Ethan Bronner of the New York Times has an excellent piece today on Hamas’s arms buildup in Gaza, based on a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.
AJC’s Terrorism Expert Yehudit Barsky examines Hamas’s quest for legitimacy, and its quest for arms, in this AJC briefing:
The repercussions of Hamas’s border breach into
SDEROT, ISRAEL – This small town of 20,000, located within walking distance of Israel’s southern border with the Gaza Strip, should be on everyone’s mind. As things go in Sderot, so they will go in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And, for all who truly desire peace, what’s happening to Sderot, and how the predicament of its residents has been virtually ignored, gives scant hope. The international community ought to be paying closer attention.
Sderot, and other communities in the western Negev region of Israel, has been the target of some 2,400 rockets since the beginning of 2007, and thousands more since 2000, launched by Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. That’s about one rocket every three and a half hours over the last year, targeting almost exclusively civilians. Imagine trying to live, raise children, conduct normal civilian activities under these conditions.
Just below the radar screen, an important date is fast approaching.
From November 5 to 8, representatives of the 186-member-nation INTERPOL, the Lyon-based international police organization, will gather in Marrakech, Morocco, for their annual General Assembly. Normally, the event doesn’t make headlines, but this time could be different.
The story begins in July 1994. The building of the AMIA, the central welfare body of Argentine Jewry, was reduced to rubble in a terrorist attack. Eighty-five people were killed; many more were injured. (Two years earlier, another terrorist attack in Buenos Aires had targeted the Israeli embassy, killing twenty-nine people.)
As international news networks were reporting Hamas’s onslaught against Fatah, I began trawling the internet to see what, if anything, the various pro-Palestinian websites and blogs had to say about the brutal civil war raging in the Gaza Strip.
The short answer: not much.
Over at the Electronic Intifada (EI) commentators were undisturbed by the fragmentation of Gaza into a burning enclave reminiscent of Afghanistan or Somalia. Just at the moment when Hamas was blasting its way towards an intra-Palestinian version of the two-state solution, the talk at EI was of a single state between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan.
Two days ago the Circuit City store clerk who tipped off police to the activities of the Fort Dix terror plotters gave his first interview. Brian Morgenstern, a 26-year-old employee at the store, told CNN that two “normal people” came into the store and asked for a camcorder cassette tape to be transferred to DVD.
While duplicating the tape, Morgenstern said, “I saw some stuff on the film that was disturbing and it kind of gained my attention that way.” According to press reports, the tape depicted 10 young bearded men firing handguns, rifles and fully automatic weapons at a firing range, calling for jihad, and shouting, “Allahu Akbar!,” or “God is great!” Six of the men were arrested on May 9, and charged, according to court documents, with planning “to kill as many soldiers as possible” in an armed attack on Fort Dix.
Listen: [audio:101meeting/allam050407.mp3]
Magdi Allam, editor at Corriere Della Sera and commentator on Arab and Islamic affairs, was presented with the Mass Media Award on May 4, 2007 at AJC’s 101st Annual Meeting. Here he gives his acceptance speech.
To the dismay of many in the Western world, Lebanon was Terror Central in the 1970s and 1980s. The lack of a central government during the Lebanese civil war made Lebanon a very attractive place for terrorist organizations to operate. Terrorists from across the globe set up training camps and a place to meet their contacts with funding from countries that provided financial support, including the former Soviet Union, Syria, Libya and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Terrorist organizations across the political spectrum established their headquarters and safe houses there.
Although the era of those terror organizations has come to an end, today Lebanon is plagued with a different generation of terror organizations. Chief among them is Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’i terror organization spawned by the radical Shi’a regime in Iran. Interestingly, Al-Qa’ida also maintains a presence in Lebanon – and, despite the group’s Sunni radical roots, Iran has provided safe haven to a number of its top leaders since the 9/11 attacks. Two of the most prominent Al-Qa’ida leaders reported to be in Iran are Saif Al-Adel and Saad Bin Ladin, the son of Osama Bin Ladin.
Iran’s support for both Sunni and Shi’a terrorists has been evident since the 1980s.
One of the parking signs in New York City used to blare, “Don’t Even THINK of Parking Here.” Another declared, “No Parking. No Standing. No Stopping. No Kidding.” Parking has always been tough in New York, but airline travel has grown increasingly more difficult for everyone since 9/11. If going through airport security hasn’t been difficult enough, the six imams who were removed from U.S. Airways flight 300 in November are attempting to make the thought of boarding a plane even more of a hassle.