Jerusalem News (29 July, 2014, 2 Av, 5774)
Contents:
1. Massive Car Bomb attack prevented at Beitar (Brit-Am World Center)
2. IAF (Israeli Air force) Bombs Sudan.
3. A new wind blowing: Israeli soldiers know what they're dying for  by Yifat Erlich
4. An Israeli-Kurdish Axis? Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds by Ofra Bengio
5. Israeli embassy warns Ireland will fall under Islamic influence - by Patrick Counihan
6. Massive Attack Combined Hizbollah and Hamas Attack via tunnels was Intended!
Hamas Planned Rosh Hashana Tunnel Surprise by Aryeh Savir
7. FIVE SOLDIERS KILLED IN AND NEAR GAZA by Gil Ronen (Arutz-7)
8. Christians flee Mosul in Iraq in Fear of their Lives
Christian leaders express shock at world silence after ISIS expels Iraqi Christians by Roula Ibrahim
9. Israeli MK to European envoys: 'Day when Islamic terror will reach your homes is near'
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1. Massive Car Bomb attack prevented at Beitar (Brit-Am World Center)
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/driver-arrested-with-suspected-bomb-at-beitar-checkpoint/2014/07/27/
UPDATE 12:01pm Police report that a massive car bomb was found inside a car that was stopped at the Beitar Checkpoint. The car was driving from the direction of Beitar Ilit towards Tzur Hadassah. Border police soldiers at the checkpoint stopped the car because it looked suspicious.
As the car initially stopped, a soldier leaned inside and tried to turn off the engine. The drive began to zoom off, with the soldier stuck in the window.
The soldier drew his pistol, and forced the driver to stop.
Inside the car they found a massive car bomb made from gas canister and explosives.
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2. IAF (Israeli Air force) Bombs Sudan.
Report: IAF Struck Sudan Weapons Stockpile Headed for Hamas - Israel recently blew up a weapons cache in Sudan that was destined for Hamas in Gaza, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al-Arab reported Monday [July 21]. According to the report, Sudanese officials believe that Israel did carry out a recent bombardment in its territory, and have imposed a total blackout on the incident.
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3. A new wind blowing: Israeli soldiers know what they're dying for
by Yifat Erlich
Published July 26th 2014
http://www.i24news.tv/en/opinion/38150-140725-a-new-wind-blowing-israeli-soldiers-know-what-they-re-dying-for
Extracts:
Something has taken hold of Israeli society in the recent weeks since the beginning of operation Protective Edge. It is not just the spirit of solidarity and civil mobilization. It is something deeper. In order to understand something elusive, we need to go back in time.
Fifteen years ago, a group of women called "the four mothers" became active in Israel. The group led a public campaign to get the Israeli Defense Forces out of Lebanon and, in so doing, introduced a dangerous discourse into Israeli society. Soldiers of the IDF suddenly became "our children". No more were they heroic soldiers but rather children that must be protected at all costs. Thus was the reversal in Israeli society, a reversal by which the front line became the home front and the home front became the front line. Instead of letting the army fulfill its task of defending our home, though we know that it bears the price of casualties, the army was castrated. This discussion turned the IDF into the Defense Forces of the IDF rather than the Israel Defense Forces. And now, in a burning Middle East, we are protecting "children" and not soldiers so that in the end the real children in the kindergartens of Nahal Oz, Ashkelon, and Ra'anana are left without protection.
Since the departure from Lebanon and the evacuation of Gush Katif, the home front has been left unprotected, so much so that there is now no point on the map that is safe from the threat of terror. In both the second Lebanon war and now in the last several Gaza operations, Israel has left without subduing terror, for the fear that the price would be too high in the lives of soldiers - sorry - our children.
Israeli society knows today that she is fighting for her life. That if she shies away from this challenge the tunnels will bring death and destruction to the cities of Israel. A new spirit is blowing in the streets since the beginning of the ground operation in Gaza, a strong spirit, that which knows how to distinguish the front from the home; to the front we are sending soldiers to defend our home. The soldiers know that well. They know it from the letters they are receiving from children and pasting onto the side of their tanks. They are fighting in the name of those children.
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4. An Israeli-Kurdish Axis?
Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds
by Ofra Bengio
Middle East Quarterly
Summer 2014 (view PDF)
http://www.meforum.org/3838/israel-kurds
Extracts:
 Following the establishment of the state of Israel, Kurdish feelings toward the Jews were transformed into a certain admiration and the urge to imitate Jewish success in the new state. Relations were characterized by mutual trust that became an important asset for ties in modern times. In turn, Kurdish Jews who migrated to Israel in the 1940s and early 1950s became excellent ambassadors for the Kurds of Iraq, publicizing and pleading their cause among the Israeli public.
In 1966, Iraqi defense minister Abd al-Aziz al-Uqayli blamed the Kurds of Iraq for seeking to establish "a second Israel" in the Middle East. He also claimed that "the West and the East are supporting the rebels to create [khalq] a new Israeli state in the north of the homeland as they had done in 1948 when they created Israel. It is as if history is repeating itself."[1]
The geopolitical context for Kurdish-Israeli relations has changed dramatically in the last few years, allowing for a certain openness or even rapprochement. Still, the total secrecy that governs these ties gives room for many questions and conspiracy theories. The 2003 war in Iraq and the establishment of a de facto Kurdish state reinvigorated ties between Israel and the KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government] .
Tacit security and economic ties were also reinforced and apparently included training of Kurds by Israelis. According to some non-Israeli sources, Israeli activities in the KRG were widespread. For example, American journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that Israeli intelligence and military operatives were quietly at work in Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria.[40] According to Hersh, at the end of 2003, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made a strategic decision to expand relations with the KRG against the background of the deteriorating situation in Iraq and growing Iranian penetration.[41] These claims remain unproven.
Mainstream Israeli sources have reported on some of these matters. The Yedi'ot Aharonot newspaper published an exclusive regarding Israel's training of peshmergas, the Kurdish paramilitary force.[42] Another Israeli source mentioned the activities of an Israeli company in the construction of an international airport in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The same source revealed that a company owned by former Mossad chief Danny Yatom and entrepreneur Shlomi Michaels conducted business with the Kurdish government, providing strategic consultation on economic and security issues. In addition, it was reported that "tons of equipment, including motorcycles, tractors, sniffer dogs, systems to upgrade Kalashnikov rifles, bulletproof vests, and first-aid items have been shipped to Iraq's northern region," with most products stamped "Made in Israel."[43] For their part, Iraqi sources, especially Shiite ones, have published lists of scores of Israeli companies and enterprises active in Iraq through third parties.[44]
On the public level, the lingering Kurdish perception of Israel was as a country that had betrayed the Kurds in 1975 (when this was clearly the shah's doing, and Israel no longer had access to Iraq) and which had supported Turkey against the PKK [Parti Karkerani Kurdistan - Kudistan Workers Party, pro-Syrian]. These perceptions, however, have recently shifted so that there is now an eagerness among many Kurds, at least in the KRG, for cooperation with Israel.
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5. Israeli embassy warns Ireland will fall under Islamic influence - by Patrick Counihan (IrishCentral.com, July 28, 2014 )
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/politics/Israeli-embassy-warns-Ireland-will-fall-under-Islamic-influence.html
Extracts:
The Israeli embassy in Dublin has been slammed after grotesque images and warnings of an Islamic invasion of Ireland were posted on its Facebook page.
The images depicted the Molly Malone statue in Dublin wearing a burka and the embassy's Facebook page claimed that Ireland would be the next state to fall under Islamic influence. Israeli media reports have accused Ireland of being far too pro-Palestinian in the current Gaza conflict.
Images of the Mona Lisa in Paris wearing a niqab and carrying a rocket launcher also featured in the propaganda.
Other images posted on the Dublin embassy's Facebook page included Michelangelo's David shown in Arab headgear and wired up as a suicide bomber with a warning to Italy and Copenhagen's Little Mermaid shown holding a gun. ... The Irish Sun reports that the Israel In Ireland Facebook and Twitter accounts have been blasted for sharing the series of controversial posts.... Criticism of the Israeli invasion has been wide-spread and fervent in Ireland.
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6. Massive Attack Combined Hizbollah and Hamas Attack via tunnels was Intended!
Hamas Planned Rosh Hashana Tunnel Surprise
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/hamas-planned-rosh-hashana-tunnel-surprise/2014/07/27/
By: Aryeh Savir, Tazpit News Agency
Published: July 27th, 2014
Extracts:
JERUSALEM - Hamas had been preparing a murderous massive assault on Israeli civilian targets during the upcoming Jewish New Year holiday, Rosh Hashanah (September 25, 2014), Â according to anonymous sources in the Israeli security services cited by the Israeli daily Maariv.
Hamas had been planning a surprise attack where 200 fighters would have been dispatched through the dozens of tunnels dug by Hamas under the border from Gaza to Israel. The terror organization aimed to seize kibbutzim and other communities while killing and kidnapping Israeli civilians. In total, thousands of Hamas terrorists would have been swarming across Israel, wearing IDF uniforms, which would have further complicated an Israeli response. Reports further indicate that Hezbollah [from Lebanon, Shiiite Muslim but like Hamas under Iranian influence] may have planned to join the attack as well, opening another front in the north.
The source stressed that the current unplanned war with Hamas inadvertently thwarted a catastrophic event on an apocalyptic magnitude such as the Yom Kippur War, which would have 'brought the State of Israel to its knees.' The destruction of these tunnels takes away from Hamas a strategic weapon it has been working on and investing in heavily for years according to the source.
Each tunnel has arteries, veins, offshoots as well as offshoots of offshoots designed in intricate and complex arrangements. As one Israeli spokesman said, 'There are two Gazas, one above ground and one below ground: an underground terrorist city.'
Speaking to the CBC, a senior Israeli defense official said the Israeli military had considerable prior knowledge of Hamas weaponry and tunnels, but was still 'surprised' by the extent of both when the current ground operation began. He added that the network had not been detected by aerial surveillance, because Hamas had solved the most obvious problem: how to hide the piles of sand removed from the tunnels. This, he said, was painstakingly taken away, a few bags at a time, and stored out of sight in buildings and underneath greenhouses.
The official said Hamas had diverted huge quantities of cement, imported for civilian construction, into the building of concrete-block walls and roofs for the tunnels. As an example, he cited a 1.7-kilometer tunnel discovered in February 2013 that Israeli engineers estimated would have required 500 tons of concrete, Â 'enough to build a three-story hospital.'
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7. FIVE SOLDIERS KILLED IN AND NEAR GAZA
by Gil Ronen (Arutz-7)
Five soldiers were killed Monday in and near the Gaza Strip.
Four of the soldiers were killed by a mortar that struck a group of soldiers near the Gaza border. This is the same mortar strike that was reported earlier as killing four "Israelis." The "Israelis" have been identified as soldiers.
Six other soldiers were seriously wounded by the mortar shell.
A fifth soldier, First Sgt. Moshe Doino, 20, of Jerusalem, was killed in the course of fighting inside Gaza in the early afternoon.
Since the campaign in Gaza began, 48 IDF officers and soldiers were killed.
The families of the dead and wounded have been notified.
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8. Christians flee Mosul in Iraq in Fear of their Lives
Christian leaders express shock at world silence after ISIS expels Iraqi Christians
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/christian-leaders-express-shock-world-silence-after-isis-expels-iraqi-christians
By: Roula Ibrahim
Published Thursday, July 24, 2014
Extracts:
The patriarchal residence in the town of Atchanah in Lebanon's Metn region brought together yesterday representatives of the churches of Mosul five days after the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) forced Iraqi Christians out of the city. This is the first time that Mosul's Christian population has been driven out of the city and is the largest forced displacement since the Armenian genocide.
About 10,000 Christians left Mosul. Nothing like this has happened since the Armenian genocide in Turkey about a hundred years ago.
Last Saturday was the deadline that ISIS gave Christians in Mosul to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy, leave the city or die by the sword. As a result, about 10,000 Christians left Mosul.
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9. Israeli MK to European envoys: 'Day when Islamic terror will reach your homes is near'
Publicized: July 28, 2014
https://www.knesset.gov.il/spokesman/eng/PR_eng.asp?PRID=11394
The Danish, Swedish and Dutch ambassadors to Israel, as well as officials
from the embassies of Britain, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Austria and Germany
took part on Monday in an urgent meeting of the Knesset Immigration,
Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee on the situation of Jewish
communities in Europe.
MK Israel Hasson (Kadima), a former deputy director of the Shin Bet internal
security service, told the ambassadors: 'NATO bombed 5,000 civilians in
Kosovo just because it was insulted; 27,000 Iraqi civilians were bombed
during the American invasion because they posed a danger to the US; there is
not a country in the world that can talk to us about morality.'
MK Hasson told the foreign envoys that 'if the European countries fail to
protect the Jews within their territory, the State of Israel will. Jewish
blood is not cheap blood.'
He warned that 'if you do not stand by our side, the day when Islamic terror
will reach your homes, your beds and your kindergartens will come soon.'