Biden’s Blunder Could Lead to Israel’s 9/11

 The United States careless incompetence in Afghanistan gifted the Taliban a military airport the size of a large town containing $83 Billion of the finest military equipment that included hundreds of aircraft.

We have already seen the Taliban gruesomely using Black Hawk helicopters dangling hanging men as they flew over Afghan towns as a warning to the citizens below.

So for what other evil purpose can they devise for the use of this American treasure trove?

A C130 US military transport plane packed with explosives crashing into a tightly populated urban city would have the same devastating effect as a nuclear explosion. It would be a world shattering statement by a messianic terror organization akin to 9/11.

It would have to be a crazy terrorist organization on a martyrdom mission. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS are all messianic jihadists with a deadly hatred of the West and Israel.

The Taliban now possess four American C130 military transport planes.

But would the Taliban try to crash an explosive transport plane into an American city or its capital?

It would certainly be a tempting target for the most well equipped terror group in the world. Sweeping in over the Atlantic to hit New York in another 9/11 style attack must be tempting. They won’t have to hijack a commercial plane. They have their own, thanks to Biden and his military generals.

There is only one problem. The C130 can fly to America from Bagram without refueling but not with a packed payload of explosive material, and there are not many options for the Taliban for refueling. Apart from Iran, no other country would give them landing rights, and a transport plane or two would remove the element of surprise.

So what other country would present a huge and attractive target for the Taliban, or one of its Afghan-based jihadi allies, to attack?

Israel, the one country in the world the Taliban doesn’t recognize. What better Islamic message would it send if it, and not Iran, obliterated the Jewish State.

Just pack a monster-size aircraft full of explosive material and fly it to its target, or targets.

Coming in undetected and crashing into Tel Aviv with a population of over four million would make 9/11 look like child’s play.

With three planes they succeeded in killing 3,000 Americans. With one or two planes they could kill millions of Jews.  

Apart from mass deaths and casualties, an attack on Tel Aviv would knock out sensitive infrastructure including power grids, communication and transport systems. It would destroy Israel’s central military command and control center and vital military defense facilities. Depending on its impact location, it could destroy Israel’s major Ben Gurion Airport.

 Whatever remains of Israel would be dangerously exposed to any enemy wanting to move in for the final kill, and we have them in large numbers on our northern, southern and eastern borders.

Such a 9/11 style attack setting out from Bagram airfield and coordinated with Iran, could be an Israel Doomsday scenario particularly if two planes were employed in the deadly mission.

A second plane targeting Haifa would have a devastating effect.   Although the population of Haifa is far fewer than Tel Aviv, just over a million people, it also houses chemical storage facilities that, for years should have been removed to safer locations. A packed plane exploding a large chemical storage plant would indeed produce a mushroom cloud akin to a nuclear blast making the Beirut port blast looks miniscule in proportion.

Is such a nightmare scenario possible?  Yes.

I have less sympathy for Afghanis than Anthony Blinken because they are being indoctrinated in their mosques and madrassas into waging holy war against the Jews and death to Israel. 

If the planes were to fly unrefueled from Kabul to Israel with a maximum payload of 44,000 pounds the distance is within reach.

The distance from Afghanistan and NYC is double. So flying a maximum load without refueling would put America out of reach for a covert suicide mission. The Target has to be Israel.

Flying time is just beyond four hours. Taking the land route over compliant countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, a Taliban or Al Qaeda suicide mission is entirely feasible.

Unless Israel was alerted for such an attack, in advance or on route, it wouldn’t know what was about to hit it until the final seconds.

If Israeli intelligence did not pick up clues that such a mission was in the planning, would its air traffic control be aware of large planes on route to their target flying over countries with which Israel does not have cooperation or open communication? Probably not, until they appeared out of Lebanese and into Israeli air space.

And that would be too late to intercept flying bombs heading to Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The distance from the Lebanon border to the Haifa port is just 45 miles. The C130 has a cruising speed of 335 miles per hour. That is less than six minutes flying time to Haifa.

Would there be time for Israeli air traffic control and the Israeli Command and Control Center to identify these mystery aircraft or scramble a jet especially if the planes had external US Military markings but did not response to radio communication?  

Surely more time would be lost as Israel went in search of verification from the US Embassy in Jerusalem? By the time, Israel or the embassy staff made contact with the Pentagon, the explosions would inform them that the planes were our version of 9/11. 

A far worse version of 9/11.

Such hesitancy would be understandable, but it would result in the death of a million Israelis or more and the destruction of Haifa and Tel Aviv on a scale unknown since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Such a nightmare scenario is too dreadful to consider, but consider it we must, because the malevolent actors involved in such a mission have the same dedicated goal of all our enemies in the region. To destroy the Jewish State and everyone in it.

Why should Iran continue arduously spinning underground centrifuges to produce the material for a nuclear bomb, then have to fit the bomb onto an aircraft when they can more easily assist a neighboring Islamic regime do the job for them, albeit in a simpler, more straightforward, form? All they have to do is to train pilots to fly the planes, pack them with explosives and send them on their suicide mission.

With Haifa and Tel Aviv gone, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel would be in chaos, exposed to the whims of the combined enemies of Israel, those who have sworn to destroy the Jewish entity and establish a Palestine from the river to the sea.

None of them would shed a tear if the land was burnt to a cinder and the dead included Christians, Druze, and yes, Muslims, slaughtered to achieve the holy mission of Israel’s annihilation.

Does anyone think that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, even the fanatics of the PLO and PFLP would hesitate before descending on defenseless Jews, to kill them and take their property? Haven’t they done this in the past? Isn’t this what they have been indoctrinated to do by their leaders in Ramallah and Gaza?

If you think this is an unbelievable nightmare scenario, think again and plan for such an Armageddon.  That is the only way to prevent such an outcome in which the mechanics and the intention are there for all to see.

This is a wake up call.

The weak United States was not prepared to attack Bagram to destroy billions of dollars of their equipment. Can Israel do the job? Afghanistan is further than Iran.

This is an existential threat that Israel must solve, and quickly. Before 9/11, Hiroshima and , explodes on Israel.

Barry Shaw,

Senior Associate for the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Biden is looking for an escape plan. For himself, not Americans trapped behind enemy lines in Afghanistan.

 Biden's address on August 24 was another example of his pathetic presidency.

He droned off the telegrompter about a number of issues and finally arrived at the global issue of Afghanistan, almost as an afterthought.

He spoke about the danger of remaining in Kabul beyond 31 August as a danger, but had nothing to say about the danger to an estimated 10,000 American citizens he will be leaving behind enemy lines.

He spoke mysteriously about the danger of ISIS forgetting that he said days ago that ISIS was not in Afghanistan.

He praised his G7 friends even as they excoriated him for being dictated to by the Taliban terrorist about the leave date. They, like America, have more work to do.

Unlike America, the British, French, and even the Dutch, went beyond Kabul Airport to extract their citizens who were unable to get to the airport.

Biden, like his plan for Kabul, cut and ran, making his escape from the room before taking searching questions from the waiting and frustrated media.

Listen to what I have to say on Israel News Talk Radio.

Barry Shaw, The View from Israel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY7WsTcD7G4&t=2s

An Afghan Withdrawal. A Biden Debacle.

Biden is about to follow Ford and Carter into the US Hall of Shame.

Within days of Biden ordering a US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Afghan President resigned and handed power to the Taliban.

 

After extracting US forces from Afghanistan, leaving behind a treasure trove of military hardware as an expensive parting gift for the Taliban terrorists as they blow down the US House of Cards Afghan policy known as "nation building," the weak US President just rushed 4,000 troops back to Kabul to extract personnel from the US Embassy before the Afghan capital falls to the Taliban.

Gerald Ford was embarrassed out of office by the shameful newsreel of embassy personnel clambering aboard a helicopter, rotors whirling, perched perilously on the rooftop of the Saigon US Embassy, while US troops were preventing desperate Vietnamese from fleeing their Communist conquerors.

 

Jimmy Carter left the White House, shamed by the vision of US embassy staff being marched blindfolded out the Kabul embassy, hands in the air in supine surrender to the goons of the Islamic regime led by a bully called Ahmadinejad who became idolized by leftwing students when he was allowed into America to attend a US conference as the triumphant Iranian president. In the indoctrination center of non-American education, he received the adulation of brainwashed American students.

 

Now it’s Biden's turn.

He has failed in everything he has touched in his brief seven months in office. Here is a short list of his utter fiascos.

The biggest Covid super-spreader event since the 2020 mass rioting by thousands of unmasked "peaceful protesters." Namely, the invasion of over a million unverified, undocumented, illegal, migrants with thousands of untreated Covid positive people infecting their way throughout America.

The closing of the Keystone pipeline and the subsequent shortage of gas and skyrocketing prices at the pumps led Biden to beg OPEC to increase production to help him head off a crisis caused by him at home.

The rage of parents against racist hatred being taught to their kids in public schools.

The frightening levels of crime and homicides raging through cities and states as a direct result of Democrat mayors and governors following the Biden Democrat doctrine of "defunding the police."

That was domestic.

In foreign affairs, after the embarrassing lecturing by a Chinese delegation at their Alaska meeting with Anthony Blinken, Biden rewarded Putin by lifting sanctions on the Russian pipeline to Europe immediately after Russian hackers had closed down the Colonial pipeline.

Now the biggest debacle of all.

Just over a month ago, Biden promised the Taliban would not take over Afghanistan as he announced his troop withdrawal from that country.

 

It is clear that Biden, his Secretary of State, his military, security, intelligence chiefs, all got caught with their pants down.

Despite their collective experience they failed miserably to estimate the capabilities of the Taliban.

It was shameful to hear the President of the United States beg the Taliban to spare the US Embassy until he had time to send in the removers to evacuate his personnel before it is seized by a bunch of uneducated sheep-herders who are on their way to a victory over the most powerful nation on earth.

This, just hours after he said at a press briefing, "The Taliban is not remotely like the Vietnamese army. They are not comparable."

 

What Biden didn't say was that the Afghan army armed, equipped, trained and financed with billions of dollars for twenty years was unable to control the Taliban who have just swept unchallenged through Afghanistan, driving American military Humvees armed with American machine guns and drones in the direction of the US Embassy in Kabul.

The Afghan army was trained and supervised by General Mark Milley, the US Commander who insisted before Congress a month ago that he is fine with military officers and soldiers being indoctrinated with the divisive racist critical race theory which will leave brothers in arms looking suspiciously at each other, questioning the moral strength of their country as they go into battle against lethal enemies.

This is what Milley said of the Afghan security forces a few weeks ago.

"The Afghan security forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country. I want to emphasize, repeatedly, a negative outcome, a Taliban military take-over, is not a foregone conclusion."

 

He was crushingly wrong. If this is the example of your top military commander, America, you are in seriously deep trouble.

Milley never saw it coming. He was too busy indoctrinating his officer corps in BLM ideology while failing to see the corrupt misuse of the $130B that the United States gave the Afghan regime to pay ghost soldiers. These are the non-existing soldiers whose money was pocketed by lying Afghan warlords who fiddled the uninspected books.

What abject incompetence!

 

The US Embassy in Kabul reported that the Taliban were executing captured Afghan troops in large numbers as they raced to conquer the country. We won’t list here what they are doing to the women. Where are the top Democrat women who plied millions of dollars of US taxpayer’s money into gender equality in Afghanistan. Where are they now when Afghan women need them most? The military term is missing in action. They care less for them than they do for the Covid carriers coming over their southern border.

 

This is the Taliban, now stronger than ever. And they are about to be joined by Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Hezbollah. Then watch what comes out of Afghanistan.

 

By walking away, Biden has opened the door to the next 9/11.

Robert Gates once said perceptively in 2014 of Biden, "He has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Biden is proving that Gates was right every time he touches a serious issue.

 

He will surely follow Ford and Carter in the US Presidential Hall of Shame.

 

Barry Shaw,

Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

 

 

 

A Court Case in Sweden Implicates the New Iranian President in International Human Rights Crimes.

Recently, the Islamic Republic of Iran held their elections and Ebrahim Raisi was inaugurated as the country’s new president.

For international diplomats and human rights organizations, this was a tremendous setback. Raisi is known to those who opposed his election as “the Butcher of Tehran” based on his reign of terror against political opponents throughout Iran starting over thirty years ago.

As the head of Iran’s judiciary, Raisi presided over the crackdown on thousands of peaceful protesters and members of minority groups who were arrested, tortured and summarily executed, often in the most barbaric manner.

Under his watch, during national street protests in November 2019, thousands of protesters, including women and children were subjected to mass arrests, and hundreds were tortured or disappeared.

As deputy prosecutor general of Tehran in 1988, Raisi participated in the ‘death commission’ that ordered the extra-judicial execution of over 5,000 political prisoners.

Blindfolded prisoners were brought before a judge and asked one question, whether they wished to repent their political opinions and pledge loyalty to the Islamic regime.  They thought this question was the beginning of a judicial process. They were never told that their answer would condemn them to death. After giving the wrong answer they were taken away for execution, usually by hanging, a few minutes later.

Raisi said the death sentences were justified by a holy fatwa issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

According to a United Nations report, under Raisi’s judicial leadership between September 2018 and July 2019, at least 8 prominent judges were arrested for defending political prisoners and human rights defenders, many of whom had received lengthy sentences by Raisi’s judiciary.

Under his leadership, the fatal shooting of hundreds of peaceful protesters was never investigated.  In 2019, at least 7000 protesters were arrested, tortured and sentenced to harsh imprisonment by Raisi’s judiciary.

According to many witnesses, Raisi personally watched the torture, rape and execution of many victims of his brutal judicial reign. Now he is Iran’s overlord. This does not augur well for the future of the people of Iran or for the rest of the world.

Moving on. This week will see the opening of a criminal case in Sweden following the arrest of 60-year-old Hamid Nouri.  Nouri was arrested in November 2019 when he arrived in Stockholm.  He was taken into a room at the airport where he was interrogated about his past in Iran. He was then arrested and placed in detention.

The two stories are dastardly connected by the malevolence of the two central characters.

The arrest of Nouri came about as a result of detailed research done by human rights activists.

This trial is unique. It is the first time that an Iranian high official is facing his victims on charges of mass murder. It is, for the Iranians, their equivalent of the Eichmann trial of 1961.

A former Iranian political prisoner, Iraj Mesdaghi, who survived the 1988 mass executions, spent years compiling records of crimes committed by the Tehran regime. He also tracked the movements of the perpetrators. He was helped by Roya and Ladan Boroumand who run a Washington-based foundation that documents Iranian human rights violations.

In 2009, the Boroumand foundation commissioned Geoffrey Robertson QC, a distinguished British lawyer, to conduct an inquiry into the 1988 Iranian killings. Robertson had authored ‘Crimes against Humanity. The Struggle for Global Justice,’ an 800-page book in 2007 after serving as a UN war crimes judge between 2002-2007.

Mesdaghi located the whereabouts of witnesses to provide testimony. He also tracked the perpetrators of the gruesome crimes.

During a 2011 symposium at Oxford University, co-sponsored by the Boroumand, on how to bring the guilty parties of the judicial massacres to justice, Mesdaghi posed a provocative dare to British human rights lawyer, Kaveh Moussavi.

“if I tell you that one of the perpetrators is coming to Europe, will you bring him to court?”

Moussavi took him up on it.” If you commit crimes that are basically an outrage against the conscience of humankind, then expect humankind anywhere on the planet to assert jurisdiction.”

Mesdaghi had been tracking the movements not only of the surviving witnesses but also the perpetrators. Most advanced within the Iranian regime, but, eight years later, Mesdaghi called Moussavi and tipped him off Hamid Nouri was travelling to Sweden.

Moussavi prepared a case file that included witness testimony and presented it to Sweden. Sweden has universal jurisdiction for violations of international law. The trial of Hamid Nouri began on August 10.  He is being prosecuted on charges of “war crimes” and “murder crimes” under the jurisdiction of the Swedish judiciary.

Several witnesses will appear to give testimony to the court which is expected to end in late September.

Nouri worked as an assistant prosecutor in Iran’s prison system. In the summer of 1988, the Iranian leadership sent special teams of security and judicial officials known as “Death Committee” to the prisons to organize the executions of members of the opposition People’s Mujahadin. Thousands of prisoners were hanged, sometimes strung up on construction cranes for public viewing. Their bodies were buried in mass graves, their relatives forbidden from mourning them or visiting the grave sites.

A second wave of executions targeted political prisoners. His accusers say that Nouri was directly involved in these executions.

Mesdaghi endured time in an Iranian prison. He suffered in solitary confinement and did not have a lawyer, but he demands that Nouri gets a fair trial with proper legal representation, and he does not demand a death sentence.

“I’m fighting for justice,” he said. “Not just for myself but for everybody.”

If Hamid Nouri is proven guilty of the crimes against him he faces up to fifteen years in prison. Beyond that, three questions need to be asked.

Will the Swedish judiciary bring evidence from this trial to the International Criminal Court with a request that they study the findings of the case and open an investigation of the crimes and put out a warrant for the arrest of the leaders of these crimes to stand trial for international human rights and war crimes at The Hague, including the new President of Iran?

Will the European Union bring the result of this trial to the United Nations Human Rights Council and request a resolution against all those who participated in the mass murder of political opponents and protesters, including the new President of Iran?

Will the United Nations Human Rights Council include the Iranian human rights crimes against their own people in the agenda of their upcoming Durban Conference scheduled for September? Or will they let Iran off the hook and make a mockery of their event by reigniting the “Zionism is Racism” fallacy as they did twenty years ago?

 It took Israel seventeen years to get this iniquitous act off the UN statute books. It would go some way to recover the tarnished reputation of the UN if, instead of targeting Israel, they took up the challenge of demanding that every criminal Iranian, including the newly crowned president, face human rights investigations over the killing of tens of thousands of Iranian citizens.

In light of a possible conviction and the implications against those in power in Tehran, will the United States include these massive human rights crimes against the Iranian people as a reason to impose harsher sanctions and bring about the end of the wickedly criminal Iranian regime?

Barry Shaw, Senior Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

 

 

With the Election of Raisi, It’s Time to Get Real with Iran.

If you thought that Iran could not get more extreme. Think again. It just did.

Remember the name Ebrahim Raisi. He is the new leader of Iran.

His ambitions were clear for decades. He marks himself out from the rest by wearing a black turban. This is significant. It is a personal statement, as well as a commitment of faith, in which he declares himself (wrongly) as a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad. In other words, his words, his orders, come from Allah himself.

He is omnipotent.

He was there, as a student, protesting the overthrow of the Shah of Persia in 1979 that led to the Islamic Revolution.

After the Revolution, he joined the judiciary and became the Deputy Prosecutor in Tehran at the age of 25.

In that capacity, he sat as one of four judges in a secret tribunal set up in 1988 that became known as the “Death Committee.”

This committee of judges retried political prisoners who had already been sentenced but instead of commuting their sentences they decreed death on what human rights groups have described as thousands of men and women.

After execution, they were buried in unmarked graves.

After Ayatollah Ali Montazeri, considered a moderate, complained about the mass executions calling them “the biggest crime in the history of the Islamic Republic” he lost his position as the successor of Khomeini. That went to hardliner Ayatollah Khamenei who became Supreme Leader after Khomeini’s death.

Raisi went on to serve as the chief prosecutor of Tehran before becoming the State Inspectorate Organization head and later in 2014 the Iranian Prosecutor General.

In 2016, he became the custodian of Iran’s most influential religious foundations, the Astan-e Quds-e Razavi, the wealthiest organization in Iran, a multi-billion domestic empire, with holdings in real estate, construction, agriculture, energy, telecommunications and financial services, according to the United States.

Although, as judiciary chief, he reduced the death sentences of people sentenced for drug-related crimes, the number of executed political prisoners increased.

Iran continues to execute more people than any other country except for China.

Despite running on a campaign “to fight poverty, corruption, humiliation and discrimination,” the recent election was shadowed by the disqualification by the hardline Guardian Council of several prominent moderate and reformist candidates.

In protest, the turnout was a low 49%, but Raisi won 62% of the vote, winning eighteen million votes.

This new position as President of Iran places him in a leading position to become the overarching Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic when Ayatollah Khamenei dies.

In a 130-page report, written by the London-based human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson, Q.C., during the killing spree of Raisi’s ‘Death Commission’ people were hung from cranes “four at a time, or in groups of six with ropes hanging from the front of the stage in an assembly hall.”

In Israel, an HaAretz analysis called Raisi, “An Executioner Fond of the Gallows,” pointing out that he preferred hanging to shooting political prisoners because it took longer to die.

Raisi said that Iran’s ballistic missiles program is “non-negotiable.”

The introduction of Raisi as Iranian President should force a naïve Western leadership to remove their blinkers and look at Iran as it really is, what their future intentions really are, and stop pussy-footing around the issue.

Barry Shaw, Senior Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. 

Putin Ate Biden's Lunch in Geneva.

Vladimir Putin held a long press conference in Geneva after his meeting with Biden, answering questions from many of the world's media.

When asked about the atmosphere of his meeting with Biden he said he felt no pressure.

In response to an American reporter's question about political prisoners in Russia, referring to Alexei

Navalny, Putin spoke about the 400 American political prisoners being held under "criminal persecution" in solitary confinement by the US Government who are referring to their own citizens "domestic terrorists."

Putin also questioned dubious American governmental actions by speaking about Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed woman who, on January 6, threatened no one but was shot dead by a US official who has not been named or arrested.

He also contrasted the BLM riots as being in violation of US law yet they allowed to burn and destroy many American cities.

He rhetorically asked the reporters if they thought that he should tolerate such wholesale violence in Russia in the name of democracy.

Dubious Democrat actions are coming back to bite them internationally.

When they tried to put a mirror up to Russia, Putin artfully turned the mirror around into America's political face.

Putin answered more questions in under an hour than Biden and Harris combined have done in six months.

It was a major diplomatic mistake by the United States to allow Putin go first with his press conference. Biden's press meet was subsequently reactive.

They didn't hold a joint press conference because the Biden camp was afraid their guy wouldn't be able to hold a candle to Putin. The optics would have looked bad.

They were right.

The Putin conference went on for 55 minutes. Biden's 24. Putin answered eighteen hardball questions. Biden answered just seven pre-arranged questions from pro-selected reporters, although Peter Doocey of Fox News managed to sneak in a question as Biden was walking off the stage.

In this non-Summit, America got nothing in return for two major Russian cyber attacks for which Putin got away scot-free. Putin came gift less after Biden inexplicably lifted the sanctions on the Russian pipeline to Europe that boosts their economy for decades and increases its power and influence in Europe.

Biden gave Putin trillions of Euros with this pipeline while paying NATO billions of dollars to protect them from Russia.

Welcome to American weakness.

Biden couldn't even get the return of Americans lingering in Russian jails.

America surrendered the moral high ground on human rights. Biden was trapped by the Democrats lying narrative of "systemic racism" in America.

It was played back to them by the Chinese delegation in their meeting the Biden's foreign policy and national security teams in Alaska in March.

It was played back to them by Putin in Geneva in June.

A weak America is on the back foot and disrespected globally.

Putin ate Biden's lunch in Geneva.

Barry Shaw,

Senior Associate at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.

Israel is at war with itself.

 

Let’s be brutally honest. Let’s call it out for what it is. We have a full blown race war playing out on the streets of Israel. We'd better get on top of it before it destroys us.

It’s easy to take sides. It’s easy to blame ourselves out of a sense of decency hoping the other side will bear their share of the guilt. The problem is it’s easy to be decent and apologize out of a sense of moral decency, even though the other side is as guilty as sin for what they are doing, in order to hopefully restore peace. But that doesn’t cut it, as we see in America.

Believe me, it’s easy to tot up the score and point red cards at the other side. That’s an easy game to win, but that won’t cut it if we want to restore calm and unite the country. The other side must shape up as well.

You can’t solve a race problem until both sides own their guilt. Not one side. Both sides. That didn’t happen in America. And they won’t find peace and absolution until that happens. The other side simply smells weakness and goes further on the offensive.

So let’s not follow the American route. In their case the blacks, for whatever justification, have gone on the rampage and are taking their hate out on the whites as if they, the blacks are innocent victims. and the whites are sucking it up and behaving as if they are guilty as sin even if they don’t have a racist bone in their body. That’s not the way to solve their problem. They are being fed wholesale lies and they are sucking it up and, in too many cases, claiming sins they do not possess.

That is not being honest. That does not solve the problem. It merely exacerbates it.

This must not happen in Israel. It must not happen in Israel for existential reasons. Here, in Israel, most people, on both sides of the divide, are decent, hard-working people, now struggling with a problem in which both sides have their share of guilt, maybe one side far more than the other. But you don’t solve the problem by duking it out on the street. You don’t solve the problem by letting mobs torch other people’s property. You certainly don’t solve the problem by taking the law into your own hands and go hunting for the vulnerable other in order to lynch them. You don’t solve the problem by destroying the other’s places of worship. And you don’t solve the problem by going after the men and women in uniform who are there to restore calm by isolating the violent instigators and, if necessary, arresting them for their crimes against society. And you certainly don’t solve the problem by elevating the violent on one side into some sort of social justice warrior while denigrating the other side as racist.

There are Israeli Arabs steeped in the religious anti-Semitism of their faith. Though barely educated, they express their emotions with a hatred of Jews and a desire for glory by attacking them. They have been brainwashed into believing this is an act of a higher calling. It brings them one step closer to an Islamic heaven as a hero and a martyr.

Sadly, Israel has an underclass of loud-mouthed louts who think it’s powerful to scream “Death to Arabs” at football games, as if that would inspire their team to score more goals. They strut as if they control the street. They are nothing but ignorant hooligans that shame Judaism.

These do not represent the majority of their clan. They do represent a danger that must be called out, condemned and punished. Not excused or justified. Because if we allow it to grow, to gain respectability, if we do not reject and destroy this disease, it will explode and destroy our country from within.

Here in Israel we must call both sides of this thuggery the racists that they are. Let’s not be America. Let’s be honest here. Let’s call the spade the bloody shovel that it is. There is racism going on on both sides of the street war here in Israel. This is not a one sided battle between good and evil. Both are evil. And it will take affirmative actors on both sides of the divide to put their differences aside and address the problem together.

This is the only way we can get on top of it and eradicate it. With brutal, non-violent honesty. Even if it means we have to be as brutally honest with ourselves as with the other. If we allow them to fester they will rot the soul out of our body.

We have existential threats from those who hate us and want to kill us based on race, and who are now exploiting our domestic vulnerabilities. This has been exacerbated by a minority of Israeli Arabs who see themselves as the spearhead of a wider Jewish hatred. Regrettably, and damagingly, elected Knesset members chosen to represent the best interests of Israeli Arabs, those quick to noisily criticize rare acts of violence against Arabs within Israel, have been dangerously silent over the eruption of Arab initiated thuggery and mob lynching against Jews.

This makes it all the more imperative to get on top of our internal problem swiftly and effectively by calling on both sides to sit together and control their side of the street. 

It’s time for unity for the sake of our soul. For the sake of our country.

Barry Shaw, International Public Diplomacy Director. Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.