Category Archives: Israel Defense Forces
Can we officially become the 51st state now?
Let’s face it folks, we can’t make it in this neighborhood by ourselves.
We’ve lost all our friends, and we’re not making any new ones. And more and more, wild animals are taking the place of inspired revolutionaries. The Arab Spring is turning into a clusterfuck before our very eyes.
The 2010 Gaza flotilla organizers failed to reach their destination, but their ultimate goal of causing us major diplomatic harm has been achieved. The Islamic Jihad terrorists who last month killed 8 Israelis couldn’t have wished for a better outcome than 80 million Egyptians ultimately turning against Israel. Continue reading
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Playing Chicken with Turkey
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is quickly becoming Israel’s most dangerous enemy, and I think the time has come for him to be treated as such.
Erdogan has cut diplomatic and defense ties; cancelled military maneuvers; he’s going after our gas reserves in the sea; says his country will sue Israeli soldiers at The Hague; will take Israel’s blockade to the ICC; and now threatens to send his navy our way. Continue reading
Will Turkey’s navy try break Israel’s blockade on Gaza?
Some thoughts on the situation:
1. A senior Turkish official revealed that the Turkish Navy intends to significantly increase its presence in the eastern Mediterranean following the Palmer Commission report. The official described it as an “aggressive naval strategy” against the “thuggery of the Israeli navy.”
Turkey rocks ‘the boat’
Not many people have noticed this, but on the day that Turkey announced it was expelling the Israeli ambassador for Israel’s refusal to apologize for the Mavi Marmara flotilla battle, Human Rights Watch slammed Turkey for human rights abuses in northern Iraq.
From AFP:
“The evidence suggests that Turkey and Iran are not doing what they need to do to make sure their attacks have a minimum impact on civilians, and in the case of Iran, it is at least quite possibly deliberately targeting civilians,” Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director, said in a statement on Friday. “Year after year, civilians in northern Iraq have suffered from these cross-border attacks, but the situation right now is dire,” Stork said. “Iran and Turkey should do all they can to protect civilians and their property from harm, no matter what the reason for their attacks in Iraqi Kurdistan.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Turks timed their announcement of sanctions against Israel to drown out the Human Rights Watch statement on Turkey’s own human rights record…
Did I hear someone say ‘hypocrites?’
By the way, Turkey has a long rap sheet when it comes to Human Rights too.
So they really should get off their high horses. Their demand for an apology has more to do with their own regional political ambitions than a desire to uphold human rights.
Say sorry first, then shoot
Egypt wants us to apologize for killing several of its border soldiers last Thursday.
The incident happened when Israeli troops chased down a bunch of terrorists who had come from inside Egyptian territory over our border, killed 8 people, and then fled back over into Egyptian territory to make their escape.
So let me get this straight: Egypt wants us to apologize for something their troops should have stopped in the first place? Continue reading
Assad’s fall could boost the Israeli economy
Some thoughts on Syria, Israel, and the socioeconomic protests here. Continue reading
Off with their heads
Whose hairbrained idea was it to threaten the foreign press with deportation and a ten-year ban from Israel if they covered the flotilla aboard the vessels? Continue reading
Not ‘our man in Cairo’ – some thoughts on Israel’s ‘Facebook spy’ held by Egypt
Do Mossad agents post their photos on Facebook?
The man accused by Egyptian prosecutors of being a Mossad spy has been named as 27-year-old Ilan Grapel, a US/ Israeli citizen from Queens in NY who immigrated to Israel to join the army. He was wounded by Hezbollah gunmen during the Second Lebanon War, after which, according to some reports, he developed a passion for all things Arabic. During the protests that eventually toppled Hosni Mubarak, Grapel posed as a journalist and joined the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. It’s still unclear what he actually did during the protests, but photos of him holding protest placards have been disseminated by Egyptian media. Israel has denied that Grapel is an agent, and it seems very unlikely that he is. More likely Grapel was the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time: a naive Israeli/ American idealist with a military background drawing attention to himself during an Arab revolution and with pictures of himself in IDF uniform posted on his Facebook page, prancing around revolutionary Cairo egging on Egyptian youth and generally making himself very conspicuous. Not exactly textbook Mossad behavior. Continue reading
Netanyahu’s speech by the numbers
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu tonight delivered a speech to a joint meeting of the US Congress.
A numerical analysis of the words he used most sheds, perhaps, some light on where Netanyahu placed emphasis, and just as importantly, where he did not. The speech consisted of 3,549 words in total, and lasted 46 minutes and 50 seconds. The Prime Minister received 30 standing ovations. Here is a list of the words most used, in descending order:
Israel: 67 [That could be just a coincidence, but ironic nonetheless]
Peace: 50
Jewish: 19
America: 14
Iran: 12
Middle East: 12
Palestinians: 11
Nuclear: 10
Arab: 9
Friend: 8
Defend: 7
Security: 7
Freedom: 7
Terror: 7
Borders: 6
1967: 6
Jerusalem: 5
Hamas: 5
Islam: 4
Democracy: 4
God: 3
Hezbollah: 2
Holocaust: 2
Territory: 1
A purely numerical analysis of the speech seems to suggest that Netanyahu’s message to Congress and the Senate went something like this: Israel, the Jewish state, wants peace. Israel is America’s friend. Iran destabilizes the Middle East and wants to go nuclear. If Iran goes nuclear there will never be peace and there will be another Holocaust. The Palestinians aren’t ready for peace. The Arabs in the Middle East want freedom but Iran wants to spoil that. Israel will defend it’s security. Borders are not an important issue, security is more important. Forget about 1967 borders. Forget about Palestinian refugees. Jerusalem will stay undivided under Israeli sovereignty. Hamas is Israel’s al-Qaida.
Here’s a word cloud courtesy of wordle.net
Here’s a video from C-Span of the speech
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf?pid=299666-1
And here’s the full text courtesy of the PMO:
May 24, 2011
Speech by PM Netanyahu to a Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress Continue reading
Can Israel avoid its own looming Nakba?
63 years ago Israel was born at the United Nations General Assembly. The Palestinians called it their ‘Nakba’ – catastrophe. In a twist of fate, history may be repeating itself.
Some thoughts on the situation.
Richard Goldstone can’t stop what he’s started. The brilliant, yet naïve jurist thought he was helping to make the world a better place, thought he could bring human rights to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts, thought he could get Hamas to abide by international law [he was so proud he got the mandate to include Hamas violations of human rights]. He was terribly wrong, and now he knows it, and wishes he could change it. It remains to be seen how far he’ll go to make amends. Goldstone may have retracted his war crimes charge against Israel, but his report has a life of its own. The damage has been done and will continue to be done. In September, just as the Palestinians will be asking the United Nations General Assembly for recognition of their new state, the UN Human Rights Council will be holding a scheduled status review of the implementation of the Goldstone Report. The fact that Hamas has done nothing – and will do nothing – to investigate its human rights abuses and war crimes charges [in Gaza they call outbound rockets ‘legitimate resistance’ and inbound retaliatory Israeli rockets as ‘war crimes’] will have no effect on Hamas. Israel’s dozens of internal probes and convictions will be lauded, but any open investigations will be used to hit Israel over the head with charges of non-implementation, which will then go back to the General Assembly, where, as I’ve just mentioned, the Palestinians will be asking for recognition of Palestine. Not that the Palestinians need the Goldstone Report to convince member states to vote in favor of their independence. Continue reading
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What will Goldstone’s reversal mean for Israel’s next wars?
Some thoughts on Richard Goldstone’s Op-Ed in the Washington Post over the weekend.
Is Israel capable of reaching out to new Arab elites?
There is a famous saying: “for a man carrying a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” In other words, for Israel’s top politicians and generals [is there a difference?] the tectonic change currently cracking the Middle East wide open is one big, nasty nail. Why is the ‘only true democracy in the region’ so utterly miffed by the freedom movement sweeping this area? Democratic eggs may be hatching in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Algeria, Yemen and Bahrain; but for every newborn free-range chick taking its first steps, Israelis see a wolf in chicken’s clothing. Why? Because democracy brings Muslim extremists to power [like it did in Gaza and Iran], and them brothers want to throw us into the sea. Continue reading
Desperate housewives don’t count rockets, they count days
Compared to the scenario that Turning Point 4 drilled this week, the events that occurred here in 1991 can be thought of as a piece of cake. Back then, Saddam fired some 30 Scuds into the Dan region, and even though millions lived in a state of fear, only one person died, of a heart attack. Since 1948, some 60,000 rockets have been fired into Israel, killing 80 civilians. Compare that to 2006, where Hizbullah lobbed over 80 tons of explosives in 33 days of war, killing 43 civilians, while four others died of heart attacks. In this week’s drill, some 220 [imaginary] tons of explosives [theoretically] hit the Israeli home front in the first 4 days of [imaginary] war. But that’s where the theoretical ends.
Turning Point 4 is an exercise based on very realistic assessments of what Israel can expect in the next round of war with Hizbullah, Hamas, and possibly Syria and Iran. The next time round, the enemy rockets will be deadlier and more accurate – and they’ll come in concentrated blitzes of hundreds at a time. They’ll come day after day, not sporadically like in 2006 and 2009, but in concentrated barrages, timed and coordinated by an axis of enemies from the north, south and east. Continue reading
Israeli soldier writes to Gazans whose home he took over
The following text is a letter posted on the Facebook profile of Yona Cymerman, an acquaintance of mine. It is written by her brother-in-law and translated by Yona. I’ve posted it here because it is quite powerful. There have been reports of IDF soldiers leaving notes for the Palestinians whose homes they commandeered throughout the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast lead.
An Open Letter to a Citizen of Gaza: I Slept in Your Home
An Open Letter to A citizen Of Gaza:
I Am the Soldier Who Slept In Your Home:
By: Yishai G (reserve soldier)
Hello,
While the world watches the ruins in Gaza, you return to your home
which remains standing. However, I am sure that it is clear to you
that someone was in your home while you were away.
I am that someone. Continue reading
UN-Israel relations going up in Gaza’s smoke
Looking at the massive plume of thick smoke rising above the Gaza skyline on Thursday, Israelis tasked with coordinating humanitarian aid shipments into the Strip couldn’t believe their eyes. Thousands of sacks of wheat and other foodstuffs sent through the Israeli crossings over the past weeks and stored at the food storage warehouse at UNRWA headquarters were on fire, sending a thick smoke throughout the area that could be seen from miles away. All the work Israel and UNRWA have been doing to avert a humanitarian crisis in Gaza was going up in flames, literally. Continue reading
Go in hard or get out quick
Day 13
It is getting harder to shake the feeling that the government and army have been feeding the media a problematic line of information.
We were told repeatedly over the past week that the IAF has managed to severely disrupt the Hamas military wing command-and-control apparatus, and that Hamas commanders on the ground [mostly under the ground in tunnels] are finding it hard to communicate with each other and send orders down the chain of command and out to operatives in the field. Continue reading
In Sderot, eyeing Gaza’s Black Sabbath
David Bouskila had a long and busy Friday night. The workload and
consultations started again very early on Saturday morning. So at about
11:30 a.m., when he finally found a few minutes to rest, he walked into his
bedroom and let his hefty body slump onto the mattress.
The second his head hit the pillow, IAF bombs hit their marks in nearby Gaza
City causing a thunderous sonic boom which shook Bouskila’s home. Sderot’s
new mayor knew it was not a good time to catch some sleep.
Credit: Sderot media center
Bouskila is speaking on his cell phone to the BBC when I catch up with him.
“We praise the IDF and the government for acting after having been under
rocket attack for over eight years,” he says. Speaking in good English all
the way through the interview, Bouskila spells out the letters of his name
to the BBC reporter on the other end of the line. Continue reading
Google removes ads from Hamas’ AqsaTube
Just spoke to Google, who said that after my request for comment, they’ve removed their AdSense program from Hamas’ new AqsaTube website.
Here’s the story published here yesterday:
Hamas, the terrorist group in control of the Gaza Strip, recently launched a new Internet site called “AqsaTube“. It is a file-sharing site enabling users to upload videos. Its format and design are similar to the American YouTube’s. Its name and logo are also similar to YouTube’s, and without a doubt were inspired by them, although the format of the site has similarities to other video-sharing platforms on the net. Emails to YouTube were not returned.
News of a kidnapping
Experts believe Hizbullah is more interested in perpetrating a terror attack against Israeli and/or Jewish targets abroad than in kidnapping Israelis. Kidnapping people in a foreign country is the most complex of operations and one that does not yield the greatest results.
Abducting even just a handful of foreign nationals, getting them on a plane and smuggling them out of a country is an extremely difficult and complex business. Even in remote and undeveloped locations, a missing foreign national won’t go unnoticed for long, as evidenced in the latest case of the Ra’anana man kidnapped in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Getting hostages through airports and sea ports is also not easy, even under the most lackadaisical port conditions.
Kidnapping or murdering a handful of Israelis overseas is not the kind of response Hizbullah envisions to the assassination of its operations chief Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus last February. One veteran observer of Hizbullah’s activities abroad terms this type of operation “revenge of the poor.” Continue reading
