| Lots of Arabs are also being killed in Lebanon Posted: 25 Aug 2013 03:00 PM PDT Last week there were twin bombings in Tripoli, Lebanon, killing 47 people. Police arrested two suspects Saturday linked to the twin car bombs in the northern city of Tripoli as the death toll from the blasts rose to 47 and politicians grappled with the aftermath of the attack amid worries of more sectarian strife.
Sheikh Ahmad Gharib, 40, was arrested by the police overnight in his residence in Minyeh, north of Tripoli. Arms, explosives and maps of the northern city were seized at his home, judicial sources said.
The sources said that Gharib was an affiliate to the Syrian regime-backed Baath Party and had recently paid several visits to Syria. Gharib was studying Islam in Syria but then quit and became a staunch supporter of the Assad regime.
Another suspect in the bombing, Sheikh Abdel Razzak Hammoud, was arrested around noon, the sources said.
The sources said that both sheikhs are members of the Tripoli-based Islamic Tawheed Movement, a pro-Syrian regime group headed by Hashem Minkara.
Investigations into the explosions outside two Sunni Muslim mosques carried on as military experts inspected the blast scenes to identify the cars used in the large bombings outside the Al-Salam Mosque on Tripoli's Maarad Street and the A-Taqwa Mosque near Abu Ali roundabout. Even though the blasts were done against Sunni targets and the suspects have ties to the Syria regie, Iran blames - Israel! Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi strongly condemned the recent terrorist attacks and bombings in the Northern city of Tripoli in Lebanon, and took Takfiri extremists and Zionists responsible for the massacre of the innocent Lebanese people.
"Undoubtedly, the wicked hands of the Zionist regime of Israel have now come out of the sleeves of Takfiri groups and irresponsible extremists, who intend to sow the seeds of sedition and undermine national unity and peaceful co-existence of different Lebanese ethnic groups, particularly Islamic sects," Araqchi said on Friday. The blast comes right after a car bomb in Beirut killed 27 more. In fact, in Lebanon this year the death toll from the spillover of the Syrian civil war has already taken about 160 lives. On an entirely unrelated topic, 48 were killed in Iraq on Sunday. It's all because of the settlements.  |
| Alaska's part of Operation Magic Carpet Posted: 25 Aug 2013 01:00 PM PDT From the Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News: From the end of 1948 to the fall of 1950, Alaska Airlines took part in the airlift of 50,000 Jews from Yemen to the newly created nation of Israel. Known as Operation Magic Carpet, Alaska Airlines employees flew in perilous conditions while helping to fulfill a Biblical prophecy that said the Yemenite Jews would return to their homeland "on the wings of eagles."
More than 60 years later a new museum in the state of Alaska pays tribute to this piece of Alaska Airlines history. The Alaska Jewish Museum's first featured exhibit, "On the Wings of Eagles: Alaska's Contribution to Operation Magic Carpet," tells the story of a young Alaska Airlines and its employees' heroic efforts to avert a humanitarian crisis during a trying time in world history.
"We decided to have the 'On the Wings of Eagles' exhibit at the museum because of the unique melding of energies between disparate groups (Alaska Airlines, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the State of Israel and the American government) to ensure the rescue of virtually an entire population from devastating circumstances," says Leslie Fried, the museum's curator.
The Yemenite Jews in Aden were living under extremely harsh conditions in the years prior to and immediately following the birth of the State of Israel.
At the time, Alaska Airlines was the largest non-scheduled carrier in the world. When the American Joint Distribution Committee contacted Alaska President James A. Wooten, he was moved after seeing the terrible conditions under which the Yemenite Jews lived in the Aden ghetto created by the British.
Throughout the next two years Captains Sam Silver, Warren Metzger, navigator Elgen Long and Chief Pilot Robert McGuire Jr. along with many others airlifted 50,000 Jews to Tel Aviv. The approximately 430 flights Alaska Airlines made were treacherous. Fuel was difficult to obtain, flight and maintenance crews had to be positioned throughout the Middle East and sandstorms wreaked havoc on the plane engines. There were no deaths during the flights though one plane was forced to make a crash-landing after the loss of an engine.
The exhibit provides a detailed look of the history of Operation Magic Carpet through historic artifacts, such as the jacket worn by Capt. Metzger and video footage of pilots sharing their airlift experiences. An interactive map also illustrates for visitors where the planes traveled while transporting the refugees. More from the Alaska Airlines site: When Alaska Airlines sent them on "Operation Magic Carpet" 50 years ago, Warren and Marian Metzger didn't realize they were embarking on an adventure of a lifetime.
Warren Metzger, a DC-4 captain, and Marian, a flight attendant, were part of what turned out to be one of the greatest feats in Alaska Airlines' 67-year history: airlifting thousands of Yemenite Jews to the newly created nation of Israel.
The logistics of it all made the task daunting. Fuel was hard to come by. Flight and maintenance crews had to be positioned through the Middle East. And the desert sand wreaked havoc on engines.
It took a whole lot of resourcefulness the better part of 1949 to do it. But in the end, despite being shot at and even bombed upon, the mission was accomplished—and without a single loss of life.
"One of the things that really got to me was when we were unloading a plane at Tel Aviv," said Marian, who assisted Israeli nurses on a number of flights. "A little old lady came up to me and took the hem of my jacket and kissed it. She was giving me a blessing for getting them home. We were the wings of eagles."
For both Marian and Warren, the assignment came on the heels of flying the airline's other great adventure of the late 1940s: the Berlin Airlift.
"I had no idea what I was getting into, absolutely none," remembered Warren, who retired in 1979 as Alaska's chief pilot and vice president of flight operations. "It was pretty much seat-of-the-pants flying in those days. Navigation was by dead reckoning and eyesight. Planes were getting shot at. The airport in Tel Aviv was getting bombed all the time. We had to put extra fuel tanks in the planes so we had the range to avoid landing in Arab territory."
British officials advised them that Arabs, angry over the establishment of the Jewish state, would certainly kill all the passengers and likely the whole crew if they were forced to land on Arab soil. Many planes were shot at.
Days often lasted between 16 and 20 hours and the one-way flights, in twin-engine C-46 or DC-4 aircraft, covered nearly 3,000 miles.
"We'd take off from our base in Asmara (in Eritrea) in the morning and fly to Aden (in Yemen) to pick up our passengers and refuel," Warren said. "Then we'd fly up the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba to the airport at Tel Aviv to unload. Then we'd fly to Cyprus for the night. We couldn't keep the planes on the ground in Israel because of the bombings."
"One of our pilots got a little bit too close to Arab territory when flying into Israel from the Gulf of Aqaba and tracers started arching up toward the plane," Warren said. "Another one of our planes got a tire blown out during a bombing raid in Tel Aviv. One of our crews practically lived on their plane from the end of April through June."
Bob Maguire, another Alaska pilot, once had to drop down to several hundred feet above the ground, squirming through hills and passes, to evade Arab gunfire.
What Warren and Marian thought was a temporary assignment turned into a seven-month mission of mercy. It also launched a marriage that has also celebrated its golden anniversary. Warren and Marian were married in Asmara in January 1949.
"I had met Warren when I started working for Alaska in July of 1948," Marian said. "We had both worked the Berlin airlift. I was sent to Shanghai and I didn't know where Warren was. I landed in Asmara after one flight and when the door of the plane opened, one of the guys who knew I'd been seeing Warren from time to time said he was in Tel Aviv and he'd be flying in the next day."
Before her Operation Magic Carpet flights in the Middle East, Marian, who retired from Alaska in 1952, assisted on flights from Shanghai transporting Jews who fled to China to escape persecution in Germany. When communists came to power in China, the German Jews took flight again to Israel. (h/t Zvi)  |
| France: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the main issue" in the region Posted: 25 Aug 2013 11:00 AM PDT From WAFA: President Mahmoud Abbas and his guest, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, agreed Saturday that regardless of the developments in the region, the Palestinian question remains the main issue and resolving it would contribute to peace and stability.
Abbas said after meeting Fabius that when he saw an opportunity to resume negotiations with Israel, he grabbed it without paying too much attention to what is going on in the region.
"When there was an opportunity to resume negotiations, we took it without looking at what was going on around us," he said.
Fabius agreed that the opportunity of reaching a final peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israel is going to contribute positively to stability in the region.
"It is very important to move forward with negotiations because this will be great for peace and stability in the region," he said.
'The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the main issue and therefore it should be resolved peacefully," he added.
He warned however that unless the negotiations move forward, the developments in the Arab countries could become an obstacle in their way.
He also described the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as "illegal under international law." Which means that Fabius' understanding of international law is as tenuous as his grasp of the Middle East. (Even if you believe that the WB is occupied, and even if you twist Geneva to be understood as if Jews building communities there were violating Geneva, it doesn't make the communities themselves illegal. Calling them illegal means that under international law, they must be dismantled and hundreds of thousands of Jews, including a significant number who were born in the area, must be ethnically cleansed. And no one, even the most anti-Israel legal scholar, seriously interprets international law that way. See this video starting at about 39:00.) Here is a recent cartoon I saw on Twitter that shows the same mentality as Mr. Fabius:  |
| 8/25 Links: MSF in Syria CW Toll 3,600 Injured 355 Dead, The Rabaa Four Fingered Salute Posted: 25 Aug 2013 10:00 AM PDT From Ian:
Get Clarity: Aish.com's Rosh Hashanah Music Video Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian journalists to protest against assaults by PA security forces Palestinian journalists plan to stage a sit-in strike in Ramallah on Sunday in protest against recurring assaults on them by Palestinian Authority security personnel.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in the West Bank called on its members to participate in the protest and condemned the attacks as an assault on freedom of expression.
The syndicate called on the PA leadership to punish security officers and policemen who assault journalists. Sheikh to Israeli Arabs: Block Jews With your Bodies Sheikh Raed Salah is at it again. The leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who has previously called on Muslims to "liberate" Jerusalem and has preached against Israel in Be'er Sheva, called this weekend for Israeli Arabs to block Jewish access to the Temple Mount with their bodies.
Salah warned his listeners that Israel is planning to "break in" to the Temple Mount, on which the Al Aqsa mosque now stands. Israeli Sheikh Tells Arabs: Israel behind Cairo Coup (Video) Ra'ad Salah, head of the radical Islamic Moveent's northern branch, incited Arabs with Israeli citizenship on Friday, telling them in no uncertain terms that Israel was behind the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood president Mohammed Morsi last month.
In a speech marking the 44th anniversary of a crazed, Christian Australian's attempt to burn down the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in 1969, Salah blamed Israel for the attack and for the coup in Egypt. UN envoy hints failure to strike peace deal would spell end for PA Nonetheless, Serry warned that yet another collapse of the peace process would cast a heavy pall over the political future of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
"President Abbas has already been, for a long time, the leader of what is considered to be the more moderate wing of the Palestinian movement which is committed to a two-state solution," Serry told Israel Radio. "Another failure will have consequences for him."
"But the very reason that in my view the consequences for both sides will be pretty serious if this fails again gives me hope that they will be serious in this US-led effort to return to meaningful negotiations." Thwarted Attempts by Hamas to Hit Security Sites in Sinai According to a report by Kuwaiti newspaper, Alrai, the Hamas squad entered into Egypt with 15 terrorists through one of the smuggling tunnels and transferred weapons in order to harm the selected targets of the attack.
Israel Radio reported that Hamas planned on smuggling leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood prisoners out of jail. PM: Israel's 'finger on the pulse' of Syria developments, if necessary will also be 'on the trigger' "Our heart goes out to the women, children, babies and citizens killed in such a cruel way through the use of weapons of mass destruction," he added.
Netanyahu said that Israel drew three conclusions from this episode.
"First, this situation cannot continue. Second, it is forbidden for the world's most dangerous regimes to have the most dangerous weapons in the world. And thirdly, we expect this to end, but we remember the ancient adage of our sages: 'If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us' – that is to say, our finger, our hand, will always be on the pulse. Our finger is responsible, and when needed it is also on the trigger." US official says 'very little doubt' Assad behind chemical attack A senior administration official said Sunday there is "very little doubt" that a chemical weapon was used by the Syrian regime against civilians in an incident that killed at least 100 people last week, but added that President Barack Obama had not yet decided how to respond.
The official said the US intelligence community based its assessment given to the White House on "the reported number of victims, reported symptoms of those who were killed or injured," and witness accounts. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly. MSF-backed hospitals treated Syria 'chemical victims' Medecins Sans Frontieres says hospitals it supports in Syria treated about 3,600 patients with "neurotoxic symptoms", of whom 355 have died.
The medical charity said the patients had arrived in three hospitals in the Damascus area on 21 August - when opposition activists say chemical attacks were launched against rebels.
But MSF says it cannot "scientifically confirm" the use of chemical weapons. Steinitz: If US Plans Attack, Israel Will Know The United States will have no choice but to take action on Syria following the latest reports of a mass chemical weapons attack, Minister of Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz predicted Sunday.
"Washington won't be able to stay quiet in the face of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime, and the West is expected to act," Steinitz told IDF Radio (Galei Tzahal).
If America attacks Syria, Israel will know in advance, he continued. In such a scenario, he said, the odds of Assad responding with rocket fire on Israel "are relatively small."
"In any case, we need to be ready in terms of both offensive and defensive capabilities," he added. Four-finger salute: Egypt rivals use 'Rabaa hand' to turn Facebook yellow A new victory sign has been flashed across Egypt to remember the Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp, which was dispersed last week in a deadly military crackdown on demonstrators in support of former President Mohammed Mursi.
The "four-fingered salute," as it has come to be known, is being publicized by bright yellow signs posted on social networking websites by Egyptian masses wanting to remember Rabaa protesters who camped out for weeks in Cairo.
In Arabic "Rabaa" means "fourth," and the hand gesture is being used to display solidarity with protesters. Turkish PM greets crowd with 'Rabaa sign' Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan greeted people with the 'Rabaa sign' after the Friday prayer at al-Aqsa mosque in Turkey's capital Ankara.
In the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa mosque close to his residence, Erdogan greeted the people with the 'Rabaa sign' and left for the official residence of prime ministry. Erdogan: Why Did Washington Condemn My Remarks on Israel? His accusation was furiously rejected by the White House which described it as "offensive and unsubstantiated and wrong."
In response, Erdogan said, "Why is the White House making a statement on this? The White House should not have spoken about this. If there's somebody to speak on this, it should have been Israel."
In televised remarks, he also said that the White House's statement "upset" him, calling Washington's approach to its NATO ally "unbecoming."
But he added, "This is very important to show the world's double standards," without elaborating. Appeals court upholds NY terror plot convictions An appeals court has upheld the convictions of four men in a terror plot to blow up New York City synagogues.
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan made the decision public on Friday. Argentina to probe official for anti-Israel incitement On Aug. 14, the Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote to Argentina's minister of agriculture, Norberto Yauhar, calling for Persico's removal. "Apparently, the speakers at Al Quds Day in Buenos Aires feel energized and empowered by the Argentina-Iran agreement, and now foment hate with impunity," Sergio Widder, the Wiesenthal Center's director for Latin America, told JTA, referring to a much-criticized agreement between the countries to jointly investigate the AMIA bombing. Upstart Israeli News Channel i24 Takes Aim at CNN, the BBC—and Al Jazeera Executives say they're reaching 350 million viewers worldwide, and none of them in Hebrew
The headquarters of i24news, Israel's first international news channel, is still unfinished. Outside, the glass building in Tel Aviv's newly redeveloped Jaffa port sparkles, but inside the cavernous blue-lit newsroom, where broadcasts launched in mid-July, wires and beams are still exposed. But the ongoing construction doesn't seem to bother the 150 journalists working around the clock to produce simultaneous newscasts in English, French, and Arabic. Israel's Kira Radinsky listed on MIT's Young Innovators under 35 Israel's Dr. Kira Radinsky has grabbed headlines again. The 27-year-old is one of 2013′s 35 Young Innovators under 35, as chosen by the MIT Technology Review.
Radinsky, who started studying at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology at 15 years old, first snagged the world's attention with her pioneering data-mining software that can predict disasters of many types, including disease outbreaks, violence and natural catastrophes. Tales of a British entrepreneur in the start-up nation I've always been fascinated by Israel's success.
According to Bill Gates, this tiny country has, "relative to its population, done the most to contribute to the technology revolution." For starters, there are more Israeli companies on Nasdaq than all of Europe combined. A pretty impressive feat.
So how did Israel do it, surrounded by enemies? Why did Dan Senor and Saul Singer's book The Start-up Nation inspire our British company to leave London, a major financial center, and relocate to Tel Aviv for awhile? In this post, I want to share some of my own experiences about what has contributed to the "economic miracle" of Israel.  |
| Egypt used chemical weapons in the 1960s; no one did anything then either Posted: 25 Aug 2013 07:15 AM PDT Arabs, allied with Russia, kill hundreds of other Arabs with chemical weapons. A cover-up of chemical weapons use and angry denials, allowing Western nations stand by and do nothing for political reasons. In 1967. From Chemical and Biological Warfare: A Reference Handbook, by Albert J. Mauroni (2007): The Yemeni Civil War (1962-1970) pitted the Yemeni royalists of the deposed imam against the Yemen republican forces in North Yemen, with Saudi Arabia and Jordan supporting the royalists and Egypt supporting the republican forces. This war was fought for five years until the two forces reached a stalemate in 1967. Although there had been occasional mentions of Egyptian military employment of mustard agent—filled bombs between 1963 and 1966, in 1967 these attacks became more frequent. International journalists began reporting that Ilyushin heavy bombers were dropping mustard-filled and phosgene-filled bombs on cities and rebel bases.
In January 1967, a gas attack near Sada killed more than 125 people. In May, two villages suffered 75 casualties from phosgene-filled bombs. Between 1967 and 1968, it is estimated that more than 1,000 Yemeni were killed as a result of exposure to CW agents. An International Red Cross mission sent doctors to assist the wounded, and the doctors testified to what they saw. Al-though they were careful to clarify that they did not see any evidence of actual attacks taking place, the signs and symptoms of the victims included burning eyes and trachea, pulmonary edema, internal thorax pain, extreme fatigue, and anorexia. Their findings were that in all probability these victims had inhaled toxic gases (Cookson and Nottingham 1969).The doctors were reluctant to identify the specific chemical warfare agents used, in part because they wanted to retain their neutrality and access to war victims. Although it appeared conclusive that mustard and phosgene had been used, a few cases suggested the use of nerve agent—filled bombs as well. The problem was how to prove the use of chemical warfare agents and who was responsible for using them. Because there were no arms control experts assigned to monitor or investigate these attacks, there was very little evidence other than eyewitness accounts from civilians and what could have been propaganda from the royalists. Although bodies and samples were sent to Saudi Arabia for more study, again, it was difficult to accuse any specific nation. Egypt claimed it had not used chemical weapons in Yemen, and, according to some sources, this may be true if Soviet air crews were manning the Egyptian-marked bombers that attacked those cities.
When Saudi Arabia and the royalists tried to get the United Nations to investigate, the UN's secretary general, U Thant, declined. On March 1, 1967, he stated that he was "powerless" to investigate the issue, and that the facts were in sharp dispute. Although he almost certainly knew exactly what was going on in Yemen, he had made a political decision to stay out of the affair. The U.S. government, occupied with answering criticisms about the use of Agent Orange and riot control agents in Vietnam, chose not to get involved. The U.S. military decided that the chemical warfare attacks were an aberration and not reflective of any requirement to worry about future chemical warfare attacks (and in 1972, chose to disestablish the Chemical Corps). The United Kingdom was attempting to reestablish relations with Egypt at that time, so it chose not to say anything publicly against Egypt or Soviet affairs in the Middle East (Seagrave 1981, 124-125). The incident became a political nonevent, fodder for the arms control community but not much else.
This incident teaches several interesting lessons. The first is the failure of the world's nations to react against the use of chemical weapons against civilians and military forces that were not similarly armed. This was not a clear violation of the Geneva Protocol of 1925, since Egypt was not then (and still is not) a signatory of the Geneva Protocol, unless it could be proven that Soviet crews were in those bombers. The reason that some military analysts believe there were Soviet crews in the bombers was twofold: First, they do not believe that the Soviet Union would have allowed Egypt to own or employ chemical weapons in 1967, Egypt having just started its interest in an offensive CW program. Second, the bombers dropped their munitions upwind of their targets for maximum effect, and in some cases, MiG fighter planes came back to drop high explosives or napalm on and near the targets to reduce or eliminate the evidence. These same tactics were seen years later when the Soviet air force attacked Afghani villages with chemical weapons. Because the attacks occurred in such remote locations and because post-mortem examinations took place days or weeks later, it was very difficult to directly attribute the cause of death to the bombing attacks.
This was the first instance of Arabs attacking Arabs with chemical weapons. The second was the Iran-Iraq War, where some 45,000 are believed to have been killed by chemical weapons.  |
| Iran sets a "red line" against US intervention in Syria Posted: 25 Aug 2013 05:30 AM PDT From Al Arabiya: A top Iranian military chief warned on Sunday that the U.S. will face "harsh consequences" if it intervenes in Syria over claims of chemical attacks, reported Agence France Presse citing a Fars new agency report.
"If the United States crosses this red line, there will be harsh consequences for the White House," armed forces deputy chief of staff Massoud Jazayeri was quoted as saying.
A year ago, U.S. President Barack Obama warned the use of chemical weapons in Syria would cross a "red line" and have "enormous consequences." Then again, Iran had threatened Israel specifically if it does anything in Syrian territory, but nothing happened after Israel evidently repeatedly attacked weapons en route to Hezbollah.  |
| Latest Egyptian rumor: Muslim Brotherhood army being formed in Gaza under Hamas Posted: 25 Aug 2013 03:18 AM PDT News out of Egypt is unreliable, to say the least, as the pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood sides hurl nutty accusations at each other. Egypt's Youm7 newspaper quotes unnamed senior Egyptian officials as saying that the new head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Ezzat, had fled to Gaza several weeks ago and is now overseeing a new mini-army of Gaza militants and1500 Muslim Brotherhood soldiers and smuggled from Egypt into Gaza through tunnels. These troops are being trained with Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades, according to the rumors, and they are in two areas of Khan Younis. It is being funded by the Muslim Brotherhood and is receiving weapons from Turkey, smuggled to Gaza through Cyprus, including anti-tank missiles. The rumor gets a little more fantastic when it says that some of the weapons are stolen from both the Egyptian and Israeli armies. (What is true is that Mahmoud Ezzat has not been seen for several weeks, since he was appointed in his new role. The idea that he is directing operations from Gaza is a bit far-fetched, though.) The commenters are taking this seriously, though, with one suggesting that it is time for the Egyptian army to hold its own "Cast Lead" against Gaza, damn the civilian casualties. Even though the story seems filled with holes, the fact that it even gets such prominent play in Egypt (and even gets leaked by Egyptian officials to the media) says volumes about how Hamas and Gaza itself is regarded as an enemy.  |
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