...

Along the same lines, Obama's failure to focus... on the open threats by Iran to destroy Israel, should be cause for serious concern in Jerusalem. Instead of tackling Teheran's genocidal bravado head-on, he chose to equate the possibility of a second Holocaust with "repeating vile stereotypes about Jews," something certainly objectionable but hardly comparable.

It was also hardly comforting to hear Obama try and convince the Arab world to stop Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic stereotypes as, bottom line, they are really not worthwhile because they ultimately make Israelis less inclined to make peace...

What will bring a true change to our region, and to relations between Jews and Arabs, will be when the latter recognize the history of the Jewish people and their connection to Eretz Yisrael and the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

The administration's escalating pressure on Israel to freeze all settlement growth has begun to stir concern among Israel's numerous allies in both parties on Capitol Hill. "My concern is that we are applying pressure to the wrong party in this dispute," said Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.). "I think it would serve America's interest better if we were pressuring the Iranians to eliminate the potential of a nuclear threat from Iran, and less time pressuring our allies and the only democracy in the Middle East to stop the natural growth of their settlements."

...They question putting public pressure on Israel while paying less public attention to Palestinian terrorism and other Arab states' hostility to Israel. "There's a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies, and the president is tiptoeing right up to that line," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). "I would have liked to hear the president talk more about the Palestinian obligation to cut down on terrorism." "I don't think anybody wants to dictate to an ally what they have to do in their own national security interests," said Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), who said he thinks there's "room for compromise."

"It's misguided. Behind that pressure is the assumption that somehow resolving the so-called settlements will somehow lead to the ultimate goal" of disarming Iran, said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip. "A backward assumption is being made that if we deal with the Israel-Palestine question, somehow all the problems in the Middle East will be solved." The pro-Israel lobby AIPAC last week got the signatures of 329 members of Congress, including key figures in both parties, on a letter calling on the administration to work "closely and privately" with Israel - in contrast to the current public pressure.

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) said that Israel cannot place its fate in the hands of any other nation - even friendly ones. He indicated that there has been a serious shift in relations with the United States, but that Israeli self-interest will not be sacrificed for the sake of those relations...

He pointed out, "The American pressure is such that it changes assumptions in Israel." Later, he described the new American administration's shift in approach to Israel as "dramatic".

"The alliance between the United States and Israel is of primary strategic significance, but this friendship does not come at the expense of Israel's clear interests, as the Israeli public sees them. And the Israeli public... knows - as the free world knows - that our future has to be in our own hands. And that is [also] a clear American interest," Rivlin declared.

"It must be explained to all concerned that Israel cannot forsake its future. Our parents provided for us, and we must provide for our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren for generations to come. The State of Israel cannot depend on the whims of any other groups...."

Regarding the pressures currently brought to bear on Israel regarding the American vision of a new Arab state established in Israel's heartland, Rivlin said, "To friends, of course, it can be explained that friends can agree to disagree. It's happened before. Ever since 1967 there has been disagreement with the United States, but it must be clear that it is unacceptable to suddenly come to Israel and say, 'You must give up all your beliefs'...

The suspect was identified as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe. Muhammad, 24, was arrested after a brief chase and charged with first-degree murder, as well as terror charges.

Based on the police department's initial interrogation, the shooter acted out of "political and religious motives... with the specific purpose of targeting military personnel." As of now, he is assumed to have acted "alone and of his own accord," a police spokesman emphasized. A spokesman for the FBI's Little Rock office said the agency is also investigating the incident.

According to police, at around 10:15 a.m. Muhammad drove up to the U.S. Army Navy Career Center inside the Ashley Square Shopping Center and opened fire on two enlisted soldiers standing outside. Other military officers and soldiers were in the building at the time, but there were no other injuries reported. Police later recovered an SKS semi-automatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a pistol from Muhammad's black SUV.

The murdered soldier was identified as 23-year-old William Long, who died shortly after being transported to a Little Rock hospital. The second wounded soldier remains hospitalized in stable condition.

Last month, FBI agents arrested four men involved in a terrorist plot to blow up two synagogues and shoot down a National Guard aircraft in Riverdale, New York. The suspects in that case, three of whom are converts to Islam, reportedly acted independently of any global terrorist organization and formed their own localized jihadist cell.