Photo Credit: Courtesy Aaron Klein
Aaron Klein

Netanyahu Speaks The Truth; International Community Not Happy

The U.S. and international community are up in arms because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the inconvenient truth that uprooting Jewish communities from the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state is tantamount to “ethnic cleansing.”

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Netanyahu’s purported outrage was to state: “Ethnic cleansing for peace is absurd. It’s about time somebody said it. I just did.”

The comments came in the form of a two-minute YouTube video in which Netanyahu responded to international criticism that building Jewish homes in already existing West Bank Jewish communities represents an “obstacle to peace.”

The Israeli leader also addressed the longstanding Palestinian Authority demand for a Jew-free Palestinian state; a requirement famously expressed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas when he exclaimed, “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands.”

How exactly did Netanyahu misuse the phrase “ethnic cleansing”? The removal of Jews from territories to form a Palestinian state fits the definition pretty well.

Recall Israel’s 2005 evacuation from the Gaza Strip. The Jewish state rightfully recognized that unilaterally handing over the territory to the Palestinians required the complete removal of all Jews from the coastal enclave, lest any remaining Jews become an immediate target for Palestinian extremists.

As a Middle East reporter embedded for a time in Gush Katif, a former site of Gaza’s Jewish communities, I personally bore witness to the dramatic withdrawal, which included the uprooting of Jewish graves for fear the bodies would be desecrated.

Israel’s instincts were spot on. Immediately after the final Jews departed, the Palestinians ransacked Israeli structures and looted not only multi-million dollar high-tech greenhouses left there with the well-intended aim of helping the local economy, but even synagogues and yeshivas.

Does anyone remember the tragic Israeli withdrawal in October 2000 from Joseph’s Tomb, considered the third holiest site in Judaism?

Within less than an hour, Palestinian rioters overtook Joseph’s Tomb and began to ransack the site. Palestinian mobs tore apart books, destroyed prayer stands, and grinded out stone carvings in the Tomb’s interior.

One BBC reporter described the scene: “The site was reduced to smoldering rubble – festooned with Palestinian and Islamic flags – cheering Arab crowd.”

Palestinians also constructed a mosque on the rubble of the tomb’s adjacent yeshiva compound. Workers painted the dome of the compound green, the Islamic color.

Why are the White House and international community criticizing Netanyahu for his accurate “ethnic cleansing” statement instead of tackling the real obstacle to peace: the Palestinian refusal to recognize the existence of Israel, and their drive to create an extremist-led, Jew-free Palestinian state?

 

 

George Soros Wants More Electronic And Online Voting

George Soros’s Open Society Foundations is seeking to expand the use of electronic and online voting systems nationwide, according to a leaked Foundations document reviewed by this reporter.

While the directive was issued two years ago, the issue of electronic voting has become a hot button topic in this year’s presidential election amid fears digital voting systems can be compromised.

The online voting plan was contained in a 67-page hacked file detailing the September 29-30, 2014 Open Society U.S. Programs board meeting in New York.

A significant portion of the board meeting was dedicated to methods the Foundation’s U.S. Programs (USP) could use to further the use of President Obama’s executive action authority to bypass Congress during Obama’s final two years in office.

The Open Society, together with partner grantees, assembled a general list of potential presidential executive actions on numerous issues. Significantly, the Soros-backed group zeroed in on the expansion of online voting.

In January 2014, Obama’s 10-person Presidential Commission on Election Administration released its recommendations for reforming the U.S. election process, including transitioning to voting via tablet computers and other technologies.

Obama’s presidential panel dismissed concerns about hacking. Those concerns may have been dismissed too soon. Two weeks ago, NBC News cited intelligence officials revealing hackers purportedly based in Russia recently attempted to breach state voter registration databases twice. One of the hacking attempts resulted in the lifting of up to 200,000 voter records in Illinois, according to the officials.

The breach prompted the FBI to issue an unusual nationwide “flash” alert, warning states to take immediate measures to beef up the security of their online voting-related systems.

Last month, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was quoted as saying during a media conference call hosted by the Christian Science Monitor that DHS should consider whether to designate the U.S. election system as a “critical infrastructure.”

 

ISIS Fighters Go Missing

Several Arab and Western espionage agencies have set up a joint situation room to trace thousands of Islamic State fighters who have gone missing in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, an Arab intelligence official told Breitbart Jerusalem.

Some of the several hundred ISIS fighters who took part in the battle of Sirte, in Libya, survived the defeat, as did fighters in the lost battles of Mosul in Iraq and Manbej, Alrai, Jarabulus and other communities near the Syrian-Turkish border, he said.

According to estimates, the number of ISIS fighters reached several tens of thousands in those areas, “but the battles did not yield thousands of dead or captured fighters.”

“That’s why it’s worrisome – these people are gone. They either integrated into noncombatant communities or, more likely, infiltrated into neighboring countries – to Turkey, and from there to Europe and other Middle Eastern countries, and in Libya’s case, all over North Africa.”

He said that 700 Tunisian fighters are unaccounted for, while thousands more are being sought.

“We exchange wanted lists with Gulf and North African countries, with Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, as well as France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries, bearing the names of militants we believe fought for IS,” he said.

“Some of the names were found in captured IS operation rooms along the Syrian-Turkish border. There are still no concrete warnings about attacks that these fugitive fighters may try to carry out, but we have no doubt that some of them will, or at least try to set up terrorist infrastructures in their countries of origin.”

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Aaron Klein is the Jerusalem bureau chief for Breitbart News. Visit the website daily at www.breitbart.com/jerusalem. He is also host of an investigative radio program on New York's 970 AM Radio on Sundays from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern. His website is KleinOnline.com.