Today in Jewish History - Tammuz 6

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On July 4, 1976, as America was celebrating its bicentennial, Israeli commandos performed a spectacular raid to rescue 100 Jews held hostage at Entebbe airport in Uganda. One week earlier, an Air France flight was hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, who landed the plane in Uganda with the support of dictator Idi Amin. The terrorists threatened to kill the Jewish hostages if the Israeli government did not release convicted Palestinian terrorists. (Amazingly, the flight crew all voluntarily chose to stay with the Jewish captives rather than be released; upon their return to Paris, they were reprimanded by Air France executives and temporarily suspended from duty.) The government of Israel refused to negotiate with the terrorists, and quickly planned a rescue mission. Conveniently, Israel had the blueprints for the building in which the hostages were held -- it was built by an Israeli construction firm. Two hundred Israeli soldiers were flown to Entebbe; they brought along a black Mercedes disguised to look like Idi Amin's personal car. The raid took a total of 58 minutes, in which all the terrorists were killed, and all but three of the hostages were safely rescued. The raid, dubbed Operation Thunderbolt, was subsequently renamed Operation Yonatan -- after Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, the leader of the raid, and the only Israeli soldier killed.

Palestinian terrorist leader arrested having car sex near Arafat's grave

Israel today arrested a longtime wanted terror leader here in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
According to Israeli security officials and Palestinian sources in Ramallah speaking to WND, the terrorist was arrested while having car sex just a few hundred feet from late PLO leader Yasser Arafat's gravesite.

Khaled Shawish was captured by undercover Israeli police forces following scores of shooting attacks he is suspected of carrying out. Shawish, who doubles as the Ramallah chief of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, previously boasted of involvement in a West Bank shooting attack in December 2000 that killed Israeli ultranationalist leader Benjamin Kahane and Kahane's wife, Talya, and seriously wounded their five daughters.

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat's grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, whose identity is being withheld by WND. The woman was not his wife.

The Fatah-linked murderer was responsible for the deaths of eighteen other people and the wounding of dozens in numerous attacks, including several in and around Jerusalem. Among the attacks orchestrated by Shawish were:

- a 2002 suicide bombing on King George Street in Jerusalem
- a 2002 suicide bombing by a female terrorist at a checkpoint just outside Jerusalem
- a shooting attack in the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem

Pakistani Scientist A.Q. Khan Aided Iran, His Nuclear-Secrets Network May Still Be Active

From Pakistani Scientist A.Q. Khan Aided Iran, His Nuclear-Secrets Network May Still Be Active:

Evidence presented this week by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies suggests that Pakistan's nuclear proliferation network, run by scientist A.Q. Khan, is not truly dead.

Its report also reveals that Khan "provided Iran with centrifuges, technical designs, components, and an 'address book' of suppliers."

The report suggests that "at least some of Khan's associates appear to have escaped law-enforcement attention and could, after a period of lying low, resume their black-market business."

Their most likely client is Iran, which "remains the most active customer in the international nuclear black market."

The Fall of Fatah

From The Fall of Fatah: Almost 40 years ago, the nationalist group Fatah took over the Palestinian movement, a reign that ended last week when Fatah accepted a junior partnership to Hamas in the Palestinian Authority. Fatah has accepted the partnership with its Islamist rival on terms which reflect much of Fatah's worldview but are very different from the moderate image the group wants to build in the West.

Even though there are Fatah members who prefer a compromise solution, they are in a minority and do not battle for the real acceptance of their views in that group. Fatah has never articulated among its own people - and does not articulate today - an alternative vision of peaceful coexistence.

Fatah's deliberate use of terrorism to mobilize Palestinians emotionally has always been a central strategy, and it has had a corrupting role in both moral and political terms.

Arafat's replacement, Mahmoud Abbas, has some moderate sentiments but is weak, ineffective, and an advocate of most of Fatah's traditional program. The actual head of Fatah is Farouk Kaddoumi, a man who rejected even the peace process of the 1990s. His popularity reflects the basic politics of Fatah.

The mistakes made under the decades-long leadership of Fatah are continuing, and even intensifying, in the new Hamas era. The result is that any possibility of peace is being pushed decades further away.

U.S. Indicts Five Men Tied to Islamic Charity

Why wasn't this on the front page of the NY Times? From U.S. Indicts Five Men Tied to Islamic Charity:

A federal grand jury in Kansas City has indicted the Islamic American Relief Agency, an Islamic charity, and five of its officers and associates on charges of illegally transferring money to Iraq before the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Court Dismisses "Frivolous" Case Against NGO Monitor

On Jan. 17, 2007, Texas Federal Court judge Sam Sparks dismissed as "wholly frivolous" and "baseless" Palestine Children's Welfare Fund (PCWF) and Riad Hamad's defamation suit against NGO Monitor and others. Among the Gaza-based PCWF's activities, documented in an NGO Monitor report, is a children's drawing contest. The judges rewarded, almost without exception, entries that featured fierce and violent hatred of Israel.

For more information on the anti-Israel Islamic children's charity, Palestine Children's Welfare Fund (PCWF), see here.