Israel mourns soldiers killed in Hezbollah attack
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) Israel on Thursday mourned Staff Sgt. Dor Chaim Nini, 20, and Maj. Yochai Kalangel, 25, the two soldiers killed in Wednesday’s Hezbollah attack on northern Israel.
Kalangel, a company commander in the Givati Brigade, traveled north from his home near Jerusalem on Tuesday evening, a day after he celebrated his daughter Elinor’s first birthday. Earlier in the week, he and his wife Tali learned that they were expecting their second child. Thousands of people attended his funeral, held Thursday at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl.
Lt. Col. Kobi Barel, the commander of Kalangel’s battalion, said, “We are stunned and pained, and we are having trouble accepting that you are gone. You were always full of faith, and the soldiers under your command followed you blindly. I knew you to be an ambitious officer, and it was clear to all that you would go far.”
Nini’s, whose funeral was held near his home in Shtulim, joined the Givati Brigade in August 2013, and last summer he fought with his comrades in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. He joined his unit in the north just days before his death, after a brief vacation.
“He was a fighter, he was inside Gaza during Operation Protective Edge, he was never afraid of combat, and he wanted to become an officer,” said Nini’s brother, Aviel. “We were worried, but he always smiled and told us everything would be alright. He was always smiling. Always helping the family.”
*
Netanyahu: Iran behind Hezbollah attack on northern Israel
(JNS.org) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Iran, the state sponsor of Hezbollah, “is the one behind yesterday’s attack” on northern Israel that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded seven others.
Speaking at a memorial service that marked the one-year anniversary of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s death, Netanyahu said, “This radical power Ariel Sharon spoke about was, and still is, Iran. Today Iran is the one arming, organizing, funding, and sending its terrorist satellites to our borders, both north and south.”
Dr. Ely Karmon, a senior research scholar at Israel’s International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, said that Hezbollah’s attack on Wednesday is part of “an attempt to change the strategic rules of the game.” According to Karmon, Iran and Hezbollah have been working for months to take advantage of instability in Syria in order to create a forward military position against Israel in Syria’s Quneitra region, close to the triple Syria-Lebanon-Israel border.
“This is actually an Iranian project,” Karmon told JNS.org. “They have around 1,500 people on the ground in Syria, most of which are counseling or training Syrian militias, and they have Hezbollah providing military support.”
*
President Reuven Rivlin slams ‘absurd’ genocide accusations against Israel at U.N.
(JNS.org) The commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp continued from Tuesday into Wednesday at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, as a result of scheduling changes due to this week’s winter storm on the East Coast.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, criticized the accusations of genocide and war crimes that are leveled against Israel at the international body.
Rivlin said that the “setting of red lines” for U.N. intervention on alleged genocide “requires us to stop diluting and cynically exploiting them in the name of pseudo-objectivity, as is done in the rhetoric of human rights with the use of terms such as ‘genocide’ for political purposes.”
Equating the situation in Israel with genocide and war crimes is an “absurd” comparison that “we as Israelis are exposed to constantly,” said Rivlin. The anti-Israel accusations, he said, confuse “the ally with the enemy” and undermine the U.N.’s “ability to effectively fight the phenomenon of genocide.”
“I stand before you at a time of great tension in our region. My heart and my thoughts are with my people in Israel. Terrorism does not distinguish between blood. In this war, all of us, all the nations united, countries of the free world, must form a united front,” Rivlin added.
Rivlin will reportedly return to Israel sooner than expected due to the Hezbollah attack on an Israel Defense Forces convoy in northern Israel on Wednesday.
“I want to send my condolences to the bereaved families as well as my wishes for a full recovery to the wounded,” the Israeli president said in a statement before his U.N. address. “I am certain that the IDF knows how to manage the situation, and that Israel’s leaders will work to calm the situation as much as possible. We are with you, even when we are required to do our job abroad, for our country and for our people.”
*
Palestinian terror groups praise Hezbollah attack on northern Israel
(JNS.org) Palestinian terrorist organizations praised Wednesday’s Hezbollah terrorist attack on a military convoy in northern Israel that killed two Israeli soldiers and wounded seven others.
Hamas representatives in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, called the attack a “natural response to recurring Zionist aggressions,” the Jerusalem Post reported. Additionally, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, said Hezbollah has “the right to respond to Israeli occupation, especially following the last aggression on Syria,” in reference to a reported Jan. 18 Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah terrorists and an Iranian general. The Al-Quds Brigades of the Islamic Jihad terror group, meanwhile, welcomed what it called the “blessed” Hezbollah attack on Wednesday.
Hamas terrorist leader Mohammed Deif recently sent a letter to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah expressing his condolences for the deaths of Hezbollah terrorists in the Jan. 18 airstrike.
“All of the forces of resistance must band together and unite against the Zionist enemy and its accomplices,” Deif wrote.
Edgar Vasquez, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said America “strongly condemns Hezbollah’s attack today on [the] Israel Defense Forces near the border between Lebanon and Israel, in blatant violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 (which was enacted to end the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon).”
“We support Israel’s legitimate right to self-defense,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who asked both sides in the conflict to “respect the [U.N.-drawn] Blue Line [border demarcation] between Israel and Lebanon.”
*
State Department-funded group reportedly working to unseat Netanyahu
(JNS.org) A U.S. State Department-funded group is partnering with an Israeli grassroots political organization in an effort to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Jewish state’s upcoming March election, according to reports.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that OneVoice International—an activist organization founded in 2002 that seeks to “empower” Israelis and Palestinians to pressure elected officials to support a two-state solution—is teaming up with an Israeli grassroots group called V15, which recently hired a former Obama campaign strategist to persuade Israelis to vote against Netanyahu.
Haaretz reported that Jeremy Bird, a 36-year-old American political strategist who served as national field director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, has joined V15 to support the organization’s grassroots efforts.
Bird told Haaretz that his strategy is to adapt his door-knocking campaign strategy for Israel in order to “speak with enough people here to replace the government.”
V15 is allegedly behind the growing “Anyone but Bibi” campaign (referring to Netanyahu’s nickname) in Israel. Yet one of the organizers of V15, Nimrod Dweck, said his group’s goal was not to endorse any specific candidate, but rather to “put your ego aside for the greater good.”
Christina Taler, a spokesperson for OneVoice, told the Washington Free Beacon that her group is working with V15 to focus on voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns, and is not engaged in partisan activities.
“We’ve formed a partnership with [V15], but it’s important to know we’re absolutely nonpartisan,” Taler said. “Our biggest emphasis and focus right now is just getting people out to vote.”
Taler also denied that any State Department funding is going towards “any of the activities we’re doing right now whatsoever,” and said the funds were used last spring to build support for the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations spearheaded by Secretary of State John Kerry.
The White House recently said that President Barack Obama would not meet with Netanyahu when the latter travels to the U.S. in March, citing the trip’s close proximity to Israel’s March 17 elections.
“It is simply hypocrisy and interference in Israel’s elections for President Obama to say that he will not meet with the Israeli prime minister because Israeli elections are too close, while his closest electoral advisers suddenly appear in Israel for the sole purpose of leading a campaign to unseat the Israeli prime minister,” said Morton A. Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America.
The Obama administration has also opposed Netanyahu’s plans to address Congress on March 3 regarding Iran and radical Islam, claiming that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) breached “protocol” by inviting Netanyahu without consulting the president.
“President Obama had no problem with British Prime Minister David Cameron recently addressing Congress to make the case he favors opposing sanctions legislation,” Klein said. And U.S. presidents have a long tradition of meeting Israeli prime ministers who are going to the polls—Bill Clinton meet with Shimon Peres just prior to Israeli elections in 1996; he also met with Ehud Barak prior to Israeli elections in 2001. Obama not meeting Netanyahu has nothing to do with the proximity to Israel’s elections and everything to do with his opposition to Netanyahu making the case for sanctions on Iran.”
In his Jan. 20 State of the Union address, Obama vowed to veto new Iran sanctions legislation.
*
Lebanese Christian leader slams Hezbollah for attack on Israel
(JNS.org) Samir Geagea, a prominent Lebanese Christian leader and senior figure in the country’s anti-Hezbollah political alliance, denounced Hezbollah’s attack on Israel on Wednesday.
“Today’s development indicates that Hezbollah is more and more expanding its regional schemes against the Lebanese state,” Geagea said, Lebanon’s Daily Star reported.
“Hezbollah has no right to implicate the Lebanese people in a battle with Israel,” he added. “There is a government and a parliament which can decide on that.”
Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven were wounded in a Hezbollah terrorist attack on Wednesday near Mount Dov, along the border with Lebanon.
Geagea is a senior figure in the “March 14 Alliance,” a group mostly composed of Sunni Muslims, Christians, and liberals who are opposed to the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis.
A Maronite Christian, Geagea’s Lebanese Forces political party currently holds eights seats in the Lebanese parliament, making it the country’s second-largest Christian party.
Meanwhile, Druze political leader Walid Jumblatt wrote on Twitter that Lebanon has “entered a phase of big troubles” and cautioned Lebanon to take precautions against a possible larger Israeli retaliation.
Lebanon has been locked in a political stalemate between the March 14 Alliance and the pro-Hezbollah March 8 Alliance, leaving the country without a president for more than half a year. Tammam Salam, Lebanon’s prime minister, is a caretaker rather than an authoritative leader.
*
Articles from JNS.org appear on San Diego Jewish World through the generosity of Dr. Bob and Mao Shillman.