(Almost) Everything you need to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one video
Israel shows humanity towards those who seek to destroy it....
Israel shows humanity towards those who seek to destroy it....
"It was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities," reported China's official Xinhua news agency. The identities of the attackers reportedly killed had not yet been confirmed. Additional reports described the scene at the time of the attack, based on witness accounts.More than 10 assailants slashed scores of people with knives at a train station in southern China in what state media said Sunday was a terrorist assault by ethnic separatists from the far west. Twenty-nine slash victims and four attackers were killed and 143 people wounded.
Police fatally shot four of the assailants, captured one and were searching for the others following the attack late Saturday at the Kunming train station in Yunnan province, the official Xinhua News Agency said. State broadcaster CCTV said two of the attackers were women — one of the slain and the one who was captured and later brought to a hospital for treatment.
Witnesses described assailants dressed in black storming the train station and slashing people indiscriminately with large knives and machetes.
Student Qiao Yunao, 16, was waiting to catch a train at the station when people starting crying out and running, and then saw a man cut another man's neck, drawing blood.
"I was freaking out, and ran to a fast food store, and many people were running in there to take refuge," she told The Associated Press via Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblog. "I saw two attackers, both men, one with a watermelon knife and the other with a fruit knife. They were running and chopping whoever they could."
Foreign fighters recruited by Al Qaeda and Hezbollah are fighting in Syria. What happens when they come home?...
Until his release, Issa Abd Rabbo was serving two life sentences for killing two Israeli university students, Ron Levi and Revital Seri, who were hiking south of Jerusalem on Oct. 22, 1984. At gun point he tied them up, put bags over their heads and then shot and murdered both. Abbas' "hero" has now given an interview to the independent Palestinian news agency Ma'an on its weekly TV program Lovers' Tales, which interviews released prisoners. There he calmly describes how he initiated the killing, spotted the two hiking university students and waited until they sat down to rest under a tree. He then recounts how he tied them up and murdered them in cold blood.Here's the clip. Note how he betrays absolutely no remorse.
The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) said an al-Qaida operative in Gaza, named as Ariv al-Sham, recruited the men separately as three independent terrorist cells. Senior Shin Bet sources said they believed Sham received his orders directly from the head of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Using Skype and Facebook, Sham was able to recruit Iyad Khalil Abu-Sara, 23, of Ras Hamis of east Jerusalem, who has an Israeli ID card. During questioning, Abu-Sara, who was arrested on December 25, admitted to volunteering to carry out a “sacrifice attack” on an Israeli bus traveling between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. In the planned attack, terrorists would shoot out the bus’s tires, causing it to overturn, before gunning down passengers at close range and firing on emergency responders.One of them was planning to arrange to bring foreign terrorists to Israel posing as Russian tourists to aid in the execution of his plans. The report in USA Today explained why this discovery is a big deal:
The bomb that tore through a Dan No. 240 bus in the central Israeli city of Bat Yam on December 22 was assembled in a pressure cooker and activated by cellphone, much like the devices that killed three people and wounded hundreds more during the Boston Marathon in April 2013, the Shin Bet investigation has revealed.... The bomb, which exploded at the corner of Mivtza Sinai and Katzenelson streets in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam, caused no injuries because an alert passenger had noticed the bag containing the device left unattended by the bus’s rear door. The driver evacuated the bus, and the device was detonated as an Israeli sapper attempted to defuse it. The bus was wrecked, but there were no injuries.... According to information released by the Shin Bet, the bomb, consisted of two kilograms of improvised explosives surrounded by nails and screws and stuffed into a pressure cooker. This was a method akin to the one used by Boston murderers, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It was made popular by an al-Qaeda manual placed online.More on the plot, via Haaretz:
Israeli security forces carried out a series of arrests in the West Bank city of Bethlehem following the attack, detaining members of the Islamic Jihad militant group. The Shin Bet believes that two of the central suspects in the plot to bomb the bus are former security prisoners in Israel: Shahada Ta'amri, 24, and his 21-year-old brother Hamdi Ta'amri, a former cadet in the Jericho Police officers' course. Another central suspect was named as Yousef Salame, 22.
A panel of Israeli cabinet ministers on Saturday night approved a list of 26 Palestinian prisoners to be released on Monday in the third phase of a four-stage series of releases agreed on when peace talks with the Palestinians were resumed earlier in 2013. All of the prisoners on the list (Hebrew PDF), save three, were convicted of murdering Israeli civilians or soldiers, as well as Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel. In a press release Saturday night, the Prime Minister’s Office said all of the inmates had been convicted of offenses committed prior to the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1994....Among the victims was a Hebrew University Professor:
•Muammar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim, convicted of murdering Menahem Stern, a history professor at Hebrew University. Stern, 64, a winner of the prestigious Israel Prize, was stabbed to death while walking to work at the university’s Givat Ram campus on June 22, 1989. A monument in his memory figures in a scene from the prize-winning Israeli film “Footnote.” Ibrahim was also convicted in the murder of Eli Amsalem. In addition, the two murdered a Palestinian suspected of collaborating with Israel, Hassin Zaid.More on Professor Stern here. This image, according to Wikipedia, is of Professor Stern in 1988, the year before he was stabbed to death. [caption id="attachment_74564" align="alignnone" width="288"]
A jury on Thursday convicted two men who called themselves "soldiers of Allah" of murdering a British soldier who was run down with a car, stabbed to death and nearly decapitated in a brutal attack on a London street. The jury of eight women and four men deliberated for just 90 minutes before finding Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale guilty of murdering Fusilier Lee Rigby. They were acquitted of attempting to murder a police officer. Both men had pleaded not guilty to murder, though neither denied taking part in the May 22 attack. Neither defendant reacted as the jury foreman announced the verdicts. Adebolajo smiled and kissed a copy of the Quran as he was led down to the cells.
The second man accused of hacking Fusilier Lee Rigby to death has refused to give evidence. Michael Adebowale, 22, was due to take the stand to explain the attack on the 25 year-old soldier near Woolwich Barracks in south London. His co-defendant Michael Adebolajo, 28, has already told the court that he tried to decapitate Lee Rigby to protest against British foreign policy. Abbas Lakha, representing Adebowale, told the court: "I call no evidence on behalf of Mr Adebowale." ... The judge sent the jury of eight women and four men away for the weekend and told them the court will contact them by mobile phone when they should return to court. He said there was more legal argument to sort out before closing speeches start but said the case was still due to conclude by Christmas.Here's video of his capture immediately after the attack:
Remember, in 2008, we were in the middle of two wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Today, our businesses have created nearly 5.5 million new jobs. (Applause.) The auto industry is back on top. (Applause.) Home values are on the rise. (Applause.) We’re less dependent on foreign oil than any time in the last 20 years. (Applause.) Because of the service and the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over. The war in Afghanistan is winding down. Al Qaeda is on the run, and Osama bin Laden is dead. (Applause.) So we’ve made real progress these past four years.Yes, Al Qaeda is on the run.
Michael Adebolajo, 28, also told the Old Bailey jury that he was a “soldier of Allah” and that he had no regrets over the killing because he was obeying his god. He said after the case he should be either “ransomed” back to his Mujahideen brothers, freed or killed.
At the start of his defence in chief, Adebolajo sat in the witness box of Court number 2, surrounded by five security guards and just feet from Fusilier Rigby’s family. He and Michael Adebowale, 22, are accused of murdering Fusilier Rigby by running him down with a car and then hacking him to death with a meat cleaver and knives near Woolwich Barracks in south east London on May 22. Asked who al Qaeda were by his counsel, David Gottlieb, Adebolajo replied: "Al Qaeda, I consider to be Mujahideen. I love them, they're my brothers. I have never met them. I consider them my brothers in Islam." He added: "Mujahideen are the army of Allah." He said: “I am a soldier and this is war.” When asked what his defence to the charge of murder is, Adebolajo said: "I'm a soldier. I'm a soldier of Allah and I understand that some people might not recognise this because we do not wear fatigues and we do not go to the Brecon Beacons and train and this sort of thing. But we are still soldiers in the sight of Allah as a mujahid. "This is all that matters, if Allah considers me a soldier, then I am a soldier."
The majority of the medical equipment taken to Japan by the IDF, including x-ray machinery and lab equipment, will remain in Japan in order to benefit the physicians and local authorities providing care to the community of Minamisanriku and its vicinity. ...
every single day....
A few days ago I used the term "barbarism" in reference to the Nairobi mall attack. An excellent article by Brendan O'Neill appeared today in the Telegraph making a similar point, and entitled "I'm sorry, but we have to talk about the barbarism of modern...
As hard as it is to believe, things still are up in the air as to the status of the Nairobi, Kenya Westgate mall attack. Kenyan officials are in "control" of the mall, but not all of the attackers or potential victims are accounted for. Via Hot...
Night fell Monday in Nairobi with no clear resolution of the standoff between Kenyan forces and terrorists at Westgate Shopping Mall. Kenyan authorities sounded increasingly confident that they had brought the three-day standoff to a close with a final assault Monday, reassuring a nervous public that there was little chance of escape for any surviving Al-Shabaab gunmen who had terrorized the mall, killing at least 62 people. "Taken control of all the floors. We're not here to feed the attackers with pastries but to finish and punish them," Kenyan police Inspector General David Kimaiyo said on Twitter. But it wasn't clear Monday evening whether any hostages remained inside the four-story mall, and authorities had yet to sound the all-clear about six hours after the assault by Kenyan forces.https://twitter.com/NewsBreaker/status/382201774058115073
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Founder
Sr. Contrib Editor
Contrib Editor
Weekend Editor
Higher Ed
Author
Author
Author
Author
Author
Editor Emerita