27-Feb-11: The Gazans continue firing into southern Israel

From Ynet: A second assault on southern Israel this evening - a mortar attack on the Erez crossing - jihadists claiming to act in the name of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine immediately claimed responsibility. Earlier today (we reported it here), a Qassam rocket was fired towards the western Negev. No injuries and no damage - but as we have noted many times this is because they failed or were incompetent, and certainly not because they wanted to avoid causing damage or injuries or worse.

27-Feb-11: Quotes of the day (two, from one excellent analytical article)

The "liberal" son of the embattled Libyan tyrant Muammar al-Gaddafi

"...appeared on Libyan television to say that his father's gunmen would fight to the last bullet to keep the Gaddafi crime family in business, a promise he is keeping. The thinking behind so many who flattered him was that the only issue in the Middle East worth taking a stand on was the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the oppression of Arabs by Arabs was a minor concern."

This comes from a thoughtful op-ed by Nick Cohen in the Guardian: "Our absurd obsession with Israel is laid bare: The Middle East meant only Israel to many. Now the lives of millions of Arabs have been brought to Europe's attention"

Same article, second quote:

"The European Union, which did so much to export democracy and the rule of law to former communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, has played a miserable role in the Middle East. It pours in aid but never demands democratisation or restrictions on police powers in return. That will have to change if the promise of the past month is to be realised. If it is to help with democracy-building, Europe will need to remind itself as much as the recipients of its money that you can never build free societies on the racist conspiracy theories of the Nazis and the tsars. They are and always have been the tunes that tyrants sing.

The full Guardian article is here.

We're not so naive as to think the immoral pouring of vast resources into the maw of the Palestinian Arab kleptocracy is going to change just because it turns out that this is no way to build a democratic society that respects basic human values and human rights.

Nor is there any reason to think that those who watched over a period of decades what the Arab tyrants and other forces of repression in the Islamic world have wrought will do some soul searching and reach operative conclusions. The world and international relations have never worked that way.

At best, we're hoping that people who express strongly-held opinions about the events that shape our day to day life in this special region will possess the intellectual honesty and good sense to pause; to at least acknowledge that somewhere in among the torrent of images and reports and data pouring out of Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, Iran, Oman, Syria, Lebanon and the others in these past tumultuous weeks there are some kernels of insight and even truth that deserve some examination.

Then again, this is the Middle East.

27-Feb-11: They're firing rockets into Israel again this morning

With no strategic target in mind, as usual, other than to hit anything Jewish or Israeli, the terrorists of Gaza are back in action this morning.

AFP reports that yet another of their seemingly-endless supply of rockets struck an un-named Israeli site in the past few hours. It caused no damage or casualties, according to Israel's military and police. But it's always been the case that this was not for lack of trying or of the desire to cause damage, pain and death.

Ynet, an Israeli news source, says today's rocket was a Qassam; it struck somewhere in the Eshkol region. The Color Red alert system which is intended to give residents of the south of Israel some modicum of advance warning when the jihadists fire was not activated "for a reason yet unknown".

Ynet also notes that there was a Friday attack on the southern Israeli city of Netivot. Another jihadist rocket fired from the Gaza Strip evidently landed on the Hamas-controlled side of the Israel/Gaza boundary. Damage, injury and loss caused to the Gazan Arabs arising from the terror attacks of their own jihadists are rarely reported in the general new media, though they are far from being a rare occurrence.

24-Feb-11: Syria continues to up the terrorism ante

Iranian regime President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
Syrian dictator Assad and Hezbollah terror leader
Hassan Nasrallah at dinner in Damascus during 2010. Source

An article in today's Wall Street Journal discloses some disturbing intelligence - with very little if any coverage elsewhere at this stage.

Second Suspected Syria Nuclear Site Is Found

WASHINGTON—A second suspected nuclear installation has been identified in Syria, according to commercial satellite photos, providing new evidence that Damascus may have been pursuing atomic weapons before a 2007 Israeli military strike. The publishing Wednesday of the photos by Washington's Institute for Science and International Security could increase pressure on the United Nations to demand expansive new inspections of suspect Syrian facilities during a March board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency... Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government has rebuffed repeated IAEA requests to conduct additional inspections of the site as well as three other facilities the U.N. agency believes could be related to a covert Syrian nuclear program. Damascus's rejection of IAEA inspections could result in Syria being declared noncompliant with its U.N. commitments and referred to the Security Council for formal censuring. Mr. Assad denied in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last month that his government has pursued a nuclear program. He also said he wouldn't allow the IAEA expansive powers to inspect his country.

The entire article is worth reading, as is this report on Syrian state terrorism. Meanwhile two Iranian navy warships tied up in a Syrian port yesterday (Wednesday). They were the first vessels of the Ayatollah-controlled regime to enter the Mediterranean since the Ayatollahs took control of Iran in 1979. The IRNA newsagency in Tehran said that the commander of Iran's navy, Admiral Habibula Siari, was due to arrive in Damascus yesterday with a delegation of Iranian military officials.

On Tuesday, the Iran's deputy army commander, Abdolrahim Mousavi, was quoted saying that Israel was "astonished" by the presence of Iranian naval vessels in the canal:

"The global arrogance (Iranian code for the US) must know that the Islamic Republic of Iran's army is fully prepared to defend its goals... The world should know that the presence of Iranian warships in the Suez Canal has taken place through the deep guidance of the Supreme Leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei) and our young and brave personnel's self-confidence..."

Probably all completely innocent.

23-Feb-11: The authorities in Tehran would like us to know

The Ayatollah-rich regime in Tehran knows something 

about violent crackdowns and 

suppression of pro-democracy protestors 

For our "Annals of State-Managed Hypocrisy" files, today's extract from the ever-astonishing Iran-government controlled PressTV:

Iran censures brutality of 4 Arab statesWed Feb 23, 2011 12:32PM
Members of Iran's Parliament (Majlis) have condemned the recent violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters by the governments of Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Morocco. In a statement issued by 191 Iranian lawmakers, the recent brutal onslaught by rulers of the four Arab countries were censured, Mehr News Agency reports.
“The regretful events in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Morocco and the ruthless slaughter of unarmed people of these countries by the authoritarian rulers is reminiscent of crimes that all dictators throughout history have committed in order to stay in power,” read the statement.

If you can take it, the rest of this breathtaking piece of hutzpah is here.

23-Feb-11: Beer Sheva under fire from Gaza

Beer Sheva neighborhood

Palestinians fire Grad missile at Beersheba; no injuries reported
Palestinians launched a Grad missile from the Gaza Strip toward Beersheba. Local residents reported hearing two explosions in the city, but the police said they have yet to locate the site of the landing. No injuries were reported. [Ynet]

Grad rocket hits Beersheba house
Alarm activated in Negev city accompanied by explosion sounds. Police say residential building suffered direct hit. No injuries reported. A Grad rocket hit a residential building in Beersheba Wednesday. An alarm was sounded in the area at around 9:30 pm accompanied by explosion sounds. No injuries or damage were reported and security forces are scanning the area. [Ynet]

Long-range rocket from Gaza hits Israeli city
Today at 22:24 | Reuters
A rocket launched from the Gaza Strip hit a house in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Wednesday, February 23, a police spokesman said, adding there were no initial reports of casualties. Beersheba is a major population centre southern Israel, about 35 km (20 miles) from the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants mostly launch rockets that have a much shorter range and are aimed at areas closer to the coastal territory. There was no initial claim or responsibility from any Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip.

UPDATE: Thursday morning - According to BBC News, a second Grad rocket fell near the southern Israel town of Netivot, causing no injuries.

23-Feb-11: The terrorists of Gaza are firing mortars into Israel yet again

YNet says three mortar shells were fired into Israel today, in the general direction of one of the kibbutzim in the Sha'ar Hanegev region, close to the Gaza border. [The Jerusalem Post says there were five.] All landed in open fields without causing injuries or property damage though, as people somehow overlook too often, this was not the outcome that the terrorists wanted.

There were earlier incidents today involving Israeli forces in the area, according to the IDF news blog. Soldiers operating a routine patrol near the northern part of the Gaza Strip security fence came under attack from an explosive device, with two additional mortar shells being fired at civilian targets in the S'dot Negev region of southern Israel. (Fortunately there were no injures or damage then either.) The IDF returned fired from its tanks, hitting one of the terrorists. Two additional explosive charges placed near the southern part of the Gaza Strip security fence were then found and dismantled by the forces. A dozen such devices have been uncovered on the Israeli side of the fence in the past two months.

Earlier still, bulldozers accompanied by tanks were active in the area, doing what security forces must when dealing with a dug-in terrorist force: clearing the ground, and scouting for concealed jihadist weaponry. They came under mortar fire then, and the tanks fired back. The Chinese newsagency Xinhua says Islamic Jihad claimed credit for its terrorists having fired two mortars at the Israeli soldiers and that seven of their men were injured. A Palestinian newsagency says injuries were suffered by what it called two "gravel collectors".

22-Feb-11: Update - Iranian warships are on the move

From Associated Press in the past hour:

Suez Canal officials say two Iranian naval vessels have entered the strategic waterway en route for the Mediterranean Sea. Canal officials say the ships — a frigate and a supply vessel — entered the canal early Tuesday morning and are expected to reach the Mediterranean later in the day. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to speak publicly about the matter. 

UPI says this morning:

Passage through the Canal can take 14 hours... Iranian Navy Lt. Cmdr. Rear Adm. Gholam-Reza Khadem Biqam told Iran's Fars news agency the warships will be dispatched to the Mediterranean Sea and will remain in the area for a year for training exercises. The canal's northern mouth, Port Said, is approximately 60 miles from Israel. The warships' intended destination means they will be sailing parallel to the coast of Israel...

21-Feb-11: Update - Iranian warships still in the Red Sea for now

Monday morning update: The planned passage of two Iranian naval vessels through the Suez Canal is reported to have been delayed by 48 hours. The two vessels had been due to enter the canal early this morning. An Egyptian canal official did not give a reason for the postponement. The passage through the canal would be the first for Iranian naval vessels since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iran's Ayatollah-controlled PressTV 24-hour-a-day media channel says the two ships carry formidable firepower": "Khark has 250 crewmembers and can carry three helicopters. Alvand is armed with torpedoes and anti-ship missiles." (Those missiles are sourced from China.)

21-Feb-11: Quote of the day - Iran takes the prize

The Australian: Iranian Spheres of Influence

From "Revolts threaten to shake the world" by Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor, in Saturday's edition of The Australian [February 19, 2011]

...The gold medal with oak leaf cluster for hypocrisy in the face of the Egyptian revolt goes to Iran. Its leaders have praised the noble demonstrators in Cairo, and attempted to portray them as heirs to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. But even while saying this, the regime has brutally suppressed relatively small attempts within Iran to recreate the protest movement of 2009. It is executing protesters and opposition activists at a rate unknown anywhere else on the planet - it has been executing roughly two people a day. Nearly 70 people were executed in Iran last month, most ostensibly on trumped-up charges, but in reality for opposing the regime.

20-Feb-11: Iranian warships have/haven't transited the Suez Canal [check one]

For those who believe that news reports are, by their nature, objective and things either did or did not happen, consider the state of this morning's reporting on those Iranian warships heading (without any doubt about their plan) for the Mediterranean Sea.

Reuters this morning says the two Iranian warships will sail through the Suez Canal on Monday, attributing the timing to Suez Canal officials. Reuters also says this morning that the Iranian warships have passed through the Suez Canal and are already heading for Syria, quoting Iran's Arabic language state television channel Al Alam.

Either way, it's clear what has happened or (if you prefer) is immediately about to happen: for the first time since the Ayatollahs took control of Iran in 1979 and dragged the country onto its highly aggressive and messianic path backwards into primitivism, Iran's military forces are free to position themselves to the west of Israel (i.e. in the sea) as well as on Israel's northern border (via the Iranian proxy Hizbollah) and on Israel's southern border (via the Iranian proxy Hamas).

Aluf Benn in Haaretz notes this morning that Egypt is allowing the Iranian warships to cross the canal. Israeli public figures are arguing that this is a provocative and dangerous move but in the post-Mubarak reality, the Egyptian military which now rules the company ignored the objections from Israel and granted a free pass to the Iranians.

No one, as far as we can tell, is expecting the changes to the regional balance of power to stop here.

Some of those changes have already arrived, and none of them contributes to a sense of peace breaking out imminently:

• The decision to open the Suez and the Med to the Iranians signals that Egypt has discontinued its strategic alliance with Israel against Iran.
• Cairo is now willing to do business with Tehran as Turkey has done under prime minister Erdogan.
• Since last week's fall of Mubarak, the cold peace between Egypt and Israel has cooled much further.
• Natural gas supplied for years under an Egyptian/Israeli supply contract was cut off after a terrorist attack on a station in northern Sinai a couple of weeks ago. To no one's astonishment, that supply has not yet been renewed.
• The demagogic religious leader al-Qaradawi who was forced into exile by Egypt's government three decades ago returned to Cairo and addressed a million Islamic faithful in Tahrir Square on Friday. His message of "love-and-democracy" includes calling for the "liberation" of Jerusalem's Palestinian-Arab-controlled Al-Aqsa Mosque and for military victory against Israel. Al-Qaradawi is an unabashed supporter of terrorism [See "Yusuf Al-Qaradawi tells BBC Newsnight that Islam justifies suicide bombings"] and especially of suicide attacks, against all Israelis including (explicitly) women, pregnant women and their unborn Jewish babies. Seven years ago, some 2,500 Islamic intellectuals delivered a petition to the UN condemning "the sheikhs of death" and Al-Qaradawi (whom they described as “providing a religious cover for terrorism”) individually and in particular.

Religiously-inspired hatred of Jews and of Israel, as exemplified by the rapturous reception given Friday to Al-Qaradawi, is back, front and center, in the daily life of Egyptian society.

19-Feb-11: Report - New Egyptian regime has green-lighted Suez crossing for the Iran warships

This just in.
Egypt allows Iranian warships to transit Suez Canal
Sat, 02/19/2011 - 15:45

Egypt has agreed to allow two Islamic Republic warships to transit through the Suez Canal. According to the Middle East News Agency, it has been confirmed that the two warships are not carrying nuclear or chemical weapons. Yesterday Egyptian foreign and defence ministries had announced they were reviewing Iran’s request to access the canal. This is the fist time since the the Islamic Republic was established that Iranian naval ships have been allowed to use the Suez Canal. Hosni Mubarak’s government had always refused Iran’s requests. The passage of Iranian warships comes as populist anti-government uprisings spread through the region, and the U.S. has announced it is closely monitoring the progress of the ships, which are supposed to cross the canal at 6 AM, according to Iranian media. The convoy includes the Alvand, a frigate, and the Kharq, a supply ship, which have both passed routine checks to ensure there is nothing illegal aboard.

We have not seen confirmation of this yet. The text quoted above comes from Radio  Zamaneh, an expat Iranian news channel based in the Netherlands since 2006.

18-Feb-11: The Iranians make their move

Egypt gets Suez Canal request from Iran warships

Feb 18, 2011 1:58 PM | By Reuter
Egypt said on Friday it had received a request for Iranian naval vessels to pass through the Suez Canal, a move Israel’s right-wing foreign minister has described as "provocative".
“We sent it to the relevant authorities,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman told Reuters, adding the request had been passed to the Defence Ministry and the Suez Canal Authority.
He did not say when any decision on such a crossing would be made. To pass through the strategic waterway, naval vessels need the approval of the foreign and defence ministries. Iran has said the two ships, a frigate and supply ship, planned to cross.

The idea that the repressive, nuclear-obsessed, anti-democratic, messianic Ayatollah-run regime in Iran is going to have its naval vessels in the Mediterranean and deployed just off the coast of Israel is a nightmare to anyone who comprehends what the terrorists and/or jihadists have on their minds constantly.

By way of reminder, here is the transcript of a speech made by Iran's then-and-current president Ahmedinijad six years ago - one of several in which he spoke of "the annihilation of the Zionist regime". The conference was an official project of the government of Iran. Its title: “The World Without Zionism”.

Now it starts getting really serious.

17-Feb-11: Up next: Libya

From today's BBC report on the tumult in Libya:

Libya's state-owned TV made no mention of the anti-government protests in the east of the country on 16 February, and continued with its usual programming on 17 February ... During its morning bulletin Libyan TV continuously showed demonstrations in support of leader Col Muammar Gaddafi, which the TV said had been held "across Libya". There were about 200 to 300 demonstrators, the vast majority of whom were men, at each protest shown. At one point a crowd could be heard chanting anti-Al-Jazeera TV slogans... The TV aired live coverage of a speech by Gaddafi the evening before, in which he denounced both the United States and their "Zionist" allies in front of a cheering crowd.

We're not political analysts here. If it were not for the disgraceful embrace of terrorism by Libya and its dictator -- no, let's give him his proper and formal title: Leader and Guide of the Revolution Muammar al-Gaddafi -- we would pay much less attention to events  happening there. Though it had a Jewish community for nearly two thousand years, the last surviving Libyan Jew left there in 2003.

But as massive change sweeps over the repressive Islamic regimes of the Arab world, you cannot help but notice how some themes keep repeating themselves.

These dictatorships and monarchies routinely use the rhetoric of democracy but absolutely don't mean it. They pretend to applaud the achievements of people power in Egypt. But at the same time they suppress their own citizens ruthlessly (14 Libyans killed in today's clashes so far), and they foolishly censor reporting of what the world's news media, television, Facebook and Twitter have already turned over to the public domain.

And not to forget that, as they keep reminding their people and us, they're all "victims" of "Zionism".

Friday Update: The BBC quotes human rights activists in Libya today saying 24 people, and possibly more, have been killed in anti-government protests in recent days, with many others wounded in clashes between dictator Gadaffi's security forces and protesters. Thousands demonstrated on the streets of Benghazi last night; the city now has a heavy military presence.

17-Feb-11: More terrorist action on our Gazan border

There are reports this morning that infantry, naval and helicopter forces of the IDF intercepted and killed three men in the course of an intense fire-fight inside the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. The army says its forces spotted the three, dressed in civilian clothing, as they approached the security fence, evidently intending to cut through the fence and place explosives. No claims of responsibility so far from the Gazan jihadist groups who daily fire rockets and mortars into Israel. But the day is still young. AFP and France24 call the three fishermen and name them as Jihad Khalaf, 20, Talaat al-Awagh, 25 and Ashraf al-Kteifan, 29.

17-Feb-11: Iranian warships, their impact, and Washington

We described "another thing to keep us awake at night" five nights ago. We're sorry to report that our sleep has not improved. The ongoing commentary of Commander J. E. Dyer, one of the few people tracking these extremely disturbing developments, continues to put things in an accurate-sounding perspective even as the United States' designated intelligence experts (see today's "US clueless about Egypt?" in Ynet) worry the daylights out of us with their fuzziness and worse.

Here's an extract, dealing with those Iranian warships that appear to be about to deploy not that far from the coast of Israel:

Iranian Warships Having an Outsize Impact   J. E. Dyer 02.16.2011 - 4:32 PM    The Wall Street Journal reports that investors pulled back Wednesday following the news that the Iranian warship flotilla was transiting the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean. (For those keeping score, the transit means that my original thinking on this task force – that Egypt’s interim government might reject its proposed movement through the canal – was wrong.) Apparently, the shekel took a brief dive with currency traders as well. Gold and crude have risen in the wake of the warship news; the dollar has fallen.Avigdor Lieberman announced that the Iranian task force is headed to Syria. Assuming this bears out, the Assad regime will get to have the best of both worlds: a brand-new American ambassador — dispatched in January with vows of “engagement” — and a historic visit from the warships of revolutionanary Iran. As Israeli authorities point out, moreover, Iran stated earlier that the naval task force would spend up to a year in the Mediterranean. Its base of operations is likely to be Syria, but triumphal port visits to Beirut are undoubtedly on Tehran’s to-do list.The ships themselves are hardly impressive: one frigate with old anti-ship missiles and one barely armed replenishment ship. From that perspective, the reactions of global markets might seem excessive. These ships can’t fight a war. But the reactions are actually quite rational. The big shift here is in political perceptions of power. The important facts are that revolutionary, terror-sponsoring Iran — under U.S., EU, and UN sanctions — feels free to conduct this deployment, and Syria feels free to cooperate in it. Egypt’s interim rulers apparently saw no reason to block the Suez transit, in spite of the Egyptians’ very recent concern over Iranian-backed terrorists and insurgents operating on their territory. Saudi Arabia, for its part, considered it prudent to host the Iranian warships last week — in spite of the Saudis’ own conviction that Iran has been aiding rebel groups that threaten Saudi territory... Complacent assumptions about inertia in the status quo will not be borne out. Iran’s proximate strategic objective is consolidating the rule of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Former prime minister Saad Hariri declared his opposition to the Hezbollah-backed government in a speech on Monday; Hassan Nasrallah is promising that Hezbollah fighters will occupy Galilee; Ehud Barak warned on Wednesday that Israel might have to enter Lebanon again to counter Hezbollah. With the battle lines being drawn, Iran’s posture is hardening: the Islamic revolutionary regime is “all in.”

Commander Dyer's analysis, especially today, is always worth the effort.

16-Feb-11: Quote of the day

Palestine has become less important for Arabs and of the utmost symbolic importance for Western radicals at exactly the same time. With the Palestinian people somewhat deflated, the Palestine issue can become perfect political fodder for the victim-oriented, fancy-dress radicals of the modern West.

Read the whole thing: Palestine an obsession of radical West, not Arabs - Brendan O'Neill
Published in The Australian February 16, 2011

15-Feb-11: PressTV: No protests here, and Israel and the US are behind them

As we have been pointing out several times this week, you can search high and low on the home page of the Iranian government-controlled TV-and-web news channel PressTV, and you will manage to see nothing at all about the mass street protests that are  paralyzing Tehran.

Ah, with one tiny exception.

Buried deep in the "Iran" section as of late this afternoon (you can see it over on the right), there is an unobtrusive headline reading "Larijani blames US for protests". And there, ladies and gentlemen, is the 24 -hour-a-day channel's sole reference so far to the biggest Iranian news story this year.

Click the link and you get to PressTV's rationalization of why thousands of Iranians are taking their lives in their hands to protest the repressive Mullah-controlled regime. The blame, as if we didn't know already, is with the Americans and the Israelis. But the gyrations performed by the hapless journalists at PressTV are quite something:

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani says the United States is behind anti-government “sham” protests cloned off the pro-democracy movements in Tunisia and Egypt. “The main purpose was to clone [the protests] so they could claim that the crises plaguing US-linked dictatorships in the region has spread and that Iran -- which has been the forerunner of democracy in the region -- is also having internal problems,” Fars news agency quoted Larijani as saying on Tuesday... Referring to the protests in Egypt and Tunisia, the parliament speaker said “roots of the Islamic awakening” in the region were in the hostile and condescending attitude of the United States and Israel toward Muslims. Larijani added that the US, “angered” by Iran's support of the pro-democracy protests in the region, orchestrated such “sham rallies” to break the will of those nations heading toward revolution."

Sadly, it's not sham injuries that the people who stand up to the repressive Iranian war machine suffer.

15-Feb-11: Iran - how the local and foreign and social media see things... differently

More clashes, more protests, and now death in the streets. But don't expect the Mullahs of Iran to acknowledge that any of this is happening. Like yesterday, we have three snapshots below, all of them focused on Tehran, all of them captured at about the same moment today. The entirely different senses of what's happening are another reminder of how editors and reporters can, at will, fashion a reality that is completely disconnected from actual events while serving an ideological agenda.

First the New York Times.

Now our friends from the Iranian-state-owned PressTV who know Breaking News when they see it:

Iran's gift to the world of round-the-clock news coverage is breathless when it comes to news breaking in Bahrain and Cairo and Tunisia. But they're struck completely dumb when the subject is the tumult on the streets of their own capital, with masses getting up and standing for their long-stolen rights.

And finally a Twitter picture, one of many that are finding their way out of Iran and into the social networks today.

Iran is "the most active state sponsor of terrorism. Iran’s financial, material, and logistic support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia had a direct impact on international efforts to promote peace, threatened economic stability in the Persian Gulf and undermined the growth of democracy." Source (August 2010).

15-Feb-11: Islamists bring their freedom, democracy to synagogue gates in Tunisia

The excitement about new winds of freedom blowing through the casbahs and central squares of the Arab world have not changed the ongoing influence of the reactionary Islamist forces and their age-old hatreds and demons.

The video clip above is from this past Friday. The location is the Tunisian capital and its historic and beautiful Grand Synagogue de Tunis. The thuggish mob, relishing their new-found freedom to incite and hate, is chanting (the words can be heard in the clip) "Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahoud, jaysh muhammad saya'oud". (Translation: "Jews, just wait. The army of Muhammad is coming back!"). It's a blood-chilling war cry, recalling a massacre of Jews and the ransacking of their material possessions by Moslems in the seventh century, bringing a final end to a once-thriving Jewish presence in what we today call Arabia.

It's the same frenzied celebration of hatred heard in numerous central squares in the Moslem world in the recent past. Just as one instance, the jihadists on board the Turkish "relief" ship Mavi Marmara chanted it for the cameras before setting sail in the direction of Gaza last year.

Friday's Tunisian mob and their ring-leaders evidently continue to have problems with their Jewish neighbours. There were about 110,000 Tunisian Jews up until 1948. Shortly after Tunisia achieved independence in the 1950s, it abolished by law its Jewish Community Council. Today, after waves of pogroms and an Al Qaida massacre in 2002, some 700 Jews still live in the capital Tunis. About 1,000 more continue to dwell in the ancient Jewish community on the island of Djerba.

14-Feb-11: The protests on Tehran's streets

It's Monday evening, around 18:00 Israel time. Things are happening in the Iranian capital Tehran. Iran's mullah-dominated, terrorism-supporting regime has a fully-controlled media outlet called PressTV. The two screen shots below, taken seconds apart, serve as an indication of the kind of policies the Iranian clergy impose and how much they ought to be believed.

Here's the home page of BBC News as of five minutes ago.

Now here's the home page of the repressive Iranian regime's mouthpiece, PressTV, taken ten seconds later.

It's too early to say whether this time, the demands of Iran's citizens to be freed from the tyranny of the Islamicists who have ruled their land with iron-fisted medieval zeal since 1979, will get more Western support than they did two years ago, or whether the head of the free world will do more now than he did then. (An authentic hero of peaceful protest and democracy, Natan Sharansky, has some carefully worded comments about the way Obama completely dropped the ball when Tehran last erupted in protest in 2009.) 

But it's not too early to observe how completely dishonest and unreliable their media channels are - today, and chronically. Here - in the BBC's words - is what's happening literally under the noses of PressTV's editors:

"Iranian police have fired tear gas at opposition demonstrators gathering in central Tehran in support of the protests in Egypt. A BBC producer in the Iranian capital, who was affected by the gas, described central Tehran as "total chaos". He said "severe clashes" were taking place between protesters and police and there had been many arrests. Iranian police have placed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi under house arrest, his official website says. It says the move is intended to block him from attending the rally in Tehran. The BBC's Mohsen Asgari in Tehran says thousands of people defied the government ban and gathered in the city centre chanting "death to dictators"."

We can find not one word about these events on the 24 hour a day station's website. 

When PressTV launched in 2007, the head of the Mullah-rich regime then and now, the appalling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, described its mission: "Disseminating correct and timely news, and presenting correct analyses and disclosing behind scene of the mankind's enemies propaganda networks are among new TV's basic duty."  We'll keep those ringing and noble words in mind as we scan a short list of notable notables who have provided input to its output over the past three years and made their contribution to "behind scene of the mankind's enemies propaganda". Yvonne Ridley, the former Al Jazeera and Sunday Express (London) journalist is a presenter. So are George Galloway, a notorious former British parliamentarian, Tariq Ramadan, Lauren Booth and Ken Livingstone, a former mayor of London.

14-Feb-11: Far from central Cairo, the missiles continue to strike Israel as before

A Qassam rocket fired from the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip exploded around noon today (Monday) in open fields in the Eshkol region of southern Israel's western Negev desert. Ynet says there were neither injuries nor property damage, but this is certainly not what the jihadists set out to achieve and they will certainly continue to try to achieve higher quality hits in the future - perhaps later today, or tomorrow or next week. This is why they are terrorists. The rate of rocket firings into Israel has been at least one a day for years, since the terrorist Hamas regime took control of Gaza in 2007's bloody Palestinian civil war.

12-Feb-11: Another thing to keep us awake at night

A respected commentator on security matters in this neighborhood posted a seriously alarming note today about Iran and its growing ambitions.

Iranian Warships Call in Jeddah

POSTED AT 2:15 PM ON FEBRUARY 11, 2011 BY J.E. DYER

Warships of the Islamic Revolutionary Iranian Navy have never visited a Saudi port until this week. Jeddah is on the Red Sea, where Iranian warships have occasionally ventured since they were first dispatched in late 2008 for anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden. Regional reporting has indicated that Iranian patrol ships have made port calls in the Red Sea port of Assab, Eritrea (where other unconfirmed reports have it that Iran has deployed missiles – of unknown type – and a contingent of troops). But until now, there has been no port call in Saudi Arabia and no hint of one.  Indeed, Saudi reporting from November 2009 registered grave concern over Iranian activities in the Red Sea. The two-ship Iranian task force, consisting of two British-built vessels, Vosper Mark V-class frigate Alvand and supply ship Kharg, left Iran on 26 January, according to Iranian news sources. The next day, a senior naval officer announced that the task force, deployed as the 12th Naval Group, “would enter the Red Sea and the Mediterranean waters.”  The prospect of a Mediterranean deployment is as unprecedented as the Saudi port visit. There is no guarantee it will actually happen, but the timing is interesting.

Commander Dyer turns her attention to how the changes in Egypt are connected...

While the Mubarak regime was in power, there was little possibility of Egypt permitting an Iranian naval task force to transit the Suez Canal... The current [Iranian] regime engages in a lot of bluster, but putting warships in the Red Sea port of America’s long-time partner Saudi Arabia is genuine action. For no navy on earth – not even ours [America's] – is a naval deployment undertaken easily or lightly. This is a big deal for them.  It’s also a big deal for Saudi Arabia.  The Saudis have been alarmed about revolutionary Iran’s activities for a long time; the chill between the two nations has meant precisely that things like naval port visits don’t happen.  The Saudis wouldn’t have accepted this visit if they didn’t perceive their US-backed position as vulnerable and exposed.

The whole article is worth a read; it's here. And for the Iranian version, try this. Here's a taste, quoting Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari whose face appears in the newsclip above:

"He expressed hope Iran would be a messenger of peace and friendship for the regional nations by sending its warships to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea as well as to ports in friendly and Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia." 

Forgive us for being a touch apprehensive about what this message of "peace" and "friendship" the docking of Iranian warships might actually entail. Iran's proxies in the north of our country (Hezbollah) and the south (Hamas) have given us Israelis plenty of reason in the past few years.

10-Feb-11: We're winning against the terrorists, right?

The head of the US government's anti-terrorist ministry told the US Congress yesterday that the terrorist threat to the U.S. may be at its most heightened state since the 9/11 attacks, according to today's Washington Post. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the jihadists of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates are putting greater efforts behind recruiting Americans and other Westerners to carry out terror attacks.

The Post goes on to say that the House Committee on Homeland Security has planned hearings on the domestic threat posed by radicalization among Americans, and the growing incidence of U.S. citizens or legal residents involved in terrorist plots. A week ago, the senior Democrat on the committee called for the scope of the hearings to be expanded, while its chair, Republican Peter T. King, said the threats from "Islamic jihad were uniquely diabolical... The Committee cannot ignore the fact that al-Qaeda is actively attempting to recruit individuals living within the Muslim American community to commit acts of terror."

Meanwhile, to illustrate how endlessly disputed the things we think we know about terror are, the French newsagency AFP reported earlier this week that "the number of Muslim Americans involved in terrorist acts dropped by more than half last year compared to 2009, easing fears that the minority group is being radicalized."

Good news, no?

And Stephen M. Walt, the Harvard professor who notoriously co-authored a lengthy diatribe against the Jewish state and its supporters called "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy", has an intriguing view on the Foreign Policy website today headlined "Some Good News About Islamic Terror". He somehow sees Islamicists as much less threatening:

"Ever since 9/11, Islamophobia has been a recurrent problem in a number of Western societies, including the United States. It's been fueled by opportunistic politicians, hate-mongering bloggers, and any number of the other usual suspects. The lingering fear of Islam undergirds the present concerns that the turmoil in Egypt might give groups like the Muslim Brotherhood greater political influence there... I know there are lot of people getting rich fueling Islamophobia."

Walt's attack on the so-called Israel lobby was described here as "a work without a trace of balance, in essence no more than an angry polemic disguised as academic research... [that] fails the test of academic integrity and honest research."

Also today, an American woman who was charged with aiding Islamic terrorists in their plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had "offended Muslims" pleaded guilty to conspiracy to  murder. Colleen LaRose called herself Jihad Jane, Sister of Terror and Fatima LaRose at various times.

"Today's guilty plea, by a woman from suburban America who plotted with others to commit murder overseas and to provide material support to terrorists, underscores the evolving nature of the threat we face," said Assistant U.S. Attorney General David Kris."

With the stakes of being wrong about terror and terrorists so incredibly high, it's quite puzzling that people can have such diametrically opposed views of where the threats are coming from and what ought to be done to blunt them.

9-Feb-11: 3 terrorist rockets fired at Sderot

This Hebrew-language news site is reporting that three additional Gazan rockets were fired in the direction of the Israeli city of Sderot in the past 90 minutes.

9-Feb-11: Blocking terrorists precisely

IDF forces, legally and morally committed to protect an Israeli population under daily rocket attack by a terrorist regime, struck overnight.

They hit a tunnel in the central Gaza Strip, and two facilities that enable mortars and rockets to be lobbed across the security fence daily into Israeli communities. The hits resulted in the destruction of the targets. Xinhua, quoting Gazan sources, says there were no injuries on the Palestinian Arab side. Euronews and Ynet both quote Gazan sources saying eight people were injured, but have no details to offer of who they are or where they were. There are no claims by the Gazans - at least not yet - of any deaths. Precision defence would not be an unfair way to describe Israel's management of this impossible situation.

For their part, Associated Press and the Palestinan Maan news agencies are saying that what Israel really attacked was "a Health Ministry medicine warehouse" quoting as their source "Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Adham Abu Salmiya". Dozens of pictures, showing a nondescript structure said to be a medicine warehouse in flames are on the news wires as we write this.

It's worth noting that an IDF announcement says last night's attacks produced secondary blasts at two of the targeted sites. In simple terms, this means the Israeli explosives triggered follow-on explosions on the ground because the sites attacked were factories where rockets and mortars are made and stored. As for the tunnel, it was one of the many that the Hamas regime builds or allows to be built to facilitate terror attacks against Israelis.

The number of mortar shells and Grad and Qassam rockets fired by Gazan terrorists into Israel in the six weeks since the start of 2011 has passed the forty mark. That's about one a day.

Discounting Israeli and Jewish channels, the number of media reports of such terror attacks on Israelis is close to zero.

8-Feb-11: Gazan mortars fired once again into southern Israel

It's Tuesday, and the restless jihadists of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip are again doing what comes naturally. This morning, a mortar shell exploded in a parking lot somewhere withing the area administered by the Shaar Hanegev Regional Council. Fired from the northern end of the Gaza Strip, it damaged an Israeli car, thankfully without causing any personal injuries. A second mortar crashed into a nearby field says JTA, damaging agricultural equipment; again we're relieved to say no humans were hurt. Around noon, two more explosions were heard in the area, indicating two additional Gazan mortar shells. Thankfully, no one was hurt but really, it's just a matter of luck since the thugs who fire off these explosives could not care less who or what gets hit or hurt; this is why they are terrorists. Islamic Jihad claimed credit for today's attacks.

No news channel, outside of the usual Jewish or Israeli sources, has reported them so far. As a result, reasonable people are going to find it hard to put things in perspective when Israeli forces take action in the coming hours or days, as they very likely will, to prevent cold-blooded, potentially deadly attacks like today's from happening or from escalating. And without perspective, nothing in this ongoing war makes any sense.

7-Feb-11: Rockets again, though you wouldn't know it from reviewing the news media

It's bad enough that defensive measures taken by beleagured Israel are reflexively condemned by critics of this country's actions as a matter of routine. It's worse when  attacks by terrorist groups equipped with rockets and explosives and jihadist hatred are simply ignored - erased from the record. Our experience is that this happens routinely and that's one of the reasons we keep recording those attacks here.

Yesterday just after dark, two Qassam rockets (possibly mortars - we're awaiting details) crashed into southern Israel. They originated in Gaza whose ideological proponents delight in misleadingly calling the most densely populated place on earth - when it suits their purposes.

One Hebrew report says the explosives were mortars, fired from the southern part of the Gaza Strip, and landed in the Western Negev, in the region administered by the Eshkol Regional Council. Gulf Times published in Qatar says much the same, but it adds:
"Gaza’s main militant factions last month agreed to observe a period of calm after weeks of increased rocket fire and rising tensions along the border which prompted a warning from Arab leaders that there was a risk of a major new Israeli invasion."

Try to find any mention in the news media on which you rely.

Gulf Times' editors somehow forgot to add that despite this so-called agreement "to observe a period of calm", the terror attacks from Gaza keep coming at the rate of more than one a day. The numbers - In December 2010: 38 attacks. In January 2011: 30 attacks, including 17 rockets and 26 mortar shells, launched into Israel. Wouldn't you think agreements to observe calm, when said to have been made by avowedly terrorist groups, deserve at least a tiny measure of skepticism by objective observers? Not enough of those working in this neighbourhood, sad to say.

2-Feb-11: Video - The rockets keep raining on southern Israel

This follows on from yesterday's blog entry in which we wrote of three additional rockets despatched into southern Israel by the terrorists of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Here below is a thirty-second video clip captured on Monday night by the security cameras at a small and simple synagogue in Netivot where a wedding celebration was in progress.

The kind of frightening moment when a roomful of people realizes an explosion has just struck is something people outside of this neighborhood rarely think about -- and which is at the very heart of what terrorists everywhere aim to achieve.

Our appreciation to Elder of Zion for putting this up on YouTube.

1-Feb-11: The rockets keep raining on southern Israel

Netivot, last night - site of the Grad rocket attack
on a wedding reception [Source: Ynet]

The fast-moving political and social chaos in Egypt has grabbed most of the regional news headlines. But, in Israel's southern towns and cities, the ongoing years-long state of violence perpetrated by the neighbors remains sadly in place, unchanged.

Overnight, far from the cameras and reporting now going on so intensively in Egypt, three powerful rockets were fired on Israeli communities from the jihadist-infested Gaza Strip, further terrorizing the residents (always the principal goal of the terrorist thug gangs). Fortunately the property damage was relatively minor and there are no reported injury to humans.

A Grad-type rocket (Grad is Russian for hail) crashed into Netivot, a desert city of 27,000 residents, in the driving rain and cold. It narrowly missed a synagogue building where a wedding celebration was underway, producing a deafening explosion in the grounds outside. Four people, according to JPost, were treated for shock in the  Netivot attack and a vehicle was damaged.

Several minutes after the attack on Netivot, a second Grad-type missile smashed into the beleagured town of Ofakim (population 25,000) which has the misfortune of being located a mere 15 miles or about 24 km from Gaza. Ofakim was struck in a previous Grad rocket attack by Gazan Arab terrorists in mid-November.

A third rocket - a mortar, according to JPost - crashed into open fields in southern Israel's Eshkol region, also overnight.

A Palestinian Arab news source is reporting on mass breakouts from Egyptian prisons, as well as the phenomenon of 34 "Muslim Brothers" - members of the outlawed Islamist militant/terrorist organization and including seven senior members of its leadership according to Haaretz - simply walking out of a jail, the one in Wadi Natrun north of Cairo, "unhindered after guards there abandoned their posts". There are indications that Gaza's already burgeoning stock of terrorists and bomb-makers has grown in the past few days, contributing to changes that already threaten what has been called "the specter of Israel's worst strategic nightmare... a scenario in which we see the collapse of the peace treaty with Egypt".