Police nab Temple Mount terrorists
Sunday, April 07, 2013 | Israel Today Staff
Israel on Sunday revealed that its security forces recently captured a Hamas terrorist cell operating out of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
The five-man cell had been behind a string of recent stone and firebomb attacks on and around the Temple Mount. Nine Israeli police officers were wounded last month in one of the firebomb attacks.
Materials to make the firebombs were smuggled onto the Temple Mount by Arab children, whom the terrorists knew were less likely to be searched by Israeli security.
The terrorists said they were motivated by alleged Israeli efforts to “Judaize” the Temple Mount (hint: it is already Judaism’s holiest site for well over 3,000 years).
They also took issue with so-called desecration of the Koran at the Temple Mount. The incident they were referring to involved an Israeli police officer who last month moved a chair, causing a Koran to fall onto the floor. (That last sentence is not a joke.)
Israelis angered that yeshiva vandalism goes unnoticed
Sunday, April 07, 2013 | Israel Today Staff
Israeli residents of Mitzpeh Yericho, a small community between Jerusalem and the biblical town of Jericho, are angered by the government’s silence over the recent desecration of a local synagogue and study hall.
Last Thursday, locals woke to find that their synagogue and yeshiva had been broken into. The vandals destroyed books and furniture and defaced a Torah scroll.
The police and army believe that youth from a nearby Palestinian Arab village or Bedouin encampment were responsible.
A spokesperson for the community told Israel National News that there is a lot of anger over the fact that the government has all but ignored the incident, while it goes to such great lengths to express regret any time Jews are suspected of vandalizing mosques.
Israeli hackers strike back
Sunday, April 07, 2013 | Israel Today Staff
Last week international computer hackers operating under the umbrella group Anonymous threatened to “erase Israel from the Internet” in a massive coordinated attack scheduled for today. By mid-morning Sunday, that attack had largely failed, and Israeli hackers had scored some blows of their own against the foreign assailants.
There was an increase in cyber attacks against Israeli government computer systems and the websites of local banks, as well as numerous smaller websites and networks. But nearly all of those attacks were repelled by Israel’s growing network of cyber defenses.
“There is hardly any real damage,” Yitzhak Ben Yisrael of Israel’s National Cyber Bureau told the Associated Press. “Anonymous doesn’t have the skills to damage the country’s vital infrastructure.”
A number of smaller Israeli websites were defaced temporarily, and in retaliation Israeli hackers defaced the websites of Islamist groups across the region.
More impressively, Israeli hackers penetrated the website associated with the Anonymous campaign against Israel - opisrael.com. Instead of reading about Anonymous’ anti-Israel views, those visiting opisrael.com on Sunday morning were instead presented with a pro-Israel banner and a long list of facts regarding the legitimacy of Israel and the history of the Jewish people.
The Israelis were operating under the newly formed banner of the Israeli Elite Strike Force.
Palestinians: No comparison between Holocaust an ‘occupation’
Friday, April 05, 2013 | Israel Today Staff
Palestinian Arabs visiting Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum as part of a program called “Combatants for Peace” said it was a gross error to compare the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict with what the Nazis did to the Jews.
Many Palestinian propagandists and their apologists abroad like to claim that Israel’s so-called “occupation” of Judea and Samaria is a new holocaust, and that the Jews, of all people, should refrain from such behavior.
One of the Arabs visiting Yad Vashem said such comparisons are made out of angry ignorance. He and other Arab participants said they can now more clearly understand why Israel bears scars and is so focused on the security of its people.
“When you look at the background of the Jewish nation, we can try to understand your anxiety and fears. A nation that went through something like this cannot live without scars,” Ahmed al-Jaafari told Israel’s Ynet news portal. “I don’t agree with the comparison between the Holocaust and the situation in the territories, and people who make this comparison make it out of pain and anger.”
Another Arab who lost a daughter in the current conflict said it was a grave mistake and a disservice to the “Palestinian cause” to make comparisons with the Holocaust, which was a tragedy on an entirely different level.
Such statements will no doubt anger many Palestinians and be ignored by media outlets and organizations biased against the Jewish state. But most Israelis would agree that until these historical backgrounds are acknowledged and understood, there is no basis for genuine dialogue, reconciliation and coexistence.
Israel hopes world doesn’t fall for Iran nuclear ploy
Thursday, April 04, 2013 | Ryan Jones
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has ordered that his nation’s nuclear program slow down a bit in order to remain under any “red lines” that might spark a harsh reaction by the international community.
That according to US and Israeli officials cited by the Wall Street Journal this week. According to those officials, Khamenei wants to avoid any external distractions ahead of Iran’s presidential election in June, when he hopes to replace President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with someone even more in line with the thinking of Iran’s Islamic overlords.
Despite this order, UN officials this week reiterated that they believe Iran does indeed seek to build an atomic weapon.
Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was quoted in several media outlets recently as saying that Iran continues to work in secret toward the goal of fielding a nuclear bomb.
Israel is again urging the world to not fall for Iran’s ploy, which is a stalling tactic Tehran has put to great use in order to reach the point it is at now with its nuclear program.
Unfortunately, the international community seems to be itching to “fall” for such a ploy, with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton quickly declaring her “cautious optimism” over the ayatollah’s reported move.
Should the world continue to drag its feet as Iran comes closer to attaining the nuclear arms that even the UN now admits it is after, Israel might have no choice but to attack alone.
In an interview with Messianic author Joel Rosenberg, former CIA Director James Woolsey said he doesn’t believe Israel has enough sustained firepower to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program entirely, but that it could feel compelled to try if the international community continues to do next to nothing.
Should it come to that, Woolsey said that Israel has unprecedented human assets among its top national leaders who will certainly have a trick or two in mind to effectively deal with Iran.
“The one thing that gives me a little bit of optimism is that [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and [former Defense Minister Ehud] Barak are the two most experienced men in the art of unconventional warfare serving in the leadership of any country anywhere in the world,” said Woolsey.
The former CIA director continued: “These two guys are used to thinking about the art of war the way Sun Tzu told us to.”
