Category: terrorism

Mossad and “The Grim Beeper” episode

December 23, 2024 • 11:15 am

I didn’t think Mossad admitted its involvement in “Beepergate“: the dissemination among Hezbollah of pagers and walkie-talkies that exploded on a signal last September.  It was key in demoralizing Hezbollah as well as eroding its power, and was cleverly targeted to avoid collateral damage. Apparently now we know that Mossad did this, since two ex-Mossad agents admitted it, and their story was shown on “60 Minutes” this week. It’s also recounted in the Times of Israel.

Here’s the 60 Minutes episode. What’s new: the walkie-talkies were disseminated ten years ago, but weren’t triggered until a few months ago. Since walkie-talkies are used only in battle, Mossad began to weaponize pagers as well. A series of shell companies in Taiwan and Hungary were set up to sell the devices to Hezbollah (they had exploding batteries) while completely masking Israel’s involvement.Multiple tests were done by Mossad to ensure that only the carrier of the pager (a Hezbollah fighter) would be injured. A big internet campaign was mounted to tout the advantages of the exploding beepers, which were larger and thus more cumbersome than conventional beepers.

To get the pagers only into the hands of Hezbollah, Mossad hired the woman who usually sold pagers to the terrorists. In toto, 30 Lebanese died and 3,000 were injured, almost all of them fighters. Yes, a few civilians were hurt, including children. But the vast majority of those injured were terrorists. All in all, the targeted episode was quite successful. It didn’t single-handedly bring about the cease-fire between Hezbollah and Israel, but Hezbollah and its controlling state, Iran, have been set back on their heels.

The Toi article pretty much replicates what’s in the video, but I’ll emphasize one bit:

the psychological effect the attack had on Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was a “tipping point of the war,” Gabriel said.

He asserted that the veteran Hezbollah leader saw pagers exploding and injuring people who were right next to him in his bunker. Asked how he knows that, Gabriel said, “It’s a strong rumor.”

Two days after the attack, Nasrallah gave a speech.

People watch the speech of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as they sit in a cafe in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

“If you look at his eyes, he was defeated,” Gabriel said. “He already lose the war. And his soldier look at him during that speech. And they saw a broken leader.”

In the days after the attack, Israel’s air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Nasrallah was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.

By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas-led terrorists in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire.

Even given all the precautions, Leslie Stahl has the moxie to ask one of the ex Mossad agents whether this episode might make Israel worry about its “moral reputation.” Some question!

Anti-Israeli group at Columbia University finally admits that it backs Hamas and terrorism

October 11, 2024 • 10:45 am

It’s not hard, if you watch anti-Israeli or pro-Palestinian demonstrations (which are pretty much the same thing), to realize that most demonstrators are really both antisemitic and pro-Hamas, seeing what happened on October 7 of last year as a good thing that produced “martyrs”, and explicitly calling for the elimination of the state of Israel. Yes, “Jews” have euphemistically morphed into “Zionists”, but up to now the demonstrators have pretty much avoided explicit worship of terrorism.

Times have changed. Now, after a year in which Hamas and now Hezbollah have taken a pounding, the demonstrators are getting more rabid, and one group at Columbia University, Ground Zero for antisemitism, is celebrating terrorism. Of course they’re celebrating it as justified “armed resistance”, but how reprehensible is it to justify “armed resistance” that involves rape, killing, and kidnapping of civilians, many of whom were working for peace?  A dance rave is not a threat to Hamas, except insofar as it involves Jews!

The NYT reports on a Columbia group that no longer masks its sentiments like they mask their faces. Click headline to read, or find the article archived here.

An excerpt:

The pro-Palestinian group that sparked the student encampment movement at Columbia University in response to the Israel-Hamas war is becoming more hard-line in its rhetoric, openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.

“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, [CUAD] said in its statement revoking the apology.

The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

“The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,” the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”

The rhetoric poses a challenge to university administrators who must decide how to handle students and student groups that take such positions. Their statements are broadly protected under the First Amendment but could lead to federal investigations into campus antisemitism or on campus discipline if they are deemed to create a hostile environment for Jewish students.

There’s more.

The Columbia group’s increasingly radical statements are being mirrored by pro-Palestinian groups on other college campuses, including in a series of social media posts this week that praised the Oct. 7 attack. They also reflect the influence of more extreme protest groups off campus, like Within Our Lifetime, that support violent attacks against Israel.

“Long live October 7th,” Nerdeen Kiswani, the head of Within Our Lifetime, wrote on X on Tuesday.

Here’s Kiswani’s post in which she celebrates the brutal murder of civilians:

And more:

Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian student group that has chapters at hundreds of colleges across the country, was among the groups whose members posted praise for the Oct. 7 attack.

“Al-Aqsa Flood was a historic act of resistance against decades of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonial violence,” the Brown chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted on Instagram.

The increasingly revolutionary tilt of the student movement reflects an internal push among many pro-Palestinian groups to align their goals with principles known as the Thawabet, crafted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1977. They include the right of Palestinians to armed resistance and to self-determination on all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Here’s that Brown SJP Instagram post, which celebrates October 7, 2023, as beginning an “accelerated phase” of opposition to Israeli genocide. Now that’s a good euphemism!

More about Columbia University Apartheid Divest:

Since [October 7], the group has praised a Tel Aviv attack by Palestinian militants that killed seven people at a light rail station on Oct. 1, including a mother who died while shielding her 9-month-old baby. It also praised Iran’s missile attack on the Jewish state that began that evening, calling it a “bold move.”

On Tuesday, the group said it rescinded an apology it made last spring about the behavior of Khymani James, a student who had said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live,” and, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

“We let you down,” the group wrote in a statement, referring to Mr. James. No longer, the group vowed, would it “pander to liberal media to make the movement for liberation palatable.”

There’s really nothing to say except that a. this is still free speech until it reaches the point where the atmosphere at Columbia becomes such as to provide an intimidating atmosphere for Jewish students, impeding their learning, in which case it becomes a Title VI violation. (It may be there now.) But regardless of free speech considerations, CUAD is now an open exponent of butchering civilians, an antisemitic group that supports terrorism and rescinds an apology for someone who said that he was going to murder “Zionists”.  This is not just support for the Palestinian people, but support for murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. After all, Israel must be eliminated “by any means necessary.”

When I posted a tweet that this article had appeared in the NYT, and calling out the protestors, I got this on my Twitter feed from an author.

Just be aware that this dude apparently supports CUAD and its aims. Things have come to a pretty pass when a Jew can be called a “Nazi” for opposing the killing of innocent Jews.

The BBC once again won’t use the word “terrorists” for Hamas

September 27, 2024 • 11:45 am

This article just appeared in Spiked (click headline below to read), but you can see a similar piece in the Times of Israel. The upshot is that the BBC, which has long bridled at using the word “terrorists” for Hamas, is now bridling again when the Beeb itself shows a documentary about the Nova Music Festival. I haven’t seen the film yet (it’s has the great title “We Will Dance Again”), but the trailer is below.  And, of course, the Nova festival is where the butchery of October 7 began. Yes, the butchery was largely by Hamas, and Hamas are, for anyone with two neurons to rub together, TERRORISTS. But not to the Beeb, so the word “terrorist” has been expunged from the film.

It’s not clear whether that bowdlerization was at the request of the BBC, or whether the filmmakers were just cowed by the BBC’s long-standing refusal to apply the “t-word” to Hamas, but either way it’s a blot on the BBC, though the network at least partly redeems itself by showing the film. But really, a film on terrorism that won’t use the “t-word”???

I’ll give excerpts from the Spiked piece below.


An excerpt:

The BBC has reached a new low. It has tumbled further down the well of moral relativism. This week, it will broadcast a new documentary about Hamas’s massacre at the Nova music festival on 7 October last year. But according to the doc’s director, the version the Beeb is showing ‘won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. If this is true, if the BBC can’t even park its weird aversion to calling Hamas terrorists when it is airing a film about Hamas’s butchery of the young at a festival in the desert, then that shames Britain.

We Will Dance Again tells the story of what the pogromists of Hamas did when they happened upon the Nova festival in the Negev desert during their invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023. Combining harrowing testimony from survivors with graphic footage of Hamas’s barbarism, it paints a grim picture of arguably the worst event of the pogrom: 364 people were slaughtered at Nova. Yet according to the director, Yariv Mozer, one thing will be missing from the version us Brits will see: the T-word.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter on ‘what they kept’ and ‘what they cut’ from their disturbing film, Mozer says ‘the version [the BBC will] air won’t describe Hamas as terrorists’. Hinting at his irritation at this alleged omission, Mozer says ‘it was a price I was willing to pay so that the British public will be able to see these atrocities’. Then Brits can decide for themselves, he says, ‘if this is a terrorist organisation or not’. Some of us have already decided, of course. The BBC might be reluctant to call the mass murderers of Jews ‘terrorists’, but others are more than happy to do so.

It is not clear from the interview with Mozer if the BBC explicitly instructed him to take out the word terrorist, or if Mozer and his team pre-empted the Beeb’s odd concern about that word and decided to take it out themselves for an easier life. The Jerusalem Post assumes it’s the former: the BBC ‘told director’ to ‘not describe Hamas as “terrorists”’, it says. Yet even if it’s the latter, even if there are tellers of Israelis’ stories out there who get the vibe that you shouldn’t call Hamas ‘terrorists’ if you want to appear on the BBC, then that’s still epically embarrassing for Britain.

If this was self-censorship, it’s understandable. After all, for the past year, ever since Hamas visited its racist terror on Israel, the BBC has been pathologically resistant to calling Hamas ‘terrorists’. Even though that’s what they are. There was a storm in the aftermath of the pogrom over the BBC’s linguistic cowardice. Just four days after the pogrom, Beeb big gun John Simpson offered a thin explanation for the corporation’s dodging of the T-word. ‘We don’t take sides’, he said. ‘We don’t use loaded words like “evil” or “cowardly”. We don’t talk about “terrorists”.’

And yet O’Neill points out how the BBC has no hesitancy about applying the term “terrorist” to “far-right terrorists”! It’s only when the terrorists kill Jews that the Beeb pulls back. (“Terrorism” is commonly used to refer to illegal and deliberate killing or intimidation of civilians in pursuit of political aims, so of course Hamas is a terrorist organization and the Nova festival is an example of terrorism.)

The Time of Israel is a little bit more forthcoming, as its article is called “BBC airs Nova massacre film after insisting references to Hamas as terrorists removed”, and also says this:

“We Will Dance Again,” a full-length documentary film about the Hamas massacre of over 360 people at the Supernova music festival during the terror group’s October 7, 2023 assault on southern Israel last year, aired on Britain’s BBC2 on Thursday evening, though only after filmmakers agreed not to refer to Hamas as terrorists.

The word “insisting”, as well as the notion that there was an “agreement”, both imply that the BBC demanded that the word not be used. Well, it doesn’t matter: what matters is the BBC’s craven historical reluctance to use the word “terrorist” to refer to Hamas. Of that O’Neill says this:

One year after 364 young Jews were murdered by anti-Semitic terrorists – yes, terrorists – Britain’s public broadcaster won’t call their killers by their proper name. You couldn’t ask for better proof of how Israelophobia rots the brain and warps the soul.

Does anyone doubt that the BBC has an anti-Semitic slant?

Well, the ToI says a bit about the movie:

Mozer, Zirinsky and others have stressed that the film is apolitical. An opening title of the film notes, “The human cost of the Hamas massacre in Israel and the war that followed in Gaza has been catastrophic for both Israelis and Palestinians,” adding: “This film cannot tell everyone’s story.”

Nevertheless, similar efforts to tell the story of the attack on the Nova festival have been protested against, including a New York exhibit of personal artifacts from the festival that drew expressions of open support for Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as chants endorsing the attack.

Here is the trailer (there’s also a 32-minute video that includes interviews with the director and producers).

The insanity of America’s supporting Qatar

September 25, 2024 • 10:00 am

The article below appeared a few days ago in MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), written by MEMRI’s founder and director Yigal Carmon. Carmon is an e-friend whom I met in Israel, and who, you might recall, predicted in the summer of 2023 that Israel would go to war with Gaza in September or October (see the prediction here). Now Yigal is not always correct, but his organization, tasked with listening to everything they can get from the Arab world and translating it into English, Hebrew, and other languages , has been essential for many countries’ intelligence.

Although Wikipedia accuses MEMRI of being “a strongly pro-Israel advocacy group,” that’s pretty much irrelevant, because its main job is translating what comes out of the Arab world (and yes, much of that is done in the cause of educating Israelis), but I am not aware of MEMRI ever having mistranslated anything. Isn’t more information better than less information, no matter who that information serves?  You may say that the article below, which advocates the US moving its military base out of Qatar, is “strongly pro-Israel,” but so what? If doing that helps dampen the terrorism strongly supported by Qatar, that’s all to the good.

There are other parts to come, so keep your eyes on the MEMRI site.

Carmon’s thesis, which is documented with extensive references, is that Qatar is a pervasive and wealthy sponsor of terrorism and Islamism (nobody really denies this), yet the US has graced it with the status as an ally, having taken an old Qatari military base and turned it into a U.S, CENTCOM base. Al Udeid Air Base harbors several thousand American troops and about 400 RAF troops (the Aussies used to have a few planes there, too, but wisely moved them to the United Arab Emirates).  That base is essential to Qatar because without it, it’s likely that the terrorism-sponsoring countryu would simply be taken over by the UAE or Saudi Arabia.

Qatar also funds terrorism big time. It has supported Hamas with gazillions of dollars and gives refuge to its members (and storage of its money) along with members of the Taliban. As Carmon writes (I’ve left the reference numbers in):

Qatar is the world’s foremost state sponsor of Islamic terrorist organizations and movements, backing a wide range of them, both Sunni and Shi’ite. They include the Islamic State (ISIS), Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, the Houthis, the Taliban, Jabhat Al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC, see below) and even Islamist militias in northern Mali.[7]

Carmon argues that the U.S. should get its tuches out of Qatar, which will give us both credibility in the eyes of the world (why on Earth are we there when other and friendlier Arab countries have offered us a base?), or, alternatively, the opportunity to use leverage against Qatar by threatening to withdraw its base, which scares the bejeezus out of Qatar since its enemies would take over the tiny but oil-rich country.

But I digress. You can read the article for yourself by clicking above. I’ll give a few quotes, grouped under bold headings that I’ve created.

The situation. 

It is a tragedy that what is common knowledge for any vegetable vendor or taxi driver in the Arab and Muslim world eludes American (as well as Israeli) intelligence leaders – that is, Qatar’s anti-U.S. and terror-supporting role in the Arab and Muslim world as well as in the West.

Trump’s meeting also underlines that Qatar’s story is not a Gulf story, nor an Arab story. It is a story that impacts the whole West and its ability to counter its enemies.

This document will detail Qatar’s role and the consequences of an American embrace of it, and the devastating effects this has on America’s true allies, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). By embracing Qatar, the U.S. is alienating and abandoning its true allies, KSA and UAE, in favor of Qatar, which is their enemy and the enemy of the United States as well. Under these circumstances, KSA and UAE have no choice but to distance themselves from America and drift towards China and Russia.

Many who would agree that Qatar is an enemy of the U.S., not an ally, may still say that America must embrace Qatar because of the CENTCOM base located there. The truth is the opposite. First of all, America can move the base at any time to the UAE, Bahrain, or KSA. In fact, these countries had requested it, but America turned them down.

Second, Qatar holds CENTCOM in its territory not as a favor to the U.S. but as security and protection for itself. Without the American base, the Aal Thani family’s rule of Qatar would likely be ended by its neighbors. It is Qatar that is beholden to the U.S. for maintaining the base on its soil. Given that the Aal Thani family owes its very survival to the base’s location in Qatar, any U.S. administration could have pressured Qatar into a pro-U.S. policy instead of its pro-terrorist and pro-Iran one. Unfortunately, none have done it.[1]

Successive U.S. administrations have acted as if they somehow owe Qatar for hosting the base. This is as much a tragedy as it is an inexplicable strategic blunder that begs explanation – because this American approach cannot be explained by any strategic considerations. But there may be other considerations in play, such as Qatar’s immense wealth, that are impacting the policies of many countries, including the U.S.

Qatar’s double role as a U.S. “ally” as well as a sponsor of terrorism (see quote above as well):

Qatar is responsible for 9/11 – the worst of all anti-U.S. Islamist terror operations. It was also involved in many others (see comprehensive MEMRI report Qatar Is Responsible For Khalid Sheikh Mohammad’s 2,977 Murders On 9/11 – At The World Trade Center And The Pentagon, And On Two Other Hijacked Flights – That Are Only Some Of 31 Attacks And Plots That He Outlined In His Own Confession, September 13, 2024).

Qatar hosts the financiers of terrorism, according to the United Nations and to former U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen.[8]

The September 2012 murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens in Benghazi was perpetrated by the Qatar-supported Al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia.[9]

In 2021, Qatar succeeded in replacing the democratically elected and secular Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani with the Taliban, whom it sustained for years with headquarters in Doha. It is also to blame for the 13 American soldiers killed during the Taliban’s violent takeover in August 2021.

Qatar provided Hamas with billions of dollars, which ended up financing the murder of over 30 Americans and the taking of 11 Americans as hostages to Gaza in its October 7 attack on Israel.[10]

Additionally, in 2007 in Gaza, it was thanks to their general support to Hamas as an organization that Hamas was able to take over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority.

Qatar also finances Hizbullah and Iran’s IRGC.[11]

Carmon documents Qatar’s support for Islamist movements, and notes this:

Qatar’s activity in the US, some of which is illegal:

Recently, it was revealed that Qatar even dared to bribe a leading Democratic senator, Robert Menendez, who was subsequently convicted of political corruption. Another striking example of this is Qatar’s contracting of a former CIA official to spy on Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) and Ed Royce (former R-CA and House Foreign Affairs Committee chair), who are all opposed to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.[19]

Qatar brazenly ignored the order by the U.S. Department of Justice to register Al-Jazeera as a foreign agent.[20]

Qatar  has funded American universities to the tune of $4.7 billion, which is evident now in the wave of pro-Hamas protests sweeping American universities.[21]

Other and friendlier Arab countires have offered the U.S. military bases.  (Bolding below is mine)

In 1995, when the major Arab countries objected to the coup of the previous Emir (Hamad bin Khalifa) against his father (Khalifa bin Hamad Aal Thani), the new emir sought out the Americans to provide him with additional protection. Shrewdly, he offered them Al-Udeid airbase to serve the U.S. military. With that move, this base came to guarantee the safety of the dictatorial Aal-Thani family.

Threatened by Qatar’s Islamist activities, and striving for Westernization and socioeconomic progress, the regimes of the UAE and KSA offered the U.S. their territory for the CENTCOM base, but the U.S. turned them down. Under the Obama administration, America made it clear that it prefers its enemies, Iran and Qatar, to its natural allies – KSA, UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan – who were also subject to constant attacks by the Qatar-supported Muslim Brotherhood.[22]

In 2017, KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt declared a total boycott on Qatar, in order to bring down the ruling Aal-Thani family. They set out the conditions for lifting the boycott: Qatar must stop supporting Iran and terrorism.[23]

It was again the U.S., alongside Iran and other anti-U.S. countries, that came to Qatar’s rescue to survive the boycott and the political pressure.

What lesson were KSA, UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt to learn from this? That the U.S. is completely blind to the role of Qatar as an anti-U.S. state sponsor of global Islamist terrorism and ally of Iran, and that it prefers its enemies to its allies. It is no wonder that over the years, in the face of this abandonment by the American administration, KSA and UAE have gradually drifted away from America and towards America’s adversaries and enemies – BRICS, Russia, and China.

Conclusion: the US should relocate its forces out of Qatar. (Or perhaps use the threat of that removal to get Qatar to stop sponsoring terrorism. A threat that works could end the war between Hamas and Gaza.  But of course Carmon realizes that this relocation is “unlikely”.)

One relatively simple move  could change America’s weak standing in the world into a strong one, and even prevent a looming world war, possibly resulting from the tensions created by Qatar worldwide – and that is moving the CENTCOM base from Qatar to the UAE or KSA. This would be a new approach by America – preferring its allies over its enemies in the Arab and Muslim world, fighting Islamism rather than embracing it, cutting off the flow of cash dollars for anti-Americanism, creating a real bloc against Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, denying the Iranian ayatollahs’ regime a major ally worldwide, and ushering in a sane strategy of strengthening Western civilization over those who seek to destroy it.

Without the American airbase in Qatar, Qatar’s ruling family could be toppled by its neighbors as they tried to do in 2017, with no one in the Arab and Muslim world missing it except the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and other terrorist organizations.

Tragically, it is unlikely that any American administration will do this, not even a Republican one. The Arab and Muslim world, and particularly the countries that are considered the collective West that have been deserted by America, will all have to learn to live in a world without American and Western hegemony.

It is a complete mystery to me why the U.S. maintains a military presence in a country that is such a strong sponsor of terrorism. It can’t be for strategic reasons because both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have offered us locations for U.S. based—and we turned them down. We’re also in the position to stop Qatar from sponsoring terrorism, but aren’t doing it.

Now there’s one fly in the ointment that Carmon neglects, which is that now Turkey has a base in Qatar as well, which may have as many as 5,000 troops.  Moreover, Turkey is a member of NATO, which means that if the UAE or another country attacks Qatar, other NATO members are obliged to come in on the side of Turkey. I’ve written Yigal about this, as in my view it could scupper his whole argument.  I’ll report on his reply or perhaps he’ll leave a comment.

Sam Harris: The beeper attacks were not only clever, but justifiable

September 23, 2024 • 12:30 pm

Given that most of the world doesn’t want Israel to win any wars, it’s natural that the media is full of criticisms of Israel for exploding hundreds of beepers (and some walkie-talkies) that were in the hands of Hezbollah operatives.  (You can see critiques, for example, here, here, and here, and the beeper attacks were also criticized by the miscreant AOC, who never said word one about Hezbollah violating international law with its repeated rocket attacks or about ther death of 12 Druze Israeli children from those rockets.

Further, beepers were in fact invented by a Jew, which I suppose makes them doubly nefarious.

At any rate, I just discovered that Sam Harris has a Substack site, and I got a subscription by begging for it. Sam, as you may recall, wrote after October 7 a terrific and eloquent criticism of Hamas terrorism as being deeply immoral. It’s one of the best short pieces he’s written.

Now Sam’s taken up the Grim Beeper episode, and defends it as a precision targeted operation that had almost no “collateral damage”.  Those who say it was a war crime or violation of humanitarian principles of war are simply off the rails. Click below (I think the article is free), or you can find the piece archived here. 

An excerpt (long one):

Thousands of electronic pagers—and later, hand-held radios—exploded simultaneously, killing dozens and injuring vast numbers of jihadists. This attack, the ingenuity of which cannot be denied, has been widely criticized as a dangerous escalation, as a breach of the rules of war, and most ludicrously, as an act of terrorism.

But if this Trojan Horse operation was as precise as it appears to have been, then it ranks among the most ethical acts of self-defense in memory. There are no “innocent” members of Hezbollah—whose only contributions to human culture have been the ruination of Lebanon and the modern evil of suicide bombing. This Iranian proxy has been firing rockets into northern Israel since October 8th, in response to… well, nothing at all. Israel’s occupation of Lebanon ended a quarter century ago.

If the Israelis managed to target members of Hezbollah by turning their personal electronic equipment into bombs—without seeding such bombs indiscriminately throughout Lebanon—then they achieved a triple victory. First, they killed or maimed the very people who have been trying to murder them, and who have displaced 70,000 innocent Israeli civilians from their homes. Second, they marked actual jihadists among the survivors, presumably making them easier to capture or kill in the future—and, one can only hope, reducing their status in Lebanese society. And third, they have stripped away some of the glamour of jihad. The promise of Paradise is one thing; the prospect of living without fingers or eyes is another.

Again, the righteousness of this attack depends on whether it was as targeted as it seems. Tragically, four children are reported to have been killed. However, compared to almost any other military operation, this act of mass sabotage appears to have produced very few unintended deaths. It is an example of exactly the sort of calibrated violence that Israel’s critics claim to support. And it has delivered a profound psychological blow to one of the most ruthless jihadist organizations on Earth.

Of course, many assert that any acts of retaliation, however precise, simply breed more violence. They seem to believe that pacifism, in some form, must be the ultimate answer to Israel’s existential concerns. After all, how else will the killing stop?

Sam then goes after pacifism with an argument reminiscent of Orwell’s, and in general I agree. Pacificm is injurious to the moral side in a just war, like WWII or, in this case, the war of Israel against Hezbollah. But, as a CO, I would not be able to fight in a war I consider unjust, such as that in Vietnam (my college term paper in Ethics was on figuring out what I considered to be a just war, and I used that paper as supporting evidence in my CO application.)

Sam ends with a question:

. . . . If you are uncomfortable with an operation that precisely targeted a group of jihadists who aspire to commit an actual genocide, just what sort of self-defense on Israel’s part would you support?

It’s an honest question, but of course for many NO form of self-defense is justifiable when it’s Israel defending itself.

Tablet argues that the Palestinian Authority is just as bad as Hamas, and should not be part of a postwar government

April 12, 2024 • 12:15 pm

Everybody in the Biden administration is all juiced up to reward Hamas for attacking Israel by giving the Palestinians a state, one presumably run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).  People who make this suggestion, who include Biden and his running dog Anthony Blinken, seen to be ignorant of the fact that the PA is a terror-promoting organization that in some ways is even worse than Hamas, for it produces schoolbooks that have brought up generations of Palestinians to hate and want to kill Jews.

If you want to know why neither Hamas nor the PA (nor even a revised version of the PA) should be running Gaza and the West Bank after the war, read the Tablet piece below, which is reasonably short and full of facts. The author, Gaudi Taub, is also a broadcaster, a screenwritere, and a historian.  Click the headline; it’s a free read:

The title of the article is startling, but it is accurate. For the PA has placed a value on the stipend a terrorist will get depending on how many Jews he’s planned to hurt, actually hurt, or killed. And the more Jews you kill, the more money a jailed Palestinian gets, all through the “Martyr’s Fund” described in Wikipedia.  (It’s often called “pay-for-slay”.) I and others have talked about it before, yet many people still seem surprised that it exists. Not only that, but it’s funded in part by American taxpayers (via fungible money we give to NGOs, which becomes extra money for the PA), and, if the terrorist is killed (and becomes a martyr, or shahid), the terrorist’s family gets a stipend for life.

Now if anything is genocide, a program whereby Palestinians are financially rewarded for killing Jews is that.  Imagine if Jews got paid for each Palestinian they killed! The world would be outraged, and it would properly be called “genocide” (which Israel is not committing now).

The Martyr’s Fund takes up a huge portion of the PA;’s budget: about 7%, and according to Tablet ,the PA considers it the most important item in its budget, one that cannot ever be dispensed with. Below is a table of what dead Jews are worth to a jailed Palestinian; monthly stipends to prisoners (or their families) are calculated based on the time a terrorist is sentenced to jail.  (A New Israeli Shekel is worth 27¢ U.S, so divide by about four to get the monthly salary in dollars.

The PA, as I said, also creates and promotes terrorism through its schools, producing materials that are also used in UN (UNRWA) schools:.

Schools are a critical part of the socialization of Palestinian children into this culture. Not only do Palestinian school books contain direct incitement in the form of explicit murderous antisemitic ideology, but also every subject, including grammar and math, drills the same message into children’s brains. Take the following exam questions that Shemesh cites (p. 20):

“Hamas shoots a rocket which weighs 50 kilos in the direction of occupied Tel Rabia [Tel Aviv], which is 90.25 kilometers away. What speed does it need to fly, what would be the maximum height, and how long will it take it get there?”

Or:

“Two people are carrying on their shoulders a coffin weighing 200 Newton in the funeral of a martyr weighing 800 Newton.” The students are asked to calculate the strength the two men would need.

. . . . In other words, the cult of death reigns everywhere you turn. Regardless of how much well-meaning Israelis tried desperately to imagine otherwise over the years, the Palestinian national ethos is built around a genocidal war to ethnically cleanse Palestine, from the river to the sea, of Jewish presence.

Finally, the PA itself not only encourages terrorism, but also practices terrorism:

By now, moreover, we know that PA security forces personnel are directly involved in terror attacks. In fact, even as the press in Israel and in the West tries to ignore it, PA officials brag about their complicity in terrorism in Arabic to their own people. They cannot stand to lose their competition with Hamas in the national Jew-killing contest.

A Palestinian Media Watch report published in February, titled “Terrorists in Uniform,” quoted a PA spokesperson bragging that “roughly 63-65% of the number of Martyrs in the West Bank … are members of the Fatah Movement. And most of them are members of the [PA] Security Forces or their sons.” The police forces Israel armed and the U.S. military trains are active participants in the terror they were supposed to stop. Using the guns we gave them to stop terror, they instead kill Jews—in the process securing the livelihoods of their families.

There’s more, but just these three aspects of PA-induced terrorism should make Americans very wary of trying to have the organization help run a postwar government in Gaza—or any government ruling entities created in the now-impossible “two state solution. One of the morons who’s been roped into PA corral is Thomas Friedman of the NYT, who seems to have ignored this:

Regardless of this bloody track record, the White House and the State Department, along with pro-Democratic Party Israeli think tanks, former IDF generals nurtured on a woke ideological diet in American universities, and the Israeli press, are careful to maintain a conceptual barrier between Hamas as a terror organization, and the PA. The latter, they maintain, is a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism—the same PA that, in reality, glorifies and incentivizes terrorism.

The last sentence—the “solution” that Thomas Friedman, Biden, and Blinken love so much—is risible. No, the PA will never be “a crucial partner in the fight against terrorism”, for it is an explicit promoter of terrorism.  If you hear somebody touting the PA as a “nicer” version of Hamas, one that can work with America, remember the things above, especially the pay-for-slay program.

 

The Tablet article ends eloquently:

Less than two weeks after the Oct. 7 attack, the PA’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs included an infamous Hadith—a saying attributed in the tradition to the messenger of Islam—in its official guidelines that provided imams with talking points to use in their Oct. 20 Friday sermon in Palestinian mosques. The Hadith says that judgment day will only come after the believers have exterminated the Jews. On that day, it says, even rocks and trees will help in the cause of jihad. They will say, “Oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me; come and kill him.”

This horrific image, nature itself partaking in ridding the world of the unnatural Jewish scourge, is even more jarring against the backdrop of the Oct. 7 attack on the Nova nature festival, where partygoers attempted to hide behind rocks and bushes in the Negev desert to escape the slaughter.

The PA, the U.S. partner that Washington wants to put in charge of Gaza, has since added the families of the “martyrs,” the terrorists who were killed while committing the horrors of that terrible Shabbat morning, to the list of pay-for-slay beneficiaries.

Yes, the trees all say to come and kill the hiding Jews.

UNIFIL: another UN organization that endangers Israel by refusing to do its job

February 19, 2024 • 10:00 am

Every day rockets are fired from southern Lebanon into northern Israel by the terrorist group Hezbollah, funded by (of course) Iran with the purpose of destroying Israel.  (Israel only strikes back when Hezbollah does this, but never initiates firing.) Sometimes the Western press reports on this near constant rain of missiles, but often it doesn’t.

I haven’t, for example, seen much news about the Hezbollah rocket that actually hit an Israeli hospital last Thursday, but, thank Ceiling Cat, it didn’t explode.  However, the Hezbollah missile rain is near constant, for the group is located right up to the border between Lebanon and Israel. If Israel had fired such a rocket at Palestine, targeting only civilians in a hospital, the world would have been outraged.

Another thing that few people know, but should, is that the United Nations has a substantial force of “peacekeeping” troops in Lebanon—thousands of them—tasked with preventing terrorists from coming close to the Israeli border, and ensuring peace in the country.  But they don’t do their job, and nobody forces them to, as the troops are afraid of Hezbollah and the United Nations is cowardly and hypocritical. Hezbollah is located right up to the of Israel, and UN troops just observe and cower as the rockets are fired.

The troops are members of UNIFIL, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, originally established in 1978 to ensure Israel withdrew from Lebanon after a battle, and to buttress the elected Lebanese government—a parliamentary democracy— in running the country, as well as restoring security and peace in general. Later, in 2006, a UN resolution dictated that any terrorists were not to operate from south of the Litani River (in red below), which is about ten miles north of the border with Israel.

Unfortunately, the UN has failed. There is no peace and security in Lebanon. Hezbollah has become the de facto government of Lebanon: no ministers or President can be chosen without Hezbollah’s approval, and for the past two years there’s been no President of the country because Hezbollah hasn’t found one to its liking. Despite UN restrictions, Hezbollah operates south of the Litani River, where UN troops are supposed to be the only armed force, and fires rockets from that area.

Did I mention that the U.S. helps fund UNIFIL?

Why isn’t there an outcry about this egregious violation of a UN mandate? You already know, of course: it’s okay to violate a UN mandate if the violation is bad for Israel. (Look at UNRWA!)

The article below (click headline to read), which is short, gives you ten facts YOU NEED TO KNOW about UNIFIL, and yes, you do need to know these things. It’s from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonprofit think tank. If you doubt the claims, check them yourself.

I’ll quote just the first five facts, plus the last one on US funding, so you can see how the UN is operating in Lebanon. But it’s useful to read the whole short piece.

  1. UNIFIL was established in 1978 to end war, restore peace and security

On March 11, 1978, Lebanese-based terrorists massacred 38 Israeli civilians near Tel Aviv, including more than a dozen children. Three days later, Israel invaded Lebanon to push terrorist groups away from Israel’s northern border. In response, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) called for Israel to withdraw and established UNIFIL on March 19, 1978, “for the purpose of confirming the withdrawal of Israeli forces, restoring international peace and security and assisting the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area.” Following the arrival of UNIFIL forces four days later, Israeli forces withdrew from hard-won positions in Lebanon.

  1. Despite UNIFIL’s presence, Hezbollah’s military infrastructure dominates southern Lebanon

UNIFIL’s failure to counter Hezbollah has enabled an extraordinary military buildup by the Iran-backed group, including its accumulation of an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles. Israel assesses that Iran has helped Hezbollah establish facilities in Lebanon to convert rockets and missiles to precision-guided munitions potentially capable of penetrating Israeli defenses and striking significant, high-value targets throughout Israel. In October 2009, a large explosion occurred at a house containing a Hezbollah weapons cache south of the Litani River. Hezbollah immediately closed the area to UNIFIL and the LAF and, using large trucks, began transferring salvaged weapons to another location. The incident demonstrated UNIFIL’s basic acceptance of Hezbollah’s dominance in southern Lebanon.

  1. UNSC Resolution 1701 expanded UNIFIL after a 2006 Hezbollah kidnapping triggered war (BOLDING WITHIN PARAGRAPHS BELOW IS MINE)

On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah operatives ambushed an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) patrol along the Israel-Lebanon border, killing eight soldiers and kidnapping two others. Israel responded with precision air strikes on Hezbollah assets, prompting the launch over the next month of some 4,000 Katyusha rockets targeting northern Israeli cities. At least 157 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed during the 34-day war, with nearly 400,000 driven from their homes for the duration. An estimated 1,000 Lebanese were killed, including an unknown number of Hezbollah terrorists. Passed in August 2006, UNSC Resolution 1701 ended the hostilities, expanded UNIFIL, required Lebanon to assert its sovereignty in the south, forbade the rearming of terrorist groups, and required the “unconditional release” of the kidnapped soldiers — whose bodies Hezbollah only returned as part of a 2008 prisoner exchange with Israel.

  1. UNIFIL’s mandate requires southern Lebanon up to the Litani River be exclusively peaceful

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 expanded UNIFIL’s mandate to have its peacekeeping force “accompany and support the Lebanese Armed Forces” as they deploy in the area between the Blue Line — the informal border with Israel — and the Litani River. The resolution charged UNIFIL with helping the LAF to establish “an area free of any armed personnel, assets, and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL.” UNIFIL is to ensure that its area of operations “is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind” and that the peacekeeping force “resist[s] attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties.” However, despite the United Nations having strengthened and expanded its contingent of peacekeepers in Lebanon, Hezbollah is now the world’s most heavily armed non-state actor, with much of its arsenal concentrated in UNIFIL’s area of operations.

  1. Hezbollah has repeatedly fired into Israel from UNIFIL’s area of operations

Since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, an estimated 100,000 residents of northern Israel have had to evacuate their homes due to the threat from Lebanon. On December 7, a guided missile attack from south Lebanon killed an Israeli civilian, one of 11 Hezbollah attacks that day, prompting Israeli threats of harsh retaliation if attacks continue. On December 9, 2023, Hezbollah launched several rockets at Israel, including one that originated 20 meters from a UNIFIL compound. UNIFIL acknowledges and condemns Hezbollah activity but does little else. As of January 9, 2024, 12 IDF soldiers and five Israeli civilians have been killed, and over 150 other Israelis injured, in hundreds of anti-tank missile, mortar, and drone attacks. Without naming Hezbollah, in late November, UNIFIL’s head of mission expressed his “deep concern” about the situation and “the potential for wider and more intensive hostilities.” Thus, Israel remains on the precipice of a two-front war in which it will have to confront not just Hamas but also a better-armed adversary on its northern border.

The only reason Hezbollah hasn’t crossed the border to attack Israel is because it knows that it wouldn’t win; Israel has the capability to pursue a two-front war.

. . . . . 10. The U.S. contributes substantial sums to sustain UNIFIL – with insufficient return on investment

The United States contributes annually to UNIFIL’s budget even as the peacekeeping body fails to fulfill its mission. In 2023, Congress appropriated $143 million to UNIFIL, accounting for over one-quarter of the peacekeeping body’s approximately $510 million budget. Since the war in 2006, Washington has spent more than $2.5 billion to support UNIFIL. The United States has likewise invested a similar amount in the LAF since 2006, a portion of which is intended to facilitate cooperation between the LAF and UNIFIL in southern Lebanon. Neither the LAF nor UNIFIL lacks the funding or manpower necessary to carry out its responsibilities. The problem is a lack of will.

The U.S. recently announced that its contributions to UNRWA are suspended for what may be a very long time, looking to funnel aid to Palestine through other organizations (17 other countries have also withdrawn funding). It should do the same with UNIFIL. The US should not be supporting UN organizations that foster terrorism or fail to stop it when that is their mission.