Tag Archives: Sinai Peninsula

A Culture That Is Foreign To Us

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The Middle East culture is not a culture most Americans understand. It is a tribal, brutal culture. The highest goal of a young man in a Muslim country is to fight and be martyred for Allah. That is the only sure way to paradise. Sharia Law is the final authority. Women and second-class citizens, and homosexuals are killed. Disobeying your parents can get you killed in an ‘honor killing’ by a trusted relative. ISIS has taken Sharia Law to a whole new level, and not everyone is pleased.

Yesterday PJ Media reported that a group of Bedouins in the Sinai Peninsula set fire to an ISIS fighter and called on all the tribes to unite and fight ISIS together.

The article reports:

As ISIS has been losing territory in Iraq and Syria, their Sinai chapter has expanded its reach, even establishing a religious police force that has been terrorizing residents who smoke cigarettes or shave. ISIS also threatened residents against cooperating with the army and police.

That, along with ISIS spreading fake news that they had killed 40 members of the al-Tarabeen tribe, drove the Bedouins to snatch an ISIS leader and film their own video of his death, the tribe told Al-Arabiya.

They said the man had killed three Sinai residents and a police and burned their bodies, so the Bedouins set him on fire. That’s employing the Islamic principle of qisas, killing a killer in the manner by which the victim was murdered. ISIS tried to use the same reasoning when they burned a Jordanian pilot in a cage in a shocking 2015 video.

The article concludes:

The al-Tarabeen said in a statement they would fight ISIS “bravely and courageously as the sons of the tribe do not fear the battles.”

“It is time to get together to face ISIS, which did not have mercy on the elderly or young, and filled the earth with corruption and destruction,” they said in a call for the tribes to unite.

“To anyone who supports ISIS by word, action or by monitoring, he has to surrender himself immediately,” they added.

We need more Muslims willing to stand up against ISIS. Otherwise we will be fighting this war forever.

Taking Necessary Action

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Fox News is reporting today that Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi is doubling the buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza.

The article reports:

The operation will expand the existing 500m buffer zone created last November to a full kilometer (0.6 mile), a move meant to halt the passage of weapons and militants. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists, expect to complete the expansion by the middle of next week.

The forced evictions are displacing a population with longstanding grievances against the government of Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. The northern Sinai Peninsula has become a hub for Islamic extremists, and security forces in the area face regular deadly attacks.

The President of Egypt was elected democratically, but has ruled with an iron hand. He has arrested members of the Muslim Brotherhood and spoken out against Islamic terrorism. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood after he signed a truce with Israel, and President el-Sissi is trying to avoid a similar fate. President el-Sissi understands that to allow terrorism or terrorist organizations to operate freely in your country is not wise. Eventually the terrorists you allow will turn on you.

Thank God For The Israel Defense Forces

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The Times of Israel posted an article yesterday about an attempted attack by Hamas terrorists on civilians at Kibbutz Sufa. The terrorists emerged from a tunnel, ready to attack, realized they had been spotted, and attempted to go back into the tunnel. That is the point at which Israeli aircraft bombed the tunnel entrance.

This is the link to the article above to see the YouTube video of the attack:

The article reports:

The tunnel is part of a network of underground channels, laboriously dug, as offensive lanes into Israel. In June 2006 two Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush that began via a tunnel in the same region, and a third, Gilad Shalit, was captured and taken back to Gaza. His exchange, five and a half years later, for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, is considered one of Hamas’s crowning achievements.

In the years since that assault several complex tunnels have been discovered, including, most recently, one that was found and bombed on the eve of Operation Protective Edge.

Lerner said he did not believe the attack was a significant shift in the tide of the 10-day-old campaign.

During the time that Mohamed Morsi was President of Egypt, terrorists had pretty much free rein in the Sinai Peninsula. I suspect that many of these tunnels were dug during that time. The only way that Israel can be secure is to make sure these tunnels are caved in and there is not underground access to Israel for terrorists.

Freedom Of Religion Is Not A Part Of The Islamic Philosophy

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Yesterday ABC News posted a story about recent events in Dalga, Egypt. The article explains that the town was taken over by the supporters of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on July 3.

The article reports:

With the army and police already fighting a burgeoning militant insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, there are growing signs that a second insurgency could erupt in the south — particularly in Minya and Assiut provinces, both Islamist strongholds and home to Egypt’s two largest Christian communities.

The takeover of Dalga has been disastrous for the Christian community in the town, located 270 kilometers (160 miles) south of Cairo in Minya, on the edge of the Nile Valley near the cliffs that mark the start of the desert.

In the initial burst of violence, the town’s only Catholic church was ransacked and set ablaze, like the Monastery of the Virgin Mary and St. Abraam. The Anglican church was looted.

Since the Morsi supporters took over the town, Christian homes have been looted and burned. Some homes have been spared because the Christians living in them have paid their Muslim neighbors to protect them.

This is an example of the government that can follow the removal of a Middle Eastern dictator. Unless we are prepared to take over a country until a moderate government can be established, we should not intervene in a civil war in the Middle East.

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America Is On The Wrong Side Of This

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Yesterday the Washington Times reported that American soldiers will be taking part in a Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping force in Egypt. Ultimately about 400 American troops will take part in the 9-month mission aimed at curbing riots. The troops will be stationed at checkpoints along the Sinai Peninsula. They’re also tasked with reporting violations to the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. My first question here is “Who will be commanding these American troops?”

The United Nations is probably one of the most anti-Israel organizations in the world. Last year the United Nations Human Rights Council called for a boycott on all companies doing business in Israel (rightwinggranny.com). How can anyone expect the United Nations to report honestly on peace treaty violations? The United Nations observers in Lebanon has been silent as Hezbollah has built up its weapons (Reuters). Why would their actions in the Sinai be any different?

In April the Reuters article linked above reported:

“Under pressure, a multi-national force is like an umbrella that gets folded up on a rainy day,” Yaakov Amidror, Netanyahu’s national security adviser, said in a Tel Aviv University speech.

Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah, Amidror said, has been building its arsenal despite the 35-year presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in its heartland.

“Has Hezbollah avoided bringing any kind of rocket, missile or other arms into southern Lebanon because UNIFIL is there?” he said. Israel believes Hezbollah has amassed 60,000 rockets, including 5,000 with heavy warheads capable of hitting Tel Aviv.

“Under their (UNIFIL) mandate, they cannot stop Hezbollah and confiscate its arms, but they can write a report. There has been no UNIFIL report about any weapon of any Hezbollah person since UNIFIL has existed,” Amidror said.

As part of the U.N. ceasefire that ended Israel’s inconclusive 2006 war with Hezbollah, UNIFIL’s mandate was enhanced to include “assisting” the Lebanese army with keeping guerrilla “personnel, assets and weapons” out of south Lebanon.

Israel is America’s only true ally in the Middle East. We need to protect them–not aid and abet their enemies. The countries surrounding Israel train their children to hate Israel and to grow up to be soldiers or suicide bombers to destroy Israel. This is a picture of a kindergarten graduation in Gaza that I posted last June (rightwinggranny.com)::

Israel lives with this threat every day. We need to be sure that we are helping combat the threat–not becoming part of it. Our future as America depends on it.

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The Cost Of The Arab Spring

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This is not another post about Benghazi, although I suspect that there will be one by the end of the day–it is a post about Egypt. President Morsi visited Gaza this week to show solidarity with the Palestinian people. While he was there, the Palestinian people fired rockets on Israel from Gaza. No problem. The fact that Egypt supposedly has a peace treaty with Israel was evidently not important to either President Morsi or the Palestinians. Well, it gets worse.

Yesterday the Weekly Standard reported that rockets were fired from the Sinai Peninsula into Israel on Friday night. Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula during the six-day war of 1967. The Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt in a treaty signed in 1979 between Israel and Egypt.  That treaty was the reason the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Anwar Sadat. The Muslim Brotherhood is now in charge of Egypt.

The article reports:

This new front comes a day after a rocket landed near Tel Aviv and on the same day Israel’s capital Jerusalem was the target of rocket fire. Those attacks were courtesy of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“After Tel Aviv metropolitan area, capital under fire too: An air raid siren was sounded in Jerusalem and surrounding communities early Friday evening. After residents reported hearing blast sounds, security forces confirmed that one rocket had landed in the Gush Etzion area near a Palestinian village,” Ynet reports.

“There were no reports of injuries or damage. This was the first air raid siren sounded in the area since the IDF launched Operation Pillar of Defense in the Gaza Strip. Air raid sirens were sounded in southern communities throughout the day and a barrage of missiles hit the area.”

Israel needs to defend herself, and she needs to defend herself in a way that makes it a bad idea to launch rockets against her in the future. Unfortunately, when Israel fights back, most of the world community chooses to blame her for the violence.

 

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Are We Back To The Days Of Czechoslovakia ?

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On Tuesday, Frank Gaffney posted an article in the Washington Times about the treatment of Israel by the Obama Administration.

The article begins by reminding us:

In October 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon issued a prophetic warning: “Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a ‘convenient temporary solution.’ ” He declared: “Israel will not be Czechoslovakia.”

Mr. Gaffney compares the statements of the Obama Administration that indicate Israel is on its own to the statements made by western nations in 1938, which Hitler took as a green light to invade the nation of Czechoslovakia. The Obama Administration does not seem to notice that Iran is closely watching the statements the administration is making regarding Israel.

The article reminds us:

Even more troubling has been the cumulative effect of Obama policies toward the Middle East that are helping transform large swaths of the region into a festering Islamist sore, prone to jihad — most immediately against Israel and, inevitably, against the United States. In particular, Mr. Obama’s determination to legitimize, empower and enrich the government of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi adds materially to the danger confronting the Jewish state and American interests.

The legitimization will reach new heights later this month when Mr. Morsi gets the red-carpet treatment in New York and Washington. The empowering included not just demands conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in July that the Egyptian military surrender power to the Brotherhood-dominated presidency and legislature. It also apparently entails U.S. acquiescence to Mr. Morsi’s moves to remilitarize the Sinai in violation of the Camp David Accords. The enriching piece involved an unconditional, lump-sum payment earlier this year, over bipartisan congressional objections, and is reportedly to be followed by the incipient transfer of a further $1 billion.

Predictably, as with the sellout of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, what such concessions will produce is an emboldening of freedom’s enemies. That will not be good for its friends — here or abroad.

We can sit and watch as Egypt remilitarizes the Sinai Peninsula or we can choose to develop a backbone and cut off any aid to Egypt until it removes its troops and weapons from the area. Unfortunately, I think under President Obama, we will sell out Israel just as Europe sold out Czechoslovakia. Selling out Israel may bring us a temporary period of something that looks like peace, but it will not bring us peace.

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Can American Aid Buy Peace ?

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Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the American State Department is working out a deal with the new Egyptian government to give them $1 billion in debt relief. Aside from the fact that America faces its own debt problems, what in the world are we supporting? This is obviously an effort by the State Department to encourage Egypt to keep the peace treaty it signed with Israel that returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Unfortunately, that peace is danger due to the actions of the new Egyptian government.

On August 6, the Los Angeles Times reported that Islamic militants have increased their presence in the Sinai Peninsula since the revolution in Egypt. We need to understand the the new government of Egypt will align itself with Iran and is fundamentally opposed to the existence of Israel.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reports:

But the election in June of Egypt’s new Muslim Brotherhood-backed president, Mohammed Morsi, has called the strength of the old alliance into question. Mr. Morsi selected Beijing last week for his first official trip outside the Middle East, followed by a trip to Iran—moves some observers saw as a deliberate snub to Egypt’s traditional Western backers.

The arrival of an Islamist government followed by political upheaval and disconcerting moves on the international stage fueled questions over the reliability of Mr. Morsi as a U.S. ally. But his efforts at internal stability and his public criticism of Syria’s regime while visiting Tehran last week, which angered his hosts, have helped balance U.S. views of the new Egyptian leader.

At the present moment, America is dealing with record budget deficits and facing drastic cuts to our military. I realize that I am only an ordinary citizen, but it makes absolutely no sense to me to give $1 billion to a country that is in the process of aligning itself with countries that do not wish us well.

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Some Notes On Yesterday’s Attack On Israel

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J. E. Dyer posted an article at Hot Air today listing three things about the attack on Israel that he considered significant.

The first thing to be noted about the attack is that it was mounted from Egypt. This is a change. This is the result of the “Arab Spring” revolution that happened in Egypt this past year. That revolution will not bring peace–it will lead the world closer to war.

The article points out:

It’s too early to determine where alliances and affiliations will shake out in the future.  But it’s not too early to recognize that Hezbollah and Hamas, along with their patron Iran, have reason to stake a claim in the future of Egypt.  Their orientation is no longer as solidly centered on Syria as it was six months ago.  Hamas’s horizons have traditionally been narrower than Hezbollah’s, but either one is in a position to see influence and freedom of action in the Sinai as an alternative to its traditional ties to Damascus.  That bodes ill for Egypt.

The second notable point about the attack is that it was a sustained multi-pronged attack.

The article points out:

But the 18 August attack encompassed at least two buses and a car (the vehicle carrying the two Israeli children who were killed), as well as the emergency response forces and the IDF helicopters dispatched to search for the attackers.  Nearly 7 hours after the initial attack (at almost 7:00 PM in Israel), gunfire was reportedly directed from the Egyptian side of the border at Israelis in the vicinity of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who was conducting a press conference from the site of the attack.  That would seem to indicate that the terrorists were able to regenerate or hold forces in reserve on the Egyptian side of the border – a bad sign about both their tenacity and the security conditions in that part of the Sinai.

Again, this represents an escalation of previous attacks on Israel by its neighbors.

The third aspect of this attack is that it may create a perception that Egypt needs to increase her troop levels in the Sinai.

The article concludes:

The prospects, therefore, are for a continued, incremental expansion of the Egyptian troop presence in the peninsula.  It is well to remember why the Sinai was demilitarized in the first place: to ensure that Egypt would not be in a position to launch a surprise attack on Israel.  Establishing an ever-higher “normal” for the level of forces there will chip away at that insurance.  Is Egypt anxious to launch an attack on Israel?  Not today.  But as an Egyptian troop presence grows in the Sinai – for reasons that seem iron-clad and urgent as they crop up – that could certainly change.

Obviously, none of this is moving in the direction of peace. Since Iran is pulling the strings on much of this activity, I wonder if the purpose of this activity is to take the eyes of the world off of what is happening in Syria. Syria is a puppet state of Iran, and the unrest there is not good news for Iran. A new government in Syria might have a streak of independence that could interfere with Iran’s plan for its middle east caliphate.

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Consequences Of The Egyptian Revolution

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The revolution in Egypt did not bring in a peace-loving democracy. It ended the rule of a government that had made peace with Israel. Today’s attack on Israel from Gaza and from Egypt confirmed that fact.

Today’s Washington Examiner reported on the terrorist attacks on Israel which killed eight people. The attacks were launched from Gaza through the Sinai Peninsula.

The article reports:

Though it seemed clear the gunmen had come through Egyptian territory, Gen. Khaled Fouda, the governor of the southern Sinai district, said no shooting had come from the Egyptian side.

“The incident underscores the weak Egyptian hold on Sinai and the broadening of the activities of terrorists,” said Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “The real source of the terror is in Gaza, and we will act against them with full force and determination.”

The Sinai desert, dominated by Bedouin tribes and never entirely under the control of the central government, have grown more violent since a popular uprising toppled longtime Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak in February. Since then, assailants have repeatedly blown up a crucial pipeline carrying natural gas to Israel and Jordan.

Egypt is in transition right now. According to the Financial Times on July 13, 2011, Egyptian elections are scheduled for November, having been postponed from their original date of September. Registration and campaigns will begin in September, but the voting will not happen for about a month and a half after that.

Unfortunately the chances of a new government in Egypt being a friend of Israel (or even not participating in any military action against Israel) are very slim. Israel lives in a bad neighborhood, and Egypt and Turkey were two countries in that neighborhood that respected Israel’s right to exist. Turkey is in the process of setting up a Muslim state and I don’t believe Egypt will be far behind. There goes the neighborhood.

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