Here’s a follow up to to the discovery of a terror cell in Canada. Questions are now being asked there that highlight a series of governmental decisions about one (at least) of the two men accused of plotting to carry out a terrorist attack on an interurban train. They’re questions that ought to get some wider airing and they come from Canada’s minister of citizenship and immigration, Jason Kenney.

The questions are about Raed Jaser, 35, accused, along with Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of planning to derail a Via Rail passenger train in what the Canadian authorities are calling an “al Qaeda supported” attack. Terrorism-related charges [detailed here] have been brought against the two.

From a CBC report, the government minister framed his concerns this way.

* Mohamed Jaser, with his wife, his son Jaser and two other children, travelled from Germany where they had been living, equipped with fake French passports, arriving in Canada on March 28, 1993. They applied immediately for asylum as refugees. Jaser was a boy of 10. He had been born in the United Arab Emirates, though he did not hold UAE citizenship. * The family’s request for refugee status was denied. They appealed, and must have succeeded because the report says they eventually became Canadian citizens.

* Jaser, however, did not – evidently because of a proclivity for engaging in crime. He had acquired five separate fraud-related criminal convictions and was also convicted of making death threats by the time the citizenship application was heard. These offences rendered him ineligible for citizenship.

* In 2004, the Canadian government served a deportation order on him. In court – despite the government’s claims that he should remain in detention – Jaser’s lawyer successfully argued that Jaser could not be deported because, as a Palestinian, he was stateless (though he was born in the United Arab Emirites – see below).

* Some time after that, Jaser received a pardon – why is not clear – and granted permanent residency status in Canada.

Kenney says, as minister of citizenship and immigration, that the pardon and permanent residency given as gifts to the accused terrorist happened because of “old policies.” Canada had recently legislated the Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, a law designed to make it easier for Canada to expel foreigners who have faced six months or more in jail for a crime committed in Canada.

Some time after Raed Jaser got permanent residence (according to Canada’s Global News), his own father

became worried enough about his son’s religious views to ask others in the community for assistance that apparently never came through, and another two before a Toronto imam approached police through a lawyer, concerned about Jaser’s influence on youth. By the summer of 2012, he was under RCMP surveillance as part of an investigation that would ultimately see him and 30-year-old Chiheb Esseghaier arrested, accused of terrorist conspiracy and plotting to attack a passenger train… [more].

The parents’ story [source] keeps coming back to their Palestinianism:

Raed Jaser’s father, Mohammed Jaser, says he was born in Jaffa; moved with his parents to Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip as a child. Egyptian authorities refused to provide citizenship. The mother says she is a Palestinian, though born in Saudi Arabia.

The two married when she was 16, and lived in Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. She attended secretarial and business administration school. Mohammed, the father, was granted legal residence in Jordan.

Raed’s younger brothers were born in Jordan. In 1966, the Jasers all moved to United Arab Emirates. Raed was born there.

Mohammed Jaser worked there in a garage, then as a school teacher, then to an advertising and publishing firm, then to Al Syasa, a political newspaper. he describes being terrorized by UAE authorities. “We lived in fear. Palestinians in the Gulf became the target of abuse, random arrests, torture and beatings… We lived as outsiders, in fear of growing and hardening anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments. Our lives were threatened and we were harassed.”

After 24 years in the UAE, the family moved to Germany in January 1991. “The Jaser children were denied asylum.” They again “lived as outsiders, in fear of growing and hardening anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments. Our lives were threatened and we were harassed.”

On Friday, JewishPress.com reported on the change in strategy on the part of the Palestinian Authority.

The PA is now demanding that Israel hand over maps of their vision of a final arrangement, to use them as a starting point for negotiations, as opposed to dealing with the primary issue that Israel is most concerned about, ending the conflict.

Handing over the maps would also have hurt Israel’s negotiating ability, as the negotiations would have then only circled around the depth of Israeli withdrawal from Israeli territories in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, as opposed to how to actually reach a workable and sustainable peace agreement with the Palestinians, which is not something the Palestinian Authority actually wants to reach.

In response, Israeli government officials said they would not be delivering any maps or a list of other concessions to US Secretary of State John Kerry, as PA President Mahmoud Abbas demanded.

Israel is insisting that any talks begin without any preconditions.

While Anonymous hackers haven’t had much success breaching Israel’s defenses, an Arab from Gaza has, according to a report in Yisrael Hayom.

The infiltrator crossed over from Gaza into Israel on Passover eve, and managed to make his way all the way to the southern city of Netivot.

A serious of technical errors with the fence and warning system, as well as the soldiers searching in the wrong direction and location, allowed the infiltrator to stroll right past Israel’s defenses.

The man was not armed, and it is not believed he crossed over to commit a terror attack.

The infiltrator actually hitchhiked from somewhere near the Gaza border with an unsuspecting Israeli who took him the rest of the way to Netivot.

The Palestinian from Gaza turned himself into the police later that evening.

The army is looking at this as a serious failure and is running a full investigation.

Here is a report posted today on an Israeli blog called The Muqata:

Due to the rising tensions in the countries neighboring Northern Israel, the IDF has recently positioned multiple “Iron Dome” anti-rocket systems around Israel’s north.

Some of the installations are nearby to Israeli Arab villages, and NRG/Maariv reports that today a group of Israeli Arabs cursed the IDF soldiers manning the installation, and pelted them with rocks till the police arrived. …

The question is, why would Israeli Arabs hurl curses, harass and stone IDF soldiers — when the anti-rocket system protects them as well. The answer depends on understanding the phrase “Israeli Arab” and other names for the same thing. An Israeli Arab is an Arab who lived (or his ancestors did) in the area that became Israel in 1948. He has the right to vote in Israeli elections, utilize Israeli health care, receive state funds for schools, etc. He is neither required to sing “Hatikva” nor to serve in the IDF, but is expected to be loyal to the state and not assist its enemies or engage in terrorism.

In recent years some former Israeli Arabs have come to prefer to be called “Palestinian citizens of Israel.” They reject the description “Israeli” because for them there is no legitimate country called ‘Israel.’ They define themselves as members of the ‘Palestinian people,’ which has created itself entirely in opposition to the idea of Israel. Palestinian Arabs (inside and outside of Israel) believe an invented version of history in which a flourishing ‘Palestinian’ society was usurped by Zionist colonialists, culminating in a mass expulsion (the nakba). Here is a more accurate historical account.

In any event, these ‘Palestinians’ long for the day that the usurpers will be eliminated, the ‘refugees’ will ‘return’ (a discussion of the ‘refugees’ is here) and the beautiful pre-Zionist ‘Palestine’, which never existed, will be re-established. Some, who have adopted the Islamist ideology of Hamas — there is an “Islamic movement in Israel” which represents this ideology among the Arab population of Israel — believe that the Jews should be entirely driven out of the land, even killed.

As citizens of Israel these ‘Palestinians’ enjoy the highest standard of living of any Arabs in the Middle East, as well as more personal and political freedom. But they will not feel fulfilled in a political/ideological sense until the Jewish regime is replaced by an Arab or even Islamic one.

So what’s a few rocket attacks if they will help end Zionism and bring the millennium?

Visit Fresno Zionism.

On Friday afternoon, Arabs blocked the entrance to the town of Elazar in Gush Etzion.

On Friday evening, a terrorist was caught infiltrating into the nearby town of Efrat.

H/T Natan Epstein

On Monday, the IDF cleared for publication that on Sunday night IDF forces arrested an Arab terrorist, right after he shot at the gate of Kibbutz Migdal Oz, in Gush Etzion.

IDF saw the terrorist shoot at the south gate with an improvised gun, and began a 10 minute chase, which resulted in his capture.

Over the past few weeks, there has been an increase in Palestinian terror attacks in Gush Etzion, including shooting at buses, roadside bombs, firebombs, and of course stone throwing. Kibbutz Migdal Oz has been a particularly favorite target of theirs.

It is not known at this time, if the terrorist is linked to other shootings in Gush Etzion.

Improvised gun used in a Palestinian terror attack in Gush Etzion.

Overnight Palestinians threw a firebomb at IDF troops near the entrance to Migdal Oz. No one was injured in the drive-by attack. IDF troops are searching for the terrorists. In the past, the terrorists have escaped into nearby Beit Faj’r.

Migdal Oz has been the repeated target for Palestinian firebomb attacks.

Since the outbreak a few weeks ago within the Palestinian Authority, 190 arabs have been infected with swine flu also known as H1N1, and 9 have died so far.

In 2009, a 34 year Palestinian man contracted the H1N1 virus during his pilgrimage to Mecca and became the PA’s first swine flu fatality.