Israel's Growing Internal Threat By P. <http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/authors.aspx?GUID=59f03c00-4031-4eae- 8b93-58def69a3fd2> David Hornik FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, July 23, 2008 http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=16D5BAA0-40E3-4E29-BA9E -94588BBC9FB8
Overshadowed by the news of Israel's trade of live Lebanese terrorists for dead Israeli soldiers was no less important news about Israel's arrests <http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331015746&pagename=JPost%2FJ PArticle%2FShowFull> of six Al Qaeda-linked Israeli Arabs charged with plotting to shoot down President Bush's helicopter earlier this year. Two of the suspects were from towns-Nazareth and Taibe-within pre-1967 Israel; the other four were from East Jerusalem. The former two, in other words, were full Israeli citizens with voting rights and so on. Although full Israeli citizenship has also been available to East Jerusalem Arabs since Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war, all but a few of them reject it. Instead they have a status as residents that entitles them to various state benefits. The two citizens among the six were students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and one of them, Muhammad Naghem of Nazareth, lived on a campus that gave him a view of a helicopter landing pad where Bush's helicopter landed and took off during his visit to Israel in January. Naghem is charged with photographing the landing and takeoff on his cellphone and then sending <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003467.html> the photos to an Al Qaeda-linked website. The president also visited Israel in April this year. The six suspects would meet regularly at the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Investigators for Israel's General Security Service also found bomb-making instructions on some of the suspects' personal computers. Far from an isolated incident, it was part of a trend. Earlier this month two other Israeli Arabs-Bedouins living in southern Israel-were indicted for passing <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,378543,00.html> information to Al Qaeda on strategic sites such as army bases, skyscrapers, and Ben-Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. And both of the two largest terror attacks in Israel this year were perpetrated by East Jerusalem Arabs-the shooting rampage at a Jerusalem yeshiva on March 6 that killed eight teenage boys and young men and wounded eleven, and the bulldozer attack on a Jerusalem street on July 2 that killed three people and wounded over fifty. In both those cases the terrorist was killed in the course of the attack, but there is suspicion of links to foreign jihadists. Also on Tuesday this week a copycat bulldozer terrorist-yet another East Jerusalem Arab-wounded <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1004690.html> twenty-four in Jerusalem before being shot. Implications: 1. In all these cases the terrorists or would-be terrorists took advantage of Israel's adherence to the highest Western standards of individual freedom. East Jerusalem Arabs, even though they reject citizenship, have Israeli ID cards that allow them free movement in Israel, and both the yeshiva and bulldozer terrorists made full use of this privilege. Israel also grants full religious freedom, and the six Al Qaeda-linked plotters took advantage of this to hold their cell meetings on the Temple Mount, where Israel not only accords Muslims freedom of worship but allows the Muslim Wakf to administer the site and has only a limited security presence. As for the two university students, under normal circumstances their ability as members of a religio-ethnic minority to study in their country's universities would be unremarkable. Students at Hebrew University, though, said they weren <http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1215331033796&pagename=JPost%2FJ PArticle%2FShowFull> 't surprised by the arrests because of the "atmosphere of radicalism" on the campus. A poll last <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/839029.html> year found that 33% of Israeli Arab high school and college graduates are Holocaust deniers. Under such circumstances, Israel will have to decide at what point granting rights becomes suicidal. It would be reasonable, at least, to revoke the East Jerusalem Arabs' identity cards since their free movement in the country spells a clear and present danger; they would then have to apply for permits like West Bank Arabs and could be much better monitored. Israel is not yet likely, though, to take even such minimal measures because of external opinion and internal left-leaning opinion. 2. Israel's intertwined security challenges include: external state threats mainly from Iran and Syria, external (or semi-external) nonstate threats mainly from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza (but also Al Qaeda and others), semi-internal nonstate threats from various terror groups on the West Bank, and steadily increasing internal threats from the Israeli Arab population. Under such precarious conditions, anyone sincerely and rationally concerned for Israel's welfare would want to see it retain a maximal security presence in the West Bank, especially since West Bank Arabs and Israeli Arabs have often collaborated in terror attacks and the latter are a natural conduit for the former. Unsurprisingly, none of this impresses, for example, British prime minister Gordon Brown who, in Israel this week, made a big pitch <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/2 308765/Gordon-Brown-to-hear-of-Palestinian-economic-woes-during-West-Bank-vi sit.html> for Israel to remove West Bank checkpoints while promising additional aid to the terrorism-cultivating Palestinian Authority. 3. Also this week outgoing Israeli UN ambassador Danny Gillerman expressed concern <http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3570318,00.html> that a nuclear-armed Iran could supply Hamas or Hezbollah with weapons of mass destruction. He's, of course, right, but the threat goes beyond either nuclear-armed Iran or Hamas and Hezbollah. A situation in which Israeli Arab citizens are already linking up to Al Qaeda portends possible catastrophic attacks up to and including WMDs. In such a reality, talk about "peace with the Palestinians" is not only obsolete but diverts attention from the growing problem of conflict with the Israeli Arabs. _____ P. David Hornik is a freelance writer and translator living in Tel Aviv. He blogs at http://pdavidhornik.typepad.com/. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: <http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml> http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
