The above headline isn’t precisely correct. Shabak believes it’s exposed an ISIS cell in Umm al-Fahm, a Palestinian town in Israel. But it hasn’t yet publicly made this claim. Instead, it’s “disappeared” one resident, Muhammad Mahajna, as I reported yesterday. According to a loal source, today he was permitted a meeting with his attorney. Also today, the Shabak arrested 10-15 other residents of the town. My source didn’t know the reasons for these arrests. He believed Mahajna’s arrest involved charges of stone- and Molotov cocktail-throwing.
But through two separate Israeli sources I’ve learned the security forces believe they’ve exposed an ISIS cell in the heart of Palestinian Israel. The timing of this is curious to say the least. Just as ISIS sweeps through Syria and Iraq and Israel closes yet another failed war in Gaza, Bibi Netanyahu makes a big splash with the fraudulent claim: “Hamas is ISIS, ISIS is Hamas.” That’s precisely the moment when the secret police gin up an ISIS-plot against the state. Once the gag order is lifted you’ll probably read headlines about plans to stuff Bibi into an orange jumpsuit and behead him.
It’s important to note this article (Hebrew) by Yossi Melman, which essentially argues that all claims of an ISIS presence not only in Israel, but in the West Bank or Gaza, are a crock.
It’s also no accident that just as Bibi seeks to deflect blame from Israel for killing 2,100 Gazans in cold blood, the Shabak manages to expose a huge plot to overthrow Fatah in the West Bank. All this proves that the Israeli agency isn’t really a pure intelligence or security entity, but rather one deeply immersed in politics and which yokes its wagon to the prevailing political winds. Here in the U.S., we saw how corrosive such a phenomenon was when the CIA tailored its reports to Dick Cheney’s preconceived notions about Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. It found WMD where none existed. We got into a disastrous war whose consequences and misery are still being felt. All due to the politicization of intelligence.
If anything, Shabak’s predicament is even worse. There is little or no separation between it and the political echelon and it serves at the latter’s bidding. Which is how you get concocted thrillers like this one.
These charges will further stir up hatred of Israel’s Palestinian minority among Jews, who largely see the former as a hostile Fifth Column. If you read the headline in the accompanying Bibiton front page, you can read the suspicion and hate dripping off the page:
According to information supplied to state leaders, tens of Israeli “Arabs” have joined various rebel groups in Syria since 2011. At least 25 of them, known as extremists, joined Jihadist groups. It’s suspected they’re likely to use the experience they gain in Syria and Iraq and try to amass intelligence about Israel to be used in future terror attacks.
The word “leaders” in the passage above implies the leak of this questionable claim came from the Prime Minister’s Office. This isn’t surprising since so many questionable or outright false claims about Palestinians come from this source and are published without any confirmation or skepticism by the Israeli press.
With screaming yellow journalist headlines like this, the Israeli far-right has lapsed into full-blown Islamophobic paranoia. Israel has become a land beset by hate and fear of fully one-fifth of its own citizens. It brought to my mind a tortured reading of the opening lines of the Gettysburg Address. In Israel’s case it might go something like this:
Three score and six years ago our [Israeli] fathers brought forth a new nation conceived in ethnic cleansing and dedicated to the proposition that all non-Jews are unwelcome and second class. Now we are engaged in yet another war filled with blood, guts and hate, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived can long endure.
Can an Israel drenched in such hate and paranoia long endure?
“Once the gag order is lifted you’ll probably read headlines about plans to stuff Bibi into an orange jumpsuit and behead him”
Haha, I’m drowning in my coffee. Honestly, if we can’t get him to the Hague ….
Umm al Fahum is not a village. It is a city with around 50,000 residents.
” Bibi seeks to deflect blame from Israel for killing 2,100 Gazans in cold blood,”
Half these Gazans were combatants. Bibi killed 1000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad combatants in cold blood? I think not.
Richard. Thousands of foreign fighters have joined the ranks of ISIS. Why not Israeli-Arabs? Are they somehow immune from the temptations of jihad?
@ Black Canary: Yes you’re right. Umm al Fahm is a town, not a village.
The false figure of 50% of the Gaza dead is one Bibi pulled out of his a*% at a press conference. Even the IDF says it can only positively ID 350 of the dead as fighters. Al Mezan confirms 76% of the dead were civilian. Do NOT spread lies here masquerading as truth. It’s a major comment rule No-no.
As for Israeli Palestinians: they are, in fact more loyal to the notion of an Israeli state than some Israeli Jews. I don’t quite understand why given their treatment at the hands of that state. But they are. As for another reason the conspiracy theory makes no sense: Shabak lies plain & simply. It tailors its outrageous claims to the political flavor of the week.
Ynet’s Ron Ben Yishai uses the 1000 combatant deaths figure as well. I believe veteran journalists, not politicians.
You believe Israeli journalists quoting hack politicians who lie. Bibi’s got a bridge to sell you too. I’ll put him in touch with you.
By maintaining that the key international legal distinction is not between military personnel and civilians but between combatants and non-combatants Israel can recategorize numerous civilians as combatants and thus minimise the number of civilian casualties. Everyone somehow linked to Hamas, even civil servants and political officials becomes in this categorisation a combatant. Yes, we have even heard one Israeli politico claim that all Gazans were legitimate targets because they had voted for Hamas and maintained it in power.
But what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. There is much to be said for the view that Israel is not a state with an army but an army with a state. Countless Israelis have probably some link to the army, in the first place because of national service but also because of all bureaucratic positions related to it, and then further positions in industries that supply the army with its necessities, and in the media that do its bidding. So the number of Israelis that are not legitimate targets of the Hamas rockets must by this reckoning be pretty small. The hasbara trumpeters cannot have it both ways: if the way they count Gazan combat casualties is correct they cannot, at the same time, complain so bitterly about Hamas’ “arbitrary targeting of civilians”
I have no legal knowledge, but I’ve read that the definiton of ‘combatant’ used in international law is someone who’s actually taking part in the fighting at the time of death. In that case it’s restricting the number of people than can be classified in that catégory as compared to ‘militants’ for instance. The 240 Palestinian police officers who were killed during Cast Lead are not defined as ‘combatants’ by B’Tselem or any other organization for instance.
http://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/during-cast-lead/by-date-of-event
And I’m still waiting for Hasbara Central to explain how Ze’ev Etzion killed by mortar shell in kibbutz Nirim who was chief of security (Haaretz wrote ‘security officer’) can be considered a civilian under the definition they use to classify Palestinians.
Maybe when you send rockets at random and happen to hit someone, the civilian-non-civilian distinction doesn’t count ….
[comment deleted: you’ve tried this one before, but apparently don’t want to remember that Jerusalem Post is NOT a credible outlet given its history of publishing fraudulent stories & outright Islamophobia.]
Theoretically, it is entirely possible that some Palestinians have gone over to the Dark Side, to fight alongside ISIS. It is entirely possible that if any of them survive and return to israel AND survive Israel’s secret services welcome, they would start to fight Israel in order to get their rights with bullets, if they could not succeed with ballots. After all, Blacks in the US also hated the US because of their continued treatment as second-class citizens, there wree calls to not join the “White Man’s War” (WWII) and even MLK said the Vietnam war was not the Black Man’s war.
Should it leave everyone aghast that after being treated worse than dead dogs, the Palestinians currently allowed to remain third-class citizens, should hate their own country?
Black Canary and others who jump to defend Israel no matter what, should take some time to think of how much stronger and better the country would be, if it actually allowed its Christians and Muslims, the same rights and privileges as it does for its Jews.
@Jafaar
“if it [Israel] actually allowed its Christians and Muslims, the same rights and privileges as it does for its Jews.”
Yeah. Same like Pakistan grants Christians and Jews the same rights and privileges as it does for Jews.
@ Black Canary: I always enjoy it when hasbarists try to compare Israel favorably to countries they consider primitive, usually Arab countries. It’s as if they ‘re saying Israel can be proud it’s better than them, when Israel doesn’t aspire to be better than them, but to be as good, free and democratic as western countries, which it is not,
Haha, Black Canary is using the ‘guilty-by-name’ stick in his response to Jaafar and that’s why he starts talking about Pakistan. Maybe Black Canary could tell us how many Jews actually live in Pakistan, and how many lived there even before the Partition.
Black Canary, you must be pretty desperate to try to compare Israel with Pakistan, by setting such an abyssmally low standard, you are sure to make Israel look good. I do have to admit Pakistan is rapidly surpassing Israel and is even apporaching ethnic cleansing by its civilians but Black Canary, you should visit my blog http://www.penjihad.com and you will see I do not coddle Pakistan when I believe it to be in the wrong. If half of you Blind Defeneders of Israel were to take up opposition to what Israel is doing, you could succceed in creating an Israel worthy of emulation.
Jingoistic, Blind Suporters of any country, are the most deadly enemies of that country, even though they fool themselves that they are backing “a higher cause” and being “Patriotic”. Just check out Hitler, Pol Pot, Milosevic, Netanyahu (all Israeli leaders actually) and a host of others.
” Black Canary, you must be pretty desperate to try to compare Israel with Pakistan”
Both Israel and Pakistan were formed in the late 1940’s. Both resulted from a partition plan. Both underwent ethnic cleansing during their independence. Israel was intended as a Jewish State, Pakistan as a Muslim State. Both fought numerous, subsequent wars with their neighbors. Both have restive minorities. Etc, etc.
@ Black Canary: Pakistan is off-topic. You will not post any further comments here that are off-topic.
But further, your historical analogy is false. Pakistan was not “intended as a Muslim state.” It was intended as a state. It would happen to have a majority Muslim population. Because of the bloodbath that ensued after Britain washed its hands of India & Pakistan & allowed ethnic cleansing & genocide, 1 million Muslims fled from India to Pakistan, further strengthening the Muslim majority.
While Pakistan has fought wars with India, there have been far fewer than there have been invasions, hostilities, etc. between Israel and Palestine (not to mention Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon & Syria).
You’re done in this thread. Move on.