Image 01 Image 03

Hamas Tag

On July 1, 2016, we covered the murder of Rabbi Michael "Miki" Mark, a father of 10 children, in front of his wife and several of the kids, Palestinian War of Terror – Israeli father of 10 murdered in front of his family: MichaelMark1
A Palestinian shot and murdered Michael “Miki” Mark, an Israeli father of 10, as he drove near Hebron. His wife and two of their children sustained injuries in the attack. From The Jerusalem Post:
In Friday’s incident, the rain of bullets against the vehicle caused it to overturn. Paramedics who arrived at the scene found Mark in the upside down vehicle, while the other passengers had been managed to exit the car. Magen David Adom paramedic Zaki Yahav said that it was a “very difficult” scene. Mark “was trapped inside” with gunshot wounds and other injuries form the accident. He didn’t have a pulse and he wasn’t breathing. “We tried to resuscitate him,” said Zahav, but it was not possible they declared him dead at the scene.

According to a latest intelligence report, Germany harbours an alarmingly large number of Islamic terror operatives on its soil. Germany is home to about 300 Hamas and 950 Hezbollah members, the annual report of Germany's domestic intelligence agency -- the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) -- reveals. The report was released last week by German interior Minister Thomas de Maizière and President of BfV, Hans-Georg Maassen. “The supporters of Islamist-terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, who aim is to destroy the Jewish State of Israel, are focused on their region of origin [Middle East] and primarily conduct acts of terrorist violence there [Authors translation],” says the 317-page long annual intelligence report.

We know that media outrage and exaggeration, combined with biased anti-Israel Non-Governmental Organizations and U.N. agencies, form a strategic asset for terrorist groups like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The international reaction to Israeli self-defense measures ignores actual international legal standards, and substitutes completely politicized measures, such as "disproportionality." That term does not mean that one side suffers more than the other in a war; rather it is a case by case measure of whether the threat to innocent civilians in a particular military strike is disproportionate to the military value to be achieved. Israel goes to extraordinary measures to comply with the laws of war, but it doesn't matter to the media and the anti-Israel propaganda machine. Hamas and Hezbollah deliberately store and fire rockets from civilian areas for this very reason. http://youtu.be/A_fP6mlNSK8

While the U.S. mainstream media is still busy churning out stories pondering on the motives of the shooter who killed 50 people in a Gay Club on Orlando, making it the worst terrorist attack since 9/11, the people in Israel are bracing up for another wave of intensified terror. The Gaza-based Islamic terrorist group Hamas has declared a “Month of Jihad” against Israel during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The Hamas call for a month-long "Jihad-athon" came just a day before two armed Arab terrorists opened fire inside a Tel Aviv restaurant, killing four Israelis and wounding at least 16 others on Wednesday, June 8. Following the deadly attack, Hamas issued a statement saying the two terrorists were members of its group. On its official Twitter account the Islamist group praised the shooting of Israeli civilians as “heroic” and warned of more attacks to follow during the Muslim month of 'prayer and fasting'.

This past Sunday Omar Barghouti blasted Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Executive Order No. 157 which directs NY state agencies to counter-boycott those companies that engage in discriminatory pro-BDS business activities. Barghouti (52) is one of the biggest names in BDS. He’s writes prolifically in support of the BDS agenda, goes on frequent speaking tours where he delivers vehemently anti-Israel propaganda to captive audiences on American college campuses and at mainline church events, and is featured prominently on BDS materials and in outlets that are sympathetic to the cause. In the mainstream media, he’s the go-to spokesperson of the movement and has been featured in a number of editorials in prominent newspapers (see here and here).

This past Sunday more than 1,500 people—along with dozens of members of the media and press—attended The Jerusalem Post’s 5th Annual Conference in New York City. The one-day event, themed “Israel, the U.S. and the Free World Facing Global Terror,” was held at the Marriot Marquis Hotel in the heart of Times Square and Manhattan’s theater district. JPost annual conference 2016 logo According to the pre-conference publicity, the annual conference—which in the past has proved to be “both newsworthy and dazzling”—was predicted to be the “best and biggest yet”. It was indeed.

Terrorist group Hamas plans to conduct public executions in Gaza in an attempt to bring down crime. Ismail Jaber, the group's attorney general, said he wants them to "take place before a large crowd." Hamas has thirteen men waiting for their execution after the courts convicted them "of murder connected to robberies." Officials can seek the death penalty for "collaborators, murderers and drug traffickers." If Hamas conducts the executions, the numbers could push them past Saudi Arabia. The kingdom houses 31.5 million people and executed 153 in 2015. Hamas will commit more death penalties since they have a population on 1.8 million.

Israel has debuted a sea version of their successful Iron Dome to provide more protection from Hamas and Hezbollah. https://twitter.com/LTCPeterLerner/status/732941770280013825 The sea Iron Dome will also protect the natural gas fields off the coast of Israel. The discoveries led to a $15 billion deal to supply Jordan with natural gas.

Islamic State (ISIS) is getting logistical and military support from Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas, a senior official of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) told the press. IDF’s Major General Yoav Mordechai revealed that terrorists belonging to Hamas and ISIS were now conducting joint military exercises in Gaza -- along the southern border of Israel. Islamic terrorist group Hamas, founded in 1987, calls for the destruction of Israel and annihilation of Jewish people in its official charter. Hamas Charter makes it clear that the Gaza-based terrorist group does not see itself as a separate entity fighting Israel, but instead is a part of the worldwide Islamic jihad. The newly-exposed alliance between ISIS and Hamas should not come as a surprise to anyone. Both of these Islamist groups not only subscribe to the same doctrine of global Jihad, but are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood movement that first started in Egypt around 1920s. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden also belonged to the same theological school of thought.

Even before the smoke could settle over the site of yesterday’s bus blast in Jerusalem that left 21 people wounded -- two of them seriously -- the Palestinian leadership is praising and celebrating the  terror attack. The armed-wing of PLO-Fatah, active in the territory under Palestinian Authority control, applauded the Jerusalem bus blast, calling it the beginning of a new phase in Intifada, the renewed campaign of terror against Israel. Hamas, the Islamist outfit controlling Gaza said it “welcomed” the Monday’s terrorist attack, calling it “natural reaction” to supposed Israeli crimes. In the eyes of these terrorist groups, the mere presence of Jews in their historic homeland amounts to a provocation and the Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel constitutes a crime -- severe enough to justify a deadly campaign of terror and incitement that started much before the State of Israel was even proclaimed.

It's beginning to look like it will be another hot summer in Israel. There was a bus explosion near Jerusalem earlier today. At first there was confusion as to whether it was a bomb or some technical failure. Police have just confirmed that it was a small bomb, though it remains unclear as of this writing if it was planted or a suicide bombing. https://twitter.com/MickyRosenfeld/status/722106508297781248 https://twitter.com/MickyRosenfeld/status/722097364958388224

In a post last December we highlighted the history of Israel’s prisoner exchanges with various Palestinian armed factions. As we noted:
For the past three decades, Israel has been forced to exchange scores of incarcerated terrorists for a mere handful of its POWs. In the majority of these lopsided prisoner swaps the Israeli soldiers had already been killed and came home in body bags. And in many cases the freed terrorists have gone on to perpetrate further terror attacks”.
Israeli soldiers, either dead or alive, have proven to be valuable bargaining chips. So basically, as we discussed, Palestinian terror organizations have been running a prisoner-exchange extortion racket. Now it looks like Israel may again be forced to pay a steep price for several of its civilians too. On Friday, Hamas publicly claimed for the first time that it was holding two Israeli men in captivity.

Great Britain's Foreign Office and Department for International Development ("DFID") have funneled million of Pounds, at least, to terrorists.  The report from the Daily Mail details how the UK's policy of spending .7% of revenue on foreign aid distorts priorities and leads it to fund terror.  The Daily Mail report builds on a broader investigation from Palestinian Media Watch ("PMW") evidencing the Palestinian Authority's ("PA") attempts to hide banned payments to terrorists from Western donors.

Palestinian Media Watch blows the whistle

In its exposé, The Daily Mail cites PMW's recent report discussing the PA's deception of Western donors.  According to the Daily Mail, "a devastating new report to be released this week by Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli NGO, suggests that Western donors have been duped by assertions that the Authority no longer funds terrorists." Drawing on original Palestinian media, PMW documents the PA's fraud on international donors.  In 2011, PMW exposed that the PA was funneling foreign donations to terrorists and their families.  Following international outcry, in 2014, the PA formally placed funding for convicted terrorists in the hands of the Palestine Liberation Organization - the parent of Fatah and the PA itself.

Palestinian Media Watch is an indispensible resource for monitoring and documenting incitement on official Palestinian Authority and Hamas television. We often embed and link to its YouTube postings of Palestinian TV broadcasts. Because they are fluent in Arabic, they perform the function not only of pulling the video but also providing English language translation in the video captions. Pal Media Watch thus documents the two-sided statements of Palestinian leaders like Mahmoud Abbas, who preach peace to Westerners, but hate and violence to their own people.

With the recent wave of terrorism unleashed on Israeli civilians, Prime Minister Netanyahu's government is investing in technology to pre-empt “lone wolf” attacks. Since September 2015, more than 100 stabbings attacks have taken place and 29 Israelis have died, including an American teenager. The terror attacks in Israel are not limited to knife attacks alone, about 40 shootings and 20 car ramming incidents have also taken place during the same period. Hamas and PLO-affiliated terrorist group are increasingly using Facebook and other social media platforms to recruit and direct attacks against unsuspecting Israeli civilians. And Israel is doing what Israel does best -- using cutting-edge technology to fight back terrorism. Speaking at a Cyber Technology conference in Tel Aviv, Israel's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said that the country is studying the modus operandi of these “lone wolf” terrorists, and devising tools to monitor social media and pre-empt such attacks. Jerusalem Post reports:
Israel will invest more in technology enabling it to gather intelligence on social media about potential “lone wolf” terrorists, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said on Wednesday.  (…)

I'm surprised I had not heard the phrase in the title of this post before today. Though I'm certainly familiar with the concept, it's one we've explored here many times when discussing (i) that the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the inability of Muslims to accept any non-Muslim entity in the Middle East, but particularly not a Jewish national entity; (b) the plight of Christians in the Middle East who are on the receiving end of what would happen to the Jews in Israel if Israel ever lost a war; and (c) the Islamist-Leftist anti-Israel coalition, in which useful Western leftists are oblivous (at best, giving them the benefit of the doubt) to the threat they would be under if forced to live under the rule of their coalition partners as they demand of Israeli Jews. I got to the phrase in a round-about way. First, I saw Martin Kramer's Tweet linking to his Facebook post:
Exactly 40 years ago, Commentary published Bernard Lewis’s landmark article, “The Return of Islam.” Remember, in January 1976, the Shah was still firmly on his throne, the Muslim Brothers were nowhere to be seen, and there was no Hamas, Hezbollah, or Al Qaeda. So how did Lewis discern the “return”? He saw that regimes, including secular ones, were beginning to invoke Islam. This, he surmised, must be a reaction to a more profound trend. Perhaps the most prescient article ever written about the Middle East.