Arutz Sheva Daily Israel Report
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Wednesday, Jan. 13 '16, Shevat 3, 5776
HEADLINES:
1. EX-ISRAELI DIPLOMAT SUGGESTED GETTING ISRAEL BOOTED FROM THE UN
2. IAF TAKES OUT TERROR CELL IN NORTHERN GAZA
3. ISRAELI LEFTISTS ALLEGEDLY 'PLOTTED SOCCER BAN ON ISRAEL'
4. ISRAEL HAS THIRD HIGHEST GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN THE WORLD
5. REPORT: HAMAS TERROR TUNNEL NETWORK ALMOST REBUILT
6. SHAMELESS: NIF USES RABIN MURDER FOOTAGE IN LATEST PR OFFENSIVE
7. DEPUTY FM BANS SWEDISH OFFICIALS FROM VISITING ISRAEL
8. BREATHTAKING: STARLINGS FORM 'DANCING CLOUDS' OVER ISRAEL
1. EX-ISRAELI DIPLOMAT SUGGESTED GETTING ISRAEL BOOTED FROM THE UN
by Gil Ronen
More details emerged Tuesday morning regarding a secret recording of a meeting between ex-diplomat Alon Liel and about five central activists in Breaking the Silence, a group that besmirches the IDF abroad. The meeting took place in the Tel Aviv offices of Breaking the Silence – which receives funding from the New Israel Fund, among other sources – on December 17, 2015, and was recorded by a "secret agent" from nationalist group Ad Kan.
According to Yifat Erlich of Yediot Aharonot, who saw the entire recording, Nadav Weiman, Breaking the Silence's coordinator of activists, started the conversation by explaining that the group has been coming under fire for attacking Israel abroad, and describing a feeling that matters were spinning "out of control."
He described Liel as "a good friend of the organization who has been accompanying us from the outset."
Liel told the group that "international activity is critical." One reason, he said, is that the Left has lost the battle for Israeli public opinion.
"I receive terrible ricochets from the Israeli public," he continued. "I am threatened. All of my friends are threatened. I believe that only the international community can change public opinion, as happened in South Africa."
One of the activists asked Liel if the group's legitimacy does not depend on the Israeli public.
Liel replied: "What legitimacy do you have? You have a two percent legitimacy, you see. But what two percent? The most moral people, the brightest ones, who can see 20 years ahead, who are not brainwashed by the messianic right-wing propaganda. Only people who do not depend on anyone. I can guarantee you that [ex-Shabak head Yuval] Diskin and [MK Yaakov] Perry think the same way. [But Yesh Atid head] Yair Lapid has come out against you, so Perry knows that if he says a word, he will be booted from the Knesset list."
Liel further explained that he can speak his mind freely because "I do not depend on anyone. The university in Tel Aviv will not say anything because many of the professors there share my opinions."
'They were traitors'
Liel, who was Israel's ambassador to South Africa and Director of the Foreign Ministry, described how apartheid South Africa gradually lost its legitimacy and said that the Israeli context was "very similar."
"You are our country's hope," he encouraged the activists. "It's true that so many people think you are wrong, but I told you about the Jews who helped Nelson Mandela. There, their families did not speak to them. They were traitors to the whites, to the Jews, they were exiled, they were jailed. You have not yet begun to pay those prices."
Liel then explained that the group needs to focus on the UN, because individual nations have a hard time fighting Israel: "Not even Britain, not France, not the United States, because of the consensus here, because of the determination and the willingness to pay a price. Bibi was willing to go to Congress and fight Obama, and nothing happened."
However, he said, if the UN Security Council adopts a pro-Palestinian resolution and the US does not veto it, the matter could reach the General Assembly, which could then make Palestine a full member state. If this happens, he elucidated, Israel would be deemed as occupying a UN member state, and this "sets into motion an unavoidable process of beginning to suspend us from the UN. It is unavoidable. No UN member state in history was an occupier of another state that is a UN member. South Africa was booted from the UN; it was dismissed. No one could take part in Olympic games. You couldn't travel anywhere in the world with a South African passport."
'I couldn't leave my home for a whole week'
At this point, Weiman said: "If they do a sports boycott on Israel… God. Really, I say a sports boycott on Israel."
Liel agreed and floated the idea that FIFA could boycott Israel, leaving Israeli soccer fans with league games like Betar Jerusalem versus Hapoel Tel Aviv. "Is that worth living for? For the brawls between Betar and Hapoel fans? Let me breathe a bit. Some Barcelona. You think it can't happen? It can still happen."
Liel informed the activists that a FIFA committee had just met with the PA prime minister in Jericho to discuss similar ideas. "Imagine FIFA saying, no problem, Israel, you have great soccer, but let Betar Ariel and Betar Givat Ze'ev play in the Palestinian League. That would be enough for us."
Liel then boasted about his role in getting Brazil to refuse the appointment of Dani Dayan as ambassador. "We went to the Brazilian ambassador and told him, he may be a big shot internally, but outside he is the head of the settlers, don't approve him. I couldn't leave my home for a whole week," he said. "Worse than what you are experiencing now. A week I couldn't leave."
Liel responded to Yediot Aharonot by saying that he is motivated only by a concern for the future of Israel. "There is no reason to record me secretly; my views are well known and I say them from every podium."
Breaking the Silence said its activists were "happy and even proud" to meet with Liel, "as we meet with numerous people, with a variety of views, as part of the team's process of development and learning."
2. IAF TAKES OUT TERROR CELL IN NORTHERN GAZA
by Ari Yashar
Israeli Air Force (IAF) fighter jets launched a strike on Wednesday morning against a terror cell in northern Gaza.
The cell engaged in planting explosives on the security fence targeting soldiers patrolling the border with Gaza. According to the IDF, direct strikes on the terrorists were identified.
Israeli farmers were instructed to keep their distance from the border area, out of an apparent concern over reprisals. Likewise security coordinators in the region were ordered to be doubly alert and on the lookout for reprisal attacks.
According to the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency, one terrorist was killed in the strike and three others were wounded. The Arab news source also claimed that the Israeli navy opened fire on several Arab boats in southern Gaza near the Rafiah coast.
A military source revealed that soldiers identified bombs on the border during operational activities, and nearby the terror cell that planned to detonate the explosives as the IDF forces passed by was located.
In response, IAF jets were called in and took out the terrorists.
MK Haim Yellin (Yesh Atid), a resident of Nahal Oz and former Eshkol regional council head, praised the security forces who "proved this morning again that they will do everything so that Gaza Belt residents can live in quiet."
"Israel must increase the deterrence against Hamas and respond forcefully to all fire from Gazan territories into Israeli territories," said Yellin. "No country in the world can ignore terror on its citizens. Israel has the right to respond with force, every terrorist needs to know they have a death sentence."
The strike comes a day after reports indicating Hamas has almost completely reconstructed its terror tunnel network to where it was at before Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014.
In the fighting - which started when Hamas launched an onslaught of missiles at the Jewish state - over 30 of the attack tunnels leading into sovereign Israeli territory were destroyed.
Wednesday's airstrike on the terror cell brings to mind IDF actions last month in foiling an attack on the border.
IDF forces patrolling near the border located powerful explosives planted on the security fence. The bombs did not detonate, with a number of them connected to a long-distance delay mechanism activated by a cell phone.
3. ISRAELI LEFTISTS ALLEGEDLY 'PLOTTED SOCCER BAN ON ISRAEL'
by Gil Ronen
Nationalist activists are about to release yet another secretly recorded video, which will show how members of Breaking the Silence and ex-diplomat Alon Liel discussed the possibility of getting international sports bodies to boycott Israel. Among the possibilities discussed was a boycott on Israel by the international soccer body, FIFA. Liel mentioned the boycotts on apartheid South Africa as a model that could be followed, and mentioned that South Africans could not partake in the Olympics.
Shimon Riklin, a nationalist pundit and businessman, claimed Monday night on Channel 20 that the discussion included the idea of getting Israel banned from the upcoming Olympics.
The recording was made by the members of Ad Kan, the same group that revealed how central leftist activists have been handing over to the Palestinian Authority Arabs who wished to sell land to Jews.
A friend of Liel's, former Attorney General Michael Ben Yair, reacted to the revelation without denying it. "The 'planted' agents are continuing their operations, videotaping and recording," he wrote on Facebook. "This time – they recorded my good friend Alon Liel, in a closed meeting with Breaking the Silence.
"I am flooded by fear, and memories of dark days from the previous century, at least as regards the nefarious activities of Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. I am afraid to go further back, lest I turn out to be right in that, too."
Liel, who was the ambassador to South Africa from 1992 to 1994, was recently involved in getting Brazil to reject Dani Dayan as Israel's appointed ambassador because of Dayan's former role in the leadership of Judea and Samaria's Yesha Council.
In 2012, he publicly backed a boycott of goods made in Judea and Samaria, writing in the South African Business Today: "I buy Israeli products every day and do my best not to buy Israeli products from the occupied territories. I cannot condemn the move to prevent goods made in the occupied Palestinian territory from being falsely classified as 'Made in Israel.' I support the South African government's insistence on this distinction between Israel and its occupation."
According to a recent Arutz Sheva article by Ronn Torossian, Liel holds radical viewpoints which the majority of Israelis, even those on the Left, oppose, from calling high school trips to the Golan "a provocation" in 2007, to saying that Jonathan Pollard is not a hero, but a man who betrayed his country. Ex-MK Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) asked to have him put on trial for treason. According to Magal, Liel had been working to get European parliaments to recognize a Palestinian state on 1967 borders, and in some cases has explicitly stated that such a state should have eastern Jerusalem as its capital.
His wife, Rachel Liel, is the New Israel Fund's Executive Director in Israel.
4. ISRAEL HAS THIRD HIGHEST GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN THE WORLD
by Raphael Poch
According to the recent OECD report regarding income inequality and the gaps between the richer and the poorer segments of society, Israel is the country with the highest percentage of people living below the poverty line in the western world.
With over 21 percent of the population living below the poverty line, Israel is above Mexico, Turkey and Chile, and even the United States, and has an increase of more than 7 percent since the 1990's.
According to the report, "Income inequality is rising. A quarter of a century ago, the average disposable income of the richest 10% in OECD countries was around seven times higher than that of the poorest 10%; today, it's around 9½ times higher." In Israel specifically the numbers are quite staggering, and it is ranked third in the world in having the largest income inequality gap, behind Mexico and the United States.
Another uncomplimentary field in which Israel is ranked high on the report, is the inequality in wages between men and women. Men in Israel earn on average 22 percent more than women do. This percentile ranks Israel fourth in the world in this unflattering category behind South Korea, Estonia and Japan. The average in most countries is approximately 15 percent.
The report suggests, that by getting more people into the workforce, restructuring education policies and systems, preparing and educating workers for change, supporting temporary as well as part time positions, and with the proper use of taxation and transfers government policy can help turn the tide of economic inequality on all fronts.
5. REPORT: HAMAS TERROR TUNNEL NETWORK ALMOST REBUILT
by Talia Blatman
The Hamas terrorist organization in investing great efforts and funds into rebuilding its terror tunnel network that was destroyed during Operation Protective Edge, according to Haaretz, and the number of reconstructed tunnels is nearing the amount of tunnels connecting Gaza and Israel prior to the 2014 operation.
Thirty-two out of 49 "terror tunnels" were identified and destroyed by IDF forces during Operation Protective Edge. Roughly one-third of the tunnels were dug east of the security fence; on Israeli soil.
Citing Haaretz, i24 news reported Tuesday that while it is unclear how many tunnels were rebuilt and how many were newly dug, the number of currently existing tunnels most likely is similar to their number before Protective Edge.
Last December, Hamas mourned the loss of one of its members, a terrorist who once guarded Gilad Shalit in captivity. The terrorist, according to a Hamas announcement, was killed in a collapsed tunnel "east of Khan Yunis," which essentially is Gaza's border with Israel.
[קישורים:4:Arab terror in Israel]
Reports that Hamas has been restoring its "terror tunnel" network are not news to the Israeli government.
MK Omer Bar-Lev (Zionist Union) said as early as May of 2015 that Hamas "has returned to digging tunnels and one or more of them have crossed the border fence, attacking the sovereignty of the State of Israel."
In August of last year, the IDF revealed that Israeli security forces had arrested a Hamas terrorist for actively planning tunnel terror attacks from within the Gaza Strip.
Gaza Division officers also reported seeing construction work and digging in close proximity to Israel's border with Gaza.
6. SHAMELESS: NIF USES RABIN MURDER FOOTAGE IN LATEST PR OFFENSIVE
by Ari Soffer
[youtube:2011472]
As far-left NGOs and activist groups come under increasing pressure, after an expose revealed a series of damning revelations about their conduct, a new video published by the New Israel Fund went on the attack - using footage of the Rabin assassination to back its claims over "right-wing incitement."
The shameless use of footage from the 1995 assassination came towards the end of the less than two-minute clip, which bombastically accused the current government of inciting against practically every sector of Israeli society.
"Incitement to violence is their modus operandi, and they know exactly what they are doing. To promote their extreme right-wing ideology, they don't care if they incite and encourage violence against the rest," the video's narrator says.
"But there is just one thing they didn't account for: without Arabs, leftists, secular people, mizrahim, Tel Avivians, LGBT, and the poor, there would be no Israel. Israel is us."
The video is likely a response to damaging revelations concerning the involvement of far-left activists and organizations funded by or associated with the New Israel Fund in a number of shocking activities. Most notably, a recent expose revealed how extreme-leftist Ezra Nawi handed over Palestinians to the PA for execution, with the help of an activist from B'Tselem.
Further footage showed how Nawi and other extremists were paid directly to stage provocations and clashes with IDF soldiers, by Breaking the Silence and Rabbis for Human Rights, both NIF-funded NGOs. In at least one case Nawi - who is himself recorded paying Arabs to riots against Israeli forces - is paid in cash by Breaking the Silence activists.
The New Israel Fund video was released on the same day as fresh revelations that Breaking the Silence had discussed plans to have Israel expelled from the UN with a former Israeli diplomat-turned far-left activist.
The various pieces of footage were all taken by undercover activists working for the Ad Kan organization, which successfully infiltrated several far-left NGOs.
7. DEPUTY FM BANS SWEDISH OFFICIALS FROM VISITING ISRAEL
by Yoni Kempinski
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) took a group of Foreign Ministry cadets on tour of Judea and Samaria on Wednesday, and while there told the future ambassadors that Swedish officials are no longer welcome to visit Israel.
[youtube:2011463]
Hotovely met up with the cadets at Peduel in Samaria, just over the 1949 Armistice lines, and spoke to them at the "porch of the nation," a site offering an impressive outlook over the coastal region.
She referenced Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom's latest remarks against Israel on Tuesday, in which Wallstrom accused the Jewish state of "executing" Arab terrorists in an attempt to delegitimize the actions of security forces.
The killing of terrorists as they are in the midst of an attack is often a matter of life or death in preventing prevent further victims, as in many cases the terrorists continue attacking after being shot.
"For over two years the relations with Sweden have been at a certain level of disconnection," Hotovely told the cadets. "That is to say that we refuse visits by the Swedish Foreign Minister in Israel."
"In the clearest manner possible the state of Israel is giving a very sharp message to Sweden that says 'you are backing terror, you are giving a tail wind to Daesh (Islamic State) to act throughout Europe. In Brussels. In Paris. We saw yesterday in Istanbul."
"Closing the doors"
Hotovely said Israel is on the front lines fighting terrorism, and Sweden "in essence is backing it and giving it a tail wind, and the state of Israel in this regard is giving a very sharp message to these sources," noting how the Swedes fail to understand "which side is fighting terror and...really wants to preserve human life."
"In my eyes these statements are a bad mix of stupidity and diplomatic foolishness, and the state of Israel in this context is closing the doors to Sweden against official visits in Israel," she added, in a response to Wallstrom's words.
Hotovely spoke with Arutz Sheva during the event, and stressed the importance of having the future Foreign Ministry officials be familiar with Jewish history in the region of Judea and Samaria, noting that history goes back nearly 4,000 years.
The legality of the Jewish presence in the Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria has been backed up by the courts, she said, and noted Jewish communities only constitute 3% of the land in the region.
"This is not an obstacle to peace, terror is the real obstacle to peace," she emphasized.
"The world is divided into people surrendering to terrorism and people fighting terrorism, and the Swedish approach at the moment is supporting terrorism," she said, adding that this approach will lead to disaster because radical Islam also targets Europe and "any democratic society."
8. BREATHTAKING: STARLINGS FORM 'DANCING CLOUDS' OVER ISRAEL
by Arutz Sheva Staff
[youtube:2011471]
Footage captured by the BBC shows breathtaking images of starlings during their migration from Russia and eastern Europe, flying high in spectacular formation over the skies of Israel.
The starlings were forming what is known as "murmurations" - cloud-like formations which help them both to catch prey and to avoid being preyed on themselves by other, larger birds.
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