We present a short real life action-packed “whodunnit” mystery involving several states’ governments, secret services, terrorist organizations, insurrectionists, arms smugglers, ghostly intelligence gatherers, and shadowy assassins who descend and strike and rise again and disappear.

Atbara is a town in north eastern Sudan, where the Blue Nile and the White Nile meet each other. For the last 20 or 30 years it has been the center of Sudan’s biggest arms smuggling network.

One of the regular buyers is al-Qaeda. Leading operatives of the network joined Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1996. (One of them, Ibrahim al Qosi, was captured and is at present enjoying luxurious confinement at Guantanamo Bay.)

Iran was a chief source of the arms, and over time Iranians acquired a foothold in the network. One of their chief customers was the terrorist organization that has engaged the hearts of European governments, the United Nations secretariat and General Assembly, the US State Department, all Islam, and lefties everywhere: Hamas. In time, they too acquired a foothold in the network.

Al-Qaeda, Iran, Hamas, all working together to provide arms for insurrection, terrorism, and war. Quantities found their way into Gaza through the tunnels that run between Egyptian Sinai and the strip.

Recently, Iran withdrew its personnel, or most of them, from direct involvement, but continued using the network to keep up the flow of arms to Hamas and Iran’s own terrorist army, Hizbullah.

A short time ago, through Atbara, the Iranians bought WMD, namely mustard gas and nerve gas, from rebels in the Libyan town of Benghazi, and ordered the consignment to be delivered to Gaza and Lebanon. It was driven in convoys from Libya to Sudan, under Hamas and Hizbullah guard.

The final lap of the transport had then to be organized.

On April 5, two men set out in a Hyundai car from Atbara for Port Sudan. They were driving through the Kalaneeb region and approaching their destination when something hit and blew up their car. The bodies of the men, one found inside the wreck of the Hyundai and one outside, were too burnt to be identified. The incident warranted investigation by the Sudanese intelligence service and the military. The Foreign Minister of Sudan made a public announcement that the car had been hit by a missile from an aerial drone – or maybe fired from a foreign ship on the Red Sea.

The government of Sudan asked the sort-of-interim-government of Egypt  to send counter-terrorist and missile experts to help the investigation. After forensic examination they declared that a remnant of paper identified one of the dead men as Iranian. And the blackened remains of the other gave them, or some among them, the impression that he was a Palestinian. They were sure, anyway, that they were not Sudanese.

But they didn’t agree with the Foreign Minister that the car had been hit from the air or the sea. They concluded that a person or persons unknown had blown it up from somewhere near by on the ground; they must have been foreigners; and they must have arrived and departed by helicopter. Having done the deed, they took off again to a waiting ship that had brought them to the coast.

Who were the dead men? What was their business? And who had assassinated them?

The report from which we have the information ends with this:

The method of attack and clean getaway pointed to a sophisticated military organization capable of unconventional operations across great distances spanning thousands of kilometers. It would have required competent military intelligence support in places as far apart as Atbara, Kalaneeb, Port Sudan and the Red Sea.

Who could it have been? CIA? Unlikely. MI6? Extremely unlikely. Who else is there who could have done it? And why?

It remains a baffling mystery, probably never to be solved.

A surprising interview. Hasan Afzal, a Briton of Palestinian origin, objects to the vicious world-wide movement to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Hasan tells The Atheist Conservative this about himself:

At present I’m on a leave of absence from the University of Birmingham where I’m studying Political Economy.

I come from a secular Muslim family. Religion was often a private experience with the family only ever becoming overtly religious during Ramadan and the two Eid festivals. Other than that, there were no boundaries on what we could talk about so I had complete academic freedom to talk/think/debate with whatever I liked.

The Israel/Palestine issue was never talked about at home, not out of censorship but it never really came up. When I was at University, I was forced to think about it. I guess I’ve been rather influenced by democratic peace theorists and liberal interventionists (aka Neocons – cough!). Sadly, university degrees are too easy to commit one’s mind too, so I spent most of my time reading around the subject. I read Strauss, Hobbes, Locke.

I began to ask: How could this little democracy, Israel, be all the evils that the hate-preachers say it is? I did my own research, and I found out it wasn’t. I got involved in anti-Islamism and discovered the Israel delegitimisation network.  Since then I have had an almost instinctive sympathy for Israel and sadness for the short-sighted leadership of Palestinians. It’s equally a pragmatic support as well as a little ideological. When I see how skewed the debate has become about Israel/Palestine, it is the Israelis I feel are the victims of a sophisticated delegitimisation network.

In the course of his researches, he met Sam Westrop, our British editor. Together they founded the organization British Muslims for Israel, which is beginning to attract media attention.

Sam and I set up British Muslims for Israel. When something happens in the Middle East – the Jerusalem bomb was a perfect example – we come out and make our point clear and provocative. The hope is that Muslims who are hesitant or unsure of their support for Israel will one day put one and one together and see who their real enemies are.

Undhimmi features the video and comments:

It is not before time that a voice of reason from the Muslim community was heard – particularly in Britain – which is fast gaining a reputation as an anti-Semite’s paradise. The cacophany of uninformed and biased, agenda-driven noise (for that it what it is), emanating from the British media and the Islamo-Left coalition – who are dedicated to dehumanising Israelis and falsely presenting the ‘Palestinians’ as perpetual victims – goes virtually unchallenged here [in the US], Britain and the West [in general].

And Melanie Phillips writes in her column at the Spectator:

A warm welcome to a new and very brave kid on the block – British Muslims for Israel. As I have often said, where someone stands on Israel is for me the litmus test of whether they are a decent and rational human being or pose a threat not merely to Jewish interests but to civilised values. Unfortunately, even among those many Muslims who are opposed to the jihad and support western democracy, animosity towards Israel often runs horrifyingly deep. Any Muslim who speaks up in defence of Israel runs significant personal risks. So those behind British Muslims for Israel, which has emerged from the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy*, merit a huge amount of praise and support. They also offer a ray of hope for the future. They show that there are Muslims who pass that key civilisational litmus test with flying colours.

Listen here to their spokesman Hasan Afzal, explaining that the group was set up to counter the dangerous notion which is gaining ground that Israel should cease to exist at all; that Muslims get a better deal if they live in Israel rather than Saudi Arabia; and even that he would happily volunteer to be involved [in Israeli public relations] in the face of the ‘sophisticated internet campaign to delegitimise Israel’.

We applaud Hasan’s efforts and will continue to cheer him on.

*Sam was also one of the founders of The Institute for Middle East Democracy.

A Saudi Arabian considers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a point of view that is unusual, to say the least, in the Arab world:

From Arab News, by Abdulateef Al-Mulhim:

What if Arabs had recognized the State of Israel in 1948?

I have been exposed to Palestinians since I was in first grade in Al-Hassa, Saudi Arabia They were my favorite teachers. They were the most dedicated and the most intelligent among all my instructors, from elementary to high school.

When I was attending New York-based SUNY Maritime college (1975-1979), I read a lot of books about Palestinians, Arabs and the Israelis. I have read every article about the many chances the Palestinians had and missed to solve their problem, especially the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel.

I have seen and read about the lives of the Palestinians in the US and other places. They are very successful in every field. And at the same time I saw the Arab countries at the bottom of the list in education and development. And I always ask the question: What if the Palestinians and the Arabs accepted the presence of Israel on May 14, 1948 and recognized its right to exist? Would the Arab world have been more stable, more democratic and more advanced?

If Israel was recognized in 1948, then the Palestinians would have been able to free themselves from the hollow promises of some Arab dictators who kept telling them that the refugees would be back in their homes and all Arab lands will be liberated and Israel will be sent to the bottom of the sea. Some Arab leaders used the Palestinians for their own agenda to suppress their own people and to stay in power.

Since 1948, if an Arab politician wanted to be the hero and the leader of the Arab world, then he has a very easy way to do it. He just shouts as loud as he can about the intention to destroy Israel, without mobilizing one soldier (Talk is cheap).

If Israel was recognized in 1948, then there would have been no need for a coup in Egypt against King Farouq in 1952 and there would have been no attack on Egypt in 1956 by the UK, France and Israel. Also there will be no war in June 1967 and the size of Israel will not be increased and we, the Arabs would not have the need for a UN resolution to beg Israel to go back to the pre-1967 borders. And no war of attrition between Egypt and Israel that caused more casualties on the Egyptian side than the Israeli side.

After the 1967 war, Israel became a strategic ally of the US because before this war, the US was not as close to Israel as people in the Arab world think. The Israelis fought in that war using mainly French and British weapons. At that time, the US administrations refused to supply Israel with more modern aircraft and weapon systems such as the F-4 Phantom.

The Palestinian misery was also used to topple another stable monarchy, this time in Iraq and replacing it with a bloody dictatorship in one of the richest countries of the world. Iraq is rich in minerals, water reserves, fertile land and archaeological sites. The military led by Abdul Karim Qassim killed King Faisal II and his family. Bloodshed in Iraq continued and this Arab country has seen more violent revolutions and one of them was carried out in the 1960s by a brigade that was sent to help liberate Palestine. Instead it made a turn and went back and took over Baghdad. Even years later, Saddam Hussien said that he will liberate Jerusalem via Kuwait. He used Palestinians misery as an excuse to invade Kuwait.

If Israel were recognized in 1948, then the 1968 coup would not have taken place in another stable and rich monarchy (Kingdom of Libya). King Idris was toppled and Muammar Qaddafi took over.

There were other military coups in the Arab world such as Syria, Yemen and the Sudan. And each one of them used Palestine as their reason for such acts. The Egyptian regime of Jamal Abdul Nasser used to call the Arab Gulf states backward states and he tried to topple the governments of these Gulf states by using his media and his military forces. He even attacked southern borders of Saudi Arabia using his air force bases in Yemen.

Even a non-Arab country (Iran) used Palestine to divert the minds of their people from internal unrest. I remember Ayatollah Khomeini declaring that he would liberate Jerusalem via Baghdad and President Ahmadinejad making bellicose statements about Israel, though not even a single fire cracker was fired from Iran toward Israel.

Now, the Palestinians are on their own. Each Arab country is busy with its own crisis. From Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon and the Gulf states. For now, the Arab countries have put the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on hold.

Abdulateef Al-Mulhim is Commodore (Retd.), Royal Saudi Navy. He is based in Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia, and can be contacted at: [email protected]

Okay, we have to concede that Obama cannot – either deliberately or through negligence – cause earthquakes and tsunamis. For all our scathing contempt of him, our seething animosity towards him, we cannot blame him for the destruction and loss of life those natural disasters have caused in Japan.

But for all other major calamities presently afflicting the world and America in particular, we do hold him responsible.

Obama is chiefly to blame for the continuing economic crisis in America. Incompetent though he is, this could be his singular success, the one goal he aimed at and achieved. America, in his eyes, was too prosperous. He took measures to make the country he led poorer and weaker. He extended government control over the economy, increased government spending, and so put people out of work. Food and energy prices are soaring. He intentionally raised the cost of energy. Higher energy costs mean higher food prices. He puts the hungrier country deeper into debt. Inflation looms. And lo! – it’s done: America is no longer the most prosperous, the freest, the mightiest country on earth. “God damn America!” Pastor Jeremiah Wright prayed. His parishioner Barack Obama heard him, and, having had power put in his hands by a misled electorate, acts to grant that iniquitous prayer.

And he is largely to blame for the growing danger of chaos and war in North Africa and the Middle East, which will affect the whole world, as oil supplies are endangered, and Iran seizes the opportunity created for it by violent upheavals and slaughter to arm its proxies, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria …

This is from Investor’s Business Daily  …

With all eyes on upheaval in the Middle East and Japan’s triple catastrophe, Iran is quietly working under the radar to wreak havoc. It’s moving fast to ship illegal weapons for use against us and our allies.

The Israeli navy on Tuesday intercepted a ship loaded with Iranian weapons 125 miles off its coast. The Liberian-flagged, German-owned Victoria, which debarked from Turkey full of what it claimed were lentils and cotton, made a pit stop at the Syrian port of Latakia and then sailed for Egypt.

In reality, the ship was hauling 2,500 mortar shells, six C-704 anti-ship missiles, two radar systems, two launchers, two hydraulic mounting cranes and 67,000 bullets.

Its Syrian stop just happened to be at the same port an Iranian ship visited when it crossed the Suez Canal last Jan. 22, and no, the Victoria was not bound for Egypt.

“The weaponry originated in Iran, which is trying to arm the Gaza strip,” said Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

As disturbing as it is, it seems to be just one element of an accelerating Iranian plan to arm terrorists in areas where it thinks it can get away with it. …

Israel in fact has been encircled from all sides by Iranian arms in the past three days. Coming up from the south, Egyptian security forces on Sunday captured another load of rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, rifles and explosive in five trucks coming from Sudan on their way to terrorists in Gaza.

Around the same time, Turkey forced an illicit Iranian plane flying over its territory to land. It was carrying, analysts believe, weapons bound for Syria.

And it seems a creepy coincidence that five members of an Israeli settler family in the West Bank were murdered over the weekend by Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terrorists who named their subgroup after a Hezbollah terrorist with links to Iran.

Iran in fact is stepping up arms shipments all over, blithely ignoring the United Nations embargo.

Three weeks ago, Senegal sent Iran’s ambassador packing after separatist rebels in the south fought pitched battles with Iranian weapons against Senegalese troops, killing three of them. …

Gambia has had it with Iran, too.

Last November, it gave Iran’s diplomats 48 hours to leave, without giving a reason. But it was believed to involve a huge shipment of illegal Iranian rocket launchers and grenades discovered in a Nigerian port on a ship that claimed to be hauling building materials.

Nigeria reported the illegal shipment to the United Nations Security Council — to no effect. Gambia booted the Iranians.

Meanwhile, illegal Iranian arms continue to flow to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and there’s cause to worry that they’ll end up in the hands of Mexican and Central American drug traffickers via Nicaragua.

It all signals that nuclear weapons are not the only danger from Iran — the country is spreading weapons of war in earnest, especially now that it sees its chance.

The world should be alert to the unquestionably violent aims of this evil regime. Its weapons shipments signal a will to make war. But who will stop them?

Not America. It could stop the Iranian regime from becoming a nuclear-armed power, but its president doesn’t want it to.

It is the recognition by dictators, rogue states, terrorists, and the Islamic “community of believers” – the ummah – that America under Obama’s presidency has resigned from its super-power status, has opted to be weak, a passive nation among nations, unjudging of others, no threat to any tyrant, wanting pathetically to be friendly with the bloodiest regimes, that has moved them to act as they do now. By his silence and inactivity he has given them permission.

This article by Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins, whose bitterness and anger we applaud, also comes from IBD:

Other nations no longer look to America’s mysterious president for leadership. …

President Obama … has not done one single thing to make America better off. His presidential scorecard is all negatives, a mixture of strikeouts, bunts, pop flies and game-losing errors so dumb and off-base they must be deliberate. Why else would he spend us into bankruptcy and lower our flag of freedom?

Obama’s foreign policy is a moral and intellectual outrage. People in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in that region seek liberty and need help. But from Obama they get flabby babble that means nothing or is too little, too late and grudging. He is condemning whole populations to further enslavement — and pushing millions of people into the arms of bin Laden, thereby pointing a gun right back at America’s head. …

Obama is as a matter of principle reluctant to interfere with the evil plans of despots — not even the mullahs in Iran who threaten nuclear holocaust — but he does not hesitate to impose harmful, downright bizarre “solutions” on innocent Americans.

He spent trillions of dollars to create a mountain of debt and a few temporary make-work jobs — but, guess what? The debt must be repaid with tax increases that will destroy millions of real private-sector jobs for years to come. Smart move, Barack! …

Obama talks airily about creating “green jobs,” but what he’s really doing is outlawing carbon fuels and destroying all the high-paying jobs in America’s manufacturing sector.

Through the combination of stultifying regulations, Obama-created high energy prices (gas may soon hit $5) and the sheer in terrorem effect of his continued presence in the White House, the president is “resetting” America’s economy to operate at a low GDP growth rate that for the foreseeable future is insufficient to provide jobs for our growing population.

Unless Republicans quickly succeed in cutting back federal spending and downsizing government — despite Obama’s opposition — and unless they repeal ObamaCare, Americans face a bleak future of massive tax increases, lower living standards, government-run and rationed health care — and a gradual loss of personal freedom. …

Obama traduces the truth daily and has already done more damage to the U.S. than Nixon, Carter and Clinton combined — and the worst may be yet to come. The man is a public menace who should be kept under political quarantine.

Better still, impeached and removed from office. Beyond that – is there a punishment that would fit what he has done?

Believers in God speak of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, hurricanes and other such natural events as “acts of God”. Funny thing is, they still maintain that their God is good, the very essence of Goodness. Plainly enough to us, if there were a God killing people, ruining their lives, wrecking their homes, dooming them to hunger, cold, loss, and sickness in Japan right now by earthquake and tsunami, he would be an evil power.

For us who do not believe in divine control of the universe, what is happening in Japan is not a moral evil but a natural disaster. Nature is not a thinking thing. It has no moral responsibility. There is no point in criticizing it. Being  good and bad has to do with moral decisions, which are human and only human. What human beings do must be judged, not what nature does.

It is for this reason that we say the cold-blooded murder of five people in Samaria, the victims of human viciousness, needs our thought more than does the plight of tens of thousands of earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, regardless of how much our emotions may be moved by one or the other.

Udi Fogel, 36, his wife Ruth, 35, and their children Yoav, 11, Elad, 4 and Hadas, 3 months were all stabbed to death in the early hours of Saturday March 12.

Can there be any reasonable doubt that the killings were carried out by a Palestinian or more than one Palestinian?

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is ostensibly the keeper of law and order on the “West Bank” which includes Samaria. The PA, which is Fatah in a suit, has received billions of US tax-payers’ money – at least $500 million per annum. Its  law enforcers are equipped and trained by the US. And where else does the money go? To raise generations hating Israelis and all Jews, teaching that the killing of Jews is a high moral duty, and to attain the “martyrdom” of suicide while doing so is the highest of moral achievements. That is what the US tax-payer is subsidizing.

From RedState:

For years, the left wing foreign policy establishment has rapturously promoted the ‘Palestinians’ as the cause célèbre of our national security interests. Despite their unyielding commitment to terror, these supercilious ‘wizards of smart’ have credulously identified the creation of a ‘Palestinian’ state as the consummate solution to all geo-political problems. They posit that upon creation of a 22nd Arab state and 2nd Palestinian state (the first being Jordon), the culture of terror would cease and we would all experience peace in our time. …

To that end, congress has been cajoled into authorizing billions of dollars in foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). In addition, we have equipped and trained their armed forces with the best our military has to offer. This travesty is justified as integral to strengthening the “Palestinian people” and the “moderate PA leadership” in their alleged battle against the “extremist” Hamas. Those of us with more than a superficial understanding of the Middle East and Islamo-fascism, have always known the PA to be indistinguishable from Hamas. After all, the PA, otherwise known as the Fatah, was the catalyst in terror under the leadership of Yasser Arafat long before Hamas arrived on the scene.

The barbaric massacre of a family of five … should dispel the fallacy of the moderate Palestinian even in the eyes of their fatuous promoters. Here are the sickening details of the massacre:

Between 22:20 and 22:30 the terrorists entered the house through the living room picture window, did not notice the 6-year-old boy sleeping on the couch and continued on to the bedroom where they slashed the throats of the father and newborn [three months old] baby who were sleeping there. The mother came out of the bathroom and was stabbed on its threshold. The evidence shows that she tried to fight the terrorists.

They then slashed the throat of the 11-year old-son who was reading in bed. They did not notice the 2-year old asleep in his bed, but murdered the 3-year old with two stabs to his heart. After that, they locked the door, exited through the window and escaped.

So who committed this atrocity, Hamas? Nope. They always blithely claim responsibility for such attacks, yet have been silent in this instance. …

After the “Imad Mughniyeh” cell [of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade] assumed responsibility for the attack on Saturday, the organization released a statement saying that killing children is not part of their ideological views.

And there are those who will believe that lie, so the subventions from the US will continue without President Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton having a moment’s uneasiness of conscience – if either of them even possesses such a moral faculty, which we seriously doubt.

This article by Jillian Becker and C.Gee appeared first at Front Page Magazine yesterday, March 9, 2011.

If the Palestinians unilaterally declare a State of Palestine this year as they say they will, everything changes. This is not the first time they have announced such an intention: twelve years ago they proposed the same thing but took it no further. This time it seems they mean to do what they say, and if they do, all resolutions, agreements, proposals made in the past for the ending of the Arab-Israeli conflict by negotiation become instantly irrelevant. Resolution 242, Oslo, the Road Map … all will be dead.

The UN Security Council Resolution 242, pursuant to which the parties were to negotiate a settlement, envisaged the establishment of borders within which Israelis should be able to live in peace. Forty-four years have passed, and Israel’s borders are still not fixed and Israelis still do not live in peace.

The Oslo Accords called for a five-year transitional period in which Israel would withdraw forces from occupied territories and accept the creation of a Palestinian Authority in exchange for security undertakings by the Palestinians. This arrangement was supposed to lead to a permanent peace settlement. The agreement was signed September 17, 1993. More than seventeen years later a peace settlement is no nearer.

The Road Map for Peace – “a performance-based roadmap to a permanent two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict” – was put forward by “the Quartet” of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, on September 17, 2002. More than eight years have passed and the conflict continues.

There have also been the failed Camp David and Taba Summits – July 2000 and January 2001 – which were likewise concerned with Israel’s borders. And the Arab Peace Initiative, 2002 and 2007, had the same aims and met with the same failure.

Now the establishment of a State of Palestine, recognized by many if not all other countries, means there will be no more of all that. No more discussion of the “right of return” of Arab refugees. No more “land for peace”. And no more negotiations under international auspices over where borders should be drawn.

The Palestinians want to declare a state without defining their borders. Temporarily, they say, they will claim all the territory of erstwhile Mandate Palestine outside the armistice lines of 1949, drawn when Israel survived the invasion of Arab armies and won its War of Independence. (These lines are commonly referred to as “the 1967 borders”, meaning those Israel had until it fought off invasion in the Six Day War of June 1967, and expanded its territory by conquest.)

Why only temporarily? With those frontiers, wouldn’t the Palestinians have all the territory the world considers they have a right to?

Oh, yes. And that’s what they fear. If they accept those borders as permanent, they will have accepted Israel’s permanent borders too. They will have accepted the existence of the State of Israel, so there would be no pretext for refusing peace. And that is what they have resisted doing all these years since the Arabs rejected Resolution 181 of November 1947 which offered a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel and went to war instead.

In order to have peace, Israel went on proposing the creation of a Palestinian state as an inducement to the Arabs to agree on secure borders. Over and over again, the Palestinians balked. In all the years that they have been negotiating under Resolution 242, the very last thing the Palestinians wanted was an agreement on borders.

The boundaries they will declare for their state are temporary not because they are willing to concede territory in negotiation, but for the very opposite reason: because they want all the territory. They want their state to consist of Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and Israel – the whole of the country that is now Israel. Israel will be dissolved in the State of Palestine. It will be abolished. That is what the Arabs have always wanted and continue to want – the abolition of the State of Israel.

It is glaringly obvious that what Israel needs to do is define and declare its own borders now. But surprisingly is seems that the Israeli government is not thinking of making that vital move. If the news out of Israel is to be believed, they don’t seem to be considering the implications of the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, and so cannot grasp the fact that with it everything changes.

They are allowing the Palestinian Authority to dangle them on a string. But why would Israel allow itself to be kept dangling while the Palestinians decide where their state will be and, therefore, where Israel will be – especially since Israel knows perfectly well that the ultimate intention of the Arab side is to wipe it off the map? Why are Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government waiting, as though in shocked disbelief or denial, for the PA to act? Do they not believe that the State of Palestine will be declared? Do they think it will not happen because the US will veto it in the Security Council? True, the Obama administration would have a hard time from Congress and American public opinion if it did not oppose the unilateral declaration, but its veto cannot be relied on. Only under heavy pressure from both parties in Congress was it reluctantly used against the recent Security Council resolution condemning Jewish settlements as illegal.

This is the moment for the Israelis finally to decide for themselves on their own frontiers, having earned that right with victory in three defensive wars. They should declare them to be permanent. Nothing within them would be negotiable. Israel would offer all those within its borders residency or citizenship, but it would not be required to let in any citizens of a foreign state. There could be no question of a “right of return” for Palestinians. This is the time, now, before the Palestinians declare their state – and even if they do not – for Israel to draw the line: this far and no further. This is where we are; whom we let in is our business; how we protect ourselves is in our hands, not our enemies’.

There could be no more talk then of “occupation” and so none of a “right of resistance”. The territories brought within Israeli sovereignty would be part of Israel. Any insurrection from people within the state would be dealt with according to Israeli law.

If there are Jewish settlements left out of the declared borders of Israel, the residents can decide whether they want to stay where they are and live in Palestine (a risky choice, and one that the Palestinians may not allow them), or move to Israel. Equally, Arab citizens of Israel should be free to stay or move.

Once Israel has defined and declared its borders, and asserted control over them, its security will be in its own hands and no longer held hostage in negotiations. Any future dispute over borders with neighboring states will need to be settled the way border disputes between states are always settled: by diplomacy or war. The issue will no longer be concerned with population majorities, no longer clouded by perceptions that superior force used against irregular militants is illegal. It will be state against state. If Israel is attacked, its defense will be legitimate and seen to be legitimate.

Meanwhile the Palestinians can get on with the business of building institutions for their state without being able to claim that the presence of Jews in settlements interferes with its viability. The institutions of statehood put in place by the Palestinians will determine the viability of the Palestinian state, not the presence of Jewish settlements. The talk of wobbly frontiers round disconnected cantons, the cry of “Bantustan” and “ghetto”, the complaint over “viability”, raised as a pretext not to accept borders, will have to come to a stop.

It may be that the Palestinians will find good governance and economic success sufficient to dull the desire to undo the Naqba (their “disaster” of 1948, when Israel came into existence). Until then, let the Palestinians have their state, and, if they choose, continued war with Israel; but they will have to bring the war to Israel’s borders. It will no longer be plausible to call it a war of “liberation” – and that might mean that it will pall as a pet cause for international humanitarians. In any case, the likelihood of a Palestinian state making war alone on Israel is not high. That Iran might join it is another story.

There is no power greater than brain power, and Israel has it.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Antitank rockets … had been the bane of the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) Armored Corps. Until now, the answers had been increasingly thick steel protective plates for the tanks to literally dull the blow. But improved rockets proved essentially able to penetrate any shield and there are limits to how much armor can be piled on a tank without impeding its movement.

Realizing how deadly portable hollow-pipe devices can be, both Hamas and Hezbollah stocked up on them, amassing colossal arsenals. In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, dozens of Israeli tanks were struck, 19 crewmen were killed and others wounded.

But while Israel’s enemies were arming themselves to the teeth, Israel’s scientists … were busy re-accentuating the country’s qualitative military edge, which had sometimes appeared to be fading.

They have invented a new missile interceptor called Trophy.

The first time it was used in the field, this is what happened:

It happened so quickly and functioned so flawlessly that the IDF tank crews doing routine duties last Tuesday near the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip frontline didn’t even notice anything unusual.

They didn’t immediately realize that they had just witnessed history in the making and that the lives of a fourman crew had been spared when the miniature Trophy system, fixed onto all tanks in the Gaza sector, recognized that a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) had been launched at one of the tanks.

Trophy intercepted the RPG with a neutralizer and blew up the incoming projectile in mid-air, with no harm wrought to either the tank or to the corpsmen in its belly.

(Pronounced cor-men, President Obama.)

The system quickly reloads in a fully automated process. It’s “smart” enough to hold fire if an RPG is about to miss its target. Moreover, the explosion it sets off is so small that friendly-fire casualties are highly unlikely.

The Trophy is perceived as the harbinger of the future in ground warfare, being the first operational active defense system, and capable of granting Israel a new strategic advantage.

Trophy will be available to Israel’s allies.

The Trophy’s premiere matters not only for Israel but globally. This was the first time that antitank fire had been successfully intercepted under real combat zone conditions, as distinct from controlled trials. The implications both to Israel and its allies cannot be overestimated.

Rocketry that is easy to carry is a favorite weapon for terrorists and a whole host of irregulars [such as] the roadside-ambushers in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Trophy could radically alter the balance of power on both the Lebanese and Gaza fronts and it could become crucial for US and allied forces battling al-Qaida and associated insurgents.

And there’s more to come:

[Trophy] is not alone. In the works is the Iron Fist, an antimissile defense that is being custom-designed for armored personnel carriers. Its jamming capabilities can swerve an oncoming rocket off course, or it can detonate it with shock waves.

Lots more is being concocted in Israeli labs, workshops and testing grounds. Despite our proven penchant for fault-finding and self-deprecation, this is a fitting occasion for unstinting collective pride. Our defenses and those who man them are, mercifully, a little more secure today in the face of our enemies.

It seems likely then that those massive stockpiles of heavy pipes, those colossal arsenals of RPGs, so painfully assembled in Gaza by smuggling pieces through tunnels, will soon have no more value than any old pile of scrap metal. Unless Hamas puts them to use against fellow Arabs, which is more than likely.

The West, it seems, has lost interest in the crimes of Communist Russia now that the Cold War is over. But documents from a smuggled Soviet archive throw light not only on the past but also on the present.

Claire Berlinski  has been examining them. She writes in City Journal:

These documents … were available to anyone who wanted to consult them. But nobody did. Publishers were indifferent. Only a fraction of the documents had been translated into English. This was, I argued, a symptom of the world’s dangerous indifference to the enormity of Communist crimes.

One thing that the documents make clear is that the Soviet Union sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. Those who tried to convey this information during the Cold War to governments, politicians, foreign ministries, the media and academics, were met for the most part with a refusal even to entertain the possibility.  (I was one who tried and came up against a wall of denial – JB.]

It is one thing to know abstractly … that the Soviets sponsored terrorism in the Middle East. It is another to read a newly translated memorandum from longtime KGB head Yuri Andropov to Communist Party general secretary Leonid Brezhnev requesting authorization to fund a detailed plan by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to kill civilians around the world:

In a confidential conversation at a meeting with the KGB resident in Lebanon in April this year, [PFLP official] Wadia Haddad outlined a prospective program of sabotage and terrorism by the PLFP [sic]. . . . The PLFP is currently preparing a number of special operations, including strikes against large oil storage installations in various countries, . . . the destruction of oil tankers and super-tankers, actions against American and Israeli representatives in Iran, Greece, Ethiopia, Kenya, an attack on the Diamond center in Tel Aviv, etc. . . . We feel it would be feasible, at the next meeting, to give a generally favorable response to Wadia Haddad’s request. …

The documents provide proof that the Russians paid for world-wide anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations:

Also interesting is a document suggesting the pains taken by the KGB to ensure the eruption of “spontaneous” global demonstrations against Israel. According to the KGB’s estimates, spontaneously outraged Muslims cost approximately a quarter-rupee apiece: “The KGB station in India is capable of organizing a protest demonstration at the U.S. Embassy to India, with up to 20,000 Muslims participating. The expenses for organizing the demonstration would amount to 5,000 Indian rupees and be covered from the funds allocated by the CPSU Central Committee for special measures in India in 1969–1971.”

The Russians were active in stirring up terrorist rebellion and promoting Communist movements in South America:

That there was scarcely a miserable group of miscreants on the planet that the Soviets did not, in some fashion, fund, train, and encourage is vaguely known now by some; it should be widely known by all. … In a 1980 document .. the secretariat of the Central Committee resolves “to grant the request of the leadership of the Communist Party of El Salvador and task the Ministry of Civil Aviation with arranging, in September–October 1980, a shipment of 60–80 tons of small arms and ammunition of Western manufacture from Hanoi to Havana, for the Cuban comrades to transfer it to our Salvadoran friends.”

They sponsored propaganda against the United States to exploit deceptively the issue of racism. The documents show that Soviet support for the Civil Rights movement in America was not provided out of principle but entirely cynically as a Cold War ploy:

Above all, the documents suggest that the most enduringly pernicious fruit of the Soviet Union was its propaganda. The cliché view of the United States as a nation whose foreign policy may best be understood as an expression of racism — an interpretation that continues to hinder American efforts to do the world any good — largely emerged thanks to the Soviet Union’s energetic efforts, as a 1970 document details:

Because the rise of negro protest in the USA will bring definite difficulties to the ruling classes of the USA and will distract the attention of the Nixon administration from pursuing an active foreign policy, we would consider it feasible to implement a number of measures to support this movement and to assist its growth.

Therefore it is recommended to utilize the possibilities of the KGB in African countries to inspire political and public figures, youth, trade union and nationalist organizations to issue petitions, requests and statements to the UN, U.S. embassies in their countries and the U.S. government in defense of the rights of American negroes. To publish articles and letters accusing the U.S. government of genocide in the press of various African countries. Employing the possibilities of the KGB in New York and Washington, to influence the “Black Panthers” to address appeals to the UN and other international bodies for assistance in bringing the U.S. government’s policy of genocide toward American negroes to an end.

The archive has contemporary relevance because they draw “an impressive picture of a world-wide terrorist network, and leave one in no doubt that the Soviet Union deserves all the discredit for the emergence of international terrorism as a major factor in global politics.”

Almost all the terrorist activity throughout the world between the late 1960s and the turn of the century was in the name of left-wing causes, and was promoted in one way or another by the Soviet Union, if not directly by funding and the supply of arms, at the very least by political support in international forums, chiefly the United Nations, and through influence on socialist parties in Europe and “national liberation” movements in the Third World.

Islamic terrorism began with the hijacking of civil aircraft by Palestinians under Arafat’s orders in 1970. He was leader of the PLO, an organization consisting of a number of factions including the PFLP – the Soviet’s foot in the Palestinian door.

In the light of what the documents prove, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Islam’s terrorist war against America and the non-Islamic world in general is an extension of the Cold War. The evil that Communist Russia did lives after it.

Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules Gaza,  is a creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, so it’s not surprising that it’s taking advantage of the failure of government in Egypt.

This comes from DebkaFile:

Gunmen of Hamas’s armed wing, Ezz e-Din al Qassam, crossed from Gaza into northern Sinai Sunday, Jan. 30 to attack Egyptian forces … They acted on orders from Hamas’ parent organization, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood … to open a second, Palestinian front against the Mubarak regime. …

Hamas gunmen went straight into battle with Egyptian Interior Ministry special forces (CFF) in the southern Egyptian-controlled section of the border town of Rafah and the Sinai port of El Arish. Saturday, Bedouin tribesmen and local Palestinians used the mayhem in Cairo to clash with Egyptian forces at both northern Sinai key points and ransack their gun stores. …

Hamas terrorists aim to follow this up by pushing Egyptian forces out of the northern and central regions of the peninsula and so bring Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip under Palestinian control. Hamas would then be able to break out of the Egyptian blockade of the enclave and restore its smuggling routes in full. …

For the last 30 years there has been a multinatinal force posted in the area to ensure that Sinai remains peaceful. Now for the first time it is needed to fulfil its mission and keep the peace as hostilities erupt.

So what exactly is it doing? It is going away. It is being withdrawn.

The  Multinational Force & Observers (MFO), most of whose members are Americans and Canadians, are on maximum alert at their northern Sinai base, while they wait for US military transports to evacuate them to US bases in Europe.

This force was deployed in Sinai in 1981 for peacekeeping responsibilities and the supervision of the security provisions of the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel under which the peninsula was demilitarized except for Egyptian police. Ending the MFO’s mission in Sinai after thirty years knocks down a key pillar propping up the relations of peace between Egypt and Israel.

Early Sunday, the Egyptian army quietly began transferring armored reinforcements including tanks through the tunnels under the Suez from Egypt proper eastward to northern Sinai in effort to drive the Hamas forces back. The Egyptian troop presence in Sinai, which violates the terms of the peace treaty, has not been mentioned by either of the peace partners. Our Jerusalem sources report the Netanyahu government may have tacitly approved it.

The people of Gaza could seize this moment to overthrow the tyranny of Hamas. Will they? Right now no development in that region is predictable.

Afterword; The Egyptian military is reported to have re-sealed the Gaza border. Mubarak is reported to have fled to Sharm el-Sheikh in southern Sinai.

While the greater part of the Arab World is in upheaval over issues of poverty, hunger, and oppression, fury flares also in the “Holy Land” over the unlikely accusation that the Palestine Authority, led by the politically impotent Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), has conceded too much to Israel in “peace-process” negotiations.

We hadn’t been aware that Palestinian leaders had ever conceded anything – not at least in practice. The whole idea since the ill-advised Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, was that there would be an exchange of “land for peace”. Israel delivered land – shifting every Israeli resident out of Gaza – but did not get peace. It got rockets, suicide bombers, and an intensified world-wide campaign to delegitimize its existence.

The accusation that the PA has betrayed the Palestinian cause has arisen out of the publication of some 1600 leaked documents from “peace-process” negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The Palestine Papers, as they are called, were given by a person or persons unnamed to al-Jazeera, which gave them to the Guardian newspaper (or so it is said).

Both al-Jazeera and the Guardian are heavily biased on the side of the Palestinians. Or to put it more accurately, they are both frantically devoted to the cause of the Palestinians, and passionately against the existence of the state of Israel. They favor the uncompromising and murderous Hamas leadership to that of the PA (which is the older terrorist organization, Fatah, dressed in a suit.)

You can read what al-Jazeera has to say about the Palestine Papers here. It believes they prove that Israel and America negotiated in bad faith, and the PA conceded too much land to Israel and dropped the sacred demand for the “return of  the Palestinian refugees”.

The Guardian pounced upon the documents in a flush of Schadenfreude. You can read the Guardian’s spin on them here. It believes they prove Israel’s intransigence in the face of Palestinian generosity.

As we are heavily biased on the side of Israel, we prefer this view of the affair by Noah Pollak at Commentary-contentions:

You wouldn’t expect Al-Jazeera and the Guardian newspaper in Britain to do anything but spin the “Palestine Papers” — the leaked transcripts of late Bush administration negotiations between Israeli, Palestinian, and American officials — to the max. And so they have, today, with shocked responses from foreign-policy types. Indeed, an editor at Foreign Policy magazine went so far as to declare on Twitter that the “two state solution is dead” as a result.

But the reality of the papers themselves turns out to be incredibly boring. Yes, during the months surrounding the Annapolis summit in 2008, there were negotiations. Yes, these negotiations concerned issues such as borders, Jerusalem, refugees, security, and settlements. Yes, the two sides discussed land swaps that would enable Israel to retain major settlement blocs. Yes, in private, the Palestinians acknowledged that the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem is not going to be handed over to them and that Israel will not consent to being flooded with millions of Arab refugees. Yes, in private, the negotiators treated each other with respect and even graciousness. No, the talks did not succeed. This is news?

And we find this from The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs interesting:

With the “peace process” a shambles, someone wants to show the Palestinians as moderates, taking “risks for peace” against a nasty, intransigent Israel. Who? … The Guardian itself tells a story in which the British government is strongly implicated.

The leaked material came from a unit called the, “Palestinian negotiation support unit (NSU), which has been the main technical and legal backup for the Palestinian side in the negotiations. The British government has heavily funded the unit. Other documents originate from inside the PA’s extensive U.S.- and British-sponsored security apparatus. The Israelis, Americans and others kept their own records, which may differ in their accounts of the same meetings.”  …

So the British government (read British intelligence) paid for and organized support of the Palestinians in negotiations and The Guardian announces up front that American and Israeli records of the same meetings may be different. Who knew the British were so heavily involved? Why were they and why would their records be different if everyone was in the same room speaking the same language – English – according to The Guardian. Either concessions were offered or they weren’t.

We’re betting they weren’t. [The implication here being that at least some of the papers are British forgeries – JB.]

The most obvious outcome of the leaks has been to enhance the already bloody rivalry among Palestinian groups. Fatah called the documents lies, but Hamas called Abu Mazen and Fatah traitors for giving away Palestinian assets. There were riots in Ramallah yesterday.

The lives of Fatah leaders, especially Abu Mazen’s, are now in danger.

*

C. Gee read the relevant papers and writes:

In countering the Al Jazeera/Guardian revelations one does not need to hypothesize that the documents are a hoax. They can be genuine and still not prove that the Palestinians gave “concessions”; that these concessions were taken to Israel; that Israel refused them; that they were not abandoned by the Palestinians themselves; or would not be abandoned during negotiations when push came to shove. As far as I can see, the documents do not provide sufficient evidence of any of this, let alone all of it. Without that evidence the story of intransigent, duplicitous Israel and beleaguered, earnest Abbas fails. As does any story that Abbas has betrayed his cause.

The characterization of the positions as “concessions” forming an offer made and rejected by the Israelis is a story put upon the Papers by Al Jazeera. What motivated Al Jazeera to concoct that spin is not too hard to guess at, but one does not need to examine motives to show the spin. The documents themselves do not support the story.

In fact the documents could be given an altogether different spin: Abbas, as leader of Fatah (and that is what he is leader of, not the Palestinian people) never deviated from the bad faith demanded by his organization in his conducting of peace negotiations with Israel: negotiate, but never sign away our rights.

Were I a newspaper looking into the story put out by Al Jazeera, I would like to see:

• the documents where the claim is made that they took the concessions to the Israelis, then verification of this in records of the negotiations with the Israelis from all sources
• documents where the claim is made that the Israelis turned them down, and when
• documents where the Palestinians explain on what grounds the Israelis turned them down, then verification and cross-checking of these Palestinian claims with other statements by the Palestinian negotiators and with Israeli records
• an evaluation of how the ‘Negotiating Support Unit‘ is constituted, what its political role is and whether the minutes reflect what was actually said, or a glossed account which positions the speakers – and the unit – correctly for the historical record. (On reading minutes of this Unit, one gets the impression that one is witnessing a soviet committee at work: each comrade is afraid that every other comrade might catch him deviating from the party line and denounce him and displace him. There is none of the candor one might expect among negotiating advisors and their negotiators, and certainly no unambiguous adoption of “concessions”. When AM says “it is illogical” to demand the return of a million refugees, he is saying that it is a pointless negotiating demand, not that it is a concession, not that he has agreed to forfeit the right of return. Everybody in the room would use and understand such code. We see the typical inner workings of a totalitarian system. One can sympathize with AM’s outrage that the very thing he tried to avoid – an interpretation of his statements that he is betraying the cause – has come about.)
• an independent translator verify that the Al Jazeera translations of the documents are correct.

One may step outside the documents to discount the Al Jazeera story. The recent history of negotiations shows time and again that an agreement, with hard compromises from both sides, is in the bag, that it merely awaits signatures, only to have it be abandoned. So far, the evidence points to Palestinian balking. The reasons given are always that the positions described as “concessions” by the Palestinians (and “demands” by the Israelis, which, given the power balance, is perverse) are too onerous and conflict with the inalienable rights of the Palestinians: to their ancestral homeland; to the right of return; to resistance. Sometimes they give procedural reasons: they never the saw the maps, the maps were given to them late, the maps shown did not give as much land as the Israelis claimed, the settlements after all take up too much space.

One explanation for the Palestinian bosses’ behavior is that any “concessions” resulting in an actual peace would be justification for their rivals in Fatah and for Hamas (a rival organization) to topple them, on behalf of that useful, angry, imaginary electorate, Arab public opinion. If they wish to stay in power, they must fulfill the statesman role expected of them by the world and negotiate for a state, but never deliver it, for fear of their rivals ousting or even offing them. The negotiating process must be justified to the rivals (as avatars of Arab public opinion) as part of the “resistance”. This is supported by recent statements by the Palestinians in the wake of the scandal, that the leaks put in jeopardy their successes in “isolating Israel diplomatically”. It is in their interest (which is not to say it might not also be in the Israeli interest, but for different reasons) to spin out the peace process, but never sign a peace treaty. Why else would the Palestinians now be working towards a unilateral declaration of a state with recognition by the UN or individual nations?