Tag: Abbas

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PACKER’S CORNER: Trump Will Negate Obama’s Iran Deal

The President of the “Palestinian Authority” Abu Mazen called the American Ambassador to Israel a “son of a bitch”. That doesn’t happen everyday. But in fairness to Abu Mazen, America has never had such a proud Jew as an ambassador before. The last few have been quite the sellouts. Abu Mazen probably loved them! David Friedman, not so much.

However, this just wasn’t enough excitement, so… Israel officially revealed that they bombed a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007. Now that is exciting! Most folks were already pretty aware of this, but now we had details. This, predictably, started a whole war of words (luckily not a real war with Syria) between different Israeli political and security figures. They argued like bickering children over who should get the credit, how the strike happened, how war was avoided and whether or not this information should have been released now. Somehow Netanyahu will get the credit (despite not being in power at the time), he’s just that good at this.

Many think this is a message to Iran not to mess. With the new and improved Trump Administration potentially poised to negate Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran in the next few months, Iran needs to know its place. Showcasing Israel’s ability to blow up nuclear facilities would be a nice warning. Additionally, as the Syrian government creeps closer to winning the civil war in their country, they also need to know that messing with Israel is never a good idea. I like to think of the whole thing as an early Happy Ramadan message to the entire muslim world, and don’t mess.

Very unfortunately, there have been victims of terror attacks in the past week in Israel. Two soldiers were killed (and two injured) in the northern Shomron and an Israeli civilian was killed in the Old City of Jerusalem. These attacks appear to have been carried out by individuals and not so premeditated. One attacker was captured and one killed. The terrorist who killed Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal was also captured this week in Shechem. They never get away. They know this, but they do it anyway. Something to ponder.

Remains to be seen how/if Israel will respond to these attacks. Will keep everyone posted.

In some good news, it looks like former residents of the destroyed community of Amona will move into houses this week, before Passover, in the new community of Amichai – near Shiloh. Rarely does Israel meet deadlines, but Passover is Passover. Hopefully the large families will experience a sense of “freedom” from the small dormitory rooms they’ve been confined to for the past year. Looking forward to those pictures.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to be questioned about something next week. At this point, even the left seems bored with this. Makes more sense for them to go through the Haggadah to be ready for the Seder(s)!

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BREAKING: One Stabbed Outside Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station, Response to Trump’s Announcement

In an apparent response to Trump’s announcement that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, a terrorist attacked a security guard at Jerusalem’s heavily trafficked Central Bus Station.  The guard was stabbed in the chest and in serious condition.

Police are reporting that the terrorist has been neutralized.




Abbas has called for days of rage and although this failed to spur large-scale intifada style protests and attacks, it evidently has inspired lone wolf attackers.  The question remains on whether today’s attack is the beginning of something larger or just a one-off.  Much depends on Israel’s response to the attack.  If the government comes down hard on Arab neighborhoods, it will force the local leaders to reassess their encouragement of anti-Israel riots.

 

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OUR TAXPAYER FUNDED PALESTINIAN SADDAM

Terror, lies and taxpayer money.

A tree may grow in Brooklyn, but a Saddam Hussein memorial has grown in Qalqilya.

Qalqilya is one of those ancient, historic “Palestinian” cities. So it dates back all the way to 1893. The population of Qalqilya more than quadrupled under Israeli rule. That’s typical of Zionist genocide which somehow vastly increases the number of Arab Muslims and their shrill accusations of genocide.

In the ancient 19th century Palestinian city of Qalqilya, dating back all the way to the days of President Grover Cleveland and the invention of the jukebox, Hamas is popular. It even elected its own mayor before he was removed from office and the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah was put back in charge. Politics in Qalqilya remains a pitched battle between Hamas and Fatah over who hates the Jews more and has the best plan for destroying them.

There isn’t much to do in Qalqilya except visit its zoo. The Qalqilya Zoo is the worst zoo in the world and embodies everything wrong with “Palestine”. Israelis helped set up the zoo as a gesture of peace. It was supposed to be a “jewel in the crown of Palestinian national institutions.”

And it just might be.

Recently, a bear ate a 9-year-old boy’s arm at the zoo. The zebras and the giraffes allegedly died as a result of Muslim attacks on Israelis near the zoo. The self-taught taxidermist who runs the zoo has an exhibition of dead animals he has stuffed and mounted, and whose deaths he blames on Israel.

Like everything else about “Palestine”, Israeli goodwill ended in death and anti-Israel propaganda.

But Qalqilyans or Qalqilyites now have something else to do besides get their arms ripped off by a bear or visit one of the city’s 26 mosques. They can stop by the Saddam Hussein Memorial.

One side of the memorial has Saddam Hussein in a beret saluting himself. The other shows an older Saddam waving his rifle in the air. If the city fathers of Qalqilya had been more on the ball, they could have acquired the Ruger M77 bolt-action rifle in question for under $50K after it was taken from the rubble of his presidential palace in Mosul and sold at auction by a senior CIA officer in Baghdad.

The Saddam Hussein Memorial bears such cheerful welcoming messages as “Saddam Hussein – The Master of the Martyrs in Our Age,” and “Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea.”

Governor Rafi Rawajba compared Saddam, Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas: the current head of the Palestinian Authority. “Saddam was an emblem of heroism, honor, originality and defiance, as was the martyr Yasser Arafat.”

“President Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) makes sure to follow in the footsteps of these two great leaders,” he gushed.

Qalqilya Mayor Othman Daoud, also of Fatah, had previously paid tribute to Saddam for sticking to “his principles and the Palestinian cause until his death as a Martyr.”

The governor of Qalqiliya was appointed by Abbas. While the Palestinian Authority president doesn’t have Saddam’s arsenal or snazzy berets, he has the same affinity for democracy as Saddam.

President Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005. It’s been the longest four years ever.

Governor Rafi Rawajba was appointed by Abbas, not elected. He’s a member of Fatah, which is the political movement that dominates the PLO, and the PLO runs the Palestinian Authority. Also present was an official from the Arab Liberation Front which is also part of the PLO. The ALF was a project of Saddam Hussein and he used it to hand out cash to the families of Islamic terrorists in Israel.

Before the latest Iraq War, the ALF promised to hand out a million dollars to terrorist families. The Bush administration used that as evidence that Saddam Hussein supported terrorists and had to be removed.

There’s just one problem.

The ALF claimed that Saddam had handed out $35 million to terror families in 3 years. The Palestinian Authority pays out over $300 million a year. It’s currently at $355 million.

The PA spends 10 times more on terror payments in 1 year than Saddam did over 3 years.

And the best part is that most of the money comes from us. The Palestinian Authority doesn’t have much of an economy. It relies on foreign aid. Some of that money comes from Europe, Japan and the Saudis. A whole lot of it comes from Americans.

Even while we were fighting to remove Saddam Hussein, we were funding the PLO which included a faction under Saddam’s control that was doing the very thing we were condemning him for.

The Taylor Force Act, named after an American veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq murdered by a Fatah-supported terrorist, is slowly wending its way through Congress. If it isn’t neutered, it will cut off some of our aid to the Palestinian Authority until it stops funding terrorism.

Taylor Force was murdered by Bashar Masalha.

Palestinian Authority television reported that, “In Qalqilya, hundreds of citizens accompanied by the body of Martyr Bashar Masalha.”

“The Martyr Bashar Masalha returned from Qalqilya to his village Hajja in a procession,” PA TV gushed, describing the burial of a terrorist who had murdered an American as a “national wedding” in which he was “embraced by the soil of his homeland as a Martyr.”

Qalqilya is not the only Muslim settlement in Palestinian-occupied Israel to have its own Saddam Hussein memorial. There’s one in Beit Rima, a town square in the Palestinian Authority’s capital of Ramallah and a UN refugee center in Jenin.

And, if business goes on as usual, the PA will be funded by hundreds of millions in taxpayer money.

Maybe it’s time we finally stopped funding the Palestinian Authority, its terrorists and the aspirations of its dictator to follow in Saddam Hussein’s footsteps.

If the Muslim colonists of the Palestinian Authority want to continue their war with Israel over settlements like Qalqilya illegally built on the indigenous territory of the Jewish people, they can do that without our help. As they were doing it without our help for decades until Bill Clinton decided that a greasy Egyptian former Muslim Brotherhood member named Arafat was his key to a Nobel Prize.

American taxpayers are paying Muslim terrorists to murder Americans. We’ve poured money into the Qalqilya Governate which has benefited from numerous USAID projects. And, in return, the locals are erecting monuments to Saddam Hussein. And a Fatah thug appointed by President Abbas, the dictator we subsidize with hundreds of millions a year, claims that Abbas is following in the footsteps of Saddam.

After spending thousands of lives in Iraq, we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars funding a Palestinian Saddam.

Making the Taylor Force Act into law is the only decent thing to do. But Secretary of State Tillerson also needs to end the doubletalk about the Palestinian Authority’s funding of terrorism. And Abbas’ enablers, in the media and the Jewish world, have to be held accountable for the lies and the terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority’s terror boss has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t want peace. The latest reconciliation effort with Hamas is another reminder of it. He isn’t interested in democracy either. Not unless the elections are rigged. What does Abbas want? If you believe his crony in Qalqilya, he wants to be Saddam Hussein. If he wants to follow in Saddam’s footsteps, he can do it without our cash.

Or the next Saddam Hussein memorial can be on us.

Originally Published in FrontPageMag.

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Hamas Has Lost A Big Battle, But Not The War

While everyone in Israel and the Arab world was shocked with the sudden reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, we have been aware of this being worked on since February. It was very expected by all insiders.  Nonetheless, journalists may sometimes build their analysis on what they see on the outside, and some second hand inside information they get, and therefore may end up with faulty conclusions.

In fact, we have seen some writers concluding that Hamas had “won”. Some went as far as suggesting that Hamas now has a freehand to fight Israel while Abbas gets the blame as Gaza’s ruler.  While these concerns may be justified when taking matters by their face value, realities on the ground maybe very different.

The first question everyone should ask is: why did Hamas hand Gaza to Abbas without him firing a shot? Didn’t Hamas take Gaza over by a bloody coup against the man in 2006?

The answer to that begins at the White House.  Our Arab sources confirmed to us that the Trump Administration made it clear, at the very beginning, that it was not going to tolerate any “nonsense” or “attacks on Israel” from either Hamas, Abbas or the Arab regimes supporting them, be those Qatar’s or Jordan’s. The presidential message was clear and reportedly conveyed by the head of the CIA himself: Any more provocation on Israel, a third Intifada for example, would bring severe punishment from the US to all of those involved.

The White House’s warnings were concurrent with direct cooperation with one of the very moderate regimes in our region, President Sisi’s. The Egyptian intelligence began communicating with Hamas early this year. Egypt convinced Hamas leaders that if they continue their pathway of doom, the US will not restrain Israel from destroying Hamas to fullest. In reality, and since 2008, each time Israel came close to annihilating Hamas, Obama openly stepped in to stop it and save Hamas at the last moment.  Operation Protective Edge was a good example of that; when an inside source in Gaza told me “most of Hamas tunnels have been destroyed”, and “Hamas won’t take one more month of this”, Obama’s administration suddenly stepped in and enforced a ceasefire.  Well, this will not happen under President Trump.

Also, this so-called reconciliation could have never happened was it not for pressure exerted on Hamas’ Arab supporters. Before neutralizing Hamas, the US administration made sure to cut its lifelines first. Qatar was put under political and economic siege by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and a few other Arab countries. Qatar has been financing Hamas for more than a decade and has harbored its leaders.  

Neutralizing Qatar was the first step in castrating Hamas. This did not stop with Qatar though, Hamas leadership and control is actually in Jordan, not in either Gaza or Qatar; Hamas is  officially “The Muslim Brotherhood Palestine Chapter”, all of Hamas leaders fall under Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood.  

But who controls Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood?

The answer will shock many readers, but Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood is under the full control of Jordan’s king. By his own words, the words of his former Minister of Political Reform, and his former Deputy Prime Minister, “The Muslim Brotherhood is a part of the Hashemite regime”. This is a matter we have lavishly documented with evidence and our work o that is available for anyone to read and verify.

It is a fact that Jordan’s king has been using his influence over Hamas as a bargaining chip with both, the Israelis, and the Americans.  After Trump walked into the Oval Office, the king knew the administration would not tolerate nor forgive such extortion.  Our sources in Jordan, Cairo, DC and elsewhere confirm that both Abbas and Abdullah of Jordan have been warned that any stunts will result in them being personally held accountable.

With Jordan’s king and Qatar’s lines of support cut from Hamas, the US pressure was shifted to Abbas himself.  First, both Saudi Arabia and UAE had an alternative plan to save Gaza’s people and avoid any conflict, this was to introduce Abbas’ rival and archenemy, Mohammad Dahalan, as a leader of Gaza. Egypt was very supportive of this step and proposed it to Hamas as its only available bailout. Hamas agreed and its very own media began promoting the idea.  This is where Abbas felt he could end up losing the entire game.  A senior PLO member, whose late father was one of its founders, summed it up for us: “Abbas knew he was going to lose everything and be totally out of the game, therefore he approached the Israeli, the Egyptians, and Hamas, telling them: Why do you need Dahlan, I will do everything you want in Gaza”.

Nonetheless, according to the senior PLO source: “Abbas knew Hamas was not going to take him in easily, so he began pressuring it by blocking its public funds, pay for public servants in Gaza was frozen”, “He also refused to pay Gaza’s power bill, which has been causing painful outages to Gazans and a huge public backlash against Hamas”.  

All of this has resulted in Hamas giving in to Egypt and hand its entire executive powers in Gaza to Abbas. This by itself is not only a tactical defeat for Hamas, but also an ideological disaster. Hamas has always demonized Sisi, insulted him on its media, described him as the devil himself, and now, Hamas allows his photos to be displayed in public in Gaza, a sign of loyalty and even submission in Arabic political culture. Hamas has always portrayed Abbas as evil and “Anti-God”, labelled war against him and the PLO as “Godly Jihad”, how do you think the average Hamas member feels about their leader giving in to Abbas before the whole world?

It is safe to say this reconciliation has a been a publicly-humiliating, torturous and politically-devastating move for Hamas, which it would have never done was it not for the extreme pressure coming from all directions.  Whoever says Hamas has won, is wrong. Nonetheless, this story is not over yet.

Hamas has kept its guns and military ranks. Abbas’ military presence in Gaza is zilch. A PLO source inside Gaza told me: “Hamas did this because it had no other choice, Hamas has given in to Egypt’s patronage, and this shall hold for a while”, he adds: “Nonetheless, Hamas will go back to war and even kick Abbas out of Gaza again at the first minute they get a chance, but with Trump, Sisi, Saudi and UAE, this is not going to happen any time soon”.

With this reconciliation, it is safe to conclude Hamas has lost a major battle, and has been humiliated to the fullest. Sisi’s controls Hamas now, Qatar and Jordan’s regimes cannot do anything for Hamas, all sounds sababa, right? In fact not really; Hamas has lost a major battle, but not the war. Hamas could still make a very nasty comeback in the future.

The US administration would do us all good by keeping the pressure on Hamas and initiating a process by which Hamas would give up some of its firepower gradually, possibly under Egyptian management and with a generous “cash for guns”, Saudi and UAE’s patronage.

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Manchester, Trump, and the Lies of Abbas

On December 1, 2001, two suicide bombers detonated themselves on Ben Yehuda Street, followed by a car bomb set to go off as paramedics arrived. There was mayhem and fear.Thirteen people were killed, including a number of soldiers out of uniform, and 188 were injured. I was 23 then and had been learning in Yeshiva for close to six months.  That night my friends and I decided to finally get out of Yeshiva and do to downtown Jerusalem.  We were sitting in a nearby cafe when the blasts went off. Our hearts were pounding.  We had friends up in the area of the bomb blasts and did not know their condition.  As we waiting inside the cafe, the owner’s boy came inside in a state of shock.  He was holding a bag and inside was an organ from one of the bomb blast victims or even the bomber.  Someone quickly ran to get Zaka to ensure the body part was properly taken care of.  The suicide bombers and the car were packed with nails. One of our friends from yeshiva was hit and spent the next days in the hospital until he recovered.

This was not the first time I had experienced “Palestinian” terror.  Months earlier I was shot at while spending Shabbat in Hebron.  My group and I ran down the street as groups of Palestinian Authority funded terror gangs opened fire on all of us.

In those days Arafat was in control and he had made a direct covenant with Hamas to fight Israel. It was Arafat who came up with the idea of the suicide bomber who would decimate countless innocents with nail bombs. This was his gift to the world.  Suicide bombers with nail bombs.  This was the weapon of choice used to kill at least 22 people in Manchester.  Arafat’s deputy is the very same Mahmoud Abbas who President Trump claims is serious about peace.  The problem with this is that Abbas knew, funded, and supported the suicide attacks on Israel.  In fact it his Fatah who killed many people in last year’s spate of stabbing and car ramming attacks, including our first grader’s rabbi and son, our daughter’s friend, and father to her schoolmate.

For the President to condemn the Manchester attack as undertaken by “evil losers” while standing next to Mahmoud Abbas, a man responsible for the murder of thousands, including the 1976 Israeli Olympic Wrestling team as well as those murderous attacks on innocent Jews throughout Israel that continue today is nothing sort of hypocritical.

I believe Donald Trump is serious about peace, but if he truly want to move it forward the arch terrorist and Holocaust denying dictator of the PA should be the first person he boots if not arrests. By displaying Abbas as a pedestal of peace, President Trump will only encourage more attacks like the terror attack in Manchester. In fact as long as Abbas is not taken to task for his crimes, there is little hope for peace.

The choice is President Trump’s.  He can stop worrying about his image or grandstanding and either decide to stay out of the region or engage it with a bit more humility. After all, it is not the lives of his family or friends that will suffer for misguided policies and peace overtures that keep repeating themselves. Rather it is my family and friends that will ultimately be burdened by his ill fated attempt to make peace in a region whose parties have never been held accountable for their past actions.