02.27.05 (9:29 am) [edit]
DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Report
February 26, 2005, 3:39 PM (GMT+02:00)
The dark days of Palestinian terror returned to Israel Friday night as a savage reminder that the three-and-a- half months of apparent lull were a pleasant fantasy.
Israeli security forces were not surprised. Throughout the phony calm, between 50 and 60 threatened bombings were constants on their screens. And although the military had drastically cut down on its counter-terror operations and precautions to give the new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas a chance to rein in Palestinian terror, still ticking bombs from all the Palestinian terrorist organizations were caught almost daily in the West Bank.
The suicide bomber who blew up a crowd waiting to go into The Stage nightclub on Tel Aviv’s beachfront Friday night, February 25, was no lone killer. He was just the first to slip through the Israeli security net after many of his fellows had tried and failed. He murdered at least four people – one woman is still fighting for her life - out for an evening of singsong and karioki. More than 50 were injured. After the Sharm el-Sheikh ceasefire declaration two weeks ago, the club had considered cutting down on its security outlay. With its front blown out, the owners are thinking again. The presence of four guards outside the door deterred the suicide bomber from trying to enter the enclosed space and killing many more people.
In Jerusalem, illusions died earlier after DEBKAfile reported three separate alerts in the last two weeks for suicide bombers on their way from the West Bank to strikes in the capital. All were captured with their bomb belts. The only minister willing to tell the public about the aborted threat was foreign minister Silvan Shalom during an interview to Public Radio, New York.
Tel Aviv and central Israel are now too on elevated terror alert for the coming days.
In the wake of the Tel Aviv attack, the Sharon government faces grave charges that will resonate in its regular session Sunday, February 27.
Rather than heed their own security chiefs’ warnings that Palestinian terrorist groups were about to unleash a fresh onslaught against Israeli civilians, prime minister Ariel Sharon and defense minister Shaul Mofaz were preoccupied with political maneuvers over the coming withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. To this end, they applied an axe to sack or silence the most effective apolitical critics of the disengagement plan and of the premature lowering of Israel’s counter-terror guard; chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, Shin Beit Director Avi Dichter and military intelligence chief Brigadier Aharon Zeevi are all on their way out.
By common consent, all the Palestinian terrorist groups quickly denied responsibility for the Tel Aviv bomb blast, pointing the finger at the Hizballah. This cry was taken up by the Israeli media quoting both Israeli and Palestinian official sources. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ vow to catch the instigators and bring them to justice belied this claim. It betrayed his knowledge that the killer’s dispatchers are to be found at home. His officers then arrested three suspects. Their release by tomorrow would be par for the course. Abbas has not so far raised a finger to dismantle any of terrorist groups and nothing more is expected from him than symbolic punishment for the instigators.
But Sharon’s office has made it clear that Abbas will be given still more leeway before any drastic military action is undertaken and exchanges with the Palestinians will not be interrupted.
The Hizballah fiction will be hard to sustain. DEBKAfile’s Lebanese sources report that in the two weeks ago since Lebanese opposition leader Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has sternly forbidden his men to so much as fire a shot in Israel’s direction so as not to give the US or Israel a pretext for hitting his bases or Syria in reprisal for the murder. For once, therefore, the Hizballah did not congratulate Palestinians on their “success” or join Palestinian celebrations in the Gaza Strip.
The most serious allegation leveled against Sharon by informed sources is his failure to respond to a development revealed exclusively by DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources. Instead of cracking down on terrorists, Abu Mazen and his sidekick Mohammed Dahlan have secretly applied to more than 20 world governments with urgent requests for large quantities of heavy weapons. The Israeli government was too busy elsewhere to keep track of this development or to calibrate national security measures and the easing of anti-terror restrictions accordingly.
According to our sources, the countries solicited for arms are primarily in Europe – Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden as well as Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, China, India and Pakistan. The list of countries not addressed is much shorter: United States and Japan. Palestinian Authority leaders calculated that however many or few respond in the affirmative – which several have – Israel cannot afford to get into a fight with them all.
The list of Palestinian requirements is attached to an innocent-sounding request signed by Mahmoud Abbas for combat equipment to restore and build up Palestinian security forces with all possible speed. He asks the recipients to contribute to the creation of the Palestinian state by allocating outdated items no longer in the use of their armies.
DEBKAfile has seen the list. It is impressive and hardly relevant for a Palestinian state dedicated by international treaty to live in peace with Israel. It includes all types of armored personnel carriers with fixed mortars, jeeps fitted with 107 mm recoilless guns, telescopic rifles, pistols, ammunition, communications and engineering gear, helmets and medical equipment.
The army Abbas is building is designed to absorb the disassembled Palestinian terrorist organizations. For the first time, they will be equipped with heavy arms.
Asked how the shipments would be delivered over Israel’s objections, Abbas and Dahlan pointed out that once the Israelis had pulled back the Gaza Strip and Egyptian border, there would be no one to stop the hardware being unloaded at the reopened Gaza port or coming through northern Sinai past Egyptian patrols.
Shopping for heavy arms is in total contravention of every international accord the Palestinians, including Abu Mazen in person, have ever signed with Israel and every pledge Abbas has made to the Bush administration and other world leaders. Informed security officials are urging the Sharon government to suspend its interchanges with the Palestinian Authority, halt the removal of roadblocks and handover of West Bank towns to Palestinian security control, revert to targeted assassinations and take military action to prevent the delivery of illicit military hardware into dangerous terrorist hands.
In 2001, the Israeli air force and naval commandos intercepted the Karine-A with 50 tons of heavy weapons from Iran bound for the Palestinian Authority. Exposure of this latest underhand intrigue should top the agenda at the London meeting supposedly on Palestinian security reforms opening in London Tuesday. It is a matter of urgent concern for the United States and Middle East Quartet members committed to the road map. Instead, Russian foreign minister frankly admitted Friday, February 25, to supplying the Palestinians with “military machines” and said Moscow was considering sending them APCs since the Palestinian Authority, he ventured to claim, had proved itself in control of security.
A leading Israeli security expert, asked by DEBKAfile, how heavy weapons deliveries would affect Israeli security, explained that Palestinian terrorists would be able to conduct hit and run attacks and military assaults inside Israel and against Israeli military positions and vehicles, national highways and strategic points. They would then escape to sovereign Palestinian territory. In Gaza, Mussa Arafat would have the use of mobile artillery to blitz Israeli towns and villages.
In the expert’s opinion, the IDF would in the end extinguish this peril too, but the cost in lives would be high indeed. The first to pay the price were the victims of Palestinian terror in Tel Aviv Friday night.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Report
February 26, 2005, 3:39 PM (GMT+02:00)
The dark days of Palestinian terror returned to Israel Friday night as a savage reminder that the three-and-a- half months of apparent lull were a pleasant fantasy.
Israeli security forces were not surprised. Throughout the phony calm, between 50 and 60 threatened bombings were constants on their screens. And although the military had drastically cut down on its counter-terror operations and precautions to give the new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas a chance to rein in Palestinian terror, still ticking bombs from all the Palestinian terrorist organizations were caught almost daily in the West Bank.
The suicide bomber who blew up a crowd waiting to go into The Stage nightclub on Tel Aviv’s beachfront Friday night, February 25, was no lone killer. He was just the first to slip through the Israeli security net after many of his fellows had tried and failed. He murdered at least four people – one woman is still fighting for her life - out for an evening of singsong and karioki. More than 50 were injured. After the Sharm el-Sheikh ceasefire declaration two weeks ago, the club had considered cutting down on its security outlay. With its front blown out, the owners are thinking again. The presence of four guards outside the door deterred the suicide bomber from trying to enter the enclosed space and killing many more people.
In Jerusalem, illusions died earlier after DEBKAfile reported three separate alerts in the last two weeks for suicide bombers on their way from the West Bank to strikes in the capital. All were captured with their bomb belts. The only minister willing to tell the public about the aborted threat was foreign minister Silvan Shalom during an interview to Public Radio, New York.
Tel Aviv and central Israel are now too on elevated terror alert for the coming days.
In the wake of the Tel Aviv attack, the Sharon government faces grave charges that will resonate in its regular session Sunday, February 27.
Rather than heed their own security chiefs’ warnings that Palestinian terrorist groups were about to unleash a fresh onslaught against Israeli civilians, prime minister Ariel Sharon and defense minister Shaul Mofaz were preoccupied with political maneuvers over the coming withdrawals from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. To this end, they applied an axe to sack or silence the most effective apolitical critics of the disengagement plan and of the premature lowering of Israel’s counter-terror guard; chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon, Shin Beit Director Avi Dichter and military intelligence chief Brigadier Aharon Zeevi are all on their way out.
By common consent, all the Palestinian terrorist groups quickly denied responsibility for the Tel Aviv bomb blast, pointing the finger at the Hizballah. This cry was taken up by the Israeli media quoting both Israeli and Palestinian official sources. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ vow to catch the instigators and bring them to justice belied this claim. It betrayed his knowledge that the killer’s dispatchers are to be found at home. His officers then arrested three suspects. Their release by tomorrow would be par for the course. Abbas has not so far raised a finger to dismantle any of terrorist groups and nothing more is expected from him than symbolic punishment for the instigators.
But Sharon’s office has made it clear that Abbas will be given still more leeway before any drastic military action is undertaken and exchanges with the Palestinians will not be interrupted.
The Hizballah fiction will be hard to sustain. DEBKAfile’s Lebanese sources report that in the two weeks ago since Lebanese opposition leader Rafiq Hariri was assassinated, Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah has sternly forbidden his men to so much as fire a shot in Israel’s direction so as not to give the US or Israel a pretext for hitting his bases or Syria in reprisal for the murder. For once, therefore, the Hizballah did not congratulate Palestinians on their “success” or join Palestinian celebrations in the Gaza Strip.
The most serious allegation leveled against Sharon by informed sources is his failure to respond to a development revealed exclusively by DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources. Instead of cracking down on terrorists, Abu Mazen and his sidekick Mohammed Dahlan have secretly applied to more than 20 world governments with urgent requests for large quantities of heavy weapons. The Israeli government was too busy elsewhere to keep track of this development or to calibrate national security measures and the easing of anti-terror restrictions accordingly.
According to our sources, the countries solicited for arms are primarily in Europe – Britain, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden as well as Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, China, India and Pakistan. The list of countries not addressed is much shorter: United States and Japan. Palestinian Authority leaders calculated that however many or few respond in the affirmative – which several have – Israel cannot afford to get into a fight with them all.
The list of Palestinian requirements is attached to an innocent-sounding request signed by Mahmoud Abbas for combat equipment to restore and build up Palestinian security forces with all possible speed. He asks the recipients to contribute to the creation of the Palestinian state by allocating outdated items no longer in the use of their armies.
DEBKAfile has seen the list. It is impressive and hardly relevant for a Palestinian state dedicated by international treaty to live in peace with Israel. It includes all types of armored personnel carriers with fixed mortars, jeeps fitted with 107 mm recoilless guns, telescopic rifles, pistols, ammunition, communications and engineering gear, helmets and medical equipment.
The army Abbas is building is designed to absorb the disassembled Palestinian terrorist organizations. For the first time, they will be equipped with heavy arms.
Asked how the shipments would be delivered over Israel’s objections, Abbas and Dahlan pointed out that once the Israelis had pulled back the Gaza Strip and Egyptian border, there would be no one to stop the hardware being unloaded at the reopened Gaza port or coming through northern Sinai past Egyptian patrols.
Shopping for heavy arms is in total contravention of every international accord the Palestinians, including Abu Mazen in person, have ever signed with Israel and every pledge Abbas has made to the Bush administration and other world leaders. Informed security officials are urging the Sharon government to suspend its interchanges with the Palestinian Authority, halt the removal of roadblocks and handover of West Bank towns to Palestinian security control, revert to targeted assassinations and take military action to prevent the delivery of illicit military hardware into dangerous terrorist hands.
In 2001, the Israeli air force and naval commandos intercepted the Karine-A with 50 tons of heavy weapons from Iran bound for the Palestinian Authority. Exposure of this latest underhand intrigue should top the agenda at the London meeting supposedly on Palestinian security reforms opening in London Tuesday. It is a matter of urgent concern for the United States and Middle East Quartet members committed to the road map. Instead, Russian foreign minister frankly admitted Friday, February 25, to supplying the Palestinians with “military machines” and said Moscow was considering sending them APCs since the Palestinian Authority, he ventured to claim, had proved itself in control of security.
A leading Israeli security expert, asked by DEBKAfile, how heavy weapons deliveries would affect Israeli security, explained that Palestinian terrorists would be able to conduct hit and run attacks and military assaults inside Israel and against Israeli military positions and vehicles, national highways and strategic points. They would then escape to sovereign Palestinian territory. In Gaza, Mussa Arafat would have the use of mobile artillery to blitz Israeli towns and villages.
In the expert’s opinion, the IDF would in the end extinguish this peril too, but the cost in lives would be high indeed. The first to pay the price were the victims of Palestinian terror in Tel Aviv Friday night.
Plastic Sirens
02.15.05 (10:01 am) [edit]
The other morning, I was driving to school. I have just moved recently so my commute is a little longer than it used to be. As I'm driving on this particular rainy morning, I came off the freeway and continued driving on the surface streets that lead to my destination. In my rearview mirror, I noticed that behind me was an ambulance.
It's windshield wipers were swishing back and fourth on the windshield and it, too, was driving along these surface streets. While I am momentarily looking at it (While still keeping one eye on the road in front of me, of course) its lights light up and its sirens begin to sound. I've always either only seen an ambulance driving along off duty/waiting for the next call or I've always heard the sirens and seen the lights as they went by. But I'd never actually ever seen one transform from one to the other.
Naturally, I pulled over to the side and allowed it to pass, as the rules of the road proscribe. I've always had great respect for Ambulance Workers. Their lives are devoted to saving the lives of other people. It's one of the most noble and incredible jobs out there. It's right up there with being a Police Officer, Fireman, or a US or Israeli Soldier. All of those jobs are specialized but they all also have the same purpose: to save and protect the lives of civilians. If you stop for a moment to think about it, we owe these people a lot.
The sound of sirens when they go by or otherwise are always an emotional thing for me. The mere sound brings tears of sadness to my eyes because I know why they are sounding. They are probably one of the most horrifically mournful and sad sounds anyone should have to ever hear, whether that sound is passing by or coming to you. The lights give me a similar effect, but nothing surpasses the emotions that arise, at least in me, when I hear sirens from an ambulance. If I were ever on that "Behind The Actors Studio" show with James Lipton and he asked the question that he asks at the end "What is the worst sound?" I'd answer that it is the sound of an ambulence siren.
At any rate, I continued driving to school with some of these thoughts in my head. I arrived, got a parking spot and walked onto campus to wait for class to start in the quad where I took a bench. I watched people walk by.
It has become a trend these days to wear these colorful bracelets that stand for one cause or another. Some of them are from the Lance Armstrong foundation for Testicular Cancer and they are yellow. The ones for AIDS are red. The ones for Breast Cancer are pink and so on. There are even some blue ones that some of the teens I work with wear that are for Israel. Most everyone wears them; especially at my school.
In concept, these things are a nice idea.
I once asked someone how they got these things that they wear like a ton of bangles on their wrists. Apparently, you pay a dollar donation to these causes and they send or give you a bracelet so that you can "stand for the cause" and be cool like everyone else who paid a dollar.
Interesting.
That person I had once asked had followed that information with "I'm saving lives [by wearing this bracelet]." OK, I had thought to myself with a bit of pity for this person who actually thinks it makes a difference.
Does it really make much of a difference to little Mikeva out there who is dying in a hospital bed in Africa because his mother had AIDS when he was born and now he's dying alone because she has already left this earth due to that disease? Does it make a difference that you look cool while someone's mother goes through Kemo after she's lost one breast already?
If you think about it, it probably costs 20 cents (or more) to make that bracelet. The bracelet is probably made in China or some other country where the people who make it make 3 cents per day. Then it probably costs another 30 cents (each) for the postage to ship those things over seas. The packaging to ship them probably costs 10 cents (per box and bubble wrap). At best, a total of 20 cents or less actually reaches a person or the research facility that is supposed to work on cures to save that person.
But we in America can feel good and make ourselves think we are actually saving lives and making a difference by sitting on our butts and being selfish, all the while wearing a yellow bracelet. Amazing.
Did you know that the percentage of collage students that actually get involved in public service or other forms of "cause helping" is significantly low? Did you know that the percentage of collage age students who do it because they actually want to make a difference and help something is low in comparison to those who do it because it looks good on a college resume'?
This is not to say that people shouldn't donate and get these bracelets all together. It's amazing that [i]the young and the spoiled[/i] actually did something, however mediocre. If anything, the good deed here is the raised awareness. That's nice though, but what do you [i]do[/i] with that awareness?
What I am saying is that more people need to do something, not just give and get something. These bracelets are a fashion statement and not much more. They started out as a great idea, but they've turned into just another reason to insulate ourselves away from the real problems we have and the ever growing need for man power. Not money, not chatchkies. Human power!
This is the world in which we live in.
While the Ambulance Workers, the Firemen, the Police, the Soldiers are off making sure we're safe, healthy, and happy, we are buying bracelets to delude ourselves into a fantasy world that is nothing more than a fantasy in the end.
Please get out there and help someone. That's way cooler than some piece of plastic.
Israel's Auschwitz borders
02.11.05 (9:34 am) [edit]
[b][i]by Joseph Farah
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com[/b][/i]
Condoleezza Rice may know a lot about the old Soviet Union, but she sure doesn't know squat about the Middle East.
The secretary of state recently explained how it is necessary for Israel to give up more land to help fashion a viable, contiguous Palestinian state – from Gaza through Judea and Samaria.
Perhaps if you don't understand the geography, this might seem like a perfectly reasonable demand. After all, how can we expect the new Palestinian state to function normally if its people are divided by artificial barriers?
What I trust Rice does not understand – in fact, what I hope she simply fails to comprehend – is that Israel has no more land to give. Israel has no moral obligation to give any land. Israel will be jeopardizing its own security in doing so.
Let me make this crystal clear. Look at a map of the Middle East. After glancing at it for a few minutes, can anyone honestly tell me they believe the problems of violence and terrorism there have to do with the fact that Israel has too much land?
This is apparently what we are to believe.
There's lots of land in the Middle East. Most of it is populated sparsely by Arabic-speaking people, culturally, linguistically, religiously and ethnically at one with the so-called "Palestinians," a people who have never had a country of their own in the history of the world. Why then is it Israel's obligation to carve itself up to create this Palestinian state?
The tiny sliver of land that represents the current state of Israel is only about one-tenth the size of the original United Nations mandate that created the Jewish state in 1947.
Now, I'm not a Jew. I'm a Christian Arab-American journalist who believes in freedom first, peace second. And I've got to tell you that the demands on Israel right now are demands for the nation to commit political, military and cultural suicide.
Do you know what the new borders of Israel would be under the plans being drawn up now for a "viable, contiguous Palestine"? I call them Auschwitz borders. I don't know why the Jews don't see it.
They are willingly helping to build a national concentration camp of half the world's Jewry surrounded by hostile maniacs who want to eradicate them. Israel's new borders under a Rice plan will be indefensible. Creating a new Palestinian state with contiguous borders and relying on Israel to come up with all the necessary real estate requires cutting Israel in half from north to south.
It might create a "viable" Palestinian state, but it will destroy the viability of Israel.
If Adolf Hitler had been a little smarter, he would have helped recreate a Jewish state in the Middle East and squeezed it the way the Arabs, the Europeans and now the United States are squeezing Israel. Hitler could never have dreamed of a more expedient "final solution."
Now I am not going to suggest that Rice or the Bush administration are intentionally trying to destroy Israel or the Jews. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are ill-informed, that they are making profoundly bad decisions based on bad data and bad analysis.
But I will make no such assumptions about the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Arab states that back it. They are not promoting a Palestinian state because they believe in freedom and self-determination for the Arab people who live there. Instead, they are doing so to create a permanent staging ground from which they will continue their war of attrition against the Jewish infidels who have the audacity to live in what they consider to be Dar al-Islam.
It's that simple. I wish Rice and Bush and even the Israeli government could see it.
It is a national disgrace that the U.S. government is spending $350 million more to subsidize the Palestinian Authority, which holds that no Jews are permitted to live within its territory or future nation. It is a national disgrace that the U.S. government would join with the rest of the anti-Semitic world to force Israel to abandon its own security needs and its own Jewish communities on historically Jewish lands. And it is a national disgrace that the U.S. government, while supposedly fighting a global war against Islamist terrorism, is appeasing them in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
