Photo: Wikimedia Commons

For decades the Middle East has been continuously in turmoil, with a de facto state of war for many countries exacerbated by internal politics. Today we have the most important conflict emerging which will shape every corner of the Middle East. On one side of this conflict are Islamic extremist groups who are pushing for the implementation of Shariah, or Islamic law. Their goal is the creation of a unified Islamic Kingdom (Caliphate) which most Muslims acknowledge has not existed since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. On the other side stands the moderate camp, which despite their positions as leaders in government, shield themselves from progressives and liberalizing forces in order to keep the status quo which has kept them in power for decades.

The internal political map and dynamics inside Lebanon, a small but important state in the Middle East, always reflected the regional forces and conflicts in a very clear and sharp way.

The Extremist camp led by Hezbollah, supported by Iran and Syria are at odds with the March 14th camp, which was successful in expelling Syria from Lebanon and recently brought the killers of former Prime Minister Rafik Al Hariri to justice in international court

In May of 2008 the Lebanese government, led by the March 14 Alliance sacked Wafeek Shukiera, a military officer who had been passing sensitive intelligence and national security secrets to Hezbollah. In doing so, the moderate Lebanese government was able to disable the underground telecommunications network linking Hezbollah with the Lebanese army. To say this was a wildly successful operation would be an understatement.

The effects of this move were enormouse. The government of the March 14th Alliance and their allies ended the occupation of West Beirut by Hezbollah without involving the Lebanese army in a bloody urban skirmish or subjecting its citizens to Hezbollah attacks..

Walleed Junblat, one of the leaders of the March 14th Alliance and Prime Minister Saad Al Hariri were applauded by the United States, Europe, and Lebanon’s moderate allies in the region. Yet, they felt deserted by their internal allies.

In contrast, Hezbollah and their counterparts received and are still receiving full support economically, logistically, and morally from their sponsors. Their power is only augmented by their sophisticated weapons brought by Iran and Syria, in clear violation of UN Resolution 1701.

Lebanon now feels abandoned and alone, a country where an international terrorist organization not only has the most influence, but is well equipped by Iran and Syria to plunge the country into another civil war. With only a pat on the back coming from the West for their work in countering Hezbollah, the Lebanese government is losing faith that the world will come to their side in case of an emergency. The consequences will be dire.

As a result, the question of Hezbollah’s weaponry is not an issue that is acceptable in Lebanese political discourse. Only two years ago, this was a central issue. Today, Lebanese do not even discuss the influence Syria and Lebanon have in their country – not out of disinterest, but fear. Further more, the leaders of the March 14th Alliance, Prime Minister Hariri and Junblat, both of whom had their fathers assassinated by the Syrian Regime, are forced to proverbially bow down to Syrian President Assad.

The fight for Lebanon is not over, but the moderates are losing as the extremists hold sway. As in many countries in the region, moderate forces need to be empowered with the full economic and political support of the Western world to stand a chance against the likes of Hezbollah. Because right now, the Lebanese government and its people are on the pitch, and they desperately need a goal.

Raslan Abu Rukun is Israel’s Deputy Consul General in Philadelphia and the first Arab-Israeli diplomat to hold the position.

Related posts:

1. Hezbollah’s Nasrallah Linked to Incoming Lebanese Ship Yasser Kashlak, organizer of another flotilla which will be leaving...
2. Iran, Hezbollah, and Attacks on Israel Iran's proxy army in Lebanon will think twice before launching...
3. Ambassador Oren: U.S. and Israel United For Peace and Security in the Middle East Ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming meeting with U.S....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

In a small Jerusalem café, I sat with Noam Shalit and tried to discuss his son, Gilad. I say tried because each time Noam, a soft-spoken, bespectacled man, began a sentence, the owner of the café rushed over with complimentary plates of humus, salads and desserts. Passersby, glimpsing Noam through the window, burst inside to embrace him. “We are with you,” they cried. “We will get our Gilad home.”

That our is the key to understanding the devotion that Israelis feel for Gilad Shalit. The Israel Defense Forces is a citizens’ army in which most young men serve for a minimum of three years, followed by several decades of reserve duty. Young women serve for at least two. Our soldiers are literally our parents, our siblings, our children. Israel is also a small country with few if any degrees of separation between families. Even those who have never met the Shalits know someone who has. And all of us have loved ones—a brother, a son—who could suffer the same ordeal that Gilad began four years ago today.

Early on the morning of June 25, 2006, Hamas terrorists—using a tunnel secretly excavated during a cease-fire with Israel—infiltrated across the Gaza border and attacked an IDF base. Firing rocket grenades and automatic weapons, they killed two soldiers—Lt. Hanan Barak and Sgt. Pavel Slutzker, both 20—and kidnapped the 19-year-old corporal, Gilad Shalit. The IDF promptly launched a massive manhunt in Gaza, suffering an additional five fatalities, but failed to find the abductors. Hamas, meanwhile, demanded that Israel release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, most of them convicted terrorists, in exchange for Gilad’s freedom.

Since then, Gilad’s parents, Noam and Aviva Shalit, have only received three letters from their son as well as a brief video showing an emaciated hostage with a haunted expression and lightless eyes. Hamas has refused to allow the Red Cross or other NGOs to visit Gilad, or to permit mail or aid packages to reach him. And to mock the Shalit family’s suffering, Hamas has staged re-enactments of the kidnapping, most recently in a Gaza summer camp, and plays in which actors portraying Gilad beg for their release. An animated Hamas film depicts an aged Noam Shalit grieving over his son’s coffin.

The plight of Gilad Shalit poses painful dilemmas. Should Israel negotiate with Hamas, a terror organization sworn to its destruction, and unleash hundreds of terrorists, many of whom will quickly return to murdering? Or can Israel leave Gilad to languish alone indefinitely, prolonging his family’s agony and undermining the faith in which other families send their children to battle?

There are no easy answers. Yet Israel has consistently sought to secure Gilad’s freedom through the good offices of intermediaries, all the while striving to reconcile the nation’s security needs with the time-honored Jewish principle of pidayon shivuyim, the redemption of prisoners.

The struggle to bring Gilad home has become a national passion for Israelis. His birthday and the anniversary of his abduction are both commemorated with dramatic public events. In one such rally, some 2,000 young people sailed a “freedom for Gilad” fleet of homemade rafts across the Sea of Galilee. Photographs of Gilad as a whimsical teenager loom from public walls and flutter on flags from car antennas. His name is emblazoned on bracelets popular among Israeli youth and the days of his captivity are displayed on a booth near the prime minister’s residence.

But the campaign to free Gilad Shalit is hardly limited to Israel. The mayors of Miami and New Orleans have made him an honorary citizen, as have the cities of Paris and Rome. President Nicolas Sarkozy has declared Gilad’s release “a top French priority,” and President Barack Obama has further condemned his “inhumane detention.”

Nevertheless, Gilad Shalit remains in solitary confinement—in spite of the protests and his parents’ unflagging appeals to the international community. Lost in the recent tumult surrounding Israel’s efforts to block Iranian and Syrian arms shipments to Hamas, which has fired 10,000 rockets at Israeli civilians to date, is the unending nightmare of the Shalit family. Their pain is shared by countless Israelis and well-wishers worldwide. We must not rest until our Gilad is once again safely at home.

Mr. Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

First published in The Wall Street Journal.

Related posts:

1. Sign of Life Received! On Friday, October 2nd, Israel received a sign of life...
2. Tweet4Shalit To raise awareness of Gilad Shalit's story and to get...
3. Press Conference with Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon delivers a statement on...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Yasser Kashlak, organizer of another flotilla which will be leaving from Beirut, has been found to be a friend of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah. Said Mr. Kashlak in a letter for Nasrallah, “In the name of the Palestinian people… we stress that we are taking the path of resistance.”

One of the ships, Miriam, is being led by Samar al-Hajj, who is the wife of a Lebanese officer who served a prison sentence for his involvement in the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Three weeks ago, to celebrate the officer’s release, al-Hajj met with Hezbollah’s Nasrallah to thank him for his support.

There are a lot of unknowns about the incoming Lebanese ships. However, according to international law, Israel has the right and the obligation to redirect ships trying to break the law. Israel can then bring them to an Israeli port for inspection.

Please stay tuned for future updates. To read more, click here.

Related posts:

1. Iran, Hezbollah, and Attacks on Israel Iran's proxy army in Lebanon will think twice before launching...
2. PM: Arms Ship Meant to Hurt Israel’s Cities On Wednesday, November 4, 2009 Israeli commandos seized a shipment...
3. Statement by MFA Dir. Gen. Yossi Gal on Gaza bound ship We have no desire for a confrontation. We have no...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. No Aid Found on Turkish Vessel Mavi Marmara After contents of the ship were unloaded, it has been...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. French Official: Flotilla Organizers Have Terror Ties "They were basically helping al-Qaida when (Osama) bin Laden started...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

PARIS (AP)— The Turkish Islamic charity behind a flotilla of aid ships that was raided by Israeli forces on its way to Gaza had ties to terrorism networks, including a 1999 al-Qaida plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, France’s former top anti-terrorism judge said Wednesday.

The Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief, known by its Turkish acronym IHH, had “clear, long-standing ties to terrorism and Jihad,” former investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Bruguiere, who led the French judiciary’s counterterrorism unit for nearly two decades before retiring in 2007, didn’t indicate whether IHH now has terror ties, but said it did when he investigated it in the late 1990s.

“They were basically helping al-Qaida when (Osama) bin Laden started to want to target U.S. soil,” he said.

Some members of an international terrorism cell known as the Fateh Kamel network then worked at the IHH, he said. Kamel, an Algerian-Canadian dual national, had ties to the nascent al-Qaida, Bruguiere said.

Among Kamel’s followers was Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who was arrested in the U.S. state of Washington in December 1999 on his way to bomb Los Angeles International Airport as part of an al-Qaida plot.

“IHH had a role in the organization that led to the plot,” Bruguiere said, reiterating sworn testimony he made in a U.S. Federal Court during Ressam’s trial. Ressam is serving a 22-year prison sentence.

Bruguiere issued an international warrant for Kamel, Ressam’s former mentor, who was extradited from Jordan to France in 1999 and sentenced to eight years in prison on terror-related charges.

IHH vehemently denies ties to radical groups. The group is not among some 45 groups listed as terrorists by the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. Nine people on board the IHH flotilla were killed by Israeli forces on Monday.

French investigators found in the 1990s that “several members of Fateh Kamel’s network worked at the IHH as a cover,” Bruguiere said. “It was too systematic and too widespread for the NGO (non-governmental organization) not to know” their real goal, he said.

The former judge, renowned for tracking down convicted terrorist Carlos the Jackal, said he didn’t believe the IHH could have been infiltrated by terrorists without its knowledge.

“It’s hard to prove, but all elements of the investigation showed that part of the NGO served to hide jihad-type activities,” Bruguiere said. “I’m convinced this was a clear strategy, known by IHH.”

The judge said he was personally involved in a raid with French and Turkish police at IHH headquarters in Istanbul in 1998, where they found weapons, false documents and other “incriminating” material.

“It was clearly proven that some of the NGO’s work was not charity, it was to provide a facade for moving funds, weapons and mujahedeen to and from Bosnia and Afghanistan” — areas focused on by Islamic militants then.

Bruguiere would not specify how many members of Kamel’s terror cell worked at IHH or give their names, but he said one of the suspects, a man from Bosnia, appeared in another terror-related case as recently as 2005 — though there was no indication at the time that the man still had ties to IHH.

Elements within the charity supported jihadi operations in the 1990s, Bruguiere said, before adding: “I don’t know whether they continued to do so” more recently.

“But it seemed clear at the time that it was thanks to a measure of political backing within the Turkish government that it (IHH) could continue to operate,” despite the strong suspicions against it, Bruguiere said.

Bruguiere retired from the judiciary in 2007 when he took part in an election to become a lawmaker in the conservative party of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He lost his bid.

Bruguiere, 67, is now the co-ordinator for the European Union in a terrorism finance tracking program jointly run with the United States.

We thank the Associated Press for this story.

Related posts:

1. Flotilla Passenger: “I Want to Be a Shahid (Martyr)” In footage captured on the Gaza flotilla, a passenger describes...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“Dear Judge Goldstone,

My name is Dr. David Zangen.  I am a consultant in Pediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem.  Over 50% of my patient population is Palestinian from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.  I speak Arabic and initiated the first training program for Palestinian physicians in the field of Pediatric Endocrinology.  The trained physicians were fully respected and were included as first authors on our studies that we published in the world’s leading professional journals.

But, at the same time, I happened to be the Chief Medical Officer of my brigade during Operation Defensive Shield, in Jenin, 2002.  I was responsible for the medical treatment of our soldiers, but also for enabling the hospital in Jenin to provide full medical services to the civilian population, and I was personally involved in numerous medical treatments that Palestinians (including fighters) received from Israeli physicians.

During and after the operation the director of Jenin Hospital was a source for what has been falsely called the “massacre in Jenin in which 5,000 people were slaughtered.”  This same person, Dr. Abu Rali, has also claimed that one part of the Jenin hospital was destroyed by Israeli tank missiles: “12 tank rockets were shot at the hospital.”

You should know, honorable Judge, that these statements have been proven and documented as outright lies, not only by Israeli sources, but also by the Human Rights Watch and UN organizations, which counted only 52 dead on the Palestinian side and 23 on the Israeli side.  These organizations, and photographs of Jenin Hospital following the operation, showed no evidence of any destruction at the hospital buildings.

This Dr. Abu Rali, a hospital director and physician, lies and incites in the service of the Shahids.  It is hard to believe that a director of a hospital can give such an obviously false testimony.  I cannot understand it.  And you cannot understand it.  But, unfortunately, this is what has happened.  Even people who would normally be considered reliable sources become advocates of blatant lies.  Tragically, moral misbehavior of doctors in the Palestinian Authority is not new.  The pediatrician, George Habash, sent his terrorists to kill children in Israeli schools, as did Hamas’ leader and pediatrician, Dr. Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, as well as pediatrician, Dr. Mahmud Zaher, who continues to encourage the launching of rockets from Gaza against innocent Israeli schools.

Please Judge Goldstone, you should really be careful when such blatant liars serve as the basis for your report.  I am sure that you mean well, but being an eyewitness, both to the events in Jenin and to the subsequent media, and initially false, UN reporting, I do understand what happened to you, how a person of such stature and integrity could become associated with such a faulty report.

Look, Judge Goldstone, at your report on the Al Fakhura incident on January 5-6th 2009 (paragraphs 651-688).  You do report how Israel was accused for directly bombing the UNRWA school.  It took two weeks for this accusation to be withdrawn.  But you, honored Judge, went back to get your testimony only from the same people who spread the blood libel of the school bombing.  Moreover, when analyzing the scene you claim that you could not verify the numbers of 24 dead and 40 wounded, but these numbers are not considered exaggerated.  Finally, in the ‘Factual Findings’ section, you already determine that 24 people were killed and 40 injured!

Did you, by any chance, try to validate any of these invented and inciting details?  Did you look at the Al Jazeera or BBC reports from the same very day of the event?  Did you try to validate your ‘Factual Findings’ conclusions by at least getting emergency room charts on the people admitted to their trauma department on this very day?  Did you go over the ID’s of the “dead” and the place or cemetery where they were supposedly buried?

No, you didn’t!

As a judge I am sure that you did not mean to hurt Israel.  I try to believe that you came to Gaza without prejudice.  But a judge is expected to look, at least, for some evidence and verification (media, emergency room registration, burial places, etc.) of the testimonies and not accept impossible “facts”.  You have allowed yourself to be misled by fabrications made either by terrorists or doctors such as Dr. Abu Rali from Jenin.

I, and my colleagues in Israel, are proud of the medical service that is given equally to every human being regardless of origin; we are also proud to belong to a nation that is identified as having higher moral standards than others.

I call on you, Judge Goldstone.  Take this Al Fakhura incident, look at the media coverage from the very same day.  See the events in their context.  Try to live one day with the responsibility for the existence of this small nation of six million Jews threatened constantly by 300 million Muslims.  I call on you to try and not draw conclusions from such lies and misleading witnesses, even if they come from so-called professionals.  In the modern world, propaganda and lies are definitely a part of the war.  And as a judge, you should not serve as a tool for augmenting hatred and conflicts.

We desire peace.  We love peace.  And we try our utmost to fight for our right to exist while maintaining the highest possible moral standards, even at the cost of our lives.

This letter was written by Dr. David Zangen and appeared in Ma’ariv in Hebrew on 27.10.09, front page. English courtesy of Dr. David Zangen.

Related posts:

1. Goldstone Report: Trial on Israel’s Right to Self Defense What is a country to do when being attacked by...
2. Israel’s Reaction to the Goldstone Report Every person here knows that today's meeting is not about...
3. Israel’s Reaction: “Goldstone Fact Finding Mission” As the Goldstone Report was released on September 15th, it...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Fifteen years ago today, on July 18, 1994, terrorists bombed the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association building in Buenos Aires.  Eighty-five people were killed.  More than 300 people were wounded.   Since then, details of the attack have emerged, revealing that the bombing was carried out at the behest of key leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The leaders that perpetrated this attack have yet to be brought to justice.

Read more about the Argentinian bombing and its aftermath, 15 years later, in the Forward‘s “As Iran Extends Its Reach, a Lesson From Argentina.”

Like

Unlike

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

A short while ago I met with a group of eminent jurists who were on a fact-finding mission, examining Israel’s military operation in Gaza. After listening to their concerns and criticisms, I asked them: “Considering the rocket attacks launched against Israel by terrorist groups in Gaza, what in your view would have constituted a lawful response?” The answer was total silence.

Like

Unlike

Related posts:

1. Israel’s Reaction to the Goldstone Report Every person here knows that today's meeting is not about...
2. At the U.N., Terrorism Pays As the UN discusses the Goldstone Report, Defense Minister Ehud...
3. Israel’s Reaction: “Goldstone Fact Finding Mission” As the Goldstone Report was released on September 15th, it...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

We’ve talked a bit about how Hamas operated in Gaza during Operation “Cast Lead.” The above video, based on intelligence and footage of the operation, sheds light on some of what the IDF had to deal with.

Related posts:

1. Israel, Gaza, and White Phosphorus: The Debate Continues It was The Times that first reported the use of...
2. Israel’s Reaction: “Goldstone Fact Finding Mission” As the Goldstone Report was released on September 15th, it...
3. Goldstone Report: Trial on Israel’s Right to Self Defense What is a country to do when being attacked by...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.