21-Jul-16: As the Olympics approach, Brazilian jihad comes into focus

In Rio, Brazilian security forces do their work a week ago [Image Source]

Ready, set...

Yesterday, a news report from the country hosting the upcoming Olympic Games that get started on August 5 ["Brazil Not Underestimating Olympic Terror Threat, Says Minister", Voice of America, July 20, 2016] quoted its sports minister saying that Brazil

was not underestimating the threat of terrorism and was taking all necessary measures ahead of next month's games in Rio de Janeiro... "The government has adopted all the measures recommended by inter-national security protocols... The government is absolutely convinced that the Games will be safe." ...Justice Minister Alexandre de Moraes told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper he is more concerned about violence and street crime, problems that affect Rio on a daily basis. "Crime is more of a worry than terrorism and that is why we are reinforcing patrols," he said. Brazil plans to deploy about 85,000 soldiers, police and other security personnel during the Olympics — over twice the size of the security force in London for the 2012 Games.

Twenty-fours later, and things already look a little different compared with the plan. Reuters reported this evening (Thursday) that its security officials had

arrested 10 people on Thursday on suspicion of belonging to a group supporting Islamic State (IS) and preparing acts of terrorism during next month's Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, [the same] Justice Minister Alexandre Moraes said. The loosely organized group were all Brazilian citizens and in contact via internet messaging groups such as WhatsApp and Telegram, but did not know each other personally, the minister said. The group did not have direct contact with IS though some of its members had made "pro forma" declarations of allegiance to the militant Islamist group, the minister said. He did not elaborate. "Those involved participated in an online group denominated 'the defenders of Sharia' and were planning to acquire weapons to commit crimes in Brazil and even overseas," Moraes told a news conference... The minister said the leader of the group was based in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba, with others spread in nine Brazilian states. [Reuters, July 21, 2016]

Other reports say the Brazilian jihadists call themselves "Ansar al-Khilafah Brazil" and propagate ISIS materials in the Arabic, English and Portuguese languages. And according to a report today on the Foreign Desk News website, Israelis are among the jihadists' targets:

In a list published on social media, jihadis are advised to target American, British, French and Israeli athletes with the notion that “One small knife attack against Americans/Israelis in these places will have bigger media effect than any other attacks anywhere else in sha Allah.” “Your chance to take part in the global Jihad is here! Your chance to be a martyr is here!” the jihadis said, citing the easy process of obtaining visas for travel to Brazil as well as the wide availability of guns in “crime-ridden slums.” Israeli athletes are further singled out. “From amongst the worst enemies, the most famous enemies for general Muslims is to attack Israelis. As general Muslims all agree to it and it causes more popularity for the Mujahideen amongst the Muslims,” they state. [Foreign Desk News, today]

Just two days before Thursday's arrests, a noted counter-terrorism authority in the US, SITE Intelligence Group, issued a report referring to calls by the Brazilian jihadists for "lone wolf" attackers to launch assaults on specific Olympic sites and via specific weapons.

In other parts of the terrorism-focused social media, an article from two years ago asserts that Brazil had become “an operational hub for Iran and Islamic terrorism” already then, offering safe haven for Islamic extremist groups.

A Wall Street Journal report today says

the arrests are certain to elevate concerns about the possibility of a terrorist attack in Rio, which is expected to attract 500,000 tourists and athletes, and raise additional questions over Brazil’s security preparations.

Telegraph UK says the Brazilians have formed an Integrated Anti-Terrorism Centre (called CIANT) for the Games. It works with the security agencies of the US, UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Paraguay and Argentina. Officers at CIANT, headquartered in the capital, Brasília, "are monitoring Rio 24 hours a day. Among the areas covered are hotels where Olympic officials and VIPs will stay, Games venues and training sites". Four days ago, the general coordinator for public security at the Games, said

there was no identified threat of a terror attack against Brazil but said the level of alert had been raised since the Bastille Day attack in Nice. “Today, in the absence of a concrete threat to Brazil, we are on yellow alert, which is characterised by increased attention and the level of response in relation to everyday life,” he said. “This can develop into an orange or red alert according to any specific threat that is identified in relation to Brazil.” [Source]

It appears now that the light changed this morning.

8-May-13: "I am your partner. I am going to kill you now."

There's a sadly familiar feel to a story carried at the moment on the Times of Israel site. It concerns a man about whom we have written here numerous times, and here's how it is headed:

Top PA official: Israel ‘is our main enemy, resistance is still our agenda’ |  Arab states should put their money where their mouth is to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem, says Jibril Rajoub, a signatory to the Geneva Initiative who had pledged he was Israel’s peace ‘partner’

Jibril Rajoub, in his words, deeds, history and public profile, personally embodies much of what makes the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis so intractable.

Start with this. He is a perennial participant for the Palestinian Arab side in the negotiations for peace that have been part of the political landscape here for two decades. An ad campaign on behalf of the Geneva Initiative included him as one of its central media figures back in August 2010. Click below to view it - the Hebrew dialogue is translated via English subtitles:

Like the other high-profile Arabs who appeared in that very expensive media campaign, the words “I am your partner” are placed in his mouth and the mouths of other Arab personalities over and again. "There is a consensus in the Arab world", Rajoub recites, "to recognize the existence of Israel in return for an end to occupation”.

The purpose of the Geneva Initiative campaign - and keep this in mind as we take a closer look at this exceptionally unlovely individual - was expressed in the following terms by the campaign's spokesperson, Gadi Baltiansky:

The perception in the Israeli public is that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side... We all want peace, but don't believe there is anyone to talk to. We are trying to change this perception, to explain that there is a partner, and that the problem is actually with us. ["Shalom, this is Jibril" on Geneva Initiative website]

In reality, Rajoub rarely lets other people put words in his mouth. He actually appears much more comfortable spinning his own words and firing them off on cue, generally in the form of threats. Those threats have come with appreciable power accumulated via a series of publicly-funded roles he has filled over the years. He's a man with the rare ability to be in the right place at the right time in order to exercise serious power. 

Today Rajoub is one of twenty members of the Central Committee of Fatah, the highest decision-making organ of the Fatah political party, and the innermost circle of the Mahmoud Abbas clique. He stands at the head of both the Palestinian Football Federation and the Palestine Olympic Committee. 

But his past is much less sporty. He was the head of the Preventive Security Force until 2002, when Arafat appointed him national security advisor. As advisor, he knew where to place his loyalties: his tenure was marked by the use of force in harassing and quashing Arafat's political opponents by whatever it took, including resort to torture [Source: BBC]. When Hamas had to be taught lessons for being too religiously fundamentalist, Rajoub got the job of managing a crackdown and did it well enough [Wikipedia]. 

And before all of that, he was an ordinary terrorist who was sentenced to life in prison. Foreshadowing a process that has happened again and again, Israel released him and 1,150 other Arab prisoners in 1985 in order to win back the freedom of three Israeli hostages held one of the alphabet-soup factions of the Palestinian Arab terrorism industry. He was sent back to prison several more times for several more rounds of terrorism. He released exactly the same number of times, acquiring a smooth grasp of Hebrew and of Israeli culture along the way.

Now to Jibril Rajoub, 2013 edition. This prince of peace, this ambassador of the power of sport to build bridges across troubled waters, this recovered thug and reformed torturer, was interviewed on Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen television channel on April 30, 2013:

Resistance to Israel remains on our agenda... I mean resistance in all of its forms. At this stage, we believe that popular resistance - with all that it entails - is effective and costly to the [Israeli] side..." [Al-Mayadeen]

The Arabic-to-English media watchdog, Palestinian Media Watch, which translated and published [here] the contents of the Lebanese TV program for the benefit of people who think Rajoub is (or ever was) a peace partner, provides some useful interpretation. In saying “resistance in all of its forms”, Rajoub simply means violence against Israel. Israel is “the main enemy” of Arabs and Muslims. So why negotiate? Because, said Rajoub, the Palestinians still lack military strength:

"We as yet don't have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning."

Does this mean he has stopped being a partner for peace? No. Rajoub is a man of principle, one who says what needs to be said (depending of course on who is listening in). And one of the principles that has served him well throughout a successful career in public life is the expedient value of violence. And really, all he's doing is sticking to his guns.

But on the other hand, what are the salaried employees of the very well-funded Geneva Initiative (mostly by the governments of France, Belgium and Switzerland), those strategists who served up Rajoub as living proof that there actually is a partner for peace with beleagured Israel, saying now? Is "oops - sorry" even in their lexicon? Or is there a more subtle, peace-friendly way to interpret "If we had a nuke, we'd have used it this very morning"?

28-Jul-12 [UPDATED]: The Games have begun but over here the 'games' are continuing as usual, and one of the runners is injured

No special athletic prowess required or expected: ordinary Israelis
in Beer Sheva running for their lives to the nearest shelter after 
an incoming rocket alert is sounded [Image Source]

With the attention of much of the world's public and news media directed at the Olympics, there have been four rocket attacks on southern Israel this evening, Saturday. 

We're much more highly motivated on this subject than most people, and therefore know more or less where to look to find reports about these firings. Most people don't. They therefore have no idea that this happened and keeps happening more or less daily. How can people understand the defensive measures Israel's military takes if basic information about ongoing constant terrorist attacks goes unreported in the news media?

Two Gazan rockets crashed and exploded in the Eshkol region on Friday. (Reminder that the precise location of rocket landings is generally held back in these reports. Knowing the outcome is usable military intelligence that no sane person on the Israeli side would want to share with the terrorists of Gaza.) 

Then this evening (Saturday) two more crashed into open fields in the vicinity of Sderot, a city - not a town, not a village - in southern Israel that has the misfortune of being located very close to the Gaza Strip. The alarms were sounded (we're referring to the anti-missile Tzeva Adom warning system) causing the usual fear and anxiety in thousands of homes throughout southern Israel who somehow fail to get used to the indiscriminate firing of lethal weapons in their general direction. As a result, a woman of 29 suffered injury as she ran to a rocket shelter, and was hospitalized in Ashkelon [Ynet]. The Palestinian Arabs are saying that the terrorists are "a previously unknown militant group in Gaza called the Al-Furqan Brigades" and that they claimed responsibility in a statement. 

Two more Qassam rockets fired from the northern part of the Hamas-infested Gaza Strip hit open fields in the Eshkol region again, tonight [Ynet]. Fortunately no injuries, no property damage, and no consequences up until now (as far as we know) to the people who fired them. That might yet change.

UPDATE: Sunday morning, and the GANSO website reports on these terrorist attacks in its customarily laconic way:

MU, 29 JUL: Overnight, 3 HMRs and 1 Grad fired from Gaza toward the Green Line. No injuries reported.

Interpretation: Three "home-made" rockets, which is what GANSO regularly calls Qassam rockets, were fired into anywhere in Israel (the fire is almost always indiscriminate) during the night, plus one GRAD. We have not seen any reports from the Israeli side describing the fourth of last night's rockets as being a GRAD. But the GANSO people, based in Gaza and presumably with their own close ties with the neighboring terrorists, should be believed. To get a sense of the ideological thinking behind what GANSO does, check out this backgrounder, courtesy of EoZ. And remember that they are funded by the European Union.

26-Jul-12: The Olympic Games start tomorrow. What have we learned?

Acutely aware of public opinion: Jacques Rogge, International Olympic Committee president

Reuters says (“Organizers try to quell anger over Munich tribute”) that the International Olympic Committee is finally taking a meaningful stand on terrorism - by “hitting back” at the demands for a forty-year-late minute of silence in memory of the slain Israeli victims of the massacre executed by the Palestinian Arab Black September terror organization at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.

LONDON (Reuters) – Olympic organizers hit back at criticism on Tuesday of how they had honored 11 Israeli team members killed at the 1972 Munich Games, ignoring calls to hold a minute’s silence for them in the opening ceremony. International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge led a surprise tribute in the athletes village in London on Monday, but that low-key event failed to satisfy relatives of the victims or Israeli officials.

The Reuters story [source] offers an especially toxic way of describing the Munich 1972 outcome: "Within 24 hours, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman were dead after a standoff and subsequent botched rescue effort." Meaning that stuff happens and the victims were from all over: from Germany, from Israel, from Palestine. Feh!

About Tuesday's "low-key" “surprise tribute”, we think there are some important points to be made:

1. How many people did it actually attract? About 100, according to Associated Press: "Rogge bowed his head as a crowd of about 100 people — IOC executive board members, dignitaries and Olympic athletes and officials — stood in silence for a minute.” By our count, there are more newspapers that reported the ceremony than people actually participating. Some tribute.
2. Rogge, to his credit, has been consistent. He “has repeatedly rebuffed calls to hold a moment of silence during Friday's opening ceremony of the London Games. He said Saturday the opening was not the appropriate place to remember the Israeli team members”. [Source: Associated Press] To our way of thinking, nothing could be more appropriate than the highly-watched opening ceremony, assuming you want people to actually remember. 
3. At Tuesday's event, Rogge took the opportunity to wax eloquent in front of the crowd of one hundred about the physical surroundings and addressed lofty visions as he spoke of “the 11 Israeli Olympians who shared the ideals that have brought us together in this beautiful Olympic Village… The 11 victims of the Munich tragedy believed in that vision… They came to Munich in the spirit of peace and solidarity. We owe it to them to keep the spirit alive and to remember them." [Source: Associated Press]
4. In the interests of repaying what the IOC “owes” to the dead Israelis and their memory, Rogge met last night (Wednesday) with two widows of the dead Israeli Olympians. He managed to leave them “distraught and heartbroken” [report]. It's almost entirely unreported.
5. The Israeli widows handed Rogge a petition signed by more than 105,000 people from all over the world, calling for a minute of silence at Friday’s opening ceremony. Rogge said no again. They asked him whether his refusal was because the victims were Israeli. Rogge declined to answer. [Source: JC]
6. One of the two widows is Anki Spitzer, the prime mover behind the petition [it’s here]. She said: “I was looking him in the eye but he said we had two different opinions. We said ‘you didn't hear the voice of the world’. He said: ‘Yes I did’.” [Source: JC]  
7. We think Rogge spoke the truth. He is acutely aware of public opinion. The public opinion to which he is paying attention is against the minute’s silence – that is, the public that is important to Rogge and the IOC.
8. It is clear that a significant part of the Olympic community is embarrassed by and opposed to the singling out of Israeli victims for honoring. Who are they? Yesterday, in a blog posting [see "25-Jul-12: An effective 'spontaneous minute' that will speak louder than the IOC's roaring hypocrisy"], we quoted Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee vice-president on this very matter. Here again is the key quote in which he spills the Olympic beans: "The threats to boycott the opening ceremony made by Arab states in the event of an official minute of silence have led the IOC to mark the 40 year anniversary in other ways, including a minute of silence on Monday inside the Olympic Village, led by IOC President Jacques Rogge. The Arab boycott “had been a possibility, according to some of our advice”, Bach said according to Israel’s Channel 2 news." [Source: Algemeiner.com]
9. It’s about the Arabs. Only Bach has admitted it so far.
10. The IOC has no problem holding massive memorial ceremonies. It’s not an issue of principle, and it’s not something that conflicts with the Olympic spirit. In 2002, at the Winter Olympics in Utah, they held a memorial service attended by 60,000 people [report and picture]. 
11. Not everyone is as appalled as we are at the insensitivity of the Olympic management team. The Palestinians, for instance, think it’s really OK. As PMW notes today, the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas is against the moment of silence: "Sports are meant for peace, not for racism", the headline in its newspaper says today. Jibril Rajoub, president of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and a man who knows a thing or two about racism and terrorism, sounds a positively lyrical note in a report from the Arabic media yesterday: "Sports are a bridge to love, interconnection, and spreading of peace among nations; it must not be a cause of division and spreading of racism between them [nations]" [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 25, 2012]
12. The Fatah/PLO/Palestinian Authority side opposes a minute of silence because, for them, the murder of Israelis by Palestinian Arabs is not terror at all. It’s heroism. Palestinian Media Watch routinely documents how they express this glorification of terror and terrorists; it’s an ongoing, daily thing. For them, the Munich massacre was done by a "star who sparkled... at the sports stadium in Munich". And so on.
13. Let's note by the way that Rajoub is himself a seasoned terrorist [see "We salute Shalit's kidnappers, says Jibril Rajoub"] who has been repeatedly arrested and imprisoned over the decades. He owes his freedom to a notorious 1985 transaction (eventually known as the Jibril Deal) in which he was among 1,150 Palestinian Arabs freed from Israeli prisons in exchange for three Israeli hostages held by a terrorist group. After his release, Rajoub moved to Tunis where he served as aide and advisor to Abu Jihad who was head of the Black September terrorist force in the early '70s [source]: the same Black September took executed the Munich massacre.
14. In a letter this week to Rogge, the terrorist Rajoub "expressed appreciation for [Rogge's] position, who opposed the Israeli position, which demanded a moment's silence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London." As PMW points out, Rajoub is unable to bring himself to actually mention the murdered Israeli athletes. Their killing is simply termed "the Munich Operation”. Small wonder that Rajoub and the PA sing the praises of Rogge's refusal to permit a minute of silence for dead Israeli athletes. But the question for us is: Those people who are standing by and with and behind Rogge – do they subscribe to the Fatah/PLO’s endorsement of the IOC refusal?
15. We have heard it said that Tuesday’s pathetic “low-key” memorial moment gave worldwide exposure to the murder of the Israeli athletes and that makes it a positive thing. But we say the events of 1972 in Munich gave them worldwide exposure too; does that make the killings a positive thing? The more serious criticism is that the message of Tuesday's IOC 'event' fails to come to grips with what is being remembered. The Munich massacre of 1972 was followed by many more killings, based on the same hatred, the same contempt for other people's lives, and essentially by the same people. The terrorists who planned and executed are busy planning more. Though the Israelis came in peace, they died as Israelis and Jews. None of this was even hinted at in Rogge's vacuous "spontaneous" comments. He mentioned Israeli once in the video clip [here]. But the message was not about Israelis or about terror.
16. We say Tuesday's “spontaneous” IOC event was symbolic, but not in the way Rogge and the IOC intended. It actually possesses multiple layers of symbolism. Thanks to the ringing endorsement of the Palestinian Authority and its blood-soaked Olympic committee head, we now understand them a good deal better.

Friday is going to be day of pomp, enthusiasm and unstoppable optimism. But in certain ways the opening ceremony of the London Olympics is also - for those of us living daily in an ongoing war - likely to be a reminder of the deep gulf between those who have some understanding of terrorism and what it stands for, and those for whom slogans and lofty pronouncements conceal a fundamental emptiness. 

"Inspire a Generation has been revealed as the official motto for the London Olympics. 'It is the heartbeat, the very DNA of this organisation and a rallying cry for the athletes to come to the UK to perform at their very best and inspire the world." [Source: Daily Mail]

It would have been good to see the Olympic movement embrace something a little more substantial and focused on genuine humanitarian values.

25-Jul-12: An effective 'spontaneous minute' that will speak louder than the IOC's roaring hypocrisy

Sixty thousand people standing in respectful silence at the opening ceremony.
London? No. Salt Lake City, 2002 - the Winter Olympics [Image Source]

The 2012 Olympic Games get underway in London in two days and three hours [check it here]. An online petition calling for sixty seconds of silence at the opening ceremony in memory of the eleven Israeli Olympians murdered in the Munich Olympic village exactly forty years ago by Palestinian Arabs has gotten more than 107,000 signatures. But it has failed to move the Olympic games organizers.

The families of the Munich 11 have tried for four long and lonely decades to obtain appropriate and respectful recognition of the Munich massacre from the International Olympic Committee. [We wrote about this earlier: "20-Jul-12: The Olympics, terror, cowardice and wisdom"] Now that it is clear they have finally and absolutely failed, the widow of one of the Munich dead says people sitting in the stadium at Friday’s opening ceremony should stand up and observe what she calls "a spontaneous minute when the IOC president begins to speak". She's absolutely right. The rest of us who will not be there should be doing everything we can to spread the word.

How did the organizers articulate their objection? Insensitively.

"We feel that the Opening Ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident," Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, said Saturday. [Source: CNN]

How did the widows object to the objection? Determinedly, and with admirable dignity.

“If you believe that the 11 murdered athletes must be mentioned, stand for a spontaneous minute when the IOC president begins to speak,” said Ilana Romano, wife of Yossef Romano, a weightlifter who was murdered in the 1972 attack. The media, she said, should follow the lead of NBC sportscaster Bob Costas [it's explained here], who has pledged to hold his own on-air minute of silence. “Silence your microphones for a minute in memory of our loved ones and to condemn terrorism,” she said... The IOC, led by president Jacques Rogge, has steadfastly refused [the request for a minute of respectful silence]... [The widows behind the petition] were in London to present the petition to Rogge in a last-ditch attempt to get him to agree. They were due to meet on Wednesday night, after Rogge postponed a Tuesday meeting. [Source: Times of Israel]

It's not as if we lack a precedent. The victims of 9/11 were honored by the IOC at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah:

Sixty thousand people stood as one in respectful silence at the start of the program when the tattered American flag, recovered from the rubble of the World Trade Center disaster, was carried into the stadium by eight U.S. athletes accompanied by three New York Port Authority police officers. The silence continued as the Utah Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed the national anthem with a kind of haunting dignity seldom heard in an age of embellishment. [Source: 2002 report in the San Francisco Chronicle]

So  why, really, is the IOC opposed to remembering the Israelis? Their deaths, unlike those of the tragic victims of 9/11, were integrally bound up with the Olympics, after all. 

There's a deeply disturbing answer. According to Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee vice-president

The threats to boycott the opening ceremony made by Arab states in the event of an official minute of silence have led the IOC to mark the 40 year anniversary in other ways, including a minute of silence on Monday inside the Olympic Village, led by IOC President Jacques Rogge. The Arab boycott “had been a possibility, according to some of our advice”, Bach said according to Israel’s Channel 2 news. [Source: Algemeiner.com]

Craven is not a strong enough word for the IOC's conduct in this affair. If, as appears to be the case, this is why the IOC has decided what it decided, then those of us who understand the reasoning behind an "Arab boycott" and the hatred it represents must do everything we can to take back and publicly honor the memories of the Munich dead: stand for a spontaneous minute when the IOC president begins to speak. 

Like many things in life, this is far too important to be left to the officials. If we're not on the side of the victims, then we are giving our support to the killers and those who stand with them.