While the United States and Europe have been struggling to find a path forward in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Afghanistan and Iran, the strategic ground upon which their assumptions about the region rest has begun to shift dramatically.
Most significantly, Turkey has finally shrugged off the straightjacket of a tight U.S. alliance, grown virtually indifferent to E.U. membership and turned its focus toward its former Ottoman neighbors in Asia and the Middle East.
Though not primarily meant as a snub to the West, this shift does nonetheless reflect growing discomfort and frustration with U.S. and E.U. policy, from the support of Israel’s action in Gaza to Iran to the frustrated impasse of the European accession process. It also resonates more closely with the Islamic renaissance that has been taking place within Turkey. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — Has Turkey grown virtually indifferent to EU membership? I don’t think so. Much more plausible is the likelihood that in pursuing its strategy “zero problems”, Turkey is merely following the paths of least resistance.
The indifference to Turkey’s EU membership is rooted inside Europe and among politicians who are pandering to the Christian right. Unless Europe utterly forgets its secular roots, sooner or later it will recognize that Turkish membership of the EU is in everyone’s interests.
Recent polls reveal a curious contrast between the public’s current feelings about America’s ongoing war in Afghanistan and the possibility of the nation adding another front to its list of military engagements, this one in Iran.
Though most Americans aren’t ready to cut and run, an increasing number are having second thoughts about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. A Pew Research Center November poll finds 56 percent endorsing the initial decision to use force, down 8 percentage points since January. Similarly, a late September Pew poll found support among Americans for keeping troops in Afghanistan until the country is stable stood at 50 percent—a hefty seven-point drop since June. This despite the fact that fully three-in-four Americans see a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan as a major threat to U.S. well-being.
Yet even as enthusiasm for involvement in Afghanistan faded, an October Pew Research survey, found that by a substantial 61 percent to 24 percent margin, Americans said that it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons than to avoid a military conflict with that country. True, the survey also found hefty support for direct negotiations—but most Americans just don’t think they’ll work. And when faced with the choice between a nuclear-armed Iran and military action, most Americans choose conflict. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — In one of the well-known Sufi stories about Mullah Nasruddin, the mullah has just returned from the market with a basket of red hot chili peppers. He is sitting in a room eating one after another and his mouth swells and his lips bleed and a student finds him and asks in bewilderment why the mullah is punishing himself. Nasruddin replies: “I keep on thinking that the next pepper will be sweet.”
Such is America’s triumph of hope over experience when it comes to contemplating the next war — the war which will vindicate this nation for all its earlier misadventures. This is the pathological shadow of the American can-do, optimistic spirit: faith in a future uncolored by the past.
Mohammad Othman, the BDS campaigner who was detained by Israel upon returning from a speaking tour in Norway, was given three months administrative detention yesterday in an Israeli military court. Othman had been held 63 days without charge before the court agreed to the prosecution’s request for administrative dentention. Othman has been under nearly constant interrogation during this time. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — The ongoing debate about the BDS movement seems like it could be a waste of energy. If BDS gathers enough momentum then it will become a politically self-justifying exercise simply by virtue of the attention it receives. If it doesn’t acquire critical mass, then its merits or flaws will be moot.
And momentum itself is to a significant degree a self-fulfilling expectation. As an Indian master once said: “faith is the willingness to try.” That willingness is increasingly evident.
The fact that J Street is alarmed by a movement that is “spreading like wild fire” across American college campuses is a strong sign that what might have once looked like a form of fringe activism is already heading on a trajectory towards the mainstream — a domain that the “pro-Israel pro-peace” lobby can probably only dream of dominating.
For nearly six weeks now Mohammed Othman, a prominent Palestinian activist and an outspoken advocate of the nonviolent boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, has been held in an Israeli military prison without charges.
On 22 September 2009 Othman, 34, was detained at the Allenby Crossing as he attempted to return home to the occupied West Bank from Jordan. He was returning from a trip to Norway, where he met with that country’s Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen, amongst other officials.
At the beginning of September, Finance Minister Halvorsen announced Norway’s divestment from the Israeli company Elbit due to “ethical concerns.” Elbit provides security systems for Israel’s separation wall in the West Bank, for illegal settlements as well as unmanned aerial vehicles (commonly known as drones) and other technology for the Israeli military. According to many Middle East analysts and human rights groups, Othman played a pivotal role in Norway’s decision to disassociate from Elbit. [continued…]
Federal officials on Monday unsealed terrorism-related charges against men they say were key actors in a recruitment effort that led roughly 20 young Americans to join a violent insurgent group in Somalia with ties to Al Qaeda.
With eight new suspects charged Monday, the authorities have implicated 14 people in the case, one of the most extensive domestic terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks. Some of them have been arrested; others are at large, including several believed to be still fighting with the Somali group, Al Shabab.
The case represents the largest group of American citizens suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with Al Qaeda, senior officials said. Many of the recruits had come to America as young refugees fleeing a brutal civil war, only to settle in a gang-ridden enclave of Minneapolis. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — “one of the most extensive domestic terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks” — “the largest group of American citizens suspected of joining an extremist movement affiliated with Al Qaeda”…
Wow! This has to be a landmark event in the war on terrorism! The high-fives must really have been thrown around at the FBI after cracking open a major operation like this. Not another embarrassing headline like this one from a few months ago: “FBI ‘lured dimwits’ into terror plot.”
Except… “Domestic terrorism investigations” seems like a bit of a stretch. The closest this report gets to suggesting that any of these young Somali Americans were intent on engaging in an act of domestic terrorism is to say: “Law enforcement officials are concerned that the recruits, who hold American passports, could be commissioned to return to the United States to carry out attacks here, though so far there is no evidence of such plots.”
Al Shabab might be labeled a terrorist organization and it might have ties to al Qaeda, but make no mistake: it is fighting a real war with conventional war-ambitions — the conquest of territory. Al Shabab wants to control Somalia. It’s hard to imagine how sponsoring acts of terrorism elsewhere would further that strategic goal.
Should we be concerned that American kids are being enticed into a desperate and bloody conflict far away? Certainly.
We’ve been following J Street’s attempts to counteract the growing BDS movement. First there was its aborted release of a public letter criticizing the Toronto Declaration. Then there was the workshop at its student conference called “Reckoning with the Radical Left on Campus: Alternatives to Boycotts and Divestments.” The workshop didn’t go quite as planned either as many students who attended actually offered their support for divestment campaigns targeting the Israeli occupation. You would think these two initial missteps would lead J Street to reconsider which way the wind is blowing. Nope.
J Street is now working to undermine the National Campus Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Conference that will be held this weekend at Hampshire College. The conference is being called to build “a coordinated national BDS campaign,” and J Street seems to feel threatened by this. Yesterday the organization sent the following email out to its student wing: [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — Strip a J Street statement of all its marketing filler and its use of slogans as a substitute for argumentation and you end up with nothing much at all.
In this case though, there is one important piece of news: “[The] Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel movement… is spreading like wild fire on campuses across the country…”
This is a major grassroots movement but J Street has the hubris and naivety to imagine it can co-opt and steer in the “right” direction. In the process J Street is increasingly coming to look like nothing more than the liberal wing of the Israel lobby.
Beyond compare By Julie Peteet, Middle East Report, Winter, 2009
While South Africa was explicit about the goal of apartheid policies, Israel engages in discursive subterfuge so that the intent and effects of their policies must be seen on the ground to be fully comprehended. Shulamit Aloni, the former Israeli minister of education, relates an episode at a bypass road built for settlers in the West Bank:
On one occasion I witnessed such an encounter between a driver and a soldier who was taking down the details before confiscating the vehicle and sending its owner away. ‘Why?’ I asked the soldier. ‘It’s an order—this is a Jews-only road,’ he replied. I inquired as to where was the sign indicating this fact and instructing [other] drivers not to use it. His answer was nothing short of amazing. ‘It is his responsibility to know it, and besides, what do you want us to do, put up a sign here and let some anti-Semitic reporter or journalist take a photo so that can show the world apartheid exists here?’
Part of the appeal of the apartheid comparison is that apartheid is a recognized name for an ideology and practice of separation. There is no similar name for what Israel has done. Neither the pre-state Zionist movement nor the state of Israel has ever spelled out an official policy of discrimination against the Palestinians, and Israel did not institute discriminatory practices in one fell swoop. Instead, it has worked in a piecemeal fashion to constrain Palestinian rights and access to resources. In other words, separation in the Occupied Territories has been a process whose legal contours are harder to discern and whose name has yet to circulate abroad.
A corollary assumption underlying the comparison is that Israeli practices cannot be condemned as discriminatory in and of themselves. They cannot stand on their own, partly because they are difficult to understand unless they are seen up close. Most people understand that Zionism, as an ideology and a project, calls for Jewish communal security, and due to centuries of pogroms and the Holocaust, this project commands considerable sympathy. But many people do not understand that Zionism, as put into practice, calls for an exclusivist state that leads to policies characteristic of apartheid, as defined by the UN.
Zionism retains a significant body of supporters in the West, particularly among Jews and evangelical Christians, but also the public at large. For numerous historical, cultural and political reasons, the American public in particular “stands with Israel,” a fact demonstrated by poll after poll and not lost on successive US administrations. Israel and its backers work constantly to cement this support, in part by equating criticism of Israel, the “Jewish state,” with anti-Semitism. Thus, drawing attention to the parallels between Israel’s occupation and apartheid has been one way to turn the tables, framing the occupation (and not criticism of Israel) as inherently racist. But the introduction of race into the conversation heats it up to the boiling point: As the Jews of Europe suffered from persecution and genocidal racism, and Jews comprised a large percentage of the white Americans who put their bodies on the line for civil rights, equating the practices of Zionism with racism is, for many, inconceivable. Rational debate shuts down.
It may be time to develop a new language. “Apartheid” cannot thoroughly explain Zionist ideology or Israeli practices. It can simply offer broad points of comparison, a framing in an already powerful concept. Yet the Afrikaans term does have a Hebrew counterpart in the term hafrada, meaning separation from and putting distance between oneself and others, in this case, the Palestinians. In Hebrew, the wall is often referred to as the “hafrada barrier.” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — I seriously doubt whether any effort to develop new language can ever work. We don’t need new terms — we need to bring about a shift in the way existing terms are used.
Apartheid was a system that Africaners believed in and legally institutionalized. The campaign against apartheid was an effort to delegitimize an idea that held legitimacy in the minds of its proponents. And that seems to be the key: people give names to the things they believe in. Efforts in “discursive subterfuge” are efforts to avoid naming that which needs to be denied.
The concept of hafrada has arisen (from what I understand) in an effort to legitimize a policy of separation, yet that policy carries with it the notion that this separation comes out of a security imperative rather than an ideological conviction. It amounts to saying: We don’t want separation but the Palestinians made us do it.
The implication is that Israelis are good Western pluralists who are not racists and who would happily co-exist with their neighbors if only their neighbors could forsake their violent tendencies.
Julie Peteet says: “Perhaps the Hebrew hafrada can one day become a rallying cry as powerful as “apartheid” was in its day.”
To my mind the much more likely candidate is Zionism.
Although this is a word that is a long way from completely losing mainstream legitimacy, it has over the decades acquired increasingly negative connotations. It is a word that seems to have entered a netherworld. Self-described Zionists tend to be right-wing. Liberal Zionists either refrain from unabashedly calling themselves Zionists or they strongly emphasize the “liberal” qualification. Yet Zionism, of whatever political stripe, has at its core the notion of Jewish sovereignty in a Jewish homeland.
What does that mean? The clearest expression that I have recently heard comes from Rabi Toba Spitzer, an American Jew who in a promotional video for J Street underlined this as one of Israel’s core attributes: “[Israel is] the one place in the world where Jews are in charge.”
Whatever Israel’s future — whether its international boundaries can be agreed upon and whether a Palestinian state can be created — the continuation of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state depends on this: that it remains a state where Jews are in charge.
This, it seems to me, reveals the unvarnished nature of Zionism and exposes Israel’s hollow claim to be democratic.
Democracy is government by the demos — the people — and it allows no distinction between the multitude of groups whose amalgamation constitutes “the people”.
Jewish democracy, built on the fantasy of “a land with no people for a people with no land”, has in its practice used “democracy” as a salve to its liberal conscience, yet in the conflict between its Jewish identity and its democratic identity, democracy has consistently lost.
The terrorist walked up the quiet alleyway, police say, and went down nine steps and found himself hidden from view in the stone vestibule outside the famous Holocaust survivor’s apartment.
More than a half century ago the Nazis hadn’t been able to kill Ze’ev Sternhell, who would live to become Israel’s foremost expert on fascism and a long-time peace activist. But the terrorist who was now on his door step, whom police allege was a fellow Israeli from the militant settlement movement, was determined to succeed in just that. He attached the bomb, hidden inside a plant, to the doorknob and left.
Sternhell was inside the apartment in West Jerusalem. It was Sept. 25, 2008 and he and his wife had returned from a vacation in Paris the previous day. The hallway leading to the front door was still clogged up with their bags. It was late, a few minutes after midnight, and just like he does every night, Sternhell went to close the metal gate at the entrance of the vestibule that is meant to keep unwelcome guests from breaking and entering. The obstruction in his hallway forced Sternhell to turn sideways, the right side of his body facing outside, as he opened the door to the apartment.
There was a huge noise and something pushed him back. He saw the flash of an explosive. His right leg and thigh stung with pain and began to bleed. He was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. Doctors told him later that if he had not been sideways to the blast, his abdomen would likely have been pierced by the bomb’s shrapnel. He could have died.
Police who came to the scene found leaflets scattered nearby. The fliers offered a reward of $300,000 to anyone who killed a member of Peace Now, Israel’s best known peace movement. “The State of Israel has become our enemy,” the fliers said. Police officers immediately went to guard the home of Peace Now’s most-prominent figure, general secretary Yariv Oppenheimer.
I interviewed Sternhell in his home this January. The police had made no arrests back then, but Sternhell was convinced that fellow Jews had tried to kill him. “This,” said the 73-year-old, whose mother and sister were killed by the Nazis when he was 7 years old, “was an act of pure Jewish terror.” [continued…]
Human rights groups are calling on the Israeli government to cancel instructions preventing ambulances from entering Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem without a police escort.
According Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulances “must wait in a Jewish neighborhood adjacent to the Palestinian neighborhood and may not enter it to transfer the injured or the sick person to the hospital until a police escort arrives, even in life threatening situations.”
In many cases, patients face long delays in receiving treatment, and must be transferred by their own family’s cars, risking complications or increased severity of illness, the rights advocates say.
In a news release on Thursday, Adalah said the procedures “violate the first rule in the work of emergency crews, which is to provide medical aid as soon as possible, and the state’s obligation to ensure the life and physical well-being of each person under its authority.” [continued…]
The international spokesman for Iran’s main opposition movement called for President Barack Obama to increase his public support for Iranian democrats and significantly intensify financial pressure on Tehran’s elite military unit, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, during an unofficial visit to Washington, also said Thursday that Iranian opposition leaders supported U.S. efforts to use diplomacy to contain the nuclear ambitions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.
Mr. Makhmalbaf’s remarks came just hours after President Obama expressed growing doubt Thursday during the final day of his Asian tour about his administration’s ability to engage Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government on the nuclear issue.
Mr. Obama emphasized in Seoul that the window for diplomacy was closing and that the U.S. and its allies would begin developing a new set of sanctions against Iran.
“Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal…and so as a consequence we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences,” Mr. Obama said at a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
Mr. Makhmalbaf, who was the campaign spokesman for Iranian presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, said he believes the current Iranian leadership is incapable of cutting a deal with the West, because the nuclear program is now fundamental to its political survival.
“If they agree not to pursue a nuclear bomb and start negotiations, they will lose their supporters,” Mr. Makhmalbaf said at a lunch hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Definitely dialogue is better than war. … But can you continue your dialogue without any results?” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — Well, if you want to use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a measure, Washington’s interest in promoting dialogue without results apparently knows no limit.
The Obama administration is hardening its tone against Israel, but analysts warned Wednesday the tough talk was mere bluster hiding the lack of a viable plan to revive the Middle East peace process.
“You’ve had three ‘no’s’ to an American president in his first year,” Aaron David Miller, who has served as advisor on Middle East peacemaking to previous US administrations, told AFP.
President Barack Obama is now “faced with the default position, which is words,” said Miller from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“And the louder they shout, the more there is a paradox. The tougher the words are, the weaker we look.” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — In an interview with Barbara Walters on Tuesday, Sarah Palin said: “I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”
Americans for Peace Now quickly shot back: “Gov. Palin may not be aware of it, but every American president in the past 40 years — Republican and Democrat alike — has opposed West Bank settlements. They have done so because settlement expansion is bad for American national security interests and because they have cared about Israel’s well-being.”
It’s curious at this juncture that anyone would think the best way to press the argument against settlements is by citing the consistency of Washington’s opposition — opposition that for 40 years has proved to be utterly ineffectual.
To consistently oppose settlement growth while settlements relentlessly expand suggests that Washington is either convinced that it possesses no leverage, or, that its opposition is disingenuous.
Early on, the Obama administration signaled to Israel that it would distinguish itself from its predecessor by saying what it meant: there would be no contradiction between its public and private declarations.
What Obama now needs to grasp is that the greatest asset he held when he came into office — the power of his word — is a fire that has largely turned to ashes.
There may be a few embers in there, but the only way to rebuild the fire is for the president to show the world what he can do. We no longer have any interest in what he has to say.
The World Likud movement held a cornerstone-laying ceremony yesterday for the expansion of the neighborhood of Nof Zion, despite – or possibly because of – American pressure against building in East Jerusalem. The Jewish settlement is in the middle of the Arab village of Jabal Mukkaber. Meanwhile, the Jerusalem municipality razed two Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem yesterday.
The plan is to add to Nof Zion 105 new apartments to the 90 ones that are already there, most of which are already occupied. The neighborhood is considered “prestigious,” but the developers ran into trouble a few years ago after they failed to sell the apartments to Jews from overseas. About a year ago the developers changed their marketing strategy to target the local national-religious market – and the apartments began selling quickly. The developers expect the same for the new part of the neighborhood.
The World Likud’s announcement of the ceremony said the neighborhood was near Jabal Mukkaber, “bounded by terraces and with olive trees and grapevines.”
In fact, however, Nof Zion is in the middle of the village, near Palestinian homes. In September Haaretz reported that the family of the late actor-comedian Shaike Ophir criticized the municipality’s decision to name a street in Nof Zion after him.
A group of American Jews interested in buying apartments in Nof Zion attended yesterday’s ceremony. New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who is considered a staunch supporter of the settlers, headed the group. Continue reading →
Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s military superiors repeatedly ignored or rebuffed his efforts to open criminal prosecutions of soldiers he claimed had confessed to “war crimes” during psychiatric counseling, according to investigative reports circulated among federal law enforcement officials.
On Nov. 4, the day after his last attempt to raise the issue, he took extra target practice at Stan’s shooting range in nearby Florence, Texas and then closed a safe deposit box he had at a Bank of America branch in Killeen, according to the reports. A bank employee told investigators Hasan appeared nervous and said, “You’ll never see me again.”
Diane Wagner, Bank of America’s senior vice president of media relations, said that her company does not “comment or discuss customer relationships” but is “cooperating fully with law enforcement officials.”
Investigators believe Hasan’s frustration over the failure of the Army to pursue what he regarded as criminal acts by U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan may have helped to trigger the shootings. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — At this point, were it not for one fact, the verdict in the court of public opinion would already be in: Hasan snapped. Had he been a non-Muslim psychiatrist and expressed the same concerns, the assumption that would now widely be made would be that under the stress of feeling like his concerns were being ignored, he became unhinged. But instead, the single most important fact in this case remains in many people’s minds, the fact that Hasan was a Muslim.
Last April, two Marines at Camp Lejeune predicted to a psychiatrist that some Marine back from war was going to “lose it.” Concerned, the psychiatrist asked what that meant. One of the Marines responded, “One of these guys is liable to come back with a loaded weapon and open fire.”
They weren’t talking about Marines suffering from a tangle of mental and religious angst, like news reports suggest haunted the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The risk they reported at Camp Lejeune was broader and systemic. Upon returning home, troops suffering mental health problems were getting dumped into an overwhelmed healthcare system that responded ineptly to their crises, the men reported, and they also faced harassment from Marine Corps superiors ignorant of the severity of their problems and disdainful of those who sought psychiatric help.
As Dr. Kernan Manion investigated the two Marines’ claims about conditions at the North Carolina military base, the largest Marine base on the East Coast, he found they were true. Manion, a psychiatrist hired last January to treat Marines coming home from war with acute mental problems, warned his superiors of looming trouble at Camp Lejeune in a series of increasingly urgent memos.
But instead of being praised for preventing what might have been another Fort Hood massacre, Manion was fired by the contractor that hired him, NiteLines Kuhana LLC. A spokeswoman for the firm says it let Manion go at the Navy’s behest. The Navy declined to comment on this story. [continued…]
Palestinians have formally asked the European Union to urge the UN security council to recognise a fully independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to the current impasse in peace negotiations with Israel.
Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, confirmed that the request to the EU was made on Monday as Israeli ministers repeated warnings that any unilateral moves would trigger counter-measures that could include the annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.
Erakat, speaking in Ramallah, said Israel had for 18 years continued to “impose facts on the ground by stealing Palestinian lands and building settlements and barriers aiming to finish off the two-state project”. He added: “We will seek the support of all members of the international community.” [continued…]
While Palestinian officials continued to threaten Sunday to unilaterally declare independence, one senior Israeli defense official summed up the growing assessment in the defense establishment by saying, “Just let them try.”
Behind the dare is a belief in the IDF and Defense Ministry that even though the past year has seen an unprecedented improvement in the performance of Palestinian security forces and civilian institutions – largely due to increased cooperation with Israel – the Palestinian Authority is still far from being able to hold it together on its own.
One official gave the water situation in the West Bank as an example. While Israel has recently come under growing international criticism for allegedly denying Palestinians adequate access to water, according to Israeli officials the situation would be far worse without Israeli assistance.
“The Palestinian Water Authority wouldn’t last a day on its own,” an IDF source said. “We allocated them a piece of land on the coast to build a desalination plant and they have decided not to build it.”
Another example focuses on security cooperation, which has significantly increased over the past two years, since Hamas violently took control of the Gaza Strip. Next month, the fifth Palestinian battalion trained by US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton in Jordan will return to the West Bank for deployment. Another one will then depart for four months of training in Jordan.
Despite the deployment of these forces – which IDF officers openly admit are doing a good job cracking down on Hamas infrastructure in the West Bank – whenever PA President Mahmoud Abbas travels outside of Ramallah to another Palestinian city, the IDF, Shin Bet and Civil Administration are all involved to coordinate and ensure his safety.
“When Abbas travels it is like a military operation,” one officer explained. “Everyone is involved since the PA forces cannot yet completely ensure his security.” [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — This has to be the definition adding insult to injury: Mahmoud Abbas cannot travel safely around the West Bank without Israeli protection.
A question one hears frequently among Palestinians these days is why the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), a group some view with suspicion and others with sympathy, has become nearly invisible in the West Bank. Certainly Hamas has suffered a series of security blows in the last few years. Israel arrested roughly one thousand of Hamas members, included elected delegates of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in June 2006. And since Hamas took control of Gaza in June 2007 following a bloody conflict with Fatah, Palestinian security forces have carried out campaigns against the group in the West Bank. Hamas claims to have suffered 30,000 incidents of questioning, arrest, closure of organizations, or confiscation of financial assets. As of now, 600 of its members are detained in Palestinian Authority (PA) prisons and 150 of its affiliated organizations are closed.
Hamas, however, is more than simply a militant organization or a social welfare service provider. It is a broad network of members and followers, which garnered 444,000 votes in the 2006 legislative elections, with an ideological and political agenda. It has a large popular following, especially among Palestinians opposed to the Oslo agreement and disenchanted with corruption in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). So where have Hamas and its supporters in the West Bank gone?
Sources inside Hamas say that the movement has frozen its activities, in line with a 1989 strategy delineating how the movement should handle crises. Hamas followed this course in 1992, for example, when Israel exiled 416 activists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to southern Lebanon following the kidnapping and murder of Israeli border patrol soldier Nassim Tolidano. Hamas is not ready, according to one of its leaders, to mobilize supporters behind a coherent course of action for fear of exposing them to arrest by the PA or Israel. Hamas also is reluctant to cause its followers to lose their jobs, given that 1200 of them have already been laid off from government jobs in the West Bank. [continued…]
Two eminent mainstream journalists — Tom Friedman and Joe Klein — recently called for United States to disengage from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, on the grounds that Palestinians were too divided to make a deal and the Israelis were not interested in one. Friedman couldn’t bring himself to draw the logical conclusion — if the United States [is] truly going to “disengage,” that also means cutting off its economic and military assistance — but Klein did.
I have a certain sympathy for this position (and even wrote similar things myself before I wised up), but there are two problems with this specific idea. The first is that it is a meaningless prescription: There’s no way to cut the aid package (or even put a hold on it, which is what Klein recommends) so long as Congress is in hock to AIPAC and the other groups in the status quo lobby. And unless I’ve missed something, I doubt groups like J Street would support it either.
Friedman and Klein’s statements do convey how discourse in the United States is changing, but the specific recommendation they offer here is a non-starter. Remember: we are dealing with a Congress that just voted to condemn the Goldstone Report by a vote of 344-24. The aid package may be indirectly subsidizing the settlements and threatening Israel’s future as a Jewish majority state, but a supine House and Senate will still sign the annual check. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — The perennial debate on whether the US will ever find the will to cut off aid to Israel invariably misses what is ultimately probably the most important sticking point: a lion’s share of the money that Congress allocates as foreign military aid ends up going back into the US economy. Members of Congress face pressure not only from the Israel lobby but also the defense industry lobby and in many cases their own constituents to keep on doling out the cash.
The Israeli government is currently in the process of negotiating its largest military purchase ever: 25 F-35 fighters at a cost of $3.25 billion, paid to Lockheed-Martin who will start delivery in 2014. Interestingly, Israel has the ability to allocate funds coming from US taxpayers that will appear in US budgets that have yet to be passed or even drafted by Congress!
So, if the White House is not about to call on Congress to cut back on aid to Israel, the one lever over which it retains absolute control is the way the US casts votes in the UN Security Council. I’m not holding my breath waiting for any surprises there.
Perhaps more significant than anything happening (or not happening) in Washington, is the process unfolding around the globe through which Israel is inexorably losing its legitimacy.
When Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US, warns about the delegitimization of Israel he is giving voice to a real fear among Israelis. That fear is given form when people such as the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says Israel does not want peace:
“What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace,” Kouchner said on France Inter radio.
“It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it,” he added.
Israel clings to a tenuous claim to being a peace-loving nation. Once the world completely loses faith in that notion, the path to pariah status will be hard to avoid.
The Army psychiatrist believed to have killed 13 people at Fort Hood warned a roomful of senior Army physicians a year and a half ago that to avoid “adverse events,” the military should allow Muslim soldiers to be released as conscientious objectors instead of fighting in wars against other Muslims.
As a senior-year psychiatric resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program.
Instead, in late June 2007, he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.
“It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” he said in the presentation.
“It was really strange,” said one staff member who attended the presentation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. “The senior doctors looked really upset” at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses. [continued…]
I jest, but truly this is a despicable piece of “reporting”.
Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing but instead he lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.
What kind of audacity and burgeoning violent extremism would lead an American Muslim training as a military psychiatrist to talk about the moral and spiritual anguish that other American Muslim soldiers might face in wars where they would likely end up killing fellow Muslims or destroying their homes?
Surely the only concern of such a doctor must be that he be well-versed in the diagnostic criteria laid out in the DSM-IV — the bible of modern psychiatry — and that he knows how to prescribe drugs appropriately.
A young confused Muslim American soldier comes in for counseling, troubled about the prospect or reality of killing fellow Muslims.
What’s a well-trained psychiatrist going to say?
“Look son, you’re in an all-volunteer army. Next please.”
Obama hosts Netanyahu By Charles Levinson and Jay Solomon, Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2009
The prime minister’s visit comes as fears grow inside the Obama administration that its aggressive plans for promoting Mideast peace could be unraveling. Mr. Netanyahu hasn’t agreed to a complete freeze of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem as a precursor to talks, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced last week that he wouldn’t seek re-election in protest over the U.S. failure to deliver such a commitment.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fueled outrage in the Arab world when she visited Mr. Netanyahu just over a week ago in Jerusalem and praised the Israeli leader for his agreement to a partial freeze, rather than pushing him publicly for more.
Mrs. Clinton’s comments drew criticism in Arab capitals that Washington was tilting toward the Jewish state. U.S. officials briefed on the secretary’s visit said there also were tensions between Mrs. Clinton and her Israeli counterparts over the Israelis’ hard line. Mrs. Clinton, who is traveling in Germany, won’t be part of the White House meeting.
The brinksmanship over a one-on-one meeting between the two leaders represents a rare display of pique by the White House toward Israel. Mr. Netanyahu had long been scheduled to visit Washington to speak at the assembly of Jewish groups. While he had no confirmed plans to meet Mr. Obama, it would be rare, but not unprecedented, for an Israeli prime minister to visit Washington without meeting the U.S. president. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — A few days ago, the Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Nahum Barnea wrote: “For days the White House has refused to set a date for a meeting. It was embarrassing and humiliating. Netanyahu was angry. Not mildly angry. He was incensed.”
Thank God President Obama has come to his senses and is ready to do whatever it takes to please America’s most important ally.
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, said last week in Washington that a nuclear Iran would pose an existential threat to Israel.
Mullen said he would prefer that the U.S. work diplomatically to keep the country from acquiring nuclear weapons, but hinted that should such efforts fail, the U.S. air force and navy could be put into action as well.
Ahead of Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s visit to the Pentagon this week, Israeli military sources said they were satisfied with the progress in talks with their American counterparts over acquiring F-35 fighter jets. Israel will pay $135 million per jet if it buys 25, and $100 million if it buys 75.
Meanwhile, Washington has retracted its opposition to installing Israeli-made systems on the jets. However, a disagreement over Israel’s request for complete access to the planes’ computer systems is yet to be resolved.
At a conference at the National Press Club, Mullen said he has spent a significant amount of time with his Israeli counterpart, IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and that “it’s very clear to me that a nuclear weapon in Iran is an existential threat to Israel,” according to a transcript released by his office. [continued…]
…members of the Obama administration, in interviews over the weekend, said that they had now all but lost hope that Iran would follow through with an agreement reached in Geneva on Oct. 1 to send its fuel out of the country temporarily — buying some time for negotiations over its nuclear program.
“If you listen to what the Iranians have said publicly and privately over the past week,” one senior administration official said Sunday, “it’s evident that they simply cannot bring themselves to do the deal.” The administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were speaking about delicate diplomatic exchanges.
Iranian officials told the energy agency on Oct. 29 that they could not agree to the deal that their own negotiators had reached, but they never explained why. Iran has never publicly rejected the deal, but its official reaction has been ambiguous at best.
Dr. ElBaradei insisted he still had hope, but he conceded that the chances were receding.
“I have been saying to the Iranian leadership, privately and publicly, ‘Make use of that opportunity. Reciprocate,’ ” Dr. ElBaradei said last week. But he said that it now appeared that “the foreign policy apparatus in Iran has frozen,” partly because of the country’s own domestic turmoil.
So far, President Obama has said nothing about the stalemate threatening his first, and potentially most important, effort at diplomatic engagement with a hostile foreign government. When the first meeting in Geneva ended Oct. 1, Iranian and American officials said they would meet again later in the month to discuss the nuclear program and the potential for a broader relationship. That meeting never occurred, and none is scheduled. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — It’s hard to push the narrative that Israel faces an existential threat and that it provides a safe haven for Jews. The “existential threat” argument would simply seem to reinforce what has for decades seemed to be objectively true: America and Europe and much of the rest of the world provide a much safer haven for Jews than does Israel.
In light of this we are likely to hear another argument presented with increasing force: that Israel’s necessity rests in its providing the only base in the world for a Jewish army.
Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, in an address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America on Sunday noted that the creation of Israel provided the opportunity for the creation of “the first Jewish defense force in 2,000 years” as, in the wake of the Goldstone report, the issue of Israel’s right to exist in now being made subordinate to its right to defend itself.
[Oren] said Israel was now facing questions about its legitimacy, not only from its traditional enemies but also from young people in the U.S., both Jews and non-Jews.
He told the conference that Israel’s ability to withstand the “onslaught of delegitimization” depends on the unity of the Jewish people, not just in Israel, but in communities all over the world.
“Our strength derives from the belief that we have a right to independence in our tribal land, the land of Israel, and that Jews have a right to defend themselves, there and everywhere. That Jews have a right to survive as Jews and as a legitimate nation.”
He seems to be claiming that the ability of Jews to survive anywhere hinges on the ability of Israel to defend itself.
If a Qassam rocket gets fired at Sderot, subtly — perhaps almost imperceptibly — it gets a little more dangerous to be living in Brooklyn.
In late July, Major Hasan moved into a second-floor apartment on the north side of Killeen, paying $2,050 for his six-month lease up front, said the apartment manager, Alice Thompson. The two-story faded brick complex, Casa del Norte Apartments, has an open courtyard with exterior stairs and advertises move-in specials.
A few days later, Major Hasan bought an FN Herstal 5.7-millimeter pistol at a popular weapons store, Guns Galore, just off the highway that runs between the mosque that Major Hasan attended and the base, federal law enforcement officials said.
The tenants generally saw him leave early and come home late in the afternoon, usually in his fatigues. He never had visitors, they said, but he was friendly with his neighbors.
“The first day he moved in, he offered to give me a ride to work,” said Willie Bell, 51, who lived next door. “He’d give you the shoes and shirt and pants off him if you need it. Nicest guy you’d want to meet.
“The very first day I seen him, he hugged me like, ‘My brother, how you doing?’ ”
In mid-August, another tenant, a soldier who had served in Iraq, was angered by a bumper sticker on Major Hasan’s car proclaiming “Allah is Love” and ran his key the length of Major Hasan’s car. Ms. Thompson learned of it and told Major Hasan about it that night, and though he called the police, Major Hasan did not appear to be angered by it. [continued…]
US intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.
One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan’s efforts.
CIA director Leon Panetta and the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, have been asked by Congress “to preserve” all documents and intelligence files that relate to Hasan, according to the lawmaker.
On Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.
“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance,” Lieberman told Fox News Sunday. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — If an investigation and Hasan’s own testimony eventually lead to the determination that the Fort Hood massacre was an act of terrorism — meaning, it was a premeditated attack whose victims were selected for political rather than personal reasons — then there already appears to be enough evidence to draw one conclusion: Hasan was a US Army major who became a terrorist and not a terrorist who joined the army.
If it is determined that this was an act of terrorism, then the next question will be: at what point did Hasan make the transition from being someone with profound misgivings about the wars; someone who suffered the indignities of being a target of anti-Muslim bigotry; to someone who wanted to use violence not merely to vent stored up rage but in order to send a message.
At this point, in spite of mounting anecdotal evidence that the killings were an act of terrorism, there is no unambiguous signature — a fact that suggests that not only in this particular case far more remains unknown than known, but that the linguistic clarity through which we are now so used to applying these terms “terrorist” and “terrorism”, point to something far more complex and far more difficult to define than the glib use of these words imply.
As a psychiatrist, one might expect that Hasan’s understanding of the workings of the human mind will make his own testimony unusually illuminating.
Unfortunately, we live in an era where the treatment of tortured psyches has been reduced to an often perfunctory practice in dispensing brain-numbing drugs. This was a physician who appears to have had no inkling how to treat himself. His case may ultimately present more questions than answers.
Hezbollah is rapidly rearming in preparation for a new conflict with Israel, fearing that Benjamin Netanyahu’s government will attack Lebanon again prior to any assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Last week, Israeli commandos seized a ship in the Mediterranean loaded with almost 400 tonnes of rockets and small arms – which Israel claimed was being sent from Iran to its Hezbollah allies. In dramatic further evidence of growing tensions, the Observer has learned that Hezbollah fighters have been busy reinforcing fixed defence positions north of the Litani river.
Having lost many of its bunkers in the south, Hezbollah is preparing a new strategy to defend villages there.
Although the organisation denied last week that the weapons were intended for its use, senior commanders have done little to disguise the scale of rearmament. “Sure, we are rearming, we have even said that we have far more rockets and missiles than we did in 2006,” said a Hezbollah commander, speaking on condition of anonymity. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — “We expect the Israelis to come soon, if not this winter, then they will wait until spring, when the ground isn’t too soft for their tanks,” says a Hezbollah commander.
Israel’s readiness to launch an attack on Iran may hinge on its readiness to send tanks back into Lebanon.
The war on Gaza, even to the extent that it may have served as a training exercise in preparation for another round of fighting with Hezbollah, probably did little to dispel the haunting memories of 2006. The Merkava tank, previously one of the IDF’s most potent symbols of invincibility, ended up exposing Israel’s military vulnerability.
The announcement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he will not run for reelection is the exclamation point on the utter collapse of the Obama adminstration’s Middle East policy. Launched to great expectations — the appointment of George Mitchell, Obama’s Cairo declaration that the plight of the Palestinians is intolerable — it is now in complete disarray. It is, without doubt, the first major defeat for Obama’s hope-and-change foreign policy.
Here’s how it unraveled. First, Obama began a test of strength with Israel over that country’s policy of illegal settlements, an expansion of its occupation of the West Bank driven by extremist, right-wing settlers who are fanatical, Bible-believing cultists who think that Israel has some God-given right to that territory. The settler-kooks — indeed, one of their past leaders was named Rabbi Kook — are supported by ultra-hardliners in Israel’s security establishment, who see the West Bank as strategic depth in Israel’s defense posture. What happened after Obama told Israel it had to stop settlements? Nothing. Score: Netanyahu 1, Obama 0. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — In his somewhat hagiographic report on Clinton’s tour of the region, Joe Klein suggests that the Secretary of State’s “recklessness” in Jerusalem might coincide with her emergence as a single strong voice on foreign policy as the administration’s diplomatic efforts are increasingly in disarray.
“In the course of the trip, there were the first stray wisps of a hint that Clinton wanted to begin asserting her independence, as the Administration, facing roadblocks across the world, struggled for a firmer foreign policy tone after an opening nine months that might be called the Rodney King — ‘Can’t we all just get along?’ — phase,” Klein wrote.
Another way of putting this might be to say that in an administration that lacks leadership, there are likely to be an increasing number of freelancers as a power vacuum creates openings for political opportunists. The current trend is heading from bad to worse.
“It’s time for you to find another donkey.” With those words, according to Palestinian sources, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas told the Palestine Liberation Organziation (PLO) executive committee that he would not seek re-election in January. The 74-year-old leader, on whom U.S. peace efforts in the Middle East are heavily dependent, reiterated that message later on Thursday in a televised address from his home in Ramallah. “This decision does not at all amount to bargaining or political maneuvering. While I appreciate the views expressed by brothers [in the PLO, who rejected his move], I hope they will understand my wish.”
The prime audience for Abbas’ statement, of course, was not the PLO leadership but the Obama Administration. According to Palestinian sources who attended the meeting, Abbas told his PLO comrades that the U.S. had “cheated” him by retreating from its insistence that Israel end settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. “We welcomed it, and were optimistic when President Obama announced the need for a complete halt to settlements, including natural growth,” Abbas said. “We were surprised by his support for the Israeli position.” [continued…]
Congressman Brian Baird (D-WA) told Al Jazeera: “The resolution [HR867] itself, I don’t think accurately characterizes the Goldstone report itself. It certainly doesn’t accurately characterize, nor does it really attempt to characterize, the reality on the ground and the devastation and death that occured there. And nor does it speak at all to the suffering of the Palestinian people or what needs to happen to try to move this situation forward. And I am concerned not only about that but about the general issue of what we can do proactively to get more relief to the people in Gaza in need immediately and what we can do to try to move the peace process forward, and that includes in my judgment, cessation of settlement expansion and moving towards real progress on the ground — tangible progress.”
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made the following statement on the House Floor about H. Res 867, which condemns the ‘Goldstone Report’ or the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict:
“Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist.
“Because behind every such deception is the nullification of humanity, the destruction of human dignity, the annihilation of the human spirit, the triumph of Orwellian thinking, the eternal prison of the dark heart of the totalitarian.
“The resolution before us today, which would reject all attempts of the Goldstone Report to fix responsibility of all parties to war crimes, including both Hamas and Israel, may as well be called the “Down is Up, Night is Day, Wrong is Right” resolution.
“Because if this Congress votes to condemn a report it has not read, concerning events it has totally ignored, about violations of law of which it is unaware, it will have brought shame to this great institution.
“How can we ever expect there to be peace in the Middle East if we tacitly approve of violations of international law and international human rights, if we look the other way, or if we close our eyes to the heartbreak of people on both sides by white-washing a legitimate investigation?
“How can we protect the people of Israel from existential threats if we hold no concern for the protection of the Palestinians, for their physical security, their right to land, their right to their own homes, their right to water, their right to sustenance, their right to freedom of movement, their right to the human security of jobs, education and health care?
“We will have peace only when the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is brought before this House and given equal consideration in recognition of that principle that all people on this planet have a right to survive and thrive, and it is our responsibility, our duty to see that no individual, no group, no people are barred from this humble human claim.”
Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, director of Military Intelligence, announced Tuesday that Hamas launched a rocket some 60 kilometers into the sea, apparently as an experiment. Such a rocket, if fired from the northernmost point of the Gaza Strip, could strike the southern cities of the Gush Dan area – including Rishon Letzion, Holon and Bat Yam – and possibly reach as far as Tel Aviv itself.
Although Yadlin didn’t specify the type of the weapon used, it appears to be a standard, foreign-made rocket smuggled into Gaza. Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hamas has accumulated an arsenal of rockets slightly larger than the arsenal it possessed before last winter’s Operation Cast Lead.
The experiment hardly caught Israeli intelligence by surprise, as it had assumed Hamas had acquired a similar type of rocket several months ago. However, the importance of Yadlin’s report should not be underestimated as this is the first tangible piece of evidence that Hamas holds a weapon capable of striking Gush Dan. It would seem Hamas has used the lull in fighting with Israel to not only restore, but improve its capabilities. Still, and similar to Hezbollah, restoring the arsenal hardly testifies to restoring motivation to confront Israel militarily. [continued…]
Editor’s Comment — How can you tell when an Israeli official is lying? You can see his lips moving.
I know, an old joke, but really: are we supposed to believe this?
Then there’s the dubious concept of missile testing in this context. One would assume that missiles constructed in Iran have undergone very thorough testing in Iran. “Testing” them in Gaza would simply mean depleting the inventory.
Haaretz says: “Israel believes Hamas considers the new rocket a strategic asset, a ‘doomsday weapon’ of sorts, and therefore avoided publicizing the experimental launch, in the hope of using the weapon as a surprise during some later confrontation.”
Wouldn’t a more effective way of maintaining the element of surprise be to skip the “test”?
Before the war on Gaza, Israeli hawks kept on saying that Hamas could not be trusted to maintain a truce and that it was building up its stockpile of longer-range missiles. Then Israel attacked and the long-range missile threat never materialized.
If Hamas really had such an arsenal, why didn’t it use it?
Were they afraid that Israel would abandon its “restraint”? Were they afraid that Israel might use disproportionate force?
The Obama administration is scaling back its ambitions for the Arab-Israeli peace process, focusing on maintaining some degree of low-level dialogue in the face of big divisions between the two sides.
U.S. officials began outlining Washington’s diminished expectations as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton completes a one-week tour of the Middle East on Wednesday. She had tried to kick-start a new round of talks during stops in Israel and Arab capitals, but the divisions proved too wide to bridge.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused U.S. calls for a complete freeze of settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Palestinians have ruled out resuming negotiations without the freeze.
Mrs. Clinton subsequently pressed Arab leaders to agree to support talks with just a partial Israeli freeze. But barring that, U.S. officials said all sides might be forced to accept a lower level of engagement in the talks to guard against a new round of violence in the Palestinian territories.
There is a fear that militant groups, such as Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon, could use a political vacuum to spark renewed violence.
More on Mideast Peace Talks
“There’s value in having the process” in itself, said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley on Tuesday. In a sign of the administration’s changing focus, Mr. Crowley added: “If this particular path, we think, can’t get us there, we’ll look for others.” [continued…]
Police suspect that Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, who has confessed to murdering two Palestinians and carrying out a long list of other, less deadly, terror attacks, also murdered two traffic policemen in the Jordan Valley eight months ago – a crime originally attributed to Palestinian terrorists.
Haaretz reported on Tuesday that police suspected Teitel of other murders in addition to those of the two Palestinians, but at the time, a gag order was still in place that prevented specifying which murders.
The policemen, Warrant Officer David Rabinowitz and Senior Warrant Officer Yehezkel Ramzarkar, were shot while sitting in their patrol vehicle near Moshav Massua. The subsequent investigation indicated that the assailant had lain in wait at the turn-off from the main road to Massua and did something to make them stop and roll down their window. He then shot them from point-blank range. No damage was done to the vehicle, and nothing was taken from it.
Teitel denied responsibility for these murders, and it not clear what evidence the police have against him. But a police source said yesterday that Teitel’s modus operandi in the crimes he has admitted to “precisely matches” that of the policemen’s murder.
The police and the Shin Bet security service have long assumed that the policemen’s killer acted alone, and not as part of an organization, making it difficult to get information about the crime. And while the police considered the possibility that the murder was criminal rather than the work of terrorists, three different lines of inquiry had drawn blanks, leaving investigators utterly in the dark. [continued…]
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ohammad Othman, the BDS campaigner who was detained by Israel upon returning from a speaking tour in Norway, was given three months administrative detention yesterday in an Israeli military court. Othman had been held 63 days without charge before the court agreed to the prosecution’s request for administrative dentention. Othman has been under nearly constant interrogation during this time. [
