Tag Archive for: northern branch of the Islamic Movement

What’s behind the Arab Days of Rage in Israel?

October 13, 2015 witnessed  the worst attacks by enraged Palestinians in Jerusalem, Central  Israel and on the Gaza frontier.Three Israelis were murdered in bus shootings, car ramming  and knifing attacks that occurred in Jerusalem, northern Israel and Ra’anana near Tel Aviv. On Wednesday evening October 14, 2015, a 65 year old woman was attacked by an assailant receiving knife wounds at  the Jerusalem central bus station. The assailant was shot dead by Border police while attempting to board an Egged bus. Ynet news reported the terrorist background of the dead assailant:

The attacker was identified as Ahmad Shaaban, 23, a resident of East Jerusalem’s Ras al-Amud neighborhood. He was imprisoned between 2012 and 2015 for terrorist activities.

The prior weekend scores of Palestinians in Gaza attempted to cross into Israel’s southern frontier only to be thwarted by IDF soldiers.  A crowd of 200 penetrated the fence near an Israeli kibbutz with resulting causalities, 11 deaths occurred from IDF gunfire when the mob refused to stop. Earlier, rockets had slammed into Southern Israel from Gaza prompting IAF retaliation.

Reuters reported “seven Israelis and 32 Palestinians, including 13 alleged attackers and eight children, have died in the surge of violence.” Reuters further noted what happened on October 13th, “the Day of Rage:”

Palestinian men armed with knives and a gun killed at least three people and wounded several others in a string of attacks in Jerusalem and near Tel Aviv, police said, in a “Day of Rage” declared by Palestinian groups.

With the worst unrest in years in Israel and the Palestinian territories showing no sign of abating, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened an emergency meeting of his security cabinet to discuss what police said would be new operational plans.

Officials said Israel was considering whether to seal off Palestinian districts in East Jerusalem – home of many of the assailants.

In Jerusalem, two Palestinians shot and stabbed passengers on a bus, killing two and injuring four, police said. One of the assailants was killed and the other captured.

Minutes later, a Palestinian rammed his car into a bus stop in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the city, police said. A surveillance video showed him then hacking pedestrians with a cleaver until he was shot dead by a passer-by. One of the Israelis he attacked died and six others were hurt, police said.

In clashes near the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the Israeli army shot dead a Palestinian, medics said. The army said its troops fired on a man who tried to throw a petrol bomb at them.

1929headline_montage

News Montage on Jerusalem  and Hebron Arab Riots,  Palestine 1929. Source: CAMERA

Arab terrorism connects one Israeli family

As Israeli blogger, Yisrael Medad , posted in  My Right Word , “One Family’s Story of Arab Terror.” The current outburst of Arab Muslim violence has intergenerational connections with history from the pre-state Yishuv period:

On Friday, August 17, 1929, Yisrael Lev, a student at the Slobodka Yeshiva in Hebron did not feel well and left for Jerusalem to seek medical assistance. That day, one of his fellow students was hacked to death and the following day, many more including dozens of Hebron’s Jewish community were similarly slaughtered. He remained Haredi but an Israeli flag flew on his balcony every Independence Day. His two daughters served in the IDF. One, Tzippora, married Zev Roich. The new couple had four children. Tzipora’s granddaughter, Naama nee Armoni, was murdered by Arab terrorists during the [2015] Succoth holiday as was her husband, Rabbi Eitam Henkin.

Naama and Rabbi Eitam Henkin(1)

Naama and Rabbi Eitam Henkin z”l

U.S. and International Concerns

The Israeli  Security Cabinet launched  new security arrangements that include IDF troops guarding buses, destruction of attackers’ homes and cordoning off sections of Arab East Jerusalem. The mainstream media like The New York Times attributes the violence in Israel to unemployed desperate “leaderless Palestinian youths  driven by  social media.” Secretary of State Kerry, speaking at a Harvard’s Belfer Center news conference, condemned the Palestinian violence saying, “the situation in Israel is too volatile.” He stressed the importance for all people to avoid what he called provocative statements that can inflame tensions further. “This violence and any incitement to violence have got to stop.” However, he suggested  that the “tit for tat” violence was driven by continuing Israeli ‘settlement building’ and Israeli “excessive force.” The fact is that settlement activity has been contained near zero. Kerry subsequently ‘clarified’ saying there was no connection between Arab violence and settlements. The Mideast Quartet led by EU Foreign Relations Commissioner Mogherini of Italy cancelled a trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah because of security concerns.

Israeli Arab Sheikh Raed Salah of the Islamic Movement    Released from Ramla Jail, 2010.

The Palestinian and Israel Arabs inciting the violence

The reality is that PA President Abbas, other members of the PA government and the Israeli Arab radical Islamist leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement ,Sheik Saed Salah, have incited and recruited Arabs  They  have fomented what Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza, has called the Jerusalem or al Quds, Intifada, a reference to the 100 year old blood libel that “the Al Aksa Mosque is in danger” from Jews.. Add to that the evident disloyalty of Arab Joint list Knesset Members who held massive rallies of Israeli Arab Muslims urging them to rise up along with their Palestinian brothers. Note this Jerusalem Post report on the disruption of an Israeli Channel 2 interview by Arab Joint List leader Ayman Odeh by Nazareth Mayor, Ali Salam:

Nazareth Mayor Ali Salam shouted at Joint List head Ayman Odeh [of Hadash] to leave his city as the MK was about to be interviewed live on Channel 2 there on October 11th.

“Ayman, you need to go elsewhere, you’ve destroyed our city!” yelled Salam at Odeh from his car, which pulled up next to [ to him while he was} standing on the sidewalk in front of the television camera.

“Get out of here. Enough with the interviews!” shouted Salam. “You all have destroyed everything! Go back to Haifa!…What are you being interviewed about? What are you doing to us? You are doing nothing!” shouted Salam.

Odeh, for his part, remained quiet, but appeared to be greatly irritated.

The sharp confrontation followed accusations by Salam earlier in the day in an interview on Army Radio in which he said Joint List MKs were “ruining coexistence.”

Joint List MKs have been organizing and leading protests  riling up the Arab public to violence, which Salam said has led to a sharp drop in Jewish customers and complaints from local business owners.

Stabbing victim Liat Naor  Source Channel 2

Stabbing victim Liat Naor, Source: Israeli Channel 2

Evidence of Israeli  Concerns over Arab attacks across the country

My colleague Lisa Benson of the eponymous National Security Radio Show reminded me of an interview she did with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat  just after an another incident involving the death of a baby at a light rail station in Jerusalem. That  was prior to the onset of last summer’s Operation Defensive Edge, the 51 day Gaza rocket war. At the time, Mayor Barkat suggested that the matter of the violent East Jerusalem Arab incident not be mentioned during the interview. Barkat subsequently foiled an Arab knifing attack on an Orthodox Jew during an episode in February 2015. Now, during the current upsurge in jihadist attacks against Israeli Jews in Jerusalem, he is urging the Netanyahu government to combat it. This is reflected in a Jerusalem Post report:

In the wake of the {October 12th attacks in Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to heighten the state’s response against terror and to act more firmly against those who incite and encourage it.  “To our regret there is no limit to the cruelty of these  murderers who choose to the attack children and innocent citizens who return from their studies to encounter the satanic evil that is shocking us all.”

The plague of auto ramming and knifing incidents was exemplified by what occurred in northern Israel reflected in this Israel Hayom report:

“I didn’t do anything, what do they want from me?” Alaa Raed Ahmad Ziwad, 20, says in court after ramming his car into a soldier and then stabbing bystanders.  Ramming victim, 19-year-old Orel Azuri, remains in critical condition.

Liat Naor, 15, was still wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair and holding her own birthday cake when she was attacked by a terrorist with a knife outside a shopping center in Gan Shmuel in northern Israel on Sunday.

She was saved when a bystander, Adi Eshet, helped subdue the terrorist, who had begun the attack by ramming his car into a female soldier, 19-year-old Orel Azuri, before jumping out and stabbing people nearby.

“I was sure I was going to die,” Naor said, speaking in the hospital room where she is recovering from her stab wounds. She thanked Eshet “for the amazing birthday present.”

The shock of the new normal in Central Israel was reflected in the aftermath of two knifing incidents October 13th in Ra’anana, a community of 80,000 near Tel Aviv that has a large of community of Anglo American residents who made aliyah to Israel. During  Operation Defense Edge in the summer of 2014, Ra’anana was spared the rocket on-slaught. The Algemeiner reported:

“Due to the security situation, the shop will be closed today,” was among the signs that could be seen this afternoon in Ra’anana, the Israeli news site Walla reported.

Ra’anana, a city of 80,000 in Israel’s central Sharon region known for its clean streets, quality education system and large English-speaking community, experienced two Palestinian terrorist attacks on the  morning of October 13th. And its citizens are responding with trepidation.

The closing of some stores on the city’s main street, Ahuza, was one reaction to the stabbing attacks, one of which occurred at around 8:50 a.m., and the other at 10:30. Parents of pre-schoolers, too, became concerned and ran to kindergartens to take their children home.

“We are aware of the reality [in the country],” a shop-owner who witnessed the first attack, at a nearby bus stop told Walla. “But when it comes close to you, it’s unpleasant and scary. We always thought that this would only happen in Jerusalem; we didn’t believe Ra’anana would become a terror-struck city.”

[…]

A restaurant owner in the area of the second attack in Ra’anana, which took place across from the Loewenstein Rehabilitation Hospital, said it’s the first time his establishment has been so empty. He also claimed his fellow restaurateurs are experiencing the same phenomenon, because “people are afraid to leave their houses.”

“Even during Operation Protective Edge [last summer’s war in Gaza, when Hamas rockets were launched into the center of Israel on a daily basis] it wasn’t this deserted,” he said.

Evidence of Palestinian and Israeli Arab Incitement

The violence by Palestinians in East Jerusalem  and the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria  was stoked by PA President Abbas, whose UN  General Assembly  address abandoned the Oslo Accords. It is pure Jew hatred with episodes of knife attacks, shootings, car rammings and attempted suicide bombings against Israeli Jews. Standwith U.S. developed an interactive map spotlighting where  instances of attacks have occurred: Interactive Map Shows the Where, When, and What of Terror Attacks.

This uprising is different because Israeli Arabs has also been encouraged to engage in these attacks by Joint Arab list Knesset members and the radical Islamist Sheik Saed Salah from his bastion of the um al-Fahm, an Arab town in the triangle area of Israel in the Galilee. Salah is head of the northern branch of the Islamic movement affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the equivalent of Hamas inside Israel. The Netanyahu government has often sought to ban the group. In a November 2014 NER/Iconoclast blog  post on “Israel Plagued by Spreading Islamikaze Violence,“ we noted:

Then there is  the fiery Salafist preacher, Sheik Raed Salah  from the Arab town of Umm al Fahm. Just released from prison for serving another term for incitement, Salah boasts that Jerusalem will become a “global Caliphate.”

As Israeli commentator Barry Shaw observed on the Lisa Benson Show of October 11, 2015, Sheik Raed Salah may have supplied the foot soldiers who barricaded the al Aksa Mosque and kick started the Jerusalem violence at the start of the Jewish New Years. He contends that Salah, whose objective is the establishment of a Caliphate to rule Israel from the Temple Mount, had planned this wave of violence. Shaw suspects that the Jordanian–appointed religious leaders of the Waqf may have been complicit in fomenting the Temple Mount violence. They allowed truck loads to enter the Mosque complex through the underground excavations supplying the rocks, cinder blocks, and materials for making Molotov cocktails. Avi Ischaroff in a Times of Israel report on often jailed Sheik Salah observed:

Salah has tried to utilize the Temple Mount to inflame the Arab Palestinian street. Now he’s finally managed to do so. “The defender of Al-Aqsa,” as Salah is known, continues to warn against the ostensible plans of the Jews to harm the mosque, vowing that he is prepared to do anything to “protect it.” His activists are everywhere in Arab towns and villages, successfully fomenting friction against Israel.

The incitement to Jew hatred and murder are reflected in the provocative statements of PA President Abbas. Jews have observed restraint while on the Temple mount. They are even been barred from saying prayers there. Abbas cited in Bret Stephens’ Wall Street Journal Global View column, “Palestinians: the Psychotic Stage,” wrote:

“Al Aqsa Mosque is ours. They [Jews] have no right to defile it with their filthy feet.” And: “We bless every drop of blood spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah.”

Then there was the Imam in Gaza invoking the Qur’anic imperative to kill Jews:

“Brothers, this is why we recall today what Allah did to the Jews,” one Gaza imam said [October 9]  in a recorded address, translated by the invaluable Middle East Media Research Institute, or Memri. “Today, we realize why the Jews build walls. They do not do this to stop missiles but to prevent the slitting of their throats.”

Josh Hasten Israeli American Journalists 10-7-15

Joshua Hasten, Israel American Journalist, October 7, 2015. Screen Shot, You Tube video.

The shahids perpetrating the days of rage in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel are being ‘honored’ for their murderous jihad sacrifices of their Jewish victims according to translations by Palestinian Media Watch:

Fatah brought soil from Al-Aqsa to grave of murderer who stabbed 2 to death in Jerusalem “so that the dead body…can hug the soil for which he died a Martyr”. PA Ministry of Education plants trees in honor of terrorists- the “Martyrs” of “the ongoing popular uprising”. Ministry: “Event meant to illustrate the devotion of the ministry… to honoring the Martyrs…[It] instills national and humanitarian values in the minds of the young”.

Then, brandishing a six-inch knife, he added: “My brothers in the West Bank: Stab!”

The story of one Israeli’s encounter with Palestinian terror

How do Jews in Israel feel confronting this murderous wave of Palestinian and Israeli Arab terrorism? Josh Hasten, a Jerusalem Post contributor was interviewed on the October 11, 2015  Lisa Benson Show.  He spoke of taking a shortcut only to be confronted on the Tekoa Road by a mob of 40 to 50 masked men from the Arab village of Beit Sahour .They were armed with rocks and cinder blocks blocking his way. He alighted from his car, showed them his licensed hand gun and when that didn’t stop them fired off a round that scattered them. Clearly, as you will see in this YouTube video, Hasten thought that spared him. However, that didn’t spare a Jewish woman he encountered who had been brutally set upon and beaten presumably by the same group. Frightening, but rarely reported in the mainstream media that tends to concentrate on Palestinians being killed, perpetrating murder and mayhem against Israeli Jews.

Watch this You Tube video of Josh Hasten’s encounter with Palestinians out to kill “their Jew.” The media may call this “violence.” Sorry, it is jihad.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Zionist Union Head Herzog ‘has abandoned the Jewish state to barbarians in their midst’?

Herzog and Tibi

MK Yitzhak Herzog of Zionist Union on left and MK Ahmed Tibi of United Arab List on right. Source: Miriam Alster/Flash 90

Zionist Union Head Herzog Wants Joint Arab Party MK Tibi to Join Sensitive Israel Defense Committee.

When we posted yesterday on “Yellow Journalism Roils Final Week of Israeli Knesset Elections”, we drew attention to the Zionist Union endeavoring to form an alliance with the Unified Arab List. We wrote:

A suggested change in the proportion for party representation under Israel’s basic law of 5.00 was compromised at 3.25 percent in a March 2014 Knesset vote. This was a marginal increase from the previous threshold of 2 Percent.  That led the Arab list of parties, harboring seditious MKs, to announce a unified list that enabled them to pick up 11 mandates in the new Knesset. That led the Zionist Union to consider a possible alliance with Arab MKs to join the government and possibly fill Ministerial posts.

Today came evidence of the collusion between Zionist Union head and Joint Arab List head Ahmed Tibi in an Arutz Sheva/INN report, ‘Buji has lost his Mind’.  The INN headline was:

Nationalist MKs pounce on Labor head who won’t rule out letting MK Ahmed Tibi into Knesset’s sensitive Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

This may be enough to swing many of Israel’s estimated 20 percent undecided back to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Likud vaporizing the temporary lead of the Zionist Union.  Benny Moshe and Gil Ronen, authors of the INN report, wrote:

Nationalist MKs reacted with derision Wednesday after MK Yitzhak “Buji” Herzog (Labor) said in a televised interview that he does “not rule out” allowing MK Ahmed Tibi of the United Arab List to the Knesset’s highly sensitive Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

“Buji has gone crazy, appointing Ahmed Tibi to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee,” said MK Miri Regev (Likud). “Seriously? It is Buji who endangers the security of Israel, despite attempts by some officers to scare the Israeli public against (Binyamin) Netanyahu. Only Netanyahu will safeguard the nation’s security and the public knows this well, in its heart of hearts.”

MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) called on Herzog to recant. “MK Buji Herzog’s agreement to Ahmed Tibi’s membership in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, which stems from his desire to receive the support of the Arabs, expresses irresponsibility and abandon.

“This position of his makes it clear to the entire Israeli public that we must not place trust in him or see him, God forbid, as prime minister. The discussions in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, certainly in the subcommittees, are ones with heavy import and it is not possible to let the MKs who support Israel’s enemies into them. Buji – return! Return to the Israeli mainstream, which typified the Labor party in the past, when it was Zionist and pro-defense, and not like today, when you have espoused the radical Left’s positions.”

How dangerous is MK Tibi?  The INN report notes:

Tibi is a former adviser to Yasser Arafat, who headed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) for decades and launched countless terror attacks against Jews. He has spoken out in favor of “martyrdom” by Arab terrorists, has a long history of inciting violence by Arabs, has a penchant for hurling coarse insults against nationalist MKs, and is perceived by many as the most clever and dangerous of the Arab MKs.

Ted Belman, publisher of the Israpundit blog, gave historical evidence of Tibi’s sedition, in a January 25, 2008 post, “Time to say goodbye” to Arab Israelis:

By examining the Israeli Arab protests at Gaza’s Erez crossing we can understand that Knesset Member Ahmed Tibi, as well as Ra’ed Salah and his comrades in the northern branch of the Islamic Movement [what we have called Hamas inside Israel], a body holding anti-Jewish positions, do not think that the Jewish people deserves its own state; at least not in this part of the world, which in their view was always meant to be the home of the Palestinian people.

[..]

Those who wish to stay and be part of the Jewish state should know that their loyalty lies only with this country. They cannot protest on behalf of those who wish to destroy it. All the others, such as Ra’ed Salah and Ahmed Tibi, must decide where they want to live. If they think that another “Palestinian state” should be established here, instead of the State of Israel, they should get up and leave. They can fight us – but from the outside. Not from within us, and not at our expense.

Looks to this writer that Yitzhak Herzog by his interview remarks has confirmed the views of Belman, many Israelis and Zionist supporters about the misnamed leftist Zionist Union. The left is seeking to destroy the “Zionist Enterprise” from within with the Knesset election next Tuesday. With Herzog’s offer to Tibi, Labor has abandoned the Jewish state to barbarians in their midst.  Israelis with any sense should vote for Likud and PM Netanyahu if they want to sleep at night.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is from Palestine.com. Photo: Reuters.

What will Israel do with ISIS on its Doorstep?

ISIS Flags at Gaza Funeral

ISIS Flags at Funeral in Gaza.

Yesterday, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) declared a Caliphate to be ruled under Sharia in the lands it has conquered in Syria and Iraq.   Jerusalem-based Dan Diker on yesterday’s Lisa Benson Show, on the Salem Radio Network was in the midst of a discussion with Mudar Zahran about the ISIS threat with “Jordan in its gunsight”, listen here.   He commented that the announcement should be viewed as a political statement to Al Qaeda and its leader Ayman al Zawihiri.

Zahran noted that  Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) had morphed into ISIS.  AQI  founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a Jordanian from Zarqa who became self indoctrinated, joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 1990’s and  ran his own Jihadi training center. He established brutal barbaric assaults in Iraq in 2005 engaging against US military and contractors,  and Shia Iraqis that set a precedent for ISIS.  al-Zarqawi was killed in a 2006 USAF -F16a  bombing attack at a targeted safe house in Iraq.

The ISIS declaration was also a statement to other Sunni terrorist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine, Hamas.  The Algemeiner reported  ISIS flags were flying this weekend on pickup trucks in Gaza for a funeral an indication that it was operating there.   Conquering large swaths of terrain, looting upwards of a billion dollars worth of  money and gold, capturing US supplied Humvees and Blackhawk helicopters abandoned by a corrupt and incompetent Iraqi Army have morphed ISIS into an Islamic State with its own army.

ISIS is more than just a political threat elsewhere in the sectarian turmoil of the Middle East. That was recognized in comments by  New York Rep. Pete King  onABC’s This Week that President Obama should be “very  very aggressive” about ISIS.  He was most immediately concerned about protecting our Embassy in Baghdad with  500 US security troops.  There are also 300 US military advisors engaged in assessing what to do with a divided Shiite- dominated al Maliki government in Iraq. A government whose military is now  supported by drones of Iran’s Quds Force gathering intelligence on ISIS forces near the capital of Baghdad.

King was also concerned about the estimated 100 American jihadis reported to be fighting with ISIS. ISIS has enticed them with English language  weekly and annual reports and videos.    My co-host on yesterday program, Lisa Benson,  commented off –line about the plethora of such sophisticated ISIS social media that is published daily.  That brought back memories of the campaign  2008 endeavoring to get Google to shut down Al Qaeda jihadist training sites.

The Administration for its part looks like the proverbial deer frozen in the headlights of ISIS.  Last week, It floated  the belated idea of funding $500 million to train “moderate” rebel fighters in the Syrian civil war. A civil war  that looks increasingly like a stalemate between ISIS and  the Assad forces are  backed by Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force with support from Putin’s Russia.  That Administration proposal may be more than a day late and a dollar short.  We had reports in mid-June from Der Spiegel and other sources that the some CIA-trained rebel fighters in Jordan  opted to join ISIS given its stunning successes.

As Diker pointed out on Sunday’s Lisa  Benson  Show the makeup of the anti-Assad  rebels  according to a Times of Israel report may control 95 percent on the Syrian side of the Golan Height. He, said, “we can see Hezbollah flags flying”.  Then he noted that the balance might be Al Nusrah, the official Al Qaeda anti-Assad contingent that increasingly has seen their fighters opt to join the “successful” ISIS.

ISIS Flags in Ma’an, Jordan

I asked Zahran, who is pro-Israel and promotes the view that Jordan is Palestine, about the peculiar circumstances  behind  last Thursday’s Jordanian Security Court decision acquitting  Al Qaeda preacher, Abu Qatada.   Abu Qatada had been extradited from the UK  for preaching incitement and allegedly raising funds for terrorist causes. The Jordanian court had dismissed one charge based on a failed 1999 plot to attack an American School in Amman. The second charge of plotting terrorism against Israel targets has yet to be heard.  Last month on May 28, 2014, the Jordanian Security Court had sentenced 11 allegedly involved in an  2012  Al Qaeda plot to attack both British and US Embassies in Amman.  Zahran drew attention to the nearly six decade dalliance with the Islamic Action front, the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, by the Hashemite Kingdom under the late King Hussein and now his son, King Abdullah II.   Zahran noted that the IAF, Muslim Brotherhood which is largely Bedouin, is the strongest organized Islamist group in Jordan. He drew attention to the daily pitched battles in  the southern town of Ma’an  between  Jordanian security forces and  local tribal supporters  of the IAF flying ISIS flags. Ma’an is located  less than three kilometers from Israel’s frontier.  The headline in a Washington Post report on the turmoil in Ma’an read, “Jordan fears homegrown ISIS more than invasion from Iraq”.

The security of Jordan as a buffer state, as  Diker pointed out is foremost on the agenda of Israel ‘s national security. We note the comments in The Times of Israel  by  former  Israeli  security cabinet strategic advisor Gen. Yaakov Amidror,  who  said that Israel should bolster the defense of Jordan against the ISIS onslaught.  At the Institute of National Security Studies  (INSS) of Tel Aviv University, yesterday Israeli PM Netanyahu underlined these security issues.     He talked about support for an Independent Kurdistan and completing a security fence along Israel’s eastern frontier from the Golan to Eilat.  Netanyahu said:

The forces of fanatical Islam are already knocking on our door” and  Israel needs to be proactive to bolster its defense against enemy infiltration.

“The first thing that we need to do is to build a security fence on our eastern border, and to build it gradually all the way from Eilat to merge with the security fence that we’ve been building over the last two years in the Golan Heights,” he said. “That fence does not hermetically prevent infiltration; it doesn’t prevent shooting through the fence as we saw tragically just a week ago; it doesn’t prevent barrages of missiles over it, or the digging of tunnels underneath it. But it does narrow down dramatically that permeatio on Israel’s border.”

Israel will not cede the Jordan Valley approaches, much sought after by Secretary of Kerry and the US facilitator in bi-lateral discussions between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, former US Ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk.  Diker pointed out Indyk’s announced return to the Washington-based Brookings Institution indicative of the US failure to achieve a final status agreement with the unified Palestinian government of Fatah with Hamas.  Diker cited the abduction of three Israel youths, including one American, by Hamas the prime suspects sought in the massive Operation Brother’s Keeper as evidence that no security for Israel could have emerged from the US facilitated negotiations. Unfortunately, the bodies of the three youths were recovered by the IDF, today amidst grief for their families and sorrow expressed by many Israelis and Americans.

Deceased three Israeli abductees likely slain by Hamas suspects. From left: INaftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, in three undated family photos. Credit Image by Reuters

Netanyahu’s  INSS remarks reflect the deep concerns about the stability of Jordan rife with more than 1.4 million Syrian refuges, and a million Iraqis. There are an estimated 1.5 million  Arabs Refugees of Palestinian origin.  Jordan’s population of 7.9  million is based on CIA Factbook estimates.  Note the last census was taken in 2004.  Then there is the  accommodation of Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist support growing in the country’s Bedouin population . They feel aggrieved about  the lack economic participation and high unemployment amid  alleged  corruption charges against the ruling autocratic Hashemite King and family.

Umm al Fahm, Israel protests by Islamic Movement, June 27, 2014.

Netanyahu also recognized internal threats to Israel’s  security at yesterday’s cabinet meeting.  He announced that  he would move to outlaw the Northern Branch of the Islamist movement, whose leader, Sheikh  Read Salah,  has proposed to establish  a Caliphate on the Temple Mount.  In October 2013, we wrote in the Iconoclast  post about Israeli Arab adherents of Sheik Salah joining up with anti-Assad Al Qaeda rebel forces in Syria.   Last Friday, there were rallies organized by  Salah and his Islamist adherents in the Israeli Arab town of Umm al Fahm protesting the raids by the IDF in Operation Brother’ s Keeper denying Hamas abduction of the three slain  youths.  Rock throwing by protesters was broken up Israeli riot police with tear gas and sound bombs. Netanyahu noted:

[The northern Branch of the Islamist Movement] constantly preaches against the State of Israel and its people. [The Islamist Movement ] publicly identify with terrorist organizations such as Hamas. Therefore, I directed the relevant authorities to consider declaring the northern branch of the Islamic Movement as an illegal organization. This would give the security authorities significant tools in the struggle against the  movement.”

In May 2014, Netanyahu had been thwarted in such a move against the northern branch of the Islamist Movement by the Justice Minister Tzipi Livni of Hatnua, because these enemies of the Jewish State are citizens. They are represented in Israel’s Knesset by Arab parties, espousing pro Palestinian positions verging on sedition.

Israel knows what it has to do with ISIS on its doorstep and fellow travelers inside. The question is the resolve of Jerusalem to take the hard steps. Israel’s friends in the US Congress are urging the Administration to undertake actions to protect its only reliable ally and interests in the region.   The ISIS Caliphate’s declaration means that Israel will have to defend itself from jihadis both inside and on its doorstep.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.