14 Months Late and Bibi Agrees With Carline Glick

As reported, yesterday

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Thursday vowed to strike at those who attack Israel and said the Jewish state can never stop fighting terrorism...Netanyahu said Israel must constantly fight against those who perpetrate and plan terrorism." Israel must always fight terrorism, he continued, "It will not stop if we do not fight it."  Sinai, he continued, has become a terrorism zone, something he said Israel is "dealing with." The security fence being built along the southern border will not stop missiles, but a solution for that too will be found, he said.

Last February, at the book launch of a book I edited along with the late Harry Hurwitz, Caroline Glick was one of the more critical speakers and among other things, said

Another problem with the deal that Israel made with Sadat the dictator is demonstrated by the current unrest in the Sinai...The last thing on Israel's mind in 1978 was the Bedouin tribes in the Sinai. Back then Sinai's Bedouin were pro-Israel and bitterly disappointed when Israel withdrew. But a lot has changed since then.

Over the past 20 years or so, the power of Egypt's central authority in its hinterlands has weakened. The strength of the Bedouin has grown. And over the past decade or so, the Bedouin of Sinai, like the Bedouin from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Israel have become aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and its al Qaida and Hamas spinoffs.

The Bedouin attacks on Egyptian police and border guard installations in al Arish and Suez over the past three weeks are an indication that the fear of a strong state, which was so central to Israel's thinking in during the peace process with Egypt, is no longer Israel's most urgent concern. Transnational jihadists in the Sinai are much more immediately threatening than the Egyptian military is. But the peace treaty - signed with a military dictator -- provides neither Israel nor Egypt with tools to deal with this threat.

Well, a year later, several attacks later, we salute Caroline Glick. ^

I Think I've Located An Illegal Settlement

On the southern bank of Nahal Shiloh, just north of Khan El-Lubban, opposite Eli:

I am fairly sure those transient Beduin do not have property rights.

But, this being the Middle East and they being Arabs, and traditional grazing rights being what they are (although in Jordan there seems to be problems), no uproar here.  Well, no anti uproar.  Seems, however, the Left does have something to say about the issue.

^

They Saw It Coming

Friends of mine:

1)  Caroline Glick:

Another problem with the deal that Israel made with Sadat the dictator is demonstrated by the current unrest in the Sinai. In 1977 Egypt's was the strongest regime in the region. So when Israel thought about the threat emanating from Egypt, it thought about the Egyptian army barreling toward Beersheba. That is why the Egyptian military was barred from operating in the Sinai.

The last thing on Israel's mind in 1978 was the Bedouin tribes in the Sinai. Back then Sinai's Bedouin were pro-Israel and bitterly disappointed when Israel withdrew. But a lot has changed since then.

Over the past 20 years or so, the power of Egypt's central authority in its hinterlands has weakened. The strength of the Bedouin has grown. And over the past decade or so, the Bedouin of Sinai, like the Bedouin from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Israel have become aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and its al Qaida and Hamas spinoffs.

The Bedouin attacks on Egyptian police and border guard installations in al Arish and Suez over the past three weeks are an indication that the fear of a strong state, which was so central to Israel's thinking in during the peace process with Egypt, is no longer Israel's most urgent concern. Transnational jihadists in the Sinai are much more immediately threatening than the Egyptian military is. But the peace treaty - signed with a military dictator -- provides neither Israel nor Egypt with tools to deal with this threat.

2) Barry Rubin (k/t=DG)

Another problem is border security. Again, we are told that it is in the interest of Egypt, especially the army, to avoid having terrorists cross the border into Israel. Yet similar logic has often proven mistaken in previous, similar cases. With junior officers and soldiers sympathizing with Islamism or radical nationalism, the orders of the generals back in Cairo might not be followed with a high degree of discipline. There are already reports of al-Qaida planning to infiltrate into the Sinai to launch cross-border attacks.

And he referred to this JP article which included this:

According to information obtained by Israel, Iran has been working to build new infrastructure in the Sinai that can be used to smuggle advanced weaponry in large quantities into the Gaza Strip.

“Iran wants to take advantage of the current anarchy in Egypt and establish a stronger foothold in Gaza,” a senior defense official said. “They are building new capabilities, upgrading smuggling mechanisms and studying the new military presence there to see how it will affect them.”

 
 

Pays to read me and my friends.
 

^

"Palestinian" Violence - Against Jordan in the Shadow of Israel's Avigdor Lieberman

UPI reports:-

Some 250 people were injured in violence after a soccer match in the Jordanian capital of Amman, officials said.  The incident began in the final minutes of a game between the Bedouin-backed al-Feisali team and the Palestinian-based al-Wehdat squad, when fans in the upper decks of the stadium began throwing bottles down into the crowd Friday night, the BBC said.

Why did they throw missiles?
 
Well, here's the Al-Jazeera report:
 


But it is Jamal Halaby, of the Associated Press, who provides us the reality:

...There is a long history of violence between supporters of the two teams, stemming in part from the decades of tension with Jordan's large Palestinian population, which includes an estimated 1.8 million refugees displaced after Israel's 1948 creation and their descendants. Most of Faisali's players and fans are from native Jordanian Bedouin tribes. Most of Wehdat's players and fans are Palestinian.

Although most of Jordan's Palestinians - excluding natives of the Gaza Strip - carry Jordanian passports and enjoy citizenship rights unmatched by other Arab host governments, many of them complain that they are barred from taking up security and army posts or holding other top positions in the Jordanian government.

Native Jordanians feel the Palestinian refugees have no allegiance to the country.

In a match last year between the same teams, Faisali fans chanted slogans deriding the Palestinian origin of King Abdullah II's wife, Queen Rania, and their son Crown Prince Hussein - an episode that even got a mention in one of the U.S. diplomatic memos released by the WikiLeaks website.

No allegiance? Hello, that resonates with Avigdor Lieberman's platform.

^

Sheep. Men. Women

Did you know that there are some 2,400 sheep farms in Israel, with about 520,000 sheep and goats?

The farms are owned by about 550 Jewish farmers and about 1,850 minority group farmers. In 2006, the sheep and goat sector was estimated at about NIS 740 million. In light of these figures, the Agriculture Ministry decided to teach women how to profit from their livestock.

That's when a problem, er, arose.

Are Bedouin woman taking on male-dominated sheep farming?

The winds of change are blowing through Israel's Bedouin sector. For hundreds of years, Bedouin men tended their flocks, while women cooked and raised the children.

Now a new initiative is threatening to disrupt this ancient balance. A joint venture between the Agriculture Ministry and the Danish Foreign Ministry will teach women from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Jordan to raise flocks of dairy sheep and develop sheep's milk product businesses. This idea, however is facing stiff opposition from the mayor of the Bedouin town of Rahat, who contends that women are to help their husbands only in educating their children.

Stiff opposition?

Is their something the men not want the women to discover?

They Were Plundering & Raping Then

When?

In 1858.

Before Zionism.

Here:-

a group of German Christians, in conjunction with American Christians, established "Mount Hope," a farming colony outside Jaffa, in the 1850s. Among the group's members were the brothers Friedrich and John Steinbeck (the latter being the grandfather of the Nobel laureate John Steinbeck). The brothers married the daughters of Walter Dickson, an American member of the group.

In January 1858, the colony was attacked by Bedouin and plundered. Friedrich Steinbeck was murdered and his wife and sister-in-law were raped. All the American settlers, including the "German" John Steinbeck, left and returned to the United States.

The incident stirred a great furor in the American press as well as in the State Department and the Senate. At the request of the Senate, President Buchanan submitted a detailed report of the actions taken by the American consuls in "the Levant" to ensure that those who perpetrated the horrific acts would be punished and that such deeds would never recur.

In Case You Were Looking for Me

Just in case you were looking for me, I was on a two-day field study trip in the framework of my MA studies at Hebrew University.

We went to Nitzan to talk and meet with the evacuated from Neveh Dekalim. To Sderot and to a Beduin "non-recognized" settlement.

And we had lunch at the T'nuvah-li dairy restaurant in Sderot.




And here's the view of Gaza from the western edge of Sderot:



No Kasams were fired during our tour.