Hamas Claims Israelis Murdered Arrigoni

The Islamic 'radical groups' (are there any other kind?), including al-Qaeda affiliated Tawhid wal-Jihad, have denied that they had anything to do with the death of Vittorio Arrigoni. Can you guess what comes next? But of course: Blame the Jews (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).

Hamas also condemned the killing, saying that it was a shameful act, contrary to the tradition of the Palestinian people. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that the "goal of this depraved band of outlaws was to spread chaos and anarchy in the Gaza Strip, a desperate attempt to strike at the stable security situation."

He added that the kidnapping and murder of Arrigoni was intended to prevent the next flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip, expected to depart next month. Barhoum explained that he believed the murder was meant to dissuade other foreign activists from arriving in the Strip.

Accordingly, Hamas accused Israel of being behind the attack, noting that Arrigoni had often spoken out against Israeli policies in Gaza, going so far as to compare what he called "Israeli crimes against Palestinians" to Nazi crimes. Additionally, he was twice arrested by Israeli authorities.

Actually, Hamas is just employing Goldstone logic. Someone was killed. We don't know who killed them. Israel has an army. Therefore, Israel must have done it.

What could go wrong?

Labels: Gaza, Hamas, IDF, Tawhid wal-Jihad, Vittorio Arrigoni

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:28 PM

IDF Spokesman, Capt. Avichai Adraee on Hamas Rocket Fire

Captain Avichai Adra'i is not only impressive in what he says, but in how he says it. He knows that his audience - the entire Arab world - respects forceful speech more than the namby-pamby words given to Western reporters and diplomats.

And he lets them have it:

ELDER OF ZIYON

Itamar and IDF paramedics Help Save Arab Lives

IDF forces and local paramedics helped save the life of a Palestinian woman and her newly born infant Wednesday, at the settlement where Fogel relatives are sitting Shiva for the five Israelis brutally murdered last week.

Just as IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz arrived in Neve Tzuf to offer his condolences, a Palestinian cab raced towards the community's entrance. In it, soldiers and paramedics discovered a Palestinian woman in her 20s in advanced stages of labor and facing a life-threatening situation: The umbilical cord was wrapped around the young baby girl's neck, endangering both her and her mother.

The quick action of settler paramedics and IDF troops deployed in the area saved the mother's and baby's life, prompting great excitement and emotions at the site where residents are still mourning the brutal death of five local family members.

Corporal Haim Levin, 19, an IDF paramedic, was the first medical team member at the scene and recounted the dramatic situation he faced.

"When I arrived, I saw a woman covered by a blanket in a yellow Palestinian van. I moved closer and saw the baby's head and upper body," he told Ynet. "The umbilical cord was around the baby's neck; the baby was grey and didn't move."

"I first removed the cord from the neck and at the same time asked paramedics to prepare the baby resuscitation kit. I pinched her to see if she's responding, and she started to cry," he said. Paramedics also treated the mother, who was in good condition at that point, Levin said.

Meanwhile, ambulance driver Orly Shlomo raced to the scene. "We joined the military paramedic and helped him cut off the umbilical cord…without the medical treatment, the fetus and woman faced genuine life danger," she told Ynet.

"It was touching, but I couldn't help but think that a few meters from there, people were sitting Shiva for another baby, who was murdered," she said. "I was touched to see the face of the new baby, but I also thought about the face of the murdered baby."

Gadi Amitun, who heads the Magen David Adom team at Neve Tzuf, said this was not the first time settlers assist Palestinians in distress.

"They know we have a skilled medical team here, and in any case of accident or injury they arrive and we help them," he said.

The paramedic noted that on the day of the Fogel massacre, settlers saw fireworks and celebrations in nearby Palestinian communities, but added that the local medical team is committed to assisting anyone in need.

Palestinians from the nearby village of Nabi Salah gathered around the paramedics along with the new grandmother and could not hide their joy.

"They thanked us and told us they named the girl Jude," Corporal Levin said.

Compare this article to how a Mondoweiss writer named Max Ajl describes what he think the left's reaction should be to the Itamar murders:

You want my condemnation? You will not have it. No one should respond to such demagogic moral blackmail. We killed those children. There are those who will warp my words. Good luck. I do not want children to die, no child deserves to die or deserves such parents or deserves to be born into such a society or such a state.

It is amazing that the Jewish anti-Israel left is less sympathetic to the Itamar victims than the neighboring Arabs whose land is supposedly being stolen. And to these sickening leftists, Jews who want to live in Judea and Samaria do not have the right to life.

I have news for Ajl: No child deserves to be born into his household, one that is filled with such hate. As we can see from the article above, a child born in the community of Itamar will be infinitely more kind, caring - and liberal - than sick moral midgets like Ajl.

(h/t Challah Hu Akbar)
Elder of Ziyon

Reuters Now Calls IDF the Israel Occupation Force

Only in sites that are virulently anti-Israel is the IDF referred to as the "IOF".

And now we can add Reuters to that list.

Although they changed the text in later versions of the report to "Israeli troops" that initial phraseology shows everything you need to know about Reuters' bias.
Elder of Ziyon

POTUS Demands Ethnic Cleansing of Israelis

Part of Obama's demand to ethnically cleanse Israel of her Jews. Thanks to Torey Dawn:

"JERUSALEM -- Israeli security forces have destroyed another home in a West Bank Jewish community, implementing the government's destruction orders that were served during the building freeze that ended in September.

In the early hours of Dec. 15, about 100 special police officers [Yasam] and security forces, including border police, entered the eastern Gush Etzion settlement of Tekos in the Judean desert and destroyed the home of Yigal and Maya Carlebach and their newborn son.

"Since the beginning of the freeze, civil administration [the IDF] officials came to our neighborhood and distributed destruction orders to every [Jewish] home that had been built within the last two years," Matanya Stein, a Tekoa Daled resident said. "About 400 meters from here there is an Arab house which has destruction orders pending on it for years."

Stein also said that Tekoa Daled, the furthermost neighborhood in Tekoa, was built entirely on either State land or land that the State had not yet officially claimed but Palestinians laid no claim to it."

The Changing Threat to Israel

My son and his cohort, then and now, could stop the Soviet fighter aircraft the Egyptians used in 1967 and the Soviet tanks the Syrians used in 1973; they could act against those who fire Qassam rockets from Gaza at Sderot and (with increasing accuracy) neighborhoods in Ashkelon, and they could move into West Bank towns and build the fence that would bring an end to the Palestinian suicide bombers. But there is nothing these soldiers could do to stop an Iranian nuke on its way to Israel. There would be no time to stop it. Instead, Israel’s military deterrent against the greatest threat to its existence and the continued existence of the Jewish people would be intellectual, theoretical, a matter of international nerve and round-robin negotiations, the proffering of carrots, the hoped-for intervention of the “international community” to keep Iran sane. Israel’s safety and future would no longer rest in the hands of its people, its soldiers, its reservists, its young and its old. It would no longer be my son defending the homeland but something else—a “second-strike capability.” A worldwide attitude. An American threat that might well be hollow would be all we could rely on.
Carl in Jerusalem

Why Did US Say IDF could Destroy LAF in 4 Hrs?

Why did the Lebanese Armed Forces murder an IDF Lieutenant Colonel in cold blood last week? Joshua Muravchik explains.

Why the sudden daring?

Because Hezbollah now largely controls Lebanon, and Iran owns Hezbollah, and both are feeling their oats. Initiating the skirmish with Israel was of a piece with the boast by Ahmadinejad’s chief of staff just three days earlier that Iran could build a nuclear bomb. According to a semiofficial Iranian news agency, the chief of staff elaborated: “Today . . . we are presented with an opportunity to alter world management.” In this usage, “world management” means the same thing that the Soviets used to call the “correlation of forces.” In the face of such an opportunity, he continued, “confining ourselves to small steps, while less costly, is not right.” And as Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the estimable Iran expert who brought these comments to light, explains, the chief of staff’s “reported remarks were full of comments about how this moment is a turning point in world history — one in which international arrogance can be replaced by a new global management, if only Iran makes the necessary effort.”

Some reports say Iran wants to avoid a new war between Hezbollah and Israel for now, preferring to keep the vast arsenal it has placed on Israel’s borders at the ready for retaliation against any strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. This makes sense, and if it is true, it makes this week’s events all the more ominous.

Reportedly, the commander of the unit that attacked the Israelis is a Shiite — sympathetic to Hezbollah. Conceivably, the Lebanese deliberately staged the incident to heat up the border in order to deflect the UN investigation of the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which reportedly is leading directly to the doorsteps of the Syrian government and Hezbollah. Or possibly, it was an act of pure bravado.

But either way, this aggression and the Iranian aide’s speech both indicate that the region’s radical, anti-American forces are growing bolder. This is an inevitable result of America’s projection of weakness and uncertainty, the essence of Obama’s foreign policy, expecially toward our Middle Eastern enemies.

What could go wrong?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem

In Conflict Always Side with the Civilized Man

The killing flotilla has become the rallying cry for the global jihadists who are hell-bent on fulfilling the express command to kill the Jews, as prescribed over and over in Islamic teaching. Remember: Muhammad, the Islamic prophet, said that the end times would only come when Muslims started mass-murdering Jews: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.”

The only suffering in Gaza is not being caused by Israel. It is coming at the hands of the barbarians, Hamas. The first paragraph of the Hamas Charter, by the way, calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Mere details, I know.

So if the Flotilla incident and the outrage that has followed it is not about humanitarian aid, much less about “occupied” land, then what is it about? This is about jihad. This is about Islamic supremacism and annihilating the Jews. 56 ginormous Muslim countries, one tiny Jewish state, and they are in a constant bloodthirsty frenzy over it.

The level of anti-Semitism in my email box and in the comments at my website AtlasShrugs.com since the killing flotilla story broke is full blown out of control. Evil has been unleashed. Pure evil. As Turkey’s Islamic supremacist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said about Israel’s act of self-defense against the killing flotilla: “Today is the beginning of a new age. Things will never be the same again.”

This is not about borders or land or aid. This is about good vs. evil. Stand against this latest libel against the Jews. You saw the video. You saw the vicious jihadis attack. This is the war against the West. Even if you are not Jewish or give a fig about Israel, in any war between the civilized man and the savage, always side with the civilized man.

Pamela Geller, Atlas Shrugs

Israel Attacks Six-ship International Flotilla

On Sunday, Huwaida Arraf, one of the organizers, said the six-ship flotilla began the journey from international waters off the coast of Cyprus on Sunday afternoon after two days of delays. She said they expected to reach Gaza, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) away, on Monday afternoon, and that two more ships would follow in "a second wave."

The flotilla was "fully prepared for the different scenarios" that might arise, and organizers were hopeful that Israeli authorities would "do what's right" and not stop the convoy, she said.

"We fully intend to go to Gaza regardless of any intimidation or threats of violence against us," she said. "They are going to have to forcefully stop us."

After nightfall Sunday, three Israeli navy missile boats left their base in Haifa, steaming out to sea to confront the activists' ships.

Two hours later, Israel Radio broadcast a recording of one of the missile boats warning the flotilla not to approach Gaza.

"If you ignore this order and enter the blockaded area, the Israeli navy will be forced to take all the necessary measures in order to enforce this blockade," the radio message continued.

Al-Jazeera also reported that the ships changed course to try to avoid a nighttime confrontation, preferring a daylight showdown for better publicity.

The flotilla, which includes three cargo ships and three passenger ships, is trying to draw attention to Israel's blockade of Gaza. The boats are carrying items that Israel bars from reaching Gaza, like cement and other building materials. The activists said they also were carrying hundreds of electric-powered wheelchairs, prefabricated homes and water purifiers.
Tia Goldenberg, AP

Common Criticisms of Israel

The Ashkenazi Jews held early prominence in Israel, because they are the most intelligent group [high IQ] in the world. The Sephardim have made forward strides in education, intermarriage and the IDF. For the modern Israeli youngsters the distinctions have blurred. The Russian and American Jews who have migrated here usually retain their hatred of Muslims.
This is an age when the FOX #noisemachine excoriates the President every day. The US Army pays Afghan warlords for safe passage of supply convoys. The Congress is a rubber stamp for the Pentagon. You "don't see Israel as Democratic either."
Israel makes many sacrifices for her health care system. Many doctors earn less than $2000 per month. An average prescription costs $2.50 from our pharmaceutical companies. Private British and US citizens donate more to the country than does the US government.
I wait for your list of "more deserving nations."