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Israel's drive to deploy the Iron Dome anti-missile shield against short-range rockets fired by Hezbollah and Hamas has moved up a gear with the induction of the first battalion to man the batteries that will operate on the borders with Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Iron Dome intercepted three 122mm Grad rockets, the type used by Hezbollah and the Palestinians, in southern Israel July 15-16. The system came into being in response to constant rocket attacks by Hezbollah on Israel's northern front and Hamas on the southern desert frontier over the last decade. Both fronts have been relatively calm for...

Female students in the Gaza Strip will be required to wear head coverings and full-length robes beginning this school year, the Hamas rules of the Gaza Strip announced on Monday. According to the new regulations, any female student that does not attend class in the proper attire will be sent home. The ministry also has ruled that male teachers cannot teach in girls' schools and women are not allowed to teach at boys' schools.

JERUSALEM – The American-funded Palestinian Authority provided financial support and, in at least one case, an official salary to al-Qaida allies in the Gaza Strip, according to information obtained by WND. U.S. policy considers the PA to be moderate. America arms, trains and funds PA militias and provides hundreds of millions of dollars per year in financial support to the Palestinian group. President Obama, furthermore, backs the creation of a PA-led Palestinian state. But WND has learned that Abdel-Latif Moussa, leader of a Palestinian Islamist splinter group allied with al-Qaida, has been on the official PA payroll for at least...

Special Dispatch - No. 2499 August 21, 2009 No. 2499 In March 2009, Hamas held a festival at the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria to mark "the victory of the 'Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades," its military wing, in the "Al-Furqan War," [1] i.e., the 2008-9 war with Israel in Gaza. The festival included a photo exhibit and the screening of films showing the Al-Qassam Brigades at their training camps; distribution of videos about the Brigades' operations during the war; and an evening poetry program featuring poets and children's choirs from across the Arab world. There were also speeches by...

The Incredibly Shrinking War on Terror By: FrontPage Magazine FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, August 21, 2009 It is fitting that any president, especially the first (real) black president, celebrate the 45th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as the Obama Justice Department did last month. The selection of an Arab as a prime speaker seems curious for many reasons, not least because Arabs are classified as “white.”  Eric Holder’s choice of James Zogby, a longtime apologist for Palestinian terrorism and dedicated foe of effective homeland security measures, to address the gathering seems to signal a deeper reality at the...

Quiet has now returned to the Gaza Strip after the weekend violence which claimed the lives of 28 people. The last of the funerals of the Jund Ansar Allah fighters killed in the suppression of the organization by Hamas authorities has taken place. This episode demonstrated the tight hold which Hamas maintains on the Gaza Strip. The weekend's events also highlight an important but little discussed phenomenon taking place in the Strip, and to a lesser extent in the West Bank - namely, the growth of al-Qaida-style Salafi Islamism among a segment of the Palestinian population. Jund Ansar Allah did...

What did Christiane Amanpour hope to accomplish in her CNN Special Generation Islam? It was supposed to be, as she described it, an investigation of the battle between extremists and moderates for the "hearts and minds" of young Muslims, especially in Afghanistan and Gaza. While such a program might have been interesting, unfortunately it's not what Amanpour actually presented. Instead, viewers were fed the usual Amanpour propaganda, especially in the second hour, where the subject might have been Gaza but the target was clearly Israel.

Hamas’ attack against a Jihadist group inside Gaza is about to provide the Palestinian Islamist organization a pass to become a “mainstream” movement, acceptable internationally as a partner in negotiations. Or at least that is what Hamas strategists think may happen as a result of crushing the minuscule militant entity known as Jund Ansar Allah (The Soldiers or the Partisans of Allah) last week. This is another murky development in the world of Jihadism, where the biggest brothers in holy war devoured the little ones, in a race between who can achieve final victory against the Kuffar (infidels). But in...

Fifty percent of Gaza residents are under 18 and Hamas is training many of them to lie on beds of nails to grow up to be tough terrorists. "No one will be able to mess with us after we become kung fu masters. Everyone will be afraid of us," one nine-year-old said.

THIS HAS BEEN "GOOGLE TRANSLATED" FROM GERMAN AS THE SITE ALSO HAS A LIVELEAK VIDEO OF THE EVENT. Give it a moment to function after clicking on the link below and scroll down. Machine translation has come a long way but still has jagged results so get the message of this show of Islamic Sharia Law. Prophet Mohammad was the "perfect human" and his actions are to be emulated.

Only in a place like Gaza could Hamas find an even crazier Islamist group to fight with. This weekend — in one of those surreal maniac-on-maniac battles in which you wish both sides would annihilate each other — Hamas forces attacked the followers of Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Partisans of God), an al-Qaeda inspired ultra-ultra-ultra militant group (not to be confused with Hamas, which gets two ultras, and Fatah, which gets only one) led by your usual creepy old bearded Ahmed Yassin/Abu Hamza Al-Masri/Omar Abdel-Rahman type — one Sheikh Abu al-Nour al-Maqdessi. (Check out this photo of him...

The International NGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW) is once again proving once again why its top banana Ken Roth is a perennial nominee for the Self Hating Jew Awards. They have a simple strategy, Skew the Story and Advocate Terrorism, HRW is famous for inventing and/or twisting facts to slander Israel. They tend to only rely on Palestinian sources and never bother to verify. HRW refuses to recognize terrorist attacks against Israel as provocative. For example, in Jan 2008, Joe Stork of HRW wrote a 34 paragraph long letter bashing Israel (the length of one of my wife's weekend Honey-do...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Islamic radicals from an al-Qaida-inspired group battled Hamas security in the Gaza Strip Friday in a shootout that killed at least seven people. The fighting began when Hamas forces surrounded a mosque in the southern Gaza town of Rafah where about 100 members of Jund Ansar Allah, or the Soldiers of the Companions of God, were holed up, including some armed with suicide belts and rifles, according to residents of the area. The confrontation was triggered when the leader of the group defied Gaza's Hamas rulers by declaring in a Friday prayer sermon that the...

At least six people have been killed and dozens injured in a fierce gun battle in Gaza, emergency services say. Eyewitnesses say hundreds of Hamas fighters and policemen have surrounded a mosque where followers of a radical Islamist cleric have been hiding. They have been firing rocket-propelled grenades at the mosque in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, witnesses say. It is thought that at least 100 supporters of the al-Qaeda-linked group Warriors of God are inside. Hamas says a grenade fired from the mosque has killed one of its fighters. Earlier, during Friday prayers, hundreds of worshippers declared Gaza an...

In November of last year the prediction was made that once Obama became president, he would push for the legitimization of the Hamas Islamic terrorist organization.That prediction has been continuosly updated as events have transpired and can be seen here.Now there is this:As predicted, there is now a first public statement by Hamas to give the "appearance" that the Islamic terrorist organization is on the way to becoming "moderate".At least according to the definition of "moderate" by clueless politicians.For the first time in the terror oganization's history, a political spokesman for Hamas has said they are now willing to accept a...

The Law: Terrorists have had lots to celebrate recently as court rulings from Bangkok to Madrid wiped out years of work to stop them and raised doubts about treating the war on terror as a law-enforcement action.Last Friday, a U.S. federal judge ordered the release of Sheik Mohammed al-Moayad, a Yemeni cleric convicted in 2005 of financing Hamas and trying to bankroll al-Qaida by as much as $20 million. Al-Moayad had been sentenced to 75 years, but based on claims of improperly admitted evidence, a judge ordered him freed. Now set for deportation, he will likely kill again. Then on...

Hamas is prepared to deal "positively" with US President Barack Obama's Middle East peace plan, a top political aide to Ismail Haniyeh, the organization's prime minister, said Thursday.... According to various reports, Obama is soon set to unveil his plan for comprehensive Middle East peace

Here we go again ! Hamas has a semi-annual ritual where they pretend to moderate in order to gain a concession or to score some political points, only the show their true colors a few days later. Usually these "moderation sessions" happen around a visit from a famous terrorism supporter like Jimmy Carter or Desmond Tutu. Last week the former President announced a double whammy as he will be joining Tutu on a trip to Gaza. And lo and behold the terrorist group announced a softening. Today Hamas announced that it is ...prepared to deal "positively" with US President Barack...

Hamas on Monday claimed to have confiscated three ambulances that were imported into the Gaza Strip for UNRWA several weeks ago, backing up an earlier IDF claim that the ambulances had been seized. But UNRWA, which last week denied an earlier Jerusalem Post article quoting IDF claims that the ambulances had been confiscated, reiterated Monday that the reports were false, said that the ambulances were safe and sound in its Gaza compound, and even distributed a photograph of one of its officials, Christer Nordal, posing with what it said were the vehicles in question. According to a statement released by...

A recent meeting between two senior Hamas officials and former undersecretary of state Thomas R. Pickering was coordinated and promoted by the US State Department, according to the Arabic weekly, Al-Ahram. Mr. Pickering met with senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud al-Zahar and Bassem Naim in Geneva in mid-June. The Washington Post reported that the Hamas officials had said they believed the meeting "represented an opening in relations with the Obama administration." However, US officials said they had only learned of the meeting afterward: They said Pickering had not been asked to approach Hamas and had no official standing; U.S. officials learned...

Internet video claims 'shocking wedding for 450 little girls' FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU ... A video circulating on the Internet, titled "Hamas shocking mass wedding for 450 little girls," purports to show children who appear to be about 8 to 10 years old being married off in a mass Hamas ceremony last week. Little girls in what appear to be wedding dresses are filmed ... The video and related pictures generated scores of blog postings making similar claims that Hamas was marrying off hundreds of little girls. .. Ahmed Jarbour, the Hamas official in Gaza responsible for social activity, told...

Muhammed married a six year old bride. But Islam has evolved in 1500 years. In Hamas land, in 2009, the brides are almost seven. Mass Muslim Marriage 450 Grooms Wed GIRLS Under Ten In Gaza byPaul L. Williams, Ph.D.thelastcrusade.org A gala event has occurred in Gaza.Hamas sponsored a mass wedding for four hundred and fifty couples. Most of the grooms were in their mid to late twenties; most of brides were under ten.Muslim dignitaries including Mahmud Zahar, a leader of Hamas, were on hand to congratulate the couples who took part in the carefully staged celebration.“We are saying to...

With the federal government facing trillions of dollars in red ink, one might think that the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), which receives upwards of $30 million a year from the taxpayers, would want to show Congress it wasn't squandering money on propaganda for terrorist groups like Hamas. But that hasn't happened.

An international human rights group stated there is "strong evidence" that Hamas committed war crimes by allowing fire rockets from the Gaza Strip, killing Israeli civilians. In a report issued Thursday, the Human Rights Watch focused on Hamas's actions during the war with Israel that ended in January 2009. "Hamas rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians are unlawful and unjustifiable, and amount to war crimes," said Iain Levine of Human Rights Watch. According to Bill Van Esveld of Human Rights Watch, the intent of armed groups to harm civilians, and not numbers of people killed, determined whether they committed war crimes....

Most of us wanted to believe in that Disengagement of four years ago. Led by Arik Sharon, “the General,” the no-nonsense strategist, we trusted he had already planned the next steps, like a master chess player. We expected benefits we will reap for years to come for the deep wound Israel would self-inflict. There might have been a plan, but God thought otherwise. Prime Minister Sharon is still in a coma of sorts, and there is not a single soul who was privy to his Grand Plan. Some of us opposed unilateral Disengagement. The most vocal opposition included the residents...

Last week, Fatah announced that it will never recognize Israel's right to exist, and that it will continue its armed struggle until the Zionist Entity has been destroyed. Two days later, the president of the United States sent $200 million to Fatah. This highly predictable sequence should represent a clarifying moment even for the green leafy vegetables who comprise J Street. Assertions of eternal friendship notwithstanding, Barack Obama is a friend to Israel in the same way that O.J. Simpson was a friend to Ron Goldman. Some insist that Obama is practicing “tough love” towards his Israeli pals, but invariably...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remarked on the four-year anniversary of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. At the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said that "Israel uprooted 10,000 of its citizens from their homes and Gaza has turned into a terror base under the control of Hamas, and sponsored by Iran." "I want to stress the fact that we are committed to the full rehabilitation of those uprooted, and the cabinet will discuss the matter next week," Netanyahu added. "We will not put up with rocket fire [from Gaza] into our communities. We will decisively respond to every attack," the prime minister went...

Michael Totten draws attention to the apparent decision by Hamas to take a brief hiatus from active terror attacks in order to engage themselves in a “culture war,” which includes the production of at least one movie. Now it seems that over in the West Bank, the terrorists have started a culture war of their own. Their prime target: Bruno, aka the Jew and occasional Hebrew-speaker Sacha Baron Cohen. A few days ago, we learned that one of Bruno’s interviewees, a former operative for the Al-Aksa Martyr’s Brigade who spent seven years in an Israeli prison, was suing Baron Cohen...

The IDF this week revealed a recruitment video produced by a Hamas terror "academy" in Gaza. The training included techniques for the abduction of IDF soldiers, a wide range of other terrorist activities, and the teachings of an al-Qaeda ideologue. As publicized by the government-sponsored Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, the hour-long video was discovered during Israel's counterterrorism operation in Gaza, Cast Lead, in 2008. Hamas produced and distributed the captured video in 2007 as a recruiting tool for a training academy it established the previous year, in an effort to improve its The battle they are to wage is...

Hamas' New "Culture War" By: Alan M. Dershowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, July 27, 2009   Hamas, the terrorist organization that specializes in targeting civilians, has now decided, according to a New York Times headline, to shift “from rockets to culture war” in an effort to garner public support for its cause.  Part of its ongoing public relations campaign is to portray the Israelis as the “new Nazis” and the Palestinians as the “new Jews.”  In order to bring about this transformation, it must engage in a form of Holocaust denial that erases the historical record of widespread Palestinian complicity with...

In early 2006, shortly before the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War, an Israeli intelligence officer predicted the future. “Missile war will replace terrorist war,” he told me when I spoke with him at the Ministry of Defense. He was right. Just a few months later, Hizballah launched thousands of Katyusha rockets into Northern Israel and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee south toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. South Lebanon was punished much more thoroughly than Northern Israel, but the Palestinians in Gaza nevertheless took Hizballah’s Baghdad Bob–style boasts of “divine victory” seriously.

The United States has told Syria that it will reduce trade restrictions towards Damascus, which were imposed five years ago for supporting organized terror against Israel. Washington has confirmed that U.S. President Barack Obama has sent letters to Arab heads of state to push them for confidence-building measures towards Israel. Syria and Israel are officially at war. Negotiations between the two countries have been mediated by Turkey throughout the years. However, at the crux of the dispute is the final status of the Golan, which Israel conquered in 1967 after it was attacked by Syria. White House press secretary Robert...

Hamas is digging tunnels next to United Nations facilities under the assumption that the IDF will not target them during a future conflict, defense officials warned on Sunday....officials said a tunnel Hamas had been digging adjacent to a UN school in Beit Hanun had collapsed earlier this month.

War is painful, war is horrific. It should be avoided as long as possible and only when everything has fully failed should it reluctantly be adapted as the means to a solution. There will always be innocents who suffer in any conflagration, but when news from a war zone are reported how much gets ignored because does not fit into the reporter’s or his/her organization’s agenda, how much gets distorted?!?!? [...]You still wonder, gentle reader, why Israel was fighting? Read it here, here or here. As you will see, none of those quoted are Jooz, none are Zioniss, none even...

A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Friday reversed a lower-court ruling that had allowed the government to bar a prominent Muslim scholar from entering the United States on the ground that he had contributed to a charity that had connections to terrorism. The scholar, Tariq Ramadan, 46, a Swiss academic, was to become a tenured professor at the University of Notre Dame, but the Bush administration revoked his visa in 2004 and again denied him a visa in 2006. The government cited evidence that from 1998 to 2002, he donated about $1,300 to a Swiss-based charity that the Treasury...

DAMASCUS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Mideast envoy Alexander Sultanov on Sunday called on Israel to stop building all kinds of Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. He made the appeal when meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem here on Sunday. After their talks, Sultanov told reporters that he and Moallem discussed the prospect of convening Moscow Mideast Peace Conference, bilateral relations, Mideast peace process and various regional issues. The stances of Russia and Syria are close on most regional and international issues, Sultanov said. On Saturday, the Russian deputy foreign minister met in...

A few days ago an article appeared in which human rights organizations responded to the question of why they did not demand the launch of an investigation regarding human rights violations by Hamas. The answer that they provided was that the firing of rockets constituted such a clear violation that it left nothing to investigate. On the other hand, Israel's actions are more subject to interpretation. If the objective of the organizations is to promote taking responsibility for unsavory actions, they should focus on clear violations and not on cases that can provoke scholarly research at the universities.

Gaza's 'Hamaswood' Premieres Feature Film About Murdered Militant GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Gaza movie premiere drew an exclusive crowd with local celebrities posing for jostling photographers — and that's pretty much where the similarities end between Hollywood and the fledgling film industry of Gaza's Hamas rulers. The Islamic militants' first feature film — an action-packed homage to a top Hamas militant — cost only $200,000 to make and is being shown to segregated audiences of bearded men and veiled women. "It's Hamaswood instead of Hollywood," Fathi Hamad, Gaza's Hamas interior minister, said after the film's first showing Friday...

The first feature film produced by Hamas made its debut this weekend, complete with an exclusive crowd of local celebrities posing for photographers at the movie premier screening in Gaza.

Israel President Shimon Peres will visit Russia in mid-August at the invitation of Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the president's office in Jerusalem announced on Friday. "President Peres will meet President (Dmitry) Medvedev on August 18 at his summer residence on the Black Sea as part of a working visit," a presidential spokeswoman said. With the visit in mind, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday briefed Peres on talks he had held with Medvedev in Moscow in June, foreign ministry spokesman Tzahi Moshe told AFP. Lieberman had reiterated at that meeting that he was "not opposed" to Israel's participation in a...

Israel voiced its fury at Switzerland Wednesday after learning that Swiss diplomats had met a Hamas delegation led by hardliner Mahmud al-Zahar in Geneva in June during a research institute conference. "We are angry, since Hamas is still considered as a terrorist organization by the European Union, even if Switzerland is not an E.U. member," Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said. "By officially receiving a Hamas delegation, Switzerland is not placing itself among those who support moderation," he said... Israel and the West consider Hamas, a group sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, a terrorist outfit. That may...

(IsraelNN.com) Spokesman Aslam Shahuan of the Hamas police force in Gaza alleged on Monday that Israeli intelligence sources were trying to corrupt the young generation by distributing chewing gum that arouses one's sexual appetite. The case started when a Gaza resident's daughter felt side effects from the gum.

Hardly a day has passed in recent weeks without Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu appealing to Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) to join him in peace negotiations. Sunday, July 12, this appeal was particularly inappropriate, issued as it was at a ceremony marking the 105th anniversary of the death of Binyamin Zeev Herzl, who envisioned the Jewish state which is anathema to the Palestinians. A few hours later, Abu Mazen's spokesmen, Saeb Erakat and Abu Rodeina, predictably spurned the invitation. Before negotiations, they said, Israel must accept the Palestinian refugees "right of return" and halt all settlement activity...

GAZA CITY // Every morning Nidal dons his blue camouflage fatigues, trademark of the Hamas Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, and sets off to work as a civil policeman in the Jabaliya refugee camp outside Gaza City. In the same camp, another policeman, Ismail, keeps his own uniform tucked neatly in a drawer, forbidden to wear it after Hamas fighters ousted his fellow Fatah forces from Gaza in a violent power struggle in 2007. Ismail and Nidal are brothers, separated by just two years and an ideological abyss that has fractured the Palestinian landscape since the West Bank...

Egypt has ceased efforts to mediate the formation of a national unity government between the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, Israel Radio reported on Saturday. Officials who met with the senior echelon of Egyptian intelligence said that Cairo is instead proposing that two separate governments ? the Hamas regime in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank ? continue to function until general elections are held. In parallel, Egypt would like to see the Palestinian factions agree on the formation of a committee that will lay the groundwork for the next elections as well as the...

JERUSALEM (AP) — An attempt by Hamas police to detain a young woman walking with a man along the Gaza beach has raised alarms that the Islamic militant group is seeking to match its political control of the coastal territory with a strict enforcement of Islamic law. The man she walked with and two of his peers were detained, beaten and ordered to sign statements promising not to engage in immoral activities, said the woman and one of the men. The incident was the first known case of Hamas openly trying to punish a woman for behaving in a way...

There is only one difference between Hamas the terrorist group that control's Gaza and Fatah, the terrorist group perceived as moderate by the United States Fatah controls Judea and Samaria. Hamas is open about it terrorist goals, Fatah (the party that is controlled by Palestinian President Abbas) tries to maintain a shroud of "moderation" Of course their moderation belies the truth. Both President Bush and President Obama have worked to "prop up" Abbas and the Fatah Party, former Prime Minister Ehud (Mr. Comb-Over) Olmert also worked to "prop up" the terrorist leader. In doing so, they all ignored the continued...

This is Cynthia McKinney and I'm speaking from an Israeli prison cellblock in Ramle. [I am one of] the Free Gaza 21, human rights activists currently imprisoned for trying to take medical supplies to Gaza, building supplies - and even crayons for children, I had a suitcase full of crayons for children. While we were on our way to Gaza the Israelis threatened to fire on our boat, but we did not turn around. The Israelis high-jacked and arrested us because we wanted to give crayons to the children in Gaza. We have been detained, and we want the people...

July 7, 2009  As Hamas Tightens Its Grip By Khaled Abu Toameh As the row between the Obama Administration and the Israeli government over the settlements continues, Hamas is gradually turning the Gaza Strip into a Taliban-style Islamic entity that poses a threat not only to Israel, but also to the Americans, Europeans and moderate Arabs and Muslims. Both Hamas and its rivals in the Palestinian Authority appear to be satisfied with the fact that the Obama Administration has turned the issue of the settlements into the major problem, shifting attention from the incompetence and corruption in the West Bank...

Col. Richard Kemp Formerly commander of British forces in Afghanistan Col. Richard Kemp told a conference in Jerusalem on June 18, 2009: "Hamas' military capability was deliberately positioned behind the human shield of the civilian population. They also ordered, forced when necessary, men, women and children from their own population to stay put in places they knew were about to be attacked by the IDF. Israel was fighting an enemy that is deliberately trying to sacrifice their own people, deliberately trying to lure you into killing their own innocent civilians." Click here to read the full presentation. Click here to...