May 10, 6.07 pm. Six missiles fired by Iran’s proxy militia, Hamas from the Gaza Strip fly into Israel and quickly become more numerous. Most were destroyed by the Iron Dome, but not all. Within a week more than 3,000 missiles had been fired by Hamas. Some caused deaths, injuries and destruction. Hamas’s goal was to exhaust the capabilities of the Iron Dome and cause as many civilian casualties as possible. To that end, it targeted Tel Aviv at night when people are asleep. Without the Iron Dome, there would have been thousands of deaths. Hamas has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Hamas’s attacks were preceded by unrest in Jerusalem and assaults on Jews. An Israeli court decision to evict Arabs who did not pay the rent and squatted in homes belonging to Jewish families in Jerusalem, was used as a pretext for riots. Violent incidents also took place on the Temple Mount, where Arab riotersshouted Islamist slogans calling for the death of Israel and bombing Tel Aviv.

As Hamas launched its missiles, Israeli Arabs in mixed Jewish-Arab cities such as Lod, Jaffa, Acre, Ramle and Nazareth assaulted their Jewish neighbors, torched Jewish synagogues, homes, cars and businesses, and flew Palestinian Authority and Hamas flags.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), in airstrikes in Gaza, destroyed countless missile launchpads, underground tunnel systems Hamas built to house its arsenals and protect its terrorists, and buildings that housed Hamas headquarters, offices, media outlets, cyber-warfare units and intelligence units. The IDF strikes also killed several senior Hamas leaders and the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the other Islamic terrorist organization participating in the attacks from Gaza.

On May 11, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that those who attacked Israel would pay “a very heavy price”. On May 14, he added that Israel now needed to fight on two fronts: Gaza and Israel. He promised to defeat Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and to “restore law and order to the cities of Israel”.

Israel, attacked by Hamas in the past, in 2014 also had to intervene in Gaza, which Israel had totally evacuated in 2005 to give the Palestinians living there the opportunity of turning it into the “Singapore of the Middle East.”

Arab Israelis have participated in riots before; some Israeli Arabs have even carried out terrorist attacks.

US Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted on May 11,: “The conflict in Israel would not be happening if President Trump were in office”. While it is impossible to know what would have happened if Trump were still president, it must be noted that sudden changes have taken place in American policy towards Israel, the Middle East, Russia, and China since President Joe Biden entered the White House.

The Biden administration has constantly shown its desire to return to the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which permits Iran to keep enriching uranium and have all the nuclear weapons it wants just a few years from now. The Biden administration also apparently is eager to lift US sanctions against Iran, thereby enriching it to arm once again not only Hamas, but also other Iranian proxies in the region, such as Hezbollah, which now runs Lebanon; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis in Yemen. The Biden administration, however, never speaks of Iran’s support for Islamic terrorist groups, or of the regime’s obsessive will to destroy Israel.

The Biden administration has radically broken with the policies of the administration that preceded it: President Trump decided to walk away from Iran’s nuclear deal precisely because the mullahs’ regime was funding Islamic terrorism and constantly threatening Israel the United States, as well as Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, Libya and Iraq. Iranian leaders appear see the Biden administration in a position of weakness and ready to turn a blind eye to even Iran’s most hideous atrocities, either inside the country or outside it.

That the Biden administration chose Robert Malley, the lead negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to conduct negotiations again, makes the Iranian leadership even more intrigued by the Biden administration’s weakness. Negotiations are currently underway in Vienna, Austria. The Iranians have refused to meet with the American delegation. The Iranian delegation has told Mikhail Ulyanov, Permanent Representative of Russia to International Organizations, that they were “still not ready” to meet Americans.

It seems Iran’s leaders thought that they could supply Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad with sophisticated missiles without risking an American reaction — and they did. The Biden administration did not react. In a PBS interview on April 2, one of the American negotiators, Robert Malley, announced that he wants “to remove those sanctions that are inconsistent with the deal”, “so that Iran enjoys the benefits that it was supposed to enjoy”. Nothing shows that the Biden administration has changed that position.

On January 26, less than a week after Biden’s inauguration, his administration stated that it would work toward “a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, and “restore relations with the Palestinians’ leadership”. It did not demand that the Palestinian Authority break its incitement to violence or support for terrorism. That policy, too, was a clear departure from that of the Trump administration, which decided to close PLO mission in Washington and said the United States would not have any relations with the Palestinian Authority until the PA completely broke with terrorism.

On April 7, a US Department of State press statement said that the Biden administration had decided to restore US financial “aid to Palestinians”, without requiring that American money not be used for terrorist purposes — also a clear departure from the policy of the Trump administration. In addition, President Biden waited for a month before calling Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a delay widely interpreted as a sign that the new administration wanted to distance itself from Israel. The appointment to the post of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs of Hady Amr, a man who has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid”, and said that he was “inspired by intifada”, seemed to confirm that the Biden administration would not be particularly “pro-Israel”.

Week after week during April and the first week of May, as Hamas speeches in the Gaza Strip grew more virulent, the Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank also made virulent speeches and did not seem nervous about drawing negative American remarks.

On April 29, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, now in the sixteenth year of his four-year term of office, postponed Palestinian parliamentary elections that had been scheduled for May, most probably out of fear of a Hamas victory. Hamas leaders apparently thought even then that they could launch an attack on Israel: they had weapons, Iranian support, and assumed that the United States would barely react. They were not wrong.

“Israel,” President Biden said on May 13, “has the right to defend itself when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory”. He did not explicitly condemn the Hamas attack or even say that Hamas committed war crimes.

“Palestinians and Israelis” Biden remarked on May 16, “equally deserve to live in safety and security and enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy, and my administration will continue to engage Palestinians and Israeli and other regional partners towards sustained calm”.

Biden thus placed Israel and the “Palestinians” on an equal footing. He made no distinction between a democratic ally of the United States and a terrorist organization he did not even name. He spoke as if he did not know that the calm was broken by a terrorist organization and by no one else, and that what prevents Palestinians from having freedom, prosperity and democracy is precisely that they are ruled by terrorists and people who supports terrorism.

Israeli commentators seem to think that the harsh rhetoric used by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority leaders — combined with the view that Israel no longer had strong American support — had led some Israeli Arabs to openly show their hatred for Israel and the Jews.

The Israeli government cannot afford to criticize President Biden, but they can clearly see that he does not show unambiguous support for Israel. There were no threats to stop the new funding he had promised the Palestinians until they stopped firing rockets. He did not threaten to withdraw his promise of an office in Washington DC for them. Most unsettling of all, while Iran’s proxy, Hamas, was raining nearly 4,000 rockets and missiles into a country the size of New Jersey, the US was engaged in talks in Vienna to discuss how much money the US was prepared to give Iran – to buy more weapons to batter Israel again?

In addition, the Israeli government could see that the Biden administration’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs in the US State Department, Hady Amr, met Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Ishtayya in Ramallah to negotiate the use of US financial aid to the PA while Israel was under missile fire, and that Ishtayya had said that Israel was carrying out “aggression in the Gaza Strip” and practicing an “ethnic cleansing policy” in the presence of Hady Amr, who remained silent.

The Biden administration still appears to want to lift sanctions on Iran’s regime, even though it is weapons designed or financed by Iran that are being used against Israel, while Iranian leaders praise Hamas for having launched an attack on Israel.

The Biden administration recently removed yet another Iranian proxy, the Houthi militias — who have been waging another war on behalf of Iran against Saudi Arabia — from the list of terrorist organizations. A few weeks later, the Houthis attacked a Saudi oil facility and a Patriot anti-missile system. The US still has not reacted.

The Biden administration has, instead, imposed a freeze on US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, and decided no longer to have any relationship with Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman , popularly known as MBS. Seemingly to destabilize the prince, the US administration made public a report accusing the him of being responsible for the murder of the anti-Saudi writer, Jamal Khashoggi, without specifying that Khashoggi was an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood, an arch-enemy of the House of Saud.

The Israeli government realizes that if there are not to be rockets pummeling Israel every few years, Hamas must be made to pay a high price — so that its leaders will think long and hard before initiating an attack on Israel again.

President Biden said that the United States would provide humanitarian support to Gaza, “in full partnership with the Palestinian Authority… in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal”. He did not explain what the United States could do to prevent Hamas from stockpiling weapons again. He ensured Prime Minister Netanyahu of his “full support to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome system.”

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that the Israeli Defense Forces “reached military achievements unprecedented in their scale, precision and strategic significance for the struggle with terrorist organizations in Gaza…. The reality on the ground,” he added, “will determine how we move forward.”

“[I]n war and conflict,” historian Daniel Pipes has written, “one side wins and one side loses…. Israel must do what all nations… are doing to achieve victory: beating its enemy….” Hamas’s rocket infrastructure in Gaza, he said, must be “completely destroyed.”

Israeli leaders know it, and it must be wished that the damage dealt this month to Hamas’s military infrastructure is significant enough so that Israel does not face the risk of a major attack in the years to come.

A recent article by Michael Doran and Tony Badran on Tablet explains why Israel needs to stay on guard and be ready to act decisively. A project designed during the Obama presidency and aiming to “create a new Middle Eastern order” seems to be underway. It would place the interests of Iran over those of US allies in the Middle East, thereby leading to the hegemony in the region of Iran. The project would erode new the Abraham Accords, push Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to come to an agreement with Iran and involve “forcing Israel into a more passive posture in the face of Iran’s rising power”. Is this project that the Biden administration is now implementing?

Sensing that the United States seeks to destabilize the Saudi kingdom and him, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman declared in April: “We are seeking to have good relations with Iran. We aim to see a prosperous Iran. We are working with our partners in the region to overcome our differences with Iran.” He then went to Baghdad, Iraq to meet with Iranian diplomats.

The Biden administration acts as if it does not see that it puts Israel and other longtime American allies in danger; it acts as if it does not see that behind Iran and the mullahs, China is on the move. China and Iran just signed a 25-year “strategic partnership” that will allow the mullahs’ regime to have hundreds of millions of dollars, help it expand its nuclear program, and presumably lead to greater military cooperation between them.

Journalist Melanie Phillips asks:

“Might Biden be turning America into Israel’s foe?…. Obama’s hostility to Israel and his empowerment of Iran made his double-term presidency a nightmare for the Jewish state. But if that was bad enough, it will take a measure of strategic genius for Israel to defend itself against Obama’s surrogate third term and keep its people safe”.

Is the Biden administration about to seriously diminish the status of the United States and the Free World to herald in a new world order that is radical and monstrous?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17392/biden-administration-israel-enemy

North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister of the Interior, Herbert Reul, has attributed partial responsibility for anti-Semitic attacks in Germany to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He said it was “totally likely” that Erdoğan’s sharp criticism of Israel had caused people of Turkish origin to take part in protests in West German cities over the past ten days. “I bet that,” Reul told the Home Affairs Committee of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament on Thursday, “but I can’t prove that.”

Earlier, Reul had again reported how, in the early hours of Wednesday evening last week, a group of about one hundred people had marched to the synagogue in the centre of Gelsenkirchen. This “anti-Semitic mob”, said Reul, had waved Palestinian and Turkish flags and chanted anti-Jewish chants on that May 12. A police cordon had prevented the crowd from entering the synagogue just in time. Erdoğan had declared on the same day that Israel should be taught a “strong and deterrent lesson”. A few days earlier, he had called Israel a “terrorist state”.

From May 10 to 18, the North Rhine-Westphalian security authorities counted 62 “incidents” with an anti-Semitic background, including insults, threats or the burning of Israeli flags. According to a ministry official, 36 of the 111 suspects have now been identified by name, and most of them are “of Arab origin”.

Reul warned of “strange alliances” of anti-Semitic groups: for example, immigrants from Iraq or Syria were “making common cause” with right-wing extremist “Grey Wolves” from Turkey, Islamists with a migration background were among them, as were German right-wing extremists. What they all have in common, according to Reul, is “a deep hatred of Jews”.

In the plenary session of the state parliament, speakers from all parties assured Jewish citizens of protection and safety. In the debate, head of government Armin Laschet rejected accusations by the AfD that the established parties were ignoring attacks by suspects with an immigrant background: In addition to anti-Semitism from the right and the left, there is “also anti-Semitism from immigrants”, said the Prime Minister.

Interior Minister Reul conceded in the debate that the police would not be able to protect every Israeli flag in the country at all times: “If the flag is burnt, then it’s burnt – then the next one will be put up.” Each city should keep ten in reserve: “But we will not take them down!

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/antisemitismus-nrw-innenminister-erdogan-mitschuld-1.5300075

On Monday night, two central places in the Styrian capital Graz were smeared with Islamic slogans. Both the Styrian Landhaus, the seat of the Styrian parliament, and the St. Mary’s Column, a central sign of Graz’s Christian history, were smeared with the Arabic writing “Allahu Akbar”.

In the course of the investigation by the Styrian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a 22-year-old man already known to the police was arrested. The Syrian, who according to the police had already been charged with various drug-related offences and resisting state authority, confessed. He also stated that he had written the words because of his religious convictions. In addition to the offence of grievous damage to property, the police are investigating the possible suspicion of membership in a terrorist organisation.

Graz’s city politicians also commented on the Islamist-motivated act of vandalism. Mario Eustacchio (FPÖ), deputy mayor of Graz, called for the problem to finally be tackled at its roots and not to continue to fight the symptoms. “Islamist structures must be consistently dismantled in Austria and immigration from Islamic countries reduced to an absolute minimum! The known Islamist mosques in Graz must finally be closed,” said Eustacchio.

Kurt Hohensinner (ÖVP), the city councillor for integration in Graz, explained his point of view in the newspaper “Kronen Zeitung”: the cause of the extremist acts of vandalism was the current conflict between Israel and Hamas. According to Hohensinner, the city of Graz is particularly committed to educational work in order to prevent extremist tendencies. Furthermore, the ÖVP politician emphasised that he wanted to “take action against any kind of extremism with the full force of the rule of law”.

Graz has long been considered a centre of Islamism in Austria. Half of all mosques are classified as extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In large-scale raids against the Austrian Islamist scene, Graz has always been in the focus.

https://www.tagesstimme.com/2021/05/20/graz-allahu-akbar-graffiti-auf-landtag-und-mariensaeule-gesprueht

As is well known, the most repulsive euphemisation and trivialisation of the currently rampant anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews on German streets came from Andreas Geisel, Social Democratic Party (SPD) Senator for the Interior in the red-red-green shithole of Berlin, who described the aggressive rowdies and rioters as “experience-oriented” young men. Whoever has such senators in government must truly fear Islam – because, with so much state understanding and “sportsmanship”, they will be allowed to let it all hang out in the future.

After all, the “hunger for experience” must be satisfied – and when words once again turn into deeds and “Jews slapping” once again becomes the new normal, then perhaps Geisel can explain when enough has been “experienced” or what is still allowed to go. 93 police officers, whose employer is Geisel, were injured by the hatemongers on Sonnenallee in the district of Neukölln alone, 65 people were temporarily arrested – because Geisel in this case, in contrast to previous Anti-Corona demonstrations, looked away and did not want to take any “disproportionate” measures – such as bans on gatherings or water cannons.

And logically, of course, this super-hypocrite with an active GDR and Socialist Unity Party (SED) past has no problem with broken rules of distance and masking. He criminalises some for demonstrating for basic rights, questioning the appropriateness of dictatorial restrictions on freedom in the name of a hyped-up “pandemic” or merely reciting the Basic Law in public, and lets his officials crack down with “White Russian” severity. While others, as the newspaper Bild resignedly states, are allowed to loudly chant “Bomb Tel Aviv” and “Shit Jews”, throw stones at synagogues and police officers and threaten journalists – and the Senator of the Interior declares them, with a wink, to be “experience-oriented” young Arab people.

For once, even the prominent union officials of the two rival police unions, which belong to different political camps, were in agreement this time: Rainer Wendt of the German Police Union could only shake his head about Geisel – and declared: “This is the usual trivialisation of an unteachable interior senator”. His counterpart Jörg Radek of the police union found similarly critical words for Geisel: “Such excuses trivialise the violence in view of the many injured.” It remains the case what the online portal Jouwatch already demanded yesterday: This interior senator must resign immediately; even for a state-sabotaging and scandalous government like the one of Berlin, such a person cannot be tolerated one day longer. Maybe Geisel will apply for a job as head of security in Gaza – there, even more “experiences” are guaranteed.

Berlin als “Erlebnispark” für Judenhasser: SPD-Geisel gerät zunehmend unter Druck

Armin Laschet ( Christian Democratic Union, CDU), Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia and candidate for chancellor of the CDU/CSU, has called for the flag of the Islamist Hamas to be banned in Germany. “We have banned the flag of the PKK because it is a terrorist organisation,” he said in a parliamentary question time on recent anti-Semitic riots. “The Hamas flag has not been banned until today.”

“Therefore, this flag, which stands for terrorism, must also be banned. It must not be displayed on German streets,” said the CDU federal leader. A law change is now necessary, he said.

Laschet accused Hamas of making many people living peacefully in the Gaza Strip “hostages for its terrorist activities”. At the same time, Hamas was harming the Palestinian Authority.

Last week, there had been anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli riots in several cities in Germany and also in North Rhine-Westphalia, including Gelsenkirchen, Solingen, Düsseldorf, Münster and Bonn. The trigger is the escalation of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel.

https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2021-05/armin-laschet-forderung-verbot-hamas-fahne-terrorismus-antisemitismus

There is a reason why those who make use of these maps avoid examining their provenance or proving their accuracy: The maps are egregiously, almost childishly dishonest. But they have become so ubiquitous that it is worth taking the time to examine them, and what their dishonesty can teach us about the Palestinian cause and its supporters.

In whatever form they take, the “Land Loss” maps show very little variation. The standard version looks something like this:

Sometimes, a fifth map is added, this one dated 1920, showing the entirety of what was once British Mandatory Palestine in a single solid color, labeled “Palestinian.” This accomplishes the seemingly impossible and makes the series of maps even more dishonest than before.

Whether made up of four or five maps, the message of the series is clear: The Jews of Palestine have been assiduously gobbling up more and more “Palestinian land,” spreading like some sort of fungal infection that eventually devours its host.

There are some outright lies in these maps, to be sure. But the most egregious falsehoods transcend mere lies. They emerge from a more general and quite deliberate refusal to differentiate between private property and sovereign land, as well as a total erasure of any political context.

This final point is especially crucial. It goes to the question of whether the Palestinians actually “lost” this land and the context of that alleged “loss.” We could quite easily, for example, make a panel of maps showing German “land loss” in the first half of the 20th century. It would be geographically accurate but, without the political context, it would tell a completely misleading story amounting to a flat-out lie. And that is precisely what these maps are: A lie.

Taking each map in turn, it is easy to demonstrate that the first one is by far the most dishonest of the lot. As far as I have been able to determine, it is based on a map of Jewish National Fund (JNF) land purchases dating roughly from the 1920s. The JNF was founded to purchase land for Jewish residents and immigrants in then-Palestine, and was partly funded through charity boxes that were once found in almost every Jewish school and organization in the West. Ironically, this map often adorned those ubiquitous boxes.

http://www.thetower.org/article/the-mendacious-maps-of-palestinian-loss/

The German government has announced a ban on the Salafist-Islamic association Ansaar International after accusing the purported aid organization of using donations to finance terrorist groups across the world.  

Germany’s Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) announced the ban earlier this month on the same day that authorities across ten federal states carried out raids against people and properties associated with the Islamic organization and its various offshoots, German newspaper Die Welt reports.

“To fight terror, one must dry up its sources of money,” said Seehofer.

According to a statement released by the interior ministry, around 1,000 police officers took part in the operation which saw evidence — including €150,000 euros in cash — seized across various locations in Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Berlin, Brandenburg, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, and Hesse German.

Alongside Ansaar International, the German government also banned groups linked to the Dusseldorf-based NGO, such as the Somali Committee for Information and Advice, the Änis Ben-Hatira Foundation, the Frauenrechte ANS Justice eV association, Umma Shop and Helpstore Secondhand UG, and Better World Appeal.

Seehoer said that these groups “spread a Salafist world view and finance terror around the world under the guise of humanitarian aid.”

Up until its recent ban, Ansaar International operated under the pretense of supporting various humanitarian projects for Muslims around the world. On its website, the Salafist NGO claims to provide humanitarian aid to individuals impacted by war and other crises by building and funding the construction of orphanages, schools, and medical centers. The organization is said to have collected €8 million to €10 million in donations in 2018.

Germany’s Interior Ministry insists, however, that the funds raised by Ansaar International are done so with the intention of funding foreign terrorist groups like the Palestinian Hamas, as well as the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab and Jabhat al-Nusra, located in Somalia and Syria, respectively.

“Financial support, even for what at first glance appear to be charitable activities, secures the terrorist groups’ power and dominance in the respective region, facilitates the recruitment of activists, and saves the terrorist group money, which in turn can be used to carry out the crimes it plans,” the interior ministry said.

“The network finances terrorism worldwide with its donations,” Seehofer’s spokesman Steven Alter wrote on social media.

The ministry, which insists that the banned organizations are “enemies of a world order that protects the human dignity of people of different faiths are created continuously”, also believes the organizations are working to send children from Germany abroad to help “internalize Salafist-extremist content there and to bring it back to Germany”.

Joachim Herrmann, the interior minister for the federal state of Bavaria, also commented on the bans and raids, saying: “This is a serious blow against terrorist financing and Salafist missionary work in Germany.”

The actions taken by German authorities this month come after the Düsseldorf Prosecutor General’s Office first began investigating the Salafist NGO in April of this year. That month, police searched the apartments of three individuals, aged between 32 and 40, including a Düsseldorf-based lawyer, who are suspected of financing terrorism.

https://rmx.news/article/article/germany-bans-islamic-ngo-over-alleged-terrorism-financing