Weekend long read

Our weekly round-up of Middle East related background reading.

1) At the Times of Israel David Horovitz tells the story of “The path of a piece of shrapnel: A minor story that made no headlines“.

“Late on Monday evening, at the height of the latest round of indiscriminate rocket fire into Israel by Hamas and other Islamist terror groups in neighboring Gaza, one rocket got through Israel’s remarkable Iron Dome missile defense system and landed directly on a house in the southern working-class town of Netivot. […]

It brought down the ceiling in one of the bedrooms, it smashed a large hole in an outside wall, it devastated the living room, it destroyed furniture, it injured the family dog, whose blood was still on the floor when the TV crew entered.

The story played prominently on Israeli TV news late Monday […], though it made little international impact, unsurprisingly, since mercifully nobody was killed.”

2) At the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh takes a look at the background to Hamas’ current preference for a ceasefire.

“For now, Hamas prefers to continue reaping the fruits of its “achievements” rather than engage in another major military confrontation with Israel.

These “achievements” include the delivery of the $15 million Qatari grant to the Strip last week. Hamas has been celebrating the Qatari move – which was approved by Israel – as a major win. It also sees the Qatari cash as a direct result of its weekly protests along the border with Israel, which began last March. Hamas leaders feel they have more to lose from a war with Israel, especially in the wake of ongoing efforts to ease the many restrictions in Gaza. […]

The monetary delivery was due to an agreement between Qatar and Israel to reach a long-term truce in the Strip and prevent another war. It was the first instalment of $90 million that the emirate has pledged to send in the next six months. Hamas does not want to risk losing the remainder of these funds.”

3) The Washington Institute provides a video and a transcript of a discussion with Ambassador Nathan Sales on the subject of Iranian terror sponsorship.

“Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Period. It has held that dubious distinction for many years now and shows no sign of relinquishing the title.

To the contrary, the regime in Tehran continues to provide hundreds of millions of dollars every year to terrorists across the world. It does this, despite ongoing economic turmoil that’s impoverishing many of its people. The beneficiaries of this misbegotten largesse range from Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in Gaza, to violent rejectionist groups in the West Bank, to the Houthis in Yemen, to hostile militias in Iraq and Syria.

Let me give you some numbers. This may sound hard to believe, but Iran provides Hezbollah alone some $700 million a year. It gives another $100 million to various Palestinian terrorist groups. When you throw in the money provided to other terrorists, the total comes close to one billion dollars.”

4) The ITIC has documented “Legitimization of Terrorism by Fatah and the Palestinian Authority: Glorification of the Murder of the Israeli Athletes at the Munich Olympic Games“.

“On September 5, 2018, the anniversary of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics was marked, in which 11 Israelis were murdered. The Fatah Movement, which carried out the terrorist attack, mentioned the anniversary of the event in posts posted on its official Facebook pages. These posts glorified the attack (“a high-quality military operation”) and praised its perpetrators. The terrorists who carried out the murder are referred to in the post of the Fatah Movement in Nablus as “the heroes of the Munich operation;” and in the post of the Fatah Movement in Bethlehem they are referred to as “heroes of the Fatah Movement, sons of Yasser [Arafat].” The portrayal of the terrorist attack in Munich is also expressed favorably in a Palestinian Authority history textbook, in which the murder is described as an act carried out by Fedayeen (who sacrifice their lives by carrying out a military operation) with the aim of “attacking Israeli interests abroad”.”

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