Ynet News: Israel to open field clinic in Japan

Two planes carrying 50 doctors, tons of equipment leave Saturday. Israeli doc: Japanese are grateful

Itamar Eichner Published: 03.23.11, 12:48 / Israel News

Israeli mission to aid Japan crisis on its way: A medical delegation, including 50 doctors, is expected to fly from Ben-Gurion Airport on Saturday and head to Japan.

Israel will send two planes, one holding nearly 20 tons worth of humanitarian aid and the other full of 50 tons worth of medical equipment intended for an Israeli field clinic which will be established in the town of Minamisanriku.
 
"The view here is extremely harsh. Everything is destroyed. Nothing is left of this town," IDF Home Front Medical Corps Commander, Colonel Dr. Ariel Bar, told Yediot Ahronot about the sights he had seen in the town.
 
"In this area alone there are about 10,000 homeless people. People sleep on the floor and seem unresponsive. They definitely need help and fast."

The Israeli clinic will provide the Japanese with pediatrics, internal and orthopedic medicine. A field X-ray lab and a blood test lab will also be built on location.

"The Japanese think very highly of Israeli knowledge and especially our ability to act independently in the field," said Bar. "When it comes to Japanese culture it's not an easy thing to ask for help or admit their inability to do something. But this crisis is hard enough so that they do. They are grateful."

Israel's ambassador to Japan Nissim Ben Shitrit is the one in charge of contacts between local authorities. Director of the North East Asia Department of the MFA (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Hagai Shagrir, is assisting Ben Shitrit from Israel.
 
"Not one building is left standing. Everything is in ruins," said Bar. "Those who are still alive suffer from different diseases. That's why we're going to establish a field clinic and provide various medical services."

Ynet News: 'Assad using Hezbollah to suppress civil unrest'

Opposition figures say members of Lebanese Shiite group working alongside Syrian security forces to quell Deraa riots; local hospital says bodies of 25 protestors brought in, 'all with gunshot wounds'

Roee Nahmias, agencies Published: 03.24.11, 13:33 / Israel News

At least 25 bodies of protestors who were killed in clashes with Syrian security forces were evacuated to the main hospital in the southern city of Deraa, a medical official reported Thursday.

"They all had gunshot wounds," the official said.

'Massacre in Deraa' Photo: AP

Meanwhile, Syrian opposition leaders have accused President Bashar Assad of using Hezbollah to suppress the anti-government protests. Abd el-Razek told BBC Arabic that Hezbollah operatives were working alongside Syrian security forces to quell the riots in Deraa. Other opposition leaders have made similar claims.

'Corrupt government is butchering us'

An independent Syrian human rights organization condemned the wave of arrests of anti-government activists in the country. The group reported that blogger and communications student Ahmad Hadifa was detained in Damascus Thursday by secret police. Last month Hadifa was held in police custody for six days.

According to the organization, Hadifa was arrested due to his "activity on Facebook in support of the protest in Deraa."

Amnesty International published the names of 93 activists it claims were arrested this month in cities throughout Syria. It said the actual number of those arrested was much higher.

A video posted on YouTube showed an activist pleading with Arab and foreign news networks to "Save us, there is a massacre in Deraa. This corrupt government is butchering us. There are tanks and other armored vehicles here. Save us. Deraa calls out to you; Deraa is dead; I beg of you."

The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that late Wednesday an "armed gang attacked an ambulance crew that drove by the al-Omari mosque in Deraa, resulting in the deaths of a physician, medic and ambulance driver."

SANA said security forces would "continue to hunt down armed gangs that terrorize civilians and murder, steal and torch public buildings and homes in Deraa."

Hurriyet Daily News: You shall not kill!

I found this article written by a Turkish journalist who is pointing out exactly the hypocrisy of the Muslim leaders. I also wonder how those hot blooded angry Muslims, among them so called "moderate" were so silent and not condemning the Itamar family massacre (as well as other past events). None of them said that he/she is sorry. How can I believe that Muslims and Islam is the religion and nation of peace? It is not for me or us to prove that they are peaceful, but they need to strive and show the world that they are. Islamophobia is not baseless.

Hanan.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011



BURAK BEKDİL

It was 2010, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was speaking, as tempered as always, to a crowd as tempered as the prime minister could be.

“These [people] even see babies in their cradles as a threat. They have killed babies in their mothers’ arms,” he boomed.

“These people,” naturally, were the Israelis.

Addressing Israel’s leaders from a public rally in Turkey, Mr. Erdoğan said in both Turkish and English: “You shall not kill.” Then he showed his linguistic capabilities and went on: “You still don’t get it? Then I shall speak to you in your own language: Lo tir’tsach!” He was referring to the sixth of the 10 commandments in the Old Testament.

In various other speeches, Mr. Erdoğan claimed that his fits of anger toward the death of children were “indiscriminative” of race and religion. “Wherever, whenever,” he often said, “a child has been killed,” he would fiercely stand against the murderers. All the same, he has been mute since Saturday.

In the early hours of Saturday, a Palestinian broke into a house in the settlement of Itamar and stabbed to death a couple and their three children, aged 3 months, 4 years and 10 years old. The slain bodies were discovered by the couple’s 12-year-old daughter who was not at home when the murder was committed.

The “Imad Mughniyeh” cell, with alleged links to the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack. The terrorist group is named after the “phantom” terrorist Imad Mughniyeh who was killed in a car bomb attack in Damascus which Hezbollah blamed on Israeli agents. Mr. Mughniyeh, or the “Shia bin-Laden,” was one of the world’s most wanted men (wanted in 42 countries) while he was enjoying a safe haven in the Syrian capital prior to his assassination.

Most predictably, we have not heard Mr. Erdoğan saying "You shall not kill" in Arabic, and we probably never will. That’s hardly surprising since we have never heard Mr. Erdoğan speaking “indiscriminately” in the past against the killing of children and defenseless people in Itamar, or elsewhere in Israel – for Saturday’s attack in Itamar was not the first of its kind. In May 2002, a Palestinian killed a 14-year-old boy and wounded another teenager in the same settlement. A month later, another Palestinian killed a woman and her three children. In July the same year another Palestinian stabbed and wounded a couple. And in August 2004, a Palestinian killed a resident of Itamar.

The killing of a 3-month old baby reminded me, inevitably, of what a “Palestinian warrior” told me in Ramallah in 2006. When he praised his suicide bomber sister who had injured a 95-year-old woman (and killed herself) in an attack, I asked him what was the point of injuring or killing elderly women or toddlers when young Palestinians also died in these attacks. He smiled and explained as simply as he could: “For us, even a 1-year-old Israeli baby is a soldier. And that [95-year-old] woman was also an Israeli soldier!” I thought it might not be safe to ask him any further questions.

But in 2008, this time in London and speaking to another Palestinian, I felt more comfortable and dared question the logic of the act that “indiscriminately angers our prime minister.” I reminded him of a verse in the Quran (4:93): “Whoever kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell wherein he will abide eternally, and Allah has become angry with him and has cursed him and has prepared for him a great punishment.”

My Palestinian friend counter-attacked with another verse (17:33): “And do not kill the soul which Allah has forbidden, except by right.” Then came his loud and tempered explanation: “The verse 4:93 forbids killing a believer. Israelis are not believers.” I looked out from the window of the pub where his orange juice vs. my wine stood on the table like two objects silently telling us why we could never agree.

For a moment, I thought about reminding him that Jews, too, are believers, like other non-Muslim believers, or ask him if the Quran (in verse 4:93) permitted the killing of atheists. But he loudly went back to verse 17:33, with radiating eyes satisfied with the near victory in our little intellectual duel. “You see, that verse forbids killing ‘except by right.’ And it is evident that some killings fall into the category of ‘exception by right.’”

I sipped my wine and got lost in thought, wondering how a doctoral candidate of engineering from a decent British university could defend the murder of innocent people only because they belonged to a faith other than his. How could he twist his own (and my) holy book so as to find holy justifications for the killing of innocent people?

“Never mind,” he interrupted my thoughts, “You are not Muslim anyway. It is normal that you don’t understand.” “Wait a minute,” I protested, “What does it mean ‘you are not Muslim anyway?’” “I see that you are drinking wine,” he replied. “I hope you don’t mind if I leave you alone now. I have an appointment,” he smiled and left the pub.

I didn’t mind because he left. But one does mind when someone tells him that he does not belong to the religion to which he thinks he belongs. I cursed the missed opportunity of reminding him of the verses and hadiths that forbid Muslims from judging other people’s faith by a man-made faith-meter. But then I thought my cute friend would find a way to twist them, too.

The hypocrisy over the killing of innocent people is not coincidental in any way. Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted, in Tehran, a delegation from the disastrous Turkish flotilla Mavi Marmara, comprising the “Mavi Marmara mujahedeen, ghazis and families of the shahids.”

The delegates participated in Iran's Revolution Day ceremonies, and the head of the Turkish delegation noted that: “We are here today with the longing and the determination to build a Middle East without Israel and America, and to refresh our pledge to continue on the path of the Mavi Marmara shahids.”

On Feb. 12, the same Mavi Marmara activist reiterated “the promising words of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran… that 'only a short time is left for the building of a Middle East without Israel or America in it, and we are praying for the quick arrival of that bright day, when all of us will meet in a free al-Quds [Jerusalem].’”

With five “Jooos” having disappeared from earth after the Itamar attack, that bright day must be arriving sooner.

I am still curious, however, about what rank the 3-month old Israeli “soldier” held. Captain? Lieutenant colonel? Certainly too young to be a general.

Ynet News: Unmasking Israel’s critics

Op-ed: Mideast chaos an opportunity to expose those who ignored Arab world crimes

Manfred Gerstenfeld Published: 03.16.11, 10:32 / Israel Opinion

Gaddafi’s murderous behavior toward his country’s citizens is probably the closest current example to what invading Arab countries and their Palestinian allies would have done to the Jews here had they been successful after Israel’s independence. This is extremely politically incorrect to say. However, that does not make it less true. To prove the point, one only needs to collect statements from prominent Arab figures in 1947 and 1948 and testimonies from Israeli witnesses of the war.

The recent chaotic events in many Arab countries may provide a unique opportunity for Israel to fully unmask many of those who are causing it damage. This includes those who have heavily criticized or delegitimized the country for years, as well as those who have looked away consistently from the massive crimes in the Arab world.

Many categories fit this bill. One can start with a long list of human rights NGOs. NGO Monitor has already accused Human Rights Watch of covering up human rights violations in Libya. How many of the human rights NGOs, if any, have protested against the membership of Libya in the United Nations Human Rights Council? Can they claim today that they didn’t know Gaddafi’s Libya is a nation that should regularly have been on the agenda of the UNRHC, rather than on its board?

Muammar Gaddafi. Violent crackdown Photo: Reuters

This is only one of a long list of questions that will enable Israel to correctly label substantial parts of the international human rights community as imposters. Also included in this category are those who voted for the anti-Israel resolution at the 2001 Durban conference.

Gaddafi’s visit to France

A second category is a selection of Western politicians. Regarding some, one doesn’t even have to ask questions about the policies of their country. British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted a few days ago, during a visit to Kuwait, that the popular uprisings in the Middle East showed that the West had been wrong to back dictators and undemocratic regimes. He added that British foreign policy had put economic self interest above promoting Western democratic values.

This was followed by Cameron telling students in Qatar that some Middle Eastern rulers were using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a distraction from their own oppressive regimes. In this framework it would, for instance, be very useful to investigate what the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said about the Arab states since she was appointed in December 2009 and compare that with her statements on Israel.

As all is relative, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is far from being one of Israel’s major critics. He is the first one to recognize the Libyan opposition, which in the future may no longer have any territory to rule over. Sarkozy received Gaddafi for a state visit in December 2007. The French president announced then that the Libyan ruler would sign a 10 billion euro agreement for military hardware and a nuclear reactor. He also said that he had asked the Libyan ruler to progress on the road to human rights.

The next category in line for exposure is a number of mainstream Christian bodies, mainly liberal Protestants. They have almost consistently looked away from how Christians of many denominations have been oppressed in a variety of Arab and Muslim countries. The murderous attacks on Copts in Egypt over the past decades are one example. These have been followed by several more murders of Copts during the Egyptian revolution of the past few weeks.

It would not be too much work for an Israeli official to peruse the websites of a few of these anti-Israeli Christian organizations and examine whether and how they have dealt with this. A few suggestions of bodies to expose are: the United Church of Christ in the US, the Methodist Church in Great Britain, the United Church of Canada, as well as organizations such as Diakonia in Sweden, Icco in the Netherlands and in particular, the friends of Sabeel in many countries. Israel’s embassy in Norway can help by checking how much or how little a few notoriously anti-Israeli Lutheran bishops in that country have spoken about these abuses against other Christians in Arab countries.

Exposing so-called journalists

In the academic world, the prestigious London School of Economic provides an excellent example of hypocrisy. At the beginning of March its director Sit Howard Davies resigned because the university had accepted money from the Gaddafi foundation run by one the Libyan dictator’s sons. Davies had also travelled to Libya to advise the country about financial reforms. However, what bothered the LSE student union in 2008 was Israel. They voted with a great majority to divest from companies that support Israel’s “apartheid regime.”

Yet another category that merits public exposure is the so-called Mideast journalists. Many of them are decent people. Many others have withheld, in line with their papers’ policies, essential negative information about the Arab world. Will anybody believe these media that there was little or nothing to report about what was wrong in Arab countries in recent years - in comparison to Israel?

In the past, one had trouble proving that a substantial number of journalists reporting from here were mainly news manipulators. Occasionally there was an easy case such as that of Riccardo Cristiano when he was correspondent of the Italian state network Rai in the Palestinian territories. In October 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers were lynched by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah. Italian network Mediaset filmed the murder and then smuggled the pictures out of the country.

Cristiano thereafter wrote a letter published on October 16th in Palestinian newspaper Al Hayat al Jedida. He disclosed that it had been Mediaset that had taken the pictures. Cristiano also indicated that he would never have published the pictures had they been his own. In his open letter, he also offered "congratulations and dear blessings" to his dear friends in Palestine.

The above list of Western whitewashers of Arab crimes, hypocrites and imposters to be exposed is only the beginning. The blatant misconduct in all the above categories, and a few others, merit far more detailed documentation. This is the moment for the Israeli government to get its act together.
 
Due to present developments in the Arab world, shortly there will be even more proof of how large numbers of Western individuals and organizations cheated when focusing their moral indignation on Israel. What in the past could be done only by time-consuming exposure of individual cases, can now already be done wholesale. Many more such cases are likely to come to light in the near future.
 
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published 19 books, several of which deal with Israel’s international relations

Ynet News: Abbas’ hate education

Op-ed: While speaking softly, Palestinian leader carries horrendous stick of hate education

Yoram Ettinger Published: 03.15.11, 18:08 / Israel Opinion

The March 11, 2011 heinous stabbing to death of a Jewish family - while asleep on the eve of the Sabbath - including a three month old baby, a four year old toddler, an 11 year old child and their parents was carried out by graduates of Mahmoud Abbas' hate education. This slaughter was not an anomalous phenomenon.

 The slaughter was a derivative of the infrastructure of hate education and incitement via school text books, Abbas-controlled media and Abbas-controlled mosques. It was installed in 1994 by Abbas, then Arafat's deputy, and perpetuated, since 2005, by Abbas, the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority. It is an extension of Palestinian incitement and terrorism, introduced by Haj Amin al-Husseini in the 1920s, and 1,400 years of Arab/Muslim hate-mongering and terrorism toward each other, but mostly against "the infidel."

While speaking softly, Abbas carries a horrendous stick of hate education, which is largely funded by US foreign aid (over $2BN since 2007.) Since 1994, he has brainwashed Palestinian youth, producing manufacturing lines of hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists/suicide bombers.

One's education is the most authentic reflection of one's ideology, vision, goals and character.

According to Prof. Efraim Karsh, Head of the Middle East and Mediterranean Studies program at King's College in London (Palestine Betrayed, Yale University Press, 2010, pp. 255-6), "For all their drastically different personalities and political styles, Arafat and Abbas are warp and woof of the same fabric: dogmatic PLO veterans who have never eschewed their commitment to Israel's destruction and who have viewed the 'peace process' as the continuation by other means of their lifelong war…He (Abbas) described the proclamation of Israel as an unprecedented historic injustice and vowed his unwavering refusal to ever accept this injustice…(There is) no fundamental difference between the ultimate goals of Hamas and the PLO vis-à-vis Israel: neither accepts the Jewish state's right to exist and both are committed to its eventual destruction…."

On August 13, 2009, Abbas – who enrolled in KGB courses and coordinated PLO ties with the Communist Bloc - ratified the resolutions of Fatah's 6th General Conference, which state (article 19):"The struggle shall not end until the Zionist entity is eliminated and Palestine is liberated."

Honoring terrorists

Holocaust denial is promoted by Abbas' school textbooks, such as Modern World History for tenth graders (p.83). Prof. Karsh notes that Abbas' doctoral dissertation, submitted at the Moscow University, and published in 1984 in Amman, "endeavored to prove…the existence of a close ideological and political association between Zionism and Nazism…(that) fewer than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, and that the Zionist movement played a role in their slaughter." Hence, Mein Kampf and the anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion are best sellers in the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas' school textbooks reaffirm the founding document of the PLO, the Palestinian Covenant. It was compiled in June, 1964, aiming at the pre-1967 Israel. Two thirds of the Covenant is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish State, as a prerequisite for the attainment of Palestinian goals.

Abbas and Salam Fayyad pay condolence visits - and authorize the transfer of monthly allowances - to families of suicide bombers. In February, 2011 they named a soccer tournament in honor of Wafa Idris, a suicide bomber. On January 16, 2010 they named a major square in El Bireh (in addition to two schools and a summer camp) in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, who commanded the March 11, 1978 massacre of 38 bus passengers on Israel's coastal road.

The school textbooks of Abbas – who supervised the 1972 Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and the March 1973 murder of two US ambassadors in Sudan - idolize suicide-bombing, fuel anti-Semitism and repudiate Israel's right to exist. For example, fifth grade Our Beautiful Language (pp. 26, 31, 32, 36, 70), tenth grade Grammar (pp. 30, 146) and Islamic Education (pp. 42-4, 48, 50) and tenth grade Modern World History (p.64).

On October 12, 2010 Abbas' official TV channel heralded the terrorists who murdered six Israeli civilians in 1975 (Kfar Yuval) and 1980 (Misgav Am.) On January 29, 2010 Abbas' official TV channel broadcast the weekly sermon, referring to Jews as "the enemies of Allah and humanity, modern day Nazis, who must be annihilated."

Hate education is the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which has always been over the existence – and not over the size – of the Jewish State. Hate education on one hand, and peace negotiation on the other hand, constitute an oxymoron.

Japan and Germany were transformed from hateful to peaceful countries by uprooting regimes of hate education; not merely by condemning hate education. To ignore the centrality of hate education, is to reward and fuel terrorism at the expense of peace and Western democratic values.

Ynet News: End Palestinian game

Op-ed: Israel should make it clear that Abbas will pay heavy price for his two-faced game

Guy Bechor Published: 03.15.11, 00:40 / Israel Opinion

There are naïve people among us who are impressed by Salam Fayyad’s and Mahmoud Abbas’ condemnations of the Itamar massacre. However, the time has come to understand that the current Palestinian Authority plays a much more sophisticated and dangerous game against Israel than Yasser Arafat’s PA.

Arafat played a two-faced game, engaging in both a diplomatic process vis-à-vis Israel and terror against it simultaneously. However, Abbas and Fayyad realized that terror against Israel in fact strengthens the Jewish State, both domestically and internationally. Hence, they shifted to a more refined game, engaging in both a diplomatic process vis-à-vis Israel as well as a de-legitimization campaign against it.

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority is the one that manages an anti-Israel campaign in the United Nations, at other international forums, and in global public opinion. In September of this year, the PA also wants to force a Palestinian state upon Israel. Indeed, Abbas’ PA makes an effort to embarrass us at every opportunity and work against our very existence.

This de-legitimization is more dangerous than Hamas’ terror, so paradoxically Hamas rule in the Arab parts of Judea and Samaria is better for Israel than Abbas’ duplicitous game, as it would make clear to the world who the good and bad guys are in this story.

The time has come to put an end to this game. Those who engage in peace negotiations cannot at the same time work against the other side’s right to exist. That is, not only fail to recognize it, but undermine its existence, embarrass it, and insult it at every opportunity.

Israel keeps PA alive

The Palestinian Authority is currently being kept alive by Israel. Had it not been for the IDF’s presence in the West Bank and had it not been for the arrests of wanted suspects night after night, this Authority would no longer exist. Hamas would topple and eliminate it within a few days, as it did in Gaza in 2007.

At the time, Hamas activists threw down their Fatah “brethren” from high-rises to their death. Strangely, no international inquiry was established in the wake of that massacre, just like no commission of inquiry will be formed in the wake of massacres committed by authorities against their own people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and so on and so forth throughout the Arab Middle East.

Israel must not accept the Palestinian Authority’s two-faced game, played at the Jewish State’s expense, while the latter keeps the PA alive only to be hit with insults and anti-Israel activity. We should also not wait until September for the PA’s international moves against Israel. The time has come to exert counter-pressure.

At this time we should already make it clear to Abbas that should his game of de-legitimization continue, Israel will change realities: It will fully withdraw from populated Palestinian areas in Judea and Samaria and set a new boundary in the territories, even at the price of moving isolated settlements. The world shall laud this move, yet by undertaking this step Israel will leave Abbas and his comrades at the mercy of Hamas, which will not treat them as kindly as Israel does.

This should not just be a threat. The government must prepare to carry out this move, thereby putting an end to the Palestinian Authority’s existence. Hamas will finish the job, as it was able to do in Gaza.
 
This warning should be presented to Abbas and Fayyad now. Should they continue to embarrass Israel and the United States and demand a unilateral state at the UN, they will pay an existential price. Even condemnations of a despicable massacre won’t help them.

Pictures and video clips from Itamar family massacre by Palestinian terrorists (beasts)

A single picture is more than thousand words.