RSS
The Implications of Rafah’s Cross-Border Tunnels
Israeli soldiers operate at the opening to a tunnel at Al Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza City, amid the ongoing ground operation of the Israeli army against Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, Nov. 22, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
JNS.org – An estimated 50 cross-border tunnels link Gaza to Egypt’s Sinai, enabling Hamas to smuggle weapons, funds and personnel, and black-market traders to import a range of goods to the Strip.
Yoni Ben Menachem, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said that since the Israel Defense Forces has not yet captured all of Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor, aka the Philadelphi Route or the Saladin Axis (the narrow strip of land along the 8.7-mile border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt), the estimate for the number of tunnels could easily rise.
The current IDF operations have focused on specific points such as the Rafah crossing and parts of the Philadelphi Corridor, as well as eastern Rafah, but they are due to expand shortly.
According to Ben Menachem, the tunnels serve purposes beyond smuggling weapons. These include the transportation of “prohibited goods such as luxury goods, cigarettes and pornographic materials, which are then sold on the black market in Gaza at high prices,” he noted, highlighting the financial aspect of the smuggling operations.
He also said there was likely high-level corruption at the Rafah crossing, where bribes are paid to Egyptian security officials to facilitate smuggling.
“According to Palestinian reports, bribery of senior officials at the Rafah crossing and Egyptian military officers on the Philadelphi Route enabled the transport of goods and weapons,” he said, underscoring the extensive network supporting smuggling activities, which he said has been occurring both over and underground.
As such, Ben Menachem said, the tunnels are part of a larger industry that includes the transfer of residents of Gaza into Egypt and beyond.
Ben Menachem referred to reports that claim Mahmoud el-Sisi, the son of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is heavily involved in these operations.
“According to Palestinian claims, Mahmoud el-Sisi, the powerful figure in Egyptian intelligence, is behind a front company named Hala, which organizes the passage of Gaza residents into Egypt,” he said. Gazan families pay thousands of dollars to leave Gaza, he added.
“I believe we are at this stage of still fighting in a limited area of Rafah, and have yet to conduct the large operation there. Israel is preparing to stay in Rafah, and wishes to destroy these tunnels. Israel cannot at this stage risk a direct diplomatic clash with Egypt over this, so the Americans will, I believe, deal with this on Israel’s behalf,” Ben Menachem assessed, referring to smoothing over security ties.
“The Egyptian army will have an financial problem, because they are being disconnected from the smuggling, an important income source,” he added.
Resolute in its fight
Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Shay, a senior research fellow at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Herzliya, served as deputy head of the National Security Council of Israel between 2007 and 2009.
He told JNS that the Gaza-Sinai tunnels have been a longstanding issue, particularly active during the rule of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the brief presidency of Muslim Brotherhood figure Mohamed Morsi. “It is likely that many tunnels were operational during Mubarak’s era and certainly during Morsi’s short rule,” Shay explained.
Since the elder el-Sisi came to power as deputy prime minister in 2013 and then as president in 2014, Egypt has made significant efforts to combat terrorism and reduce the number of tunnels. Shay said, “El-Sisi’s government has been resolute in its fight against Islamist terrorist groups, including the Islamic State in Sinai and the Muslim Brotherhood, and part of these efforts included tackling the tunnel networks.”
Despite these efforts, “achieving 100% success is improbable,” Shay added.
He highlighted the strategic importance of maintaining good relations between Israel and Egypt, particularly in the context of the ongoing conflict against Hamas and humanitarian efforts.
“There is a clear strategic interest for both Israel and Egypt to maintain good relations, as evidenced by the cooperation on humanitarian activities through the Rafah crossing and Egyptian mediation regarding hostages,” Shay said.
The tunnels, he added, represent a concern for both countries, necessitating cooperative efforts.
“The IDF must decide on its next steps carefully to avoid jeopardizing relations with Egypt,” Shay cautioned, emphasizing the necessity for joint efforts to curtail the smuggling and promote regional stability.
The post The Implications of Rafah’s Cross-Border Tunnels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada
Vancouver police arrested and released one person at the home of Charlotte Kates, director of the terror group Samidoun, in a dramatic raid on Nov. 14. The raid was conducted […]
The post Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
RSS
Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, US, March 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer
President-elect Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes in New York City (NYC) precincts that were at least a quarter Jewish, according to a data analysis by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a prominent Washington DC-based political group.
RJC presented data on Friday affirming the notion that Trump won a higher proportion of the NYC Jewish vote than in previous elections, potentially signaling an ideological shift in the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. According to RJC data, Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25%.
Trump’s 2024 performance among Jews in NYC seems to mark a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections, contests in which the president-elect struggled to make inroads among Jewish voters.
Voting data from the 2024 election also indicate that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. President-elect Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily-Jewish enclaves of deep-blue cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
Trump’s increased success among Jewish voters in the Big Apple comes amid simmering anger over surging antisemitism across the country.
In the year following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, college campuses have become embroiled in an unrelenting onslaught of protests opposing the Jewish state. Moreover, many Jews have expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, suggesting that the president has not been a firm ally of the Jewish state.
Over the past year, NYC has been ravaged with raucous, often-violent anti-Israel demonstrations and an unrelenting spate of antisemitic hate crimes.
Columbia University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world, became a poster-child for the anti-Israel campus movement, erecting encampments and holding protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Many NYC public schools came embroiled in scandal after teachers presented students with lesson plans that accused Israel of committing “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Though most national Democrats continue to express support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists, some figures in the party have, over the past year, adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state, often citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a key reason.
High-profile Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) have suggested that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” against Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign targeting terrorists since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Earlier this year, a group of dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to “reconsider” approving offensive arms shipments to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them once he retains office in January.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
The post Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge
Screenshot of masked men who attempted to rob Jewish man in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Thursday. Photo: Screenshot
The Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York was the target of another attack on Thursday evening, as three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood.
Footage of the incident was shared on X/Twitter by Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit. It shows the men, whose faces were concealed by hoods and ski masks, chasing the man into the street and through the neighborhood after attempting to accost him.
No arrests have been made.
“He doesn’t give in easily, and I don’t think they got anything,” Behrman tweeted. “The Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
The explosion of an antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has set the Orthodox Jewish community on edge in recent weeks.
Last Tuesday, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. According to multiple accounts, the assailants were two Black teenagers.
That incident was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. Before then, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Most recently, a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. Police later identified the man as Stephan Stowe, 28 — a suspect gang member with an extensive criminal history which includes 33 prior arrests — and charged arrested him attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, the suspect was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login