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Terrorism Tag

Posted by David Gerstman on August 04, 2014 13 Comments
Last week's ceasefire between Israel and Hamas prompted a number of similarly themed observations. https://twitter.com/MsIntervention/status/494995494230171650 Similar tweets appeared here and here and here and here. What did Hamas gain by agreeing to the ceasefire to the terms of Thursday night's ceasefire when it rejected the same terms more than two weeks earlier? What did it gain by continuing to lose fighters and resources? It now appears, as Elder of Ziyon shows, that the reason Hamas agreed initially to the ceasefire was to carry out Friday's attack that killed three Israeli soldiers.
Clearly the ceasefire provided the opportunity Hamas wanted to perform this operation. Their acceptance of the cease-fire - including the terms that IDF soldiers can keep their positions, which Hamas knew were near a hidden tunnel entrance - can only be described as a well-planned ruse for this attack, Hamas' most sought-after prize. These were not conditions that Hamas would normally accept. Hamas' claim that this occurred before the ceasefire is a lie, as the reports of heavy clashes in Rafah all started at 9:30, not 7:30 as Hamas says.

Posted by David Gerstman on July 24, 2014 13 Comments
Live Video and Twitter feed at bottom of post Five more Israeli soldiers have been killed over the past two days. https://twitter.com/IsraelHatzolah/status/491854825932333057 https://twitter.com/IsraelHatzolah/status/491978983651545088 Last night the FAA lifted its restriction on American airlines flying to Ben Gurion Airport.
The FAA has lifted its restrictions on U.S. airline flights into and out of Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport by cancelling a Notice to Airmen it renewed earlier today. The cancellation is effective at approximately 11:45 p.m. EDT. Before making this decision, the FAA worked with its U.S. government counterparts to assess the security situation in Israel and carefully reviewed both significant new information and measures the Government of Israel is taking to mitigate potential risks to civil aviation.
Hamas had considered the restriction of flights to be a "great victory." Yesterday on The Situation Room, Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan claimed that Hamas was targeting Ben Gurion because there were military flights there.

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 22, 2014 7 Comments
It has been ten years since the original 9/11 Commission released it's report. The Commission has stayed together informally, but today released a anniversary report entitled “Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of The 9/11 Commission Report.” The panel members warn that though al-Qaeda has been severely weakened since 2001, new and offshoot groups -- like ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) continue to pose serious threats to the United States national security. From The Washington Post:

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 17, 2014 50 Comments
A flurry of media reports are reporting that a Malaysian Airlines passenger jet has been shot down over Ukrainian airspace. The Boeing 777 carried 295 people and was "at altitude" (30,000 feet) according to the Interfax agency. All on board are said to have perished, according to Ukrainian sources. The media reports and video of a fiery crash have exploded on the internet after this initial tweet came from Malaysian Airlines. On FOX News Channel's breaking news coverage -- Jennifer Griffin, FOX News Pentagon correspondent, says the Ukrainian interior minister reports a Russian surface-to-air missile system brought down the flight. Griffin says Ukrainian civilians and government officials had reported seeing the advanced Russian BOOK missile system move into the country from Russia in recent days. From BBC News:

Posted by David Gerstman on July 13, 2014 6 Comments
The Times of Israel sums up the casualties so far.
As of Saturday afternoon, the death toll in Gaza from Israel’s Operation Protective Edge had climbed to 127 people, after Israeli forces struck 60 targets overnight Friday and into Saturday; Israel had no breakdown on the proportion of civilian and combatant casualties. Among the dead was a relative of former Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, named as Nidal al-Malash, who the Israeli army said was in a terror cell that was hit as it prepared to fire rockets at Israel. No Israelis had been killed by rocket fire as of Saturday afternoon, though several were injured, including an Ashdod man badly hurt in a rocket strike at a gas station Friday. A Haifa woman suffered a fatal heart attack dashing for shelter on Friday.
The Times also notes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "that all Gaza casualties were 'the responsibility of Hamas,' since the Strip’s Islamist rulers deliberately put Gazans in harm’s way by firing on Israel, hiding out, and storing weaponry among the civilian population." In an implicit admission of Netanyahu's charges, Hamas told Gaza residents not post photographs of rockets being fired from their neighborhoods to social media. Also as the IDF tweets: 2014-07-13_065803_IDF_Warning

Posted by Bruce Carroll on July 10, 2014 32 Comments
The breaking news via Twitter on Wednesday night was quite alarming. The United Nations seems to be playing down the significance of the threat, but the Iraqi government's warning was specific that this material could be used in creating weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq has notified the United Nations that Sunni militants seized nuclear material from a university in the northern city of Mosul last month as they advanced toward Baghdad, the nuclear regulatory body of the United Nations said on Thursday. Gill Tudor, a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is based in Vienna, said in a statement that the organization’s experts believed the material — thought to be uranium — was “low-grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk.” Word of the seizure first emerged in a letter to the United Nations dated July 8 and seen by reporters from Reuters, which quoted it as saying that “terrorists” from the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known as ISIS, had taken control of the materials. The letter said that almost 90 pounds of uranium compounds had been kept at the university and that the materials “can be used in manufacturing weapons of mass destruction,” Reuters said.
The first question that comes to many Americans' minds is: How can there be uranium material left in Iraq? After all, the Bush Administration was skewered by the media (and continues to be) when they presented the "yellowcake" evidence at the United Nations prior to the 2003 Iraq War. And, as that TIME article pointed out, even the Bush Administration admitted in 2003 that they messed up on the yellowcake evidence.

Posted by David Gerstman on July 10, 2014 10 Comments
As Operation Protective Edge it's worth anticipating the likely response to Israel's latest war against Hamas. Israel will be accused of a disproportionate response and of not taking care to avoid collateral damage. Already there's been at least one incident in which a number of civilians were injured and and 7 were killed. Israel has a policy of letting civilians know when they are about to bomb a target to give them a chance to get of the way. One would assume that observers would be impressed that Israel gives up the element of surprise in order to reduce collateral damage. But that assumption would be wrong, if one judges by the reporting and analysis from the New York Times and Washington Post. Here's how the New York Times reports the incident:
The call came to the cellphone of his brother’s wife, Salah Kaware said on Tuesday. Mr. Kaware lives in Khan Younis, in southeast Gaza, and the caller said that everyone in the house must leave in five minutes, because it was going to be bombed. A further warning came as they were leaving, he said in a telephone interview, when an Israeli drone apparently fired a flare at the roof of the three-story home. “Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,” he said, with some even going to the roof to try to prevent a bombing. Others were in the stairway when the house was bombed not long afterward.
Israel warned the residents and people went into the building. The casualties here occurred because Gaza residents because people intentionally put themselves in danger. The New York Times then informs us:
The Israeli military said that targeted houses belonged to Hamas members involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had been used as operations rooms.
As the Washington Post also reported the story we have an indication that in this case, the Israeli military was 100% correct. After describing the warning call, the "knock on the roof," and the entry of neighbors into the building, the Post reports:
Ahmed Kawarea said he ran home when he heard about the first rocket. The second missile hit when he was in the stairwell on his way to the roof.

Posted by David Gerstman on July 09, 2014 5 Comments
The New York Times, in the past week, has twice drawn a false moral equivalence between Israeli society and Palestinian society. Last week after the killing of Mohammad Abu Khdair, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times wrote:
The two events exposed the extent to which parts of each side have dehumanized the other. After the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers last month, messages posted on social networks by Palestinians celebrated the capture of “three Shalits,” in reference to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas militants in Gaza, who was eventually released in exchange for 1,027 prisoners. A 17-year-old created the Facebook group calling for revenge for the kidnapping of the three Israelis, and an Israeli blogger, Ami Kaufman, pointed to a photograph submitted to the Facebook group by two smiling girls who held a sign reading, “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”
This was a sentiment repeated in an editorial in today's New York Times, Four Horrific Killings:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 08, 2014 44 Comments
Rockets fired from Gaza were shot down today over several major Israeli cities, including Tel Aviv -- and landed in the Jerusalem vicinity. Hamas landed 5 "naval commandos" by sea. They were taken out by an IDF helicopter gunship. (added) Another video from the Israeli Navy of the same incident: Elsewhere, Palestinians at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem cheered the rockets landing in Israel (via Truth Revolt):

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 07, 2014 5 Comments
I added Legal Insurrection's name to the list of pro-Israel blogs and bloggers supporting Elder of Ziyon's open and unequivocal condemnation of the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. In a follow up post today, Elder makes points I made this morning in Israeli reaction to murder of teen a sign of Israel’s moral strength. Elder notes:
I had no idea how many would agree when I wrote it. Within 12 hours, over a hundred people, including some very prominent writers and bloggers, had added their names to the letter. It was shared hundreds of times on Facebook. Many people wrote to say how appreciative they were that I put into words what they were thinking. Zionist bloggers weren't alone in their condemnation. Major US Jewish and Zionist organizations roundly condemned the murder and expressed horror at the fact that the suspects are Israeli Jews. As I've noted in the past, the anti-Israel crowd suffers from psychological projection. They assume, reflexively, that the hate they have for Israel is mirrored by Israelis and Zionists towards Arabs.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 07, 2014 12 Comments
Israel is undergoing intense soul searching, as a nation, for the actions of what are believed to be 6 Israeli Jews in murdering an Israeli Arab teen, Mohammed Abu Khedair, in retaliation for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel. Much of that criticism is internal. Members of Israel's Knesset unanimously condemned the murder, as has every prominent Israeli leader. The Editor in Chief of The Times of Israel writes that " the killing of Muhammed Abu Khdeir must rid us of the illusion that we enjoy a distinctive moral superiority over our neighbors." An Israeli Jewish group is organizing a visit to the family of the murdered teen. Israeli President Shimon Peres termed the murder a crisis of morality:
President Shimon Peres says Israel is in a deep crisis of morality following the arrest of six people in the killing of Palestinian teen Muhammed Abu Khdeir last week. “We did not believe that such a heinous crime could take place among our people. We mustn’t be such a people,” Peres says. “Today ‘out of Zion shall go forth the shame,’” he says, paraphrasing a famous Bible quote. “There is no justification for death and no crime is more acceptable than another,” the president adds. “My heart aches with the grieving Abu Khdeir family and with the grieving Shaar, Yifrach and Fraenkel families.”

Posted by David Gerstman on July 06, 2014 10 Comments
While the media has been focused on the arrests of up to six Jews in the killing of Mohammed Abu Kheidr, Arab violence against Israel has been continuing. The Jerusalem Post reports:
The Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council area was battered with ten rockets from Gaza. Residents of the communities in the Sha'ar Hanegev area were instructed to remain in fortified shelters. Three rockets hit the Eshkol Regional Council area , one of which started a brush fire, and an additional two rockets landed in open territory in the Ashkelon Coast Council region.
In addition for the first time since 2012, a rocket hit Be'ersheva. 2014-07-06_094248_IDF_Tweet Elder of Ziyon notes a number of attacks in and near Jerusalem and elsewhere over the weekend; including the torching of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem)...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 06, 2014 10 Comments
Reports this morning from Israel indicate that six Israeli Jews have been arrested in the murder of Mohammed Abu Kheidr, apparently as retaliation for the murder of three Israeli teens, Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel. The Times of Israel reports:
Six suspects have been arrested and interrogated in connection with the murder of 16-year-old Muhammed Abu Khdeir, whose burned body was found in the Jerusalem forest on Wednesday morning Police on Sunday said only that a “dramatic development” in the investigation has led them to believe that the act was most likely carried out by Jewish extremists in revenge for the killing of three Israeli teenagers earlier in June. “Apparently the people arrested in relation to the case belong to an extremist Jewish group,” an unnamed official was quoted by AFP as saying.... Police initially said they were investigating various avenues in the teen’s death, including criminal or personal motives, while Israeli social media abounded with rumors that he had been killed because he was gay or as part of an ongoing family feud. On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority attorney-general, Dr. Muhammed Abed al-Ghani al-Aweiwi, said that Abu Khdeir was burned alive, according to the preliminary findings of the autopsy.
We will update when additional details are released by the police. In the meantime, the murder needs to be condemned unconditionally, and not celebrated or excused the way many Palestinians and BDS supporters immediately excused the killing of the three Israeli teens as a reaction to supposed Israeli crimes. These sentiments below are true, but in no way excuse what happened to Khdeir: Kidnapped Israeli Teens (added) This case of an Israeli teenager, Shelly Dadon, on way to job interview who was stabbed to death has received almost no international media attention:

Posted by David Gerstman on July 01, 2014 8 Comments
In the wake of yesterday's awful discovery that Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Frankel had been murdered by the abductors, it's now clearer what happened. The Times of Israel reported What happened on the night of the kidnapping:
The prevailing assessment within the defense establishment is that the kidnappers, at least at first, only saw one of the hitchhikers, perhaps Yifrach, who did not know Shaar and Fraenkel. Only once the kidnappers’ Hyundai i35 came to a stop did the kidnappers realize that they would be outnumbered by their hostages within the small confines of the car. This may be what changed the nature of the crime from kidnapping to murder, security sources suggested. ... Recognizing, too late, that the car was not an innocent Israeli vehicle, one of the teens called the police at 10:25 p.m. and whispered, “We’ve been kidnapped.” The call was transferred immediately to a senior officer, who continued to ask questions but received no reply. The call lasted for 2:09 minutes and was then cut off. The officer called the number eight more times, but received three busy signals and reached voicemail five times.
It is likely that shortly afterward the three boys were murdered and taken to the field where they were found buried. The reactions to the abductions have highlighted certain fault lines between Israeli and Palestinian societies.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on June 30, 2014 17 Comments
The bodies of the three Israeli teenagers kidnapped two weeks -- Gil-ad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel -- have been located by the IDF near Hebron. Details as to how and when they were killed have not been made public yet. News reports and rumors circulated for hours, but we waited until official confirmation, this tweet being from the Prime Minister's Arab Media spokesman: [Note - the original of Ofir Gendelman's tweet above has been deleted, not sure why] The Times of Israel reports:
Israeli troops on Monday discovered the bodies of three Israeli teenagers, who were kidnapped on June 12, north of Hebron in the West Bank. The bodies were found in an area between Halhul and Karmei Tzur on Monday afternoon. Israeli security forces, which had been conducting extensive searches in the area, sealed off the area and declared it a closed military zone.
Buzzfeed reports that the teens likely were shot during the kidnapping:
BuzzFeed spoke to an Israeli official involved in the case, who confirmed that during the police call a gunshot can clearly be heard. The car, he added, had clear evidence of foul play. Over the last week. Israeli soldiers could be seen digging through rocks and dredging wells in Hebron in the search for the teens. “We have been operating, for some time now, with evidence that these boys were killed,” he said. “It is with a heavy heart that we realized we were looking for bodies.” An Israeli army officer, who spoke to BuzzFeed by phone from the Hebron area, said that an autopsy had not yet been conducted. He said that the bodies of three teens had been found shot, likely very close to the time of their abduction.
This post will be updated as additional details are released. There are plenty of alleged facts and photos circulating on Twitter and Facebook -- we're going to stick with official and/or confirmed news reports. UPDATES:
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