RUTHFULLY YOURS

Between Israel and Hezbollah, “another conflict is all but inevitable,” wrote retired Israeli Brigadier General Yakov Shaharabani. “It will be far more destructive and harmful than any other war Israel has fought in recent memory.” The former Israeli Air Force Intelligence chief thus introduced a sobering Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies report a decade after Israel’s last clash with the Lebanese terrorist organization.

Shaharabani said that the July 2006 Lebanon War “was the longest Israel had experienced since its War of Independence in 1948,” but any future clash with Hezbollah will make those destructive 34 days pale by comparison. According to his FDD coauthors, the Israeli government estimates that Hezbollah has approximately 150,000 rockets today as opposed to the mere 14,000 it possessed prior to the 2006 conflict. Writing for the Weekly Standard, Vanderbilt University law professor Willy Stern said that this gives Hezbollah a “bigger arsenal than all NATO countries – except the United States – combined.”

Stern elaborated that Hezbollah’s state sponsor Iran has “supplied its favorite terrorist organization with other top-of-the-line weaponry,” including advanced Russian-made anti-tank and anti-ship missiles and air defense systems. The FDD report noted that sanctions relief for Iran under the recent nuclear agreement will only darken this picture, for “Iran’s massive windfall is expected to trickle down to its most important and valuable proxy: Hezbollah.” Additionally, “Hezbollah has gained significant experience during five years of fighting in Syria” for the embattled Bashar Assad dictatorship.

Israeli Defense Forces leaders have presented Stern with grim scenarios in which “elite Hezbollah commandos will almost certainly be able to slip into Israel and may wreak havoc among Israeli villages in the north.” Given Hezbollah’s “capacity to shoot 1,500 missiles per day, Israel’s high-tech missile-defense system will be ‘lucky’ to shoot down 90 percent of incoming rockets, missiles and mortars.” Accordingly, “IDF planners quietly acknowledge that ‘as many as hundreds’ of Israeli noncombatants might be killed per day in the first week or two of the conflict.”

The FDD report documented Shaharabani’s prediction that the “next Lebanon war could actually devolve into a regional war.” With Hezbollah’s expanding into Syria, “Hezbollah and Iran plan to connect the Golan Heights to the terror group’s south Lebanese stronghold – to make it one contiguous front against Israel. Iran can also unleash violence on Israel through its Palestinian proxies,” meaning, for example, that Hamas rockets “could force the Israelis to divert Iron Dome and other anti-missile batteries to the southern front with Gaza.” As Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “was already embedded with Hezbollah during the last conflict, there is the very real possibility that Iranian forces could join Hezbollah in battle during the next confrontation.”

A new video out of ISIS’ Al-Khayr province in Syria suggests jihadists emulate the on-hand weaponry of the Nice attack with at-home items such as a power screwdriver, baseball bat or hypodermic needle.

The death toll in the July 14 attack on the French coastal city, in which a Tunisian living in Nice drove a cargo truck into a Bastille Day crowd, rose to 86 a few days ago as another man died of his injuries. Eighty-three were killed at the scene.

French authorities initially declared that the truck driver, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, had no known links to terrorism. The attacker’s uncle said Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, claimed by ISIS as one of their own, was recruited by an Algerian shortly before the attack even though he “didn’t pray, didn’t go to the mosque and ate pork.”

His choice of a truck as a weapon has been fueling the ISIS call for lone jihadists to use whatever weapons are convenient and less likely to arouse suspicion.

As far as targets, the new video focuses largely on France and the United States. After giving weapons suggestions, the video shows a white man in a white T-shirt and jeans carrying a black bag and approaching a gate with a French flag flying overhead.
(ISIS video screenshot) (ISIS video screenshot)

The video begins, though, with footage of Israel Defense Force soldiers clashing with Palestinians. It soon shows Catholics celebrating Mass and talks about kuffar (disbelievers) paying jizya tax to the Islamic State.

Among the multiple terror montages in the nearly 20-minute video are scenes from the World Trade Center on 9/11, specifically those trapped by the fire trying to summon help from windows or jumping.

They highlighted Hamas’ statement after the Nice attack, in which the Gaza terror group condemned the France attack “out of principle and moral and humanitarian rejection of all forms of extremism and terrorism.”

That July 15 Hamas statement added: “The movement emphasizes in this context that the Palestinian people are more than stung by the fire of Israeli terrorism, which our people are still suffering from for decades.” ISIS hopes to poach recruits from Hamas fighters in Gaza as they push toward Israel.

The ISIS video shows American polling places, including at the former Berryville Primary School in Arkansas, but does not show either candidate, just President Obama and his European counterparts. They also use footage of U.S. service members and drone operation, and a short clip that appears to be either news footage or a city video showing police officers receiving a briefing. The officers shown are from Medford, Ore. Another Medford officer lingers near the trunk of a patrol car. CONTINUE AT SITE

Nicola Sturgeon, how welcome are Jews in Scotland?http://david-collier.com/?p=2152

August is festival month in Edinburgh. A massive celebration, delivered through a collective of independent arts and cultural festivals. Just one of these, the ‘Edinburgh Festival Fringe’, is the largest arts festival in the world.

At the ‘Fringe’ event this year, scheduled for August 17, is the ‘International Shalom Festival’. Described as a one-day celebration bringing together Jews, Arabs, Christians and other minorities, that all co-exist together peacefully in Israel. Yet once again, as Israeli artists perform inside Scotland, demonstrations are being arranged in protest.
Edinburgh protests

As far back as 1997, during the Oslo peace talks, antizionists attacked Israeli performers at the festival. In 2008 the Jerusalem Quartet concert was disrupted, in 2012 it was the turn of the Batsheva Dance Troupe. In 2014, anti-Israel activists called on the venue to cancel a show with Israeli performers, and local police forced the venue to incur additional security costs. In turn, the venue demanded additional funds from the performers.

So in 2015, Haaretz reported that for the first time in years, Israeli performances were not hosted at the festival at all. This silencing of the Israeli voice is celebrated as a victory by the anti-Israel activists. The voice that seeks dialogue and accommodation is being silenced.

The festival is not the only place in Scotland such opposition is seen, less than two years ago a worker at an Israeli cosmetics stall in Glasgow had a ‘burning liquid’ thrown at her. The university space is also rabid, with events being called off due to protests, and Jewish students at universities are “denying or hiding” their identity because of discrimination. These events, including the protests at Edinburgh, are all connected.

Yet here is a simple fact. Israel is by far the most diverse nation in the Middle East. Despite the accusations of the protesters, there is not a single nation in the region that is as free, as democratic, as liberal or as diverse as Israel. Not one. What else sets it apart from all of its neighbours though, is another simple fact. It is the only nation in the world that is Jewish.

According to the 2011 census, there are just under 6000 Jews currently living in Scotland and this year marks 200 years since the first Jewish congregation was founded, ironically in Edinburgh. But in reality, how welcome are the Jews in Scotland? When I use the word ‘welcome’, I don’t refer to the lack of a Hitlerite doctrine, or wish to gauge whether gangs of antisemites seek out symbols that adorn Jewish houses to begin targeting the inhabitants. I simply ask how free are Jewish people to celebrate their Jewish identity publicly?
Zionism

Which brings me back to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The protesters suggest that Israeli money is funding the Shalom Festival and then embark on a sickening exercise to follow ‘Jewish money’, from the organisers back to the embassy of the only democratic nation in the Middle East.

So what is this protest, anti-Israel or anti-Jewish? Well primarily, it is clear that the protest is anti-peace. The essence of the Shalom Festival is co-operation, the diverse and inclusive nature of Israel. And support for dialogue, the underpinnings of the international position over a two state solution. What the protesters are standing against isn’t a settlement or Israeli army action, but rather a core element of Jewish belief – Zionism. The very existence of Israel.

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s president blamed Islamic State for turning a youth into a human bomb at a crowded outdoor wedding party in southeast Turkey’s largest city, killing at least 51 people in a weekend attack that underscored how the war in neighboring Syria is destabilizing the region.

The bombing in Gaziantep targeted a largely Kurdish neighborhood and turned a celebratory summer evening into a scene of anguish and mourning, as the couple recovered on Sunday from injuries sustained in the massive Saturday blast and investigators worked to identify the charred body parts of guests and family members.

Dozens of funerals took place on Sunday, including ceremonies for 29 children who forensics teams had managed to identify. Nearly 100 people, including many women and children, were wounded in the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said a youth between the ages of 12 and 14 carried out the attack and said the bombing had the hallmarks of Islamic State.

Turkey has been battling the terror group as part of the international coalition, and has suffered multiple bombings targeting Turkish citizens already this year, including a devastating attack at Istanbul’s Atatürk International Airport.

Turkey’s Kurds in particular have come under fire from Islamic State. Kurds in Syria and Iraq, who are ethnically related to their kin in Turkey, have been among the most active groups fighting the extremists. Previously, Islamic State bombed a Kurdish rally in the Turkish capital and killed more than 100 people last year.

Earlier this month, a Syrian rebel offensive carried out largely by Syrian Kurdish groups and backed by U.S. special operations forces routed Islamic State positions in the Syrian city of Manbij, cutting the terror group’s last major road link to Turkey, which it had used to shuttle foreign fighters and supplies to its so-called caliphate. Turkey’s prime minister said Saturday that his nation was stepping up its role in finding a peace deal for Syria.

Freedom and human rights have had a bad run in Latin America in the past decade. Venezuela has become a Cuban satellite and holds scores of political prisoners. Pluralism hangs by a thread in Bolivia, El Salvador and Ecuador. Yet the collapse of democracy may be most poignant in Nicaragua, which fought back against the Communist Sandinistas during the Cold War only to see them return with a vengeance amid U.S. indifference.

Last month Sandinista President Daniel Ortega purged Nicaragua’s opposition from Parliament. In November he will run for a third five-year term with his wife, Rosario Murillo, as his vice-presidential candidate. Elections under Mr. Ortega have never been transparent and he has barred international observers from this one. He has blocked serious presidential challengers, so this won’t be much of a contest.

Readers may recall how Mr. Ortega led the Sandinista revolution that toppled Anastasio Somoza in 1979 with the help of the Soviet Union. He moved quickly to establish a Communist beachhead in Central America. This spawned the grass-roots Nicaraguan resistance known as the Contras aided by the U.S. Mr. Ortega won one rigged election in 1984. But when he agreed to another with international observers in 1990, he lost to Violeta Chamorro.

The Sandinistas accepted defeat but refused to surrender their weapons or their judiciary seats. The “commandantes” of the revolution had enriched themselves by confiscating property in what was known as “the piñata,” and many Nicaraguan property owners have never been compensated.

Mr. Ortega has returned to power by exploiting democratic rules and then changing them once in power. Center-right President Arnoldo Aleman (1997-2002) negotiated a deal with Mr. Ortega to lower the threshold for a first-round victory in the presidential election to 35%. That allowed Mr. Ortega to split the anti-Sandinista vote in 2006 and win. CONTINUE AT SITE

In 1983, Marxist unrest in the tiny Caribbean Island of Grenada threatened the safety of roughly 1,000 Americans residing there. Many of them were medical students at the island’s medical school. President Ronald Reagan did not hesitate. He dispatched 6,000 U.S. troops to evacuate the Americans and secure the island. Within a week, U.S. objectives were met. The Americans were safe, the Cuban mercenaries were expelled and rule of law was reestablished.

There was a time when being a U.S citizen held significance and carried weight, when two-bit dictators and petty thugs would think twice before harming Americans. In the age of Obama, that time remains but a distant, faded memory. Holding U.S. citizenship now is not only meaningless, it paints a broad target on one’s back. The Benghazi debacle serves to reinforce this view.

The brazen, preplanned September 11, 2012 terror attack against the American consulate in Benghazi needlessly cost the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979. Obama’s State Department, run by his inept and malevolent secretary of state, is largely to blame. Indecisiveness, bureaucratic bungling and poor intelligence led to a series of mistakes that hampered relief efforts.

The extreme ineptitude demonstrated by the Obama-Clinton duo in protecting Americans during the Benghazi fiasco recently repeated itself in a disturbing incident eerily similar to events unfolding on that hot September night. On July 11, rampaging South Sudanese “soldiers” – savages would be a more appropriate term – attacked a sprawling hotel compound in the capital city of Juba inhabited by Western relief workers, journalists and South Sudanese elites. In the following 24 hours, the Westerners as well as some South Sudanese were forced to endure gang rape and torture. One South Sudanese journalist was shot dead while an American woman was raped by as many as 15 South Sudanese soldiers. Americans were singled out for particular cruelty.

Unbelievably, the carnage could have been prevented. There was a significant United Nations force staffed by Chinese, Ethiopian and Nepalese troops stationed nearby, just a few minutes’ drive away. Minutes after the South Sudanese soldiers forced their way into the Terrain Hotel complex; UN forces as well as the U.S. embassy in Juba were deluged with frantic calls for help. Emails, Facebook messages and texts were inexplicably ignored. One American who succeeded in escaping in the early stages of the assault made his way to the nearby UN compound but his pleas too fell on deaf ears.

Since the completion last year of a landmark deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program, the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has lashed out again and again at the U.S. for its supposed failure to live up to its end of the bargain. But a speech he gave on Aug. 1 in Tehran took his anti-American rhetoric to a new level. He accused the Obama administration of a “bullying policy” and of failing to lift sanctions in a way that benefited “the life of the people.” Mr. Khamenei ruled out cooperation with the U.S. in the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, telling his audience that Iran’s experience with the nuclear deal “showed us that we cannot speak to [the Americans] on any matter like a trustworthy party.” Many in the crowd chanted anti-U.S. slogans.

Is Iran preparing to walk away from the accord? It’s unlikely. Mr. Khamenei’s speech was classical political posturing intended to rally his hard-line followers. But more than that, his bluster conceals a deeper strategic calculus. For all his complaints about American treachery, Mr. Khamenei and his allies recognize that the nuclear deal has produced significant benefits for their hobbled theocracy and may serve to further entrench the regime brought to power in the 1979 revolution.

President Barack Obama defined the nuclear deal primarily as an arms-control exercise, designed to constrain Tehran’s nuclear program for at least a decade and to keep the U.S. from becoming embroiled in yet another Middle East war. But the White House and its top diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, also quietly suggested that the agreement might open the door to a broader rapprochement between Tehran and Washington and empower Iran’s moderate political forces, particularly its elected president, Hassan Rouhani.

U.S. officials have always cautioned that it would take time for the salutary effects of engagement with Iran to take effect. They have even conceded that, in the short term, the agreement might energize hard-liners opposed to engagement with the West—and that, indeed, seems to be what is happening. CONTINUE AT SITE

In September 2015, a Canadian broadcaster, Ezra Levant, suggested that what Europe was experiencing, was not primarily an influx of “refugees” fleeing conflict, but rather a new Gold Rush, in which young men from the Muslim world were seeking to improve their fortune at Europe’s expense.

Rome-based journalist Barbie Latza Nadeu seriously asked whether Italy was “enabling the ISIS invasion of Europe.”

Profits in the people-smuggling business often flow to terrorist-backed gangs operating in Italy. The numbers drowning in the Mediterranean continue to mount.

Chaotic scenes have erupted on the coastal Mediterranean frontier between Italy and France. On August 4, for instance, hundreds of migrants, chiefly from Eritrea, Ethiopia and the Sudan sought to storm the crossing in their attempts to make it to Northern Europe.

“Both the Italian and French forces at the border were taken by surprise,” remarked Giorgio Marenco, a police commander in Ventimiglia, where tear gas was used to disperse the migrants. Others merely braved the choppy waters of the sea to breach the crossing by swimming towards their goal.

The Italian town contains the last train station in Italy near the border. The besieged terminus lies three miles from the French Riviera. It has been a gathering point for the predominantly Muslim migrants since June 2015. A fractious tent city for migrants has sprung up, mirroring others spread across Italy. The capital of the French holiday district is Nice, which experienced a jihadist massacre on July 14.

Although mercifully free from mass terrorist outrages this year, Italy has already endured several alarming scenes of disorder and protest resulting from the pressure of accepting increasing illegal migrants.

On May 7, violent attempts by “open borders” activists took place, aimed at forcing open the frontier between Italy and Austria. On May 21, various groups in Rome organized mass demonstrations against Italy’s “invasion” by migrants. Apparently the prevalence of populist politics in the country has created movements which do not lie within the usual “Left-Right” political spectrum in which analysts usually classify parties.

The chief example is the presence in Italy of the Five Star Movement, founded in 2009 by the comedian Beppo Grillo, and now considered Italy’s second largest political force. Having taken a back seat after frequently being condemned for his “Islamophobic” anti-mass immigration rhetoric, Grillo’s party nevertheless helped to elect Virginia Raggi, in July, as the new mayor of Rome.

Despite the assurances of Angelino Alfano, the Italian Interior Minister, that Ventimiglia would not turn into “our Calais” — a reference to migrants amassed at the French channel port who are seeking illegal entry into the United Kingdom — the challenges faced by Italy lie not merely in numbers.

At a conference on Wednesday held by Darkenu — a self-described “grass-roots movement of the ‎Israeli moderate majority” — former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak ‎blasted incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for endangering the country’s security. As someone ‎who turned imperiling the Jewish state into an art form, Barak ought to know better.‎

It was Barak, after all, who made grandiose offers of territory and other concessions to Palestine Liberation Organization chief ‎Yasser Arafat which, had they been accepted, would have done Israel in. It was he who exposed ‎the truth — the one the rest of us knew already — that the Palestinian terror master and Nobel Peace prize ‎laureate was ever-bent on annihilating the Jews in his vicinity. ‎

Indeed, when Barak made his final appeasement offer at Camp David in 2000, Arafat returned the ‎favor by launching a suicide-bombing war against innocent Israelis. Yet Barak proceeded to blame ‎his successors for a lack of a two-state solution.‎

And let’s not forget Barak’s hightail-it-out-of-there retreat from southern Lebanon that left a ‎vacuum for Iran to fill. Barak’s response since then is to spew more vitriol at Netanyahu than at ‎Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.‎

But, hey, such is the manner of washed-up has-beens. To stay relevant on the think tank and ‎lecture circuit, they need something to say, and it isn’t “I’m sorry.”‎

The attempts to deny any ancient and ongoing Jewish presence in Jerusalem, to say there was never a first let alone a second Temple and that only Muslims have any right to the whole city, its shrines and historical monuments, have reached insane proportions.
Is this really what it boils down to? The Islamic State rules the international community? Including UNESCO?
The world is outraged when it sees the stones of Palmyra tumble, or other great monuments of human civilization turn to dust. But that same world is silent when the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters Islamise everything by calling into question the very presence of the Jewish people in the Holy Land.

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, is known throughout the world for the many places it designates as World Heritage Sites. There are more than one thousand of these, distributed unequally in many countries, with Italy at the top, followed by China.

The largest single category of sites consists of religious sites, categorized under the heading of cultural locations (as distinct from natural ones). Within this category, UNESCO has carried out many dialogues with communities in order to ensure that religious sensitivities are acknowledged and guaranteed. UNESCO has undertaken many measures in this field.

In 2010, the organization held a seminar on the “Role of Religious Communities in the Management of World Heritage Properties.”

“The main objective of the [seminar] was to explore ways of establishing a dialogue between all stakeholders, and to explore possible ways of encouraging and generating mutual understanding and collaboration amongst them in the protection of religious World Heritage properties.”

The notion of dialogue in this context was clearly meant to avoid unilateral decisions by one nation or community to claim exclusive ownership of a religious site.

Alleged or actual claims to multiple ownership of religious sites are not uncommon. A collection of essays entitled, Choreographies of Shared Sacred Sites: Religion, Politics, and Conflict Resolution, examines such disputes over shared religious sites in Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus, and Algeria, providing powerful analyses of how communities come to blows or work reconcile themselves in a willingness to share shrines and other centres. Sometimes people come to blows over these sites, and sometimes one religion can cause immense pain to the followers of another, as happened in 1988 when Carmelite nuns erected a 26-foot-high cross outside Auschwitz II (Birkenau) extermination camp in order to commemorate a papal mass held there in 1979.

A more famous example of an unreconciled dispute is the conflict over the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India, a mosque originally built in 1528-29 on the orders of Babur, the first of the Mughal emperors. According to Hindu accounts, the Mughal builders destroyed a temple on the birthplace of the deity Rama in order to build the mosque — a claim denied by many Muslims.[1] The importance of the site is clear from a Hindu text which declares that Ayodhya is one of seven sacred places where a final release from the cycle of death and rebirth may be obtained.

These conflicting claims were fatefully resolved when an extremist Hindu mob demolished the mosque in 1992, planning to build a new temple on the site. The demolition has been cited as justification for terrorist attacks by radical Muslim groups.[2] The massacres at Wandhama (1998) and the Amarnath pilgrimage (2000) are both attributed to the demolition. Communal riots occurred in New Delhi, Bombay and elsewhere, as well as many cases of stabbing, arson, and attacks on private homes and government officers.[3]