Category Archives: Israel

A REMINDER (9/21/017): Some Shin Bet Veterans Not Against Iran Deal

Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, and a former chief of the Israeli Navy, said this about the US deal with Iran:

“… when it comes to Iran’s nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option.”

“When negotiations began, Iran was two months away from acquiring enough material for a [nuclear] bomb. Now it will be 12 months,” Ayalon says, and the difference is significant to anyone with a background in intelligence. “Israelis are failing to distinguish between reducing Iran’s nuclear capability and Iran being the biggest devil in the Middle East,” he says.

“Ayalon and several of the other Israeli war heroes who appeared in The Gatekeepers, an acclaimed 2012 documentary about Shin Bet, endorsed Obama’s best argument for the agreement—that the alternative is much worse.”

MORE.

Israel: A Quality Society, Not A Suicide Pact

Israel, Judaism & Jews, Terrorism

“Ten Hours of Walking in Israel as a Woman in Hijab” (via Target Liberty) serves as a remarkable testament to the quality and tolerance of Israeli society. So conclusive and vivid is this video depiction that words pale by comparison. It is a rather long clip. My tolerance for text-less material taking time to get through is limited. But, here, a picture in time is indeed worth a thousand words.

Editor Robert Wenzel disagrees, writing this at TL:

In commerce, there is peace.
What Corey Gil-Shuster didn’t film is what occurs at Israeli government checkpoints.

Checkpoints? The reason there is “peace in commerce” is because those manning checkpoints care about the security of their Israeli countrymen, Jew and Muslim, to ensure that hijab-swaddled individuals do not have vests of explosives under their garb.

Would you feel at ease in a cinema or a supermarket where hijabs went unchecked?

Kudos to the Israelis.

The ‘Sacrifices’ Our ‘Friends’ In The Middle East Make

Iran, Israel, Jihad

I had imagined that Israel would grow a brain and would reconsider its antagonistic attitude to Bashar Hafez al-Assad. Syria’s embattled leader is currently fighting ISIS and losing. But no, things are as Bat Buchanan paints them:

America [is expected to] send her best and bravest back into Iraq to defeat ISIS, while Turkey, the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and Israel are helping bring about the defeat of a Syrian army that has been battling ISIS for years.

Our “friends” in the Middle East have no problem with us fighting and dying to drive ISIS out of Iraq, while they try to bring about the fall of Assad in Syria, which would constitute a triumph for ISIS.

Our “friends” don’t mind this happening because it would be a defeat for Iran and the Shiite Crescent, their enemies, even if it meant a victory for ISIS and al-Qaida, our enemies.

What Pat fails to mention is that American leaders are the true traitors, here. They and their comitatus — “the sprawling apparatus … that encompasses not only the emperor’s household and its personnel … but also the ministries of government, the lawyers, the diplomats, the adjutants, the messengers, the interpreters, the intellectuals”—are first to offer up American blood and treasure in furtherance of their own interests and aggrandizement.

The Geopolitics Of Genocide-Recongition

History, Israel, Middle East

The following puzzling snippet comes via Vox Day:

Israel does not plan to recognize the Armenian genocide perpetrated by Turkey, Rafael Harpaz, Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Azeri website Trend.

“Israel is a democratic country, everybody has two opinions, not one opinion,” Harpaz said. “The government has a very clear opinion.”

He said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman had made Israel’s policy clear. Harpaz told Trend he hoped Israel’s troubled relations with Turkey would improve.

Vox correctly notes that “this decision makes sense from a geopolitical grand strategic point of view.”

I would go further and venture that Israel’s “willingness to throw away the moral high ground” on the Armenian genocide is indicative of the Jewish State’s sense of insecurity in a region that is rapidly forming new alliances. This, coupled with the alienation from the administration of Barack Obama has clearly made Israel a lot more cautious as to which Middle-Eastern potential partner it annoys with symbolic gestures.