Levitt Letter Extra News

By Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi and Jennifer Packer,   www.TheIsraelProject.org

Photos of Israeli naval force intercepting ship with 500 tons of arms (Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

A cargo ship filled with tons of Iranian weaponry en route to Iran-backed terror groups that was intercepted Tuesday (Nov. 3) 100 miles (161 km) from Israel’s coast provides further evidence of the Islamic Republic’s status as the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. The ship, carrying hundreds of tons of advanced weaponry and missiles,[1] including Katyusha rockets, assault rifles, mortar shells, grenades, and anti-aircraft platforms, was to be delivered to the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.[2]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday (Nov. 5) said Iran’s attempted shipment of arms to terrorists – and the Islamic Republic’s intent to kill Israeli civilians — was a war crime the UN Security Council should investigate. “Their goal was… to kill as many civilians as possible,” Netanyahu said. The weapons shipment also constitutes yet another breach of UN Security Council resolutions 1747 and 1701, which forbid the Islamic Republic from exporting or trading weapons.

Also on Nov. 3, Israeli military intelligence revealed that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas successfully tested a rocket with a range of up to 37 miles (60 km), which places Israel’s second largest city Tel Aviv within firing range.[3] Hamas also possesses other Iranian-manufactured rockets like the Fajr-3, which has a range of up to 29 miles (47 km).[4]

Since 2001, Iran-backed terrorist groups have fired over 12,000 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel.[5] Hezbollah launched over 4,000 rockets into Israel in 2006 during Israel’s defensive war against Hezbollah, also known as the Second Lebanon War, and has stockpiled more than 20,000 rockets in southern Lebanon since the end of the war.[6]

Following is important background information about Iran’s financial support of terrorism worldwide.

Iran: Leading State Sponsor of Terror Across the Globe

Iran is widely recognized as the world’s leading state sponsor of international terrorism.[7] Both directly and indirectly, Iran funds, trains and arms groups that share the regime’s stated goal of destroying Israel and the West, as well as overthrowing regimes in Muslim countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia[8]. These groups include Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas.[9] Iran also provides support to insurgent groups in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan which have inflicted casualties on American, British, Australian and other multinational forces.[10]

Iran is expanding its terror network beyond the Middle East, using Hezbollah and splinter groups of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to recruit and train sleeper cells in foreign countries.[11] The terror network that Iran has created and continues to sustain, combined with the regime’s determination to become a nuclear power, is a serious international security issue and a growing global concern.[12]

FBI officials have also noted that Hezbollah has a sizeable presence in the United States, and suspects that Hezbollah may be planning to activate sleeper cells in the New York City area.[13]

Iran poses different threats to nations and regions across the globe.

Middle East

The terrorist group Hezbollah, which operates primarily out of Lebanon, is one of Tehran’s primary weapons against Israel and Western interests in the region. Iran helped found, organize and train Hezbollah and gives the group over $200 million a year,[14] in addition to an estimated $300 million after the war with Israel in 2006.[15] It also continues to provide arms to the group,[16] despite the demands of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. [17]

Since Israel’s defensive war against Hezbollah in 2006, Iran has replenished Hezbollah’s arsenal of artillery rockets, and has supplied more advanced anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles.[18] At least 4,500 Hezbollah operatives have received intensive training from Iran.[19] In August 2009, Egypt intercepted a group of Hezbollah militant cells planning the assassination of Israel’s ambassador to Egypt, as well as its link to another group planning on targeting Israeli tourists to Jordan.[20] That same month, Egypt was hit by a barrage of mortars launched by militant Islamic groups in Gaza.[21]

Iran also supports Palestinian terror groups opposed to a peaceful solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.[22] From 1993-2006, Iran provided approximately $30 million in annual subsidies to Hamas.[23] Since Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, Iran has transferred several hundred million dollars annually to Hamas.[24] The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has trained approximately 950 Hamas terrorists in rocket and bomb construction, tactical warfare, weapons operation and sniper tactics.[25]

Iran also provides the vast majority of Hamas’ weaponry.[26] Since Israel’s defensive Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, Iran has supplied Hamas with advanced weaponry, including dozens of Iranian-produced 122mm Grad rockets which have significantly increased the range of Hamas’ rocket arsenal.[27] During the operation, the Iranians claimed that more than 70,000 Iranian college students from universities throughout Iran volunteered to serve as suicide bombers to carry out attacks against Israel. The rush of volunteerism came after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a religious decree stating that anyone who carried out an attack against Israel on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza would be considered a martyr.[28]

In 2002, the Israeli Navy intercepted “Karin A,” a ship carrying 50 tons of advanced weaponry and rockets supplied by Iran and Hezbollah that was bound for Palestinian terrorist groups through Gaza’s waterway.[29]

Iraq

In Iraq, Iran has fomented violence by giving insurgents about $3 million monthly and providing arms and training for them.[30] Iranian-supplied explosively formed penetrators (EFP’s) are a serious concern for U.S. soldiers; the weapons were responsible for 18 percent of U.S. combat deaths in the last quarter of 2006, and 30 percent in -dominated areas.[31] In July 2007, Iran planned an operation that killed five American servicemen, according to the U.S. Army.[32] Shia groups now use Fajr-3 rockets bearing the markings of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard dated 2007, and Hezbollah also uses the Fajr-3.[33] Attacks on U.S. bases have included the use of these rockets as well.[34] Iran has sought to provoke sectarian violence in Iraq, and to that end, arms Sunni groups as well.[35] Iran has sent revolutionary guard units to Iraq to train Shia militia fighters,[36] and sent explosive-laden motorcycles across the border.[37]

Afghanistan

Iran arms the Taliban’s campaign against NATO forces and civilians in Afghanistan even as it publicly supports Hamid Karzai’s government.[38] Iran provides the Taliban with 107mm mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, C-4 explosives and small arms.[39] Iran also gave the Taliban surface-to-air missiles, which they use against British troops.[40] Iran is the main supporter of Hekmatyar,[41] a major warlord and drug trafficker.

Europe and beyond

Europe serves as a popular location for Hezbollah operatives to conduct fundraising activities, accruing an estimated $198 million a year.[42] E.U. officials have identified 900 Hezbollah terrorists residing in Germany and sleeper cells in 20 E.U. nations.[43] Hezbollah cells are using key European capitals as intelligence-gathering centers. In 2008, evidence suggested Hezbollah had planned terrorist attacks in Rome and Paris, as well as the kidnapping of major figures.[44]

Iran has worked directly and through proxies, including small groups linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, to recruit potential suicide bombers to attack Israel, Europe and the United States. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has praised martyrdom as an “eternal art.”[45] The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, backed by the regime and linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has reportedly enlisted 40,000 people to carry out suicide attacks.[46]

Iran maintains terrorist training camps within its borders and abroad. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, an extra-territorial arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, operates 20 known terrorist training camps and centers.[47] Hamas, Hezbollah and groups in Iraq send fighters to camps in Iran for months and even years of intensive training. Through Hezbollah, Iran trains insurgents in Iraq.[48]

During the 1990s, Iran sent arms to the Muslim-led Bosnian government, a move violating a United Nations embargo on all sides of the civil war.[49] Additionally, between 2004 and 2007 it was reported that over 300 Iranian operatives had entered Bosnia-Herzegovina.[50]

Latin and South America

Hezbollah also carried out terrorist attacks in Argentina,[51] and killed 241 Americans in the 1983 suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.[52] On Aug. 21, Iranian President Ahmadinejad nominated Ahmad Vahidi, wanted for his part in planning the 1994 Argentinean attack that killed 85 at a Jewish community center, as defense minister.[53]

Hezbollah is very active in Venezuela, Bolivia and Uruguay, as well as other Latin American countries, seeking to plan new attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets in the continent.[54] In 2009, the anti-American Hugo Chavez of Venezuela continued to strengthen his ties with Iran.[55] Additionally, Hezbollah has been using Mexican smuggling routes, to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, in order to bring in money to finance terrorist operations.[56]

Attacks on U.S. and British citizens

In 1988, an Iran-backed terrorist organization was responsible for the kidnapping, torture and murder of Col. William Higgins, a U.S. Marine officer serving under a UN mandate in Lebanon.[57] Additionally, Iran has placed a death warrant on British author Salman Rushdie, attempted to assassinate him in 1989 and has kept a $2.5 million bounty on him.[58]

Asia

North Korea and Iran have maintained strong ties. In 2007, the two countries signed a cultural and scientific exchange plan.[59] Additionally, North Korea has shared its nuclear technology know-how with Iran[60] and North Korea has provided arms and training to Hezbollah through this relationship.[61] Such ties have also involved rocket experiments; in May 2009, a Scud missile reportedly tested by North Korea, Syria and Iran killed more than 20 people in a Syrian market.[62]

********************

Footnotes:

[1] Katz, Yaakov, “Over 60 tons of advanced arms and missiles found on vessel” The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 4, 2009,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799077483&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

[2] Katz, Yaakov, “Over 60 tons of advanced arms and missiles found on vessel” The Jerusalem Post, Nov. 4, 2009,
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1256799077483&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

[3] Waghorn, Dominic, “Hamas Rocket ‘Could Hit Tel Aviv From Gaza’,” Sky News, Nov. 4, 2009,
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Israel-Claims-Hamas-Has-Test-Fired-Rocket-That-Could-Hit-Tel-
Aviv-From-Gaza-Hamas-Is-Denying-Claims/Article/200911115433590?lpos=World_News_First_World_News_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15433590_Israel_Claims_
Hamas_Has_Test_Fired_Rocket_That_Could_Hit_Tel_Aviv_From_Gaza%2C_Hamas_Is_Denying_Claims;
Teibel, Amy, “Israel, PM accuse Iran of war crime over arms ship,” Associated Press via The Baltimore Sun, Nov. 5, 2009,
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/sns-ap-ml-israel-arms-boat,0,251054.story

[4] “Gaza rockets can now hit Tel Aviv,” UPI, Nov. 3, 2009,
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2009/11/03/Gaza-rockets-can-now-hit-Tel-Aviv/UPI-73651257283344/

[5] “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gaza Facts,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nov. 4, 2009. http://www.mfa.gov.il/GazaFacts/

[6] “Explosions at Two Hezbollah Arms Caches in villages in South Lebanon” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Oct. 14, 2009, http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hezbollah_e0142.htm;
“Behind the Headlines: The Second Lebanon War – Three years later,”  Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, July 12, 2009, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/The-Second-Lebanon-War-Three-years-later-12-Jul-2009.htm

[7] “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” U.S. Department of State, Apr. 30, 2009,
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122436.htm

[8] Mansharof, Y., “Calls in Iran to Topple Egyptian, Saudi Regimes,” Middle East Media Research Institute No. 479, Dec. 12, 2008, http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA47908

[9] O’Toole, Pam, “Rice: Iran is terrorism ‘banker’,” BBC News, Feb. 17, 2006,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4722498.stm, accessed July 7, 2006

[10] Harding, Thomas, “Taliban ‘using missiles from Iran to target British troops,” The Daily Telegraph, May 22, 2007; Gordon, Michael R.; Shane, Scott, “Behind U.S. Pressure On Iran, Long-Held Worry Over A Deadly Device In Iraq,” The New York Times, March 27, 2007

[11] Levitt, Mathew A., “Islamic extremism in Europe,” Testimony to the Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats, United States House of Representatives, April 7, 2005,
http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/lev042705.pdf

[12] Thomas, George, “Iran trains ‘ultimate martyrs,’” Christian World News, May 12, 2006,
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/CWN/051206Iran.asp;
International Institute for Strategic Studies, “Iran’s nuclear programme,” Strategic Comments, Volume 12, Issue 1, Feb. 2006

[13] Thomas, Pierre, “Some Experts Fear Hezbollah Attack in the United States,” ABC News, July 28, 2006, http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Mideast/story?id=2246657;
“Hezbollah may activate sleeper cells,” United Press International, May 22, 2006, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2006/05/22/Hezbollah-may-activate-sleeper-cells/UPI-82771148307908/

[14] “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” U.S. Department of State, Apr. 30, 2009,
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122436.htm

[15] Partlow, Joshua, “U.S.: Iran, Hezbollah Training Iraqi Militants,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/02/AR2007070200174.html?hpid=topnews

[16] Rotella, Sebastian, “In Lebanon, Hezbollah arms stockpile, bigger, deadlier,” The Los Angeles Times, May 4, 2008,http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/04/world/fg-hezbollah4

[17] U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 1701, Section 15,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4785963.stm

[18] Hughes, Robin, “Iran Replenishes Hizbullah’s Arms Inventory,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, Jan. 3, 2007

[19] Fisk, Robert, “Hizbollah turns to Iran for new weapons to wage war on Israel,” The Independent, Apr. 8, 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/hizbollah-turns-to-iran-for-new-weapons-to-wage-war-on-israel-805763.html

[20] Shiffer, Shimon, “Hezbollah suspected of setting camp in Venezuela,” YnetNews, Aug. 13, 2009,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3761491,00.html

[21] “Rafah: Gazan escapes clashes to Egypt, child hit by bullet,” Ma’an News Agency, Aug. 16, 2009, http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=219187

[22] Country Reports on Terrorism, Chapter 6- State Sponsors of Terror Overview-Iran,” U.S. Department of State Web site, April 28, 2006,
http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2005/64337.htm

[23] Wurmser, Meyrav, “Iran-Hamas Alliance,” Hudson Institute, Oct. 4, 2007,
https://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5167

[24] “Iranian Support of Hamas,” Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Jan. 12, 2009, p. 20,
http://www.terrorism-info.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/pdf/iran_e004.pdf

[25] “Senior Hamas operative figure tells London Sunday Times’ Gaza Strip correspondent about Iranian and Syria military aid, detailing the training received by hundreds of Hamas terrorist operatives and describing the transmission to Hamas of Iranian technical know-how for the manufacture of rockets and IED,” The Intelligence and Terrorist Information Center, Mar. 17, 2008,
http://www.terrorisminfo.org.il/malam_multimedia/English/eng_n/html/hamas_160308e.htm;
Colvin, Marie, “Hamas wages Iran’s proxy war on Israel,” The Times, Mar. 9, 2008,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3512014.ece

[26] Cohen, Yoram and Matthew Levitt, “Hamas Arms Smuggling: Egypt’s Challenge,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Watch #34, Mar. 2, 2009,
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3020

[27] Cohen, Yoram and Matthew Levitt, “Hamas Arms Smuggling: Egypt’s Challenge,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Policy Watch #34, Mar. 2, 2009,
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3020

[28] “Iran says 70,000 volunteer for Israel fight,” The Associated Press, Jan. 5, 2009,
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g3Y3DBA09cm20SrlOg47GI4Ixp4gD95H5LI00

[29] “Seizing of the Palestinian weapons ship Karine A,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Jan. 2, 2002, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2002/Seizing%20of%20the%20Palestinian%20weapons%20ship%20Karine%20A%20-

[30] Partlow, Joshua, “U.S.: Iran, Hezbollah Training Iraqi Militants,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/02/AR2007070200174.html?hpid=topnews;
“U.S. commander: Iran still supports Iraq attacks,” USA Today, June 30, 2009,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-06-30-odierno-iraq-iran_N.htm

[31] Gordon, Michael R.; Shane, Scott, “Behind U.S. Pressure on Iran, Long-Held Worry Over a Deadly Device in Iraq,” The New York Times, March 27, 2007

[32] Burns, John F., Gordon, Michael R., “U.S. Says Iran Helped Iraqis Kill Five G.I.’s,” The New York Times, July 3, 2007

[33] Wright, Robin, “Iranian Flow Of Weapons Increasing, Officials Say; Arms Shipments Tracked To Iraqi, Afghan Groups,” The Washington Post, June 3, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/02/AR2007060201020.html

[34] “Iraqis find Iranian-made rockets after US attacked,” AP, Aug. 19, 2009, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hwK_CSpBxsNuVUEaDuOwmSSCiqGwD9A584680

[35] Rubin, Alissa J., “U.S. Suspects That Iran Aids Both Sunni and Shiite Militias,” The New York Times, A12, April 12, 2007

[36] “Iranian fighters tracked in Iraq, general says,” USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-08-19-fighters_N.htm

[37] “Police: Iranian fighters in southern Iraq,” UPI, Sept. 23, 2008,
http://www.upi.com/Emerging_Threats/2008/09/23/Police-Iranian-fighters-in-southern-Iraq/UPI-24701222206742/

[38] Straziuso, Jason; Daniszewski, John, “General: Iran aid to Taliban is strategic,” Newsday (Associated Press), June 12, 2006.

[39] Farmer, Ben, “Iranian Weapons Getting through to Taliban,” Telegraph, June 8, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5477283/Iranian-weapons-getting-through-to-Taliban.html;
Wright, Robin, “Iranian Flow Of Weapons Increasing, Officials Say; Arms Shipments Tracked To Iraqi, Afghan Groups,” The Washington Post, June 3, 2007;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/02/AR2007060201020.html;
Blair, Tony, “What I’ve learned,” The Economist, May 31, 2007,
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9257593

[40] Harding, Thomas, “Taliban ‘using missiles from Iran to target British troops,” The Daily Telegraph, May 22, 2007

[41] Joscelyn, Thomas, “Iran and the Taliban, allies against America,” The Long War Journal, July 28, 2009, http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/07/iran_and_the_taliban.php

[42] Levitt, Mathew A., “Islamic extremism in Europe,” Testimony to the Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats, United States House of Representatives, April 7, 2005,
http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/lev042705.pdf

[43] McElroy, Damien, “Iran election: Tehran backs Hizbollah operations around world,” Telegraph, June 26, 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/5651837/Iran-election-Tehran-backs-Hizbollah-operations-around-world.html;
Levitt, Mathew A., “Islamic extremism in Europe,” Testimony to the Committee on International Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Emerging Threats, United States House of Representatives, April 7, 2005,
http://wwwa.house.gov/international_relations/109/lev042705.pdf

[44] Sasinini, Guglielmo, “Hizballah Planned Attacks in Rome and Paris,” Libero, Jan. 31, 2008.

[45] “Iran’s new president glorifies martyrdom,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 945, July 29, 2005, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP94505

[46] Colvin, Marie, Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter, “Iran suicide bombers ‘ready to hit Britain’,” The Sunday Times, April 16, 2006, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article706132.ece

[47] Razi, Farhad, “20 Terrorist training camps in Iran uncovered,” Global Politician, March 1, 2006,
http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=1639&cid=2&sid=4

[48] Partlow, Joshua, “U.S.: Iran, Hezbollah Training Iraqi Militants,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2007,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/02/AR2007070200174.html?hpid=topnews

[49] Jehl, Douglas, “U.S. Looks Away as Iran Arms Bosnia,” The New York Times, April 15, 1995,
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/15/world/us-looks-away-as-iran-arms-bosnia.html

[50] “More than 300 Iranian Intelligence operatives entered BiH from 2004 to 2007,” March 6, 2009,
http://www.necenzurirano.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1275&Itemid=1

[51] “Breakthrough made in ’94 Argentina bombing,” MSNBC, Nov. 9, 2005,
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9983810/

[52] Murphy, Jarrett, “Beirut Barracks Attacks Remembered,” CBS News, Oct. 23, 2003, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/23/world/main579638.shtml

[53] “Iranian Cabinet Nominee Wanted in Argentine Attack,” The New York Times, Aug. 21, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/21/world/AP-ML-Iran.html?_r=1

[54] “Hezbollah operation in S. America,” UPI, Aug. 13, 2009,
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/08/13/Hezbollah-operating-in-S-America/UPI-43671250166246/

[55] Shiffer, Shimon, “Hezbollah suspected of setting up camp in Venezuela,” YnetNews, Aug. 13, 2009,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3761491,00.html

[56] Carter, Sara, “Exclusive: Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S.,” The Washington Times, March 27, 2009, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/27/hezbollah-uses-mexican-drug-routes-into-us/

[57] Weinraub, Bernard, “U.S. Says C.I.A. Believes It Is Probable Higgins Was Killed Before Monday,” The New York Times, Aug. 3, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/03/world/us-says-cia-believes-it-is-probable-higgins-was-killed-before-monday.html

[58] Loyd, Anthony, “Tomb of the unknown assassin reveals mission to kill Rushdie,” Times Online, June 8, 2005, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article531110.ece

[59] “DPRK-Iranian Cultural and Scientific Exchange Plan Signed,” Korean Central News Agency, Jan. 19, 2007, http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2007/200701/news01/20.htm

[60] Coughlin, Con, “N Korea helping Iran with nuclear testing,” Telegraph, Jan. 24, 2007,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1540429/N-Korea-helping-Iran-with-nuclear-testing.html

[61] Mohammed, Arshad, “North Korea may have aided Hezbollah, LTTE – U.S. report,” Reuters, Dec. 13, 2007, http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-30964520071213

[62] “Report: Missile landed in Syrian market,” UPI, Aug. 15, 2009,
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/08/15/Report-Missile-landed-in-Syrian-market/UPI-49681250310757/

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By Rabbi Tzvi Nightingale,  www.aish.com

Was that my father standing behind the barbed wire?

Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you
There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more
But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true
-Jackson Browne

My father has three birthdays. Yes, three. His biological birthday is May 10, 1924. When he came to Canada after the war, he was too old to qualify as an orphan, so he had to rearrange his age a bit and make himself younger. 5/10/24 became 10/5/27 and he was now born on October 5, 1927. (Please don’t tell the Canadian government about this. I would hate to see him deported at this stage of his life.) Oddly, our family has been celebrating this completely fictitious birthday ever since.

My father was finally liberated from Dachau on April 29, 1945.

But it is his third birthday that he speaks about with the most emotion; the one that carries the most meaning for him. He spent years in various forced labor and death camps after his town of Staszow, Poland was liquidated by the Nazis in 1942. He was finally liberated on April 29, 1945 from Dachau concentration camp in Germany. My father has never been one to speak at length about his experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust, but he does talk about this one particular day. Among other things, I have heard him praise the American army for quickly delousing the inmates soon after they freed the camp. Being free from the Nazi hell and from the lice that infested his body for so long gave him a new lease on life.

The day after Yom Kippur I went to my office and did what I do after every Yom Kippur — not much. Not only am I tired from the fasting and teaching, but truth be told, I find the next day to be a bit of a downer. After intensely thinking about life, God, goals and being a better person, and trying to inspire 150 people who come to our Aish center for services, I am just not up to the everyday mundane grind that comes rushing back. So trying to recapture some of the seriousness and meaning of Yom Kippur, I found myself on YouTube and typed in “Dachau” in the search box. The top of the list was a film called Dachau Concentration Camp Liberation.

It was not a sophisticated piece, by any means. It consisted of photos slowly being panned to the background music from Schindler’s List. There were photos of soldiers approaching the camp and arresting surrendering Nazis, a bird’s eye view of the camp and photos of the main entrance and a gate with the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei.

A picture appeared of an American soldier walking on a wall perpendicular to a building, and I wondered, If my father were to see this short film, would he remember some of the structures and buildings? I briefly thought of showing him the film but knew I would not follow through due to his extreme sensitivity whenever the subject of the Holocaust comes up. In all the years I have known my dad, I have only heard snippets here and there.

At 1:50 into the film a photo appeared that made me hit the pause button. It was a relatively clear photo, a close up of sorts, of three inmates behind barbed wire, all smiling and waving — presumably at their saviors. The short man on the left has an overcoat, obviously given to him by one of the soldiers. The man on the right with the moustache is taller and appears to be saluting. They are wearing the familiar striped concentration camp garb.

And the man in the middle looks like my father.

Could this really be my father?

I began to stare intensely and analyze every detail of the physical features to see if they match my dad’s. The widow’s peak hairline, the shape of the face, the somewhat larger ear, the gap between his front teeth — all were consistent with his look. Could it be? Could this really be him? I kept asking myself. But the trait that made me think it was him the most was the shape of his waving hand. I have always noticed this about my father, how his index finger curls and seems slightly raised higher than his middle fingers and how his thumb comes to almost meet them. Today, thanks to his arthritis, his hand is almost frozen in that position, and this was the shape of the hand of the man in this photo.

I immediately emailed the link to my three brothers in Toronto with the subject line, “Something very weird” and told them to pause the film and tell me what they think. By next morning, they agreed that this could indeed be our father in the photo.

Then things got a little complicated. We were faced with the dilemma of showing this photo to my father. Will it bring back too many painful memories? Should we subject him to an image of himself from so long ago of the most horrible time in his life? What effect would possibly seeing himself in Nazi prisoner garb have on his psyche?

My oldest brother, Reuben, has always been closest to my father ever since he went to work for him in his meat packing plant at the age of 15. My dad gave him the most noxious job there to discourage him from working at Grace Meats, but packing tripe did not turn Reuben away. They have been very tight ever since. Reuben felt that we should think this through and “sit on it” for a while. “He has not seen the photo for all these years, another day or so will not change things.”

Sid, the next oldest brother and the peacemaker in our family, agreed. Murray and I wanted to show it to him but for the time being we deferred to the elder siblings. But the following day Murray came up with a Solomonic solution: Let’s show the picture to my dad’s one surviving sibling, Henya, who was with him in the camps earlier in the war and would be able to recognize if this indeed was him.

Murray called me that morning on his way to Auntie Henya. I told him to call me on my cell as soon as he spoke with her. Murray called me at 12:30 pm. “She was unequivocal – it’s him. And not only that, but the man standing next to him with the overcoat was his childhood friend, Herschel D.”

With that Murray then called my dad and asked if he wished to see a photo of himself on the day of his liberation from Dachau. He did. Murray went up to his condo and showed him the picture. With tears in his eyes my father declared, “Yeah, that’s me.”

On April 29, 1945 a handful of photos of the liberation of Dachau were taken by Robert Spring, an X-Ray technician serving with the 59th Evacuation Hospital of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. There were 32,000 inmates on that day and most of the photos taken by soldiers were of men too skeletal to discern their identities, too grainy to see any specific faces, or group shots taken from far away. But Mr. Spring decided to take one photo of a random group of nameless survivors whom he would never see again.To the Nazis, the man in the photo was prisoner number 147 963 and for 64 years and five months it was a photo of a nameless prisoner experiencing freedom for the first time in many years.

On the day after Yom Kippur in the year 5770, Tuesday September 29, 2009, it was discovered that the smiling inmate in Nazi prisoner garb was not just prisoner 147 963 , and he was not a random nameless survivor that a heroic soldier happened to capture on camera. He was born Icek Nachtigal, Yitzchak Dovid ben Reuvain, and he goes by the name of Irving Nightingale. He was born on May 10, 1924 but he will tell you that his real birthday is April 29, 1945.

And he is my father.

The photo we found.

By Shmuel Rosner– Chief U.S. Correspondent, www.Haaretz.com

(written in 2007 when Letters From Nuremberg was first published)

There are too many Jews around here, thought the prosecutor, Thomas Dodd. “Col. Kaplan is now here, as a mate I assume for Commander Kaplan. Dr. Newman has arrived… it is all a silly business.” In the prosecution team of the Nuremberg trials, in which Nazi high officials are indicted, there is no need for such number of Jews, that’s what Dodd was thinking. “One would expect that some of these people would have sense enough to put an end to this kind of parade.”

“Grace, my dearest one,” thus Dodd opens many of his letters from those stormy days to his wife. They are very personal, and let the reader peep into the nature of relationships between Thomas and Grace. But these letters also constitute a fascinating historical documentation of the many back stage events of the Nuremberg trials. Dodd was the right hand man of Judge Robert Jackson, the leading prosecutor. He later became a Congressman and a Senator. The letters he sent are now published in a new book, Letters from Nuremberg, authored by his son, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, with the help of a friend, Lary Bloom. One should assume that timing it is no mere coincidence: Dodd is now running for President.

Focusing of the too-much-Jews letter doesn’t do justice to Dodd. There’s no reason to believe that he didn’t want them around him because of personal dislike or racist prejudice. “You know how I have despised anti-Semitism,” he writes to his wife, who stayed at home, in the US, while he was spending more than a year abroad. The trials failed to make the case against the Nazi persecution of the Jews. They were blamed for war crimes, but left unspoken the truth about the nature of the war they have declared against one particular nation.

“Jews should stay away from this trial – for their own sake,” Dodd explains. He doesn’t want them to supply anti-Semites and isolationists with ammunition – afraid of a possible growing sentiment to describe the war as “war for the Jews.” His son, the Senator, added a foot note reminding readers of comment made by Charles Lindbergh, leading the anti-war movement, back in 1941. Three forces are pushing America to get involved in the war, he said: The Brits, the President, the Jews.

Senator Dodd told me that he doesn’t necessarily agree with the sentiment articulated by his father in the letter sited above. He is convinced, though, that this was an honest assessment. Thomas Dodd really thought the number of Jewish members in the team was bad for the Jews themselves. There was no doubt in the son’s mind that the letters should be published in full, not censored. While speaking to three Jewish reporters about the book, he focused more on its political implications, in the broader sense, that on the events of those long-gone times.

Much more than the content of any letter, this is the really controversial side of this book. The son is using the father’s writings to promote his beliefs regarding foreign policy, the international law, human rights. Quoting them, he is trying building a case against the Bush administration, blaming it for a “fundamental shift” in America’s policy, as far as international norms of justice and the rule of law are concerned. Dodd argues that there’s a stark difference between the way America chose to react to the crimes of the Nazis, hence, his fathers’ letters, and the path it has taken after the events of September 11. In conversation, Dodd agrees that the differences between now and then are more than cosmetic. However, the first part of the book is mostly dedicated to drawing the political lessons he sees fit.

“Civilized nations respond differently,” Dodd says, armed with the proof: these newly released letters. Civilized nations do not execute, hold people in secret prisons indefinitely, circumvent the courts – but rather prosecute. The letters show that this is what the father believed. But most of them don’t deal with politics, or philosophy, but rather describe the daily struggles of a man in a unique position. In the morning, he was questioning Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess; in the evening writing about it to his wife, “He is gone mentally and I doubt that he can answer for his offenses.” In the next letter he describes an encounter between Hess and Herman Goering, the Air-Force chief and second in command to the Fuhrer. “Don’t you recall me?” he asks Hess. “I am really very sorry,” Hess replies. “It is genuine,” writes Dodd. He really couldn’t recognize him.

In one of the most dramatic moments of this trial, Dodd was the one presenting to the world the shrunken head of a Polish prisoner. The photo depicting him holding this dreadful piece of evidence is still memorable. The head was used as a paper holder at the office of a Nazi officer. But from the letters, one learns about the personal relations that developed between Dodd and some defendants. Franz Von Papen, short-time deputy to Hitler and one of the few to be found not guilty at the end of the trial, is called “my friend Papen.”

Dodd the father died relatively young, at the age of 64. His political career ended in turmoil and he was censured by the Senate for personal usage of public funds. His son, as one expects, wants this book to serve as a tribute to the better days of the father (he had many good days and some achievements as a legislator too). He said that publishing the letters now, a decade after they were discovered, is the culmination of a long and slow process. There are many family members involved, and making decisions takes time. If he doesn’t mention the campaign as a reason, one should assume that it is only because this will be just stating the obvious.

No dramatic revelations can be found in this book. But it is a fascinating history lesson, and a great way to learn more about the people taking part in the trial of the century. And as it is always with people, much space is dedicated to rivalries, maneuvers, egos. “The worst of [Colonel Robert] Gill, however, is his disloyalty to Jackson,” writes Dodd about one member of the team. But he also remembers that this is not the everyday trial, that he is playing a part in one great drama. “I like the assignment,” he writes. “It is an important and worthwhile one.”

www.nydailynews.com

Dare defend yourself from terrorist attacks and risk international war crimes prosecution.

That is the lesson of the October 16 action by the UN Human Rights Council, which voted 25 to 6, with 11 abstentions, to endorse the Goldstone Report, a document that brands Israelis as war criminals for trying to stop deadly rocket-fire from Gaza 10 months ago.

Ever since Israel’s 2005 pullout from Gaza, Israeli civilians were battered by thousands of mortars and rockets launched by Hamas in its war to destroy the Jewish state and kill its people.

And, straight from the terrorist textbook, Hamas was assembling and launching its rockets from civilian neighborhoods, near mosques, near schools, near hospitals.

Late last year, Israel finally launched a military offensive to stop the terror. Wherever and whenever civilians might be harmed, Israel’s military dropped leaflets to urge civilians to clear out. An innovative new technique of “knocking” on roofs with non-exploding noisemakers was employed as well, to give ordinary Palestinians every opportunity to save themselves.

Because, it was Israel’s objective to punish and disarm the terrorists, no one else.

For this, the Human Rights Council – already known for its anti-Israel bias – opened an investigation, producing a report calling the terrorists and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) equally culpable. Equally guilty of crimes against humanity.

The Council has now formally ratified this libel and urged Israeli and Palestinian authorities to demonstrate that they are investigating the alleged crimes. Or else the charges will be referred to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

In fact, Palestinian Authority officials recenlty visited that court to argue for its jurisdiction over these matters.

Which means Israeli commanders who set out to defend innocent people from indiscriminate attacks, with painstaking plans to protect civilians in the process, could wind up alongside the butchers of Darfur, alongside those tried at Nuremberg.

Only five nations stood with the U.S. in opposition: Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, and Ukraine. Good for them.

We have to ask, again, what’s the use of Americans sitting on the Council, spitting into its hurricane-force winds? 25 nations are party to the crime—among them: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. Shame on them. Do you see a pattern?

France and Britain were among the abstainers. Unlike the abstaining dictatorships, the democracies should have known better; so, double shame on them.

As Elie Wiesel once said, “Silence in the face of evil is always on the side of the aggressor.”

By Amy Teibel, Associated Press

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Lebanon on Sunday that Israel “will not hold back” when attacked and holds the Lebanese government responsible for any assault on his country.

Netanyahu delivered the warning after two rockets fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel on Friday. Israel responded immediately with artillery fire, and the exchange ratcheted up persisting tensions between the two countries.

“We view this very gravely,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet. “We will not hold back when Israeli territory comes under fire, and will not reconcile ourselves to missile fire or any other form of terror directed at Israeli citizens.”

It was not immediately known who fired the rockets Friday. But radical Palestinian factions in Lebanon have been blamed in four firings at Israel this year.

The Israel-Lebanon border has been tense since Israel mounted a monthlong war against Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas in the summer of 2006. More than 1,200 people in Lebanon and 160 Israelis died in that conflict, which ended in a United Nations-brokered truce.

On Sunday, Netanyahu put the onus of maintaining the cease-fire squarely on the shoulders of the Lebanese government.

“We see it responsible for all these violations and hostilities directed at our territory that originate from Lebanese soil,” he said.

Hezbollah has a large rocket arsenal, but is not believed to have used them against Israel since the 2006 fighting. It has denied involvement in previous rocket attacks on Israel.

But friction between Israel and Hezbollah has escalated as Lebanese politicians wrangle over the formation of a new government. The Hezbollah-led opposition would likely be a part of that cabinet.

In mid-July, a suspected Hezbollah arms depot exploded near the Israeli border. Israel said this was proof the group was rearming and stashing weapons in populated villages.

Lebanon’s An-Nahar newspaper reported Sunday that the U.N. force in Lebanon, which was beefed up significantly after the war to monitor the border, had been warned of a possible attack 10 days earlier.

The U.N. force relayed this information to the Lebanese army two days before the attack, the report said.

A spokesman for the U.N. force, Milos Strugar, said an investigation under way “is pointing in the direction of some extremist groups.” He did not elaborate.

By Yehuda Lahav and Nir Hasson, www.Haaretz.com  [see follow-up article posted on Sept 22, 2009]

In 1939, Sir Nicholas Winton was a 30-year-old stockbroker at a British bank planning to take a vacation in Switzerland. At the time he had no diplomatic connections, no secret contacts and was not being sent anywhere on behalf of anybody.

But when German troops invaded Czechoslovakia in March that same year, Winton followed his heart and changed his travel destination from Switzerland to Prague.

By that time, thousands of children — many of them orphans — were already awaiting their fate in various camps in the Czechoslovakian capital.

Winton was not Jewish, but felt a responsibility to help those struggling during the war. He turned first to his own government, then to the governments of neighboring states, but was met with rejection by all. In their eyes, his fears appeared exaggerated or unfounded.

Of his own accord (and initially at his own expense), Winton founded an aid association for the children of Czechoslovakia. He was its president, treasurer and only employee.

Using the association’s name, he tried to find British foster families for Czech and Slovakian children — most of them Jewish. Their journeys to Britain were organized by Czech friends of Winton.

As he explained years later, Winton searched for foster families via notices and mail correspondence. He recalled one Scottish family who requested a 10-year-old girl, preferably blond. Winton sent the family photographs of 10 children so that the family could decide which they wanted.

Using these methods, 669 children were brought to Britain from Czechoslovakia by Kindertransport in the summer of 1939. Many of them were torn away from their parents and close relatives at the Prague train station. Nobody knew where the children were going and if the parents would ever see them again. Many of the parents were later murdered at Auschwitz.

The last group was supposed to leave Prague on September 3, but was sent back — just two days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II began.

After the war, Winton managed to find homes around the world for the children from that group that survived, sending the refugees everywhere from Israel to South America. Winton chose not to maintain contact with the children, as he felt that by finding them a home he had finished his good work.

On Tuesday September 1, 2009 — the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion beginning of World War II — a train will head from Prague to the Liverpool Street station in London, on the same 1,300 kilometer route taken by the 669 children in their escape from the Nazi inferno.

The steam train being used for the journey is a replica of the trains used during World War II and will include carriages from that era, obtained from several European countries for the reenactment.

One of the carriages being used on the current journey is that which was used by Tomas Masaryk, the president of Czechoslovakia in the 1920s and 1930s.

The journey, which will take four days, will leave from Prague’s central train station — the same location at which Winton’s children parted from their parents.

The train will pass through Germany and Holland before arriving at the Dutch coast, where the passengers will board a ferry that will take them to Britain. Once there, they will board another historic train that will bring them to London.

The survivors and their families number some 5,000 people today, 240 of whom will be on the train on Tuesday, accompanied by diplomats and members of the public. Waiting for the passengers at Liverpool Street station will be Sir Winston himself, who in May celebrated his 100th birthday.

‘The child is crying’

Helen Zinger escaped the Nazis with the last group to successfully leave Czechoslovakia before the outbreak of the war. Zinger, whose family arrived in Czechoslovakia from Germany for after the Nazis rose to power in 1933, does not know how Winton got in touch with her parents. But she does remember boarding the train in July 1939, at the age of 14, and told Haaretz that she didn’t know where she was being sent.

Zinger was eventually brought to a German-Jewish family in the northern English coastal city of Hull. The city suffered from German bombing during the war, and in letters she sent to her family in Czechoslovakia during the war, she wrote the words “the child is crying,” a family code for being bombed.

Her sister Chana Vislovitz, who also survived the war, recalled receiving the letters with the special code.

She told Haaretz that her mother went crazy not knowing what had happened in the months between the writing of the letters and its passage through the British censors.

Zinger survived the war and also succeeded in her studies. Four years after arriving in Britain without knowing a word of English, she was accepted to Oxford University to study philosophy, economics and politics. Her mother and sister survived the Theresienstadt ghetto, but her father was sent out of the ghetto on the last train to leave for Auschwitz before the end of the war, where he was murdered.

Following the war, Helen was reunited with her mother and sister with the aid of a British soldier Chana met in the ghetto, who organized for a search to be conducted for Helen in Britain.

According to Vislovitz, their mother wanted her sister to return to Czechoslovakia from Britain after the war, but Zinger’s adoptive father asked that she stay an extra year to finish the degree.

Zinger eventually moved to Israel together with her family in 1962. She and Vislovitz both still live there today.

Winton was awarded a knighthood in 2002, but in his own mind the work he did to save the 669 children was natural, and he never even mentioned it to his wife Garda.

In fact, his name only became known around 50 years later, when Garda came across an old briefcase filled with papers from the wartime years, including the list of the 669 children, while searching for something in the attic of their house.

Garda called historian Elizabeth Maxwell following the discovery, and the BBC organized a meeting between Winton and several of the survivors. In recent years Winton’s story has gained much attention in Britain and other countries, and a Slovakian director even made a movie about him.

In 1998, then Czech president Vaclav Havel awarded Winton the Order of Tomas Masaryk. More recently, Czech schoolchildren began collecting signatures calling for Winton be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Some 53,000 signatures have already been collected.

Whether Winton wins the prize is open to question, but what is known is that his rescue actions have become educational material for school children in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who are taught about the actions of a man labeled “the utmost inspiration.”

More than Czech 100 students participated recently in a literary competition named after Winton, in which they wrote, photographed and produced films with the aim of proving that even in today’s world one must stand

By Tovah Lazaroff, www.JPost.com

Shlomo Slonim, 81, lays a stone on his mother's grave, which is just one in a number of rows of graves from Hebron massacre. Photo: Tovah Lazaroff

On his freckled forehead, one can still see the scar from the knife wound Shlomo Slonim sustained 80 years ago, when an Arab stabbed him as he huddled in his mother’s arms in their Hebron home.

“It’s not the only wound I have,” Slonim told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday. He opened up the palm of his hand to show scars on the insides of his fingers.

“There is one that I cannot bend,” said the 81-year-old, who was dressed in black slacks and a light blue, short-sleeved, button-down shirt.

He wore glasses and a knitted kippa and spoke calmly as he stood in the Hebron cemetery, at the end of a small ceremony marking the Hebrew anniversary of the 1929 massacre of 67 Jewish residents of that city by an Arab mob.

Slonim recounted the details of that fateful day, when he was only a year old. He has no memory of the events, of course, but he has heard the story so many times that he told it as if he were recalling his own experiences.

It was Shabbat morning when an Arab mob armed with knives filled the streets and burst into Jewish homes, Slonim said.

Dozens of Jews, he said, had gathered in his parents’ home for safety. His father, Eliezer Dan Slonim, 29, had been the director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and a representative of the Jewish community in the Hebron Municipality.

Given the good relationship he enjoyed with his Arab neighbors, local Jews believed they would be safe in his home, said Slonim.

They were wrong. As the Arabs came to the home, the people inside tried to bar the door with their bodies, but they couldn’t hold back the mob, he said.

After bursting in, the Arabs killed 24 people with knives and machetes. Among them were Slonim’s father, his mother, Hannah, 24, and her parents who were visiting for Shabbat. They also fatally wounded his older brother, who was only four. He succumbed to his wounds several days later in Jerusalem and was buried there.

The lone survivor of his immediate family, Slonim comes as often as he can to the cemetery to visit his parents’ graves, which are among the many graves of massacre victims marked by a long row of small headstones.

As is customary in Jewish tradition, he placed a small stone on each grave on Sunday.

The massacre destroyed the Hebron Jewish community, whose roots go back to biblical times, even though there were other periods when Jews were chased out of the city.

Some Jews tried to return to Hebron after the massacre, but the British removed them in 1936.

It was only in 1979 that Jews returned to live in Hebron. While those Jews who came saw themselves as the spiritual descendents of the former community, very few of the survivors or their descendents were among them.

Slonim said that he had thought about returning, but did not want to live among people who had killed his family.

“I would never know if the Arab I passed in the street had a hand in their murder,” he said.

Slonim was not the only survivor to return Sunday to the cemetery for the ceremony organized by the Jewish community of Hebron. Yankele Hillel, 81, said that an Arab neighbor had saved him and his mother.

One woman, Menuha, said that her great-grandmother, for whom she was named, had survived because she hid behind a closet.

Among those who arrived at the cemetery was Rabbi Moshe Levinger, who in 1968 brought Jews back to Hebron to celebrate Pessah. They moved into rooms in a local hotel and refused to leave until a compromise was brokered, which led to the creation of the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba.

Levinger came to the cemetery in a wheelchair on Sunday, hours after he had been released from the hospital. He was inspired, he said, by the spirit of the holy ones who were buried there.

A national ceremony in honor of the victims will be held next month.

By Peggy Shapiro, www.americanthinker.com

Where could you hear radio talk show hosts Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, military analyst Elliot Chodoff, Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren, Senator Joe Lieberman, country music star Randy Travis, and cantor and musical theater singer Dudu Fisher on the same stage with ministers and orthodox rabbis? Where could you see over four thousand Christians waving Israeli and American flags to the singing of national anthems of Israel and the U.S. and breaking out in spontaneous dance during the playing of Havah Nagilah? Where could you witness Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, and Pentecostals wearing Star of David necklaces, which they had just purchased at an Israel bazaar?  That’s what I heard, saw, and witnessed at the Conference of Christians United for Israel in Washington D.C. on July 19-22 when Christian Zionists from a multitude of denominations and backgrounds took up the huge Convention Center and made over 400 lobby appointments on Capital Hill to speak up for Israel and mark a change in the Jewish-Christian relationship.

The attendees were African Americans, Asians, Caucasians, Hispanics, teens, octogenarians, the affluent, and the unemployed from all over the U.S. I met a Nigerian mechanical engineering student who was pursuing a Master’s Degree and supporting a wife and child, a stunningly beautiful airline hostess who brought her granddaughter, an African American grandmother who was planning her 16th trip to Israel, and a food chemist for a large corporation. I spoke to a shy woman from the southern tip of Illinois. She had never made a public speech or taken political action and called herself “a hick from the sticks.” My roommate, along with 89 others, made their way to Washington from Minnesota on a 24-hour bus ride. The crowd was diverse, but they shared one common mission, which was proclaimed on the banners which hung from every rafter: “For Zion’s sake, I will not keep silent.” They were united by their commitment to speak up on behalf of the State of Israel and for its rights to exist, to self defense, and to sovereignty.

The focus of the conference was a two-pronged message to Congress and to the Obama administration, which has recently taken Israel to task for adding housing to accommodate the natural growth in its “settlements,” while soft-peddling any criticism of Iran’s nuclear ambitions: Israel is not the obstacle to peace, and the U.S. must place crippling sanctions on Iran to stop the terror-sponsoring state from acquiring nuclear arms.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told the group, “Critics say the stumbling block [to peace in the Middle East] is settlements or Jerusalem or refugees,” “We all know the real stumbling block to peace is posed by those who vehemently deny the nation of Israel’s historical right to the land of Zion.” Democrat Shelley Berkley (D-Nev) minced no words in her criticism,  “…to pin the peace process” on the settlement issue “is absolutely foolhardy. To publicly dress down the State of Israel is a huge mistake.”  CUFI founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee forcefully summed up the message, “America is singling out Israel…Despite all of the risks Israel has taken for peace, our government is pressuring Israel to take more risks. Hello Congress, we’re putting pressure on the wrong people here. You want to get tough, get tough with the terrorists, not the only democracy in the Middle East.” The crowd responded with a thunderous ovation.

Speaker after speaker pointed to the refusal of Palestinians and Arabs to accept a Jewish state in any part of the Middle East as the cause of the sixty-one year conflict, and to Iran for escalating the terror through its proxies of Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south. They urged the administration not to underestimate Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the existential threat they pose to Israel and to the entire region. U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who accepted CUFI’s Defender of Israel Award at the Tuesday Night to Honor Israel, evening, said, “The chief obstacle to peace in the Middle East is not Israelis living on the West Bank but the regime in Tehran.”

After an extravagant Night to Honor Israel, on Wednesday, CUFI delegates took the message to Capitol Hill to tell their members of Congress not pressure the Jewish state but to respect the democratic nation and work with it as a friend. Representatives were also asked to co-sponsor legislation that could strengthen the President’s hand in the event that negotiations do not prove fruitful. One bill is the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, which would impose sanctions on companies that help Iran import or produce refined petroleum. The other bill, The Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, which authorizes state and local governments to divest from companies investing in Iran’s energy sector, never made it to the floor when it was introduced last year.

The CUFI conference sent a message not only to Congress and to the President, but also to Jews. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who addressed the conference via satellite, acknowledged that the conference marked the changing relationship of Christians and Jews. “For centuries, the relationship between Christians and Jews was marked by conflict rather than partnership and friendship, but this is changing. A new chapter in the relationship between us is now being written.” Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, in a passionate speech proclaimed that the threats Jews face today from a regime that is determined to wipe Israel off the map are fundamentally different from the threats Jews faced in 1939 because now there are “tens of millions of Christians who will not be silent and stand with the State of Israel.”

In the breakout sessions to fellow Christians, pastors addressed the skepticism of some in the Jewish community about allying with Christian Zionists because of a history of Church anti-Semitism and replacement theology (which teaches that Christians replaced Jews as the “Chosen People”). In a number of meetings, clergy warned that some Evangelicals, such as former President Jimmy Carter, are spewing anti-Semitism when they profess Replacement Theology. The pastors gave the biblical foundation for the support of Israel. It is not the conversion of Jews nor hastening the end of days, but the strongly held belief that God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses those who curse the Jews. (Genesis 12:13)

C.U.F.I., established only four years ago, now has 150,000 members who are living their belief and who have aspirations for growing to millions of voices which “are silent no more” when Jews or the Jewish State are in danger.

Ilan Halimi in captivity

Ilan Halimi in happier days

Tender French Justice for the Gang of Barbarians

By Nidra Poller

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com

In a show of disrespect for the family of Ilan Halimi, victim of the most atrocious anti-Semitic crime committed in France since World War II, the court announced the verdict after 10 PM on Friday night—the Sabbath—on the eve of the July 4th holiday weekend. Emma, the young lady who lured 23 year-old Halimi into the cruel trap was sentenced to nine years in prison. Youssouf Fofana, the “Brain of the Barbarians,” who admits he finished off his Jewish victim, after 24 days of torture, stabbing him five times and setting him aflame, gets “life” in prison (with a possibility of parole after 22 years). The other 25 accomplices or accessories were given jail terms ranging from acquittal to 18 years. The motive of anti-Semitism was retained for some of the defendants, but did not incur the corresponding ten-year increase in jail terms. Two men who played a key role in the Halimi kidnapping are on the loose because the police couldn’t persuade any of the defendants to cough up their names.

The two-month trial was held behind closed doors in juvenile court because two of the defendants were just under 18 when the crime was committed. Ruth Halimi, the victim’s mother, pleaded in vain for an open hearing. In January 2006 she had vainly entreated investigators to recognize the anti-Semitic motive of her son’s jailers. For 24 days the police followed false trails, overlooked clues, missed chances to nab the mastermind, and bungled negotiations for unrealistic ransom demands that were little more than a pretext for the torture inflicted on Ilan Halimi. The photo sent to the family the day after his disappearance tells it all: Ilan’s face is totally plastered with thick silver duct tape. His eyes and mouth are sealed shut, leaving a small hole for his broken nose.

He was kept naked—first in an unheated apartment, then in a boiler room—fed liquids through a straw, forced to eliminate in a plastic bag, beaten, kicked, pummeled… No one will ever know the extent of his ordeal. Playing on the nuances of French law that supposedly establishes the exact degree of participation of each individual in a collective crime, defense lawyers portrayed their clients as lost sheep haplessly involved in a seemingly normal short-term business enterprise…even when it became obvious that the whole thing was bungled and only the torture was real.

Late Friday afternoon, the press, alerted by rumors that the verdict would be pronounced before nightfall, stood for hours in the halls of the Palais de Justice before being admitted into the antiquated courtroom. The atmosphere was weirdly festive, as defense lawyers chatted with each other and fussed over their clients, half-hidden from our view behind a glassed-in cubicle. It was after 10 PM when the presiding judge finally announced—in a barely audible voice— prison terms for the 27 defendants, from life to 18 years, to 15, 13, 11 and by even increments all the way to six months suspended sentence and, for two of them, acquittal. Most prisoners are released in France after serving half their terms.

The whole thing has been hushed up and tucked away under front page stories about holiday traffic jams and the Tour de France bicycle race. Last week Maître Francis Szpiner, representing the Halimi family, expressed his misgivings about the indulgent recommendations to the jury of the Avocat Général—a sort of voice of the people and the Bench. Interviewed Friday night after the lenient verdict was announced, Szpiner called upon the Minister of Justice to appeal (the plaintiffs do not have the right to appeal). Several Jewish organizations have called for a gathering Monday night in front of the Justice Ministry at Place Vendôme…at the same place where enraged Islamists shouting “Death to Israel, Death to the Jews” made a show of force in January.

Background:

France’s Private Concentration Camp

By Jamie Glazov, www.FrontPageMagazine.com, Friday, June 26, 2009

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog Atlas Shrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Front Page Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications.

FP: Pamela Geller, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Geller: Thank you for having me Jamie.

You’ve been following the trial of the torture and murder of a young Jewish man, Ilan Halimi, in Paris. Tell us about the case and the trial.

Geller: The death of Ilan Halimi can only be described as an unspeakable horror, and yet typical of the increasing Islamic Jew-hatred and violence against the Jews. A group calling itself the Muslim Barbarians targeted Jewish men for torture and murder. Their first attempts to kidnap a Jew were unsuccessful, despite the lure of a beautiful girl. Ilan Halimi was not so lucky. He did not escape the Islamic homemade concentration camp the Muslim Barbarians had set up.

The banality of evil lived in that apartment building. Apartment dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan’s screams and cries of torture over a period of three weeks, and yet did not call the cops. The screams must have been loud because the torture was especially atrocious: the thugs cut bits of flesh off the young man. They cut his fingers and ears. They burned him with acid. They poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire. Not only did those in the building not go to the police — they did nothing at all. Worse, many took part in the tortures.

So systemic is the Jew hatred in France that it impeded rescuing Ilan or securing his release. Halimi’s family said that throughout Ilan’s entire captivity, the French police refused to move on any of the evidence that pointed to an anti-Semitic motive. Instead, the police conducted a routine kidnap investigation (which invariably involves ransom, not death). The police refused to pursue the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that, according to newspaper accounts, “in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan’s family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background”.

The family begged the police to listen to torturous phone calls from the kidnappers and acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish. Clearly, had the police not acted in judeophobic fashion, they would have recognized that Ilan’s life was in terrible danger and taken urgent action. But law enforcement was not the only guilty party. The government refused to acknowledge the anti-Semitic motives behind the torture and killing a full week after the Halimi turned up mutilated and dead.

This was not new, of course. In 2003, Sebastian Sellam, a popular disc jockey at a hot Parisian night club called Queen known as DJ Lam C (a reverse play on his surname) was on his way to work when in an underground parking lot, a Muslim neighbor slit Sellam’s throat twice. His face was completely mutilated with a carving fork. Even his eyes were gouged out.

It has taken three years to bring this case to trial and even now, they are hiding their dirty little secrets behind closed doors.

FP: How come this trial is not receiving any attention or coverage?

Geller: The French would like this ugly little business to go away. Like Al Dura. Like

their sordid national behavior when the Nazis occupied France.

The latest outrage in the closed (more like hidden) trial of the “Muslim barbarian” ringleader Fofana and his 26 accomplices (it was more like 50) in the savage torture and murder of Ilan Halimi is suspension of the trial, with no indication of when it will begin again. Why isn’t Youssouf Fofana, in a glass box like Eichmann at Nuremberg, chained like the wild animal that he is?

In a shocking display of proud Islamic Jew hatred (consistent with the most sacred teachings of the Koran), the brutal Halimi murder trial was suspended after the defendant spewed vile invectives and threw his “Arab shoes” across the courtroom at the jury. Throwing shoes at someone is a powerful insult in the Arab world.

According to a prosecution lawyer, Fofana’s shoe throwing occurred during the presentation of evidence by doctors who examined Halimi’s body.

It is not clear when the hearing would be resumed. The trial is being conducted behind closed doors, with no press or public allowed, at the request of two of the defendants who were minors at the time of the killing. The trial is closed at the request of barbarians so evil, so savage that it defies the normal mind. And yet the vichy French acquiesced to the Muslim nazis and are hiding their pathetic attempt at justice behind closed doors.

The silence in the media and across the world is a crime against humanity. Imagine, if you will, the unthinkable, the impossible — if Ilan had been a Muslim and his attackers had been Jews. Stop laughing — I know it is impossible, but that’s not my point. This is damning proof of the Jew hatred that is running wild across the world. Israel shuts a light off in Gaza and the world wants to eliminate her. Imagine if Ilan had been black and his attackers had been white. Stop and think about it.

FP: So let’s dig a bit deeper here: why did the police turn a blind eye to the evidence indicating that Islamic anti-Semitism was behind the kidnapping? Why is the French government, law enforcement and the media now covering up why this horrifying crime was committed? Better to let a Jew get tortured and killed than to point to the truth about what Islam teaches and what many Muslims believe and are ready to act upon, yes? This is Jew-Hate and a surrender to Islam simultaneously, yes?

Geller: Yes, exactly. This is a strain of anti-Semitism in Europe that has never been eradicated. There is never any discussion of Islamic anti-Semitism, and it is fundamental to Islamic teachings. This refusal to acknowledge the obvious gives tacit approval to incitement to violence. It is unsafe to walk about many European cities with any identifying Jewish apparel or accessories on. Is that what Europe learned from World War II? Is that the lesson that Europe took away from the holocaust?

The lesson that Europe had decided to avail itself of in the aftermath of Auschwitz was not that evil is bad and that they behaved like monsters, but rather that everything was caused by nationalism — and therefore, what they really needed to do was have a European Union that would obviate their need for nationalism, so that they could become this transnational gobbletygook. They’d all get together and therefore they wouldn’t have another Auschwitz.
But really the lesson should have been that they were evil and they had to be good. And that is the lesson they still have to learn. You have to be able and willing to make moral distinctions and stand up for the good and fight evil, and that is something the Europeans refuse to do.

They are constantly having memorials to dead Jews, while condemning Israel for every act of self defense, no matter how benign it is, in the defense of innocent Jewish citizens.

Ilan Halimi best demonstrates the horror of this lack of humanity. But certainly the “death to Jews” rallies that spread like a cancer across the Europe (and major US cities) during the Gaza defensive in January is certainly a gross demonstration of this evil.

FP: What are your own personal thoughts on this case?

Geller: It is an indescribable horror. Unimaginable. It demonstrates the free hand Jew hatred is given. It was not just the Muslims that reveled in the torture of this young Jewish man; it was law enforcement’s response (or lack of it), and the circus-like atmosphere of the trial. It is a stunning indictment of French society. Flagrant and unabashed hatred.

FP: What can ordinary citizens do to try to bring some kind of justice to this horrifying crime and to expose the shameless, hateful and cowardly behavior of French authorities and the media etc?

Geller: Speak up! Write, call, email, fax media and elected officials. Burke was right when he said all that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing. Speak up! Evil is made possible by thesanction you give it. Withdraw your sanction (channeling Ayn Rand here).

FP: What do we get from the reality that this happened, as you relate, in an apartment building where myriad dwellers, all Muslims, heard Ilan’s screams and cries of torture and did not only did nothing but came to participate? This wasn’t a secret between three people. Dozens and dozens of people knew about this, and supported and engaged in it. What does it tell us?

Could it possibly have something to do with the Islamic theological teaching about not only the importance of hating and killing Jews, but also that a Muslim will go to heaven if he kills a Jew?

Hmmm I wonder.

The liberal and leftist milieus cannot accept what it tells us of course, but they know there would never be a reverse situation (i.e. an apartment building full of Jews who hear a Muslim screaming from being tortured and they support it and participate in it, etc.). And if this did happen, which it wouldn’t, imagine the media being completely silent about it.

Geller: This is the terrible truth about Islam, well documented in Dr. Andrew Bostom’s encyclopedic tome,The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. The Islamic dehumanization of the Jews mirrors what the Nazis did during the Hlocaust. I find it troubling in all of my research and personal dealings it is difficult to find devout Muslims (any Muslims that are not apostates) who are not hostile to Israel. It speaks volumes. And of course, none of this would be possible if the Left were not aligning itself with political Islam. But this is consistent with the modus operandi of the left. Historically they align themselves with the totalitarian ideology du jour.

FP: Pamela Geller, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com

The Chavista (follower of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez) red shirt onslaught seems to be sharpening its pitch. After all, weeks and weeks of attacks, fanned by “Globovision (a 24-hour television news network in Venezuela) as the source of all evil,” have a way to self-generate excessive stimulation in those quarters.

Yesterday (Wednesday, June 17), we saw many concerted attacks of the sort, worthy of any self-respecting totalitarian regime. I chose to show only one, the attack on Miranda State’s Governor Radonski ’s office by the mayor of Los Teques, Alirio Mendoza. The pictures say it all. My only question is how come nothing will happen to this mayor promoting violence and using public employees for that purpose DURING working hours, while Globovision will be closed any time soon just because Rafael Poleo did not control his big mouth for a few seconds? Does chavismo ignore that these things do go around the world? The shirts might be red, but this is Fascism and the language is clear: those who wear the swastika in their heart are those covering the walls with it.

By the way, just for the record, the grandparents of governor Capriles Radonski died in the Holocaust. So we can mark that down as yet more chavista anti-Semitism.

Chavismo will not stop at anything to weaken those opposition officials elected last November. Rosales, Maracaibo mayor is in exile; Ledezma, Caracas mayor, has been stripped of any function; Governors Perez of Zulia, Navarro of Nueva Esparta, and Salas Feo of Carabobo have lost control of ports, airports, and highways; and now it is the turn of the two last-remaining governors with still some authority. The attack on Capriles Radonski in Miranda has restarted and in the most ignominious way one can think of.