29-Dec-18: A quiet weekend

Dutch police action [Image Source]

A handful of terror-centric reports that arrived in our news filter this quiet weekend and that, for the most part, have gotten very little media attention.

Friday night Arab-on-Israel rocket attack

A rocket was fired Friday from the Gaza Strip into Israel, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office said, the first such incident in over six weeks. The Red Alert alarm warning system was not activated as the projectile landed in an open area, the spokesperson added. No injuries or damage were reported. [Times of Israel]

Five men arrested in Rotterdam on terrorism charges 

Five men have been arrested in Rotterdam on charges of preparing a terrorist attack, broadcaster NOS said on Saturday. Four were arrested early on Saturday morning at homes in the centre and east of the port city and the fifth man was picked up later in the day. The first four are aged 20 to 30 and have a ‘non-western’ background, broadcaster NOS said. One is said to be a Syrian refugee with residency status named as Saleh H. A second man is said to be an Egyptian national... [DutchNews.nl]

Egypt security forces kill 40 suspected terrorists in raids - report 

Egyptian security forces killed 40 alleged terrorists in raids in the Giza and North Sinai regions early Saturday, state media reported, a day after four people were killed when a roadside bomb struck a tourist bus in Giza. Egypt's Interior Ministry said the raids, conducted at dawn Saturday, targeted three suspected hideouts of terrorists who were planning hostile acts during the Christmas holidays, according to the state-run Al-Ahram online newspaper. Ammunition, firearms and improvised explosive devices were recovered in significant numbers... Three Vietnamese tourists and an Egyptian tour guide were killed and at least 11 people were injured in the attack Friday in a central tourist area of Giza, near Cairo, where the pyramids are located... [CNN]

...meanwhile from the Palestinian Authority's media mouthpiece:

"...Spokesman Yousef al-Mahmoud said in a statement that the Palestinian people and its leadership stand with Egypt in fighting “this cowardly terrorism aimed at innocent people and the security and stability of the Egyptian people.” He expressed belief that Egypt is capable of fighting terrorism and those who stand behind it, calling on Arab countries to stand together in fighting terrorism and extremism targeting the Arab world in particular and the world in general.

Three charged with planning terror attack in Sweden

Sweden's prosecution authority said on Thursday it had charged three men with planning a terror attack in Sweden, warning the plot could have caused serious damage had it not been prevented... The men, aged between 30 and 46, originally hail from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Their residency status in Sweden could not immediately be verified... The three are suspected of "obtaining and storing large amounts of chemicals and other equipment with the aim of killing and wounding other people," the prosecution authority said in a statement. "If the terrorist crime had been carried out, it could have seriously hurt Sweden." The trio were also charged, along with three other people, with financing terrorism. Prosecutors accuse them of sending money abroad to fund the so-called Islamic State's operations... According to Dagens Nyheter, at least one of the suspects had been in contact with Rakhmat Akilov, a radicalized Uzbek asylum seeker who mowed down pedestrians in Stockholm with a stolen truck in April 2017, killing five people. Akilov was sentenced to life in prison in June 2018... [TheLocal (Sweden)]

23-Apr-18: Bret Stephens on Israel's robust willingness to defend itself

Familiar scenes - from seven years ago [Image Source]

In a punchy New York Times column published this past Friday ["Jewish Power at 70 Years"], Bret Stephens starts out talking about a hate crime - with an intriguing twist - in today's Germany. But then he heads off in the direction of the Middle East and the challenges posed to Israelis by the people on the far side of our borders.

Here's a first extract:

On Friday, Palestinians in Gaza returned for the fourth time to the border fence with Israel, in protests promoted by Hamas. The explicit purpose of Hamas leaders is to breach the fence and march on Jerusalem. Israel cannot possibly allow this — doing so would create a precedent that would encourage similar protests, and more death, along all of Israel’s borders — and has repeatedly used deadly force to counter it. The armchair corporals of Western punditry think this is excessive. It would be helpful if they could suggest alternative military tactics to an Israeli government dealing with an urgent crisis against an adversary sworn to its destruction. They don’t. It would also be helpful if they could explain how they can insist on Israel’s retreat to the 1967 borders and then scold Israel when it defends those borders. They can’t.

He's right. We're old enough to remember the coordinated Arab assaults on multiple Israeli bordersseven years ago in conjunction with Naqba Day - May 14 and 15, 2011 and around the same time as the ill-fated and unfortunately-named Arab Spring.

A BBC report at the time ["Palestinian protests: Arab spring or foreign manipulation?", BBC, May 15, 2011] said the not-so-peaceful "protestors"

undoubtedly embodied the same kind of risk-taking, confrontational people-power ethos that has fired the revolts in many parts of the Arab world.

How did that risk-taking confrontation play out?

Lebanon

In Lebanon, some 30,000 people were pulled together by the organizers near Lebanon's Israel border and walked towards it just opposite the northern Israeli town of Avivim. Soldiers of the Lebanese army first fired into the air to deter them. But then, as they headed recklessly into and across a border minefield throwing stones towards the Israeli and shouting into the hills for a "right of return", the Lebanese forces shot at them with assault rifles and tear gas. Before the retreat was completed, 11 participants were dead and about 100 injured.

Egypt

On the Egyptian border, thousands were reported to about to make their way from Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other points of origin toward the Rafah crossing with Gaza. But the military regime then in power intervened, warning bus companies not to answer the convoy organizers' requests. The few buses that did set off were stopped by the military and in the end, according to Ma'an, only some 80 individuals equipped with flags and an arsenal of angry demands and slogans got to the border. 

Fatahland

According to Wikipedia, around 300 West Bank "protesters" assembled at the Qalandiya Crossing - a busy crossing point - to demonstrate, forming human chains, staging sit-downs, hurling rocks. About 120 were said to be affected by tear gas, stink-spray and other crowd-dispersal means. BBC: "Clashes at the Qalandiya checkpoint in Ramallah continued for hours, with dozens of Palestinians injured. Palestinian protesters threw stones at Israeli security forces, who fired tear gas and rubber bullets."

Jordan

In Jordan, about 500 Palestinian Arab Jordanians were prevented by Jordanian army and police forces from doing harm at the Allenby Bridge, the major crossing point into the West Bank and Israel. They used tear gas and other similar tools and some 25 people were reported injured, including 11 Jordanian police. A Ma'an report said the Hamas-aligned Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and what Ma'an called "the powerful Islamic Action Front" termed this "shocking" and turning reality on its end demanded "an end to such policies that have harmed Jordan's image". 

Syria

On Israel's Syria border, 20 buses of "protestors" arrived from Damascus on Naqba Day, May 15, 2011. According to the BBC, the IDF said it "had only fired warning shots as a large number of protesters tried to breach a border fence near the village of Majdal Shams. But reports said at least two people had been killed and dozens injured. Israel's army says this is a "serious" incursion. Brig Gen Yoav Mordechai said soldiers were still trying to control the crowds and that dozens of protesters had crossed. The army has reportedly sealed off Majdal Shams and is carrying out house-to-house searches for "infiltrators"... "We are seeing here an Iranian provocation, on both the Syrian and the Lebanese frontiers, to try to exploit the Nakba day commemorations," Gen Mordechai said... Syria denounced Israeli actions in the Golan Heights and Lebanon as "criminal", Agence France-Presse news agency reported. "Israel will have to bear full responsibility for its actions," the foreign ministry said." The NY Times said "some 13 Israeli soldiers were lightly wounded from thrown rocks." And Ynet, quoting an IDF enquiry, said "nearly 1,000 Syrians approached the fence, with Syrian border forces unable – or unwilling – to stop them. About 300 protesters, including children, rushed the fences and crossed over onto Israeli soil..."

Some weeks later, those May 2011 events in Syria were revealed to have actually been planned ahead of time by the Assad regime. This is all documented in an expose ["Report: Document Reveals Nakba Day Clashes Planned by Syria Government", Haaretz, June 14, 2011]. The bused-in attackers had attempted to breach Israel's border which was the plan. The Haaretz report quotes a Syrian government memo: "Permission is hereby granted allowing approaching crowds to cross the cease fire line (with Israel) towards the occupied Majdal-Shamms, and to further allow them to engage physically with each other in front of United Nations agents and offices. Furthermore, there is no objection if a few shots are fired in the air." There are clear parallels with what's happening now on Israel's Gaza frontier.

Then in June 2011, again on the Syria side of its border with Israel, large numbers of assailants purporting to "protest" were again bused in from Damascus. A Jerusalem Postreport quoted Syrian officials saying 23 were killed and 350 injured "as they attempted over the course of several hours to breach the barbed-wire border".

...

The Bret Stephens essay dwells as well on the intriguing case of Adam Armoush. Thought, when the story initially emerged, to be a young German Jew, he is in reality a 21-year-old Israeli Arab living in Germany 

who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew. The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar... There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year...

Stephens then connects Israel and Europe:

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time... There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized... There are many reasons to celebrate the date [of Israel's 70th anniversary a few days ago], many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile. But there’s a more basic reason. Jews cannot rely for their safety on the kindness of strangers... Hence Israel: its army, bomb, and robust willingness to use force to defend itself. Israel did not come into existence to serve as another showcase of the victimization of Jews. It exists to end the victimization of Jews... Though not Jewish, Adam Armoush was once one of the nonchalant when it came to what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. Presumably no longer. For Jews, it’s a painful, useful reminder that Israel is not their vanity. It’s their safeguard. 

Well said.

14-Dec-17: Understanding what happened after Wednesday night's Gazan rocket attack on Israel

Haaretz says (rather blandly) three rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip toward Israel yesterday (Wednesday): 

Two were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system and one fell into an open area as alarm sirens sounded in southern Israeli districts and cities including Sderot. Magen David Adom emergency responders said that a 30-year-old man wounded his leg while running for cover, and two others were being treated for shock. The rocket fire on Israel from the Gaza Strip Wednesday evening is returning the residents of the Gaza border region back to a state of tension they haven’t experienced since Operation Protective Edge over three years ago. No less [sic] than 15 rockets have been fired into Israeli territory since U.S. President Donald Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem, and although the Israel Defense Forces has been showing restraint, it will have a hard time holding back for much longer. 

Others say there were four, not three, and the difference points to something significant:

On Wednesday night, four rockets were fired from Gaza at southern Israel. Two of them were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, a third struck an open field and the fourth fell short of the border and hit a school in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli officials... [Times of Israel, today]

So that's five Arab-on-Israeli attack rockets intercepted in mid-air and brought down by the amazing, life-saving, defensive Iron Dome system so far this week. 

As far as we know, neither Haaretz nor any non-Israeli news source has drawn attention to how yet-another Fell Short rocket dispatched on its murderous path towards Israel failed to cross the border and fell onto the heads of hapless Gazan Palestinian Arabs.

This time it struck a school according to Israeli assessments:

Beit Hanoun’s Ghazi al-Shawa public school, according to Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Defense Ministry liaison with the Palestinians.

Given the late-night hour, it was probably empty of students. But who really knows? And just imagine the reaction if it was an Israeli attack that view up a Gazan (almost certainly meaning UNRWA) school. Does anyone think The Guardian (which has a documented interest in Gazan schools being attacked) will give its readers any insight into this latest school bombing.

Fell Shorts are never reported by the terrorist regime in Gaza. If they did, they might have to own up to the utter contempt they have for harming their own side. Fell Shorts are very rarely reported by major news agencies.

By way of response, Israel this morning (Thursday) imposed a closure of its Gaza crossings:

Israel announced the closure of its Gaza border crossings on Thursday in response to daily rocket fire from the enclave over the past week after US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital stoked Palestinian anger. [Reuters, this morning]

An Israeli source adds:

The army said the Kerem Shalom Crossing, from which goods enter and leave the Strip, as well as the pedestrian Erez Crossing would be shuttered beginning on Thursday, in light of “security events and in accordance with security assessments.” It was not clear when the crossings would reopen, the army said. A military spokesperson said that in “humanitarian cases” Gaza residents may be allowed to pass through the Erez Crossing, but that this would be contingent upon approval from Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, Israel’s chief military liaison to the Palestinians, known formally as the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). [Times of Israel, today]

CNN's reporting on this ["Israel closes Gaza border crossings", CNN, today - archived here in case they change the text] maintains CNN's not-exactly-stellar record for perspective and fairness:

The Israeli military said it will close border crossings into Gaza beginning Thursday until further notice "due to the security events and in accordance with security assessments."
The crossings being closed, Kerem Shalom and Erez, are the only two on the Israeli border left. Israel has closed border crossings when tensions are high, some which have not been reopened to date. The territory is also under a naval blockade by the Israeli navy. Kerem Shalom is the crossing point where goods and supplies are brought into Gaza; Erez is the point where people cross. Shutting the two points effectively cuts off Gaza from the rest of the world by land, save for its small Egyptian border, which is generally closed. The territory is also under a naval blockade by the Israeli navy.

(Yes, Israel's navy gets mentioned twice. There's something about sailors in uniform.)

CNN has an interesting way of looking at this. Gaza, which everyone knows views Israel as its sworn enemy and which is busily attacking Israelis with rockets and tunnels at this moment, is shut off "from the rest of the world" by Israel closing its border this morning. Oh, "save for its small Egyptian border" which is "generally closed".

The word agitprop was invented for silliness of this CNN sort.

15-Oct-17: Rockets strike southern Israel from Sinai

Incoming hostile rockets were detected at about 10:15 tonight (Sunday) in southern Israel, and as a result the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) warning system was activated in multiple communities.

The IDF says there were two rockets and unlike the recent spate of inbound missiles from Gaza where Hamas runs everything, these originated in Sinai. The last time we saw Sinai rockets here was during the inaugural Trump visit five months ago: "23-May-17: In the midst of US presidential visit, ISIS plays its hand".

No indication yet of whether there has been any damage to property or worse. Israel National News says explosions were heard in the Eshkol region. Times of Israel quotes the IDF:

A military spokesperson said they were still looking for the rockets, indicating that they likely struck an open field, rather than a populated area. The army did not immediately identify who launched the rockets, but it was likely a Sinai affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group.

Some background via Ynet:

Earlier in the day [Sunday], suspected Islamic State militants attacked six checkpoints in the turbulent north of the Sinai Peninsula, killing six [Egyptian] soldiers and wounding 37, according to [Egyptian] security and hospital officials. The officials said the near-simultaneous attacks took place at and around the town of Sheikh Zweid, with dozens of militants using heavy machine guns and mortars... Egyptian security forces have for years battled militants in northern Sinai, which borders the Gaza Strip and Israel. But the insurgency there has gained momentum after the Egyptian military ousted an elected Islamist president [Morsi] in 2013.

Sheikh Zuweid (using the more common spelling) is a Sinai town of some 60,000 Bedouin that has been under the control of ISIS since 2015. Reuters adds this evening to what we know from Ynet when it says

At least 24 militants and six soldiers were killed on Sunday in attacks on military outposts in North Sinai, the Egyptian military said in a statement. The statement did not give details, but security and medical sources said about 20 members of the security forces had also been injured when more than 100 militants repeatedly attacked security outposts south of the border town of Sheikh Zuweid. The attackers used car bombs and rocket propelled grenades (RPG), the sources said.

Egypt's Sinai has been in a state of almost complete chaos for the past six years. This Jerusalem Post
backgrounder ["Lawlessness and terror: The Beduin kingdom of Sinai"] from March 2012 traces the spiraling downwards.

23-May-17: In the midst of US presidential visit, ISIS plays its hand

Manchester Arena, Monday night [Image Source]

Times of Israel reports today (Tuesday) that

a rocket was fired from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula at southern Israel on Tuesday morning, amid a visit to the country by US President Donald Trump, the army said. No injury or damage was caused by the missile, the army said. Israeli troops launched a search for the impact site in the Eshkol region, which abuts the Sinai Peninsula. In some cases, rockets launched toward Israel do not cross the border and end up landing inside Egyptian territory. No organization took immediate responsibility, but previous such incidents have been claimed by the Islamic State terror group’s Sinai affiliate. The incoming rocket alert was not activated during the attack, as the military calculated the projectile was not heading toward a populated area.

Social media reports indicate the rocket was fired into Israel during the morning peak traffic hour, roughly 7:30 am, when large number of Israeli children in the target area are making their way to school.

Claims were made this afternoon that the Islamic State terrorists are also taking credit for last night's horrifying massacre at Manchester Arena:

The attack, which killed at least 22 people, including an 18-year-old college student, and left around 59 injured, was described by British Prime Minister Theresa May as "the worst attack the city has experienced."
The news comes after outlets reported that ISIS supporters were celebrating the bombing on social media, hailing it as a victory against "the crusaders" of the West and framing it as a response to airstrikes in Iraq. According to the Daily Telegraph, one video showed an English-speaking ISIS supporter holding up a sign reading 'Manchester' with the date of the attack. A statement made via ISIS channels on the messaging app Telegram said that "one of the soldiers of the caliphate placed explosive devices in a gathering of crusaders in the middle of the British city of Manchester," hinting that the terrorist incident was not a suicide attack, as it is believed to have been. It said the bombing was a response to Britain’s “transgressions against the lands of the Muslims.” Pro-ISIS accounts had earlier celebrated the attack on social media, framing it as a response to airstrikes in Iraq. [TIME, today]

19-Mar-17: A thought about Jordan and its treaty obligations

Ahlam Tamimi the day after she arrived back in Jordan
October 19, 2011 [See below for more background]

Stephen M. Flatow whose daughter Aliza was murdered in a Palestinian Arab Islamic Jihad human bomb attack on an Israeli bus in 1995, has an op ed on the web site of the Jewish Press today ["Jordan Protects A Killer Of Americans – Where’s The Outrage In Washington?", March 19, 2017].

A brief extract:

The Trump administration has revealed that four years ago the U.S. secretly indicted a Palestinian-Jordanian terrorist who was involved in the murders of American citizens.
So why is Jordan still refusing to hand over the killer? The case involves Ahlam al-Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist with Jordanian citizenship. In August 2001, she played a major role in the bombing of a Sbarro Pizzeria in Jerusalem. Fifteen people were killed – including American citizens Malki Roth and Shoshana Greenbaum – and four Americans were among the 122 people who were injured. Tamimi was captured by Israel, tried, and convicted, but served just eight years in prison before being released in an Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange. She then became the host of a television show in Jordan, and has boasted on air about her role in the Sbarro massacre...
Sure, it’s good that Ahlam al-Tamimi is now on America’s Most Wanted list. But when will the Palestinian killers of some 142 other Americans be added to the list?
More important, when is the U.S. government finally going to put meaningful pressure on those who shelter killers of Americans? The U.S. gave Jordan $393 million in aid last year. Is that just a blank check? Or is it time, perhaps, to make some of that aid conditional on Jordan surrendering killers of Americans?

The whole article is worth a few more moments of reading, here.

We posted this brief comment, below, on the article's page:

This shabby chapter in US/Jordan relations provides a good opportunity to recall that Jordan, with a population whose majority defines itself as Palestinian Arab, is and functions as another Palestinian entity - one arm of a three-sided structure that includes the Fatah/PA regime and the Hamas entity in Gaza.  

Mr Flatow's question ought to be echoed in many of Washington's corridors of power: With hundreds of US aid dollars flowing into its coffers annually, can Jordan be granted a blank check to do what's convenient for a Saudi ruling clan (the Hashemites) that aspires to keep holding onto a desert kingdom filled with self-styled Palestinians and their blood lust?  

Or will it honor its treaty obligations and hand the savage smiling murderer of Americans - including the murder of our fifteen year old daughter Malki - to extradition and the US justice system? 

It ought to be carefully explained to Jordan that answering that question the wrong way brings on uncomfortable penalties.

The photo at the top of this page is little-known. It comes from an online photo collection, Demotix, that is no longer on line. We archived it, fortunately, when it was still up.

In case you thought the Jordanians were embarrassed by the return of a mass murdering Jordanian woman, released from prison via an act of open extortion (the Shalit deal) and destined to spend her days in the shadows and fringes of Jordanian society, think again.

The photo shows a scene from a high-profile Jordanian reception for the happy murderer a day after she was released from her Israeli prison cell (October 18, 2011) and arrived back to her home-land via a brief stop-over in Cairo. This photo was taken on October 19, 2011.

And where was this glossy event conduction? The reception to honor the barbaric savage who explicitly sought to kill as many Jewish mothers and children as possible took place inside Jordan's Family Court complex in Amman. Whether or not they understand this, the authorities in Jordan were sending a repugnant message about law, order, decency, public endorsements and above all their view of the morality of blowing Jewish children to bits.

The Jordanian authorities, despite their thin protestations to the contrary, have never had a problem giving Ahlam Tamimi appropriate public platforms from which to give expression to her celebrity-murderer status. If there's even a one of them who's embarrassed by how this impacts on their moral standing, they're continuing to do a first-rate job of hiding it.

Below is the full page Demotix image from which the photo above was extracted.

20-Feb-17: In Sinai, rocket-equipped ISIS jihadists remind Israelis this morning of an ongoing threat

Egyptian soldiers standing guard at a strategic site in Egypt's Sinai Desert, November 2015 [Image Source] 

Times of Israel reports this morning (Monday) that two rockets (mischievously and disingenuously described in a Guardian report today as "hand-made") were fired from Sinai into southern Israel's Eshkol region in the past hour. They crashed into open fields. It's reported that no one was injured and there are no signs of any damage caused in the attack, according to the IDF.

The Iron Dome incoming rocket alert system that has delivered breathtakingly-effective defensive results for the benefit of the thousands of Israelis living within range of the massively-well-equipped rocket jihadists in the Gaza Strip and the Sinai desert, was not activated this time. That's evidently because the system instantly computed that no populated Israeli area was threatened by the trajectory of the rockets.

So far, no terrorist group has claimed credit for the attack. But Times of Israel notes that it came hours after the Islamic State terrorists based in Sinai had accused Israel of killing five of its members in an airstrike.

According to Amaq news agency, an official media arm of the terror group, an Israeli drone struck a car with five Islamic State members in a village in the northern Sinai near the Egypt-Israel border on Saturday. The strike occurred near the village of Shabana, south of the town of Rafah, Amaq said. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to The Times of Israel’s request for comment, but generally refrains from confirming or denying strikes outside of Israel. ["Two rockets from Sinai hit southern Israel, IDF says", Times of Israel, February 20, 2017]

Ynet late last night (Sunday) quoted an ISIS news agency called al-Amaq saying that an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had attacked a vehicle in a village in the northern Rafah part of Egypt's Sinai desert the day before (Saturday). It said five members of its local group were killed in the Israeli attack and that, in Amaq's words they "fell as martyrs to the Jewish enemy", naming one of the dead jihadists as Hatab al-Maqdasi.

Ten days earlier, ISIS had claimed credit for four rockets fired into Eilat from Sinai [which we reported here]. ISIS had said then

A number of rockets were launched at Jewish centers in Eilat, known as Umm Rashrash. The Jews and Crusaders should know that the war of the apostles will not save them in any way. ["ISIS says Israel killed 5 of its members", Ynet, February 19, 2017]

A Financial Times article yesterday indicates the scale of what's at stake:

Isis operations in Egypt have largely remained confined to the jihadi group’s northern Sinai stronghold, but the group remains the biggest security threat facing the state. They have killed hundreds of soldiers and policemen and have periodically been able to strike beyond their area with devastating impact... The northern Sinai, a large desert region that borders Gaza and Israel has long been blighted by lawlessness, neglected by Cairo and roamed by smugglers. The Sinai jihadis started out as a local group targeting Israel. But they intensified attacks against Egyptian security forces in 2013 after the army’s ouster of an elected Islamist president. In 2014 they swore allegiance to Isis naming themselves “Sinai Province.” ["Civilians caught in crossfire as Egypt battles Isis in Sinai", Financial Times, February 19, 2017] 

A 2016 BBC Monitoring backgrounder [here] says the Sinai-based jihadists have given signs of softening a previously harsh towards the Islamists of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. It had previously criticized them for adopting "infidel democracy" but later called them "supporters of peacefulness" in encouraging them to revolt against Egypt's President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi.

While ISIS have a host of determined enemies, there are obvious strategic reasons why they prefer to be seen as losing martyrs to the Israelis rather than the Egyptians, whether or not the evidence is with them.

15-Jul-15: Victory for resistance, a new chapter of hope, united against terror etc

Iran's Zarif [Image Source]

From the sublime to the ridiculous to the pollyannish, here's our brief overview of the spectrum of reactions to yesterday's announcement of an understanding between Iran and six world powers.

The BBC, reporting from Iran, provides a window into the jubilation there after yesterday's announcement:

There is a sense of pride on Iran's rolling news channels IRINN and Press TV, with patriotic music videos adding colour to rolling coverage of the build-up to Tuesday's announcement. State-owned Channel One is more reserved, presumably not to overexcite the audience over the agreement. But even Channel One is appreciative of the negotiators, while stressing that the deal came through the "resistance" of Iranians. In their morning editions, before the deal was formally announced, Iran's moderate and reformist papers celebrated the upcoming agreement, hailing Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as a hero of near-epic proportions. The Qanoon newspaper carried a front-page report depicting Mr Zarif as Arash, a heroic archer figure from Iranian folklore... ["Iran nuclear deal shakes Middle East media", BBC, July 14, 2015]

Widely varying Iranian understandings of what to hope for [Image Source]

Reuters sees four paradigmatic views to this (all direct quotes):

• U.S. President Barack Obama hailed a step towards a "more hopeful world" 
• Iran's President Hassan Rouhani said it proved that "constructive engagement works". 
• Israel pledged to do what it could to halt what it called an "historic surrender"...
• Delighted Iranians danced in the streets of Tehran, while motorists sounded car horns and flashed victory signs in celebration... [Reuters, today]

Elsewhere Reuters quotes these insider assessments:

• Iran's foreign minister Zarif: "[W]e are starting a new chapter of hope"...
• US foreign minister (secretary of state) John Kerry: "This is the good deal we have sought."
• European Union foreign minister ("foreign policy chief") Federica Mogherini: "I think this is a sign of hope for the entire world."

Other voices:

Under Iran's reputedly 'moderate' Rouhani, significant ongoing advances in
diminishing the number of foes of the regime [Image Source]

• All the quoted Republican presidential candidates are critical and opposed [source: Reuters]. Most of them raise meaningful objections that are not contradicted by anything their president has said to the public. This is not exactly a moment for a full and frank exchange of American views.
• Syrian despot Assad, addressing Rouhani in Iran, looks forward to 'momentum' in the 'constructive role' played by Iran in supporting 'the rights of people' [Ynet today]
• The leader of one of the Syrian rebel groups (the Asala and Tanmieh Front) fighting the Assad forces in northern Syria fears "an increase in Iranian influence in the region and this is what is making Assad happy". Iyad Shamse says he worries that "US pressure would not be enough to stop Tehran from entering" the war. "We are worried," he is quoted saying [Reuters yesterday]
• "The lifting of international sanctions will allow Iran to consistently expand its oil and gas market,.. The deal will open new trade opportunities for Turkey, in particular in the energy field." [Anadolu Agency - Turkey, today] Turkey's imports from Iran were $10 billion in 2014; exports were around $4 billion [Hurriyet Daily, today].
• Iraq's prime minister Haider al-Abadi sees the "agreement signed Tuesday between Iran and world powers in Vienna" [note: in reality nothing was signed] as "a catalyst for regional stability... an important step" that "will lead to better unity in the fight against terrorism." [Alalam Iran, yesterday]
• Associated Press, reporting from Dubai today, says the deal "met with a profound wariness in the Arab world, where concerns are widespread that the easing of its international isolation could tip the already bloody contest for power in the region toward Shiite-led Tehran." [AP, today]
• Egypt's foreign ministry "expressed hope" that yesterday's deal "prevents an arms race in the Middle East as well as ensuring the region is free of all weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons"... [Masress Arab News Agency, Egypt, today]
• "Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his US counterpart John Kerry could be possible candidates for the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize over Iran's nuclear accord..." [Iran's PressTV news agency, last night]

So much hope. So much unfounded optimism. So little historical awareness.

01-Jul-15: ISIS violence, terror and chaos rage on Israel's southern flank

Scene of the Cairo assassination of Egypt's state prosecutor
on Monday [Image Source]

Egypt's Sinai Peninsula has grown steadily more restive in the past two years. We have posted dozens of times during that period [see "Sinai"], tracking the crescendo of Arab-on-Arab violence and terrorism that has exacted a steady toll of lives in the desert as well as in Egypt's cities. Today, in Egypt and in its capital city, Egypt is at war.

Just two days ago, on Monday June 29, 2015, Hisham Barakat, who had served as Egypt's state prosecutor since July 2013, was killed when his secure motorcade was hit by a bomb blast in the capital Cairo [source: Aljazeera]. Barakat's appointment had come very soon after Egypt's military removed the country's elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi. In the course of the past two years, Barakat was responsible for a series of legal measures directed at reducing the power of the Islamists, including freezing the assets of 15 prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and ordering the arrest of the group's Supreme Leader leader, Mohamed Badie.

We showed Badie embracing Hamas arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal back in January 2012. Badie was charged with inciting violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters where 51 people were killed.

Deposed president Morsi, along with hundreds of his supporters, have since been sentenced to death by Egypt's courts in a series of mass trials. Barakat also oversaw the court acquittal of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

There's some background to the events of the past few days. During May 2015, ISIS' Egyptian affiliate urged its followers

to attack judges, opening a new front in the world's most populous Arab state. Earlier in the same month, three judges were shot dead in the northern Sinai city of al-Arish... [Aljazeera] 

Then, right after Monday's assassination in Cairo, a visibly infuriated Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, publicly pledged to escalate the battle against the Islamic "militant" terrorists. An AFP report published yesterday captured some of the anger and rising threats:

"The arm of justice is chained by the law. We're not going to wait for this. We're going to amend the law to allow us to implement justice as soon as possible," Sisi said in a televised speech surrounded by Barakat's mourning relatives. "Do courts in these circumstances work? Do these laws work? They work with normal people," said Sisi, shaking a clenched fist for emphasis. Hundreds of policemen and soldiers have been killed since Morsi's ouster by militants based in the sparsely populated Sinai Peninsula... At least 1,400 people, most of them Morsi supporters, have been killed in a police crackdown on protests. Meanwhile, thousands of people, mostly Islamists but also including secular dissidents, have been jailed and hundreds sentenced to death. Morsi himself has been sentenced to death... Outside the mosque where the funeral was held, a crowd of 50 protesters chanted: "The people demand the execution of the Muslim Brotherhood." Inside, Justice Minister Ahmed al-Zind, a recently appointed hardliner, told judges to avenge Barakat's killing. "The ball is now in the judges' court. Take your revenge using the law. Effective, swift law that doesn't take five years." Politicians and pro-Sisi media -- virtually all the channels and newspapers in Egypt -- have called for an even harsher crackdown on Morsi's Brotherhood and militants. ["Egypt's Sisi pledges tougher laws after prosecutor killing" | Agence France-Presse, June 30, 2015]

Instead, what they got today was one of the most dramatic of those Sinai days. It's an ongoing situation that is worrying at multiple levels. A brief Reuters report today ["Death toll in North Sinai militant attacks rises to 70: sources", July 01, 2015] summarizes the carnage.

Today's news reports suggest the Islamic "militant" terrorists mounted a cluster of simultaneous attacks on Egyptian army targets across the northern Sinai during the morning hours, producing a blood-bath.

Ansar Bait al-Maqdis, the ISIS affiliate in Egypt [click here for our previous posts about the havoc they have brought to the region] claimed responsibility for the attacks. Their version, not contradicted by anyone at this stage as far as we know, is that they hit some 15 army and police positions, and executed three human bomb attacks. Two of those targeted military checkpoints; one hit an officers' club in El-Arish.

A Times of Israel report says "the attackers on Wednesday used mortars, rocket-propelled grenades as well as assault rifles. Two of the checkpoints, which were apparently located in close proximity, were completely destroyed." Other reports say the terrorists succeeded in seizing Egyptian soldiers and are now holding them captive for what we presume will be barbaric purposes that have become sickeningly familiar. They also seized Egyptian army weapons and armoured vehicles.

Kerem Shalom Crossing: In April 2015, 523 laden trucks passed through
and crossed into the Gaza Strip each day, on average. It was shut down today
because of the nearby Arab-on-Arab carnage. [Image Source] 

Not surprisingly, the IDF has been "closely monitoring the border area with Egypt and Gaza in light of the events". Israel's Ministry of Defence took the decision some hours ago [source] to shut down Israel’s border crossing into the Gaza Strip and another into Egypt, with immediate effect:

Gates at the Kerem Shalom crossing were closed, cutting off the main conduit for goods transferred from Israel to Gaza by hundreds of trucks every day. In addition, the Nitzana border crossing, used by commercial traffic moving between Israel and Egypt via Sinai, was also closed. The Taba border crossing, used by pedestrian travelers visiting Egypt in the less-restive southern Sinai peninsula, was still open during the early afternoon. [Times of Israel, today]

Inside Egypt, there's considerable related violence underway this evening. Just in the past hour:

Egyptian security officials say special forces killed nine members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, including a former member of parliament, during a raid on a Cairo apartment... [source]

31-May-15: In Sinai, Islamist terrorists threaten Eilat and Hamas

Funeral procession in Sinai honors the lives of four dead jihadists, caught in
the act of firing rockets in the direction of Israel [Le Figaro, August 11, 2013]

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis ("Champions of Jerusalem", in Arabic) is the Islamist jihad group that has brought considerable misery in the past several years to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

They are in the news again this morning because the natural gas pipeline running from Egypt through the desert to both Israel and Jordan was blown up yet again in the early hours of this morning, Sunday. And as numerous news agencies (Associated Press, for instance) point out, that's a target they have openly attacked [see "26-Oct-14: The ongoing savagery just over the border" for instance] more than a dozen times already.

Security officials in Egypt say suspected Islamic militants have blown up a natural gas pipeline outside el-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai. The officials say authorities stopped the flow of the gas to extinguish the fire after the blast, which happened early Sunday morning. No group immediately claimed the attack. However, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or "Champions of Jerusalem," a jihadi group based in the Sinai Peninsula, has claimed responsibility for more than a dozen similar bombings and attacks on security forces. It pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group late last year... [AP, today]

The same terror organization has been mentioned this past week [here], issuing mortal threats against Hamas and the southern Israeli city of Eilat:

Jihadists in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State have threatened to strike the port of Eilat "in the coming days," according to reports in Egyptian media. The reports state the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem), which changed its name to Welayat al-Sinai (Province of Sinai) "threatened to strike the Eilat Port, following coordination with Islamic State's wing in the Gaza Strip" ...Salafi groups began to surface in Gaza in 2006 and have had a tense relationship with Hamas, which seized the territory from forces loyal to the Western-backed Fatah group in 2007. The tensions between the two terrorist groups in the coastal enclave began on May 3, when Hamas destroyed a mosque belonging to a group known as the "Supporters of the Islamic State in Jerusalem." The group responded by threatening to kill Hamas members – publishing some of their names and photos - unless Hamas releases several men, including a local Salafi sheikh. In March, a senior IDF official said that Israel was "preparing for a multi-pronged terror threat directed against our forces and civilians in the Eilat area..." Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has spearheaded an insurgency in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula since the army overthrew Islamic president Mohammed Morsi.

Click here for some past posts about the terror raging in Egyptian Sinai.

14-Apr-15: From Gaza, where seldom is heard an encouraging word, a (very) cautiously optimistic note

Smoke rises (in this Getty Images photo published in The Guardian) in October 2013 from
the mouth of a smuggling tunnel dug beneath the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. "Egypt's army has destroyed many of the tunnels on the Egyptian side of Rafah", the caption reads

Here's a slightly surprising follow-on to a post we put up yesterday: "13-Apr-15: The carnage resulting from Gaza's Hamas tunnels may now be sharply reduced". 

Khaled Abu Toameh, one of the most well-informed and worthwhile news sources in the Arab parts of the Middle East, writes on the Gatestone Institute that Egypt's tough new regime of security measures and laws to strangle the massive number of tunnels running underground between the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip and Egypt is having an impact:

"The smuggling (of weapons into the Gaza Strip) has been stopped almost completely," admitted Abu Mohammed, a Palestinian arms dealer from the town Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. "Rarely does anyone manage to smuggle light weapons or ammunition." ...He complained that it has become impossible to smuggle missiles and rockets into the Gaza Strip... ["T]he cost of one bullet, which used to sell for one US dollar, had doubled in recent months. Similarly, the price of an Egyptian-made AK-47 assault rifle has risen from $900 to $1300"... Sisi has shown real guts and determination in his war to drain the swamps of terrorists. The tough measures he has taken along the border with the Gaza Strip have proven to be even more effective than Israel's military operations against the smuggling tunnels. That the Gaza Strip is facing a weapons shortage is good news not only for Israel and Egypt, but also for the Palestinians living there. It is hard to see how Hamas will rush into another military confrontation with Israel -- where Palestinians would once again pay a heavy price -- at a time when Sisi's army is working around the clock to destroy smuggling tunnels, and the prices of rifles and bullets in the Gaza Strip are skyrocketing... ["Gaza: Egypt Responsible For Weapons Shortage", Khaled Abu Toameh, Gatestone Institute, April 13, 2015]

A note of a less sanguine kind is sounded in a bulletin issued yesterday by MEMRI. The MEMRI mission is to render into English some of the published Arabic-language material that would otherwise go ignored in the West, and thank goodness for its work. Quoting a March 14, 2015 report on the Hamas-controlled Alqassam.ps website, the MEMRI report says the Al-Qassam Brigades, an arm of Hamas, are 

preparing for the next conflict with Israel by establishing military camps. Recently, the Al-Qassam Brigades' preparation and training division began constructing two camps, named Al-Yarmouk and Filastin, near the Israel-Gaza border. A department official said: "The brigades will continue to train, with no fear of Israel." He added, "The training is also meant to assure the residents that the resistance is in good shape, that it has not ceased operations as the occupation claims, and that it is on the frontlines to defend the people.

MEMRI quotes other Gazan sources (via Felesteen.ps, and almajd.ps) from March 8, 2015, saying 

joint training was conducted for the first time by the military wings of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (the Al-Quds Brigades) and Hamas (the Al-Qassam Brigades). The Hamas website Al-Majd explained: "The training is a deterring message to the occupation from the resistance, as well as a message of strength for the domestic Palestinian front."

Sadly, it's premature for the swords on our side of the fence to start being beaten into plough-shares.

13-Apr-15: The carnage resulting from Gaza's Hamas tunnels may now be sharply reduced

Children working on a Gaza tunnel construction site, from a National
Geographic report published in July 2014

As far as we can tell from Googling, no mainstream Western news source is reporting on the dramatic moves the Egyptians have just taken - a no-holds-barred assault on the Hamas-inspired Gaza attack-tunnels phenomenon. Not surprisingly, several Israeli sources are reporting on it. Here's one.

Egypt to sentence Gaza smugglers to life in prison | The Times of Israel April 13, 2015

A new amendment to Egypt’s penal code would sentence offenders convicted of digging and using cross-border tunnels connecting the country to the Gaza Strip to terms of up to life in prison, the Egyptian news agency MENA reported Sunday. The amendment, one of several passed by presidential decree, seeks to curtail the problem of tunnels between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, which have been used to smuggle contraband crucial for the Hamas rule in the Palestinian territory, as well as weapons and terror activists. Under the new amendment, the Egyptian government has the authority to confiscate buildings above the tunnels or any equipment used in their construction. Anyone with knowledge of cross-border tunnels who does not report them could be liable to the same life term as those who build and use them.

The victims of the tunnels industry are not only Israeli military personnel and civilians. Nor are they only Egyptian security people fighting the terrorist groups that have been active for years in the Sinai. In fact, the price paid by Palestinian children is one that has so far largely been kept under wraps.

A July 2014 Tablet Magazine report ["Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels"] describes the ruthless abuse by the Islamist ideologues of Hamas in exploiting child slave-laborers. Demonstrating the lethal hypocrisy of Iran's local Hamas surrogates in the Gaza Strip, those children were all Palestinian Arabs:

The Institute for Palestine Studies published a detailed report [here] on Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon in the summer of 2012. It reported that tunnel construction in Gaza has resulted in a large number of child deaths. The author, Nicolas Pelham, explains that Hamas uses child laborers to build their terror tunnels because, "much as in Victorian coal mines, they are prized for their nimble bodies". Human rights groups operating in Gaza raised concerns about child labor in the tunnels as far back as 2008. Hamas responded by saying it was “considering curbs." ...Nor does it seem that Hamas paid much subsequent attention to ensuring the safety of the child workers that it used to build the tunnels that would wind up endangering the lives of many in Gaza. On a tour of the tunnels in 2011, Pelham noted that, “nothing was done to impede the use of children in the tunnels.”

Now something does appear finally to have been done - not (of course) by the jihadists of Gaza but by the Egyptians on the other side of the border.

It's safe to assume that many lives that would otherwise be needlessly endangered, at least in those Gaza tunnels that run to and from Egypt and the Sinai, will be preserved as a result.

28-Feb-15: That was shocking and dangerous, whine the sadistic, murdering thugs

Shocked: Inner circle of Hamas child abusers, with Haniyeh and Meshaaal in the
central roles [Image Source]

The terror-addicted Hamas Islamists who boast of kidnapping and murdering teenagers, of executing a massacre outside a night spot frequented by youngsters, of bombing a pizzeria filled with children are outraged. Yes, outraged.

From Reuters today:

Hamas says Egypt listing it as terrorist organization is 'shocking and dangerous' | GAZA Sat Feb 28, 2015 7:45am EST | (Reuters) - An Egyptian court decision to list Hamas as a terrorist organization is "shocking and dangerous," the Islamist group said a statement from Gaza on Saturday. "The Egyptian court's decision to list the Hamas movement as a terror organization is shocking and is dangerous, and it targets the Palestinian people and its factions of resistance," the statement said. "It will have no influence on the Hamas movement, which enjoys the respect of all the nation and the leaders of the nation."

Xinhua this evening quotes Hamas calling the Egyptian ruling

"a coup on history...  a despaired (sic) Egyptian attempt to export the internal Egyptian crisis, but it will never influence Hamas' status which (has) gained the respect of Arabs and Muslims all over the world"

The growing isolation of Hamas is a work in progress. A year ago, the Egyptian Urgent Matters Court, the same legal forum that handed down today's decision

banned all activities by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and ordered the seizure of its offices and assets... Egypt's interim government designated the Brotherhood a terrorist group in December [2013], five months after President Mohammed Morsi was ousted by the army. A Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, condemned the court ruling. "The decision harms the image of Egypt and its role towards the Palestinian cause," he told Reuters news agency. "It reflects a form of standing against Palestinian resistance." [BBC]

Hamas is regarded as an outlaw by a long list of states [see this Wikipedia table].

• Canada lists Hamas as a terrorist entity. 
• The European Union designated Hamas as a terrorist group from 2003 to 2014, a status annulled for now by its General Court in December 2014 for "technical" reasons: see "17-Dec-14: Has Hamas just been whitewashed by Europe?". The EU and its 28 member states are maintaining its funding freeze and sanctions against Hamas and Hamas members for now. 
• New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Egypt (on January 31, 2015) and Australia all list Hamas' so-called "military wing" as a terrorist organization. Japan froze Hamas assets in 2005, 
• The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan banned Hamas in 1999 but (typically for the country) gives it considerable on-again/off-again freedom to operate. 
• Saudi Arabia outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot, in 2014, terming it a terrorist organization; several Hamas insiders have been quoted in the past month expressing optimism about a new Saudi "openness" since the January 23, 2015 death of King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.
• Hamas is designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. 

The demonstrable Hamas devotion to extreme violence, cold-blooded murder, bombings, shootings, stabbings and sadistic child abuse are not incidental to their approach to life and to Jews. They are central to it:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to [Hamas] principles... There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors... [from Hamas Charter, Article 13]

Many people know (though far fewer have actually read it) that Hamas has a Charter in which they give confident, full-volume publicity to their blood lust and (in their own words) its Islamic underpinnings. Their boastful strategy works with huge effect in the Arab world and among non-Arab Moslems for whom bloodshed appears to serve as a kind of grotesque magnet.

When the president of the United States says, as he did on Wednesday 18, 2015 in the White House, that

We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam... No religion is responsible for violence and terrorism. People are responsible... We have to make sure ... that we do not stigmatize entire communities... [Aljazeera]

he reminds us ("we are at war" and "people are responsible") how much of a mistake it can be to attack people for their religious beliefs. It's clear to us that Hamas acting in the name of Islam is a matter for them - and much less so for us. For us, what's important is the things they do: the viciousness of their hatred, the amorality of their murderous violence, the utter absence of any recognizable Hamas moral compass.

The Egyptians are right when they say the people of Hamas are terrorists. And President Obama is right when he says we are at war with them. Now if only we could get the US State Department ["14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance"] to finally pay attention to those truths.

28-Jan-15: In Washington DC, a red carpet for the Islamists

Waleed Sharaby: Image taken from his Facebook page;

the four-fingered salute, called "R4BIA", signifies

"those who wake all the Islamic world

with their death". He was standing inside the US State

Department when this picture was snapped

We wrote several posts here over the past year and a half about the inexplicable difficulty the management team at the US State Department seem to have with calling terrorism 'terrorism', at least so far as it pertains to Islamist and radical Palestinian Arab practitioners of lethal terror. 

Some sample articles (among many) include

• 14-Aug-13: Are the Palestinian Arab murderers who are being released at this moment, freedom fighters or terrorists? Let's check with the State Department
• 17-Nov-13: Is Washington going to make up its mind whether it sees the killers as freedom fighters or as terrorists?
• 10-Dec-13: Can Kerry and his State Department colleagues not hear what's being said clearly in Arabic? 
• 9-Apr-14: Analyzing the failure, what role did the Kerry State Department play?

This morning, we have a scoop from the Washington Free Beacon where Adam Kredo has uncovered some remarkably close canoodling between unabashed proponents of Islamist strategies (with all that entails) and senior figures in the US government's foreign policy establishment. This, we freely admit, sends shivers of horror down our spines, knowing what we do about the terrorism-laden agenda of the Brotherhood and its various local editions, in particular Hamas.

Muslim Brotherhood-Aligned Leaders Hosted at State Department | Brotherhood seeks to rally anti-Sisi support | Adam Kredo | Washington Free Beacon | January 28, 2015 5:00 am | The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013. One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page. That delegation member, Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and a spokesman for Judges for Egypt, a group reported to have close ties to the Brotherhood...  Another member of the delegation, Maha Azzam, confirmed during an event hosted Tuesday by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID)—another group accused of having close ties to the Brotherhood—that the delegation had “fruitful” talks with the State Department... Assam also said that the department expressed openness to engagement, according to one person who attended the event... When asked to comment on the meeting Tuesday evening, a State Department official said, “We meet with representatives from across the political spectrum in Egypt.” The official declined to elaborate on who may have been hosted or on any details about the timing and substance of any talks...
Patrick Poole, a terrorism expert and national security reporter, said the powwow at the State Department could be a sign that the Obama administration still considers the Brotherhood politically viable, despite its ouster from power and a subsequent crackdown on its members by Egyptian authorities.
“What this shows is that the widespread rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East, particularly the largest protests in recorded human history in Egypt on June 30, 2013, that led to Morsi’s ouster, is not recognized by the State Department and the Obama administration,” Poole said. “This is a direct insult to our Egyptian allies, who are in an existential struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood, all in the pursuit of the mythical ‘moderate Islamists’ who the D.C. foreign policy elite still believe will bring democracy to the Middle East,” Poole said.

Ahlam Tamimi, self-confessed murderer of Jewish children including

our daughter Malki who was 15 when killed in the massacre

engineered by Tamimi, is photographed hanging out with

some jihad-friendly pals in 2013. Notice her proudly giving 

the same hand sign that Sharaby did, though we think she was not inside

the US State Department at the time. But we're checking that.

It may be helpful to people in the State Department to take a look at a photograph of one of the most notorious of the Hamas murderers, the unrepentant and now-free killer of our teenage daughter. Her name is Tamimi.

In the photo at right, taken from a social media site in 2013, Tamimi too flashes those four fingers, surrounded by like-minded admirers. What she intends by it has to be understood against a background in which she praises her own handiwork - the murder of 15 Jews in the Sbarro pizzeria massacre which she engineered and for which she was convicted on her own confession, and then released in the extortionate Gilad Shalit Transaction in 2011. She did what she did in the name of Hamas, whose first-ever female terror-operative she is said to be, and in the name of Islam. A television program presenter these days, with a show praising jihadist terror and terrorists that is beamed throughout the world, she is a person who knows how to communicate messages.

She too travels widely, not yet to Washington (as far as we can tell) but certainly throughout the Arabic-speaking world, from her home base in Jordan. As the 'success model' of the students at Jordan's only graduate school for journalism, she probably has the skills to explain to the foreign policy officials at State the things they ought to know (but evidently don't) about the Brotherhood's aspirations and the role that their religion plays in their actions. They should call her in.