Two New York residents, one of them identified with the Ku Klux Klan, tried to sell to Jewish groups a deadly X-ray radiation device that one of them described as “Hiroshima on a light switch” and which he designed to zap people to death, according to the FBI, which unsealed its complaint in Albany on Wednesday.

The FBI charged Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, who is an industrial mechanic with General Electric in Schenectady, and alleged co-conspirator Eric J. Feight, 54, who works for an electronics company in Columbia County, with material support to terrorists, including use of a weapon of mass destruction.

Crawford told undercover FBI agents dujring a year-long investigation that he is “a member of the Ku Klux Klan, specifically, the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”

His device was designed to be mounted on a truck and remotely controlled with the capability of aiming a laser beam of radioactivity at people.

He searched for a source of radiation and found supposed a ready supplies who actually were FBI agents, working after apparent tip-offs from two Albany synagogues Crawford approached.

He approached one synagogue in April 2012 and “asked to speak with a person who might be willing to help him with a type of technology that could be used by Israel to defeat its enemies, specifically, by killing Israel’s enemies while they slept,” the FBI complaint says.

The “enemies” referred to by Crawford are Muslims and enemies of the United States to whom he referred as “medical waste.”

Crawford contacted a second Albany area synagogue the same day with a similar offer.

The FBI complaint states, “Crawford also told the (FBI source) that the target of his radiation emitting device would be the Muslim community. Crawford described the device’s capabilities as ‘Hiroshima on a light switch’ and that ‘everything with respiration would be dead by the morning.’”

He ended his meeting with the agent by stating, “How much sweeter could there be than a big stack of smelly bodies?”

The investigation advanced to the point that in December, the FBI requested and received a search warrant enabling agents to monitor Crawford’s and Feight’s cell phone calls, emails and text messages.

Crawford had successfully tested the remote triggering system, without a radiation supply, which could work from a little less than a half mile away from the weapon, according to the complaint. The suspects met in Albany on May 20 with the device in hand, and they planned to test it in a dry run out at a hotel, without a radiation system.

Crawford and Feight met again last Wednesday, when Crawford was to have been provided with an unfinished radiation system.

FBI agents, posing as South Carolina Ku Klux Klan members, who were interested in buying the device and financing the plot, arrested them on the spot.

Moments ago a second shooting attack occurred in the Shomron, in Hawara on Highway 60, between Tapuach Junction and Har Bracha.

There were no injuries, but police identified multiple bullet hits on the armored bus.

Last night’s attack occurred at the Jitt Junction on Highway 55, east of Kedumim, when Arab gunman opened fire on an IDF patrol. No injuries were reported.

One of today’s PLO preconditions for negotiation with Israel — they change frequently — is for a release of “all Palestinian prisoners.” For example, the Times of Israel reported today that

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year offered to free 50 Palestinian security prisoners who have been held since before the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s, in a bid to get Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to come back to the peace table, The Times of Israel has learned.

However, Abbas rejected the offer.

Today, a senior Palestinian official told The Times of Israel, the Palestinians might agree to renew talks with Israel if Netanyahu releases all 107 of the pre-Oslo veterans still in jail, most of whom have blood on their hands.

The Prime Minister’s Office had no comment on the matter.

It’s important to understand that these demands are more than just an attempt by the PLO to get a concession from Israel without giving anything in return (although it is assuredly that).

Although the Arabs and their supporters will refer to these individuals as ‘political prisoners’, they have by and large been convicted of serious violent crimes, especially including murder. They are not imprisoned simply for their politics.

The demand for the release of prisoners is of great ideological and religious significance. In the PLO’s secular/postcolonialist Palestinian narrative, the Jews have no legitimacy in ‘Palestine,’ and therefore do not have the right to imprison Arabs, the true ‘owners’ of the land. In addition, violent terrorism is the natural right of an ‘oppressed people’ trying to free themselves from colonialists.

From the standpoint of the Islamist Hamas, the actions of the prisoners constitute defensive jihad against Jews usurping land which is an Islamic waqf. Far from being criminals, they are heroes for doing their Allah-commanded duty.

For both groups the release of the prisoners would also humiliate the Jews, who would not be able to revenge themselves on the killers of their relatives (incidentally, this is another reason Israel should implement a death penalty for terrorist murder).

And both see themselves as fighting to reestablish Arab (as well as tribal and family) honor by recovering the possessions ‘stolen’ from them in the nakba of the founding of the Jewish state.

The release of these prisoners, therefore, would be a great victory and encouragement for the Palestinian cause, even if the prisoners themselves are no longer useful in the struggle. Expect a massive celebration when the ‘heroes’ return home.

As often happens, pragmatic Israelis miss the significance of ideology. The report continues:

It is understood that the Israeli security establishment has no objections on security grounds to the release of the 107 pre-Oslo veterans, particularly in light of the release of 1,027 Palestinian security prisoners to Hamas as part of the deal that saw the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in Gaza in October 2011.

We can quibble about this, especially since some of those released in the Shalit deal did return to terrorist activity. But even if this is entirely true, the security aspect is only a small part of the significance of releasing Arabs that have murdered Jews.

The correct approach would be to apply the death penalty to murderers, and to imprison the others — and keep them imprisoned — under humiliating conditions.

If Israel would like to end Arab terrorism, the way to do it is by removing the incentives, not by making it pay.

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Death tolls don’t attract readers. Unless you have a strategic stake in an ongoing war, you will likely avert your eyes (especially if you’re mainly on the dying side, as opposed to the killing side) when the tally of dead in this conflict or that appears in the news.

Syria has been the site of an appalling state-sanctioned bloodbath for more than two years. When the UN stopped conducting its own death count there in January 2012, the senior UN human rights official Navi Pillay said the toll was more than 5,000. We went to the website of the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights earlier today. There [this page] they offer these heart-stopping updated numbers:

• People killed since the start of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad: 83,598
• Of whom the number of civilians killed is 74,993.
• Of that number of civilians, 8,393 are children and 7,686 are women.
• The number tortured to death: 2,441.

Smaller, more human-scale numbers, are easier for some to visualize. So the same organization’s home page gives these numbers for the deaths of just the past few days: Thursday June 6: 84. Wednesday June 5: 69. Tuesday June 4: 91.

Just numbers, true. But signifying dead humans and lost lives.

It’s horrifying. But now please note that the leaders of Hezbollah, the Shi’ite Islamist terrorists based in Lebanon, want those numbers to become bigger and better. A Lebanese news source says its leaders vowed today

to continue to help Syrian President Bashar Assad in his two-year-old civil war against rebels, while insisting the party be involved in national government decisions… “We will not change our position on protecting our people and the backbone of the resistance [Syria] regardless of intensified pressure locally, regionally and internationally,” Hezbollah’s Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said… “The more the threats and the more the pressures are exerted on us, the more the spirit of the resistance and enthusiasm has flared…”

The bogus claim to be at the heart of something called ‘resistance’ has served Hezbollah well. It gets very substantial military training, weapons, explosives and money, as well as political, diplomatic and organizational aid, from Iran (Wikipedia). In fact, for all practical purposes it serves as an arm of the Iranian leadership. It gets additional cash, and support, from Shi’ites living in West Africa, the United States and the tri-border South American area where Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil meet.

Hezbollah has not always been as open about the murderous role it is playing in the Syrian killing fields. Its chief, Hassan Nasrallah, admitted to that role in a May 25, 2013 address that MEMRI also translated to English. Hezbollah “cannot stand idly by” he said, while the Syrian regime is embroiled in civil war. It was an admission that caused outrage in the non-Shi’ite parts of the Arab world, particularly in the Arab/Persian Gulf (we don’t take sides in that naming battle), with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), convening in Saudi Arabia last Sunday, deciding (see Al-Watan newspaper) “to examine taking measures against Hizbullah’s interests”. As with most of Nasrallah’s pronouncements, it was deliberate and calculated.

Hezbollah has become a so-called ‘state within a state’ in its native Lebanon, but has grown lethally active in other places too, particularly in Europe. Reuters pointed out a few days ago that while there are increasingly focused efforts to outlaw Hezbollah in Europe, this

would mark a major policy shift for the European Union, which has resisted pressure from Israel and Washington to do so for years. [Reuters]

One of the factors behind the push to blacklist the Shi’ites is a terror attack carried out this past summer in a Black Sea vacation resort called Burgas. A Bulgarian bus driver was killed, along with 5 Israeli tourists. 32 more were injured. A bomb exploded on their bus at Burgas airport, minutes after they flew in on an Israeli charter flight. Two Hezbollah “activists” were fingered along with an unfortunate third man who died while putting the bomb inside the bus. The intelligence forces of Bulgaria, Israeli and the US, as well as Europol, have said Hezbollah carried out the cold-blooded atrocity. They also believe Hezbollah’s Iran-driven terrorism is on the move, spreading out to other parts of the world.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party vowed to annihilate Tweeter “slander” that “is much more dangerous that a vehicle loaded with a bomb.”

Ali Sahin, the vice chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was quoted by Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper as saying, “People must be held responsible for the content they write. If as a result of a tweet they write, people loot shops and burn vehicles, the one who wrote it must bear its costs.

“A tweet containing lies and slander is much more dangerous that a vehicle loaded with a bomb. The explosion of a vehicle loaded with a bomb would be limited, but a tweet filled with lies and slander can lead to a climate of conflict.”

The party took the cue from Erdogan, who has blamed the Twitter social network for the success of opposition elements to stage mass protests that are well into their second week.

Isn’t censoring Twitter a violation of rights?

Not at all. The opposite is true, according to the party’s logic.

“Sahin said people’s personal rights, legal personalities of companies and public institutions were being attacked while commercial activities were harmed due to news spreading on social media,” Hurriyet reported.

Sahin added, “The elected government is being conspired against, there is an intention to topple the government through social media and people are being sworn at. All these things should have a cost, a sanction. Cursing at people is not freedom… Social media must be brought under order and regularity. Such a draft law can be considered.”

Now it all makes sense.

Anyone wanting to topple Erdogan’s government and cursing it  through social media is violating the freedom of others, especially that of Erdogan to remain at the helm. Got it?

Erdogan is doing his best to prove to the world that he is an ego-centric power seeker.

An article for CBS Marketwatch by freelance journalist Craig Mellow described Erdogan as a prisoner of his own desires. “Like other transformational leaders who came before him, Prime Minister Erdogan in his third term now looks more like a captive of power than an agent wielding it for the nation’s good,” Mellow wrote.

With one speech one day last week, Erdogan managed to sink the country’s stock market by 5 percent. That’s pretty good work for one day.

As the Jewish Press reported on Sunday, Erdogan might have been able to let the protest movement die from lack of oxygen had he talked them eye-to-eye, as he finally plans to do on Tuesday, instead of calling them vandals and terrorists.

“Erdogan decried what he called the ’interest rate lobby,’ which ‘thinks they can threaten us with speculation on the stock exchange,” Mellow wrote. “That lobby duly dumped more Turkish shares, bringing the decline in the benchmark Istanbul Stock Exchange National 100 Index to 15% since the protests began.

Mellow praised Erdogan for his first years in office, when he turned Turkey around and created one of the world’s healthiest baking systems and ushered in a period of tremendous economic growth.

“Along the way, Erdogan laid down what looked like a promising blueprint for a modern Islamic state that honored its own traditions without sending secret police house-to-house to enforce them,” Mellow continued. “Turkey’s reputation changed. No longer the butt of Europe, Turkey became its vibrant oasis….

“But… Erdogan in his third term now looks more like a captive of power than an agent wielding it for the nation’s good. A la Putin, he is constructing an end-run around term limits that would allow him to stay in charge of Turkey by being elected president….

Recep Erdogan is teetering on the edge of a classic tragedy, wherein a powerful and potentially positive character is done in by a moral flaw that is revealed by extraordinary events.”

But at least Erdogan will make sure to make Turkey safe from those awful Tweets that can cause car bomb explosions.

Dear Readers,

We want to thank everyone who participated in our petition, regarding the security threat on the roads of Judea and Samaria.

We just received the following communication from the Prime Minister’s office, and would like to share it with you.

To: Mr. Stephen Leavitt, Editor-in-Chief, JewishPress.com

Dear Mr. Leavitt,

We acknowledge receipt of your e-mail dated June 4, 2013, and the petition which you enclosed.

The Government of Israel’s primary responsibility is for the security of the people and State of Israel, and all the Prime Minister’s decisions are guided by this imperative. We will continue to take all necessary steps to protect the right of every Israeli citizen – including that of the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria – to live in peace, without the threat of violence and terrorism.

Kindly convey this message to all the signatories of the petition.

Sincerely,
Mark Regev
International Spokesman for the Prime Minister

After the vicious murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Muslim terrorists several weeks ago, there were several instances of vandalism against mosques, as well as a few small demonstrations organized by the English Defense League, which were met with opposition from “anti-fascist” protesters. But the predicted “wave of anti-Muslim sentiment” did not materialize.

Gordon Ross relates British reactions to another perceived ‘outrage’, one that happened in 1947.

By Gordon Ross

There can be no comparison between the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in the UK and the very recent 2013 anti-Muslim demonstrations.

In August 1947, consequent upon retaliatory actions taken by Jewish militants of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (so-called “terrorists”) against the occupying British mandatory authorities in the land of Israel, there was a serious backlash from sections of the indigenous UK population against Jews in the UK in anti-Jewish riots which were at their worst in Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. Synagogues, Jewish shops, centres and individuals were attacked, and demonstrators called for violence against Jews. There wasn’t any significant protest against the riots from outside the UK Jewish community.

Daniel Trilling described them thus:

In Birkenhead, near Liverpool, slaughterhouse workers had refused to process any more meat for Jewish consumption until the attacks on British soldiers in Palestine stopped. Around Merseyside, the anger was starting to spill on to the streets as crowds of angry young men gathered in Jewish areas.

On Sunday afternoon the trouble reached Manchester. Small groups of men began breaking the windows of shops in Cheetham Hill, an area just north of the city centre which had been home to a Jewish community since the early 19th century. The pubs closed early that day because there was a shortage of beer, and by the evening the mob’s numbers had swelled to several hundred. Most were on foot but others drove through the area, throwing bricks from moving cars.

Soon the streets were covered in broken glass and stones and the crowd moved on to bigger targets, tearing down the canopy of the Great Synagogue on Cheetham Hill Road and surrounding a Jewish wedding party at the Assembly Hall. They shouted abuse at the terrified guests until one in the morning.

The next day, Lever said, “Cheetham Hill Road looked much as it had looked seven years before, when the German bombers had pounded the city for  12 hours. All premises belonging to Jews for the length of a mile down the street had gaping windows and the pavements were littered with glass.”

By the end of the bank holiday weekend, anti-Jewish riots had also taken place in Glasgow and Liverpool. There were minor disturbances, too, in Bristol, Hull, London and Warrington, as well as scores of attacks on Jewish property across the country. A solicitor in Liverpool and a Glasgow shopkeeper were beaten up. Nobody was killed, but this was the most widespread anti-Jewish violence the UK had ever seen. In Salford, the day after a crowd of several thousand had thrown stones at shop windows, signs appeared that read: “Hold your fire. These premises are British.”

There were no Jewish clerics in the UK preaching hatred, incitement to violence, murder and treason from the pulpit, no young UK born ‘disaffected’ Jews demonstrating against the UK and burning its national flag in the streets, setting explosives here or travelling to the Middle East to join or train with the militants there, as has been the case in recent years with a number of Imams and other UK born Muslims.

In 2005 there were the 7/7 London Islamist bomb outrages, resulting in many dead and injured.  Since then there has been an ongoing Islamist terror campaign, with Islamist demonstrators calling for violence against and murder of non-Muslims, and a continuing barrage of complaints and demands issuing from the Muslim community, including the demand for the introduction of shariah law!  In 2010, a Muslim woman was put on trial for the attempted murder of an MP.  She stabbed him in the stomach because he had supported the war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  She would not plead against the charge because she refused to recognise the jurisdiction of the court, and a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ was accordingly entered by the court on her behalf.  Fortunately the jury found her ‘Guilty’. In May this year, Islamist extremists murdered a British soldier on the streets of Woolwich, London, in full view of passers-by.

This latest Islamist outrage has provoked some anti-Muslim demonstrations and attacks, which the authorities here and other appeasers have been quick to condemn, but nothing that can in any way be compared with the anti-Jewish riots of 1947, and there were no significant demonstrations or protests from any section of the ‘indigenous’ UK population against the earlier Islamist extremist attacks and demands.

The only demonstrations staged here before were in support of Islamist terrorist groups like Hezbollah (in August 2006: “We are all Hezbollah now”) and Hamas, and those against the Jewish nation-state of Israel when it dared to defend itself against enemies dedicated to its destruction and the destruction of all Jews everywhere. Such demonstrations have often been led by prominent public and political figures such as former London Mayor, Ken Livingstone (whose inclination is to welcome and embrace known extremist Islamic cleric hate-mongers), gorgeous George Galloway (of ‘Big Brother’ fame) and senile radical left-winger, Tony Benn (complete with Arab keffiyah around his scrawny neck), and have persuaded some people in the UK to the view that ‘Britistan’ is truly on the way!

© Gordon Ross 2013

Gordon Ross is a non-practising (retired) solicitor, currently living in north London.  After practising law in London for almost 30 years, both in employment and on his own account, he immigrated to Israel in 1983 and re-qualified as an attorney at the Israel Bar.  In 1987 he returned to London, solely in order to take up employment as an in-house lawyer in commerce, which position he held until retirement towards the end of 2008.

He is keenly interested in history, both ancient and modern, and in international politics, particularly where Israel and the Middle East are concerned.

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The Gulf Cooperation Council took the lead against Hezbollah Tuesday and unanimously declared it a terrorist organization, a designation that the European Union is considering.

“All GCC countries are convinced that Hezbollah is a terrorist organization,” Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Ghanim bin Fadl Al-Buainain told reporters in Jeddah.

“There is no difference of opinion among the GCC countries on considering Hezbollah a terrorist organization, especially after its involvement in the Syrian conflict.”

The GCC foreign and finance ministers met in Jeddah to discuss Gulf security, “continued Iranian threats, especially the busting of Iranian spy rings” in of GCC countries.