Category Archives: News

In its latest assault on Gaza, so far Israel has killed 21 children

It’s too soon to know what the ultimate death toll will be from Israel’s current assault on Gaza, but it’s noteworthy that even the Washington Post is paying attention to the number of children getting killed.

If media attention given to the World Cup has provided Netanyahu some extra latitude in conducting this military operation, the welcome escape of watching football offered no safety for one group of fans in Gaza.

As AFP reports:

It was supposed to be an evening of entertainment in Gaza, watching the World Cup semi-final at a cafe, a welcome break from 48 hours of Israeli air strikes.

But the evening was cut brutally short when an Israeli raid flattened the Fun Time Beach cafe in the southern Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday, killing nine people and wounding 15.

All that is left of the popular seaside cafe — where dozens broke their Ramadan fast on Wednesday night before settling down to watch Argentina play the Netherlands — is a large crater and a few mounds of sand.

The cafe’s multicoloured sign is still standing, somewhat crookedly, as colourful bunting and canvas windbreakers lay strewn on the floor, torn down by the force of the blast.

The Israeli missile scattered the dead and wounded across the beach, and made a hole so deep that seawater filled it up from underground after impact.

The New York Times adds: Tamer al-Astal, 27, was lying in a hospital bed being treated for shrapnel wounds in his face and leg from the blast on the beach. Mr. Astal, a construction worker, said he lived near the cafe and went there every night.

“We were watching news on the television and waiting for the match to begin,” he recalled. “I heard a terrible boom and felt myself suffocating. I woke up to find myself here in the hospital.”

Three of Mr. Astal’s cousins were among the dead.

Samah Sawalli, 29, said her brothers had been spending their nights at the cafe and coming home at dawn when the daily fast starts in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“They would break their fast there,” she said, wearing a black veil and surrounded by her mother, who was unable to speak, and other women at the family’s home in Khan Younis. Weeping, she recalled their assuring her that Fun Time Beach “was a safe place.”

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Egypt silent as Israel attacks Gaza

The New York Times reports: Again and again over decades, Egypt has leapt in to play the role of mediator during hostilities between the Palestinians and the Israelis, including the time two years ago when Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, helped broker a cease-fire after eight days of bloodshed in the Gaza Strip.

But in the latest battle, the Egyptians appear to be barely lifting a finger, leaving the combatants without a go-between as the Palestinian death toll mounts.

Officials with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement in Gaza, said on Wednesday they had seen almost no sign of an Egyptian effort to defuse the crisis, in sharp contrast to previous conflicts under Mr. Morsi and President Hosni Mubarak. Making matters worse, according to Palestinian officials, Egypt continued to keep its side of the border all but sealed on Wednesday, barring even humanitarian aid.

Egypt’s apparent willingness to sit out the crisis reflected shifts in its foreign policy under its new president, Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who led the military ouster last summer of Mr. Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and a close ally of Hamas. The Brotherhood was outlawed after Mr. Morsi’s ouster, and accused by Egyptian officials of terrorism during a crackdown on the government’s opponents. In various plots against Egypt described by the authorities, Hamas was often cast as the Brotherhood’s menacing accomplice. [Continue reading…]

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Palestinians denounce West Bank leadership

Al Jazeera reports: Like every night since the kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Palestinian teen Muhammed Abu Khdair, a group of young Palestinian men in Bethlehem covered their faces with t-shirts and kuffiyehs (checkered scarves), and headed to their usual positions near the Israeli army post next to Rachel’s Tomb.

Palestinian Authority (PA) forces surveyed the scene from behind the youth, who threw stones and dodged volleys of tear gas, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition fired by Israeli soldiers from their watchtower.

For many, this non-interference on the part of the PA is a major source of anger, as protests continue to spread across the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in Palestinian communities in Israel over the military offensive under way in the Gaza Strip.

“The Palestinian police is mercenary of the Israeli occupation; they just watch and do nothing,” said Majdi, a 28-year-old from Deheisheh refugee camp and one of the usual protesters. His friend, Dia, added that: “It’s worse than that,” alleging that Palestinian police document the people who throw stones and pass the information on to Israeli soldiers. [Continue reading…]

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Death toll rises past 80 on third day of Israeli assault on Gaza

Al-Akhbar reports: Israel pressed on with an intensive aerial offensive in Gaza for a third day on Thursday, raising the death toll to 81, Palestinian officials said, as Israel indicated a ceasefire was “not on the agenda.”

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the deadliest single bombing raid since the start of the offensive which killed eight members of a family including five children in a predawn strike. The attack destroyed at least two homes in Khan Younis in southern Gaza while residents were asleep, killing the eight people, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

At least 81 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the Israeli military operation on Tuesday, more than 50 of them civilians, Palestinian health ministry sources said. The ministry of health added that 537 Palestinians have been injured in Israeli attacks since the Tuesday.

The bloodshed is likely to continue unabated, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Knesset members on Thursday that a ceasefire was not in the plans.

“I am not talking to anybody about a cease-fire right now,” Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted Netanyahu as saying. “It’s not even on the agenda.” [Continue reading…]

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U.S. may agree to Assad retaining control over chemical weapons facilities

Defense One reports: Syria’s regime may be able to retain parts of its shuttered chemical-arms factories under “compromise” terms devised by a global watchdog agency.

The United States could endorse the concept in order to finalize a plan this week for dealing with the dozen contested sites, even though doing so would require making “serious” concessions to President Bashar Assad’s government, said Robert Mikulak, Washington’s envoy to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

“We are not, however, prepared to go further or engage in further haggling,” Mikulak told the agency’s 41-nation governing board on Tuesday.

He indicated that the plan from the agency’s Netherlands-based staff would impose new “tunnel perimeters” and “more effective monitoring measures” for at least some of Syria’s five underground facilities, while demolishing seven fortified hangars. [Continue reading…]

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U.S. ignored warnings before ISIS takeover of a key border city

The Daily Beast reports: Three weeks ago, a group of leaders from the opposition Free Syrian Army warned U.S. officials that a strategic city along the Iraqi border was about to fall to ISIS. It was the latest in a long series of increasingly anxious cries for help. The rebels never heard back from the Americans.

Five days ago, the predictions came true. Free Syrian Army units in the city of Der al Zour handed over their territory to the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham, following weeks of desperate requests for help to international officials, including a direct appeal in a private meeting with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

“[The U.S. officials] showed an understanding of the situation but there was no movement at all,” the commander of the FSA battalion near Der al Zour told The Daily Beast in an interview. “There’s no clear American position in that part of Syria. We told the Americans we are going to fight ISIS and ISIS is close to us, but they did nothing.”

Two leaders of the Free Syrian Army in eastern Syria told The Daily Beast that the moderate rebels in the area greatly outnumbered the ISIS fighters returning from Iraq in stolen American-made vehicles. But the FSA battalion, weakened from months of being under siege, did not have enough ammunition to engage ISIS in the fight. They retreated south, giving up what they controlled of Der al Zour to ISIS without ISIS having to fire a shot.

“Der al Zour was surrounded for several months by ISIS and the regime. The siege included no food and water. Our battalion was weakened,” the FSA commander said. “The FSA numbers are big, but we don’t have weapons, we don’t have ammunition, we don’t have anything.”

For several weeks prior, FSA leaders had tried to sound the alarm. If Der al Zour fell to ISIS, the extremist group would have control of the transportation routes from their stronghold in Raqqa, Syria to their new territories in northern Iraq. The area is also rich in oil and gas resources and was the last FSA stronghold along the rapidly disappearing Iraq-Syria border. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS is about to destroy Biblical history in Iraq

Christopher Dickey reports that soon after ISIS took control of Mosul: the minions of the self-appointed caliph of the freshly self-declared Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, paid a visit to the Mosul Museum. It has been closed for years for restoration, ever since it was looted along with many of Iraq’s other institutions in the wake of the culturally oblivious American-led invasion of 2003. But the Mosul Museum was on the verge of reopening, at last, and the full collection had been stored there.

“These groups of terrorists—their arrival was a brutal shock, with no warning,” Iraqi National Museum Director Qais Hussein Rashid told me when he visited Paris last week with a mission pleading for international help. “We were not able to take preventive measures.”

Indeed, museum curators and staff were no better prepared than any other part of the Iraqi government. They could have learned from al-Baghdadi’s operations in neighboring Syria that a major source of revenue for his insurgency has been the sale of looted antiquities on the black market. As reported in The Guardian, a windfall of intelligence just before Mosul fell revealed that al-Baghdadi had accumulated a $2 billion war chest, in part by selling off ancient artifacts from captured Syrian sites. But the Iraqi officials concerned with antiquities said the Iraqi intelligence officers privy to that information have not shared it with them.

So the risk now — the virtual certainty, in fact — is that irreplaceable history will be annihilated or sold into the netherworld of corrupt and cynical collectors. And it was plain when I met with Rashid and his colleagues that they are desperate to stop it, but have neither the strategy nor the resources to do so. [Continue reading…]

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Life in Mosul under the rule of ISIS

According to an NBC News report, the most common complaint in Mosul these days is about lack of electricity: “We all thought ISIS fighters will hurt people, but they did not do so,” said shop owner Fahad, referring to militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). “It is 100 percent safe here. The only thing we suffer from is the lack of public services.”

The shop owner’s sentiments run counter to reports of brutality carried out by the militants elsewhere. As recently as Wednesday, Iraqi security forces found 53 corpses, blindfolded and handcuffed, south of Baghdad, Reuters reported.

The identity and sectarian affiliation of the dead people was not immediately clear, but the Sunni insurgents have boasted of killing hundreds of captive Shi’ite army troops after capturing the city of Tikrit on June 12. They put footage on the Internet of their fighters shooting prisoners.

ISIS overran Mosul two days before that fight, marking the first of many key victories for the fighters in a lightning offensive through Iraq. The assault triggered an exodus of refugees, with many Shiites fleeing northern Iraq amid fears of sectarian violence at the hands of the Sunni extremists.

While many Shiites left Mosul, those who stayed behind are being treated “just like Sunnis — in a very good way,” insisted Fahad, a 30-year-old Sunni who asked that NBC News only use his first name.

Fahad said he and others initially feared for the safety of their female relatives at the hands of the violent militants.

“We prepared to defend our houses and families, but after a while, we started to see the truth,” he said. “They did not rape a single woman, they did not force people to leave their houses and did not chase innocent people – except those who are wanted.”

Shortly after capturing Mosul, ISIS fighters roamed the city handing out leaflets warning residents away from smoking and drinking alcohol, and promising that lawbreakers would be dealt with under Islamic law, according to The Associated Press. Women also were told to stay home as much as possible.

But ISIS has largely held off on enforcing the group’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, according to residents. [Continue reading…]

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IAEA statement on seized nuclear material in Iraq

Following reports that ISIS seized nuclear material used for scientific research at Mosul University, the IAEA issued the following statement:

The IAEA is aware of the notification from Iraq and is in contact to seek further details. On the basis of the initial information we believe the material involved is low-grade and would not present a significant safety, security or nuclear proliferation risk. Nevertheless, any loss of regulatory control over nuclear and other radioactive materials is a cause for concern.

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Assad’s ‘machinery of death’ worst since the Nazis

As Israel once again commits war crimes in Gaza, perpetuating the collective punishment of a population being held under siege, why is it that so many of those in the West who express their outrage at the behavior of the Israelis, have remained largely silent for the last three years in response to the atrocities committed by the Syrian government? That silence is all the more ironic when in their effort to raise awareness about Gaza, some activists on social media are using — without correct attribution — images of civilian casualties in Syria.

The Daily Beast reports: Tens of thousands of photographs showing the Syrian government’s torture, murder, and mass starvation of civilians in custody are evidence of the kind of systematic atrocities not seen since Hitler’s Nazi regime exterminated millions during World War II, according to the State Department’s top war crimes official.

Stephen Rapp, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for War Crimes and director of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, has reviewed large sections of a huge collection of photos and written records of Syrian government atrocities smuggled out of the country by a former military photographer known as “Caesar.” Rapp spoke about the evidence at a July 3 event at the Atlantic Council in Washington.

“This is solid evidence of the kind of machinery of cruel death that we haven’t seen frankly since the Nazis,” he said. “If it is as it appears thus far, we’re talking about more than 10,000 individuals being killed in custody over the period from 2011 to 2013, including largely men but also some very, very young men and boys and women… It’s shocking to me, as a prosecutor—I’m used to evidence not being so strong.”

Rapp’s strong condemnatioin of Assad and his call for international action to respond to Assad’s crimes against humanity comes as the Obama administration is engaged in an internal debate over how hard to actually push for regime change in Syria, given the rise of terrorism in the region.

Another former war crimes prosecutor who has reviewed some of the evidence tells The Daily Beast that he believes the photos indicate at least indirect “Russian government responsibility” for the atrocities. [Continue reading…]

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Top Obama official blasts Israel for denying Palestinians sovereignty, security, dignity

The Times of Israel reports: Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank is wrong and leads to regional instability and dehumanization of Palestinians, a top American government official said Tuesday in Tel Aviv, hinting that the current Israeli government is not committed to peace.

In an unusually harsh major foreign policy address, Philip Gordon, a special assistant to US President Barack Obama and the White House coordinator for the Middle East, appealed to Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make the compromises needed to reach a permanent peace agreement. Jerusalem “should not take for granted the opportunity to negotiate” such a treaty with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has proven to be a reliable partner, Gordon said.

“Israel confronts an undeniable reality: It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability,” Gordon said. “It will embolden extremists on both sides, tear at Israel’s democratic fabric and feed mutual dehumanization.” [Continue reading…]

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The Iraqi generals who once served Saddam and now run ISIS

The Daily Telegraph reports: Documents seized from the house of a member of the Islamic State in a raid by the Iraqi military have revealed, for the first time and in remarkable detail, the leadership structure of this secretive organisation.

Whilst al-Baghdadi’s predecessors, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – who led the group when it was known as ISI – reportedly kept power very centralised, the new jihadist leader has assigned deputies to manage everything from military stores and roadside bomb attacks to the finances of the organisation.

“I describe Baghdadi as a shepherd, and his deputies are the dogs who heard the sheep [the Islamic State’s members],” said Hisham al-Hashimi, a security analyst who had access to the documents. “The strength of the shepherd comes from his dogs.”

The information, which was found on memory sticks taken from the home of Abu Abdul Rahman al-Bilawi, al-Baghdadi’s military chief of staff for Iraqi territory, who was killed in the military raid, identified two key deputies who are charged with managing terrain controlled by the Islamic State in Syria and in Iraq respectively.

Unlike al-Baghdadi both of these men formerly held senior roles in the Iraqi military and are seasoned in battle.

Abu Ali al-Anbari, who is charged with managing operations in the parts of Syria controlled by the Islamic State, was a major general in the Iraqi military under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, Mr Hashimi said. He’s said to hail from the northern Iraqi province of Mosul.

Abu Muslim al-Turkmani was a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi military’s intelligence core under and also spent time as a special forces officer.

“These men the reasons behind the strength of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They are the key people who keep him in power,” said Mr Hashimi.

Mr Hashimi claimed that there are now 25,000 men in Iraqi who have sworn allegiance to the Islamic State.

This figure was also, separately, quoted to the Telegraph by a senior ranking member of the Iraqi military, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr Hashimi said: “Each of these men have a job within the organisation, a geographical area in which they must work, and a monthly salary.”

There are reportedly approximately 1000 medium and top level field commanders, who all have technical, military and security experience.

Salaries range from $300 to $2000 per month depending on the job post.

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Evidence of a sectarian massacre south of Baghdad

The Associated Press reports: Iraqi officials discovered 50 bodies, many of them blindfolded and with their hands bound, in an agricultural area outside a city south of Baghdad on Wednesday, raising concerns over a possible sectarian killing amid the battle against a Sunni insurgency.

The lightning sweep by the insurgents over much of northern and western Iraq the past month has dramatically hiked tensions between the country’s Shiite majority and Sunni minority. At the same time, splits have grown between the Shiite-led government in Baghdad and the Kurdish autonomy region in the north.

In an address on Wednesday, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused the Kurdish zone of being a haven for the Islamic extremists and other Sunni insurgents. He did not provide any evidence, and the claims are likely to only further strain Baghdad’s ties which the Kurds, whose fighters have been battling the militant advance in the north.

The bodies, all of them with gunshot wounds, were found in the predominantly Shiite village of Khamissiya outside the city of Hillah, located some 95 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, said military spokesman Brig. Gen. Saad Maan Ibrahim. He said an investigation was underway to determine the identities of the dead as well as the circumstances of the killings. [Continue reading…]

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Israel steps up Gaza offensive and prepares for possible ground invasion

The Guardian reports: Israel has launched what it described as an open-ended and escalating offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, as air strikes and naval gunfire hit 50 sites overnight.

As part of a new offensive dubbed “Operation Protective Edge”, Israeli troops have been mobilised along the Gaza border and a limited number of reserves called up for a possible ground invasion.

The strikes came after Israeli army sources said troops were being put on notice of “preparation for escalation”. The Guardian saw columns of tank and armoured personnel carriers moving along the main highway between Jersualem and Erez, on the Gaza border.

Rocket attacks from Gaza – initially from Islamic factions other than Hamas – have been increasing in recent weeks against the backdrop of a major Israeli operation against Hamas on the West Bank following the kidnapping and murder of three teenagers whose bodies were found last week.

Air strikes by Israel, both following the discovery of the bodies and in response to rocket fire, have escalated in recent days despite assessments by analysts in Gaza and Israel that neither Hamas nor Israel wants a prolonged or bloody conflict.

Despite the continuing rocket fire, Israel’s prime minister, Binyanim Netanyahu, had shown a marked reluctance to be drawn into a military operation, offering Hamas “quiet for quiet” despite increasing political pressure from hardliners in his cabinet.

The Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, on Monday formally announced his party was leaving the Netanyahu coalition over the Gaza issue.

But despite this alleged government reluctance, the army has reportedly been ordered to prepare a significant expansion of its operation. [Continue reading…]

Asmaa al-Ghoul reports: During the past few days, news has circulated about indirect communication between Cairo and Hamas to set up a cease-fire agreement in Gaza with Israel. A Hamas official confirmed to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that there has been no Egyptian brokerage for the truce and that “Egypt has distanced itself this time.”

In previous statements, Hamas leaders had set the lifting of the blockade in Gaza as a condition for any truce. However, this has yet to materialize.

“We agreed with the factions during a meeting held two days ago not to launch missiles, but 20 missiles are launched every day. Therefore, it seems that some parties have breached the agreement,” the Hamas official said. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian women refugees struggling alone to care for their families

The Guardian reports: Women are the sole providers for one in four Syrian refugee families, struggling to provide food and shelter for their children and often facing harassment, humiliation and isolation, according to a report from the UN high commissioner for refugees.

More than 145,000 Syrian families now living in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan are led by women, it says. The civil war in Syria has torn apart families and communities, forcing almost three million people – mostly women and children – to flee the country.

Those interviewed for the report, Woman Alone – the Fight for Survival by Syrian Refugee Women, said they lacked resources, jobs, food, housing, protection and security. One in three reported they did not have enough to eat.

“For hundreds of thousands of women, escaping their ruined homeland was only the first step in a journey of grinding hardship,” said António Guterres, the UNHCR chief. “They have run out of money, face daily threats to their safety, and are being treated as outcasts for no other crime than losing their men to a vicious war. It’s shameful. They are being humiliated for losing everything.” [Continue reading…]

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Israeli politician declares ‘war’ on ‘the Palestinian people’

The Daily Beast reports: The political climate in Israel is so ugly that at least one member of Knesset is comparing Palestinian children to “little snakes” – and announcing that she’s ready to declare war on the entire Palestinian population.

Ayelet Shaked – a Knesset member of the religious nationalist Jewish Home party — took to Facebook with inflammatory remarks about the Palestinians on July 1, the day before the brutal murder of 17-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khudair.

“This is a war,” wrote Shaked, who has been routinely denounced in the Israeli press as an extremist. “Words have meanings. This is a war. It is not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority. These too are forms of avoiding reality. This is a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people. Why? Ask them, they started.”

The following day, Khudair was kidnapped in Jerusalem and later burned alive. Six Israeli suspects were arrested on Sunday in connection to the murder, which set off a slew of protests throughout the region. [Continue reading…]

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Leading jihadist thinker condems ISIS caliphate

Al Monitor reports: Jordanian Islamist groups have rejected the announcement of an Islamic caliphate by al-Qaeda offshoot the Islamic State (IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) on territory it has seized in Iraq and Syria, a move they see as a “rush job,” “forced” and “illegitimate.”

The Sunni militant organization declared itself a caliphate on June 29, renamed itself “Islamic State“ and proclaimed its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, caliph of the Muslim world.

Salafist and al-Qaeda spiritual leader Assem Barqawi, better known as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, one of the most influential voices in Salafist Islam, dismissed the declaration of a new caliphate in a lengthy statement posted July 1 on his website branding the group “deviant” and against the principles of both Islam and Sharia. [Continue reading…]

Thomas Hegghammer writes: A number of the world’s most senior jihadi ideologues have already come out against ISIS on the caliphate question, and the criticism from supporters of al-Qaida and groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida-anointed jihadi group in Syria, has been scathing. Meanwhile, ISIS has so far only received the pledge of allegiance (bay’a) from a small number of minor clerics, dissidents from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and groups in the Syrian-Iraqi theater that were at risk of being swallowed by ISIS anyway. To be sure, ISIS has also seen many declarations of support from grassroots sympathizers around the world, but it is unclear whether these are newly won adherents or people who were cheering on ISIS already. As [J.M.] Berger put it in another article, it looks like “ISIS threw a party and nobody came.”

This raises the question: why did they do it? It is hard to believe that ISIS simply miscalculated and genuinely thought the entire jihadi movement would submit to their authority. ISIS is not an isolated sect, but a tech-savvy bureaucracy that monitors enemy Twitter accounts and consumes academic literature (in fact, they will probably read this very article). They must have known the lay of the ideological land. We should therefore not dismiss the move as ideological excess, but rather assume it was based on a careful calculus.

It is possible, for example, that this was a bid for the youth vote in the jihadi movement. ISIS may have realized it was not going to win over the pro-al-Qaida old guard anyway, but that there was a potential to further increase its appeal among young recruits, especially abroad. Bear in mind that for the past three years, virtually all of the world’s new jihadi foreign fighters have gone to Syria, where a majority has joined ISIS. By comparison, only a handful have gone to Pakistan, Yemen, or Algeria to train with al-Qaida and its affiliates. Moreover, ISIS has arguably been the biggest game in town the past year in terms of visibility on the jihadi Internet. Finally, with its battlefield advances in Iraq over the past month, ISIS has demonstrated real-life impact that other jihadi groups can only dream of. New recruits—who tend to be young, male, and impatient—may be attracted to the group that gets things done. Declaring a caliphate consolidates this youth appeal by adding another element of bravado to the ISIS project. In such a context, heavy criticism from the ideological establishment may paradoxically bestow an underdog image on ISIS, which younger recruits may find attractive. [Continue reading…]

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