Mashaal: Suicide is our ‘Life’

By Dalit Halevy

Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal FOTO: Reuters

Hamas leader says a suicide terror campaign against Israel is around the corner.

Hamas head Khaled Mashaal said on Saturday that there is no solution to the Palestinian problem, except through renewal of the spirit of jihad and self-sacrifice for Allah. He stressed that this would happen “soon.”

Mashaal spoke at an event in Qatar, dedicated to the memory of Palestinians who were killed in terror attacks against Israel, whose remains were recently transferred by Israel to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Mashaal noted that the residents of Gaza, the “West Bank,” the “1948 areas,” Jerusalem and the diaspora are one nation with a single common strategy, which is jihad and struggle. Hamas and the rest of the organizations are preparing to renew the jihad, he said, because the Palestinian people has not gotten tired and has not abandoned the path of jihad and struggle in the liberation of all of “Palestine,” from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea.

Mashaal emphasized the importance of instilling the value of dying for Allah, in children from infancy. From the first moment after a son is born, he said, the Palestinian fathers say “This son of mine is a sacrifice for Palestine,” and they wish for him to become a shaeed, and that Allah will bless him with a martyr’s death.

Mashaal added that when a Palestinian joins the Al-Kassam Brigades “we are very happy”; when he carriesut a [terror] attack “we are overjoyed” and when e is killed “we praise Allah.”

“Jihad in the path of Allah is the pinnacle of our aspirations,” he said, “and its our life.”

“chickensh*tting of Bibi.”

By:J. E. Dyer

Which glass has the poison? Photo Credit: Asher Schwartz

{Originally posted on author’s site, Liberty Unyielding}

Many are misreading the import of the Obama administration’s latest essay in narrative placement: the “chickensh*tting of Bibi.”

There is no doubt that the administration wanted to defame Benjamin Netanyahu: to undermine his reputation as a national leader, impugn him and his policies. The administration has been in high dudgeon over Netanyahu and Israel for some time now, flouncing around in impotent fury like Scarlett O’Hara looking for a vase to throw.

Team Obama is caught, after all, between the stark realities that keep Israel’s security policy constant, and the constancy of American public support for Israel. Making substantial moves against Israel is a non-starter for an American president; Congress may not agree on much, but on that, it would act with unity and swift purpose – and the urgent support of the people

No form of diplomatic pressure, meanwhile – no matter how publicly uncomfortable – is going to make Netanyahu give in on Israel’s security and her hope of a future. Nothing short of giving Israel over to destruction is acceptable to the Palestinian Arab leadership as the price of a “peace deal,” and Netanyahu will never agree to that just to make John Kerry or Barack Obama happy.

So the Obama administration snipes from the shadows (and puts on passive-aggressive spectacles like the ridiculous shunning of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon during his recent visit). John Podhoretz aptly characterized an earlier incident in the administration’s series of pokes and jabs as a “hissy fit.” What we’ve been seeing is a very prolonged hissy fit; I almost feel a certain solicitude for the psychological effort it must take to keep it going.

Earnest observers in the U.S. and Israel are taking it seriously. A policy rift between the U.S. and Israel makes it hard, probably impossible, to confront Iran effectively – that’s the grown-up sense they are trying to make of it all. And they’re not wrong about that. But they’re behind the train, standing on the tracks as it pulls away in the distance.

Reality has moved beyond the old touchstones: U.S. power, a “concert of nations” addressing common security threats, maneuvers to line up “global” principles that every nation will feel itself bound to live by. The status quo defined by those characteristics is collapsing. In important ways, it has already collapsed, as evidenced by the utter, unaddressed chaos in Syria and Iraq, and the unaddressed Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Hoist on its own petard

This has all come to a head at this particular time largely because the Obama administration thinks it’s a foreign policy to place a narrative in the media about Bibi being a chickensh*t. The posture represented by that form of sophomoric intrigue is deeply irresponsible, morally vicious, and anti-Westphalian, and it has come out in Obama’s policies over and over and over again. The entire world, outside of Western academia and the editorial boards of the left-wing media, already knows that Obama is not an honestly-intentioned Westphalian statesman.

Read more: “chickensh*tting of Bibi.”

Egypt gives residents on Gaza border 48 hours to leave

By Ashraf Sweilam

Egyptian army soldiers seen in a watchtower on the Rafah border with the Gaza Strip, July 2013. (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Locals ask officials to extend deadline, as army prepares to destroy homes to build buffer zone after deadly attack

L-ARISH, Egypt (AP) — Egyptian authorities on Tuesday ordered residents living along the country’s eastern border with the Gaza Strip to evacuate so they can demolish their homes and set up a buffer zone to stop weapons and militant trafficking between Egypt and the Palestinian territory, officials said

The measure comes four days after Islamist fighters attacked an army post, killing at least 31 soldiers in the restive area in the northeastern corner of the Sinai Peninsula. After the attack, Egypt declared a state of emergency and dawn-to-dusk curfew there. Authorities also indefinitely closed the Gaza crossing, the only non-Israeli passage for the crowded strip with the world.

The buffer zone, which will include water-filled trenches to thwart tunnel diggers, will be 500 meters (yards) wide and extended along the 13 kilometer (9 mile) border.

Read more: Egypt gives residents…

In pro-Palestine Sweden, far-right Jewish lawmaker embraces Israel.

Swedish MP Kent Ekeroth (photo credit: CC BY-SA Kent Ekeroth/Wikipedia)

Kent Ekeroth’s mother immigrated from Poland. As an MP for the nationalist Sweden Democrats, he now agitates against Arab immigrants

Kent Ekeroth sits in the parliament in Stockholm for the far-right Sweden Democrats, the country’s second-largest opposition party. He’s a proud Swedish nationalist who agitates against leftists, liberals and Muslim immigrants

Ekeroth is also Jewish, a frequent visitor to and staunch supporter of the State of Israel, and as such, was opposed to his government’s announcement earlier this month of plans to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state.

“We opposed this vote for several reasons. For one, it’s not the right way forward for Sweden to unilaterally recognize the Palestinians’ state without Israel’s involvement, without negotiations,” he said. “The other part is: a state is formed when a state can control its own territory. The Palestinian Authority cannot.” Worse yet, the PA formed a unity government with Hamas, he continued. “For us to recognize that — unacceptable.”

To make their opposition to the government’s declared intention to recognize Palestine official, the Sweden Democrats, together with other opposition parties, last week voted against it in the Riksdag’s Committee on European Union Affairs. The newly formed center-left coalition of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven should have first discussed the issue in the Foreign Relations Committee, the lawmakers decided — a vote that, if disregarded, could get the government into hot water with the parliament’s Constitutional Committee.

But the damage is done and Stockholm is unlikely to reverse its decision, said Ekeroth, 33. “I don’t think they will back down. That would be too much of an upset if they did,” he told The Times of Israel last week in Jerusalem, where he visited as part of a delegation of pro-Israel parliamentarians from across the globe.

The new government’s declaration that “Sweden will recognize the State of Palestine” — which was followed by a similar vote in the British House of Commons and the announcement that the Spanish parliament might be next — “will probably have a domino effect in Europe,” Ekeroth said. “The left-wing establishment in many European countries will of course use this and the English vote as a reason to do the same thing in their countries. Considering that the left-wing media in Europe is very strong in almost all countries, especially the Western European countries, I wouldn’t be surprised if there would be mounting pressure to do so.”

A native of Malmö, Ekeroth was born to a Swedish father and a Jewish mother originally from Kazakhstan who immigrated to Sweden in the 1960s. He is “partly Jewish, but obviously also Swedish. So it’s a bit of both,” he said. Later during the interview, he clarified: “I’m first of all Swedish. I was born there, it’s my first language, it’s the culture I grew up in; I’m sure I’m Swedish in many ways, culturally. That’s natural. But then I have a Jewish background, so I understand that part, too.”

Ekeroth is entirely secular and described his observance of Jewish traditions as “shallow.” He first got into politics after a debate at the local synagogue (although he is not a member of any Jewish community). A centrist party tried to recruit him but since he has always been opposed to immigration he joined the far-right Sweden Democrats, with whom he entered the Riksdag in 2010. According to his worldview, unlimited immigration to his native land is the root of all evil befalling it — including the government’s decision to recognize Palestine.

For one, the Green party, the Social Democrats junior partner in the ruling coalition, is “fiercely anti-Israel,” he said. Sweden’s new Turkish-born housing minister Mehmet Kaplan participated in the Mavi Marmara flotilla that sought to break the Gaza blockade in 2010, he added in support of his argument.

Read more In pro-Palestine Sweden…

Arab Terrorists Try to Burn Jews Alive in Jerusalem

By Dalit Halevy, Ari Yashar

‘Silent intifada’ spirals out of control; terrorists hurl firebombs at Jewish homes in dead of night to burn sleeping inhabitants.

Arab terrorists hurling molotov cocktail firebombs at Jewish homes, trying to burn entire families as they sleep – it has become part of a routine of terror in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, where a “silent intifada” has been raging under the radar of major news outlets.

A new video shows just shocking and potentially lethal the wave of terror has become; the video, uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, shows Arab terrorists from the Al Sawana neighborhood just east of the Old City, between the Mount of Olives and Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus, lobbing firebombs at Jewish homes.

The terrorists can be seen charging the homes in the dead of night clutching their molotov cocktails, before releasing the bombs at the houses in large arcs and then turning tail to flee the scene.

Two of the firebombs are seen catching, setting alight the homes with blazing fires. Miraculously, the inhabitants were able to avoid the urgent danger.

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction has been actively promoting the recent terror wave, with senior PA official Jibril Rajoub saying in August his organization had made a “political decision” not to stop anyone from “slaughtering a settlement.”

Fatah terrorists have also been engaged in gun battles in and around Jerusalem, and were recently filmed firing automatic weapons into the air in the capital. Hamas has also been getting in on the action; another recent video shows terrorists with Hamas headbands shooting at an IDF Border Patrol post with modified sub-machine guns in Jerusalem’s Shuafat neighborhood.

Read more: Arab Terrorists…