In today’s news…
Hamas Rocket Hits Children's Rehabilitation Center - Noam Bedein
On Saturday night a Palestinian rocket scored a direct hit on the children's hydrotherapy rehabilitation center, located in the heart of Sderot's Sapir College. The center provides therapy and workshops for special-needs children and is used by children from the entire country. The facility was decimated. On any other day, a catastrophe would have taken place. During weekdays, the center is packed with hundreds of children and therapists.
Rockets Hit Israel and Jordan Resorts; Four Hurt in Aqaba
Rockets from Egypt's Sinai struck Israel's and Jordan's Red Sea port resorts on Monday. In the Jordanian port of Aqaba, "the Grad rocket landed in a public street near a major five-star hotel and caused four injuries, with three persons lightly wounded and the other casualty in serious condition," a Jordanian interior ministry source said. (Reuters)
Israel: New Turkish Intelligence Chief May Disclose Israeli Secrets to Iran - Amos Harel (Ha'aretz)
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday voiced concern that the appointment of new Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, who is close to Iran, could result in Tehran gaining access to Israeli secrets.
"In recent weeks a man who is a supporter of Iran was appointed to head Turkey's Mossad. There are a fair number of our secrets that are in [Turkish] hands. The thought that in the past two months they could have been open to the Iranians is quite disturbing," Barak said.
And in other “good news”…
Gaza Friday Sermon on Hamas TV: Muslims Should Wage Jihad to Liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Filth of the Jews
A Gaza Friday sermon, aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa TV on July 16: "Dearly beloved, the Al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] is subjected to a vicious campaign of Judaization and defilement, at the hands of the filthiest creatures made by Allah - the Jews....Today, we see the brothers of apes and pigs destroying homes with their occupants still in them, uprooting trees from their land, and killing women, children, and the elderly."
"Our people will never relinquish the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Palestine. We will redeem it with our souls, with our blood, with our sons...until this holy land is purified from the filth of the Jews." "When an enemy invades a Muslim country, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim man and woman. A son should set out on Jihad even without the permission of his father, a wife should set out even without the permission of her husband." (MEMRI)
No "Linkage" of Israeli-Palestinian Dispute to Other Regional Conflicts - James Kirchick
Why is it that Israeli apartment construction in east Jerusalem, and not, say, the mass killing of Muslims in Sudan, stirs the hearts of the Arab world? One would have been hard-pressed to find much substantive coverage of that genocide in the Arab media, which is busy directing the attention of Arabs to the many small ways in which "crusader Zionists" and their American allies oppress Muslims. The reason for the double standard can probably be found in the fact that the perpetrators of the Sudanese genocide were themselves Muslim (and Arab), and their victims black. But the stunted maturity of Arabs' political culture does not excuse Western acceptance of their hyperbole. Let the Arab and Muslim world show some anger at the vast array of human rights abuses committed by their own and against their own before we accept their mawkish claims of indignation on behalf of the Palestinians at face value.
It is one thing to say that the Palestinian people deserve a state. It is another thing entirely to say that their lack of having one is in any way responsible for bombings in Bali or Baghdad. To do so buys into the propaganda of the most vicious and reactionary forces in the Middle East, who cynically exploit the Palestinians for their own ends. There's no real reason to believe that Arab attitudes toward the U.S. would change were it to forge a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, a deal which, given the present state of Palestinian politics, would not last long.
Let the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolve itself on its own terms, if it is ever to be resolved, and let us not force upon the parties a solution that neither of them are willing to accept and that will only prove to be a prelude to the next phase of the Islamist struggle. The writer is a contributing editor for the New Republic. (World Affairs Journal)
For Biased Critics of Israel, Even Its Defensive Actions Violate Human Rights - Jeffrey Robbins
Earlier this month, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof devoted an entire column to calling upon Israel to lift the blockade of Gaza, while mentioning not one word about the rocketing of Israeli civilians that had brought about the blockade, and whose recurrence the blockade is intended to prevent. Indeed, for much of the past decade, Israel has been forced to defend itself from charges that defending itself is a crime.
From 2000 to 2004, the Palestinian leadership organized a suicide bombing campaign aimed at killing and maiming as many Israeli civilians as possible. About 1,100 Israelis were blown to pieces and 5,000 more were wounded or maimed. This is the rough proportional equivalent of about 55,000 Americans killed and 250,000 Americans wounded or maimed. A bombing campaign whose very purpose was to take innocent human life should have triggered universal condemnation of Palestinian violence. It didn't.
Similarly, from 2000 to 2008, families of southern Israel were subjected to between 8,000 and 10,000 rockets, missiles, and bombs fired at them by Hamas gunmen embedded in civilian neighborhoods in Gaza. Yet the progressive community remained largely silent. It turned out that it wasn't the 8 years of targeting Israeli civilians that was the human rights violation. It was the Israeli effort to stop the attacks from Gaza in 2009. The writer served as a U.S. Delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission under President Clinton. (Christian Science Monitor)
To the Chorus of Chronic, Compulsive Critics of Israel - David Harris
You just can't contain your rage against Israel, can you? A mere mention of Israel and you're out of the starting gate in record time with another tirade accusing it, and its defenders, of every conceivable evil in the world - from Nazism to Apartheid, from blood libel to mass murder - the facts be damned.
Could it be that your real ideal is a Hamas-run society, with its all-enveloping political and religious suffocation, relegation of women to the status of virtual male property, intimidation of the tiny Christian community, unadulterated anti-Semitism, and reverence for the cult of violence? The writer is Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee. (Huffington Post)
Can New York Times Reports on Israel Be Trusted? - Andrea Levin
A May 7 story by Ethan Bronner cited "Nancy Kricorian, a New York City novelist and poet who visited here for the first time as part of the Palestinian [writers'] festival," who was quoted as "infuriated" at "military checkpoints and the separation barrier." She was presented as an apolitical literary soul newly encountering Middle East realities. Actually, Kricorian is the New York coordinator of the Code Pink organization and promotes stridently anti-Israel political positions. TheTimes should require candid identification of radical (and factually questionable) sources being cited. The writer is executive director and president of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. (Jerusalem Post)
Mike Sachs |
Northeast Regional Director |
212-750-4110 • Fax 212-750-4125 |
AIPAC • The American Israel Public Affairs Committee |
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