Hamas to Exploit Quiet In Race To Render Iron Dome Irrelevant

 Dr. Aaron Lerner 30 May, 2021

Our Iron Dome system does a fantastic job destroying dumb rockets by calculating their trajectories and sending interceptors to destroy them mid-air.

Iron Dome isn’t designed to intercept a guided rocket (aka missile) as its flight paths cannot be projected simply on the basis of data relating to the missile’s movement during the first seconds after launch.

Hamas knows this and can be expected to devote considerable resources to upgrade from dumb rockets to missiles.

It is a considerable technological jump but it would be a tremendous mistake to assume that the timeline for such a project is such that the military industry activity of Hamas can once again be dutifully recorded in an ever growing target bank rather than addressed. After all, Iran designs and produces missiles and nothing is preventing it from sharing its knowledge with Hamas.

 We were surprised by the range of some of the rockets Hamas built and launched in the last round. 

The consequences of a Hamas missile surprise would be profoundly more serious.

 We simply cannot afford to allow Hamas to once again exploit “quiet for quiet” to advance their military capabilities.

Such Moralizing - Are both hands tied behind our backs?

 From one of my correspondents, how true this is

"We now hear the moralizing about the need to help everyone in Gaza. (Of course, not a word about helping the Israelis whose homes were destroyed by Hamas rockets.) Once again, we hear the pompous assurances that assistance in rebuilding Gaza will be conditioned on Hamas not diverting it to build more rockets for the next war it starts.

In Israel, we've learned that assurances from the international community are worthless.

Israel  remembers the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism set up in 2014 to ensure the materials sent to rebuild the civilian infrastructure weren't diverted by Hamas, yet by some estimates, upward of 90% of the building materials transferred to Gaza went into the construction by Hamas of the 100 miles of tunnels Israel just destroyed, as well as those which remain - along with the more than 4,000 rockets Hamas fired at Israeli cities and towns, as well those destroyed by Israel, and the estimated 11,000 which remain.

 They also  remember how, under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 ending the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) supposedly was strengthened and tasked with guaranteeing the only other military force in southern Lebanon would be the Lebanese army. Instead, under the nose of UNIFIL, Hezbollah, with the aid of Iran, increased its rocket arsenal from a few tens of thousands to an estimated 150,000, more than the combined arsenal of NATO save the United States. It's mainly installed in civilian areas, particularly homes, turning virtually all of southern Lebanon into an armed terrorist base.

Here's one simple proposal:  For every truck of humanitarian aid  Gaza receives Israel must in return receive  a truck full of Hamas weapons for destruction supervised by international observors. 

Unless this or another effective method is used to eliminate the terror infrastructure in Gaza, any effort to help Gaza will be worse than a waste, and only guarantee a far bloodier conflict a few years down the road."

Attacks on Jews Worldwide

 Mobs and thugs are rampant on streets around 

the world attacking Jews wherever they happen to be.

Western Weakness Emboldens Hamas

 The accepted narrative in Western media and governments is 

a) That the current round of violence was sparked by the potential eviction of four families of arab squatters in the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem, renamed “Sheik Jarrah” 

b) another reason given, is the legal purchase of two large buildings in the Shiloach neighborhood of Jerusalem, 

c) the final reason peddled to Western audiences for the current uprising and missile attacks is Israel’s police “storming” the Temple Mount, which as video shows only occurred because Arabs used the holy site as a staging ground for attacks.

All of three of the above have been cleverly used by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as pretext in their current struggle against the Jewish people. 

While the leftist media around the world has repeated the above reasons, the real reason for the current round of violence is that 

a) the Biden team in the USA early on had decided to renew financial help to the flailing Palestinian Authority and at the same time called for a return to the two state solution. 

b) On top of that, the Biden administration has all but laid the groundwork for reestablishing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran on even better terms. 

c) Hamas sees all this the opportunity to topple Mahmoud Abass

The enemies of Israel in Gaza and within the country see a weak US president willing to sell out traditional US allies to the Iranian regime. As always in the Middle East when there is weakness they will take advantage.

Star Wars in Israel

 Can you really imagine sleeping through this night after night??!!

Deliberate Media Distortion

 by Richard Kemp  •  May 16, 2021

Hamas is no match for the IDF and could be quickly and much more cheaply defeated by blunt and crushing military force were it not for one thing — the Israeli need to minimise loss of civilian life. Hamas know that.

Over many years of conflict in Gaza, the majority of the world's media have enthusiastically reported the deaths of Palestinian civilians as though they were the deliberate object of Israel's callous and uncaring way of war. This blatantly false propaganda has been taken up by Hamas supporters and "useful idiots" in the West.... Human rights groups around the world have been doing the same.

The wilful ignorance combined with malice has always been breathtaking. Every commission of inquiry determined Israel's guilt before it even met for the first time.

Every debate and vote has overwhelmingly and of course falsely affirmed Israel's supposed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Meanwhile Hamas's actual multiple war crimes have been brushed aside.

[T]he IDF did all they could to ensure minimum loss of civilian life by selecting targets where the lowest levels of innocents would be harmed.... As in previous conflicts in Gaza the IDF has made radio broadcasts in Arabic, sent SMS messages and even phoned civilians inside the strip to warn them of impending strikes.... Gazans have given interviews confirming this.

Many in the media, human rights groups and international bodies have rushed to characterise all civilian casualties (other than those inflicted by Hamas of course) as war crimes. But the Geneva Conventions disagree. Inflicting civilian casualties is not illegal provided a military operation is necessary for the prosecution of a war, they are not disproportionate to the planned military gain and that combatant commanders do not intentionally target civilians while doing all they can to avoid hitting them.

The media takes reports from the Gaza health ministry as authoritative and objective. That is disingenuous and they know it. The health ministry is controlled by Hamas and follows their every order.

Despite all of this, as the media unceasingly show us, the real victims in this campaign have indeed been Gaza civilians. But they usually get the cause wrong. Every one is due to Hamas's unprovoked aggression against Israel. None would have occurred without it.

If Western governments, international bodies and human rights groups are genuinely interested in avoiding suffering in Gaza, they should start now, striving to end Hamas's reign of terror rather than support it by parroting their baleful narrative.

Israeli Ambassador Answers Hostile Questions

 

Israeli Ambassador to the UK answers hostile 

questioning by Sky News journalist Adam Boulton

“PALESTINIAN” ARABS SEE A WEAK BIDEN AND HAVE DECIDED TO ATTACK

  David Mark May 13, 2021 

The current gamble by both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas to use organized violence on the streets of Israel, as well as barrages of unprecedented rocket fire on two-thirds of the Jewish State in order force the Biden administration to pressure Israel, may be backfiring.

The accepted narrative in Western media and governments is that the current round of violence was sparked by the potential eviction of four families of arab squatters in the Shimon Hatzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem, renamed “Sheik Jarrah” when the Jordanian army expelled the indigenous Jewish population in 1948. Another reason given, is the legal purchase of two large buildings in the Shiloach neighborhood of Jerusalem, also renamed Silwan when arab rioters expelled the indigenous Jews in the late 1930s. The final reason peddled to Western audiences for the current uprising and missile attacks is Israel’s police “storming” the Temple Mount, which as videos show only occurred because arabs used the holy site as a staging ground for attacks.

All of three of the above have been cleverly used by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as pretext in their current struggle against the Jewish people. While the leftist media around the world has repeated the above reasons, the real reason for the current round of violence is that the Biden team early on had decided to renew financial help to the flailing Palestinian Authority and at the same time called for a return to the two state solution.

On top of that, the Biden administration has all but laid the groundwork for reestablishing the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran on even better terms. The enemies of Israel in Gaza and within the country see a weak US president willing to sell out traditional US allies to the Iranian regime. When there is weakness they will take advantage.

At the end of the day, as IDF troops amass on the border of Israel and Gaza, Hamas may have underestimated the drive that Netanyahu has to make them bleed. True, the US administration is unfriendly and some would say antagonistic, but Biden can ill afford to lose Israel as an ally going forward. The US administration right now, may not like what Israel is doing, but it knows that there is still enough pro-Israel sentiment out there to cushion the Jewish state from a reversal in American support.

Of course that can change.

With younger voices beginning to actively mobilize in America against the Jewish State, now may be one of the last opportunities Israel may have to crush Hamas once and for all.

JEWS ATTACKED BY ISRAELI ARABS ACROSS ISRAEL

 by Leah Rosenberg May 11, 2021 

It’s absolutely insane what’s going on in Israel. Israeli Arabs are attacking Jews throughout the country as Hamas sends rockets from Gaza.

Anti-Israel protests have been taking place in the Israeli cities of Lod, Ramla, Natzrat, Haifa, and more. Arabs have stoned a bus on the streets of the Israeli city of Ramla. They placed burning tires on road 40 outside the city of Lod and then stone the cars that stop. They did this all as joint protest/celebration with Hamas shooting rockets at Jerusalem. These Israel Arabs do not represent all Arab Muslims, but they do represent a large public that can’t be ignored.

Arabs attacked and lit a Synagogue on fire in Ramla. They also attacked a police station in Kfar Manda. They attacked Jewish cars on the street in Lod. These examples of violence are just that: Only a few examples. There are tons of cases of Arabs throwing stones at Jewish cars up North and down South. There are tons of cases of Jews being attacked in Arab East Jerusalem. The problem is the genocidal, ideological, religious agenda to kill Jews and destroy Israel. And that exists within a large population of Israeli Arab Muslims as well, not only Hamas or Palestinian Arabs. The media slams Israel instead of condemning the constant violence and rocket attacks from the Arabs.

Too many good-hearted Jews and Israelis still believe “if only we don’t live in Judea and Samaria, then…” or “if only we don’t live in Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, then…” And then there is “if only we don’t visit the Temple Mount, then…” What about this one? “If only we don’t March through Damascus Gate.” And then this: “If only we destroy all 21 Jewish communities in Gaza and expel 10,000 Jews from their homes.” That didn’t work, and neither does anything else. The list just goes on and on. Appeasement not only doesn’t help, it is a recipe for empowering our enemies to continue to escalate the conflict!

The conflict has nothing to do with land. No matter how good we are to our neighbors, there are many of them who don’t want us here at all, no matter where we live or march. The irony is that if you ask Israeli Arab Muslim citizens if they prefer to be citizens under the Palestinian Authority, they say no way. They know life for them is much better living as Israeli citizens. Yet, they still support the destruction of Israel. Not all of them but enough that we can’t ignore it.

None of this is logical or relates to human rights. It is a religious conflict. Israel gives freedom and equality to all citizens, including Arab Muslims, yet it makes no difference.

Israel is not perfect. But it does not deserve the negative spotlight that it always gets. How much more violence and terror do we have to experience before enough Jews/Israelis wake up to the reality of our situation?

Palestinians: Our True Goal is to Destroy Israel

The current round of violence with Hamas has one major difference from all other confrontations. Hamas sees the cancellation of the elections by the PA as a great opportunity to gain the support of the West Bank Arabs and those in Jerusalem.  Having the international media promote their message that their rocket attacks are in support of the Palestinians, Hamas is in a great position to take over from the PA.

If this were to happen then as Bassam Tawil writes below, this would create a whole new ball game in the attempts to make peace. 

by Bassam Tawil  •  May 11, 2021

The Palestinians are upset because Jews are being permitted to tour the Temple Mount. The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

No one is disputing the Palestinians' right to protest Israeli policies. Yet when the protests turn into large pro-Hamas demonstrations, with calls for bombing Tel Aviv and killing Jews, they expose the true deadly intention of the protesters.

When thousands of Palestinians chant "We are all Mohammed Deif" they are saying that they see themselves as terrorists ready to attack and destroy Israel. They are saying that Deif is their role model because he managed to murder many Jews and remains at large, despite Israeli attempts to apprehend or kill him.

Hamas owes its growing popularity to the anti-Israel inflammatory campaign waged in the Palestinian media, especially social media platforms, the mosques and public rhetoric of Palestinian leaders. Hamas also owes its popularity to the ongoing corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and its autocratic president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The demonstrations in favor of Hamas should also sound alarm bells with the Biden administration and serve as an accurate indicator as to Palestinian priorities. The Biden administration is talking about reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the "two-state solution." Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and Deif, however, have a different solution in mind: the annihilation of Israel and the deaths of Jews -- the more the merrier.

Attempted Lynching by Arab Mob

 The above near lynch is just another example of out of control 

arab violence spurred on by radicalized youth, foreign 

influence and a weak disorganized response by the Israeli 

security forces. Roaming gangs of arabs have been increasing

 their attacks on Jews in and around the Old City as well as

 within the Shimon Hatzaddik (Sheik Jarrah) neighborhood 

and the Shiloach (Silwan). The response over Ramadan by 

the Israeli police and security forces has focused more on 

arresting attackers instead cutting off the flow of support 

the attacks have from within “palestinian” arab society.

What Hizbollah does not Want You to See

Yoseph Haddad, an Israeli Arab who is clearly on the 

side of Israel and not on the side of terrorism, 
is quite public about his beliefs. That’s clear from 
he fact that he is showing the inside of a Hezbollah 
terror tunnel to whoever is willing to listen. He wants 
people to know what Israel has to deal with.

Slice of Persia in the Heart of Israel

 (By Mr. Afshari, a professor of history emeritus at Pace University an Iranian who visited Israel)

Israel is the last country where an Iranian raised in a Muslim family would have visited The Baha’i World Center in Haifa, Israel

I expected to find a place to feel at home, and that’s exactly what happened when I visited a Slice of Persia in the Heart of Israel  

In January 2013, I spent a day as a guest at the Baha’i World Centre in Haifa. The site is the spiritual and administrative heart of the Baha’i Faith, a religion founded in Iran with about five million adherents across the globe. The center’s grounds are bedecked with gardens and terraces. As I walked up and down the beautiful landscape, it struck me that everything about that hallowed place is Iranian. Even though I was in Israel, I felt as though I was walking in a Persian garden.

The Baha’i faith is generally described as the largest non-Muslim religious minority in Iran. The faithful espouse noble principles like the importance of unifying humanity, the harmony between science and religion, and the equality of women and men. But, as the religion was founded after Islam, the Iranian government finds the faith’s adherents’ existence intolerable. Despite facing a longstanding state-sponsored campaign of oppression by Tehran, the community has found a way to persist.

Before the international community exerted pressure on Iran in the 1980s, Baha’is were killed indiscriminately by vigilantes and often arbitrarily executed by the government. Today, that persecution has cooled to arbitrary imprisonments and arrests. Baha’is also see their economic advancement blocked, sometimes by being denied access to higher education. The continuation of this systemic and baseless campaign against the Baha’is makes me ashamed to be Iranian.

After I left the Baha’i World Centre, I kept imagining that one day—perhaps it would dawn on Iranian civil society and government officials that the institution in Haifa is a significant part of Iran’s religious[1]national heritage.  I dreamed that one day Iranians of all religious persuasions could visit and experience the enlightened and sublime feeling of fellowship offered by the institution.

That day feels very far away. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned several shameful recent actions by the Iranian government against the Baha’is. Notably, in October, an Iranian court acquitted 11 people who had demolished the homes of 27 Baha’is in the small farming village of Ivel. The court found that there had been no wrongdoing, as it was illegal in the first place for Baha’is to own property.

As I empathize with my countrymen who have had their homes taken from them, I also think about all the other Baha’is of Iran. Do they feel at home in their own country, whose government has rejected them? And what of the Iranian Baha’is scattered around the world, many of whom left Iran as refugees, persecuted by their government to the point that they had to leave the country? In what way is Iran a home to them?

 Ivel lies in the northern province of Mazandaran, which also happens to be the ancestral home of Baha’u’llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, who was born in 1817. He too was forced by the government to leave Iran. He died as a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire in Akka, then Palestine, in 1892. The gardens I visited on my trip to Israel are the result of Baha’u’llah’s long exile.  Like his followers over more than a century into the future, he could find no home in Iran.

 As I stood in the Baha’i gardens of Haifa, looking out over the Mediterranean, I felt part of something bigger than that moment in time. I was taking in something uniquely Persian—a precious piece of culture, heritage and history that should be honored and celebrated by all Iranians. And every Baha’i in Iran carries a part of this same precious culture, heritage and history. How long will the Iranian government continue to deny it to us?

Gloomy Future for Journalists Middle East

 

By MOHAMMAD AL-KASIM   May 3, 2021 

The Middle East is considered to be one of the world's most dangerous regions to cover for journalists, and freedom of the press is widely curtailed and often violated in many places.

The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found that the media has been totally blocked or seriously impeded in 73 countries during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic when people are most desperate for information.

Journalists are subject to being arrested, attacked, banned from working, and subjected to other forms of judicial harassment by governments and their security and intelligence services only because they seek to tell the truth.

Israel, which jumped up two spots to 82, has an open and direct media and is considered one of the freest in the Middle East. But, according to the index, journalists still face aggressive treatment from government officials. Another issue facing journalists in Israel is “military censorship."

The RFS report finds that this self-censorship has resulted in little or no coverage of the reality of life in the Palestinian territories.

Ohad Hemo, a veteran reporter in Israel, covering Palestinian affairs for Israel’s Channel 12 News says he is trying to change the type of coverage Israeli reporters do of the West Bank and Gaza. He told The Media Line that in his 17 years of reporting, he has not had to curtail his coverage of Palestinians for Israeli media while reporting from Gaza and the West Bank and bring Palestinians lives to Israelis.

Hemo, says there is no dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, and that perhaps his coverage "contributes to converging views and helps create a dialogue between them."

"The Israeli journalist and Palestinian workers working in Israel are the last bridge between the two peoples," he said. In addition, he says: "Working in the Palestinian territories is not easy for me; in the end, I'm Jewish and an Israeli, which makes my work there difficult."   

Palestine moved up five spots to 132, a slight improvement over last year. Meanwhile, continued tension between Israelis and Palestinians makes covering the conflict dangerous.

Veteran Palestinian journalist Faten Elwan says "I always wanted to tell the story of the people, the joy and the griefs as well. The stories about the killing and the blood, but I also wanted to tell the stories of those who have dreams. Regardless of all the pain we have here, we still have joy and dreams,"

Elwan says being a Palestinian journalist in the West Bank does not give one immunity from being attacked. Palestinian journalists are also harassed and arrested by Palestinian Authority security services when they report on issues that may be critical of the PA, she explained.

Elwan longs for her early days in journalism. Despite all the difficulties, journalists then had a lot more freedom than they do now.

"Let me say until 2006 we were the freest journalists talking about Yasser Arafat. I was insulting Yasser Arafat inside the Muqata during the Israeli invasion," she said, referring to the then-PA president and the presidential compound in Ramallah in the West Bank. 

Elwan says the turning point for Palestinian journalists came 15 years ago, at the same time that Mahmoud Abbas became PA president, when things began gradually changing. 

"We started to see that our country is turning into a police state,” she said. “Every word that you say can be used against you." She says the older generation of journalists were not intimidated, but the new journalists, or the social media journalists, were attacked physically and mentally. "We are living in a dark era where journalism is concerned," said Elwan.

Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan and Iraq are among the most repressive Middle Eastern countries for journalism, according to the Press Freedom Index.