Nablus, Hub of The Terror Triangle

Video Of The Week - Into the "Lions’ Den” - https://tinyurl.com/m9c2svhx 

The Terror Triangle: What You Need to Know About the West Bank City of Nablus

Akiva Van Koningsveld, HonestReporting.

 For the full Article go to - https://tinyurl.com/yjket6t9

An elite Israel Defense Forces soldier died on October 12 after being shot near the community of Shavei Shomron in the northern West Bank. Staff Sgt. Ido Baruch, 21, was attacked by gunmen who opened fire from a passing vehicle as his unit was “conducting operational security activity in the area,” the IDF said. 

A relatively unknown Palestinian armed faction operating out of the nearby city of Nablus, the Lion’s Den, soon claimed responsibility for the killing of Baruch, warning Israel that “the volcano of our operations has begun and only God will extinguish it.”  Tuesday’s deadly shooting was the latest in a string of recent attacks carried out by terrorists from Nablus that targeted Israeli security forces and civilians. On October 2, the Lion’s Den in two separate West Bank shootings injured an Israeli taxi driver and a soldier. 

Nablus (identified with the ancient Jewish city of Shechem) is home to about 150,000 people, making it the second-largest locality under Palestinian Authority jurisdiction.  Nablus’ history as a hub for anti-Jewish terrorist activity far predates the founding of the modern State of Israel. In a 1921 report, a British Mandate official already denounced the Nabulsi attitude as “fanatic” and “bigoted,” citing, in particular, the city’s “hostility to the Jews.” Notably, the bloody Arab riots of 1936-39 were in part triggered by the slaying of two Jewish men near Nablus at the hands of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam supporters.

Soon after the attack, on April 20, 1936, the Arab National Committee of Nablus declared a general strike and boycott of Jewish goods, a call heeded by Arabs throughout the Mandate’s territory. During the six-month strike, some eighty Jews were murdered in terror acts, with a total of 415 Jewish deaths recorded during the entire 1936-1939 Arab Revolt period.  Together with Jenin and Tulkarem, Nablus comprised what London at the time dubbed the “Triangle of Terror” or “Triangle of Fear.”

When Palestinian arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat set up Fatah terror cells in the West Bank after the Arab armies’ ’67 defeat, he chose Nablus as the location for his first secret headquarters, before relocating to Ramallah.  Some of the most horrific terror attacks during the Second Intifada (2000-2005) were likewise carried out by Nablus residents, including a December 2, 2001, bombing of a Haifa bus that killed 15 Israelis and injured 40. The day after the attack, thousands of Hamas followers marched through Nablus in support of suicide bomber Maher Habashi.  The explosive belts used in the March 2002 Passover massacre (30 dead) were also produced by Hamas in Nablus.

During Operation Defensive Shield (March-May 2002), IDF troops uncovered hundreds of rifles and improvised firearms in Nablus, in addition to 18 explosives laboratories and a factory producing Qassam rockets.

Fast forward 20 years, the successes of Operation Defensive Shield have apparently been undone, and Nablus’ reputation as an epicenter for Palestinian terror has been firmly re-established.  Nablus initially resurfaced in the international press on February 8, 2022, after IDF forces neutralized three Palestinians during an operation in the al-Makhfiya neighborhood. Israeli officials said the targets belonged to a terror cell that had conducted shooting attacks against Israeli military positions and personnel.

Six months later, following a Palestinian terror wave that left 19 Israelis dead, Israeli troops during a raid killed Ibrahim/ Nabulsi, the fourth member of the cell suspected of being a commander of the terror group’s Nablus brigade. Nabulsi was wanted for numerous attacks in the West Bank, including shooting attacks against Jewish worshippers visiting Joseph’s Tomb just outside of Nablus.  After Nabulsi’s death, a cadre of young Palestinian terrorists took it upon themselves to carry on his violent legacy. This summer, Ibrahim Nabulsi helped found a new coalition of armed groups modeled after the Jenin Battalion; Areen al-Usood (the Lion’s Den). According to Israeli data, the number of drive-by shootings targeting Israeli military positions near Nablus has more than doubled since 2021.

The Lion’s Den has also attacked civilians, for instance by firing at the Jewish community of Har Bracha, located south of the Palestinian city. On September 9, Israeli security forces thwarted a large-scale attack in Tel Aviv, arresting an operative linked to the Nablus group. All in all, the group is estimated to consist of some 100 Palestinians under the age of 30. Although the alliance includes members of Fatah, PIJ, Hamas and the PFLP, it has no clear affiliation with any specific terror organization.

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Lord Levy is Wrong

Video Of The Week -Agricultural Innovations in Israel - https://tinyurl.com/mr3pf8fw                                            

His arguments against moving the UK embassy to Jerusalem will aid Israel's foes 

For the full article by Melanie Phillips go to: https://tinyurl.com/yc7kns9y

Anglo jaws collectively dropped to the floor upon reading an opinion    piece in The  Times of Friday 14th October. Lord Levy  is a British Jewish philanthropist and long-standing member of the Labour party, whose stellar fund-raising efforts earned him a peerage bestowed by Labour’s former leader (and Levy’s former tennis partner) Sir Tony Blair. Every single one of Levy’s arguments  are  misguided, ill-judged or flat-out wrong.

1'’The longstanding principle of Jerusalem’s status needing to be determined in a negotiated settlement”. This is a  wilful error. The principle in question was enshrined in the 1947 UN resolution proposing a division of Palestine between an Arab and a Jewish state, and which designated Jerusalem as a corpus separatum to be administered by the UN. Since the entire Partition Plan was rejected by the Arabs, however, it was never implemented and all its proposals were rendered void.

2 “Pouring fuel on the fire is highly irresponsible”. What fire? Despite global predictions of a Middle East conflagration if Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem, not only did this not happen but the historic Abraham Accords were signed between Israel and the Gulf states.

3“How does this benefit Britain in the world?” This is shallow and blinkered. Liz Truss has cemented a solid trading and friendship relationship with Israel. Her unambiguous acceptance of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital marks out her government as defying the poisonous anti-Israel consensus among other western countries. Given the importance to Britain of access to Israeli high-tech know-how, intelligence and security links, the proposed embassy move is patently in Britain’s national interest.

4: “All Arab ambassadors, including those representing states that have normalised relations with Israel, have expressed their opposition.” Exactly  the same happened when Trump moved the US embassy, which ignited furious  opposition across the Arab and Muslim world. Two years afterwards came the Abraham Accords.

5 The most egregiously false and incendiary of Levy’s assertions was his suggestion that, by moving the embassy, the UK would be conniving at Israel’s defiance of  “international legality”, “the UN charter”, the “inadmissibility of territorial acquisition” and “annexation by force”.But Israel is guilty of none of these things, which are all canards promulgated by its enemies.The international lawyer Professor Eugene Kontorovich has written, the key doctrine under international law that determines the borders of a state is uti possidetis juris (“as you possess under law”). According to this principle, Israel’s borders at the moment of independence were the borders of Mandatory Palestine — which included all of Jerusalem as well as Judea and Samaria. Kontorovich wrote “The UN, in its thousands of resolutions to the contrary, flagrantly ignores that principle.”

6 “The heads of the youth movements have strongly denounced the move. They are the future leadership of the Jewish community and should be listened to carefully. “If that is indeed so, then Britain’s Jewish community should be seriously alarmed that its young people are so catastrophically ill-informed about Israel, Jewish history and the Jewish people.

7 “A Trump-style UK relocation would be bad for peace.” But Trump’s relocation of the US embassy was followed by the Abraham Accords, the biggest advance for peace in the Middle East over the past century. Moving the UK embassy would also advance peace by signalling an end to Britain’s shameful century-old capitulation to Palestinian Arab lies and blackmail — a principal source of encouragement for Palestinian Arab rejectionism and violence. By publishing these views in The Times, Levy has in fact spoken for and reinforced Israel’s enemies.

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Why a Two-State Solution Won't Work

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For the full Article by Dore Gold, go to https://tinyurl.com/3bxn6ht4

Prime Minister Yair Lapid's support for the “two-state solution” during his UN General Assembly address re-opened the Israeli debate over the merits of this policy. It was never a part of the key documents that provided the diplomatic basis for the Arab-Israeli peace process in the past.

It sounds fair but however it sounds, the two-state solution is not drawn from binding legal commitments made by Israel in the past.

 

In October 1995, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave his final address to the Knesset weeks before he was assassinated. In the speech, he outlined the components of a final peace settlement with the Palestinians. He did not make any reference 1o the two-state solution. His backing of Palestinian statehood by itself was at best lukewarm. He spoke only about an entity which was “less than a state.”

 

Another problem with the terminology of the two-state solution is the expectation that if the Palestinians' grievances are fully addressed and resolved, the wider Arab-Israel conflict will come to an end. Diplomats embraced the “two-state solution” as a kind of magic key that would solve the Arab-Israel conflict. There is no indication that this was ever true.

 

If the considerations of the Palestinian Arabs were paramount for the Arab world, then why wasn't a Palestinian state established in Judea and Samaria when the Arab world had the chance because it already held those areas?The Palestinian Arabs tried briefly to set up a mini- state in the Gaza Strip, known as the All-Palestine Government, but it never acquired wider backing through international recognition.

 

Israel needs to design an approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that keeps in mind the true dimensions of the wider conflict. The Arab-Israel conflict has resembled an accordion that can expand or contract according to international circumstances.Today there is a risk that if the two- state solution becomes popularized again,Israel will come under rising international pressures to adhere to its terms, even if they do not apply. It risks stripping Israel of its right to secure boundaries which is an integral part of Resolution 242.

 

What recent events demonstrate is that a very different Middle East has arisen. Diplomacy remains vital in this new period, but i1 will only yield results if it addresses the vital interests of the parties. That is the lesson of the Abraham Accords, which produced four normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states.The two-state solution is just a nice-sounding mantra that will lead diplomats off course. This should be the message of the State of Israel the next time an Israeli prime minister addresses the UN General Assembly.

 

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"When Muslims are Infidels- Isis Targets Nazareth School"

 Video Of The Week - Israel Busts ISIS Cell in Nazareth - https://tinyurl.com/4w8we2pk

 Link to the full article - https://tinyurl.com/bdzh8865 

(JNS) The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and the Israel Police announced on Sunday the arrest of six alleged members of an Islamic State terror cell in the Arab Israeli city of Nazareth in the country’s north

The suspects were arrested in September after security forces concluded that they were plotting to launch terror attacks inside Israel. One of the suspects is known to security forces due to past ISIS involvement, the Shin Bet said in a statement.

The investigation found that the suspects consumed online ISIS content, and that “at a certain stage, took the decision to implement a terror attack in ISIS’s name.”

They allegedly conducted secret meetings, and began plotting attacks, with a main intended target being a Muslim high school in their home city, which the suspected believed “acted in line with the infidels,” according to the investigation.

“The suspects intended to attack an educational institute containing teenagers … and teaching staff,” said the statement. They also plotted attacks on a crowded bus station in northern Israel, a police station in Nazareth, and forests in which Jewish Israelis walk through. 

The Shin Bet statement hailed the arrest of the cell as “significant,” adding that the incident shed light on the influence of ISIS in Israel. The terror organization “continues without cease to spread its ideology among citizens of the State of Israel and its residents, and works to recruit them through, among other means, online propaganda, including on social media networks, to promote terror attacks in Israel,” the statement said.

The six suspects were charged on Sunday with a string of severe security offenses.

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New Findings For Cancer Detection

Video Of The Week - Amazing Discovery of Tomb - https://tinyurl.com/mr4y38xb

 For the full Article from Weizmann Institute of Science go to- https://tinyurl.com/2wy8p5pe

Cancer tumors contain multiple species of fungi that differ per tumor type, according to a large study led by researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of California, San Diego.

The study, published today in Cell, potentially has implications for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, as well as for the detection of cancer through a blood test. It complements scientists’ understanding of the interaction between cancer cells and the bacteria that exist in tumors alongside fungi, bacteria that have been shown to affect cancer growth, metastasis and response to therapy. 

The researchers systematically profiled fungal communities in more than 17,000 tissue and blood samples taken from patients with 35 types of cancer. They found that fungi can be detected in all of these cancer types. Fungi were mostly found “hiding” inside the cancer cells or in immune cells inside the tumors.

The study also revealed multiple correlations between the presence of specific fungi in tumors and conditions related to treatment. For example, breast cancer patients who have Malassezia globosa – a fungus found naturally on the skin – in their tumors had a much lower survival rate than those who did not have the fungus. In addition, specific fungi were found to be more prevalent in the breast tumors of older patients than in those of younger ones, in the lung tumors of smokers than in those of nonsmokers and in melanoma tumors that did not respond to immunotherapy than in tumors that did respond to therapy.

These findings suggest that fungal activity is “a new and emerging hallmark of cancer,” says Prof. Ravid Straussman of the Weizmann’s Molecular Cell Biology Department, coleader of the study. “These findings should drive us to better explore the potential effects of tumor fungi and to re-examine almost everything we know about cancer through a ‘microbiome lens,’” he said. 

The study, which characterized both the fungi and the bacteria that are present in human tumors, demonstrated that typical “hubs” of fungi and bacteria can be found in tumors. For example, while tumors that contain Aspergillus fungi tend to have specific bacteria in them, other tumors that contain Malassezia fungi tend to have other bacteria in them. These different “hubs” may be important for treatment, as they correlated with both tumor immunity and patient survival.

“This study sheds new light on the complex biological environment within tumors, and future research will reveal how fungi affect cancerous growth,“ says Prof. Yitzhak Pilpel, a coauthor of the study and a principal investigator at the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Molecular Genetics Department. “The fact that fungi can be found not only in cancer cells but also in immune cells implies that, in the future, we’ll probably find that fungi have some effect not only on the cancer cells but also on immune cells and their activity.”

The existence of fungi in most human cancers “is both a surprise and to be expected,” says Rob Knight, a professor of Pediatrics, Bioengineering and Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego, who coauthored the study. “It is surprising because we don’t know how fungi could get into tumors throughout the body. But it is also expected, because it fits the pattern of healthy micro biomes throughout the body, including the gut, mouth and skin, where bacteria and fungi interact as part of a complex community.” 

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“A Royal Debunking”?

Video Of The Week - Royal Family’s Connection to Jerusalem-https://tinyurl.com/mw8t3par

For the full article By Stephen M. Flatow go to: https://tinyurl.com/2p8v67pj

The ascent of Prince Charles to the British throne King Charles III is a problem for advocates of the Palestinian Arab cause. The new king’s connection to a key Jewish holy site in eastern Jerusalem could focus attention on a subject that the Arabs are anxious to avoid.

King Charles III’s grandmother, Princess Alice, and her aunt, Grand Duchess Elisabeth, are both buried in a small Christian cemetery on the Mount of Olives, near the largest Jewish cemetery in the world.  The Mount of Olives is in that part of the city that the Palestinian Authority calls “Arab East Jerusalem.” The PA says that the area should be the “capital of Palestine.” According to the PA, Zionists – whether Jews or Christians – have no right to be there. They’re “illegal settlers.”  The cemetery where the two royals are buried belongs to the Church of Mary Magdalene, a Russian Orthodox church and convent that was built at the foot of the Mount of Olives in 1886 by Tsar Alexander II. It is located directly across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.

Princess Alice, who lived in Greece during World War II, sheltered a Jewish family from the Nazis and was posthumously honored by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. Alice, who passed away in 1969, left instructions to be buried at Mary Magdalene cemetery. Her remains were transferred there in 1988.

 The royals’ desire to be buried in Jerusalem demonstrates a longstanding affection for the capital of the Holy Land, something that reflects what we call “Christian Zionism.”  Whether or not Alice or Elisabeth ever called themselves “Christian Zionists” – and whether or not the new king thinks of himself as such – doesn’t matter. The historical facts speak for themselves. Charles knows that his Bible describes the founder of their religion traveling and residing in territories with Hebrew, not Arabic, names – because those areas were, and are, central parts of the Jewish homeland. If there had been a Palestinian Authority in those days, no doubt it would have denounced Jesus as a “Zionist settler.”

As prince, Charles visited the graves of his grandmother, and her aunt, when he attended the funeral of Shimon Peres in 2016. Perhaps, in the PA’s eyes, that made him an “accessory to Zionist settlement activity.” Interestingly, Charles’s visit to the Mount of Olives was undertaken secretly, without the knowledge of the public or news media, apparently for fear of offending the Palestinian Authority.

It’s easy to see why the PA would have been angry over Prince Charles’s visit to his relatives’ graves. Any focus on the Mount of Olives is a public relations disaster for the Palestinians. It reminds the world that one of the most important Jewish religious sites in the world is situated in eastern Jerusalem – shattering the myth that it’s an all-Arab territory that belongs to the Palestinians.  The PA and its media allies call it “Arab East Jerusalem,” but that’s just a propaganda term. The Jewish people’s roots in eastern Jerusalem go back thousands of years, long before any Arab claims.

 The existence of the Church of Mary Magdalene is yet another PR headache for the Palestinians. It was established in 1886 – at a time when no Arabs called the area “Palestine” or called themselves “Palestinians.” That is yet another reminder that Palestinian national identity is a recent and shallow invention, created not because Palestinians are any different from Jordanians or Syrians, but simply as a weapon against the Jews.

How King Charles III interacts with Israel, and whether or not he visits his illustrious family’s graves in Jerusalem, remains to be seen. But the facts about why his relatives are buried there, and who the city and the country belong to, are part of a historical record that cannot be denied. 

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How "Human Rights" Believers Fund Evil

 Video Of The Week "Funding Evil is not British Fair Play" https://tinyurl.com/t8k88rw7

For the full article by Melanie Phillips go to https://tinyurl.com/35mc3dep

This week’s Jewish Chronicle features a major story by David Rose, which reveals that Britain has been investing millions of pounds in training the Palestinian Authority in human rights even while the PA has been perpetrating torture and beating a prominent Palestinian democracy and human rights campaigner to death.

David’s story can be read here, here and here.

The opinion piece that I wrote for the JC to accompany the story follows below.

***

For many in the west, it has long been an article of faith that peace will only come to the Middle East when the Palestinians gain a state of their own.

Along with the EU and America, successive British governments have promoted a “two-state solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

Central to this thinking is a key distinction. Hamas is considered beyond the pale as Islamist extremists who throw gay Palestinians off rooftops to their death and make no bones about their aim to destroy Israel. But the Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas is deemed “moderate” and entitled to run a future state of Palestine that would be part of the community of nations.

The JC has now exposed this faith in the PA as an excruciating misjudgment.

For while Britain has been investing millions in it in the arrogant belief that it can teach it western values, Palestinian officers have been murdering and torturing dissenters who campaign for their human rights.

Last year Nizar Banat, a leading Palestinian campaigner for freedom and democracy, was dragged from his home in Hebron by a squad of 14 PA officers and beaten with a hammer so severely he effectively drowned in his own blood. His murder triggered weeks of protests that were in turn violently crushed by the PA security forces.

Now the JC has revealed that for the past 14 years a “British Support Team” under the command of a brigadier has been training PA officers in human rights — including “inclusivity and gender awareness”.

The JC investigation shows that, in PA-controlled territory, torture by these forces is routine and systemic. People are arrested for their political views; lawyers are beaten; women are sexually assaulted.

A senior PA official said torture was justified to gather intelligence and that Banat deserved to be killed. Yet the British are solemnly teaching such people “inclusivity and gender awareness”. Maybe someone should teach the British “humility and self-awareness”.

The idea that human rights training might turn the PA into defenders of law and liberty is as laughable as it would be to provide human rights training to Vladimir Putin’s secret police or Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Yet Britain has long told itself ten impossible things before breakfast about the Palestinians. Ever since the Oslo Accords in the nineties established the PA as the putative government of a Palestinian state, Britain and others in the west have resolutely denied the truth about it.

They’ve denied that its aim has remained the destruction of Israel; denied  that British and EU funding facilitates PA incitement to murder Israeli Jews and steal their land; denied the savage repression it inflicts upon its own people.

Whitehall’s moral blindness is truly epic. Astoundingly, Britain has repeatedly claimed that its Palestinian human rights training is succeeding.

In 2011, the Foreign Office stated: “The PA leadership is committed to strengthening human rights and is making good progress” 

In 2018, the Foreign Office awarded itself an official score of “A+” for its PA programme, meaning that it had “exceeded expectations” for developing “capable, accountable and responsive security and justice services”.

Well, we can now see that the PA’s “accountable and responsive” reaction to this training was to continue to perpetrate torture and to produce a brutal squad that beat a human rights campaigner to death.

As a result, millions of pounds have been squandered. Worse, Britain has made itself complicit with a tyrannical regime that oppresses its own people.

Worse still, the British government has been helping sanitise the PA and perpetuating the lethal fiction that it can be trusted to uphold human rights.

It told itself this because it wanted to believe it. To put it another way, if it acknowledged that the PA was incorrigibly despotic with no understanding of or commitment to justice, the rule of law and respect for human life, it would have to acknowledge that there could be no state of Palestine in the foreseeable future.

That would mean its support for the Palestinian cause would be negated. It would mean that when Israel said the Palestinians posed a mortal threat to life and liberty, they were all too correct.

This would not only derail a key feature of British foreign policy. It would also show up as hypocrites, idiots or fellow-travellers of tyranny all who support the establishment of a Palestinian state run by the PA.

Since such a state is the cause of causes for the western intelligentsia, the truth must be denied. More than £65 million has now been wasted in perpetrating a lethal “human rights” fiction instead.

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