Tag: terrorism

Prime Minister of Israel Binyamin Netanyahu issued a statement warning that steps by the Palestinian Authority to implement a new agreement with Hamas will mean the end of peace talks with Israel.

Khaled Mashaal has served as chairman of the Palestinian terrorist group since 1996.

Bolton: "The world's central banker of terrorism will very soon become a nuclear weapons state."

Thomas Friedman, the New York Times foreign affairs columnist, proved once again last week that despite his non-stop insistence that he has Israel’s best interests at heart, he relishes nothing more than slinging mud at Israel and its most vocal American supporters.

Meet Israel’s secret weapon against terrorism, code named “Mona Lisa.”

Threatening civilians is a traditional mode of state terrorism in parts of the Muslim world. A second type of state terrorism – the murderous one – has increased significantly.

It is perhaps the ultimate irony that the Bus 300 affair recently popped up again in the Israeli media just days after the al-Qaeda terrorist with the U.S. passport, Anwar al-Awlaki, was liquidated by a drone in Yemen, and shortly before the Netanyahu government agreed to release more than a thousand terrorists for the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Commemorating a national tragedy requires integrity. Memorial Day is not observed with proclamations of pacifism, nor should it be. December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, is properly remembered as the day that will "live in infamy," not as a plea for international sensitivity.

Whether this is a memoir or autobiography or whether this book was written as an article of regional diplomacy, King Abdullah does come across in this book as a quite sincere person making a valiant effort at regional diplomacy, who is trying to quell terrorism in the Mideast and raise the social and economic levels of his countrymen.

In the past I have written about global anarchy and its strategic implications for Israel. Today, I want to assess something far more specific and ominous: global chaotic disintegration. Such an unraveling is already an evident fact of life in several different parts of the world. Moreover, substantial and sudden extensions of this perilous condition to other far-flung parts of our planet are both plausible and probable.

I like this book. Very much. Terrorist Cop will be of interest to all Americans and Israelis who remain deeply concerned (as they should) about our continuing vulnerability to Jihadist terror attacks. It will be of even greater interest, moreover, to readers of The Jewish Press. After all, the author, now retired New York City homicide Detective First Grade Mordecai Dzikansky, spent his distinguished 25-year career as an NYPD "Jewish cop."

Let me return very specifically topreemption, in counter-terrorist operations, and in national self-defense against existential threats from other states. In this regard, there are two basic considerations before us here at the conference: legal and operational. Naturally, our capacity to succeed on both dimensions at the same time will sometimes be problematic. Moreover, there are potentially important trade-offs, and also interactions or synergies between the legal and the operational considerations that should be better understood.

Back in 2003 I wrote an op-ed for The Jewish Press titled "You Just Might Be an Assimilated Jewish Liberal," based standup comic Jeff Foxworthy's "You just might be a redneck" routine. It's time to revisit that theme, focusing on Israeli leftists rather than American liberals.

The ongoing war against Israel is most visible at precisely the point where the effects of terrorism are concealed. If that sounds paradoxical, think of the bodies hurled into the void from the World Trade Center - only to immediately disappear from the television screens and the front pages of newspapers.

The central truth of being human is the constant love of being alive. We Jews, of course, both in our prayers, and in our sacred rituals, have always underscored the central difference between life and death, between the "blessing and the curse." In consequence, all Jewish survival, individually and collectively, is now closely bound up with the survival of the Jewish state. For both its too few friends, and its too many enemies, Israel is now plainly the individual Jew in macrocosm.

Faced with the daunting prospect of seemingly endless terrorism, and with staggering global opposition to any of its essential and altogether permissible forms of self-defense, Israel now requires a complex and capable counter-terrorism strategy merely to survive. Simultaneously, the major threats to Israel's physical survival lie in certain mass-destruction (biological and/or nuclear) attacks by enemy states. Ultimately, therefore, the Jewish State's actual continuance rests upon even more than successful counter-terrorism. It rests also upon the inherently fragile and unpredictable foundations of nuclear deterrence.

In these pages, I have written occasionally about dangerous cartographies. Oddly, even now, the so-called road map to peace will not go away quietly. If implemented, President Barack Obama's plan for a "Two-State Solution" in the Middle East will sorely degrade both U.S. and Israeli security. This is because the twisted roadmap to Palestinian statehood still misses a decidedly crucial understanding:Jihadist terror has little to do with territory or politics or military strategy or tactics. In essence, it is a ritualistic and longstanding expression of religious sacrifice.

Back during the presidential election campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama made repeated reference to a "cycle of violence" in the Middle East. Although, thankfully, he no longer uses this particularly inappropriate term in describing ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, now President Obama continues to allege a basic symmetry between the warring parties. These disturbing allegations, whether explicit or couched in innuendo, are wrong and troubling. They encourage U.S. policies that can only revive and exacerbate Arab violence.

The New York Post called him "the nation's foremost journalistic expert on terrorism." Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief, called him the "Paul Revere of terrorism." For 16 years, Steven Emerson has been conducting research, reporting, writing, speaking, and testifying before Congress on the threat of radical Islam.

Juval Aviv's exploits as an Israeli counterterrorism agent are widely believed to be the inspiration for Steven Spielberg's 2005 film "Munich." After wrapping up his career as a major in the Israel Defense Forces (and reportedly working for the secretive Mossad), Aviv launched a lucrative career as a security consultant and investigator.

After Palestine, conditions in the Middle East would be markedly less favorable to both Israel and the United States. The only credible way for Israel to deter large-scale conventional attacks following Palestinian statehood would be by maintaining visible and increasingly large-scale conventional capabilities. Naturally, enemy states contemplating first-strike attacks upon Israel using chemical and/or biological weapons would be apt to take more seriously Israel's nuclear deterrent. Whether or not this nuclear deterrent had remained undisclosed (the so-called "bomb in the basement") could also affect Israel's deterrent credibility and, thereby, U.S. security.

However unwittingly, President Obama is now setting the stage for Israel's dismemberment. Almost certainly, his fixed and unwavering commitment to a Palestinian state stems from the purest and most sensible of motives. Surely this principled commitment is drawn from some deeply personal and historic sense of justice and fairness, and not from any sort of insidious anti-Israel bias. The problem, however, is that this seemingly well-intentioned presidential interest in fair play is starkly at odds with an asymmetrically brutal geopolitical reality in the Middle East.

As U.S. President Barack Obama stubbornly proceeds with his deeply flawed resurrection of a "Two-State Solution" in the Middle East, he will bring substantial harm to the United States as well as to Israel. In this connection, Mr. Obama should quickly recognize that thecore rationale of Jihadist terror has little if anything to do with politics or with military strategy and tactics. Rather, this rationale is, and will surely remain, fundamentally, a sincere expression of religious sacrifice.

Without getting lost in the immensely dense intricacies of quantum theory and the theories of relativity, we already know that modern physics has witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the rational understanding of space and time. Normally, however, these imaginative breakthroughs - which have produced entirely new "paradigms" or scientific models of the physical universe, still remain distant from analytic considerations of international relations and international law.

To be sure, it's a theme that I have already pursued in this column on several occasions, but nonetheless one that still seems to warrant further emphasis and elucidation. We all seem to know what Jihadistterrorists are after, yet our pertinent U.S. foreign policies remain founded upon altogether contrary assumptions. The most obvious example of such confusion, perhaps, is this country's continuing support of Palestinian statehood, an outcome that would, prima facie, undermine America's war on terror.

Faced with staggering and largely unprecedented geopolitical threats, President Obama already understands the limits of military action against terrorism. At the same time, it is unlikely that he also fully appreciates the stark and absolutely determinative role of religion and ritual in shaping America's principal terrorist adversaries. It is imperative, therefore, that the president begin to understand that all Arab/Islamic terrorism, including Palestinian terrorism, is authentically driven by deeply theological notions of sacrifice.

From an existential standpoint, Israel must quickly change its strategic and diplomatic course, or prepare to disappear in increments. More specifically, with a new prime minister in place, Israel will soon need to reassess its presumed faith in the so-called Road Map to Peace in the Middle East.

Over these many years, as my faithful readers will recall, I have occasionally referenced the idea and concept of time in my Jewish Press columns. For the most part, these column references to chronology have pertained very precisely to very particular Israeli issues. This week, however, expanding my ambit of concern, I would like to center an entire argument concerning Israel's survival on time.

She believes al Qaeda was an "obscure group" turned into a massive threat due to U.S. policies.

Israel has elected a new prime minister. From the start - and even before he begins to consider assorted specific issues for negotiation with other governments and organizations - he will have to determine whether any form of diplomacy is actually indicated. Although, on the surface, such advice may appear distinctly odd or foolish at best, there will be clear benefits to Israel of proceeding diplomatically only after first cultivating genuine understanding.