09/20 Links Pt1: Glick: Defending Ourselves to Death; UN ground zero for antisemitism ~ EoZ

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Defending Ourselves to Death

It is the job of the government, the police and the courts to make clear that crime doesn’t pay. It is their failure to drive home this message consistently that empowers radicalized thugs from Jaljulya to spread feces on Jewish graves.
Likewise, the problem in Gush Etzion isn’t that area communities haven’t taken the necessary steps to protect their residents or that the IDF suffers from a manpower shortage. The problem is that Palestinians in Odeh’s middle-class community, which overlooks Efrat, and in surrounding villages feel free to plan terrorist attacks against their Jewish neighbors as they sit in their living rooms and watch genocidal broadcasts on Hezbollah, Hamas and Fatah TV.
As for the Golan Heights, sooner or later, Hezbollah and Syrian government forces, along with their Iranian overlords can be depended on to open a new front against Israel in the Golan Heights if they become convinced that Israel’s main countermove will be to permanently deploy a missile defense battery along the border. Missile defense batteries don’t scare enemies away. They merely challenge their ingenuity.
No one doubts that the government wants to defend Israel’s citizens – alive and deceased. But despite their good intentions, our leaders are failing us. Our political, military, police and bureaucratic leaders are failing us because our foes – at home and abroad – have come to believe that we aren’t willing to do what is necessary to defeat them.
Our leaders are failing us because they refuse to act on the sure knowledge that an over-reliance on defensive measures does not deter aggression. It invites aggression.

Palestinian speaks in city

A Palestinian human rights activist turned commentator blamed a lot of people Monday evening for the failure of Muslims and Jews to make peace in Israel.
Bassem Eid offered his Fort Wayne audience a list of groups he said are doing nothing to try to resolve the decades-old conflict: Palestinian leaders, the Egyptian government and other Arab countries, the United Nations, President Barack Obama’s administration and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement.
But Eid spared Israel itself during his remarks at the History Center. His appearance was sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Fort Wayne and the Harry W. Salon Foundation.
“Imagine that Israel is interested in the reconstruction of Gaza while we, the Palestinians, are much more interested in the destruction of Gaza,” Eid said about Palestinian territory in Israel.
Pointing to wars in the region, Eid said Israel is “probably the most safe place in the Middle East. “As an Arab, as a Muslim, I don’t want to be Syria, I don’t want to be Libya, I don’t want to be Iraq, I don’t want to be Yemen. It’s much safer for myself and for my children to keep ourselves” in Israel.
Arab leaders want the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to continue because it is “the only way the Arab leaders can keep on corrupting their own people,” he said.

‘70% of European Jews won’t go to shul on High Holy Days despite heightened security’

Participants in the online survey were asked: if there was an increase or decrease in the number of registered individuals in their Jewish communities in comparison with last year; whether there was an increase or decrease in the number of Jews expected to attend synagogue on the High Holy Days in comparison with last year; how concerned they and their community members are by the increase in anti-Semitism in their countries; and whether there was heightened security at Jewish institutes in their community in light of the increase in terror attacks in Europe in the past year.
Approximately half of Jewish communities across the continent reported a decline in the number of active members in their community, while only 11% reported a rise in members and 39% of the communities reported no change in the number of registered community members.
Meanwhile 75% of the communities reported increased security measures taken by their respective governments. EJA and RCE General Director Rabbi Menachem Margolin said that this was in light of an increase in anti-Semitism since last year’s High Holy Days and the vast majority of community leaders reported increased security and policing measures around Jewish schools, synagogues and other affiliated institutions.

8 accused of ISIS-inspired Olympic plot to attack Jews, foreigners

A Brazilian judge on Monday accepted the indictment of eight men accused of plotting militant attacks inspired by Islamic State against foreigners at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro as well as against homosexuals, Shi'ite Muslims and Jews.
Judge Marcos Josegrei da Silva of the Federal Court in Curitiba, Brazil, said police and prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence to proceed to trial. It is Brazil's first prosecution under a new terrorism law enacted earlier this year.
The accused were also charged with racketeering. All but one were also charged with corrupting minors.
The eight are part of a group of 10 who were arrested in July, only weeks before the Olympics began, as part of the Brazilian Federal Police's Operation Hashtag. An 11th suspect turned himself in shortly after the arrests.
Prosecutors and police said the men communicated with each other over internet applications such as Telegram and spoke about training, procuring weapons and making attacks.
At the time of their arrest, authorities said only two of the men, all Brazilians between the ages of 20 and 40, had actually met each other, when they went to learn Arabic in Egypt in 2012 after converting to Islam.

France arrests 8 over July truck attack that killed 86 in Nice

French authorities said Tuesday that there have been eight new arrests in connection with the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice that left 86 people dead — 10 of them children and teenagers — and 434 injured.
All eight suspects were arrested in the Alpes-Maritimes region in the southeastern corner of France that includes Nice.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said the suspects detained Monday were French and Tunisian and had links to the attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, who plowed a 19-ton truck down Nice’s Promenade des Anglais and into a crowd assembled for a July 14 fireworks display.
The 31-year-old father of three was shot dead by police after a firefight. French authorities said the terrorist became radicalized “very quickly,” with some of his family and friends saying that he had smoked, drank and never gone to the mosque.
While he had a record of being a petty criminal, Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had not appeared on the radar of intelligence services for links to radical Islam.
At least five people already face preliminary terrorism charges in the attack, and are accused of helping Lahouaiej-Bouhlel obtain a pistol and providing other support. It was not immediately clear what role is suspected for the men arrested this week.

MEMRI: Board Chairman Of Pro-Hizbullah Daily: Kill Every Armed American Outside Of The U.S., Expel All Americans From Our Countries

On September 19, 2016, following of reports that American forces have entered Northern Syria, Ibrahim Al-Amin, board chairman of the pro-Hizbullah Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, published a virulent article titled "For Us, The Americans Are Murderers And Thieves Who Must Be Resisted." In it, Al-Amin attacked the U.S., which he claimed occupies Iraq and now Syria as well, and called to kill every armed American outside the U.S. and expel all "American functionaries," including diplomats, civil society activists and academics, from Arab countries.
The following is a translation of the article:
"It is the 'right' of the Americans – the government, the people, and the institutions – to not learn from their experience in maintaining relations with the other peoples of the world. However, the problem lies in the fact that some of our own people do not wish to learn [either], and continue to rely on this group of murderers and thieves. What can be done with such people? Nothing. But every time, and in more than one place in the world, and in every generation, there is a group that realizes that the only way to deal with an arrogant murderer is by using own method, logic, and language.
"The U.S. does not suffice with reoccupying Iraq, but has decided to expand its conquest to Syria. The excuse it uses [to convince] itself is understandable, since all the elements it tasked with toppling the Syrian state, harming the resistance, and preventing any substantial change in the region have failed.
"Ok. It can do what it sees fit. But we too must do what suits us. We must shoot any American carrying arms outside the U.S., without considering the reason for his presence [outside the U.S.] and whether it is the result of a request by some element or another. This is an occupying force that must be resisted with bullets and fire.

Donald Trump lauds Israel’s use of profiling to prevent terror attacks

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lauded Israel for its success in using racial profiling to prevent terror attacks.
In a phone interview Monday with “Fox & Friends,” the network’s morning show, Trump said that US police are afraid to consider religion or ethnicity when identifying suspects as potential terrorists.
“Our police are amazing. Our local police, they know who a lot of these people are,” Trump said in the interview. “They’re afraid to do anything about it because they don’t want to be accused of profiling and they don’t want to be accused of all sorts of things.
“You know, in Israel they profile. They’ve done an unbelievable job, as good as you can do. They see somebody that’s suspicious, they will profile. They will take that person and they’ll check out.”
The interview came after the FBI announced that it was searching for a naturalized Afghan citizen, Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, of New Jersey, in connection with an explosion in a New York City neighborhood and at a New Jersey train station.

UN ground zero for antisemitism and incitement on a global scale

Many UN-accredited NGOs wipe Israel off their maps, depicting “Palestine” as all of Israel plus Gaza, Judea and Samaria.
Since the UN accredits these NGOs through a formal process, it can’t claim that it’s ignorant of their anti-Semitic activities and messaging. The truth is there in plain sight for anyone who wants to see it.
According to the US State Department, antisemitism today includes demonizing Israel, delegitimizing its right to exist in it historical homeland and holding Israel to a higher standard than any other state.
Propagating “blood libels” against Israelis and working to destroy this UN member state are clearly anti-Semitic and violate the UN Charter. If there is genuine concern about the rise of antisemitism, then concrete actions must be taken to stop UN NGOs from abusing their powerful global platform to incite hatred.
America and other Western democracies have turned a willfully blind eye to this loathsome reality and continue to subsidize global Jew-hatred via their funding of the UN, an institution created in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust that has utterly failed to live up to its promise.
As Ayn Rand wrote, “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”

'New Diplomatic Battle Against Hamas' at the UN

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon announced a new initiative aimed at “battling the diversion of humanitarian funds to the Hamas terrorists in Gaza.”
At a briefing in the UN, Ambassador Danon explained that Israeli intelligence indicates a troubling new trend of Hamas’s exploitation of humanitarian groups. “We are initiating today a diplomatic battle against the diversion of humanitarian organizations’ funding towards Hamas’s terror infrastructure,” said Ambassador Danon. “We will not relent until the UN and other aid organizations begin to track and follow every dollar that enters the Gaza Strip,” he continued.
During his briefing, Ambassador Danon displayed a flow-chart illustrating how Hamas is diverting international aid. Ambassador Danon announced that he had asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the UN implement comprehensive oversight mechanisms to ensure an end of humanitarian funds reaching terrorist organizations.
In addition, Ambassador Danon stated that he had contacted the heads of international organizations operating in Gaza and similarly demanded that they introduce better internal oversight so as not allow Hamas to exploit the goodwill of the international community and its desire to assist Palestinian civilians.
Among the organizations Ambassador Danon contacted were: UNDP, World Vision, UNRWA, The Red Cross, USAID, AMIDEAST, Mercy Corps, International Orthodox Christian Charities, EU Humanitarian Aid and Development Department (ECHO), Germany’s international aid agency (GIZ) and the Norwegian Refugee Councils.

88 senators urge Obama to uphold veto on ‘one-sided’ UN resolutions

On the eve of a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama in New York Tuesday, 88 US senators penned a letter to the commander-in-chief urging him to uphold for the duration of his term the US policy of opposing “one-sided” United Nations resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and vetoing them where necessary.
In their missive commended by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Monday, the senators say that while they are disappointed that Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are stalled, the only way to resolve the conflict is through “direct negotiations that lead to a sustainable two-state solution,” echoing a stance held by Netanyahu himself.
The letter was initiated by Michael Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, and New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand, a Democrat.
In it, the signatories — among them Tim Kaine, the Democratic vice presidential nominee — argued that the US must remain “an indispensable trusted mediator” between Israelis and Palestinians, and that the international community should “avoid taking action that would harm the prospects for meaningful progress.”

Ted Cruz to Senate: Don't dictate solutions to Israel

Early Tuesday morning Senator Cruz responded to the letter, praising its spirit and goal of encouraging President Obama to oppose anti-Israel activities in the UN.
Nevertheless, the statement issued by the senator’s office read, the letter itself infringes upon Israeli sovereignty as it suggests Israel must pursue the two-state solution and establishment of a Palestinian state.
“Unfortunately, the language in the opening paragraph declaring the ‘two-state solution’ as the ‘only’ resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians undermines this well-intentioned effort, and makes it impossible for me to sign,” said Cruz.
“This matter is an internal one for Israel to decide, and it is not the place of the United States – or the United Nations – to impose a solution on a sovereign nation.”

Netanyahu’s (mildly triumphant) last goodbye to Obama

On Wednesday in New York, Barack Obama will host Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for one last time as president.
You can be certain that the meeting will be friendly — albeit kind of resignedly so. These two super-articulate, super-self-confident leaders, who kept on winning elections against the odds, have long since been reconciled to the fact that they see the world differently, and that neither is going to change the other’s mind.
They’ll talk warmly about the unbreakable alliance between our two countries. Netanyahu will thank Obama for the latest, most tangible expression of that alliance — America’s $38 billion investment in Israel’s capacity to defend itself. Obama, for his part, will doubtless stress the value of the aid package in serving America’s national interests via a strong Israel in the treacherous Middle East. They’ll both mean every word that they say. The US-Israeli alliance is indeed robust, and mutually vital — existentially so, in Israel’s case.
But the Obama-Netanyahu years have been years of at least somewhat missed opportunity — inevitably, given those differing worldviews; unfortunately, for both our countries and their shared causes. We truly are allies in the most basic of battles — to try to guarantee and widen people’s freedoms, to try to marginalize and de-fang the death-cultists. America and Israel, fighting that same fight, could have achieved more if Obama and Netanyahu had gotten along better, had trusted each other more, had bridged their differences more effectively.

Netanyahu says he’ll urge ‘uniform’ global fight against terror at UN

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will urge world leaders to create “a uniform standard in the war on terrorism,” he said Tuesday before boarding his plane to New York, where he will address the United Nations General Assembly later this week.
Netanyahu also said he will thank US President Barack Obama for a 10-year, $38-billion US military aid deal, signed last week, when the two leaders meet on the sidelines of the General Assembly on Wednesday.
“We are in the midst of a very important diplomatic week for the State of Israel. I am leaving now for the United States,” Netanyahu told reporters at Ben Gurion Airport. “There I will first meet with President Obama and I will thank him for the great and important security assistance to the State of Israel over the coming decade.”
During his five-day stay in the city, Netanyahu will also meet with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, World Economic Forum chief Klaus Schwab and a group of African heads of state. He will also address the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank that is giving him an award, and visit an exhibit of drawings by an Israeli soldier whose body is currently held by Hamas, along with the remains of another soldier.

'B'Tselem waging delegitimization campaign against Israeli military'

The military on Monday issued a strong condemnation of the B'Tselem human rights organization, saying its most recent report on IDF investigations into alleged wrongdoings by Israeli forces during the 2014 Gaza conflict was "another step in the delegitimization campaign B'Tselem is waging against the Israeli legal system in general, and the military justice system in particular."
B'Tselem's new report accused military decision-makers of opting for operational policies that resulted in the "unprecedented killing" of Palestinian civilians, further alleging the IDF is using "an extensive cover-up mechanism" to dismiss claims brought against Israeli soldiers.
The group's report argues that "investigations into incidents that took place during Operation Protective Edge engaged mainly in the creation of false representation of a functioning system, one ostensibly seeking the truth, while those truly responsible for violations [of the rules of war] are not investigated. All that is done is conducting superficial reviews pertaining to individual events devoid of context."
The report claims that nearly two-thirds of Palestinian casualties during the military campaigns were civilians, including 526 minors. Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in airstrikes on residential areas, "raising suspicions that Israel violated international humanitarian law."
B'Tselem further claimed that "once again, the political and military echelons were not questioned by any official body, and were never held accountable for their decisions."

NGO Monitor: B’Tselem’s Ideological War Against IDF Continues

B’Tselem’s claims are fundamentally flawed in three respects:
1) B’Tselem objects to policies in a broad sense. However, in this or any other example, if each of the individual strikes at issue were consistent with the laws of armed conflict – targeting fighters, command centers, and weapons caches and fully proportionate – there is no basis for establishing violations at the policy or macro level. Moreover, B’Tselem cannot support its claim of a pattern in which Israel did not act to “avoid harm to civilians,” given the evidence that of more than IDF 6,000 airstrikes, the NGO has identified at most 72 incidents (1.2%) where (supposedly) “residences were bombed while residents were at home.” If anything, the pattern proves the opposite point, which is inconsistent with B’Tselem’s agenda.
2) B’Tselem’s arguments are emotional, neither fact-based analysis nor legally-based. The leaders of this NGO again examine Israel’s operations in Gaza and unsurprisingly, see “a terrible human tall (sic).” However, that is not a legal standard. War is certainly hell and civilian deaths are always tragic, but neither is inherently illegal and cannot be addressed outside the wider context of the conflict in all of its dimensions. As such, Israeli investigations are right to carefully examine the specific circumstances of individual incidents for compliance with international law, and while the moral questions are certainly important, they should not be confused with the legal dimensions.
3) B’Tselem’s arguments transparently serve the NGO’s primary political objectives. Under the leadership of Hagai Elad, B’Tselem has emphasized political dissent from the Israeli government and from policies (including military operations in Gaza), in contrast to an emphasis on research regarding human rights issues. This agenda is reflected in the complaint that “there are no investigations of the true culprits: Neither government officials nor senior military commanders…” Political opposition is certainly legitimate, but exploiting human rights and international law, in the form of serious charges of wrongdoing without real evidence, is not.
In other words, as in other publications on the 2014 war, B’Tselem is using complaints about individual incidents and investigations (jus in bello) as a pretext for its opposition to Israel’s decision to again confront Hamas (jus ad bellum) in the first place.
Among NGOs, B’Tselem is not alone in trying to undercut Israeli investigations in response to the MAG’s detailed reports. Adalah and Al Mezan also tried (and failed) to refute the IDF findings.
As highlighted in B’Tselem’s statement, these NGOs continue their active roles in the campaign to demonize Israel, deprive Israeli citizens of the right to self-defense, and bring Israeli officials before the International Criminal Court.

Summit in Venezuela declares support for 'Palestine'

A group of unaligned nations has taken a stance in favor of the, Arab Palestinian's right to a state, and called to renew negotiations on the basis of the French initiative.
The French initiative was presented earlier this year, and has been heavily criticized both in and outside of Israel. The initiative was notable in that neither Israel, nor Arab Palestinian representatives were invited to discuss its particulars.
The 17th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement which convened in Venezuela on September 18, has declared 2017 "the last year of Israel's ‘Occupation of Palestine’." There are 116 nations in the movement; founded to counter American and Russian political pressures and preserve the members’ respective independence.
During the Cold War these countries were known as the, “Third World.” The “First World,” referred to the NATO and SEATO signatories and the, “Second World” to Russian satellite states. Since the end of the Cold War, the relevance of the movement has been waning, and the term “Third World” now refers to the undeveloped nations who form the bulk of the Non-Aligned Movement.
The official notification, which was read by Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmad Abu Ziad, expressed the summit committee's full support for the right of the, Arab Palestinian nation to establish its own independent state, using the pre-1967 lines as its borders, and with east Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel shoots down Palestinian drone off the Gaza coast

Israel Air Force fighter jets on Tuesday shot down a Hamas-launched drone off the Gaza coast, the army said.
In a statement, the military said the drone was “under IAF surveillance from the moment it took off from the Gaza Strip.”
Details regarding the size and design of the drone were not released by the military.
The drone was only in the air for “a few minutes,” before it was shot down. At no point did it enter Israeli territory, a military official told The Times of Israel, on condition of anonymity.
Hamas did not immediately confirm that they had launched the unmanned aerial vehicle, however, the terror group has said in the past that it possesses the capabilities.
“Hamas has been developing its drone capabilities especially in the last two years,” IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.
“Today’s event proves once more that Hamas continues to invest in tools of terror and not the needs of the people of Gaza,” he said.

Stabbed policewoman still in ‘very serious’ condition

The condition of a 38-year-old policewoman seriously injured in a stabbing attack Monday outside Jerusalem’s Old City was still being described as “very serious but stable” a day later.
Dr. Ofer Marin, head of the trauma unit at the capital’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, told Army Radio Tuesday morning that she “arrived in very serious condition, to our regret with a very deep wound in her neck that also affected her blood vessels. The injury also caused damage to her spine and her condition at this time is very serious but stable.”
Marin said her life was not in immediate danger but stressed that the injury was grave.
A second officer, aged 45, who was also stabbed in the attack, was taken in a conscious state to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem with multiple stab wounds to his upper body. His condition was described as moderate.
Immediately after he was stabbed, the officer pulled his gun and shot the attacker, 20-year-old Ayman Kurd, of the capital’s Ras al-Amoud neighborhood, critically wounding him.
Police subsequently arrested his three brothers on suspicion of expressing support for the stabbings. Officers are investigating whether they helped their brother plan and carry out the attack.

Palestinian teen tries to stab soldier, is shot dead — army

A Palestinian teenager was shot and killed while attempting a stabbing attack on an IDF soldier near Bani Na’im, outside of Hebron, on Tuesday morning, the army said, marking a fifth straight day of attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
During a search at a checkpoint, the assailant “tried to stab a soldier,” but did not injure him, according to the IDF.
“The assailant was shot by the forces and killed,” the army said in a statement.
The Palestinian health ministry identified him as Issa Salem Tarayrah, 16.
The alleged assault was the ninth such attack in under a week, with the vast majority occurring in Jerusalem and the Hebron area, where Palestinians live in close proximity to settlers and Israeli troops.

Palestinian “Fellow Executed”?!

A Palestinian terrorist stabbed an IDF soldier near Hebron’s Tel Rumeida neighborhood on Saturday morning. The attacker was shot dead by soldiers.
This is how Australia’s Channel 9 News reported the incident with yet another example of a faulty headline:

Who is doing the attacking? The headline clearly turns the Palestinian terrorist into a victim of Israeli malevolence. And what exactly is an “Israeli checkpoint knife attack?”
Bizarrely the Palestinian terrorist is later referred to as a “fellow,” a term commonly used as a term of endearment. We’ve seen Palestinians terrorists described as “militants,” “activists” and “freedom fighters” but this is the first time we have seen one called a “fellow.”

Raid on home of Hamas operative leads to rescue of baby deer

During a raid on the house of a Hamas operative in the village of Jaba, near Jenin in the early hours of Monday morning, security forces discovered a month-old fawn that was being held illegally and in conditions not suitable for wild animals.
Border Police forces who conducted the raid transferred the fawn to the nature reserve section of the Civil Administration for treatment and rehabilitation.
The Civil Administration said the fawn was being monitored by veterinarians at the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem, while continued recovery will most likely be conducted at a petting zoo. Veterinarians think that due to the age of the animal and the amount of time it spent in captivity, there is little chance it could survive in the wild.
Naftali Cohen, an officer in the nature reserves and parks authority of the Civil Administration said, "We are increasing collaboration with IDF and Border Police forces operating in the West Bank. We are in constant contact with organizations in Israel which deal with animal rehabilitation after we transfer an animal."
Operations commander, Yasser Assadi, added, "Even in operations where we detain wanted suspects, it is impossible to ignore the sight of a suffering animal being held in captivity. This situation also involves saving life."

In Gaza and West Bank, Palestinian Journalists Fear Squeeze on Free Press

On Sept. 1, half a dozen Hamas security officials called at the home of Mohammed Othman, a young journalist in Gaza who had written several probing articles. They seized two laptops, two mobile phones and took Othman away for questioning.
Twenty-four hours later, after what he described as an intense interrogation, the 29-year-old was released, but not before he had been asked to sign a document promising not to criticize Hamas, the Islamist group that runs Gaza, or its security services. Othman says he refused.
"They were telling me things trying to scare me and influence me," he told Reuters the day after his release, describing being slapped around during the detention. "I discovered the reality is worse than I thought."
The Hamas-run Government Media Office in Gaza said Othman was detained by internal security on a warrant issued by the prosecutor's office, and denied he was mistreated.
"We have great respect for the rights of journalists to work freely and write everything," the head of the office, Salama Maarouf, told Reuters. "The general policy is to allow journalists to work freely and not to touch their rights."
Despite that, media monitoring and human rights groups say press freedom is under threat in the West Bank and Gaza, with both Hamas and Fatah, the Western-backed party that runs the West Bank, increasingly wary of journalists and bloggers who write critically or seek to expose wrongdoing.

MEMRI: Palestinian Author: We Can Sacrifice 1-2 Million Arabs a Year to Liberate Palestine

Palestinian researcher and author Yousef Jad Al-Haq recently rejected the two-state solution and called to conduct organized resistance in order to liberate Palestine "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea." Extrapolating the percentages from the birthrate of the Arab nation, he said: "If a million of us die, but we get to liberate Palestine... Well, that's fine by me." Al-Haq was speaking on Syria News TV on August 16.

MEMRI: Sheikh promised the congregation that “the Israeli occupation” will vanish just like the Roman and Persian empires and British and French colonialism.

Sheikh Raed Salah, Leader of Islamic Movement in Israel: This Land Will Vomit Israeli Occupation Like the Sea Vomits Its Filth
In a Friday sermon delivered on March 25 in Jatt, Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel and former mayor of Umm Al-Fahm.
He promised the congregation that “the Israeli occupation” will vanish just like the Roman and Persian empires and British and French colonialism.
Sheikh Salah added that the land will “vomit” the Israeli occupation “just like the sea vomits its filth.”
The sermon was posted on the Internet by Q Press, an outlet associated with the Israeli Islamic movement.

Palestinian leader says he is proud to be branded a ‘global terrorist’ by U.S.

Fathi Hammad said that he is pleased to be named a “global terrorist” by the United States.
On Friday, the State Department branded the senior Hamas leader a “specially designated global terrorist.” That is a rarefied list of international enemies belonging to organizations such as al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Jewish Kahane group, Algerian Salafists, the Islamic State and Hamas, among others.
On Saturday, Hammad told The Washington Post: “The decision only makes me more confident about my path. The threat of killing or arrest? It doesn’t freak me out, not at all. I am looking forward to it.”
Hammad said, “I feel proud that I managed to anger America.”
Then he added, “I don’t know why they picked me.”
The United States charged that Hammad, 55, a former interior minister for the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, coordinated terrorist cells. No evidence was presented. The designation also said that Hammad is a director of Al-Aqsa TV, “which is a primary Hamas media outlet with programs designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood.”
Why the State Department decided to name Hammad as a global terrorist now is unclear. It is well known that Hammad founded the TV station, but it went on the air soon after Hamas, an Islamist militant group, took control of the coastal enclave in 2007.
Now Hammad is a man back in the news, for all the wrong reasons.

Traces of purportedly relinquished chemical weapons found in Syrian regime lab

In a confidential report, the UN-backed Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has found that Syria continues to manufacture chemical weapons, according to the journal Foreign Policy.
The 75-page report, seen by Foreign Policy, states that inspectors discovered traces of deadly toxins Sarin and VX in an underground laboratory known as Hafir 1.
In April 2016, the OPCW inspectors told The Hague that the samples they had collected at Hafir 1 “contain indicators of Sarin and VX nerve agents, which suggests that chemical weapons may have been produced and weaponized in this facility.”
Hafir 1 was never previously inspected by the OPCW. International powers involved in the Assad regime’s disarming itself of chemical weapons earlier in the country’s five-year civil war, including the US and Russia, had accepted Damascus’s claims that these facilities had never produced chemical weapons. But now it appears that the regime lied, not only producing the weapons at Hafir I, but even loading them into warheads.
According to the report, Damascus wanted to keep these warheads as an “insurance policy” against the rebels.

Airstrikes hit 20-truck Aleppo aid convoy hours after Syria truce ends

Air strikes hit around 20 aid trucks outside a Red Crescent center in the Syrian province of Aleppo on Monday, a monitor said, hours after the army declared a week-long truce to be over.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights did not immediately report any casualties in the raids on the Orum al-Kubra area, west of Aleppo city.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said: “We understand a convoy has been hit. We are trying to get more information.”
The strikes came shortly after Syria’s army declared an end to the ceasefire between the regime and non-jihadist rebels brokered by Russia and the United States.
David Swanson, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said earlier Monday that a convoy on trucks was crossing into Orum al-Kubra with “wheat flour, health supplies and other emergency supplies” for 78,000 people in the area.
Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said the trucks arrived in the afternoon.

UN suspends Syria convoys after deadly strike on aid trucks

he UN said Tuesday it had suspended all humanitarian aid convoys in Syria after a deadly air raid the previous night hit trucks delivering aid near Aleppo, killing a Red Crescent staff member and civilians.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that tracks the Syrian civil war, said at least 12 were killed in the attack, mostly truck drivers and Red Crescent workers.
Red Cross spokesman Benoit Carpentier said the director of the Syrian Red Crescent’s sub-branch was among those killed in the attack.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva that it’s “a very, very dark day… for humanitarians across the world.”
He said that the UN aid coordinator had received needed authorizations from the Syrian government in recent days to allow for aid convoys to proceed within Syria, but as an “immediate security measure, other convoy movements in Syria have been suspended.”
Laerke added that the temporary suspension of the aid deliveries would hold pending a review of the security situation in Syria.

Obama Admin ‘Laundered’ U.S. Cash to Iran Via N.Y. Fed, Euro Banks

A member of the House Intelligence Committee is accusing the Obama administration of laundering some $1.7 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Iran through a complicated network that included the New York Federal Reserve and several European banks, according to conversations with sources and new information obtained by the lawmaker and viewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
New disclosures made by the Treasury Department to Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a House Intelligence Committee member, show that an initial $400 million cash payment to Iran was wired to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) and then converted from U.S. dollars into Swiss francs and moved to an account at the Swiss National Bank, according to a copy of communication obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.
Once the money was transferred to the Swiss Bank, the “FRBNY withdrew the funds from its account as Swiss franc banknotes and the U.S. Government physically transported them to Geneva” before personally overseeing the handover to an agent of Iran’s central bank, according to the documents.
These disclosures shine new light on how the Obama administration moved millions of dollars from U.S. accounts to European banks in order to facilitate three separate cash payments to Iran totaling $1.7 billion.
The latest information is adding fuel to accusations the Obama administration arranged the payment in this fashion to skirt U.S. sanctions laws and give Iran the money for the release of U.S. hostages, in what many have called a ransom.

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