Response By The World To The Murder Of The Three Teens Is Tepid Compared To The Condemnation Of Israel Of Its Retaliation To Rocket Attacks.

Peace Be Upon the Boys, No Peace for Palestinian Terrorists

Author and columnist Ruthie Blum demands that there be no rest for societies that breed terror. This opinion piece first appeared in ‘Israel Hayom‘.

The discovery on Monday of the dead bodies of Israeli teens Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frankel and Gilad Sha’ar sent shock waves across the country. In spite of a growing sense of doom — due to the fact that their Hamas captors had not come forth with demands, and extensive searches were coming up empty — there was nevertheless a ray of hope that the boys were still alive.

Tens of thousands flocked Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, showing solidarity with the families of the kidnapped boys, the evening before the discovery of their corpses. (Photo: Zoe Vayer)

Fresh in the public’s mind was the 2006 abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, who spent five years in Hamas captivity until being released in exchange for 1,027 terrorists. Based on this experience, much discussion following the June 12 kidnapping of the three teenagers was devoted to the question of how to handle the current situation better. In other words, there was an assumption that Israel’s biggest dilemma was going to be whether to launch a rescue operation or negotiate for the boys’ release.

It is thus that the news of their cold-blooded murder and subsequent burial in a hole in the ground was not only tragic and enraging; it also came as somewhat of a surprise.

What came as no surprise at all, however, was the response of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and the socalled “international community.”

Residents of the PA attacked the ambulance transporting the bodies of Eyal, Naftali and Gilad out of the area near Hebron where they were found. The mob expressed its sentiment about the boys by hurling epithets, rocks and paint at the vehicle, smashing its windshield.

Palestinian Authority Appeals for Help to Prevent Israeli Retaliation

PA President Mahmoud Abbas — who had been lauded publicly by the Israeli government (and by Naftali Frankel’s mother, Rachel) for his assistance in the search for the boys and their kidnappers — immediately appealed to the United States and Europe to prevent Israel from retaliating militarily.

Hamas thumbed its nose at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that “Hamas is responsible and Hamas will pay” for the premeditated slaughter of the teens. Its senior spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri, wrote on Facebook: “Netanyahu … must understand his threats do not terrify us. If he launched a war against Gaza, the gates of hell would be open on him.”

Kidnapped Israeli teenagers depicted as rodents by Palestinian media.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moonissued a statement condemning “the deliberate killing of civilians,” calling the murder of the boys a “heinous act by enemies of peace [that] aims to further entrench division and distrust and to widen the conflict.”

The Vatican called it a “hideous and unacceptable crime” and an “obstacle to peace.”

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki managed to condemn the murders without actually acknowledging them as such.

“The harm that has been done to these teenagers is a tragedy,” she told reporters. When asked whether the U.S. was calling for “restraint,” she answered, “It certainly does.”

President Barack Obama echoed this message in a statement.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms this senseless act of terror against innocent youth,” he said. “From the outset, I have offered our full support to Israel and the Palestinian Authority to find the perpetrators of this crime and bring them to justice, and I encourage Israel and the Palestinian Authority to continue working together in that effort. I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.”

As was to be expected, everybody’s main concern is that Israel will do what is necessary to defeat those who aggress against it. That the Arabs in Gaza and the PA wish to keep the “Zionist enemy” and “occupation forces” at bay is at least understandable.

After all, since Monday night, the Israeli Air Force has been striking dozens of terrorist targets throughout Gaza.

US President Barack Obama urges restraint “on both sides.”

And though Netanyahu’s emergency meeting with the Diplomatic-Security Cabinet ended just after midnight with no final decision on how to respond to the murder of the boys, Abbas and his new Hamas partners undoubtedly realize that even their patsies in Washington and Brussels may not be able to serve as their buffer in this instance.

But it never ceases to boggle the mind that Western countries consider Israel to be a greater threat to “stability” than the Arabs who seek its destruction. Nor does it cease to amaze that the hackneyed phrase “enemies of peace” is still being used to refer to state-backed terrorists. They are not enemies of peace. They are enemies of Israel.

When the autopsies of Eyal, Naftali and Gilad are complete and the innocent teenagers can be buried — this time properly, with their grieving family and friends there to pray and mourn — Israel must be determined not to let the societies that bred their killers ever rest in peace.

Ruthie Blum is the author of “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’” 

Obama's Lack Of Condemnation On Death Of Teens In Israel, Should Tell Everyone Where He Stands!

White House's 'Condolences' for Murdered Israeli Teens Will not be Enough

Author(s):  Dr. Phyllis Chesler
Source:  breitbart.com.     Article date: June 30th, 2014

My heart is broken, absolutely broken. Words never fail me but, at this moment, mere words feel inadequate, even inappropriate. I am, of course, talking about the discovery of three dead bodies which once belonged to three beautiful Israeli souls: Gilad Shaar, Naftali Frenkel, and Eyal Yifrach.

This is a time for tears but also a time for some very serious decisions. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has confirmed that “Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay. He added that the teenagers were “kidnapped and murdered in cold blood by wild beasts.”

The French foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, is “deeply shocked and upset” by the murder of these boys. He also expressed “horror” and indignation.”

President Obama expressed his “deepest condolences” to the family of the slain teenagers. He added: “I also urge all parties to refrain from steps that could further destabilize the situation.” President Obama did not accuse Hamas of this despicable act nor did he say our government would assist Israel in its search for security and justice. Obama has once again called for “restraint” and “stability.” Does he mean that Jihadists should refrain from Jihad because it is “de-stabilizing” the entire Middle East or does he mean, more likely, that Israel should “refrain” from defending itself?

White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, also said:  “We obviously condemn in the strongest possible terms violence that takes the lives of innocent civilians.”

This is a very unsatisfying and peculiar statement. To what is Earnest referring? This could apply to anyone anywhere at any time. It’s lack of specificity is cruel and insulting.

Why did Hamas operatives choose to kidnap these three boys? Why did they decide to kill them, apparently, almost immediately, and not use them to barter for Palestinian Arab terrorists in Israeli jails? Are these the actions of two low-level Hamas operatives hoping to be rewarded?  Did the Hamas leadership decide they were not interested in hostage-taking especially since the boys could not be moved very far due to the massive IDF search for them?

Or, is this a game-changer? No more bartering. Just Jew-killing. Do the crazed Jihadists now plan to take over both Jordan and Israel? 

I take it personally whenever evil triumphs. One knows that evil is at work when children are murdered by adults or callously used by adults as human shields, sex objects, child soldiers— or as hostage victims.

The Muslim-on-Muslim violence that is taking down the Middle East as we have known it is so fiery, so horrendous, that perhaps the death of these three precious boys will be overlooked or minimized. Perhaps our passionate focus on them will be resented and mocked.   

Jews, Israelis, our supporters and allies know that we will never forget these boys and their cruel fates. We will honor their martyrdom by our deeds of valor and courage.

Whenever an Israeli is killed, the Jew-haters quickly point out how many Arabs have been killed. However, they have mainly been killed by other Arabs and Muslims. This particular killing field is accepted as a given. When an Israeli or a Jew fights back or seeks to rescue on of their own, that’s when the entire world points a finger and starts its games of counting and moral equivalencies.

A Memorial service will be held tonight outside the Israeli Consulate in NYC. I am sure that similar Memorial services will be held all over Israel and across North America. Hopefully, such Memorial services will also be held across Europe but I have my doubts.

May these dear, innocent boys rest in peace, may the lives they led be a blessing for us all, may their families and all Israel be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

What Will Happen To Turkey As The Mideast Continues To Burn? Will It Become An Ally, Once Again Or Something Else?

An Unhelpful Ally

Author(s):  Jonathan Schanzer
Source:  The Wall Street Journal.     Article date: June 25th, 2014

The Middle East is aflame. The rapid march of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS, from Syria into Iraq has rattled Washington and Brussels. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is also heating up, as the Jewish state searches frantically for three teens kidnapped in the West Bank. And the world powers continue to wrangle with Iran over its nuclear-weapons program.

None of these crises are easy to solve, and all three have been exacerbated by policies crafted in Europe's backyard by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Turkey.

The ISIS crisis in Iraq is inextricably tied to the dangerous and permissive border policies of Mr. Erdogan's government in Turkey over the past two years. It was only last year that U.S. President Barack Obama chided Mr. Erdogan for “letting arms and fighters flow into Syria indiscriminately and sometimes to the wrong rebels, including anti-Western jihadists.”

Mr. Obama wasn't alone in that assessment. As Human Rights Watch noted in an October report, “Many foreign fighters operating in northern Syria gain access to Syria via Turkey, from which they also smuggle their weapons, obtain money and other supplies, and sometimes retreat to for medical treatment.”

Mr. Erdogan has denied these allegations and vowed to prevent aid from flowing to jihadists in Syria. But media and law-enforcement reports contradict his statements. “The relative accessibility of the Syrian-Turkish border explains” why so many jihadists have made their way to Syria, the Journal reported earlier this month, citing Europol.

ISIS has found other transit points into Syria. But it's clear that this group, and other violent factions, have benefited from Turkey's Wild Wild East. As Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment told the website Syria Deeply in December, “Turkey is to Syria now what Pakistan was to Afghanistan in the 1990s.”

Ankara may also be serving as a remote headquarters for the Palestinian terror group Hamas. Senior Hamas figure Saleh al-Aruri “operates out of Turkey, with the backing of the Turkish government,” Ynet reported in October. And a high-ranking Israeli intelligence official confirmed his presence there to me, adding that al-Aruri is “one of the most important leaders of Hamas” and is “involved in a lot of things including finance and logistics.”

More specifically, al-Aruri is in charge of Hamas's portfolio in the West Bank, according to the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat. As with other Hamas leaders, his violent proclamations are publicized on the English-language website of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas's military arm. “Hamas will be at the forefront of the resistance work in the West Bank,” the site quotes him as saying in October.

Aruri has been based in Turkey since 2012, according to the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly, after Hamas abandoned its Damascus headquarters in protest over the Assad regime's slaughter of fellow Sunnis. He joined a Hamas delegation in March 2012 that took part in talks with Mr. Erdogan, the Palestinian Maan News Agency reported. Later that year, he traveled from Turkey to Gaza to attend the Qatari emir's visit to Hamas-controlled Gaza. The following October, al-Aruri joined Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal for a high-level meeting with Mr. Erdogan in Ankara, according to a Hamas-linked website.

Aruri's name has recently appeared in the Israeli and Palestinian media as a person of interest in the kidnapping of the three Israeli teens in the West Bank earlier this month; shortly after these reports surfaced, the Israelis razed al-Aruri's home. His leadership role in the Qassam Brigades in the West Bank raise troubling questions about what he is doing in Turkey—and why Ankara allows him to remain there.

An even more troubling question is why, amid global financial pressure to convince the Islamic Republic's leadership to dismantle its illicit nuclear program, one of Turkey's three state-owned banks, Halkbank, was allegedly executing gas-for-gold transactions with Iran. Turkey in 2012 and 2013 purchased Iranian natural gas in Turkish lira and transferred the proceeds to Halkbank accounts. Iranian traders then used these proceeds to buy gold from Turkey, which was shipped to Dubai before making its way to Iran. Ankara insisted that the transactions didn't violate sanctions because the gold was going to individuals, not the Tehran regime (trade with individuals wasn't proscribed at the time).

Washington adopted new legislation in January 2013 that imposed a blanket prohibition on all gold sales to Iran. Yet the Obama administration didn't make the prohibition effective immediately. The sanctions only became effective six months later, on July 1, 2013. By forestalling the imposition of the sanctions, the White House granted Turkey and Iran additional months of trading opportunities. According to a report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Roubini Global Economics, “Iran's golden loophole” allowed Tehran to receive more than $13 billion before gas-for-gold slowed to a trickle.

Then, on December 17, 2013, a massive corruption probe in Turkey alleged multiple links between the Turkish political elite and a shadowy business network tied to Iran. One anti-AKP newspaper reported that Reza Zerrab, an Iranian-Azeri businessman, was “accused of being involved in irregular money transactions, mostly from Iran, that total some 87 billion euros.” Using his connections in Iran and Turkey, Mr. Zerrab moved “almost a metric ton of gold to Iran every day for 1 1/2 years” in transactions amounting to more than $28 billion, according to Bloomberg. A Turkish prosecutor's report, leaked in March, leveled additional allegations about this financial network between Turkey and Iran.

Mr. Erdogan and his allies deny any wrongdoing, and the AKP has deferred a parliamentary investigation to next year. But if the allegations are true, Turkey helped the mullahs attain financial leverage at a crucial moment in the battle over Iran's nuclear future.

Ankara is now imploring NATO for assistance in repelling ISIS. The AKP is also condemning Israel's West Bank manhunt, while opposing an Iranian nuclear bomb (Turkish President Abdullah Gul last year voiced his concern about a “neighboring country possessing weapons not possessed by Turkey”). Yet Turkey bears some responsibility for all three crises, and Europe must hold Ankara to account.

Mr. Schanzer is vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.