Archive for October, 2009
I think this article should be read by as many people as possible and I received written permission to send it in my blog by Tom Gross. Shalom from IreneBritish police to tackle UK-funded torturers on the West Bank
By Tom Gross
National Review Online Wednesday, October 28, 2009 The British government is sending police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of brutal torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers.Their mission is to set up and train a new “internal affairs” department with sweeping powers to investigate abuse and bring torturers to justice.
Today I’ll begin with a very minor subject which has surely not been mentioned in any media outside Israel - and that is “camels“. No, not the cigarettes, but real live ones which are constantly crossing the border from Egypt into Israel. Evidently every year, hundreds of camels cross the border in search of greener pastures to graze, while others are deliberately sent from Egypt to smuggle in drugs or other illicit materials. Israeli authorities are also concerned that the camels wandering into Israel from other countries could be carrying deadly diseases, like Rift Valley fever (I have no idea what that is but it doesn’t sound so good. )
“In some of the areas surrounding us, the veterinary supervision is not as stringent as it is in Israel and since diseases know no borders, we have to do all we can to prevent them from getting in,” Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture said.” Once a camel or any other animal sets foot on Israeli soil, sending them back into Egypt is not a viable option, since there is no way to prove which country these unmarked animals are from”. There is also the possibility that sending them back into Egypt could cause a diplomatic row between the two countries, so the best thing would be to prevent them entering, not an easy thing to do with such long desert borders.
Last week an explosion took place in a private house in southern Lebanon. At once all thought this was a so-called “work accident ”by the Hizbullah terrorist organization, but as they are not allowed to keep weapons south of the Litani river, they of course denied this at once, claiming that the explosion was caused by IDF (Israel defence Forces) leaving explosives behind during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. But we know this is not so, but that thousands of weapons caches have been placed in homes scattered in 160 villages in southern Lebanon,
The day after this stockpile exploded in the home of a Hizbullah operative in Tayr Filsay, near Tyre , Israeli senior defense officials said that the IDF had a video taken from an Israeli aircraft of the home, which belongs to Abdul Nasser Issa, a low-level Hizbullah operative. The blast took place at around 8 p.m. , and an hour later Hizbullah men were seen on the film carrying weapons out of the home and loading them onto a truck. In the footage, seven men are seen carrying a four-meter-long device, thought to be a Katyusha rocket or launcher. Hizbullah is thought to have more than 30,000 rockets of various ranges and sizes. The men took several hours to clear the home. For the first few hours, the area was sealed off by Hizbullah and the Lebanese army. The Israeli aircraft followed the truck as it drove about 4 km. to another village called Deir Qanoun al-Nahr. There, the truck pulled up at another home and the group of men unloaded the weapons. “Hizbullah uses civilian homes to hide its weaponry,” an IDF officer said. “This is a direct violation of UN [Security Council] Resolution 1701.
Posted in Israeli conflict, Life in Israel, Observations, anti-semitism |
Tags: explosion, Hizbullah, IDF, Lebanon, terrorists, Turkish-Israeli relationship, weapons explosion
This is a letter written by Dr. David Altman of the Netanya Academic College. He has given me written permission to use it and his name in my blog. I have shortened it slightly but left in all important points. Shalom, Irene
To the honourable Justice Richard Goldstone September 17. 2009
Your Honour,
What was in your mind, Justice Goldstone, when you became the emissary of the world’s most intractable states? What were you thinking of when you became the representative of Sudan, Syria and Libya? Sudan – a country that on a daily basis commits genocide as the world stands by, silent. Libya – a country that has no democracy and no human rights, a country that sentences innocent people to death on trumped-up charges, that sends terrorists to blow up a plane carrying hundreds of passengers, that sends terrorist ships to attack cities and innocent people in Israel. And Syria, where people have been butchered extra-judicially and without trial, a state that supports terror and the murder of individuals, joins these two in an unholy alliance.
What was in your mind, when there is a deafening silence in the face of the slaughter in Darfur, in the face of the deaths of hundreds of thousands in Sri Lanka, in the face of those killing their brothers in Afghanistan and Iraq, without any reaction from the world? What were you thinking of when they gave you a remit to investigate crimes committed by a life-affirming democratic state?
What we wish to say to you, sir, is that you are a rebellious son of a great people. We are a life-affirming nation. We are a people that loves peace and hates war. We are a people that has proven that it is ready to do much for the sake of peace and to pay a heavy price, unlike all those who surround us and desire war.Wars have always been imposed upon us, and when we have taken up arms, it has always been with tears in our eyes and out of concern for ourselves and our fellow man.We respect the rules of war – both those that have been laid down by mankind, and those that have been dictated to us by the Creator.
