DAILY ALERT

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Hamas Radio: Jaffa is the Same as Gaza, Tel Aviv the Same as Rafah (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies)
    The Hamas radio station Sawt Al-Aqsa broadcast the following song on August 16, 2005:
    Al-Qassam warriors, rain rockets on the settlers! Don't let any Jew sleep!
    The Al-Aqsa Brigades will make you tremble in Haifa and Tel Aviv; they will strike you in Safed and Acre.
    Because we do not distinguish between [Jewish] Palestine and [Arab] Palestine.
    For [as] Jaffa is the same as Gaza, Tel-al-Zuhour [Tel Aviv] is the same as Rafah, and the Galilee is the same as Hebron.
    We make no distinction between the parts of the earth of the homeland.

Saudi Al-Qaeda Leader Killed in Shootout (AP/FOX News)
    Al-Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia, Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi, was among six al-Qaeda militants killed during police raids Thursday in Medina and Riyadh, the Saudi Interior Ministry said.

Syria and the Plot to Attack Israeli Tourists in Turkey - Zvi Bar'el (Ha'aretz)
    The arrest last week of Louai Sakra in Turkey, suspected of planning to carry out a terrorist attack on Israeli cruise ships, would not have happened without the unusual cooperation of several intelligence agencies.
    According to Turkish sources, it was Syrian intelligence that furnished information about the possibility that Sakra was living in Diyarbakir in southeast Turkey; Israeli intelligence contributed information on his potential targets and Turkish intelligence reaped the harvest.
    This is not the first time that Syrian citizens or "visitors" have acted in the name of the objectives of al-Qaeda or as part of the radical Islamic mission.
    The bombers of the synagogues in Istanbul in 2003 fled to Syria, where they found refuge among local friends with whom they had studied at a madrassa (Islamic school) in Aleppo, Syria. Syria extradited the Turkish escapees to Turkey, but retained their Syrian friends.
    It is estimated that hundreds of madrassas operate in Syria, some with Saudi funding, that serve as hothouses for radical education.
    While the ideology of the ruling Baath party is avowedly secular, journalists who have visited Damascus and Aleppo relate that women wearing full veils are now commonly seen not only in the street but also in the universities. Mosques may be found on every corner and Friday prayers bring commerce to a halt. These are new developments in Syria.
    Assad now faces a strong Islamic movement that is already asking itself if it can threaten his regime, or whether Assad would even be able to act against the Muslim Brotherhood, as did his father in Hama in 1982, when the regime killed about 10,000 people.
    Since Syria's closest friend is Iran, and since Saudi Arabia is one of the largest investors in Syria, it will be very difficult for Bashar Assad to act as his father did and launch a direct attack against a religious organization.

Sharon's Fateful Choice Sealed in '93 - Sidney Zion (New York Daily News)
    What really killed the Jewish settlements was the Oslo peace process, which brought Arafat to Gaza and the Clinton White House, plus a major influx of arms to the Palestinians, who until then had only stones to throw at Israel.
    Before 1993, the Jewish settlers in Gaza needed no protection by the Israeli Army. Throughout the "peace process," arms were smuggled into Gaza through Egypt and everybody knew it.
    It all fell down at Camp David in 2000, when Arafat refused to accept 98% of the West Bank, half of Jerusalem, and all of Gaza.
    Instead, he opened the second intifada, this time with arms and suicide bombers.
    Then it required a division, 15,000 Israeli soldiers, to protect the Gaza settlers.

Arab Bank Fined $24M for Funding Palestinian Terror (AP/Forbes)
    Arab Bank PLC, one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East, is paying a $24 million civil fine for inadequate controls against money laundering at its New York branch, the Office of the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency announced Wednesday.
    Families of 40 U.S. citizens killed in terrorist attacks in Israel sued Arab Bank in federal court in New York City last year, accusing it of channeling money to Palestinian terrorist groups and of making insurance payments to beneficiaries of suicide bombers.

In Pakistan's Public Schools, Jihad Still Part of Lesson Plan - Paul Watson (Los Angeles Times)
    Each year, thousands of Pakistani children learn from history books that Jews are tightfisted moneylenders and Christians vengeful conquerors.
    One textbook tells kids they should be willing to die as martyrs for Islam.
    They aren't being indoctrinated by extremist mullahs in madrassas, the private Islamic seminaries often blamed for stoking militancy in Pakistan.
    They are pupils in public schools learning from textbooks approved by the administration of President Pervez Musharraf.

At Malls, Grim Preparations for the Worst, and Israeli Assistance - Robert Block (Wall Street Journal/Baltimore Sun)
    The recent wave of suicide bombings in London's mass-transit system has heightened fears in counterterrorist circles of similar attacks in America.
    The possibility of suicide attacks against the nation's 1,200 enclosed shopping centers, bustling icons of U.S. wealth and consumerism, is still only a grim theory.
    But the mere idea has transformed the way private security companies train their guards and go about their business.
    The inspiration for their preparation for the unthinkable came from Israel, the country with the most experience keeping human bombs out of its shopping centers.
    The cornerstone of the Israeli strategy is to deny a bomber entrance to the mall by creating layers of defenses from paramilitary sentries to watchmen trained to recognize the behavior patterns of people about to blow themselves up.
    To date, there never has been a successful breach of an Israeli shopping mall by a suicide bomber despite more than 100 attempts.

The Jihadi Bomb - Ralph R. Reiland (American Enterprise Institute)
    "There have been multiple cases of real theft of real weapons-usable nuclear material that we know of," said Matthew Bunn, a senior research associate in the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University, in an interview with the Foreign Policy Association two months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
    "Al-Qaeda is intent on finding ways to circumvent U.S. security enhancements to strike Americans and the homeland," CIA director Porter Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last February.
    "It may be only a matter of time before al-Qaeda or another group attempts to use biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons," he said.
    The question is will the U.S. government be any more competent at stopping an attack than it was on Sept. 11?

U.S. Visa Problems for Israel's High-Tech Industry (Red Herring)
    Israel's high-tech industry is expected to be hit hard by a U.S. Homeland Security Department announcement that the quota for professional visas for the 2006 fiscal year has already been used up.
    The American government annually issues 65,000 H1B visas to foreign engineers and scientists working temporarily in the U.S., of which about 1,000 go to Israeli applicants.
    The visa enables companies to send over employees for extended periods of time to set up U.S. offices or oversee projects.

Merrill Lynch Encouraged by Israel's "Sizzling" Economy - Nathan Sheva (Ha'aretz)
    Encouraged by Israel's "sizzling" economic growth in the second quarter of 2005, Merrill Lynch raised its growth forecast for the year from 3.8 to 4.2%.
    "Israeli economic growth surged at a higher-than-expected pace in the second quarter. Real GDP expanded at a 5.6% annual rate in the quarter after growing at a 3.9% pace in the first quarter," the investment bank wrote in its analysis.

Israeli Super Bandage Saves Lives (Medical News Today)
    Almost half of battlefield fatalities are due to hemorrhaging. Almost one-fifth of those victims could have been saved had better methods of hemorrhage control been employed.
    Dr. Sody Naimer, a family doctor in the Gush Katif region who has treated many trauma victims, has developed a revolutionary new bandage - called ELastic ADhesive Bandage or ELAD - that can replace both ordinary bandages and tourniquets and can even be used to treat burns.

Useful Reference:

The Pullout from Gaza: Map and Profiles of Israeli Communities (New York Times)

Profiles of Families in Neve Dekalim (New York Times)

History of Israeli Settlement in Gaza (AP/Boston Globe)

The Disengagement Plan: An Opportunity for Peace (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

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Observations:

Settling In for a Long Wait - Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post)

• Israel has no peace partner - Mahmoud Abbas has nothing to offer and has offered nothing - and in the absence of a partner, there is only one logical policy: Rationalize your defensive lines and prepare for a long wait.
• Far from Israel getting any credit for this deeply wrenching Gaza withdrawal, the demand now is for yet more concessions - from Israel. The New York Times called the Gaza withdrawal "only the beginning" and declared that Sharon "must also be forewarned" that giving up the West Bank must be next.
• This is a counsel of folly. The idea that if only Israel made more concessions and more withdrawals, the Palestinians would be enticed into making peace is flatly contradicted by history. We are not talking ancient history here; we are talking the past 12 years.
• Under Oslo, Israel made massive, near-suicidal concessions: bringing the PLO back to life, installing Arafat in power in the West Bank and Gaza, permitting him to arm militia after militia, and ultimately offering him (at Camp David 2000) the first Palestinian state in history, with a shared Jerusalem and total Israeli withdrawal from 95% of the formerly occupied territories (with Israel giving up some of its own territory to make the Palestinians whole). How were these concessions met? With a savage terrorist war that killed 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands more.
• The Gaza withdrawal is not the beginning but the end. Apart from perhaps some evacuations of outlying settlements on the West Bank, it is the end of the concession road for Israel. And it is the beginning of the new era of self-sufficiency and separation in which Israel ensures its security not by concessions, but by fortification, barrier creation, realism, and patient waiting.
• Waiting for the first-ever genuine Palestinian concessions. Waiting for the Palestinians to honor the promises - to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism - they solemnly made at Oslo and brazenly betrayed. That's the next step. Without it, nothing happens.

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