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A July 4th Message of Concern: Concerning the US State Department Effort to Bolster Mahmood Abbas
I write to share information that is critical to US interests in the Middle East: This is with regard to the State Department inspired project to bolster PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and to provide him with funds, arms and training via the Dayton plan, so that his security services might be strengthened. Please understand that I do not represent the Israeli government and therefore have the latitude to say things that are not said by the government. There is a solid body of opinion here in Israel that concurs with what I am about to tell you. Quite simply, the attempts to strengthen Abbas are a disaster. He is neither moderate nor stable. He does not represent a hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Please consider the following: 1) Abbas is closely allied with terrorist forces. A brief review of Abbas's actions and policies from the time he became PA president makes this clear. He was the one who invited Hamas into the political process, and who began to incorporate terrorists into the PA security forces. In the Mecca agreement for a unity government, he moved to a more radical position to conform with Hamas demands. 2) Some of the other Fatah leaders perceived as the most "moderate" and promising the greatest hope for "reform" for Fatah are themselves greatly compromised. In particular is this the case with Muhammad Dahlan, who is, without a doubt, a terrorist. He ordered an attack on a school bus in 2000, was complicit in the Karine A weapons ship operation, and maintained a close relationship with Hamas's arch-terrorist Muhammad Dief. Most recently it has been discovered that Dahlan was in possession of the ID card of murdered Israeli border guard Nissim Toledano. The credit for this murder was claimed by Hamas. The fact that Dahlan had Toledano's ID card raises new questions about his - and Fatah's - complicity with Hamas. 3) It has never been Abbas's intention to take out Hamas. There is considerable documentation for the fact that until the very end, when it was already too late, he did not give the order for his troops to fire on Hamas. Hamas didn't defeat Fatah, Fatah troops allowed themselves to be routed. These troops were greater in number, had more and better weapons and were better trained. It was because of a failure of will that they lost. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason to believe that when they confront Hamas in the West Bank - and rest assured they will! - they will do any better. Pumping money, training, armaments into Fatah-controlled PA security forces in the West Bank will not yield greater success than doing this in Gaza did. 3) There is an unvarying precedent for arms and funds supplied to the PA, for fighting terrorism, to ultimately end up in terrorist hands. In spite of supposed guarantees in place to prevent this from happening, it is a good bet that it indeed will happen again. 4) According to the Middle East Newsline, a security oriented news service, Fatah (most notably Muhammad Dahlan) allied in Gaza with Al-Qaida forces, in the hopes that they would assist in defeating Hamas. MENL says this prompted Egypt, which has great apprehension of Al Qaida, to allow the smuggling of weapons into Gaza to strengthen Hamas further. 5) Abbas has a special relationship with Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, which is a terrorist arm of Fatah. There has been a pretense maintained that Al Aksa is now independent of Fatah and has nothing to do with it, but this is not the case. I have been in touch with security experts, some of whom prefer to speak off the record, who tell me that Al Aksa continues to answer to Abbas and that Abbas protects Al Aksa and puts its people on the PA security payroll. Now some most significant information has been exposed. Abbas pledged at the recent Sharm el-Sheikh conference to dismantle all militias not connected with his security forces. He has been telling the international community that Al Aksa Brigades has agreed to surrender its guns. It is partly on this basis - and the vision of a new, improved Fatah - that the US and Israel are prepared to assist Abbas. However, WorldNetDaily has just released a piece that includes interviews with major Al Aksa Brigades leaders. They say that they have never been asked to surrender their arms, and that this message was meant for the international community. "Abbas," says one leader, "recognizes the Brigades as a legitimate source of resistance." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56466 6) Hamas confiscated a great deal from Fatah in Gaza. This has several important implications. First, US supplied weapons were taken from Fatah by Hamas, so that they were lost. Now there is talk about supplying Fatah again in the West Bank. This would likely be an exercise in futility and invite more of the same. Second, Hamas has gained control of intelligence gathering equipment and intelligence files of Fatah, and will utilize these acquisitions to further weaken Fatah. Abbas has not totally disavowed future connections with Gaza, and careful attention to various diplomatic statements makes it obvious that there remains the possibility of renewed negotiations between Fatah and Hamas. If Hamas is in possession of Fatah intelligence, it can extort concessions from Fatah. __________________________ Without a shadow of a doubt, it is Hamas's intention to gain control of the West Bank. The Shin Bet (Israeli secret service) has just revealed a Hamas plan to gain control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies in Fatah are not in a position to stand against Hamas. Relying on Fatah will simply generate greater problems and cause further destabilization in the region. Preventing destabilization of the region means permitting Israel to continue to take all necessary actions - including the maintenance of roadblocks - against terrorist infrastructure in the West Bank. Israel has been successful because of a presence there, with strong intelligence, and the ability to act as necessary. Strengthening of this approach is critically important at present. _______________________ Were Condeleezza Rice to have her way, a Palestinian State would be established in the West Bank with Fatah at its helm. This would be nothing short of a calamity for US interests in the region. It would mean the establishment of a terrorist state that would threaten forces of moderation and provide a base for terrorist training, storage of weapons, recruitment and attacks; it would severely destabilize the region. I welcome communication and will gladly provide further documentation or answer questions. Arlene Kushner
Israel Holds Convicts - not prisoners The term "prisoners" has been inappropriately used to describe those Fatah or Hamas members held in Israeli jails. The term "prisoner"connotes a soldier taken as a "prisoner of war" in battle. The Fatah and Hamas members held in Israeli jails have been duly convicted in a court of law of murder, attempted murder or of membership in a terrorist organization. They should be therefore be referred to in the media as "convicts", not as "prisoners". ----- End forwarded message -----
Israel's Black African Priorities: Why Darfour Before Ethiopia? 11 Tammuz 5767, 27 June 07 by David Bedein http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/7229 Rescue operations conducted by the government of Israel to bring more than 16,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel represented one of the few times in history that a Black African community willingly and enthusiastically moved to a majority-White Western country. From the point of view of Ethiopian Jewry, they had come home to Zion. Having visited Ethiopian Jews during their trek from Ethiopia during Operation Moses in 1984, this reporter heard numerous stories from Ethiopian Jews about their own prophetic lore. Passed down from one generation to the next was a tradition that Ethiopian Jews would be repatriated to Zion when the last emperor of the Solomonic dynasty would fall. And when Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was overthrown in 1974, that was one of the signs that Ethiopian Jews would indeed come home. Although Israeli Jews of Ethiopian origin now number more than 100,000, there were some Ethiopian Jews who were left behind. They are the 15,700 Ethiopian Jews from a group known as the Falash Mura, the remnants of Ethiopian Jews who had been forcibly converted over the course of previous generations. After intense pressure, the Israeli government made a decision on February 16, 2003, that anyone who can trace maternal descent to Jews of Ethiopia would be allowed to return to Israel under the Law of Return. The Israeli government then launched Operation Promise to raise funds to bring this last community of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. With expectations raised, these 15,700 Ethiopian Falash Mura have moved their residence into three temporary compounds in the Gondar region of Ethiopia, awaiting their repatriation to Zion. However, the Israeli government will only allow 300 Falash Mura per month to arrive in Israel. No one in the Israeli government will give an explanation as to why such a low quota exists. Meanwhile, although the Israeli government is supposed to be providing "Immigration Eligibility Forms" for the Falash Mura, no Israeli government representative has visited the three compounds where the Falash Mura have been lingering since the decision to bring them to Israel. No Israeli government official will give an explanation for this policy. However, the Israeli government is making every effort to absorb at least 5,000 Muslim Sudanese refugees from Darfur, who are leaving transit camps where they had been living in temporary accommodations in Egypt. The Israeli collective farms known as kibbutzim are absorbing the Darfur refugees and giving them work in exchange for room and board. How an unpaid Muslim population will integrate into Israeli society is a question that no one in Israel is prepared to deal with. Now the Jewish State prepares to welcomes African non-Jews, who are strange to Israel, while it turns its back on a African Jews who perceives Israel as their s home. To learn more about the plight of remaining Ethiopian Jewry, check out the web site of The Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry at http://www.SSEJ.org.
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