Thursday, October 23, 2014
Dear Family & FriendsTonight my grandson (who could be a Master Chef in his future) came home to me from work at 10 pm & whipped up a fantastic Gourmet Mushroom Soup (his first!). The lesson in getting such great food 2 nights in a row is: Keep your children close & your grandchildren closer.
Hope some of what I search the Internet for you will demolish, deflate, deflect & destroy the lies a somewhat ?hostile to Jews & Israel? world seems to be drowning in, creating a Tsunami of destruction. Do you believe that ISIS, Hamas, Hezb?Allah, Islamic Jihads (of all kinds)?are a temporary aberration & will just dry up & blow away without the Free World getting our act together, mounting our defenses with all our smarts & wits about us, to fight back. As Will Shakespeare said: ?Whether ?tis nobler in the mind to take the slings & arrows of outrageous fortune or by taking up arms, end them?.?
Let?s do it!
Fight Pal Statehood x2; Defeat Terrorism against our 3 month old babies!!!; Instruct Europe in Defense against the Dark Arts of Islam; Spread the Israeli-invented mine/IED-sweepers around the Free World; Share our archeology & Protect it from being stolen; Hamas = ISIS & ISIS = Hamas; Defeat the 2 Stage/State Solutions; Teach the Brits proper manners; Save the Kurds!
SEE INDEX BELOW:
- Palestinian Statehood? by Louis René Beres 2. What is the rationale for recognizing the non-existent state of Palestine? By Caroline Glick 3.?Is There No End?? By Arlene Kushner 4. Peaceful Muslims Seize French Territory Peacefully 6. IAI reveals ?groundbreaking? defense against IEDs 7. Iron Dome: ?Rigged Success?? 8. ?Tremendously Important? 2,000 Year Old Find in Jerusalem 9. ?Hamas has 2 headquarters: Gaza & Turkey? 10. THE TWO-STAGE SOLUTION? By Martin Sherman, JPOST 11. UK vote epitomizes ignorance & opportunism by Isi Leibler 12. Israel & Embattled Kurdistan by Victor Sharpe
Have a great night & day, All the very best,
Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba/Mom
Check our Website: WinstonIsraelInsight.com
Palestinian Statehood? By Louis René Beres http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4805/palestinian-statehood
October 22, 2014 at 5:00 am
The Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO], forerunner of today?s Palestinian Authority, was founded in 1964, three years before Israel came into the unintended control of the West Bank & Gaza. What therefore as the PLO planning to ?liberate?? Why does no one expect the Palestinians to cease all deliberate & random violence against Israeli civilians before being considered for admission to statehood?
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States endorsed a ?Mandate for Palestine,? confirming the right of Jews to settle anywhere they chose between the Jordan River & the Mediterranean Sea. This is the core American legacy of support for a Jewish State that President Obama now somehow fails to recall.
A sovereign state of Palestine, as identified by the Arabs ? a Muslim land occupied by ?Palestinian? Arabs ? has never existed; not before 1948, & not before 1967. From the start, it was, & continues to be, the Arab states ? not Israel ? that became the core impediment to Palestinian sovereignty.
When U.S. President Barack Obama announces in the United Nations that he wants a two-state solution for Israel & ?Palestine,? & when U.S. Secretary of State repeated it recently ? & when Sweden & the UK vote for a Palestinian State, & now possibly Spain & France ? they should be more careful what they wish for.
Although there is no lawful justification for offering statehood, but Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, on September 26, 2014, told the United Nations that ?the hour of independence of the state of Palestine has arrived.? Earlier, in 2012, the PA had already received elevated status from the UN General Assembly to that of a ?nonmember observer state,? but this elevation fell short of full sovereignty.
There can also be no justification ? ethical, legal, or geopolitical ? for waging war against the ISIS jihadis in Syria & Iraq, while simultaneously urging statehood for the Hamas/PA jihadis in West Bank [Judea & Samaria] & Gaza.
The so-called ?Two-State Solution? approach to the conflict between Israel & the Palestinians, strongly reaffirmed by the US, Sweden & the UK, is founded upon multiple errors. For one, it still accepts the false Arab narrative of an Israeli ?occupation.?
Recurrent & virulent Arab terrorism against the Jews ? who have lived in the area for nearly three thousand years ? began many years before Israel?s de jure statehood. The Hebron riots & massacre of 1929 are perhaps the best known example; & Arab terrorism continued throughout the British Mandate period, 1920-1948.
Organized Arab terrorism against the state Israel began the first hour of Israel?s independence, in mid-May 1948.
The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO], forerunner of today?s Palestinian Authority [PA] was founded in 1964, three years before Israel came into the unintended control of the West Bank [Judea & Samaria] & Gaza.
What therefore, between 1964 & 1967, was the PLO planning to ?liberate?? The answer, of course, was ? & still is ? all of Israel. These are precisely the ?1967 borders? that President Obama has insistently identified as the appropriate starting point for peace negotiations, & that are generally recognized by military experts ? American as well as Israeli ? as the invitingly indefensible ?Auschwitz borders.?
Furthermore, the PLO was formally declared a ?terrorist organization? in a number of major U.S. federal court decisions, including Tel-Oren v. Libyan Arab Republic (1984).
Then, almost ten years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, seeking peace with the fratricidal Palestinian factions, in 2005 forcibly expelled more than 10,000 Jews from Gaza & northern Samaria. Immediately, these ethnically cleansed areas, as a result of relentless & discriminatory Palestinian demands, were transformed by Hamas from productive agricultural & living areas to barren fields and, frequently, extended terrorist rocket-launching sites.
Since then, Israel has had to undertake several major self-defense operations against Gaza-based Palestinian terrorism, most recently, the Gaza War of this summer, Operation Protective Edge.
Why does no one expect the Palestinians to cease all deliberate & random violence against Israeli civilians before being considered for admission to full statehood in the civilized community of nations? It is sadly & abundantly clear that the Palestinians are actually seeking something very different from an ?end to occupation.? Both Fatah & Hamas, in their charters, daily declarations, non-stop incitement to murder, & official maps ? long familiar in Washington ? include all of Israel as a part of ?Palestine.? For both Fatah & Hamas, there has always been the disingenuous quest for a ?One-State Solution,? a not-so-secret code for demographically flooding Israel to make it an Arab state in which the Jews, who have lived on that & for roughly 3000 years, might continue there on sufferance as ?tolerated? subjects or be completely expelled, depending on the speech.[1]
It probably has never even occurred to the U.S. Administration, Sweden or Britain that both Hamas & Fatah still identify their common ideological mentors as Hitler & Goebbels, two figures who remain ardent objects of admiration for the prospective rulers of a nascent ?Palestine?.[2]
At its core, President Obama?s, Sweden?s & Britain?s policy toward Israel & ?Palestine? reveals dangerous & hard-to-correct bewitchments of language. However untrue, the ritualistic canard of an Israeli ?occupation? has now been repeated so often, & so authoritatively, that it is generally taken prima facie as irrefutable fact.?
On June 30, 1922, however, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the ?Mandate for Palestine,? confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine ?anywhere they chose ? between the Jordan River & the Mediterranean Sea. This is the core American legacy of support for a Jewish State that President Obama now somehow fails to recall.
Today, Palestinian claims & policies are fashioned not so much as proper material for diplomatic negotiation (after all, the PA & Hamas are already pursuing accelerated Palestinian statehood outside the framework of previous bilateral legal arrangements with Israel), but rather as a lethal incantation, which still does not make its claim true.
One Israeli prime minister after another has attempted to trade land for peace & each has received, in response, only endless terror attacks, rockets, & protracted war. The reasons for the unrelenting lack of Palestinian reciprocity, generally unhidden & doctrinal [3] can easily be found in our daily newspapers. Both the PA & Hamas leaderships, for example, demand that Israel continue to have 1.8 million Arabs as full citizens of the Jewish State, but simultaneously insist that not a single Jew be allowed to remain as a citizen of the impending Palestinian state. This expectation, that Palestine will be ?Judenrein,? or free of Jews, is a total contradiction of the original U.S. support for the Palestine Mandate, & of all authoritative international law.
Also widely disregarded is that Egypt, Syria, & Jordan were the principal aggressors in the openly genocidal Arab attacks that first began on May 15, 1948, literally moments after the new Jewish State?s UN-backed declaration of independent statehood entered into force.
Already, back in 1918[4], Jerusalem?s Muslim religious leader, Grand Mufti Hajj Amin el-Husseini, stated plainly: ?This was & will remain an Arab land?. the Zionists will be massacred to the last man?. Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country.?
The U.S. Administration, Sweden & Britain also disregard that these same Arab states launched yet another aggression ? that of 1967, or the Six Day War. As a direct result, the so-called Israeli ?occupation? followed. The Israelis pushed back their aggressors, then immediately tried to exchange the newly-acquired land for peace, recognition & negotiations ? only to be told, by the Khartoum Conference the same year, No, no & no.
No, no & NO. From left to right: 1) King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, President Nasser of Egypt, President Sallal of Yemen, Sheikh Sabah of Kuwait & President Arif of Iraq at the1967 Arab League Summit in Khartoum; 2) Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; 3) Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.
During the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence, the West Bank [Judea & Samaria] & Gaza came under the illegal control of Jordan & Egypt respectively. Nothing in prior international law, including the 1947 U.N. General Assembly partition resolution, had ever said anything about any Jordanian or Egyptian title to these lands. The West Bank & Gaza were simply seized ? those were the lands that were ?occupied? ? by these two Arab states after their 1948 aggressions against Israel; & thereafter claimed, as a fait accompli, as the traditional (and no-longer legal in the post-UN Charter world) prerogative of an armed conflict. A sovereign state of Palestine, as identified by the Arabs ? a Muslim land occupied by ?Palestinian? Arabs ? has never existed ? not before 1948 & not before 1967. Moreover, UN Security Council Resolution 242 never promised a state of Palestine. Even as a non-state legal entity, ?Palestine? ceased to exist when Great Britain relinquished its League of Nations mandate.
These Arab aggressions in 1948 did not put an end to any already-existing Arab State of ?Palestine? state. Ironically, what these aggressions did manage to accomplish was the deliberate prevention of an Arab state of ?Palestine.? From the start, it was, & continues to be, the major Arab states ? not Israel ? that became the core impediment to Palestinian sovereignty. The current predicament of what to do with West Bank [Judea & Samaria] & Gaza is the direct result of Arab states? non-compliance with the original UN partition plan of 1947, for which the Jewish side, however reluctantly, had given its full approval.
* * *
A continuous chain of Jewish possession of the land was legally recognized after World War I, during the San Remo Peace Conference in April 1920. The Treaty of Sèvres was signed, in which Great Britain was given mandatory authority over ?Palestine,? based on the expectation that Britain would correctly prepare the area to become the ?national home for the Jewish People?: To wit:
?The Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 8, 1917, by the British Government, & adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.?
In 1922, however, Great Britain, unilaterally, & without lawful authority, split off 78% of the lands promised to the Jews ? all of ?Palestine? east of the Jordan River ? & gave it to Abdullah, the non-Palestinian son of the Sharif of Mecca. Eastern ?Palestine? now took the name ?Transjordan,? which it retained until April 1949, when it was renamed ?Jordan?.
From the moment of its creation, Transjordan was closed to all Jewish migration & settlement, a clear betrayal of the British promise in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, & a grave contravention of its core Mandatory obligations under international law.
In 1947, the newly formed United Nations, rather than designate the entire land west of the Jordan River as the long-promised Jewish national homeland, enacted a second partition. Jewish leaders reluctantly accepted the painful & unjust division. Ironically, despite this second allotment again giving complete advantage to Arab interests, the Arab states did not.
On May 15, 1948, exactly twenty-four hours after the State of Israel came into existence, Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, declared to a tiny new country founded upon the still-glowing ashes of Holocaust: ?This will be a war of extermination, & a momentous massacre.?[5]
This unambiguously genocidal declaration has been at the very heart of all subsequent Arab, Muslim & Islamist actions against Israel, including those of the supposedly ?moderate,? U.S.-supported Palestinian Authority leadership of Fatah. Even by the strict legal standards of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention & Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the actions & attitudes of Arabs & Muslims toward the microscopic Jewish state in their midst have remained genocidal.
Jurisprudentially, what they have in mind for Israel has a formal name: it is called crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity, which include ?Extermination,? was one of three original counts of indictment at the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal, invoked pursuant to the London Charter of August 8, 1945.
In 1967, the Jewish state, as a result of its unexpected military victory over Arab aggressor states after the Six Day War, gained unintended control over West Bank & Gaza. Although the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war is codified in the UN Charter, there still existed no authoritative sovereign to whom the territories could possibly be ?returned.? Israel could hardly have been expected to transfer them back to Jordan & Egypt, which had exercised unauthorized & terribly harsh control since the Arab-initiated ?War of Extermination? in 1948-49, as well as the Arabs repeatedly using that territory to launch aggression against Israel. Moreover, the idea of Palestinian ?self-determination? had only just begun to emerge after the Six Day War; it had not even been included in UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted on November 22, 1967.
The Arab states convened a summit in Khartoum in August 1967, concluding with ?Three Noes?: ?No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.?
The Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] had been formed three years earlier, in 1964, before there were even any ?Israeli occupied territories.? From their own candid statements in the PLO Charter of 1964 & the Hamas Charter of 1988 ? it is this very same territory ? all of Israel ? that they are now planning to liberate.
President Obama?s still-proposed ?Two-State Solution? derives from a misunderstanding based on ignorance ? legal, historical & conceptual ? of Israel & ?Palestine.?
Even if Israel?s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were to agree to a complete cessation of all so-called Jewish ?settlement activity,? no quid pro quo of any kind would be forthcoming from any quarter of the Arab/Islamic world.[6] There was none when Israel left southern Lebanon, none when Israel left Gaza & there is therefore reason to expect there will be none now.
Rather, what still seems in place, & backed by the President Obama, Sweden & the UK, is the PLO ?Phased Plan? of June 9, 1974, which repeats the principle policies of the Palestinian National Council: to take what one can get, then to use that to take the rest ?as a step along the road to comprehensive Arab unity.?[7]
For Israel, any Two-State Solution would conclusively codify another Final Solution ? & simultaneously create another jihadist, enemy terrorist state.
Louis René Beres is a Professor of International Law in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University.
[1] ?PLO ambassador says Palestinian state should be free of Jews?, USA Today, Sept. 13, 2011.
[2] On this point, see Andrew G. Bostom, MD, especially the essay, ?A Salient Example of Hajj Amin-al-Husseini?s Canonical Islamic Jew Hatred,? & also ?The Legacy of Jihad, 2005). Hajj Amin el-Husseini, preeminent Islamic leader during the World War II era, was viewed by Adolf Hitler, Goebbels, & the Waffen-SS, as a ?Muslim pope.? As Bostom further indicates, ?The Nazi regime promoted this former Mufti of Jerusalem in an illustrated biographical booklet, printed in Berlin in 1943, which declared him Muhammad?s direct descendant, an Arab hero, & the ?incarnation of all ideals & hopes of the Arab nation.? On pertinent connections between the current Palestinian movement & Nazism, see also: Jennie Lebel, The Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin-el-Husseini & National Socialism, Paul Munch, Belgrade, 2007, p. 243; & Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy ? Nazi Propaganda during World War II & the Holocaust, Cambridge, 2006, pp 180-181.)
[3] See seminal writings by Dr. Andrew Bostom, above.
[4] Dr. Andrew Bostom in The Legacy of Islamic Anti-Semitism (p. 92)
[5] Akbar al-Yom, Egypt, October 11, 1947, quoted by David Barnett & Efraim Karsh, ?Azzam?s Genocidal Threat,? Middle East quarterly, Fall, 2011
[6] See, for consistently authoritative quotations from official Palestinian sources, PA & Hamas, Palestinian Media Watch, especially its regular special section on ?Israel?s right to exist denied.? See: www.palwatch.org
[7] Article 4: ?Any step taken towards liberation is a step towards the realization of the previous Palestinian National Councils.? & Article 8: ?Once it is established, the Palestinian national authority will strive to achieve a union of the confrontation countries, with the aim of completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory, & as a step along the road to comprehensive Arab unity.?
Palestinian Statehood? by Louis René Beres
?????
What is the rationale for recognizing the non-existent state of Palestine?
By Caroline Glick
The New York Times online debating forum Room For Debate asked me to participate in an online forum regarding the rationale for recognizing the non-existent state of Palestine.
Here?s what I wrote:
When Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced his decision to recognize the non-existent state of ?Palestine? earlier this month, he inadvertently gave the game away.
Lofven said, ?A two-state solution requires mutual recognition & a will to peaceful coexistence. Sweden will therefore recognize the State of Palestine.?
The Palestinians refuse to recognize or peacefully coexist with the State of Israel.
Like his coalition partner Hamas terror master Khaled Mashaal, & despite his sweet talk to Western audiences, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas has pledged, repeatedly, over decades that he will never, ever recognize Israel. During his speech to the UN General Assembly last month he reverted to PLO language from the 1970s, referring to Israel repeatedly as ?the occupying Power,? & ?the racist occupying State.?
So when Lofven recognized ?Palestine,? he joined the Palestinian campaign to destroy Israel. He used the language of the ?two-state solution,? to reject the Jewish state.
Former British foreign minister & Labor MP Jack Straw went a step further this week as he addressed his Parliament before its lopsided 274-12 vote to recognize ?Palestine.?
The vote, he explained, was not about advancing peace. It was a straightforward bid to harm Israel. In his words, ?The only thing that the Israeli government?understands is pressure.?
Lofven, Straw & their colleagues throughout Europe aren?t stupid. They know what they?re doing. They know that Gaza, which Israel vacated nine years ago, is a terror state run by the genocidal jihadists of Hamas. They know that if Israel succumbs to their political & economic warfare & cedes its capital city & historic heartland to its enemies, it will be unable to defend its remaining territory.
And they know that like Gaza, those areas will quickly be taken over by Hamas, which will use them to launch a war of annihilation against Israel in conjunction with its jihadist brethren in surrounding states.
In other words, they know that in recognizing ?Palestine? they are not helping the cause of peace. They are advancing Israel?s ruin.
If they were even remotely interested in freedom & peace, the Europeans would be doing the opposite. They would be working to strengthen & expand Israel, the only stable zone of freedom & peace in the region.
They would abandon the phony two-state solution, which as Straw & Lofven revealed is merely doublespeak for seeking Israel?s destruction & its replacement with a terror state.
With strategic blindness & moral depravity now serving as the twin guideposts for European policy towards Israel, Israel & its supporters must tell the truth about the push to recognize ?Palestine.?
It isn?t about peace or justice. It?s about hating Israel & assisting those who most actively seek its obliteration. Originally published in The New York Times.
What is the rationale for recognizing the non-existent state of Palestine?
By Caroline Glick
From Arlene Kushner akushner18@gmail.com October 22, 2014
?Is There No End??
Late this afternoon, there was a terror attack in Jerusalem. An Arab from eastern Jerusalem ran his car into a group of people who were waiting at the Ammunition Hill station of the light rail. Eight people were injured.
Credit: Flash 90
A 3-month old baby girl,[Chaya Ziso] badly hurt at the scene, died shortly thereafter in the hospital.
A heartbreaker: Apparently the parents had been trying for years to have a baby. They were on the way from praying at the Kotel (Western Wall) when they were attacked. The baby?s grandparents had just come in from the US to meet their new grandchild. They had only hours with her before she was taken from them.
Is there no end??
The terrorist tried to flee the scene on foot & was shot; he was badly wounded but is not dead. Identified as Abdur Rahman Slodi of Silwan, he had previously served in Israeli prison for terrorist activities ? according to press reports. Frankly, I hope he is in a lot of pain.
It is news past due: Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch has announced the formation of a new police unit dedicated to dealing with the ?unrest? in Jerusalem.
Today we saw a full-blown terrorist attack, but for the most part the ?unrest? refers to Arabs throwing stones & Molotov Cocktails, & firecrackers & even, on at least one occasion that I am aware of, fireworks. They function at a level that tends to be less than lethal, but feels unsafe (IS unsafe) & vastly uncomfortable. This is the ?silent intifada? designed to drive out Jews from certain areas of Jerusalem.
Along with the new police unit are plans for adjustment in the law that makes it easier to cope with minors, who are major participants of that ?silent intifada.?
Meanwhile, in Berlin, Kerry, in a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, declared current relations between Israel & the Palestinian Arabs ?unsustainable.? Saying that United States was aware of the urgency of the situation, he indicated that it was necessary to find a way to negotiate. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/22/us-mideast-israel-kerry-idUSKCN0IB11X20141022?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
I would call him a clown, but nothing seems very funny right now. Actually, I rather agree that the current situation is ?unsustainable.? But what I have in mind is not precisely what he is referring to. Hamas spokesman Hossam Badran, in a statement for official television, declared: ?This is a natural response to the crimes of the occupation & invasion of our land by the Jews, particularly on the [Temple Mount].? http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/186472#.VEgOyptxnIU
There a connection between the attitude reflected by this Hamas statement & Kerry?s assessment that the current situation cannot be sustained. He is caught up in the distorted vision of Israel as ?occupier.? Poor suffering ?Palestinians,? whose situation must be remedied. No matter the cost to Israel.
© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by Arlene Kushner, functioning as an independent journalist. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
If it is reproduced & emphasis is added, the fact that it has been added must be noted.
See my website at www.arlenefromisrael.info Contact Arlene at akushner18@gmail.com
Peaceful Muslims Seize French Territory Peacefully
citizenwarriorgeneral@gmail.com]
Peaceful Muslims Seize French Territory Peacefully Posted: 20 Oct 2014 07:08 PM PDT
On our recent article about WikiIslam, ?Tranquil? left this interesting comment:
WikiIslam is excellent!
I want to mention a tactic that I believe is very useful in the fight against Islam. Time & time again I come up against the old ?but what about the peaceful Muslims?? line.
I have found that one good way to defuse that is to point to France (with its 751 ?ZUS zones? ? the no-go areas that are very dangerous for non-Muslims).
These zones were set up by the so-called ?non-violent? Muslims.
All they had to do was to move into an area in large numbers. Property values then drop (allowing even more of them to move in). The locals moved out & presto ? a part of the country is conquered. No guns or bombs needed.
Heck, the French government even has the ZUS zones on its website! This PROVES that these zones ? set up by the ?non-violent Muslims? ? are dangerous.
Two links about these zones:
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2006/11/the-751-no-go-zones-of-france
http://sig.ville.gouv.fr/Atlas/ZUS/
Click link below to see video:
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/IAI-reveals-groundbreaking-defense-against-IEDs-379382
WATCH: IAI reveals ?groundbreaking? defense against IEDs by Dov Lieber JPost.com 10.22.2014 | 28 Tishri, 5775
IAI joins the cyberwarfare race
Airbus Defense & IAI strike deal to produce drones ?
The new three-tiered detection system is mounted onto the front of armored vehicles & possibly eliminates the greatest threat ground forces have faced in recent years.
IAI CIMS system. (photo credit:IAI)
The IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries) has unveiled the latest defense against the threat facing armored vehicles from IED?s & mines?a large rectangular multi-sensor system that is placed on the front of an armored vehicle, which can detect & then destroy hidden explosive devices from long distances.
The CIMS (Counter IED & Mine Suite), which was first unveiled in a US Army exhibition last week in Washington, DC, has three main components: an above-surface detection system, advanced ground penetrating radar & a powerful medal detector.
This three-tiered system enables the CIMS to detect hidden explosives underground, partially exposed above ground & those in camouflage.
According to a video released by the IAI, CIMS can operate day & night & through any weather at a rate of 10 Km/h for a 270° radius. The video also shows a machine gun attached to the tank destroying the detected explosives.
?CIMS was developed primarily in order to enable quick & safe ground maneuvers,? said Nissim Hadas, the Vice President of IAI & CEO of Alta.
Hadas added that ?the development of the system was due to the idea that presently there exists no sufficient solution to this complex military problem that can provide reliable security for ground forces.?
IED?s & mines were the greatest threat to American soldiers in Iraq. According to the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), the average number of US soldiers wounded by IEDs Between 2004 & 2008 was roughly 336 a month.
WATCH: IAI reveals ?groundbreaking? defense against IEDs
Critics of missile defense must have seen their whole multi-decade, multi-million dollar campaign to stop U.S. missile defenses in danger of crashing to the ground.
?All flight tests of the weapon have been rigged,? William Broad, New York Times, June 9, 2000.
The success of Iron Dome apparently gave the lie to the repeated claims that missile defense tests are rigged; that missile defense systems cannot work; that they do not save lives, & that the threat of rocket attacks must be dealt with through appeasement & concessions.
Imagine that hundreds of armed terrorists from ISIS are in a secure sanctuary in northern Mexico. For nearly two months in 2015, they launch 4479 rockets into the United States. Their targets are schools, hospitals, apartment buildings & day-care centers in Texas, New Mexico & Arizona.
Then imagine that not a single person is killed from this terrorist rocket barrage (although mortar fire at one border crossing kills two Americans).
Why are so few Americans harmed? A missile-defense system along America?s border with Mexico was able to shoot down over 90% of the incoming rockets that were engaged, while others could be ignored as they fell harmlessly into the southwestern American desert.
Further imagine that, say, Canada helped fund such a missile-defense. Americans would be thankful for the help of its Canadian brothers & sisters; cheer the defense industry that developed the missile-defense which, as President Reagan said in 1983, allows us to protect lives rather than avenge them; & they would thank God there were so few fatalities.
The media would tell a story of success; folks would move to support further defensive missile technology, & then tell their leaders go & find ISIS & destroy every last vestige of them.
The parallel to this is exactly what took place in the skies over Israel between July 6 & August 26, 2014.
The aggressor was not ISIS but its sister terrorist group, Hamas, which launched 4479 rockets at Israel from the Gaza Strip.[1]
Ninety percent of the rockets launched by Hamas & engaged by the Iron Dome missile defense were destroyed. This defense technology was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Defense (although developed, built & used solely by Israel in 2012 in the first Gaza rocket war).
A battery of the Iron Dome missile defense system. (Image source: IDF)
News outlets such as the Wall Street Journal[2] & CNN lauded the Iron Dome?s success.[3] There were zero Israeli fatalities from Hamas?s rocket fire in areas defended by Iron Dome, although two Israelis perished & 30 Israelis were wounded, some seriously, from Hamas rockets not intercepted by Iron Dome.
Other 2014 articles echoed a similar story from Time magazine on the first use of Iron Dome in 2012: that Iron Dome was the ?most effective, most tested missile shield the world has ever seen.?[4]
But then the story changed.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists started the skeptical coverage on July 19, 2014 with a story purporting to reveal ?The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working.?[5]
Reuter?s David Axe followed up a week later with a story, complaining on July 25, 2014, ?Israel?s Iron Dome is more like an iron sieve.?[6]
On July 31, 2014, the Middle East Monitor entitled a story ?It is a lie to say that Iron Dome is Protecting Israelis from Hamas.? [7]
Two weeks later, August 12, 2014, reporter Dylan Scott asked, ?For all the Hype, Does Israel?s Iron Dome Even Work?? [8]
What happened?
In America there is a strong anti-missile defense ?industry.? Most of the organizations that subscribe to its views are either highly skeptical of missile defenses, or oppose them altogether. [9]
Most have also worked for many years to stop, delay, or defund American missile defense deployments, especially those designed to protect the continental United States as opposed to our allies or forces overseas.
In tracking the success of the Iron Dome, in 2006, before it existed, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, launched 4200 rockets at Israel; they killed 53 people.[10]
In 2012, when Iron Dome was initially deployed with five interceptor missile batteries, Hamas launched 1600 rockets at Israel; they caused five fatalities.
In 2014, Hamas launched 4479 rockets at Israel, which was protected by nine Iron Dome batteries. The rockets caused two fatalities ? in an open area not protected by Iron Dome.
To compare: from 2006 to 2014, more rockets were fired at Israel than were launched by Nazi Germany against Great Britain in all of World War II. Yet Israel fatalities dropped from 53, to 5, to 2.
As noted by Uzi Rubin, founder & former director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization (in Israel?s Ministry of Defense), in his September 12 briefing in Washington, D.C.[11], there were missile defense critics who seemed unhappy that Iron Dome appeared to work well.
Many critics of missile defense sometimes sound as if they assume that the proponents of missile defense want the U.S. to protect America all by itself ? without the help of other nations ? & without relying on arms control agreements with other countries. They thus described President George W. Bush?s 2002 plan to build national missile defenses in Alaska & California as a ?go it alone? strategy.
But is such a charge true? Today, the American Missile Defense Agency [MDA] website features dozens of nations with which the U.S. cooperates in pursuing joint missile-defense objectives ? precisely what missile defense critics complained was not being done.
Furthermore, simultaneously, from 2002-08 the Bush administration also significantly reduced nuclear weapons stockpiles with the Moscow Treaty between the U.S. & Russia, proving the compatibility of pursuing both missile defense & ?working with others? on proliferation threats.
On July 19, 2004, for instance, former MDA Director Lt. Gen. Trey Obering noted in remarks to the Multinational Missile Defense Conference in Berlin, Germany,[12] three keys ways the US had been seeking international cooperation on missile defense during the Bush administration:
?That is why we emphasize in the Missile Defense Agency this simple axiom?geography counts. It matters where we locate the piece parts of the missile defense system. The role for our allies[emphasis added] here is obvious. Second, we need to present a united front to those who would seek to harm us with ballistic missiles. Our ability to deter attacks & dissuade other governments from investing in ballistic missiles will be significantly enhanced if we can speak through our alliances, friendships, & coalitions with a single voice. Third, cooperation means pooling our intellectual & financial resources.? [Emphasis added].
* * *
According to Uzi Rubin[13], the aforementioned press reports relied on amateur videos & photographs of the missile intercepts over Israel, as well as on an examination of pictures of the ?smoke contrails? of the Iron Dome interceptor & Hamas rocket explosions.[14]
Press reports also noted that much of the critical analysis of Iron Dome came from an assessment of the 2012 Gaza missile attacks, & not primarily from the 2014 rocket attacks from Gaza.[15]
National Public Radio [NPR], on its ?All Things Considered? program, just three days after the beginning of the 2014 Gaza War, claimed Iron Dome did not work ? before most data from the 2014 attacks could even be fully collected & analyzed.[16]
After two months of the rocket attacks, some in the arms-control community, such as Subrata Ghoshroy of MIT, originally gave grudging praise for Iron Dome?s success[17] while others, referenced such media coverage as the June 9 NPR story in concluding that the Iron Dome probably did not work.
Others concluded that even if the Iron Dome system did work, it does not make Israel any less blameworthy for protecting itself. As it was put in one essay from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [18], ?Israel needs to end the lockdown on Gaza.? For Israel to allow enemies outspokenly dedicated to its destruction to be better able to attack it?
Still others in the arms-control community eventually went back to their ongoing, comfortable position that if it is a missile defense system, it cannot possibly work. As Philip Coyle emphasized, ?No military system is 90% effective.?[19]
If Iron Dome is effective, & works well, it would be a huge boost to missile defense in general & the security of the U.S. & its allies in particular.
American arms-control groups, however, have defined ?effectiveness?[20] in a manner that makes achieving either workability or effectiveness for U.S. missile defenses extremely difficult.
The current missile defense of the continental United States, for example, intercepts missiles in mid-course, in space, where it is difficult to distinguish decoys & other counter measures from real warheads.
American mid-course-intercept tests have worked in 9 of 14 tests, & have overcome some key technological hurdles. But many critics continue to insist such missile defense tests are rigged & thus the missile defense technology will never demonstrate a sufficient capability to enable a high confidence in the system working. In short, it?s nothing but a military boondoggle.[21]
Under such assumptions, it is not surprising that as one prominent critic from the Union of Concerned Scientists [UCS], Lisbeth Gronlund claimed, missile defense was unachievable unless it was one hundred percent reliable: ?It shouldn?t be deployed,? adding, ?Something is not better than nothing.?[22]
Three years later, at a May 14, 2004 UCS press conference, Gronlund said in a variation on the same theme, ?No missile-defense is better than some defense,? a statement echoed a week later by press conference participant Congressman Rush Holt, who called missile defense a ?wasteful, dead-end program that adds nothing to our real national defense.?[23]
The United States has conducted dozens of missile defense tests for a variety of systems. Such tests have been successful in 66 out of 81 attempts, including, most recently, 20 successful intercept tests in a row, including consecutively successful tests of the U.S. Navy?s Aegis, & the Army?s Terminal High Altitude Air Defense [THAAD] & Patriot missile defenses.
But such a success rate is still not sufficient to get the support of missile defense critics. Philip Coyle of the Center for Arms Control, for example, proclaimed at a June 4, 2014 Brookings Institution missile defense seminar that he was ?surprised? that some of the American missile defense tests failed because they were all ?rigged for success.?[24]
As the New York Times put it in a June 9, 2000 report, ?all flight tests of the weapon have been rigged?. Ironically, this charge by the New York Times was made during the Clinton Administration, although subsequent reporting by the Times made it appear the ?rigged? tests were solely an artifact of the subsequent George W. Bush administration missile defense program.[25]
By contrast, the success of Iron Dome upset the rhetorical apple cart of the missile-defense deniers. In the real world of an actual war, this missile defense system worked. There was nothing ?rigged? about its success ? & obviously it performed in a ?realistic environment.?
As many members of the U.S. Congress concluded this summer after watching & hearing of Iron Dome?s success, if missile defense can protect Israel, missile defense can protect America, too.[26]
The critics of missile defense must have seen their whole multi-decade, multi-million dollar campaign to stop U.S. missile defenses in danger of crashing to the ground if the American people came to believe missile defenses like Iron Dome did, in fact, work ? & work spectacularly well.
* * *
According to a briefing[27] by missile defense expert Uzi Rubin, most critics of Iron Dome were guilty of making seven key mistakes.
First, said Rubin, the pictures & videos of Iron Dome interceptors appearing to plummet to earth ? & thus giving some the idea that Iron Dome was not working ? were an optical illusion that understandably easily confused non-experts. In fact, the Iron Dome interceptors were actually homing in on their targets.
Second, the critics failed to account for nearly 4500 Hamas warheads that had to land somewhere in Israel. If they were not intercepted, where did they go?
Some Iron Dome critics, said Rubin, simply assumed that thousands of Hamas warheads, while not intercepted, either did not explode or were ineffective & thus did not cause much damage.
In fact, Rubin said, Iron Dome intercepted hundreds of Hamas rockets; others fell in open desert or vacant areas, while some did strike property and, in unprotected spaces, did cause some Israeli casualties & injuries, some serious.
By contrast, in 2006, when Israel had no missile defenses against Hezbollah rockets, many more Israelis were killed or wounded, & property damage was extensive.
Third, critics, pointing to mobile phone ?pictures? of Hamas Grad rockets apparently bypassing the Iron Dome interceptors, alleged that the interceptor missile had to ?hit the attacking missile head on,? otherwise the attacking rocket could not be destroyed.
On July 9, for instance, three days after the Hamas rocket attacks commenced, Bob Siegel of NPR said: ?As I understand it, for it to work, it actually has to hit an oncoming rocket head on.? His guest assured him that he was ?correct? adding, ?The Iron Dome has no chance, for all practical purposes, of destroying the [Hamas] artillery rocket.?[28]
According to Uzi Rubin, ?the critics just got this part wrong?.
What they missed, said Rubin,[29] is that Iron Dome has an ?elegant capability? to destroy an adversary?s rocket even if it is just nearby an incoming rocket. The interceptor, Rubin explained, must indeed ?approach? the incoming rocket ?head on? but does not need actually to strike the rocket at that point.
Fourth, Rubin said, damage to property in Israel was totally inconsistent with the idea that Iron Dome failed to intercept a high percent of Hamas rockets. Damage from such rocket attacks, he explained, is reimbursed by the State of Israel upon the filing of a claim, no questions asked. Even if it is not unheard of to have people fudge things & occasionally blame some ?fender benders? on ?rocket attacks,? in 2014, despite twice as many rocket attacks as in 2012, the number of Israel property-damage claims fell by 25%.
Fifth, in 2014, despite an increase in the number & frequency of rocket attacks, Israel?s fatalities fell from 53 to 2, a decrease of 97%.[30]
Sixth, in all measures of lethality, there were dramatically fewer casualties & property damage in Israel in 2014 when Iron Dome was deployed, compared to the casualties & property damage from rockets in the 2006 Lebanon War, when Iron Dome was not deployed.
Finally, Rubin explained that Israel?s civil defense shelters ? often simply safe-rooms in buildings & apartments ? did not account for the low number of casualties & scarce property damage in 2014.[31] The same civil defense shelters were present in 2006 when 53 Israelis died in the missile war that year. & Israelis are not able to run for shelter faster now than in 2006.
The difference, then, between 2006 & 2014 was precisely the presence of Iron Dome.
In short, Iron Dome gave the lie to the repeated claims that missile defense tests are ?successful? only because they are rigged; that missile defense systems cannot work; that they do not save lives, & that the threat of rocket attacks must be dealt with through appeasement & concessions.
Missile threats from countries such as Iran & North Korea can be dealt with, at least in part, by missile defenses.
We do not have to be victims unless we choose to be. We can successfully defend ourselves.
We should, finally, ask ourselves seriously: Is ?No missile-defense better than some defense?? Really?
[1] ?Israeli Missile Defense? by Uzi Rubin, who founded & was the first director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization in the Israel Ministry of Defense (MOD) & is known as the ?Father? of the Israeli Arrow Missile Defense? September 12, 2014 from C-Span, read more.
[2] WSJ Video, ?How Israel?s Iron Dome Rocket Defense System Works?, July 11, 2014, noting its successful intercept rate.
[3] ?How Iron Dome blocks rockets from Gaza, protects Israelis? by Michael Martinez & Josh Levs, CNN, July 9, 2014
[4] ?Iron Dome: A Missile Shield That Works?, Time.com, November 19, 2012,
[5] ?The evidence that shows Iron Dome is not working?, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), July 19, 2014.
[6] . ?Israel?s Iron Dome is more like an iron sieve?, by David Axe, Reuters, July 25, 2014. Axe writes: The conclusions were based on ?Careful analysis of amateur videos & photos of Iron Dome interceptions over the past three years?most of [this] data is from a previous round of fighting in 2012.?
[7] ?Middle East Monitor Story on Missile Defense Quotes Phil Coyle? by Alastair Sloan July 31, 2014, subtitled ?It is a lie to say that Iron Dome is protecting Israelis from Hamas.?
[8] In ?For All The Hype, Does Israel?s Iron Dome Even Work??, Talking Points Memo, August 21, 2014, Dylan Scott asks: ?But what if the U.S. government is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into a system that isn?t nearly as effective as it is claimed to be??
[9] The Arms Control Lobby Confronts Ballistic Missile Defense: Critics Torture Logic to Discredit Anti-Missile Technology, March 2003 Capital Research Center, Washington, D.C.
[10] From Uzi Rubin, September 12, 2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan.
[11] From Uzi Rubin, September 12, 2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan. See also ?Iron Dome?Savior, or Sales Job??, by Jim Fallows, The Atlantic, July 15, 2014, & ?Does Israel?s US-funded Iron Dome make the world safer?? by Azriel Bermant, The Guardian, August 6, 2014.
[12] From the MDA.org website, Address by Lt.Gen (Ret) Trey Obering, USAF, former Director, Missile Defense Agency, Multinational BMD Conference, Berlin, Germany, July 19, 2004.
[13] From Uzi Rubin, September 12,2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan.
[14] From Uzi Rubin, September 12,2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan.
[15] Aviation Week & Space Technology, ?Iron Dome ? Are The Critics On Target?? by Bill Sweetman, Aug 25, 2014.
[16] ?The Rockets from Hamas, & the Iron Dome That Could Use Patching?, July 9, 2014, All Things Considered, National Public Radio.
[17] ?Israel?s Iron Dome: A misplaced debate?, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), July 29, 2014.
[18] ?Israel?s Iron Dome: A misplaced debate?, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS), July 29, 2014. See also: ?More Than a Missile: Judging Iron Dome? by Zachary Goldman, August 11, 2014, Commentary;?Iron Dome: The public relations weapon? by John Mecklin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS). Mecklin writes: ?Israel?s Iron Dome rocket defense system is high-tech. So is the PR campaign around it.? 27 May, 2014. & ?Iron Dome Boondoggle: Has Obama Just Signed a $225M Check for a Defective Israeli Missile Shield?,? DemocracyNow.org. See also David Talbot in Technology Review, ?Israeli Rocket Defense System is Failing?, July 10, 2014.
[19] Quoted in the Middle East Monitor story by Alastair Sloan of July 31, 2014 entitled ?It is a lie to say that Iron Dome is protecting Israelis from Hamas.?
[20] For an extended look at what makes missile defense effective, the June 26, 2014 update of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis [IFPA] Independent Working Group on Missile Defense is an excellent source as well as ?The Arms Control Lobby Confronts Ballistic Missile Defense: Critics Torture Logic to Discredit Anti-Missile Technology?, March 2003 Capital Research Center, Washington, D.C. See Defense Dossier, American Foreign Policy Council, February 10, 2014, ?Missile Defense for Today & Tomorrow? by Rebeccah Heinrichs.
[21] Missile Defense Agency ? U.S. Department of Defense test data show 65 of 79 actual tests were successful (excluding two tests where the test was aborted because the target or interceptor did not launch).
[22] At the Union of Concerned Scientists, Press Conference, on July 26, 2001. At a later Washington, D.C., UCS Press Conference, on May 14, 2004, Lisbeth Gronlund said: ?No missile-defense is better than some defense.?
[23] Congressman Rush Holt, (D-NJ), Congressional Record, May 21, 2004, House of Representatives. Also May 14, 2004, UCS press conference & follow-up remarks on May 21, 2004 on the floor of the House.
[24] ?U.S. Missile Defense Developments: How Far? How Fast?? Brookings Institution, June 4, 2014.
[25] ?Antimissile Testing is Rigged to Hide a Flaw, Critics Say,? by William Broad, June 9, 2000, New York Times.
[26] ?Americans Should Take Notes on Israel?s Iron Dome?, by Rebeccah Heinrichs , July 27, 2014, Daily Signal.
[27] From Uzi Rubin briefing in Washington, D.C. provided to over 120 top defense specialists, September 12, 2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan.
[28] ?The Rockets from Hamas, & the Iron Dome That Could Use Patching?, July 9, 2014, All Things Considered, National Public Radio.
[29] From the Uzi Rubin, ?The Gaza Missile Wars? September 12, 2014 briefing (picked up by C-Span).
[30] From Uzi Rubin, September 12,2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan. The rocket attacks were 4200 in 2006 & 4479 in 2014.
[31] From Uzi Rubin, September 12,2014, ?The Gaza Missile Wars?, CSpan.
Iron Dome: ?Rigged Success?? NOT!! by Peter Hussey Arutz 7
FREEMAN CENTER BROADCAST October 21, 2014
For Zion?s sake I will not hold my peace & for Jerusalem?s sake I will not rest.? Isaiah 62.
FREEMAN CENTER FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES P.O. Box 35661 * Houston, Texas 77235-5661
* E-mail: bernards@sbcglobal.net OUR WEB SITE < www.freeman.org >
Ignorance Is Weakness Know The Truth Self-Inflicted Ignorance Is Suicide The Freeman Center Defends Against ignorance
?Tremendously Important? 2,000 Year Old Find in Jerusalem By Tova Dvorin: Arutz Sheva ? First Publish 10/21/2014,
IAA hails discovery of ?extremely rare? Latin inscription; researchers say it proves historical accounts of rebellions against the Romans.
Inscription found Yuli Schwartz, courtesy of the IAA
The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced a rare find of ?tremendous historical significance,? it announced Tuesday: a fragment of a stone engraved with an official Latin inscription dedicated to the Roman emperor Hadrian.
IAA researchers stated during the announcement that the stone fragment, found during a series of excavations north of Damascus Gate, may be among ?the most important Latin inscriptions ever discovered in Jerusalem.?
Researchers say the significance of the inscription stems from the fact that it specifically mentions the name & titles of Hadrian who was an extremely prominent emperor, as well as a clear date ? a tangible confirmation of the historical account regarding the presence of the Tenth Legion in Jerusalem during the period between the two Jewish revolts against Roman rule.
Dr. Rina Avner & Roie Greenwald, excavation directors on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, spoke to the press about the discovery. ?We found the inscription incorporated in secondary use around the opening of a deep cistern,? they said, in a statement. ?In antiquity, as today, it was customary to recycle building materials & the official inscription was evidently removed from its original location & integrated in a floor for the practical purpose of building the cistern.?
?Furthermore, in order to fit it with the capstone, the bottom part of the inscription was sawed round,? they added.
The size & clarity of the letters make the discovery important, they said. The inscriptions, consisting of six lines of Latin text engraved on hard limestone, was read & translated by Avner Ecker & Hannah Cotton of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The English translation of the inscription reads, ?To the Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, son of the deified Traianus Parthicus, grandson of the deified Nerva, high priest, invested with tribunician power for the 14th time, consul for the third time, father of the country (dedicated by) the 10th legion Fretensis Antoniniana.?
?This inscription was dedicated by Legio X Fretensis to the emperor Hadrian in the year 129/130 CE,? Ecker & Cotton concluded, adding that the find is the second half of a single inscription.
The first was discovered nearby in the 19th century & was published by the pre-eminent French archaeologist Charles Clermont-Ganneau; it is currently on display at the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Museum ? also known as the the Faculty of Biblical Sciences & Archaeology of the Pontificia Universitas Antonianum ? in Rome, Italy.
Only a small number of ancient official Latin inscriptions have been discovered in excavations throughout the country & in Jerusalem in particular.
Once the excavation findings are published the inscription will be conserved & put on display for the public
?Tremendously Important? 2,000 Year Old Find in Jerusalem
?Hamas has 2 headquarters: Gaza & Turkey?
By Shlomo Cesana, Daniel Siryoti, Eli Leon & Israel Hayom Staff
Defense Minister Moshe Ya?alon tells U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel: Turkey is playing a cynical game ? Ya?alon thanks Hagel for U.S. support, says disagreements should not cloud the ?deep friendship? between Israel & the U.S.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel & Defense Minister Moshe Ya?alon at the Pentagon, Tuesday
Photo credit: Reuters
In a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Tuesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya?alon criticized Turkey for the support it provides to Hamas.
?Turkey is playing a cynical game,? Ya?alon told Hagel. ?Hamas is supported by Turkey & Qatar. Hamas has two terror headquarters ? in Gaza & in Istanbul. Hamas moved its terror headquarters from Damascus to Istanbul, in Turkey, a NATO member, where it is represented by Saleh al-Arouri, who orchestrates terrorist attacks against Israel from there & attempted to instigate a coup against [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas in Judea & Samaria,? Ya?alon said.
Ya?alon & Hagel discussed a range of topics on Tuesday, including Iran, the Islamic State group, Syria, Operation Protective Edge & Israel-U.S. defense ties. Ya?alon thanked Hagel for U.S. aid in the development of the Iron Dome anti-rocket system.
?Even if there are disagreements between the U.S. & Israel, they should not be allowed to cloud the deep friendship & warm, intimate ties between the two countries,? Ya?alon said.
A U.S. Defense Department statement said Hagel ?reaffirmed the United States? deep commitment to the security of Israel, & the importance of the U.S.-Israel defense relationship.? Hagel & Ya?alon ?agreed to continue to work together to maintain the strength of the U.S.-Israel security relationship,? the statement said.
Regarding the Iranian nuclear threat & the ongoing nuclear talks between world powers & Iran (there is a Nov. 24 deadline for a final agreement to be reached), Ya?alon told Hagel, ?The Iranian issue indeed worries us. The question of if there will be an agreement & what kind of agreement worries us. We?ve said all along that better no agreement than a bad agreement & the question is what are they discussing at the moment, are they talking about how many centrifuges there will be & if so, why should they have centrifuges at all? Are they talking about other elements of the Iranian military nuclear project such as missiles ready for nuclear warheads??
On the Islamic State group, Ya?alon said it poses a threat to stability in the Middle East. He called for the strengthening of moderate forces in the region who are fighting against the group. Ya?alon said Israel believes the Islamic State group can be stopped.
Ya?alon is currently in the U.S. on a five-day work visit. On Monday, he held meetings in New York with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon & U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power.
Meanwhile, in a Vanity Fair article published on Tuesday, IDF officials confirmed that Hamas had planned to use cross-border tunnels to carry out a massive terrorists attack inside Israel.
?Hamas had a plan,? Lt. Col. Peter Lerner of the IDF Spokesperson?s Unit said. ?A simultaneous, coordinated, surprise attack within Israel. They planned to send 200 terrorists armed to the teeth toward civilian populations. This was going to be a coordinated attack. The concept of operations involved 14 offensive tunnels into Israel. With at least 10 men in each tunnel, they would infiltrate & inflict mass casualties.?
It is unknown when Hamas planned to conduct the attack. The plot was thwarted by the events of this summer, which saw Israel launch Operation Protective Edge, during which several dozen Hamas tunnels were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces.
?Hamas has 2 headquarters: Gaza & Turkey?
The entire issue of Palestinian statehood, & the Palestinian narrative on which it is based, are nothing but a giant hoax so transparent it is inconceivable that anyone even feigns credence to it.
With the two-state solution? Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land & the chosen people? What will become of all the sacrifices they made ? just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea & Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse?. Then we will move forward.?
? Abbas Zaki, senior PLO official. (ANB TV, Lebanon, May 7, 2009)
Two recent events have once again propelled Palestinian statehood into the forefront of media spotlight, after several months of it being overshadowed by other events like developments in Ukraine, the war in Gaza & the televised barbarity of Islamic State.
One was the statement by Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven (subsequently somewhat equivocally revised) that his country would recognize a Palestinian state. The other was the British Parliament?s (nonbinding, but in the eyes of some, historic) vote on recognition of statehood for the Palestinians.
In light of these incidents, I was invited to appear on i24news news & participate in a discussion with a Palestinian interlocutor on the prospects for, & the prudence of, establishing a Palestinian state.
Much of what follows reflects the things I said during that 20-minute debate ? & the things I didn?t, but would have, had time permitted.
Patently incompatible
I began by asserting that it should be obvious to anyone with an iota of intellectual integrity that establishing a Palestinian state, in any conceivable configuration, is incompatible with the security & survival of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
It is incomprehensible for anyone who holds this view of Israel?s role in the world not to strive to have the issue of Palestinian statehood removed from the international discourse.
After all, the recent round of fighting in Gaza should have brought home dramatically the perils involved in a Palestinian entity with a short 50-km. border, abutting the sparsely populated, mainly rural South.
Thus, little imagination is required to grasp the horrific implications for Israel entailed in the establishment of yet another Palestinian entity in Judea-Samaria (a.k.a. ?West Bank?), but now with a 500-km. border, abutting the heavily populated urban center of the country ? with Ben-Gurion, Israel?s only international airport, easily within mortar range.
Just what the significance of this latter element is should be vividly underscored by two disturbing features of the last clash in Gaza. First, Ben-Gurion was closed down by the landing of a single stray rocket in its approximate vicinity. Second, the Iron Dome defense system, highly effective against Kassam & Grad rockets, was markedly less so against mortar fire.
Disastrously disruptive
Little imagination is required to envision the disastrously disruptive consequences for Israel?s international air contacts were its only gateway subjected to incessant ? even intermittent ? short-range mortar barrages from nearby locations, far more accurate than any occasional rocket launched from the remote Gaza Strip.
Much the same could be said for the country?s land transport system ? with the Trans-Israel Highway (Route 6) running for much of its length immediately adjacent to, & well within rifle range from, any prospective frontier.
Moreover, the impact of this chilling prospect is magnified by the fact that, unlike Gaza, much of the territory earmarked for a future Palestinian state comprises the limestone highlands which dominate Israel?s urbanized Coastal Plain. In it lie virtually all of Israel?s major airfields (civilian & military); main seaports & naval bases; vital infrastructure installations/systems (power generation & transmission, water, communications & transportation systems); centers of civilian government & military command; & 80 percent of the civilian population & commercial activity.
All of these could be disrupted at will, at minimal cost, by any hostile forces, whether regular or renegade, deployed on the western slopes of these highlands.
Clearly, recurrent disruption of their functioning ? or even a tangible threat thereof ? would make the maintenance of socioeconomic routine untenable.
?Not since Dr. Goebbels??
Amplifying the dire danger that a Palestinian state would pose for Israel is the undisguised intention of the Palestinians, of all political persuasions, to exploit such a state as a platform for further assaults on the Jewish state, until ?Palestine,? from the River to the Sea, is totally free of the ?Zionist invader.?
To convey the manifest mendacity of the Palestinian position, I drew on a quotation from an opinion column titled ?Palestinian Lies? that appeared in Haaretz, towards the end of the near-hegemonic era of the Labor Party, then headed by Yitzhak Rabin: ?Of all Palestinian lies there is no lie greater or more crushing than that which calls for the establishment of a separate Palestinian state in the West Bank? Not since the time of Dr. Goebbels has there been a case in which continual repetition of a lie has borne such great fruits??
There was a tangible sense of surprise in the i24news studio when I revealed that these were not the words of some rightwing religious radical, but of Prof. Amnon Rubinstein, who was elected to the Knesset soon after penning the cited article, served for a decade as an MK for the far-left dovish Meretz party, & held the post of minister of education.
One narrative; five myths
I took the firm position that Rubinstein?s assessment of the veracity of Palestinian claims is essentially accurate, & that the Palestinian narrative is nothing but a giant hoax, a gigantic political sleight-of-hand, comprising five transparent myths: Myth of Palestinian Peoplehood; Myth of Palestinian Nationhood; Myth of Palestinian Homeland; Myth of Palestinian Statelessness; & Myth of Palestinian Refugees.
I have discussed these myths in some detail in previous columns. All are easily refutable, indeed freely admitted, falsehoods, intended to blur the fact that the two-state prescription is a two-stage blueprint for the annihilation of Israel.
When my Palestinian interlocutor in the debate charged that my position merely reflected my own, uninformed prejudices, I replied that quite the opposite is true.
My contentions can all be conclusively corroborated by deeds, declarations & documents of the Palestinians.
I began by citing former Arab MK Azmi Bishara, described as a ?Palestinian intellectual,? & forced to flee Israel to avoid investigation of alleged acts of treason during the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
One could hardly find a more resounding renunciation of Palestinian nationhood than that provided by Bishara when, in a 1994 Channel 2 program, he astounded his Israeli co-participants with the following assertion: ?I don?t think there is a Palestinian nation at all. I think there is an Arab nation. I always thought so? I think it?s a colonialist invention ? a Palestinian nation. When were there any Palestinians? Where did it come from?? Indeed, when? Indeed, where? A swift tour d?horizon of decades of what prominent Palestinians have done, said & written will convincingly confirm the flagrant falsehood of the Palestinian narrative & the sinister subterfuge on which their demand for statehood is founded.
Five myths (cont.)
For example, senior Palestinian leaders have admitted ? openly, consistently & continually ? that Palestinians are not, & never have been, a distinct people identifiably different from others in the Arab world (Myth of Peoplehood).
But not only do the Palestinians admit that they are not a discrete socio-ethnic entity ? i.e. a people ? they concede that as a political unit ? i.e. a nation ? their demands & aspirations are neither genuine nor permanent (Myth of Nationhood) & are merely a contrivance to undermine Jewish nationhood.
The Palestinians explicitly eschewed any sovereign claims to the ?West Bank? (and Gaza), only incorporating them in their territorial claims after these territories came under Israeli control (Myth of Homeland), clearly vindicating the view that the concept of Palestinian ?national identity? is a fabricated construct, conjured up to further the Arab quest to repudiate Jewish national claims.
Moreover, the Palestinians are ?stateless? not as a result of callous Israeli malfeasance, but of deliberate Arab malevolence (Myth of Statelessness). It is the Arabs who either stripped them of citizenship they already had (as King Hussein did in 1988), or precluded them from acquiring citizenship they desire (as per the Arab League directive).
Finally, regarding the issue of refugees, it is becoming increasingly difficult to conceal the fact that the status of Palestinian ?refugees? is totally different from that of all other refugees on the face of the globe (Myth of Refugees). Were the same criterion that applies to all other cases, applied to the Palestinians, the number of refugees would plunge dramatically ? from around 5 million claimed today, to fewer than 50,000.
The malice behind the myths
Arguably the most dramatically revealing & comprehensive declaration as to the malicious mendacity that underlies Palestinian claims to statehood was provided by the late Zuheir Mohsin, a senior member of the PLO Executive, in an interview to the Dutch newspaper Trouw.
It is a declaration frequently cited by opponents of Palestinian statehood, yet seldom repudiated by its proponents. I, too, have referred to several portions of it in the past, but in the present international context, I feel there is great value in presenting it in its entirety.
In the interview headlined: ?We are only Palestinians for political reasons,? Moshin stated frankly: ?There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians & Lebanese.?
We are all part of ONE people, the Arab nation? We are ONE people. Only for political reasons we carefully underwrite our Palestinian identity. Because it is of national interest for the Arabs to advocate the existence of Palestinians to balance Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons. The establishment of a Palestinian state is a new tool to continue the fight against Israel & for Arab unity.
?A separate Palestinian entity needs to fight for the national interest in the then remaining occupied territories. The Jordanian government cannot speak for Palestinians in Israel, Lebanon or Syria. Jordan is a state with specific borders. It cannot lay claim on ? for instance ? Haifa or Jaffa, while I AM entitled to Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem & Beersheba? The Palestinian state would be entitled to represent all Palestinians in the Arab world & elsewhere. Once we have accomplished all of our rights in all of Palestine, we must not postpone the unification of Jordan & Palestine for one second,? Moshin said.
Two stages, not two states
It is hard to conceive of a more brazen confession that the true goal of the twostate principle is the two-stage destruction of Israel.
It would be a perilous error to dismiss this as unrepresentative of mainstream Palestinian opinion today.
Nowhere is it more clearly articulated than in the Palestinian National Covenant, still posted on the official ?State of Palestine? site hosted by the UN. It proclaims:
?Article 19: The partition of Palestine in 1947, & the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time?
?Article 20: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, & everything that has been based on them, are deemed null & void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history??
Article 12 lays out the temporary nature of Palestinian identity in the staged strategy for the ?liberation? of ?Palestine? defined as ?an indivisible territorial unit, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate.?
It states: ?The Palestinian people are a part of the Arab Nation? [and] believe in Arab unity? however, they must, at the present stage of their struggle, safeguard their Palestinian identity??
The present stage? See what I mean by two stages?
Stage one: Create Palestine.
Stage two: Eliminate Israel ? precisely as per Abbas Zaki in the introductory excerpt.
The real tragedy
All of this is ? or at least, should be ?painfully obvious. Yet, Israel has failed ? even refused ? to make this case to the world.
This is inexcusable, incomprehensible & unacceptable.
For as Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, correctly underscored in bemoaning the Swedish initiative, (Jerusalem Post, October 14), doing so is a ?strategic imperative? for the nation.
It is one that Israel has failed dismally to address. That is, perhaps, the greatest tragedy of all.
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is the founder & executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies (www.strategic- israel.org)
The two-stage ?solution?