Tag Archives: Gaza Strip

Crowning Erdogan as the New King of Islamists

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erdobanner_zps35d7cfd0by: Ryan Mauro:

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s apology to Turkey for the deaths of its citizens during the 2010 flotilla raid misses the point. The tension with Turkey was never really about the operation. It was about making Israel bow to Turkey, crowning Prime Minister Erdogan as the new king of the Islamists.

“Israel apologized to Turkey. Dear prime minister, we are grateful that you let our country experience this pride,” says billboards that have been set up in Ankara celebrating the Israeli apology.

The actions taken by the Turkish government since Netanyahu’s apology show that its goal is submission, not reconciliation.

Erdogan is extending his time in the spotlight by demanding that Israel pay $1 million to each of the nine casualties’ families, ten times the amount Israel has offered. Heisn’t yet dropping his case against the Israeli generals involved in the raid, nor is he fully restoring diplomatic ties with Israel. And he’s announced that he will visit the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in what is a thinly-concealed victory lap.

The aspirations of the Turkish government were frankly stated by Foreign Minister Davutoglu. Last May, he said, “We will manage the wave of change in the Middle East. Just as the ideal we have in our minds about Turkey, we have an ideal of a new Middle East. We will be the leader and the spokesperson of a new peaceful order, no matter what they say.”

Read more at Radicalislam.org

 

 

Obama’s mysterious visit

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US President Barack Obama delivers address to the Muslim World at Cairo University in Cairo Egypt

US President Barack Obama speaks on American foreign policy at Cairo University in Cairo Egypt on 04 June 2009. The much anticipated address was aimed at challenging Muslim perceptions about the US.

By Caroline Glick:

Why is US President Barack Obama coming to Israel today? In 2008, then president George W. Bush came to celebrate Israel’s 60th Independence Day, and to reject Israeli requests for assistance in destroying Iran’s nuclear installations.
In 1996, then-president Bill Clinton came to Israel to help then-prime minister Shimon Peres’s electoral campaign against Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu.
It is possible that Obama is coming here in order to build up pro-Israel bonafides. But why would he bother? Obama won his reelection bid with the support of the overwhelming majority of American Jews. Their support vindicated his hostility toward Israel in his first term. He has nothing to prove.
It is worth comparing Obama’s visit to Israel at the start of his second term of office, with his visit to Cairo at the outset of his first term in office.
Ahead of that trip, the new administration promised that the visit, and particularly Obama’s “Address to the Muslim World,” would serve as a starting point for a new US policy in the Middle East. And Obama lived up to expectations.
In speaking to the “Muslim World,” Obama signaled that the US now supported pan-Islamists at the expense of US allies and Arab nationalist leaders, first and foremost then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Moreover, in castigating Israel for its so-called “settlements”; channeling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by intimating that Israel exists because of the Holocaust; and failing to travel from Cairo to Jerusalem, preferring instead to visit a Nazi death camp in Germany, Obama signaled that he was downgrading US ties with the Jewish state.
In sharp contrast to the high expectations the Obama White House cultivated in pre-Cairo visit statements and leaks, Obama and his advisers have downplayed the importance of his visit to Israel, signaling there will be no significant changes in Obama’s policies toward Israel or the wider Middle East.
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 Through the radical Left, Obama may intend to foment a pressure campaign to force the government to withdraw unilaterally from all or parts of Judea and Samaria, as Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. If this is Obama’s actual policy goal, it would represent a complete Europeanization of US policy toward Israel. It was the EU that funded radical leftist groups that pushed for Israel’s unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005.
And in the past week, a number of commentators have spoken and written in favor of such a plan.
Caroline Glick: “The presence of Jews on the West Bank has nothing to do with prospects for peace”. From the debate “Israel is destroying itself with its settlement policy: If settlement expansion continues Israel will have no future” which took place at the Royal Geographical Society on 15th January 2013. : h/t BNI
Caroline Glick is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Security Policy. She is also the Senior Contributing Editor of The Jerusalem Post and Director of the Israel Security Project at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. She serves as adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and is the author of Shackled Warrior: Israel and the Global Jihad (2008) She holds a B.A. in Political Science from Columbia University and a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard University, served as Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1997-98, and regularly briefs senior administration officials and members of Congress on issues of joint Israeli-American concern. She lives in Jerusalem. A former officer in the Israel Defense Forces, she was a core member of Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestinians and later served as an assistant policy advisor to the prime minister. During Operation Iraqi Freedom, the widely-published Glick was an embedded journalist with the U.S. Army’s Third Infantry Division. She was awarded a distinguished civilian service award from the U.S. Secretary of the Army for her battlefield reporting.

Hamas: We are Not Terrorists; We Just Want to Destroy Israel

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cmimg_32400by Khaled Abu Toameh:

Hamas wants be dropped from the U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations not because it has changed, but because it feels that the world has changed, and that many naïve Westerners are now willing to tolerate its radical ideology and terrorism.

Hamas leaders are working hard these days to have their movement removed from the U.S. State Department list for Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The Hamas leaders are hoping to persuade a number of European Union countries to support their bid.

Hamas wants to be removed from the list without changing its strategy or charter, which call for jihad [holy war] and which do not recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Hamas is also not prepared to dismantle its armed group, Izaddin al-Kassam, as part of its effort to persuade the US and EU to drop it from the list of terrorist groups.

Nor is Hamas prepared to stop smuggling weapons or give up thousands of rockets and mortars that it possesses in various parts of the Gaza Strip.

And of course Hamas is not prepared to renounce violence in the context of its effort to seek legitimacy in the international community.

The Hamas initiative comes at a time when senior officials of the movement, including Khaled Mashaal, continue to talk about their dream of replacing Israel with an Islamic state. In addition, they are continuing to call on Palestinians to abide by the “armed resistance” as the only option for achieving their goal.

Ironically, the Hamas request to be removed from the list of terrorist groups coincides with reports about the Islamist movement’s involvement in terror activities in neighboring Egypt.

According to these reports, Hamas was behind the August 2012 killing of 16 Egyptian border guards in Sinai. Hamas has also dispatched thousands of its men to Cairo to protect Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi against his political opponents, the reports revealed.

Although Hamas has denied the reports, there are increased signs that the movement is cooperating with other Islamic fundamentalist groups in Sinai to turn the peninsula into a base for jihadists from different parts of the world. Some of these jihadists are believed to be linked to groups that are affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

Hamas claims that it has won the secret backing of a number of EU governments — a claim denied by the EU.

The Hamas demand was first raised by the movement’s prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, during a meeting with European supporters in the Gaza Strip last month.

Read more at Gatestone Institute

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Why the CIA Director Is Wrong: Rethinking Al-Qaeda

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osamaBy Barry Rubin:

It’s time, a dozen years after September 11 and following Islamist coups in the Gaza Strip, Islamist electoral revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Turkey, and a probable Islamist victory during the next year in Syria, to completely rethink our view of al-Qaeda.

First, al-Qaeda wasn’t involved in any of these events, and several other big developments we could list. Second, al-Qaeda hasn’t disappeared, contrary to the Obama administration’s claims. And third, the American homeland is now demonstrably well-protected from terrorist attacks, so consequently while success on this front remains important, it need not be the top U.S. strategic priority.

So let me propose a new way of looking at things: aside from being a problem of counterterrorism — that is, of law enforcement — al-Qaeda is no longer important.

It certainly isn’t strategically important, nor is it important for the biggest and most essential U.S. national interests. That doesn’t mean al-Qaeda should be ignored, yet combatting it is relatively manageable.

This alternative view is especially significant at a moment when the new CIA director is the father — and the president, secretary of State, and secretary of Defense the avid fans — of a theory that places al-Qaeda at the center of the world stage. Basically, their theory goes like this:

Al-Qaeda is terribly evil and a threat to America. It must be fought. But all Islamism — except for al-Qaeda — can be moderated and won over by a sympathetic U.S. policy. The Islamists are the best people to handle and defeat al-Qaeda, and by giving the people what they want — Islam running the society — their desire to commit terrorism or to attack America will subside. After all, if the United States shows itself to be Islamism’s best friend, why should Islamists be angry at it?

This strategy began with Obama’s Cairo speech, which was a profoundly pro-Islamist statement, and that’s why he invited Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders to sit in the front row.

In other words: put your enemies in power, and they are no longer your enemies. Moreover, once Islamists get into power they will get entangled in party politics, paving roads, running schools, and doing all the other things that governments do. They will lose their radicalism and certainly stop using violence.

There’s a lot to say against this theory.

Read more at PJ Media

 

The Truth About Hamas’ Smuggling Tunnels

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by Paul Alster:

The general narrative of the situation in Hamas-controlled Gaza is of a people under siege, deprived of everyday goods, whose only means of receiving sufficient supplies is through the network of tunnels that bring a wide range of essential items from Egypt.

In fact, Israel delivers an average of 300 truckloads of goods each day through official crossing points to the Gaza Strip, basic supplies that provide steady, if unspectacular amounts of necessary items to the 1.6 million inhabitants of the Hamas-controlled enclave. The majority of everyday commodities as well as luxury items and, most significantly of all, drugs, explosives, and military hardware, come through the tunnels. They are run by a band including multi-millionaire Gazan businessmen often making vast amounts of money, and critically, paying taxes/bribes to Hamas to allow free passage of all goods.

A senior Israeli Defense Force officer, speaking exclusively to the Investigative Project on Terrorism on condition of anonymity, explained why that continues.

“Why don’t Hamas pressure Israel to open more crossing points?” the officer asked. “The only crossing they insist that is open is Rafah, [the border between Gaza and Egypt], because that is a sign of sovereignty and is an international border crossing point between two countries. We are willing to transfer more goods at Nitzan crossing and Kerem Shalom crossing, but that is something they [Hamas] are not encouraging.”

If goods flowed more freely into Gaza there would be no need for the tunnels. So it is in Hamas’ interest to paint a picture suggesting a “population under siege” that would suffer without the tunnels bringing in food and goods. It’s a story non-governmental agencies lap up and repeat throughout the world in their solicitations. The import of illegal weapons and contraband is rarely mentioned in that narrative.

Last summer, 16 Egyptian border policemen were killed by Islamist terrorists based in Sinai who later managed to breach the Israeli border before being overwhelmed by a combination of Israeli Air Force and army units. This attack, understood to have included weapons that originated from the Libyan conflict of the previous year, was a wake-up call to Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood government. Although it is Hamas’ parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood may recognize that it, too, is now a potential target for the weapons smuggled through Gaza’s tunnels, some of which have been acquired by Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists now moving with impunity throughout the Sinai Peninsula’s Bedouin tribes. These fanatical terror cells seek nothing less than achieving the introduction of strict Islamic law in Egypt, Africa’s most populous Muslim nation.

That might explain a recent crackdown on the tunnels from a somewhat surprising source; Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, expected by most Gazans to offer them significant support, but who now appears shaken by the growing threat from Sinai and other major factors as he struggles to cling on to power.

On Monday, the Times of Israel reported that Egyptian security forces had surprised border smugglers around the Rafah crossing by deliberately pumping water into tunnels, flooding them and making them vulnerable to collapse.

This could be the first real indication that Egypt is responding to international pressure, Gaza-based political analyst Mkhaimar Abu Sada told the IPT.

Read more at IPT

How the U.S. Aids Hamas Through the Palestinian Authority

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118013615_363447bBy David Bedein:

On February 5, 2013, the reconstituted US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa held a subcommittee hearing on the subject of “Fatah-Hamas Reconciliation: Threatening Peace Prospects.”

Two senior expert witnesses from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy testified and expressed optimism that US trained Palestinian Security Forces, affiliated with the Fatah, will combat the Hamas terror group which competes for power in the nascent Palestinian Arab entity.

Yet the Fatah policy and attitude towards Hamas can be summarized in an exchange that I had with Fatah founder Yasser Arafat at a press conference in Oslo, on December 10, 1994, the night before Arafat became one of the recipeints of the Nobel Peace Prize.

My question/statement:

“Mr. Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and Israeli Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs Peres said a few hours ago in answer to my question, that you deserve the peace prize because you have committed yourself to crushing the Hamas terror organization.”

Arafat response: “I do not understand the question. Hamas are my brothers.”

When the Palestinian Authority was founded in 1994, President Yasser Arafat, by design, established a multiplicity of security forces with overlapping authority and in competition with one another.

The 17 diverse forces of the PA, which often constituted no more than private fiefdoms, were ineffective and corrupt. What mattered to Arafat was that no force was of sufficient size or competency to seize power.

In several instances while Arafat was in power, PA forces turned their weapons on Israel. In September 2000, Arafat recruited security forces to organize attacks on civilians and soldiers in the course of what was called the Second Intifada, or uprising.

The Israeli military decimated the PA security forces in 2002, with facilities demolished and weapons seized.

Serious involvement by the West began to revitalize the PSF, the Palestinian Security Forces, after Arafat’s death in November 2004.

Subsequent US support for the PA Security Forces was intended to be a step towards creation of that stable Palestinian Arab entity.

In 2005, the Office of the US Security Coordinator was established. The 16 US officers who work within that office are assigned to the State Department. The Coordinator reports directly to the Secretary of State.

Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor, reorganized the security services into six main forces, and instituted a policy of mandatory retirement at age 60. Efforts by the US to strengthen the PA forces were delayed, however, by the Hamas victory in the Palestinian Authority legislative election in 2006. Hamas held a majority of the seats in the legislature and was heavily represented in the government. In addition, it had created its own security forces, with generous funds from Iran and Syria.

In June 2007, Hamas fighters routed a US-equipped and US-trained PA force that was 10 times bigger and captured the Gaza Strip. The failure of the PA forces was plain to see, and the US was prepared to invest more vigorously in strengthening that force because Abbas then ostensibly separated a Fatah-controlled government from direct involvement with Hamas.

By 2008, the Office of the Security Coordinator, with a staff of 145, defined as a key goal of its efforts, the development of a PA security force with paramilitary capabilities that could protect Abbas’ regime from Hamas. The American investment in this venture encompassed major assistance in reforming the forces and rebuilding of infrastructure, providing of equipment and major involvement in training.

In 2011, the Security Office enlarged its focus to include the development of PA indigenous readiness, training, and logistics programs as well as the capability to maintain and sustain operational readiness and support infrastructure. By that year, U.S.-financed training programs had graduated 4,761 Palestinian cadets from the U.S.-supported Jordanian International Police Training Center in Amman. The Coordinator’s Office also conducted training in the West Bank attended by 3,500 security commanders and troops. Washington helped build joint operations centers for planning, command, and control, as well as the National Training Center in Jericho.

However, as we consider the situation now, in early 2013, we see that not only has that goal of providing PA Security Forces with the capacity to repel Hamas not been achieved; over the past year, the influence of Hamas within the PA security forces has grown significantly. This, in spite of all the funding, training, and weaponry that has been supplied.

All other factors aside, there is an underlying cause that is routinely overlooked: the nature of traditional Arab (which includes Palestinian Arab) culture. Whatever the PR promoting a Palestinian state would have us believe, the reality is that for many Palestinian Arabs, loyalty does not rest with some abstract notion of a state that must be defended. Primary, loyalty is to the extended family: the clan. Training does not significantly alter this perception.

Read more at Front Page

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The Hamas-Egyptian Alliance

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hamas morsiby Khaled Abu Toameh:

The collapse of the Mubarak regime has been a great blessing for Hamas, which has emerged as a major player. Now Hamas knows that it can always rely on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power and increase Hamas’s influence.

Did Hamas dispatch 7,000 militiamen from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to protect President Mohamed Morsi, who is currently facing a popular uprising?

Reports that appeared in a number of Egyptian opposition media outlets in the past few days claimed that the militiamen entered Egypt through the smuggling tunnels along the border with the Gaza Strip.

The reports quoted unidentified Egyptian security officials as saying that the Hamas militiamen had been spotted in the Egyptian border town of Rafah before they headed toward Cairo, to shore up the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Morsi, which Hamas may have feared was in danger of collapse.

The officials claimed that the Hamas militiamen had been deployed in a number of sensitive locations in the Egyptian capital, including the Al-Ittihadiyeh Presidential Palace, as part of a plan to protect the Muslim Brotherhood regime.

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, is a staunch supporter of the Morsi regime.

This week, a Gulf newspaper Akhbar Al-Khaleej published what it described as “secret documents” proving that Hamas, with the financial backing of Qatar, had plans to send hundreds of militiamen to Egypt to help Morsi’s regime.

One of the classified documents, signed by Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin al-Kassam, talks about the need to send “warriors to help our brothers in Egypt who are facing attempts by the former regime [of Hosni Mubarak] to return to power.”

Read more at Gatestone Institute

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The New ‘Silk Route;’ Weapons to Gaza and Beyond

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by Paul Alster:

November’s “Pillar of Defense” operation by the Israeli military included a couple of unpleasant surprises for Israeli citizens. For the first time, Palestinian terrorists fired missiles at the country’s two population centers, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, sending residents scurrying for shelter.

For years, Palestinian rocket fire was isolated to smaller cities in southern Israel. Israeli military officials say weapons smuggled into Gaza via the new “Silk Route,” a pipeline created and protected by governments including Iran, Sudan and others, made that dramatic new range possible.

In a wide-ranging interview for the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a senior source in the Israeli Defense Force, speaking on condition of anonymity, explained how that smuggling works and what it means.

“You can see how it goes between Iran, northern Sudan, via Egypt. It didn’t gradually evolve and develop like the old merchant trail, ‘The Silk Route.’ It’s not something built thousands of years ago. It is something that we believe government officials sat down and decided on. Let me put it this way; in such countries, under such regimes, we don’t believe that anything is being done without the permission and knowledge of the local power.”

The official, whose assessments are based on his day-to-day experience of combating efforts to supply terror groups in Gaza, said the smuggling of more sophisticated weaponry was facilitated in part by upheaval in North Africa.

“When we are talking about the smuggling of illegal arms into the Gaza Strip” the officer began, “we should focus on a few members of this notorious community; we are talking about Iran, north Sudan, Libya as a state, not a government, and of course, the Sinai Peninsula.”

“Libya has become a serious problem since the fall of the Gaddafi regime because it is an open black market” he said. “Unlike Iran and Sudan, there is no government behind what is going on there. There were huge stocks of weapons (some of it western), that are now being offered to the one able to pay the highest price. The Palestinians are taking advantage of that. They will send procurements missions to look for specific items there (in Libya), or sometimes they are taking part in open auctions in Sinai to whoever will pay the most for weapons like SSR’s, Anti-Tank Guided Missiles, MANPADs etc.”

Read more at IPT

Paul Alster is an Israel-based journalist with a special interest in Israeli/Palestinian relations and Middle East politics. He is a regular contributor to FoxNews.com and the Times of Israel, and blogs at www.paulalster.com

Op-Ed: “Exposé: How Much Does the War On Israel Cost Europe?

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By Giulio Meotti:

The EU has become the largest single donor to the Palestinians, contributing about €500 million ($720 million).Europe also channels an ocean of money to the anti-Israel NGOs. And don’t forget the textbooks.

Over the past year, the Coordination Forum for Countering Anti-Semitism monitored incidents worldwide. In 2012, 6 oof the 10 worst anti-Semithic attacks took place in Europe (the rest are shared among Iran, Yemen and United States).

Even more frightening are the new statystics about the popular feelings about the Jewish people in Europe.

Amid the rise in hate crimes in France, the World Zionist Organization calculated the level of anti-Semitism among French citizens. The survey revealed that more than 40% of the French population holds anti-Semitic beliefs. The survey also found that 47% of the population believes that “French Jews are more loyal to Israel than the country where they live.”

The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project found that 46% of Spanish residents held an unfavorable view of Jews. Meanwhile, 47% of Germans are of the opinion that “Israel is exterminating the Palestinians,” according to a poll undertaken by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, affiliated with the German Social Democratic Party.

44 % of Italians are prejudiced or hostile toward Jews, according to a study recently issued by the Italian Chamber of Deputies’s Committee.

You can find the same trend all over Europe. Half of the population holds deep anti-Jewish feelings.

Britain has just included Israel on a list of 28 countries whose human rights record is of “concern” to the government. It’s the same Britain that in 1989 refused to sell gas masks to Israel because they could be used for “offensive purposes”. In 1991 a subsidiary of Thames Water Plc., the British company that supplies water and sewage services to most of London, refused to do business with Israel because it has “many and valued Arab clients”.

How much is Europe investing in Israel’s destruction? By financing the Palestinian war and sponsoring the Arab rejectionist anti-Semitism, Europe is reawakening the centuries-old beast of Judeophobic bigotry. European taxes are used to fund anti-Semitism of an intensity unseen since Nazi Germany.

The European Union just announced a contribution of EUR 14 million for a programme in Gaza. Most of this aid goes through UNRWA.

Many terrorists work for the UN agency,  such as Issa al Batran, who was in charge of Hamas rockets production and was also employed as a teacher in the UN schools. Or the UN Gaza’s schoolmaster, Awad al Qiq, who was the Islamic Jihad “rocket-maker”.

Food storage facilities in UNRWA’s areas, funded by the European Union, have become munitions depots. UNRWA’s employees transported weapons and terrorists by the agency ambulances.

Hamas interior minister, Said Sayyam, was also a math teacher for UNRWA. The schools administered by the UN have become madrassa for the war against the Jews.

In Jenin, UNRWA schools displayed images of “martyrs” responsubile for dozens of Israelis killed in Hadera and Afula.

Despite all this evidence, for the period 2007-2013 a total of €29 million has been allocated by the European Union to UNRWA’s programme.

Among the recipients in Nablus of the European aid just approved there is also Al-Najah University, which serves Palestinian terror organizations as a stage for promoting their commitment to armed struggle. Many of Hamas’ leaders in Nablus, including leaders of the Az Adin al-Qassam terrorist wing, began their involvement in the movement while students or professors at the university. The faculty also served as a recruitment center for suicide bombers. Brussels just approved for Nablus a 4-year programme with 4 million €.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority and the European Union recently met in Ramallah to discuss foreign aid in the next five years. The European Union just allocated €60 million to “support the Palestinian National Development Plan by helping the PA to finance its budget deficit and implement its reform agenda”. This fund perpetuates the chronic Arab corruption.

In 1998 $20 million in European Union aid that was intended to provide ”cheap housing for Palestinians” was used to finance luxury apartments for rich supporters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.

The European Union also just made a contribution of €7.2 million to the payment of the December salaries and pensions of “83,800 Palestinian civil servants and pensioners in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”.

The Palestinian Authority routinely authorizes payments to the families of “martyrs” by using Europe’s aid. The Palestinian Authority has introduced a new law which pays the families of suicide bombers out of its civil service budget.

In 2011, the European Union allocated €145 million for the Palestinian Authority’s expenditures, €35 million for “institution building projects” and €22 million for support to public infrastructure. A further 11 million were allocated for the “private sector” and €8 million for “East Jerusalem initiatives”, which means charging Israel of “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and creating a “model of terrorising a civilian population”.

Europe’s goal is to make Israel surrender Area C in Judea and Samaria, because as John Gatt-Rutter, the European Union Representative in Jerusalem said, there is “no viable Palestinian state without area C”. Translated: Judea and Samaria must be “Judenrein”, cleansed of any Jew.

Read more at Arutz Sheva

Giulio Meotti

The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He is at work on a book about the Vatican and Israel.

 

 

Libya Blowback: US Missiles intercepted in Egypt bound for Hamas-controlled Gaza

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By Patrick Poole

A stunning story out of Egypt on Friday (HT: Jonathan Schanzer at FDD) after a raid in northern Sinai uncovered a cache of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles bound for Hamas-controlled Gaza. The discovery was made in Be’r al-Hefn near Arish in an area known as a transit point for materials headed for the smuggling tunnels running from Sinai into Gaza.

The most remarkable part of the story is that the missiles were American-made, arriving from Libya according to multiple reports.

Egypt Independent reported:

The North Sinai Security Director seized  a shipment of advanced anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles at dawn on Friday.

The directorate received a tip that the missiles were being secretly stored in a repository in Be’r al-Hefn — just south of Arish, the capital of North Sinai — and would be smuggled through tunnels to the Gaza Strip, said a security source.

After informing the Interior Ministry in Cairo, two assistants to the interior minster led a large formation of police in a raid on the area. Be’r al-Hefn has often been used as an illegal storage area for explosives and weapons.

“With the help of secret informants, the police found the storage site, where they found six US-made advanced missiles inside large holes in the ground [that were waiting to be] smuggled to the Gaza Strip through tunnels,” the source said.

He said the shipment likely originated in Libya, and that the range of the rockets was 2 km.

That US-made weapons are finding their way from Libya should be of grave concern for American security officials. Presumably these are weapons provided by the Obama administration to the Libyan rebels in their fight against Gaddafi in 2011.

US weapons have also made their way to Syria via Libya with active US assistance according to reports. In October, Russia accused the US of sending Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, a claim that Defense Secretary Panetta denied.

Back in August I noted here at PJ Media the New York Times caught scrubbing one of its stories of any mention of CIA funneling arms to the Syrian rebels.

This is not the first time that US missiles have been bound for Gaza and Hamas. During Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in January 2009, Hamas attempted to use American-made Stinger missiles they had acquired against Israel’s AH-64 ‘Apache’ helicopters to no effect since the weapons system identified the Israeli aircraft as friendly.

A Maan News Agency report on yesterday’s raid noted that authorities had recovered 17 French missiles several weeks ago in the same area.