RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Friday, the host of a political program on Al Tahrir TV in Egypt delivered an oral editorial on Tzipi Livni, who served as Israel’s justice minister and chief negotiator with the Palestinians until early last month, when the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed.

Before delving into the content of the editorial, and receiving a dose of sorely needed comic relief from the tragedies around us, let us first review what Livni has been up to these days.

Clearly worried about her future prospects in politics, Livni, the head of the Hatnuah party, joined forces with Labor leader Isaac Herzog. The two reached the conclusion that a merger would give the “peace camp” a better chance of beating Netanyahu in the March elections. So desperate were they not to be left in the dustbin of Israeli history that each agreed to a rotation as prime minister (Herzog for the first two years, and Livni for the remainder of the term), in the event that their “Zionist Camp” bloc garners enough votes to form the next coalition.

CONTENTS

1. Israeli NGO files war crimes charges against Palestinian leaders at ICC
2. Fatah: Netanyahu will hang “soon”
3. Fatah distances itself from latest “genocidal, anti-Semitic” Facebook post
4. Why June 13? Because they kidnapped the teens on June 12
5. “Palestine to join Interpol”
6. Iran claims to “builds world’s first missile-evading drone”
7. Egypt threatened to arrest George Clooney’s wife
8. Saudi Airlines reportedly plans to segregate sexes
9. Ayatollah compares Ferguson, Gaza; 50 women arrested for “un-Islamic” dress
10. Hamas condemns shooting of Gazan teen by Egyptian guards
11. “Female slavery the biggest honor for non-Muslim women, says jihadist”
12. Santa chased out of Turkish town in anti-New Year’s celebration

Number of suicide bombings worldwide doubles in 2014 but none in Israel (& The Guardian hails Israeli president) –

CONTENTS

1. Wide-ranging poll finds both Jews and Arabs “proud to be Israeli”
2. The Guardian chooses Israeli President Rivlin as a “hero” of 2014
3. Despite Gaza war, tourist numbers to Israel fell only 1% in 2014
4. Egypt Chamber of tourism: Hotel occupancy reached only 12% by New Year
5. Number of suicide bombings around world surged 94% in 2014 but none in Israel
6. U.S. academic group votes against further anti-Israel resolutions
7. Norwegian NGO funds exhibit of children’s maps replacing Israel with Palestine
8. Jews flee France in record numbers to escape anti-Semitism
9. Dieudonne’s supporters turn against him
10. Anti-Semitic acts in UK at 30-year high; BDS activist makes Nazi salute
11. Jewish groups condemn pro-Nazi rallies in Croatia, Ukraine
12. Nazis’ vast, secret “nuclear weapons facility” uncovered in Austria

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At least 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a newspaper in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo, known for taking satirical potshots at Muslim leaders, Reuters reported.

One of the dead was a journalist; three police were also wounded, The Associated Press reported.

Reuters reported it’s the same newspaper that’s been bombed in the past for publishing cartoons about Muslim leaders.

France’s Info radio said police at the scene said another five have been injured.

“About a half an hour ago, two black-hooded men entered the building with Klashnikovs,” Benoit Bringer, a witness to the incident, told the French station. “A few minutes later, we heard lots of shots.”

The attackers escaped and an alert has been sent through the community, said Luc Poignant, an official with the SBP police union, AP reported.

A few pages into “Napoleon: A Life,” historian Andrew Roberts notes that the great general regarded himself as “of the race that founds empires.”

How odd that sounds to modern ears. Of course, in the past, people viewed the world differently. Most of us get that. In the present, not everyone sees the world the same way, but many of us don’t get that.

Secretary of State John F. Kerry responds to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Ukrainian territory by exclaiming, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.

Within the foreign policy establishment it is widely assumed that those who send suicide bombers to kill us must harbor “legitimate grievances,” and that they, like us, would prefer peace to war, and are eager, as we are, to resolve conflicts diplomatically, with both sides accepting compromises.

These are dangerous illusions. Throughout most of history, war has been the norm, peace the exception. Pursuing victory and conquest, founding empires — these were seen as noble pursuits.

The Republican caravan finally arrives, with a flutter of banners, the banging of pots and pans and dogs barking in the dust at everyone’s feet. Those long-faced spectators relegated to the side of the road are Democrats, unable to hide their surly resentment and disappointment. They’re packing heat disguised as eggs and tomatoes for throwing.

Anticipation, expectation, hope and maybe even a little prospect of change is the order of the day. Disappointment will follow soon enough. Many’s the heart that will be broken, after the gall and venom of debate, insult, argument and eventually even a little compromise. It’s how Congress is supposed to work. The men who designed it wore no lace on their drawers.

The Republican leaders, beginning with Mitch McConnell in the Senate and John Boehner in the House, are determined to show everybody that “the Republicans are not as bad as you think,” that the leaders of the conservatives are not as bad as the newspapers and purveyors of television palaver make them out to be.

2014 was known as the year of the cyber breach. Forty-three percent of companies experienced a breach last year, including highly visible and damaging hacks to Sony, Home Depot, Target, and JP Morgan Chase. Unfortunately, the cyber breaches of 2014 were not an aberration, but a likely trend. Both the public and private sectors received wakeup calls from these breaches and are beginning to respond accordingly by working together.
As for the private sector, investment by the government in cybersecurity is now a high priority. According to federal government budget projections, over $65 billion will be spent in the next five years on cybersecurity. Also, federal CIOs say by a wide margin in polls that cybersecurity is their primary IT spending focus.
An additional factor for government budget planners is that spending now correlates to policy enactments. At the end of the last legislative session, Congress passed four significant pieces of cybersecurity legislation, including The National Cybersecurity Protection Act of 2014 (S. 2519). That legislation, according to the House Homeland Security Committee, “will codify the existing cybersecurity and communications operations center at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), known as the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center. The new law will authorize the center’s current activities to share cybersecurity information and analysis with the private sector, provide incident response and technical assistance to companies and federal agencies, and recommend security measures to enhance cybersecurity.”

Gay, Christian-convert son of a Palestinian militant family tells Times of Israel he found compassion where he least expected it, and most needed it.

A Palestinian teenager was arrested in Tel Aviv in late 2006 for illegally entering Israel. It was the third time the 15-year-old from Nablus had crossed into Israel, fleeing his abusive father. Now 24 years old, openly gay, and a convert to Christianity, he is fighting for his life to remain a refugee in Canada.

The boy belonged to an aristocratic family, in Palestinian Islamist terms. His maternal grandfather, Said Bilal, was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Nablus, who oversaw the activities of its Palestinian branch, Hamas. His uncle, Muaz Bilal, was condemned in 2002 by an Israeli court to 26 life sentences for dispatching suicide bombers into downtown Jerusalem in the late 1990s, killing 21 Israelis and injuring 300 in two separate attacks. Two other uncles, Bakr and Obada Bilal, a military Hamas field commander and an explosives expert, respectively, were released from Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap in October 2011.

The ruling Hamas regime in Gaza has angrily denied Israeli claims that Khaled Mashaal, the head of the terror organization’s political bureau, has been expelled from his base in Qatar, at the same time leaving open the question of whether Mashaal will now move to NATO member Turkey, as some reports have suggested.

The Israeli government responded to reports that Mashaal had been thrown out of Qatar – where he has been living in a luxury hotel in the capital, Doha – by saying that it “welcomes Qatar’s decision.”

“We expect the Turkish government to act responsibly in a similar way,” the Israeli statement added.

However, Izzat Rishq, a top aide to Mashaal, flatly contradicted the Israeli claim, telling the Associated Press: “There is no basis of truth about brother Khaled Mashaal leaving Doha. We are in Doha now.”

AP also reported that the Turkish Foreign Ministry said it had no information on a Qatari decision or plans by Mashaal to relocate to Turkey.

One pro-Hamas commentator in Gaza did shed some light on the mystery. In a posting on Facebook in Arabic, columnist Ibrahim al Madhoun said that Mashaal might well leave Qatar, but not “for the reasons reported.”

Those reasons, explained Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC, are rooted in Qatar’s currently rocky relationship with Egypt. The two countries have been at loggerheads for the last eighteen months over Qatar’s continued financial backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose rule in Egypt was overthrown by the current President, Abdel Fattah el Sisi, in July 2013. Egyptian and Qatari intelligence officials met in Cairo last month in an attempt to resolve the dispute.

“There is this reset between Qatar and Egypt, and one condition is for Qatar to dial back on support for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas (the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood,)” Schanzer told The Algemeiner. Other Arab Gulf countries have also been supportive of Cairo’s demands, Schanzer said.

Schanzer pointed out that “Hamas has been wandering since 2012,” when the organization departed from Syria, its main headquarters, because of the brutal civil war raging there. Many Hamas officials traveled onto Egypt and Qatar; with the removal from power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Qatar stood out as a country that would still, Schanzer said, provide “finance and a welcoming environment.”

If Hamas is compelled to shift its operations from Qatar, Schanzer said, Turkey would be the group’s obvious next destination. “Turkey is right now a stronger location than even Qatar for Hamas headquarters,” Schanzer said. “There are two senior leaders already there, as well as around a dozen mid-level operatives and at least two financiers.”

Schanzer named the two leaders as Imad Al Alami, a longstanding Hamas envoy to Iran, and Salah al Arouri, the head of the West Bank branch of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the so-called military wing of Hamas. Al Arouri is widely regarded as being responsible for the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers who were hiking in the West Bank in June 2014.

“Mashaal’s arrival would cement the notion that Turkey is the top headquarters for Hamas,” Schanzer observed. “Whether he goes their voluntarily or because Qatar deports him, it would be undeniable that a NATO member state has become the leading sponsor of Hamas.”

Asked whether Turkey is in violation of the NATO Charter by hosting Hamas, Schanzer said there was a clear breach of the “spirit” of the western alliance, if not its rules.

“Technically, Turkey is operating within the legal boundaries of NATO and the UN, because Hamas is not designated terrorist group at the UN,” Schanzer said. “But NATO was designed to uphold the western fight against various threats, and I would think that terror organizations like Hamas would squarely fall within those parameters.”

Schanzer emphasized that support for Hamas was not the only problematic issue with regard to Turkish foreign policy. “Turkey has a huge Islamic State problem, as it’s the main jurisdiction for IS funding, weapons transfers and personnel transfers,” he said. “Turkey also helps Iran evade sanctions. When you look at the totality of Turkey’s foreign policy over the last few years, many serious questions are raised, including whether it’s a state sponsor of terrorism.”