Watchman Newsletter

Southern Israel under fire; 11 hurt in rocket attacks

YNet News (Link) - Ilana Curiel (August 20, 2011)

Gaza terrorists launched an incessant rocket and mortar offensive at southern Israel Saturday, wounding at least 11 people across the region.

The barrages followed a declaration by the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades – Hamas’ military wing – saying that its armistice with Israel was over.

Saturday morning, the Color Red alert sounded in the greater Beersheba area. A subsequent explosion was reported in the city around 9 am. The projectile landed in an open area just outside Israel’s largest southern city, injuring one person lightly. Magen David Adom paramedics attended to both.

Seven other people suffered light injuries while running to a nearby shelter. They arrived at the Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheba independently.

Pentagon prepares for economic warfare

The Australian (Link) - Helen Rumbelow (August 20, 2011)

The guests were assembled in the Warfare Analysis Laboratory, surrounded by uniformed officers from the highest levels of the Pentagon and a dizzying array of screens normally used to simulate nuclear world war.

The gentlemen were called to order and the games began.

“If you imagine the war room in Dr. Strangelove, you’re not far off,” says participant James Rickards.

Yet this was no traditional battle game, but rather the Pentagon’s first economic war game, and the authorities are loath to talk about it.

Economic war? It sounds preposterous. Except it gets less so with every dollar of debt run up by the US.

Behind the scenes, the military are worried about the market. For who owns much of this debt? China, the US’s most powerful rival and threat. And that makes America vulnerable to a new kind of bloodless but ruthless war.

Iran seizes 6500 Bibles, citing rich missionary conspiracy

Jihad Watch (Link) - Marisol (August 19, 2011)

As the propagation of non-Islamic faiths is forbidden under Islamic law, missionary work is banned. But that won’t stop the mullahs from being paranoid about it, and taking the opportunity to remind the unbelievers of their place in the Islamic Republic of Iran. “Iran Seizes 6,500 Bibles to Stop ‘Deceiving’ Christian Missionaries,” by Fionna Agomuoh for the Christian Post, August 17:

Iran has seized 6,500 copies of the Bible in northwest Iran in what appears to be the latest crackdown by Iranian authorities against Christianity in the country.

Few details are known about the seizure, however, Christian news agency, Mohabat News, reports that Dr. Majid Abhari, adviser to the social issues committee of the parliament in Iran stated, “These missionaries with reliance on huge money and propaganda are trying to deviate our youth.”

Christian Genocide in Somalia

FrontPage Magazine (Link) - Frank Crimi (August 19, 2011)

The Islamist terrorist group al Shabab is intentionally starving Somali Christians in territory it controls. It’s just the latest incident in the terror group’s systematic efforts to eradicate all of Somalia’s Christians.

According to the International Christian Concern (ICC), al Shabab’s intentional denial of humanitarian aid has resulted in the deliberate starvation of 18 Christians in the Somali cities of Afgoye, Baidawa, and Kismayo. As ICC spokesman Jonathan Racho said, “Any Somali that is suspected of being a Christian, or a friend of a Christian, does not receive any food aid.”

Unfortunately, the ongoing and purposeful elimination of the small Somali Christian community at the hands of al Shabab has gone largely unrecognized and unreported, eclipsed by the other horrors of rape, torture and murder perpetrated upon most of Somalia’s Muslim population by the Islamist terrorist group.

It goes without saying that al Shabab’s brutality has been well documented, most recently in a report issued by Human Rights Watch, which found the terror group continuing to carry out public beheadings and floggings; forced recruitment of children into its forces; and the denial of humanitarian assistance to the 2.2 million starving Somalis in al Shabab-controlled territory.

Top Story: Iran’s Christian Shutdown

Steel On Steel (Email) - Frank Crimi (August 19, 2011)

Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that Yosef Nadarkhani, a 32 year-old Iranian evangelical pastor, must reject his Christian faith or be put to death. It’s the latest incident in the Islamist Republic’s continuous and increased assault on its small Christian population.

Nadarkhani was first arrested on the charge of apostasy (leaving Islam for another faith) in October 2009 and sentenced to death by hanging for his refusal to teach Islam to Christian children. While Nadarkhani hadn’t practiced any faith before he became a Christian at age19, he was born to Muslim parents and thus considered to be a Muslim under Islamic law.

As such, Nadarkhani’s conviction was upheld in September 2010 by a lower Iranian court when it found that he had proven his apostasy by “organizing evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith, inviting others to convert, and running a house church.” At that point, Nadarkhani appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court to have his death sentence reversed but that appeal has now been rejected.

To Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Nadarkhani’s attorney, the Iranian court decision came as a surprise as only one month ago he had been under the impression that his client’s appeal had been granted. Instead, Nadarkhani now stands to be the first Iranian Christian executed for apostasy since 1990.

Top Story: Iran’s Christian Shutdown

Steel On Steel (Email) - Frank Crimi (August 19, 2011)

Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that Yosef Nadarkhani, a 32 year-old Iranian evangelical pastor, must reject his Christian faith or be put to death. It’s the latest incident in the Islamist Republic’s continuous and increased assault on its small Christian population.

Nadarkhani was first arrested on the charge of apostasy (leaving Islam for another faith) in October 2009 and sentenced to death by hanging for his refusal to teach Islam to Christian children. While Nadarkhani hadn’t practiced any faith before he became a Christian at age19, he was born to Muslim parents and thus considered to be a Muslim under Islamic law.

As such, Nadarkhani’s conviction was upheld in September 2010 by a lower Iranian court when it found that he had proven his apostasy by “organizing evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith, inviting others to convert, and running a house church.” At that point, Nadarkhani appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court to have his death sentence reversed but that appeal has now been rejected.

To Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Nadarkhani’s attorney, the Iranian court decision came as a surprise as only one month ago he had been under the impression that his client’s appeal had been granted. Instead, Nadarkhani now stands to be the first Iranian Christian executed for apostasy since 1990.

Livni calls for ‘action’ in response to terror attacks

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Lahav Harkov (August 18, 2011)

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni (Kadima) called on the government to retaliate following Thursday’s terrorist attacks near Eilat.

“The terrorist attack requires Israeli action, which Kadima will support,” she said at a meeting of Kadima mayors.

“The attack in the South completely changes the equation,” Livni added. “We need a new way of thinking about closing the border between Israel and Egypt.”

National Union MKs also called for border security to be tightened.

“This government failed at sealing the southern border before tens of thousands of illegal immigrants, signaling to all the terrorist organizations in the area that there is no problem penetrating the Israeli border,” MK Arye Eldad (National Union) said.

He added: “Only a dramatic change in instructions to open fire and targeted killings of the heads of Beduin gangs in the Sinai and the Negev will successfully close our border.”

Father Of The Euro: It’s “On The Edge Of A Precipice”

Business Insider (Link) - Simone Foxman (August 18, 2011)

Jacques Delors -- one man responsible for ushering in the European Economic and Monetary Union -- told Swiss newspaper Le Temps that Europe and the euro risk falling from “the edge of a precipice.”

“To avoid falling, the choice looks straightforward to me: either member states accept the robust economic partnership I always demanded, or they transfer more powers to the Union,” said Delors, who served as European Commission president from 1985 to 1994.

His voice joins a chorus of experts and leaders who are calling for eurobonds and a more comprehensive economic and political EU.

Delors proposed a part-mutualization of European debt, with nations allowed to harmonize debts worth “up to 60 percent of GDP” and issue joint securities. This is, in his words, “the pump to extinguish the fire.”

PA TV: Western Wall area to be turned into Arab housing neighborhood

Palwatch.org (Link) - Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik (August 17, 2011)

Official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a documentary which stated that the PA plans to build an Arab residential area in place of the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem, “when they [Israelis] disappear from the picture, like a forgotten chapter in the pages of our city’s history.”

The Western Wall, a remnant of the Temple Mount, is Judaism’s holiest and most important prayer site.

The PA TV documentary further rejected the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, referring to Jewish history as “their false history,” while the Jews’ praying at the Western Wall was called “sin and filth.”

Netanyahu to Clinton: No apology to Turkey

YNet News (Link) - Attila Somfalvi (August 17, 2011)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday that Israel will not apologize to Turkey over the 2010 flotilla incident, despite an earlier demand by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to do so.

Clinton spoke with Netanyahu, asking Israel to apologize to Turkey for killing nine of its citizens aboard the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara ship in May 2010. However, Netanyahu made it clear that given the current situation in the Middle East, Israel will not issue an apology.

Later on Wednesay, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said it would be impossible for Turkish-Israeli ties to improve unless Israel apologised and paid compensation for the killing of the nine Turks.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference in Istanbul that “if the Palmer Report does not contain an apology, both sides and the United States know what we will do.” He did not elaborate.

“Israel is facing a choice: deeper relations with Turkey or open a gap with the Turkish state that will not be overcome very easily,” he said.

Re-Examining the Arab Spring

Stratfor Global Intelligence (Link) - George Friedman (August 15, 2011)

On Dec. 17, 2010, Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in a show of public protest. The self-immolation triggered unrest in Tunisia and ultimately the resignation of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This was followed by unrest in a number of Arab countries that the global press dubbed the “Arab Spring.” The standard analysis of the situation was that oppressive regimes had been sitting on a volcano of liberal democratic discontent. The belief was that the Arab Spring was a political uprising by masses demanding liberal democratic reform and that this uprising, supported by Western democracies, would generate sweeping political change across the Arab world.

It is now more than six months since the beginning of the Arab Spring, and it is important to take stock of what has happened and what has not happened. The reasons for the widespread unrest go beyond the Arab world, although, obviously, the dynamics within that world are important in and of themselves. However, the belief in an Arab Spring helped shape European and American policies in the region and the world. If the assumptions of this past January and February prove insufficient or even wrong, then there will be regional and global consequences.