Friday 19 February 2010

Israel Matzav: Sabbath music video

Sabbath music video

This is Ehud Banai singing Keil Adon from the Sabbath morning prayers. The song talks about how God rules over all of nature.

Let's go to the videotape.



Nice scenery, eh?

Shabbat Shalom everyone.


Israel Matzav: Sabbath music video

Israel Matzav: If only all terrorists could meet the same fate

If only all terrorists could meet the same fate

Heh.

So let me see if I can wrap my head around this: Israel tracked a Hamas terrorist to Dubai and executed him at close range and by hand so as to avoid any collateral damage to civilian life. Shouldn’t we be celebrating this as the way war should be conducted instead of putting our noses up in the air and acting as though we’re so much better when we lob a missile at a terrorist from an airplane?

I mean, look, I’m all in favor of lobbing missiles at terrorists from airplanes; it’d be nice to capture them alive and get some info out of them via harsh interrogations, but a Tomahawk up the keister works just as well as far as I’m concerned. But then you get all the hemming and hawing about “Oh, we’re just creating more terrorists when we accidentally kill an innocent bystander.” Well, there’s none of that here, is there? The guy was traced to his hotel room, zapped with a stun gun, and smothered to death. Quick and easy. If only all terrorists could meet the same fate.

Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan.


Israel Matzav: If only all terrorists could meet the same fate

Love of the Land: The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City

The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City


Israel Antiquities Authority
18 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

A beautiful aqueduct, standing 1.50 meters high and built of large stones, has been situated for almost two millennia right under one of the most familiar and traveled places in Jerusalem – beneath the road that leads from Jaffa Gate toward the David Citadel Museum and the shops on David Street.

The High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem, which dates from the second-third century CE, was exposed in excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting, with funding provided by the Jerusalem Development Authority for the purpose of replacing the infrastructure in the region.

According to Dr. Ofer Sion, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The side of the aqueduct was discovered during the course of the excavation. When we removed the stones in its side and peeked into it we saw a splendidly built aqueduct covered with stone slabs where one can walk crouched down for a distance of approximately 40 meters. It is very exciting to think that no one has set foot there for many hundreds of years”. According to Sion, “The noted Land of Israel scholar, Dr. Conrad Schick, described a specific section of the aqueduct in a survey he conducted at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1898 a building was erected in this area which afterward became what we know of today as the Imperial Hotel. Schick’s documentation provided us with the clue that led to exposing this section of the aqueduct”.

The aqueduct is c. 60 centimeters wide and 1.5 meters high. Shafts were exposed at fifteen meter intervals or so that allowed the ancients to check the state of the aqueduct from what was the surface level in those days.

Up until the end of the Second Temple period, in the first century BCE, Jerusalem’s water supply was derived from the Gihon Spring; however, as the number of residents steadily increased, the city’s water resources proved insufficient.

(Read full story)

Love of the Land: The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City

Elder of Ziyon: New Israeli drone to be delivered to the IDF

Elder of Ziyon: New Israeli drone to be delivered to the IDF

Ungovernable. Perhaps.

Ungovernable. Perhaps.

After WW2 France seemed ungovernable. After fiddling with various things, the French re-tooled their form of government (and some other things, too), and things got vastly better.

In the 1980s Israel seemed ungovernable. We fiddled with various things, re-tooled our electoral system, the result was even worse than before, we went back to the original system - and things got better. Or rather, they got lots worse on other fronts (the 2nd Intifada started, for example) but it turned out the old-new system was working fine.

Sometimes changing the system fixes things. Sometimes not. It depends what the original problem had been.

The Economist discusses the political system in America, and wonders if it needs fixing or perhaps not.
Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Elder of Ziyon: Palestine Today's "proof" of US involvement in Mabhouh hit

Elder of Ziyon: Palestine Today's "proof" of US involvement in Mabhouh hit

Daily Mail: Israel Told Britain About Dubai Operation - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Daily Mail: Israel Told Britain About Dubai Operation - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

U.S. Engaging Syria - a Terror State - on Anti-terror Concerns - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

U.S. Engaging Syria - a Terror State - on Anti-terror Concerns - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Group: We Demand a Jewish Presence in Jericho - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Group: We Demand a Jewish Presence in Jericho - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

PM's List of Heritage Sites Does Not Include Cave of Machpelah - Jewish World - Israel News - Israel National News

PM's List of Heritage Sites Does Not Include Cave of Machpelah - Jewish World - Israel News - Israel National News

Nationalists Appalled: Court Insists on Razing Maj. Klein's Home - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Nationalists Appalled: Court Insists on Razing Maj. Klein's Home - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

13 Years Since Helicopter Disaster - Inside Israel - Israel News - Israel National News

13 Years Since Helicopter Disaster - Inside Israel - Israel News - Israel National News

IDF Soldier Lightly Wounded on Thursday - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

IDF Soldier Lightly Wounded on Thursday - Defense/Middle East - Israel News - Israel National News

Israel Matzav: Kuwaiti newspaper fined for pro-Israel ad

Kuwaiti newspaper fined for pro-Israel ad

In much of the world outside North America and Europe, the International Herald Tribune, which is published by the New York Times, is included with one of the local daily newspapers. Here in Israel it comes with the English-language version of Haaretz. In Kuwait, it comes with al-Watan.

During Operation Cast Lead, the Anti-Defamation League took out an ad in the New York Times urging support for Israel, and it was reprinted in the Herald Tribune. In Kuwait, no one looked at the Herald Tribune before throwing it into al-Watan, and as a result, al-Watan's readers (or the readers of its English-language version, if there is one) received a copy of the ADL ad asking people to support Israel.

Al-Watan has now been fined 3,000 dinars ($10,400) for this 'crime.'

Al-Watan's lawyer, Rashid al-Radaan, told AFP that he has challenged the verdict at the appeals court, saying that the newspaper did not deliberately allow the printing of the advertisement.

"The printing of this advert was not done on purpose," he said, adding that the IHT goes directly to the press without being checked by Al-Watan.

Three Kuwaiti lawyers sued Al-Watan Daily although the paper had issued an apology to its readers for running the advertisement.

Notice how it never occurs to anyone in Kuwait or at AFP (which wrote the story) just how ridiculous this is. But they will magically love us if we give the 'Palestinians' Judea and Samaria. Right....

Israel Matzav: Kuwaiti newspaper fined for pro-Israel ad

Israel Matzav: Report: Mossad gave British MI6 notice of Dubai action; Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite

Report: Mossad gave British MI6 notice of Dubai action; Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite

London's Daily Mail reports that the Mossad gave the British intelligence agency MI6 advance notice that it planned to liquidate 'Palestinian' terrorist and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.

MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake British passports, it was claimed last night.

A member of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, said the Foreign Office was also told hours before a Hamas terrorist chief was assassinated in Dubai.

The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action.

But the claim from a credible source that the Government had some prior knowledge of the abuse of UK passports will strengthen calls for ministers to come clean about what they knew and when.

...

The Mossad man said Israeli intelligence chiefs understand British authorities will have to 'slap them on the wrist' and added: 'The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.'

The Israeli's claims contradict Foreign Office assertions that the UK knew nothing of the affair until shortly before the Dubai authorities went public over the assassination earlier this week.

However officials in the Gulf state have claimed that British ministers may have been alerted by Dubai last month about the use of the passports.

If MI6 received a tip-off from Mossad it is not certain it would have been passed to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, particularly if it was vague.

Intelligence officers may have preferred to wait before alerting ministers. But any suggestion that officials turned a blind eye to an extra-judicial killing will strengthen calls for a public inquiry into the UK's involvement in the war on terrorism.

The Mail also discloses the role that the arrested 'Palestinians' played in the plot:

Intelligence sources say al-Mabhouh was lured to a meeting in Dubai by two men who had worked with him in Hamas in Gaza.

He did not realise they had defected to the more moderate Fatah, bitter enemies of Hamas, and were secretly working with the Israelis.

Two Palestinian men are in custody in Dubai. The director of the Dubai Police forensic medicine department revealed yesterday that finding the cause of al-Mabhouh's death had been the most difficult post mortem he had ever done.

British-trained Dr Fawzi Benomran said the killers had put his body in bed and covered it, to make it appear he had died in his sleep.

But he and his team established that death was caused by 'suffocation by smothering, most probably with a pillow'.

Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Heh.

Israel Matzav: Report: Mossad gave British MI6 notice of Dubai action; Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite

Israel Matzav: Someone at Israel's embassy in London has a sense of humor

Someone at Israel's embassy in London has a sense of humor

Someone in Israel's embassy in London has a wicked sense of humor.

Good catch by William Jacobson here.


Israel Matzav: Someone at Israel's embassy in London has a sense of humor

Love of the Land: Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely


Jonathan Spyer
International/JPost
18 February '10

The evidence suggesting that British passports were used by members of the team responsible for killing Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is causing concern at the possibility of a new diplomatic row between Israel and the UK. Such a row would come at a time of already strained relations between the two countries, because of the failure of the British government to take firm action to end the possibility of the arrest of Israeli officials in Britain on suspicion of ‘war crimes.’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to carry out a full investigation into the affair. A British Foreign Office Spokesman quoted earlier in the London Daily Telegraph earlier this week said that the authorities “believe the passports used were fraudulent and have begun our own investigation.” If the killers of Mabhouh were indeed Israelis, the unauthorized use of foreign passports will come as no surprise. It has been a much noted aspect in the known operations of Israel’s external intelligence services in recent years.

The two men apprehended following the failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Amman in 1997, for example, were found to be carrying forged Canadian passports. A diplomatic row also erupted between Israel and New Zealand in 2004, after two Israeli citizens were convicted of passport fraud in Auckland. The case resulted in the suspension of top-level contacts between the two countries for a short period of time. Israel is understood to have offered guarantees to the authorities of both countries that their documents would not be used in future operations.

Some reports in the British media have raised additional questions over the future of British-Israeli intelligence sharing in light of the latest incident.

The British and Israeli intelligence services are thought to cooperate closely in a variety of areas of common interest – including on the Iranian nuclear program, and in the fight against Sunni ‘Global Jihad’ organizations. The warnings of major diplomatic fallout are probably overblown.

(Read full article)

Related:Scandal over Mossad use of UK passports curiously fails to materialise with Britons awe struck at Israeli daring

Love of the Land: Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

DoubleTapper: Israel Did It...Maybe

Israel Did It...Maybe

One Writer's opinion on the Dubai Termination

...but I have a considerable admiration for the Israeli way of doing things. They want something, they get it. They perceive someone as their deadly enemy, they kill them. They get hit, they hit back. They don’t waste time explaining or justifying or agonising; nor do they allow their detractors to enter their country and then afford them generous welfare payments. They just act. No messing. No scruples. Not even a shrug and a denial, just a rather magnificent refusal to debate anything.

This absolutism, based on their history, carries its own moral weight; one that is rather electrifying in a Western world grown flabby with niceties. Clearly, the Israelis could defend their policies if they wanted to, but they quite simply can’t be bothered. It’s a waste of breath. One admires them for that, too.

I’ve felt this way ever since the Entebbe raid in 1976, an occasion when the Israelis showed Hollywood a thing or two. After two Palestinians and two Germans had hijacked an aircraft on a flight that had originated in Israel, the Israeli army simply swooped in, killed the hijackers and freed all but three of the hostages. It was decisive, bloody and clever. Lieutenant-Colonel “Yoni” Netanyahu, the older brother of the present Prime Minister, Binyamin, was the only commando killed in the fighting.

They also outdid fiction after the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when they hunted down 11 Palestinians who were responsible and eliminated them wherever they were in the world. Aided by fake passports and disguises, Mossad agents employed methods including a booby-trapped telephone, a bomb planted in a bed and a raid in Beirut in which the present Defence Minister, Ehud Barak, dressed as a woman. Nobody caught it on CCTV, but on the ground that human nature can never resist this kind of stuff, Steven Spielberg made it into the Oscar-nominated 2005 movie Munich.

Maybe, as the West becomes increasingly gentle and polite, and pays those monthly direct debits to Amnesty International, we need the Israelis to remind us that the world is not made according to our template...

From here


DoubleTapper: Israel Did It...Maybe

Elder of Ziyon: Another Arab murdered in a posh hotel

Elder of Ziyon: Another Arab murdered in a posh hotel

Elder of Ziyon: The French Halal burger kerfuffle

Elder of Ziyon: The French Halal burger kerfuffle

Detective Comics Covers - 4 (# 42 to 56) - BATMAN





Detective Comics Covers - 3 (# 27 to 41) - BATMAN





Love of the Land: It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street


Noah Pollak
Contentions/Commentary
18 February '10

Solomonia has the details on the latest from the anti-Israel group J Street, which has organized a trip to Israel in partnership with Churches for Middle East Peace. CMEP is a leader in the so-called “BDS movement” — boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. These are the people who want to isolate Israel in the way that the world is currently isolating, say, Iran — which is a tremendous irony, being that J Street is opposed to anything resembling BDS when it comes to the Islamic Republic.

These guys have gone so far off the deep end that I think if Ismail Haniyah invited J Street on a solidarity mission to Gaza City, Jeremy Ben-Ami would have to sit down and think really hard about the offer.


Love of the Land: It’s Time to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction J Street

Israel Matzav: Still no sign of American leadership on Iran

Still no sign of American leadership on Iran

You all remember that President Obumbler was going to give Iran until the end of September to 'engage' over its nuclear plans. Then Iran got an extension until the end of the year, because it agreed to meet with the P - 5 + 1 in Vienna in October. Then a sanctions resolution couldn't be introduced in January, because Libya was chairing the Security Council and would not allow it to be raised. But February would be an auspicious month, because France - which favors sanctions - is chairing the Council.

Well, we're now well into the second half of February (19 days gone - at least in part - and 9 to go) and there's still no sign of a sanctions resolution hitting the Council.

February has arrived, but the Chinese are still opposed to sanctions and the Iranians are enriching their uranium to a higher level. Obama's response is that he has had it and the time has come for sanctions and immediately - which means within a few weeks, perhaps by the end of March. In March, however, Gabon will assume the presidency of the Security Council, and it is not certain that Iran is at the top of its agenda. And there are still the problems with the Chinese.

And if we assume that ultimately there will be sanctions, so what? The involvement with sanctions, who's for and who's against, when, why and to what extent, deflects from the primary problem - the absence of an American strategy for tough negotiations with Iran. Even more serious, however, is that there are worrying signs that the Obama administration is beginning to resign itself not only to the fact that Iran will continue to enrich uranium, but also to recognition that the Islamic republic could ultimately build a nuclear bomb.

When you begin to reconcile with a specific reality, you stop trying to change it. And then we hear more about the need to deter and contain Iran than about stopping it, about a nuclear umbrella for America's allies in the Persian Gulf instead of a firm negotiating strategy against Iran. And sanctions alone won't stop Iran.

The role of sanctions and other pressure, such as credible military threats, is to convince Iran that time is not on its side and it would be better to seriously negotiate with the West. Only then will the diplomatic work of American-Iranian negotiations begin, with a goal of an arrangement that would eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat.

There is no sign that the Obama administration intends to mobilize the necessary political muscle to lead such a process. An additional decision on ineffective sanctions will apparently satisfy the U.S. So, we tried.

The diagnosis is correct; the solution is not.

The weakness that Obama is showing toward Iran has implications for America's global leadership role. Israel must speak to the Americans about this, and instead of focusing on sanctions, should try to determine if and how the U.S. intends to lead a comprehensive process leading to a solution. Without genuine American determination, there is no prospect of preventing the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.

Yes, indeed, Obama's weakness has serious implications for America's leadership role. But Obama doesn't believe that America can or should be a (let alone "the") world leader. To be a world leader, you have to believe in your own exceptionalism. Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism, and he has done and continues to do everything in his power to degrade it.

What could go wrong?

Israel Matzav: Still no sign of American leadership on Iran

Detective Comics Covers - 2 (# 16 to 26)




Detective Comics Covers - 1 (# 1 to 15)





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