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Fwd: Today's News Summaries Unity Coalition for Israel Oct 27, 2017
Editor's Note: Friday October 27, 2017
BALFOUR DECLARATION CELEBRATION
The first Zionist Congress was held on August 29th 1897, 120 years ago. The most significant date for Israel was November 2nd, 100 years ago the British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote a letter, the Balfour Declaration, that was the catalyst for the re-birth of the State of Isreal. And 50 years ago the state of Isreal was defended in the miraculous Six Day war.ISRAELIS HAVE MUCH TO CELEBRATE in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to uc4i.org for updates.
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Contents: (summaries below)
- COLUMN ONE: Balfour's greatest of gifts , JERUSALEM POST, Caroline B Glick
- Militias vs. Palestinian "Reconciliation", GATESTONE INSTITUTE, Khaled Abu Toameh
- Air Defense: Iron Dome Moves North, STRATEGY PAGE,
- With Clintons Tied to Scandal A Triple Deus Ex Machina Descends Upon Washington, NY SUN, Conrad Black
- Nigeria: Muslims murder 48 Christians, destroy 249 homes in 13 Christian villages, JIHAD WATCH, Robert Spencer
COLUMN ONE: Balfour's greatest of gifts
Caroline B Glick
JERUSALEM POST, October 27, 2017...In the face of the growing discrimination Israelis suffer and rejection Israel endures, how are we to look at the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, which we will mark next Thursday? One hundred years ago, on November 2, 1917, Arthur Balfour, foreign secretary of Great Britain, detonated a bomb whose aftershocks are still being felt in Britain and worldwide.
That day, Balfour issued a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, the leader of the British Jewish community.
The letter, which quickly became known as the Balfour Declaration, effectively announced the British Empire supported an end of the Jewish people's 1,800-year exile and its return to history, as a free nation in its homeland – the Land of Israel.
In Balfour's immortal words, "His Maje sty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object."
The Palestine Arab leadership at the time rejected his statement. Shortly thereafter the Arabs initiated a terrorist onslaught against the Jewish community in the Land of Israel that has continued, more or less without interruption, ever since.
Indeed, nothing at all has changed with the Palestinians. They have not moved an inch in a hundred years. PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas now demands that Britain officially renounce the Balfour Declaration and apologize for having issued it as if Lord Balfour was still foreign secretary and David Lloyd George was still prime minster.
And their growing chorus of supporters at the UN, throughout the Islamic world, and in Europe is similarly stuck in 1917.
Prime Minister Benjam in Netanyahu doesn't believe that the enduring Arab and international rejection of Israel's right to exist mitigates the significance of the Balfour Declaration. Next week he will travel to London to participate in the centennial commemorations of the Balfour Declarations at the side of British Prime Minister Theresa May.
May said on Wednesday that she is "proud" to commemorate the declaration. In her words, "We are proud of the role that we played in the creation of the State of Israel and we certainly mark the centenary with pride."
This was certainly nice of her. But May couldn't ignore the fact that a hundred years later, a large and growing number of people refuse to come to terms with what Britain did. So she added, "We must also be conscious of the sensitivities that some people do have about the Balfour Declaration and we recognize that there is more work to be done. We remain committed to the two-state so lution in relation to Israel and the Palestinians."
So we return to the Palestinians, and the UAE, and the protesters who will be screaming out against Balfour and David Lloyd George from one end of Britain to the other next week demanding their declaration be withdrawn and history rolled back.
And the protesters of course aren't alone. Britain's main opposition party is being led by an ardent Israel-basher. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn announced on Monday that he will not be participating the Balfour centennial ceremonies.
It certainly makes sense for him to boycott them.
It would be awkward for a man who was elected and reelected after calling Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists his "friends," to be celebrating Britain's role in establishing the state his friends are working to destroy.
Corbyn's boycott, and his very rise to power, are clear signs that Balfour's legacy is a mixed bag.< br />Except that it isn't a mixed bag.
At a very deep level, Israel owes its existence to the Balfour Declaration. This is true not because the Balfour Declaration changed the way the world viewed the Jews. It manifestly did not – not in its own time, and not today.
Indeed, it is ironic that the Palestinians and their supporters blame the British for the establishment of Israel, because shortly after the Balfour Declaration was issued, British authorities, particularly on the ground in the Middle East, did everything they possibly could to cancel it.
In 1920, British military officers asked the local Arab strongman Haj Amin al-Husseini to incite a pogrom in Jerusalem over Passover. Husseini's thugs murdered four Jews and wounded many more. The purpose of the pogrom was to convince the British Parliament to cancel the Balfour Declaration.
The plan didn't work. And two years later the League of Nations established the British Mandate for Palestine on the basis of the Balfour Declaration.
The Mandate required Britain to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration, by among other things facilitating mass Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel.
But the seeds of doubt were duly sown. Almost immediately after the League of Nations issued the Mandate, the British carved off three-quarters of the territory earmarked for the Jewish national home to create Trans-Jordan.
It was largely downhill from there. With each successive wave of Arab terrorism against the Jews, the British issued restrictions on Jewish immigration and limitations on the right of Jews to purchase land that grew harsher with each iteration. These actions paved the way for the 1939 White Paper which abrogated the Balfour Declaration in all but name. It renounced Zionism, and effectively ruled out any possibility of a viable Jewish state being established by blocking Jewish immigration and land purc hase.
It also sealed the fate of the Jews of Europe, by denying them the ability to flee to the one place on earth that wanted them – their home.
British antagonism to Jews and their national liberation movement only grew in the postwar years. News of the Holocaust didn't move the British to fulfill their commitment under the Balfour Declaration. Instead, they threw Holocaust survivors into prison camps in Cyprus and raised the Arab Legion, the most powerful Arab military force in the 1948-49 War of Independence. Britain only recognized Israel in 1950.
So again why is Netanyahu making the trip to London? The answer is that while the Balfour Declaration didn't change the world, it changed the Jews....
Militias vs. Palestinian "Reconciliation"
Khaled Abu Toameh
GATESTONE INSTITUTE, October 27, 2017
The notion that Hamas would ever dismantle its security apparatus and deliver the Gaza Strip to Mahmoud Abbas's forces is a fantasy.
It is estimated that there are about 50 different militias operating in the Gaza Strip. These militias are said to be in possession of about a million pieces of weaponry.
If Hamas refuses to disarm, that is one thing, but when Abbas's supposed loyalists also come out with similar statements, that this is akin to spitting in the face of the Palestinian Authority president.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas says he does not want to see "militias" in the Gaza Strip if and when the "reconciliation" agreement he reached with Hamas is implemented. "The Palestinian leadership will not accept the model of militias in the Gaza Strip because it isn't a successful one," Abbas told the Chinese news agency Xinhua. "There should be one authority, one law and one weapon, with no militias."
Hamas, for its part, has already rejected Abbas's demand. Hamas has said it has no intention of disarming despite the "reconciliation" agreement recently signed in Cairo. "We can't give up our weapons because the Palestinian people are still in the phase of national liberation," said Yehya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip. "We also can't and won't recognize Israel."
Hamas's refusal to disarm should come as no surprise. Since Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip ten years ago, it has built a huge security apparatus that consists of thousands of militiamen, most of them members of Ezaddin Al-Qassam, the movement's military wing. Hamas has also smuggled large amounts of weapons into the Gaza Strip and dug dozens of tunnels along the borders with Israel and Egypt.
The notion that Hamas would ever dismantle its security apparatus and deliver the Gaza Strip to Mahmoud Abbas's forces is a fantasy. Hamas has no problem allowing Abbas loyalists to return to the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, as was the situation before 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip. But this is the most Hamas would be willing to sacrifice to support the success of the "reconciliation" accord with Abbas and his Fatah faction.
Masked gunmen from a Fatah militia are pictured on January 30, 2007 in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, during a period of armed clashes between Fatah and Hamas. Later that year, Hamas expelled Fatah and seized complete control of the Gaza Strip.
(Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images)
This is a price Hamas is prepared to pay, not out of affection for Abbas but because it serves its own interest. The reopening of the Rafah terminal will allow Hamas to breath after years of isolation and blockade. A few hundred Abbas loyalists who manage the Rafah border crossing do not pose a threat to Hamas's rule over the Gaza Strip.
Above all, Hamas seeks to prevent a return to the pre-2007 era, when the Palestinian Authority had exclusive control over the Gaza Strip. Until that year, the PA had multiple security forces that maintained a tight grip on the Gaza Strip and employed an "iron fist" policy against Hamas and other opposition groups.
The statements of Hamas leaders in the past few days show that they are seeking to duplicate the model Hezbollah uses in Lebanon. Hamas wants to remain in charge of security matters in the Gaza Strip while restricting the Palestinian Authority's responsibilities to civilian affairs. Hamas's refusal to disarm and hand over security responsibilities to Abbas could torpedo the Egyptian-sponsored "reconciliation" agreement -- especially in light of the PA's rejection of copying the Hezbollah model in the Gaza Strip.
While Abbas is talking about the need for Hamas to disarm and dismantle its militia, however, some Palestinians are wondering what would be the fate of armed groups in the Gaza Strip that are affiliated with Fatah if the "reconciliation" agreement is implemented.
Hamas is far from the only party with a militia in the Gaza Strip. Almost all of the other Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), have their own militias there -- in addition to a number of ISIS-inspired militias that have also appeared in the Gaza Strip in the past few years.
It is estimated that there are about 50 different militias operating in the Gaza Strip. These militias are said to be in possession of about a million pieces of weaponry.
Abbas's real test will be the day he is forced to face the unruly Fatah-affiliated armed groups in the Gaza Strip. Abbas has good reason to be worried about the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP and DFLP militias. None of these groups will ever voluntarily lay down its weapons or dismantle its militias just because the Egyptians or Abbas want it to. Abbas, moreover, also needs to worry about the Fatah-affiliated groups: they also are unlikely to comply with his wish to see no militias in the Gaza Strip.
Fatah has in the Gaza Strip several armed groups not known for their blind loyalty to Abbas. Some of these disgruntled armed groups, in fact, often sound more like Hamas and Islamic Jihad than Fatah.
Fatah has quite a number of militias in the Gaza Strip: Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Ahmed Abu Rish Brigades, Abdel Qader Al-Husseini Brigades, Martyr Ayman Judeh Groups and Nidal Al-Amoudi Brigades.
Although they are affiliated with Abbas's Fatah, these armed groups continue to talk about an "armed struggle" against Israel and their desire to "liberate Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." The unruly Fatah-affiliated groups have a history of angering and embarrassing Abbas and the Fatah leadership in the West Bank. The groups often issue statements applauding terror attacks against Israel, such as the recent shooting at Har Adar, near Jerusalem, in which three Israelis were murdered.
For the past few years, the Fatah leadership in the West Bank has sought to distance itself from the actions and rhetoric of those Fatah armed groups in the Gaza Strip. That effort reflects the desire of the Fatah leadership in the West Bank to present itself to the international community (and Israel) as a "moderate" party that opposes violence and seeks a peaceful solution with Israel.
Even more worrying for Abbas is that in addition to Hamas, the Fatah armed groups in the Gaza Strip are refusing to disarm as a result of the "reconciliation" agreement.
Now, not only does Abbas have to worry about Hamas and Islamic Jihad; he has his own Fatah gunmen saying that they too will not disarm. This headache for Abbas poses yet another obstacle to the implementation of the "reconciliation" agreement.
As Abu Mohammed, a spokesman for the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in the Gaza Strip, said recently: "We won't give up our weapons until all Palestine has been liberated." His statement echoes the position of Hamas and all the other armed groups. If Hamas refuses to disarm, that is one thing, but when Abbas's supposed loyalists also come out with similar statements, that is akin to spitting in the face of the Palestinian Authority president.
The "reconciliation" agreement has yet to be implemented on the ground, yet the issue of the militias in the Gaza Strip is already emerging as a major obstacle and a severe blow to Abbas. He will now have to decide: either to proceed with the "reconciliation" agreement and accept playing the role of president of a Gaza Strip filled with armed groups and militias -- most of which are no friend of his, or to backtrack and realize that his wish to have one law, one police force and one authority in the Gaza Strip is nothing more than a pipe-dream.
Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based in Jerusalem.
Air Defense: Iron Dome Moves North
STRATEGY PAGE, October 26, 2017Realizing that there was likely to be a long-term threat from Iranian forces in Lebanon and Syria Israel announced it was stationing a battalion of its Iron Dome anti-rocket systems in northern Israel. There was already a battalion assigned to southern Israel to defend against the rockets Hezbollah had amassed in Gaza and had last used on a large scale in 2014. There had not been large scale rocket attacks in northern Israel since the Iran-backed Hezbollah launched a major rocket attack in 2006 and convinced Israel that Iron Dome was worth developing and deploying.
Israel currently has ten Iron Dome batteries. Three to five batteries plus some support facilities makes a battalion. It took several years for Israel to realize that Iron Dome should be on duty at all times. In the beginning Iron Dome was seen as an emergency weapon, to be kept in storage most of the time and mobilized for use by reservists in wartime. It has not worked out that way.
Iron Dome has been in service since 2009 and proven itself in combat. Because of this Iron Dome has long been deployed full time in southern Israel and sent north mainly for training and batteries were kept in the north only as long as they appeared to be a threat. Each battery has radar, fire control equipment, and 3-4 missile launchers (each with 20 missiles) and costs about $37-50 million depending on how many missiles it is shipped with.
Iron Dome uses two radars to quickly calculate the trajectory of the incoming rocket and do nothing if the rocket trajectory indicates it is going to land in an uninhabited area. But if the computers predict a rocket coming down in an inhabited area one (or often two to be sure) $50,000 Tamir guided missiles are fired to intercept the rocket. This, and the fact that the Iron Dome fire control system can track hundreds of incoming missiles at once makes the system cost-effective.
So far Iron Dome has shot down 700 rockets, which is about 85 percent of the rockets it calculated were headed for a populated areas. The Tamir missiles used by Iron Dome weigh 90 kg and have a range of 70 kilometers against rockets, mortar shells and artillery shells up to 155mm. Iron Dome can also shoot down aircraft and helicopters (up to 10 kilometers/32,000 feet altitude). Iron Dome is the principal defense against short range rockets fired from Gaza or Lebanon. Work is underway to increase Iron Dome range from 70 to over 200 kilometers.
By 2014 Israel had eight batteries of Iron Dome and over 2,000 Tamir missiles and after the mid-2014 war with Hezbollah a lot more money was spent on increasing the number of Tamir missiles available and trying to expand the number of batteries to fifteen. In mid-2014 Israel found that its stockpile of 2,000 Tamir missiles was enough to shut down the Hamas effort to hit Israel with thousands of rockets but not enough to deal with similar attacks from Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south....
With Clintons Tied to Scandal A Triple Deus Ex Machina Descends Upon Washington
Conrad Black
NY SUN, October 27, 2017It is delicious to see, even more suddenly and completely than anyone had anticipated, the breakdown of the steamroller media smear of Donald Trump. A trinitarian deus ex machina descended.
The Washington Post, struggling desperately in its discomfort, a few days ahead of the information being forcibly extracted by congressional subpoenas, acknowledged that the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee had paid for the assembly of the Steele dossier.
This rotten fish of lies and gossip was universally regarded at first as rubbish so scurrilous no one would publish it for months until Buzzfeed, the bottom of the web barrel, took it up, which emboldened the flounder skimming the bottom, CNN, to present it as a major triumph of journalistic enterprise and to popularize it.
Carl Bernstein, one of America's most Pulitzer-laden myth-makers, was exhumed to pronounce it an important document.
Finally, after everything else had led nowhere, bloodthirsty Trumpophobes like the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senators Burr and Warner, acknowledged that Mr. Steele was all they could go on, and they could not get at its sources because of the intervention of special counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, preventing FBI officials from testifying before Congress.
CNN, through the pleasing Erin Burnett, wagging her puckered nose at us, tiresomely repeated that some aspects of the Steele dossier had been "proved," but some were not corroborated, and that the dossier was initiated by Fusion GPS at the request of anti-Trump Republicans, whose place was taken first by the Clinton campaign, when Mr. Trump clinched the Republican nomination, and then by the FBI.
In fact, none of it has been seriously corroborated, and the only part of it with the slightest relevance to Mr. Trump's legitimacy as president is a completely unsubstantiated suggestion that some promises might have been made to alter U.S. policy toward Russia favorably if the Russian government could affect the U.S. election's outcome in Mr. Trump's favor.
There is not a shred of evidence to support this, despite fervent efforts by the Obama administration and the special counsel to unearth some. Nor is there any evidence of actual Russian influence on the election result or of any policy change by the present administration toward Russia that the Kremlin would welcome. Nor, though The New York Times clings to the story, has any evidence surfaced that Fusion GPS was initially retained on this file by anti-Trump Republicans.
It was inexpressibly pleasant to see a CNN "expert" refer to the news that the sole remaining, pitiful wisp of hopeful damage to Trump and support of the collusion canard was this bit of slime bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign as, get ready for it, "A talking point for the Republicans!"
As this hydrogen balloon was blowing up like the Hindenburg at the mast at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the Uranium One affair was boiling over as a new congressional investigation was launched into the whole issue of about $131 million to $145 million being pledged or paid to the Clinton Foundation as Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for an ordinary speech in Moscow. Secretary of State Clinton and Attorney General Holder agreed to sell 20% of American uranium resources to Russia, through Russian intermediaries then under intensive investigation by the FBI director, Robert Mueller, and by then U.S. attorney in Maryland, Rod Rosenstein.
I am not quick to allege criminal wrongdoing, and the businessman chiefly involved is someone I know and respect, and it is not clear that anything harmful to national security occurred. But at the least, considering their ambitions to move back into the White House, the Clintons should have been more careful.
The trifecta was completed with the revelation that the investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was not based on his brief relations with Donald Trump, but on his lengthy connection with the Democratic Podesta brothers, and the extent to which he helped them funnel wealthy and influential Russians into high governmental circles in Washington....
Nigeria: Muslims murder 48 Christians, destroy 249 homes in 13 Christian villages
Robert Spencer
JIHAD WATCH, October 26, 2017Will the Islamophobia never end? Will Pope Francis (pbuh) be traveling soon to Plateau state in order to explain to these Muslims that they're misunderstanding their Religion of Peace?
"Christians Recount Terror of Herdsmen's Nine-Day Massacre in Plateau State, Nigeria," Morning Star News, October 25, 2017:
JOS, Nigeria (Morning Star News) – The church elder in Plateau state, Nigeria saw the Muslim Fulani herdsmen storm into his village at 11 p.m. the night of Oct. 13, shooting in all directions.
"Every one of us ran to save his life," Dauda Samuel Kadiya, 38, of the Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) in Zanwrua, told Morning Star News. "I was shot at, but the bullet only bruised my hand. You can see the wound yourself."
The assailants destroyed eight houses in the attack, one of several assaults in Plateau state that went on uninterrupted from Oct. 8 to Oct. 17, killing 48 Christians, survivors said.
"All Christians in villages around here have been displaced, and worship buildings have been abandoned," Kadiya said. "Some of the church buildings were destroyed by the attackers."
In Zanwrua village, 62-year-old Agado Aura recounted how he and his wife narrowly escaped death.
"Myself and my wife were still sitting in front of my house chatting at about 11 p.m. in front of my house when the attackers came," Aura, a member of St. Peter's Catholic Church in Tafigana but a resident of Zanwrua, told Morning Star News. "We could not go to bed early, because the previous night a village near ours, Tafigana, was attacked by the herdsmen. Suddenly, we heard gunshots from the eastern part of the village. We ran into some of the nearby rocks close to my house and hid there."
The armed herdsmen came to his house and started shooting, he said.
"They broke the doors to our rooms and then set fire on my house," Aura said. "Having set fire on my house, they went to the next house and did the same. They continued burning houses until they were done, before they left. I was watching all they were doing from my hidden spot behind those rocks you see over there."
Area Christian leaders told Morning Star News how armed herdsmen, apparently accompanied by terrorists from Islamic extremist groups, attacked communities just a few kilometers from a Nigerian army facility, the Rukuba Military Cantonment outside Jos, for nine days.
Moses Tsohu, a Zanwrua village leader and ECWA member, lamented that the attacks were carried out in spite of the presence of soldiers stationed at check points on the Jos-Miango Highway.
"In the past few weeks, our people have been attacked by Muslim Fulani herdsmen who are collaborating with armed terrorists to invade our communities," Tsohu told Morning Star News. "These attacks are being carried out daily. Every blessed day we witness the invasion, killing of our people, and the destruction of their houses."
The attacks on 13 Christian communities in the north-central state also wounded nine people and ruined 249 homes, survivors said. Herdsmen began the assaults on Oct. 8 on Nkie Dongwro village, where one Christian was killed and another wounded….
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by voices@unitycoalitionforisrael.org. .
