UN’s WEAK RESPONSE TO MUSLIM SLAUGHTER OF CHRISTIANS!
by Hillel Fendel (Arutz Sheva News)

Hundreds of Christians were brutally slaughtered with axes and knives by a Muslim Nigerian mob on Sunday.

The Muslims attacked three small Christian villages in central Nigeria in an early-morning raid. They blocked off all exits, shot in the air, and then set upon the Christian residents of all ages as they tried to escape with axes, machetes and gunfire.

Reports of the number of dead range from nearly 400 to more than 500. Two months ago, violence between the sides claimed more than 300 people when rival youth gangs burned mosques, churches and businesses.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with over 150 million people, is about equally split between the mostly-Muslim north and the chiefly-Christian south. The center, however, is largely mixed, and native Christians vie with relatively-recent Muslim immigrant arrivals for control of fertile agricultural areas.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon expressed sorrow Monday night at the slaughter. In a fairly restrained response, he told reporters that he is “very disturbed” at the situation, and “called upon all sides to act with maximum restraint.”

DIVIDED PA OKs INDIRECT TALKS FOR FOUR MONTHS!
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

A divided Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee, parent body of the Palestinian Authority, approved American-mediated indirect talks with Israel, but Israeli and international media reported the PLO decision as if it were unanimous.

The approval also includes a severe pre-condition that the PA’s demands be met within four months, a demand that U.S. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley has said is not practical.

The Agence France Presse told readers that “the Palestinian leadership has decided to give an opportunity for the American suggestion to hold indirect talks between the Israeli and Palestinian sides.” Associated Press reported, “A skeptical Palestinian leadership agreed Sunday to hold U.S.-mediated peace talks with Israel for four months.”

However, none of the news reports bothered to note that the decision was split. The Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency, which is considered close to the PA, quoted the PLO’s executive committee secretary Abed Rabbo as saying, “This decision of the Palestinian leadership was taken with the objection or disagreement by a number of factions and members of the Executive Committee.”

The communist Palestinian People’s Party stated it voted against the decision and that the PLO was “embarrassed” by the decision of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to ask the Arab League for backing a return to talks.

Even Abbas’ spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeina, cautioned that a four-month deadline was imposed for agreement to Arab terms of a new PA state that includes all of eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Israeli public opinion and leaders across the political spectrum oppose the condition even though Abed Rabbo claimed that Israel has agreed that the 1949-67 borders will be the basis for negotiations.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with visiting U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell Sunday following the Obama administration representative’s discussion with Defense Minister Ehud Barak the evening before.

The agreement is in effect a face-saving measure for the Obama administration, which has failed to convince the PA to drop pre-conditions for direct talks with Israel. U.S. President Barack Obama has sent his Vice President Joe Biden to Israel for a three-day visit beginning Monday evening.

Observers anticipate that Biden’s scheduled address to students at the Tel Aviv University may feature a “reaching out to Jews” speech, paralleling the “reaching out to Muslims” address President Obama delivered in Cairo University last June. The president then referred to Israeli communities in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as “illegitimate” as well as illegal.

Another possibility is that Biden may state that the United States will attack Iran with nuclear weapons if the Islamic Republic carries out its apparent plan to annihilate the Jewish State with nuclear warheads.

SIGNS THAT HAMAS IS LOSING CONTROL OVER GAZA!
by Hana Levi Julian
(Arutz Sheva News)

Messages are flying between Hamas commanders deployed throughout the Middle East, expressing concern that local leaders are losing control over Gaza. Ahmed Ja’bri, head of the terror group’s Izz a-din al-Kassam armed division, recently sent an urgent message to Hamas politburo leader Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, complaining about the organization’s “deteriorating” authority in Gaza.

According to a report published Saturday in the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, the letter noted that “several worrisome explosions recently occurred in Gaza, security anarchy is extensive, and al-Kassam men are being killed.”

The letter was apparently not the first sent by Ja’bri, warning Mashaal that the situation in Gaza has become increasingly tense. Global jihadists have been posing a growing challenge to Hamas’s authority in the area, he informed his superiors. The latest message followed a spate of attacks targeting the offices of senior Hamas commanders, including the Gaza prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. It was not clear who was behind the assassination attempts.

“This is the second letter sounding the alarm, the first having been sent in November,” he reminded. “I want to stress once again that the situation in Gaza is worsening,” the text of the letter read.

“We began to lose control of the internal situation after you asked us to transfer control to the government and not to interfere, in order to allow it to direct the affairs of Gaza,” he complained.

“A number of government officials have complained about operations in which we eliminated some Fatah operatives, something that was necessary to secure peace internally. Izz a-Din al-Kassam may have made a few stupid errors, such as killing agents from the Palestinian Authority security force, and these resulted from personal motives – but the security of the Hamas movement was always vastly more important than an occasional death,” he added.

Hamas-Global Jihadist Power Struggle Intensifying

Hamas has been struggling in recent months with a growing challenge to its authority from mushrooming Islamist groups linked to the international al-Qaeda terrorist organization. According to IDF military intelligence sources, global jihad (al-Qaeda) operatives were active in Gaza for several years; an IDF soldier was killed in an attack perpetrated in January 2009 by global jihadists near southern Gaza.

Global jihadists also clashed with Hamas terrorists last July over control over a mosque in the area of the Rafiah, the only border crossing that does not lead into Israel, but rather into Egypt and the rest of the world. IDF military officials warned in 2008 that al-Qaeda terrorists were among the hundreds who had infiltrated Gaza after Hamas operatives blew up the security barrier on the Egyptian-Gaza border in January 2008.

One of the three Hamas-linked terrorist groups involved in the June 2006 kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was the Army of Islam, a group that has ties to the Doghmush clan, and that is considered a branch of al-Qaeda in Gaza.

The group was also responsible for the March 2007 kidnapping of Alan Johnston, the Gaza City bureau chief for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It was nearly four months before Johnston was freed; Shalit is still being held hostage – his condition and whereabouts remain unknown.

Last month another British journalist was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists — freelancer Paul Martin was arrested at a Gaza courthouse for allegedly supporting a terrorist facing charges of collaborating with Israel. Martin, who has written for the BBC and the Times of London, among others, is still being held by the terrorist group, which has not announced formal charges against him, but has said he will be held until at least March 15.

Hamas, which seized control of the region following a milita war with Fatah in June 2007, claims Martin “committed offenses that harmed the security of the country” but has not detailed what those offenses are. Since Gaza is not a sovereign country, and Hamas does not respect the Geneva Convention or any other international law, negotiations for Martin’s release will rest largely on the skill of his defense lawyer alone, Sharhabil Zayim.

NORTH KOREA ASSISTING IRAN ON MISSILE SITE!
by Gil Ronen
(Arutz Sheva News)

Iran’s development of a missile launch facility in the northern province of Semnan and its Simorgh missile project both indicate that the militant Shiite theocracy is probably collaborating with North Korea on its missile program. The platforms seen on the Semnan launch pad’s new gantry tower – a multi-level tower for servicing missiles before launch – resemble those seen on the gantry tower at North Korea’s new Tongchang launch pad. A drainage pit 170 meters directly in front of the pad also seems like a copy of one at Pyongyang’s new site.

In addition, the first stage of the Simorgh missile strongly resembles the North Korean Unha-2, with four clustered engines and near-identical dimensions.

Photographs and information about the likely collaboration between Iran and North Korea have appeared on security news sites.

Defense Update also reported that east of the active site, “the Iranians are constructing a new facility that could be supporting the Iranian solid rocket propulsion development, associated with the Sejjil and Ashura missiles or even larger missiles” – and noted that “according to Jane’s Intelligence analysts, the site could be associated with the next-generation Simorgh rocket.”

The Simorgh, unveiled in early February, is officially intended to be used as a space-launch vehicle, but it could be converted for launching long-range ballistic missiles for military purposes.

Satellite images indicate that the launch pad has “a fully constructed flame bucket” – the structure that diverts the missile’s exhaust gases from the hillside. The launch site is linked through tubing to a nearby, sheltered underground facility. The gantry tower is approximately 18–20 meters tall, and the flame bucket is nearly as high as the tower. Jane’s analysts assume the construction appears midway towards completion.

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, said at the recent Jerusalem Conference that “the main central military threat against Israel is the missile threat. Israel’s security situation changes all the time. Threats of missiles are becoming more severe at an extremely quick pace.”

“During the Second Lebanon War,” he added, “Hamas had 13,000 missiles. Today, the number of rockets and missiles spread around Israel is in the tens of thousands. The reality has changed. Moreover, if in the past missiles and rockets were weapons possessed by states and were thought of as strategic tools, today they are used also by terror organizations, and the reality is much more severe. This is because these same states removed the obstacles that they imposed before and began transferring missiles to terror organizations they support under their authority.”

TWO ISRAELI MISSILE SHIPS PASS THROUGH SUEZ CANAL!
by Gil Ronen
(IsraelNN.com)

Two missile ships belonging to the Israeli Navy passed through the Suez Canal recently, according to reports on several internet sites. In the past, the passage of Israeli warships southward through the canal, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, has been interpreted as preparation for a possible attack against Iran.

The IDF spokesman said in response to IsraelNationalNews’s inquiry regarding the reports that the IDF does not usually comment on military movements.

Two Israeli warships passed through the Suez Canal on July 14 last year in what was seen as an unusual show of cooperation between Egypt and Israel. The Hanit and the Eilat, both Sa’ar-5 class Navy torpedo boats, traveled from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, allegedly to beef up Israel’s military presence there.

One week earlier, an Israel Navy Dolphin-class submarine also traveled through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and back, escorted by Egyptian navy vessels. It was the first such drill for the German-made secret vessel, defense sources said.

Israeli navy vessels usually travel around the Horn of Africa in order to reach the Red Sea. The voyages in July were seen as a message from Israel and Egypt to Iran, which continues its nuclear program and threats against Israel in spite of United Nations sanctions.

HAMAS FURIOUS OVER NEGOTIATIONS GO-AHEAD!
by Maayana Miskin
(Arutz Sheva News)

Hamas speaker Ahmad Bahar expressed fury Thursday following the Arab League’s decision to approve mediated negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. As long as Hamas does not share power in the Palestinian Authority, negotiations with Israel “would not meet any standards of legitimacy,” Bahar said.

Hamas and Fatah shared control of the PA until 2007, when bloody fighting for control of Gaza led to a split between the parties. Fatah now controls the PA based in Judea and Samaria, while Hamas has formed a breakaway PA that rules Gaza after winning the elections there. It is attempting to infiltrate Judea and Samaria and vie for control there as well.

Bahar warned PA Chairman Abbas that Hamas supporters would refuse to recognize decisions made in negotiations with Israel as long as Fatah is the sole negotiating party.

Bahar also criticized the Arab League, and suggested that the league reconsider its decision.

Hamas insists that the land Israel is on belongs to the Muslim world, and that the entire land should be given to PA Arabs. The terrorist group has agreed to observe a tadhiya (temporary calm) at various points, but refuses to sign any permanent treaty with Israel, which it does not recognize and to which it refers as “the Zionist entity.”

ISRAELI CRITIC EXPOSES “LIE OF APARTHEID”
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

None other than Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, a long-time and fierce critic of Israel, has exposed the lie behind tying the Jewish State with the term “apartheid.” His column on Tuesday, under the headline “Israel has its faults, but apartheid isn’t one of them,” tore apart the description as “pure racism.”

Cohen’s comments coincided with “Israel Apartheid Week” events that are being staged on dozens of campuses throughout the world, predominantly in Canada and the United States.

“Israel’s critics continue to hurl the apartheid epithet at the state when they have to know, or they ought to know, that it is a calumny,” wrote Cohen. “Interestingly, they do not use it for Saudi Arabia, which maintains as perfect a system of gender apartheid as can be imagined — women can’t even drive, never mind vote — or elsewhere in the Arab world, where Palestinians sometimes have fewer rights than they do in Israel.”

The media watchdog group CAMERA noted, “The importance of the article appearing in the influential Post and secondarily in Post syndicate subscriber newspapers, especially at the beginning of international Israel Apartheid Week, should not be underestimated.”

It pointed out, “If Israel can be tarred with the same brush as South Africa was when a white minority brutally repressed the black majority, it likewise can be ousted from the United Nations, denied international recognition (its sovereignty implicitly rejected), economically and militarily boycotted, and eventually brought to its knees.”

Cohen flatly stated that the linking of the word “apartheid” with Israel belies the truth. “The use of the word has become commonplace — Google “Israel and apartheid” and you will see that the two are linked in cyberspace, as love and marriage are in at least one song,” according to Cohen. “The meaning is clear: Israel is a state where political and civil rights are withheld on the basis of race and race alone. This is not the case.”

He also took aim at former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” set off a storm of protest in the Jewish community. Carter last year wrote a public apology for his previous criticisms that “stigmatize Israel” but did not refer to his own book’s description of Israel.

Cohen wrote, “Carter was waving the bloody shirt of racism, and he knew it.”

The journalist contrasted the official apartheid policy of South Africa decades ago, when the majority black population was denied citizenship and civil rights, with the situation in Israel, where Arabs and Jews have equal civil rights, including representation in the Knesset.

He stated, “Whatever this is — and it looks suspiciously like a liberal democracy — it cannot be apartheid.”

Despite Cohen’s rare defense of Israel, his column did not spare Israel from his usual condemnation of a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria. He asserted that the areas are “not part of Israel proper, and under every conceivable peace plan — including those proposed by Israeli governments — almost all of it will revert to the Palestinian Authority and become the heartland of a Palestinian state.”

However, Cohen admitted that the term apartheid does not apply to Judea and Samaria, which he calls the West Bank, and wrote that “security concerns are not rooted in racism.”

As for Israel Apartheid Week, Cohen condemned it. He told readers, “Israel is not above criticism and the Palestinians have their case, but when that case is constructed out of lies about the Jewish state, it not only represents a wholly unoriginal cover of some old anti-Semitic ditties but also denigrates the Palestinian cause…”

“Years of this sort of stuff have made Israel tone-deaf to legitimate criticism and exasperated with any attempt to find fault. That’s why Israel refused to cooperate with the South African jurist Richard Goldstone when, on behalf of the United Nations, he looked into alleged war crimes. The United Nations had once equated Zionism with racism. After that, it was hard to care what the United Nations thought.”

WORLD OPPOSES ISRAEL BUILDING NEW ARAB HOMES IN JERUSALEM!
(Israel Today News)

The international community demonstrated this week that it is not only the construction of Jewish homes in Jerusalem that it opposes, but rather any sovereign action at all by Israel in the city, including projects to benefit the capital’s Arab residents.

Many Arab residents of Jerusalem complain that they are neglected by the municipality when it comes to neighborhood upkeep and investment. So Mayor Nir Barkat this week had planned to officially announce a new project for the Silwan neighborhood on the southern edge of the Old City.

Silwan, known to Jews as the City of David, is an impoverished, mostly Arab neighborhood. In order to reclaim the area’s historic glory, Barkat had wanted to tear down one of its poorer neighborhoods and construct a new park with luxury apartment buildings surrounding it. The current residents of the area were to be temporarily housed elsewhere and moved back into the new apartments upon their completion.

But the Palestinian Authority took the plan as an opportunity to attack Israel, completely ignoring the fact that its primary aim was to benefit the local Arab residents.

“There is no way the Palestinians can accept the demolishing of houses in Jerusalem and the continuation of building settlements for the Jewish settlers,” Palestinian cabinet minister Mohammed Ishtayeh told reporters on Tuesday.

In typical fashion, the UN took the side of the Palestinians, and demanded that Israel halt Barkat’s “concerning” project.

“We’re trying to reduce tensions at the current time, not exacerbate them. Whatever the intentions behind such a project, Israel needs to understand that demolishing Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem demolishes confidence among Palestinians and frankly, also internationally,” read a statement released by the UN Special Coordinator’s Office for the Mideast Peace Process.

The pressure resulted in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoning Barkat on Tuesday to request that he postpone the official launch of the project. The call came just hours before the mayor had scheduled to hold a press conference to announce the project.

The Obama Administration expressed relief later in the day that Barkat had halted what it, too, for some reason viewed as a dangerous initiative.

Barkat told reporters that he is confident the Arab residents of Silwan will all sign on the project, giving him the backing he needs to finally rehabilitate this history-rich section of Jerusalem.

BEWARE “SWEET-TALKING” BIDEN, SAYS CAROLINE GLICK
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu (Arutz Sheva News)

U.S. President Barack Obama is sending Vice President Joe Biden to Israel next week because the President is afraid that the lack of trust in him by the Israeli public “will negatively influence American Jews who support Obama,” journalist and think-tank researcher Caroline Glick told Arutz 7. Vice President Biden’s arrival next week follows this week’s visit by key Senator John Kerry, last month’s trip by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen and frequent shuttle trips by U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell.

Vice President Biden is preceding his junket with talks with key American Jewish leaders, and he will deliver a speech next week to Tel Aviv University students and lecturers. Glick said he and Kerry want to make sure that Israel and the United States are on the same page concerning Iran, meaning that a military attack on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites is not on the table at this time.

Kerry this week said Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was “very tuned in to not being rash or jumping the gun here or doing something that doesn’t give those other opportunities a chance.”

Glick said that Vice President Joe Biden will bring with him a message of “we love you” although, “despite his sweet talk,” he has been the biggest defender of Iran. “Maybe he will talk about the ‘American commitment to the security of Israel,’ but this would be a gross lie,” Glick stated.

She added, “The journalists in Israel undoubtedly will be convinced and will call on our leaders to give Obama a chance.

Glick warned as far back as 2008 that President Obama’s choice of Biden as his running mate was a sign that the two could be trusted. During the campaign, Biden stepped up his rhetoric of supporting Israel and even said that the United States should not stand in Israel’s way if it wants to attack Iran as a matter of self-defense and prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons to annihilate the country.

“In my 34-year career, I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel,” Biden stated during the campaign. “So the idea of being an ‘honest broker’ is not, as some of my Democratic colleagues call for, the answer. It is being the smart broker; it is being the smart partner.”

Glick pointed out that despite the pro-Israel talk, Biden was “a staunch supporter of an Israeli transfer of the strategically critical Golan Heights to Syria and…harshly criticized the Bush administration for its refusal to support Israeli negotiations with Syria. At the same time, he downplays the significance of Syria’s strategic alliance with Iran and its sponsorship of terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Belittling those ties, Biden has claimed repeatedly and without a shred of evidence that the Syrians really want to put all of that behind them.

“Biden’s positions on Iran are even more troubling. Over the past decade, since Iran’s ballistic missile program and its nuclear program came into full view, Biden has distinguished himself both for his refusal to support tough U.S. diplomatic moves against Iran…. In 1998, Biden was one of only four senators to vote against the Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act, a bill that punished foreign companies and other entities that sent Iran sensitive missile technology or expertise.”

The Vice President also “was one of just a handful of senators who voted against a Senate resolution calling on the State Department to classify Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization,” according to Glick.

ANTI-SEMITISM RISING IN FRANCE AND CANADA!
by Hana Levi Julian (Arutz Sheva News)

Anti-Semitism in France is strongly on the rise, according to the 2009 annual report released late last week by the Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ). The organization reported that 832 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in France in 2009, as compared with 474 such incidents in 2008 - a 75% increase.

The statistics were gleaned from records in the organization’s Aid to Victims Department, which cross-checked the figures with data published by the French Ministry of Home Affairs. Included were “statistics, comments, analyses and extracts from sentences handed out by courts in cases involving anti-Semitism,” according to the Council Representing Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF).

CRIF President Richard Prasquier attributed the increase to the French population’s anger at Israel during its counter-terrorist operation in Gaza, Cast Lead, last January. There were 354 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in January 2009 alone - a “totally unacceptable transposition to France of the Israel-Palestine conflict,” Prasquier said. He added that “anti-Semitic words and deeds on a daily basis, often under the cover of anti-Zionism, have become a major and worryingly trivial fact of life.”

In 2007, the number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the French Interior Ministry was 386, a lower figure than had been recorded in previous years. But the trend had already begun to change long before the Operation Cast Lead was carried out; the 2008 figures were already 22 percent higher than those of the previous year.

At least part of the reason for the hatred may have been due to the corresponding rise in the country’s Islamic population.

As of 2003, there were an estimated five to six million Muslims living in France, according to a report issued by the country’s Interior Ministry. However, by 2007, that number had climbed to an estimated eight million, according to Odile Jacob’s Intégrer l’Islam.

In 2008, there were some 490,000 Jews living in France, according to a survey by Professor Sergio Della Pergola of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute and the Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University.

Anti-Semitic incidents in Canada also reached record highs in 2009, according to an annual report released by the B’nai Brith Canada organization. The survey showed an 11.4 percent jump in the number of incidents over the previous year, 2008 – a figure that constituted the highest level ever reported in the 28-year history of the audit.

According to the report, 1,264 anti-Semitic incidents took place in Canada in 2009. These included 32 violent attacks, 348 cases of vandalism and 884 reports of harassment. The majority of the incidents took place in the province of Ontario.

In the greater Toronto area, incidents dropped by 11 percent, but rose elsewhere in the province by nearly 50 percent. In the French-speaking Quebec province, there was a 52.5 percent rise over the 2008 data, and in the city of Montreal, where a large Jewish population resides, there was a 58.7 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents.

The figures are higher than those reported for 2008, but it is the distribution that has changed, rather than the numbers themselves. A total of 1,135 incidents were reported in that year.

The organization noted there has been a five-fold increase in anti-Semitic incidents in Canada over the past decade. As happened in France, the highest number of attacks occurred last January, during Israel’s counter-terrorism operation in Gaza.

According to the Toronto Muslims website, Muslims living in Canada today number more than 750,000, with some 61 percent of those residing in Ontario, where the majority of the anti-Semitic incidents occurred. “Since the September 11 terrorist attacks many Muslims have begun to look to Canada as an alternative to the United States… This is especially true with international students who have come to Canada in much larger numbers since 9/11,” the site noted.