In the War on Terror, Europe is no Friend of Israel - by Judith Bergman

There is something fundamentally wrong that while Israel uses its expertise to save European citizens from terrorism, Europe supports and funds Arab terrorism against Israeli citizens.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
07 February '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/02/07/war-terror-europe-no-friend-israel/

Israel is famous for its security expertise and countries throughout the world seek it out, knowing that it is virtually unmatched.

India, many of the countries of Africa as well as Europe are among the beneficiaries of Israel’s security know-how and intelligence sharing. Yes, the same Europe which in the words of EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini, is the largest collective contributor to the PA, the terrorist entity that continues to incite, orchestrate and financially reward terrorism.

Recently, a report in the German magazine, Der Spiegel, revealed that Israel is part of a secret counter- terrorism coalition that gathers intelligence on ISIS terrorists who return from Syria to Europe. The intelligence collection and anti-terror campaign reportedly includes 21 states. Benjamin Netanyahu also recently said that Israel had helped thwart several dozen major terror attacks in Europe, even attacks involving ‘civil aviation’.

“When we talk about ISIS it’s important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways”, Netanyahu said, “The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries. Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation. Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives.”

Nations should help each other out, there is no question about that. Terrorism is an international problem and it must be fought across borders. Still, something is wrong with this picture. Take this example: Back in November 2015, a specific intelligence warning from Israel led German authorities to call off a soccer game between Germany and the Netherlands. Around the same time, however, German department stores were removing Israeli wine from their shelves because the European Union had released its new guidelines about labeling Israeli goods from Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights and east Jerusalem.

There is something fundamentally wrong about the fact that Israel uses its expertise to save European citizens from terrorism, while Europe uses its taxpayer money to support and enable terrorism against Israeli citizens.

How Mondoweiss Defames Israel Without Really Trying - by Sheri Oz

...Dear reader: you tell me who you would rather apologize to: George Khoury, Yara Karmalawy, Susan Abulhawa, Julia Carmel . . . or the families of dead and maimed victims of a terrorist who crawled through the cracks?

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
07 December '16..

Mondoweiss apparently loves to write hate-articles about Israeli border security. I love to read their hate-articles because it means that my country is taking care of me. The article below was written last summer but I am republishing it here now because yesterday there was a report in the news of a pro-BDS activist trying to get into Israel and being detained at the airport and not admitted.

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I am very sorry, George Khoury, that you had to suffer the indignity of being rejected at Ben Gurion Airport and, if your seemingly verbatim script of what transpired between you and the security agent (who you take to be a Shin Bet agent and why wouldn’t you, it sounds so grand to be interviewed by none other than the Shin Bet — a lowly airport security agent isn’t good enough for you) is true, then I do apologize for her rudeness.

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When a police chief simply misunderstands his role and is in over his head

...But it would appear that our police chief simply misunderstands his role and is in over his head. So let's spell it out for him as simply as possible: as a public servant, Mr. Danino, you are supposed to be serving the public, not the other way around.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
01 December '14..

Amid the political drama regarding the fate of the governing coalition, a spectacle no less crucial to the future of the Jewish state has gone largely overlooked.

In a series of public statements over the course of four consecutive days, Police Chief Yohanan Danino brazenly overstepped his position and authority, launching unprecedented verbal attacks on the attorney general, the Israeli Right and members of the Knesset.

Under heavy criticism in recent weeks for his failure to curb Palestinian violence on the Temple Mount and in eastern Jerusalem, Danino did what any bungling bureaucrat would do: he tried to pin the blame on everyone else but himself.

Speaking at a conference in Sderot, Israel's top cop denounced visits to the Mount by right-wing parliamentarians, suggesting that they had prompted Palestinian rioting. Furthermore, he asserted that anyone seeking to change Israeli policy at Judaism's holiest site should not be allowed to set foot there.

"Anyone who wants to change the status quo on the Temple Mount – it should be forbidden for him to go up there," Danino said, adding that, "I banned [Likud MK Moshe] Feiglin from ascending the Mount until I had no backing from the attorney general. This is a mistake, to allow someone who is a symbol of the movement to change the status quo [to ascend the Mount]."

In effect, our esteemed chief of police has just declared that those who support government policy on the Temple Mount may visit the site, while opponents should be barred from doing so. In other words, the exercise of one's fundamental rights and freedoms, at least in Danino's mind, should be directly linked to one's political views, and woe unto him who wishes to alter government policy.

This is an absolute outrage and it demonstrates that Danino doesn't understand the first thing about how a democracy functions. A person's inalienable rights, such as freedom of speech and worship, do not belong to Danino, the police or even the state. They are natural, God-given rights, and the state's role is to protect and uphold them. A Knesset member or ordinary citizen has the right to visit the Temple Mount regardless of his personal views vis-à-vis government policy. This is so obvious and self-evident that it should not need to be pointed out, particularly to the man who serves as Israel's chief law enforcement officer.

Not surprisingly, Danino's outrageous comments led MK Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of the Knesset, to send a letter to Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch in which he rightly noted that "these statements are grave and inappropriate coming from a police commissioner about elected public officials. It is unacceptable that a public servant – as senior as the position may be – would question the freedom of movement of Knesset members."

Satloff - The Monitor, Merrimac, and Middle East

Robert Satloff..
The Washington Institute..
ForeignPolicy.com..
31 January '12..





American presidents love to describe the U.S. commitment to Israeli security as "ironclad." But is this what they mean?
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"Our ironclad commitment -- and I mean ironclad -- to Israel's security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history."

President Barack Obama has a new favorite adjective to describe the U.S.-Israeli relationship. In an apparent effort to silence any doubters about his administration's commitment to Israel, he invoked the word "ironclad" not once, but twice, in a key passage of his State of the Union address in January. One can almost envision the ayatollahs in Tehran throwing their hands up in surrender when they heard the second "ironclad" -- something like: "Mahmoud, forget about building the A-bomb. Two 'ironclads' -- Obama must be really, really serious!"

But before the mullahs voluntarily mothball their enrichment plants they might want to ask a few basic questions: What does ironclad mean? How have presidents used the term in the past? And how strong, really, is an "ironclad commitment"?

Israel's 'paranoia'

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
07 March '10

The British Sunday paper The Observer devoted one of its recent editorials to an ostensibly well-meaning lecture about what really, truly was in Israel's best interest. The title counseled that "Israel can accelerate peace by exercising restraint," and the sub-header elaborated: "The diplomatic challenge is to help Israel grasp how its failure even to engage with international opinion risks an isolation which will make the country much less secure."

The piece was open for comments by readers for just 12 hours, but attracted more than 300 responses in this time, and if the thrust of these comments reflected "international opinion", they provided a good example of the futility of any Israeli efforts to "engage" with this kind of utterly misinformed and deeply hostile audience.

The analysis offered in the editorial suggested that:

Israeli policy is driven by two fears. The first, quite justified, is that the country is mostly surrounded by hostile states, some of which host terrorist attacks against its civilians. The second, unjustified, is that criticism from any quarter includes an implicit question of the legitimacy of the Jewish state. That paranoia leads to constant reliance on isolationist militarism which, as well as creating terrible injustice for the Palestinians, has consistently failed to provide the security that Israelis crave."

The assessment that efforts to provide Israelis the security they "crave" have " consistently failed" is most peculiar given that the relevant Israeli authorities reported at the end of last year that in 2009, there was "a marked decrease in the volume of terrorist attacks compared to previous years."

Any editorial writers who would like to dispense free advice on how best to achieve the "security that Israelis crave" could also benefit from contemplating the graphic that accompanies the quoted report, because it vividly illustrates that Israeli efforts to achieve peace in Camp David and Taba from summer 2000 to January 2001 were followed by the violence of the so-called "Al Aqsa intifada."

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