Why the EU should ban the IRG as well as Hezbullah

May 16, 2013 Leave a comment

IRGAfter much discussion and pressure applied, the EU has finally decided to ban the “military wing” of Hezbullah while leaving it’s supposedly more moderate “political wing” to continue collecting funds through its various European “charities”  (excuse the cynical quotes)! Finally, too many real facts reared their inconvenient heads for even Brussels to ignore. The final straws were Bulgaria’s sensible conclusion on the Burgas bus bombing and the Cypriot trial of  a confessed Hezbullah operative nabbed before he could do any explosive damage. In parallel with this compromise proscription of Hezbullah, the EU must now turn its guns on Hezbullah’s biggest material supporters, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRG) and similarly condemn them as a terrorist organisation.

Following the 1979 Islamic revolution the Ayatollahs refused to place all their trust in the Iranian Army, perceiving it as tainted by association with the deposed Shah. Accordingly they established the IRG, all of whose members swear allegiance to the revolution and are dedicated to protecting the Islamic regime above everything else. They are direct agents of the Grand Ayatollah in consolidating the extremist Shiite Islamic revolution internally and extending it (and therefore the influence of Shia Islam) far beyond Iran’s borders. It is this external aspect of IRG operations that places it firmly in the category of a terrorist organisation.  Read more of this post

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Margaret Thatcher and the Jews

April 13, 2013 Leave a comment

This is NOT a political comment on Margaret Thatcher or her premiership of Britain, so please don’t blast me for sharing this! Aish HaTorah shared a fascinating insight into her early love for Jewish people during her childhood before World War 2…

 Her proudest moment was saving an Austrian Jew.

by Sara Debbie Gutfreund

When Margaret Thatcher passed away today, the tributes began pouring in from all over the world. Mrs. Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, serving for 11 years starting in 1979. Known as the Iron Lady, she was a strong Conservative who changed England’s perspective on its economic and political life.

Despite her many impressive accomplishments, including fighting the Soviet communist regime, Thatcher said that her proudest moment was when she saved a Jewish teenager from Austria during the Holocaust.

In 1938, Edith Muhlbauer, a 17-year-old Jewish girl, sent a letter to Muriel Roberts, Edith’s pen pal and the older sister of Margaret Thatcher, asking if the Roberts family could help her escape from Austria. The Nazis had started rounding up Jews from Vienna and Edith knew it was just a matter of time before she would be among them. Read more of this post

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Israeli Government Report on PA Incitement

December 11, 2012 Leave a comment

The cabinet of Bibi Netanyahu was recently (Dec 2nd) presented with a detailed report on PA incitement against Israel and Israelis in the form of a Powerpoint presentation. This was released and we are pleased to be able to show it to you here. It demonstrates that the PA as an official policy is teaching its people three things:

  1. The whole of what is now Israel, “from the river to the sea”, is part of “Palestine”.
  2. The demonisation of Jews and Israelis
  3. All forms of struggle – including terrorist acts – are legitimate forms of opposition to Israel

The international community expects Israel’s government to make concessions and talk peace to the PA, who are clearly demonstrating that they do not want peace. The international community should instead be pressuring and penalising the PA for refusing to sit down and negotiate with Israel without pre-conditions. Anyway, enough already! On to the show…

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So what’s true and what’s a myth in the new “Palestine” reality?

December 9, 2012 Leave a comment

un_vote2

Mahmoud Abbas and Ban Ki Moon at the UN

So the dust is beginning to settle on the UN vote to give a non-existent state the status of a state (if you get me). Maybe this is a good time to work out what is myth and what is reality in the new “peace paradigm” that the UN has created. Let’s make no mistake about this; things cannot remain the same, if only because the breakdown of the Oslo process from the nineties is now complete and probably irreversible. In this new reality, let’s list a few truths…

1. The 29th November UN General Assembly vote did not create a state of Palestine. For all the celebrations in Ramallah on Mr Abbas’ return, the UN cannot create a state, it can only recognise one that already exists. The Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of a State (December 1933), which predates the creation of the UN, states as its first article,

“The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government; and d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states.”

The Palestinian Authority is a temporary administrative instrument, not a proper government; its population is not permanent as long as there is a claimed “right of return” to lands in the state of Israel; it has no properly defined borders; it does not and cannot enter into meaningful relations with other states, since the PA is itself only an arm of the PLO. Read more of this post

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Don’t you just love it? New Israeli Passport stamp for “Judea and Samaria”!

December 5, 2012 Leave a comment

As exposed by one of the most virulently anti-Israel groups out there…

Within the last couple of days, Israel appears to have changed their passport entry stamp for people entering the “West Bank”. Under Oslo, the entry stamp says that the person is restricted to “Palestinian Authority Only”. The entry stamp now apparently says, “Judea and Samaria Only”! Well, the Palestinian Authority was a construct of the Oslo Accords of the mid-90s and since Mahmoud Abbas has clearly broken the Accords by applying to the UN for “Observer State” status (and getting it), Israel is entitled to revert to pre-Oslo things – like more settlements, reviving the controversial E1 planning zone etc (see other blog posts about this).

Here are images of the old and new passport stamps, as published by “Electronic Intifada” (name of passport holder removed)..

new stamp

The new Israeli entry stamp, “Judea and Samaria only”!

 

old stamp

The old entry stamp, “Palestinian Authority only”

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Three days this week to kill the peace process

November 27, 2012 2 Comments

This week, in the space of three days, the chances of a two-state peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians have drifted apart to an extent that may well prove unredeemable. Last night (Tuesday 27th), the Likud party primaries in Israel moved the party firmly in a right-ward (ie non-two-state) direction, epitomised by the long-awaited electoral success of Moshe Feiglin. Feiglin, a settler who carries a support base within Likud of 12-15,000, is firmly on the religious right in Israeli politics and wants to offer an alterative to Oslo and the two-state solution. Feiglin is just one of the candidates on the right of the party to have taken Likud even more right-wing than they already were as the nations main right-wing party!

Meanwhile, in New York, PA chief Mahmoud Abbas is preparing to speak to the General Assembly of the UN on Thursday and ask for Observer status for a Palestinian state that doesn’t exist! He already has at least 150 of the available 193 votes committed to him, so acceptance of his nonsensical application is assured.

So what do these two events mean for peace? Read more of this post

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Why Hamas has no bomb shelters in Gaza!

November 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Children in bomb shelter

Israeli children in a bomb shelter in Kerem Shalom. Children in Gaza have no such protection; they have to die for Allah! Photo courtesy of The Israel Project.

This morning an Al Jazeera television reporter speaking in Gaza City commented that there were no bomb shelters for Palestinian Arabs to use or air raid sirens to warn of an imminent aerial attack. That’s one reason why casualties are higher than they should be in the Gaza Strip. If the journalist had looked closer she would have noted that street lamp-posts are almost impossible to find! Hamas, which governs the Mediterranean coastal region, allows its terrorists to utilise them to make rockets to fire at innocent Southern Israel communities rather than provide light for its 1,500,000 residents.

Last year, Rabbi Shmuel Bowman, Director of Operation Life Shield, who works tirelessly to raise money to provide much needed bomb shelters in the southern missile-hit part of the Holy Land took his begging bowl to churches and synagogues in the United Kingdom. The Israeli government does not have enough money to provide the smaller type of bomb to place at strategic spots, so community minded people like Shmuel roll up their sleeves and get cracking to raise cash to provide them. Shmuel told how an American donated a shelter and was in Israel to see it in situ. The donor was standing at the bomb shelter door when a rocket fired from Gaza landed nearby and he was spared possible death from shrapnel because of his gift. The blast knocked him off his feet, though.

The rabbi also told of a completed youth centre being moth-balled by the Israeli authorities because it lacked a bomb shelter … until the Operation Life Shield stepped in. As it happens, Shmuel is back in the United Kingdom and his supporters will be anxious to hear what is happening on the ground in this beleaguered part of the Middle East. One thing he will be glad to report is that the Israeli government is stumping up more cash to provide air raid shelters in Southern Israel because of the on-going plight of innocent communities there. Read more of this post

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And when you’ve got your “casus belli”…..

November 15, 2012 1 Comment

PSC anti-Israel rally near Israeli embassy
(courtesy of @ LaurenBoothUK)

There’s no way Israel will lose militarily in the current clashes with Hamas terrorists in Gaza but in the propaganda war, with the world’s media, governments and pro-Palestinian organisations steeped in unjustified prejudice against the Jewish state, it is a different matter.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and UK Ambassador Daniel Taub, having learned from previous public relations debacles, were quick off the mark to register plus points. Netanyahu today told a press conference that he had explained Israel’s position with American President Barack Obama, United Nations General-Secretary Bank ki-Moon, European Union Foreign Minister Dame Katherine Ashton, French President Francois Hollande, and Quartet Representative Tony Blair, and they had sympathised with his decision to counter the four-day non-stop missile barrage from Gaza.He said the destruction of Hamas’s missile stockpiles had sent a clear message that Israel will not tolerate indiscriminate rocket attacks on its civilian population.

Taub, commenting on Israel’s aerial strikes, told the BBC: “What we did succeed in doing is taking out the vast majority of Hamas’s arsenal and that has to be a step in the right direction.” He warned that Israel could send ground forces into Gaza “in order to ensure peace and quiet for the citizens of southern Israel? Doing nothing is simply not an option. We have to recognise that restraint is a means and not an end.” Taub’s latter comment was a veiled reference to US President Obama and UK Foreign Secretary William Hague who have urged both sides to show restraint.

With the Palestine Solidarity Campaign predicting an attendance of 900 at their “To counter Israel’s killing spree in Gaza” protest tonight (Thursday, November 15) outside the Israeli Embassy, London, Britain’s Zionist Federation (ZF) issued an emergency notice to encourage supporters to join a counter demonstration. A ZF media release stated: “Following a relentless barrage of rocket attacks into Southern Israel, Israel has launched Operation Pillar of Cloud to defend itself. From 2005 until Operation Cast Lead 5,000 rockets were fired into Israel. In this calendar year alone 800 rockets were fired into Israel. More than 125 rockets and mortars have fallen on Israel since Saturday afternoon. The duty of any government is to ensure the security of its inhabitants and this is why Israel will target those who seek their destruction.” Read more of this post

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“Casus Belli” – a lovely latin phrase for “Why I’m going to war with you”!

November 15, 2012 Leave a comment

As the present thunderstorm of rockets from Gaza began over the weekend, I kept an eye on the Western media outlets through Google. Sure enough, nothing! Nothing except a piece from Fox News that kind of implied Israel was firing back because of the elections in January. As we have come to expect, the Western media only woke up and stretched itself once Israel launched Operation “Pillar of Cloud” (biblical inference here?). However, at least Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged that Hamas started it this time in a news conference today.

In the post World War Two years, the idea that a country needs a good reason before it attacks another country was codified in the UN Charter, which allowed for countries to go to war to defend themselves, or to engage in aggression as part of a UN force. Article 51, however, acknowledges the “… inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations…”. An armed attack on one’s country is therefore a “casus belli” (literally “cause of war” or “reason for war”), under which your country can immediately retaliate with military force. The UN will subsequently attempt to bring about peace by diplomatic means, but it does not deny your country the right to exercise military force before that in its defence.

A prime instance of “casus belli” was the 1967 “Six Day War”, in which Israel carried out a pre-emptive strike against some of her neighbours and won the subsequent war against all reasonable odds. What was the casus belli – or rather what were they? Firstly, Egypt ordered the UN peace-keeping force on the border with Israel to leave, against all written obligations she had signed after the 1948 war with Israel. Secondly, Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian forces moved up towards their respective borders with Israel and Jordan and Syria initiated border incidents. Thirdly Egypt closed the Tiran Straits, which prevented Israel using her southern port of Eilat. Any one of these actions was by itself a reason for war and, in the presence of all three, Israel was completely justified in carrying out her successful pre-emptive military actions as a defence against imminent armed attack from three surrounding nations.

So if the Six Day War was accepted internationally as a defensive action by a member state of the UN threatened with armed attack, each one of the 120 or so rockets fired from Gaza over the weekend was individually a casus belli. Israel was within her rights to have launched against Hamas whatever attack she felt was needed to stop just the first of the  rockets coming over. Operation Pillar of Cloud was only launched after 120-150 “casi bellorum” (plural!) had taken place – restraint if ever we saw it! Read more of this post

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As Israel carries out war drills, the noose is tightening!

October 21, 2012 Leave a comment

A Hizbullah rocket launcherIsrael has carried out its biggest earthquake disaster drill, which coincidentally is also good practice for wartime casualty handling. At the same time, some 3,500 US troops are carrying out war drills on Israel’s anti-missile defences. Hopefully, she is not about to have to do these things for real, but the noose is surely tightening around the Middle East’s only democratic state.

Starting at the top (North), not only is Lebanon facing a possible resurgence of internal troubles but Iran’s proxy Hizbullah offers periodic reminders that they are not backward in the technology of war. Sending a remotely controlled drone over Israel may seem a fruitless action, but sends the message that Hizbullah’s masters are keeping them up to date with handy modern implements of war for the next tussle with Israel.

Moving right (East), Syria’s desperate troubles don’t exempt Israel from possible trouble over the other side of the Golan. The last resort of many dictators in history has been to start a war with an external enemy, “the other”, and divert attention from internal issues. Most would say that Bashr Assad’s position has deteriorated too far for this to be an option, but who knows what measures a lost cause with chemical warheads will stoop to? Further, the next Syrian regime could be even more hostile to Israel than two Alawite dictators have been if the Jihadists have their way. Read more of this post

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