Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu speaking at the Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration ceremony at Yad Vashem:
AP
“We are witness today to the new-old fire of hate, hatred of Jews inflamed by organizations and regimes of extremist Islam, most of all Iran and its satellites. Iran’s leaders are scurrying to develop nuclear weapons and freely announce their desire to destroy Israel, but before these repeated declarations to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth, at best we hear faint protest, and even this is fading.
“We don’t hear the forceful protest that is required, we don’t hear the strong denouncement, nor the angry voice. But as usual, there are those who direct their criticism against us, against Israel… The world accepts Iran’s declarations of annihilation and we still don’t see the international determination required to prevent Iran arming… I call on the enlightened nations to rise and denounce this intention to destroy, and to act with real determination to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)?
8:45PM: Anat Kam, the former soldier indicted for espionage for copying thousands of classified military documents without authorization and giving them to Haaretz journalist Uri Blau, was motivated by ideology.
Classified documents reveal that the Israel Defense Forces had committed war crimes in the West Bank, Anat Kam, the former soldier indicted for espionage over an alleged theft of top secret material, told the court earlier in the year, according to police documents released allowed for publication Monday at the request of Haaretz.
In the newly released material documenting court hearings surrounding Kam’s arrest, the journalist and former IDF soldier said that the motivation behind her removal of sensitive military material was to expose “certain aspects of the IDF’s conduct in the West Bank that I thought were of interest to the public.”
Kam added that her thinking behind taking the top secret papers was to ensure that “if and when the war crime the IDF was and is committing in the West Bank would be investigated, then I would have evidence to present.”
Kam said that she didn?t think that transferring the documents would endanger the country, as she did not think “the journalist would focus on the details of the military actions, but rather on the principles and the policies that were behind the the top officers’ decisions.”
Kam also explained that she turned to Israeli journalists because she assumed that “the censorship would not allow the publication of information classified as top secret or that is dangerous for publication.”
Referring to the possibility that she would be penalized for the theft, Kam said that when she “burned the material [onto a CD] I thought that in the test of history, people who warned of war crimes were forgiven.”
“I didn’t have the chance to change some of the things that I found it important to change during my military service, and I thought that by exposing these [materials] I would make a change,” the former soldier said, adding that it was for those reasons that “it was important for me to bring the IDF’s policy to public knowledge.”
Meanwhile, you can file this under Everybody Panic:
The Tel Aviv District Court allowed several new details in the Anat Kam affair to be released Monday, among which is the disconcerting discovery that one of the CD’s burnt by the indicted journalist has gone missing.
She has put all of us in danger. I don’t care how gentle, kind and well-intended others are trying to portray her. She deserves to be punished to the full extent of the law.
4:40PM: Photo of the day:
A Palestinian woman shields herself from sunlight during a weekly protest calling for the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, at the International Red Cross building in Gaza City, Monday, April 12, 2010. (AP Photo/ Hatem Moussa)
As if she was getting any sunlight.
4:32PM: Not news: Palestinian terrorist organizations not getting along so well.
News: Islamic Jihad being pissed at Hamas for actually preventing them from killing Jews.
The Hamas government’s internal security force in the Gaza Strip released a cell of gunmen Monday who had planned to open fire on an IDF force operating near the border fence.
Sources from the Islamic Jihad reported to Ynet that members of the cell – made up of members of Islamic Jihad’s military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and the Nabil Massoud cell, which is one of the armed groups of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades – were released after they committed in writing not to continue these types of activities.
A source in the al-Quds Martyrs’ Brigades reported that members of the cell were arrested as they planned to carry out “a quality jihad mission against a special Zionist force operating within Palestinian territory.”
The source expressed his amazement over the detainment, which last four hours: “Members of the cell were detained in the security headquarters that Gaza security officers evacuate every night out of fears of IDF attack, which made the mujahidin vulnerable to attack as their guards remained in a safe place. Treatment of our mujahidin was not as it is supposed to be, and they were not granted proper respect. They treated them like they were criminal inmates.”
The source reported that members of the Hamas government in Gaza asked the detainees to sign a written commitment not to carry out any military action against Israel, claiming that there is an undeclared truce in place that must be respected.
“We do not recognize any truce between the resistance and the enemy, who continues to invade our land,” claimed the al-Quds Martyrs’ Brigades source.
Which raises the following questions:
Assuming this is true (a big assumption in itself), what is Hamas up to?
What is a “quality” jihad mission? One where they use expensive explosives?
Are Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades also pissed at the al-Quds Martyrs’ Brigades, who have seemingly ripped off their name?
If so, why can’t they battle each other to the death?
12:10PM: What it looks like on the roads when the nation comes to a standstill during the Holocaust Remembrance Day/Yom Hashoa siren.
10:25AM: A 2-minute siren sounded 25 minutes ago, and we stood in silence to pay our respects to those killed in the Holocaust.
Aside: I wonder if Arab-Israeli Knesset members like Ahmed Tibi stood in silence.
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
