Hamas: Busier than Ever in the West Bank Nadav Shragai Israel Hayom, Aug. 21, 2019
The same week the Palestinian Authority doubled the salary of Hamas member Hussam Kawasme, who is in prison for planning the abduction and murder of three Jewish teens in Gush Etzion in the summer of 2014 – as revealed by Palestinian Media Watch – IDF soldier Dvir Sorek, 18, was murdered in the same area. Sorek’s murder took place exactly five years after the kidnapping that shook the entire nation, and now authorities are looking into whether Hamas in Gaza and its “terrorism headquarters” were involved in this latest incident, at least tangentially.
For now, there are no proven links between Hamas in Gaza and the two suspects arrested for Sorek’s murder, Hamas operative Nazir Saleh Khalil and his cousin, Qasem Araf Khalil, both from the Atafra clan.
According to the Shin Bet security agency, two other Atafra clan members, Yazan and Saif, were recruited at the behest of Hamas in Gaza by Awis Rajoub to carry out a terrorist attack at a shopping mall, on a bus, or on a train. They were supposed to pick their target and prepare the explosives that were to be used. Rajoub was being handled from Gaza. He maintained contact with his handlers using a telephone that he picked up at a pharmaceutical warehouse in Ramallah. The phone’s password was sewn into a pair of pants that he was given by an elderly woman from Gaza who was allowed into Israel to receive medical treatment. The Shin Bet says that Hamas in Gaza and its branch in Judea and Samaria, which is made up almost entirely of terrorists released in the deal to free captive soldier Gilad Schalit and which played a part in the kidnapping of the three teens in 2014, never stops trying to execute terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria and within the Green Line. Its activity is directed not only from Gaza, but also from Lebanon, Turkey, and Qatar, and in the past few months, Iranian money has also entered the picture. Last week’s events on the Temple Mount, in which Hamas was also involved, provide the organization with an opportunity to set dozens of potential terrorists and terrorist attacks in motion.
In the past few weeks alone, the Shin Bet exposed a number of Hamas cells that have been planning abductions, shootings, and stabbings, like the one that claimed the life of Sorek, under orders from Gaza. They were also plotting against the PA itself. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] ______________________________________________________
Why Palestinians Do Not Trust Their Leaders Khaleb Abu Toameh Gatestone Institute, July 11, 2019
While Palestinian leaders continue to dedicate their time to vilifying Israel and the US administration, the Palestinian public seems to have more pressing matters on its mind. Take, for example, the debilitating and dangerous lack of public freedoms and the corruption under the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian leaders, however, appear oblivious to the urgent concerns of their people. Evidently, Palestinian leaders do not grasp that the Palestinian public cares a great deal more about being treated like human beings by their own leaders than about anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric. Thus, the gap between Palestinian leaders and their people appears to widen by the moment, and the Palestinians’ dissatisfaction with the performance of these leaders grows at a parallel pace. The number of Palestinians who heeded the Palestinian Authority’s call to take to the streets in protest against the recent US-led “Peace to Prosperity” economic conference in Bahrain was relatively small.
Although the Palestinian leaders were hoping that tens of thousands of people would participate in the rallies against the US and Israel, it was evident that the number of participants was much lower than expected. In fact, most of the protesters in the West Bank were members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction or employees of his government. Similarly, the number of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who are heeding Hamas’s call to head to the border with Israel for the weekly protests is in steady decline. The protests, which began in March 2018, are organized by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip under the title: “Great March of Return.”
The decreasing number of Palestinians who are willing to go to the border and endanger their own lives by catapulting stones, firebombs and other lethal objects at Israeli soldiers is a positive sign; it is possible that the Palestinian public in the Gaza Strip is getting fed up with Hamas’s empty arguments and rhetoric.
Two recent public opinion polls have revealed the depths of Palestinians’ mistrust for their leaders. Both polls, conducted in March and June 2019 by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), showed that an overwhelming majority of 80% of the Palestinian public believes that Palestinian institutions are infested with corruption. The results of the polls also showed that nearly 60% of Palestinian respondents want Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, and that most people are not satisfied with his performance. The June poll, covering 1,200 Palestinians, showed that 67% believe that financial corruption is deeply rooted in Palestinian institutions. The results of the poll also showed that most Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are afraid to criticize their leaders. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] ______________________________________________________
Palestinian Education Mirrors Palestinian Vision Yoram Ettinger The Ettinger Report, Aug. 23, 2019
Palestinian terrorists are graduates of the tightly-controlled Palestinian education system (K-12), which has forged the core beliefs, norms and values of the Palestinian society. Moreover, the Palestinian education system has reflected the worldview of its architects – Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas.
Historical experience has also played a major role in shaping the identity of all societies, but it is presented (in democratic societies) or misrepresented (in non-democratic societies) by the education system, which thus enhances or corrupts the foundations of the next generation.
Furthermore, the Palestinian education system is the most authentic reflection of the Palestinian reality, vision and tactics, which are camouflaged by the Palestinian “screen saver” of diplomatic pronouncements, briefings and interviews.
The moderately-packaged Palestinian “screen saver” aims to mislead and sooth the concerns of Western policy-makers and public opinion-shapers, who are driven by well-intentioned wishful-thinking and oversimplification. The West is eager to produce peaceful-coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians, in defiance of the Palestinian reality, and irrespective of the fact that peaceful-coexistence has yet to be established among Arabs/Muslims (“believers”), let alone between “believers” and the “infidel” in “the abode of Islam.” Therefore, hate-education, on the one hand, and peaceful-coexistence, on the other hand, constitute a classic oxymoron. It highlights a major pitfall of Western policy-makers, who have grossly misunderstood and underestimated the dominant role played by Palestinian hate-education and incitement.
Western policy-makers have ignored the significance of Palestinian hate-education, which documents the intolerant, violent, immoral, terroristic, subversive and anti-Western profile of the proposed Palestinian state.
Western policy-makers tend to ignore a major prerequisite to a constructive peace process: the uprooting – and not merely trimming – of hate-education. An April 2019 “IMPACT-se” study of the newly-restructured, more radical and more Islamist Palestinian school curriculum, conducted by Hebrew University Prof. Eldad Pardo, a veteran of Islamic and Middle East studies and a top expert on Palestinian curriculum, provides an elaborate documentation of the nature of the Palestinian education system.
For example:
*Urging Palestinian youth to follow in the footsteps of Dalal Mughrabi, the female terrorist who participated in the 1978 PLO attack on two Israeli buses, murdering 38 civilians, including 13 children and injuring 72. According to the textbooks (5th grade Arabic Language volume 2, pages 51-54 and 9th grade Social Studies volume 1, page 53), “Dalal Mughrabi’s struggle portrays challenge and heroism, making her immortal in our hearts and minds…. Arab women, such as Dalal Mughrabi who led the 1978 operation, had a prominent role in…leading guerrilla operations against occupation….” Mughrabi is heralded as a martyr role model, and is commemorated, by the Palestinian Authority, through the naming of public schools and youth camps after her; a series of “Dalal Mughrabi seminars;” annual anniversaries of her death; a Dalal Mughrabi public square in al-Bireh; an official plaque; a women’s center in Bourqa, etc. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] ______________________________________________________
Who’s Responsible for Denying Hadar Goldin a ‘Decent Burial’? Jonathan S. Tobin Algemeiner, Aug. 4, 2019
Five years ago, Hadar Goldin, a 23-year-old Israeli soldier, was killed during Operation Protective Edge. The purpose of that campaign was to silence the barrage of Hamas rockets and missiles from Gaza into Israel, as well as to prevent the terrorist group from using tunnels for kidnapping and murder raids. At the cost of more than 2,000 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom were terrorists, and 73 Israelis (67 Israel Defense Force soldiers and six civilians) slain, as well as many thousands of wounded on both sides and devastating damage inside the Gaza Strip, a temporary halt to Hamas’ atrocities was achieved.
But for Goldin’s family, the nightmare continues. The question is, whose fault is it that their boy’s body continues to be held hostage by Hamas? The answer to that question speaks volumes about the international hypocrisy concerning Palestinian terrorism and intransigence. It also speaks to the terrible dilemma that Israel faces as it attempts to quarantine the Hamas terrorist state in Gaza without unduly harming civilians or launching another war that may not achieve more than what happened in 2014.
After UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry announced a ceasefire, Hamas gunmen ignored the call for a cessation of hostilities and attacked an Israeli patrol led by Lt. Goldin on August 1, 2014. He was killed and his body was spirited away by the terrorists. Along with the body of Oron Shaul, another Israeli soldier killed a few days earlier, and two living Israeli citizens (one an Ethiopian-Israeli and the other a Bedouin), Hamas continues to hold Goldin’s corpse hostage.
That this is a gross violation of international law, as well as of common decency, is of little concern to a group like Hamas, which uses civilians as human shields, and schools and hospitals as places to hide their fighters and munitions. But the dilemma facing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is what he can or should do to gain their release.
For five years, the Goldins have led a protest aimed at forcing someone to do something to get their boy a “decent burial.” They blame the international community that continues to enable Hamas rule in Gaza for their tragedy. And they believe that the United States and the United Nations, under whose auspices the ceasefire ruse was used to kill their son, is particularly responsible for what happened, and are frustrated that neither the world body nor the Obama or Trump administrations has been either willing or able to free their son’s body.
But the main focus of their anger has been Netanyahu. In one sense, this is a familiar story for this prime minister. Whenever an Israeli is held captive by terrorists, the country has rallied around the cause of redeeming the hostage. Such efforts are deeply rooted in Jewish tradition where the mitzvah pidyon shvuyim or “redemption of hostages,” is something that Jews have regarded as priority since ancient times. That is compounded by the way Israelis identify with any soldier held prisoner in a country where almost everyone serves. That has led Israeli governments to conduct lopsided exchanges in order to gain the freedom of Jewish hostages.
In the latest such instance in 2011, public pressure to free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier who had been held hostage since 2006, led to Netanyahu agreeing to a deal that exchanged 1,027 prisoners, including many with blood on their hands. Such deals are a gift to Hamas and demonstrate the advantage Israel’s enemies have over a country that prizes the lives of its children more than the implications of such exchanges for their security. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.] ______________________________________________________
For Further Reference:
Jerusalem Bomb Plot Underscores Ceaseless Hamas Terror Efforts: Yaakov Lappin, IPT, Aug. 13, 2019 –– Israeli security forces recently uncovered a West Bank Hamas terror cell that was in the final stages of preparing a bomb attack on Jerusalem. The episode underscores the constant threat posed by the largest Palestinian terror organization to regional security and its determination to restore its capabilities in the West Bank.
Palestinian Intelligence Warns of Possible Violent Uprising in West Bank: Elior Levy, Ynet, Aug. 19, 2019 — A Palestinian intelligence warns of a possible deterioration of security situation in the West Bank which may lead to another breakout of violent uprising and destabilize the Palestinian Authority, if the political and economic stagnation continues, according to a report seen exclusively by Ynet and its sister publication Yedioth Ahronoth.
Palestinians To Get Half-Billion Dollars From Israel In New Tax Deal:Ynet, Aug. 22, 2019 — Israel has agreed to allow the Palestinian Authority to collect at least half-billion dollars in tax money, which normally Israeli government collects on the Palestinians’ behalf, in an effort to help relieve a burgeoning economic “crisis” constraining the West Bank, a senior PA official said Thursday.
Anti-LGBT Discrimination is Now Official PA Policy: Fienna Nirenstein, JNS, Aug. 26, 2019 — After Palestinian LGBT organization al-Qaws announced that it had held a gathering in the West Bank city of Nablus earlier this month to discuss gender pluralism in the city, the group was banned by the Palestinian Authority.
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