YNET: Arab-Israeli Soldier Hides His Uniform from Neighbors

Samir (alias), 26, a Muslim Arab from northern Israel and a married father of one, is a combat soldier in the IDF. He serves in a Home Front Command search and rescue battalion, whose men also perform combat activities. "I love the army," he says. "If I was born and raised in Syria, I would have served in their army. But I live here, so I decided to do my part and enlist."
    In Samir's village army service is not generally accepted. The few who volunteered are still the target of harassment. His wife and parents were the only ones who supported his decision. "I'm in a good place," he says. "If I can continue in the regular service, I will. If not, I will try and join the civilian emergency services: police or fire brigades." Despite the difficulties, Samir calls on Muslim youth to follow in his footsteps. "It's very gratifying," he says. (Ynet News)

Christian Arab youth come under fire over desire to enlist in IDF Arab media and Arab MKs are waging a vicious smear campaign against a small group of Christian Arab youth interested in military or national service • Christian Orthodox priest excommunicated for "cooperating with the enemy."

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The Arab media is waging an unrestrained and vicious campaign against a small group of Christian Arab youth who wish to serve in the Israel Defense Forces.

Two weeks ago, a conference was held at an Upper Nazareth community center fro 121 Christian 11th and 12th grade high school students, all residents of Nazareth, Upper Nazareth, and Arab villages in the Lower Galilee region, who had expressed their desire to enlist in the IDF, even in combat units. Israel Hayom has learned that every year, some 50 youths from the Christian Israeli-Arab sector enlist for military duty.

However, after the recent conference, problems began for the youths. Photographs of some of them at the conference and at IDF preparatory meetings were published on various Facebook pages, and some Arabic print newspapers and online news sites began a smear campaign against them, including implied threats. Some of those in the media attacks were Arab members of Knesset.

The youngsters were depicted as traitors, and journalists wrote articles promising to "take care of them" and hunt them down. One writer said, "We will uproot you from the source. The mission that failed 50 years ago will fail now, too."

The Arab Knesset members who joined the chorus of incitement condemned the conference and enlistment to the IDF, and distorted and twisted what was said there by claiming that the conference’s goal had been to slander and attack Islam. In addition, the Arab Orthodox local council in Nazareth announced that priest Jobrail Nadaf, who took part in the event and supports IDF enlistment among Christian Arab-Israeli youth, had been suspended from his duties as priest and excommunicated from his church for what was called "cooperating with the enemy." Nadaf was also the target of extreme threats and quickly complained to the Nazareth police, who opened an investigation.

"This is obviously sheer foolishness," one of the conference organizers said. "This was an information conference. It has nothing to do with Islam. The uproar by the Arabic media is awful; they are making us out to be traitors and enemies. Soldiers in the IDF have asked their commanders for permission to return home in civilian clothes, not in uniform. This could spiral into bloodshed."

According to Nadaf, "I am not sorry for my participation in the conference. The call to remove me from my job is unlawful and I will continue to serve my community. I'm happy that the police and the Defense Ministry are determined to protect me."

Alex Gadalkin, the deputy mayor of Upper Nazareth and one of the conference organizers, said, "This is an act of grave incitement and racism by the Arab media and Knesset members from the Arab sector. Law enforcement agencies must respond with a strong hand against those who are inciting."

The Defense Ministry said in a statement: "Due to the threats received by those involved in promoting equality in sharing the burden of military service or national civic service, the head of the ministry's Social Defense Department reported the matter to the relevant authorities so it could be taken care of as quickly as possible. The Defense Ministry will not accept that people who work to promote this issue come under threat or attack, and it will act to grant the greatest possible aid and support to all those being threatened."

IYIM Hachnasat Sefer Torah #200 to IDF

An open letter from Anonymous to the Government of Israel; Claims that the official websites of the IDF, Mossad Intelligence Agency and Shin Bet were successfully hacked

The official websites of the IDF, Mossad Intelligence Agency and Shin Bet were successfully hacked on Sunday, November 06, 2011. The question is who is behind the hacking attack?

The Office of the IDF Spokesman is not releasing any official comment as of yet, other than the main IDF site is down. There were advanced warnings apparently that the Anonymous hacking organization was planning to target the IDF and other sites.

The computer experts are working on getting the downed website back up and running as well as seeking to learn just how they penetrated firewalls and security to prevent repeat occurrences.On Friday, a YouTube movie was uploaded named AnonymousMMV, with the threat that the organization would be hacking into the sites and taking them down in response to the Israel Navy operation preventing boats from reaching Gaza on Friday, 7 Cheshvan.

And the winner is ... Israel's Counterterrorism Unit

Israel's Counterterrorism Unit team won, for the second consecutive time, first place in an international homeland security competition • The same team took first place in a handgun shooting competition for special IDF and police units in September.

Itsik Saban

Best of the best: The winning Israeli Counterterrorism Unit team in California.  |  Photo credit: Israel Police

For the second consecutive year, a team from Israel's Counterterrorism unit has taken first place in an international competition testing homeland security and readiness to respond to acts of terror.

The team swept the prestigious "Urban Shield" competition, held last week in California in the framework of a national emergency drill organized by the U.S. Homeland Security Office.

During the internationally acclaimed competition, combat teams were tested in a variety of anti-terrorist, extreme crime, hostage rescue, and tactical combat scenarios. An FBI team and a team of royal Jordanian guards were also among the participants.

The national emergency drill was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with the aim of testing the preparedness of emergency services and anti-terrorist units should another terrorist attack occur.

Although this marked the competition's sixth consecutive year, Israel only began participating two years ago. It has now taken first place in both attempts.

Israel's Counterterrorism Unit is an elite unit in the Border Police, comparable to such global crime-fighting groups as U.S. SWAT teams, the French GIGN, and the German GSG-9, which was established after 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were murdered at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich.

The Counterterrorism Unit is tasked with handling a number of security and civilian-related situations, and its members are trained in various types of drills and simulations -- some secret -- mainly focusing on terrorist attacks and hostage crisis situations.

The Counterterrorism Unit is one of Israel's most in-demand security units. Its members take on complex and dangerous missions, sometimes working in tandem with the Internal Security Agency. They arrest crime bosses and take on missions in some of the nation's most high-risk areas. The unit employs advanced hi-tech equipment and unique methods of operation, some of which were developed especially for the unit.

In September, the same Israeli team won first place in a handgun shooting competition for special IDF and police units. Other participants in that competition were the National Police Undercover Unit, the Border Police Undercover Unit, and several elite IDF units.

Police Commissioner Yochanan Danino congratulated the Counterterrorism Unit on winning the international competition.

Arabs in the IDF - The Special Populations Unit

On March 6, 2008, a small infantry unit from the Israel Defense Forces’ Givati Brigade left camp with the rising sun to comb the Gaza border for arms smugglers, terrorists, and assorted other unwanted visitors. Israel shares 1,017 kilometers of borderland with its neighbors, and patrols much of it every day. On the average morning, these patrols turn up very little. But when this group of soldiers pulled into the still-cool sand outside their base’s gate, the first of two Jeeps in their convoy caromed over a remote-control bomb and burst into flames. The vehicle jumped, hit the ground, and rolled to a stop. Inside, the front seat was slick with blood. A young soldier lay slumped against the dashboard, dead.

Had he been a typical Israeli soldier, what happened next would have followed a predictable routine.Haaretz, Yediot Ahronot, and Ma’ariv, Israel’s three major dailies, would have run front-page stories detailing the attack and the ensuing military funeral, their reporting flanked by outsize color photographs of the dead man as he was in life, a hand still resting on his shoulder where his wife or girlfriend had been cropped out. Human-interest pieces would have followed— Yediot recounting how, during the shiva mourning period, the soldier’s grieving mother had brought out his soccer trophies, Ma’ariv relaying an eerie story about something prescient he’d said the last time he’d visited. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the prime minister would convene an emergency meeting of his cabinet to hash out a military response.

When this soldier died, though, things went differently.

Suliman abu Juda, one of several thousand ethnic Arabs who serve, almost unnoticed, in Israel’s military, was buried in a civilian ceremony in the unregistered Negev village he called home—a settlement not officially recognized by Israel. In the days following his death, only one newspaper printed his name. The foreign ministry’s website, which lists soldiers killed in action, posted a nameless bio of abu Juda, a twenty-eight-year-old father of seven. Next to the profile was an empty box where a photograph would normally go.

The muted response came at his parents’ request. It was an effort on their part to avoid retribution from other Arabs in Israel, and from Palestinians who might have opposed their young son’s decision to cast his lot with the Israeli army. Abu Juda had two wives; one hailed from the West Bank city of Hebron, an incubator of Palestinian violence. His parents worried that their in-laws’ standing, to say nothing of their physical safety, would be jeopardized if their son’s name got out. And so abu Juda’s death was allowed to pass almost unnoticed.

His faceless online obituary is an apt illustration of the Israeli Arab soldier’s predicament. These men—and they are almost entirely men—are despised by much of the Arab world as traitors, and feared in Israel as a potential fifth column. The average Israeli Arab simply lives in the Jewish state; Israel’s Arab soldiers are its collaborators. Some, like abu Juda, fall in love and marry women from the West Bank and Gaza, and then, quite literally, must raise their rifles against family members. They are at once Muslims and citizens of the Jewish state; the first line of defense and a “demographic threat.”